by free2beme 7 Replies latest jw friends
Be honest ....
The book of Job makes the God of the bibke look the same a the little prick with a magnifying glass burning ants with the sunlight. Don't worry, they have no feelings ... they're just ants!!!
Wait wait wait ... he is a god of love, right??? Quick everyone run, the sun is coming up, and God's looking mean and laughing funny.
The WTBTS interpret the Bible literally, and claim that everything written in it actually happened. I doubt that the writers of Job ever meant for it to be read like that. Wiki has a page about the Book of Job.
I love the book of Job.
There was simplistic assumption that bad things happen to bad people and that when bad things happen to good people its because they are being punished. The book of Psalms is full of this sort of nonsense.
The author of Job had the courage to challenge that and to demand an audience with god to accuse him of injustice.
I am certain that the ridiculous introduction about Satan's challenge and the conclusion about god's "who the f~~~ do you think you are to question me" reply to Job are later additions. Other than a quote from Bart Ehrman I have no evidence for that assertion, so I would need to do some research on the manuscript evidence
Job has been included by many scholars among the greatest works in literary history. In general it is recognized as a symbolic drama (metaphor). This was the common writing style of the entire Biblical era. No one wrote literal stories unless they were doing objective reporting on actual events or biographies like Josephus and the other historians did. Notice though, that none of those historians had a word to say about Jesus of Nazareth, except for a one-paragraph blatant forgery.
The Watchtower taking Job literally is further evidence of their extreme Biblical and spiritual ignorance comparable to an infant. Like Paul says, milk for babes, meat for adults.
I lived with constant, utterly agonizing pain for decades. The suicide rate is more than 95%. Opiates did not touch the pain. Contrary to public perception, they don't work on certain pain. I turned to Job. Since I was so interested, I read a scholarly book and Carl Jung's Answer to Job. The commentators note that Job legend predates the Hebrew Bible. So an existing story was modified. Also, they said that the opening and closing narratives and the poem of Job proper seem to have different authors and do not meld well.
God is petty and rageful, worse than the Infancy Gospels of Jesus,in the opening. God changes in the poem. I found that the poem was achingly beautiful. There is no indication that any number of daughters are more important than the closing number of daughters with no mourning for any individual person. God conniving with Satan sounds Satanic to me. I achieved greatly. My position allowed me to routinely dine with CEOs and I practiced for the U.S. Senate. I lost all due to illness. The guilt, nurtured in growing up JW, was enormous. I had to be bad. My father scapegoated me. So many people said moronic things to me with the best of intentions. Rebuking them would have been rude. Their comments hurt to my very soul. Reading Job's friends help to Job and Job's reply gave me courage. Deep truth is there.
The poem is achingly beautiful. The poem seems to be more about Job's deep depression b/c of an alienation from God. He seeks some union with God but cannot attain it. The physical symptoms in the poem relate to depression. They are different from the wounds in the introduction. Job is positive in that God does appear out of the whirlwind. Union is achieved. I love the who created the crocodile answer. Some things are beyond human understanding. If you are in agonizing pain, you probably want a Jesus miracle over who created the crocodile answer. Jesus obviously had th epower to cure all afflicted humans and prevent future occurrences. Yet he chose not to do so. I wonder about that.
It took overcoming a lot of resistance to the JWs to pull a nonNWT translation down and actually read it. I needed to read the Bible as a primary source in school. It was freeing to just read and ask my own questions and concerns. So much beauty and controversy is in the Bible yet the Witnesses fit it all into misguided and very simplistic versions. The rank and file is not educated. Some powerful Witnesses are. Others convert from denominatoins where the Bible is read with complexity. Most people would know instinctively that life, let alone God, cannot be reduced so readily. I wonder if the doctrine is purposefully dumbed down.
When I first started here, my view of the Witnesses was that Bethel had too much power, even over things not related to worship or doctrine -- like oral sex, dress, hairstyles,etc. Now I see the cult power more clearly. I just can't believe that they all believe lock and step the stuff addressed in the WT.
Those,who like literary babes, read the Bible in a literalist way have to go through such contortions of logic to try to make "sense" of it all that they miss the point of the whole thing.
The Book of Job is wasted on JW's and others who read the Bible in a literal way.
crofty....You describe almost exactly my view on the book, and I had laid all that out in a lengthy post last year but I can't seem to find it.
The book of Job is the main place in the Bible that depicts Satan as more of a literal being than a concept of wickedness... Really the idea that he's a fallen angel is barely touched upon in the Bible, and I don't see a pitchfork anywhere... But Job is kind of an interesting and unique book that gives a unique look at God and the devil, and there's some debate about when it was written and that it might have been in the time of the patriarchs. It's a unique format too as a big chunk of it is basically a conversation of statements between Job and his friends. Interesting bit of literature there for it's age and all... Even atheists can appreciate it.
