The book of Job and the origins of Judaism

Biblical Theology Bulletin, May, 2009 by James A. Sanders

As Donald Harman Akenson clearly and effectively demonstrates, the later biblical writers, when they wanted to advance their ideas, used well-known earlier literature as the vehicle for doing so (Akenson). They knew they could not edit the earlier too much or they would lose the authority of the older vehicle they wanted to ride. They simply added their bit to what was already familiar. This often in the Bible led to contradictions and anomalies in the text. The basic tendency of biblical criticism in the first place was its attempts to locate the different sources that gave rise to the problems in the text. But Akenson, who is not a biblical scholar but a Canadian expert in Irish literature, makes the case vividly, almost poetically, for much of biblical literature beyond what biblical experts have done. In antiquity such contradictions and discrepancies did not bother the reader or hearer of the text, as they do us. The very art of writing/ reading was a "mystery" to most people of the time. Just to be able to read a language (priests, scribes) brought wonder to the miracle of writing (Carr).

Most of the Bible is anonymous in authorship and includes opposing points of view (the yin and the yang?) as indeed most Oriental literature and art do. We don't know who wrote most of the Bible, and it was not until the Greeks came calling in the Hellenistic period that Jews were even interested in assigning their common or community literature to individual authors. This gave rise to the phenomenon called "pseudepigraphy," attributing accepted or received community literature, no matter its inner consistency or lack of it, to well known names from the past. Thus Moses became the author of the Pentateuchal Torah, David of all the Psalms, Solomon of Wisdom literature, and indeed Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, the "authors" of the four Gospels.

It is interesting in the light of the pseudepigraphic craze that overtook Judaism under the heavy Greek influence, that the Book of Job escaped attribution to Solomon or any such well-known name from Israel's past (see Ezek 14:14). It seemed to be able to stand on its own strength and power as a story and a statement about the balance between divine and human responsibility. Job is not presented as an Israelite or as a Jew, but as an Edomite from "the land of Uz." The story has universal interest. The poet who gave us the Rebel Job used the older story to good advantage. The experience of Israel as a people, given a promise by their God, had the gifts rescinded that had accompanied the promise, progeny and land, taken back by the God who gave them. Why? The shape of the tri-partite Jewish canon was designed to answer the question, "Why?"

The story line that moves from creation and the promises, through one mishap and problem after another, finally reaches a climax in 1 Kings 10 when the Deuteronomistic "historian" relates how the two promises to Abram and Sarai in Gen 12 were gloriously fulfilled. The visit of the Queen of Sheba represents the nations round about who supposedly admired this phenomenal accomplishment. Everything in Jerusalem was of gold, very little of silver. But in the next chapter, God appoints three satans to test Solomon and he flunked all three trials. From that point on it was all downhill until the united kingdom of David and Solomon was divided in two (1 Kgs 12) and both fell ignominiously before the neo-Assryian (2 Kgs 17) and neo-Babylonian expansionist forces (2 Kgs 24-25) in the region. By the end of 2 Kings, the end of the section in the Jewish canon called the Early Prophets, or the Early History, the experiment is over, finished, and the survivors of the promised people are scattered, either in exile in Babylonia or assimilating to other identities in the area of Palestine.