Not Lamb of God but Old Scape Goat: Job as Gospel Parody in Shemot Rabbah
Not Lamb of God but Old Scape Goat: Job as Gospel Parody in Shemot Rabbah

Summary/Abstract: This article argues that the Job scapegoat parable preserved in ySotah and Bereshit Rabbah, develops intosubtle parody of Christian supersessionism that reaches its zenith in the medieval Shemot Rabbah. ShemotRabbah transforms a terse allusion into an expansive narrative in which God offers Job, as a sacrificial goatto divert Samael’s accusations of idolatry to enable the parting of the Sea. By foregrounding a righteousJob’s own protest that God “hands me over to the evildoer” and ma kes him “a target for (the sake) of Hispeople,” Shemot Rabbah reconfigures patristic reception of Christian typology: Job becomes not aprefiguration of a Christ like universal redeemer but a scapegoat whose suffering benefits Jews alone. TheMidrash ther eby inverts the Gospel motifs of the Agnus Dei in John and the roles of the sheep and goats inMatthew 25. Read against the Christian exegetic and visual environments of late antique and early medievalPalestine (e.g., Phillip the Presbyter), the rabbinic parable emerges as a parodic reorientation of JewishChristian imagery that asserts Jewish particularism while paralleling growing Christian particularism.

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