0.1 No part of the interpretation of Job is more clouded with uncertainty than the identification of genre. The parallels offered do not quite fit, and most scholars end up by concluding that Job belongs to no literary category: it simply is! To be sure, there is no dearth of suggestions: Job has variously been called a “wisdom disputation,” an “answered lament,” a “rı̂b” or “trial,” a “theodicy,” an “epic,” a “trial,” etc.1 It is not necessary for my purpose to repeat the various arguments pro