When I was a younger man, I had the privilege of being the best man at the
marriage of a friend and classmate. To my horror I discovered that the best
man must begin the feast by toasting the newlyweds. I had been raised a
teetotaller, and while I thought I could handle a wineglass almost like a
pro by gripping it tightly at the stem between my thumb and forefinger,
the only toast I knew was "cheers". My panic must have shown, because the
MC, another classmate, came over and suggested that I recite an ancient
Jewish blessing. I was so grateful I would have recited it in Hebrew, but
here is the English text. "May you have the wisdom of Solomon, the patience
of Job and the children of Israel."
"The patience of Job". A short phrase that I have never fully understood,
since Job appeared to be anything but patient. Or perhaps in my family
patience meant something different, something closer to comatose--"Just
be patient and you will get your turn too!". Nevertheless, it is a
phrase more widely known than the character it was intended to describe.
This is an example of wisdom literature: a short, pithy saying that
attempts to capture a lifestyle, an attitude, or a worldview. "Spare the
rod and spoil the child" was another favorite in my family. The book of
Job is replete with such examples. Perhaps this accounted for its continued
popularity during the dark ages of the KJV when the obscure Hebrew made
for opaque English. Even when the plot line was too tangled to follow and
the rebuttal had lost its logical thread, one could still extract gems
such as "Man is born to trouble as the sparks fly upward." If you will
allow me to gloss over the intervening millennia, surely something similar
kept scribes busy copying this book from age to age, and before them,
maintained the oral tradition. If this then is the enduring legacy of the
book of Job, it would behoove us to examine it for those qualities common
to wisdom literature.
One needs only a passing glance at the Book of Job to see that it looks
a lot like the Psalms or Isaiah, little short sentences that do not fill
the column. A slightly closer look verifies that indeed, the sentences do
not tell much of a story, but have about as much plot as a dictionary.
This is a characteristic of poetry, which a quick glance at Proverbs will
show us, is also a characteristic of wisdom literature. A slightly closer
look will reveal that the first chapter and the last chapter have a much
better story line, and read like history, it's the chapters in between that
are poetry. A comparison with other wisdom books in the Bible reveal that
this is exactly the structure of Ecclesiastes. So evidently it was a well
known style or technique to have a historical introduction to a known drama
or morality lesson, and then switch to poetry for the body of the book,
finally wrapping it up with a bit of historical epilogue.
This isn't such a surprising format, when one thinks about it. If I drag
out my high school literature book, that is exactly how famous pieces of
literature were handled. There would be the historical introduction of the
battle at Gettysburg, then President Lincoln's speech, then some homework
problems and thought questions at the end. It's a didactic approach,
introducing the student to a piece of important literature without forcing
the student to read everything ever written by Lincoln preceding this event.
One might even say it's an efficient approach to education, summarizing the
long boring stuff, and just hitting the highlights where necessary, wrapping
it up with an epilogue that finishes the rest of the story.
Clearly then, the writer of Job was teaching a lesson. He summarized what we
needed to know about Job's circumstances and suffering quickly, and then took
us to the meat of the story, Job's response and that of his friends. This
organization reveals to us that what was most important to this ancient
teacher was not the history of Job, nor the explanation at the end, but the
very personal responses in the middle. What was most important, he is telling
us, is the subjective response, so pay attention class, because the pop quiz
on this material will be the unexpected suffering in your own life.
Wisdom literature has a long tradition in the ancient cultures of the
middle east. It was so popular that people made large collections of the
sayings of the wise and even translated them into neighboring languages.
They have been found in the Akkadian, Egyptian, Ugaritic, Sumerian and
Hebrew languages extending over many centuries of time. Such great
similarities exist between an Egyptian book of wisdom The Wisdom of
Amenophis and sections from the Book of Proverbs that scholarly debates
have raged as to which came first. What made them so popular, and why do
we find so many copies in different languages for such long periods of time?
From a Marxist viewpoint, such platitudes are the natural result of
squeezing a large population into a small area; to avoid friction, one
must "socialize" the next generation, teaching them how to live in close
proximity without conflict. The "fertile crescent", the valleys of the
Euphrates, the Jordan and the Nile rivers, closely bounded by arid and
semi-arid deserts, produced not only a high concentration of humanity,
but a conduit for trade and for war. The waves of conquerors and the
conquered produced a heterogeneous mixture of many cultures, many languages,
many gods, and many governments. Into this highly volatile mix (yes, even
more so than the middle east today!) these collections of wise sayings
provided continuity, stability, and perhaps even a cross-cultural
"cosmopolitan" unity. Thus one would expect these maxims to stay away
from "hot buttons", from mentioning names of local deities, or preferred
forms of government. One would expect them to laud the stabilizing aspects
of culture, the family unit, the workplace, the judicial system, and to
avoid mentioning the destabilizing aspects of society, the military, the
stratification of rich and poor. How right Karl Marx was, to call this
the "opiate of the peoples"!
Therefore from our 20th century perspective, it seems rather surprising
that wisdom literature speaks so often about God. The opening lines of
Proverbs begin with "The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom", a
sentiment echoed by Job himself in chapter 28. If wisdom is defined as
we did above, as the oil that keeps the gears of culture moving, how can
religious sentiment help? Won't contrary religious feelings (e.g., Catholics
vs. Protestants, Christians vs. Moslems) do more to destabilize society
than steady it?
Again, the response to this sort of question reveals more about the answerer
than the answer. An agnostic or atheist might attempt to explain how religious
sentiment is an abstraction for a concrete problem. The problem might be one
of universal law; one cannot justify shoulds and shouldn'ts
without appealing to consequences, consequences that require a universal
enforcer. Local deities wouldn't do, for the reasons above, so one produces
a quite generic, universal sort of enforcer, the big one, the creator-God.
Or one could pick a different concrete problem, the stratification of society
into the have's and the have-not's. To avoid the difficulties
that Marx observed, there must be a restraint to unbridled power, wealth and
privilege. Unfortunately government (kings) were often the worst abusers of
power. Therefore one needed a "king of kings" who brought even royalty to
account, who embodied the concept of "fairness". Hence the idea of God was
a necessary development for the success of wisdom literature.
Well one could multiply these humanistic explanations ad infinitum,
all of which violate the definition for wisdom given above, "the fear of the
Lord", since one can't very well fear something one has invented. Were these
cosmopolitan authors really as backward as the Stone Age tribesmen of Papua
New Guinea, worshipping the gods of their own creation? Can we really believe
that no one saw through such obvious deception in the ensuing centuries of
popularity? At the very least, one must admit that the writers of wisdom
literature believed, feared, respected, admired, and yes, worshipped this
God of wisdom. If wisdom literature arose out of human aspirations, we must
confront the contradiction of self-awareness and selflessness, the clash
between human desires and divine commands.
Do not think for a minute that Job or his friends were unaware of this
tradition when they debated the purpose of God and of wisdom. In a profound
sense, this book is about itself, about the role that wisdom literature has
in society. Job's friends were humanists, though unlike today's agnostic/atheists,
they valued the tradition, this wisdom handed down from their ancestors. But
just as Kurt Gödel's incompleteness theorem showed mathematicians that they
could never hope for Platonic self-consistent perfection in their earthly
endeavors, so also Job proved to his friends that wisdom literature was
internally inconsistent with God and with life. Job's emotional and verbal
response was so catastrophic to the whole body of wisdom literature, to
the whole stability of cosmopolitan unity espoused by his friends and their
sources, it was such subversive nonsense that those three friends felt it
must be opposed at all costs, even at the cost of destroying a friend with
the friendship.
I want to focus on the nature of this subversion, this incongruity
that characterizes the entire book of Job. Yet I fear that we, the
modern readers, are so removed from the debate that we might falsely
construe the utter seriousness of the players as an abstract comedy
of the absurd. But it remains subversion still, for the book of Job
continues to ask how these collected sayings of anonymous pagans became
canon, how in stark contrast to the sanctified history of God's chosen
people, these platitudes of worldly wisdom made it into the Bible.
To state it from a 19th century churchman perspective, how did such
uninformed heathens produce a body of literature that mimicked the
inspired Word of God so closely? Or what was the nature of the "holy
water" that sanctified this product of pagan minds and made it worthy
of the Word of God? Is it true, as some have claimed, that there are
different paths to God in different ages, so that the denizens of the
middle east in the millennium before Christ had a local highway that
brought them tantalizingly close to the pearly gates (closer than
their brethren by the Yellow River)? Or is it true, as another wise
man has said, that God is the natural destination of the unfettered,
rational mind, the conclusion of wisdom, so that all wisdom literature
points to God? To rephrase this, was this wisdom a product of a specific
culture that was blessed by God, or the product of a great human intellect,
which accidentally found itself in this culture, or the arbitrary decision
of a incomprehensible God?
If I am allowed to equate wisdom with God and God with Christ, then the
question becomes, what is the relationship of Christ and Culture? A question
that existed not just for the modern church, but for the ancient Hebrews,
for the patriarchs, and yes, for the entire Ancient Middle East. If the
difficulty for an agnostic interpretation of wisdom literature is self-consistency,
how an invented Christ could claim sovereignty over culture, then there is an
equal difficulty for a theist who observes syncretism, the absorption of culture
into Christ. The problems remain even if I am not allowed to make the equation
of wisdom and Christ, for a culture-bound wisdom is of little modern use, while
a wisdom-bound culture has likewise been shown to be a Hegelian myth that two
world wars erased forever.
If Job's plight and Job's wisdom is relevant for today, if the righteous are
not rewarded, and the wicked do prosper, then all of us with two cars and
three children should be memorizing Job's speeches in anticipation of our
own day of judgment. If, on the other hand, Job's wisdom is NOT directly
relevant then we can extol his virtues independent of his own reporting.
That is, we can concatenate chapters 2 and 42, reducing this book to a simple
object lesson on obedience and dismiss the poetry as irrelevant and a trifle
misguided. Despite a high regard for scripture, this latter view seems to
dominate in conservative circles, which begs the question of the relationship
between wisdom and culture. If the information contained in chapters 3--41
is by God and is therefore of value, we must be very careful that we are not
found negligent in our handling of this wisdom that cost Job so dearly.
Is Job for or against God? Is Job for or against wisdom? Is God for or
against Job? Is God for or against wisdom? Can wisdom be for or against
either? These are the sorts of questions this book raises, while
simultaneously attacking any answer we give. The majority of the sermons
listed in the appendices will answer these questions: Job is for God; Job
is against wisdom; God is for Job; God is for wisdom; Wisdom cannot be for
or against anything. But the majority of modern (20th century) academics
will say: Job is against God; Job is for wisdom; God is against Job; God
is against wisdom; Wisdom is against both. Both groups will defend their
positions with impeccable logic and extensive quotes. And woe betide the
fool who compromises either camp! Like Job's comforters, we spare no pain
to correct the errant sufferer, and so perpetually invoke Job's curses on
ourselves.
I hope that the previous section convinces you that Job remains as
controversial today as he was 3000 years ago. One might ask whether
any other author has managed such longevity. From a Hegelian perspective,
any controversy of thesis/antithesis is eventually resolved by synthesis.
So why is it that 3000 years of recorded history is unable to synthesize
Job? Certainly not from lack of trying, as the appendices can attest. May
I suggest that the writer of Job attains this dubious distinction by
brilliant use of self-referentiality.
Just as Kant was awakened from his dogmatic slumber by Hume's
Treatise, so I was awakened from my rational stupor by
Gödel's Incompleteness Theorem. Like David Hume two centuries
before, Bertrand Russell at the dawn of the 20th century was
skeptical of the philosophy of his day and of the religion of
his fathers. Endless arguments seem to revolve around ambiguities
inherent in language and thought. Enamored of the success of 19th
century mathematics and equipped with a sharp mind and sharper pen,
he attempted to reduce the very language of philosophy and theology
to mathematical symbols, to capture Aristotle's Logic in pure
crystalline form. The tool he created, symbolic logic, was wielded
ferociously at these thickets of fuzzy thinking. The proponents of
Russell's agenda were branded "Logical Positivists" whose single-minded
goal was to rid the world of equivocation and religion through
mathematics and science.
Their mount was given a fatal wound when a young German named Kurt
Gödel published a mathematical proof, using symbolic logic, that
no matter how simple or complicated the rules of symbolic logic
became, one could still equivocate. For any system of axioms imagined
would always be incomplete, because one could formulate statements
which were neither true nor false. That is, no matter how many special
cases Russell included in his rulebook, he could never prove by logic
alone that God did not exist. How did Gödel single-handedly pull off
this stunt, stymieing the advance of the Logical Leviathan? By using
self-referential arguments. Consider the statement: This sentence
is False. Now I ask you, is that true or false?
Russell goes to great lengths to exclude such constructions from his
logic, but Gödel pursued him relentlessly. If Russell will add a rule
that such constructions are invalid, then Gödel will construct a
statement about that rule: "All rules which falsify self-referential
constructions are False." and so on ad infinitum. Logical
positivism did not survive this and similar counter attacks, leaving
behind a rear guard of scientists who seem vaguely mystified by the
disappearance of their champion.
Gödel's proof should not have come as such a surprise to Logical
Positivists, for self-references litter recorded history. Literary
criticism is permeated by discussions of "irony", which is perhaps
the identifying characteristic of modern prose. One cannot go
to the movies without finding references to previous movies--art
imitating life imitating art imitating life. One cannot observe the
latest fashions without being aware of self-conscious references to
previous fashion. We end the 20th century in a decade of self-referential
"retro" styles.
Douglas Hofstetter, who popularized Gödel's proof in his book
Gödel, Escher, Bach: an eternal golden braid,
argues that the attraction found in the art of Escher and the music of
Bach is self-referential. Hofstetter argues that much of nature itself
can only be understood by self-reference. For example, the biological
arms race between pathogens and people is a constant self-referential
test, with the body having to distinguish between itself and an interloper,
while the interloper keeps appropriating characteristics of its host. The
most famous modern plague, AIDS, is a virus that targets the body's
machinery for recognizing viruses, revealing the deadly seriousness
of self-reference.
Albert Einstein, perhaps the most famous scientist of the 20th century,
wrote a paper at almost the same time as Gödel entitled Can quantum-mechanical description of physical reality be considered complete?
in which he complains that
the newest rage in physics, quantum mechanics, was incomplete because
it could not predict or even answer questions such as the exact
position and speed of an atom. Worse, QM claimed that simple knowledge
of the position destroyed any possibility of finding the speed, and
vice versa. Surely, fumed Einstein, this limitation in human
capabilities should not be construed as a limitation in divine
knowledge--"God doesn't play dice." was his curt dismissal of
quantum mechanics. Einstein was wrong, for not only does God
play dice, He plays with us. Physicists have been able to show
that merely observing a system will indelibly change it, that
we are inexorably a part of the system we want to describe. For
as we obtain knowledge, knowledge obtains us.
Nor is the Bible an exception, for it absolutely revels in self-references. My favorite is Paul who quotes a philosopher from Crete who said "All Cretans are liars...", to which Paul adds the inspired commentary "what he says is true". Or the scripture verse where he says "all scripture is inspired by God", leading to the doctrine of the infallibility of the canon. "How do we know the Bible is infallible? Because it says so." Much earlier, Moses, trembling before the burning bush, asks God His name and is told, "I am who I am", or even "I am the I am". God can only be characterized by Himself, He cannot be described by what He has created. Self-reference is the answer to the limitless "Why?" (Because I said so!). It is the prerogative of the creator over its creation, it is the claim of divinity over mortality, it is the beginning and the end. Therefore it is all the more remarkable, that on the sixth day of creation, we are told "God created Man in His own image, in the image of God He created him." And we find that the very highest act of creation is self-referential, bestowing that crucial divine prerogative upon Man.
So when Job's comforters argue for the validity of received wisdom,
and Job against, the apparent victory of Job implies the invalidity
of the story of Job. But if we argue that his comforters win, we own
a book that contradicts our conclusions. So we, the reader must piece
together some sort of compromise, trying to bring a resolution between
Job and his friends, between our heart and our mind, between God and
wisdom. Job forces us to decide.
Why is Solomon wise, but Job only patient? Was Job's complaint a
wise thing to say? Or is wisdom only worthwhile if we are first
"healthy, wealthy and wise"?
What is wisdom, something cultural or something transcendent? Is
wisdom about people or about God; is it by people or by God? Does
Job say anything that wasn't culture bound? How can we tell?
Is Job's wisdom even relevant for today?
We find ourselves unable to answer these questions until we understand
what wisdom is, and what it is not. This is, of course, the purpose of
wisdom literature. And now we can see we have just purchased a ticket
for the oldest merry-go-round in the universe, for we cannot understand
the question until we have understood the answer. But before you exit
in haste, consider perhaps if it is not the world that is travelling
in circles, finding questions for answers that no one believes, and
this merry-go-round of wisdom is the one stationary point on a planet
spinning out of control.
Copyright © 1999 Rob Sheldon