582 Oh That One Would Hear Me! The Dialogue of Job, Unanswered ZACHARY MARGULIES New York University New York, NY 10012 Abstract: Job’s encounter with God (38:1–42:6) has long been understood as the crux of the Book of Job, leading readers to seek the book’s meaning in these cryptic chap- ters. Based on formal discrepancies in the text and evidence from two Babylonian parallels, the existence of a “dialogue of Job” (chaps. 3–27; 29–31) is proposed, which was composed independently not only from the prose tale (chaps. 1–2; 42:7-17) but also from the theophany. As this original poetic composition made no appeal to a divine epiphany, its depiction of a suffering and persuasive protagonist served pro- vocatively to challenge traditional answers to the question of theodicy, rather than offer a solution of its own. Key Words: Book of Job • theodicy • theophany • dialogue • genre • prose • poetry Much of modern scholarship on the Book of Job has been concerned with the coherence of the book, with debate centering on the meaning and extent of the dissonance between the prose tale (chaps. 1–2; 42:7-17) and the intervening poetry (3:2–42:6*). 1 Recent scholars who have seen irreconcilable differences have largely treated the poetry as a unified composition, excepting the Elihu monologue (chaps. 32–37) and the so-called wisdom poem (chap. 28). 2 In this debate over the 1 See, e.g., Eduard Dhorme, A Commentary on the Book of Job (trans. Harold Knight; London: Nelson, 1967) lxxii-lxxxv; and Marvin H. Pope, Job (3rd ed.; AB 15; Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1973) xxii-xxvii; and the recent overviews of scholarship in Wolf-Dieter Syring, Hiob und sein Anwalt: Die Prosatexte des Hiobbuches und ihre Rolle in seiner Redaktions- und Rezeptionsge- schichte (BZAW 336; New York: de Gruyter, 2004) 25-49; Markus Witte, Hiobs viele Gesichter: Studien zur Komposition, Tradition und frühen Rezeption des Hiobbuches (FRLANT 267; Göttin- gen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2018) 23-29. 2 For the exclusion of the Elihu speeches in chaps. 32–37, see Pope, Job, xxvi-xxviii; Harald- Martin Wahl, Der gerechte Schopfer: Eine redaktions- und theologiegeschichtliche Untersuchung