LogicandReason

Interesting Minimalist...thanks Jeffrey

Californian

I agree with your analysis of Job, but could you elaborate on what you mean by this statement? I find Job to be the perfect anti-dote to the notion that if one has a personal disaster of any kind it's because they have done something horribly wrong, or that God hates them.

Jeffrey Gibson

The theology that the author of Job finds bankrupt and is attempting to show as such is that which we find in Deuteruomy, in the so called Deuteronomic History, and in the Wisdom literature that is grounded in a Deuteronomic view of the way the world has been set up by God to work. It is the assumption that the universe is ordered and/or controlled by the God of Israel in such a way that if one "does good", one prospers, and that one who suffers, Including Israel as a nation, must have done wickedness.

Sorry if that wasn't clear.

Jeffrey

LogicandReason

Jeffrey, Is Job pure allegory?

Jeffrey Gibson

To provide a truly responsive answer this, I'll first have to know what you mean not "allegory" but "pure allegory

But if by allegory you mean what this term ordinarily signifies, and is used to mean by literary critics -- i.e., a story in which all of the characters and events within it represent something other than that which they seem, on a literal reading of the narrative, to be -- then no, Job is not an allegory, a story that is concerned with subjects other other than what the narrative line read litteraly is speaking of.

The story of Job does not make sense if Job is meant to be taken as anything other than the righteous man he is declared by God to be. He is not a cipher for something else, etc.

What Job is to me is a polemic and philosophical tract set in a narrative framework. And note that the characters in narratives/polemics such as this do not have to be historical, and the events recounted within them do not have to have actually occurred, for the message of the story to be regarded as "true".

So the questions of was there an actual/historical Job who endured great sufferings and was blamed by his friends for his sufferings is as misguided as one that says was there an actual prodigal son/good samaritan.

Jeffrey

LogicandReason

I have much to learn my friend...
I see the difference...thanks

So in this case it is controverting the idea that a person is rewarded because of good behavior and punished as a result of bad behavior?

If this is the case, then I can understand why my use of the word "Caprice" is not warranted. I was factoring that God allows Satan to kill Job's seven sons and three daughters, spouses and servents, and allows for Job's physical suffering to make a point to Satan. I could not find any logic in a superior being needing to challenge or prove a point to a known inferior being. As a polemic, with no actual historical characters, it is now understandable.

Why the need for Satan in this polemic? Could God have simply proved this point to the "sons of God?" Does this reveal a need for someone or some entity to represent evil. Is this an attempt to show that God is not responsible for evil that happens?

Jeffrey Gibson

No.

Alas, I have no more time to answer these questions as I am bumping hard up against a very harsh and immovable deadline.

Moreover, they are all discussed in the works I refered you to, as well as in general popular Intros to the Bible like that of Steven Harris.

So go and read!

Jeffrey