The story/play assumes a cosmology in which ‘God’ is ‘out there’, in which the Accuser and other angelic messengers are viewed as coming in/out of a celestial chamber ‘out there’, . . . (cf.1:6ff and many similar places in the story/play). How critical is this pre/non-scientific cosmology to the ‘religious’ T/O paradigm? I would argue it is essential (a sine qua non) to the ‘religious’ T/O paradigm, a necessity that becomes increasingly evident as one scans the 17th-century forward theological spectrum from ‘liberal’ across to ‘fundamentalist’. The assumed pre/non-scientific cosmology in the story/play is absolutely critical re the ‘religious’ T/O paradigm’s perspective on divine sovereignty.
Within the ‘religious’ T/O paradigm, ‘God’ must remain unsullied from corruption, removed from the taint of his creation/creatures, and, therefore, contacted only through such worship media as sacrifice and prayer. Think in terms of the distance/barriers between a monarch and the population. A monarch does not tolerate being questioned. The spectrum for the population under a monarchy runs from bowing passively to confronting a corrupt monarch to rejecting royalty of any sort.
It seems a contradiction to adhere to and advocate a democratic political structure for society and yet to maintain an approach to spirituality and ethics that depends/draws on the language/imagery characteristic of a monarchical political structure. It also seems a contradiction to adhere to and live by a modern/scientific view of nature and yet to maintain an approach to spirituality and ethics that is inseparable from a pre/non-scientific view of nature.
Peterson has ‘friend’ where the RSV has ‘servant’ (1:8). Is there any sense of ‘friend’ in the Hebrew word translated ‘servant’ (RSV)? The Hebrew word can imply a special relationship (e.g., references in Jewish scripture to ‘my servants the prophets’, to Moses, to Joshua, to angels, to the patriarchs). The Hebrew word can refer to a friend, to a fellow-citizen, or simply to another person. Is this word the word for ‘friend’ throughout the story/play (e.g., 2:11, 6:14, . . .)?
‘Friend’ or ‘servant’ in the prologue description of Job should be thought of as ‘confidant with influence’. There is no sense of humility or of being ‘among the least of these’ or of ‘taking a lower seat’. Job should be cast in the story/play as aristocratic, as nobility. He has liberties and privileges, even before ‘God’, others do not have.
The frightening calamities (1:13-19) -- from the Sabeans’ violence to destructive lightning to the Chaldeans’ deadly aggression to the terrible storm -- are all attributed to ‘God’ in the story/play. The same explanation occurs re Job’s humiliating afflictions in the second cycle of calamities (2:1-10). Job, in his first lines in the prologue, accounts for the calamities with “the Lord gave” and “the Lord has taken away” (1:20-21). The narrator makes the point that the prologue Job “did not charge God with wrong” (1:22), apparently meaning Job does not accuse ‘God’ of injustice or malevolence when he attributes the calamities to ‘God’. In response to his humiliating afflictions, the prologue Job speaks of receiving good and evil from ‘God’ (revealing that he considers the wave of calamities as well as his personal afflictions to be ‘evil’). Yet the narrator repeats that Job “did not sin with his lips” (2:10). Are Job’s two responses in the prologue acceptable to/within the ‘religious’ T/O paradigm?
What, from the ‘religious’ T/O paradigm perspective, is evil about the violent events and devastating experiences recounted in the prologue? What criteria for distinguishing good from evil are common to the ‘religious’ T/O paradigm? What makes an event/experience evil? Koheleth (in the Ecclesiastes essay) uses blunt terms such as ‘offensive’, ‘tragic’, ‘grievously wrong’ in reference to human suffering/misery. The ‘scrap heap Job’ insists on similarly radical (i.e., to the root) interpretations of human suffering/misery. Are such interpretations of human suffering/misery found in other parts of Jewish scripture or in Christian scripture? Are such interpretations of human suffering/misery permitted within the ‘religious’ T/O paradigm? by ‘Jesus’?
A word study is in order re ‘evil’ in the story/play and in the larger context surrounding the story/play. Job does not point -- either in the prologue or in the heated exchanges with his three close friends -- to the prologue’s Accuser as an independent, separate, and/or primary source for evil. In the ‘religious’ T/O paradigm, ‘God’ is not just a monarch with unquestioned power. In the paradigm’s (D)euteronomic form trusted by Job and his three close friends, ‘God’ is expected to act/rule as a good/benevolent monarch who protects/rewards the righteous and who punishes/defeats the unrighteous. James in Christian scripture extended defense of the ‘religious’ T/O paradigm to the point of arguing that nothing from ‘God’ could be evil or stem from malevolent motives. All texts/writers in Jewish scripture and in Christian scripture are much nearer to James than to the ‘scrap heap’ perspective in the Job story/play or to the Ecclesiastes essay. The ‘scrap heap Job’ is being driven away from the confidence and security in divine providence promised by the ‘religious’ T/O paradigm. The heated exchanges with his three close friends leave him in the untenable position of concluding that ‘God’ (as he has to this point understood the term ‘God’) is capable of engaging in profoundly evil actions with sobering/frightening malevolent motives toward human beings. By untenable I mean that his thinking must keep moving because this position leaves him no way within the ‘religious’ T/O paradigm either to respect/honor ‘God’ or to lament before ‘God’ in anticipation of deliverance/relief.
