The Curious Case Of My Servant. Job

by criticalwitness 11 Replies latest watchtower bible

  • OldGenerationDude
    OldGenerationDude

    Your statement seems to be based on the Watchtower interpretation of the book of Job. Unless misunderstood, this would suggest that you accept the Governing Body’s interpretation as either valid or universal. If you do view their interpretation as applicable to this work it will be a handicap to your understanding of the book.

    If you read the book using a critical/analytic approach, you will likely not have these questions at all. Why not? This is what current scholarship offers:

    1.The book is not an historical transcript.

    Even the New World Translation prints the majority of the book as a poem. This should be a clue to most readers that the story is a song—an opera of sorts—and therefore not to be read as if it were a historical account written with literal details.

    2.The “satan” mentioned in the prologue of Job is not to be confused with Satan the Devil.

    The book begins with a prose narrative about Job who is the center of discussion of a heavenly court of justice. The “satan” in this prologue is merely an angel debating in the position of adversary, playing “devil’s advocate,” so to speak. Since the book cannot be dated before the 3rd century B.C.E., when “Satan” first became a proper name for the Evil One in Jewish theology, and since the angel obviously has access to both official meetings in heaven as well as some duty of oversight in earth’s affairs, it would be incorrect to apply the late Christian theological understanding of the Devil to this pre-Christian account.

    3.The book is a type of theological statement known as a theodicy, and it is written in a poetic narrative (obviously meant to be chanted and not read).

    While there may have been a faithful servant of God known by the name Job, the book is not a literal account of this or any person in particular. The author used the common Near Eastern narrative device of an innocent sufferer through which to offer his theodicy.

    4.The issues in the story are simplified version of more complex issues.

    In fact, despite a fictional or parable-like narrative in song, real-life questions involving anguish and suffering are at the heart of the story. An interesting point of the narrative is that in the end no answers to any of the questions raised are supplied, neither to the character of Job in the narrative nor by the narrative itself. While the characters are simple two-dimensional players, life greatest problems are multi-dimensional. The story seems to be wrapped in the moral: we ought not to bring God down to our level by offering simplistic answers to life’s complex issues.

    5.The book of Job is really about the struggle of traditional theology versus personal experience.

    Job’s “friends” offer their arguments based on the "sound" religious tradition of the time, that God punished the wicked in this lifetime (and therefore anyone suffering was being punished by God for sins committed). The theology is in conflict with Job’s personal experience—a life of faithfulness with no just reason for such punishment. This dynamic is an ever-present reality in Judeo-Christian life, as religion traditions of the past cannot be rigidly applied in an ever-changing world. God’s revelation to humankind is an unfolding process, and humans who claim to believe in God cannot at the same time demand that God fit their personal tastes or comfortably be understood by the limits of our ability to reason. In the end God is the judge, not humans.

    This is the mainstream exegesis of the book in question (not necessarily my own). If interested in learning more details, they can be found by simply opening practically any study edition of the Bible offered in a bookstore (and can offer better answers than I can). I offer this here to show that if one is not exposed to the Watchtower interpretation, then your questions will not generally rise.

    You are asking questions about characters and details in the book that are merely folklore devices and not the underlying theology of the work itself. Such questions would be important if we believe in the Watchtower’s view that this is a work of history, but such would be a mistake. Such an interpretation belies any claim to academic learning and scholarship and makes the story sound unreasonable (which is why one ends up with the questions you have).

  • yadda yadda 2
    yadda yadda 2

    If we did take the account literally, for example, then how is it that Job, an imperfect man and apparently the most righteous of all men pre-Christ, did not prove the Devil a liar for all time regarding imperfect humans?

    Satan was ony concerned to pick on the most challenging example of loyalty to God he could find. He roamed the whole earth to find the biggest test. He knew he could turn the weak and faithless aside easily, but in Job he met his match. So why then is this issue of proving the Devil a liar apparently still going on today, according to the Watchtower Society?

    Why also wasn't the issue of Universal Sovereignty settled in the first century, after Christ's death? Jesus was fully tested by Satan and Satan failed. Issue settled.

    What other categories of human being could Satan test. He only succeeded with Adam (first perfect human created on earth), but he failed with Job, he failed with Daniel and all the prophets, he failed with John the Baptist (the greatest non-anointed imperfect person according to Jesus) and he failed with Jesus.

    Surely, any issue raised in the spirit realm about Satan being able to turn anyone away from God was settled 2000 years ago when Christ died. In fact, the Insight Into The Scripture (Vol 2) on the topic "Sovereignty" admits as much on p.1013:

    "So Jesus Christ, in a totally perfect way, proved the Devil a liar, completely settling the question, will any man be faithful to God under whatever test or trial may be brought against him?"

    I might start a new thread on that.

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