Hebrew Bible Monographs 24. Scott C. Jones Covenant College Lookout Mountain, Georgia

Transcription

1 RBL 02/2011 Johnson, Timothy Jay Now My Eye Sees You: Unveiling an Apocalyptic Job Hebrew Bible Monographs 24 Sheffield: Sheffield Phoenix, Pp. x Hardcover. $ ISBN Scott C. Jones Covenant College Lookout Mountain, Georgia This book is based on the author s 2004 doctoral dissertation at Marquette University, supervised by John J. Schmitt. In it Johnson argues that the book of Job is a nascent form of apocalyptic that preceded and influenced the flowering of apocalyptic literature between the second century B.C.E. and the first century C.E. The work centers around the problematics of the genre of the book of Job, thought by many to be a collection of genres that results in a super genre that is sui generis. However, Johnson believes this is a content-less formulation (39). His main burden is to dethrone the reigning opinion that Job is wisdom literature and persuade that apocalyptic better fits the book of Job and its reception history. Johnson sets out his method in the introduction. Among others, he discusses Carol Newsom s recent examination of currents in genre theory, particularly the contributions of Bakhtin in considering the social and historical dimensions of genre and of cognitive theory, which speaks of ideal cognitive models (Gestalten) to which texts may belong to greater or lesser degrees. 1 Johnson is of the opinion, however, that these contributions 1. Carol A. Newsom, Spying Out the Land: A Report from Genology, in Seeking Out the Wisdom of the Ancients: Essays Offered to Honor Michael V. Fox on the Occasion of His Sixty-Fifth Birthday (ed. R. Troxel, K. Friebel, and D. Magary; Winona Lake, Ind.: Eisenbrauns, 2005), ; repr. in Roland Boer, ed.,

2 offer little advantage over the work of the SBL Apocalypse Group in 1979, which defined apocalypse by a list of features. 2 Further, he sees binary logic, rather than the Gestalt model s fuzzy logic, as necessary to the enterprise of genre classification. Johnson speaks of instrinsic genre and follows E. D. Hirsch in emphasizing the determinacy of texts and the import of authorial intention in shaping meaning that is genre-bound. In chapters 1 3, Johnson lays out his argument for an apocalyptic Job before he tests that hypothesis with a reading in chapter 4 and summarizes its implications in chapter 5. Chapter 2 reviews various genres for Job. Aside from Job s connection with wisdom literature, Johnson evaluates Job as a dramatized lament, Rechtsleben, Greek tragedy, drama, comedy, parody, polyphonic, and poeticized folktale. It is questionable whether parody, as proposed by Katharine Dell and Bruce Zuckerman, is itself a genre, 3 but this is even more true of polyphonic. Moreover, Carol Newsom s monograph does not offer polyphonic as an overarching genre for Job but as a way of speaking about the conversations between the book s many smaller genres. 4 There are other labels for Job that Johnson could have included, but the most surprising omission was epic, which enjoyed wide currency up through the nineteenth century. 5 The main criterion by which Johnson evaluates these many proposals is their success in accounting for the seemingly disparate literary phenomena contained in Job (38). More particularly, he examines their ability to incorporate perhaps the two most troubling portions of the book: the poem on wisdom in Job 28 and the Elihu speeches in Job In my opinion, using these as sample texts is both helpful and problematic. On the one hand, the widespread view that these passages are secondary may well point to problems with the criteria by which they are regarded as such. It is certainly worthwhile to ask whether another model or method might account for these passages better. On the other hand, Johnson s demand that any overarching genre for the book of Job must account for these passages precludes the Bakhtin and Genre Theory in Biblical Studies (SemeiaSt 63; Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2007), Published in John J. Collins, ed., Semeia 14: Apocalypse: The Morphology of a Genre (Missoula, Mont.: Scholars Press, 1979). 3. Katharine J. Dell, The Book of Job as Sceptical Literature (BZAW 197; Berlin: de Gruyter, 1991); and Bruce K. Zuckerman, Job the Silent: A Study in Historical Counterpoint (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991). 4. Carol A. Newsom, The Book of Job: A Contest of Moral Imaginations (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003). 5. See especially Barbara K. Lewalski, Milton s Brief Epic: The Genre, Meaning, and Art of Paradise Regained (Providence, R.I.: Brown University Press, 1966), On the genre of the book of Job, including a discussion of epic, see Françoise Mies, Le genre littéraire du livre de Job, RB 110 (2003): ; and Markus Witte, Die literarische Gattung des Buches Hiob: Robert Lowth und seine Erben, in Sacred Conjectures: The Context and Legacy of Robert Lowth and Jean Astruc (ed. John Jarick; New York: T&T Clark, 2007),

3 possibility that they could be secondary. He thus cuts off higher criticism with a presupposed interpretive commitment to Job s final form as preserved in the MT (78). Chapter 2 sets out the SBL Apocalypse Group s Master Paradigm in thirteen points and then compares Job with each of these features. He also gives some attention to the work of both Paolo Sacchi and Michael Vines in an attempt to provide some breadth and balance to his definition of apocalyptic. It is clear, however, that he views the Apocalypse Group s Master Paradigm as exemplary, and this paradigm is the centerpiece of comparison. In section 1, on revelatory mediation, Johnson treats Eliphaz s vision (Job 4:17 21), the poem on wisdom in Job 28:1 28, and Yhwh s speeches in Job But as he admits later, the Yhwh speeches are unmediated (50). To draw upon Job 28 as evidence for his point, he must posit that it is an auditory revelation (48) by an unnamed otherworldly being (60), even a royal intermediary (69), to Job. He even suggests that this mediator addresses the reader paranetically in Job 28:28 (62). Not only is this unlikely, but more important, this view contradicts Johnson s commitment to the received text, in which Job, not an otherworldy mediator, is the implied author of this poem, not the recipient. Furthermore, it is God who speaks in Job 28:28, not a mediator, and God addresses Md)h, not the reader. 6 It seems that Johnson has not resolved his thinking on chapter 28, since later he states that Job is speaking in ch. 28 (133). So is it an otherworldy revelation by a mediator to Job or a poem spoken by Job? Several of the arguments in this chapter rest on the claim that his reading is not excluded by the evidence in Job. But that is far from claiming that the data commends it. In other cases, he admits that the passages he draws on do not really contain the elements in the Master Paradigm. The result is too much special pleading and coercion of the data to fit his definition of apocalyptic. This, I think, is an unfortunate by-product of his tendency to treat genre as a static list of formal features rather than a dynamic set of mental categories that must be considered in relation to one another. His comparison of Job with the thematic characteristics of apocalyptic presented by Paolo Sacchi and Klaus Koch, or with the apocalyptic chronoscope (sic; read: chronotope) of Michael Vines does not fare any better. Other portions of Job that Johnson does not treat, however, might have strengthened his argument, such as including the Elihu speeches among the book s revelations. Not only does Elihu claim to be an inspired mediator (32:8, 18), but Theresia Mende and others have shown that his role is in many ways parallel to Daniel in Dan I have written extensively on Job 28 elsewhere: Scott C. Jones, Rumors of Wisdom: Job 28 as Poetry (BZAW 398; Berlin: de Gruyter, 2009). 7. Theresia Mende, Durch Leiden zur Vollendung: Die Elihureden im Buch Ijob (Ijob 32 37) (Trierer Theologische Studien 49; Trier: Paulinus, 1990), ; Newsom, Moral Imaginations, This connection was first noted by Bernhard Duhm, Das Buch Hiob (KHAT 16; Freiburg im Breisgau: Mohr Siebeck, 1897), xi, 159.

4 In chapter 3, Johnson hopes to demonstrate that the evolution of the story of Job clearly evidences knowledge of, and appreciation for, eschatology (77). To do so, he examines the Job tradition beginning with a hypothetical original folktale as proposed by Zuckerman, up through the medieval period. These traditions include, among others, LXX-Job, the Qumran targums, the Testament of Job, the book of James, and even the Apocalypse of Paul. On the whole, Johnson succeeds in showing how the figure of Job and the book of Job were used in apocalyptic contexts throughout Jewish and Christian tradition. But Johnson goes further to argue that each of these sources did so because the book of Job itself (presumably the proto-mt) was apocalyptic. But Job s use in apocalyptic contexts hardly makes MT-Job apocalyptic. Furthermore, it is highly unlikely that these later tradents were as concerned with the original meaning or original genre of the book of Job as Johnson seems to assume. Job itself may certainly have eschatological impulses (104), but these were greatly amplified by much stronger eschatological impulses of the interpretive tradition. In chapter 4 Johnson offers a reading of Job as apocalyptic literature. After laying out his outline of the book, which revolves around a series of three revelations bracketed by the prose tale, he proceeds to move through it, section by section. According to Johnson, Job 1 2 set up a cosmic conflict between God and the satan that plays itself out in the poetic dialogues between Job and his friends. He understands Job 1:11 as the satan s selfimprecation if he does not succeed in getting Job to Krb Yhwh to his face. Thus understood, 1:11 is not a wager between the Satan and God but an abbreviated curse formula whereby the Satan communicates: If Job does not curse [Krb] you to your face, [then may something bad happen to me]. Johnson believes that this reading may explain why the satan is not punished by God in the epilogue: he was already punished by the fulfillment of his self-imprecation (110). According to Johnson, the heavenly scene between God and the satan sets up the theme of the persecution of Job that runs throughout the book, the lingering question thus being whether or not Job will be able to persevere (i.e., not curse God). The beginning of the dialogues introduces the leader of the friends, Eliphaz, who deceptively uses a vision meant solely for him (4:17 21) as a ploy to try to get Job to repent of something he did not do. Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar are thus unwitting allies of the satan who persecute Job by provoking him to curse God openly. According to Johnson, this interpretation of Eliphaz s vision is the key to seeing apocalyptic features in the rest of the dialogues, which are an earthly manifestation of the inaugural cosmic war begun by God and the Satan over Job s faith (118 19). In the second cycle, Johnson views Job 19:25 29 as rudimentary apocalyptic (125), but he simply cites the NRSV, as elsewhere, without discussing the linguistic difficulties of the Hebrew. In Job 26:2, Job rebuts Bildad s attempts to support one who has no power, which Johnson interprets as

5 a reference to Eliphaz. As a whole, the dialogues present friends who appear to be authentic but who actually seek to exploit Job. The revelation that Job receives from an otherworldly mediator in Job 28 (as noted above) revitalizes Job amidst his persecution and enables him to persist in righteousness in Job 29 31, which, according to Johnson, present a hope-filled Job [who] is now ready to die in his own intransigent insistence that he is righteous (142). But Elihu appears in Job 32 37, representing the satan s last attempt to get Job to curse God. Johnson thus interprets Elihu as nothing more than an extension of the Satan (144). In this, he returns to the view of Elihu in T. Job (41:5; 42:3; 43:5) at the turn of the Christian Era. The Yhwh speeches rebuke Elihu as the one who confuses counsel in 38:2 (see 152 on translation) and spare Job from further attacks by the Satan s lieutenants (148). Yhwh does not challenge Job but crowns him as the victor who has persevered (149). Job s confession in 42:5 6 is not an admission of wrongdoing but an acknowledgement that Yhwh s revelation rescued him and gave him apocalyptic insight (155). So rather than cursing God openly, Job blesses God in the end. Johnson s overall reading of the book of Job repeats the perspective in the book of James (5:11) and the Testament of Job by viewing Job as a tale as about perseverance under persecution rather than unjust suffering. But it goes further by claiming that Job s endurance was aided by otherworldly revelation that gave him hope. Very little of this reading of Job strikes me as cogent. Job s testing, like Abraham s and Israel s, is not persecution. There is no indication that the friends are intentionally trying to deceive Job, much less that they are the henchmen of the satan. They may not be right, but, at least at first, they are trying to help Job, not exploit him. In order to read Job 28 as a mediated revelation, Johnson must fabricate a mediator and claim that Job is the addressee, for which there is no evidence. Job hardly presents Job as hope-filled but as one who longs for an ideal past. Whatever one thinks of Elihu, he is no more satanic than any of the other friends, despite the evaluation of the Testament of Job. In my opinion, Elihu attempts to be the mediator Job looks for throughout the dialogues. But Job s imagination of a mediator as his only hope is corrected by an unmediated revelation in Yhwh s storm theophany. A direct encounter with God, not a go-between, is what leads to Job s confession of God s ability to achieve any design, not a claim to have just received apocalyptic insight. In chapter 5 and in the conclusion, Johnson summarizes the main theological points of his presentation and offers some topics for future research. He sees his work as advancing that of Gerhard von Rad, who argued that wisdom, not prophecy, was the parent of apocalyptic. Since von Rad understood Job as wisdom literature, Johnson believes that his apocalyptic Job fits von Rad s paradigm better than von Rad himself imagined. He also suggests reading Job as an exilic parable. He states, It could be that the exiled scribes

6 appropriated the story of the Babylonian Job and created a parable whereby Job represents Israel in exile, and the friends are Israel s tormentors (168). If this were the case, the symbolic values in Johnson s reading would be God = Job = Israel versus the satan = the friends = Israel s exilic tormentors. Johnson s proto-apocalyptic Job emphasizes some aspects of the book that might otherwise receive scant attention. For example, his outline of the book around a series of revelations is helpful, even though I would have included Elihu among these, and not Job 28. His view that Job is an exilic parable of Israel and the nations is also suggestive. The most important contribution is chapter 3, which demonstrates that Job was regularly drawn on in apocalyptic contexts. But in my opinion, Johnson s study falls short of offering a persuasive account of an apocalyptic Job, or even a proto-apocalyptic Job, in the fifth century B.C.E. That Job contains a few features that could be viewed as apocalyptic is only evidence of one ingredient among many in the multigeneric masterpiece that is the book of Job.