Friday, October 06, 2017

Christian/non-Christian Job

I'm 7/8 of the way through the five tradition MOOCs! The Book of Job has turned up, though not in the Judaism module. (It's mentioned in passing, and to be fair, that module assigns the fewest readings; Job is mentioned in the Islam module, too, also in passing.) It's in the Christianity module, in an omnibus of Biblical texts addressing "existential questions of violence and suffering, justice and love." Yet the recommended excerpts don't include the text central to so much Christian Job interpretation, 19:25-27's knowledge "that my redeemer lives" (though we get Zophar's retort to it in ch. 20!). Curious but not entirely surprising. The course is taught by a distinguished Biblical scholar who surely can't see the translation "redeemer" without wincing.