Contested Creations In The Book Of Job

In Contested Creations in the Book of Job: the-world-as-it-ought- and -ought-not-to-be Abigail Pelham reads the Book of Job both ‘forwards’—examining the perspectives on creation presented by Job and his friends and corrected by God’s authoritative voice from the whirlwind—and ‘backwards,’ demonstrating how the epilogue explodes readers’ certainties, forcing a reappraisal of the characters’ claims. The epilogue, Pelham argues, changes the book from one containing answers about creation to one which poses questions: What does it mean to make the world? Who has the power to create? If humans have creative power, is it divinely sanctioned, or has Job, acting creatively, set himself up as God’s rival? Engaging more thoroughly with Job’s ambiguity than previous scholars have done, Contested Creations explores the possibilities raised by these questions and considers their implications both within the book and beyond.

In Contested Creations in the Book of Job: the-world-as-it-ought- and -ought-not-to-be Abigail Pelham examines the perspectives on creation presented by Job’s characters and explores the challenges to their certainties about creative agency and power raised by its epilogue.

Life is a primary theme in Scripture, expressed in the rich diversity of the various books, corpora and genres of Scripture. Much has been published on what Scripture teaches about life and death. To date, however, no comprehensive biblical theology in which the concept of life is traced throughout the different books and corpora of the Old and New Testament has been published. It is this lacuna that this book aims to fill, assuming that such an approach can provide a valuable contribution to the theological discourse on life and related concepts. The primary aim of this book is to give an indication of the different nuances of the concept of life in the various books and corpora of the Old and New Testament by providing the reader with a book-by-book overview of the concept of life in Scripture. The secondary aim is to give an indication of the overall use and function of the concept of life in the Old Testament, the New Testament, and Scripture as a whole. The latter is provided by using the findings of the book-by-book overview of the concept of life in Scripture to draw the lines together.

Within the book of Job, the interlocutors (Job, the friends, and Yahweh) seem to largely ignore one another's arguments. This observation leads some to propose that the dialogue lacks conceptual coherence. Lance Hawley argues that the interlocutors tangentially and sometimes overtly attend to previously stated points of view and attempt to persuade their counterparts through the employment of metaphor. Hawley uses the theoretical approach of Conceptual Metaphor Theory to trace the concepts of speech and animals throughout the dialogue. Beyond explaining the individual metaphors in particular texts, he shows how speech metaphors compete with one another, most perceptibly in the expressions of job's words are wind. With regard to animal metaphors, coherence is especially perceptible in the job is a predatory animal metaphor. In these expressions, the dialogue demonstrates intentional picking-up on previously stated arguments. Hawley argues that the animal images in the divine speeches are not metaphorical, in spite of recent scholarly interpretation that reads them as such. Rather, Yahweh appears as a sage to question the negative status of wild animals that Job and his friends assume in their significations of people are animals. This is especially apparent in Yahweh's strophes on the lion and the wild donkey, both of which appear multiple times in the metaphorical expressions of Job and his friends.

Theologians and philosophers are turning again to questions of the meaning, or non-meaning, of the natural world for human self-understanding. Brian R. Doak observes that the book of Job, more than any other book in the Bible, uses metaphors drawn from the natural world, especially of plants and animals, as raw material for thinking about human suffering. Doak argues that Job should be viewed as an anthropological “ground zero” for the traumatic definition of the post-exilic human self in ancient Israel. Furthermore, the battered shape of the Joban experience should provide a starting point for reconfiguring our thinking about “natural theology” as a category of intellectual history in the ancient world. Doak examines how the development of the human subject is portrayed in the biblical text in either radical continuity or discontinuity with plants and animals. Consider Leviathan explores the text at the intersection of anthropology, theology, and ecology, opening up new possibilities for charting the view of nature in the Hebrew Bible.

It is traditional to think we should praise Abraham for his willingness to sacrifice his son as proof of his love for God. But have we misread the point of the story? Is it possible that a careful reading of Genesis 22 could reveal that God was not pleased with Abraham's silent obedience? Widely respected biblical theologian, creative thinker, and public speaker J. Richard Middleton suggests we have misread and misapplied the story of the binding of Isaac and shows that God desires something other than silent obedience in difficult times. Middleton focuses on the ethical and theological problem of Abraham's silence and explores the rich biblical tradition of vigorous prayer, including the lament psalms, as a resource for faith. Middleton also examines the book of Job in terms of God validating Job's lament as "right speech," showing how the vocal Job provides an alternative to the silent Abraham. This book provides a fresh interpretation of Genesis 22 and reinforces the church's resurgent interest in lament as an appropriate response to God.

It can be a challenge to understand the Hebrew Bible’s wisdom literature and how it relates to biblical history and theology, but John L. McLaughlin makes this complicated genre straightforward and accessible. This introductory-level textbook begins by explaining the meaning of wisdom to the Israelites and surrounding cultures before moving into the conventions of the genre and its poetic forms. The heart of the book examines Proverbs, Job, Qoheleth (Ecclesiastes), and the deuterocanonical Ben Sira and Wisdom of Solomon. McLaughlin also explores the influence of wisdom throughout the Old Testament and in the New Testament. Designed especially for beginning students—and based on twenty-five years of teaching Israel’s wisdom literature to university students—McLaughlin’s Introduction to Israel’s Wisdom Traditions provides an informed, panoramic view of wisdom literature’s place in the biblical canon.

In Metaphorical Landscapes and the Theology of the Book of Job Johan de Joode demonstrates how crucial spatial metaphors are for the theology of the book of Job.