I have recently been attending a Zoom discussion group at St. Paul’s Anglican Cathedral in London, Ontario which is using lectures by Northrop Frye on the Bible as Literature. The lectures can be found here https://heritage.utoronto.ca/content/video/bible-and-english-literature-northrop-frye-full-lecture-1, and I highly recommend them. Northrop Frye was a great literary critic who explored the impact of the Christian bible on Western Art and literature in his works, The Great Code and Words of Power. The group is using video of his lectures at the University of Toronto in the early 1980’s in the discussion.
The current lectures are on the Book of Job in the
Christian Old Testament. The Book of Job describes the account of a man,
Job, who is the subject of a bet between God and Satan to see if Job, a man
who, “was blameless and upright, one who feared God and turned away from evil,”
can be turned from loving God. Satan bets that if everything that
Job possesses is taken away from him, he will curse God. Satan is, in
effect, betting that Job is just a fair-weather friend to God. With the
agreement of God, Satan is allowed to take everything away from Job, his vast
possession and his children. The only caveat is that Satan must not harm
Job physically, “Very well, all that he has is in your power; only do not
stretch out your hand against him!” Even this condition is renegotiated
and God gives Satan permission to attack Job’s health and he is, “inflicted
loathsome sores on Job from the sole of his foot to the crown of his head.”
After a debate with friends who seem to embody the
expression, ‘with friends like these, who needs enemies’, Job demands and
receives an opportunity to appear before God and demand the justification for
what has happened to him. God does not answer Job directly but justifies
himself by declaring that Job, in effect, has no right to question him as Job
was not present when God created the world:
Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth?
Tell me, if you have understanding.
Who determined its measurements—surely you know!
God seems to come off looking like a bully and a
tyrant – at least at first glance – and this has been the debate among
theologians and biblical scholars probably since it became part of the canon of
scripture. However, engaging with the scripture as part of the study group I
have seen another possibility. Frye gave me an appreciation of the
meaning of property. He noted that it means what is proper to a
person. Drawing on this, I believe that the Book of Job can be understood
as an exploration of what it means to be a human being in its essence.
What is being demonstrated by the author of the Book, is what it means to be a
human being. Is the essence of a person the things which the world
identifies with that person – his or her job, his or her possessions, his or
her achievements? Or does the fact that humans are created in the image
of God the essence of how the person is? Humans will identify with the
image they present to the world. Carl Jung calls this their
persona. If that is taken away, they are in danger of losing the
identity, their self-image. Job had all that made him valued to his
world. Even his wife told him to “curse God, an die.” However, he
showed himself to be true to whom he was in his essence. This was the
trial of Job in which he was found to be not guilty.
I do not know if I would pass the trials of Job but
I might just take the advice of Job’s wife. I hope that I will never have
to face trials anything like Job’s. I know that my journey has been an
attempt to find out who I am in my essence.
I hope that you are blessed on your journey to find
the essence of who you are.
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