This book explores the protests of Job from the perspectives of Jewish, Christian, and Islamic religious and philosophical traditions. Shira Weiss examines how challenges to divine justice are understood from a Jewish theological perspective, including the pro-protest and anti-protest traditions within rabbinic literature, in an effort to explicate the ambiguous biblical text and Judaism's attitude towards the suffering of the righteous. Scott Davison surveys Christian interpretations of the book of Job and the nature of suffering in general before turning to a comparison of the lamentations of Jesus and Job, with special attention to the question of whether complaints against God can be expressions of faith. Sajjad Rizvi presents the systematic ambiguity of being present in monistic approaches to reality as one response to evil and suffering in Islam, along with approaches that attempt a resolution through the essential erotic nature of the cosmos, and explores the suggestion that Job is the hero of a metaphysical revolt that is the true sign of a friend of God. Each author also provides a response essay to the essays of the other two authors, creating an interfaith dialogue around the problem of evil and the idea of protest against the divine.

The nine papers collected here explore a broad range of sources for texts from the classical period of Arabic philosophy, and a broad range of influence exerted by these texts. By the 'classical period' is meant that part of the Arabic philosophical tradition normally included in the canon of 'medieval' philosophy. It begins in the ninth century, which is when the impact of Greek philosophical and scientific works began to be felt, thanks to their translation under the 'Abbasid caliphs, and ends in the twelfth century. This volume focuses on the influences felt by, and exerted by, the four main philosophers of this period: al-Kindi, al-Farabi, Avicenna, and Averroes. But the historical range covered extends well past the twelfth century, into Latin Renaissance philosophy and Islamic philosophy of the seventeenth century. Philosophical themes include human psychology, logic, the influence of Neoplatonism, and problems in Aristotelian natural philosophy.