Dr Tom Kerns
North Seattle Community College

 

A Few Valuable and Interesting Books
about
The Book of Job

 

1. Blake, William, Illustrations for The Book of Job. Blake did these illustrations himself, and wrote some text to accompany each one. (Available on reserve in the NSCC Library)

2. Frost, Robert, A Masque of Reason. Another contemporary drama piece re-doing the Job story. Frost, of course, puts the whole drama in poem form.

3. Jung, C. G., Answer to Job, 1952. Read it only after you've read Jung's Memories, Dreams, Reflections.

4. Kidner, Derek, The Wisdom of Proverbs, Job and Ecclesiastes, Intervarsity Press, 1985. A very insightful, clear and thoroughly probing study of these three intimately related books in the Old Testament.

5. Kushner, Rabbi Harold,When Bad Things Happen to Good People. It was on the best-seller lists in the early 1980s and deals with a question that most of us consider important, in a way that most of us can understand, even if we may not agree with it all. His discussion of The Book of Job is illuminating.

6. Lewis, C.S., The Problem of Pain. A very readable approach to the problem of evil, attempting a solution from Lewis' Christian perspective.

7. Lewis, C.S., A Grief Observed. Lewis' experience of grief at the death of his wife, Joy. This was an experience of immense personal pain which made him re-examine his attempted solutions in the above book.

8. MacLeish, Archibald, J.B. A contemporary re-telling of the Job story, set in modern times. Job's three friends are a psychotherapist, a Marxist and a minister. Done as a drama, and very readable. MacLeish has the ending turn out a bit differently than in the original Job story.