Job is, as St Jerome understood well, the slipperiest of the biblical books. It is also one of the rare moments when the Hebrew Bible truly approaches literary and philosophical greatness. In this it ranks alongside the Epic of Gilgamesh as a treasure from the ancient Near East. Its complexity scares me, which is why I have a monograph worth of drafts still sitting unpublished on my hard drive. As a corollary of its complexity, it fascinates me that so many generations of readers have felt compelled to close down its ambiguities and to redeem its horrors: for the god this book offers us is truly a monster. No wonder there is so little evidence of its authority in the sectarian scrolls from Qumran (except perhaps in the Hodayot) or in the New Testament (except perhaps in Romans), no wonder the rabbis debated its meaning so vigorously, and no wonder its reception history is one that reflects the endless attempt to own its meaning. Job becomes patient, he becomes a type of Christ, and so on.
Marc Chagall's 'Job's Despair' (1960)
I have here the modest aim of offering a footnote to Deane Galbraith and Philip Davies, via a slight detour through a revisionist approach to the personality of Adolf Hitler. In a recent interview in Der Spiegel, Birgit Schwarz has suggested we need to reconsider Adolf Hitler’s conviction that he was an artistic genius. This is the theme of her book Geniewahn: Hitler und die Kunst (Böhlau, 2009). For Schwarz, Hitler’s conviction that he was a genius misunderstood by those who rejected his art was at the centre of his worldview. Along with his deep inner conviction he needed a community of admirers, of which Josef Goebbels was a fine example, to bolster this delusion. This delusion of genius carried with it the conviction that Hitler was above morality and thus permitted to do anything: “The genius has outstanding ideas, and they must be implemented, even if they are completely amoral.”
The Yahweh of the book of Job is a Genie in the Hitlerian sense. That is, he is utterly amoral by virtue of being an artistic genius above the banalities of the human world in which puny, scabby little Job finds himself mired. This is how he answers Job in Job 38:1-41:26. “Will you condemn me that you may be justified?,” asks Yahweh in 40:8. He asks this in the context of asserting that because he is such a genius that he can create the marvellous cosmos, from the morning stars to the dumb ostrich, he is in no way bound by the kind of morality Job understands. In this I suggest Deane Galbraith is slightly missing the point by suggesting that Yahweh “simply demands obedience without justification.” That, perhaps, was always to be read between the lines of Job 23:12, but the focus in the Yahweh speeches is on Yahweh’s genius, not Job’s obedience. Job submits after a fashion to this dreadful god, but his obedience is not quite the point. It is that to whatever little world of justification Job may feel himself to belong, Yahweh is too much of a genius to worry about it. He can treat Job as a pawn in his cosmic game of oneupmanship with the Accuser without scruple.
But to leave the matter there would be to do an injustice to another genius, the greatest of all ancient Hebrew poets, from whose stylus this masterpiece has proceeded. (S)he was a genius in our sense of an extraordinary talent, not in Hitler’s. This is obvious, given that her name and personality have vanished behind her creation. This creation has much to teach us in the ethical sphere. If there truly exists a god such as the one portrayed in Job, He has nothing to teach us about ethics. As Job himself learns, true ethics begins when we face one another and acknowledge our common humanity (Job 21:5). Here Philip Davies is far too simple in his rejection of the Hebrew Bible. The problem lies as much in the sphere of textuality and the nature of Scripture as in the sphere of ethics in sensu stricto.
Marc Chagall's 'Job Prays' (1960)
Davies’ reflections have much to commend them. It does seem prima facie that it is ridiculous to suggest that the religions of the world have given humans ethics that bestow value on human life: frequently the effects of these traditions have shown the opposite. The “divine command” approach to ethics so fundamental to the Hebrew Bible and to many communities of its readers is arguably not a question of “ethics” at all. For a start, it is inseparable from ancient Near Eastern treaties, in which people were compelled under threat of torture, genocide, and exile (see Deuteronomy 28 for a particularly edifying example) to obey the suzerain king. Such treaties offer the framework for biblical ideas of covenant, and are the reason biblical ideas of covenant are inseparable from ancient Near Eastern notions of kingship. The Yahweh of the Hebrew Bible was created in the image of an ancient Near Eastern despot. If we focus on “codes” of law in the Hebrew Bible, we are more or less lost with respect to ethics. As in Job 1-2, we are surely unable to serve Yahweh gratuitously, because if we fail to serve him he will afflict us with blight and mildew (or at any rate a gruesome skin disease).
But is this all? It seems to me at least that part of the purpose of the book of Job is precisely to deconstruct the covenant on which such a hideous and inadequate moral code is based. It deconstructs it by exposing the unspeakable deity at its root. If, however, we shift our attention from Job 38:1-41:26 and look at the dialogue, we see an attempt to negotiate an approach to ethics that is based not on obeying the random precepts of a capricious (and generally invisible) deity, but rather on attention to the suffering of the Other. Job commands his friends to look at him and be appalled (Job 21:5) – that is, engage with him as he is, rather than explaining his place in an irrelevant and dehumanizing ethical system that buys divine righteousness at the price of human dignity. An ethic that begins with Job 21:5 cannot be a matter of a code of law but must be negotiated in the mess of human life.
For this we need not simply a text but a community of readers, and this is where the problem lies with Davies. He reifies the text in a manner more akin to some (by no means all) of the advocates of theological hermeneutics to which he is so implacably opposed. Scripture only exists, however, in its recognition as such and in its consequent use in the context of an interpretive community. We receive Scripture through the lens of Talmud (in Judaism) or apostolic tradition (in Catholic and Orthodox Christianities). While these traditions provide frameworks that are used to limit the meaning of Scripture, the availability of Scripture to an infinite readership means that its meaning cannot be controlled. There can be no “biblical values” without a community to pick and choose from the smorgasbord of biblical options, yet at the same time there can be no limit on a given reader’s reclamation of Scripture from those who would construe such “biblical values” as the hermeneutical key to scriptural interpretation. More simply, Scripture can be taken to mean (almost) anything; consequently it actually means nothing. The range of possible construals is radically open.
Back to ethics. Job 21:5 can be construed as the key to the deconstruction of the ethical system that the Job of the prologue had taken as read. In the canon of the Hebrew Bible as a whole, it is perhaps Leviticus 19:18 that has that honour. This is because to command someone to love their neighbour as they love themselves is to command something that cannot really be codified. While “love” in the context of ancient Near Eastern treaties tends to be a matter of unquestioning obedience, what might it mean to love one’s neighbour in that sense? The radical openness of this command, not to mention its resistance to definitive codification, is arguably what made it so central to the ethics of the synoptic Jesus and of the Hillel portrayed in b. Shabb. 31b, as well as the command on which much of the work of Emmanuel Levinas could be construed as an extended commentary.
So readers make Scripture, and readers make biblical values. Davies is right that it is to some external set of values that such readers in fact make appeal when they attach themselves to “biblical values.” But it is in the engagement between readers, interpretive communities, and the sacred texts that are constituted by them that such values emerge, and in this more complex sense it could just be asserted that “religion” (on some level) has, by an extended process of extrapolation, given us ethical values we can live by.
“[God] is in no way bound by the kind of morality Job understands”
This is well qualified, as compared to simply presenting God as asserting, in the divine speeches, a simple ‘Hitlerian’ amorality which dispenses with morality.
I’ll reply more fully sometime over the next week (because you’re wrong, wrong, wrong, wrongity wrong).
But am I N. T. Wrongity Wrong?
James,
Why am I very, very confused by this?
I’ve thought of many things for which N.T. could stand for – ‘I New Testament Wrongity Wrong’ being the most obvious, ‘I Neurological Trauma Wrongity Wrong’ being among the least – and none of it makes sense.
Alas, I think I know an in-joke when I see one.
On a more substantive note , in your very last paragraph, can’t we say that anything with some moral content gives us ethical values we can live by? Could we say, for instance (and I know Harold Bloom has already said this), that ‘it is in the engagement between readers, interpretive communities, and the texts that are constituted by them that such values emerge, and in this more complex sense it could just be asserted that Shakespeare’s Hamlet (on some level) has, by an extended process of extrapolation, given us ethical values we can live by’?
Does your argument – which is a good one, I think – demand that such texts be religious in nature (ignoring for now that what ‘religious’ means is a whole separate kettle of slippery fish)? What does removing the word ‘sacred’ from this sentence do to your meaning? Is sacredness also determined by this dialogue between text and interpretive community? If not, what determines ‘sacred’ from ‘profane’ texts? If any text that builds an interpretive community that comes to value it as sacred can form these values, is this reading of Job telling us anything new?
“I’ve thought of many things for which N.T. could stand for”
Eric – it’s a play on ‘NT Wright’, a well known New Testament scholar, who you probably haven’t heard of in religious studies. The joke was made on a web (blog?) site that doesn’t seem to be accessible anymore. James tells me that he regularly gets accused of being behind the website at conferences (he’s not, he assures me).
Only the true Messiah denies his divinity.
“Scripture can be taken to mean (almost) anything; consequently it actually means nothing”
Why “(almost)”? What limits you from just saying “anything” without qualification?
And if you say “(almost)” in relation to anything, why not include “(almost)” prior to “nothing”? However, if you do put “(almost)” almost prior to “nothing” then you have something.
Good point Bruce, and I did mean “almost” nothing. I’m more or less following Umberto Eco here, that there are an infinite number of possible construals of a text, but there are still limits to interpretation. See his “The Limits of Interpretation” (Bloomington, 1990).
I would be interested in your views on the nature of the ‘something’ implicit in the “almost” nothing – after all isn’t it the meaning of the text?
Taking someone like Eco seriously does not mean assuming that “infinite readings” is equivalent to “texts meaning (almost) anything”. Texts in practice usually have a severely limited range of meanings since the range of possible readers is severely limited. These are still infinite in number, however, because there is no way to say that the pool of possible readers is completely exhausted. Texts mean whatever their various readers say they do. This is not a single “something”, Bruce, but rather a set of somethings. A limited but infinite set of somethings.
Of course, if you throw deconstruction into the mix, then you might want to claim that any reading is possible by virtue of perpetual deconstruction, but that would simply make you a (supply your own expletive here).
“Dubious tosser” would be my favourite :)
I like ‘dubious tosser’. It has a beautiful english ring to it.
I also like the paradoxical idea of something which is “a limited but infinite (ie without limit) set of somethings”. I am not kidding here. It reminds me of the paradox of freedom within constraining parameters
“Scripture can be taken to mean (almost) anything; consequently it actually means nothing. The range of possible construals is radically open.”
By “it actually means nothing” I mean something akin to von Ranke when he defined history as “wie es eigentlich gewesen ist.” Scripture “actually” means nothing – its “meaning” cannot be fixed and resides in the interplay between the text (which as a material datum is almost fixed, with a bit of wiggle room for the textual variants, from which the Qumran covenanters were able to make exegetical capital – see 1QpHab XI, 2-14) and its myriad interpreters. My problem with Davies’s essay was that it seemed to suggest we could separate off the “Hebrew Bible” and examine its “ethics,” whereas in fact the ethics of the biblical texts do not somehow reside in them, but exist within interpretive communities that develop and transmogrify through time.
Against John, an infinite plurality of possible construals certainly does mean a text can mean almost anything. That is, it cannot mean absolutely anything because texts, readers, and interpretive communities each have their particular boundaries; yet these boundaries themselves are open to constant, yet not random flux. And also against John and his “dubious tosser,” I wouldn’t want to make the step from deconstruction to perpetual deconstruction! The instability of texts isn’t random. The way the Women’s Institute read Blake’s Jerusalem is radically at odds with Blake, but isn’t a random consequence of the dissemination of the writerly text.
Going back to Eric’s original response – I’ve had to mull it over a little, but yes, I think you’re right. Davies’s essay can be read as an attack on the idea that religions have given us ethical values we can live by, and are therefore A Good Thing. My response, however, need not be construed as a defence of the religious traditions that evolved from the communities behind the Hebrew Bible. The canonical status of Job as a sacred text is one that is attributed to the text by the communities that received and transmitted it as such – a view that is very close to Wilfred Cantwell Smith and James VanderKam on “Scripture.” We can certainly read Hamlet for ethics, as we could read Homer, or One Hundred Years of Solitude, or watch Notes on a Scandal or Il y a longtemps que je t’aime. Equally, Job can be extracted from its scriptural context – Yahweh can then be read as a character in the text (you could try the same experiment with Yahweh in 1 Samuel) whose actions can be judged ethically. We would then not need to feel compelled to define the meaning of Job based on Deuteronomy, or Jeremiah, or Romans. The way the interpretation of works such as Job is controlled by the shape of the canon and the greater de facto influence of other “scriptural” works would be a study worth undertaking. Certainly Barth’s use of Job in Römerbrief would be an interesting case in point.
Brief note on my allusion to von Ranke – the key word is “eigentlich.” He was wrong, too.
“Against John, an infinite plurality of possible construals certainly does mean a text can mean almost anything. That is, it cannot mean absolutely anything because texts, readers, and interpretive communities each have their particular boundaries; yet these boundaries themselves are open to constant, yet not random flux.”
I don’t think we are far apart, James. I just don’t find the equation of an “infinite plurality of possible construals” with “almost anything” helpful. If we think of a given text (Job?), then we can watch it change shape as different people explain it. But do the often widely varying meanings then offered equate to “almost anything”? I doubt it. Are they part of an infinite plurality of meanings? Hell, yes. You may not like the notion of “severely limited” any better than I like “almost anything”. But I doubt we would disagree on what this looks actually like in practice or what it means for biblical interpretation.
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***He asks this in the context of asserting that because he is such a genius that he can create the marvellous cosmos, from the morning stars to the dumb ostrich, he is in no way bound by the kind of morality Job understands. In this I suggest Deane Galbraith is slightly missing the point by suggesting that Yahweh “simply demands obedience without justification.”***
I think the fundamental mistake you both (all) make with this text is to try to understand it purely with your intellect. Add odd statement to make to Biblical scholars I know. But often the desired target of a narrative, particularly one which is troubling, is not the intellect but the emotions. I see Yahweh’s speech as an attempt not to put forward a new theory to be analyzed, but to cut through all theories so that Job (and the reader) can arrive directly at the truth… bypassing the messy work of endless debate. Those of you who are in the religious studies department may want to compare this to the desired impact of a Zen Koan…. to try to answer one with a lengthy monologue would (I am sure you agree) would be to miss the point of the exercise.
Listen to the tyrannical Yahweh as you would listen to a triumphant peace of music. Don’t think. Just let the impact happen to you.
I’ll leave Job to one side and listen to Karajan conducting Bruckner’s Eighth Symphony in future.
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