A Fitting Inheritance for Job’s Daughters in the Testament of Job?

Full title
A Fitting Inheritance for Job’s Daughters in the Testament of Job?
Updated By
Research notes

NR\Reader checked\10/03/2015

Reference type
Author(s)
Harkins, Angela Kim
Year
2014
Journal / Book Title || Series Title
Henoch
Volume
36
Issue / Series Volume
1
Pages
64-85
Work type
Label
20/10/2014
Abstract

The Book of Job undergoes remarkable transformations in the ancient versions and early Jewish pseudepigrapha. In many of these historicizing interpretations, the figure of Job and his close family members are made more concrete than they appear in the MT text. In particular, the Greek Testament of Job dramatically transforms Job's wife and daughters and also introduces new episodes not known in either the MT or LXX, including a vignette in which Job gives heavenly cords to his three daughters as an inheritance. No discussion of the Testment of Job have given a plausible account for why this bequest was especially fitting. This essay reads the story of Job's daughters through the lens of the fallen angels traditions and proposes that the heavenly cords were to protect tha daghuters from the threat of illicit sexual advances from heavenly beings.