6 “Where were you?”: The Logic of the Book of Job

2021 ◽  
pp. 88-98
Keyword(s):  
Book Of Job

Mimetic Monsters

2010 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 85-93
Author(s):  
Timothy Beal
Keyword(s):  
The Other ◽  
Jewish Tradition ◽  
Book Of Job ◽  
Edge Of Chaos ◽  
The Face ◽  
The Relationship

This article reads between two recent explorations of the relationship between religion, chaos, and the monstrous: Catherine Keller’s Face of the Deep and Author's Religion and Its Monsters. Both are oriented toward the edge of chaos and order; both see the primordial and chaotic as generative; both pursue monstrous mythological figures as divine personifications of primordial chaos; both find a deep theological ambivalences in Christian and Jewish tradition with regard to the monstrous, chaotic divine; both are critical of theological and cultural tendencies to demonize chaos and the monstrous; and finally, both read the divine speech from the whirlwind in the book of Job as a revelation of divine chaos. But whereas one sees it as a call for laughter, a chaotic life-affirming laughter with Leviathan in the face of the deep, the other sees it as an incarnation of theological horror, leaving Job and the reader overwhelmed and out-monstered by God. Must it be one way or the other? Can laughter and horror coincide in the face of the deep?

Job’s Emotional Struggle with the Womb: Some Psychoanalytic Interpretations

2020 ◽  
Vol 28 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Pieter Van der Zwan
Keyword(s):  
Extended Body ◽  
Book Of Job ◽  
Psychoanalytic Study

The womb is invested with great significance in the book of Job. As Job regresses from his extended body, concretised in his children, servants and material possessions, to his own, which is then “eaten into” by his skin problems, he longs to return to it. His fantasies about this womb reflect his unconscious anger, wishes and anxieties, processed by his symbolisation of the womb as a holding and containing grave where he can escape the attacks on his body. As such the womb invites a psychoanalytic study, with even transpersonal-psychological prospects, including that God is somehow, at least unconsciously, associated or even identified with the womb.

The Concentric Structure of the Wisdom Poem in Job 28

2018 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 26-45
Author(s):  
Ruth Henderson
Keyword(s):  
Ring Structure ◽  
Central Unit ◽  
Central Section ◽  
Book Of Job ◽  
Rhetorical Question ◽  
Linear Fashion ◽  
Creative Power ◽  
Concentric Pattern ◽  
Human Effort ◽  
Concentric Structure

The enigmatic wisdom poem of Job 28:1–28 stands apart from the rest of the book of Job in style and structure. Most read this poem in linear progression as three strophes (vv. 1–11; 15–19; 23–28) with an intervening refrain (vv. 12–14; 20–22). In this study, it is suggested that the poem has been presented in the form of a concentric or compositional ring structure, which juxtaposes arguments rather than presenting them in a linear fashion. According to this structure there are five compositional units, the centre of which holds the main point of the text (A, B, C, B1, A1). A central section (C vv. 15–19), maintains the traditional view of the supreme value of wisdom. The central unit is surrounded by two inner parallel sections each beginning with a rhetorical question concerning the location of wisdom (Sections B vv. 12–14 and B1 vv. 20–22), and two outer sections (A vv. 1–11 and A1 vv. 23–28) in which two contrasting ways of acquiring wisdom are presented: by independent human effort presented in the form of a mining metaphor (A vv. 1–11); or by contemplation of God’s omnipotent creative power and reverence for Him resulting in right behaviour (A1). Each of the major units also follows a concentric pattern.

The Sahidic Translation of the Book of Job

2010 ◽  
Author(s):  
Émile Clément Amélineau
Keyword(s):  
Book Of Job

Job the True Sage

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael C. Legaspi
Keyword(s):  
Book Of Job ◽  
Divine Justice ◽  
The Will ◽  
Do So

In the book of Job, wisdom is contested. In the speeches of the friends, wisdom is a program based on a pious alignment with divine justice as manifest in the sacred, social, and cosmic orders. In the figure of Job, the reader is invited to reconsider the nature of piety on which this understanding of wisdom is based. Job raises the possibility that piety is a form of integrity that yields a different relation to order. Accordingly, piety does not consist in a knowledge of order that leads to a prosperous life but rather in the determination to hold one’s place within the order, to remain true to the inner dictates of one’s pious life. To do so is to inhabit an order in which the strange inexplicability of this determination is coordinated to the strangeness of the cosmos itself and to the will of an inscrutable God.

Sexual Politics and Surveillance

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Erin Runions
Keyword(s):  
Positive Emotions ◽  
Gay Rights ◽  
Sexual Politics ◽  
Reading Strategy ◽  
Political Subjectivity ◽  
Lgbt Rights ◽  
Book Of Job ◽  
Sense Of Security ◽  
Bodily Experiences

Psalm 139 has been used by pro-lifers and gay rights activists to argue for foetal rights and LGBT rights, respectively. The poet speaks of God’s surveillance from the womb, but why is God’s surveillance so valued by interpreters, rather than dreaded (as in the book of Job)? This essay explores why this Psalm is so politically potent, using a metonymic feminist reading strategy to interrogate the ways in which scripture is used to confer rights. Spinoza’s comment on Psalm 139 leads to a consideration of scripture in relation to bodies and affect. The Psalm’s surveillance produces bodily experiences of threat and bodily fragmentation, while also ameliorating that threat by providing a sense of security through time. The results are the positive emotions of allegiance to God and appreciation of surveillance. Identifying readers gain a feeling of agency, a model for rights-bearing political subjectivity as interior, fixed, and known by God.

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