The 306 Greatest Books #49 - The Book of Job

I am going back and posting all of my previous book reviews so that they are listed on my site in chronological order. The reviews are dated for the time when I read the book, hence the reason many of them will be listed for times before this website existed. 

The next up on my reading of the 306 greatest books is The Book of Job by an anonymous author. This book can be found on the Norwegian Book List.

Although I have seen many 100 Greatest Book lists that put the entire Bible on them, out of my four lists only The Book of Job had made the cut. The Book of Job is often considered to be one of the best stories in the bible because of its attempts to justify the presence of good and evil both together on Earth. As I was reading through the story though, I was getting a little bit confused by the text about who was arguing for each side as God and Satan verbally sparred it out. Otherwise, the book seems to get its point across. Essentially, the story is about a man named Job (pronounced "Jobe") who looses his family and his health because of a bet between Gob and Satan to show that Job will still be a man of God despite all his tragedies. After reading the story I can see the moral implications of the story but it leaves a sour taste in my mouth to see God killing people just to prove a point. Overall, I probably wouldn't advise this as a great work of literature.