The Friends of Job and the Task of Biblical Theology

The Theology of Job’s Friends

Largely because of this concluding verdict on the friends, they have not been held in high esteem by modern commentators. ¹ They are seen as upholding a rigid and outdated dogma. In the words of Timothy Beal, they “defend God’s moral universe and insist Job must’ve done something wrong to deserve such misery.” ² Yet the fact remains that the friends are quite orthodox in their theology. They defend the logic of act and consequence, what Klaus Koch called the Tun-Ergehen-Zusammenhang, ³ which underpinned traditional wisdom as we find it in Proverbs, and also the covenantal logic of Deuteronomy. “Can papyrus grow where there is no marsh?” asks Bildad the Shuhite. “Can reeds flourish where there is no water?” (Job 8:11). At the outset, they speak gently to Job. They do not suggest that he is a wicked person, but no one is perfect. “Can mortals be righteous before God? Can human beings be pure before their Maker?” (4:17). As the dialogues go on, the tone becomes more condemnatory, on both sides, but the friends are presumably speaking in good faith, and their views are more typical of the ancient world, and specifically the biblical world, than are those of Job.

OPEN IN VIEWER

William Blake (1757–1827). Job Rebuked by His Friends. Watercolor illustration from The Book of Job. The Pierpoint Morgan Library, New York, NY. Photo Credit: The Pierpoint Morgan Library/Art Resource, NY.

In a recent article published in Interpretation, Joel Kaminsky has attempted to mount a defense of the friends. ⁴ He argues, quite rightly, that Proverbs and Deuteronomy are subtler than modern interpreters acknowledge. The authors of Proverbs and Deuteronomy were not unaware of innocent suffering. It is possible to be poor and righteous, an idea often affirmed in the psalms. But they believed that everything would eventually be put right. When Eliphaz asks, “who that was innocent ever perished?” (Job 4:7) he is taking a long-term view, and indeed even Job is restored at the end of the book. Moreover, modern religious people, whether Jewish, Christian, or other, typically take a similarly optimistic view of the universe. Justice will eventually prevail. It is unfair, then, to dismiss the friends as mere caricatures. As Carol Newsom has written, whatever the friends of Job were, they were not fools. ⁵

Kaminsky takes the view that the dialogues are a real argument between two equally compelling viewpoints. ⁶ In this he follows Carol Newsom, who has written influentially of the book of Job as a polyphonic text, as understood by the Russian theorist Mikhail Bakhtin. She summarizes Bakhtin’s view as follows:

[A] polyphonic text has three distinctive aspects: (1) it embodies a dialogic sense of truth; (2) the author’s position, although represented in the text, is not privileged; and (3) the polyphonic text ends without finalizing closure. ⁷

“Dialogic truth” is always open and “unfinalizable.” In the case of Job, Newsom suggests, “the author is not setting up the confrontation in such a way that one voice triumphs, for no one voice can speak the whole truth.” ⁸

Bakhtin’s idea of dialogic truth has rich possibilities for biblical theology as a whole. ⁹ How well it fits the ending of the book of Job is a more difficult question. Newsom argues that “the polyphonic author . . . slyly manages to reassert the continuing claim on truth by voices that were silenced by the authoritative divine voice.” ¹⁰ She regards the juxtaposition of “two earnest attempts to secure closure (the divine speech and the ‘happily ever after’ ending of the didactic tale)” as ironic: “the author ensures that no closure can take place.” She continues:

When God in the prose conclusion (42:7) declares that Job has spoken correctly, then the unfinished business of Job’s objections comes back into view. And even though God rebukes the friends (42:8–9), the narrative conclusion in 42:10–17 seems a wink of the polyphonic author behind God’s back, validating the friends’ claims, since the story ends just as they said it would. ¹¹

But this attempt to read the book as open-ended is counter-intuitive. The final restoration of Job is ironic, all right, because even a two-fold restoration cannot restore what Job has lost. His view of the world has surely been altered irrevocably. He can no longer enjoy his wealth as a matter of entitlement, since he knows it can all be swept away in a single day. If there is a nod here to what the friends had said, it hardly vindicates them, in light of the explicit statement that they had not spoken rightly, as Job had. To be sure, the ending of Job is subtle. No one is fully vindicated. Job is credited with honesty, although he knew not whereof he spoke. Even if the friends were partly right as to what would happen, their whole way of speaking about God is repudiated. And pace Newsom, God is not just one voice among others in the polyphony. Neither Job nor the friends can hold their ground before God.

But why exactly were the friends rebuked? According to Job 42:7 they had not spoken forthrightly (nĕkônāh), to God, as Job had done. Job, we may recall, had spoken very forthrightly indeed:

It is all one; therefore I say,

he destroys both the blameless and the wicked.

When disaster brings sudden death,

he mocks at the calamity of the innocent.

The earth is given into the hand of the wicked;

he covers the eyes of its judges—

if it is not he, who then is it? (9:22–24)

In contrast, he claims that the friends “lie for God”:

Will you speak falsely for God,

and speak deceitfully for him?

Will you show partiality toward him?

Will you plead the case for God?

Will it be well with you when he searches you out?

Or can you deceive him, as one person deceives another?

He will surely rebuke you

if in secret you show partiality. (13:7–10)

Job’s prediction is fulfilled in the divine speech in the epilogue, when God tells the friends that they have not spoken rightly about him as Job has.

Newsom finds God’s statement ironic: “Words spoken ‘without knowledge’ (38:2) may nevertheless be correct (nĕkônāh).” ¹² But the context scarcely permits us to understand the adverb as “correctly.” The judgment that Job spoke without knowledge (38:2, cf. 42:3) still stands. Rather, words spoken without knowledge may at least have the virtue of honesty. God does not admit to sadism, and the happy ending suggests an ultimate benevolence. But the account of the friends is still too simple, and Job’s indictment was not without basis. God does crush the innocent on occasion. Even if we credit the friends with taking a long-term view, they must be faulted for failing to acknowledge the reality of Job’s suffering, and of his innocence. Even if Job goes too far in his indictment, he can still be credited with honesty in acknowledging the evidence before him.

The dispute between Job and his friends is in large part a conflict between tradition and experience. The friends harden tradition into dogma that admits no exceptions. Job insists on the particularity of his experiential situation, which does not fit the expectations of tradition. The exception does not necessarily invalidate the tradition entirely. It may still be true in broad outline. But exceptions must be acknowledged. To gloss over them or explain them away is to lie for God, and if the book of Job is to be believed, God does not appreciate dishonest testimony on his behalf, however well intentioned it may be.

Apologetics and the Book of Joshua

Joshua has become something of a scandal for biblical theology, because of its story of violent conquest, which has provided legitimation for colonial context from the Puritans to the Boers in South Africa to modern Israel. The scandal has been exploited by Richard Dawkins in his best-selling atheistic manifesto, The God Delusion, which singles out the story of Joshua and the commands of Deuteronomy as egregious examples of the immorality of the biblical God. ¹⁵ Douglas S. Earl has risen to Joshua’s defense in The Joshua Delusion. ¹⁶ Earl reads Joshua as Christian Scripture, a project shared by many scholars who engage in explicitly theological education.

To read Joshua as Christian Scripture is to read it in light of the New Testament and Christian tradition. So while it is possible to explore Joshua as a warrant for genocide, this “is not, on the whole, fitting with respect to the canon of Scripture. If one assumes that Joshua should be read in the light of the Gospels . . . then it is difficult to see how one could seek to legitimate genocide using Joshua.” ¹⁷ He does not want to resort to allegory, as Origen and other church fathers did, since he realizes that many people in the modern world regard such an approach as arbitrary. So, “the historical and ethical difficulties point us not necessarily to an allegorical or spiritual sense of a text, but rather to a symbolic sense that has theological and spiritual implications.” ¹⁸ He argues: “there is a sense in which each way of reading ought to be ‘fitting’—in tune with what the text was trying to achieve as a discourse.” ¹⁹

Earl proceeds to argue that the concept of ḥerem (which means “to annihilate”) “was not significant in the Old Testament as a description of a historical practice of warfare or conquest.” Rather, “in Deuteronomy, and Deuteronomy 7 in particular, what the author of the text was doing with the concept of ḥerem was to use it symbolically to command the separation of Israel from non-Israel.” ²⁰ Joshua, too, is concerned with the true identity of Israel. “Although the story is set in the context of conquest, it is not really about conquest. Conquest is the backdrop for stories that make one think carefully about the construction of the identity of the community of those who worship Yahweh . . .” Joshua thus raises the question of what attitude the community of Israel ought to have towards itself and towards others. When are ethnic Israelites to be shunned? When are surprising non-Israelites to be welcomed? “Joshua is not about genocide” (ital. mine). ²¹

The view that the book of Joshua is concerned with defining Israelite identity is well established in modern scholarship. In the words of Richard Nelson, “the book of Joshua is a literary production designed to create and support the identity of the people it calls ‘all Israel.’” ²² But to get from there to the conclusion that Joshua is not a conquest story and is not about genocide requires a considerable sleight of hand. One cannot avoid the ethical problems of the conquest story by characterizing it as fictional and ideological. ²³

Modern historians do not regard the book of Joshua as a reliable historical account, but this hardly lessens the moral problem raised by the book. As James Barr observed, “[T]he problem is not whether the narratives are fact or fiction, the problem is that, whether fact or fiction the ritual destruction is commended.” ²⁴ The story of Joshua does not seem to have been used as a warrant for genocide in antiquity, but the presumed authors or redactors in the exilic or early postexilic period were not in a position to implement it, even if they had wished to do so. While the great majority of Christians and Jews have not taken it as warrant, there have been enough prominent exceptions (the Crusaders, Puritans, Boers in South Africa, and even some Israeli settlers) to render the text highly problematic. ²⁵ Texts can be actualized in more than one way and may have more than one “intention,” if indeed we can speak about the intention of a text at all. Rather than try to redeem Joshua by focusing on the supposed intention and denying the importance of the literal narrative, it would be more intellectually honest to admit that this text expresses an ideal that moral human beings should repudiate.

The attempt to rehabilitate Joshua and defend him and his God against the charge of genocide is not peculiar to evangelical Christian interpreters. Gary Anderson, a well-respected professor at Notre Dame University, argues that “Israel’s possession of the land is conditioned on the grace of God and the moral stature of the people.” ²⁶ He continues: “The text does not award a land to Israel in a manner that immorally voids all previous claims. Quite the opposite, the gift of the land to Israel can only take place when the sins of the Canaanites will be of sufficient number and magnitude so as to justify their expulsion.” ²⁷ This is a venerable apologetic tactic, dating back to John Calvin. It has a biblical basis, although the usual rationale in the Bible is that God has promised the land to Israel. But as Nick Wolterstorff points out in a rejoinder to Anderson, the justice of such a divine promise is far from evident. ²⁸ Neither is it evident that the Canaanites were more wicked than other peoples, despite the biblical allegations.

Historical Criticism

Historical criticism has been the dominant method of biblical interpretation over the last two centuries or so. It is not a strictly defined method. “At its most basic level,” writes Dale Martin, “historical criticism takes the primary meaning of the text to be what its meaning would have been in its original context.” ³¹ This does not exclude the possibility of further, secondary meanings. Neither does it require exclusive focus on historical questions. Many of the newer methods or approaches that have found favor in biblical studies, such as social scientific criticism, feminist, or liberationist approaches, are quite compatible with historical criticism. Even avowedly ahistorical reader-response criticism could be enriched by an awareness of the otherness of the original context of a text.

Historical criticism views the text as a human product, shaped by its original time and place. It is only as a human product that the text can be studied historically. For this reason, it has always been in tension with theological methods that want to affirm some transcendent, divinely intended meaning of the text. From an historical perspective, one can speak, unproblematically, of the ways in which texts take on new meanings when read in new contexts, but as Martin notes, the meaning in its original context is always primary. Of course the meaning in the original context is often unclear and may be a matter of conjecture, but that is part of the limitation of human knowledge. The meaning of any text can be contested, regardless of the context in which we read it.

In the eyes of its adherents, historical inquiry is the pursuit of truth. ³² The truth may be ambiguous and indeterminate, but historical criticism attempts to approximate the truth to the best of our ability. It is based on the recognition of the otherness of the text, which was written long ago and in another culture. This does not mean that the text cannot speak to us today, but it does so indirectly and by analogy. Historical criticism is based on the assumption that human nature has not changed fundamentally from biblical times. To imagine how a text might have functioned in its original context can enable us to imagine how it might function in our own situation.

Martin would like to break the hegemony of historical criticism, and he is surely not alone in this. His argument, however, is indebted to literary theory in a way that most such critiques of historical criticism are not. In his view, “texts don’t mean; people mean with texts.” ³³ A text doesn’t actually mean anything until it is interpreted, or construed in a particular way, and interpretation depends on context, and the tradition of the community in which it is taken place. “No human being comes at texts as a blank or in complete isolation from other human beings,” writes Martin. “Even when we are alone, we carry around in our heads our reading community (or more precisely, communities, since we are not influenced by only one set of reading assumptions but by several). We have learned proper and improper ways to read texts, and we have learned that different kinds of texts should be interpreted with different kinds of practices.” ³⁴ Humpty-Dumpty, in Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking Glass, famously claimed that he could give a word any meaning he wished. Martin grants that this is not so, at least if we want to be understood by other people, but this is not because words have inherent meanings, but because meaning is the product of social consensus. ³⁵ All of this is true, as can be seen readily enough from the differences between languages. Language is a system of signs to which different meanings have been assigned in different languages. But what should the implication be for the theological interpretation of Scripture?

Historical criticism is one reading strategy among many that have been applied to the Bible. It is a relatively recent invention, which only rose to prominence in the last two and a half centuries. What counted as the literal sense in the Middle Ages was very different from what is now regarded as the historical meaning of the text. Martin concludes: “Christians for most of the history of Christianity have not used the historical-critical method in their readings of the Bible. To insist that historical criticism is necessary for the Christian reading of Scripture is to say that no Christian before the modern period read Scripture Christianly.” ³⁶

In a free society, one can, of course, read Scripture, or anything else, any way one wants to. And unless one happens to be a particular kind of conservative Protestant, one can be a perfectly good Christian without reading the Bible at all. Many, perhaps most, Christians through the centuries have in fact been illiterate. The question before us, however, is what is now the best, or at least a good way to read Scripture. The fact that a particular method is of recent origin is irrelevant as to its value. (Postmodern literary criticism, to which Martin subscribes, is of far more recent origin than historical criticism.)

The main reason why historical criticism is a necessary ingredient in a theological reading of Scripture, one that cannot be ignored, is that its basic premises are true. The biblical texts were written long ago and in another culture. Their original meaning is determined by the cultural context and language use of the society in which they originated. This is so precisely because of the socially conditioned nature of language, which Martin has eloquently expounded. These texts acquired new meanings in other settings to be sure, but if we neglect or erase the original meaning of the text we are suppressing evidence that is relevant to its meaning today.

Take an example that Martin also uses, Psalm 22. This psalm has a hallowed place in Christian tradition where it has been associated with the crucifixion of Jesus (cf. Matt 27:46; Mark 15:34). This Christian interpretation was certainly not the original meaning of the psalm. We do not know where or by whom it was written, but it was certainly pre-Christian, and it originally articulated either a view of the human condition in general or the suffering of some, presumably Jewish, individual. Christians through the centuries were not wrong to apply this psalm to the suffering of Jesus (or indeed to their own sufferings). Psalms are paradigmatic by nature. But if they thought that the psalm applied exclusively to Jesus, or was written as a prediction of his death, then they surely were mistaken. The same could be said of the great poem about the suffering servant in Isaiah 53, which for many Christians is a powerful expression of the meaning of the death of Jesus. But any interpretation that ignores the fact that Isaiah 53 was not originally about Jesus is a distortion. The restriction of these texts to meanings related to Jesus is not inconsequential. It slights and ignores the history of the Jewish people, to whom these writings originally referred, and it limits unnecessarily the range of potential applications of these poems in the modern world.

An even more theologically loaded instance is provided by the biblical expression “son of God.” ³⁷ This expression is found in several instances in the Hebrew Bible. It may refer to heavenly beings, as in Gen 6:2 or Dan 3:25, it may refer to Israel as in Exod 4:22 or Hos 11:1, to the king, as in Psalm 2, or to the righteous person, in Wis 2:18. Avowedly Christian readings have taken many of these passages as predictions of Christ. But here again Jewish history is erased and slighted, as if the meaning of the Hebrew Scriptures for the Jewish people is of no lasting significance. Moreover, the meaning of the expression “son of God” in the New Testament cannot be understood without taking the history of its usage into account.

A Distinctively Christian Reading

Martin, however, speaks of reading the Bible “Christianly,” in accordance with his belief that the meaning of the Bible depends on the context in which it is read. But what might it mean to read “Christianly”?

Two possible meanings come to mind. First, a Christian reading might be any way that Christians have in fact read Scripture. So, for example, the Church Fathers read it allegorically, so allegory is a legitimate way of reading Scripture. Perhaps, but that hardly makes it a useful or relevant method of reading in the twenty-first century. Many contemporary Christians find fundamentalist modes of reading attractive. Think of the millions of copies sold of Hal Lindsey’s Late Great Planet Earth! ³⁸ Lindsey’s hermeneutic, which attempts to decode the book of Revelation with reference to present and future events in world politics has ancient roots, going back to the method of the Pesharim in the Dead Sea Scrolls. ³⁹ But should we endorse it as a suitable way of reading for that reason? Does it guide readers to the most relevant and helpful interpretation of the biblical text? I should think not. Martin himself notes some of the problems with ways in which Christians have construed Scripture, e.g. as a law book. Any attempt to derive a theological reading for the modern world from the historical practice of Christians will be in urgent need of a criterion, to separate the wheat from the chaff. The fact that Christians have used a particular method in the past does not necessarily make it either legitimate or good for the present. This is not to deny that it is good to know the history of interpretation. All knowledge is helpful, but it calls for discrimination.

A better way to construe what is meant by the Christian reading of Scripture is to think of it as a reading that is informed by the specifically Christian story of Jesus. The relevance, and limitations, of this approach appear especially in connection with the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament. Christians inevitably evaluate the laws and teachings of the Old Testament in light of the teaching of Jesus. But Christianity also has a long history of supersessionism, whereby they reduce the Old Testament to a foreshadowing of the New. In the post-Holocaust era, many Christian theologians have belatedly realized the dangers of such an approach and the impact it has had on Jewish-Christian relations throughout the centuries. The Hebrew Bible was not just a foreshadowing, but was and remains Scripture in its own right. But for Christians to appreciate the Hebrew Bible in its own right they need to acknowledge it as other, and for that they must be informed by an historical appreciation of religion and culture that is both different from and older than Christianity.

Reading “Christianly” is a dubious enterprise. It turns Christian readers in on themselves and encourages them to ignore the broader world. It has been the great merit of historical criticism that it has provided a platform for ecumenical understanding by acknowledging the otherness of the text and the fact that it is not the exclusive property of Christians. This is not to claim that historical criticism provides the last word in theological interpretation, but that it provides a necessary starting point and a guardrail for interpretation. ⁴⁰

Interpretation and Ethics

Martin insists that his argument is not just about literary theory but is also an ethical issue. He contends, with reason, that “one of the most serious impediments to the ethical use of Scripture, especially with regard to issues of gender and sexuality, has been the myth of textual agency.” ⁴¹ By this he means the claim that the Bible simply “says” certain things, whereas it does not actually say anything until it is interpreted. Those who appeal to what the Bible “says” can mask or deny their responsibility for their interpretations. Martin refers to this as “textual foundationalism.”

The text of the Bible is taken to be a relatively firm basis from which we can derive all sorts of knowledge about doctrine or ethics, by simply reading the text and passively “hearing” its message. The idea is that the text of the Bible is a stable, reliable source for certain kinds of knowledge (doctrine and ethics, mainly) similar to the way “nature” is thought to function as a source for scientific knowledge. ⁴²

The goal of interpretation for Martin, if I read him correctly, is to produce what he considers to be ethically responsible interpretations. ⁴³ He points out, quite correctly, that theological foundationalism based on historical criticism “cannot be depended on to deliver secure, ethical interpretations of Scripture.” ⁴⁴ The Bible, historically interpreted, often condones violence. ⁴⁵ Historical critical arguments were used in defense of slavery, ⁴⁶ and some historical critics used their scholarship to support Nazi ideology. ⁴⁷ But biblical foundationalism, as Martin defines it, involves two issues that should be carefully distinguished. One, as we have already seen, is whether the Bible has a determinate meaning. The other is the issue of biblical authority. Historical criticism leaves little doubt that male homosexual activity is condemned in the Bible, if only in a very limited number of instances, ⁴⁸ or that slavery was condoned. But to say that the Bible is a secure basis for doctrine or morals in these cases is quite another matter. The problem here lies in the kind of authority one ascribes to the Bible, regardless of how one interprets it.

Martin, however, does not question the authority of the Bible directly, although he arguably undercuts it quite radically. His proposal is that “we might learn to see Scripture as less a simple source for doctrine or ethics and more as an instrument used by the Holy Spirit mainly to reinforce Christian doctrine and ethics we have imbibed from several different sources.” ⁴⁹ Scripture, in effect, is given an ancillary, instrumental role. At the end of his book on The Pedagogy of the Bible, Martin makes some curricular proposals, which include the recommendation that the theology of Scripture (i.e. the ways in which Scripture has been used in theology) be taught before different methods of interpretation are introduced. In effect, students would be taught the doctrine and ethics that Scripture should reinforce, and then see how Scripture could be interpreted so as to reinforce them. Martin insists that this does not mean that we can interpret the text to support our prejudices, but the constraints on interpretation are provided by theological tradition rather than by the historical context of the text. In a surprising way, then, Martin reverses the Reformation principle of using Scripture to critique tradition and makes Scripture the handmaiden of theology.

Would such a curriculum lead to more ethical interpretation? Historical critics may have supported unethical causes on occasion, but has Christian theology been exempt from this failing? Where in Christian tradition do we find acceptance of homosexuality, or the kind of tolerance of “error” that would preclude religious violence? Did Christian theology lead to the rejection of slavery before the Enlightenment? But moreover, is intellectual honesty not an ethical concern? And is it intellectually honest to deny that the Bible, read in its historical context, espouses many ethical positions, such as slavery, that we now find abhorrent?