Reading Job as a Kierkegaardian Text: The Incarnation of Indirect Communication
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Søren Kierkegaard offers two different readings of the book of Job, one in his book Repetition and the other in one of his “upbuilding discourses” published during the same year. This essay contextualizes Kierkegaard’s authorship and argues that he presents Job as a maieutic text designed not to teach certain content, but rather to force the reading subject to wrestle with contradiction and criticize a number of viewpoints, including the reader’s own presuppositions. In the end, the maueitic text does not offer any answers: It merely encourages the birth of the critical subject. Exegetical examples focusing on the prologue and Job’s speeches in Job 9 explore the potential for more thoroughgoing maieutic readings of the book of Job.
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1
Søren Kierkegaard, Gjentagelsen (Copenhagen: C.A. Reitzel, 1843), and ibid., Fire opbyggelie Taler (Cophenhagen: P.G. Philipson, 1843). Gentagelsen (“repetition”) can be found in Søren Kierkegaard, Fear and Trembling/Repetition (ed. and trans. Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong; Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1983), pp. 125–231. Fire opbyggelie Taler (“four upbuilding discourses”) can be found in the compilation Eighteen Upbuilding Discourses (ed. and trans. Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong; Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992), and the sermon “The Lord Gave, and the Lord Took Away, Blessed Be the Name of the Lord” on pp. 109–124.
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3
Søren Kierkegaard, Fear and Trembling/Repetition (ed. and trans. Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong; Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1983), p. 358. Quotation taken from Søren Kierkegaard, Stages on Life’s Way (ed. and trans. Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong; Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1988), pp. 409; 434–35.
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5
Søren Kierkegaard, The Point of View (ed. and trans. Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong; Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1998), p. 495.
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10
See Kierkegaard, Stages on Life’s Way, p. 1, and Kierkegaard, Fear and Trembling/Repetition, p. 131.
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12
Søren Kierkegaard, Concluding Unscientific Postscript (trans. Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong; Princeton: Princeton University, 1992), p. 619.
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13
On October 16, 1843, Fear and Trembling, Repetition, and Three Upbuilding Discourses were published.
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18
Kierkegaard, Eighteen Upbuilding Discourses, pp. 5, 53, 107.
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19
George Pattison, Kierkegaard’s Upbuilding Discourses: Philosophy, Literature, and Theology (London: Routledge, 2002), p. 121.
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42
Neils Nyman Eriksen, The Category of Repetition: A Reconstruction (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2000), p. 2.
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43
Svend Bjerg, “Kierkegaard’s Story-Telling,” ST 45 (1991), pp. 111–25.
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47
J.W. von Goethe, The Sorrows of the Young Werther (trans. Burton Pike; New York: Random House, 2005); and Georg W.F. Hegel, Phenomenology of Mind [trans. J.B. Baillie; New York: Harper & Row, 1967).
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54
Ronald Gray, Goethe: A Critical Introduction (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1967), pp. 48–55.
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57
See Kierkegaard, Fear and Trembling/Repetition, p. 200, and Job 6:30.
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69
See Timothy Polk, “Job: Edification against Theodicy,” for an example, and Timothy K. Polk, “Kierkegaard and the Book of Job: Theodicy or Doxology?,” WW 31 (2011), pp. 409–416.
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71
Polk, “Job: Edification against Theodicy,” p. 140, and Polk, “Kierkegaard and the Book of Job: Theodicy or Doxology?” which only treats the discourse.
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72
William P. Brown, “Introducing Job: A Journey of Transformation,” Int 53 (2003), pp. 228–38.
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74
Matitiah Tsevat, “The Meaning of the Book of Job,” HUCA 37 (1966), pp. 73–106, followed by Edwin Good, “The Problem of Evil in the Book of Job,” in Leo Perdue and W.C. Gilpin (eds.), The Voice From the Whirlwind (Nashville: Abingdon, 1992), pp. 50–60.
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76
Carol Newsom, The Book of Job: The Contest of Moral Imaginations (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003).
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77
Alan Cooper, “Reading and Misreading the Prologue to Job,” JSOT 46 (1990), pp. 67–79 (74).
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78
Alan Cooper, “Reading and Misreading the Prologue to Job,” JSOT 46 (1990), pp. 67–79 (74). See also D. Clines, “False Naivety in the Prologue to Job’, HAR 9 (1985), pp. 127–36; reprinted in On the Way to the Postmodern: Old Testament Essays, 1967–1998 (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1998), vol. 2, pp. 735–44. Cooper cites Clines’ preliminary observations that the prologue of Job seems more complex than it appears at first glance, which Clines takes to be a literary artifice for the purpose of deceiving the reader.
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83
Cf. Choon-Leong Seow, Job 1–21: Interpretationand Commentary (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2013), p. 264; Newsom, Book of Job, p. 41; D. Clines, Job 1–20, p. 9.
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90
Fox, “Job the Pious,” p. 359 n. 13. Fox writes, “[I]f it [the connection] is intended, then it is implied.” Cooper’s distinction between implication and intention is important; a text can imply something that it does not intend to communicate.
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92
See Seow, Job 1–21, p. 106, for a discussion of the critique of Deuteronomistic theology.
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98
See Newsom, Book of Job, p. 255; John B. Curtis, “On Job’s response to Yahweh (Job 40:4–5; 42:2–6),” JBL 98 (1979), pp. 497–511; and E.J. van Wolde, “Job 42,1–6: The Reversal of Job,” in W.A.M. Beuken (ed.), The Book of Job (Louvain: Peeters, 1994), pp. 223–50.
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102
1 J.J.M. Roberts, “Job’s Summons to Yahweh: The Exploitation of a Legal Metaphor,” RestQ 16 (1973), pp. 159–65.
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Reading Job as a Kierkegaardian Text: The Incarnation of Indirect Communication
In: Biblical InterpretationSearch for other papers by Brennan Breed in
Current site
Google Scholar
PubMed
Søren Kierkegaard offers two different readings of the book of Job, one in his book Repetition and the other in one of his “upbuilding discourses” published during the same year. This essay contextualizes Kierkegaard’s authorship and argues that he presents Job as a maieutic text designed not to teach certain content, but rather to force the reading subject to wrestle with contradiction and criticize a number of viewpoints, including the reader’s own presuppositions. In the end, the maueitic text does not offer any answers: It merely encourages the birth of the critical subject. Exegetical examples focusing on the prologue and Job’s speeches in Job 9 explore the potential for more thoroughgoing maieutic readings of the book of Job.
| All Time | Past 365 days | Past 30 Days | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Abstract Views | 1127 | 158 | 11 |
| Full Text Views | 259 | 6 | 2 |
| PDF Views & Downloads | 173 | 23 | 7 |
