Book of Job
Presented on: Tuesday, April 11, 1989
Presented by: Roger Weir
Dead Sea Scrolls
Presentation 2 of 15
The Book of Job
Presented by Roger Weir
Tuesday, April 11, 1989
Transcript:
I noticed during the liturgy last week that the real flat spot still is in the prayer, the sacred poems. The, I think we had six people who made offerings.
**inaudible comment from the room**
Four? Is that how many there were?
**inaudible comment from the room**
And I think that we're not, we're not understanding the process completely. So, the material I think that I would like for us to concentrate on for next week is a very famous poem in The Book of Job. And it's actually referred to in material, scholarly material, as The Poem on the Inaccessibility of Wisdom. And all of you will have some edition of the Bible. And it's chapter 28 of Job and it's verses 1 through 28. So, if you get to Job, chapter 28 verses 1 through 28, which is the whole of, of chapter 28.
Now this Poem on the Inaccessibility of Wisdom is a part of The Book of Job and yet is different from all the rest of The Book of Job. And the current wisdom, scholarly wisdom, about this is that somehow the chapter 28 is by the same author as The Book of Job but a different composition. Which has been inserted and placed in The Book of Job at this position. So that in literary analysis through the words and the phrases and the style and so forth, chapter 20 belongs with The Book of Job and yet it is noticeably out of sync with the movement of The Book of Job. Now the only way to explain this for us to understand here is that this Poem on the Inaccessibility of Wisdom in Job fulfills a like function that the Haiku fulfill in Basho's Narrow Road to the Deep North. Theyre poetic insertions which are different from the text. that the text prepares a setting and that the poems are like a jewel placed in the setting.
Now you have to understand that just as Basho is extremely sophisticated the author of The Book of Job whoever he was extraordinarily sophisticated. It's the most refined book in the Old Testament. It has always held up as one of the greatest of all literary compositions, religious or otherwise, in the world.
The fact that chapter 28 both does and does not belong in The Book of Job is a symbolic key sign for those who can understand, like ourselves. That is to say because of this Poem on the Inaccessibility of Wisdom and its relationship to the text we have to take a look, tonight, at The Book of Job and try to understand and appreciate, does The Book of Job have anything to do with the Essenes? Does it have anything to do with the teacher of righteousness? Does it have anything to do with Jesus? Does it have anything to do with the core developing religious momentum from the 2nd century through the 1st century? 2nd century B.C. through the 1st century A.D. And I think that you'll be in a position to appreciate in another hour just how The Book of Job is really important in this sense.
First let me give you a translation of chapter 28. I'm going to give you a couple of verses from the King James Version just to get you into the tone and then I'm going to shift to the Anchor Bible translation of The Book of Job. It's much more sophisticated. the King James was sophisticated for the 1600s. The Anchor Bible sophisticated for the late 20th Century. And in those 400 years an awful lot has been **inaudible word**.
Here's the opening verses from the King James.
Surely there is a vein for the silver and a place for gold where they find it. Iron is taken out of the earth and brass is molten out of the stone. He set up an end to darkness and searches out all perfection. The stones of darkness and the shadow of death. The flood breaketh out from the inhabitant. Even the waters forgotten of the foot. They are dried up and they are gone away from men. as for the earth, out of it cometh bred. And under it is turned up as it were fire. The stones of it are the place of sapphires and that hath dust of gold. There is a path which no fowl knoweth and which the vultures eye has not seen.
And you'll notice that in the King James Version there's no headline as to the fact that this is a special poem set aside. But notice that the imagery that's carried here is alchemical. all of the imagery even though it has a natural base in terms of the imagery, the use of the imagery is in an alchemical process. Which means that the author is seeking to express a very sophisticated, conscious process. an alchemical process is always a, an indication that there is a conscious process here.
Now here's the translation from the Anchor Bible, which is closer to the original.
There is a smelter for silver. A place where gold is refined. Iron is taken from the dust. Copper is smelted from stone. Man puts an end to darkness. Every recess he searches. Through dark and gloomy rock, he sinks a shaft far from the habitation. Forgotten by the foot of man. suspended remote from men, they sway. The Earth from which comes food below is changed as by fire. Yet stones are the source of sapphire and it's dust contains gold. The path no bird of prey knows. no falcons eye has seen.
Now notice here that even closer the language is that of a process. It's not just a natural imagery but there are specific words. smelter and smelted. Re
uh refined. And men doing actions and so forth. And men digging in places far from habitation. Going underneath. Below there is a fire. And there are stones there. And it's dust contains gold. And all of this is an alchemical imagery. All of this is characteristic of a time when these processes, metallurgical processes, were metaphors for conscious development.
Now when would this have been? When could this have been? We know that before this Poem on the Inaccessibility of Wisdom in Job the earliest use of gold as a spiritual metaphor is in The Wisdom of Solomon. Which we've looked at over the last two years maybe half a dozen times. Which was written in Alexandria. And which was written no earlier than 50 B.C. and probably closer to 20 B.C., if that. There wisdom, The Book the Wisdom of Solomon is no more than one generation from the time of the birth of Jesus. Written in Alexandria.
Now what's curious about this is that The Poem on the Inaccessibility of Wisdom is the earliest indication that we have in any semitic literature of the use of this ruf
metallurgically refined process, alchemical process. echoed only then in The Wisdom of Solomon. And then not for another hundred years until we get to The Hermetic Treatises is there any kind of use of alchemical metaphors for this kind of imagery.
In fact, so rare is it that not until we get to the 3rd century A.D., like with The Visions of Zosimos is it that we have the complete alchemical process given to us in a kind of a conscious symbolic image base. so that this Poem and the Inaccessibility of Wisdom in Job is very, very recent. It's not at all something from say 2000 BC. It's not at all something from 500 B.C.
Now I'll finish the poem for you in this translation so that you can hear the tone. there's a very peculiar tone. This is one of the most elegant of all of the poems in the Old Testament. The proud beasts have not trodden it. no serpent passed over it.
Theyre speaking of the path. Theres a secret path. nothing in nature has ever been on this path.
Now there's an implication here that when man takes this path, he is supernatural. He is no longer limited by the constraints of nature. He is in a different sense. He is supernatural.
He puts his hand to the flint. Overturns mountains at the base. In the rocks he hews out channels. His eye sees every precious thing. The source of the rivers he probes. Brings hidden things to light. But wisdom, where can it be found? Where is the place of understanding? Man knows not its abode. Tis not found in the land of the living.
That is the say natural man does not know this. Natural ordinary man does not know this.
Deep says it is not in me. The sea says not with me. It cannot begot for bullion. Nor can silver be weighed as its price. It cannot be bought for gold of Ophere with precious onyx or sapphire. Gold or glass cannot match it. Nor vessels of fine gold be its barter. Coral or crystal are not to be mentioned. Wisdoms values surpasses rubies. The topaz of Ethiopia cannot equal it. It cannot be bought with pure gold. Wisdom whence does it come? Where is the place of understanding? It is concealed from the eyes of all living. Even hid from the birds of the air. Perdition and death say we have heard a rumor of it. God knows the way to it. He is familiar with its place. When he looked to the ends of the earth. Surveyed all under the heavens. When he allotted weight to the wind. Meted out the waters by measure. When he made a groove for the rain. A path for the thundershower. Then he saw it and appraised it. Discerned and tested it. And he said to man, behold the fear of the Lord, that is wisdom. To turn from evil is understanding.
It is a very subtle poem. And I want you to have the experience of reading this in this kind of a sequence. That is to say before you go to sleep at night, read through chapter 28 of The Book of Job. Read through it and savor in your mind the images that are being given. And then when you put the book down and you lay down to sleep, let those images occur to you. Let them play. Let them swim. and whatever feeling tones. whatever sense of meaning. Wherever you might carry yourself but try not to think about it. Try not to think in a discursive mental way. But try to feel about the images. Try to let the images carry the feeling, and you can do this even with an associative kind of meaning. And then let it be. Let it be foul and go to sleep.
And in the morning when you get up, the first chance you have to think of this. Whatever occurs to you then. Whether it's when you first wake up. Or whether you're walking around and you're fixing some coffee. Or you're fixing some juice. You're starting to brush your teeth. You're finally dressed. You're going out the door. At some point you will think about, you will remember that that's what you did. when that thought comes to you whatever words, whatever thoughts, whatever idea, whatever impression in thought is there, jot that down. Write that down. save that up.
Now if you do this every night for the next week. By the time you come Tuesday night guarantee you that you will have something there. Now this is a, this is a Royal Road process. Its, it's like the proof of this is not that I can say to you what this is but that you yourself in your own practice individually. Will come up with in a comparative sense in a kind of a blind comparative process that would satisfy any kind of scientific criterion of evidence. That there is something in us all. There is a path. There is a working pattern. There's a template in us all which this taps, this technique taps.
Now the first time that Job is ever mentioned in The Old Testament is in Ezekiel. And in Ezekiel, this is a chapter 14 in Ezekiel, he mentions Noah, Job and Daniel as three pillars of honesty among men. The question has come up can man be trusted? the issue is there, is man worth God's attention? And Ezekiel says that with Noah, Job and Daniel in ancient times man showed that he is capable of the ultimate quality of trustworthiness for God. Now the Daniel is without the I. It's Dan-el. Dan-el.
Now we know that if Dan-el. And we know that the prototype, the ancient archaic prototype, for Job was a king Keret. K-e-r-e-t. And we know that Dan-el and King Keret were two of the favorite mythological epics around 2000 B.C. on the coast, the eastern coast, of the Mediterranean. What is today Lebanon. What was at one time Phoenicia. What was Canaan before Phoenicia. And in ancient Cannan before even the time of Abraham the sacred epic of king Keret and the sacred epic of Dan-el, Daniel and Job, were motifs for a place that we found in 1928.
And when the archaeological site was investigated, a Frenchman and a German took the stone tablets, the Cuniform Tablets, that have been found there and subjected it to an analytical process. And within a year had deciphered the language. they assumed that it was an ancient archaic semitic language. And in a peculiarity, one of the things in all semitic languages is that the word for three always has the same kind of three letters. There are no vowels, but the same three consonants occur. There's a kind of a balance. And because of that and various other things they were able to decipher the code. And they found that the name of the ancient city was Ugarit. And we put the vowels in. U-g-a-r-i-t. Ugarit. And that the language now is known as Ugaritic. And that in the Ugaritic language, the ancient Semitic Canaanite language, Job and Daniel were the two-great pillar of examples of how man really **inaudible word** himself. One through suffering and the other through vision. Through suffering and through vision.
Now those themes, the Job and Daniel themes then, had been around for 2,000 years. Were characteristic and were famous at a time of the last great turn of the archetype of self. When the divine king manifestation of the symbolic self is first **inaudible word** with Sargon. Sargon the Great of Akkad. 2,000 years later when the symbolic self was again changing, those concerns came up again. And Daniel and Job came up again at the same time. It's just like in the time that we're living now. The concerns of Jesus are coming up again.
It isn't that necessarily people are needing to be Christian. It's that they're needing to understand what is happening to it. What is going on in the world. And the turn of the whole pattern shows that the origins are extremely important for this whole cycle. Because the end of the cycle is always commensurate with the beginning. And before there can be a new beginning those first origins have to be expressed completely. The self is, is a perfection expression. And in its perfection is also completeness. And there can be no renewal of the self in its new expression until that which had been in process is fulfilled. Is completed. Only then are the thresholds transparent and we can go on. When there's unfinished business you cannot go on. It's like a law of karma.
And so, the most pressing issue is to finish up the old archetypal business to complete the expression. And at the time of the 2nd century B.C., at the time when Job and Daniel as archetypal themes if primordial man in his capacity to contact God came up again.
Now we know that The Book of Daniel was written around 160 B.C. We have a pretty good idea that the teacher of righteousness was in fact the author. We see it in the language. The methodology. The use of it and everything was consistent with that hypothesis **inaudible word or two**.
Now what about Job, The Book of Job? We see that in Ezekiel there is no mention at all of Job in the sense of The Book of Job. In fact, the first mention of Job at all is in The Wisdom of Ben Sira. And in The Wisdom of Ben Sira, which we have looked at before. In chapter 49 is the first instance of a mention of Job outside of Ezekiel in The Old Testament.
And it runs like this. This is chapter 49, it's in verse 9. Chapter 49, verse 9 of The Wisdom of Ben Sira. Let me read a little bit before verse 9. Let me start with,
They abandoned the law of the most-high these kings of Judah. Right to the very End. So, he gave over their powers to others with glory to a foreign nation. Who burned the holy city and left its streets desolate. As Jeremiah had foretold for, they had mistreated him. Who even in the womb had been made a prophet to root out pull down and destroy. And then to build and to plant. Ezekiel beheld the vision and described the different creatures of the chariot throne. He also referred to Job who always held fast to the ways of righteousness. Then to the 12 prophets may their bones flourish with new life where they lie.
And still it goes on in this way.
So that again here Job is referred to not in terms of The Book of Job but in terms of the Job mentioned in Ezekiel.
Now we know that the book The Wisdom of Ben Sira was translated in Alexandria in 132 B.C. We know that the translator was the grandson of the author, who lived some 60 years before him. Had written the book some 60 years before him. So that The Wisdom of Ben Sira is written about 190 B.C. Now we know because The Wisdom of Ben Sira was one of the greatest of all of the productions of this time. It was immediately held as a classic of, of the highest Hellenistic Jewish wisdom.
We can see that The Book of Job was probably not extant in 190 B.C. The mention here is just in terms of an illusion in Ezekiel. And had The Book of Job the most elegant of all of The Old Testament books been written by the time its characterization of Job would certainly have carried the day over the illusion, the passing illusion of Ezekiel. We can also see that the translator in 132 B.C., carries on by translating his grandfather's work.
Now sometime after 190 B.C. The Book of Job was composed. The oldest manuscript that we have of The Book of Job was found with the Dead Sea Scroll material. Found in 1956. And what it is, is they found in cave 11 a targum of Job.
Now you may not know what a targum is. I brought here out of the library a targum of Ezekiel. the targum is a translation of a biblical book in, from Hebrew to Aramaic. It can be a translation to almost any language but mostly the targums were translations from the Hebrew to the Aramaic. The targums began to be made around the 2nd century B.C. because the language of the people had changed. they didn't speak Hebrew anymore. it was like Middle English. Aramaic was the language that people spoke and thought in. And conversed in. And read in. And when Hebrew was read out it, even if it could be understood it sounded stilted. Or it was saved for very special kinds of moods. high religious moods. It would be like hearing Shakespeare in the original. And you would do it for effect to get the dramatic effect. But you wouldn't have plays done in Shakespearean English in 1987. The same thing here. So that the targums are translations of the books from Hebrew to Aramaic.
Now in cave 11 at Qumran a targum for Job was found. It's the earliest targum that we have. And what's peculiar is that we have enough of it. You have to understand that most of these scrolls were in fragments. and we have the last sections. The last 10 or 12 chapters of Job in this targum. And it shows that it is quite different from the Jewish text of Job, the Masoretic text which came down from the 1st century A.D. And also, fairly different from the early Christian text.
Now the early Christian text was formalized at the Council of Trent. And they adopted the viewpoint of Saint Jerome who said that Job had been a translated book. And it was difficult to understand and make commentaries on because it was a book in translation.
Now we understand from the Qumran text that in fact The Book of Job ended with verse 11 in the 42nd chapter. The Job that we have in both the Jewish text, the Masoretic text and the Christian texts in the like in the King James Version, goes on for another six verses and ends with verse 17.
Now let me read you the last bit here. This is Job 42nd chapter starting with verse 10. Ill read you verse 10 and 11. And then 12, 13, 14 and, and let it go. Here's verse 10.
And the Lord turned the captivity of Job. And when he prayed for his friends, also the Lord gave Job twice as much as he had before. Then came there unto him all his brethren and all his sisters. And all they that had been of his acquaintance before. That did eat bread with him in his house. And they bemoaned him and comforted him over all the evil that the Lord had brought upon him. Every man also gave him a piece of money. And everyone an earring of gold. So, the Lord blessed the latter end of Job more than his beginning, for he had fourteen thousand sheep and six thousand camels. And a thousand yoke of oxen. and thousand she-asses. He also had seven sons and three daughters.
Etc. etc. and it ends, So Job died being old and full of days.
The book here as passed on in the Jewish and the Christian tradition makes Job end with a kind of a comforting homiletic. But in the Dead Sea scroll in the Quamrun man cave 11 The Book of Job has a totally different ending.
This is the direct translation of The Dead Sea Scrolls hearken of Job.
And God hearkened to the voice of Job and forgave them their sins on his account. And God turned to Job with mercy and he gave him double for all he had. And they came to Job all his friends and all his brothers and acquaintances. And ate with him food in his house. And consoled him for all the misfortune which God had brought on him. And each gave him a lamb. and each a ring of gold.
Now it ends not with the homily that he lived happily ever after but with the poignant symbolic image of Job being given a ring of gold from everyone that he sees. The lamb, a lamb and a ring of gold. A lamb is a sacrificial symbol and a ring of gold a consummation symbol. A lamb is a mythic image of striving towards the self. A ring of gold is the accomplishment of the self-brought into life.
We use a ring of gold in our time as a symbol for marriage. For a marriage, a physical marriage. It is traditionally a symbol of a spiritual marriage. But its traditionally a symbol of the marriage of the two elements within oneself. Is the alchemical symbol in nature when one would refine it one would have a drop of gold left in the cauldron. But a ring of gold means that man has worked on that gold and fashioned it opened. So, it becomes symbolic of a self. it's symbolic of consciousness. Everyone that Job sees now he is both a lamb and a ring of gold. He sees in this way.
So, in the Qumran material we can see in The Dead Sea Scroll we can see that The Book of Job indeed is an esoteric book about the process of self-discovery. Of going to the deepest depths of oneself and bringing out of that the material of the contact from God, the gold and fashioning that into a ring.
Now The Book of Job in its original in The Dead Sea Scroll targum of Job has both Hebrew and Aramaic. And in fact, the traditional Hebrew text of Job has more Aramaic, Aramaic phrases and words than any other book in The Old Testament. So much so that it is impossible to separate the Hebrew from the Aramaic. You cannot translate the Hebrew passages back into Aramaic and then have a completed book. Nor can you translate the Aramaic back into Hebrew and that have a completed book. The Book of Job in terms of language is an amalgam. Or to put it more strongly it's an alloy between the strong Hebrew and the supple Aramaic. So, the language form of The Book of Job is extremely important.
The only other book in The Old Testament that has the same quality is The Book of Daniel. The Book of Daniel is written both in Hebrew and Aramaic. When it was translated into Greek in the Septuagint, the translations from the Greek read back so that one can see that of the original was in Hebrew and Aramaic. The same thing for The Book of Job. Its original language is a, an alloy of Hebrew and Aramaic together.
So that one cannot form an image base in one language. It won't hold. Every image that you have has to be balanced with two distinct languages. Two distinct characters. One a very strict archaic quality and the other a very fluid contemporary quality. It's like bringing fire and iron together. And adding a little bit and one gets a steel. One gets a new man-made superior element. So that the language of Job like the language of Daniel has this kind of a quality.
Now we have we have a number of references. This is the basic theme of the whole Book of Job. And I'm going to paraphrase this little Old Testament guide published in England in 1985 by J.H. Eaton. It's a wonderful little summation here. The poet's theme now rises to its climax. He shows this Job openly facing the universal evil. And yet in his deepest convictions believing in truth. In other words, on the outside one faces apocalyptic evil to the nth degree. Which is held in balance only by an inner perception of truth. So, one has ultimate evil and ultimate good as it were at the very same time. But the ultimate truth is in a point of contact with God. The ultimate evil is that everything, everything else is apocalyptically evil.
Now this kind of a balance, this kind of an opposition oppositorium coniunctionis in psychology produces a very radical effect. It produces the effect of topsy-turvy. of enantiodromia, as you Jung used the heriquitian term. It means that the inner point immediately becomes the outer world. And the outer world collapses and becomes the inner point. It's a complete flip-flop. It happens psychologically in the individual. It's the, for instance is the basis of the realization of tragedy. One faces a tragedy with the inner form of the tragedy intact. And the tragic emotion converts itself into an inner calm. And when the evil is interiorized because it was only sustainable in terms of an illusory world, does not have any sustainability within. When it is interiorized it vanishes. And the inner point of light becomes the vision of the world. Now this is the theme of The Book of Job.
Job's faith appears no longer in the formulas of a well-drilled piety. Rather his faith is evident in his refusal of the attractive but dishonest course advocated by the friends. It is evident in his continuing appeals to God. And it is evident above all in those great resurgences of confidence in his ultimate vindication. Of all that he knows of God the sweet and the bitter. It is the justice and fidelity which will have the last word. Such as the conviction which is rested in blood and tears from his ordeals.
So that we have this kind of a ultimate opposition going on in The Book of Job. It's again like, The Book of Daniel, it's a method. It's a technique. But whereas Daniel was the technique of, of developing the visionary capacity The Book of Job is an instruction book. It's a methodology. It's the technique of maintaining the inner presence in the face of universal evil, universal illusion. Looking for that flip-flop. That change. That radical transformation.
Now The Poem on the Inaccessibility of Wisdom comes at a juncture in The Book of Job where we must be assured that the, that the contact with God is absolutely true. And that there is no natural way to confirm this. that there is nothing in this world that can confirm it. So, The Poem on the Inaccessibility of Wisdom has a complementary function. It reasserts that the point of inner contact is real and asserts that the lack of contact in the world is also real. That both conditions are true. Both happen at the very same time. There is no way to find a correlation using a natural image base any longer. There is only that supernatural interiorization, which is to be trusted.
So that it runs like this, at the end. When he made a groove for the rain. A path for the thundershower. Then he saw it and appraised it. Discerned and tested it. And he said to man, behold the fear of the Lord that is wisdom. The fear of the Lord, that is wisdom. to turn from evil is understanding. To turn from the outer to the inner.
And that fear of the Lord. We live in a time when the fear has been transformed long sense into love. Love the Lord. But before the transformation the classic way in which it was expressed was the fear of the Lord. Because of the work of Jesus, we understand it now is the as the love of the Lord. It means the same thing in this previous archetypal epoch. So that we have in The Book of Job example for ourselves. One of the peculiarities occurs in The Book of the Acts of the Apostles, which was by Saint Luke. Which is the compliment to The Gospel according to Luke.
Well wait. Well wait. I sense something is coming up.
END OF SIDE ONE
There are no references to The Book of Job before the 2nd century B.C. there are no references to The Book of Job. It is the most powerful of all the literary compositions in The Old Testament.
In fact, the rabbinic, early rabbinic tradition, is that somehow Job was written by Moses. So, the, in the early of rabbinic orders for The Old Testament after the five books of Moses: Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy. The sixth book was Job. The Book of Job was assumed to have been by Moses because it was obviously written by someone who had a direct personal contact with God. Who else can this be but Moses?
What happened to the whole Hellenistic Jewish experience? The rabbinic experience threw the Hellenistic Jewish epoch out completely. They took gigantic psychological religious social scissors and they snipped out the whole, the whole epoch of Hellenistic Judaism and threw it out. In fear and revulsion. In hatred. This was done in 90 A.D., a very famous counsel.
Why is this so? It's very peculiar because The Book of Job and the rabbinic relationship to The Book of Job holds a key to it. Now the way to unfold this properly is to go to The Acts of the Apostles by Luke. Luke composed his gospel about 85 A.D. So that The Acts of the Apostles is of contemporary with the Great Council at Jamnia. where all the rabbis came together and said we're not ever again going to have any kinds of experiences like we've gone through. we're going to codify every word in every phrase, every letter. And nothing will ever be changed again because we've only gotten into all this trouble because of it. That was the council of Jamnia in 90 A.D.
So, Luke is writing just before that council. just a few years. Paul is speaking from the steps of the fortress in Jerusalem. Brethren and fathers listen to my defense to you now. When they heard that he spoke to them in Hebrew they calmed down still more. He didn't speak in Aramaic this time. or Latin. or even Greek. But he spoke in Hebrew. He said I am a Jew born in Tarsus in Silesia. Brought up in this city, Jerusalem. Carefully instructed into the law of the fathers at the feet of Gamaliel. and I was zealous for God as all of you are today. I persecuted this way, meaning chris, meaning Christianity before it became an **inaudible word**. Before it became an ism.
I persecuted this way often to the death. by binding both men and women and delivering them to prisons as the high priest also and the whole presbytery here can witness on my behalf. And then he goes on to tell about his experience in the road to Damascus.
He studied under Gamaliel. now there were a couple of priests named Gamaliel. And there was a generation apart. And Gamaliel the first was Paul's teacher. He was not only the teacher, but he was the head of the Jewish Inquisition against the new way of Jesus.
Now in the various Rabbinic books the compendium Rabbinic sayings and stories and so forth, there are two references to Gamaliel will which concern his decision to throw The Book of Job out of con, out of consideration. To throw The Book of Job out of public consideration because it was a dangerous text. Now the, the references to this are far and wide. The Ancient Library of Qumran by Frank Moore Kraus has a reference in here. And gives the two references from The Babylonian Talmud, Shabbat 115 A. and The Jerusalem Talbot, Talmud Shabbat 16 A.
But in tracking this down to try and find a translation of the old Rabbinic sources, I found it finally in The Book of God and Man: A Study of Job by Robert Gordis. Gordis was the Rabbi in New York City at Rockaway Park at the Bethel Congregation. It was the one of the largest congregations in New York City. Several thousands of people. He was the head Rabbi there for thirty years. And at the, towards the end of his life he wrote this book published by the University of Chicago Press. And Gordis in fact, in the very beginning of his work says that he supposes that Job is the Mount Everest of all Jewish scholars.
The truth is that Job is the perennial challenge to every reader in biblical scholar. This Mount Everest of the human spirit continues to defy even the most intrepid and confident of climbers. And it probably will never yield all of its secrets. For every aspect of the book poses problems that each reader and student must solve for himself.
Now Gordis is writing in the beautiful, civilized, humane way but notice what he is saying. That the experience of 2,000 years, Jewish experience, with The Book of Job still yields the fact that every individual reader has to wrestle within himself because the book is written that way. The book will not open itself, will not disclose its structure. It's written pointedly in such a way that there is no way to have a scholarly intellectual decision about its structure. Why is this so? Is it so because it has no structure? Most certainly not. It is so because its structure most pointedly forbids this to happen. The Book of Job is like a colon for scholarly committees. They cannot solve it. It's structure poignantly only opens to the individual tussling with its form. It's made to work only in this way. It's a lock and the only key for it is the individual consciousness working with it. Interiorizing it. One person at a time.
This is exactly as you notice the technique that the therapeutae community will use for prayer. That Jesus will say this is the only way to pray at all. in the great Sermon on the Mount in The Gospel According to Matthew, you pray and the silence of your own heart. Even before you have anything to say, do you not know that God knows what's you need even before you say it. Its the technique. It's the, it's our try and truth path.
Now these are some references in the Rabbinic literature translated by Gordis into English for here. This is footnote number 43 to this chapter, which is chapter 15. Footnote 43 to chapter 15 on page 362 of The book of God and Men. And he gives us the references to The Babylonian Talmud, The Jerusalem Talmud and also a third reference to the Toshefte (sp?). Another con, rabbinic compendium.
All three references are about the same little homiletic story. The passage reveals the ultimate let'emization, legitimization of written Targums achieved not without opposition. Rabbi Josie said, it happened with my father Hollefta who went to visit Rabbani Gamliel, the son of Rabbi Gamaliel in Tiberias.
Tiberias is on the Sea of Galilee. It's the great city. It's the largest city in Galilee. right on the, right under the sea.
He found him sitting at the table of Yallan Hanudsef(sp?). In his hand was The Book of Job in an Aramaic translation which he was reading. I said to him, I remember your grandfather Rabun Gamaliel standing on the slope of the temple mountain. They brought him a copy of a targum of Job and he commanded the builder to place it under the masonry. Thereupon he to, the younger Gamaliel, commanded that the book be stored away and withdrawn from public use. Hidden away in the Ganesa.
In other words, the teacher of Paul the head of the Jewish Inquisition against the new way, specifically took the targum of Job and had it placed, not destroyed, but placed away. How far away? In the masonry of the wall. Why? Because it had been the seed, one of the seeds, one of the beginnings of the whole complication that had ended with the mission of Jesus. And the tremendous travails and times that had come.
There is a direct archetypal line from The Book of Job to Jesus. Just like there's a direct line archetypally from The Book of Daniel to The Book of Revelation. The archetypal figure in The Book of Daniel is the same archetypal figure in The Book of Revelation. the suffering of Job is a direct line to the suffering of Jesus. They work together in this way. Now we did not know until our own time that any of this made sense. came together. Made a pattern.
It would seem that The Book of Job really has a most peculiar place. I want to give you one assessment here. Then we'll call it an evening.
One of the peculiar qualities in The Book of Job is a realization that there is an afterlife. Now this is absolutely not a part of the Jewish tradition. The sense in The Book of Job though is peculiar. It recognizes that there is an afterlife, but that God is somehow eternal. And is peculiarly having nothing to do either with an afterlife, because there's no sense of death belonging in the realm of God at all. So that one of peculiarities of Job is denying the idea of the afterlife. Not in terms of traditional Jewish non-recognition of it but denying it with a twist to say that there is such a thing as eternal life. Which makes the idea of an afterlife a worldly illusion. Now this is a very, very peculiar sophisticated, eloquent doctrine. And The Book of Job has this in it.
I would think that The Book of Job belongs somehow to the 2nd century B.C. comes out about the same time as The Book of Daniel does. Comes out in this Essene community of Qumran. And the fact that we have the earliest version of The Book of Job with the mixed Hebrew and Aramaic there from the cave 11. Now most of the scholars that have looked at this have said that this must have been a translation from some previous kind of text. Because it has all kinds of complications in it which are classically now recognized as distinctive of The Book of Job. But we've seen that the complications, the distinctive complications, are exactly the point of the writing of The Book of Job. And that the complications are all there intact in The Dead Sea Scroll manuscript, make it very close to the original. I can't imagine that The Book of Job is more than a generation older than The Dead Sea Scroll manuscript that we have. All of the complications are there in fact, very powerfully and dramatically there. Even to the extent that the Jewish and the Christian renditions of Job, the Masoretic and the Vulgate the Latin text of The Book of Job is in The Old Testament is called the Vulgate. The Latin Vulgate.
The Vulgate and the Masoretic text watered-down try to gloss over try, to humanize the outcome of The Book of Job. Make it a case that Job has learned his lesson. And through some kind of the blind gift from God he's been put back aright. Whereas The Dead Sea Scroll targum of Job shows originally that it was a technique methodology for going within and discovering exactly what the fine point was. The fine point was the transformation of the inner to the outer. The bringing of the outer within to the vanishing point. and the conversion of evil to good. And that man is the crucible in which God does this work. Man is the crucible of the transformation of a spiritual goal from the worldly **inaudible word**.
His usefulness to God is that he is the only vehicle the others that can make this transformation. Without man the universe would have no way for God to transform it from its natural mundaneness to its internal grandeur. So that man becomes then in Job the suffering servant able to offer himself up as the crucible for God. And in Jesus man becomes the suffering son. It changes from the servant to the son. Who inherits that kingdom because something of the crucible goes into the gold? By the crucible absorbing the dross and releasing the gold, the crucible itself becomes illuminated. And this is the spiritual point of The Book of Job and its place in our ecology.
So, in our book Jesus in Alexandria we're going to have to have a little chapter on The Book of Job to go along with the chapter on The Book of Daniel.
Now I think I didn't wanna hold you up. But when you come to The Book of Job to The Poem on the Inaccessibility of Wisdom. If you have a copy of the Dead Sea Scrolls in English I think in here. I'm using the Pelican version, Vermais**inaudible word**, on page 192, Vermais has numbered this number 15, hymn number 15. And let me just read this for you.
Nothing exists except by thy will. None can consider thy deep secrets. Or contemplate thy mysteries. What then is man? that is Earth. That is shaped from clay. And returns to the dust. That thou should give him to understand such marvels. And make known to him the counsel of thy truth. Clay and dust that I am. what can I devise unless thou wish it? And what contrive, unless thou desire it? What strength shall I have, unless thou keep me upright? And how shall I understand, unless by the spirit which thou has shaped for me?
So just that section. and if you will compare The Poem on the Inaccessibility of Wisdom in Job with this Thanksgiving Hymn from the Teacher of Righteousness in The Dead Sea Scrolls, you'll see that they are constantan. that they, it's not so much that they fit together but they work together. They come from the same community, from the same population. It could well be from the same figure. It may have been that the Teacher of Righteousness also wrote The Book of Job as well as The Book of Daniel and The Thanksgiving Hymns from The Dead Sea Scrolls. He was an extraordinary individual. He was every bit the prototype in the forerunner of Jesus. And it's not impossible that he was that figure. So that's what I have for you tonight. Thank you.
I'm glad that some of you came.
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