'Job' as apologetic: The role of the audience (Articulations of alternative pieties embedded in ideological convention within scriptural narrative)

A key to interpreting the Book of Job, following from the general methodolo gy for the human sciences set out by the French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu , is to regard the field in which the text is embedded as the beliefs of it s audience rather than its explicit content of story and characters. Bourdi eu has shown the extent to which belief and practice involve elements of un certainty and strategy, allowing inconsistencies to be interpreted as rheto rical effects. Several conclusions follow: the main focus of the Book is ho nour and wisdom; belief in divine transcendence may be produced as an effec t of discontinuity and uncertainty in the narrative; piety may appear as an ideological effect of a pre-monetary economic order; and the principle of temporal retribution is shown to be reinforced by the text. At the same tim e, the Book is shown to furnish its own critique of conventional piety and to articulate an alternative piety grounded in critique itself. Religion is not purely ideological, for piety is portrayed as a critique of the ideolo gical effects of the symbolic order.