English Protestantism’s attention to Job’s complaints (rather than just his patience, as in patristic and medieval readings) signals a turn from using the Book of Job as hagiography to what early modern Protestants called “history” and what we might call psychological realism.

Kimberly Susan Hedlin, “The Book of Job in Early Modern England” PhD Diss., University of California, Los Angeles 2018, ii.

This dissertation explores how post-Reformation literature—ranging from neo-Latin exegesis to religious lyric engages with the Old Testament figure of Job. Far from the patient Christian saint that dominates medieval commentary, Job in the early modern period is a racialized, masculine mortal; a complainer with free will; a mere atom in a heliocentric cosmos; and a discoverer of the sublime. He is a typological figure of Christ, the patron saint of syphilis and music, and an epic poet. His story was conjectured to be the most ancient in the world and his poetry the most difficult in the Bible.

Kimberly Susan Hedlin, “The Book of Job in Early Modern England” PhD Diss., University of California, Los Angeles 2018, 1.

Calvin’s use of Elihu is only one example of how early modern readers differ from contemporary readers in approaching the dating, authorship, and transmission of the Book of Job. Whereas contemporary scholars describe an anonymous (possibly postexilic) Hebrew author of Job’s prose frame and poetry, many early modern commentators believed Moses to be the author of the Book of Job (perhaps during his time wandering in Midian), or credited Job himself, Solomon, or Elihu with the book’s authorship.

Kimberly Susan Hedlin, “The Book of Job in Early Modern England” PhD Diss., University of California, Los Angeles 2018, 9.

It took Protestantism’s increased attention to the Book of Job itself (rather than oral legend, patristic commentary, apocryphal texts, and the Septuagint translation) to jumpstart a new way of understanding Job’s character. In his “Preface to Job,” Martin Luther inverts the patient Job tradition, suggesting that Job’s complaints are what make the Book of Job “magnificent and sublime” (chapter 1).61 In contrast to medieval commentators who praised Job for what he was able to endure, Luther highlights Job’s weakness for how it manifests his dependence on God’s grace. In his Sermons Upon Job, John Calvin, too, flips the “patient Job” tradition on its head. Instead of an exemplum of patience, Calvin understands Job as a complainer, who accuses God of injustice because he fails to comprehend God’s absolute power.

Kimberly Susan Hedlin, “The Book of Job in Early Modern England” PhD Diss., University of California, Los Angeles 2018, 17.