SOURCE: "Is Job Religious for Nothing?" in In Turns of Tempest: A Reading of Job, Stanford University Press, 1990, pp. 189-203.

Good is a Cameroonian-born theologian whose writings include Irony in the Old Testament (1965) and Job and the Literary Task: A Response (1973). In the following essay he offers an analysis of the first section of The Book of Job.

Perhaps Job 1-2 is a folktale. In some respects it reads like one: the "once upon a time" beginning, with its quick, deft encapsulation of the hero's circumstances and character, the formulaic structural points ("It was the day when,"1.6, 13; 2.1), the refrains of the messengers' speeches ("And I escaped all alone to tell you," 1.15, 16, 17, 19), the formal greetings between Yahweh and the Prosecutor(1.7; 2.2), the repeated formula defining Job, given by the narration and twice by Yahweh ("scrupulously moral, religious, one who avoids evil," 1.1, 8; 2.3).

The only reference to Job outside the Book of...