Darryl Cooper — Easter Mesage 2 - Confrontation: The Book of Job

Daryl

Speaker 1: Cooper: Hey, everybody. This is Daryl Cooper. This is the Martyr Maid Podcast, and this is a special episode to celebrate Easter here in 2025

Some of you

Speaker 2: probably heard the Easter episode I did a couple

Speaker 3: of years ago. If you haven't, I'll link it in the show

notes

Speaker 3: Or under whatever post happened

Speaker 4: to bring you here. But today I want

to talk

Speaker 4: about the book of Job

Those of you who

Speaker 1: are subscribers to the Martyr Maid sub-stack will be familiar with a lot of the themes and material in this episode. And I'd like to give a quick message to my Bible-believing listeners. I am going

to be

Speaker 1: exploring different ways of thinking about the book of Job. And about God. And about the story told in the Gospels. And I understand

Speaker 5: that makes some people

Speaker 6: reflexively uncomfortable

I

Speaker 7: would just ask you to approach this episode with a generous spirit. I'm going to talk

Speaker 4: about things that I've been working over and struggling with in my mind for years. And I haven't come close to figuring

them out. I'm

Speaker 8: not trying to be your pastor. I'm not claiming to be

and

Speaker 8: authority with some previously undisclosed truth about the Bible

I

Speaker 9: myself don't have

Speaker 5: much certainty about any of the things I'm about to talk

about. I'm

Speaker 5: trying to understand things that have always been very hard for me to wrap my head around, and I'm just going to share some of

Speaker 10: that with you here. So, even if the theology is unorthodox, the last thing I'm trying to do is lead anyone

Speaker 11: astray

or

Speaker 11: to ask anyone to accept my answers to these questions. Since even

Speaker 8: my answers might very well be different by next Easter

So here we go. I'm content to die

Speaker 12: for my beliefs

So cut off my head. And make me a martyr. The people will

Speaker 13: always remember it

Speaker 14: No

They will forget it. Hell

Speaker 15: does exist God is a thought God is an idea It

is a

Speaker 15: place

Speaker 16: It is somewhere Hell does exist

But its

Speaker 17: reference is to something that transcends all thinking

Why must we tear

Speaker 18: ourselves apart for this small question of religion? This

is from an article in

Speaker 19: New York Times, dated

Speaker 8: October 7th, 2018. Schoharie, New York

The

Speaker 8: 17 friends had all piled into a white stretch limousine for what was supposed to have been a birthday celebration at

Speaker 5: an upstate New York brewery

but they never

Speaker 10: reached their destination. The

massive vehicle

Speaker 10: speeding downhill on Saturday, approached the intersection of two highways that residents had long warned was notoriously

Speaker 5: dangerous, and

in just a

Speaker 8: few seconds of terror, their worst fears were realized

The

Speaker 8: limousine lost control, careening through the intersection and

Speaker 10: striking an empty car. The crash killed all 18 occupants of the limousine, including the driver, as well as two pedestrians, in

Speaker 5: an accident that left deep tire tracks in the ground and the small town about 40 miles west of Albany reeling

Four sisters

Speaker 5: two brothers, and at least three young couples were among the dead

Speaker 8: Jessica Kirby, 36, witnessed the crash, but when asked to describe the scene, she said, I don't want to. It's not something I want to think about

Speaker 10: How

are we supposed to understand

Speaker 10: something like that? There's

a certain sense

Speaker 10: in which

Speaker 20: accidents unnerve us even more than murders or terrorism or deaths in

war. And

Speaker 21: those latter three, they don't leave us at a loss over who was responsible or why it happened

Or at least

Speaker 21: what the

Speaker 10: proximate cause was

For the loved

Speaker 10: ones of the 20 people who died in that accident, though, things aren't

Speaker 8: so clear. You can blame the driver if you want. You can blame the limo company

You can blame

Speaker 8: the local government for not responding

Speaker 5: to residents' warnings that the intersection was dangerous and all that's

fine. But

Speaker 5: none of these is likely to satisfy the parents or

Speaker 22: siblings or spouses

Speaker 8: of the people in that limousine. One time many years

ago, I

Speaker 8: was at a mall in a Hallmark shop looking for a birthday card. And standing near me was this woman and her friend, and the woman's cell phone rang. And so she answers it, totally normal

Hello." And then she

Speaker 3: stopped walking, stopped moving altogether. And

she and

Speaker 23: the caller exchanged a

Speaker 3: few short sentences back and forth. And

then she just

Speaker 3: collapsed to the floor, sobbing like I've never seen an adult sob before or since. Inconsolable. So

I hung around in case there

Speaker 3: was something

Speaker 5: I could do to help. Or maybe it just felt uncomfortable. inappropriate to leave and go about my day like nothing had happened

And a

Speaker 5: little later, the woman's friend told me that that phone call, she had just found out that her husband and her only son, her only child, had been killed in a hit and

run. Now, there are people

Speaker 8: out there listening, I know, who don't have to be told how these

people felt

Speaker 8: Because I know many of you

have been there. One of my

Speaker 8: best friends is Daniele Bolelli, the creator of The Great History on Fire and Drunken Taoist podcasts. He has

a beautiful and

Speaker 8: brilliant daughter named

Speaker 24: Isabel, who's high school age now. But

years ago

Speaker 24: very shortly after Isabel was born, and Daniele's written

Speaker 3: and spoken about this in public, so I hope I'm

not speaking out

Speaker 11: of school, um... Shortly after Isabel was born, her mother, who was young and healthy

Speaker 8: and beautiful, and if she captured Daniele's heart, she must have been pretty amazing in a lot of ways, was diagnosed with cancer. It progressed very quickly, and within months, she was gone

And Daniele was left

Speaker 8: to figure out how to raise a baby daughter alone in his grief

Thank you. To his

Speaker 25: credit, and to Savannah's, and to the credit of Isabel's nature, he did a great job, a really, really great

Speaker 11: job, and not just under the circumstances grading

on a

Speaker 11: curve, but by any standard you could put him up against. But

I've mostly

Speaker 11: avoided discussing the topic with him over the years of our friendship. Anytime

I think of

Speaker 11: mentioning it in the context of a conversation

It

Speaker 11: feels like I'm about to walk on sacred ground with mud all over my cheap tennis shoes. And so I just turn

Speaker 3: around and head the other way. I

think I also

Speaker 3: avoid it because

well, not so much to

Speaker 3: protect Danieli's sensitivities. He's a very open-hearted person. He would talk about it with me if I brought it up

But it's also just

Speaker 9: because talking, it just stops me in my tracks. I don't

think I

Speaker 9: could handle something like that

And

Speaker 25: people say everyone thinks that And then it happens And you just handle it Because you have no choice But I don't know

The voice

Speaker 25: in my head warns me That it would probably push me past my limit And

nothing quite

Speaker 25: like that has happened to me But I'm very close with Daniele And when someone you love experiences that You don't gain any insight Into what it's like exactly But you can't just abstracted away either. You can't pretend like it's just something that happens in newspaper headlines to

Speaker 11: other people

but not

Speaker 11: to your wife or your child. From now on you know it's real and you feel a new visceral fear of things that haven't happened yet and might not

happen. But

Speaker 11: you understand down to your bones

that That

Speaker 11: you're not on any lists for exemptions or special treatment

When these things happen

Speaker 25: to us, the

most natural

Speaker 25: thing in the world is

to ask

Speaker 25: who to blame. And

when an answer

Speaker 25: doesn't immediately present itself, we often start looking up at the sky to find the culprit

Because if no

Speaker 25: one's to blame, if the answer's really just, these things happen

then you

Speaker 25: have to confront the cold, empty meaninglessness of this world that we've all been born into. Which

I think is

Speaker 3: probably harder than living in a world run by a capricious or inscrutable God. The

book of Job is one of the oldest

Speaker 25: meditations we have on this question. And

for my

Speaker 25: money, it's never been surpassed by imitators

Speaker 26: or alternatives in thousands of years since it was written

Okay. To me, Job is

Speaker 26: the most morally difficult book of the entire Bible. It's

frequently

Speaker 25: trotted out by skeptical non-believers to make a mockery of God. And

to be

Speaker 25: honest, it's no wonder. The story of Job seems, at face value, to invalidate many of the core claims made by

Speaker 11: Christians and Jews about the character and purpose of God

But, Many

Speaker 11: believers just avoid the questions raised by the book. And ironically

Speaker 25: enough, I've learned as I've expressed this opinion publicly before, ironically enough they often take up the arguments of Job's

friends, whom

Speaker 25: God at the end

Speaker 27: of the story explicitly says were wrong

about him. Most of you

Speaker 28: will be familiar with the general outline of the story of Job, but for those who are not, here's a quick

Speaker 8: recap. Starts out, God is holding court in heaven, and the heavenly beings are taking turns presenting themselves before the throne in the manner of ministers making their reports to an ancient Near Eastern king. One of the ministers

Speaker 29: is

Satan. At

Speaker 29: least, that's how we transliterate the word. In reality, the capitalization that we're familiar with, when we see Satan written down

Speaker 11: that makes it a proper noun, that was added by modern translators, since there were no capital or lowercase letters in the ancient texts, and in the original it comes with the definite article attached, so it actually reads "the Satan

which

Speaker 10: means "the adversary" or "the accuser

So the

Speaker 10: Satan presents himself

Speaker 30: before the Lord And

God

Speaker 9: calls him out Boasting of this man called Job The most righteous and blameless

Speaker 25: servant of God on earth He basically says, hey, accuser You

like to go

Speaker 25: around accusing people I'd

like to see you try

Speaker 25: to poke holes in this guy Good luck with

that and

Speaker 27: so, as intended, the Satan is provoked, and he replies, well, sure. Of course, he behaves himself. You've given him everything. He's rich, respected, healthy. He's a big

Speaker 25: family. Why wouldn't he be singing your praises

Give a dog a

Speaker 25: bone every time he barks at the moon, and he'll bark all night, but righteous

How would

Speaker 10: you know

He tells God

Speaker 10: that if he stops the gravy

train Thy

Speaker 10: servant Job will curse thee to thy face

Now, one

Speaker 10: interesting thing I've noticed about this opener is that in the pop culture version of the story, you know, the one

that people

Speaker 10: just kind of know, even if they've never actually gone and read the book of Job, it's often imagined that the Satan was the one who challenged God and

Speaker 5: provoked him to abandon Job

But in fact

Speaker 5: the devil was just passing through. It was God who called him out

And

Speaker 5: started the whole ball rolling

And so God

Speaker 25: accepts the devil's challenge. He says, I'll tell you what. Do

whatever you

Speaker 25: want to him. Except don't go cut his arms and legs off or something. You have free reign. Just don't touch his physical body

How to interpret this has

Speaker 1: been a subject of debate probably ever since the book's author first started handing out his manuscripts for friends to proofread

The

Speaker 29: fact that God sets the rules over what the Satan can and cannot do, that's

a clue that

Speaker 25: God remains in control of this situation

Everything that

Speaker 25: happens is under his supervision. The

Satan has

Speaker 31: not gone rogue, and though he may be the one about to inflict the damage, he is acting as God's agent when he does it

Now, I like to study

Speaker 29: the history behind the biblical texts as much as the

next

Speaker 8: guy. And I know the Old Testament was edited and redacted and spliced together over centuries, and only received its final polish during probably

Speaker 25: Hellenistic times. But all the stuff about different authors and different sources, all that's come to us as a result of modern scholarship

And

Speaker 25: Christianity was given its shape by men who didn't know anything about any of that

They took

Speaker 25: the Bible as they found it

When someone in the

Speaker 10: Middle Ages was told that God created the universe in seven days, even though days are a way of counting the Earth's rotation relative to the sun, and the sun and moon weren't created until the fourth day, whatever. There

Speaker 8: might have been some edgy cleric saying you can't take it literally, but the vast majority of people

Just

Speaker 1: read the story as it was written. Since that's the way it was approached by the people who shaped the religion that is the bedrock of our civilization, I like to switch out of academic mode and into religious mode and take the

Speaker 25: story seriously, on its own terms, the way it's written, the way our ancestors did. And so when you do that, when you take the story at face

Speaker 10: value, you're confronted with questions. that seem kinda silly from an academic perspective

I have

Speaker 8: this somewhat embarrassing habit where every so often I'll find myself on

Speaker 25: you like the passive, the use of the passive there, I find myself on the Quora website. You know, it's where people can ask questions and other people answer them and you

Speaker 5: rate the answers and they rise

to the

Speaker 5: top and so forth. So I'll find myself on Quora Reading very

Speaker 22: detailed explanations and debates of which fictional characters would win in a fight

Who'd win

Speaker 8: between Doctor Strange and Rae Slyne Magir from the Dragonlance novels

Or between

Speaker 8: Doctor Manhattan and pre-retcon Beyonder

Or what if Golden Age

Speaker 8: Superman and World Breaker Hulk both threw a punch and hit each other's fist

The answers are Rae

Speaker 6: Slyne, Beyonder, and Superman, by the way

Well

Speaker 6: sometimes I'll look up from my screen and

Speaker 5: realize I've been reading this stuff for over an hour

And I

Speaker 5: don't even read comic books. I barely

Speaker 4: read them

as a kid. And I've never

Speaker 4: read any of the comic books featuring a lot of the characters I spend all this time reading about on Quora. And so I guess I just enjoy

Speaker 31: taking a fictional story on its own terms. And getting into it. Getting into

Speaker 5: that world

And so if you're

Speaker 5: someone who sees the Bible as a work of fiction, that's fine. Just pretend this episode is one of those

Speaker 25: quora posts

And so

Speaker 25: anyway, among those questions that you're faced with almost right

Speaker 10: away

are the apparent

Speaker 10: contradictions regarding the limits of God's knowledge and power

If God is, as

Speaker 10: most believers suppose, omnipotent, which means all-powerful, and omniscient, which means all-knowing

he

Speaker 10: could just take a peek into the future and know how this game with Job is going to play out. So

what's he

Speaker 10: trying to prove? And to whom is he trying to prove it

Are we to believe

Speaker 32: that God cares what the devil thinks? That he cares so much that he's willing to inflict torture

Speaker 8: on his most loyal servant just to make his point? Or, and here I might say, teeter a little too close to the edge of blasphemy for

Speaker 10: some

has the devil

Speaker 10: managed to introduce doubt into God's own mind regarding Job's fidelity

For God to doubt would

Speaker 5: mean placing limits on his omniscience

There's no

Speaker 5: room for doubt when you know everything

But the prologue of

Speaker 10: the book of Job itself

at least

Speaker 10: seems to imply that God might be subject some kind of limits. It might seem like pedantic nitpicking, but when the devil makes his presentation, God asks him

Speaker 8: Where have you been?" Satan tells him that he's been wandering to and fro about the earth and traveling upon it

a fact

Speaker 8: which God ought to have known without

asking. He then

Speaker 8: asks a follow-up question, "Have you

Speaker 31: seen my servant Job

which, again

Speaker 31: omniscience should have made unnecessary. The very

Speaker 10: fact that the Satan makes his challenge in the first place seems to imply that the devil, at least, thinks that there might be room for doubt or uncertainty in God's mind. The great psychologist Carl Jung naturally interprets the text in

Speaker 22: psychological terms, and in his great little book, Answer to Job, he suggests that the adversary, the accuser, the Satan, is the embodiment

or the

Speaker 33: mythical personification of God's doubt

He's the voice in

Speaker 8: God's head whispering to him that you can't trust these people. They're

not really

Speaker 8: what you think they are

And the whole scene

Speaker 8: before the heavenly throne is an

Speaker 25: argument God is having with himself over whether or not his most beloved

Speaker 8: servant is really sincere

So, in

Speaker 8: any case, the devil takes his marching orders and he just goes ham on poor Job. That same day

some

Speaker 34: of his children are sharing a meal in the tent of their eldest

brother

Speaker 11: when they're set upon by nomadic raiders who kill all of Job's sons who were present and carry off all the daughters who

were there into

Speaker 35: slavery. Lest Job consider this some random disaster, the Satan strikes again

Speaker 10: almost immediately

Even

Speaker 10: as the messenger was delivering the bad news about his children, another servant comes running up and says that lightning had come down from the sky and burned up even more of his children, as well as all of his sheep. And then another servant came. Chaldeans attacked the camels and

Speaker 22: took them and killed your boys, and only I escaped to tell you

And before this

Speaker 22: third messenger says

was

Speaker 22: finished with his report, a fourth rushed up to tell Job that a great wind had collapsed the walls of a house unto all of his

Speaker 36: remaining children

So all of Job's

Speaker 36: wealth and all of his possessions were destroyed or carried off

and

Speaker 5: every one of his children had been massacred by the devil because

of a

Speaker 5: bet he made with God after God called him out

After the

Speaker 7: final messenger finishes his report, Job tears his robes

Speaker 10: and lays down with his face in the dust. But despite it all, he not only does not curse God, he blesses him

Speaker 8: Naked came I from my mother's womb, and naked will I return. The Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away. May the name of the Lord be blessed

So

Speaker 8: far, the patience of Job, to quote the well-known idiom, has remained intact. So score one point for God, zero

Speaker 5: for the devil, and like negative one million points for poor old

Job. So now the scene

Speaker 10: cuts back to the heavenly throne room. And while Job is down in the

Speaker 5: dirt, grieving over his catastrophe

God is exultant. He's

Speaker 5: celebrating

He

Speaker 5: tells the devil to behold

Speaker 10: my servant Job is held fast to his innocence, even after you

Speaker 37: incited me to ruin him without cause

Many Jewish and

Speaker 5: Christian apologists join Job's friends who will arrive shortly in insisting that surely Job must have done something to deserve his suffering, if only carrying the stain of original sin

But

Speaker 5: God seems to reject their defense of his own actions. And he confirms here that he has

Speaker 22: destroyed Job for no reason

Well, the Satan's not

Speaker 38: impressed. The old devil says, so what? A man

will give

Speaker 39: up everything he

Speaker 10: has to save his own skin. Give

me the power

Speaker 10: over his flesh and bones and

Speaker 5: he'll surely curse you to your face. And

so God says

Speaker 5: fine. Fine

Do

Speaker 5: whatever you want. Just don't kill him

A command

Speaker 5: which reaffirms that it is God and not the devil who is in

Speaker 10: control here. And

so once again, the

Speaker 10: accuser seems to have manipulated God

Speaker 32: into attacking Job for no reason at all. As again, God himself has just admitted. And

so now the devil

Speaker 5: strikes Job's flesh and blood. covering his whole body from the top

Speaker 22: of his head to the soles of his feet with excruciatingly painful boils

Bereft, Job sits

Speaker 32: down in the ashes of his ruined house, bitterly weeping and scratching his running sores

Speaker 5: with a shard of broken pottery. His

own wife, the

Speaker 5: only member of his family

Speaker 32: still alive

comes to

Speaker 32: him and, speaking for the devil, says

How

Speaker 40: long will you go on clinging to your innocence? Just curse God and die

Although

Speaker 41: Job had been a

Speaker 22: respected leader of his community, his misfortune has brought him into disrepute, since he lived at a time and among people who believed, as Job always had, that righteousness is rewarded, and anybody suffering

Speaker 10: the terrible fate that had befallen Job must have secretly been engaged in some egregious evil

But there are

Speaker 10: three

Speaker 8: friends who have not quite abandoned him

and they

Speaker 8: come to sit and weep with Job

Speaker 22: over everything that's happened

They weep

Speaker 22: together for seven days without speaking a word, and then finally Job opens his

Speaker 10: mouth. "God damn the day I was born, and the night that forced me from the womb! Why couldn't I have died as they pulled me out of the

dark? Why

Speaker 10: were there knees to hold me, breasts to keep me alive, if

only I

Speaker 10: had been strangled or drowned on my way to the bitter light

And so begins

Speaker 42: Job's lament

He's still not

Speaker 5: cursed God, but

things are

Speaker 5: starting to get serious as this first part

Speaker 22: of the story comes to an end

And we find

Speaker 22: ourselves wondering, with a bit of trepidation, what he's going to say next

The story of Job is

Speaker 22: not original to the Bible

and is

Speaker 22: more likely a Biblical spin on a tale long known throughout

Speaker 8: the ancient Near East. A Sumerian and later Babylonian poem, commonly known as "The Poem of the

Speaker 5: Righteous Sufferer," or if the title is translated literally, "I will praise the Lord of Wisdom

have

Speaker 5: long drawn comparisons to the Book of Job, and they share enough

Speaker 29: characteristics with that Bible story that it's fairly safe to assume that the Bible story was pollinated by these

Speaker 5: earlier versions. Scholars sometimes refer to those two works as the Sumerian Job and the Babylonian Job, and both of them certainly

Speaker 1: predate the composition of the biblical story. The

earliest

Speaker 43: version of the Sumerian work

dates from

Speaker 22: around 1700 B.C., about seven centuries before the founding of ancient Israel

The

Speaker 29: Babylonian version is more firmly dated to the reign of King Nazi Muratash

Speaker 22: of the Kassites, who reigned from 1307 to 1282 BC

The original

Speaker 22: version records

Speaker 8: the lament of Tabu Utu

Bel, a

Speaker 8: prosperous official in the city of Nippur

And the

Speaker 8: later Babylonian version centers on a wealthy public official named Shubshi-Meshre-Shakhan. In each version

Speaker 10: the man is brought low and lodges a complaint against the injustice of

his suffering. To

Speaker 29: Marduk, king of the gods of Babylon, Shubshi-Meshre-Shakhan sings: "From the day Baal punished me, and the hero Marduk became angry with me

My

Speaker 29: god rejected me. He disappeared

Speaker 5: My goddess left. She departed from my side

The sufferer says that the

Speaker 22: king's courtiers have plotted against him, causing him to lose the king's blessing and with it all of his worldly possessions. He had

been

Speaker 5: reduced to an object of scorn and mockery, and

his days

Speaker 5: were filled with terror and humiliation

The word

Speaker 5: around town was

Speaker 19: that, obviously, his apparent righteousness was all a ruse. That

he must

Speaker 19: have been living secretly in sin for the gods

Speaker 10: to have abandoned him like this. When

I walked through the

Speaker 10: street, fingers were pointed at me. When I entered the palace, eyes would squint at me in disapproval. My

own city

Speaker 10: glared at me as an enemy. My own country

was

Speaker 10: hostile to me as if it were foreign. My brother became a stranger. My friend became

Speaker 19: an enemy and a

demon. My

Speaker 19: comrade denounced me furiously. My colleague dirtied his weapon for bloodshed

My

Speaker 29: best friend slandered

me. My

Speaker 29: own slave openly cursed me in the

assembly. My

Speaker 29: slave girl defamed me before the crowd

Speaker 19: When an acquaintance saw me, he hid

My

Speaker 19: own family rejected me as their flesh and blood. It

goes on like that

Speaker 10: for a while. And finally, his torment is multiplied by an affliction of painful and debilitating diseases. On

the second of

Speaker 10: the four tablets, the sufferer mounts a feeble defense of his conduct, saying that his god had treated him as somebody who had lived unrighteously and failed to fulfill his religious duties, but that in fact

I was

Speaker 19: attentive to prayers and supplications. Prayer was my common sense. Sacrifice my rule

Finally, he's

Speaker 10: visited in dreams by envoys of the gods who praise him for never cursing his lord. And then on the gods' behalf, they remove his afflictions and restore his place of honor. And that's how the poem ends

An Akkadian poem says

Speaker 44: known as the dialogue between a man and his God

is

Speaker 19: the earliest known theodicy, which is what all of these

Speaker 45: are. Theodicy is a Greek term coined by Leibniz to refer to religious attempts to reconcile God's justice with the

Speaker 19: problem of evil, basically. This Akkadian version is shorter and simpler, but it carries the same tune. A prosperous man is destroyed by painful illness

and

Speaker 19: the collapse of his social position, he cries out for justice, and is finally restored by the renewed

Speaker 45: attention of his god, who praises his servants' loyalty despite

his suffering. Now

Speaker 19: all of these ancient texts are relatively recent discoveries. The Sumerian version, for example, was translated in the mid-19th

century. So

Speaker 19: it's possible that some elements of the translations were influenced

by the

Speaker 19: translator's Christian perspective regarding what a story like this is supposed to teach us. Other scholars have independently translated the poems in the years since, but one of the things that happens with texts like these is later translators often begin with the accepted original version as their starting

point and avoid

Speaker 5: venturing out with two novel interpretations that might invite controversy or just be seen as a challenge or a dig by other translators

and so

Speaker 5: as a result problematic translations can often survive the scrutiny of many eyes for a long time as may be true of a critical passage in the book of Job which we'll discuss later

Speaker 22: but even allowing for that possibility

The

Speaker 22: similarities between all of these poems with each other and with the book of

Speaker 5: Job are to start to ignore, I think. And given the well-documented cultural and demographic interpenetration of these ancient Near Eastern societies

Speaker 22: and the much later composition date of the biblical story of Job

which most

Speaker 45: scholars agree is a product of the Jews' time in Babylonian captivity

Speaker 5: so you're talking 6th century B.C

The

Speaker 5: baseline assumption, I think, should be that the basic framework of the story

Speaker 46: was a common possession of all the peoples in the region. That

kind of syncretism

Speaker 19: can be off-putting to more literal-minded Christians who often balk at any suggestion that biblical stories might have been influenced by older, non-biblical sources

There

Speaker 19: are, for example, several Sumerian and Babylonian myths, all of which almost certainly predate the composition of the biblical book of

Genesis

Speaker 8: that tell of a universal flood survived by one man and his family who had been warned to build a giant boat to ride the thing out. Tablets

and seals

Speaker 8: from ancient Sumer, Babylon, Elam, and other places depict scenes that

in

Speaker 8: which a woman is leading a male initiate to eat the fruit of a tree with a serpent coiled around

it. Or some

Speaker 8: variation on that theme. You know, the fruit might be a drink, and the serpent might be a god wearing a serpent crown

But the

Speaker 8: similarities to Eve leading Adam to partake

Speaker 10: of the fruit that she'd eaten at the serpent's urging

Speaker 5: very hard to deny. Christians

And

Speaker 5: some Jews, although to be honest, Jews in my experience tend to be more flexible and open-minded regarding the

Speaker 19: literalness of their own texts than many Christians. But those

of them who insist that

Speaker 43: the Old Testament stories are historically

Speaker 5: factual, they usually don't approve of these comparisons. They find ways to argue around them. But when it comes to the book of Job, at least, I don't really think that's necessary

Even

Speaker 47: if you do think of it that way, I don't think it's

necessary

Speaker 6: One reason not to object to Job's story being a common possession of the ancient Near

East is

Speaker 6: written right

Speaker 10: there in the first verse

of the book

Speaker 10: There was a man in the land of Uz whose name

was Job

Speaker 10: See, Job

Speaker 22: is not a Hebrew name

And

Speaker 22: scholars best guess at the location of

Speaker 19: the land of Uz puts it in the northwest corner of Arabia, near the Gulf of Aqaba. In

other words

Speaker 5: not in the Hebrew heartland, because Job was not a Hebrew

This would be far from the only time

Speaker 5: in the Old Testament that God takes an interest in the fate

of a

Speaker 5: Gentile

Speaker 5: Abraham very

Speaker 19: early or actually he's still named Abram since the scene depicted in Genesis 14 takes place before the covenant gives him his better known name of Abraham

Speaker 48: Abram pays homage to Melchizedek king of Salem

Speaker 29: and the text says a priest of the most high

and the verses

Speaker 5: that follow make clear that the most high is not some generic title for some other god but is Yahweh

the

Speaker 5: future God of the Israelites. God also commanded

Speaker 35: Jonah to prophesy against Nineveh

capital city

Speaker 35: of the heathen Assyrian Empire

in order that

Speaker 35: they might repent

Speaker 8: and turn their hearts to God, which they do

King David's mother

Speaker 8: was a Moabite. So there are many such cases, which

to a

Speaker 5: Christian, prefigure God's later expansion of the covenant beyond the confines of Israel out to all the nations

Okay, so if

Speaker 5: Job is not an Israelite, and the rabbinical consensus is that he was not

that means he

Speaker 5: was not

Speaker 10: subject to the law handed down through Moses at Mount Sinai. In fact, neither the law nor the history of the Israelites is mentioned or even

Speaker 5: alluded to in the book of

Job. And

Speaker 5: there's no indication that Job is a convert to the Hebrew religion, or

that he's

Speaker 5: ever heard of the Torah, or of

Speaker 10: anyone named Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, or Moses

And this, again, is not

Speaker 10: without

Speaker 25: precedent in the Bible. The

fact that

Speaker 25: Melchizedek was called a priest of the Most High, even though neither

Speaker 10: the covenant, nor the law, nor the

priesthood, had

Speaker 10: yet been created at that time

it's evidence that

Speaker 10: those are apparently not prerequisites for being in God's service, for Gentiles at least

The Ninevites did not demonstrate the

Speaker 25: sincerity of their repentance by circumcising themselves or adopting the prohibitions

Speaker 49: and sacrifices demanded by

the law, And it

Speaker 49: would have made no sense for them

Speaker 50: to do that

Speaker 4: Because those were things required only of the Israelites As a sign of the special task for which they had been designated

And so if Job was

Speaker 4: not under the law

The interesting

Speaker 8: question is, well then what was his religion

The Bible scholar

Speaker 8: Jack Miles calls it the covenant of Eden Job

had the

Speaker 8: same religion, so to speak

And he had the same religion As

Speaker 29: the pre-Abrahamic patriarchs, Adam and

Speaker 25: Noah

as well as Melchizedek. That

Speaker 25: is, he believed in one God who created the universe, that God was good, and that one fulfilled one's duties to him by rendering

Speaker 1: sacrifice and living righteously

Although it seems very likely

Speaker 25: that the book of Job was a new twist on an old story told by their neighbors for a long time, before the Jews ever wrote down their version

its

Speaker 8: uniqueness is not diminished for having been shared. None of the older

Speaker 1: versions even approached the book of

Job in

Speaker 1: the beauty of its verses, or the depth of its theological ruminations, or the grandeur and ambition

of its vision

Speaker 7: The book is divided broadly into three parts. The first part we described above. It begins with God's wager with the devil, and ends with Job seated in silent suffering

Speaker 25: with his three friends

The second part is by

Speaker 25: far the longest, taking up most of the book, and consists of Job's laments and his disputations with

Speaker 8: his friends as they try to justify God's behavior toward him, and then finally God's appearance to speak on his own behalf

The third part

Speaker 8: describes Job's restoration

And it's

Speaker 8: probably significant that the first and third parts are composed in simple prose While

the

Speaker 11: long middle portion is composed in poetic verse In a meter that is apparently unique to the Hebrew Bible The

implication, I think

Speaker 8: that we can draw from that Is

that the

Speaker 8: prologue and the epilogue They represent the portions of the story that everybody in those

Speaker 51: days knew While the long middle portion is the unique contribution of the Jews

Speaker 4: It's as if the author was saying, part one. Okay, so you all know the story of the righteous man who was abandoned by God and fell on hard times, right? Part two

Well, what

Speaker 4: you don't know is what he said after his life came apart. And what God said

Speaker 25: back to him

And

Speaker 25: finally, you all know what happened. Since he remained faithful, he was restored to his former place of prosperity and honor at the

end. And so

Speaker 25: in other words, the Book of Job might have been an early example of fanfiction spun off from a well-known story

Speaker 11: Which, again, I really don't think diminishes it any more than the works of Aeschylus or Sophocles are diminished by their derivation from ancient Greek myths. Nowhere in the Old Testament do the authors insist that every word of it records some historical event. And

the presence

Speaker 11: of books like the Song of Solomon are pretty clear indications that the compilers were not very shy about including works that used a literary device to express a profound truth

There's another aspect

Speaker 5: of the Bible that

pretty much

Speaker 5: everybody disagrees with

me on. Every

Speaker 29: believing person, anyway. And namely, that's that God changes over the course of the story. To

most

Speaker 10: Christians and Jews, God is infinite

Meaning that

Speaker 10: there is nothing missing in Him. Nothing that you could add to Him since He's already

Speaker 8: infinite

God's also perfect. And since

Speaker 8: perfect has nowhere to

Speaker 10: go but down

God

Speaker 10: cannot possibly change, because change would imply either that he was less than infinite before

or

Speaker 25: that

Speaker 10: he's less

than

Speaker 25: infinite and perfect now

The most

Speaker 22: obvious seeming change of God's character takes place between the Old and New Testaments

And believers

Speaker 8: have ways of arguing their way around even that apparently dramatic change But if

Speaker 25: you were just a space alien reading the Bible with no preconceptions whatsoever, and no dog in the hunt saying

you would think

Speaker 25: that God had seriously mellowed out in the years between Malachi and Matthew. In

fact, many early

Speaker 5: Christians could not reconcile the loving God of the Gospels and the Pauline epistles with the capricious and vengeful God they read about in the Old Testament

The

Speaker 25: transition was so jarring and so incongruous that, that the followers of an important early sect, one that for a time challenged what would become the orthodox view for preeminence

Speaker 52: decided that Old Testament

Speaker 10: God and New Testament God could not possibly be the same being. But I see God changing even over the course of the Old Testament

itself. I can

Speaker 10: point to examples like the several occasions when God changes his mind about

something, One of my

Speaker 4: favorites is from the book of Numbers. I don't know if favorite is the right way to put it, but book of Numbers chapter 11. On God's orders, Moses has

led the

Speaker 4: Hebrews out

Speaker 5: of captivity under Pharaoh

out into

Speaker 5: the desert on their way to the promised land. Well

pretty soon the

Speaker 5: people are running out of food and water and they

Speaker 10: begin to complain, saying

to Moses

Speaker 10: that, hey, in Egypt at least we had food

Why did

Speaker 10: you bring us out here just to watch us die of thirst and hunger

Seems like a fair

Speaker 49: enough question under the circumstances. God did not think so, and it's his opinion that matters

Speaker 4: here. So he sent fire to burn the people up for complaining and killed thousands of them

He might have

Speaker 49: killed them all, but Moses interceded, and so God relented. But even Moses was a bit annoyed by this outburst

He

Speaker 25: repeated the question that had just brought God's fiery wrath down on the people, except

Speaker 10: referring to himself. He said, why did you drag me all the way from Midian to Egypt just to lead these people to their deaths in the desert? God

seems to listen to

Speaker 10: Moses, puts away

Speaker 5: his holy

Speaker 10: flamenwerfer, and in a gesture of supreme goodwill, he miraculously sends huge flocks of quail

to

Speaker 10: drop dead in piles three feet deep all around the

hebrew's camp

Speaker 10: but

Speaker 53: then this is the part that gets me even as the people are eating the first meat they've had in some

Speaker 10: time and without them saying or doing anything since he changed his mind and decided to have mercy

on them

Speaker 5: god changes his mind again decides to kill

him anyway The people

Speaker 5: spent all day and all

Speaker 10: night and all the next day and gathered the quail, and

they spread

Speaker 10: them out for themselves all around the camp

While the meat

Speaker 10: was still between their

Speaker 54: teeth, before it was even chewed, the

Speaker 36: anger of the Lord was kindled against the people once again, and the Lord struck the people with a very severe plague

Numbers 11

Speaker 55: 32, and 33

Now

Speaker 34: even here

early in

Speaker 34: the Old Testament

The

Speaker 34: change in God's character from the intimate

Speaker 4: personal deity of the patriarchs into this thundering and capricious lawgiver of the desert, you can't miss it

Throughout the book

Speaker 4: of

Speaker 8: Genesis, God reveals himself to individuals in a very personal way. He walks with Adam

Speaker 10: in the cool of the evening. He

even takes up

Speaker 10: his needle and thread and makes Adam and Eve some clothes before driving them out of his presence

To

Speaker 5: Abraham, he appears as a man, speaks with him as a man, enjoys his hospitality as a man. Abraham's grandson, Jacob

Speaker 10: wrestled with God in the night

and he

Speaker 10: won. The contest went on all night, even after God dislocated Jacob's hip, causing a permanent limp

Finally, just before

Speaker 27: first light, God had to implore Jacob, release me, for dawn approaches

And lest

Speaker 10: anyone claim that God threw the match, Jacob refused. He said, I will not let

you go

Speaker 10: not unless you

bless me

Speaker 5: And so God blessed Jacob, and in doing so changed his name to Israel. For you have struggled against God and man

and have prevailed

Speaker 5: Now to be sure, the deity that smote Sodom and Gomorrah with divine fire

Speaker 25: Was not revealing his full power level here But under the limited rules of this contest with Jacob There can be really no doubt

Speaker 9: in the text about who came out on top

A little

Speaker 32: later, Jacob and his 12 sons

Speaker 36: I guess

it would

Speaker 36: be 11 of them at this point These are the patriarchs of the tribes of

Speaker 5: Israel They travel as refugees to Egypt during a famine And they find their long-lost brother, the 12th son

well

Speaker 5: established in Egypt, and so they accept an invitation to settle in Pharaoh's territory. And

that's how the

Speaker 5: book of Genesis, the first book of the

Speaker 10: Bible, ends. And

when the

Speaker 10: second book, the book of Exodus, picks up the story, 400 years have passed. And

during

Speaker 5: that time, the Israelites had multiplied in Egypt. The Egyptians were becoming very uneasy about their presence, and so their relationship with Pharaoh took a downturn

By the time

Speaker 22: God sent Moses to lead them out of Egypt, the people had lost all memory of God's covenant with their ancient ancestors, and they'd taken to the ways of the people around them

Starting with the

Speaker 5: Exodus story, God is no longer dealing with individual men. Now

he has an

Speaker 5: entire population on his hands

And like

Speaker 5: a politician who can speak plainly in private, but when he's in front of crowds has to resort to emotive hyperbole and other effects to impress the audience, God no longer appears as a man, as he had to Abraham, but bellows at the multitude from within pillars of smoke and fire. Throughout the book of Genesis, God governed his servants with a very light touch

From

Speaker 5: Adam, to Noah, to Abraham, down to Joseph, at the end, he expected sacrifice as tribute appropriate to his station

Speaker 22: but he never actually demanded worship, in the sense we're used to it

and he

Speaker 22: only demanded their obedience to a few very broad and easy-to-follow rules

During and after

Speaker 22: the Exodus, Jesus

said, God

Speaker 5: demands grand displays of public worship, and strict obedience to an elaborate system of regulations governing the personal and social conduct of the Israelites

And

Speaker 10: yet, his pact with the people is sealed in the manner of

Speaker 32: ancient treaties or business contracts in the ancient

Speaker 21: Near East. And it's made clear at every turn that God will hold up his end Which means guaranteeing

Speaker 10: their safety, their prosperity, and their fertility, as long as the people followed

all of his

Speaker 8: rules. In the book of Job, as previously though only briefly in a few Psalms and Proverbs, this quid pro quo relationship

Speaker 5: between God and man is superseded by a demand for unconditional worship, even if God fails to meet his covenantal obligations

Speaker 4: Nowhere in the Pentateuch, nor in most of the rest of the Bible, is it ever really suggested that man's obligations to serve God would remain in force if the promised rewards were not

Speaker 22: forthcoming, let

alone if

Speaker 22: they were replaced by gratuitously inflicted suffering

Speaker 36: Yet

this is

Speaker 36: exactly what is expected of Job. Bertrand Russell wrote

The

Speaker 36: world in which we live can be understood as a result of muddle and accident. But

if it is the

Speaker 10: outcome of a deliberate purpose, the purpose must have been that of a fiend

Is God a

Speaker 5: fiend? The

first response to a

Speaker 5: question like that is another question. By

what

Speaker 8: standard should God be compared? And

to that

Speaker 8: question I can only think of one answer

God

Speaker 8: can only be compared to the standards and definitions

Speaker 4: with which he himself has provided us. Unsurprisingly, his definitions of righteousness and justice and the other virtues line up

Speaker 6: pretty well with the definitions we creatures made in his image might come up with on our own

In any case

Speaker 10: it's fair to say that God's actions against Job can only be judged as careless at best, sadistic at worst and there's no way to justify his behavior by any standard that is comprehensible

to us every time I

Speaker 10: return to the book of Job no matter how many times I've

read it I'm surprised all

Speaker 10: over again by the intensity and

Speaker 32: the urgency of Job's

lament many

Speaker 4: people are surprised when they read the book because the job we encounter is not the patiently suffering

Speaker 32: martyr of popular memory he is a man screaming accusations against the lord with uncompromising ferocity job's

three friends

Speaker 4: counter his accusations with common answers to the eternal question why do bad things happen to good

Speaker 36: people and good things happen to bad ones they say God is just

His

Speaker 36: universe is orderly. And if things appear

Speaker 10: unjust and disorderly to man, it can only be because there are things to which we are not privy. One

of Job's

Speaker 10: friends asks him, Can an innocent man be punished? Can a good man die in distress? I have seen the plowers of evil reaping the crimes they sowed

Those twin

Speaker 10: questions... "can an innocent man be punished" and "can a good man die in distress" are

Speaker 4: meant rhetorically. The answer to both, as far as Job's friends are concerned, is an unequivocal, obvious, self-evident

Speaker 10: no." An innocent man cannot be punished. A good man cannot die in distress. God is just, and justice rewards

Speaker 22: righteousness and punishes evil. And Job, well, Job might do well to search his heart for the secret sin that has brought this calamity upon him. If

I were

Speaker 36: you, he tells Job, I would pray. I would put my case before God. And

so that's

Speaker 36: exactly what Job does. He

demands a fair

Speaker 10: hearing. He

enters a plea

Speaker 10: of not guilty, and he calls on God to account for his broken promises

Job's

Speaker 10: demands are often bitter and sarcastic. He says, "Teach me, and I will be silent. Show me where I am wrong. Do honest words offend you

Are you

Speaker 10: shocked by what I

Speaker 56: have said? Therefore I refuse to be quiet. I will cry out my bitter despair

Won't

Speaker 10: you even give me time to swallow my spit

If I

Speaker 10: have sinned, What have I done to you, O watcher of men

Before long, Job's

Speaker 40: second friend, Bildad

Speaker 6: the Shuhite

the shortest

Speaker 6: man in the Bible, followed only by Nehemiah. Oh gosh

Speaker 49: Sorry for the Sunday school slash youth group jokes. Anyway

Bildad

Speaker 36: the Shuhite... has heard enough of this kind of talk from Job, and so he

Speaker 10: bitterly reproaches his friend. He says, How long will you go on ranting, filling our ears with this trash

Does God make

Speaker 10: crooked that which is straight

or turn

Speaker 10: truth upside down? Your children must have been evil. He punished them for their crimes

God never

Speaker 10: betrays the innocent, or takes the hand of the wicked

Now, to

Speaker 10: his credit, Job manages to restrain himself from striking Bildad down on the spot

But he

Speaker 10: doesn't back down. He says, "How can I prove my innocence? Do I have to beg him for

Speaker 37: mercy? If I testify, will he even answer? Is he even listening

to my

Speaker 37: plea? He's punishing me for nothing. For no reason he has torn my flesh

No, I

Speaker 37: am guiltless, yet his mouth condemns me, blameless, but his words convict me. He does

Speaker 56: not even care. So I say, he murders both the pure and the

wicked

Speaker 10: When the plague brings sudden death, he laughs at the anguish of the

Speaker 57: innocent. He hands the earth over to the wicked and blindfolds its judge's eyes. Who does it? "If not

he

Speaker 58: Mm-hmm. Who

Speaker 32: indeed? The best answer most believers can come up with rings hollow to many other

Speaker 5: people, which does not make it untrue

to be

Speaker 5: fair. They say, "Well, the standards by which you are attempting to judge God, those were meant to regulate the behavior of man. They have no bearing whatsoever on the behavior of God. Normal rules do not apply

It's hard to answer

Speaker 10: that, but if

God were

Speaker 10: anyone other than God

there would

Speaker 10: be no

Speaker 5: question of how to judge his behavior towards Job

In the Old

Speaker 5: Testament, God frequently refers to Israel

Speaker 10: as his wife

just as

Speaker 10: Jesus describes the church in the New Testament. So let's go with that. Imagine a husband

who

Speaker 5: tortures his loving wife

to

Speaker 5: satisfy his paranoia regarding the unconditionality of her loyalty

Imagine she

Speaker 10: doesn't retaliate, doesn't even curse her husband

but only

Speaker 10: weeps and asks for an explanation

But rather than

Speaker 53: explain himself, he just shouts, I'm twice your size, I could snap your neck with my bare hands. I

pay all

Speaker 56: the bills, and the only reason you have a roof over your head or food to eat is because I give them to you

Who do you

Speaker 10: think you are to question me

Would anyone out

Speaker 32: there listening care to raise his voice in defense of that husband? Of course not

Imagine it's a parent

Speaker 32: behaving this way toward a child, since that's another metaphor

Speaker 5: God often uses to describe his relationship to mankind. Or again, imagine a king

A king

Speaker 5: gratuitously harms his subjects, in fact his most loyal

Speaker 8: subjects, for the same non-reason. The

gulf separating a

Speaker 25: king from his subjects is much wider than the gulf between husband and wife or parent

Speaker 10: and child. Does

the king's

Speaker 10: greater power and position change the equation

Speaker 5: to mitigate his guilt

The husband's

Speaker 5: justification, basically

Speaker 10: was that his greater power relative to his wife meant that she had no valid claim to question his conduct

and no right to

Speaker 10: expect his behavior to conform to any standard whatsoever. If

we accept this defense

Speaker 25: from the husband even a little bit, then

the same argument

Speaker 25: ought to mitigate the guilt of a king that much more

After

Speaker 4: all, we judge a man who kills his neighbor more harshly than a king who makes war on his. But

most of us

Speaker 53: would say no. Both the husband and the king are equally, totally, indefensibly guilty. And

I'm bigger

Speaker 10: and more powerful than you is not a justification. It's just a refusal to provide one

But that, in so many

Speaker 10: words, is the answer that God gives Job

and

Speaker 10: orthodox readings

Speaker 31: of the Bible do accept this non-explanation as a correct and reasonable response to Job's demands

During his discussions

Speaker 10: with his friends, Job had, on more than one occasion, evoked a courtroom scene and demanded to cross-examine his accuser. And

he doesn't

Speaker 10: mean the Satan, he means God. If

only I knew

Speaker 10: where I might find him. THAT I MIGHT STAND IN HIS PLACE OF DWELLING. I WOULD PRESENT MY CASE BEFORE HIM, AND FILL MY MOUTH WITH ARGUMENTS. I WOULD FIND OUT WHAT ANSWER HE MIGHT GIVE, AND CONSIDER WHAT HE WOULD SAY

TO ME

Speaker 10: WOULD HE CONTEND WITH ME ONLY BY THE GREATNESS OF HIS POWER? NO! HE WOULD HEAR ME OUT, AND THEN DROP ALL CHARGES AGAINST

ME. FOR

Speaker 10: THERE THE UPRIGHT CAN

Speaker 5: GET A FAIR HEARING

And I

Speaker 5: would be forever delivered from my judge

Essentially, what Job

Speaker 10: is saying here is, you know, there must be some mistake

Because he is

Speaker 10: innocent of whatever it is that has brought this punishment upon

Speaker 36: him

Job's uprightness was

Speaker 36: established at the beginning of the story, and it is not in question

What is in

Speaker 5: question is whether his uprightness has anything to do with how God chooses to behave toward him. And

if it

Speaker 5: doesn't, well then what

Speaker 10: Job certainly thinks it should. And

he didn't

Speaker 10: pull that notion out of a hat

Half the Old

Speaker 5: Testament consists of God assuring his people that if they do right by him, he'll do right by them

And

Speaker 25: the other half consists of God warning them of the consequences of failing to meet his expectations. He certainly makes good on that end of the

Speaker 10: bargain when they slip up

But Job has

Speaker 10: not slipped up

He's not

Speaker 10: only a good man, but the best man. Upright and blameless, and there is no one like him in the world, says God. If

anybody is within

Speaker 10: his rights to expect God to keep his promises and deal fairly with him, It's Job. And remember that God

Speaker 22: himself boasts to the devil of Job's steadfastness after the first round of torture. And

Speaker 10: remember the way he put it. See, he is held fast to his innocence, even after you incited me to ruin him without cause

Job took the

Speaker 10: massacre of his family and the destruction of his property and his social position with stoic humility

and the destruction of his property. saying

Speaker 10: that he only had those things because the Lord had provided them, so it was the Lord's prerogative if he wanted to take them back. And

it's only

Speaker 10: when Job has been reduced to a despised, penniless, lonely beggar sitting in the ashes that are all that remain of his house

mourning

Speaker 5: his murdered family and scratching with a puncture the running sores that cover his body, that Job starts finally asking questions

Job

Speaker 37: had faith that he would be vindicated You saw this in the last passage He had faith that he would be vindicated If only he could get God to listen If only he could stand before him And prove his

innocence But

Speaker 37: that insistence Cannot Even if it's not intended It can't help but also be an accusation Because if Job is

Speaker 53: innocent Then God is guilty Of unjustly giving

Speaker 10: him over to torture - See

you next year. This is

Speaker 10: the blasphemy that outrages and alarms Job's three companions, but Job refuses to back down, and eventually reduces

Speaker 11: them to silence, prompting God to make an appearance to

Speaker 4: speak on

his own

Speaker 4: behalf. Someone unfamiliar with the book of Job, but familiar with the rest of the Bible

writes You

Speaker 4: might expect

Speaker 27: God to offer Job something by way of explanation, especially at the end, after Job has

Speaker 59: passed the

test. But what

Speaker 59: explanation is there? What explanation could God possibly give

Speaker 11: Admitting that he'd been duped by the Satan would make him no better than Adam and Eve, whom he cursed

Speaker 56: and barred from his presence, and cursed all of their descendants down to the present

day. just

Speaker 56: because they fell for the devil's tricks

God could even have

Speaker 8: claimed to have had reasons beyond Job's comprehension for what he had put him through and that would be less satisfying to Job, no doubt but at least has the benefit of being believable

but God

Speaker 8: gives Job nothing, nothing of the

kind and just

Speaker 8: refuses to even take his

Speaker 10: questions seriously

and In one of

Speaker 10: the psalms, the psalmist asks a good question He sings When I consider your heavens, the work of your hands The moon and the

Speaker 8: stars which you have set in place What

is man that you

Speaker 8: might

Speaker 37: take thought of him Or human beings that you show us any concern Another

way to

Speaker 60: phrase that question might

be

Speaker 60: God, what are you getting out of this relationship? It's pretty

Speaker 4: clear what we get out of it. First and foremost we

get to exist

Speaker 25: but what

about God

Speaker 11: A plain reading of the Old Testament makes it seem as though we've been nothing but a profound disappointment and a thorn in his side ever since he shaped us from the dust to the

ground. For

Speaker 8: the first five days of creation, everything went according

to plan

Speaker 8: As God effortlessly

Speaker 4: spoke the universe into

Speaker 5: existence

But then

Speaker 5: again, his decision to rest on the seventh day raises, at least by implication, a question about how effortless it was. In any case, on the sixth day, God got around to creating man

And right

Speaker 5: away, we're told that there's something wrong with him. Small thing, but it says it is not good for God. for him to

be alone

Speaker 31: again a minor

Speaker 25: flaw but after five days of God completing task after task and seeing that it was good as it tells us after each task is complete this is the first time in

Speaker 27: creation that anything is judged as being not good

so

Speaker 31: God parades all the animals of the world before Adam so that he can name them

and to

Speaker 31: evaluate whether any of them would make a suitable companion for Adam

None of the animals

Speaker 5: meet the criteria, so God realizes that Adam needs someone a little more like himself. So

he puts

Speaker 5: Adam to sleep and

Speaker 6: creates Eve from one of his ribs. It did

not take

Speaker 6: long after the seventh day for the humans to find trouble. We

all know this

Speaker 8: story, I assume

When God

Speaker 8: planted the Garden of Eden, he told Adam and Eve that

Speaker 53: they could eat any fruit or seed from any plant in the place, except

Speaker 10: for one

Why would he do

Speaker 10: that? Any

parents of

Speaker 10: children out there, would you ever do that? Or

if you did

Speaker 10: you would know what you were doing, right? Why

would God put

Speaker 10: the tree there at all

Adam and

Speaker 10: Eve are only about a day old at this point So it seems a bit like leaving a

Speaker 25: child alone with a poison candy bar And telling them not to eat it Actually it's worse, it's like leaving a poison candy bar with a child And then sending an older sibling, already notorious for causing trouble To go convince the child to eat it

So who in that case

Speaker 25: would be responsible if the child did eat

it? Of the

Speaker 25: three, the parents, the older

Speaker 27: sibling, and the child, I think most of us would say that the child bears the least responsibility

Speaker 25: followed by the older sibling, the serpent, and that final responsibility would fall on the parents for engineering the whole ridiculous scenario in the

first place

Speaker 25: Why did God let the devil into his brand new garden to harass his

Speaker 5: newest creations

The most

Speaker 5: obvious answer is that the serpent and the tree were put there as a test, and it's an explanation that fits well with the rest of the Old Testament

Speaker 25: story, but why? Well, try to see things from God's perspective. Up until

the creation of man, every

Speaker 10: single phenomenon in the whole history of the universe had bent instantly to God's

will

Speaker 53: operating according

to

Speaker 53: the ordering principles he's worked out from the first

cosmic moment

Speaker 10: Then one day these little human creatures go off script and start doing their

own thing

Speaker 27: This has never happened before and so God watches them with interest. He watches as these little troublemakers spread out on the earth because what

else

Speaker 27: Could be more interesting to a being For whom literally every other thing in the universe Had always been perfectly predictable

Humans build a

Speaker 4: great big tower God decides they're getting a little big for their britches So he kicks it over and confuses their languages To delay us trying it again Before long

Speaker 40: the fascination starts to fade a bit, and God gets tired of their attitude, so he kills off all but a handful of them with a great flood. A

little later, God

Speaker 8: finds a man named Abraham and orders him to kill his only

Speaker 9: son, Isaac

Why would he do

Speaker 9: that? Well, it's

to see if he

Speaker 5: would do it, I guess

God's

Speaker 5: doubts regarding Abraham's loyalty were only allayed when Abraham has the knife raised for the killing strike. And only then, at the last moment, God steps

Speaker 32: in and calls it

off. In a

Speaker 32: world of rebellious men, Abraham has proven his obedience

Although even

Speaker 32: then you wonder if there's a sliver of doubt left in God's mind of whether he

Speaker 5: really would

have done it. In any

Speaker 5: case, God makes a covenant with Abraham. He promises to look after his line and ensure its prosperity and safety, just so long as his descendants continue to replicate Abraham's mechanical obedience

But is

Speaker 5: that really what God wants? He can get blind obedience from his angels, or from any of his creatures. The whole reason God

Speaker 25: took such an interest in

us is

Speaker 25: that we're the only beings in all creation capable of surprising him

This is made very clear

Speaker 25: in the story of Abraham's grandson, Jacob, which we discussed a little bit ago

When Jacob

Speaker 8: wrestled with God in the dark of night, and Jacob refused to let him go as dawn approached unless God blessed him, Jacob got his blessing and a new name to

Speaker 11: go with it

That name, as

Speaker 11: we said, was Israel

which

Speaker 5: means one who struggles or fights against God

Think about that. The chosen

Speaker 10: people of God, their very name refers to the fact that they are

Speaker 27: capable of resisting him. Even

if you're an atheist and

Speaker 27: don't believe anything in the Bible, just

from a literary

Speaker 27: perspective, it's an interesting approach for the authors

Speaker 31: to take

But again

Speaker 31: just try to see it from God's perspective

Speaker 34: For all of eternity, up to the creation of Adam, God was alone in the universe. Nothing in existence except him

and his toys

Speaker 34: Every atom, every molecule, every mineral, vegetable, and animal racing to fulfill his whims as fast as he could conceive

them. And

Speaker 52: then one day this little creature looks him in the eye and God realizes I'm no longer alone

What, if

Speaker 52: not that

Speaker 31: creature, could possibly hold his interest? Maybe that's the answer to the psalmist's question

Speaker 11: Who is man that you might take thought of him, or human beings that you show

us any concern? All this

Speaker 25: places both God and

man, In

Speaker 25: quite a bind, a sort of catch-22. Man's loyalty is of supreme importance to

God, but

Speaker 25: man's loyalty is only meaningful because we can choose not to give it to him. We can choose to turn

away from him. In a

Speaker 25: recent discussion on Duncan Trussell's

Speaker 11: podcast, I drew on the Marvel comic and TV series Jessica Jones for a comparison

Speaker 10: Silly

Maybe. But

Speaker 10: comics, you know, can do many of the same things as myth if they're done right

And they

Speaker 5: can be useful for boiling a story down to essentials and then blowing those essentials up to godlike proportions

And so

Speaker 5: in Jessica

Jones

Speaker 4: the primary villain is called the Purple

Speaker 61: Man

It's called

Speaker 61: that because his wardrobe favors purple suits. Well, in the comic book he has purple skin, but Netflix wisely dialed back the weirdness

Speaker 5: when they made

the show

Speaker 62: Now, some

people

Speaker 5: are naturally skilled at

Speaker 62: manipulating others. We've

Speaker 6: all encountered these people: con men, lawyers, interrogators, cult leaders

your

Speaker 29: friendly neighborhood malignant narcissists. They all know how to

Speaker 10: subtly alter a person's perception. Until the person does what they want without even knowing he's being manipulated

Well, the Purple Man is a

Speaker 10: portrayal of that

Speaker 8: manipulator personality with the skill turned all the way up to the max setting. His superpower is basically the Jedi mind trick, but with no breaks

His power is

Speaker 8: absolute and effortless

If he says

Speaker 8: stop moving, a person will come to a halt and remain there until he starves to death. Unless he's given permission by the purple man to get going

If instead of

Speaker 8: stop moving, he says

Speaker 11: stay where you are, that person will fight and claw to the death if anybody tries to move him from that spot

If he

Speaker 8: says, pick

up that hot

Speaker 8: poker and stick it in your eye, no hesitation. The person

Speaker 11: immediately picks it up, puts it in his eye. And if the purple man tells him to do it without screaming, the person will make a sound

But here's the

Speaker 25: thing

The

Speaker 25: power is on all the time. It's an automatic response

Speaker 10: to hearing the purple man's voice. He

can't turn it off

Speaker 10: even if

Speaker 8: he wants to. In

the story

Speaker 8: he's had this power at least since he learned to talk

At first

Speaker 10: as a kid, he starts to notice that his parents never say no when he asks for a cookie, and his teachers at school never tell him he's given a wrong answer

And over

Speaker 10: time, he begins to understand the power he wields

We can imagine

Speaker 10: the kind of personality that takes shape from those early experiences. He grew

up

Speaker 11: as the spoiled, petulant center of the universe that any child would be if he got literally everything he wanted all the time

And of course

Speaker 31: as a catch, he got everything he wanted from

people... Except

Speaker 10: the one thing he needed most, the freely willed love and care of others, especially his parents

Once he became aware

Speaker 10: of his gift, he could never trust again that the love or positive feelings of other people were not simply a response to the power he had over them

Maybe his parents would have

Speaker 32: loved him anyway

You never

Speaker 32: know for sure

And so, of

Speaker 32: course, he grows up to be a psychotic supervillain, cycling through supermodel

Speaker 11: sex partners, dining for free in expensive restaurants, and asking bank managers to give him all the money in the vault

Speaker 5: and don't call the police. And

then one day he meets the

Speaker 5: protagonist, Jessica Jones

Speaker 56: Jessica's superpower, much simpler

and more

Speaker 63: straightforward. She's got superhuman strength

And so

Speaker 63: Purple Man takes control of her and holds her in thrall as a girlfriend and an enforcer. One

night, the two of them

Speaker 8: are out doing villainous things, and he orders Jessica

Speaker 5: Jones to murder this woman. And for some unexplained reason, Jessica musters a split second of lucidity, and

the spell is

Speaker 5: broken just long enough for her to run away and make her escape

And

Speaker 10: this is the

Speaker 31: first and only time in Purple Man's entire life that

this has

Speaker 31: happened. So

what would be the contents

Speaker 10: of the Purple Man's mind, given his life experiences

Because it would be very

Speaker 32: different from ours. You know, personality is, in large part at least, a collection of the habits and

Speaker 10: strategies and compensations that we develop in

To

Speaker 10: deal with the obstacles and disappointments that come with living in

the world. But

Speaker 31: Purple Man has none of those. He doesn't know

what an obstacle is. He

Speaker 31: doesn't know what it

Speaker 10: is to be told

no or even maybe

Speaker 10: Every person, Albert Einstein

Speaker 31: George Patton, Charles Manson, everyone, is nothing but a puppet

to him. Their

Speaker 31: thoughts and their morals and their identities just pathetically

Speaker 4: fragile and temporary. He could order a mother to throw her child off a cliff and she'd do it without hesitating. So

Speaker 8: what is a mother's

love to this

Speaker 8: guy? He could make Gandhi shoot a baby or Martin

Speaker 10: Luther King give speeches in support of the KKK, so what are your silly human values

to him? He'd gone

Speaker 31: his entire life without ever having had to convince anyone of anything. During puberty, he wouldn't have

Speaker 8: experienced any adolescent struggles with sex or social status. If he had developed a crush on a girl at school, he

can go to her

Speaker 31: house, order her parents to leave, tell her to take off her clothes, and so on

If he really liked her and

Speaker 31: wanted her to like him back, he didn't want to play it that way, too bad

he

Speaker 31: can't turn it off the

Speaker 27: minute he asks will you be my girlfriend the power kicks in and she's just slavishly going along with it

yes i will how could his

Speaker 31: interest in her be sustained under those circumstances

it would

Speaker 31: be impossible

it would really

Speaker 31: be impossible for him to not eventually feel contempt for

her and she

Speaker 25: would just be a robot

And

Speaker 25: you've got an infinite supply of robots, so on bad days, maybe you'd just tell her to stick that hot poker in her eye for some

Speaker 31: entertainment. The

contents of a mind that had

Speaker 31: never had to stop for even a split second to puzzle over how to

Speaker 10: get what he wanted, or

to delay

Speaker 10: gratification for even a moment, that mind would be very different from ours. It

would be a

Speaker 10: mind... Occupied solely with generating new desires and new games to play

Speaker 64: alone with itself and the universe

The existence is

Speaker 64: a kind of

Speaker 25: solitary confinement

And if

Speaker 10: you've been in solitary confinement from the

day you were born

Speaker 10: what would you use as reference points to confirm that you really

even exist? I could go

Speaker 5: Cartesian, I think, therefore I am, and I seem to be thinking. Fair enough, but we've got thoughts in our dreams. What

makes a

Speaker 8: dream a dream is that the entire dream universe is constructed for our benefit. It's

an

Speaker 5: extension of our own minds, and technically it's all under our control, even if that control is unconscious. Well

that's how the

Speaker 5: world was for the Purple Man, until Jessica Jones told him no

Thank you. And his

Speaker 5: entire existence then crystallized around her

the only

Speaker 65: other real person in the world

When you've been

Speaker 25: alone for your entire life

and never

Speaker 25: suspected that there was anybody else out there, and

suddenly

Speaker 27: you're not alone anymore

what else is there to

Speaker 27: pay attention to

What? the

Speaker 5: writers do a good job of portraying the ambivalence in purple man's character you

know he's

Speaker 11: exactly the psychotic child you would expect of a grown adult being told no for the first time

Speaker 40: in

his life

Speaker 40: and he reacts to jessica's rejection with tantrums threatening her and others to try to force her to say yes as she tries to to hide from

him and even

Speaker 66: though the very thing he needs from her is her ability to say no. If

she did agree to

Speaker 25: be with him, he would never be sure whether her affection was real or whether she was just being overwhelmed by his power. He

would become

Speaker 32: paranoid, consumed with jealousy

Speaker 8: and spend his days devising tests to try to discern whether she really loved him

A

Speaker 8: biblical way to say this would be that Jessica

Speaker 34: Jones was the only

Speaker 32: suitable companion for the purple man. In

the story of

Speaker 32: creation, only Eve, who was taken from the body of man and made in his image, proves to be a suitable companion for Adam. And

only man

Speaker 5: made in the image of God, could

be a

Speaker 5: suitable companion for God. This

calls up the

Speaker 5: image of a love triangle, and And one interpretation that I like of the story of

Speaker 10: the fall of man is that Adam chose to ate the fruit because his wife, Eve, had already eaten it

She was

Speaker 10: already doomed

And Adam was faced

Speaker 10: with the decision of either being separated from

her and

Speaker 25: remaining in paradise with God

or else going with her

Speaker 25: and

Speaker 30: accepting the consequences. And he chose his wife

Again and

Speaker 10: again throughout the Old Testament, God describes Himself as "jealous

Speaker 8: The words "jealousy" and "envy" are often used interchangeably, but they are not the same thing. Envy is when you see someone's pretty girlfriend

Speaker 33: and you wish you had a girlfriend that looked like that. Jealousy is when somebody sees your pretty girlfriend

and

Speaker 8: you're afraid she might decide to leave you and go with him instead

Jealousy

Speaker 45: is the fear of loss And

so it's

Speaker 45: a close cousin to paranoia From

the very

Speaker 32: beginning God

is

Speaker 8: devising loyalty tests Putting the serpent and the tree in the garden Ordering Abraham to kill his son The

Speaker 25: countless trials through which the Israelites are put in the desert I mean the whole law is kind of an elaborate test

But When the

Speaker 5: Israelites inevitably fail his tests, his reactions often resemble nothing so

Speaker 11: much as the outrage of a betrayed husband facing public humiliation as a cuckold. The

Israelites' dalliance

Speaker 5: with foreign gods is frequently compared with fornication, adultery, and prostitution, and

the

Speaker 22: punishments that God threatens are those prescribed for a whore

Or an

Speaker 22: ancient unfaithful

Speaker 10: wife. God thunders. Besides all your abominations and harlotries. You did not remember the days of your youth. When you were naked and bare and squirming in your blood

Then it came

Speaker 36: about after all your wickedness. Woe, woe to you, declares the Lord God

That you

Speaker 36: built yourself a shrine and made yourself a high place in every square

You

Speaker 36: built yourself a high place at the top of every street and made your beauty abominable. And you spread your legs to every passerby to multiply your harlotry. You

also played

Speaker 36: the whore with the Egyptians

Speaker 8: your lustful neighbors with huge genitals, and multiplied your harlotry to make me angry. Behold

now I

Speaker 8: have stretched

Speaker 36: out my hand against you. I delivered you up to the desire of those who hate you

the

Speaker 36: daughters of the Philistines, who were ashamed of your lewd conduct. Moreover, you played the whore with the Assyrians, because you were not satisfied. You played the whore with them, and still were not satisfied. You also multiplied your harlotry with the land of merchants, Chaldea

Yet even

Speaker 36: with this, you were not satisfied

Thus says the

Speaker 36: Lord God, because your lewdness was poured out and your nakedness uncovered through your harlotries with your lovers and with all your detestable idols, and because of the blood of your sons which you gave to idols, therefore

Speaker 10: behold, I will gather all your lovers with whom you took pleasure, even all those whom you loved and all those whom you hated. So

I will

Speaker 10: gather them against you from every direction and expose your nakedness to them that they may gaze upon the filth of your nakedness

Thus I

Speaker 36: will judge you like women who commit adultery or shed blood are judged

Speaker 10: And I will bring on you the blood of wrath and jealousy. I will also give you into the hands of your lovers

Speaker 8: And they will tear down your shrines, demolish your high places, and strip you of your clothing. They will take away your jewels and leave you naked and bare. I will incite a crowd against you, and they will stone you and cut you to pieces with their swords

They

Speaker 40: will burn your houses with fire and execute judgments on you in the sight of other women. Ezekiel

Speaker 67: 16

At

Speaker 5: times, God

seems to

Speaker 5: be of two minds with regard to his own actions

His motives

Speaker 5: are multiple and ambivalent. For example, he frequently

has

Speaker 10: his prophets pronounced that after Israel has been punished for her misdeeds, he will remember his earlier vow and have compassion

Speaker 32: on the people, relenting in his anger and restoring Israel to his

good graces. In

Speaker 32: the mouth of the prophet Ezekiel, however, God makes no such tender-hearted claims. Recalling the Israelites' time in the desert after Moses led them out of

Egypt, God

Speaker 32: says that

Speaker 10: the only reason he spared any of them

was that if

Speaker 10: they all died, it would make him look bad to the other nations. He said

So I said I

Speaker 10: would pour out my wrath on them and spend my anger against them in the wilderness. But I withheld my hand, and for the sake of my name, I did what would keep it from being profaned in the eyes of the nations in whose sight I had brought these people out

And then, in

Speaker 5: one of the more shocking passages, in a book filled with shocking passages

Speaker 32: God says this: "So I gave them other laws that were not good, and statutes through which they could not live. I defiled them through their gifts, the sacrifice of every firstborn

Speaker 10: that I might fill them with horror

so

Speaker 10: that they would know that I am the Lord

God seems to be

Speaker 5: saying that he always knew that people would find it impossible to live up to the stringent requirements of the law

That, in

Speaker 10: fact, the law had not been given to them for guidance, but

as a kind

Speaker 10: of punishment

The law to which the

Speaker 22: Israelites were subject did, in fact, technically

Speaker 5: require families to sacrifice their firstborn child to God. In

this, God was

Speaker 5: demanding no more than what Baal or Molech or other nearby gods required of their subjects. Abraham's easy willingness to offer up Isaac probably reflected the fact that it was standard practice in the Levant in those days

In

Speaker 5: fact, it would have been strange if God had not required Abraham and his descendants to sacrifice their children. This

is probably how the

Speaker 5: story of Isaac's sacrifice was meant to be understood by the ancient Israelites. Not

that God's

Speaker 5: demand of Abraham was extraordinary

Speaker 4: because it wasn't in those days, nor that Abraham's obedience was extraordinary

since even

Speaker 4: the followers of the despised Canaanite gods performed the sacrifice

What was

Speaker 4: extraordinary

was God's

Speaker 25: willingness to accept the sacrifice of a ram in Isaac's place

God never

Speaker 4: renounced his claim to the firstborn children of Israelite families, but

he did show

Speaker 4: mercy by allowing them to offer substitutes, as he had with Abraham

There are hints

Speaker 5: though, and even at least one straightforward example, of God requiring men to follow through on sacrificing

Speaker 22: their own children in his name

In

Speaker 22: Judges chapter 11, the warrior Jephthah is preparing to lead the people in battle against the

Speaker 32: Ammonites. The

Ammonites

Speaker 5: are strong, and victory is uncertain, so Jephthah calls on the Lord for support

and he

Speaker 5: makes a tragic vow

Jephthah made a

Speaker 10: vow to the Lord, saying, If you will indeed give the sons of Ammon over into my hand

then

Speaker 10: it shall be that whatever comes out of the doors of my house to meet me when I return, it shall be the Lord's, and I will offer it up as a burnt offering

Well, God

Speaker 6: apparently accepts the terms and gives Jephthah a great victory over the Ammonites

When Jephthah

Speaker 6: returns home from battle

the first thing

Speaker 3: to rush out the door and greet him is

his

Speaker 22: beloved only daughter

When

Speaker 22: Jephthah came to his house at Mizpah, behold, his daughter was coming out to meet him with

Speaker 10: tambourines and with dancing. Now

she was

Speaker 10: his one and only child. Besides her, he had no son or daughter. When he saw her, he tore his clothes and said, Alas, my daughter, you have brought me down and devastated me, for I have given my word to the Lord, and I cannot take it back

So she

Speaker 22: said to him, My father

my father, You

Speaker 22: have given your word to the Lord. Therefore, do to me as you have said

And so Jephthah

Speaker 30: killed the girl and burned her body in the name of the Lord

Why would God agree to a

Speaker 10: bargain like that

Why, when

Speaker 10: Jephthah made the offer, did he not reject it out of hand

Or even refuse to help

Speaker 10: Jephthah for suggesting a blasphemy like that

Or why did he

Speaker 10: not do as he had done with Abraham and stay Jephthah's hand at the last moment, once it was clear that he was going

Speaker 25: to fulfill the vow? Apologists

have tried to explain

Speaker 25: this troubling story by saying that the loss of his daughter was God's punishment for Jephthah having made such an unacceptable vow. But

I've never found

Speaker 25: that explanation convincing. I don't think it's in the text

It's

Speaker 11: true, for sure, that throughout most of the rest of the Old Testament, sacrificing your children

Speaker 5: is denounced as an abomination, but Jephthah's sacrifice is not framed that way. It's not remembered just as the catastrophic

Speaker 31: blunder of a thoughtless father. And

if it's not

Speaker 31: remembered as an act of piety and faithfulness, it's not remembered as a sin. It's

not remembered as a sin. But what did God

Speaker 37: really think of Jephthah's sacrifice? Or of Abraham's willingness

Speaker 27: to

kill his son

Speaker 27: Isaac? Did their compliance satisfy his jealousy

Speaker 5: but cost them his respect? Again, if God wanted robots

Speaker 25: he could

have made

Speaker 25: them. And being willing to murder your only child on the capricious whim of a distant deity

is

Speaker 25: about as

Speaker 31: close as you can get to being a robot without being made of metal and silicone

After Adam and Eve ate

Speaker 10: the forbidden fruit, God said, The man has become like one of us, knowing good and evil

Doesn't that seem to

Speaker 10: imply that man's stature was actually raised in God's eyes as a result of their disobedience

Speaker 5: even if he was pissed off about it

Did he

Speaker 31: really want them to spend all of eternity frolicking around the Garden of Eden, picking fruit and playing fetch

with the

Speaker 68: animals? Maybe he thought that was

what he

Speaker 32: wanted. But if God can experience anger and regret and compassion and jealousy and disappointment

couldn't he

Speaker 32: also get bored

And to return to the

Speaker 8: topic at hand, what would have impressed God more

If Job

Speaker 8: had continued to sing his praises even as he tortured him and massacred his family? Or

if Job stood

Speaker 5: firm in his defiance

This is the question we're

Speaker 5: left with as we await Job's response after God's awesome outburst from the whirlwind

I mentioned that

Speaker 5: there's one thing... About which most believers disagree with me

Speaker 22: namely that God changes over the course of the Old Testament

Even many people

Speaker 10: who might agree that God appears to change often fall back on the argument that it's not God who changes, but just man's perception of God

And they may be

Speaker 10: right, but

Speaker 25: let's continue a little further down the path of reading the Bible as a work of literature in which the character God is the protagonist

The earliest

Speaker 5: apparent change in the divine nature happens during the creation story. The first few chapters of Genesis, if taken at face value, seem to give an account

Speaker 11: that differs somewhat from the popular version of the universe's first few days. Genesis 1 describes the creation

Speaker 5: of the universe

from the

Speaker 5: void. Since God did not yet have anyone to hold the flashlight while he worked

His

Speaker 5: first act as creator was to

Speaker 7: cause light to appear

The biblical

Speaker 7: phrase, let there be light

Speaker 49: is much more official and imperious sounding than the original Hebrew. The original Hebrew could be justifiably translated as simply light

Speaker 32: Interestingly, he doesn't create the sun, moon, or stars to give light on the earth until day four, so I wonder if we're supposed to read something else into Let There Be Light

Consider the

Speaker 32: creation story in

Speaker 8: the Indian holy text, the

Speaker 5: Brahadaranyaka Upanishad, composed in the 6th or 7th century B.C. In

the beginning

Speaker 32: there was nothing whatsoever. In the

beginning, there was nothing whatsoever. Then

Speaker 32: just as in Genesis, came

Speaker 30: the first act

and the

Speaker 5: process of creation got underway. The

Speaker 30: first

act

Speaker 5: in the history of the universe, according to this telling, was

the only

Speaker 10: thing that it could be, could only be one thing, and the Upanishad records it as, let me have a mind

Speaker 32: or let me awaken. All

of these make the same

Speaker 32: point, that creation commenced with

Speaker 11: the emergence of consciousness

And

Speaker 11: light is probably the most common metaphor we use to refer to consciousness. You

know, the lights

Speaker 3: are on, but nobody's home

Are we meant to read the

Speaker 25: biblical first act? Let there be light, or light? Not

as the

Speaker 25: emergence of light, per se

Speaker 11: since the Hebrews knew perfectly well that came from the sun and moon and stars, but

as the emergence

Speaker 11: of

Speaker 5: consciousness

The Upanishad

Speaker 5: continues

In the

Speaker 5: beginning

Speaker 33: there was nothing whatsoever, but only death and hunger covering the whole world, for hunger means death

Hunger causes death

Speaker 32: coming and going

It puts every

Speaker 32: creature on the horns of an eternal dilemma. To

kill or

Speaker 32: be killed

To eat or

Speaker 32: be eaten

But how could

Speaker 32: the world be covered by death and hunger if there

Speaker 64: was nothing yet existing to die or be hungry? For endless

Speaker 31: ages before the first mind awoke, there was nothing at all happening except sex and death

Every

Speaker 69: creature devouring every other creature

Speaker 5: that fell within its grasp and the visceral psychology of hunger, as Neumann called

it, Ruled

Speaker 5: what we might call "consciousness" in the pre-human age

So maybe

Speaker 26: the beginning in this story doesn't

Speaker 5: refer to the eternity before the world was formed

but of the

Speaker 5: time before the first consciousness emerged

Speaker 11: to look around and contemplate

it. The

Speaker 11: world we see around us only looks like it does because our nervous system has evolved to perceive

it this way. With no

Speaker 11: one around to behold

it, The

Speaker 11: universe is

Speaker 26: just energy, infinitesimal particles that don't look like anything until they're processed and rendered by consciousness

There are no objects. There's neither

Speaker 11: time nor space in the sense that most

Speaker 10: people mean by those terms

There's no

Speaker 10: cause and effect. These phenomena are all qualities of consciousness. A particular way of perceiving reality

that

Speaker 11: allows an organism like humans to get what we need to survive and grow from the environment. Wittgenstein

Speaker 6: once wrote, The limits of my language are the limits of my world. Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent

Homo sapiens

Speaker 10: didn't come with complex, elaborate language

Speaker 11: right out of the box

There was a time

Speaker 11: presumably, Way back when our ancestors were just emerging from apehood

When humans only

Speaker 11: possessed a single word. It must have been a first word, I guess. Or maybe a few words

For most of human

Speaker 11: history

Speaker 31: language developed to help us communicate and cooperate within and among groups. To secure territory

To avoid

Speaker 11: and fend off danger. And to find and defend food and other resources

Okay. An

Speaker 31: enormous amount of cognitive and linguistic development had to take place before

Speaker 4: humans could even begin to ask a simple abstract question, like, how would you feel if you didn't have breakfast this morning

Ancient languages often

Speaker 4: resort to metaphor because they lack the vocabulary to discuss abstract ideas directly. Even we moderns use a term

Speaker 10: like consciousness – Without knowing exactly

Speaker 5: what we mean by it. Or

rather, we

Speaker 5: know what we mean, but we have trouble defining it without resorting to synonyms like mind

The tabletop game

Speaker 8: taboo is built around the difficulty we have

Speaker 11: describing even everyday words without falling back on synonyms, analogies, and metaphors

Imagine trying to

Speaker 11: describe the process of evolution

or the

Speaker 11: physics of the early

Speaker 4: universe, or even ideas like "good" and "bad" without recourse to

Speaker 6: any abstract language or mathematics

What would you

Speaker 11: do? Most of us would do what the ancients did. We'd try to explain

it by

Speaker 11: means of metaphor and narrative. We'd tell a story. You know, this is the reason myth preceded philosophy. It's the reason we teach children abstract concepts first by telling them stories

And

Speaker 11: only later by explaining the principles

Speaker 8: embodied in the stories. Chimpanzees have been observed engaging in rudimentary tool use, like sticking a piece of straw down an

Speaker 22: anthill and drawing

Speaker 5: it back once it's covered with tasty ants. And

this is not an

Speaker 5: instinctive behavior

Speaker 25: Not all chimps do it

It's a cultural

Speaker 25: trait, for lack of a better term, that is taught to young chimps

by

Speaker 25: their elders

Chimps, of

Speaker 10: course, have no verbal language, so their only means of transmitting knowledge is by imitation. The

same is true of very

Speaker 4: young children

The easiest way to

Speaker 4: teach a kid to tie his shoelaces is to just show him. Tell him to watch and do what you do

When a child develops

Speaker 5: a sufficient vocabulary, you can use language to supplement his imitative learning

You

Speaker 8: know, some kids are taught a simple story. Bunny ears, bunny ears, playing by a tree, crisscross the tree, trying to

Speaker 31: catch me. It's a mnemonic crutch for shoelace tying if they can't remember what it is they saw their parents do. Narrative

enables children

Speaker 53: to learn by imitating figures that exist only in their minds. They

learn how to handle fear

Speaker 5: and develop courage and determination

by

Speaker 5: hearing stories about courageous, determined people who overcame fear

Research has shown that

Speaker 5: children before the age of about seven

lack the

Speaker 5: cognitive capacity

and I

Speaker 5: don't just mean the skill or the ability, but the neurological hardware, to work fluently with abstract concepts

Trying to teach

Speaker 5: them to

Speaker 11: be good and

by way of

Speaker 25: Kant's categorical imperative, would be a wasted effort, obviously, and if you tried to do

Speaker 8: it, you would almost involuntarily start telling them a very short story, like, being good is when you see someone who needs

help, and you stop to help

Speaker 8: them. Some

Speaker 22: lessons can't be taught by imitation, and require more precision than a metaphor

Speaker 5: can provide

But

Speaker 5: these are rarely relevant

Speaker 25: to a child; in fact, most adults can go through their entire lives and get along just fine without ever having much use for abstract theoretical concepts. Great civilizations were built by men who believed that the sun was

Speaker 5: the wheel of a god's chariot being driven

across the firmament. The

Speaker 5: genius of the Greeks was that they took that giant step

from

Speaker 5: understanding the world through narrative and metaphor, myth, to

trying to

Speaker 5: understand it by means of abstract concepts

Speaker 31: philosophy. In

that sense, the

Speaker 31: Greeks may have

Speaker 1: been the first adults in history, at

least in the

Speaker 1: world west of Persia

The biblical creation story

Speaker 5: was written down thousands of years ago

It was

Speaker 5: based on an

Speaker 32: oral tradition that may have gone back tens or even hundreds of thousands of years. Who

Speaker 8: knows? Back when the human vocabulary consisted solely of terms related to practical

Speaker 4: experience. Those of us in the West whose concept of religious belief is based on Jewish and Christian traditions often struggle with the question of whether ancient pagans really believed

their

Speaker 11: myths

The

Speaker 11: Greeks could climb Mount Olympus and go see for themselves that Zeus and his court were nowhere to be found

They certainly

Speaker 34: believed their myths, if belief means that their behavior was shaped by the stories

But if belief

Speaker 34: is taken to mean that they took the stories literally, I

think it's probably

Speaker 34: doubtful

Speaker 25: that they believed them in that sense

The core elements

Speaker 25: of most mythologies are... Almost unimaginably ancient. They go back far

Speaker 5: far, far deeper

than the

Speaker 5: records, any of the records we have of them

And we know that

Speaker 10: because of people around the world who share motifs and elements of these stories that

Speaker 31: are unmistakably related

to

Speaker 31: And being able to go back and say, well, when was the last time these two groups of people had any kind of

Speaker 6: common contact before they went their separate ways

Greek myths were

Speaker 6: not original to Greece

They had their template

Speaker 8: among Aryan warrior herdsmen of the South Russian steppe, the womb of nations, whose conquests spawned civilizations from India to Greece, from Persia to Britain

And. We know

Speaker 8: the

Speaker 25: myths of these ancient civilizations had a common source because they share similarities which are otherwise inexplicable. There

are myths

Speaker 25: recounting an ancient

Speaker 31: battle between the thunderbolt-wielding king of the gods and an older feminine water dragon or water serpent. And

they're found

Speaker 66: throughout the Northern Hemisphere, pretty much anywhere reached

Speaker 5: by the Proto-Indo-European migrations. Okay

And so

Speaker 5: for example, in India, there's the story of Indra, king of the gods, using his lightning bolt to strike

Speaker 11: down the water monster Vritra, who was preventing all the rivers and rains from nourishing the earth

Greece had the same

Speaker 11: story of lightning-wielding Zeus, destroying the water monster Typhon

Norse mythology has

Speaker 11: the thunder god Thor in combat against the world serpent Jormungandr

Jormungandr. The

Speaker 11: motif is found in Siberia and even across the Bering Strait among some native North American tribes

most

Speaker 49: notably the Iroquois. And so this last diffusion

Speaker 11: suggests a very ancient origin for this myth, since

the last

Speaker 11: meaningful contact between the peoples of Eurasia and North America predates the last Ice Age

A similar

Speaker 11: motif is also found in Semitic myths in the Levant and Mesopotamia, suggesting some cross-pollination in the ancient Middle East. This

is interesting

Speaker 11: but not really surprising, since Indo-European cultures, the Scythians and other steppe peoples, Persians, Hittites, Cretans, ancient Armenians, and others

They

Speaker 11: interacted through trade and conquest with the region's Semitic peoples long before anybody began to make records of it. In

fact, the

Speaker 11: ancient Armenian homeland was the site of two prehistoric tales from the early chapters of the Book of Genesis

We find the Babylonian

Speaker 8: god Marduk casting his lightning bolt at the sea dragon Tiamat

and the

Speaker 8: Canaanite thunder god Baal doing the same against the serpentine sea god, Yam

And even in the

Speaker 5: Bible, there are hints of Yahweh's victory over the primordial sea beast, called Rahab, in Job chapter 26, Isaiah chapter 51, and Psalm 89

While the mythological

Speaker 5: motif I described above is almost certainly an example of cultural diffusion

there are

Speaker 8: other examples that... pending the discovery of yet unknown cultural exchanges, can only be explained by independent parallel

development. In

Speaker 8: linguistics, this phenomenon is called a false cognate, meaning similar words that indicate the same thing in languages that have no known historical connection

to each other. The

Speaker 8: most famous cognate is maybe the most well-known word on Earth, And for many of you, it might have been the first

Speaker 6: word you ever spoke. Ma. You know, mother, mama, mum. Ma

or some

Speaker 6: close variation, such as mama or nana

refers to

Speaker 6: mother in languages as

Speaker 10: diverse as English and Swahili, crossing boundaries not only of language, but of language

groups. Yeah. There are a

Speaker 10: few theories why this is

Speaker 32: so, but the simplest and most convincing is that ma is one of the first words that

a human

Speaker 32: infant begins to consistently generate. Ma

is just the

Speaker 32: word that results when you make a sound

Speaker 35: with your lips closed, mm, and then continue making the sound with your

Speaker 71: lips apart, mm, ma, mm, ma. "ma-ma-ma-ma

This became associated

Speaker 35: with the mother because in every ancient culture, mother

Speaker 29: was the infant's constant companion

and the

Speaker 29: infant's primary reference point throughout its early development. At first, that might be kind of counterintuitive. Today, we already have the word

Speaker 25: ma," so mothers try to teach their babies to call them "mama." But originally, it might have been the other way

around

Speaker 25: Before humans had a word for mother, the baby's most common babble sound, ma-ma-ma-ma-ma, might have provided it

The number of languages

Speaker 25: in which this phenomenon is present

and the

Speaker 25: rich linguistic and

Speaker 11: religious and philosophical traditions that have grown around that word in so many different cultures, indicate that ma is probably one of the most ancient words in the history of human language

In any

Speaker 5: case, there is a very high likelihood that not only English and Swahili-speaking kids but also children of Paleolithic cave dwellers

Speaker 10: probably

Speaker 6: called their female parent mama or nana. An

infant is not born

Speaker 6: with a self-concept nor

any sense of

Speaker 10: subject-object differentiation

Or even

Speaker 10: a sense of the world

Speaker 32: being made up of discrete objects. It

has no

Speaker 32: identity. No

sense

Speaker 31: that the world outside is separate from its own being. It

sees and hears

Speaker 31: in the sense

Speaker 10: that its eyes and ears work. But

it doesn't

Speaker 10: know what it's seeing or

Speaker 31: hearing

The experience of

Speaker 31: one moment has very little connection to the next moment

Or the

Speaker 72: one that came before it

The infant has

Speaker 32: no sense of what is worth paying attention to, and what should be

Speaker 11: ignored

The world of

Speaker 11: the infant begins as a buzzing, flashing chaos with just one anchoring presence to hold on to. The

first separate object

Speaker 25: of which the infant becomes aware is invariably the mother. And

with that

Speaker 25: first recognition of an other... The world, which had been an undifferentiated whole, is suddenly torn

Speaker 11: in

two. The

Speaker 11: infant mother dyad is the basis of every human's first

cosmology. Eventually

Speaker 11: the baby learns that the universe is neither its own undifferentiated self

nor

Speaker 11: the self-mother dyad, but a much more complex arrangement in which mother is just one of countless objects and forces that populate it

But it takes a

Speaker 11: little while. The Brahadaranyaka Upanishad, mentioned earlier a few moments ago

seems to

Speaker 11: recount this

Speaker 6: process, I think, in mythological terms

Immediately after

Speaker 6: the awakening of the divine mind, nothing else had yet been created. There's only the mind, and the mind was all there was. And since nothing else yet existed, the

mind had

Speaker 6: nothing to think about, nothing to contemplate

except itself. But then one day, the

Speaker 31: mind had a thought

The first thought in

Speaker 31: the history of the universe

And that

Speaker 31: thought was

Speaker 73: I

or I

Speaker 31: am he

Indeed, what

Speaker 31: else could it be

There

Speaker 31: was nothing else but himself to think about, and like the baby in the womb, the

Speaker 25: divine mind had presumably floated in unconscious bliss for uncountable eons

Speaker 5: because time had not yet begun

before it

Speaker 5: became aware of itself as a locus of experience and will

This is the moment

Speaker 5: early in the infant's life when

Speaker 25: in its extremely rudimentary way, the child realizes that it is an individual. Everyone's first thought, although they haven't maybe learned the word for it, is "I". As soon as that first thought happened, it immediately gave rise to a second thought. The mind thought

Speaker 31: Well, now that I know I exist, what if something happens to me?" The automatic and inevitable consequence

Of

Speaker 31: having a self is fear

On the heels of this

Speaker 10: second thought followed a third

Equally

Speaker 5: inevitable and automatic. Which was, wait, I don't have anything to be afraid of. I'm here all alone

That caused the

Speaker 5: fear to subside, but it was immediately replaced

Speaker 25: by a new feeling

He was not at

Speaker 10: all happy. Therefore, people to this day are not happy when alone

He

Speaker 10: desired a companion

So the

Speaker 10: two immediate results

Speaker 53: inevitable, automatic, of having a self, a sense of I

are

Speaker 32: fear and desire

And it was these impulses which

Speaker 11: caused the divine mind, God, in our Western way of thinking, to create the world

This is a

Speaker 11: central point in later Indian and especially Buddhist mythology. According to

the

Speaker 31: Upanishad, the desire for a companion was satisfied when he split himself in two and produced a woman, who was simultaneously daughter

Speaker 11: wife, and mother

It's the

Speaker 11: story of Genesis, just told as if Adam was not merely an image of the creator, but the creator

Speaker 31: himself. In old

Sanskrit

Speaker 31: The Indo-European language of ancient India, the root word "ma" means

Speaker 11: to measure", as in the important Indian cosmological term "maya" which means "to measure forth" or "to measure and mark off the part from

the whole

Speaker 5: The Sanskrit root "ma" also means "to make", "to create", or "to bring forth

And Mother becomes

Speaker 8: even more interesting as she continues to develop. From that root Ma we also get Matrix, which is defined as a situation or surrounding substance within which something else

Speaker 10: originates, develops

or is

Speaker 10: contained. In the typical Bronze Age cosmology, the central religious cult revolved around the

Speaker 11: Goddess as Matrix

The

Speaker 11: goddess was herself the universe. She was time and space. The matrix within which we all live and breathe and have our being

The gods

Speaker 11: were secondary

They existed

Speaker 5: within the same structural matrix as mankind. Just a much more exalted place in the hierarchy. In

ancient

Speaker 11: Egypt, for example, the great sun god Ra, the solar disk, "passed through the body of the goddess each night to be reborn again each morning

Heinrich

Speaker 3: Zimmer, a scholar who specialized in Indian mythology, commented on her manifestation here

He

Speaker 5: said, "If one inquires to know her ultimate origin

The

Speaker 5: oldest textual remains and images can carry us back only so far and permit us to say, "Thus she appeared in those early times. So and so she may have been named, and in such and such a

Speaker 8: manner she seems to have been

revered." But

Speaker 8: with that we have come to the end of what can be

said. With

Speaker 8: that we have come to the primitive problem of her comprehension and being. She is the primum mobile, the first beginning, the material matrix

Out

Speaker 8: of which all comes forth

Also from ma

Speaker 8: we get mater, which is Latin for mother, as well as matter and material

The generative

Speaker 8: act of the human mother was seen

as a mere

Speaker 8: shade of the generative act of the earth goddess

And the

Speaker 25: association of the Feminine Principle with the realm of matter that is of life in the world, in time, in space, the cycle of birth, maturity, death, regeneration, the association of the Feminine Principle with all that, all this, is ancient and widespread, I mean, across the continents. We

shouldn't be

Speaker 25: surprised

The

Speaker 25: woman is herself the embodiment of that deep, unfathomable mystery of life. Woman is the beating core, the actual main

Speaker 11: event of everything going on

around us. The

Speaker 11: cities that men build, you know, the art we create, the stories we tell, these are decorative shells that we build around the pulsing heart of life, endlessly begetting

life. The

Speaker 11: nineteenth-century Swiss philologist J.J. Bakhafen

Speaker 5: in his study of Gynocracy in the Ancient World wrote: "The mother is earlier than the son. The feminine has priority, while masculine creativity only

Speaker 10: appears afterward as a secondary phenomenon. Woman comes first, but man becomes. The prime datum is the earth, the basic maternal substance

Speaker 32: Visible creation proceeds from her womb, and it is only then that the sexes are divided in two

Only then

Speaker 10: does the masculine form come into being. The first earthly manifestation of masculine power takes the form of the sun

From the

Speaker 10: sun, we infer the

Speaker 6: father. The existence and nature of the masculine power are only evidenced by the sun

on

Speaker 6: this rests the subordination of the masculine principle to that of the mother the man appears as creature as effect

Speaker 8: not cause the reverse is true of the mother she comes before the creature appearing as cause the prime giver

Speaker 10: of life and not as an effect

she is not

Speaker 10: to be inferred from the creature but is known in

Speaker 6: her own right in a word the The woman first exists as mother, and the man first exists

as

Speaker 10: son. Earlier I mentioned that a mythological motif calling up the image of Adam and Eve, accepting the serpent's gift

can in fact be found

Speaker 10: in many Near Eastern cultures

Speaker 8: besides that of the Hebrews

There are

Speaker 8: late Sumerian and Akkadian seals, for example, that are variously arranged to present that same essential

Speaker 63: scene, which we described earlier, either a serpent coiled around a tree full of fruit or a serpent king or serpent

Speaker 11: god in human form with a serpent crown or some other identifier to let you know that that's who he is, handing out a gift, usually a fruit or a goblet of the fruit's juice or wine

Speaker 5: to a male initiate who is being directed to the serpent's offer by a female attendant

of course we're all

Speaker 11: familiar with the biblical tale of a woman leading a man to eat a piece of fruit at the behest of a serpent but there's an important difference which i'll address shortly

serpents are often

Speaker 3: associated with the moon

in

Speaker 8: world mythologies

there was a native

Speaker 8: american tale in which the primordial

Speaker 4: man forgot to attend a meeting

at

Speaker 4: which the creator was going to choose which of his creatures would live eternally the serpent was there he was

Speaker 25: present to accept the offer and so he acquired from the moon its power to shed its skin as the moon sheds its shadow to become new again on

the sumerian

Speaker 25: seal pictures the

cup being offered by

Speaker 25: the serpent king to the initiate

has the

Speaker 10: symbol of the crescent moon

above it The

Speaker 10: association of serpent and moon, serpent and woman, woman and moon. Those

Speaker 8: associations appear again and again across the world with prehistoric roots that reach

Speaker 10: back to long before the earliest river civilizations. There's

a figure, a

Speaker 8: Venus, from 20,000 to 27,000 B.C., depicting a rotund female, holding up a

Speaker 11: crescent bullhorn, which is often in many cultures used to symbolize the

Speaker 5: moon for obvious reasons, and it's got 13 marks on

it, and

Speaker 5: she's pointing to her pregnant belly with her other

hand. There are

Speaker 5: 13 lunar cycles

Speaker 10: in a year, and the human female ovulates

Speaker 8: about 13 times in the same

span, A

Speaker 8: fact which apparently was noticed as far back as the Paleolithic Cultures that

Speaker 4: share the serpent, woman, moon motif Make it quite clear what these symbols

Speaker 8: mean to them

All three are

Speaker 8: symbols of material regeneration

Speaker 10: Representing the seething, pulsing powers of nature The endless birth and death of generations

Thank you. Blood

Speaker 22: sacrifice, temple prostitutes, and other

Speaker 11: rites centered on sex and death predominated in the religious life of all of these societies. All

three symbols

Speaker 61: furthermore, are often associated with water

Serpents with

Speaker 61: their smooth liquid

Speaker 8: movements are often found in water

The

Speaker 8: ancients who noticed the correlation between lunar and menstrual cycles would probably have also observed the relationship between the moon and the tides and

Speaker 11: that a woman releases water immediately before she begins the sacred rite of giving birth. So

the mother goddess was the

Speaker 10: supreme being of Bronze Age civilizations before

Speaker 5: they were conquered and wiped out by nomads from the Semitic desert and the Aryan steppe

The

Speaker 6: conquerors inhabited the cities and towns of their defeated foes. And their contact

Speaker 32: with the provincial village was minimal, as long as their tax payments were consistently forthcoming

And so as a

Speaker 32: result, the new rulers were able to impose their own system of religion on the population centers. But

shards of

Speaker 32: the older system

and

Speaker 32: the older symbols were preserved among the peasants scattered about the

Speaker 8: countryside. In

her Prolegamina to

Speaker 8: the Study of Greek Religion, Jane Ellen Harrison makes the case that the

Speaker 5: mystery cults of the Mediterranean were the vestiges of the region's pre-Homeric past

She talks

Speaker 5: about rites that were not

Speaker 32: performed in the shining Apollonian light of day, as the Greeks would have preferred, but at twilight or

Speaker 11: dawn, and not in a mood of celebration, but one of

Speaker 74: dread, foreboding

Offerings were

Speaker 36: made, always by women

in a spirit

Speaker 36: of riddance or pacification

to dark

Speaker 32: and indefinite deities that might be temporarily satisfied, maybe

Speaker 5: but which remain dangerous

never

Speaker 5: to be brought under control or made subject to human designs

The beings

Speaker 30: worshipped

Speaker 32: Harrison wrote

were not

Speaker 32: rational, human, law-abiding gods, but vague, irrational, mainly

Speaker 33: malevolent spirit things, ghosts and bogeys and the like

Welcome to life in

Speaker 33: the longhouse. In

one

Speaker 11: Orphic write, Offerings of sweet cakes were given to live serpents and the reaction of the serpents to the offering was studied for signs of whether the coming year was going to bring good or evil

Sacrifices were not offered

Speaker 10: on sunlit hilltops, as with the Olympian cults of classical Greece, but at first or last light in pits dug into the earth

It's important enough to

Speaker 10: reiterate that the offerings to

Speaker 8: the serpents were always made by women

Just as

Speaker 8: in the Mesopotamian Seals and the Garden of Eden, it's the woman who's in direct contact with the serpent god. Just

as Eve's

Speaker 8: interaction

Speaker 22: with the serpent began the narrative of biblical history, really, so

did an

Speaker 22: eel come to

Speaker 8: Hina, the moon maiden of Polynesia, to

Speaker 10: make her an offer that would begin their creation story

So this

Speaker 10: motif traveled well, even out to islands where there were no snakes, and eels were just slotted in there as a replacement. As

I think about it, two common, but not

Speaker 9: universal, but very common

Speaker 10: characteristics of Paleolithic and Neolithic art come to mind. And the first is that images representing women are almost always naked. Whether they're statues or

Speaker 8: paintings or anything like that, almost always naked while the images of men are always clothed

or in a

Speaker 8: costume adorned with something. And second, the two-dimensional

Speaker 10: paintings, when they represent humans, are typically of costumed men, while the three-dimensional carvings are usually of women

the

Speaker 10: meaning of the first point is obvious enough the images of women with ample breasts and hips usually

Speaker 49: and occasionally holding out a breast or pointing to the belly or vulva for viewers who require

Speaker 10: direct instruction I suppose they're nude because a woman whose identity is rooted in the capacity to generate and nourish new life a

woman has

Speaker 10: no need of

Speaker 32: outer vestments

You

Speaker 8: know, of culture, really, to tell her who she is

She carries

Speaker 8: her own meaning in her body

She requires no

Speaker 8: induction ceremonies or

Speaker 10: rites of passage. Her first menstruation is a more powerful initiation than any contrived ritual could ever be

Man, on the other

Speaker 5: hand, we

rely for

Speaker 5: our identity on the construction of symbolic

Speaker 22: social roles

men

Speaker 22: are pictured as

Speaker 10: costumed because men are nothing without a mask to wear

a woman needs

Speaker 10: no language to articulate her purpose or fashion her identity man cannot do without it

a woman's

Speaker 10: destiny is rooted in her being

while man

Speaker 10: has to fashion his own Oswald Spengler wrote Endless becoming is comprehended in the idea of motherhood. Woman as mother is time and is

Speaker 5: destiny. All symbols of time and distance are also symbols of maternity

Care is

Speaker 5: the root

Speaker 8: feeling of future, and all care is motherly

When the nomadic

Speaker 8: hunters and herders from the steppe and desert broke out against the Bronze Age

Speaker 5: goddess-worshipping agricultural civilizations, they brought with them their active masculine warrior gods

These gods

Speaker 5: were not associated with the ever-revolving and ever-recurring cycles of life and

time. They

Speaker 5: were not

Speaker 31: vague representations of natural forces. They were conscious actors, heroes, and seers in the image of man, battling it out for honor and

Speaker 10: supremacy. And

rather than scratching out

Speaker 10: all memory of the early myths of the defeated peoples, the conquerors retained them

but they

Speaker 31: did so in an inverted

Speaker 8: form to commemorate their victory, I suppose

So in

Speaker 8: the pre-biblical

Speaker 10: Mesopotamian representations described above, the liaison between the serpent lord and the woman at the

Speaker 75: foot of his fruit

Speaker 25: tree is not portrayed disapprovingly as it is in the Bible. In the Bible, the serpent tells Eve that she will not

Speaker 5: die if she tries his fruit

but in

Speaker 5: fact will have her eyes opened and become like God, knowing

Speaker 32: good and evil

The

Speaker 32: Bible treats this as an elaborate trick by the serpent to bring down a curse upon all

Speaker 5: creation. But

in the

Speaker 5: pre-biblical versions, the serpent's words are taken at face value. That is, it's not a trick. He really is presenting the fruit as a gift. In

the mythology of the

Speaker 5: conquerors

The

Speaker 5: goddess and her titanic children were transformed into demons

Speaker 8: that had been overcome by their own heroic warrior gods

And so, as

Speaker 8: noted earlier, at the beginning of time, Hebrew Yahweh slays Leviathan, or Rahab, Babylonian Marduk destroys

Speaker 32: Tiamat, Greek Zeus kills Typhon, and Indian Indra puts an end to Vritra

In each of

Speaker 30: these

The

Speaker 30: sea dragon, the feminine sea dragon that is destroyed

Speaker 32: is a vestige of the earlier mythology. Well

the god

Speaker 32: who

Speaker 11: destroys her is

the hero of

Speaker 11: the new mythology, of the conquerors. Out

of the

Speaker 11: dragon's corpse, the new gods fashioned the world. The

world was

Speaker 11: not grown or given birth. It was

Speaker 75: built. It was

built. Like an

Speaker 75: artifact. The Chhthonic goddess, previously

Speaker 8: associated reverently with the serpent, was now transformed into a terrifying dragon, or a snake-haired gorgon like Medusa. Or

as we see in the

Speaker 8: biblical

Speaker 11: version of Eve and her serpent friend, into the very source of evil and

Speaker 27: death in the world

This is our version of

Speaker 27: the story of civilization

The

Speaker 27: raw energy of nature is

Speaker 10: rationally arranged and made to conform to an order

Speaker 22: hatched

by the human mind. The focus

Speaker 22: of life shifts from nature to culture

away from the

Speaker 22: voluptuous nude

Speaker 32: female to the consciously contrived world of the symbolically costumed male. And yet

In the

Speaker 32: examples of Medusa and the Indian goddess Kali, as

well as

Speaker 32: many others, those are the two

Speaker 25: most prominent ones that come

to mind, the

Speaker 25: myths of the conquering heroes carry a surprising ambivalence

Athena, a

Speaker 25: warrior goddess born not from the loins of a woman but from the forehead of her father Zeus, Athena tells Asclepius how to draw blood from Medusa's corpse and

And

Speaker 25: how blood taken from her right side has the power to kill

But blood taken

Speaker 25: from her left side has the power to heal and even resurrect from the dead

Or again, consider

Speaker 32: Kali, wife of the god Shiva

This is in

Speaker 32: India. Shiva's neck is adorned with a serpent. And Kali's his wife

And in images of her

Speaker 32: that you'll see universally... She

Speaker 25: brings death with one set of her arms

but she's

Speaker 25: offering a gift of some kind with her other set. And surprisingly, even the Bible is a bit ambivalent on the question of serpents, which you wouldn't think after how it starts

After the

Speaker 8: incident with Eve, the serpent is cursed by God to go about on its belly below all the other animals and to be the eternal enemy of humankind. But just a short time later

we

Speaker 8: find Moses wielding, of all things, a serpent staff, which he uses to carry out his most famous miracles

Once when the

Speaker 8: Israelites begin grumbling at Moses for having led them into an endless desert to die, God sends fiery serpents to bite and kill thousands of them

Appealing to

Speaker 25: Moses, the people cried out, saying, We have sinned, for we have spoken against the Lord and against you. Now pray unto the Lord, that he might take away the snakes from us

So Moses

Speaker 25: prayed for the people

The Lord

Speaker 25: said to

Speaker 5: Moses, Fashion a snake, and put it up on a pole, and it shall come to pass that everyone who is bitten may look upon it and live

And Moses fashioned

Speaker 75: a snake of bronze and raised it on a pole

Then when

Speaker 75: anyone was bitten by a snake and looked at the bronze

Speaker 11: snake, they lived

Amen. That

Speaker 11: bronze serpent on its pole was preserved by the Hebrews And for centuries was an object of worship to them Until it was destroyed in the religious

Speaker 5: revolution of King Hezekiah of Jerusalem Hezekiah removed the high places and smashed the idols And cut down the sacred groves And broke into pieces the

Speaker 36: bronze serpent

Speaker 32: that Moses had made

Speaker 36: For unto

Speaker 32: those days the children of Israel did burn incense to it

and

Speaker 32: he called it Nehushtan

Speaker 4: Later, in the Christian Gospel of John, Jesus alludes to his crucifixion when he connects himself

to the

Speaker 4: bronze serpent of Moses

And as Moses

Speaker 32: lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him shall not perish

but

Speaker 5: have eternal life

The narrative of

Speaker 8: the Bible

says

Speaker 8: especially if the Old and New Testaments are taken together, can

be read

Speaker 8: as the gradual development of the idea of the divine

from

Speaker 32: the tribal war god that we find in the Pentateuch into the more complex, much more expansive

Speaker 10: even infinite god that comes into view later. In

fact, it's

Speaker 10: worth noting that in the chronological last two books of the Old Testament, Ezra and Nehemiah

God

Speaker 10: does not speak or appear at all the books are pure historical narratives

people

Speaker 25: talk about God but that's it God floats unseen in the background just glimpsed in scraps of dialogue

Speaker 10: from humans who never see him or hear of him anymore

the book of

Speaker 10: Job in fact

is the

Speaker 5: last time God speaks directly to man in the Hebrew Bible which means that God's speech to Job was God's final word to man

Speaker 32: if you're a Jew or his final word before making an appearance among us in the flesh if one is a Christian the final

Speaker 30: exchange between Job and God must therefore be considered of utmost importance

so as we

Speaker 76: gear up for the home stretch here

I want to

Speaker 76: restate two thoughts

Speaker 5: that I have mentioned a couple times in this series. The

first is one I

Speaker 5: mentioned just a moment ago, that

I think

Speaker 5: God changes over the course of the Bible

Speaker 32: And the second is that the book of Job is the pivot on which the rest of the Bible story turns. Taking

those two

Speaker 7: thoughts together, the book of Job is the critical turning point in the transformation of God in the

Speaker 5: Bible

God's

Speaker 5: speech to Job, as I just said, is the last time God speaks for himself in the Hebrew Bible. It's

worth

Speaker 64: revisiting some of the highlights of the story leading up to God's final message to man. One

of the most striking

Speaker 77: things about the Old Testament is that God, if you read

it

Speaker 21: straight through, God gradually withdraws his presence over the course of the story. Right

The God

Speaker 32: of Genesis walks in the Garden of Eden. He speaks directly with Adam and Eve. I

mentioned one of my

Speaker 32: favorite little details earlier, how after the fall, when poor Adam and Eve had covered their nakedness

Speaker 25: with leaves, God made them some clothes before throwing them out into the world. It's very intimate, you

Speaker 32: know, kind of sweet, honestly. The

creator of the

Speaker 7: universe says

You

Speaker 11: know, he probably caused the clothes to appear by snapping his figurative fingers, but I like to picture him taking their measurements and making the cuts and sitting down with his sewing needle

Either way

Speaker 11: the God we find in the second book, Exodus, is

Speaker 64: not a God who would ever condescend to making a human's

Speaker 78: undergarments

The next four books

Speaker 8: tell the story of Moses leading the Israelites out of Egypt to the Promised Land

But

Speaker 8: rather than eating and chatting with the

Speaker 32: people, as he had done with Abraham, God appears as a pillar of smoke and fire, and manifests as earthquakes and volcanic eruptions

He speaks

Speaker 8: only with Moses

And from this

Speaker 8: point on, God will communicate with the Israelites only through designated prophets

Even King David

Speaker 10: whom we're told the Lord loved like a friend

Had

Speaker 10: to consult a

Speaker 32: prophet to receive any word from God

God never came

Speaker 32: to him

The messages of

Speaker 32: the prophets, as the story goes on, become more and more abstract, more mysterious and symbolic. And the vast majority of people never hear or see God directly

And

Speaker 32: finally, as I just said, in the chronological last two books of the story, Ezra and Nehemiah, after the Jews have been freed from Babylonian captivity by the

Speaker 30: Persians and allowed to go back and rebuild the second temple in Jerusalem

in those

Speaker 30: two books, God's just a whispered rumor. His

last direct appearance to a

Speaker 30: human being in the Hebrew Bible comes in the climax to the book of Job

Speaker 79: after Job calls God

Speaker 32: to the carpet to account for Job's suffering and after Job's friends are unable to sway him from his position God finally shows

Speaker 36: up

and Job is

Speaker 36: taken up into a whirlwind and provided with one of the most spectacular visions

Speaker 32: found in any piece of religious literature ever written the only scene I know that really compares with it, is the Hindu Bhagavad Gita, when Krishna reveals

Speaker 30: his ultimate form to Arjuna

That Indian

Speaker 8: text is actually interesting to hold up next to the Book of Job

They address

Speaker 8: similar

Speaker 32: questions

adjusted for

Speaker 32: cultural differences between ancient Hebrews and Indians, and they resolve them in a somewhat similar manner

The Bhagavad Gita is the

Speaker 36: most famous section of a much larger work, the great epic known as the Mahabharata

And

Speaker 36: its setting, the Bhagavad Gita's setting

Speaker 32: is the field of battle just before the climactic confrontation between armies on two sides of a civil war. The

protagonist is

Speaker 32: Arjuna, a great warrior

who is

Speaker 32: struggling with an apparent contradiction in his religious

Speaker 8: duties. On one hand, he is of the Kshatriya class. He's

Speaker 22: a warrior

He

Speaker 22: has a sacred duty to fulfill his obligation

to fight

Speaker 22: On the other

hand

Speaker 31: there are friends and relatives arrayed across the battlefield against him, people he respects and

loves. What

Speaker 5: about his obligations

to them

Speaker 5: Arjuna concludes that it must be a greater sin to kill his friends and family

than

Speaker 5: to shirk the duties of his caste, and so he lays down his bow and refuses to participate in

Speaker 64: the battle

Well, his

Speaker 64: chariot driver, who, unbeknownst

Speaker 30: to Arjuna, is actually the god Krishna in human form. You'd have thought the blue skin would have given it away, but hey

Krishna tries

Speaker 30: to convince Arjuna to fight

and he tries

Speaker 32: it using the arguments that would have been common answers to the conundrum in those days

He

Speaker 32: provides the answers Job's friends would have given Arjuna

Some scholars

Speaker 32: have suggested that the Bhagavad Gita was added to the Mahabharata in order to provide a theological response

Speaker 64: to challenges raised by

Speaker 25: the spread of Buddhism. If

that's true

Speaker 25: this runs parallel to the suggestion of some Bible scholars that Job's friends were making the standard

Speaker 64: pat arguments commonly provided for God's apparent abandonment of the Jews during the Babylonian exile

But, Krishna's

Speaker 64: arguments fail on Arjuna, just as the justifications of Job's friends fail to persuade Job. And after

Speaker 32: the debates run their course and Arjuna remains unconvinced, Krishna reveals his true form, and gives Arjuna an unforgettable divine vision

In the

Speaker 32: vision, Arjuna sees both armies. Rushing into Krishna's gaping mouths and being crushed like grapes. Rivers of their blood running down Krishna's chin. He's shown that human life is

a flash

Speaker 32: in the pan

And that he need not

Speaker 32: be worried about killing his enemy because everyone on both sides has already been dead a thousand times. And they will die a thousand times more, killed not by Arjuna

but by