Ebook: The Book of Job and the Immanent Genesis of Transcendence

Winner of the 2017 Manfred Lautenschlaeger Award for Theological Promise

Recent philosophical reexaminations of sacred texts have focused almost exclusively on the Christian New Testament, and Paul in particular. The Book of Job and the Immanent Genesis of Transcendence revives the enduring philosophical relevance and political urgency of the book of Job and thus contributes to the recent “turn toward religion” among philosophers such as Slavoj Ž iž ek and Alain Badiou.

Job is often understood to be a trite folktale about human limitation in the face of confounding and absolute transcendence. On the contrary, Hankins demonstrates that Job is a drama about the struggle to create a just and viable life in a material world that is ontologically incomplete and consequently open to radical, unpredictable transformation. Job’s abiding legacy for any future materialist theology becomes clear as Hankins analyzes Job’s dramatizations of a transcendence that is not externally opposed to but that emerges from an ontologically incomplete material world.

Review
"In this book Davis Hankins develops a sophisticated interpretation of the Book of Job, informed by biblical scholarship and psychoanalytic theory. . . . This is a very comprehensive analysis and an impressive book." —Reading Religion
About the Author
Davis Hankins is a lecturer in the Department of Philosophy and Religion and a faculty member of the Women's Studies program at Appalachian State University in Boone, North Carolina.