[6/96] The story/play Job (specifically the dialogue sections and the 42:7 assessment) and the essay Ecclesiastes (minus the last paragraph, which I consider added a later editor to take the edge off the essay) have become, for me, the windows into Jewish Scripture and Christian Scripture.
[2005 Note: the Job 42:7 text reads (Peterson translation) – After God had finished addressing Job, he turned to Eliphaz the Temanite and said, “I’ve had it with you and your two friends. I’m fed up! You haven’t been honest either with me or about me – not the way my friend Job has.” Without the series of exchanges between the prologue and epilogue, this statement has no logical place in the story. So the statement should not be treated as part of the epilogue that, together with the prologue, forms the ‘happily ever after’ short version of the story/play. I think the composer surprises the audience with the implied task of searching back through the extended story/play asking, “What did Job say about ‘God’ that the composer thinks is right?”]
[2005 Note: I started giving Ecclesiastes careful attention during my Louisville years (1976-79) when I saw the similarities with modern existential writings. I remember concluding that Ecclesiastes stands alone in Jewish Scripture and Christian Scripture in requiring so little commentary to be accessible to a modern reader. When I began teaching a systematic theology graduate course (1981), the format I chose was to imagine a series of conversations between ‘Jesus’ and the author of Ecclesiastes. For many years, I read Ecclesiastes as the personal statement of Koheleth (the speaker in the essay). More recently, I have come to regard Koheleth as a literary device created by the essay’s anonymous author. I see Koheleth as similar to a court fool – i.e., a character who gives rather blunt analyses that those challenged can easily dismiss. Another analogy is Shostakovich’s precarious position before Stalin. Distinguishing Koheleth from the author of the essay aligns well with the tenuous place of the essay in the canon of Jewish Scripture and accounts for the outlandish/clownish statements attributed to Koheleth in the essay (e.g., Koheleth’s excessive claims to know more than anyone else before him and to be the best student by far there had ever been).]
[2005 Note: the Job 42:7 text reads (Peterson translation) – After God had finished addressing Job, he turned to Eliphaz the Temanite and said, “I’ve had it with you and your two friends. I’m fed up! You haven’t been honest either with me or about me – not the way my friend Job has.” Without the series of exchanges between the prologue and epilogue, this statement has no logical place in the story. So the statement should not be treated as part of the epilogue that, together with the prologue, forms the ‘happily ever after’ short version of the story/play. I think the composer surprises the audience with the implied task of searching back through the extended story/play asking, “What did Job say about ‘God’ that the composer thinks is right?”]
[2005 Note: I started giving Ecclesiastes careful attention during my Louisville years (1976-79) when I saw the similarities with modern existential writings. I remember concluding that Ecclesiastes stands alone in Jewish Scripture and Christian Scripture in requiring so little commentary to be accessible to a modern reader. When I began teaching a systematic theology graduate course (1981), the format I chose was to imagine a series of conversations between ‘Jesus’ and the author of Ecclesiastes. For many years, I read Ecclesiastes as the personal statement of Koheleth (the speaker in the essay). More recently, I have come to regard Koheleth as a literary device created by the essay’s anonymous author. I see Koheleth as similar to a court fool – i.e., a character who gives rather blunt analyses that those challenged can easily dismiss. Another analogy is Shostakovich’s precarious position before Stalin. Distinguishing Koheleth from the author of the essay aligns well with the tenuous place of the essay in the canon of Jewish Scripture and accounts for the outlandish/clownish statements attributed to Koheleth in the essay (e.g., Koheleth’s excessive claims to know more than anyone else before him and to be the best student by far there had ever been).]
