The Narration/ The Author
The narration of Job was either (a) a Mesopotamian unparalleled human endeavor which ordered key characters to express a consistent/non-contradicting Theology (probably devised by Sumerian or Babylonian Scribes using a historical reference ) (b) a historical character with both divine and mortal participants (c ) ‘divinely inspired’-i.e., A God which governed all the actions of the above mentioned (d ) all the above guided by a singular acting metaphysical Author which extended Itself into *the Story* (both Proto-Biblical for ALL of humankind to learn true Sovereignty and a facet of a coming Messiah/ the TRUE relationship between God and ‘the Satan’/ Devil)
Countering Culturally Trending Jewish and Christian beliefs
If we assume option ‘d’ under our previous heading we can continue through the *reason* of ‘the story’— (Greek: ‘istorein- ‘the inquiry (of finding the answer)’/ ‘history’/ “story (following the path to the ‘truth’ – {proto indo european zero grade etymology: ‘dr’ – ‘tree’ – ‘truth’ – ‘root, stem, and branches’}).
In this most early of stories, Job’s Theology exemplifies the non-dualistic nature of God-which carries through the Pauline, Augustinian, Calvinist, Protestant doctrines that deny ‘rogue agency’ or ‘free will (as ill-defined in the western sense in the cocktail, “free” and “will” {see my “Anatomy of the Will” lectures on this site})’. It is in the discourses of Job’s 3 friends who ‘encourage’ – yet, condemn Job through their own hidden fallible beliefs (‘cultural theology’) within dualism, free will, and retributive action.
Amazingly, the very beliefs of ‘rogue-agency-free-will’; retributive actions, dualism (God vs. the Devil/ You vs God/ You vs the Devil’) ARE the by-products of the pagan gods of allotments, fortune, fertility goddesses, Djinns, Jeanies, Demons, etc. that were worshipped in Mesopotamia. We especially find these ‘fortunata’, ‘fates’, Parcae, Morai, i.e., > ‘allotment’ gods/ goddesses in Job’s wife’s belief system. She denotes her ‘theology’ in her query to Job, “Do you maintain your integrity? Curse God and die”. Job, in kind, responds to his wife by denoting his Theology: “You talk like a foolish woman, Shall we accept good from God and not accept *CALAMITY (not ‘evil’)*? I will take license here to say, Job calls the doctrine of fortunes, “foolish”.
How many Preachers, Ministers, Rabbis, Buddhists, etc tell us that God would never bring ‘calamity’ into your life?
Dispelling of Dualism, Free Will, Retributive Nature
The Theological Narration of Job exhibits Satan as a mere ‘mechanism’ used in buffeting Job. This ‘mechanism’ is the ‘machination’ or the Greek: ‘ethos’–’the hand; handle; Latin: manus-manipulation by which *a nature* works and finally, the “yod” or “hand” – the realm of one’s talent.
The hand of ‘calamity’ is the Hand of God, but not “God”. I believe that the appellate to ‘the Hand of God’ is named, “The Satan”. It’s the only justifiable approach to the book of Job when we no longer see “The Satan” as being the agent of destruction, rather, it was God, and righteously said that God was the “destroying agent” – Job 1:21, 22.
We see in Job 1:6 either the ‘sons of the elohim’ -Hebrew: “bene -ha-Elohim” as being God’s following Sons, or, i belief do to the Hebrew’s verbal Hitpael usage, “the sons of the gods (fallen angels) with Satan in their Midst” –or camp.
Still, dispelling ‘dualism’ or ‘two forces fighting to win over the other, *The Story* or *The Narration* of the book Job is setting us up for a metaphysical effect using humanistic literary devices.
We see this same ‘calamity’ brought by the agreement of the ‘elohiym’ under YHVH-God in Genesis 11:7. We see YHVH having an intercommunal conversation within His *elohiym* or “council” as ONE “God”, i.e., this time, for literary, historical and Theological implications, a *unification* with His council (for this second, seemingly adversus to Job’s “bene-ha-elohiym”). The “unified-elohiym with YHVH said as ONE, “Let US go come down and *confuse (Hephaits)* the wholesome language ( this ‘language’ in Shinar would most definitely have been: Eme-gir/ Sumer- “wholeness speech/ perfect speech/ good speech/ speech from its natural surrounding in natural flow {cf. my work on “The Anatomy of the Will” concerning Plato’s “Cratylus” in reference to ‘perfect speech’ or ‘natural etymologies’})”. But, what happened here? A destructive nature of God’s “elohiym” did take place. A destruction of a language’s cohesion and a beginning of new border lines/ boundary lines-i.e., countries, which mean, “lip, law, language, boundary, isolation, etc”. Is this not the work of the ‘council of the elohiym with YHVH as the ultimate Elohiym?
Going back to the story of Job, we see a “unification” of the gaggle of “shaitans” or “satans” against God-YHVH. Their obvious spokes-being was, “The Satan” (Job 1:7). We see such ‘sons of the elohiym’ or ‘fallen angels {Hebrew: “NPHL”} -’ and Leader as the ones who carry out the *plan*, Council, or Will of the Highest command.There is indeed an Interesting time and placement play here: if these were only the ‘sons of the angels {elohiym}’ who, seemingly themselves, plotted against YHVH–then, the ‘elohiym’-or ‘council’ against God (beney-ha-elohim -le-hith-yatsav-al YHVH) was only a mere response to the HIGHEST ‘council’ that originally ‘stood against ((LE HITH YATSAV)) YHVH. The consistency of this Theology remains, once again, in the STORY of Job.
Let’s return to a simple maxim found in Isaiah 45:7: It is God who brings “GOOD” AND ‘CALAMITY” (not ‘evil’ {see my article on “evil” on this site/ fomcm.com }). Therefore, the excitement, tension, meaning, reprise, Authorship, Genius within the STORY OF JOB resides entirely from, with, by, in, …YHVH…or, “EYEH” = “the Verb that IS and Causes ALL things to happen at HIS WILL. It is in the placements of ‘time’ that the ‘drama or reeling out’ give us meaning. God plays both sides of the Chess game. God created the Board for law, the pieces for understanding the ‘degrees’ of movement within the law, BUT, the movements upon the pieces within the law by the MEANINGFUL MASTER OF INTENTION.
With the above paragraph labelled, “number 1”, we see the ‘events’ of time and placement “figuration” and “participation” for the STORY’s sake–that is, for us living in time or temporality. With paragraph number 2, we see the ‘compression’ of time and placement into infinite reduction, i.e., “IT IS FINISHED”, ALREADY DONE, OVER, –prior to time. This “Infinitely reduced” or “infinitely compressed” expression of time, matter and meaning was preordained for us to see ‘Beauty’ in Time….if you will, as the gods could have never seen it in infinity. Furthering this notion: this means that all feeling, love, joy, meaning of relation, sadness, happiness would indeed be ‘energies’ or ‘energies that be’ that were all Preordained. What if I said, “we are infinitely bound to infinite possibilities on the strings of an Eternal God and adversus, —To be in Hell would be to infinitely be bound to an infinite reduction of limitation, …”Limitation” not as a “Force” or “Deity”, but, an infinitely becoming nothingness.
This “will” or “council” sets forth to destroy all of the ALLOTMENTS of this world that Job was given, just sparing his life. When did you ever call an ‘incident’ evil, yet, later on said that it was ‘God’s will’ that I came to ‘this place’ in my life because of all of the ‘calamity’ that ‘befell’ me. Hmmmmmm…
It is in the authority of the story of Job that we can define the term, “elohiym”. For, “elohiym” is the exact equivalent to the Greek gods’ council called the “BOULE”–which means, “WILL, volition, agreement, *shot to the target with full intention: hence, “bullet, ballistics, …and finally, “boulesthai” = ‘the BULL’s eye’ in the Greek’s Archery terminology.
For your references: here are a few of the ‘calamitous’ gods, their weapons and their titles from other religions that I believe carry ‘history’ to some of the Biblical Patriarchs who played the role of ‘destroyer’, ‘confounder’, ‘agitator’, etc. : The “Club of Cush, Hermes, Mercury, Janus, Nebo (the interpreters between Heaven and Hell/ all seen with some type of rod, caducee/ Caduceus, Nechustan, etc )”, Thor and “Hammer of Thor”, Bel the Confounder seen with His “Club of Confounding”–possibly referring to the time of Peleg (“to Break” in Genesis 11) with God-Elohiym and YHVH ‘confounding’ (Hebrew:”hephaitz (cf. to “Hephaistos”)” the “Sepah”, “Shem”, “Dabar” and “Lashon”, etc.. — these are all Deities in the mythological sense that carried “Clubs” which destroyed, scattered, broke, annihilated, etc. cultures, peoples, tongues, nations in the natural world and/or the pantheons containing anthropomorphic deities at the Will of that particular ‘confounding’ Deity.
For an interesting look into a Sumerian composite sketch of the ‘confounding Satan/ Deity/ elohiym/Serpent https://en.m.wikipedia.org/
Going one step further from the draw of these pagan gods back to the Biblical YHVH: Satan is nothing more than God’s Nechustan (or Caduceus, Ningishzida {c.f. Now, let’s return to a more simple way of saying it in my American interpretation for Genesis 50:20: “For what people thought was meant for *evil* – even against God – God meant it for good – and not only that but brought Goodness to pass–out of the intentions of *evil.
Now, let’s look at our very contrasted term, “evil”, which has nothing to do with the term, ‘calamity’. That is, “calamity” holds a ‘fixity’ in the context of “meaning” under a theological/ doctrinal ‘destruction’–that is, under God’s Sovereignty.
“EVIL”, as defined from it’s Germanic and, interestingly enough, it’s Greek origins, means ‘to not fit in the cosmos of a community or ordered thing; to be ugly in the senses of those things which are beautiful; unskilled; inability; without practical application; inapplicable, etc.
So, in brief, the Shakespearian, King James or Jacobian English uses this term from quite a removed sense than that of the American “rogue agency”usage–from whence we have an abberhent sense of God and the Devil in our churches, synagogues, etc. —i.e. a relativistic/ cultural/ memetic nonc- word to attribute “EVIL” as a rogue and random force outside of GOD’s Sovereignty….or worse yet, a GOD who couldn’t handle that kind of “Evil”..therefore, a “LESSER” God.
The proper sense of “evil” that you see in the King James Version has its *English* translation, of Isaiah 45:7- “I form the light, and create darkness, I make peace and create EVIL: I the LORD do all these things—does, so interestingly fit it’s Germanic and Greek origin, though, not directly fit the Hebrew as ‘translation’ or ‘interpretation’–again, directly. God does indeed disfigure to fit, to figure into the participation of our Universal Salvation. We ALL participate in God’s Sovereignty whether your mind is fully convinced or not…much like if you believe you are breathing or not.
Let’s make our final approach with a little more gravity:
Let’s make “sense” to our cursed position away from Eden, go into a natural-dualistic mindset and then back again only to destroy such dualistic thinking.
The anatomy of Job’s Theology disallows“free-will” as ‘rogue agency’. The Theological narration of Job abolishes the notion that retributive-action is attributed to God’s nature – that is: *how could God be shocked, amazed, surprised, caught off guard, etc. if HE is the Predeterminate Author -hence, the very definition of “author” in the relationship of his/ her writing of Time, events, physical and metaphysical space?!?
As we will continue to delve into Job’s story, we will find “The Satan” talking initially by himself to God, THEN, through Job’s wife, THEN, “The Satan” finally ‘sifts’ or ‘tests’ the upright heart of Job. This is a mode near that of Jesus and the Satan all throughout Jesus’ ministry. It wasn’t that Jesus needed repenting, rather, His soul was continually tested because conflict is found in creation. Conflict is to be found in nature against spirit in the presence of time, motion, entropy, etc., –not God against another force. This kind of ‘dualism’ IS God’s ‘creation’ with God outside of these turbulences
