Don't Know Much About the Bible - Kenneth C. Davis [116]
Just as the character Job himself learns that there are no easy answers, Job is not an easy book. It stands as testimony to the questioning nature of the human spirit, perhaps the leftovers from that “Forbidden Fruit” Adam and Eve enjoyed in Eden. The fact that the people who decided on what should be in the Bible included a book with so many unanswered questions is also a “testament” of their recognition of God’s mysterious ways and the legitimacy of wondering about them. This is not a book that celebrates blind faith or Abraham’s unconditional “fear of God.” Job leaves readers with a tentative grasp of faith. Its message still seems subversive, leaving behind an uneasy sense that this somewhat capricious God of Job offers his “servant” the time-honored but frustrating response so many children get from their parents: “Because I said so.”
Out Of The Mouths Of Babes
PSALMS
God’s Greatest Hits! A collection of 150 hymns or, more accurately, poems, Psalms is the first book in the Hebrew “Writings” but follows Job in Christian Bibles. The Hebrew title is Tehillim, “Praises” or “Songs of Praise,” but that is not a completely accurate description. These are often intensely personal songs of despair, woe, and depression as well as songs celebrating the glories of God.
In ancient Jewish and Christian tradition, King David was considered the author of Psalms, but modern biblical scholars agree that the book was has multiple authors. The biblical text actually attributes seventy-four psalms to King David, twelve psalms to Solomon, and one to Moses; thirty-two psalms are identified with other individuals, and the rest are anonymous. The most widely accepted notion is that the psalms were composed over a long period, from the Exodus to the time of the Return to Jerusalem in 538 BCE. While historic setting is important to the Psalms, as C. S. Lewis noted in his Reflections on the Psalms (1958):
The Psalms were written by many poets and at many different dates. Some, I believe are allowed to go back to the reign of David. I think certain scholars allow that Psalm 18 might be by David himself. But many are later than the “captivity,” which we should call the deportation to Babylon…. What must be said, however, is that the Psalms are poems, and poems intended to be sung: not doctrinal treatises, nor even sermons…. Most emphatically the Psalms must be read as poems; as lyrics, with all the licenses and all the formalities, the hyperboles, the emotional rather than logical connections, which are proper to lyric poetry. (pp. 2-3)
The Bible has traditionally been thought of as God speaking to people. But in Psalms people speak to God, in some of the world’s greatest poetic literature. David Rosenberg, a poet who strives to capture the human voices at work in the Hebrew scriptures in his book A Poet’s Bible, makes this point in discussing the intimate, human quality of Psalms. “One day, translating a psalm that I thought was written in anger and is usually presented as such, I suddenly realized it was not anger at all but an intense depression, a self-conscious awareness of failure. The psalmist was facing depression and not allowing himself to respond with anger. Instead, even as his voice speaks bitterly, he overcomes despair with his song’s ironic sense of never ending, echoing into eternity. And I felt the poet’s utterly real presence.” (p. 3)
While Jews and Christians share the entire Hebrew scriptures, or Old Testament, Psalms might be the most emotionally and intensely shared book of Hebrew scripture. Rabbi Joseph Telushkin calls Psalms the “backbone of the Hebrew prayerbook” and notes that because the psalms are so omnipresent in prayer services, Jews know many of the book’s verses by heart. Jesus often quoted or referred to Psalms, notably during his temptation, in the Sermon on the Mount, and at his crucifixion. It is likely that