Vom Leiden zur Lehre: Der Dritte Redegang (Hiob 21—27) und die Redaktionsgeschichte des Hiobbuches

This volume, originally Witte's 1993 Marburg dissertation under Professor Otto Kaiser, is presented as a literary analysis of the third speech cycle in the book of Job and a sketch of the redactional layers in the book with special emphasis on the third speech cycle.
The first section of the book (pp. 7-55) is an exposition of the history of scholarship on the third speech cycle, beginning with B. Kennicott's contribution in 1780. To further survey the history of scholarship on the third speech cycle, Witte offers as an appendix (pp. 239-47) a "Synopse zur Forschungsgeschichte," again beginning with Kennicott in 1780 and concluding with his own 1993 study.
The second and most important section of the book (pp. 57-192) is Witte's literary- and redaction-critical analysis of the third speech cycle, which he demarcates as chapters 21-27 of the book of Job. (Some begin the third speech cycle with chapter 21, others with chapter 22.) To begin his literary analysis, Witte distinguishes three different speech types: (1) The Monologue, (2) The Dialogue, and (3) The Prayer. He provides for each of the chapters in the third speech cycle textual notes, a translation, and an analysis that focuses on the speech's themes, form, structure, and literary and poetic patterns and uses the techniques of modem literary criticism. He then compares the speech in the third cycle with the speeches by the same speaker in the first and second cycles. These literary analyses of the third speech cycle are, in this reviewer's opinion, the most valuable parts of the book. While the reader may not concur with every fine point of Witte's readings of the chapters in the third speech cycle, students of the book of Job will find in his research a rich harvest of careful, thought-provoking literary studies.