Theological Tuesday

--Did Job really exist?

Show notes:
Textual indications that the book is an inspired parable or play rather than a history
o Just doesn’t seem like real life that people would speak for such extended duration in a conversation.
o Getting back double at the end seems quite a fairy tale
o Naming the daughters only and only at the end.
o Having 7 sons and 3 daughters at the beginning and at the end.
o The bit about getting back double of everything just has the sound of a fairy tale (they rode off into the sunset and lived happily ever after) to it.
o The style of speech is extremely unusual for actual conversation. Who speaks for pages at a time and then listens while his friends do the same? Very uncommon in real life.
o The characters seem more like archetypes or caricatures for kinds of errors than they do like real people.
o The whole backdrop of there being these regular times for the sons of God to come and be in front of God repeatedly is just strange.
o The level of the catastrophe at the beginning and the doubling of everything at the end is a bit hyperbolic

Textual indications that the book is a history rather than an inspired parable or play
o “There was a man in the land of Uz whose name was Job….” Job 1:1
o Use of names for people
o Giving of numbers of cattle, etc.
· Other information
o We don’t know where Uz was (or even if it was a real place for sure)
o We don’t know who wrote this book
o It’s extremely old, perhaps older than any other book in the Bible.
o Ancient literature of fable wouldn’t have included names of children and other specifics so as to appear like a history.

Expert views
o "There is a minority view among Rabbinical scholars, for instance that of Rabbi Simeon ben Laqish, that says Job never existed (Midrash Genesis Rabbah LXVII). In this view, Job was a literary creation by a prophet who used this form of writing to convey a divine message."
o From the Jerusalem Talmud we hear a similar statement by Simeon ben Laqish:"Job never actually existed; he is only the imaginary hero of the poem, the invention of the poet" (Yer. Sotah 20d)."

Would it matter if it were “merely” a play?
o Does it become more or less powerful when thought of as an actual guy or as a prophetic illustration?
§ Being real carries more tangibility to the modern reader
§ Would it to the ancient reader?
o Does it matter in the context of the book
o Does anything about the book suffer from the idea that it’s a literary invention for a point?
o You like Jesus’s parables, right?
o Does anyone believe that Lucy, Peter, Edmund, and Susan are real? Does it matter?
o Must Job exist?
o What hangs on it?
o Can the Bible be the Word of God without Job existing?
o Does the idea of even considering the possibility scare you?
o Why?
o What is our notion (in America in 2011) of epistemology and metaphysics?

What does it mean to be real?
o So, what’s more real, those events or the God who oversees them as revelations of Himself?
o Did Little Red Riding Hood or Cinderella or Sleeping Beauty exist? Does it matter insofar as those fairy tales convey real meaning and content?
o Can something be true without being historically real?
o Can it be real without having existed in history?
o Does it tell or reveal truth even if it isn’t factual?
o Which is greater the fact or the truth?
o In art, is a painting ever true, by this standard?
o Doesn’t the rendering of it immediately distort it?
o Even photorealistic paintings aren’t real. A photograph isn’t real.
o The beauty of language is that it distorts the physical reality it describes, but this also can mean that it brings even more meaning and truth to that reality, especially when the five senses (which by no means are the key standard of either nature or ultimate reality) aren’t equipped to capture the full truth behind what they perceive.
o We read newspapers and we see photos and we think that defines truth.
o Can something be true even if it isn’t “real?”
o Does God exist independent from and prior to the physical world of events?
o Is 1984 less true because it’s science fiction?

Can a story be more true precisely because it isn’t real?
o To deconstruct the story is often to destroy it.
o The story is the meaning.
o Stories don’t necessarily embody points or lessons, maybe the point or lesson is the far less real thing than the story you drew it from.
o Careful here, this verges on dualism or Platonism
o “not limited by corrupt flesh…”
o Gnosticism

Are there other examples of non-factual content in the Bible?
o Jesus’s parables
o Nathan’s parable to David
o Various prophetic dreams, visions, and messages.
o Songs
o Psalms
o Proverbs
o Ecclesiastes (Note that Job is right in this section of the Bible)
o Tons of prophetic imagery.

What are concerns if it isn’t a factual story?
o It feels like compromising on the authority of Scripture
o Liberals who don’t take the Bible seriously of course love this idea.
o The slope seems slippery. Like if we admit that any part isn’t historically reliable we’ll lose the whole thing.
o If some parts of the Bible aren’t factually historically real, how can we know what is and what isn’t?
o
§ Is this really so hard to tell?
§ And even if it isn’t easy, it’s a task the Bible itself presents to us with its wide variety of literary styles.
§ You can’t analyze and dissect each of these the same way, as if they are mere logical constructs.

What’s the real point of Job
o It’s not that this guy suffered.
o It’s that this human really didn’t deserve anything he didn’t get (hell is like this only forever).
o And that this guy shows us by contrast the real Savior Jesus who suffered far worse than this (and didn’t deserve it) but did so not only without complaining but chose to suffer this way out of love for us.
o Job is learning to love God as opposed to God’s gifts.
o Jesus came to lose the gift of God’s love in order that we could have it.
o Is the Bible about what God did or Who He Is more primarily?

My only view is that you don’t have to have a view.
o It’s every bit as meaningful and carries just as much real revelation if it never took place in history, as long as it’s genuinely inspired by God, which it clearly is.