Quote:
Originally Posted by Mnemosyne
tumhalad2, have you read the book of Job?
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Yes, actually.
The "Poetic Dialogue" aspect of the Book of Job is very interesting. As Bart Ehrman writes "It cannot be overlooked that in the divine response from the whirlwind to Job's passionate and desperate plea for understanding, why he, an innocent man, is suffering so horribly, no answer is given. God does not explain why Job suffers." (
God's Problem, 188)
Ehrman argues convincingly that there are many variant conceptions of suffering in the Bible, and that the Book of Job offers one: essentially, that there is no humanly convincing answer, and that we are deserving of no explanation from the Almighty. There are certain similarities between Job and CoH, the least of which is the sense of a cruel, hard world existing at the limits of our understanding.