Reading Job, part 6
Reading a biblical book is no simple thing.
But before you can even start to approach the book, you need to be very clear in your mind about what reading you're about to undertake.
Are you reading through the glasses of the scholar or that of faith ?
And please read "faith" in the widest possible meaning. In my interpretation, reading something to find "The Truth" is a reading of faith ... even if The Truth you're looking for is to debunk the whole biblical nonsense.
Reading with the glasses of the scholar, however, is not reading to find The Truth. Reading as a scholar (and this holds true for any book, not just biblical ones) means, that you try to find out how this thing works. What makes it work. In what way. And why. Not to find an elusive grand unification theory, because that is not possible in the humanities (and in this respect, theology of any faith is part of the humanities), but to find out little strings of connections, levers, tricks and clevernesses, techniques ... and oodles of other things, tangible and intangible.
You take it apart to examine the parts, and sometimes the parts can be very small indeed. And then, when you put it together again, it hopefully works :-)
The scholarly reading of a book like Job entails your trying to find out what really belongs where and why, because this book has been seriously messed with. It entails a lot of boring grammar and etymology and dictionaries and obscure (and very long) articles on half-verses and - sometimes - single words.
And once you have answered all your own questions to your own satisfaction, you then turn your finds over to others, so that they can take all your glorious arguments apart and ask the uncomfortable questions you didn't think of.
This is not necessarily nice :-)
Scholarly debates can be - metaphorically - bloody :-) BUT the usual point of everything going really bad is the point, where someone starts arguing from faith rather than from scholarship.
Faith is not a permissible argument in scholarly work. No. This is not a debatable point. It isn't.
Scholarship might be permissible in an argument of faith, but the other way round is not only a big no-no, it does not work !
A scholarly reading is not a reading in order to find objective proof that your faith is true. It is not even a reading that can help you find The Truth of your faith. The only kind of proof you can find re. faith is to be found within you (... and, naturally, with God, but God is not a permissible argument in scholarship either). And what you carry in your heart and your mind is - I'm sorry to say - for one thing rather immaterial, for another rather fragile. There is no such thing as proof of faith.
There may be something resembling proof of the etymology of a word, and the historical development of the use of that word.
An example : 200 years ago "condescending" was not necessarily a negative word. It meant that someone who was your superior, stepped down to your level. And this could be kindly meant. In a society where class was important, for a noblewoman to speak kindly to a peasant was ... condescenting ... in the positive way.
OUR society, however, only rarely acknowledges that one human being is superior to another. Class is still important, but it is not accepted to be so :-) This means, that the lord is expected to speak kindly and on level with the farmer, and if there is the slightest hint of superiority in the lord's manner, he will be judged to be condescending ... and that is most emphatically NOT a positive designation. If he doesn't speak with the farmer at all, it is not seen as his free choice either, he will be called names that are far worse than "condescending".
Now. If you read Jane Austen, this is important to know ! or you might read things into the relationship between Lady Catherine de Bourgh and Mr Collins that are - in all probability - not intended by the author. What is more, if you want to transmit the same kind of relationship in a modern context, you would need to find different words, different actions and different metaphors.
To know the historical use of a word is scholarship. To translate it into modern terms is a work of love and .... yes ... faith. Because, you see ... you will have a very hard time showing that your modern version is The Truth. You can, however, show the historic development of the usage of a given word.
So. You can use scholarship to feed parts of the narratives and readings of faith.
But you cannot get a reading of faith from a scholarly reading.
What is more, trying to use faith as a part of your scholarly method simply doesn't work.
Even if you make a very good, modern version of an old story, you cannot take the findings of this modern version and read into the original story.
And what does this have to do with Job ?
It means, that this "reading of Job" part of my blog can now go in two distinctly different ways.
It can be faith-driven, in which case it will be more-or-less Job sermons, or it can be scholarship-driven, in which case it will mostly be discussions on single words, structures etc.
I'll try to be clear about which glasses I'm wearing when :-) not for your sake :-) but for mine.
Monday, February 12, 2007
Thursday, February 01, 2007
Reading Job, part 5
The relationship between the frame-narrative and the poetic dialogue.
The book of Job has several distinctive parts. The most obvious "division" is that between the narrative at the ends, and the poetic bulk of the book.
The framework consists of chapters 1-2 and 42:7-17.
The rest is a sort-of dialogue between Job and his 3 friends : Elifaz, Bildad and Zophar, and then there are the Elihu-speeches (chapters 32-37).
The Elihu speeches are sort-of a problem, because they are ... different from the rest of the poetry. And yes. You can tell :-) Not necessarily by "objective" measures, but in the same way that you can tell that one author is not the other when you read them. Much of it is in the general ... tone. The skill of the author. And frankly, the skill of whoever did the Elihu-speeches is not the same as that used in the rest of the poetic parts of the book.
Now. Forests have given their lives to deal with these issues, so I will not bore on about them here. Suffice to say, the issues of which parts belong and which parts don't have raged in scholarly discussions over the past centuries.
My usual approach to something is : it is there for a reason. Someone put it there, and someone kept it there. For a reason. Even when we might not see any immediate reason for it :-)
But that does not do away with the puzzle of why it looks the way it does.
And with the book of Job, I'm about ready to give up on one of my principles. The above :-) And say, outright, that the frame-work narrative is, in fact, the first commentary on the poetic bulk of the text.
You can read the main part of the book without the introduction. It is possible. Yes, you end up asking "what happened before this", but you can do it. The question then is : how much of the poetry refers, directly or indirectly to the action in the first 2 chapters ?
And with a quick read-through, I've ended up with the following :
5:3-7
16:7ff
18:5ff
20:10
27:13ff
29:2-6
30:15ff (particularly vss 18-19)
But there are other passages, that seems to contradict the framework, a quick read-through brought up these :
14:21-22
19:13ff
21:25
22:23-24
Of all these passages, one is particularly interesting, because it seems to deal explicitly with loosing your family, violently. The second half of ch. 16 v.7
KJV translates : "... thou hast made desolate all my company"
RSV translates : "... he has made desolate all my company"
The Danish authorized version translates : "... you have exterminated all that is mine"
In the Hebrew, this is 3 words. Only one of them is unambiguous. The one translated "all". The other two can be discussed.
The verb can - as is the case above - be translated "to destroy" or "to lay waste" (make desolate), but the same verb can equally be translated "appaled" or "amazed".
The noun (object) can mean "company" (and it has a suffix denoting 1st person singular, therefore translated into "my company" or, "all that is mine"), but it can also mean : community, family, council, witness, sign, portent, command, promise.
Take your pick !
So the question I feel pressing on my mind after this bit of dictionary-work is : do we translate "desolation" and "company" here, because we have the story ?
In context, any number of other options could be equally possible, without changing as much as a dot in the Hebrew text.
If you read the next verse, verse 8, Job talks about how even his own decay bears witness against him, and if one looks at the general tone of the book, and the legal turn it takes, "witness" would, in my opinion, not be a bad choice. In fact, seen in the immediate as well as the extended context, "witness" would - in my opinion - be a better choice than one alluding to family and friends.
... but I'm sure that one can fit in just about any of the meanings with just a wee bit of creative footwork.
And with that particular piece in place (or out of it, as it were), I have felt a growing conviction, that the first 2 chapters, and the last part of the last chapter, are, in reality, the first commentary on what could have been "just" the poetic bulk of the book. I may even choose to debunk the Elihu-speeches too :-) but I'm still out on that one.
What is more, seen over-all, this would - in my opinion - only make the book stronger. The initial narrative is, as I see it, an interpretative stumbling-stone, which defines too much of the interpretation we put on the rest. We are so horrified at the idea that a good God can be the cause of so much distress as is evidenced by Job, that we will rather make God into someone who can be tempted by a trickster like the satan.
But ... the "real" answer really is in the bulk of the book, and Job gives it. Several times. If there is but one God, and this one God is almighty, then everything, good or bad, has to come from His hands.
Not from mine.
Job actually does not buy into the platitudes of the friends : that he can repent and make peace with God, and then he will be well again. Job insists, that he did nothing to deserve all that was good, and that he equally has done nothing to deserve to loose it. It all came from one and the same hand, that of God.
But we don't like that answer, do we ?
We want God to be nice.
But God isn't necessarily a cute guy who does what we want him to. As C.S. Lewis writes so aptly about his Christ-figure, Aslan, in the Narnia books : Aslan is not a tame lion.
In the same manner. God is not a nice or cute God. And in Job we seem to see parts of him that are tough to handle for us. Which does not make it less necessary to do so.
The relationship between the frame-narrative and the poetic dialogue.
The book of Job has several distinctive parts. The most obvious "division" is that between the narrative at the ends, and the poetic bulk of the book.
The framework consists of chapters 1-2 and 42:7-17.
The rest is a sort-of dialogue between Job and his 3 friends : Elifaz, Bildad and Zophar, and then there are the Elihu-speeches (chapters 32-37).
The Elihu speeches are sort-of a problem, because they are ... different from the rest of the poetry. And yes. You can tell :-) Not necessarily by "objective" measures, but in the same way that you can tell that one author is not the other when you read them. Much of it is in the general ... tone. The skill of the author. And frankly, the skill of whoever did the Elihu-speeches is not the same as that used in the rest of the poetic parts of the book.
Now. Forests have given their lives to deal with these issues, so I will not bore on about them here. Suffice to say, the issues of which parts belong and which parts don't have raged in scholarly discussions over the past centuries.
My usual approach to something is : it is there for a reason. Someone put it there, and someone kept it there. For a reason. Even when we might not see any immediate reason for it :-)
But that does not do away with the puzzle of why it looks the way it does.
And with the book of Job, I'm about ready to give up on one of my principles. The above :-) And say, outright, that the frame-work narrative is, in fact, the first commentary on the poetic bulk of the text.
You can read the main part of the book without the introduction. It is possible. Yes, you end up asking "what happened before this", but you can do it. The question then is : how much of the poetry refers, directly or indirectly to the action in the first 2 chapters ?
And with a quick read-through, I've ended up with the following :
5:3-7
16:7ff
18:5ff
20:10
27:13ff
29:2-6
30:15ff (particularly vss 18-19)
But there are other passages, that seems to contradict the framework, a quick read-through brought up these :
14:21-22
19:13ff
21:25
22:23-24
Of all these passages, one is particularly interesting, because it seems to deal explicitly with loosing your family, violently. The second half of ch. 16 v.7
KJV translates : "... thou hast made desolate all my company"
RSV translates : "... he has made desolate all my company"
The Danish authorized version translates : "... you have exterminated all that is mine"
In the Hebrew, this is 3 words. Only one of them is unambiguous. The one translated "all". The other two can be discussed.
The verb can - as is the case above - be translated "to destroy" or "to lay waste" (make desolate), but the same verb can equally be translated "appaled" or "amazed".
The noun (object) can mean "company" (and it has a suffix denoting 1st person singular, therefore translated into "my company" or, "all that is mine"), but it can also mean : community, family, council, witness, sign, portent, command, promise.
Take your pick !
So the question I feel pressing on my mind after this bit of dictionary-work is : do we translate "desolation" and "company" here, because we have the story ?
In context, any number of other options could be equally possible, without changing as much as a dot in the Hebrew text.
If you read the next verse, verse 8, Job talks about how even his own decay bears witness against him, and if one looks at the general tone of the book, and the legal turn it takes, "witness" would, in my opinion, not be a bad choice. In fact, seen in the immediate as well as the extended context, "witness" would - in my opinion - be a better choice than one alluding to family and friends.
... but I'm sure that one can fit in just about any of the meanings with just a wee bit of creative footwork.
And with that particular piece in place (or out of it, as it were), I have felt a growing conviction, that the first 2 chapters, and the last part of the last chapter, are, in reality, the first commentary on what could have been "just" the poetic bulk of the book. I may even choose to debunk the Elihu-speeches too :-) but I'm still out on that one.
What is more, seen over-all, this would - in my opinion - only make the book stronger. The initial narrative is, as I see it, an interpretative stumbling-stone, which defines too much of the interpretation we put on the rest. We are so horrified at the idea that a good God can be the cause of so much distress as is evidenced by Job, that we will rather make God into someone who can be tempted by a trickster like the satan.
But ... the "real" answer really is in the bulk of the book, and Job gives it. Several times. If there is but one God, and this one God is almighty, then everything, good or bad, has to come from His hands.
Not from mine.
Job actually does not buy into the platitudes of the friends : that he can repent and make peace with God, and then he will be well again. Job insists, that he did nothing to deserve all that was good, and that he equally has done nothing to deserve to loose it. It all came from one and the same hand, that of God.
But we don't like that answer, do we ?
We want God to be nice.
But God isn't necessarily a cute guy who does what we want him to. As C.S. Lewis writes so aptly about his Christ-figure, Aslan, in the Narnia books : Aslan is not a tame lion.
In the same manner. God is not a nice or cute God. And in Job we seem to see parts of him that are tough to handle for us. Which does not make it less necessary to do so.
Monday, January 29, 2007
Reading Job, part 4. Biblical Wisdom
I'm reading commentaries. And general works on wisdom literature. There are 3 books of the Old Testament that everyone agrees is wisdom-literature : Proverbs, Ecclesiastes and Job. They all belong to the same general genre, because they all deal with the life of everyman ...
or rather ... the issues dealt with in each of them are issues that every man (and woman) can relate to.
Proverbs is the easiest of the lot to get to grips with, even if it is not a particularly homogenous work. In it are hymns and proverbs, aforisms and good advise, admonitions and praises. But it is impersonal.
Ecclesiastes purports to be the work of one man, and his struggle to get to grips with what he percieves to be the meaning-less-ness of life Vanitas vanitatum, all is vanity, all is in vain.
And then there is Job. The received wisdom re. Job is, that it deals with innocent suffering. With the major problem, that if God is almighty, and there is only one, then all good as well as all suffering has only one source : God
And how can God allow things to go bad for the good man and good for the bad man.
All this is exemplified in the person of Job. But ... the book itself has different parts. There is the frame-work. Chapters 1-2 and chapter 42:7-17. This is the story that the remainder is hinged upon. Chapters 1-2 establish the piety, wealth and general wonderfulness of Job. It tells of how he looses everything through the work of the contradictor (the satan) first his possessions (and among those : his children) then his health. So, the health, wealth and happiness-deal is off, and when the main-part of the book starts, we find Job, sitting in the ash-heap, scraping his boils and wounds with a pot-sherd. And with 3 friends around him. There to mourn his losses with him.
And then comes the part that groups this one as belonging to the genre of wisdom.
A dialogue between Job and the friends (Eliphaz, Bildad and Zophar). Then a sololiqui by a 4th person (Elihu), and finally, the big show-down between Job and God.
But as I read, and read, and read ... the book itself (in so far 4 different translations and 2 re-tellings), and the commentaries, I frankly find it harder and harder to accept the received wisdom re. this work.
The more I read, the more I become convinced that this book is not about the suffering of the innocent. It is read as such, certainly, and it can be read as such, but ...
All good exegesis must start with reading what is there.
Not what one already knows or assume to know, but what is actually there.
As I wrote in the previous post. This can be troublesome with Job, but ... if the starting-point is, that the text is what it is (disregarding scribal errors), because someone wanted it to be this way, then we have to deal with the weird stuff too. And we have to account for it.
And in my endavor in this direction, the presupposition of the general genre of wisdom is becoming a hindrance. Not that I don't think that the ultimate ... goal of the text is, for the reader as well as the main protagonist to achieve wisdom, knowledge, insight, but ...
This is not an exposition on the right way to live for "everyman" (like Proverbs) or a tractate on how the individual can find meaning in an empty life, as Ecclesiastes attempts. The book of Job seems to me to be about loss and depression ... but the loss is only explicit in the narrative framework, not in the main part of the book. There it is implied, but not spelled out ... (but I need to re-re-re-re-read the main part to be certain about that).
Oh, well. For the moment, I'll try to separate what I know about wisdom-literature in general, and the received knowledge re. Job in particular and try to go with what I read.
After all, that is what exegesis is about :-)
I'm reading commentaries. And general works on wisdom literature. There are 3 books of the Old Testament that everyone agrees is wisdom-literature : Proverbs, Ecclesiastes and Job. They all belong to the same general genre, because they all deal with the life of everyman ...
or rather ... the issues dealt with in each of them are issues that every man (and woman) can relate to.
Proverbs is the easiest of the lot to get to grips with, even if it is not a particularly homogenous work. In it are hymns and proverbs, aforisms and good advise, admonitions and praises. But it is impersonal.
Ecclesiastes purports to be the work of one man, and his struggle to get to grips with what he percieves to be the meaning-less-ness of life Vanitas vanitatum, all is vanity, all is in vain.
And then there is Job. The received wisdom re. Job is, that it deals with innocent suffering. With the major problem, that if God is almighty, and there is only one, then all good as well as all suffering has only one source : God
And how can God allow things to go bad for the good man and good for the bad man.
All this is exemplified in the person of Job. But ... the book itself has different parts. There is the frame-work. Chapters 1-2 and chapter 42:7-17. This is the story that the remainder is hinged upon. Chapters 1-2 establish the piety, wealth and general wonderfulness of Job. It tells of how he looses everything through the work of the contradictor (the satan) first his possessions (and among those : his children) then his health. So, the health, wealth and happiness-deal is off, and when the main-part of the book starts, we find Job, sitting in the ash-heap, scraping his boils and wounds with a pot-sherd. And with 3 friends around him. There to mourn his losses with him.
And then comes the part that groups this one as belonging to the genre of wisdom.
A dialogue between Job and the friends (Eliphaz, Bildad and Zophar). Then a sololiqui by a 4th person (Elihu), and finally, the big show-down between Job and God.
But as I read, and read, and read ... the book itself (in so far 4 different translations and 2 re-tellings), and the commentaries, I frankly find it harder and harder to accept the received wisdom re. this work.
The more I read, the more I become convinced that this book is not about the suffering of the innocent. It is read as such, certainly, and it can be read as such, but ...
All good exegesis must start with reading what is there.
Not what one already knows or assume to know, but what is actually there.
As I wrote in the previous post. This can be troublesome with Job, but ... if the starting-point is, that the text is what it is (disregarding scribal errors), because someone wanted it to be this way, then we have to deal with the weird stuff too. And we have to account for it.
And in my endavor in this direction, the presupposition of the general genre of wisdom is becoming a hindrance. Not that I don't think that the ultimate ... goal of the text is, for the reader as well as the main protagonist to achieve wisdom, knowledge, insight, but ...
This is not an exposition on the right way to live for "everyman" (like Proverbs) or a tractate on how the individual can find meaning in an empty life, as Ecclesiastes attempts. The book of Job seems to me to be about loss and depression ... but the loss is only explicit in the narrative framework, not in the main part of the book. There it is implied, but not spelled out ... (but I need to re-re-re-re-read the main part to be certain about that).
Oh, well. For the moment, I'll try to separate what I know about wisdom-literature in general, and the received knowledge re. Job in particular and try to go with what I read.
After all, that is what exegesis is about :-)
Tuesday, January 23, 2007
Reading Job, part 3
Textual criticism.
There are many issues when reading Job.
One of the fairly serious ones is : Which Job are you reading ?
Just try reading the King James version and the RSV-version (and probably even the NEW RSV-version), and you will see that they differ greatly from each other at some points.
... and yet, they are both translations of the same, basic, Hebrew text.
With Job, the trouble lies not so much in the translations, but in the Hebrew.
You see, the Hebrew text is ... difficult.
There are passages in there that are well nigh impossible to get any sort of meaning out of. There are passages where every other word is one that only occur in the book of Job, and half of those are words that only occur this once.
When things like this happens, scholars turn to text-critique. Try to establish a firm text, one that is as close to "the original" as possible, and to do this, a battery of options are available.
The first one is : could there be a simple error of spelling. These texts have been handed down to us in written form, certainly, but ... errors occur. Letters are mis-read, repeated, omitted. Whole passages were repeated or omitted, not because the scribe/s were incompetent, but because they were human beings.
And when the next scribe along the line started copying, he knew, that he had to copy completely accurately, so ... a chance error was continued, now as (pardon) gospel truth.
And another couple of errors occur with the next scribe ... and the next ... and the next ...
Now, in scholar-speak, all the many possible scribal errors have each their name, and I'm not going to bore you with those. Just take my word for it, that haplography and dittography are just a few of them.
One way to deal with this is, to make a hyper-text. That's what New Testament scholars have in the Nestle-Aland edition of the New Testament. That is a text where you take many different old manuscripts of the same text, and see if there is a concensus.
When there is no consensus, you generally go with the version found in the older manuscripts ... but other options are noted in a text-critical apparatus.
Old Testament scholars don't have that ... yet. In this country we use a print-version of the manuscript usually known as the "Leningradensis", which is the oldest known manuscript containing the entire Old Testament, as we know it. There is a manuscript called the "Aleppo" which is about a century older, but that one doesn't have Genesis, since it has been in a fire. SO, we work with an annotated version of Leningradensis (which is - and you may be surprised here - a medieval manuscript from the 12th century)
ANYway. You still look at what other manuscripts and fragments of manuscripts, have, and if most of the others have a different version, you may choose to go with that.
If this one doesn't work (every script writes the same gibberish), you go to what is called "the versions" : the Septuagint (ancient Greek version of the Old Testament) and the Vulgate (Latin version of the Old and New Testament) are the most important, but there are others. You turn to those and check what they have translated.
Sometimes - quite frequently in fact - this can solve the issue.
You can see, from their translation, that they had a word added (or not there), or where the spelling error is, or that they assumed a different vocalization, simply by translating backwards.
BUT, there are pit-falls in this one too.
One of the "solid" pillars of textual critisism is, that any copyist is more likely to change gibberish to sense than the other way around ... which again means, that the - to us - gibberish text might well be the "real" thing, whereas the ancient versions changed an original text to something more easily understandable.
This rule of thumb is called the rule of lectio difficilior "the difficult reading"
So, you're back to square one, with a gibberish text.
Job is overflowing with textual problems. Words that only occur once. Strange grammar. Weird spellings. You name it, it is there.
And this makes translating Job your basic, scholarly nightmare.
To translate right, you need to know what the general trust of the piece is.
To find out what the general trust of the piece is, you need to understand what it says.
... Catch 22 ...
And caught between the rock and the hard place, I have reached the point, where I need to re-think the entire book. Need to find out what I think the book of Job is all about.
Is it about the unjust and unjustified suffering of the righteous man ? the problem which is known as theodicé ? Or might there be other issues that are as important ?
But that will have to be the next post.
Textual criticism.
There are many issues when reading Job.
One of the fairly serious ones is : Which Job are you reading ?
Just try reading the King James version and the RSV-version (and probably even the NEW RSV-version), and you will see that they differ greatly from each other at some points.
... and yet, they are both translations of the same, basic, Hebrew text.
With Job, the trouble lies not so much in the translations, but in the Hebrew.
You see, the Hebrew text is ... difficult.
There are passages in there that are well nigh impossible to get any sort of meaning out of. There are passages where every other word is one that only occur in the book of Job, and half of those are words that only occur this once.
When things like this happens, scholars turn to text-critique. Try to establish a firm text, one that is as close to "the original" as possible, and to do this, a battery of options are available.
The first one is : could there be a simple error of spelling. These texts have been handed down to us in written form, certainly, but ... errors occur. Letters are mis-read, repeated, omitted. Whole passages were repeated or omitted, not because the scribe/s were incompetent, but because they were human beings.
And when the next scribe along the line started copying, he knew, that he had to copy completely accurately, so ... a chance error was continued, now as (pardon) gospel truth.
And another couple of errors occur with the next scribe ... and the next ... and the next ...
Now, in scholar-speak, all the many possible scribal errors have each their name, and I'm not going to bore you with those. Just take my word for it, that haplography and dittography are just a few of them.
One way to deal with this is, to make a hyper-text. That's what New Testament scholars have in the Nestle-Aland edition of the New Testament. That is a text where you take many different old manuscripts of the same text, and see if there is a concensus.
When there is no consensus, you generally go with the version found in the older manuscripts ... but other options are noted in a text-critical apparatus.
Old Testament scholars don't have that ... yet. In this country we use a print-version of the manuscript usually known as the "Leningradensis", which is the oldest known manuscript containing the entire Old Testament, as we know it. There is a manuscript called the "Aleppo" which is about a century older, but that one doesn't have Genesis, since it has been in a fire. SO, we work with an annotated version of Leningradensis (which is - and you may be surprised here - a medieval manuscript from the 12th century)
ANYway. You still look at what other manuscripts and fragments of manuscripts, have, and if most of the others have a different version, you may choose to go with that.
If this one doesn't work (every script writes the same gibberish), you go to what is called "the versions" : the Septuagint (ancient Greek version of the Old Testament) and the Vulgate (Latin version of the Old and New Testament) are the most important, but there are others. You turn to those and check what they have translated.
Sometimes - quite frequently in fact - this can solve the issue.
You can see, from their translation, that they had a word added (or not there), or where the spelling error is, or that they assumed a different vocalization, simply by translating backwards.
BUT, there are pit-falls in this one too.
One of the "solid" pillars of textual critisism is, that any copyist is more likely to change gibberish to sense than the other way around ... which again means, that the - to us - gibberish text might well be the "real" thing, whereas the ancient versions changed an original text to something more easily understandable.
This rule of thumb is called the rule of lectio difficilior "the difficult reading"
So, you're back to square one, with a gibberish text.
Job is overflowing with textual problems. Words that only occur once. Strange grammar. Weird spellings. You name it, it is there.
And this makes translating Job your basic, scholarly nightmare.
To translate right, you need to know what the general trust of the piece is.
To find out what the general trust of the piece is, you need to understand what it says.
... Catch 22 ...
And caught between the rock and the hard place, I have reached the point, where I need to re-think the entire book. Need to find out what I think the book of Job is all about.
Is it about the unjust and unjustified suffering of the righteous man ? the problem which is known as theodicé ? Or might there be other issues that are as important ?
But that will have to be the next post.
Wednesday, January 10, 2007
Reading the book of Job. Part 2
First commentary
Well, the first commentary on Job is read.
Anthony and Miriam Hanson : "The book of Job. Introduction and Commentary". SCM Press Ltd. London 1953 and later. Part of the Torch Bible Commentaries.
Now, don't get me wrong. It's a nice enough commentary, BUT ...
For scholarly work it is all but useless.
But then, it does not have the ambition to be scholarly. It is meant as a sort of self-help book on reading Job for the interested (and educated) lay (Christian) reader. As such it stands the test of time. There are some interesting parallels and similes drawn, the comparison between Job and Jonah in the implied picture of God is interesting, as is the drawing attention to the implied use that Paul makes of Job in his arguments in 1 Corinthinans and Romans.
So ... and uplifting book to use for personal, faith-determined study, but not a book that is useful for a scholar.
First commentary
Well, the first commentary on Job is read.
Anthony and Miriam Hanson : "The book of Job. Introduction and Commentary". SCM Press Ltd. London 1953 and later. Part of the Torch Bible Commentaries.
Now, don't get me wrong. It's a nice enough commentary, BUT ...
For scholarly work it is all but useless.
But then, it does not have the ambition to be scholarly. It is meant as a sort of self-help book on reading Job for the interested (and educated) lay (Christian) reader. As such it stands the test of time. There are some interesting parallels and similes drawn, the comparison between Job and Jonah in the implied picture of God is interesting, as is the drawing attention to the implied use that Paul makes of Job in his arguments in 1 Corinthinans and Romans.
So ... and uplifting book to use for personal, faith-determined study, but not a book that is useful for a scholar.
Tuesday, January 09, 2007
Reading the book of Job. Part 1
I like to read. I could do it more or less all day ... if it wasn't for other things getting in the way. Things like housework, using my hands, being a mother to my children and a wife to my husband ... and all the other things that make up the woman that is me.
And at the present, I'm trying to prepare a class on the master-degree-level on the book of Job from the Old Testament. Now, I haven't worked with this for 6 or 7 years. The Hebrew of the book of Job is - at the best of times - difficult (at the worst of times it's horrible). What is more, its one of the most loaded books in the Old Testament.
At the core of every modern commentary is - naturally - the big question : If Job is righteous, and he is, both God, Satan and Job claims this, why does he suffer ?
Put in fancy words, this is the problem of theodice, the unjust suffering of the just. The fact that s*** happens, even to good people. The fact that bastards may live well and happily while good people suffer in many ways.
Well. I've just finished what can only be called and early commentary on it. A narrative on why Job suffers and why his freinds are judged unjust and sinful. It's called "Testament of Job" and is a so-called apocrypha. It's not part of the bible, but the book is old, and deals with biblical material. The versions we know all come from manuscripts that are 11-14th century c.e. and they do not in any way agree with each other on the finer details. What they do agree on is, that the single thing that makes "the satan" (see below) seek to destroy Job and his faith is an act of faith, done by Job, turned against idolatry.
... this, naturally, does not deal with the still-remaining problem of why God allows the satan to have his wicked way.
BUT I'll try to keep you posted :-) as I wind my way around this text and the various large lines and fine details :-)
And then : why does she write "the satan" ...
well ... I do because in the book of Job, "satan" is not a name. It's a job-description :-) and it simply means "the contradictor". In the canonical book of Job, what happens is that God is full of pride in the righteousness of Job, and the contradictor, the satan, says : huh ! a man's righteousness and piety will only last as long as things go his way.
So, the satan has a clear function, he is (lame but pardonable pun) the devil's advocate with God, and it is his job to contradict everything and anyone :-) to question, to contradict, to counteract.
What is more, in the framework story, he is one of the sons of God (yes, it does say so, even if some translators shy away from this and translate "angels"), and is part of the heavenly household depicted in chapter 1.
I like to read. I could do it more or less all day ... if it wasn't for other things getting in the way. Things like housework, using my hands, being a mother to my children and a wife to my husband ... and all the other things that make up the woman that is me.
And at the present, I'm trying to prepare a class on the master-degree-level on the book of Job from the Old Testament. Now, I haven't worked with this for 6 or 7 years. The Hebrew of the book of Job is - at the best of times - difficult (at the worst of times it's horrible). What is more, its one of the most loaded books in the Old Testament.
At the core of every modern commentary is - naturally - the big question : If Job is righteous, and he is, both God, Satan and Job claims this, why does he suffer ?
Put in fancy words, this is the problem of theodice, the unjust suffering of the just. The fact that s*** happens, even to good people. The fact that bastards may live well and happily while good people suffer in many ways.
Well. I've just finished what can only be called and early commentary on it. A narrative on why Job suffers and why his freinds are judged unjust and sinful. It's called "Testament of Job" and is a so-called apocrypha. It's not part of the bible, but the book is old, and deals with biblical material. The versions we know all come from manuscripts that are 11-14th century c.e. and they do not in any way agree with each other on the finer details. What they do agree on is, that the single thing that makes "the satan" (see below) seek to destroy Job and his faith is an act of faith, done by Job, turned against idolatry.
... this, naturally, does not deal with the still-remaining problem of why God allows the satan to have his wicked way.
BUT I'll try to keep you posted :-) as I wind my way around this text and the various large lines and fine details :-)
And then : why does she write "the satan" ...
well ... I do because in the book of Job, "satan" is not a name. It's a job-description :-) and it simply means "the contradictor". In the canonical book of Job, what happens is that God is full of pride in the righteousness of Job, and the contradictor, the satan, says : huh ! a man's righteousness and piety will only last as long as things go his way.
So, the satan has a clear function, he is (lame but pardonable pun) the devil's advocate with God, and it is his job to contradict everything and anyone :-) to question, to contradict, to counteract.
What is more, in the framework story, he is one of the sons of God (yes, it does say so, even if some translators shy away from this and translate "angels"), and is part of the heavenly household depicted in chapter 1.
Saturday, October 07, 2006
Psalm 73
Well, it's been the longest time, hasn't it :-)
I'm part of an online study of psalms, and this past week, we've been trying to deal with psalm 73. Here are some of my thoughts :-)
I've been reading this psalm every day for the past week, and what with the things that are and have been happening around "our" ears internationally, not least the atrocious slaughter of little girls in a Amish school, two things have "crystallized" in my head re. this psalm (and mind you, this is not a scholarly reading, just a pastoral one)
The first thing is, that this psalm, deals head-on with the problem, that there is no visible equation between being a good person, a faithful one, and a prosperous one.
Health, Wealth and Happiness do not automatically follow faith and trust in God.
Being a "good person" does not automatically ensure you a problem-free life.
Having faith and trust in God, however, does equal, that the race to "be someone" to be rich, have parties, the right clothes etc, or "to have" worldly goods, becomes of less importance.
There is a huge ... security in trusting, that just as God looks to the lilies of the valley, he will supply your needs :-)
The other thing I took in from this psalm is, that bitterness and anger are dangerous things. Doesn't really matter who you direct it at. The opposite of love is not hate. The opposite of love is everything that keeps you away from it, even for a very short time. Emotions like anger, bitterness, resentment, jealousy are all that. And these are just the ones on the top of my head.
And what is worse, we all have it !
"My feet had well nigh slipped ..."
Now, don't get me wrong here, I'm not pointing my finger at anyone. I am pointing my finger at everyone. There is a difference :-) For one thing, I'm included in the "everyone" :-)
And I have never met a person, who has not, at some (several) point(s) of his or her life experienced all of these ... hateful emotions.
And the worst, the absolutely worst thing you can do about them is to put the lid on them. To not recognize that they are there, and try to pretend they are not. It's a bit like a closet ... you know ... the closet where you stuff "everything" when you need to just get it off the surfaces of your house, and really don't know what you'll do with it. So, it's stuffed into the closet. Dirty socks and playthings, a box of whatever and kiddies' new shoes.
Now, this closet simile is actually very good :-)
There are things in there that you will miss ! and will not understand where are.
The closet will at the same time constantly nag at the back of your brain, draining you with it's unknown contents and "horrors", and one day, when you try to stuff one more thing in there, "everything" is going to come tumbling out, and that is not a pretty sight. There is dirty laundry that you would much rather not deal with twice, and which you most particularly would have preferred to not contaminate that leather hand-bag that was rather neat when it was stuffed in there.
We do the same thing with lots of emotions. Good and bad. Because we live in a society where the only really acceptable emotion is joy. Oh, a single, quiet tear might be ok, but not anger, not anguish ... nothing too much over the top, and yes, joy can be too much over the top too.
So, we stuff emotions into our mental closet, and when the day comes, where it all tumbles out, what happens is - more often than not - violence.
Violence that can be aimed at yourself, violence that can be aimed at others.
School-shootings and senseless murders. Beating of family and cutting of yourself. Anorexia and bulimia. Drugs from the MD or from the street.
And no, I'm sorry, but these are not grotesques. These are real happenings. Things that happen to normal, well-adjusted, resourceful families who do not deal with their emotions.
So, what to do ?
You have this closet, jam-filled with emotions, and you are really, truly scared to try and take out just one, because "everything" will then tumble out.
Well ... in my eyes, the only thing can be done is, to start
Accept that these emotions are there.
Recognize them.
Reach out to see if there is any help around you (and there will be). Friends. Family. Therapists. Ministers. They are out there, and they will help ... if you will ask.
Sometimes the closet is so jam-packed that you will need professional help. Don't turn it down ! Accept the pills and the therapy that will help you move on. Don't think you can do without the help of others !
Because that is part of it too :-)
You are not alone :-)
And this is where prayer is part of it too :-)
And one by one, you can offer your troubles and your hateful emotions to Jesus Christ.
Pray that he will lift the burden of them off your shoulders.
Take your troubles to the sancutary of God that is your own heart and soul, and rather than take your own counsel, take that of God.
Reach out your empty hands, and feel how God will help you. Sending you messengers, angels, in many shapes and forms. Work-mates, family, professionals. He will send them, but you will have to grasp the opportunity :-)
You may not be rich or powerful, or have a glamourous life with lots of parties and nice clothes, but you may be at peace with God and with yourself.
And to me, that is basically what this psalm is about.
Our yearning to be and to have that which we are not and have not, and how to deal with that, emotionally and in faith.
Now, the only part I actually don't like about this psalm is the ... smugness in the certainty that the rich and powerful are on a slippery slope to destruction. I would much prefer to know, that they too can go to the sanctuary of God that is their heart, that riches and the finding of love, forgiveness and rest, are not mutually exclusive :-)
But I guess it's similar to what the former Chech president (and even former dissident author) Vaclav Havel said : Being a politician demands that a person has extraordiary moral fibre, because when you are a politician it is extremely easy to become morally corrupt.
To my mind it's a bit like that with being a woman (or man) of faith.
It is so very easy to be sucked in and believe that you are righteouss and faithful, and all it really takes is one, tiny, hateful emotion, sneaking in unbidden in your thoughts.
No, to me, this psalm is very much a reminder, that the only offering I have to give to the Lord is that which is not good enough, and the only road I can meaningfully travel towards God is, to give up that which is my own : the emotions that lead away from love.
And that every time I recognize these hateful emotions, that I have to take them out, and beg Jesus Christ to take them away from me.
To not be "a habitation of cruelty", but to strive to keep the sancutary of our bodies and souls as pure as we can (1 Cor 6,19), and to know, that we cannot do so on our own
To me, my own ... helplessness in that regard is not depressing. In some ways it's a great relief. To know, that I cannot do it on my own, that I need help, that I need to reach out to both my God and my neighbour. To give as well as recieve. And the "recieve" part is not the least important one here :-)
To see the angels that God have place around me. Not as glittery pictures of long-haired, sex-less beings, but as the man who holds the door and smiles, the woman who makes room for me on the bus, the neighbour who waves and shouts "hi".
All I have to do is ... recieve :-)
God bless you.
Well, it's been the longest time, hasn't it :-)
I'm part of an online study of psalms, and this past week, we've been trying to deal with psalm 73. Here are some of my thoughts :-)
I've been reading this psalm every day for the past week, and what with the things that are and have been happening around "our" ears internationally, not least the atrocious slaughter of little girls in a Amish school, two things have "crystallized" in my head re. this psalm (and mind you, this is not a scholarly reading, just a pastoral one)
The first thing is, that this psalm, deals head-on with the problem, that there is no visible equation between being a good person, a faithful one, and a prosperous one.
Health, Wealth and Happiness do not automatically follow faith and trust in God.
Being a "good person" does not automatically ensure you a problem-free life.
Having faith and trust in God, however, does equal, that the race to "be someone" to be rich, have parties, the right clothes etc, or "to have" worldly goods, becomes of less importance.
There is a huge ... security in trusting, that just as God looks to the lilies of the valley, he will supply your needs :-)
The other thing I took in from this psalm is, that bitterness and anger are dangerous things. Doesn't really matter who you direct it at. The opposite of love is not hate. The opposite of love is everything that keeps you away from it, even for a very short time. Emotions like anger, bitterness, resentment, jealousy are all that. And these are just the ones on the top of my head.
And what is worse, we all have it !
"My feet had well nigh slipped ..."
Now, don't get me wrong here, I'm not pointing my finger at anyone. I am pointing my finger at everyone. There is a difference :-) For one thing, I'm included in the "everyone" :-)
And I have never met a person, who has not, at some (several) point(s) of his or her life experienced all of these ... hateful emotions.
And the worst, the absolutely worst thing you can do about them is to put the lid on them. To not recognize that they are there, and try to pretend they are not. It's a bit like a closet ... you know ... the closet where you stuff "everything" when you need to just get it off the surfaces of your house, and really don't know what you'll do with it. So, it's stuffed into the closet. Dirty socks and playthings, a box of whatever and kiddies' new shoes.
Now, this closet simile is actually very good :-)
There are things in there that you will miss ! and will not understand where are.
The closet will at the same time constantly nag at the back of your brain, draining you with it's unknown contents and "horrors", and one day, when you try to stuff one more thing in there, "everything" is going to come tumbling out, and that is not a pretty sight. There is dirty laundry that you would much rather not deal with twice, and which you most particularly would have preferred to not contaminate that leather hand-bag that was rather neat when it was stuffed in there.
We do the same thing with lots of emotions. Good and bad. Because we live in a society where the only really acceptable emotion is joy. Oh, a single, quiet tear might be ok, but not anger, not anguish ... nothing too much over the top, and yes, joy can be too much over the top too.
So, we stuff emotions into our mental closet, and when the day comes, where it all tumbles out, what happens is - more often than not - violence.
Violence that can be aimed at yourself, violence that can be aimed at others.
School-shootings and senseless murders. Beating of family and cutting of yourself. Anorexia and bulimia. Drugs from the MD or from the street.
And no, I'm sorry, but these are not grotesques. These are real happenings. Things that happen to normal, well-adjusted, resourceful families who do not deal with their emotions.
So, what to do ?
You have this closet, jam-filled with emotions, and you are really, truly scared to try and take out just one, because "everything" will then tumble out.
Well ... in my eyes, the only thing can be done is, to start
Accept that these emotions are there.
Recognize them.
Reach out to see if there is any help around you (and there will be). Friends. Family. Therapists. Ministers. They are out there, and they will help ... if you will ask.
Sometimes the closet is so jam-packed that you will need professional help. Don't turn it down ! Accept the pills and the therapy that will help you move on. Don't think you can do without the help of others !
Because that is part of it too :-)
You are not alone :-)
And this is where prayer is part of it too :-)
And one by one, you can offer your troubles and your hateful emotions to Jesus Christ.
Pray that he will lift the burden of them off your shoulders.
Take your troubles to the sancutary of God that is your own heart and soul, and rather than take your own counsel, take that of God.
Reach out your empty hands, and feel how God will help you. Sending you messengers, angels, in many shapes and forms. Work-mates, family, professionals. He will send them, but you will have to grasp the opportunity :-)
You may not be rich or powerful, or have a glamourous life with lots of parties and nice clothes, but you may be at peace with God and with yourself.
And to me, that is basically what this psalm is about.
Our yearning to be and to have that which we are not and have not, and how to deal with that, emotionally and in faith.
Now, the only part I actually don't like about this psalm is the ... smugness in the certainty that the rich and powerful are on a slippery slope to destruction. I would much prefer to know, that they too can go to the sanctuary of God that is their heart, that riches and the finding of love, forgiveness and rest, are not mutually exclusive :-)
But I guess it's similar to what the former Chech president (and even former dissident author) Vaclav Havel said : Being a politician demands that a person has extraordiary moral fibre, because when you are a politician it is extremely easy to become morally corrupt.
To my mind it's a bit like that with being a woman (or man) of faith.
It is so very easy to be sucked in and believe that you are righteouss and faithful, and all it really takes is one, tiny, hateful emotion, sneaking in unbidden in your thoughts.
No, to me, this psalm is very much a reminder, that the only offering I have to give to the Lord is that which is not good enough, and the only road I can meaningfully travel towards God is, to give up that which is my own : the emotions that lead away from love.
And that every time I recognize these hateful emotions, that I have to take them out, and beg Jesus Christ to take them away from me.
To not be "a habitation of cruelty", but to strive to keep the sancutary of our bodies and souls as pure as we can (1 Cor 6,19), and to know, that we cannot do so on our own
To me, my own ... helplessness in that regard is not depressing. In some ways it's a great relief. To know, that I cannot do it on my own, that I need help, that I need to reach out to both my God and my neighbour. To give as well as recieve. And the "recieve" part is not the least important one here :-)
To see the angels that God have place around me. Not as glittery pictures of long-haired, sex-less beings, but as the man who holds the door and smiles, the woman who makes room for me on the bus, the neighbour who waves and shouts "hi".
All I have to do is ... recieve :-)
God bless you.
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