Cuestiones En Job

JBL 128, no. 4 (2009): 703–715

In the Eyes of the Beholder: Unmarked Attributed Quotations in Job
edward ho
edwardcwho@yahoo.ca 25 Amulet Crescent, Richmond Hill, ON L4S 2S2, Canada

Quotations, in the broadest sense, pervade every utterance, for all texts are compelled to draw on previous vocabulary, expressions, images, and ideas. As Julia Kristeva puts it, “any text is constructed as amosaic of quotations; any text is the absorption and transformation of another.”1 In a more conventional sense, a quotation may refer to words that are intended to be recognized as originating from another source but are “reused” as the words of the speaker. The words uttered, however, are meant to be heard as the voice of the primary speaker, even though the voice of the precedent text is alsosimultaneously invoked. This phenomenon is what Mikhail Bakhtin calls “double voicing.”2 The current voice may have different types of relationship to the precedent voice, ranging from absolute alignment to total opposition. In her intriguing monograph on Job, Carol A. Newsom argues that both Job and his friends at times quote traditional sayings in order to enhance their own arguments. According toher, both the present speaker’s voice and that of the tradition are intended to be simultaneously recognized by the audience. Whereas the friends often cite authoritative tradition in agreement and support, Job at times alludes to the hymnic tradition in order to parody them.3 In biblical

This article is a revised version of a paper read at the Biblical Hebrew Poetry Section, SBL annualmeeting in Boston, Massachusetts, November 23, 2008. 1 Julia Kristeva, Desire in Language: A Semiotic Approach to Literature and Art (ed. Leon S. Roudiez; trans. Thomas Gora, Alice Jardine and Leon S. Roudiez; European Perspectives; New York: Columbia University Press, 1980), 66. 2 Mikhail Bakhtin, Problems of Dostoevsky’s Poetics (ed. and trans. Caryl Emerson; Theory and History of Literature 8;Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1984), 187–89. 3 Carol A. Newsom, The Book of Job: A Contest of Moral Imaginations (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003), 130–31.

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studies, this type of quotation is sometimes discussed under the rubric of “innerbiblical exegesis,” “intertextuality,” “allusion,” or “echo.”4 For the sakeof clarity, in what follows, I will use the term “allusion” when referring to this type of quotation. Another distinct type, called attributed quotation, consists of words that are intended to be taken as belonging to a subject other than the primary speaker, regardless of their actual source, and only repeated by the latter. This is what Bakhtin calls “objectified discourse” or “representeddiscourse.”5 Whether the quotation expresses the sentiment of the precedent voice truthfully is not a matter in question. Most important is the distance that the primary speaker sets in relation to that voice. In Bakhtin’s words, the primary speaker’s “intention does not penetrate inside the objectified discourse.”6 In this type of quotation, the voice may change significantly, even in total oppositionto that of the primary speaker, especially in disputation. The correct identification of an attributed quotation is thus crucial to its interpretation. An attributed quotation can be marked by a verbum dicendi, an explicit verb of speaking or thinking, such as rm). This type of explicitly marked attributed quotation appears frequently in many portions of the book of Job, such as the dialoguebetween Job and his three friends (11:4; 19:28; 20:7b; 21:14–15, 28; 22:13–14, 17; 24:15b), the so-called wisdom poem (28:14, 22, 28), Job’s later testimony (31:31), and the speeches of Elihu (32:13; 33:9–11, 24, 27–28; 34:5–6, 9, 18, 31–32, 35–37; 35:2–3, 10-11; 36:23b; 37:6a). In addition to a verbum dicendi, an attributed quotation can sometimes be signaled by virtual markings. The main indices...