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contact:
malbon@vt.edu

Cynthia Chapman is affiliated with Oberlin College.

Abstract: This paper focuses on the pairing of Job’s wife with Satan in early Christian and Jewish midrash and in the visual narrative found in the early Christian sarcophagus of Junius Bassus. As the speaker of one tantalizing line – “Do you still persist in your integrity? Curse God and die” – the character of Job’s wife presented an open invitation for midrashic comment. An examination of rabbinic and early Christian written interpretations of Job’s wife demonstrates that one trajectory of interpretation linked Job’s wife to Eve in the garden. Both of these women were understood as instruments of Satan in their husband’s trials. The juxtaposition of Adam, Eve and the serpent with Job, his wife and Satan on the sarcophagus of Junius Bassus represents a visual midrash on the character of Job’s wife. Moreover, the grouping of a third scene of divine trial from the Hebrew Bible on this sarcophagus – the binding of Isaac – suggests a need to consider Sarah as yet another wife who experiences the divine test by proxy and like Eve and Job’s wife proves inadequate to the challenge.

2005, Philadelphia


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