Job Today
by Robert L. Lewis, Jr.

(go at the bottom of the page for more commentaries )

“There was a man in the land of Uz named Job. That man was blameless and upright; he feared God and shunned evil” (Job 1:1). 1 These words introduce one of the most interesting characters of the Bible and one of the most misunderstood books of the Bible. Job has become an icon as one who patiently suffers. The “patience of Job” has become an idiom in many cultures. Does this ancient Book of Job have anything to say to us in light of postmodernity? If we focus only on the parts of the book that gave rise to the idiom, probably not. However if we look at Job's dialogue with his friends and God's answer to Job, then there is much we can learn from this twenty-five hundred year old book. 2

Some modern readers have problems with the idea that a wager between God and Satan caused Job's suffering. This can cause a reader to not take the book seriously. We tend to forget that the cultural view of Satan was different from the idea of who Satan is according to a large portion of Western culture today. I do not wish to digress into an in-depth comparison of the cultural views of Satan; however, I do think it is important to briefly address the meaning of satan at the time the author wrote the book in order to better understand it today. The word satan in Job means “the adversary” and did not point to an evil creature. Evil creatures were referred to by either sa`iyr or shed which are translated as either devil or demon. During this time period, the adversary had a particular role in the heavenly court. This special function was to find and point out people disloyal to God. This adversary is a member of the heavenly court and defends God by exposing people who do not honor God. It is not until centuries later that Satan is seen as an opponent of God. 3 Another issue that often causes modern readers to misunderstand Job, and many other parts of scripture, is the word “fear,” as in “Does Job not have good reason to fear God” (Job 1:9)? This word in the Hebrew Scriptures is (yare') , and means fear and revere. It is also used in Scripture to mean “to stand in awe of,” “honor” and “respect.” Its use does not entirely mean to be afraid of God. Therefore, we could translate Job 1:9 to say, “Does Job not have good reason to fear and revere God?”

Western readers also tend to grow impatient with the Book of Job because of the perception that the dialogue is lengthy and one-sided. Job's friends seem to not listen or have become insensitive after sitting quietly with Job for several days. We cannot deny that Job has some powerful arguments and his friends are working from models and ideas that are even older than the book itself. However, there is still much wisdom that we can glean from this book for today's Western culture.

The Book of Job is part of the wisdom tradition found in the Scriptures because it gives us a dialogue with a unique moral dilemma. Job begins the book as a Patriarch, a leader not only in his own household, but a man who was “wealthier than anyone in the East” (Job 1:3). Within two short chapters Job, through no fault of his own, has lost all his belongings, his family, and his health. Job's friends come to sit quietly and mourn with him for seven days and nights. Cursing the day he was born is how Job breaks the silence. His friends try to help him understand what has happened in three very distinct ways. Their first attempt forms a narrative for Job that brings together the past events and seeks to transcend them (chapters 4, 5, 8). They then stress the importance of religious tradition and prayer (chapters 8, 11, 22). The third attempt is to offer Job moral reasons why God is punishing him (chapters 15, 18, 21).

Job rejects all three attempts by his friends to lead him to their way of understanding. Job counters the narrative form by speaking on human existence which narrative alone cannot explain (chapters 7, 4). He spurns the practice of religion and prayer by choosing instead the practice of legal argument (chapters 9, 13, 19, 23). Job also dismisses the moral reasoning that he some how deserves his fate (chapters 21, 22). His friends think that he has also rejected the idea of morality, but that is not the case. Job attempts to bring meaning of what has happened to him by bearing witness to his friends (chapters 29-31).

NARRATIVE

In the last twenty years, narrative has played a large part in pastoral care and pastoral counseling. 4 Narrative is not a simple task of combining stories together, but takes on what Paul Ricoeur calls its figure. This figure brings together all the events involved in a theme and is considered a single issue with meaning and value. 5 Job's friend, Eliphaz, creates a narrative from the hymn in 5:9-16. This hymn ends with, “So there is hope for the wretched; the mouth of wrong doing is stopped,” a message of hope for Job. Eliphaz is telling Job that he will get past this time of woe by looking toward the future. This hymn does not address the reason the lowly are lowly or what caused the dejected to need victory. Eliphaz also does not seem to be interested in how Job ended up being in these circumstances, because his form of narrative is focused on the future. Job's friends are trying to ease his pain by providing part of Job's narrative for him so he can see beyond his present state of being. This narrative has gone beyond its normal ability to make meaning and goes into the realm of storytelling that is full of the negative tones of telling a tale. 6

Job does not respond with only a denial of human narrative, but a challenge to human existence itself. Job questions his friends' representation of time. They present a narrative that is open-ended in order to give Job hope for the future, but Job does not see hope because he is focused on the here-and-now. Job presents human existence without hope through his language of life as a time of servitude (7:1-10). He tells of a human existence with extreme limits. His narrative does not draw on a distance future, but only on a day-to-day existence. Even when one reaches something that is hoped for (rest at the end of the day), it is perverted by the nagging thoughts of having to do it all over again (7:4). He compares life to a weaver's shuttle that will eventually run out of thread (7:6). It is a thread that is no different in the end as it was in the beginning. 7

Job also rejects his friend's narrative because of difference in opinion to the effect of time on the body. For Eliphaz, time allows the injured body to recover (4:3-4) and for Bildad time allows an uprooted plant to spring to life again (8:19). To Job, time is one more thing that causes pain. This is found in his image of the poisoned arrow leaching poison into the body over time and worms that feed on broken flesh (7:5). Job is in the time of here-and-now while his friends are in the time of the future. Job's point is that there is no future, thus no hope, if he cannot survive the here-and-now. Job's hope is not for a future without pain, but for a quick death which would end his pain now (7:8). 8

Job counters the narrative of a future with hope with the suffering of the here-and-now. Job has a deep and grievous wound that a futuristic hope cannot mend. He has not released his hold on his experience to try and grasp something that may be out there in the future. The future is something that is hard to grasp and to let go of the here-and-now may leave Job with nothing to hang onto at all.

Focusing on experience is something we tend to do well in the postmodern West. People today “are inclined to regard their own experiences as superior to the accounts of others, and the truths found through self-discovery as having greater relevance to them than those handed down by way of creed or custom.” 9 Job's friends try to tell him what they would do if they found themselves in his place. Eliphaz tells Job, “I would resort to God; I would lay my case before God” (5:8). Bildad tells him, “. . . Seek God and supplicate the Almighty, if you are blameless and upright, He will protect you and grant well-being to your righteous home” (8:5-6). Zophar's experience leads him to tell Job, “Is a multitude of words unanswerable? . . .If you direct your mind and spread forth your hands toward [God] - If there is iniquity with you remove it, and do not let injustice reside in your tent - Then free of blemish, you will hold your head high” (11:1,13-15).

Job does not see things the same way as his friends. He is embedded in his own experience. He sees little hope in God now because of his blameless and upright nature before turmoil came upon him. Job has experienced evidence of God's power and sees it against him (9:2-4, 10:1-22). Job does not claim God is powerless, but he is trying to claim his own power by maintaining his integrity:

By God who has deprived me of justice! By Shaddai who has embittered my life! As long as there is life in me, and God's breath is in my nostrils, my lips will speak no wrong, nor my tongue utter deceit. Far be it from me to say you are right; until I die I will maintain my integrity. I persist in my righteousness and will not yield; I shall be free of reproach as long as I live. (Job 27:2-6)

Eliphaz, Zophar and Bildad are involved in a theological discussion with Job. The three friends, coming out of what they know about their faith, defend God whereas Job questions God due to his personal experience with God. Job questions God, yet he still has a desire to be in a relationship with God. Therefore, through Job and his friends, we can come to terms with his tough questions about God and listen for the answer with Job.

RELIGIOUS TRADITION

Eliphaz, Zophar and Bildad engage Job with a narrative of hope that draws on the practices of piety and the consequences of piety and impiety. Their attempt to engage Job is based in a moral view of the world with God as a judge distributing reward and punishment in accord with the acts of each person in each household (chapter 4). His friends give him advice to seek God through prayer and religious practices. In chapter 22 Eliphaz gives a list of actions, which bring God's punishment, ending it with a call to seek God. “Be close to [God] and wholehearted; Good things will come to you thereby” (22:21). The friends do not only offer a narrative of hope but a narrative embedded into religious tradition. The purpose of the practices found in religious tradition is to enable transcendence. With the list of impious acts that could bring about God's punishment, there is always an offer of what can turn God's punishment away - prayer and religious practice. 1 0

The friends urge Job toward the prayers and practices of religious tradition by sharing what they would do if in Job's place. “I would resort to God; I would lay my case before God” (5:8), “If you seek God and supplicate the Almighty, if you are blameless and upright, He will protect you” (8:5). There are examples in chapters 11 and 22 where they give Job suggestions on how to pray and how to hold oneself during prayer and worship. Elie Wiesel echoed these ideas of how to prepare oneself for prayer when he spoke of the Tefillah and how one should prepare before hand. Once one achieves focus, then prayer can begin. 1 1 Zophar encourages Job to examine himself to make sure he is without blemish, (m'uwm) , before presenting himself to God (chapter 11). The word Zophar uses for blemish is the same word that Scripture uses to describe animals that are not fit for sacrifice to God. 1 2

Job spurns his friends' endeavors to lead him into seeking God through traditional religious practices. On the surface it would appear that Job is rejecting prayer. However, it is not prayer but the friends' ideal of what prayer should be that Job rejects. Carol Newsom explains that traditional prayer for Job and his friends would refer to the body as a place for God to work. There are Psalms that describe this type of prayer such as Psalm 38 and 139. Job attempts to give meaning to his suffering by examining how God has affected his body (10:8-12). Job gives this type of prayer new meaning which is a little unsettling. Newsom goes on to state that Job gives prayer that invites Godly examination with a different twist. Job sees himself as a target for examination not as a human, but as a hunted animal (7:20). 1 3 For Job, the practice of religion becomes an act of violence aimed at him. He brings this image of being targeted out more clearly in chapter 16.

Envisioning a different practice to the one his friends have given him, Job turns to legal language. The language used in a legal dispute is different from that used in the prayers of the Psalms. A legal case is to be devoid of the person, and the body, and is to be unattached to emotion.

Today again my complaint is bitter; my strength is spent on account of my groaning. Would that I know how to reach [God], how to get to his dwelling-place. I would set out my case before Him and fill my mouth with arguments. I would learn what answers He has for me and know how he would reply to me. Would he contend with me overbearingly? Surely He would not accuse me! There the upright would be cleared by Him, and I would escape forever from my judge. (23:2-7)

This form of religious practice would rearrange the relationship between God and humans. The friends' form of religious practice and prayer only addresses the surface of the experience. Job's practice of a legal dispute is an exegesis of the experience. The legal exchange with God never becomes fully played-out in Job's mind because he realizes that this is an impossibility. However, through this exegesis of his experience with legal language, Job begins to form his own testimony (23:13-17). Job has become cautious of his friends' worldview of a retributive God. We too must at times question traditional religion for the sake of itself. This does not mean that we are to abandon the practice of religion, but to find new ways of seeking God when the old ways fail us. Job did not get immediate satisfaction from his new practice, but he did begin to receive some insight that the traditional ways could not give him or reveal to him.

PUNISHMENT AND SUFFERING

In chapter 15 Eliphaz shares part of what he believes is the moral order of the world, including the idea that it is the wicked who create wickedness and that the wicked receive what they deserve. Bildad compares the punishment of the wicked to the events of Job's misfortune in chapter 18. Then in chapter 20, Zophar is compelled to tell what he sees as the truth by explaining that the “joy of the wicked has been brief” (20:5). They are comparing what has happened to Job with how the wicked are punished, thereby implying that Job is one of the wicked. Job counters their reasoning in chapter 21 with his own version of the truth. Job denies that the wicked are regularly punished by stating that catastrophe - such as he has endured - rarely visits the wicked. Job also points out that punishment is often random and that a wicked person who is not punished in life is often honored in death. Job ends this speech with accusing his friends of offering him empty consolation. He is challenging his friends' moral view of the world.

Eliphaz then outrightly accuses Job of doing wicked things. From Eliphaz's perspective, Job may not have actually done these things, but he has committed just as wicked an act by denying the three friends' world view of morality, therefore deserving to suffer. 1 4 Job seems to have lost his bearings and begins crying out to be accountable to someone with authority (31:35-40). He has taken no solace from his suffering and no comfort from his friends. He wishes to give his account to someone else. This action by Job indicates his understanding that being moral cannot be a solitary act; it must take place among others, among a community. 1 5

René Girard writes in his book, Job: The Victim of His People , that the community plays a major role in Job's suffering. Girard states that the cause of Job's suffering is “not divine, satanic nor physical, but merely human.” 1 6 Girard goes on to say that he sees Job as a scapegoat or in other words “the innocent party who polarizes a universal hatred, which is precisely the complaint of Job.” 1 7

Job realizes how much he has suffered when there is no one who truly understands his fate. He has not suffered because of his wickedness and has not been given a good reason as to why he has suffered. Job wishes for the days “when I was in my prime, when God's company graced my tent” (29: 4). Job, like many postmodern Westerners, is trying to make sense of how his faith could have turned against him, how his goodness could be answered with such a fate (chapter 31). Instead of giving in to self-pity, shame and guilt, Job has exhausted himself in a quest for spiritual understanding.

Job can be a model for us in our contemporary search for understanding. Fredric Jameson writes about the postmodern culture and how we are defined more by our misconceptions, misinterpretations and fragmentation than by our comprehension, discernment and unity, or what he calls “psychic fragmentation.” 1 8 Through his book, Jameson writes about the concept that in Western capitalist society truth is simulated or counterfeit and not discovered.

In capitalistic society those who are suffering are often seen as those who will not help themselves. With clichés such as “God helps those who help themselves” and “you reap what you sow” spouted as truth, is it no wonder that those who suffer are seen as victims of their own devices much like his friends saw Job's suffering? Many still think of suffering as punishment from God and prosperity as a reward. And just as Job's friends believed that he was suffering because of past sin, so too do many religious people today believe that is why people suffer. We do not have to look back any further than September 2001 to witness such ideas. Just days after the attack on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, Jerry Falwell was a guest on Pat Robertson's 700 Club : "What we saw on Tuesday," said Falwell, "could be minuscule if in fact God continues to lift the curtain and allow the enemies of America to give us probably what we deserve." Pat Robertson replied with, "Jerry, that's my feeling. I think we've just seen the antechamber to terror. We haven't even begun to see what they can do to the major population." Later Falwell stated, "I really believe that the pagans, and the abortionists, and the feminists, and the gays and lesbians who are actively trying to make that an alternative lifestyle, the ACLU, People for the American Way - all of them who have tried to secularize America - I point the finger in their face and say, you helped this happen" 1 9

Job never bent to the accusations of his friends because he would have seen this as a denial of the truth and a denial of God. His loyalty to God, which leads him to holding onto his integrity, raises him to a higher stage of faith. If he had not held onto his faith, he would not have transcended to what James Fowler identifies as the highest level of faith. Job continued with a faith in God that can be loved, and does love, even though Job tried to hold God accountable for his suffering. 2 0 Job had ample opportunity to deny God, but to leave such suffering in God's hands required an even stronger faith than his friends had.

Although Job never figured out an answer for his suffering, he discovered something much more important. This newly discovered something is that suffering cannot separate one from God. In the presence of God within the tempest, Job was no longer aware of his suffering - he no longer had room for anything but God Almighty. Job may still have been conscious of his suffering but not of the burning questions his suffering had created regarding God. Job realizes that his knowledge of God came about directly through his suffering because it allowed him to focus on God and ask himself, and others, questions about God. 2 1

Then Job answered the LORD: “I know that you can do all things, and that no purpose of yours can be thwarted. ‘Who is this that hides counsel without knowledge?' Therefore I have uttered what I did not understand, things too wonderful for me, which I did not know. ‘Hear, and I will speak; I will question you, and you declare to me.' I had heard of you by the hearing of the ear, but now my eye sees you; therefore I despise myself and repent in dust and ashes.” (Job 42:1-6 NRSV)

Job grew out of the questions not because they were answered, but because he asked them. Job's religion had come about through hearsay, or inheritance. But a faith that comes by hearsay or inheritance is not going to sustain one when the real crisis is experienced. Job did not repent because of any sin against God, nor because his friends said he should repent. Job repented for the things he said out of ignorance about the nature of God.

Job does not find an answer for his suffering even in God's presence. However, he did find an answer that makes the suffering bearable. For Job, his questions no longer need answering because he has moved beyond them, nor does he resign himself to the fact that suffering is his lot in life. He has found peace in the presence of God. 2 2

MESSAGE FOR TODAY

Twenty-five hundred years after the writing of the Book of Job, people are still asking “where is God?” - especially in light of events over the last hundred years. There are also the followers of science and technology who point to logical reasons for events that were once thought of as miracles, leaving the claims about God sounding childish. As we begin a new century, we are faced with religion being used not to bring us together, but to divide us. Adherence to God is used not only to strike up debate, but to strike one another.

Those who search for God as Job did will refuse to accept that this is the world God intends. They will not succumb to the idea that humans are only born to perish and that we must submit to the injustices that terrorize us. Like Job, they will take their lives in their hands and insist that although God is not seen, God is committed to us. In the Book of Job, we see God respond to faith that is enacted rather than religiosity that is played out.

Job's fear and hope are two sides of the same coin. His fear is that in his search for God, all Job will find is that the One who unjustly rips his world apart is the completeness of God.

If I go East - He is not there; West - I still do not perceive Him; North - since He is concealed, I do not behold Him; South - He is hidden, and I cannot see Him. (23:8-9)

Job's search for God in chapter 23 leaves him “fainthearted” for he is afraid that God is not there since he cannot perceive God. Job's hope is that he might find God in places that cannot be searched. Job's move from fear to hope is found in his words, “Yet I am not cut off by the darkness; [God] has concealed the thick gloom from me (23:17).

It is not the suffering of Job that gives this book voice in the twenty-first century - it is Job's faithfulness to God regardless of the suffering. The mystery of suffering is not tainted with anything to lessen suffering. Job still does not know why he was suffering, but knows that his faith is what enabled him to endure the suffering. Job realizes his commitment to faith in God is not tied up in the rewards he will reap because of it, but because he is tied up in God's commitment to creation. Job becomes silent as he realizes God's commitment to creation is a commitment to his life.

God comes into Job's life in the form of a tempest, a whirlwind or a storm depending on the translation. The symbolism of this is that God is there in the midst of what seems like chaos. The coming of God onto the scene breaks away from the ordinary wisdom Scriptures where reason and experience are the norms, not revelation. 2 3 God then questions Job pushing him to the limit of his experience and beyond into mystery. Job does not get the answer he thought he was looking for; however, he does get an answer.

Job's way of thinking is disrupted by God without God giving him a new way of thinking. God only offers Job visions of the Behemoth and the Leviathan to consider. God is giving Job images of beasts he may never even have considered in his worldview. Job's thinking and images he used in his speeches came from his experience of being a patriarch, perhaps the most powerful man in the East, certainly the richest. Now he must consider things that are not of his world. Job had cried out in his pain and grief and he ends up with a lesson that changes his way of thinking. His cry had been one informed by his world. He had been isolated from his community. Having nothing left, Job even believes that God has used divine power to degrade him with no cause.

God's speech to Job has much to offer Job and us. Erazim Kohak offers wonderful insight to this speech:

A human alone, surrounded by gleaming surfaces in his artifacts, cannot bear the pain. He [or she] can do that only when grief can disperse, radiate out and be absorbed. [Even] fellow humans and their works, bearing the same burden cannot absorb it . . . To reconcile, that is what the forest does, silent and accepting as if God were present therein, taking the grief unto Himself (sic). When humans no longer think themselves alone, masters of all the survey, when they discern the humility of their place in the vastness of God's creation, then that creation and its God can share the pain. . . . That is the age-old wisdom of the Book of Job. . . . When God speaks . . . [God] speaks not of pain but of vastness of the creation, of the gazelle in her mountain fastness and the mighty creature of the deep sea. God is not avoiding the issue. [God] is teaching Job the wisdom of bearing pain that can neither be avoided nor abolished but can be shared when there is a whole living creation to absorb it. . . .When the human in the solitude of the dusk, surrenders his [or her] pride of place and learns to bear the shared pain, he [or she] can begin to understand the pain that cannot be avoided as a gift which teaches compassion and opens understanding. . . . It opens him [or her] to receive, in empathy, the gift of the other, not in censure but in gratitude and love. 2 4

As Kohak put it so well, is what God's speech offers Job and us. God's words move Job to say in 42:6, “I am comforted concerning dust and ashes.” Or in other words, I am comfortable with my finite humanity. 2 5

At the end of the Book of Job, one cannot help but ask if more questions are raised than answered. God's response to Job does not answer the charges Job made nor does it really answer his questions. What is important is that God's last speech is addressed not to Job but to the three friends. He is “incensed” at the friends for not speaking the truth about God (42:7). Not speaking the truth has more to do with presenting a negative example of debate than with what they said about God. This form of debate highlights the need of a mutual dialogue among people that encourages respect for all those in the conversation. Even after the debate is over, Job does not hold his victory over the heads of his friends - he prays for them.

We can also use the character of Job to help us bring revelation into our own lives. In Job we can see both the victim and the victor. Job's transcendence invites us to see beyond ourselves while we see some of ourselves within Job. Job does not turn on the community that mocked him, but accepts their gifts. From Job's ordeal we can learn that we should not turn our backs on the victims of the world. 2 6

We should also take from the Book of Job the knowledge that it is God's trust in Job that allows the adversary to challenge Job, and us, with obstacles. God's proof against the adversary was someone who had the most to lose in the entire East. Newsom's article “The Moral Sense of Nature: Ethics in the Light of God's Speech to Job” begins with her asking how did Job live out his days after the events of the Book of Job. By the end of the article Newsom points out that Job went beyond his culture's norms and gave his daughters an inheritance, thereby allowing them to be more independent in a patriarchal world. 2 7

Job was following some higher moral than the social norms of his days after his encounter with God. Job's actions in the last chapter are all the more meaningful due to the absence of the adversary for the rest of his life.

1 Unless otherwise noted, English translation of all scriptures is taken from the Jewish Publication Society 1985 version of the Tanakh . Also, a chapter and verse references to scripture will be in the Book of Job unless otherwise noted.

2 James L. Crenshaw, “Job: Introduction,” in The HarperCollins Study Bible , ed. Wayne A. Meeks (New York: HarperCollins 1993), 750-751.

3 Newsom, Carol A, The Book of Job: Introduction, Commentary, and Reflections, in The New Interpreter's Bible, Volume 4 (Nashville: Abingdon Press 1998), 373.

4 One example of this is Woon San Sohn, Telling and Retelling Life Stories: A Narrative Approach to Pastoral Care (Nashville: Vanderbilt University, 1990).

5 Paul Ricoeur, Time and Narrative , translated by Kathleen McLaughlin and David Pellauer (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984), 66.

6 Newsom, The Book of Job, 374-385.

7 Newsom, The Book of Job, 393-394, 396-398

8 Ibid.

9 Ralph C Roof, Generation of Seekers: Spiritual Journeys of the Baby Boom Generation (New York: HarperCollins, 1993), 67.

10 Newsom, The Book of Job, 499-504.

11 Elie Wiesel, Class lecture, “The Lit. of Memory: The Fictional Works of Elie Wiesel,” (Boston: Boston University School of Theology, 2000).

12 Newsom, The Book of Job, 421-422.

13 Ibid., 411-413.

14 Newsom, The Book of Job, 500-501.

15 Ibid., 555-558.

16 René Girard, Job: The Victim of His People , trans. Yvonne Freccero (Stanford: Standford University Press, 1987), 3.

17 Ibid., 5.

18 Fredric Jameson, Postmodernism, or the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1995), 89-91.

19 As reported by Weekend Edition on National Public Radio, September 15, 2001.

20 James W. Fowler, Stages of Faith: The Psych of Human Development and the Quest for Meaning, (San Francisco: HarperCollins, 1995), 199-204.

21 Newsom, Book of Job, 627-629.

22 Ibid., 629-633.

23 Dermot Cox, “Structure and Function of the Final Challenge: Job 29-31,” Proceedings of the Irish Biblical Association 5 (1981): 65.

24 Erazim Kohak, The Embers and the Stars: A Philosophical Inquiry into the Moral Sense of Nature , (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984), 45-46; quoted in Carol A. Newsom, “The Moral Sense of Nature: Ethics in the Light of God's Speech to Job,” Princeton Seminary Bulletin , 26, v.15, n.1.

25 Carol A. Newsom's translation of the verse in, Carol A. Newsom, “The Moral Sense of Nature: Ethics in the Light of God's Speech to Job,” Princeton Seminary Bulletin , 26, v.15, n.1.

26 Harold M. Schulweis, “Karl Barth's Job,” Jewish Quarterly Review, 157, v.65.

•  Ibid., 9, 27.

Bibliography

Cox, Dermot. “Structure and Function of the Final Challenge: Job 29-31” Proceedings of the Irish Biblical Association 5 (1981).

Crenshaw, James L. “Job: Introduction.” In The HarperCollins Study Bible , ed. Wayne A. Meeks, 749-751. New York: HarperCollins, 1993.

Fowler, James W., Stages of Faith: The Psych of Human Development and the Quest for Meaning. San Francisco: HarperCollins, 1995.

Girard, René. Job: The Victim of His People . Translated by. Yvonne Freccero. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1987.

Jameson, Fredric. Postmodernism, or the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism . Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1995.

Kohak, Erazim. The Embers and the Stars: A Philosophical Inquiry into the Moral Sense of Nature . Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984, 45-46. Quoted in Carol A. Newsom, “The Moral Sense of Nature: Ethics in the Light of God's Speech to Job,” Princeton Seminary Bulletin , 26, 15, n.1.

National Public Radio. Weekend Edition. September 15, 2001.

Newsom, Carol A. “The Book of Job: Introduction, Commentary, and Reflections.” In The New Interpreter's Bible, Volume 4. Available on CD-Rom, disk seven of the electronic edition. Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1998.

“The Moral Sense of Nature: Ethics in the Light of God's Speech to Job,” Princeton Seminary Bulletin , v.15, n.1.

Ricoeur, Paul. Time and Narrative. Translated by Kathleen McLaughlin and David Pellauer. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984.

Roof, Ralph C. Generation of Seekers: Spiritual Journeys of the Baby Boom Generation. New York: HarperCollins, 1993.

Wiesel, Elie. Class lecture, “The Lit. of Memory: The Fictional Works of Elie Wiesel.” Boston: Boston University School of Theology, 2000.

Woon San Sohn. Telling and Retelling Life Stories: A Narrative Approach to Pastoral Care. Nashville: Vanderbilt University, 1990.

Robert L. Lewis, Jr. is the Assistant for Spiritual Programs at Boston University School of Theology where he is completely his studies for a Doctor of Theology (Th.D.) in practical theology and previously received a Masters in Sacred Theology (S.T.M.) in Church and Society. Robert is a priest in the Apostolic Catholic Orthodox Church (also known as the North American Old Catholic Church) where he is the Ecumencial and Interfaith Affairs Officer. Robert is currently the Ecumenical Pastor-in-Residence at Zion Church and the Theologian-in-Residence at the Loring Community Center in Plymouth, MA. He is also an active member of the Plymouth Interfaith Clergy Association where he is greatly involved with fair treatment of children and youth in regards to their religious background and practices.