The Babylonian Theodicy

&The Book of Job

A strange and difficult text indeed...

Saadiah Gaon (882-942)

Five ‘major difficulties’ in The Book of Job:(1) Satan’s part in the story: who is he and what is his purpose?(2) Job’s suffering — why? — isn’t he upright and God-fearing?(3) The dynamics of the debate between Job and his friends(4) The language of the text(5) God’s ‘lectures’: what is their ‘point’?Providence in the Book of Job, Jeremy L. Pfeffer (2005)

What is the role of the frame-story?

Axel Olrik (1864-1917) and his ‘folktale laws’:(1) the law of opening and of closing: e.g. ‘once upon a time...’(2) the law of repetition... etc

Satan as ‘trickster’ folktale figure

dramatic irony

Who is Job?Karel van der Toorn’s ‘emblematic sufferer’:“By employing a character who suffers from an array of physical and emotional afflictions, the texts create a figure with which various readers can identify. This ‘Everyman’ trope heightens the philosophical problem.”—Benjamin Clarke, Misery Loves Company: A Comparative Analysis of Theodicy Literature in Ancient Mesopotamia and Israel (2010)

Pfeffer: Job as ‘Ideal man’ [“‘ideal gas’, mathematical model, theoretical benchmark”]

‘frame-story Job’ vs. speech-Job

Jean Fouquet, Job and His False Comforters (1460)

Gerard Seghers, The Patient Job (c. 1650)

William Blake, 1826

A Serious Man (2009 film)

modern-day ‘Elihu’ clip:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lkq-Fd9TU8k&list=PL3F27273A5E5C6D44

William Blake, watercolour (1805)

What is the thrust of God’s argument?

Virginia Woolf: “I read the Book of Job last night; I don’t think God comes well out of it.”(letter, 1922)

A legal point of view...

F. Rachel Magdalene’s attributes of legal narratives:(1) multiple strands (parties, witnesses)(2) distinct points of view in conflict with each other(3) strands that are in competition before an adjudicator who will resolve the conflict(4) all parties seek to persuade—On the Scales of Righteousness: Neo-Babylonian Trial Law and the Book of Job (2007)

Job 9:2-5, 9:19Of course, I knew it was so:how can man be right before God?Should a person bring grievance against Him,He will not answer one of a thousand.

If it’s strength—He is staunch,and if it’s justice—who can arraign Him?

Job 9:32-36, 23:3-6For He is not a man like me that I might answer Him,that we might come together in court.Would there were an arbiter between us,who could lay his hand on us both,who could take from me His rod,and His terror would not confound me.I would speak, and I will not fear Him,for that is not the way I am.

Would that I knew how to find Him...I would lay my case before Himand would fill my mouth with contentions.

A Serious Man (2009 film)

“This is not a frivolous request” video clip:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aQQsBjOrNMY&list=PL3F27273A5E5C6D44

Job 16:8-9, 16:19-20, 19:25-6And You crease my face, it becomes a witness, my gauntness deposes against me.

Even now, in the heavens my witness stands,one who vouches for me up above.

But I know my redeemer lives,and in the end he will stand up on earth...

Franz Ka*a, The Trial (1925)

“They're talking about things of which they don't have the slightest understanding, anyway. It's only because of their stupidity that they're able to be so sure of themselves.”

“Someone must have slandered Josef K., for one morning, without having done anything truly wrong, he was arrested.”

Comparing conclusionsThe Babylonian Theodicy (286-297):You are sympathetic, my friend,be considerate of (my) misfortune.Though I am humble, learned, supplicant,I have not seen help or succour for an instant.I would pass unobtrusively through the streets of my city,My voice was not raised, I kept my speaking low.I did not hold my head high, I would look at the ground.I was not given to servile praise among my associates,May the god who has cast me off grant help,May the goddess who has [forsaken me] take pity,The shepherd of Shamash will past[ure] people as a god should.

Job 42And Job answered the Lord and he said:I know You can do anything, and no devising is beyond You.“Who is this obscuring counsel without knowledge?”Therefore I told but did not understand,wonders beyond me that I did not know.“Hear, pray, and I will speak.Let me ask you, that you may inform me.”By the ear’s rumour I heard of You,and now my eye has seen You.Therefore do I recant,And I repent in dust and ashes.”...And the Lord blessed Job’s latter days more than his former days, and he had fourteen thousand sheep and six thousand camels and a thousand yoke of oxen and a thousand she-asses. And he had seven sons and three daughters. ... And Job died, aged and sated in years.