Mike's musings

The Book of Job

As I've mentioned in previous posts, an atheist friend and I are having a fascinating conversation about faith, which I hope to blog in time. I'm not ready to do that yet, but she asked me a particular question in a side-thread, and I think it's interesting enough to post here, as well as being separate from the main thread. It's an interesting question to be answering, and any comments on how I did it are very welcome!

The question

OK - one of the only times god actually talks to a human? These events are few and far between..........and what does he say?

Actually, rewind a bit. The whole book resembles Trading Places, god and the devil in a nice gentlemens' club - "And where have you been?" says god, "Oh down on earth, doing stuff" says satan, or as the James version has it:
And the LORD said unto Satan, Whence comest thou? Then Satan answered the LORD, and said, From going to and fro in the earth, and from walking up and down in it.

I am sure I am not the only one who reads the subtext "unlike you!".

Then Job gets given a hard time, for no reason?

Then at the end they finally have a chat. And god just goes on and on about what he has done. Not terribly inspiring?

What's your take on it?

I am genuinely interested.

The answer

Done some reading to remind myself: never did much on the Book of Job. Anyway, it's part of what's known as the Wisdom literature in the Bible, along with several other books, of which the best known are probably Proverbs and Ecclesiastes (best known for the song "Turn, turn, turn", which quotes it). There's wisdom literature known from other cultures of the period and area, but the Bible (oddly enough!) is the best known of the set.

The first point to note is that there's a particular type of writing used for Wisdom literature (or, to be more accurate, various types: various forms, to use the standard terminology). Think socratic dialogue, Greek drama, Elizabethan sonnets or experiment write-up: there are standard ways of putting these things together, and the interventions of the "3 friends" is one of those.

In fact, I'm quite chuffed with my choice of socratic dialogue as an example, because I don't think that many people think that the original Socratic dialogues actually record real conversations by Socrates. The same goes for the Wisdom literature: it was a way of putting information across to the next generation(s), through a recognisable story in a recognisable structure.

Now, I'm not saying that there aren't people whose experience of communication with God isn't that He/She speaks directly to them, though it's not mine.

So, I guess that part of the wisdom that's being imparted is that Satan is all around us, ready to trip us up, but that if we continue resolute and trust in God, we will be rewarded in time.

Part of the problem is that critical reading of the Bible, though not rare, is not what gets the press externally. It's the fundamentalists, who pretend that they read the Bible "as is" (you can't: you always bring preconceptions to all texts) who get the press, so that's who many atheists think they're up against (and who R. Dawkins, Esq. tends to engage with, to the exasperation of many of the rest of us).

I hope this doesn't sound like I've ducked or side-stepped the question. It's also worth pointing out that there are many books (and parts of books) in the Bible, about which there is great academic disagreement. For instance, it seems unlikely that the story of the woman caught in adultery, told in John's gospel (the "let whoever is without sin cast the first stone" story), was in the original text, but it seems to have been added very early on in the history of the text, and to be consonant with the values of the community using it, so it tends to be an accepted part of the Canon. Oh, and don't let anyone fool you into even thinking that we (Christians) all agree on what the Bible should look like in terms of which books are in it, let alone on translation. It's all sort of fun. Really: I love this stuff!

Labels: apologetics, bible, theology