The Norwegian philosopher Peter Wessel Zapffe(1899-1990) and the Book of Job

Abstract

https://www.dknvs.no/publikasjoner/skrifter/

This article seeks to bring attention to the life of Peter Wessel Zapffe and to translate his paragraph on Job (106) from his 1941 work Om det tragiske (On the Tragic) for the first time from Norwegian into English. We contextualize the work in the thought of biblical critics of the time and celebrate Zapffe’s distinctive and radical stance on the book of Job. Notorious already in Norway for his biting and critical turns of phrase, so distinctive of his writings, and for his eccentric character, this article brings his work to a wider audience, an awareness of which is long overdue.