Some Oddball Books of the Hebrew Bible (Part 1)

by James Davisson

I recently finished reading the Hebrew Bible, the first and biggest step in an ongoing project to read through the Christian Bible in its entirety (Apocrypha included! I'm reading Sirach right now.) The Big Idea of the Hebrew Bible the relationship between two key things: God and God's people, Israel. And while most books of the Bible have both of these things (God and Israel), I noticed in my reading that there are a few books that are missing one or the other, which makes them stand out and seem a bit, well, odd.

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"Queen Esther," Andrea del Castagno

ESTHER:

What it is: Esther is the story of a Jewish woman in Persia who marries the king and saves the Jewish people from destruction.

What it's missing: God (...and Israel, sort of). This book famously does not directly mention God anywhere. It's also set entirely outside of the land of Israel (though it's still about the Jewish people).

How it got in there: Esther has had trouble getting into/staying in the Bible for both Christians and Jews because of the lack of God, as well as the generally non-religious character of the book. (Note that the Greek translation of the book added several passages of a very religious character; this version can be found in Catholic and Orthodox Bibles. These additions probably reflect discomfort with the lack of obvious religious meaning in the book of Esther.) It's noteworthy that the character of Esther in the book appears to be entirely assimilated to the surrounding culture in Persia, as she is not only married to a gentile, but also eats non-kosher food, and in fact neither she nor her cousin Mordecai seem to follow or acknowledge the Jewish religious laws.

There's definitely a strong case for including Esther in the Bible, since God's providence can certainly be seen working through people in the book, perhaps best in Esther 4:13-14. Also, in spite of taking place outside of Israel, it still has a message very directly intended for the Jewish people: take heart, be hopeful, and stay strong in tough times; look, you've been through worse before and come out okay.

Why it's interesting: What's interesting to me is that Esther is often regarded in scholarly circles as a piece of fiction, rather than history. Not only is there no external evidence to indicate that any of the events are historical (Queen Vashti, for example, does not exist in the historical record apart from this book, nor does Esther herself), but there are also a number of apparent historical inaccuracies. What's more, the book itself seems to be intended primarily not to record history but to convey satire of the enemies of the Jews and a message of support to the Jewish community.

We rarely (or for some of us, never) talk about the fictional character of some Biblical books in church or other religious contexts. For the most conservative audience, of course, the possibility of fiction in the Bible is not up for debate, as it is widely held that the Bible is inerrant.

But even in more progressive circles, the idea that parts of the Bible are fictional is poorly understood and very rarely discussed. I think we could get a much better understanding of the nature of the Bible and our relationship to it if this was the subject of the occasional sermon or Bible study.

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"Job's Tormentors," William Blake

JOB:

What it is: Job is the story of a good man, named Job, who suffers a lot and asks why he's suffering.

What it's missing: Israel. Job doesn't live in Israel and neither he nor his "friends" (they're really crappy friends and longwinded to boot) appear to be Jewish. Unlike Esther, where setting the book outside the Jewish homeland doesn't keep the book from having a pretty Jew-specific message, Job's lack of Jews or the land of Israel is very pointedly directing the reader toward the universal character of its ideas. The book of Job is about answering the question "Why do good people suffer?" The (somewhat unsatisfying) answer is basically "God is the God of everything, and it's complicated, so it's rude to ask, thank you very much." But since God is the God of everything, it makes sense to set this book outside of Israel, have it feature gentiles, and generally signal that "hey, this is the answer for everybody, not just Israelites."

How it got in there: Unlike a couple of the books on this list, Job appears to have been embraced immediately as an important theological work, and its inclusion in the Bible has never been controversial. We have evidence of its inclusion in the canon from the earliest possible date; there is even an Aramaic translation of Job among the Dead Sea Scrolls, the earliest collection of Biblical manuscripts we have.

Why it's interesting: Job is an even more obvious work of fiction than Esther, which at least has the decency to be set in a definite historical time and place (Persia during the Jewish exile) with at least one historical character (emperor Xerxes). Job, on the other hand, is set in the land of Uz, which may or may not have ever been an actual place. The introductory story has all the hallmarks of a folk tale (repeated building actions, over-the-top quantities of death, and formulaic numbers) and some of it actually takes place in heaven, which is very unusual in the narrative books of the Hebrew Bible (and an impossible place for a historian to speak about with any certainty). Furthermore, the middle part is five dudes talking to each other (in poems!), and the climax is God speaking from the whirlwind. All of this bears very little resemblance to an attempt to record a real, historical event.

Instead, we can say with confidence that the author of Job did not write it as history, but as a way of discussing the big question he had in mind. Job is so clearly fictional that even the ancient Rabbis said "there was no such creature as Job; he is a parable."

The fact that these two books, Esther and especially Job, are essentially "made up" does not have to be threatening, because in a very important sense, being fictional is not the same as being false. For a prime example, we need look no further than Jesus: Jesus told stories to illustrate his points, and Christians know that these stories Jesus told were fictions, but we also firmly believe that they express eternal truths. We can believe the same things about books like Esther and Job.

Why it's even more interesting: As interesting as this idea is, there's an even bigger and more interesting one that Job opens up for us: that there are different, and indeed, disagreeing ideas in the Bible about really big, important topics. In the case of Job, the disagreement is about whether good is rewarded and evil is punished. Large portions of the Hebrew Bible either assume or state directly that God punishes the wicked and rewards the righteous. Job, on the other hand, points out the fact that this does not seem to be borne out in reality and asks why this is so.

I really wish that the disagreements among the Biblical authors were something that could be freely discussed and thought about by open-minded Christians, and I especially wish it were more often addressed directly in church services. Partly because smart people recognize the contradictions and it drives some people away. And partly because not talking about this fact and dealing with is can lead to unnecessary error, doubt, and even sin by faithful Christians.

(Okay, I'm done talking about fictional books in the Bible for now. I could also talk about Genesis, Daniel, Jonah, and others, but most of these books have both of the elements, God and Israel, that the rest of the"oddball" books in this list are missing, so I'll leave them to one side. Part 2, with three more oddball books and a summary, will be up later this week.)

Update: part 2 of this post is now available here.

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Photo Sources:
1: http://www.womeninthebible.net/paintings_esther.htm
2. https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/aa/Blake_1793_Job%27s_Tormentors.jpg