The Book of Job
by John F. Thornton
List Price: $9.95
Pages: 96
Format: Paperback
ISBN: 0375700226
Publisher: Vintage
The
Vintage Spiritual Classics Series
The Vintage Spiritual Classics
present the testimony of writers across the centuries who have pondered
the mysterious ways, unfathomable mercies, and deep consolations afforded
by God to those who call upon Him from out of the depths of their lives.
These writers are our companions, even our champions, in a common effort
to discern the meaning of God in personal experience.
"God is our home but many
of us have strayed from our native land. The venerable authors of these
Spiritual Classics are expert guides--may we follow their directions
home."
--Archbishop Desmond Tutu
The questions, discussion
topics, and background information that follow are designed to enhance
your group's reading of the six works that make up the first series in
Vintage Spiritual Classics. We hope they will provide you with a variety
of ways of thinking and talking about these ancient and important texts.
We offer this word about the act of reading these spiritual classics.
From the very earliest accounts of monastic practice--dating back to the
fourth century--it is evident that a form of reading called lectio divina
("divine" or "spiritual" reading) was essential to any deliberate spiritual
life. This kind of reading is quite different from that of scanning a
text for useful facts and bits of information, or advancing along an exciting
plot line to a climax in the action. It is, rather, a meditative approach,
by which the reader seeks to taste and savor the beauty and truth of every
phrase and passage. There are four steps in lectio divina: first, to read,
next to meditate, then to rest in the sense of God's nearness, and, ultimately,
to resolve to govern one's actions in the light of new understanding.
This kind of reading is itself an act of prayer. And, indeed, it is in
prayer that God manifests His Presence to us.
The Book of Job, a dramatic poem composed sometime between the seventh
and fifth centuries b.c.e., is concerned with the suffering of the innocent.
It speaks today to the torment of anguish and solitude when the burdens
of our humanity exceed the reach of cure, of palliatives, and of all manner
of sympathetic human intervention. Then, in unexpected and even terrible
ways, God's grace is amazingly given. Job teaches us to recognize and
be open to these divine visitations.
As Cynthia Ozick observes
in her Preface, we approach The Book of Job without the weight of scholarly
knowledge, and "there is something to be said for novice readers who come
to Job's demands and plaints unaccoutered: we will perceive God's world
exactly as Job himself perceives itÉJob's bewilderment will be oursÉ.For
us to be as (philosophically) naked as Job will mean to be naked of bias,
dogma, tradition. It will mean to imagine Job solely as he is set forth
by his own words in his own story."
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1. What current or recurring examples of disaster, cruelty, or loss in history, or in the contemporary news media come to mind most powerfully when you read The Book of Job? What examples of disaster or loss in your own life do you think of? Does your reading of Job's drama shift, change, or deepen your perspective on your life's most awful experiences? On those of history? If so, how?
2. The author of Job makes an effort to frame this highly sophisticated debate with the naive style of a folk tale. How do the opening and closing of Job's story shape your response to its central questions and arguments? Why do you suppose the author chose to make this juxtaposition? Is it because, as Cynthia Ozick suggests, the author intends it to be a timeless or primordial tale?
3. The "patience of Job" was already proverbial by the first century c.e., when it was referred to in the Epistle of James. But is Job a patient man? Doesn't he lose patience with God? How do you understand the personality and character of Job? Is his story meant to teach us patience, or is this an oversimplified reading?
4. How does The Book of Job change your assumptions about the nature of God? We tend to think of God as not only omnipotent but good, just, fatherly. Why does God agree with Satan's urging that Job needs to be tested? Does God laugh at, or ignore, Job's suffering? How should Job react to God's observation that Job is just a minute and insignificant piece of the Creation? Does God's replacement of goods, cattle, and children to Job at the end of the tale justify his having taken them away?
5. Cynthia Ozick, in her Preface to the Vintage edition, states that The Book of Job is "shocking to conventional religion." Why is it so?
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