Before the Church · c. 1000 BC
The Babylonian Theodicy
Saggil-kinam-ubbib
What it is
An acrostic dialogue in twenty-seven stanzas between a sufferer and his friend. The sufferer says the godless prosper and the pious starve; the friend defends the order of things; and by the end the friend concedes that the gods gave humanity crooked speech and lies from the beginning.
Why it lasted
A debate poem on divine justice five centuries before Job, and closer to Job in form than anything else in antiquity — two speakers alternating, the orthodox answer offered and worn down.
Scripture it works from
Where to read it
Public domain and free to read in full, though not held here. The archives below have it.
These open a search on each archive rather than a direct link, which is the honest way to point at an edition nobody here has checked line by line.
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