Contested Creations in the Book of Job: The-World-as-It-Ought-and-Ought-Not-to-Be

273 Pages·2012·1.04 MB·English

by  Abigail Pelham

Contested Creations in the Book of Job
Biblical Interpretation Series
Editors in Chief
Paul Anderson
Yvonne Sherwood
Editorial Board
Akma Adam – Roland Boer – Musa Dube
Jennifer L. Koosed – Vernon Robbins
Annette Schellenberg – Carolyn J. Sharp
Johanna Stiebert – Duane Watson
Ruben Zimmermann
VOLUME 113
The titles published in this series are listed at brill.nl/bins
Contested Creations in the Book of Job
The-World-as-It-Ought-and-Ought-Not-to-Be
By
Abigail Pelham
LEIDEN • BOSTON
The titles published in this series are listed at brill.nl/bins 2012
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Pelham, Abigail.
Contested creations in the Book of Job : the-world-as-it-ought-and-ought-not-to-be / by Abigail Pelham.
 p. cm. — (Biblical interpretation series, ISSN 0928-0731 ; v. 113)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-90-04-21820-8 (hardback : alk. paper)
1. Creation—Biblical teaching. 2. Bible. O.T. Job—Criticism, interpretation, etc. I. Title.
BS1199.C73P45 2012
223’.106—dc23
2012010127
This publication has been typeset in the multilingual “Brill” typeface. With over 5,100 characters
covering Latin, IPA, Greek, and Cyrillic, this typeface is especially suitable for use in the
humanities. For more information, please see www.brill.nl/brill-typeface.
ISSN 0928-0731
ISBN 978 90 04 21820 8 (hardback)
ISBN 978 90 04 23029 3 (e-book)
Copyright 2012 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands.
Koninklijke Brill NV incorporates the imprints Brill, Global Oriental, Hotei Publishing,
IDC Publishers and Martinus Nijhoff Publishers.
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Fees are subject to change.
This book is printed on acid-free paper.
For Peter

CONTENTS
Prologue: The Author, the Reader, and the Professional
Not-Knower  .................................................................................................. 1
Writing and Un-Writing  ........................................................................... 1
The Author in Biblical Studies  ............................................................... 1
The Reader in Biblical Studies  ............................................................... 5
It’s Complicated  .......................................................................................... 9
‘ Quod Scripsi, Scripsi ’: The Reader as Writer  ..................................... 13
Job’s Ambiguity  ............................................................................................ 17
The Will to Be Right and the Value of Being Wrong  ...................... 21
1.  Creation in the Book of Job: Reading Backwards and Forwards
for Questions and Possibilities  ............................................................... 24
Questions and Answers about Creation  .............................................. 24
Two Problems: Job’s Response and the Epilogue  ............................. 26
Reading Backwards and Forwards  ........................................................ 31
2. Relationships Between Persons in the
World-as-It-Ought-and-Ought-Not-to-Be: Centrality and
Dispersion, Connectedness and Loneliness  ....................................... 42
The Righteous and the Wicked  .............................................................. 42
Chapter 29: Relations between Persons in Job’s
World-as-It-Ought-to-Be  ...................................................................... 46
Job’s Centrality in the World of the Prose Tale  ................................ 49
Job’s Relationship to God and Hassatan in the Prologue  .............. 52
How Job is the Real Winner of the Bet between God and
Hassatan  ................................................................................................... 53
Job’s ‘Phantom Greatness’ as Demonstrated by His Three
Friends  ...................................................................................................... 56
The Anti-World of Chapter 30: Job Displaced from the Center  ..... 60
The Connectedness of the Righteous and the Loneliness of
the Wicked: Interpersonal Relationships as Viewed by Job’s
Three Friends  .......................................................................................... 61
The Expectation of a לאג: Job Rejects the Friends’ Assertion
that He is Fundamentally Alone  ....................................................... 64
Summary of the Positions Taken by Job and the Friends  ............. 70
viii contents
The Wicked and the Righteous in God’s Speeches  .......................... 71
God’s Speeches as a Response to Job’s Claims about the
World-as-It-Ought-to-be  ...................................................................... 73
The Attention of the Animals ................................................................. 75
The Aloneness of the Animals  ............................................................... 78
God’s Centrality: The Question of Power  ........................................... 79
Leviathan and God’s Power  .................................................................... 83
The Place of Human Beings in God’s World ...................................... 86
3. Time in the World-as-It-Ought-and-Ought-Not-to-Be: Stasis,
Change, and Death ..................................................................................... 92
Nothing Ever Happens: Stasis in Job’s World-as-It-Ought-to-Be  .... 92
God as Agent of Change: Creator of the Anti-world  ....................... 95
Excursus: God’s ‘Wisdom’ as God’s Whim  .......................................... 98
The Friends on the Static Life of the Righteous Man  ..................... 100
The Changeability of the Anti-world of the Wicked  ....................... 104
Death as the Mark of the Supreme Changeability of the Lives
of the Wicked  .......................................................................................... 105
The Spirit’s Message: Mortality as Unrighteousness  ....................... 107
Job and the Problem(s) of Human Mortality  .................................... 115
The World According to God: The Stable Foundation of
the Earth  ................................................................................................... 120
God’s Changeable World  .......................................................................... 122
The Purpose of Death in God’s Speeches  ........................................... 127
God Challenges Job to Afflict the Wicked with Change  ................ 130
Job and ‘The Beasts’: Survival in a Changeable World  ................... 131
Leviathan as the Embodiment of Unpredictable and
Uncontrollable Change  ........................................................................ 134
4. Inside and Outside: The Configuration of Space in the
World-as-It-Ought-and-Ought-Not-to-Be  ............................................ 138
Introduction  ................................................................................................. 138
Wilderness as the Anti-world  ................................................................. 141
The Wicked as Outsiders and the Metaphor of the House as
Inner Space  .............................................................................................. 143
Job as Outsider/Death as Inner Space  ................................................. 148
Job’s Antithetical Comments on the Outsideness of the Wicked .... 150
The Body as a Microcosm of the Human Community  ................... 154
The Breaking of Job’s Body as Indication of His Outsider Status  .... 157
contents ix
Job’s Self-Identification as an Insider through His Preservation
of the Inside/Outside Distinction  ..................................................... 164
The “Senseless, Disreputable Brood”: Humans as Animals in
the Outer Space of the Wilderness  .................................................. 167
The Economics of Insider Status  ........................................................... 170
Job’s Inability to Draw the Boundary Line  ........................................ 172
The Meaning of God’s Answer from the Whirlwind  ....................... 173
God’s Boundary-Making (or Lack thereof ) in the Founding of
the Earth and the Birth of the Sea  ................................................... 176
Questions about Place  .............................................................................. 178
Animals and the Economics of Insider/Outsider Status ................ 179
The Economics of Leviathan  .................................................................. 182
The Breakdown of the Distinction Between Inside and Outside
Space  .......................................................................................................... 183
5. The Explosive Finale: Reading Backwards from the Epilogue  ..... 186
Job Goes Back Inside  ................................................................................ 186
What Just Happened?  ............................................................................... 189
Types of Readerly Expectation and Their Relative Value  ............. 193
Job as the Creator of the World of the Epilogue .............................. 199
The Problem of the Prologue  ................................................................. 203
The Prologue as Job’s Daydream  ........................................................... 208
Job and the Chaos Monster  .................................................................... 212
Excursus: What is Chaos?  ........................................................................ 214
Job as Chaos, or Not  .................................................................................. 220
Job’s Curse of Chapter 3  ........................................................................... 225
“You Can Have It”: Job’s Rejection of God’s Blessing ...................... 230
God’s Changeable World: An Alternate Reading of the
Epilogue  .................................................................................................... 235
So, Which Is It?  ........................................................................................... 238
Epilogue: Negotiating and Renegotiating the World  ............................ 240
Bibliography  ...................................................................................................... 245
Index of Names  ................................................................................................. 251
Index of Subjects  .............................................................................................. 253
Index of Scriptures  .......................................................................................... 258