Wednesday Bible Study: Profundity?

The Book of Job has been influential in Jewish and Christian theology, and in later secular Western culture. There have been many allusions to it in literature and art, and it was adapted into a play in verse, titled J.B., by the American poet Archibald MacLeish, which won a Pulitzer prize.* Scholars believe it to have been written between the 7th and 4th Centuries BCE, but as with much of the Tanakh there is controversy as to whether it has a single authorship, or represents an accretion of material. As with Esther, the setting is not in Judah. Job appears to be an Israelite who has a relationship with the Israelite god, but he lives in what is thought to be an area south of Judah in the Levant or possibly in Arabia. He makes sacrifices to god himself, without the intercession of the priesthood. I have not seen any commentary on this anomaly, but it ' s pretty glaring.The subject is what we today call theodicy -- the problem that a supposedly benevolent God allows for suffering and injustice. That hasn ' t actually been a problem in the Torah and histories so far, because Yahweh is not in fact benevolent, he ' s a seriously psychopathic SOB. However, it had apparently started to vex people by the time this was written. The book makes a partial attempt at a solution by introducing the character of Satan. The idea that God has sons or some sort of community around him has been seen before, in somewhat variable form, but the specific idea of an adversary - which is the mea...
Source: Stayin' Alive - Category: American Health Source Type: blogs