In this study Oliver Leaman poses two questions: how can a powerful and caring deity allow terrible things to happen to obviously innocent people, and why have the Jewish people been so harshly treated throughout history, given their status as the chosen people? He explores these issues through an analysis of the views of Philo, Saadya, Maimonides, Gersonides, Spinoza, Mendelssohn, Hermann Cohen, Buber, Rosenzweig, and post-Holocaust thinkers.

"...anyone with the most remote interest in suffering will find this perhaps the most important intellectual investigation on the subject in recent years."

Theological Studies

"The topic may be heavy but the writing is anything but cumbersome. A deft survey of the major Jewish thinkers on this nettlesome problem, with special attention to their view of the book of Job."

"...anyone with the most remote interest in suffereing will find this perhaps the most important intellectual investigation on the subject in recent years."

Oliver Leaman is Professor of Philosophy and Zantker Professor of Judaic Studies at the University of Kentucky. He is the author of An Introduction to Classical Islamic Philosophy (2001), Evil and Suffering in Jewish Philosophy (1995), and is editor of Encyclopedia of Asian Philosophy ( 2001) and Companion Encyclopedia of Middle Eastern and North African Film (2001). He is co-editor, with Glennys Howarth, of Encyclopedia of Death and Dying (2001).