Janny Cai | Blogger #2 | 12/09/19
Modern Mythology 2020 - Period 7
Aim: How does the “Book of Job” structuralize and shape Western philosophy?
The Place of Job in the Old Testament -
Job is the first five books commonly referred to as “The Books of Poetry”. These include Job, Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and the Song of Solomon. Called such because they are written in poetic style in contrast to the narrative style of most other books, they are also often referred to as “Wisdom Literature” (especially Job, Proverbs, and Ecclesiastes.) Oswald Chambers (1874 - 1917) offered this concise summary of the five books:
- Job :: How to suffer
- Psalms :: How to pray
- Proverbs :: How to act
- Ecclesiastes :: How to enjoy
- Song of Solomon :: How to love
Now let’s take a look at the Book of Job in particular...
The Book of Job
Discussion -
Billy: WISDOM is the combination of MORAL and KNOWLEDGE. With this, God is able to make decisions, he is able to comprehend things that normal humans can’t.
WHY DO WE SUFFER?
God is in between good and evil, he is the judge and is always just and fair.
Humans are too simple, humans can’t understand God, humans can’t even understand another human being, so how can they make just and fair decisions on that? They can’t, so God decides.
Satan (Our Depiction) versus Satan (Old Testament)
- our depiction: evil, demon, will possess you
- Satan is not a demon, but an opposer of God, archangel
Satan didn’t make anyone do anything, just made everyone question everything.
Classroom analogy -
Teacher -> GOD
That one kid -> SATAN
Everyone else -> 🤔🤔🤔
Math analogy -
You know answer, but you don’t know why answer.
Steven: blindly following God is not true faith, being able to understand why is
Shannon: resurrection of JESUS
Job’s friends thought they knew everything, but they don’t. God made Job suffer, not man. + Job questions.
HOW DO WE SUFFER BECAUSE WE ARE ALL GOING TO ANYWAYS?
Why religion was important in the 1400s.
Religion versus Cult
- religion encourages you to question but ultimately come back to the same answer, because
- cults do not question anything
Iandra: we have to rely on God’s actions even if we don’t understand, we just gotta accept the fact that we don’t understand.
Cornelia: never lose faith, but do question.
IS OUR SUFFERING SIGNIFICANT? ARE WE SIGNIFICANT?
Reflection -
What did I learn? From what I got from today’s lesson and discussion was that, people will suffer, if you are a “good” or “bad” person. Everyone suffers. Also, talking about how there is a higher entity who knows more than mankind and comprehend things that even we don’t know, it’s pretty intimidating. God made everything on the planet and there is so much of it, and everything is so vast that we are barely significant in this huge universe.
Why did I learn it? Well, it is interesting to learn about how people live and why people believe in what they believe in. It’s also nice to learn about this right after the Egyptian Book of the Dead film with all of the similarities they said that the Book of the Dead has with the Old Testament. Learning about the influence of one culture on other cultures and how each culture has similar qualities of another but at the same time, being kept distinct and remaining unique.
How will I use what I learned? There are just somethings we have absolutely no control of in life, and it’s completely no one’s faults. If we stay hopeful about everything and the future, good things will come by eventually. These are some wise words, and they can be useful even in a world where it’s vastly different from the 1400s.
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