Book of Job can help despite its absurdities!

economy

We are incapable of grasping stories that do not follow rational sequence of cause and effect. One such typical example is book of Job:

1) It presents a God who tries to please His adversary at the cost of great suffering to His beloved ones.

2) God cannot have an adversary as no one can qualify to be an adversary of the Almighty.

3) Satan is obviously the creation of the faulty human imagination (of the time when humans believed the shape of earth was flat that prompted Satan to take Jesus to the top of the mountain so that “all the kingdoms of the world could be visible to him and Jesus.”)

4) God is supposedly asking: “Now take seven bulls and seven rams and go to my servant Job and sacrifice a burnt offering for yourselves” (Job 42:8)—something God Himself says He will never ask anyone to do (Isaiah 66:3).

Yet the only good we find in the book of Job is that Job knows how to deal with absurdities of life. He told his wife: ‘We do not seek explanation for the good things life gives to us. So should be the case when we receive the unpleasant.’ (Job 2:10)

Viviane

We are incapable of grasping stories that do not follow rational sequence of cause and effect.

Perhaps you should speak for yourself only.

Phizzy

I think you are looking at the Bible as though it was one book.

It is a collection of writings by many authors, sometimes a number of authors in a book with only one name as its Title, it was written over many centuries, hence the contradictions, and, I find interestingly, the obvious development of theology.

Job is probably a very early story which has found its way into the Bible, perhaps the oldest ? maybe it predates the Creation stories (plural) that we find in Genesis ? and so the god of Job is very different from the god of Paul, for example.

It is interesting to see the development from obvious Polytheism, through Henotheism to an eventual Monotheism as we read the Old Testament, and to see the evolution of YHWH.

I think a work such as Job needs to be read with an appreciation of its antiquity, and its genre, then it does not seem so "absurd", but rather, a beautiful example of early oriental literature and thought.

James Mixon

Job obey God and lose his filmily, Satan disobey God and

become the ruler over earth.

millie210

It is interesting to see the development from obvious Polytheism, through Henotheism to an eventual Monotheism as we read the Old Testament, and to see the evolution of YHWH.

I think a work such as Job needs to be read with an appreciation of its antiquity, and its genre, then it does not seem so "absurd", but rather, a beautiful example of early oriental literature and thought.

Phizzy this was an absolutely elegant post.

Just wanted to thank you for sharing your thought.

economy

Phizzy

As usual, you have the final word--so adorable you are.

jhine

Yes Phizzy , the bible is a collection of books some of which are poetry and morality tales . On another thread about the book of Jonah I suggested that that to understand these books it is helpful to find a Jewish commentary on them , lots online .This does give a different perspective than the one offered by the WT !

jhine

Sorry about the last post , one of those ID ten T problems !

I was saying that on another thread about the book of Jonah I suggested looking at Jewish commentary on these books . You get a very different perspective than from JW teaching . My Jewish Learning is a good start .

Jan

WTWizard

All fiction. This is to sucker you and I into believing that joke-hova will take care of things if we wait long enough. No matter how much you suffer, no matter how bad things get, there is no excuse because of this lame excuse of a story that was written in lieu of fixing anything now. That joke-hova can take the whole book of Job, and the whole LIE-ble, and shove it.

Book of Job can help despite its absurdities!

It is interesting to see the development from obvious Polytheism, through Henotheism to an eventual Monotheism as we read the Old Testament, and to see the evolution of YHWH.

I think a work such as Job needs to be read with an appreciation of its antiquity, and its genre, then it does not seem so "absurd", but rather, a beautiful example of early oriental literature and thought.

Phizzy this was an absolutely elegant post.

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