update from sparkleup
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<p>Of all of the book of Job, it is this framing device which seems to cause the most controversy. Even the Apocrypals podcast, whose tagline is “Where two non-believers read the bible and try not to be jerks about it”, drops the ‘and try not to be jerks about it’ for this episode, host Chris Sims explaining, “Unfortunately, this week we are reading the book of Job.” \parencite{apocrypals}</p>
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<p>Sims’s argument boils down to the fact that this framing device leads to Job being a narrative, moral, and commercial failure: a narrative failure for not resolving any of its plot points, a moral failure because it fails to explain why bad things happen to good people, and a commercial failure because “it is the most cogent argument against religion that I have ever heard.”</p>
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<p>It’s a compelling argument, too. He goes on to explain that it is almost the inverse of Pascal’s wager, in that it “presents a world where it is impossible to distinguish between God’s wrath and God’s indifference.” Whereas Pascal would have it that there is no downside to believing in God as there is the possibility of infinite salvation if you do and you’re right and infinite damnation if you don’t and you’re wrong. Here, we are presented with the fact that, whether or not you believe in God, you’re equally liable to suffer.</p>
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<p>This, however, is an argument presented from a contemporary Christian perspective (Sims mentions earlier in the episode that reading the Book of Job is one of the reasons he is no longer a Christian, but he still speaks from the perspective of an ex-Christian). The interpretations of the same text a hundred years ago, a thousand years ago, twenty-four hundred years ago were all different. For instance, Cereno explains that the historical context of the book, written in the fourth century BCE, does not include the same context of the afterlife. The pre-biblical Jewish audience of Job when it was first penned would have had the concept of <em>Sheol</em> — that place of of stillness and darkness where both the righteous and unrighteous wind up — rather than than the contemporary understanding of an afterlife. This was written before the concept of the messiah, before heaven and hell and life after death.</p>
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<p>In this context, Job’s life being torn to shreds means that his brief time here on Earth, the only time he has with nothing after it, is one that divides ones life into fractions, into a before, a during, and an after. Job is struck for, what, two weeks? We may only guess, as the Adversary’s second visit to the sons of God and the Lord. And yet those are two weeks out of a finite number.</p>
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<p>Job having a new family (some of them even have names!) and twice the wealth before does not replace the life that he had before, does not make up for lost children, but it does at least bring some joy for those next century and a half.</p>
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<p>This centers God’s response as the sticking point. He spends four chapters responding to Job the conversations that have taken place between him and his friends. While these conversations make up the majority of the book,<sup id="fnref:1conversations"><a class="footnote-ref" href="#fn:1conversations">7</a></sup> His response solely in the context of this framing device (which, we must remember, is an older folktale which has been re-cast as a framing device for the rest of the book) gives us a particular flavor of ‘God works in mysterious ways’ with more nuance than one commonly finds when that phrase is employed.</p>
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<p>God appears to Job and his friends and expounds on the fact that none of them do — nor indeed can — possibly understand the ways in which he works. They’re not just mysterious, they’re vast and incomprehensible. If He is outside time, then, from our point of view, those ways stretch both forwards and back. If they envelop and pervade all things tangible and intangible, then they are </p>
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<div class="footnote">
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<hr />
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<ol>
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<li id="fn:1revelation">
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<p>I don’t care about the book itself, I should add. There is much that falls out of its existence that I care very much about. I care about the way it is used, and while I care about the way that Job is used, I also care about the text, which is not something I can say about Revelation. <a class="footnote-backref" href="#fnref:1revelation" title="Jump back to footnote 1 in the text">↩</a></p>
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<p>I don’t care about the book itself, I should add. There is much that falls out of its existence that I care very much about, of course. I care about the way it is used, and while I care about the way that Job is used, I also care about the text, which is not something I can say about Revelation. <a class="footnote-backref" href="#fnref:1revelation" title="Jump back to footnote 1 in the text">↩</a></p>
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<li id="fn:1works">
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<p>A simplification, of course, but perhaps a good starting point. <a class="footnote-backref" href="#fnref:1works" title="Jump back to footnote 2 in the text">↩</a></p>
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<li id="fn:1satan">
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<p>This is the translation of the phrase in Hebrew, <em>hasatan</em>. Alter notes that it wasn’t until much more recently that this was refigured as specifically Satan: “The word <em>satan</em> is a person, thing, or set of circumstances that constitutes an obstacle or frustrates one’s purposes.”<sup id="fnref:1makyo"><a class="footnote-ref" href="#fn:1makyo">4</a></sup> \parencite[466]{alter} The Jewish Publication Society concurs. (Job 1:6, JPS via Sefaria) It is job title more than it is identity. In fact, the transition from the Adversary to Satan himself is fraught.[^1ally] ((etc etc, also footnote to ally)) <a class="footnote-backref" href="#fnref:1satan" title="Jump back to footnote 3 in the text">↩</a></p>
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<p>This is the translation of the phrase in Hebrew, <em>ha-satan</em>. Alter notes that it wasn’t until much more recently that this was refigured as specifically Satan: “The word <em>satan</em> is a person, thing, or set of circumstances that constitutes an obstacle or frustrates one’s purposes.”<sup id="fnref:1makyo"><a class="footnote-ref" href="#fn:1makyo">4</a></sup> \parencite[466]{alter} The Jewish Publication Society concurs. (Job 1:6, JPS via Sefaria) It is job title more than it is identity. In fact, the transition from the Adversary to Satan himself is fraught.[^1ally] <a class="footnote-backref" href="#fnref:1satan" title="Jump back to footnote 3 in the text">↩</a></p>
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<li id="fn:1makyo">
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<p>Shortly after I started to realize just how ill-suited I was to music education, I went through a change of identity online. While before I had gone by the name ‘Ranna’, cribbed from Garth Nix’s excellent Old Kingdom series, I now began to go by the name Makyo, a zen Buddhist term which bears a similar meaning. Something about just how focused many of the general teacher education classes were on things other than education filled me with a sense that I might not actually be in any way helping students, but simply standing in their way. I was <em>makyō</em>. I was <em>satan</em>. <a class="footnote-backref" href="#fnref:1makyo" title="Jump back to footnote 4 in the text">↩</a></p>
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<p>There is a difference in interpretation, here. On the one hand, Alter suggests that Job’s wife is being sardonic here, saying, “Job’s wife assumes either that cursing God will immediately lead to Job’s death, which might be just as well, or that, given his ghastly state, he will soon die anyway” \parencite[469]{alter}. Might as well curse anyway, eh?</p>
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<p>The editors of the NOAB take a more sympathetic view of the exchange. Job’s wife is seen as far more sympathetic: “The outcome of all Job’s piety has beento rob his wife of her ten children, her social standing, and her livelihood.” \parencite[737]{noab} Curse God, then. Who else could be responsible? How can you continue to praise after our ten (admittedly unnamed) children have died? <a class="footnote-backref" href="#fnref:1die" title="Jump back to footnote 6 in the text">↩</a></p>
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<li id="fn:1conversations">
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<p>Which will no doubt take up the majority of this essay. <a class="footnote-backref" href="#fnref:1conversations" title="Jump back to footnote 7 in the text">↩</a></p>
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</ol>
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</div>
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</article>
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