Theology & Philosophy

Book of Job: Fate, Virtue, and Liberty

ABSTRACT

This conference examined questions of fate and individual responsibility through a reading of the Book of Job, a Muslim gloss on theodicy, and contemporary theological and artistic encounters with Job's message.

READING LIST

Conference Readings

A Serious Man. Directed by Joel Coen and Ethan Coen. Universal Studios: Universal City, 2010. DVD.

Al Ghazali., “The Perfect Rightness of the Actual.” In Theodicy in Islamic Thought: The Dispute Over Al-Ghazali’s Best of All Possible Worlds, edited by Eric Linn Ormsby, 32-80. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2016 [1984].

Alter, Robert. The Wisdom Books: Job, Proverbs, and Ecclesiastes: A Translation with Commentary. Translated by Robert Alter. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2011.

Cone, James H. The Cross and the Lynching Tree. Maryknoll, New York: Orbis Books, 2013.

Gutierrez, Gustavo. On Job. Translated by Matthew J. O’Connell. Maryknoll, New York: Orbis Books, 1987.

Maimonides, Moses. The Guide for the Perplexed. Translated by M. Friedlander. New York: Dover Publishing , 1990.