Pathology and pain, disease and disability: The burdens of the body in the Book of Job peering through a psychoanalytic prism (original) (raw)
Related papers
While almost all commentators take notice of Job's descriptions of physical suffering, the ways Job uses his body to rhetorical effect have not been fully recognized. This article considers the impact of the legal metaphor on Job's use of body imagery (Job 9:20,(30)(31) 16:8;(22)(23)(22)(23)(24)(25)(26)(27) and maintains that Job's speeches draw on the ancient world's understanding of the body to question and invert traditional usage of body imagery, particularly the stock of body images from the Psalms that present the body, the self, and the voice as a manifold unity. Job overturns traditional images of the disintegrated body known from the biblical laments in order to distance his body's appearance of guilt from his testimony of innocence. In contrast to the psalmists, who petition God to restore them to health, Job uses images of disembodiment and bodily disintegration to separate his broken body from his contention that he is innocent. In this way, Job uses imagery of the body to form a counternarrative that testifies to his innocence.
The “Innards” in the Psalms and Job as Metaphors for Illness
Horizons in Biblical Theology, 2020
This article explores body and illness metaphors in the Psalms and Job. Specifically, it focuses on the various terms pertaining to the “innards” or “internal organs” of the human body. Although myriad terms for internal organs exist, the terms קֶרֶב and מֵעֶה are the particular focus of this article. Interestingly, a link between discourse and digestion emerges in the metaphors from both Job and the Psalms. However, in Job a language for pain emerges which is disturbing and anthropomorphic, regularly depicting an attacking deity. In contrast, in the examples from the Psalms, tend to make a clearer distinction between the righteous and the wicked. In both cases, however, the body and metaphors connected to it are tightly bound up with what is social. The body is portrayed as an ever-interpreted entity and the actions and reactions of the community are all-important.
Communicating with Sufferers: Lessons from the Book of Job
Christian Bioethics 2013, (2013) 19(1): 82-99.
This article looks at the question of sin and disease in bioethics with a spiritual-theological analysis from the book of Job. The biblical figure Job is an innocent and just man who suffered horrendously. His dialogues with others—his wife, his friends, and God—can give many valuable insights for patients who suffer and for those who interact with them. Family, friends, physicians, nurses, chaplains, and pastoral workers can learn from Job how to communicate properly with sufferers. The main question for Job was how to maintain the tension between God’s justice and God’s mercy and not yield to the temptation of cursing God but to speak well of Him in moments of difficulties.
Grotesque bodies in the book of Job: A psychoanalytic perspective
Verbum et Ecclesia
Job is suffering from illness without understanding it. His impairment and exclusion render him disabled in an abled, gloating but threatened society for which he is the laughing stock despite his exceptional piety. His psychic and spiritual breakthrough comes when God makes him reflect on and in the mirror of the wild and disorderly bodies of the two monstrosities, Behemoth and Leviathan, elsewhere in the Hebrew Bible exemplifying chaos, but now unexpectedly celebrated. Even as possible relief thanks to light-hearted humour these grotesque bodies emancipate the object of body-politics by subverting the centre of certainty and power. In this study the Bakhtinian critique of the ‘monologisation’ of the human body and its experience promised to be fruitfully combined with psychoanalytic insights about imprisoned body-images to enrich the relevance of the book of Job.Intradisciplinary and/or interdisciplinary implications: The interface of biblical hermeneutics and exegesis with other ...
Disability and Advocacy in the Book of Job
Troubling Topics, Sacred Texts: Readings in the Hebrew Bible, New Testament, and Qur’an, 2021
The lasttwenty years or so in biblical studies have seen more and more scholars examining the Bible through the lens of disabilities studies. Beginningw ith Nancy Eiesland'sgroundbreaking 1994 book TheD isabled God and culminating most recentlyi nt he publication of as ingle-volume Bible commentary focused on biblical representations of disability,¹ these scholarlyeffortse xplore the religious, social,and culturalbackground behind the Bible'sdepictions of disability and the ways thosedepictions have shaped Jewish and Christian views on disability. Among the most significant contributions of disability studies to biblical scholarship has been the waythe discipline has expandedour definitionofdisability.N ol onger seen solely as am edical condition, disability is now understood as ac omplex social and cultural phenomenon. In the words of Candida Moss and JeremySchipper, "the culturalmodel understandsdisability as aproduct of the ways thatc ultures use physical and cognitive differences to narrate, organize, and interpret their world… Descriptions of disability become one wayb yw hich we createo rs hape culture."² Within biblical studies this shift has meantt hat disability criticism is no longer just am atter of diagnosingb iblical representations of illness or impairment but also using disability as al ens for examining otherc ulturald iscourses. Such is my goal in this essayonthe book of Job. In particular,Iwant to show that countervailingr epresentations of disability in the book advanceo ne of its key themes, namely,the tension between Job'soutward behavior and his interior dispositions. This tension is expressed most famouslyi nt he question posed to YHWH by the Adversary: "Does Jobf ear God for nothing?" (1:9).³ He does not challenget hat Jobi si ndeed "ab lameless and upright man who fears God and turns away from evil" (1:1,8;2:3). Rather,the Adversary questions the motives be
THE LAMENT OF THE AFFLICTED: A TRANSLATION OF JOB 30
Having been afflicted by God and judged by his friends, Job cries out in Chapter 30 with a poem describing his present decrepit state. Because of the difficulty of the Hebrew texts, English translations and commentators disagree on how to translate various sections of this poem. This paper attempts to show that the Hebrew text is comprehensible as it stands and presents a new translation of Job 30 from the Masoretic text with reference to the rest of the Hebrew Bible for interpretive aid.
On the borderline – representations of disability in the Old Testament
Scandinavian Journal of Disability Research, 2014
This article explores disability in the Old Testament. The discussion takes its starting point in a number of domains and arenas where disability was visualized and investigates the significance and meaning that can be attached to these domains in relation to the problem of inclusion and exclusion. The analysis highlights complex and contradictory phenomena, where the interpretation was not given but rather dependent on the cultural context and different mechanisms at work.