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April 17, 2007
Convocation on Job Session V
The fifth session of the Convocation on Job was given over in its entirety to Loren Fisher. This gave him an opportunity to further comment on some of the ideas expressed in the previous sessions and to add some new material in support of his own position on Job. If you don't know what that position is, please read my report on Session I of the conference. In fact, out of the context of the whole day's discussion, some of the thoughts that I will be reporting below may seem almost random.
First, Loren noted that certain themes in Job I are quite different from themes in Job II. One such theme in Job I is "Integrity (tam in Hebrew)." As he indicated, the Hebrew word can mean "perfect," "complete," or "finished." And while the Hebrew word does appear in Job II, it does not represent a major theme. The major theme in Job II is "justice."
Second, he took the occasion to elaborate upon something he had said in response to Sanders' presentation. Job 27, 29-30 is formally different from Job II. Both sections begin, "And Job took up his speech (mashal); he said:" Here we are dealing with a monologue rather than a dialogue. He related Hebrew mashal to Akkadian tamshilu which means "'an image' or 'picture.'" "When Job took up his mashal, he is presenting his 'poetic portrait;' he presents us with a portrait of a man of integrity. This is not what the rebel gives us."
At this point Loren turned to the Egytpian story, "The Debate between the Man and his Ba on Suicide." He noted that it had the same structure as the Book of Job: a prose prologue with some poetry, a poetic dialogue and prose epilogue. Loren sees this story as "somewhat like the Job I story."
At this point, Loren addressed what he sees as a central theme in Job II. "For the Rebel, God is not omnipotent." He sees this as implicit in Job II's opposition to his orthodox "friends." But in Job 14:4 the implicit becomes explicit, "Who can make a clean thing out of an unclean one? Not One!." While most scholars try to gloss this verse in one way or another, Loren reads One as "God." He cited not only Deuteronomy 6:4 but also Job 23:13 as places were the Hebrew Bible uses "One" to mean God or Yahweh. He also called our attention to various numbers for gods in Mesopotamia. "The divine 'one' was the name Anu. 'Ten' was Adad, and "Fifteen, was the goddess Ishtar." Likewise, the Egyptian god Amon-Re is called "One."
Near the end of his presentation, Loren turned to what is clearly the most controversial of his claims regarding Job II, the Rebel Job: The Death of God. In his written work, Loren suggested that the speeches of Elihu accused the Rebel Job of asking "where is god?" See Job 35:10 for example. In the book as we have it, the Rebel Job does not raise this question directly but comes close to it in Job 23. Loren looked at the "grammatical details" of "where is god?" He notes the Ugaritic expression 'iy zbl, "where is the prince?" in KTU 1.65 and 16. These lines and their parallels clearly refer to the death of Baal. Zophar in Job 20:7 knows that the expression "where are they" means they are dead. In names, 'iy is both "an interrogative and a negative." The Ugaritic expression directly informs the Biblical name Jezebel. Loren then followed Albright's suggestion that the very name Job means, "Where is my father?"
Loren concluded by reading two original poems, one of which I will post with his permission at a later time.
Update: April 18, 2007
Fixed errors that confused Job I and Job II
Posted by Duane Smith at April 17, 2007 7:05 PM | Read more on Hebrew Bible |
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