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This introductory chapter begins with a discussion of the fascination with the Book of Job as evidenced by the diverse body of interpretations throughout the ages from religious thinkers in Judaism and Christianity from late antiquity to modern academic scholars. It presents a background of medieval Jewish philosophy, and then reviews the major challenges that interpreters of Job have faced throughout the ages. The present study aims to go beyond providing a description of how medieval Jewish philosophers read the Book of Job by drawing much-needed attention to the exegetical literature in medieval Jewish philosophy in general. By analyzing how medieval Jewish philosophers interpreted the Book of Job, the exegesis of these thinkers is brought to light as an exciting chapter in the history of Jewish thought, which neither scholars of medieval Jewish philosophy nor scholars of medieval Jewish exegesis can afford to ignore. A proper examination of the commentaries chosen and an assessment of their significance both as philosophical and exegetical works require that these be discussed on a number of levels. For each commentary, the discussion will focus on three interfaces: between the commentaries and their antecedent sources, between the commentaries and the biblical text, and between the commentaries and the systematic thought of the medieval Jewish philosophers.

This chapter investigates the deployment in medieval Hebrew exegetical literature of various exordial topoi (accessus ad auctores) used in high and late medieval Christian schools and universities to introduce authoritative secular and sacred texts studied therein. As time-honored certainties concerning Hebrew scripture crumbled in the post-medieval period and as the need to probe questions of biblical authorship, dating, original historical setting and the like was felt with unprecedented intensity in “modernity”, it was in “introductions” to the Hebrew Bible (or rather the “Old Testament”) that biblicists typically sought to address such issues. This chapter begins with aerial surveys of the genre of the introduction in earlier medieval Jewish exegetical literature and of the Latin accessus in its historical development. It then reconsiders what has been seen as an initial stratum of Jewish awareness of Latin prologue formats in 13th-century southern France. It also explores the less ambiguous yield of a handful of Hebrew texts from Italy and Iberia.