The Divine Council at the SBL 2009 Annual Meeting
The Society for Biblical Literature (SBL) is currently holding its annual meeting in New Orleans. The meeting began November 21 and will run to November 24. Abstracts of the many sessions are available online.
Of particular note is F. Rachel Magdalene, University of Leipzig and Humboldt University Berlin, who is presenting Retributive or Restorative Justice: Reading the Nature of God, Justice, and Humanity in the Book of Job on Monday (November 23):
The traditional understanding of the transaction between Yahweh and the Satan in the prologue to the book of Job is that this constitutes a test of Job’s faith, one which the Satan initiates but Yahweh allows as the Satan’s superior. This understanding supports the omnipotence of Yahweh, but raises several other theological questions, as well as a number of literary and legal ones. For instance, this view may well challenge both Yahweh’s omniscience and his omnibeneficience. Moreover, this reading does not readily account for the presence of the dialogues, the plethora of legal metaphors throughout the book, and the distinct nature of the Elihu speeches. This paper will argue that the Satan brings a formal legal charge against Job in the Divine Council with which Yahweh must deal juridically in order to maintain his position as the creator and maintainer of cosmic justice. God does not impose the suffering on Job nor agree with its usefulness. This is the Satan’s claim, and, once it is proven incorrect, Job’s fortunes are reinstated in a manner that does not support the idea of retributive justice, but rather God’s restorative justice. The paper concludes that a reading of the book of Job that is sensitive to the legal materials of the book reveals that the book may well represent a far different theology and theological anthropology than has previously been thought. It may, in fact, disclose a profound divine trust in humanity that foreshadows the atoning work of Christ.
Madgaline (Ph.D. University of Denver and Iliff School of Theology and J.D. University of Colorado School of Law) provides a provocative perspective to the story of Job as seen through the lens of the “divine council.”
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Thank you for making readers aware of this facet of the Old Testament that is of common interest to both Latter-day Saints and evangelicals. I’d like to suggest that in 2010, since Latter-day Saints will be studying the Old Testament, that evangelicals make this a focus of study for the year and that aspects of this study might become part of our interfaith dialogue.
One helpful resource for this study is John Walton’s Ancient Near Eastern Thought and the Old Testament (Baker Academic, 2006). In this volume Walton surveys the literature of the cultures of the ancient near east in order to understand the ways in which these cultures viewed the world, and then to note the similarities and differences with Israel and the Old Testament by way of comparative study. The results is an illuminating study that will require open-minded evangelicals to reassess many of their cultural assumptions from the modern West that they bring to their interpretation of the Old Testament.
In terms of the divine council or divine assembly, Walton discusses this several sections, including a chapter on “The Gods,” a sidebar on “Comparative Exploration: Yahweh’s Council,” and a segment on the council in light of state and family religion in light of the Decalogue. In the latter, in connection with the First Commandment, Walton writes:
Obviously, such ancient Near Eastern comparative study has implications for our study of the Old Testament, specifically for evangelical understandings of the divine council (even though it is not a major aspect of study for us), and for Latter-day Saint interpretations of this concept in the first of the Four Standard Works as well.
I hope readers find these comments helpful. May the study and the dialogue continue.
John, thanks for your comments and suggestions. I also agree this might be an opportune time to interact on issues relevant to the Old Testament that are of mutual interest.
Incidentally, Walton gave a talk titled “Genesis One as Ancient Cosmology” as part of the Logos Lecture Series last year, June 23, 2008. The lecture is available to listen to here.
Thanks for the link to the lecture. I recently read not only Walton’s book on comparative issues related to the ancient near east and the Old Testament, but also his book on The Lost World of Genesis One. It sheds great light on the text and the modern scientific assumptions we’ve brought to the text in eisegesis. It appears that the creation narratives actually say nothing about the “how” let alone “when” of material creation, and we must turn to theological and philosophical considerations to answer these questions. I’ll give the lecture link a listen.