Named the 1997 Best Book Relating to the Old Testament
by the Biblical Archaeology Society

A sweeping historical examination of how painters and sculptors have represented the biblical hero Job through the ages.

"This is a work of enormous erudition, artistic insight, and biblical expertise. Only Samuel Terrien could bring it off."-The Catholic Biblical Quarterly

"A remarkable book. . . . Terrien's commentary demonstrates not only his profound grasp of the biblical subject and its possibilities for interpretation, but also the scope of his knowledge of history and the stamp that history leaves on the artifacts that survive it. He reads the art with the same insight with which he reads the biblical text, conscious of the human drama depicted there. The collection sketches the face of human suffering through the ages. Terrien's reflections help us to understand some of the causes of that suffering, and to marvel at the human spirit that has refused to be crushed by it."-Theological Studies

"Beginning with the earliest Christian and Jewish representations of Job, Terrien traces the subtle changes that have taken place in the way in which the book's chief character has been perceived. This graphic history provides many new insights into the various ways that sensitive but nonspecialist readers have interpreted Job."-Robert R. Wilson, Yale University

Do artists who deal with biblical scenes study the texts that inspire them? At the same time, do scholars pay attention to artists as biblical interpreters? Eminent biblical scholar Samuel Terrien seeks to answer these questions in this first ever comprehensive survey of Jobian iconography from the third century to modern times. Through an analysis of the varying depictions of Job, he finds that artists were not usually subservient to directives of religious authorities; rather, they often contradicted or preceded the exegetical trends of these commentators.

Terrien has selected more than 150 masterpieces from the approximately 800 images of Job that have escaped oblivion. His vast knowledge of the biblical text illumines the rich discussion, which ranges over artistic medium and time from the fresco of the Dura-Europos synagogue, the miniatures of the Patmos manuscript, the Doge Dandolo mosaic of the San Marco Baptistry in Venice, the mercy seats of Champeaux-en-Brie, the Sacra Allegoria of Giovannni Bellini in Florence, and Albrecht Durer's Jabach Altarpiece in Cologne and Frankfurt, to the mystery soldier in Salvator Rosa's Job in the Uffizi and the Job with Background of Geometricized Christ à la Cimabuë by Marc Chagall in St.-Paul-de-Vence.

This rich interdisciplinary work reveals for the first time that Jobian artists saw in the ancient hero not only the prophet of a new life or the model of revolt and faith but also-and surprisingly-the intercessor of sexual reprobates, the patron saint of musicians, and, in modern times, the existential man.