1. See especially Joseph Heinemann, Prayer in the Talmud: Forms and Patterns, Studia Judaica (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1977), 49; Abraham Joshua Heschel, Heavenly Torah: As Refracted through the Generations, trans. Gordon Tucker (New York: Continuum, 2005), 137–38, 209–16; David Charles Kraemer, Responses to Suffering in Classical Rabbinic Literature (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995); Alan L. Mintz, Ḥurban: Responses to Catastrophe in Hebrew Literature (New York: Columbia University Press, 1984), 77–78; David Stern, Parables in Midrash: Narrative and Exegesis in Rabbinic Literature (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1991), 130–45.

2. Meira Z. Kensky, Trying Man, Trying God: The Divine Courtroom in Early Jewish and Christian Literature (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2010), 13–61; Yochanan Muffs, Love and Joy: Law, Language, and Religion in Ancient Israel (New York: Jewish Theological Seminary of America, 1992), 9–48; Stone, Michael, “Reactions to the Destruction of the Second Temple,” Journal for the Study of Judaism 12 (1981): 200–02CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

3. Kraemer, Responses to Suffering, 150–71.

4. Dov Weiss, “Confrontations with God in Late Rabbinic Literature” (PhD diss., University of Chicago, 2011). Texts from the Tanḥuma-Yelammedenu genre can be found in the following midrashic works: 1) Midrash Tanḥuma—both the standard and Buber editions; 2) Shemot Rabbah—chapters 15–52; 3) Bamidbar Rabbah—chapters 15–23; 4) Devarim Rabbah—both the standard and Lieberman editions; 5) Pesikta Rabbati—chapters 1–14, 19, 25, 29, 31, 33, 38–45, 47, and supplements 1 and 2 (ed. Ish-Shalom); and 6) hundreds of fragments found at the Cairo Genizah. There is even some Tanḥuma-Yelammedenu material that has been deposited in Bereshit Rabbah and Pesikta de-Rav Kahana. For a listing of all extant Tanḥuma-Yelammedenu texts and manuscripts, see Marc Bregman, Sifrut Tanḥuma-Yelammedenu: Teʾur nusḥehah ve-ʿiyyunim be-darkei hithavutam (Piscataway, NJ: Gorgias, 2003), 20–96.

5. Weiss, “Confrontations,” 72–184.

6. Weiss, “Confrontations,” 115–25.

7. Bamidbar Rabbah II (TY) 19:33 according to MS Paris 150.

8. Weiss, “Confrontations,” 185–243.

9. Marmorstein, Arthur, “The Background of the Haggadah,” Hebrew Union College Annual 6 (1929): 141–53Google Scholar.

10. Judith Baskin, Pharaoh's Counsellors: Job, Jethro, and Balaam in Rabbinic and Patristic Tradition (Chico, CA: Scholars Press, 1983), 7–43; Naomi Koltun-Fromm, “Aphrahat and the Rabbis on Noah's Righteousness in Light of the Jewish-Christian Polemic,” in The Book of Genesis in Jewish and Oriental Christian Interpretation, ed. Judith Frishman and Lucas van Rompay (Lovanii: Peeters, 1997), 57–71; Koltun-Fromm, “Zippora's Complaint: Moses Is Not Conscientious in the Deed! Exegetical Traditions of Moses' Celibacy,” in The Ways That Never Parted: Jews and Christians in Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages, ed. Adam H. Becker and Annette Yoshiko Reed (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2003). On the strident talmudic critiques of King David, see Richard Lee Kalmin, “Midrash and Social History,” in Current Trends in the Study of Midrash, ed. Carol Bakhos (Leiden: Brill, 2006), 133–59. On the willingness of the Talmud to critique earlier sages, see Jeffrey L. Rubenstein, Talmudic Stories: Narrative Art, Composition, and Culture (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999), 281–82.

11. Sifrei Devarim, Haʾazinu, pis. 307, to Deuteronomy 32:4 (ed. Finkelstein, p. 344). This text only appears in MS London 341. This translation is based on Reuven Hammer, Sifre: A Tannaitic Commentary on the Book of Deuteronomy, Yale Judaica Series (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1986).

12. Mekhilta de-Rabbi Ishmael, par. Be-shalaḥ, to Exodus 15:19 (ed. Horovitz-Rabin p. 112).

13. The only biblical text unequivocally opposing the right of an individual to challenge God is found in Deutero-Isaiah. After God tells the Persian King, Cyrus, that his victories are for the purpose of bringing the Israelites back to Zion, God laments those who would critique him for bringing about Israel's redemption through the nonconventional means of a gentile king. God proclaims: “Shame on him [הוי] who argues [רב] with his Maker [יצרו]. Let the potsherd strive with the potsherds of the earth. Shall the clay say to the potter, ‘What are you doing? Your work has no handles?' Shame on him who asks his father, ‘What are you begetting?’” (Isaiah 45:9–10). Just as it would be absurd for clay to critique its potter, so too would it be absurd for a human to critique his Maker.

14. Yochanan Muffs, The Personhood of God: Biblical Theology, Human Faith, and the Divine Image (Woodstock, VT: Jewish Lights, 2005), 184.

15. Philo, Quis Rerum Divinarum Heres, 5–28, found in Philo: With an English Translation, ed. F. H. Colson and G. H. Whitaker, vol. 4, The Loeb Classical Library (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1949), 287–97. Also see Ephraim E. Urbach, The Sages: Their Concepts and Beliefs (Jerusalem: Magnes, 1975), 413–14.

16. Karina Martin Hogan, Theologies in Conflict in 4 Ezra: Wisdom, Debate, and Apocalyptic Solution (Leiden: Brill, 2008); Kensky, Trying Man, Trying God; Stone, “Reactions to the Destruction,” 200–02.

17. Marmorstein, “Background of the Haggadah,” 141–54.

18. On Marcion's critique of the Old Testament God, see Adolf von Harnack, Marcion: The Gospel of the Alien God (Durham, NC: Labyrinth, 1990); Sebastian Moll, The Arch-Heretic Marcion (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2010), 47–63, 107–14.

19. Von Harnack extracted citations of Antithesis found most notably in Tertullian's “Against Marcion” and the anonymous work of the “Dialogue on the True Faith in God.”

20. Contra von Harnack, Sebastion Moll convincingly argues that Marcion saw YHWH not merely as a stern God of justice, as von Harnack had claimed, but more radically as an evil deity. According to Moll, von Harnack was misled by later Marcionites who adopted the more moderate position. Moreover, according to Moll, von Harnack's misreading may have been fueled by his overall affinity for Marcion, who in many respects anticipated Luther. Moll, Arch-Heretic Marcion, 47–63.

21. For example, the author of Testimony of Truth, a Coptic gnostic text found at Nag Hammadi, criticizes the biblical God for the Decalogue's unjust principle of punishing children for the sins of the parents “until the third or fourth generations.” Because of this doctrine, the Old Testament God is described as a “malicious envier.” See the “Testimony of Truth” in James M. Robinson, The Nag Hammadi Library in English (San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1978), 455. For further analysis of this text and other gnostic “uncharitable readings of the canon,” see Moshe Halbertal, People of the Book: Canon, Meaning, and Authority (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1997), 40–44. Similarly, the gnostic authors of the Secret Book according to John and the Revelation of Adam denounced YHWH and identified him as “Ialdabaoth” or “Saklas” (Satan). See Bentley Layton, The Gnostic Scriptures: A New Translation with Annotations and Introductions (London: SCM, 1987), 23–64. Other gnostics, such as Ptolemy in his Letter to Flora, more moderately describe the God of the Hebrew Bible as “imperfect” for commanding an imperfect law (Layton, Gnostic Scriptures, 306–15). Ptolemy regarded some of the divinely given Torah teachings such as the doctrine of inherited punishment and lex talionis (law of “eye for eye”) as imperfect and hence in need of revision. In this work, Ptolemy, like Marcion, contrasted the problematic elements of Torah law with the teachings of Jesus. Around the same time, the second-century Middle Platonist Celsus criticized the Hebrew Bible for its all-too-human and childish depiction of God (for example, God rests, retracts, and speaks with anger). See Celsus, On the True Doctrine: A Discourse against the Christians, trans. R. Joseph Hoffmann (New York: Oxford University Press, 1987). This work was preserved, and challenged by Origen, Contra Celsum, trans. Henry Chadwick (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980). On Celsus's critiques of the Old Testament God, see Burke, Gary T., “Celsus and the Old Testament,” Vetus Testamentum 36, no. 2 (1986): 241–45CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Henry Chadwick, Early Christian Thought and the Classical Tradition (Oxford: Clarendon, 1966), 22–30; John G. Gager, Origins of Anti-Semitism: Attitudes toward Judaism in Pagan and Christian Antiquity (New York: Oxford University Press, 1983); Young, Edward, “Celsus and the Old Testament,” Westminster Theological Journal 6, no. 2 (1944): 166–97Google Scholar. While the anthropomorphic dimension takes center stage, Celsus also objects to God's arrogance, his problematic decision to imbue humanity with the Evil Inclination, and his “arbitrary destruction of the world.” See Chadwick, Early Christian Thought, 25. In response to these sorts of critiques, proto-Orthodox Christians such as Justin, Tertullian, Origen, and Irenaeus sought to undermine these polemical attacks (albeit in different ways) by justifying the goodness and justice of the Old Testament God at all costs. Origen in particular responds to Celsus as he did to Marcion, charging him with reading Scripture too literally and with failing to appreciate its deeper allegorical message.

22. Michael Satlow, “Beyond Influence: Toward a New Historiographic Paradigm,” in Jewish Literatures and Cultures: Context and Intertext, ed. Anita Norich and Yaron Z. Eliav (Providence, RI: Brown Judaic Studies, 2008), 37–53.

23. See, for example, Adiel Schremer, Brothers Estranged: Heresy, Christianity, and Jewish Identity in Late Antiquity (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), 9, 10.

24. Pope Gregory I, Morals on the Book of Job, vol. 1, A Library of Fathers of the Holy Catholic Church (Oxford: John Henry Parker Press, 1844), 511 (emphasis mine). On Gregory's commentary to Job, see Susan Schreiner, Where Shall Wisdom Be Found?: Calvin's Exegesis of Job from Medieval and Modern Perspectives (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994), 22–54.

25. Pope Gregory I, Morals on the Book of Job, 511. In somewhat similar fashion, Augustine posits: “we as sinners deserve nothing other than eternal damnation, who then does the man from this mass think he is that he is able to question God and say: “Why have you made me this way?” Here, however, the emphasis seems to be on human sinfulness in general rather than on, more specifically, human intellectual deficiencies. Saint Augustine, Eighty-Three Different Questions, trans. David Mosher, The Fathers of the Church (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1982), 159.

26. Midrash Tannaim to Deuteronomy 18:13 (ed. Hoffmann, pp. 110, 111).

27. B. Berakhot 19a.

28. See also B. Sanhedrin 110a: “Whoever critiques [המהרהר] his rabbi, it is as if he critiques God.” For the conceptual distinction between philosophical error and relational disrespect in another theological context, see Moshe Halbertal and Avishai Margalit, Idolatry (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1992), 9–36, 108–36.

29. B. Bava Batra 16a.

30. John Chrysostom, Commentary on Job, trans. Robert C. Hill (Brookline, MA: Holy Cross Orthodox Press, 2006), 181. I have slightly veered from Hill's translation. Notably, Chrysostom limits the prohibition against arguing with God to long-winded arguments only.

31. Earlier in that section (Commentary on Job, 179), Chrysostom makes a similar comparison: “[T]he [human] king is not subject to the laws but above them, being maker of the laws in fact. So it is right that the one who says to the maker of the laws ‘you are doing wrong’ is censured just as if you were to say to the maker and creator [i.e. God], ‘You are making it badly.’”

32. Chrysostom, Commentary on Job, 180.

33. Alexander Roberts and James Sir Donaldson, eds., The Ante-Nicene Fathers: Translations of the Writings of the Fathers down to A.D. 325 (Grand Rapids: W. B. Eerdmans, 1980), 8:140. Ambrose of Milan (340–397 CE) formulates a similar concern, highlighting the attempted inversion of judicial roles when one challenges God: “[N]o one should protest [God] that some misfortune has befallen him and complain that he has been afflicted contrary to his merit. For who are you to proclaim your merit beforehand? Why do you desire to anticipate your Judge? Why do you snatch the verdict from the mouth of him who is going to pronounce it?” On the Death of His Brother Satyrus, trans. Leo P. McCauley, S. J. et al., vol. 22, The Fathers of the Church [Washington DC: Catholic University of America, 1947], 206–07.

34. Bereshit Rabbah, Bereshit, par. 28:4, to Genesis 6:7 (ed. Theodor-Albeck, 1:262). Also see Bereshit Rabbah, Noaḥ, par. 36:1, to Genesis 9:18 (ed. Theodor-Albeck, 1:336), where God himself castigates those who raise such questions: “In all of the works and designs which I executed upon the people of the generation of the Flood, who could dare say to me [God], “You have not done rightly [כשורה לא עשיתי].”

35. Louis H. Feldman, “Remember Amalek!”: Vengeance, Zealotry, and Group Destruction in the Bible according to Philo, Pseudo-Philo, and Josephus (Cincinnati: Hebrew Union College Press, 2004), 88–96. Also see Sifrei Devarim, Ha'azinu, pis. 311, to Deuteronomy 32:8 (ed. Finkelstein, p. 351), which asserts that God acted “cruelly” (אכזריות) to the generation of the Flood as he “caused them to float like leather bottles in the water.”

36. Moll, Arch-Heretic Marcion, 57; Origen, On First Principles, trans. G. W. Butterworth (New York: Harper and Row, 1966), 101, 102, 270.

37. See, for example, Bereshit Rabbah, Va-yerʾa, par. 52:4, to Genesis 20:4 (ed. Theodor-Albeck, 2:547); Pesikta Rabbati 42 (ed. Ish-Shalom, 176b); Midrash Tanḥuma, Va-yerʾa, par. 5 to Genesis 18:17 (Bnei Brak: Sifrei 'Or Ha-ḥayim, 1998) 1:104; Midrash Tanḥuma, Ḥayye Sarah, par. 5, to Genesis 24:1 (ed. Buber, 1:119). Other rabbinic passages ethically defend God's act of near omnicide. Some of them incredibly posit that there were no righteous people who died in the Flood (see Midrash Tanḥuma, Ba-midbar, par. 32, to Numbers 4:18 [ed. Buber, 4:24]), while others justify God's corporate punishment even while admitting the death of innocents. For example, the late Midrash Tehillim 1:12 (ed. Buber, 12) posits that God punished those under the punishable age among the generation of the Flood “because of the sins of their fathers.” A very different defense is offered in Vayikra Rabba, Aḥarei mot, par. 23:9, to Leviticus 18:3 (Margoliot, 2:538, p. 539). Here, R. Ḥiyya states that “the generation of the Flood was blotted out from the world because they were steeped in whoredom [זנות],” though Scripture itself never mentions this sin. In support of this view, Rabbi Simla'i remarkably argues: “in every instance where you find the prevalence of whoredom, an androlepsia (a Greek word meaning “to snatch people”) comes upon the world and slays both the righteous and the wicked.” Here, R. Simlaʾi acknowledges that God meted out communal guilt when destroying the generation of the Flood. Like Roman emperors, the biblical God at times kills the innocent together with the righteous. Interestingly, R. Sa‘adiah Gaon (882–942 CE) (Saʿadia ben Joseph, The Book of Beliefs and Opinions, trans. Samuel Rosenblatt, Yale Judaica Series [New Haven: Yale University Press, 1976], 330) cites God's problematic handling of the generation of the Flood to rationally prove the afterlife: “We are confronted by the fact that God, the just, ordered … the extermination of the young children of the Generation of the Flood (Genesis 6–9). We note also how He continually causes pain and even death to little babes. Logical Necessity, therefore, demands that there exist after death a state in which they would obtain compensation for the pain suffered prior thereto.”

38. Reading this passage as pointing to the indiscriminate nature of God's destructive power is made explicit in Mekhilta de-Rabbi Ishmael, par. Bo, to Exodus 12:22 (ed. Horovitz-Rabin, p. 38).

39. I interpret this to mean that God metes out lesser punishment than one truly deserves. My reading follows Aggadat Bereshit 22:1, to Genesis 18:25 (ed. Buber, p. 45).

40. Midrash Tanḥuma, Va-yeẓʾeh, par. 5, to Genesis 28:10 (ed. Buber, 1:148). See also Pesikta Rabbati 31 (ed. Ish-Shalom, 142b–143a).

41. On the rabbinic tendency to equate architectural structures with human body parts, see Charlotte Elisheva Fonrobert, Menstrual Purity: Rabbinic and Christian Reconstructions of Biblical Gender (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2000), 40–66.

42. Kraemer, Responses to Suffering, 150–71.

43. Recent scholarship has warned us against uncritical acceptance of attributions. On this issue, see discussion and bibliography in Shai Secunda, The Iranian Talmud: Reading the Bavli in Its Sasanian Context (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2014), 29–31.

44. B. Taʿanit 25a.

45. M. Taʿanit 3:8.

46. M. Taʿanit 3:8.

47. For recent scholarship on the Ḥoni story (and for an extensive bibliography), see Michal Bar-Asher Siegal, Early Christian Monastic Literature and the Babylonian Talmud (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013), 112–19; Moshe Simon-Shoshan, Stories of the Law: Narrative Discourse and the Construction of Authority in the Mishnah (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012), 149–66; Stone, Suzanne Last, “Rabbinic Legal Midrash: A New Look at Honi's Circle as the Construction of Laws Space,” Yale Journal of Law and the Humanities 17 (2005): 97–123Google Scholar; Stone, “On the Interplay of Rules, ‘Cases' and Concepts in Rabbinic Legal Literature: Another Look at the Aggadot of Honi the Circle-Drawer,” Dine Yisrael 24 (2006): 125–56Google Scholar. For classic treatments, see especially Daube, David, “Enfant Terrible,” Harvard Theological Review 68, no. 3/4 (1975): 371–76CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Goldin, Judah, “On Honi the Circle-Maker: A Demanding Prayer,” Harvard Theological Review 56, no. 3 (1963): 233–37CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

48. See B. Berakhot 19a where R. Elazar b. Pedat interprets Ḥoni's words as disrespectful. I should add that, as opposed to R. Elazar's reading of Ḥoni in B. Berakhot 19a, an anonymous (post-tannaitic) “pseudo-baraita” found in B. Taʿanit 23a evinces a more positive attitude towards Ḥoni. First, it compares Ḥoni's protest to the prophet Habakkuk's protest in Habakkuk 2:1. Second, B. Taʿanit (re)reads Shimon's opposition to be only driven by a technical problem: the use of an oath that might, however unlikely, have led to its desecration. Strikingly, the problem of disrespecting God is completely passed over. Jeffrey Rubenstein (Talmudic Stories, 261–62) has surmised that these types of “pseudo-baraitot” may be the work of the redactors (especially those, like ours, that are preceded by the technical phrase “our rabbis taught us”). In any event, I assume that the anonymous pseudo-baraita of B. Ta‘anit 23a is a (pro-Ḥoni) recapitulation of the mishnah later than Rabbi Elazar's (anti-Ḥoni) reading found in B. Berakhot 19a. On pseudo-baraitot, also see Jacobs, Louis, “Are There Fictitious Baraitot in the Babylonian Talmud,” Hebrew Union College Annual 42 (1971): 185–96Google Scholar.

49. On the rabbinic reception of the ‘Akedah story, see the extensive bibliography cited in Bernstein, Moshe, “Angels at the Aqedah: A Study in the Development of a Midrashic Motif,” Dead Sea Discoveries 7, no. 3 (2000): 265 n. 5CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

50. Midrash Tanḥuma, Lekh lekha, par. 10, to Genesis 15:1 (Bnei Brak: Sifrei 'Or Ha-Ḥayim, 1998), 1:83–84.

51. See, for example, Sifrei Devarim, Haʾazinu, pis. 307, to Deuteronomy 32:4 (ed. Finkelstein, p. 345) and B. Kiddushin 40b.

52. The notion that a “burnt offering” is brought for matters of the “heart” first appears in Vayikra Rabba, Ẓav, par. 7:3, to Leviticus 6:2 (ed. Margoliot, 1:153–154), and Y. Yoma 8:7 (45b). By contrast, B. Zevaḥim 88b, and B. ʿArakhin 16a have the priest's wide belt atoning for “sins of the heart.” For a list of other sins for which a burnt offering is brought, see B. Yoma 36a.

53. Bamidbar Rabbah 16:11, to Numbers 13:17, taken from Midrash Rabbah, 6 vols. (Jerusalem: Vagshal, 2001), 4:404.

54. As does Midrash Tanḥuma, Va-ʾetḥanan, par. 6, to Deuteronomy 3:26 (ed. Buber, 5:11).

55. My reading follows the commentary of Rabbi David Luria (1798–1855) to Bamidbar Rabbah 16:11, s.v. mah. Midrash Rabbah 4:404.

56. Also see Bereshit Rabbah, Va-yerʾa, par. 49:25, to Genesis 18:25 (ed. Theodor-Albeck, 2:509), which argues that “Job was punished” for his protests of God.

57. On the legal terms appropriated by the author of Job, see a full bibliography in Kensky, Trying Man, Trying God, 41 n. 78.

58. I exclude here God's response to Job's remarks in chapters 40 and 41.

59. On the reception of Job in rabbinic literature, see Baskin, Pharaoh's Counsellors, 7–26; Hananel Mack, It Was Only a Parable: Job in Second Temple and Rabbinic Literature [Hebrew] (Ramat Gan: Bar-Ilan University Press, 2004); Urbach, Sages, 400–19.

60. M. ‘Eduyot 2:10.

61. M. Semaḥot 8:11.

62. M. ‘Eduyot 2:10. Also see Mack, Job, 149, 50.

63. Urbach, Sages, 407.

64. Pesikta Rabbati 47 (ed. Ish-Shalom, 189b–190a).

65. The inclusion of Moses in this midrash is strange as Moses quite often challenges God in both the Bible and rabbinic literature.

66. On the patristic reception of Job, see Baskin, Judith, “Job as Moral Exemplar in Ambrose,” Vigiliae Christianae 35 (1981): 222–31CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Baskin, Pharaoh's Counsellors, 32–43; Richard A. Layton, Didymus the Blind and His Circle in Late-Antique Alexandria: Virtue and Narrative in Biblical Scholarship (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2004), 56–84; Schreiner, Where Shall Wisdom Be Found?, 22–54.

67. Alexander Roberts et al., The Ante-Nicene Fathers: Translations of the Writings of the Fathers down to A.D. 325 (Buffalo: The Christian Literature Publishing Company, 1885), 3:707.

68. On Tertullian's defense of a perfectly just Old Testament God, see Kensky, Trying Man, Trying God, 284–92.

69. Layton, Didymus the Blind, 77.

70. Layton, Didymus the Blind, 77.

71. Layton, Didymus the Blind, 78.

72. Baskin, “Job as Moral Exemplar in Ambrose,” 224. Aquinas also reads Job's protest as merely playing devil's advocate as noted by Schreiner, Where Shall Wisdom Be Found?, 77–82.

73. Ambrose, “On the Duties of the Clergy,” 1:12:42, found in Philip Schaff and Henry Wace eds., A Select Library of Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers of the Christian Church. Second Series, trans. H. de Romestin and H. T. F. Duckworth E. de Romestin (Buffalo: The Christian Literature Publishing Company, 1890).

74. Schreiner, Where Shall Wisdom Be Found?, 35.

75. Gregory I, Morals on the Book of Job, preface, iii.

76. Lawrence L. Besserman, The Legend of Job in the Middle Ages (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1979), 36, 37. For further details, see Gard, Donald, “The Concept of Job's Character according to the Greek Translator of the Hebrew Text,” Journal of Biblical Literature 72 (1953): 182–86CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Gehman, Henry, “The Theological Approach of the Greek Translator of Job 1–15,” Journal of Biblical Literature 68 (1949): 231–40CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

77. Besserman, Legend of Job.

78. James 5:11.

79. Midrash Tanḥuma, Va'erʾa, par. 1, to Exodus 6:2 (Bnei Brak: Sifrei 'Or Ha-ḥayim, 1998), 324–325. Also see B. Sanhedrin 111a (parallel) and Midrash Tanḥuma, Va-'etḥanan, par. 6, to Deuteronomy 3:26 (ed. Buber, 5:11).

80. Augustine, Corpus Christianorum. Series Latina, vol. 33 (Turnholti: Typographi Brepols editores pontificii, 1953), 75.

81. Yehezkel Kaufmann, The Religion of Israel: From Its Beginnings to the Babylonian Exile, trans. Moshe Greenberg (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1960), 399.

82. Midrash Tehillim 90:7 (ed. Buber, 195b).

83. Francis I. Andersen, Habakkuk: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary, 1st ed., The Anchor Bible (New York: Doubleday, 2001), 268–273. The author of Midrash Tehillim reads shigyonot as shogeg, “error.”

84. Bishop Theodore of Mopsuestia, Commentary on the Twelve Prophets, trans. Robert C. Hill, The Fathers of the Church (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2004), 268 (emphasis mine).

85. John L. Esposito, Darrell J. Fasching, and Todd Thornton Lewis, World Religions Today, 2nd ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006), 22.

86. Anson Laytner, Arguing with God: A Jewish Tradition (Northvale, NJ: J. Aronson, 1990).

87. Cited in Steven T. Katz, Shlomo Biderman, and Gershon Greenberg, eds., Wrestling with God: Jewish Theological Responses during and after the Holocaust (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007), 55, 59.

88. Katz, Biderman, and Greenberg, eds., Wrestling, 69, 70. See also the writings of Hayim Yisrael Tsinerman found in ibid., 157–62. On the other extreme, atheists have also criticized those who protest God, but for the opposite reason. For example, Alexander Donat (1906–1983), a survivor of Majdanek and Dachau, reprimands Elie Wiesel (ibid., 274–86) for his religious rebelliousness, arguing that “outbursts of complaint, bitterness, and blasphemy are [merely] ways of acknowledging Him by way of protest, and I want no part in that.… My Judaism is one without God … to believe in God after Auschwitz is an insult to our intelligence … I indict God [but unlike Wiesel] without prosecuting Him.” On this point, also see Bernard Schweizer, Hating God: The Untold Story of Misotheism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), 9.