The Book of Job
Most descriptions of what the book of Job is about don’t match the actual book of Job.
No, its not an explanation of why God allows evil to exist, not really. That doesn’t explicitly come up at all. The beginning and end where Job loses all and then recovers all is basically a frame story for the disputation.
My own point of view, completely uninformed by scholarship, is that (1) its a poetic recognition that evil happens to good people and is evil and (2) its a long and poetic argument between people who don’t believe in a robust afterlife (Job’s friends) and people who do (Job). The friend’s keep saying that God is just in this life and Job keeps saying, no, not in this life, so there must be a life to come.
It feels fictional to me. The prophets say that Job was real and I’m going to believe them, obviously, so could one say it was a fictionalized account inspired by something that actually happened?
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Rozy
October 19, 2023
We need a biblical “Mormon” to explain why this particular story was included, with an “And thus we see . . . ”
Because of trials I have faced I feel the realness of Job’s story, the questions, the anguish, the testimony. Especially after our son’s suicide I clung to Job’s statement “For I know that my redeemer liveth!” Otherwise life is in vain and not worth living, truly what’s the point if there is no redemption and mercy and justice?
Zen
October 19, 2023
It is easy for us to say, we would love all ancient scripture. I think there is great divine wisdom in the fact that the Book of Mormon is, in its present translation, optimized to the Traditional Christian understanding.
If you look at something that isn’t, then it is very confusing. Job is probably the oldest book in the Bible.
Spending some time in the Book of Enoch .. confusing and strange.
I have been thinking about writing a post on the recently found Book of Gad the Seer. Some parts are really interesting, like David teaching about Love. It would sound practically New Testament, but the reasoning he gives is far more Old Testament in its emphasis. Other things about it are just bewildering – like he has a vision of a lamb. If I understood it, it would probably be incredibly profound and enlightening. As it is, I can’t make heads or tails of it.
Job probably goes back to the period between the Flood and Abraham. At least before Moses. And Mesopotamian in its setting.
I would say, rather, that it is a meditation on why bad things happen to good people. His friends clearly believed in God and the next life – they just supposed that if something bad happened now, there was a reason for it – Job had sinned.
And no, the answer in its complexity was simplified to – Satan tempting God.
There is a Mesopotamian story that echoes this one. Probably reflecting the age of the original story.
And probably a bit of historical fiction to fill in the blanks wouldn’t shake my testimony.
IAW
October 20, 2023
Job is an epic poem in the Hebrew. It is not classified among the Histories, but among the Wisdom books.
America exists, but the Columbiad should not be taken as literal history.
Anyway, I am sure “Job” existed (even if his name wasn’t Job), but the book is clearly an artistic statement instead of a historical one, even if there is history behind it. It is not “Job’s Journal” but instead poetry written to explore what happened to Job from all sorts of angles.
Old Man of the Mountains
October 21, 2023
Hugh Nibley taught that the Book of Job was in the form of a theatrical play. I don’t know of any comments on its historicity though.