Read "On Reading the Bible" by Arthur Quiller-Couch online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
Of the drama itself I shall attempt no analysis, referring you for this to the two books from which I have already quoted. My purpose being merely to persuade you that this surpassing poem can be studied, and ought to be studied, as literature, I shall content myself with turning it (so to speak) once or twice in my hand and glancing one or two facets at you.
To begin with, then, you will not have failed to notice, in the setting out of the drama, a curious resemblance between Job and the Prometheus of Aeschylus. The curtain in each play lifts on a figure solitary, tortured (for no reason that seems good to us) by a higher will which, we are told, is God's. The chorus of Sea-nymphs in the opening of the Greek play bears no small resemblance in attitude of mind to Job's three friends. When Job at length breaks the intolerable silence with