The hero of the book that bears his name — a man of the land of Uz, outside Israel and outside the covenant, 'blameless and upright, fearing God and turning away from evil,' and the wealthiest of the sons of the east. He loses ten children, his livestock and his health in two chapters, and spends thirty-nine more refusing both to curse God and to accept his friends' explanation of why it happened. Ezekiel names him with Noah and Daniel as a byword for righteousness (Ezekiel 14:14, 20), and James cites his endurance (James 5:11). Nothing outside the book is known of him; whether he is remembered history or a figure made for the argument has been debated since antiquity, and the Talmud preserves the opinion that 'Job never existed and was a parable' (Bava Batra 15a) alongside those who insisted he did.