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ABSTRACT
TEXTS OF PROTEST: PERSPECTIVES ON SUFFERING IN
THE BOOK OF JOB AND THE POPOL VUH
The following comparative study analyzes various responses to the problem
of suffering in ancient Israel and pre-Hispanic Mesoamerica as represented in the
biblical Hebrew book of Job and the colonial K’iche’ Maya Popol Vuh. Through
the method of textual analysis, it identifies and explicates a number of distinct
perspectives and examines the relationship between the experience of suffering
and the creative project of meaning-making through the construction,
deconstruction, and reconstruction of traditional narratives. In this context, it
interprets myth as a hermeneutic for apprehending the meaning of suffering and
proposes an understanding of literary composition as a means of reinterpreting and
renegotiating mythic understandings of the past regarding the nature of the gods,
the cosmos, and the human condition, including such inevitable features of
existence as pain and mortality. The study applies Paul Ricoeur’s typology of the
“myths of the beginning and the end of evil” in the Hebraic and Hellenic mythic
traditions to the case of the Popol Vuh in an effort to develop the beginnings of an
analogous understanding of the representations of suffering in Mesoamerican
myth by determining points of correspondence to as well as divergence from this
Ricoeurian typology. Finally, it interprets both texts as forms of protest against
ideologies deemed oppressive by their respective authors. Thus, it examines how
these authors are reacting to their respective cultural-historical contexts and
generating meaning through narrative in response to historical experiences of
acute suffering.
Nicholas Jared Andrews
May 2013
TEXTS OF PROTEST: PERSPECTIVES ON SUFFERING IN
THE BOOK OF JOB AND THE POPOL VUH
by
Nicholas Jared Andrews
A thesis
submitted in partial
fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of
Master of Arts in English
in the College of Arts and Humanities
California State University, Fresno
May 2013
APPROVED
For the Department of English:
We, the undersigned, certify that the thesis of the following student
meets the required standards of scholarship, format, and style of the
university and the student's graduate degree program for the
awarding of the master's degree.
Nicholas Jared Andrews
Thesis Author
Steve Adisasmito-Smith (Chair) English
Ruth Jenkins English
Robert Maldonado Philosophy
Keith Jordan Art and Design
For the University Graduate Committee:
Dean, Division of Graduate Studies
AUTHORIZATION FOR REPRODUCTION
OF MASTER’S THESIS
I grant permission for the reproduction of this thesis in part or in
its entirety without further authorization from me, on the
condition that the person or agency requesting reproduction
absorbs the cost and provides proper acknowledgment of
authorship.
X Permission to reproduce this thesis in part or in its entirety must
be obtained from me.
Signature of thesis author:
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Many thanks to all who have provided encouragement and support during
the course of this endeavor, in particular my mother, my father, my beautiful
girlfriend, close friends, and the following California State University, Fresno,
faculty: Dr. Steve Adisasmito-Smith, Dr. Ruth Jenkins, Dr. Robert Maldonado,
and Dr. Keith Jordan. I extend my sincerest gratitude to these professors for their
dedication and integrity, for sharing their knowledge and passion with students
such as myself, for encouragement and support throughout my academic career,
and, perhaps most of all, for their friendship. I consider myself very fortunate to
have had the opportunity to learn from these remarkable individuals, and I hope
that I have managed to glean a bit of their knowledge during the time that I have
spent in their classrooms and in their company.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Page
CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION – DOLEO ERGO SUM: EVIL,
SUFFERING, AND THE DESIRE FOR MEANING .................................. 1
The Problem of Evil .......................................................................................... 1
The Problem of Suffering ............................................................................... 12
Myth and Meaning .......................................................................................... 14
Methodology and Significance ....................................................................... 19
CHAPTER 2 – INTRODUCTION TO THE BOOK OF JOB:
BACKGROUND AND CULTURAL-HISTORICAL CONTEXT ............ 24
CHAPTER 3 – THE BOOK OF JOB: THE RETRIBUTIVE VIEW OF
SUFFERING AND ITS REFUTATION .................................................... 54
The Prose Narrative Framework: Suffering as a Test of Faith ....................... 58
The Poetic Debate: Suffering as Divine Injustice ........................................... 64
The Theophany: The Cosmocentric Perspective and the Mystery of
Suffering ............................................................................................... 84
Conclusions ..................................................................................................... 90
CHAPTER 4 – INTRODUCTION TO THE POPOL VUH: BACKGROUND
AND CULTURAL-HISTORICAL CONTEXT ......................................... 94
CHAPTER 5 – THE POPOL VUH: RITUAL SACRIFICE AND THE
REGENERATIVE VIEW OF SUFFERING ............................................ 118
The Creation: Suffering for a Greater Good ................................................. 119
The Fall of Vucub Caquix: The Return of the Retributive View ................. 126
The Defeat of the Death Lords: Suffering as Cosmic Conflict ..................... 129
Conclusions ................................................................................................... 135
CHAPTER 6: CONCLUSION – THE BOOK OF JOB AND THE POPOL
VUH: A COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS ................................................... 137
The “Symbolism of Evil” .............................................................................. 137
“Evil” in Ancient Israel and Pre-Hispanic Mesoamerica ............................. 139
Page
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vi
Theological Views ........................................................................................ 147
Anthropological Views ................................................................................. 153
Texts of Protest: A Departure and a Return .................................................. 156
The Problem of Suffering in Modern Thought ............................................. 159
Limitations and Suggestions for Further Study ............................................ 164
WORKS CITED AND CONSULTED ................................................................ 166
CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION – DOLEO ERGO SUM: EVIL,
SUFFERING, AND THE DESIRE FOR MEANING
The Problem of Evil
Throughout much of the history of “western” civilization, philosophical
discourse regarding the experience of suffering has been dominated by a
discursive formation that has come to be known as the “problem of evil,” an
ongoing dialectic in the fields of Christian theology and the philosophy of religion.
Due to the prominent influence of Christian thought among the ideologies of the
West since the conversion of the Roman emperor Constantine (r. 306 – 337 CE),
who made Christianity the official state religion of the Roman empire, this
discourse has traditionally been conceptualized in terms of the metaphysical and
theological claims of the Christian tradition, which considers God to be the
summum bonum (“highest good”). As Joseph F. Kelly notes, “much of the
difficulty about evil derives from monotheism, belief in one God, often a good and
powerful deity who theoretically can stop evil but practically does not” (5). As
Kelly here implies, evil presents no logical dilemma for traditional polytheistic
belief systems, which account for the presence of evil by the existence of multiple
divinities, each with their own distinct domain of activity. Furthermore, such
polytheistic divinities are not typically held to be necessarily benevolent or
absolutely powerful. As in the myths of the ancient Greeks, for example, human
beings are often unfortunate pawns in the disputes of anthropomorphic gods who
inflict suffering out of anger or jealousy. Monotheism, on the other hand, cannot
account for the existence of evil by either divine plurality or impotence if it posits
an omnipotent deity. Thus, in its logical form (as opposed to its evidential form),
the problem of evil emerges from the acceptance of four propositions traditionally
associated with the monotheistic “Abrahamic” religions: Judaism, Christianity,
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and Islam. Therefore, it may be construed as a logical problem with four premises,
though many variants omit the first premise, deeming it superfluous. These
premises are as follows: (1) God is omniscient (all-knowing), (2) God is
omnipotent (all-powerful), (3) God is omnibenevolent (all-good), and (4) Evil (or,
more precisely, suffering) exists.
As emphasized by J. L. Mackie, the above premises, if all accepted as
viable truth claims, appear to present a logical contradiction, a point reiterated by
numerous philosophers and theologians. The logic of this argument, in
correspondence with the above premises, is roughly as follows: (1) If God is
omniscient and evil exists, then it logically follows that he knows all things (past,
present, and future), including every instance of evil or suffering that ever has
occurred or ever will occur; (2) If God is omnipotent and evil exists, then it
logically follows that he either causes evil or permits evil (as he does in the
biblical book of Job). In either case, he cannot be absolved of ethical
accountability, since he possesses the power to prevent evil, and therefore cannot
be deemed omnibenevolent, since his causation or allowance of evil would seem
to negate this possibility; (3) On the other hand, if God is indeed omnibenevolent
and evil exists, then it logically follows that he is powerless to prevent it and
therefore, by definition, is not omnipotent. Unless, of course, he has some
justifiable reason for allowing such evil to exist, though it is difficult to imagine
what could possibly justify the degree and overwhelming prevalence of evil and
suffering in the world. Indeed, as even C. S. Lewis (a famed Christian apologist
and author of the Chronicles of Narnia series) admits, the vast emptiness of the
“completely dark and unimaginably cold” cosmos, the predatory natural order of
biological existence, the inevitable physical pain that arises as a consequence of
corporeality, the acute mental suffering made possible by the evolution of
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consciousness, the entirety of human history (“a record of crime, war, disease, and
terror”), the “agonized apprehension” of loss and the “poignant misery” of
memory, the inevitable ruin of civilizations, and the entropy of the universe itself
all seem to indicate, and thus might reasonably lead one to conclude, that “either
there is no spirit behind the universe, or else a spirit indifferent to good and evil, or
else an evil spirit” (1-3). Despite this abundance of evidence, however, Lewis, like
countless others before and since, remained unconvinced, for reasons discussed
below.
This logical problem was perhaps most definitively articulated by David
Hume (1711 – 1776 CE) in a series of “old questions” that he attributes to the
ancient Greek philosopher Epicurus (341 – 270 BCE): “Is God willing to prevent
evil but not able? Then he is impotent. Is he able, but not willing? Then he is
malevolent. Is he both able and willing? Whence then is evil?” (pt. X, p. 63). John
Hick has formulated the problem in similar terms: “If God is perfectly good, He
must want to abolish all evil; if He is unlimitedly powerful, He must be able to
abolish all evil; but evil exists; therefore, either God is not perfectly good or He is
not unlimitedly powerful” (5). Lewis has chosen to formulate the problem in the
inverse, emphasizing the absence of perfect happiness rather than the presence of
evil or suffering: “If God were good, He would wish to make His creatures
perfectly happy, and if God were almighty, He would be able to do what He
wished. But the creatures are not happy. Therefore, God lacks either goodness or
power, or both” (14). David Parkin has encapsulated the problem in a single
question: “If God is benevolent, omniscient, and omnipotent, then why does he
permit the existence of evil” (21). Finally, in what is perhaps its most succinct
articulation, Rabbi Harold S. Kushner has distilled the problem yet further,
refining it to what is arguably its utmost essence: “Why do bad things happen to
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good people?” Such arguments, referred to as “arguments from evil,” have been
divided by scholars into two types: (1) the “logical problem of evil,” which
concerns the logical incompatibility of the existence of evil with the
aforementioned theological claims; and (2) the “evidential problem of evil,” which
concerns the apparent improbability of the existence of God based upon the
empirical evidence of evil in the world. In other words, the former concerns the
logical possibility of the existence of an omnipotent and omnibenevolent god,
given the existence of evil, while the latter concerns the improbability of the
existence of such a god, given the existence of evil.
In response to these problems, Christian apologists throughout the ages
have produced, and continue to produce, increasingly elaborate arguments in
defense of the doctrine of divine justice. Since the twentieth century, these
arguments, referred to as “theodicies,” have been classified under the rubric of two
distinct types. The first, which Hick has called “the predominant theodicy of
western Christendom,” is known as the “Augustinian theodicy” or “free will
defense,” first proposed by Augustine of Hippo (354 – 430 CE) in his
Confessiones and later associated with Alvin Platinga in modern discourse (215).
The second, Hick has identified as the “Irenaean theodicy” or “soul-making
defense,” developed by Hick himself based upon the writings of Irenaeus (130 –
202 CE), an early Church Father and theologian who proposed a two-stage process
of human creation and development requiring free will and the existence of evil
for the spiritual maturation of the individual human soul in preparation for its
ascent to heaven. This latter approach is essentially the argument made by Lewis
as well, in his book The Problem of Pain (1940), in which he describes suffering
as the chisel that the divine sculptor uses to “remake” and “perfect” human beings,
“to compel us into unity . . . by persecution and even hardship” (35). However,
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Lewis would later find this perspective challenged, and his faith shaken, by the
tragic loss of his wife to cancer, an experience that caused him to reconsider his
prior interpretation of suffering, as recorded in A Grief Observed (1961).
The Irenaean theodicy can be understood as a specific subtype of the more
general “greater good defense,” employed by Thomas Aquinas (1225 – 1274 CE)
in his Summa Theologiae, which suggests that an omnipotent and omnibenevolent
god either causes or permits evil in the service of a hypothetical “greater good” by
which the entire history of evil and suffering will eventually be justified (a
suggestion offensive to modern sensibilities when considered in the light of such
horrendous atrocities as the systematic extermination of millions of men, women,
and children during the Holocaust or the horrific deaths of thousands of children
daily due to starvation, malaria, or complications from the HIV/AIDS virus, for
example). To this effect, Aquinas writes, “God allows evils to happen in order to
bring a greater good therefrom” (pt. III, q. 1, art. 3, p. 13). In its traditional form,
this view interprets the biblical myth of “the Fall” (as it has come to be called in
the Christian tradition) found in Genesis 2.4b – 3.24 as a felix culpa (meaning
“happy fault” or, in the Catholic tradition, “fortunate fall”), a phrase derived from
the writings of Augustine. According to this view, the Fall was ultimately a
“fortunate” event because it made possible the redemption of humanity through
the incarnation and sacrifice of Christ on the cross for the expiation of “original
sin” engendered by the disobedience of the primordial human couple. Thus, in
Augustine’s estimation, evil exists because “He [God] deemed it better to bring
good out of evil than not to permit any evil to exist at all” (ch. VIII, par. 27, p. 35).
Furthermore, Augustine understood evil to be nothing more than the “privation of
good” (Latin: privatio boni), as darkness is merely the absence of light, rather than
a thing unto itself with its own independent existence (ch. III, par. 11, p. 18). To
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this effect, he writes, “to lessen the good is to give rise to evil” (ch. IV, par. 12, p.
19). Therefore, he reasons, “There can never be evil where there is no good,” and
“every being therefore is good” (ch. IV, par. 13, p. 20). Some proponents of the
greater good defense have argued that free will constitutes a greater good that
justifies the existence of suffering. According to this view, God’s allowance of
evil is a necessary condition of free will, for human freedom cannot exist without
the possibility for moral evil. Thus, this view places the burden of evil squarely on
the shoulders of human beings, thereby combining the two types of defense (free
will and greater good) into a single theodicy that effectively absolves God of
responsibility for all sufferings produced by human beings, though it neglects to
address and cannot account for non-human causes of suffering, such as disease,
natural disasters, and mortality itself.
Other notable thinkers who have employed variations of these arguments
include Boethius (480 – 524/6 CE), in his De Consolatione Philosophiae, and
John Milton (1608 – 1674 CE), in his masterpiece of epic poetry Paradise Lost,
the explicit purpose of which (according to the text itself) is “to justify the ways of
God to men” (I.26). Despite his efforts, however, Milton arguably succeeded in
accomplishing the opposite due to his vividly imagined depiction of Satan as a
complex, introspective anti-hero and impassioned orator who rallies a third of the
angels of heaven to revolt in protest against the dictates of a totalitarian god,
leading William Blake to comment that Milton was “a true Poet and of the Devil’s
party without knowing it” (71). For this reason, Milton’s Satan was adopted by the
Romantics as a heroic, rather than a villainous, figure.
In 1710, German polymath Gottfried Leibniz (1646 – 1716 CE) published a
collection of essays on “the goodness of God, the freedom of man, and the origin
of evil,” in which he coined the term “theodicy,” meaning “divine justice” (from
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the Greek , meaning “god,” and , meaning “justice”). In these Essais de
Théodicée, Leibniz expounded a philosophical argument in response to the
problem of evil. This philosophy, known as optimism (from the Latin optimum,
meaning “best”), acknowledges the inherent imperfection of the world but asserts
that, despite this fact, it remains the “best of all possible worlds.” This claim was
famously satirized by Voltaire (1694 – 1778 CE) in his novella Candide, ou
, which dramatizes the gradual disillusionment of its naïve,
eponymous protagonist as he is forced to confront the imperfection of the world
through a series of increasingly fantastical hardships. Similarly, another French
novella also produced during the Enlightenment, titled Justine and authored by the
infamous Marquis de Sade (1740 – 1814 CE), vividly illustrated the “misfortunes
of virtue” in what seems to be the worst of all possible worlds, expounding his
own libertine philosophy in the process through the philosophical musings of the
novella’s many villains.
Since the publication of Leibniz’s writings on the problem, the term
“theodicy” has come to denote any argument that attempts to reconcile the
doctrines of divine omnipotence, omniscience, and omnibenevolence with the
existence of evil, though since the early twentieth century its meaning has been
expanded (by sociologist Max Weber and others) to apply to any attempt to
explain the existence of evil or to account for its origin, whether formulated within
or outside of the framework of Christian theology. This expansion of the term has
enabled its application to non-western belief systems, effectively broadening the
discussion by allowing for the inclusion of such belief systems in an emergent
cross-cultural and pan-historical discourse on the various representations and
understandings of the related phenomena of evil and suffering in the diverse
traditions of human history. Though at times a useful term, the word “evil,”
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remains problematic for a number of reasons, however, and should thus be
employed with caution.
First, it is a heavily loaded term that connotes certain culturally specific
metaphysical and theological associations that are not universally applicable,
though they are certainly widespread, both historically and geographically. The
term “evil” is most often used to describe human causes of suffering, though its
actual referent in such cases is typically human cruelty or sadism rather than a
hypothetical, metaphysical force that is operant in the world. Natural causes of
suffering (such as disease, drought, earthquakes, famine, floods, hurricanes,
tornadoes, tsunamis, volcanic eruptions, and other such occurrences) cannot
rightly be called “evil,” for they are merely consequences of the physical laws of
nature and thus lack intent. The term “evil,” then, may be defined, and
distinguished from suffering, by the following conditions: Evil is the willful
infliction of suffering, while suffering is the effect of an “evil” committed.
According to this definition, the infliction of suffering, in order for it justifiably to
be termed “evil,” requires intent. Suffering, on the other hand, is an effect
experienced and may thus manifest regardless of causality or intentionality.
Similarly, Adam Morton writes, “Evil centers on atrocity: death, pain, and
humiliation imposed on others. Evil acts produce atrocities deliberately, and with
a specific kind of deliberation, in which evil-doers look away from the fact that the
victims are fellow human beings” (13, emphasis added). Jeffrey Burton Russell
has also defined evil in similar terms, stating that “the essence of evil is abuse of a
sentient being, a being that can feel pain. It is the pain that matters. Evil is grasped
by the mind immediately and immediately felt by the emotions; it is sensed as hurt
deliberately inflicted” (17, emphasis added). In response, Kelly has distilled this
definition to the following formulation: “the deliberate imposition of suffering by
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a human being upon another sentient being,” which is as precise a definition of
evil as any (3). It is important to note that the operative factor in all of the above
definitions is deliberation or intent. To these definitions, all of which are suitable,
let us add simply “the willful infliction of suffering,” which is perhaps the most
succinct possible formulation.
Second, the term “evil” signifies incomprehensibility and thus halts
attempts at understanding, often before they have begun. As Terry Eagleton notes,
calling an action “evil” implies that it is “beyond comprehension,” for “evil is
unintelligible” and “there is no context which would make it explicable” (2-3).
Similarly, in Morton’s estimation, “‘Evil’ is part of the vocabulary of hatred,
dismissal, or incomprehension. We call acts or people evil when they are so bad
that we cannot fit them within our normal moral and explanatory frames.” Thus,
“our horror drives us to a special terminology” (4). Later, he adds, “we very often
react to evil as if it were mysterious and inexplicable. We can’t imagine how
anyone like us could do anything like that” (21). For this reason, the term “evil”
has the potential to stifle productive conversation. It often appears as the verbal
equivalent of throwing one’s hands up in acquiescence to incomprehensibility,
thus providing no useful solutions. According to Morton, “We find the origins of
atrocity so puzzling that we label the mystery Evil, and we grope desperately for
explanations for it” (2). What is needed in such circumstances is a
demythologization of evil, for it is only by attempting to understand the various
neurological, psychological, and sociological factors that have led to an act of
“evil” that a humane society can hope to prevent similar crimes in the future. To
this effect, Morton theorizes, “Instead of depicting the motives of evil-doers as
unintelligible, an enlightening theory of evil should help us to understand the
variety of motives for performing evil actions, and the varied resemblances these
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motives have to those that operate in normal human life.” In other words, “it
should expand our resources for understanding” rather than diminish them by
resorting to superstitious, medieval thinking that relies upon mythological
constructs such as demonic possession, the Devil, or the concept of original sin
(7).
Third, and perhaps most insidious of all, concerns the employment of
supernatural claims as explanations for human evil, such as demonic possession or
voices from God. These “devil made me do it” or “God told me to” explanations
reflect, at best, a need for mental health intervention and, at worst, an attempt to
evade ethical accountability and responsibility for one’s actions. Furthermore, they
are dangerous. As Morton rightly notes, “Though there are no devils, people’s
beliefs in devils can be a powerful force for evil” (33). Thus, the term itself bears
the dangerous potential to produce the very types of atrocities that it seeks to
condemn, through the demonization (i.e., dehumanization) and “othering” of those
labeled “evil” and the fostering of the kind of “virtuous paranoia” that inspires
“protective or pre-emptive atrocities,” such as those seen, for example, during the
witch-hunts, tortures, and executions conducted in western Europe and later in
Salem, Massachusetts in 1692, to cite but one particularly infamous example of
many (Morton 5).
1
As Morton explains, “Thinking in terms of evil can give us the
same attitudes as evil-doers. They often think their victims deserve what they get,
that they are worthless scum, inferior beings, or dangerously alien. They often
think, in fact, that their victims are evil.” Therefore, he cautions, “Thinking in
terms of evil can, if we are not careful, make us accomplices in atrocity” (6).
1
See the notorious Malleus Maleficarum for an example of the misogynistic logic that was used
to justify these persecutions (Mackay).
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Finally, the idea of human evil presents a logical chicken-and-egg problem
that implies circular reasoning: Do human beings commit evil acts because they
are evil? Or are they evil because they commit evil acts? On the other hand, as
Susan Heiman notes, the term “evil” can be useful because it is indicative of the
human desire for clear moral distinctions, even while its ambiguity and lack of
definition renders it susceptible to the dangers of distortion and manipulation for
political ends (xiv). Consider, for example, the Bush Administration’s use of the
term “Axis of Evil” following the terrorist attacks of 9/11, a calculated rhetorical
strategy aimed at demonizing foreign nations considered enemies while rallying
the American public into compliance with a political agenda in the guise of a
global “War on Terror.”
The present study will examine the problem in more general terms,
divorcing it from the metaphysical and theological associations that the term
“evil” connotes (the apt reason for this study) and instead shifting its focus to the
experience of suffering, which is perhaps its true root. By this, I mean to suggest
that the phenomenon of suffering begets the concept of evil, which is retroactively
postulated as its source. In other words, evil (as a metaphysical construct) is
conceived in response to the experience of suffering, as a means to account for and
make sense of this troubling phenomenon. As Parkin rightly points out, “Evil is
not anything: it denotes rather an area of discourse concerning human suffering,
human existential predicaments, and the attempted resolution of these through
other humans and through non-human agencies, including a God or gods” (10-11,
emphasis in original). Thus, the problem of evil, in its most fundamental form, is
more precisely a problem of suffering. This simple fact reveals the universality of
the problem, for “suffering may be culturally defined, but it is never lacking,” and
“the predicaments are therefore many” (23). In responding to this most
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fundamental of human problems, Parkin notes, “people reveal their cultural
assumptions about being, fallibility, and culpability” (23). There is, therefore,
much to be learned by employing the problem of suffering as an analytical
framework for cross-cultural comparison, insofar as it can reveal a great deal
about a particular culture’s ideas and values regarding humanity’s most
fundamental concerns and its most perplexing and troubling questions.
Furthermore, such comparative inquiry increases our perspectives and broadens
our understanding of humanity’s remarkable creative capacity for meaning-
making in the face of complex problems.
The Problem of Suffering
Suffering is an inevitable condition of human existence. As Buddhist
philosophy has long acknowledged, living necessarily involves the experience of
pain, both physical and emotional, though the experience of each individual
remains unique. Thus, suffering is at once both a deeply personal (and often
alienating) experience and a universal human phenomenon capable of uniting
people en masse, whether in solidarity created through common suffering or in
alliance against the suffering of others. Due to its universal nature, suffering is
also a fundamental component of human identity; part of what it means to be
human is to experience pain, and to overcome the challenges and hardships that
human life entails, which in turn shapes our understanding of ourselves and of our
relationship to the world in which we live. As Eagleton notes, “There are certain
negative features of the human species which cannot be greatly altered. As long as
there is love and death, for example, the tragedy of mourning those dear to us who
perish will know no end” (37). Human beings, therefore, are creatures that love
and creatures that die (in contrast to the immortal gods), creatures that hope and
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fear, laugh and weep, struggle and endure, creatures that suffer. Thus, suffering,
like mortality and the ability to feel love, is an essential feature of the human
condition. In some cases, the experience of suffering can provide opportunities for
learning and growth, an observation that recalls the Irenaean theodicy as well as
Friedrich Nietzsche’s oft-quoted aphorism, “What does not kill me makes me
stronger” (33). In other cases, however, the experience of suffering is so acute that
it suffocates the soul, crushing the spirit and depriving the sufferer of the will to
live. Often, suffering is the result of human causes, which theologians call “moral
evil” (as distinguished from suffering produced by non-human causes, termed
“natural evil”).
2
Such human causes bring to mind the Augustinian theodicy and
can thus be explained in terms of free will. In other cases, however, suffering
occurs senselessly, resulting from indiscriminate chance occurrences that are
beyond human ability to predict or control. What meaning, if any, can be derived
from such perplexing cases of senseless suffering?
According to Dorothee Soelle, the value of personal suffering lies precisely
in its ability to “make one more sensitive to the suffering in the world,” to increase
one’s capacity for compassion (125). In this way, Soelle argues, suffering “can
teach us to put forth a greater love for everything that exists” because “the
capacity for love is strongest when it grows out of suffering,” a view that is
reminiscent of the Irenaean theodicy, though it is here construed in secular terms
(125, 126-7). Thus, according to Soelle, the experience of suffering is capable of
countering societal apathy, a word that literally signifies an insensibility to
suffering (from the Greek + , meaning “without emotion, feeling, or
2
Parkin delineates three distinct categories of evil: “the moral, referring to human culpability; the
physical, by which is understood destructive elemental forces of nature, for example earthquakes, storms,
or the plague; and the metaphysical, by which disorder in the cosmos or in relations with divinity results
from a conflict of principles or wills” (15).
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suffering”). In Soelle’s view, “the ideal of a life free from suffering, the illusion of
painlessness, destroys people’s ability to feel anything” (4). Therefore, “only those
who themselves are suffering will work for the abolition of conditions under
which people are exposed to senseless, patently unnecessary suffering, such as
hunger, oppression, or torture” (2-3). Most importantly, Soelle asserts, “God has
no other hands than ours,” and it is thus up to human beings, in the absence of
divine intervention, to embody the power of the so-called “God of love” (i.e., the
Christian god) through compassion and humanist activism (149). Implicit in
Soelle’s analysis are two fundamental concerns. The more urgent concern
plaguing the sufferer is undoubtedly the question of how to alleviate his or her
suffering. Arguably the more significant concern, however, is the question of
meaning.
Myth and Meaning
In Viktor Frankl’s estimation, “man’s main concern is not to gain pleasure
or to avoid pain but rather to see a meaning in his life,” contrary to the “pleasure
principle” of Freudian psychoanalysis (113). According to Frankl’s
psychotherapeutic theory, called “logotherapy” (from the Greek , a
polyvalent word signifying, among other things, “meaning”), the process of
“striving to find a meaning in one’s life is the primary motivational force in man”
(99). He calls this striving “the will to meaning,” in contrast with Schopenhauer’s
will to live, Nietzsche’s will to power, Freud’s will to pleasure, and Foucault’s
will to knowledge. “That is why man is even ready to suffer,” Frankl writes, “on
the condition, to be sure, that his suffering has a meaning” (113). Frankl’s analysis
here echoes Nietzsche’s maxim, “He who has a why to live for can bear almost
any how,” an assertion that testifies to the enduring strength of the human will
15
15
(33). It is also apparent that he who has a why to die for can bear almost any how,
as evidenced by the willingness (even eagerness, in some cases) of martyrs to
endure torture and death for their convictions (whether religious beliefs or socio-
political ideals), mothers to sacrifice themselves for their children, and lovers to
endure the same for their beloveds.
Frankl’s assessment has been independently maintained by Peter L. Berger,
who writes, “And it is probable . . . that, in situations of acute suffering, the need
for meaning is as strong as or even stronger than the need for happiness,” for the
apprehension of meaning makes suffering more tolerable by strengthening the
resolve of the sufferer (58). Furthermore, Berger rightly sees meaning-making as
the primary function of theodicy: “It is not happiness that theodicy primarily
provides, but meaning,” he notes (58). Indeed, it is in part this struggle to make
sense of suffering that underlies the enterprise of religion and the sacred narratives
that lie at its core, which Soelle has described as an elaborate “bundle of defense
mechanisms against disappointment,” a reductive definition to be sure, but one
that acknowledges a fundamental function of religious narrative (147). Thus,
religion and its mythic content may be understood, in one sense, as a creative
response to suffering that generates meaning.
This approach to the study of scripture (sacred texts) is capable of
providing unique insights into the representations of suffering that appear in
various cultural artifacts, such as myths and literature. Here, it is important to note
the relationship between these two categories, for they are not mutually exclusive.
By definition, myths (traditionally an oral form of meaning-making among non-
literate cultures) become literature (and yet remain myths) at the moment that they
are written down. In many respects, literature has been an heir to myth, an
alternative medium for the creation of new myths made possible by the invention
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16
of a new technology (writing), and yet the literary imagination has also been a tool
for the preservation and reinterpretation of the myths of the past, as evidenced, for
example, by the book of Job.
3
Due to the universal nature of suffering, as well as the significance of its
role in the project of meaning-making, this troubling phenomenon has been a
subject of major concern for artists, philosophers, psychologists, sociologists, and
theologians alike throughout the ages. One of the ways in which human responses
to suffering manifest is in the construction of belief systems (studied under the
rubric of religion) and the mythic structures that support them. Each of these belief
systems provides its adherents with a comprehensive worldview (from the German
term Weltanshauung), a hermeneutic for apprehending the nature of the cosmos,
the divine, and the self. Such worldviews offer an interpretation of existence and
provide a framework that enables their adherents to orient themselves in time and
space, “to ‘locate’ human phenomena within a cosmic frame of reference” (Berger
35). Such belief systems, which Berger calls “nomoi” (from the Greek ,
meaning “law,” “custom,” or “order”), “locate the individual’s life in an all-
embracing fabric of meanings that, by its very nature, transcends that life,” such
that “the individual who internalizes these meanings at the same time transcends
himself” (54). These belief systems contribute to the construction of individual
identity while simultaneously enabling the transcendence of individuality through
the formation of collective identity, for “the world-building activity of man is
always and inevitably a collective enterprise” (Berger 7). This collectivity in turn
promotes solidarity and thus strengthens the social fabric of the community.
Furthermore, and of paramount significance for the present study, such belief
3
See chapters 2 and 3.
17
17
systems provide a means of comprehending reality by generating meaning in
response to such troubling phenomena as suffering and death, for “every nomos is
an area of meaning carved out of a vast mass of meaninglessness, a small clearing
of lucidity in a formless, dark, always ominous jungle” (Berger 23).
Thus, Berger conceives of religion as a product of man’s “self-
externalization, of his infusion of reality with his own meanings” (28). Religion,
he explains, “implies that human order is projected into the totality of being” (28).
It is “the audacious attempt to conceive of the universe as being humanly
significant,” and therefore constitutes “the ‘sacred canopy’ which every human
society builds over its world to give it meaning” (28). A part of this projection of
human order and significance onto the cosmos is an attempt to understand the
experience of senseless suffering as meaningful and purposive, to bestow sense
upon and assign a teleology to an otherwise perplexing phenomenon.
It is in this manner that the enterprise of religion, and its symbolic language
of myth (Greek: ), addresses the most fundamental concerns of humanity:
suffering, death, and the question of meaning. Mythopoesis (myth-making), then,
serves a logopoetic (meaning-making) function, by which human beings make
sense of these concerns and generate meaning in response to them. Therefore, the
human desire for meaning may be understood as the impetus for mythopoesis. In
other words, the natural human propensity for meaning-making constitutes the
“mythopoetic nucleus” (to borrow a phrase from Paul Ricoeur) that lies at the
heart of the world of myth, pumping blood to its innumerable appendages and
infusing them with life.
As a method of interpretation, reframing the problem of evil as a problem
of suffering sheds new light on sacred narratives that attempt to explain evil, a
prevalent theme in world mythology, undoubtedly due to the fact that the
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18
experience of suffering is a universal phenomenon. For example, a myth of the
origin of evil, such as the biblical Fall (a myth-type that Ricoeur calls the
“Adamic” myth, from the Hebrew noun , a title referring to the primordial
human ancestor), is more precisely a myth of the entrance of suffering and
hardship into a previously utopian existence that is simultaneously a “good place”
(Greek: + ) and “no place” (Greek: + ). Likewise, an apocalyptic
myth of the end of evil (the Adamic myth in reverse) constitutes an eschatological
destruction or exile of evil from the world and thus an end to the suffering
experienced within that world. In the context of the apocalyptic faiths, this
destruction or exile effectively restores the cosmos to its former pristine state in
the absence of suffering. The former myth-type (the Adamic myth) looks back,
from the midst of suffering in the present time, to a mythical utopian past, while
the latter (the apocalyptic myth-type) projects that desire (the alleviation of
suffering) forward in time, envisioning a mythical utopian future free from
suffering and death. Together, these two myth-types offer an explanation for the
existence of evil as well as hope for its eventual end at the eschaton. These mythic
understandings are representative of but one of numerous systems of thought
conceived in response to the universal problem of suffering. The study ahead
investigates two other such belief systems (those found among the peoples of
ancient Israel and pre-Hispanic Mesoamerica, respectively) in an attempt to
determine the unique responses developed by the cultures that produced them as
well as the distinct meanings that these responses derive from the experience of
suffering.
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19
Methodology and Significance
It is in the above terms that the present study will examine, through the
methods of textual analysis, various responses to the problem of suffering among
the mythic narratives of these cultures, all of which evidence the aforementioned
process of logopoesis. In addition, the study will attempt an interdisciplinary
approach, drawing upon extra-textual evidence from such disciplines as
archaeology, art history, and comparative religion where applicable. The study
takes as its primary sources two historically significant literary works from
contexts far removed, both geographically and temporally: the biblical Hebrew
book of Job and the colonial K’iche’ Maya Popol Vuh. These texts vividly
confront the problem of suffering and the question of meaning with fruitful results,
offering valuable insight into the differing perspectives of these unique cultural
traditions.
The book of Job, a meditation on unjust suffering and exploitative power, is
an especially valuable text for any discussion of the historical “solutions” to the
problem of suffering because it contains multiple responses to this problem and
engages these differing perspectives in an argumentative poetic dialogue of
competing ideologies that illustrates both the complexity of the problem and its
relevance to the lives of actual human beings by presenting an example of unjust
suffering in the case of Job. Furthermore, and most significantly, the text is an
exemplary document in the history of the problem of suffering insofar as it
evidences a shift in thinking by presenting a powerful critique of traditional
responses to the problem and by opening up the discussion to a plurality of
interpretive possibilities through the exploration of new, alternative “solutions.” In
the process of this extraordinary critique, Job questions neither the existence nor
the omnipotence of God. Instead, he stages a protest on moral grounds, heretically
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20
refuting the traditional claims of divine morality and justice in a series of
impassioned monologues. In response to Job’s indictment, YHWH (the theonym
of the god of the Israelites, conventionally pronounced Yahweh, though the
original Hebrew pronunciation and meaning of this name are uncertain)
4
presents
a surprisingly modern perspective that further contradicts the traditional view
espoused by Job’s “friends,” who infer the presence of guilt from Job’s misfortune
based upon their refusal to question the doctrine of divine justice (the
understanding that God rewards the righteous and punishes the wicked).
Thus, the text constitutes a useful entry-point into the discussion because it
simultaneously engages both traditional “orthodox” views and dissenting
“heterodox” views, preserving within its verses the unraveling of the moral vision
of the cosmos, a paradigm-shifting development in the history of western thought.
It is for this reason that Bruce Zuckerman has referred to the text as a case of
“historical counterpoint,” while William Safire has called Job “the first dissident”
and the text itself “the first authorized challenge to Authority” (88). The claim that
the text records a pivotal event in the history of the western discourse on suffering
is not intended to imply that Job was the singular voice that affected this
development. It is indeed in Job, however, that this historical “moment” finds its
most exemplary expression concretized and crystallized in textual form, a literary
fossil preserved in the archaeological record of the biblical canon.
In the following chapters, the book of Job is contrasted with the Popol Vuh,
a colonial Maya text selected for inclusion in the present study as a means of entry
into an original investigation of the problem of suffering as represented in the
literatures of pre-Hispanic and colonial Mesoamerica, as compared to and
4
See van der Toorn.
21
21
contrasted with traditional western responses to the problem. For the purposes of
the present study, and due to its limitations by constraints both temporal and
spatial, the Popol Vuh is herein analyzed as a representative document of the
larger cultural traditions of pre-Hispanic Mesoamerica, a heretofore largely
neglected area of study in the context of the problem of suffering. While the text is
held to be an exemplar of certain pan-Mesoamerican cultural traditions and
ideological principles, it is included herein with the understanding that, while the
K’iche’ shared many cultural beliefs and practices with other neighboring
Mesoamerican peoples (both contemporary and antecedent), each of these cultures
was distinct and unique. Therefore, care must be exercised to avoid reductionism
of the diversity of individual Mesoamerican civilizations and the uniqueness of
their cultural output. Neither the extant literatures of either colonial or pre-colonial
Mesoamerica have yet been brought to bear upon the cross-cultural and pan-
historical dialectic of the problem of suffering. For this reason, the study aims to
identify and elucidate the various responses to this universal problem that are
suggested by the pre-Hispanic myths preserved within the Popol Vuh.
Chapter 2 offers an introduction to the book of Job, discussing the cultural-
historical context out of which the text has emerged as well as the hermeneutical
problems that it presents for the astute reader. Especially significant cultural-
historical developments for the study of Job include (1) the metaphysical and
theological claims of the Hebrew wisdom tradition, which constitute the dominant
worldview of the Hebrew Bible, and (2) the Exilic Period of biblical history, a
time of acute suffering (and, one imagines, a corresponding period of critical
questioning of traditional theological understandings) among the peoples of
ancient Israel. Chapter 3 provides a corresponding textual analysis of Job that aims
to identify and contextualize the various perspectives on suffering contained
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22
therein, and to suggest a particular interpretation of the ambiguity of the text.
Chapter 4, like chapter 2, offers an introduction to the Popol Vuh, its cultural-
historical context, and its hermeneutical problems. Chapter 5 presents a textual
analysis of the Popol Vuh in light of the understandings developed in the
preceding chapter and attempts to derive from the discussion an overarching pre-
Hispanic view of suffering that may provide a working theoretical framework for
further study of the problem in the context of the cultures of pre-Hispanic and
colonial Mesoamerica. Chapter 6 consists of a comparative analysis of the various
responses to the problem in both Job and the Popol Vuh, an approach intended to
highlight the commonalities as well as underscore the distinctions between the
differing perspectives suggested by the two texts, as determined by the individual
analyses of each in chapters 3 and 5 respectively. Chapter 6 concludes with an
interpretation of both works as texts of protest that constitute a creative means of
liberation from oppression in response to the respective cultural-historical contexts
out of which they emerged, followed by a brief discussion of the limitations of the
study and suggestions for further research.
The problem of suffering is complex and multi-faceted, one that offers no
simple solutions, as evidenced by the multiplicity of responses to it. The questions
of why suffering exists, how suffering can be alleviated, and what, if any, meaning
may be derived from the experience of suffering are all fundamental human
concerns that are worthy of attention. On the one hand, it is important to speak
scientifically, in objective terms, about the empirical causes of suffering (whether
physiological, psychological, social, or political) in order to attempt their
alleviation and prevention. On the other hand, it is equally valuable to speak in
subjective terms about the experience of suffering as well as various historical,
philosophical, and theological responses to the problem in all of its myriad forms
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23
and manifestations. Unlike the former category, the latter addresses the question of
meaning and attempts to understand suffering in ontological and
phenomenological terms.
The present study aims to draw upon the language and ideas of both
categories in its methodology in hopes of addressing the problem with the
objectivity of the scientist as well as the sensitivity of the caregiver. The task
ahead is, of necessity, an intellectual pursuit concerned with the problem of
suffering generally (i.e., as an abstract concept), but in undertaking such an
endeavor it is important not to lose sight of the reality of suffering in the world and
the ways in which it affects the lives of individual human beings, each with their
own dreams and frustrations, hopes and fears. It is the sincere hope of the author
that this study will provide a useful entry-point into the problem of suffering and
elucidate for the reader the various pre-modern perspectives preserved within the
texts in discussion. In doing so, the study aims to cultivate a deeper understanding
of these dynamic cultures and to promote an appreciation of the complexity and
cross-cultural significance of this most fundamental and timeless of human
concerns, the universal plight of Homo patiens, the “suffering man.”
CHAPTER 2 – INTRODUCTION TO THE BOOK OF JOB:
BACKGROUND AND CULTURAL-HISTORICAL
CONTEXT
The book of Job (Hebrew: ) is one of many books contained within
the canon of the Hebrew Bible (the Christian “Old Testament,” called the Tanakh
in Judaism), a compilation of texts of various genres that are regarded as holy writ
in both the Jewish and Christian traditions. The Hebrew Bible familiar to modern
readers is divided into three parts: the Torah (“Teaching” or “Instruction”), the
or (“Prophets”), and the Ketuvim or Ketubim (“Writings”), from
which the moniker Tanakh (based on an acronym formed from the initial letters of
each section: TNK) is derived. Job is located in the third section, which contains
the “Poetical and Wisdom Books” (Brettler 721). Along with the books of
Proverbs and Qoheleth (commonly known by the title Ecclesiastes, derived from
the Greek Septuagint translation of the Hebrew Bible), Job is regarded as
belonging to the corpus of ancient Hebrew “wisdom literature,” a genre that
addresses universal human concerns in an attempt to understand the world, the
place and purpose of human beings within the world, and the relationship of
human beings to God. Not unlike the “deeply skeptical” Qoheleth (Hebrew:
, meaning “Teacher” or “Gatherer”), which likens the pursuit of wisdom to
the futile “chasing of wind,” Job may be said to represent a kind of “anti-wisdom”
literature because both texts call into question and challenge the conventional
views of the Hebrew wisdom tradition, exemplified by the book of Proverbs as
well as certain of the Psalms, sometimes called “wisdom psalms” (Seow 721).
Among these conventional views is the belief that suffering is visited upon
human beings as a just punishment from God. J. Christiaan Beker explains that
this retributive perspective is a central feature of “Deuteronomic theology” (or
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25
“Deuteronomistic theology,” as it is often called) the theology espoused by the
Deuteronomistic historian believed by scholars to be largely responsible for the
composition or redaction of the historical narratives of the books of Joshua,
Judges, 1 and 2 Samuel, and 1 and 2 Kings (31-34). This theology informs, and
thus pervades, much of the Hebrew Bible. Bart D. Ehrman has called its
retributive perspective the “classical” or “prophetic” view of suffering, due to its
espousal by the prophets of classical Israel. Both Ehrman and James L. Crenshaw
(Defending God) have independently explored the multiplicity of biblical
responses to the problem of suffering and, in doing so, have demonstrated the
prevalence of this retributive view throughout the canon of biblical literature, from
the Pentateuch (another name for the Torah, from the Greek + ,
meaning “five scrolls”) and the Deuteronomistic history to the prophets and
certain of the wisdom texts. This view is evident, for example, in such familiar
biblical stories as the exile from Eden (Gen. 2.4b – 3.24), the global flood (Gen. 6
– 9), the destruction of the tower of Babel (Gen. 11.1 – 9), the destruction of
Sodom and Gomorrah (Gen. 18 – 19), and the ten plagues of Egypt preceding the
Exodus (Exod. 5 – 12), among many others. It is worth mentioning that this view
is also found in such New Testament books as the Pauline epistles, the canonical
gospels, and the Apocalypse of John. It is this traditional retributive view of
suffering, a consequence of a theology that understands God as both omnipotent
and just, that informs much of the Bible (in both its Jewish and Christian forms),
and it is this view to which the book of Job responds with moral outrage.
The book of Job presents the astute reader with a number of hermeneutical
problems in terms of linguistic ambiguity, structural integrity, and the differing
theological perspectives contained within it. First, for the philologist, the text
contains numerous instances of hapax legomena (words that occur only once in
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26
the extant written record of a given language), rendering the meaning of certain
passages uncertain and highly speculative. Translation is necessarily an
interpretive endeavor, but the presence of uncertain words and phrases renders the
process even more dependent upon the interpretation of the translator, who must
rely on contextual clues and linguistic evidence derived from related languages in
an attempt to determine the meaning of these words and phrases. This, of course,
also renders the task of literary criticism difficult and problematic. Second, at the
level of structural integrity, the text evidences a number of additions thought to
have been incorporated long after its initial composition as well as a number of
passages that appear to be either missing or mistakenly scrambled out of sequence,
possibly due to scribal error. Third, the differing theological perspectives
contained within the text suggest the possibility of dual, or even multiple,
authorship, though they may also constitute an intentional rhetorical strategy on
the part of a single author. Regardless, all of these textual features have led many
modern critical scholars to doubt the original unity of the text. As a result of its
ambiguity, its apparent disunity, and the complexity of its poetic content, Job has
been considered by many scholars to be “the most mysterious book of the Hebrew
Bible,” “the most difficult book of the Bible to interpret,” and “probably the most
challenging book in the entire Bible” (Alter 3; Gruber 1500; Kushner 14).
The book begins and ends with a brief prose “framing story,” which
bookends a poetic dialogue or symposium that makes up the bulk of the text. This
framing story, the setting of which “evokes the Patriarchal Period, when great
biblical heroes like Abraham were the nomadic herders of large flocks of cattle,
sheep, and goats,” relates the folktale of “Job the Patient,” a righteous gentile
(evidently an Edomite) from “the land of Uz,” south of Judah (Gruber 1503). This
righteous gentile is made to suffer in the prologue as a consequence of a divine
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27
wager between YHWH and a subordinate supernatural being described as one of
the “sons of God” (Hebrew: , i.e., members of the divine council)
1
and referred to as ha-, meaning simply “the adversary” or “the accuser” (a
title generally accepted to have been derived from a Semitic root meaning
variously “to accuse,” “to obstruct,” “to oppose,” or “to persecute, be hostile to”).
2
As Crenshaw notes, “At this stage in the development of Israel’s religious
thought, the word is still a title and therefore has an article,” while Cilliers
Breytenbach and Peggy L. Day explain that, “As in Job 1 and 2, the noun
appears with the definite article, and hence is not a proper name” (Whirlpool 58;
728). Furthermore, “the presence of the definite article also raises the question as
to whether it denotes an office of Accuser in the divine council,” a likely
possibility considering the divinely sanctioned role that this figure plays in the
narrative and the authority bestowed upon him by YHWH (728-29). Hector
Ignacio Avalos explains that this term is often applied to human beings as well,
stating, “in the Hebrew Bible could refer to any human being who played
the role of an accuser or enemy (1 Sam. 29.4; 2 Sam. 19.22; 1 Kings 5.4, 11.14)”
(678). Similarly, Rivkah Shärf Kluger speaks of the “original Old Testament
profane [as opposed to sacred] meaning of the Satan concept,” explaining that “the
noun originally belonged to the profane sphere” (34). Significantly, as
Kluger notes, “it is used with its profane meaning in texts older than those which
depict the mythological Satan” (32).
3
As in Job, “when it is used of human beings
it is not a proper name, but rather a common noun meaning ‘adversary’ in either a
1
See Job 1.6 and Gen. 6.2; cf. Job 38.7 and Ps. 29.1.
2
On the etymology of the word, see Breytenbach & Day and Kluger 25-34.
3
For example, 1 Sam. 29.4, 2 Sam. 19.22, and I Kings 5.4, 11.14, 11.23, and 11.25.
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28
political or military sense, or ‘accuser’ when it is used in a legal context”
(Breytenbach & Day 726). Thus, the use of this common noun as a proper name
referring to the “archenemy of God and the personification of evil” is evidently a
much later inter-testamental development (Avalos 678).
4
As a condition of this wager, which is concerned with the theme of
“disinterested righteousness” (the question of whether a pious man might remain
so even in the face of extreme adversity), Job loses first all of his material
possessions (the animals and servants that constitute his livelihood) as well as his
sons and daughters, who are crushed and killed when the house of the eldest
brother collapses upon them (Crenshaw, Whirlpool 59-60, 75). He then loses his
health, afflicted with “severe inflammation . . . from the sole of his foot to the
crown of his head” (Jewish Study Bible, Job 2.7). Despite his wife’s advice to
“Blaspheme God and die,” Job refuses to speak ill of the divine and is rewarded in
the epilogue for his pious acceptance of the multifarious sufferings visited upon
him (2.9).
It is this Job who is praised for his “righteousness” in Ezekiel 14.14 and
14.20, and for his “patience” in James 5.11. While James seems to be referring
here to the patient Job who appears in the prose, Ezekiel may be referring to an
antecedent of this literary character, a pious hero of oral folklore upon which the
prose narrative and its textual hero were based. Regardless, it is clear that neither
Ezekiel nor James is referring to the defiant, argumentative Job of the poetry. This
interpretation of Job as a pious paragon of unwavering faith, typically espoused by
those who know only the patient Job of the prose framing narrative, remains the
dominant interpretation in the popular consciousness, “a latter-day myth used to
4
See also Breytenbach & Day and chapter 6.
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29
conceal the insurrection ignited by the clash of tradition [the doctrine of divine
justice] with experience [the reality of unjust suffering]” (Safire 224). Kushner
calls this prose narrative the “fable” rather than the folktale of Job, while Mayer
Gruber draws a distinction between “the Book of Job the Patient” (the prose
framework) and “the Book of Job the Impatient” (the poetic dialogue contained
within it). Similarly, John E. Hartley distinguishes between “the account of Job’s
trial and restoration” (the prose) and “numerous speeches that treat the issue of
suffering” (the poetry) (3).
In stark contrast to this prose narrative framework, chapters 3.1 – 42.6 of
the text consist of a “poetic debate” comprised of three cycles of alternating
monologues between an argumentative and defiant Job, who maintains his
innocence and indicts God for acting unjustly, and his three friends (Eliphaz the
Temanite, Bildad the Shuhite, and Zophar the Naamathite), who assert the
traditional wisdom doctrine of divine reward for the righteous and retribution for
the wicked (Crenshaw, Job 332). In an attempt to “console and comfort” Job,
these friends initially rend their robes and heap dirt upon their heads in a
demonstration of compassion (lit. “suffering together/with,” from the Latin com +
passum) that was customary of ancient cultures of the Mediterranean,
5
and then sit
with him in stillness for seven days until he breaks the silence with a powerful
lament (2.11 – 13). They first respond to his lament by advising him to have faith
in the possibility of divine restoration, since he is renowned for his unmatched
piety and it is common knowledge that God’s nature is one of justice and mercy.
Thus, they surmise that Job will be rewarded for his suffering in the end. They
next suggest that perhaps Job has unwittingly committed some offense against
5
See, for example, Homer’s Iliad and Virgil’s Aeneid.
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30
God, or that his children were killed as a consequence of some offense that they
had committed unbeknownst to him. The friends therefore recommend that he
repent of his crimes and request forgiveness from God, to which Job responds with
pleas of innocence and a request to be informed of the nature of his crimes if he is
indeed guilty, as they insist that he must be. How can he possibly repent, he
argues, if he is never told what he has done wrong? Soon, however, Job’s
comforters quickly turn to false accusations and chastisement, using his
misfortune as evidence against him and blaming him for his own affliction when
he contests their arguments and refuses to repent on moral grounds. Here, in the
poetic debate, particularly in their accusations against Job, the friends espouse the
retributive worldview of the Hebrew wisdom tradition while Job refutes this
position with a series of counter-arguments.
Due to the impassioned protest of the poetry, Ricoeur sees Job’s
“meditation on the suffering of the innocent” as a pivotal moment in the
development of mythic thought. He places it in the category of the “Tragic” vision
of existence, in which God (or the gods) is the source of evil, exemplified by the
dramatic genre of ancient Athenian tragedy, as opposed to the category of the
“Adamic” myth, in which man is responsible for evil, exemplified by the myth of
the Fall related in Genesis 2.4b – 3.24. He contrasts these two myths and
illuminates their relationship by explaining, “the evil that is committed leads to a
just exile; that is what the figure of Adam represents. On the other hand, the evil
that is suffered leads to an unjust deprivation; that is what the figure of Job
represents. The first figure calls for the second; the second corrects the first” (324,
emphasis in original). Thus, he views the book of Job as the single “upsetting
document that records th[e] shattering of the moral vision of the world”: the
doctrine of divine reward and retribution (314). Furthermore, Ricoeur sees this
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31
shattering of the “ethical theology” of divine justice as the event that “begins the
foolish business of trying to justify God,” the moment when “theodicy is born”
(315).
Similarly, René Girard sees the book of Job accomplishing something
equally significant in the history of mythic consciousness. For him, Job is a pivotal
text that, “for the first time[,] . . . allow[s] the victim to speak in the midst of his
persecutors, in place of giving the usual mythological point of view of the
persecutors concerning a victim who is perceived as guilty” (“Job as Failed
Scapegoat” 205). Girard sees mimesis in Job’s adoption of the naïve theology
espoused by his friends, whom Girard interprets as representatives of an entire
community of persecutors. Furthermore, he sees the “scapegoat process” at work
in the unanimous condemnation of Job by this community (205). In his analysis,
Girard compares Job to Oedipus (the exemplary figure of his paradigm), of ancient
Greek myth and the tragedies of Sophocles, seeing both characters as tragic
figures who fall from privileged positions of respect and veneration to positions of
alienation and exile from the community. The significant difference between the
two, according to Girard, is that, “unlike Oedipus, who finished by submitting, Job
plunges into the debate frantically [and] accomplishes the unheard [by] resist[ing]
the violent unanimity” of the scapegoat process (194). In the words of Stuart
Lasine, who affirms Girard’s interpretation, “Job is a failed scapegoat . . . because
he refuses to accept the community’s image of him as guilty and culpable, thereby
preventing the complete unanimity required for the maximal efficiency of the
scapegoat mechanism” (151). Thus, in the book of Job, the blame is removed from
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the persecuted and rightfully placed on the persecutors, where it belongs, as
Ricoeur, Girard, and Lasine all contend.
6
Near the end of the debate, the parallelism of the book’s cyclical structure
begins to break down. Bildad’s final speech is apparently cut short in the third
cycle, and Zophar’s final speech is missing entirely, perhaps due to scribal error or
deliberate censorship, though “some scholars find Zophar’s missing third speech
in 27.7 – 23” (Gruber 1501). The poetry continues with a brief philosophical
meditation on wisdom, which many scholars agree is most likely an interpolation
derived “from another composition entirely,” followed by an insertion of four
speeches by a new character named Elihu, whose sudden appearance in the text,
with minimal introduction, adds little to the debate and interrupts the narrative
sequence by which Job’s final speech effectively summons YHWH. Perhaps
tellingly, YHWH appears after the four speeches of Elihu and then responds
directly to Job, suspiciously neglecting to address Elihu’s presence or his
arguments in either the divine speeches or the epilogue (Gruber 1501). As Gruber
explains,
most scholars regard the speeches of Elihu as a later addition by a
different author, for the following reasons: Elihu is not mentioned in
the narrative sections in chapters 2 and 42; neither Job nor God
replies to him; He speaks in a Hebrew that differs from both the
prose and the poetry of other parts of the book; and he seems to add
nothing to what has been said before. (Jewish Study Bible 1546n4)
Thus, these speeches (like the “Hymn to Wisdom” of chapter 28) also
appear to be a later addition to the text. Some scholars have even suggested that
6
See also Girard, Job the Victim.
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the Hymn to Wisdom may have been “incorporated into the book of Job by
mistake because pages containing it were found among the writings composed by
the author of the symposium” (Gruber 1503).
Regardless, the poetry concludes with a pair of speeches by YHWH (38.1 –
41.26), who speaks to Job out of a “storm” (NIV, Scheindlin), “tempest” (JPS), or
“whirlwind” (KJV, NRSV, Mitchell, Alter), using both intimidation and awe-
inspiring descriptions of nature to silence him (38.1). Each speech by YHWH is
followed by a corresponding response by Job. The ambiguity of these responses to
the theophany (an “appearance of God,” from the Greek + ) continues
to perplex modern readers, both laypersons and biblical specialists alike. It is this
ambiguity that constitutes the critical crux of the text, upon which its interpretation
largely hinges. In addition to these interpretive challenges, the task of accurately
dating the text is also fraught with difficulty.
The precise date of Job’s composition is uncertain and remains a subject of
contention, but most modern critical scholars place it “somewhere between the
seventh and the fourth centuries BCE,” with many placing it specifically “during
the period from the mid-6th century to the mid-4th century, the Persian
(Achaemenid) period (539 – 332 BCE)” following the exile of the Israelites in
Babylon (Seow 726; Gruber 1502). Like so many books of the Bible, the
authorship of Job is anonymous and unknown, though scholars speculate that the
author of the poetry was drawing upon an antecedent oral folktale (the “fable” of
Job the Patient) that had been in circulation in the ancient Near East for centuries,
a claim supported by various antecedent parallels to the book of Job in the
literatures of neighboring cultures.
Among these similar texts are a series of declarations of innocence or
“negative confessions” contained within the Book of Coming Forth by Day (the
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Egyptian “Book of the Dead”), parallels of which are found in Job 31 (Matthews
& Benjamin 219-22); an Egyptian text (Matthews & Benjamin 223-29) that “files
a lawsuit against Egypt for its views on life and death” in the form of a trial
between a sufferer who “proposes committing suicide as an antidote to his pain”
and his ba soul, which asserts that the task of human beings is to “live life to its
fullest,” much like the biblical Qoheleth (229, 225); an Egyptian protest narrative
composed, like Job, of both prose and poetry, in which “an eloquent peasant . . .
argues for his rights in the courts of Egypt” (Matthews & Benjamin 230-38); a
didactic Sumerian variant of the “Job” motif known as “(A) Man and His God”
(Kramer 352-57); and a “Babylonian theodicy,” often referred to as “the
Babylonian Job” (Matthews & Benjamin 239-44; Biggs 374-79), in the form of a
dialogue between a blasphemous sufferer and his pious friend that parallels Job’s
poetic debate. In the Sumerian text, described by its ancient author as a
“lamentation to a man’s (personal) god,” a sufferer demonstrates proper conduct
by supplicating to this deity in the midst of suffering and is restored to joy when
his “lamentation and wailing . . . soothe[s] the heart of his god,” moving him to
mercy (Kramer 356, 354). Similar to the poetry of Job, the Babylonian text
“argue[s] that a world filled with suffering and evil proves that the divine
assembly cannot be just,” evidencing the antiquity of the problem of suffering
(Matthews & Benjamin 239). All of these texts clearly share very similar
structural forms and thematic content, creatively grappling with the problem of
suffering. What is novel about the Joban poet’s version of this common ancient
Near Eastern motif, however, is his apparent appropriation and radical
reinterpretation of the hypothetical oral folktale for the purpose of refuting its
worldview, a technique that adds considerable complexity, depth, and also
ambiguity to the text in its dialogue of competing theologies. Furthermore, the
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poet introduces a theophany into his text, by which God himself addresses the
sufferer directly, an innovation with somewhat ambiguous results.
Most scholars have come to accept one of two hypotheses that serve to
elucidate the many ambiguities inherent in the text: some contend that the prose
prologue and epilogue that bookend the poetry were written by a separate author at
an earlier or later date (due to distinct differences in both language and content),
while others consider the poet to have used an oral form of the folktale as a
framework to compose both the poetry and its prose bookends. The former
hypothesis leads to two possible conclusions: either the prose framework was
composed earlier and retained by the poet for the purpose of refuting its theology
or, conversely, the poetry was composed earlier and the bookends later added in
an attempt to temper the heresy of the poetry by providing a logical explanation
for Job’s suffering (the wager of the prologue) and a positive resolution to it (the
restoration of the epilogue) rather than ending with Job’s second and final
response to the theophany. The former interpretation is far more compelling,
though certain textual details suggest the possibility of dual (or perhaps even
multiple) authorship, such as Job’s mention of his children as though they were
still alive in the poetry and YHWH’s castigation of Job in the poetry. Textual
evidence also suggests that there have been multiple editorial additions and
revisions to the text as late as the 4th century BCE. As mentioned above, the Hymn
to Wisdom and the speeches of Elihu may have been such later additions, possibly
written by a redactor who was concerned about the unorthodox nature and
accusatory tone of Job’s poetic speeches of protest, though some have contended
that the poet himself later returned to the text and incorporated these additional
elements. Regardless, as Gruber explains,
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it is clear that in the view of many scholars, the text of Job has
undergone considerable upheaval in the course of its transmission,
and parts of it have become misplaced. Though there is no direct
manuscript evidence of this for Job, evidence from the Dead Sea
Scroll versions of other books suggests that biblical books grew over
time, and that different recensions (versions or editions) of the same
book could circulate in ancient Israel. . . . Unfortunately, however,
the problems with the structure and growth of Job are so trenchant
that there is no scholarly consensus concerning the stages of
development of the book. (1501)
As has been maintained by Edwin M. Good and others, it seems clear that
Job’s primary concern is the problem of evil (more precisely, the undeserved
suffering of the innocent), though Crenshaw identifies two distinct issues:
“disinterested righteousness and innocent suffering,” adding that the answer to the
question of which of these two themes is the dominant concern of the text
“depends on whether we view things from above or below, through God’s eyes or
Job’s” (Whirlpool 59-60). While acknowledging the former, the present study
naturally concerns itself with the latter of these two themes. As discussed in the
previous chapter, the problem of evil proper, as it appears in later western
discourse, emerges out of the Christian tradition and is thus a subsequent
development antedated by the book of Job. However, it is clear that Job is
grappling with a more general form of this problem (the universal problem of
suffering) within the culturally specific context of the religion of ancient Israel. In
doing so, the book of Job presents a critique of the retributive doctrine of divine
justice, demonstrating its falsity by the example of Job, who suffers as a condition
of a wager between cosmic forces, rather than as a direct consequence of his
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behavior. Furthermore, the book of Job provides no definitive solution to the
problem but presents differing responses to it from the perspectives of “Job the
Patient” in the prose narrative framework, “Job the Impatient” in the poetic
dialogue, Job’s wife (who appears briefly and only in the prologue), the three
friends of Job in the poetry, Elihu (a passerby who reiterates the retributive view
of Job’s friends), and YHWH himself, who perplexingly rebukes Job for
“speak[ing] without knowledge” in the poetry yet rewards him for speaking “the
truth about me” in the prose (38.2, 42.7).
As some scholars have suggested, the name Job (Hebrew: ) may be
etymologically related to the Hebrew noun , meaning “enemy” (Hartley 66).
More likely, it constitutes a case of deliberate, strategic wordplay, exploiting this
phonetic resemblance to further suggest the agonistic nature of Job’s relationship
with God. Indeed, Job himself refers to YHWH as his “foe” and complains of
being treated “like an enemy” by God (16.10, 13.24). In a particularly heretical
moment, he even goes so far as to refer to God as “the wicked one,” who “mocks
as the innocent fail” and “covers the eyes of [the world’s] judges” (19.23 – 24).
Gerhard von Rad (qtd. in Crenshaw) has analyzed this idea of “God as the direct
enemy of men” in Job, and James L. Crenshaw has similarly explicated “Job’s
perception of God as a personal enemy,” the latter noting the use of martial
language to characterize the deity as a divine warrior on the attack: “Job thinks in
the language of the military, so that he depicts God as an enemy who actively
wages war against one person” (Whirlpool 62, 68, 68nn26-27, 71). Furthermore,
the fact that Job is a gentile rather than an Israelite may constitute an intentional
rhetorical device intended by its Israelite author to convey a sense that Job’s case
is universal, for the problem of innocent suffering is not merely an Israelite
concern but a concern of all who suffer undeservedly.
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An informed analysis of this perplexing text in light of its cultural-historical
context requires a familiarity with biblical history, which the remainder of the
present chapter outlines very briefly, addressing select pivotal events most
relevant to the discussion ahead, such as the covenant relationship between
YHWH and his chosen people, the abuse of power and exploitation of the
populace during the “Monarchic Period” (as evidenced by anti-monarchic
sentiments contained within a number of the Prophetic Books), and, perhaps most
significantly, the seemingly broken promises of YHWH during the exile in
Babylon. An understanding of biblical history is important for any discussion of
Job because it provides the cultural-historical context from which the text emerged
and enables its engagement in an inter-textual dialogue with other books of the
Bible. By necessity, the following historical reconstruction is a selective and
interpretive history, as any historical narrative inevitably is. In order to highlight
the ancient Israelite perspective, the narrative trajectory of this history roughly
corresponds to the historical details as they appear in the Bible, using the texts
themselves as a starting point and incorporating extra-biblical evidence (i.e.,
material remains and documentary evidence produced by neighboring peoples)
when helpful, whether for the purpose of elucidating the uncertain early history of
ancient Israel or illustrating but a few of the numerous hermeneutical problems
faced by biblical historians, archaeologists, and philologists. In other words, it
primarily follows the “theoretical or theological chronology, which considers the
meanings and purposes of chronological schemes used as a literary vehicle of
religious conceptions,” while incorporating elements of the “historical or scientific
chronology, which deals with the real chronology of actual events” (Barr 117). It
is the intention of the author that this narrative, far from being comprehensive, will
provide sufficient context to orient readers in the conceptual landscape within
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which the book of Job was written and enable them to actively participate in
critical inquiry of the text in the analysis of the following chapter. Thus, let us
begin with the Pentateuch, which comprises the first five books of the Hebrew
Bible.
After the “Primeval History” of Genesis (known in Judaism by its incipit,
Bereshit) chapters 1 – 11, which contain the familiar myths of creation, the exile
from the garden of Eden, the global flood, and others, chapters 12 – 50 relate the
events of the “Patriarchal Period,” in which the legendary patriarch Abraham (also
called Abram) receives an unconditional promise from YHWH, who declares that
he will lead Abraham into the land of Canaan and will make of his descendants a
chosen people who will grow into “a great nation” within that land
7
(Flanders,
Crapps, & Smith 6). During a time of famine in this promised land (Gen. 12.10),
however, the “Abrahamic Covenant” remains unfulfilled when the ancestors of the
Israelites are forced to migrate to Egypt and settle there for a time before,
according to the book of Exodus (known in Judaism by its incipit, Shemot), being
forced into slave labor by an anonymous Egyptian pharaoh for fear of the threat
that their increase might pose to the Egyptian state in the future (Exod. 1.8 – 14).
Eventually, led by a fugitive named Moses and guided by YHWH, here conceived
as a liberator god “who stands by the poor and frees the enslaved,” the Israelites
flee Egypt to escape oppression under the rule of “Pharaoh” (Ceresko 106). If
there is any “historical kernel” to the Exodus narrative, then this pharaoh may
have been Merneptah (r. 1213 – 1203 BCE), the son of Rameses II (r. 1279 – 1213
BCE), though to date no archaeological evidence or extra-biblical record of such a
mass exodus from Egypt has been discovered (Tigay 104). It is more likely,
7
See Gen. 12.1 – 3, 12.7, and 15.18 – 21.
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scholars surmise, that a much smaller group of refugees, referred to by some as the
“Moses group,” migrated into Canaan and merged with other “in-migrant”
refugees who had fled from oppressive city-states within the land of Canaan and
settled in the hill country, as suggested by the archaeological record, though much
of Israel’s early history remains uncertain until approximately the 7th century BCE
(Ceresko 97-106).
8
According to the books of Exodus (Shemot), Numbers (Bemidbar), and
Deuteronomy (Devarim), the Israelites wander in the wilderness for forty years
before arriving at Mount Sinai, where Moses receives the torah (“teaching” or
“instruction”), which establishes the conditional promise of the “Mosaic
Covenant,” the foundation of the Moses/Sinai traditions (as contrasted with the
later David/Zion traditions of the Monarchic Period). According to the
Moses/Sinai traditions, YHWH is the divine suzerain of the Israelites, and there
can be no other legitimate sovereign. YHWH establishes this relationship with his
elected people by instituting a conditional agreement with them in the form of the
covenant at Sinai. The covenant itself is presented much like a legally binding
contract, applying the form and legal language typical of suzerainty documents of
the ancient Near East, such as the “Hittite vassal treaty” (also called the “Hittite
suzerainty treaty”), which indicates that it served a similar function by establishing
a king-and-vassal relationship between YHWH and Israel (Ceresko 87-92).
According to the conditional promise of the covenant, YHWH will grant the
Moses group a land to inhabit and make of them a prosperous nation, provided
that they act in accordance with his will and abide by the th, the laws of the
covenant. Thus, he leads them into the promised land of Canaan, “a land flowing
8
See also Finkelstein & Silberman and Finkelstein & Mazar.
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with milk and honey,” and directs them to claim it by force, through the
extermination and displacement of its present inhabitants (Exod. 33.3; Deut.
31.20).
Here begins the “Deuteronomistic History” recorded in the books of
Joshua, Judges, Samuel, and Kings, which relate the biblical view of Israel’s
origins in the land and the period of the monarchy. According to the book of
Joshua, which presents the traditional “conquest model” of the nation’s origins,
the Israelites return to and conquer the land of their ancestors, displacing and
exterminating various Canaanite peoples under the military leadership of a man
named Joshua (more precisely, Yehoshua, originally called Hosea or Hoshea).
9
The book of Judges, on the other hand, implies a gradual settlement of the various
individual tribes of YHWH over time rather than a unified military invasion. In
contrast with both of these views, as mentioned above, the presence of agricultural
technology (in the form of limestone cisterns) as well as consistent pottery
typology of material remains discovered by archaeologists at various sites within
the land suggest that the inhabitants of these settlements were indigenous in-
migrant Canaanites who had fled from nearby city-states into sparsely settled areas
of the hill country, rather than nomadic invaders who had migrated into the land
from outside of Canaan (Ceresko 97-106). According to the “social revolution
model” proposed by Norman Gottwald and refined by others, a loosely allied
confederation of tribal communities forms as various disaffected groups of people,
including a group of immigrants from Egypt (the Moses group), flee from
oppression and settle in the hill country of Canaan. Over time, these disparate
peoples, along with their myths, traditions, and even genealogies, merge and
9
See Num. 13.16.
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eventually become consolidated, their respective communities united by similar
circumstances of flight from oppression and a shared devotion to a patron liberator
god, whether imported from outside of Canaan by the Moses group or adopted
from an existing Canaanite pantheon within the land.
Mark S. Smith
10
has argued that YHWH was imported from Edom or some
other locale south of the land and was incorporated into an existing Canaanite
pantheon evidenced in ancient Ugaritic inscriptions. This Ugaritic pantheon
included the gods El and Baal (an alternate name for the storm god Hadad as well
as a common reverential title meaning, “Lord”) and the goddesses Anat and
Asherah, the latter of which was the divine consort of El and possibly of YHWH
as well.
11
In Smith’s view, YHWH becomes identified with the patron deity of the
Ugaritic pantheon (the patriarchal sky god El) and the two eventually coalesce, a
hypothesis that provides an explanation for the use of both “YHWH” and “El” as
names for the national god of the Israelites throughout the Hebrew Bible, parallel
descriptions of these deities in biblical and Ugaritic texts, and the use of epithets
such as Shaddai (commonly translated as “Almighty”), Baal (“Lord”), and Elyon
(“Most High”) as alternate names for YHWH throughout the Hebrew Bible.
Whether or not Smith’s hypothesis is correct, it is clear that the Israelites adopted
these common Semitic epithets and that “some of the divine names compounded
with El in the Hebrew Bible were probably originally used of non-Israelite deities”
(Emerton 548). According to Jo Ann Hackett, “some contemporary scholars
propose that what distinguished ‘Israel’ from other emerging Canaanite Iron I
societies was religion—the belief in Yahweh as one’s god rather than Chemosh (of
10
See also Cross and Day, Yahweh and the Gods.
11
See, for example, Hadley and Dever, Did God Have a Wife?.
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the Moabites), for example, or Milcom (of the Ammonites)” (156). This is perhaps
unsurprising, since, as Hackett notes, “the early Iron Age marked the rise of
national religion in the Near East, tying belief in the national god to ethnic
identity” (156). Thus, Hackett explains, “the Israelites are the people of Yahweh,
just as the Moabites are the people of Chemosh; Ammonites, worshipers of
Milcom; Edomites, of Qaus. And farther east, the Assyrians follow Ashur into
battle” (156). Furthermore, the evidence from this period “points to the covenant
with Yahweh as one of the defining element’s of Israel’s culture, and one that
distinguished it from its neighbors: the covenant metaphor is not found in other
ancient Near Eastern texts” (158). “According to the covenant,” Hackett adds,
while other gods may exist for other cultures, Yahweh is Israel’s god
and they, in turn, are his people. Yahweh will protect them, give
them space to live, and provide fertility for their animals and crops;
and they in return will not worship other gods but will observe the
form of Yahweh’s worship that existed at that time. (158)
It is therefore clear that what bound this community together, and what
differentiated it from neighboring peoples, was a common allegiance to a national
patron deity. This adherence to the religion of Yahweh, the central feature of
which was the covenant relationship that these settlers shared with their patron
god, would likely have provided the impetus for greater social solidarity among
this loosely allied tribal confederation, which in turn, one imagines, would have
aided in the consolidation and preservation of what would develop into the
religious traditions of the later nation of Israel during the Monarchic Period.
After generations in the land of Canaan, and during a period of imminent
threat from neighboring imperial powers, a more structured political organization
becomes necessary as a means of defense. Here, again, the facts are difficult to
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ascertain and the process of historical reconstruction requires a great deal of
speculation, based upon both textual and extra-textual evidence. According to
Carol Meyers, “a centralized state was formed late in the eleventh century,” and
“by the middle of the tenth century, according to the biblical narrative, this state
reached near imperial proportions,” though scholars contest the grandeur of the
Monarchic Period based upon archaeological evidence that suggests a much
smaller scale than what is described in the texts (165). According to 1 Samuel, this
process of centralization and greater political unity begins when Saul is anointed
by the prophet Samuel and becomes the first “king” of Israel, a kingship
“grounded in conflict between deity, prophet, and people” due to the replacement
of YHWH by a human sovereign, a supplantation interpreted as a “rejection” of
God (1 Sam. 8.6 – 9). Ultimately, Saul appears to have been unsuccessful, perhaps
due to the incompatibility of a statist political system with the egalitarian
Moses/Sinai traditions.
12
The first successful kingship develops with the establishment of the
theocratic Davidic monarchy, whose power was apparently retroactively
legitimated and bolstered by the propagandist rhetoric of an unconditional promise
by YHWH (through the prophet Nathan). In fact, the later “medieval concept of
the divine right of kings would be based on biblical precedents associated with the
Davidic dynasty” (Meyers 166). According to this “Davidic Covenant,” YHWH
promises to establish an eternal kingdom of Israel in Canaan, which will remain
forever undisturbed by its enemies and which will always be ruled by an heir of
David on the throne (2 Sam. 7.8 – 16). At this pronouncement, 2 Samuel relates,
David begins a series of divinely sanctioned military campaigns to once again
12
See Ceresko.
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subdue the various peoples of the land, attacking and defeating the Philistines, the
Moabites, the Arameans, the Ammonites, the Edomites, and other neighboring
nations (2 Sam. 8). According to 2 Samuel, a pro-Davidic text perhaps
commissioned during the reign of Solomon (the son and successor of David), “The
LORD [i.e., YHWH] gave victory to David wherever he went” (8.14). Thus,
according to the text, David conquers Jerusalem, “the stronghold of Zion, now the
city of David” (called Jebus and inhabited by the Jebusites), establishing it as the
holy capital city of Israel and the nexus of Yahwism, the institutional worship of
YHWH (1 Chron. 11.1 – 9).
According to Anthony Ceresko’s interpretation of the events of the
Monarchic Period, David may have strategically adopted Canaanite religious
traditions and incorporated them into the existing Moses/Sinai traditions, which
would have earned him Canaanite support within the city but would also have
caused many Israelite adherents to the Moses/Sinai traditions to become
increasingly critical of the monarchy, as reflected in the anti-monarchic rhetoric of
many of the prophets. Furthermore, it is clear that the Monarchic Period witnessed
the acute suffering of the populace under a socio-economically stratified order that
was antithetical to the Moses/Sinai traditions of the tribal confederacy and its
practical philosophy of mutual aid, a social system that would have proven
beneficial for survival in the hill country where conditions were harsh and
subsistence difficult. During this period, Ceresko contends, the ruling elites
enforced exploitative taxation upon the populace in order to maintain status,
wealth, and luxury at the top of this socio-economic hierarchy, as rulers are wont
to do (an unsurprising trend evidenced time and again throughout the historical
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record).
13
As a result, many of the prophets interpret this practice (and the
monarchy itself) as a violation of certain ethical commandments of the covenant,
which promote egalitarianism and social justice among Israelites. Many of the
prophets are also critical of the monarchy’s tolerance of idolatry (the worship of
other gods) within the holy city of Jerusalem and especially among Israelites,
predicting divine retribution as a consequence.
According to the biblical record of this period, David is succeeded by
Solomon, who commissions the building of the temple in Jerusalem, the literal
house of YHWH on earth, in which is housed the hallowed “ark of the covenant of
YHWH,” a golden chest conceived as the throne and “footstool” of YHWH and
containing the stone tablets of the Mosaic Covenant established at Sinai (1 Sam.
4.4; 1 Chron. 28.2).
14
According to Ceresko’s liberation perspective, civil war
eventually erupts among the populace, perhaps due to the exploitative economic
policies of the monarchy and the social conditions that they engendered, resulting
in a schism in which the unified nation of Israel splits into a “divided monarchy”
comprised of the northern kingdom of Israel and the southern kingdom of Judah,
though many scholars contest the historicity of the united monarchy based upon
archaeological data, considering it an invention of a later period intended to
glorify Israel’s past.
15
After this supposed schism, a devastating turn of events transpires, as the
armies of the Neo-Assyrian Empire begin a series of military campaigns by which
they systematically invade and eventually conquer the northern kingdom in 722
13
See also Meyers 166.
14
See Hackett 157-58.
15
See, for example, Finkelstein & Silberman and Finkelstein & Mazar.
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BCE after a three-year siege of the capital city Samaria, slaughtering and
displacing multitudes in the process. This event is interpreted by prophets of the
southern kingdom as a form of divine retribution for the crime of idolatry (an
offense against YHWH) among the inhabitants of the northern kingdom. The
conquest of the northern kingdom is followed by a period of Assyrian control and
repeated invasions of Judah as the southern kingdom struggles to maintain its
independence. The Neo-Assyrian Empire is eventually supplanted by the Neo-
Babylonian Empire, and in 586 BCE, during the imperial reign of Nebuchadnezzar
II, the Babylonians conquer the southern kingdom of Judah. The temple in
Jerusalem, the literal house of YHWH containing the sacred ark of the covenant as
well as the (the radiant “Presence” or “Glory”) of YHWH, is destroyed, the
Judean king Zedekiah taken prisoner, and the surviving Israelites led in captivity
to Babylon.
Many scholars consider this period instrumental in the development of
monotheism out of the normative henotheism or monolatry (the worship of a
single deity without denying the existence of others) of the “official religion” of
ancient Israel, as opposed to its polytheistic “popular religion,” which included the
worship of other Canaanite deities, whether as a result of religious syncretism or
as a vestige of an earlier polytheistic form of the official religion influenced by the
Ugaritic pantheon, as Smith contends.
16
It is in these terms that Smith considers
the Hebrew Bible a source of not only ancient Israel’s collective cultural memory,
but also its collective cultural amnesia, arguing that its texts contain evidence of
the polytheistic origins of its faith, despite the subsequent suppression of those
origins (Memoirs). Some scholars have postulated the existence of a hypothetical
16
See especially Early History and Memoirs.
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“Yahweh-alone” movement, which gave rise to the “one-god worldview” of post-
exilic Judaism and the later Abrahamic faiths, though this theory has failed to
garner widespread acceptance (Halpern 526; Smith, Memoirs). Regardless of the
historical accuracy or inaccuracy of this claim, it is clear that, “starting apparently
in the 9th century BCE, Israelites began to distinguish YHWH starkly from other
gods,” though “it is unknown whether the distinction originated from the
opposition between YHWH and foreign high gods or between YHWH and local
ancestral gods. Still, the alienation of the local gods from YHWH ensued, as
subordinate gods were identified as foreign” (Halpern 526).
As Smith explains, the period of the monarchy appears to have played a
significant role in the transition to monotheism via processes of convergence, by
which characteristics of other Canaanite deities such as El and Baal were absorbed
and incorporated into Israel’s theological understanding of YHWH, and
differentiation, whereby the Yahwistic faith (along with ancient Israelite identity)
distinguished itself from other co-existent forms of Canaanite religious expression
by rejecting and suppressing its Canaanite heritage, a theme attested to in the
numerous injunctions against idolatry found throughout the Hebrew Bible. Smith
also asserts that both the northern kingdom of Israel and the southern kingdom of
Judah were heavily influenced by Neo-Assyrian culture (Early History).
It has been theorized that it is during the period of exile in Babylon that the
biblical canon begins to become codified and concretized in written form in an
attempt to preserve the traditions of Israel (their beliefs, narratives, and ritual
practices) during the captivity of its peoples in a foreign land. In this context, the
Genesis myth of the exile from Eden (2.4b – 3.24) may be understood as a mythic
representation of longing for a utopian time and space free from pain and hardship,
a vision akin to the ancient Greek “Golden Age” recorded in Hesiod’s Works and
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Days (lines 109 – 201) and retold in Ovid’s Metamorphoses (1.89 – 1.150). In this
myth, as with the Babylonian exile itself, the blame is placed upon human beings,
who bear the burden of guilt in order to preserve a conception of divine justice.
17
Many scholars also consider the period of the Babylonian conquest and
exile to be a prominent influence upon the content of the book of Job, due to the
tremendous suffering endured by the Israelites, whose patron god had seemingly
been defeated by the rival Babylonian god Marduk. At this point in history, the
divine promises of YHWH, who had liberated the Israelites from slavery and had
sworn (as a condition of the Mosaic Covenant) to shield them from further
catastrophes provided that they abide by his commandments, appear to have been
broken, causing widespread disillusionment among the Israelite community. This
disillusionment is preserved within the Hebrew Bible, which comprises a plurality
of interpretations of this pivotal event, evidencing the polyvocal nature of its
authorship. The conquest of Judah, and the subsequent period of captivity in exile
that followed it, may have been a prominent influence on Job’s poetic dialogue in
particular, as evidenced by the apparent skepticism of the text and its emphasis on
abandonment, unjust punishment, and the incomprehensibility of the undeserved
suffering of the innocent.
As a result of this catastrophe, and the tremendous sufferings that it
produced (many of which are powerfully lamented in the poetry of the books of
Psalms and Lamentations), a number of the prophets interpret the monarchy as an
apostasy or “rejection” of YHWH that replaces the true sovereign with a human
king, thus evoking the wrath of their national deity. The Babylonian conquest is
therefore interpreted in a number of distinct ways: (1) as a defeat of YHWH by
17
See Crenshaw, “Introduction” and, more recently, Defending God.
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Marduk, the patron god of the Babylonians; (2) as an intentional abandonment by
YHWH, who “hides his face” from his chosen people in anger (a concept known
today by the phrase hastarat panim
18
), symbolized in Ezekiel by the departure of
the from the temple (8 – 11); and, (3) as divine retribution, whether for
offenses committed against YHWH, fellow Israelites, or both. According to the
lattermost interpretation, YHWH had used the Babylonian army as an instrument
to punish the Israelites for their disobedience and to coerce them by force to return
to the commandments of the Mosaic Covenant. Furthermore, the worship of other
Canaanite deities among the Israelites, including the practice of offering sacrifices
to these deities, was interpreted as an act of unfaithfulness to YHWH because it
breaks (“covenant fidelity”) by violating the first commandment of the
Decalogue (the “Ten Commandments” recorded in the books of Exodus and
Deuteronomy). It is in the book of Exodus that YHWH is explicitly described as
“a jealous god . . . whose name is Jealous,” a statement that attests to Israel’s
henotheism (monolatry) at the time of its composition (34.4).
One of numerous examples of YHWH’s jealousy is provided by the
prophet Hosea, who metaphorically equates the crime of idolatry with the
analogous crime of adultery in vivid, poetic descriptions of YHWH’s rejection and
brutal sexual shaming of his “wife of whoredom” (the nation of Israel) as a
punishment for straying (lit., “whoring away”) from him in pursuit of other
“lovers,” a metaphor for the worship of foreign gods.
19
Hosea’s creative
employment of this metaphor serves a twofold purpose: first, it indicts the nation
of Israel for her violation of in anticipation of the imminent conquest of the
18
See Kushner, Book of Job 176-78.
19
See especially Hosea 1 – 3.
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northern kingdom during the 8th century BCE, though the text was almost certainly
written after this event or edited by later redactors in an attempt to “explain the
reasons for the disasters that befell Israel”; second, it offers hope for the renewal
of the Mosaic Covenant and the restoration of a unified nation of Israel in the land
if and only if her people (described as “children of whoredom” and “a harlot’s
brood”) repent and return to YHWH (Ben Zvi 1143). In Hosea, YHWH similarly
objects to the use of the names of Canaanite gods (such as Baal, both a proper
name and a title meaning “Lord”) as epithets for him, a practice also interpreted as
infidelity (1.2, 2.6, 2.18). Finally, a number of the prophets (Amos, Hosea, Isaiah,
and Jeremiah among them) concern themselves with social justice, frequently
evoking (“justice”) and (“righteousness”) in their rhetoric of social
reform. Thus, they interpret the exploitative policies of the monarchy also as a
violation of .
According to this perspective, Israel’s violation of the laws of the Mosaic
Covenant, the conditional agreement of the Moses/Sinai traditions, is directly
responsible for the sufferings of the nation’s people. The prophets therefore
interpret the Babylonian exile as a form of divine retribution, whether for the
unjust policies of the monarchy, the worship of “alien gods” (such as the
Canaanite storm god Baal), or both. This retributive view of suffering informs the
collective ancient Israelite understanding of the nation’s relationship to its god as a
series of anonymous scribes compile, compose, edit, and revise the sacred
narratives, customs, laws, ritual practices, and historical interpretations of their
people over the course of centuries, eventually establishing a canon of texts that
ultimately results in the formation of the Hebrew Bible as it is known today.
Following the exile, the Israelites are eventually allowed to return to
Jerusalem by Cyrus II (praised as “the LORD’s messiah” by Ezra and Isaiah) after
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the Persian conquest of Babylon in 539 BCE. The restoration of the Israelites in
their promised land and the commencement of the reconstruction of the temple
mark the beginning of what has come to be called the “Second Temple Period.”
The book of Job (the poetry, at the least) is thought to have been composed
sometime during either the Exilic or Post-Exilic Period in or shortly after the 6th
century BCE (though some scholars place it as late as the 4th century BCE), a
plausible hypothesis based upon detailed philological and historical analysis of its
language and content (the concerted efforts of numerous scholars, among them
Marvin H. Pope) and given the symbolic parallelism of the text’s structure to the
events surrounding the exile: Job begins in a position of privilege (the Monarchic
Period, as remembered by the later Israelite community), is afflicted and
experiences a sense of abandonment and moral outrage against God for his unjust
suffering (the Babylonian conquest and the subsequent Exilic Period), and is
eventually restored to his former status in the prose epilogue, symbolizing the
return of Israel to the promised land and the restoration of its relationship with
God (the Post-Exilic Period). This interpretation, of course, assumes the unity of
the text and requires either an exilic or post-exilic date of composition, the former
of which would render Israel’s symbolic restoration in the epilogue (represented
by Job’s restoration) anticipatory, a reading which would suggest that the text is
perhaps a prophetic book intended to instruct its readers (or hearers) in the proper
course of action required to ensure their own restoration in the land. According to
this interpretation, then, Job’s final submission to YHWH represents Israel’s
return to the covenant with a newfound understanding of God and the suffering
that their people had endured.
Finally, a number of scholars of the past have argued that the book of Job
was originally a dramatic work influenced by the classical Greek tragedians of 5th
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century Athens. Horace Kallen endorsed this hypothesis, calling the text “a Greek
tragedy in the manner of Euripedes” and “restoring” it to its hypothetical original,
dramatic form, contending “first, that it is the work of Hebrew poet aware of
Euripedes’ tragic form but un-Greek in his emulation of it; second, that he
followed the Greek precedent by framing his heresy in orthodox events and
symbols; [and] third, that the form he gave his tragedy was scrambled from the
dramatic to the narrative when Job was added to the canonical scriptures . . . in
order to fit the conventional perspectives of the dominant Judaism of the time”
(vii, ix). This interpretation of the text, however interesting, has failed to gain
widespread acceptance among contemporary scholars.
While the book of Job is most prominently a meditation on the problem of
suffering in the context of the Yahwistic religion of ancient Israel, it may also
reflect anti-authoritarian (i.e., anti-monarchic) sentiments in its portrayal of
exploitative power wielded by a tyrannical God who arbitrarily tortures an
innocent victim to prove a point to a subordinate (ha-, the “adversary”) who
has challenged his authority. Moreover, it contains apparent allusions to certain
passages of Psalms and 2 Isaiah (and possibly other biblical texts as well,
including Genesis) and presents a direct counter to the conventional wisdom of the
proverbs, particularly the traditional retributive worldview endorsed by much of
the biblical canon. Thus, let us begin our analysis of the text by situating the book
of Job within the context of the ancient Hebrew wisdom tradition before
proceeding to engage it in an inter-textual dialogue with the views of this tradition.
CHAPTER 3 – THE BOOK OF JOB: THE RETRIBUTIVE VIEW
OF SUFFERING AND ITS REFUTATION
In the context of biblical literature, wisdom (Hebrew: km) is a multi-
faceted term. Crenshaw defines it, first, as a distinct literary genre that comprises a
corpus of “widely divergent” texts yet nonetheless “expresses itself with
remarkable thematic coherence” (Old Testament Wisdom 10, 12). This genre, as
both he and Michael V. Fox explain, is shared by other cultures of the ancient
Near East, as evidenced by parallel texts in ancient Egyptian and Mesopotamian
literature written “starting in the late third millennium BCE and extending to the
Hellenistic period, as late as the third century BCE” (Fox 1448).
1
Second,
Crenshaw defines wisdom as “a particular attitude toward reality, a worldview”
(11).
This worldview, as it appears in ancient Israelite literature, evidences
several features: first, it is anthropocentric (it “begins with humans as the
fundamental point of orientation”); second, it is optimistic (it “believes that all
things can be learned through experience”); third, it is monotheistic (it assumes
that “the one God embedded truth within all of reality”); and, fourth, it is practical
(it assumes that “the human responsibility is to search for that insight and thus to
live in harmony with the cosmos”) (11). Its “fundamental assumption,” though,
“consisted of a conviction that being wise meant a search for and maintenance of a
stable society, in a word, a just order” (12). From this fundamental assumption,
Crenshaw explains, “it naturally follows that human actions had cosmic
implications” (12). Similarly, in Robert Alter’s formulation, wisdom “raises
questions of value and moral behavior, of the meaning of human life, and
1
See chapter 2.
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especially of the right conduct of life” (xiv). Thus, the Hebrew wisdom tradition
espouses three central claims: (1) the world operates according to divine justice
(that is, God rewards the righteous and punishes the wicked); (2) God has created
the world and embedded truth within it, as personified by “Lady Wisdom” in
chapters 1 – 9 of the book of Proverbs; and (3) human beings are capable of
“reading” the world and making sense of it by virtue of their mental faculties, with
which they have been imbued by God. As Crenshaw rightly notes, when tested
against the empirical evidence of human experience, “this confidence in the world
and human potential gives rise to profound skepticism, but such a heart-rending
cry bears eloquent testimony to a grand vision of what ought to be, a vision that
persists even though despair has overwhelmed the sage” (Old Testament Wisdom
11).
It is in this manner (a “heart-rending cry” of “profound skepticism”) that
the book of Job effectively challenges the above suppositions by testing them
against a fictional case of undeserved suffering, using this case as a medium to
pose critical questions about the ability (or inability) of human beings to
comprehend the workings of the cosmos, the nature of God, the suffering of the
righteous, and the prosperity of the wicked. In the rigorous argumentation of the
poetic debate, Job argues against the doctrine of divine justice based upon the
evidence of personal experience. Alter affirms this interpretation, characterizing
the poetry as “a radical challenge to the doctrine of reward for the righteous and
punishment for the wicked [that] dissents from a consensus view of biblical
writers—a dissent compounded by its equally radical rejection of the
anthropocentric conception of creation that is expressed in biblical texts from
Genesis onward” (3).
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This anthropocentric perspective views human beings as the ultimate goal
of creation. In the book of Genesis, for example, human beings are made in imago
dei (Hebrew: ), in the “image of God,”
2
who grants them dominion
over the earth, instructing them to “master” it and to “rule” all of its inhabitant
organisms (Gen. 1.26, 1.28). Furthermore, the covenant relationship between
YHWH and the Israelites (attested throughout the Pentateuch, the Deuteronomistic
history, and the prophetic literature) evidences a special relationship between God
and humanity (specifically, between the Israelites and their patron deity, YHWH).
The god of Job challenges this perspective during the theophany, in which he
asserts the insignificance of humankind in the vast arena of the cosmos through a
series of poetic descriptions of the immensity and power of nature, in effect
deemphasizing the role that humanity plays in the grand scheme of creation.
Thus, the following analysis examines three distinct perspectives on
suffering presented by the text: (1) a pedagogical, didactic, or instructive view of
suffering that interprets the experience as a divine test by which God imparts some
lesson to the sufferer or tests his integrity by challenging his faith, as evidenced by
the prose narrative framework; (2) the retributive view espoused by Job’s friends
(and an interloper named Elihu), along with its converse perspective (an anti-
retributive view suggested by Job’s refutation of divine justice), as evidenced in
the poetic debate; and (3) a cosmocentric perspective that asserts the relative
insignificance of human beings, the amorality of a transcendent god, and the
mysterious nature of suffering. This lattermost view is the perspective presented
by the divine speeches of YHWH, which contrast humanity’s relative ignorance
and insignificance with his own omnipotence and infinite wisdom.
2
See Gen. 1.26 – 27, 5.1 – 3, and 9.6.
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Accordingly, the analysis ahead strategically examines three major divisions of the
text, selecting representative passages in support of each view from among
numerous possible examples. The three major sections analyzed are as follows: (1)
the prose narrative framework, (2) the poetic debate, and (3) the theophany,
including Job’s ambiguous responses to it, which seem to affirm the claims of
human insignificance and cosmic indifference asserted by YHWH, though the
effectiveness of Job’s protest (i.e., its ability to summon YHWH) suggests
otherwise, as does the divine wager of the prologue. Ultimately, the poet-author of
Job forges new understandings of both God and suffering by refusing to replace
the retributive view with another equally dogmatic view. Instead, he insists that
God’s nature is neither moral nor immoral, but amoral, and emphasizes the
unknowable mystery of creation, asserting the inability of human wisdom to
penetrate to the source of this enigma. The poet, therefore, makes no claims of
definitive understanding, other than his assured refutation of the retributive view
and its reductive understanding of God. Thus, the problem of suffering, for Job,
becomes a matter of epistemology, a philosophical inquiry into the limitations of
human knowledge.
The poet’s approach, then, is an agnostic (from the Greek + ,
meaning “without knowledge”) admission of ignorance, much like the wisdom of
the famous “Socratic paradox”: “I know that I know nothing.” Rather than
asserting any particular interpretation of suffering, the poet simply argues against a
specific interpretation (the retributive view), which he deems both false and
oppressive. Thus, he offers a corrective of this worldview through the rhetoric of
protest. Finally, the poet (as represented by Job) finds a humble contentment in the
realization that human beings are not the center of creation and that some things,
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such as the mysterious nature of God and the elusive meaning of undeserved
suffering, are beyond human understanding.
The Prose Narrative Framework: Suffering
as a Test of Faith
The prose framework suggests an interpretation of suffering as a test of
one’s faith in the justice of God, a common theme in various parallel myths of the
ancient Near East, many of which antedate the book of Job.
3
Within this
framework, Job rebukes his wife for speaking “as any shameless woman might
talk” by urging him to “Blaspheme God and die,” adding “Should we accept only
good from God and not accept evil?” (2.9 – 10). Here, Job agrees that God is the
source of both good and “evil,” but despite his personal suffering he maintains that
human beings should accept both fortune and misfortune without complaint,
regardless of the apparent injustice or senselessness of the circumstances.
Furthermore, the omniscient narrator of the prose framework explicitly states that,
despite all of his suffering, “Job said nothing sinful,” reflecting the patient and
pious Job of the hypothetical oral folktale, a character starkly contrasted with the
argumentative and defiant Job of the poetry (1.22).
Here, it is worth recalling the biblical myth of the akedah (the “binding (of
Isaac),” found in Gen. 22), in which God “put[s] Abraham to the test” by
commanding him to sacrifice his young son Isaac, saying, “Take your son, your
favored one, Isaac, whom you love, and go to the land of Moriah, and offer him
there as a burnt offering” (22.1, 2). Abraham willingly complies, though he is
interrupted before completing the task. Due to this compliance, Abraham (much
like Job) has been praised as the “father of faith” by philosopher Søren
3
See chapter 2.
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Kierkegaard and countless others for his pious subordination of reason to his faith
in God, despite the absurdity that YHWH’s seemingly irrational command
engenders, since the death of Isaac would seem to negate any possibility for the
fulfillment of the unconditional promise of the Abrahamic covenant (the
establishment of a great nation of Abraham’s descendants through Isaac). Both the
myth of the akedah and the folktale of Job, along with this pious interpretation, are
problematic for modern readers because they commend uncritical obedience to the
commands of divine authority, despite the sub-textual ethical dilemmas inherent in
each case. The poetic debate of Job, on the other hand, would seem to suggest that
the appropriate response to such an abuse of power (divine or otherwise) is moral
outrage and defiance through protest.
Some scholars have speculated that the akedah may constitute an adoption
and emendation of an earlier ancient Near Eastern myth of the type containing this
familiar “divine test” motif.
4
In this hypothetical earlier form, scholars infer, the
sacrifice of the son by the father is fulfilled, rather than interrupted by an angel
(lit. a “messenger,” from the Greek ) of God, and the child later resurrected
as a reward for his father’s pious obedience to the will of God, much as Job is
rewarded with new children in the epilogue to replace those killed in the prologue
(a recompense offensive to modern sensibilities). Thus, the akedah may constitute
a direct parallel to the oral folktale of Job the Patient.
Based upon this model, the amendment of the akedah narrative has been
interpreted as a conscious rejection of the cultic practice of child sacrifice, an act
of devotion to the gods that was apparently prevalent among the Punics
(Carthaginians) of North Africa and probably the Canaanites and Phoenicians of
4
See Zuckerman 16-25.
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the Levant as well, as attested by archaeological evidence (both material and
inscriptional) discovered at a number of apparent “Tophets” (from the Hebrew:
-
, “burning place”) of Carthage as well as numerous biblical
condemnations of the practice among both Canaanites and Israelites (e.g., Lev.
18.21; Deut. 18.10 – 13; 1 Kings 11.4 – 11; 2 Kings 23.10; Jer. 7.30 – 34, 19.1 –
5, 32.30 – 35).
5
The practice as it occurred in Carthage is explicitly described in
classical sources written by Greek and Roman historians such as Diodorus Sicilus
(ca. 90 – ca. 30 BCE) and Plutarch (ca. 45/6 – ca. 120 CE), but these sensational
accounts are most likely embellished, and their numbers greatly exaggerated, for
the propagandizing purpose of slandering the enemy of Rome in order to justify
the Roman destruction of Carthage, not unlike the ridiculously inflated Spanish
accounts of human sacrifice among the Mexica, which were used to justify the
conquest and, along with it, the brutal subjugation and slaughter of indigenous
peoples.
6
According to this interpretation, the akedah constitutes a corrective myth
intended by its tellers to abolish the practice among its hearers. As Zuckerman
explains, this “akedah model” can be applied to the book of Job as well, a method
that aids in illuminating the layers of historical counterpoint embedded within the
text (Zuckerman 16-25).
In Job, this counterpoint is both a response to an antecedent myth of
unquestioning obedience (the oral folktale of Job the Patient) and a response to the
doctrine of divine justice that it supports. As preserved in the epilogue, Job is
commended and rewarded by YHWH in the folktale for speaking “the truth about
me” in his pious acceptance of suffering, saying, “Naked came I out of my
5
See also 2 Chron. 28.1 – 5 and 33.1 – 6.
6
See Carrasco, Aztecs 61-77.
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mother’s womb, and naked shall I return there; the LORD has given and the
LORD has taken away; blessed be the name of the LORD” (42.7, 1.21). This
statement seems to suggest a non-retributive worldview in which YHWH gives
and takes without regard for righteousness or wickedness. It is more likely the
case, however, that the test requires the faithful to trust in the justice of God
despite present sufferings, all the while maintaining belief that God will ultimately
restore those who remain faithful, as he does in the epilogue. Thus, the divine test
motif, as it appears in the prose framework of Job, affirms the doctrine of divine
justice.
In the text of Job as a whole, however, Job’s poetic protest against the
injustice of his suffering is interjected into the framework of the folktale. A
number of modern scholars have reasonably argued that this insertion is indicative
of the endorsement of Job’s protest by the poet. According to this interpretation,
the poetic debate is inserted into the prose framework with the result that Job’s
argumentative defiance, moral outrage, and indictment of an unjust god (in stark
contrast to his pious acceptance in the prologue) are commended by YHWH as
“the truth about me” in the epilogue, while Job’s friends are rebuked by YHWH
for defending his actions in their adherence to the doctrine of divine justice and its
retributive view of suffering, despite empirical evidence to the contrary (42.7). To
this effect, YHWH says to Eliphaz in the epilogue,
I am incensed at you and your two friends, for you have not spoken
the truth about me as did my servant Job. Now . . . sacrifice a burnt
offering for yourselves. And let Job, my servant, pray for you; for to
him I will show favor and not treat you vilely, since you have not
spoken the truth about me as did my servant Job. (42.7)
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By means of this clever insertion of the poetry into the prose framework,
such scholars argue, the poet suggests that Job’s argumentative and vehemently
critical response to unjust suffering is in fact the appropriate response to such
circumstances. Furthermore, and perhaps even more remarkably, this insertion
would then seem to suggest that such criticism of God is divinely sanctioned. As
Safire notes, the text thereby “sanctifies defiance of unjust authority,” “enshrines
dissent and demands moral self-reliance,” and “ennobles the admission of
ignorance . . . reward[ing] that admission with a promise of ken to come” (225).
Perhaps most importantly, he argues, it “reaches across the ages to invite the rest
of us to do the same for ourselves” (Safire 225). However, despite the appeal of
this interpretation for modern readers, it is sadly negated by YHWH’s rebuke of
Job in the poetry and Job’s affirmation of this rebuke in his responses to YHWH.
Regardless, the book of Job constitutes a radical alteration of the folktale
and a direct challenge to the traditional wisdom response to suffering: the
retributive view, which commends pious acceptance of suffering as a sign of one’s
unwavering faith in the ultimate justice of God and condemns criticism and protest
in response to one’s sufferings, no matter how unjust or senseless their cause.
Job’s friends, then, are portrayed not as wise in their adherence to this view, but
instead as naïve. In effect, they compound Job’s sufferings by hurling accusations
at him like the metaphorical “arrows” of YHWH with which he has been
“poisoned”: “For the arrows of the Almighty are in me; / My spirit absorbs their
poison; / God’s terrors are arrayed against me” (6.4). Elsewhere, God is explicitly
characterized as Job’s “enemy” (13.24), his “foe” (16.10, 19.11), and most
heretically as “the wicked one” (19.23), for the claim of YHWH’s omnipotence
and absolute sovereignty requires that he be held responsible for wickedness as
well as righteousness, as Job notes in the poetry: “When suddenly a scourge brings
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death, / He mocks as the innocent fail. / The earth is handed over to the wicked
one; / He covers the eyes of its judges. / If it is not he, then who?” (19.22 – 24).
These and numerous similar verses of the debate clearly indicate that Job’s
persecutors are not merely his friends, who berate him in the poetry, but also the
two divine figures who conspire to torment him in the prologue: YHWH and “the
adversary” or “the accuser” (Hebrew: ha-) of Job, a kind of divine spy and
prosecuting attorney who roams the earth observing human beings and reports to
YHWH about their behavior. In the poetry, Job’s friends make themselves
accomplices to the injustice perpetrated against him by defending the doctrine of
divine retribution in an attempt to justify his sufferings, but it is the adversary
(with the consent of the omnipotent YHWH), who causes them. This fact does
little to absolve YHWH of moral accountability however. As Crenshaw notes,
“Since the adversary is designated as a child of God [Hebrew: ben ] in the
employ of the divine court, the shift in responsibility for ensuing atrocities is
slight. Ultimately, God is still at fault” (“Introduction” 11). Similarly, for
Breytenbach and Day, “Though he challenges God at a very profound level, he is
nonetheless subject to God’s power and, like Yahweh’s messenger in Num. 22,
acts on Yahweh’s instructions. He is certainly not an independent, inimical force”
(728). Thus, it is only with YHWH’s consent that the adversary, an agent of the
divine, is given license to torment Job. His agency is therefore dependent upon the
will of YHWH, who initially grants him permission to do anything but harm Job
directly (1.12) and later instructs him to afflict Job physically but to spare his life
(2.6). Thus, YHWH “imposes certain limits on [the adversary] but nevertheless
consents to the experiment” (Soelle 110). Amazingly, even YHWH himself does
not deny his culpability, though he attaches blame to the adversary as well, saying
to him after the first series of torments, “He [Job] still persists in his integrity,
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although you incited me against him, to destroy him for no good reason,” to which
the adversary replies with a second challenge, “But stretch out your hand now and
touch his bone and flesh and he will curse you to your face,” a statement (in fact, a
command) that implies YHWH’s direct responsibility for Job’s suffering (2.3,
emphasis added; 2.5, emphasis added).
Therefore, there is no question that Job’s suffering is unjust, nor is there
any question about who is responsible for causing it, for the reader is privy to
information that Job is not: the fact that his suffering is the result of a wager
between YHWH and the adversary. Here, the reader sees clearly that Job has been
wronged, despite the persistent denial of his friends. Furthermore, the reader is
told by the omniscient narrator of the prologue, as well as by YHWH himself, that
Job is “blameless and upright,” a fact confirmed in the poetry by his friends before
they begin to bombard him with false accusations in an attempt to preserve their
worldview at any cost, despite its unsustainability when tested against the
evidence of human experience (1.1, 1.8). Thus, let us turn now to the poetic
debate, which constitutes the bulk of the text.
The Poetic Debate: Suffering as Divine Injustice
Through the experience of personal suffering, Job deduces (in the poetry)
that God “destroys the blameless and the guilty” alike (a non-retributive view), for
he knows, as the reader does, that he has committed no offense, and yet he is made
to endure tremendous, ever-mounting suffering with each additional torment
imposed upon him (9.22). In the course of the poetic debate, the poet appropriates
the legendary, folkloric figure and adopts the retributive perspective for the
purpose of first refuting it in its own terms and then, at the conclusion of poetry,
rejecting the conceptual framework of divine justice entirely, thereby espousing a
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converse anti-retributive view. In other words, the poetic dialogue has Job accept
the framework of divine justice in order to refute it from within by arguing that
God is acting unjustly, a necessary maneuver, as Crenshaw explains, since “Job
has no case at all against God apart from an operative principle of reward and
retribution, for in a world devoid of such a principle good people have no basis for
complaining that the creator has abandoned the helm and thus allows the ship to
wander aimlessly amid submerged rocks” (Whirlpool 62). Once one “abandon[s]
belief in a moral deity,” Crenshaw notes, “all such claims lose their credibility”
(62). At other times, however, Job seeks and hopes for an explanation that might
justify his circumstances, whether from his friends or from God (who remains
silent until the theophany), only to then systematically refute this view with
increasing resentment when his complaints go unanswered.
In the poetry, then, instead of piously accepting his fate as he does in the
prologue, Job grapples with the problem of suffering at length by means of a
creative rhetoric of protest that employs both the poetic language of lamentation
and the legal language of indictment. For example, on the one hand, Job expresses
a profound sense of abandonment by an absent god, who in one speech “hides his
face” in anger, treating Job “like an enemy” (13.24, cf. Ps. 44.23 – 24), and in
another remains hidden as Job searches for him in vain (23.3, 8 – 9). On the other
hand, Job is overwhelmed by God’s “oppressive presence” that “turns divine
providence into celestial harassment” (e.g., 7.17 – 21 and 10.20; Crenshaw 69 and
61n13) and imagines a judicial hearing before this cruel, totalitarian god who is
simultaneously judge, jury, and executioner (Crenshaw, Whirlpool). Thus,
Crenshaw notes, “Job both complains because god is too near and also grieves
over the fact that the deity has withdrawn into the heavens” (Whirlpool 61).
Furthermore, Job professes a longing for a divine arbiter and witness who might
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testify in his defense, attesting to his innocence and vindicating him of all charges
hedged against him (16.18 – 16.21; 19.25 – 26; cf. 9.32 – 35). Meanwhile, his
friends continue to naïvely rely on the suppositions of the orthodox worldview of
the wisdom tradition, uncritically accepting the premise of divine retribution, even
while they watch an innocent friend suffer undeservedly.
Soelle refers to this retributive understanding of God as a kind of
“theological sadism,” for “any attempt to look upon suffering as caused directly or
indirectly by God stands in danger of regarding him as sadistic” (26). The logic of
this theology, she explains, “consists of three propositions found in all sadistic
theologies: 1) God is the almighty ruler of the world, and he sends all suffering; 2)
God acts justly, not capriciously; and 3) all suffering is punishment for sin” (24).
Therefore, according to these propositions, it logically follows that because Job is
suffering, he must have done something to earn it. This is the precise inference
that his friends make. Though the prologue states that they initially visit Job “to
console and comfort him,” their persistent professions of this “sadistic” theology,
and the retributive view of suffering that follows from it, fail to provide either
comfort or consolation (2.11). Instead, Job’s “mischievous comforters” multiply
his wounds by adding persecution to his affliction, castigating him and fabricating
false accusations against him (16.2). Thus, he criticizes them for their abuse,
saying, “How long will you grieve my spirit, / And crush me with words? / Time
and again you humiliate me, / And are not ashamed to abuse me” (19.2 – 3).
But first, the poetry begins with a powerful lament by Job as he sits in
ashes, scratching his leprous flesh with a potsherd (2.8). His flesh is “covered with
maggots and clods of earth,” and his skin “broken and festering” (7.5). In this
lament, Job “curse[s] the day of his birth,” praying for a reversal of creation by
employing metaphors of light and darkness, a possible allusion to God’s
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separation of light from darkness in the cosmogonic narrative of Genesis 1.1 – 2.3
(vv. 1.3 – 5), in which he creates the heavens and the earth through the power of
speech alone, proclaiming “Let there be light” (1.3). Thus, Job proclaims, “Perish
the day on which I was born, / . . . / May that day be darkness [i.e., “Let there be
darkness”]; / May God have no concern for it; / May light not shine on it; / May
darkness and deep gloom reclaim it” (3.3 – 5). Here, Job prays for a reversal of his
birth, and thus an undoing of his suffering, through the metaphor of a return to the
time of darkness before creation. Even here, at the very outset of the poetry, Job’s
words are a far cry from the patient Job of the prose folktale. Job continues his
lament, adding,
“Why did I not die at birth, / Expire as I came forth from the womb?
/ Why were there knees to receive me, / Or breasts for me to suck? /
For now I would be lying in repose, asleep and at rest, / With the
world’s kings and counselors who rebuild ruins for themselves, / . . .
/ Or why was I not like a buried stillbirth, / like babies who never
saw the light? / . . . / Small and great alike are there, / And the slave
is free of his master.” (3.11 – 19)
Here, Job construes death as a welcome, liberating event, rather than an
unpleasant, destructive one, because it brings “repose” and “rest” to the weary. It
frees the slave from his master and, by analogy, would free Job too from his
torment at the hands of a cruel, divine master. Furthermore, Job here espouses a
non-retributive view in the assertion that all people, “small and great alike,” are
ultimately destined for the same fate: to become food for worms in the grave, a
truth that he makes explicit elsewhere, as evidenced by the following example:
One man dies in robust health, / All tranquil and untroubled; / . . . / Another dies
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embittered, / Never having tasted happiness. / They both lie in the dust / And are
covered with worms” (21.23 – 26).
Even mighty “kings and counselors,” he muses, despite all of their worldly
wealth and status, rebuild the ruins of yesterday in vain, only to die tomorrow,
leaving them to crumble to dust like their builders. With this evocative image, the
poet renders an effective analogy for human ephemerality, for just as manmade
ruins return to the dust out of which they were fashioned, so too the God-made
men, “formed . . . from the dust of the earth” (Gen. 2.7), who build and rebuild
those ruins for naught. Thus, there is a realistic wisdom in Job’s lament, in
addition to his cry of anguish and his solemn prayer for the comforting embrace of
death to relieve him of his misery.
To this lament, Eliphaz replies with an affirmation of the traditional
wisdom perspective, reminding Job that the world operates according to divine
justice: “Think now, what innocent man ever perished? / Where have the upright
been destroyed? / As I have seen, those who plow evil / and sow mischief reap
them. / They perish by a blast from God” (4.7 – 9). Here, as elsewhere, there is no
question that God is the source of suffering, but it is clear that suffering is not
inflicted arbitrarily. Rather, it is inflicted as a form of punishment in direct
correspondence to one’s behavior. As elsewhere in the Hebrew Bible, suffering is
here understood as an instrument of divine retribution. While this view may have
promoted ethical behavior among the ancient Israelite community, and may have
provided a source of comfort by fostering a sense of divinely mandated order and
justice amid the often uncontrollable ills of the world, it also served to stigmatize
and alienate those who suffer, as evidenced by the case of Job.
Furthermore, Eliphaz adds, all are guilty to a greater or lesser degree,
though they may consider themselves innocent, for “Evil does not grow out of the
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soil, / Nor does mischief spring from the ground; / For man is born to [do]
mischief, / Just as sparks fly upward” (5.6 – 7). Here, the text presents an analogy
in which the latter claim affirms the former: Where there is fire, sparks will always
fly upward; by analogy, where there are human beings, there will always be
“mischief” (the KJV and NRSV translations use the word “trouble”), and, as a
result, divine retribution as recompense for that mischief. Therefore, Eliphaz
argues, some degree of suffering at the hands of God is inevitable, so the best that
can be done is to plead one’s case before him while maintaining faith in his mercy.
It is in this manner that he advises Job, saying, “I would resort to God; / I would
lay my case before God, / . . . / See how happy is the man whom God reproves; /
Do not deject the discipline of the Almighty. / He inures, but he binds up; / He
wounds, but his hands heal” (5.8 – 18).
Not persuaded by this advice, Job replies with continued resentment:
Would that my request were granted, / That God gave me what I
wished for; / Would that God consented to crush me, / . . . / Then
this would be my consolation, / As I writhed in unsparing pains: /
That I did not suppress my words against the Holy One. / What
strength have I, that I should endure? / How long have I to live, that I
should be patient? / Is my strength the strength of rock? / Is my flesh
bronze? / Truly, I cannot help myself; / I have been deprived of
resourcefulness. (6.8 – 13)
Here again, Job explicitly identifies God as the source of his suffering and
affirms his prayer for death as a remedy for his misery. He refuses to suppress his
words, for though he may be “crushed” by God, his integrity would be his
consolation. While his friends see only heresy in Job’s words, Job finds virtue in
protest, for he refuses to speak falsely in the sight of God and refuses to suppress
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his arguments against him. Thus, he later proclaims, “I insist on arguing with
God,” while his friends “invent lies,” speaking “unjustly” and “deceitfully on
God’s behalf” (13.3 – 7).
Finally, Job here adds that the severity of his suffering has deprived him of
his resolve and thus rendered him incapable of patience. His pain is too acute to be
borne in silence and therefore must be given vent in a courageous outcry of
protest. To this effect, he later adds, “I will not speak with restraint; / I will give
voice to the anguish of my spirit; / I will complain in the bitterness of my soul”
(7.11). He proceeds to do precisely that throughout the debate, vividly cataloguing
the crimes of God. For example:
In his anger he tears and persecutes me; / He gnashes his teeth at me;
/ My foe stabs me with his eyes. / . . . / I had been untroubled and he
broke me in pieces; / He took me by the scruff and shattered me; /
He set me up as his target; / . . . / He pierced my kidneys; he showed
no mercy; / . . . / My face is red with weeping. (16.8 – 16)
And again:
Yet know that God has wronged me; / . . . / I cry “Violence!” but
am not answered; / I shout, but can get no justice. / . . . / He has laid
darkness upon my path. / He has stripped me of my glory, / . . . / He
tears down every part of me; I perish; / He uproots my hope like a
tree. / He kindles his anger against me; / He regards me as one of his
foes. (19.6 – 11)
Like Eliphaz, Bildad and Zophar also reply to Job with arguments in
defense of God, for they too refuse to admit that an innocent person might be
made to suffer unjustly or that an “evildoer” might be brought to prosperity in a
world that they believe is ordered by divine justice. To this effect, Bildad states,
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“Surely God does not despise the blameless; / He gives no support to evildoers”
(8.20). First, he argues that Job’s children must have committed some offense
against God unbeknownst to him. Therefore, he advises Job to “supplicate the
Almighty,” saying, “Will God pervert the right? / Will the Almighty pervert
justice? / If your sons sinned against him, / He dispatched them for their
transgression. / But if you seek God / And supplicate the Almighty, / If you are
pure and upright, / He will protect you” (8.1 – 6). On the contrary, Job has been
“pure and upright” all along, and it has earned him nothing but pain. Next, Zophar
accuses Job himself of wrongdoing and instructs him to reach out to God in
repentance: “And know that God has overlooked for you some of your iniquity. / .
. . / But if you direct your mind, / And spread forth your hands toward him / . . . /
You will then put your misery out of mind / . . . / You will be secure, for there is
hope” (11.1 – 18).
At this point, the arguments of Job’s friends, though misguided, are
expressed with the best of intentions. Soon, however, they become increasingly
hostile, as Job’s comforters become, like the divine , his adversaries and
accusers. For example, Eliphaz exclaims in an accusatory tone, “You subvert piety
/ And restrain prayer to God. / Your sinfulness dictates your speech, / So you
choose crafty language. / Your own mouth condemns you, not I; / Your lips testify
against you” (15.4 – 6).
Perhaps it is due to anxiety, whether conscious or unconscious, about the
implications of the upheaval of their worldview that prevents Job’s friends from
accepting its falsity. For these men, the overturning of the wisdom view of the
world (a just cosmos controlled by a just and omnipotent god) constitutes the
collapse of the very “ground on which life was built, the primal trust in the world’s
reliability” (Soelle 86). Perhaps it is for this reason that they insist upon clinging
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to this worldview, even at the cost of abandoning their loyalty to a friend, whom
they proceed to defame and slander without cause during the course of the debate,
knowing full well that he is innocent of all charges but attempting nonetheless to
coerce him into reaffirming the just order of the retributive worldview by falsely
confessing guilt and repenting. Crenshaw explains the friends’ behavior in similar
terms, as follows:
Their faith requires them to prove that Job has committed some
awful crime, for his calamity called for precisely this conclusion.
That is why their tolerance gradually fades, and open accusation
replaces subtle hints. Earlier appeals to Job’s nobility of character
give way to one primary concern, and that is to vindicate themselves.
In the process a decisive shift occurs; whereas the friends were at the
outset genuinely interested in helping Job return to his former state,
in the end their consuming passion was to justify themselves. This
recognizable change explains why Job came to identify the three
friends as agents of the enemy, in this instance, God. (Whirlpool 70)
In direct contrast to his friends’ self-assured affirmation of the retributive
view, Job counters these arguments by pointing out the unfairness that exists in the
world and employing this evidence to question the “knowledge” (i.e., wisdom) of
God’s judgment:
Why do the wicked live on, / Prosper and grow wealthy? / Their
children are with them always, / And they see their children’s
children. / Their homes are secure, without fear; / They do not feel
the rod of God. / . . . / They spend their days in happiness, / And go
down to Sheol in peace. / . . . / Can God be instructed in knowledge,
/ He who judges from such heights? (21.7 – 22)
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Here, the general prosperity of the wicked is strikingly contrasted with the
suffering of Job. The wicked “prosper and grow wealthy,” while Job has lost
everything. The children of the wicked are “always with them, and they see their
children’s children,” in direct contrast to Job, whose children have been callously
murdered by YHWH and the adversary.
Eliphaz replies to Job’s rhetorical questions with further accusations and
questions of his own: “Is it because of your piety that he [God] arraigns you, / And
enters into judgment with you? / You know that your wickedness is great, / And
that your iniquities have no limit. / . . . / Therefore snares are all around you, / And
sudden terrors frighten you” (22.4 – 10).
The argument intensifies as Job counters these false accusations with
evidence of his righteousness, and then proceeds to contrast this righteousness
with the misfortune that has plagued him despite his exemplary behavior: “Did I
not weep for the unfortunate? / Did I not grieve for the needy? / I looked forward
to good fortune, but evil came; / I hoped for light, but darkness came; / . . . / Days
of misery confront me. / I walk about in sunless gloom” (30.20 – 30).
In addition to his criticism of God and his arguments against the claims of
his friends, Job rebukes his friends as well, and with equal vigor, for their lack of
loyalty and support during his time of need. Thus, he challenges them, saying,
“Teach me; I shall be silent; / Tell me where I am wrong. / . . . / Now be so good
as to face me; / I will not lie to your face. / Relent! Let there not be injustice; /
Relent! I am still in the right. / Is injustice on my tongue?” (6.24 – 30). And again:
“Will you speak unjustly on God’s behalf? / Will you speak deceitfully for him? / .
. . / Your briefs are empty platitudes; / Your responses are unsubstantial” (13.2 –
12). Elsewhere, he desperately pleads with them for compassion, exclaiming, “Pity
me, pity me! You are my friends; / For the hand of God has struck me! / Why do
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you pursue me like God, / Maligning me insatiably?” (19.21 – 2). Furthermore,
Job understands that divine wisdom cannot be acquired from other human beings,
particularly those who speak with naïve, self-assured dogmatism about things
beyond their reach, things that they could not possibly understand any more than
he can. Thus, he says to them, “What you know, I know also; / I am not less than
you” (19.2).
Perhaps most strikingly, Job also speaks directly to God, indicting with
tremendous poetic power the one who is both his creator and destroyer, as in the
following examples: “You frighten me with dreams, / And terrify me with visions,
/ Till I prefer strangulation, / Death, to my wasted frame. / I am sick of it. / I shall
not live forever; / Let me be, for my days are a breath” (7.14 – 16). “Your hands
shaped and fashioned me, / Then destroyed every part of me. / . . . / Should I be
guilty—the worse for me! / And even when innocent, I cannot lift my head; / So
sated am I with shame, / And drenched in misery” (10.8 – 15). “Why did you let
me come out of the womb? / Better I had expired before any eye saw me, / Had I
been as though I never was, / Had I been carried from the womb to the grave. / My
days are few, so desist! / Leave me alone” (10.18 – 20). “Mountains collapse and
crumble; / Rocks are dislodged from their place. / Water wears away stone; /
Torrents wash away earth; / So you destroy man’s hope, / You overpower him
forever and he perishes; / . . . / He feels only the pain of his flesh, / And his spirit
mourns in him” (14.18 – 22).
Furthermore, Job protests the unfairness of his circumstances, for how can
he, a mere human being, call the divine to account for his crimes? Moreover, who
can he appeal to, but God himself, who is his persecutor? Therefore, Job has no
recourse other than protest against a cruel, omnipotent, and hidden god:
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Man cannot win a suit against God. / . . . / Who ever challenged him
and came out whole? / . . . / He snatches away—Who can stop him?
/ Who can say to him, “What are you doing?” / God does not restrain
his anger; / . . . / If I summoned him and he responded, / I do not
believe he would lend me his ear. / For he crushes me with a storm, /
He wounds me much for no cause. / He does not let me catch my
breath, / But sates me with bitterness. / In a trial of strength—he is
the strong one; / . . . / Though I were blameless, he would prove me
crooked. (9.2 – 24)
The vitriol with which Job indicts God throughout the poetry can be
understood as an exemplary case of “misotheism” (from the Greek , meaning
“hatred,” and , meaning “god”), a phenomenon that Bernard Schweizer
defines as “hatred of God” or “enmity toward God.” Schweizer interprets this
“antagonistic faith” as a “response to suffering, injustice, and disorder in a
troubled world” (2, 8). “Misotheists,” he writes, “feel that humanity is the object
of divine carelessness or sadism, and they question God’s love for humanity,”
though without entirely rejecting belief in his existence (8). According to
Schweizer, this distinct philosophical position is characterized by “anti-God
rhetoric” and is typically adopted on moral grounds from within the framework of
a theistic belief system (2). It is distinct from atheism, he explains, “since the
hostility to God obviously presumes the existence of God,” nor can it be equated
with Satanism, “since opposition to God doesn’t automatically lead to reverence
for God’s adversary” (1). In his research, Schweizer found that “the most
immediate effect of God-hatred is on the misotheist himself, for whom it serves a
therapeutic function. Although seemingly directed at the figure of God,” he
contends, “misotheism reflects a passionate concern for the affairs of man,” as it
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does in the case of Job, who rails against undeserved suffering and insists on
justice for the sufferer (8).
Schweizer identifies three distinct types of misotheism, which he calls
“agonistic misotheism,” “absolute misotheism,” and “political misotheism” (17-
20). These three categories, he explains, are “unified by their shared opposition to
God,” but remain “distinctly dissimilar in the way they approach their subject and
in the way they conceive of their ultimate project” (19). The first of these types
(agonistic misotheism) is “characterized by an ongoing internal struggle and by
the agony over one’s negative relationship with God” (18, 17). “Torn between
hope and despair,” these misotheists struggle with “the understanding that God is
not entirely competent and good, while resenting the need to praise and worship
him” (17). Moreover, and most importantly, they “wish that they were wrong in
their negative assessment of the deity and would prefer God to be benevolent and
caring after all,” but suffer from an “inability to believe in a good god” due to the
empirical evidence of their own experience (17). He goes on to explain this
perspective in terms strikingly reminiscent of Job:
Their case against God is based on personal experience . . . which
[has] taught them that the universe is not well ordered and could
therefore not reflect some divinely ideal plan. Something has gone
wrong with the universe, they argue, if millions of pious believers
can be slaughtered without the slightest trace of divine intervention,
if prayers remain consistently unheard, and if personal indignity and
suffering come down on good people without explanation or
rationale. (17)
Perhaps most tellingly, Schweizer notes, “Their persistent provocation
could be seen as a form of prayer, [for] they believe enough to keep trying,” as
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does Job, who repeatedly attempts to provoke God into responding to his cries.
For example, he states,
I say to God, ‘Do not condemn me; / Let me know what you charge
me with. / Does it benefit you to defraud, / To despise the toil of
your hands, / While smiling on the counsel of the wicked? / . . . /
You know that I am not guilty, / And that there is none to deliver
from your hand. (10.1 – 7)
Schweizer rightly associates Job with this, the first of the three
aforementioned categories (agonistic misotheism), but considers him disqualified
from inclusion based upon his response to the theophany: “These [agonistic]
misotheists infallibly identify with the biblical figure of Job, although they do not
follow the pattern of Job’s wrestling with God, insofar as his temporary rebellion
with God is followed by meek acceptance of divine supremacy” (17). Here,
Schweizer suggests that Job’s final submission negates the argument of the poetry
by reducing Job’s defiant speeches of protest to a mere “temporary rebellion.” On
the contrary, the poetic Job constitutes a powerful and resonant voice in the history
of dissent, despite his eventual submission. By applying Schweizer’s definition of
misotheism to the case of Job, the poet’s project becomes abundantly clear: to
challenge the orthodoxy and its tyrannical god in metaphorical terms, using the
bold “anti-God rhetoric” characteristic of agonistic misotheism. In doing so, he
wages a poetic assault on this theology in favor of an alternative understanding of
both God and suffering.
Thus, Job’s protest is nothing less than an articulation of “conflicted faith,”
expressed through a critique of the doctrine of divine justice and the reductive
theology that follows from it. This conflicted faith is evidenced, for example, by
the following passage, in which Job attempts to reach out to God, seeking comfort
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but finding instead only cruelty and harassment: “I cry out to you, but you do not
answer me; / I wait, but you do not consider me. / You have become cruel to me; /
With your powerful hand you harass me. / . . . / I know you will bring me to
death” (30.20 – 30).
During his indictment of YHWH, Job cries out for an arbiter and a witness
to his innocence, imagining one who will advocate for him and testify in his
defense against the false charges of iniquity hedged against him: “Earth, do not
cover my blood; / Let there be no resting place for my outcry! / Surely now my
witness is in heaven; / He who can testify for me is on high. / . . . / Let him
arbitrate between a man and God / As between a man and his fellow” (16.18 –
16.21; cf. 9.32 – 35). Furthermore, Job envisions a (an “avenger” or a
“redeemer”) who will vindicate him (and possibly avenge his death) in the future,
saying, “I know that my vindicator [Hebrew: ] lives; / In the end he will
testify on earth— / This after my skin will have been peeled off” (19.21 – 6).
Here, as Gruber explains, the Hebrew noun is a “legal term for the person in
the family responsible for avenging the murder of other members (Num. 35.19;
Deut. 19.6).” Thus, “Job is not speaking about God but rather about a future
kinsman who will vindicate him, who will take revenge on God for what God has
done to Job” (Jewish Study Bible 1529n5).
7
According to Crenshaw, the cultural-
historical background informing this figure “would seem to be the Sumerian idea
of a personal god who looked after the well-being of devotees,” rather than a
literal avenger responsible for carrying out lex talionis, the “law of retribution”
(Whirlpool 74n38).
7
See also Ewert 68.
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Soelle extrapolates from this figure an interpretation of Job’s wish for
vengeance as a longing for a different kind of god who is neither the cruel tyrant
implied by the advice of Job’s wife nor the totalitarian judge asserted by his
friends. Instead, she explains, Job cries out for a god who stands by the side of
those who suffer, a god of the oppressed and persecuted, not unlike the god of the
Exodus, who had delivered the Israelites from bondage and led them out of Egypt:
The God of the exodus is not one who imposes affliction and then,
with equal arbitrariness, removes it again [as he does in Job’s prose
framework]. The affliction is explained completely in rational terms.
It stems from force employed by the Egyptians, who fear being
supplanted by the ever-increasing numbers of Israelites. God has
nothing to do with this suffering—aside from being on the side of
the wronged. . . . The God of the exodus was himself the answer to
the experience of oppression. (109)
While there is much to admire in this interpretation, it should be noted that
the god of liberation who figures in the Exodus myth is also a god of wrath, who
inflicts horrendous punishments on human beings, both Egyptian and Israelite
throughout the Pentateuch (and indeed, on the entire world during the global flood
of Gen. 6–9). The comparison that Soelle establishes is useful for another reason,
however, for in it the god of the book of Job is analogous to the pharaoh of the
Exodus. He is not one who sides with those oppressed and persecuted but one who
deals out oppression and persecution, and then berates the sufferer for complaining
about his unjust treatment, intimidating him with a frightening display of power.
As Crenshaw notes, here, “the champion of oppressed people” has not only
“ignored the desperate plea for help” but has become “like an enemy” to Job
(Whirlpool 71). This is why Job’s eventual submission, which concludes the
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poetry, is so perplexing, even incredible, to modern readers. In Soelle’s words,
“that Job at the conclusion of the book submits himself to this power-being who
dwells beyond good and evil is incredible because it is intolerable” (118).
In Soelle’s view, in accordance with the traditional Christian interpretation
of the , Job’s longing for an advocate utterly unlike the murderous god who
has killed his children and afflicted him with disease is ultimately fulfilled in the
figure of Christ, who endures crucifixion as a public display of the type of divinity
that he represents, a graphic symbol of the suffering god: “Job’s call for the
advocate, the redeemer, the blood-avenger and blood-satisfier is to be understood
only as the unanswered cry of the pre-Christian world, which finds its answer in
Christ. Job is stronger than the old God. Not the one who causes suffering but only
the one who suffers can answer Job” (119). According to this interpretation, the
crucified Christ too (like the god of the Exodus) is “on the side of the wronged,”
the side of the oppressed rather than the oppressor, of the tortured rather than the
torturer (109).
Thus, Soelle emphasizes not God the Father, with the problematic orthodox
theological claims of his omniscience, omnipotence, and omnibenevolence, nor on
the celestial Son (the second hypostasy of the Trinity and the disembodied “Word”
of God, a mere abstraction). Instead, she places it upon Jesus the man, who
suffered and died upon the cross not for the absolution of original sin, but in a
public display of solidarity with those who suffer. In other words, she emphasizes
the humanity of Christ, rather than the claim of his divinity: “Wherever people
suffer,” she writes, “Christ stands with them. To put it in less mythological terms,
as long as Christ lives and is remembered, his friends will be those who suffer.
Where no help is possible, he appears not as the superior helper [the omnipotent
God of miraculous intervention] but only as the one who walks with those beyond
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help” (177). Thus, in Soelle’s view, the true nature of God is not revealed through
power but through suffering.
This god of liberation theology is nowhere featured in the book of Job,
however, for in it “God appears to Job as God of creation and nature and not God
of history who ‘brought Israel out of bondage in Egypt’” (Kepnes 50). As Steven
Kepnes explains, this “God of creation does not intervene in history to repair its
injustices,” nor does he “erase the pain and cruelty of human suffering” (50). He is
an apathetic god, insensitive to human suffering. By contrast, Soelle’s god, then, is
akin to the imagined whom Job believes will side with him and stand in his
defense against his persecutors. He is a god who shares the burden of affliction.
He is the consoler and comforter who suffers alongside those in need. In Girard’s
view as well, Christ is the figure who shatters for all time the “sinister old
theological rubbish” of the doctrine of divine reward and punishment, presenting a
new kind of God (that is, a new theology), which he identifies with the paraclete
(from the Greek , signifying an “advocate,” “helper,” “comforter,” or
“consoler”) of the gospel of John, a figure known to the Christian tradition as the
“Holy Spirit,” the third hypostasy of the Trinity (“Job as Failed Scapegoat” 204).
8
Despite the implication of religious triumphalism inherent in this
Christocentric perspective, and its anachronistic retrojection of Christ into a text
that predates Christianity by centuries, there is nonetheless something to be
commended in its emphasis on compassion and social justice rather than power.
Indeed, the principle of radical non-violent resistance preached by Jesus in the
Sermon on the Mount (Matt. 5 – 7) has been employed to revolutionary historical
effect by such notable civil rights activists as Mohandas “Mahatma” Gandhi and
8
See also Girard, Job the Victim.
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Martin Luther King, Jr. The ethical demands and social justice rhetoric of certain
of the Hebrew prophets (such as Amos and Isaiah) were also employed by Martin
Luther King, Jr., in his own speeches of protest millennia later.
As I have attempted to demonstrate, throughout the poetic debate, the poet
effectively refutes the doctrine of divine justice presented by the prose through a
sophisticated rhetoric that combines the poetic language of lament and the legal
language of indictment, along with the anti-God rhetoric of the misotheist in what
is arguably its earliest extant manifestation, though certain antecedent ancient
Near Eastern texts (of the sort mentioned in chapter 2) may qualify as earlier
examples. Furthermore, the tension produced by the juxtaposition of the prose and
the poetry constitutes an effective rhetorical strategy that evokes sympathy (lit.
“feeling/suffering together/with,” from the Greek + ) in the reader as
Job’s moral outrage becomes the reader’s own. By means of this juxtaposition, the
poet enables the reader to see, indisputably, that the doctrine of divine justice is
demonstrably false, as evidenced by the case of Job, and, by extension, the case of
any and every individual who has ever been unjustly robbed of his or her
livelihood, loved ones, health, or life “for no good reason.” The case of Job speaks
especially to anyone who, like Job, has endured oppression at the cruel hands of an
apathetic authority figure (or authoritarian institution) who wields absolute power
with little to no regard for the suffering that his actions cause, for this is precisely
the role of YHWH in the book of Job. This realization has led David Robertson to
proclaim in response to the text, “While God may be more powerful than we are,
he is beneath us on scales that measure love, justice, and wisdom. So we know of
him what we know of all tyrants, that while they may torture us and finally kill us,
they cannot destroy our personal integrity. From that we take our comfort” (qtd. in
Safire 81).
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It is this personal integrity that Job maintains throughout the poetic debate.
Amid accusations of guilt, he refuses either to repent or to utter a false confession
and eventually swears an oath of honesty, evoking his persecutor in the process:
“By God who has deprived me of justice! / By Shaddai who has embittered my
life! / As long as there is life in me, / And God’s breath is in my nostrils, / My lips
will speak no wrong, / Nor my tongue utter deceit. / . . . / Until I die I will
maintain my integrity / I persist in my righteousness and will not yield” (27.3 – 6).
Here, Job is indeed stronger than God. Though YHWH may be omnipotent, and
thus infinitely more powerful than Job, Job’s power is his integrity, for he is in the
right (ethically speaking) and no matter how much fear and trembling YHWH
evokes during the theophany, no amount of dread or wonder can alter the fact that
Job is innocent and has been made to suffer unjustly at the hands of God, as the
prologue makes explicit.
In this respect, the poetic Job admirably suggests that the ethical demands
of justice are of a higher order than the laws of either man or god. Furthermore, he
insists upon holding God to this standard of ethical behavior, even at the risk of
being “crushed” or “slain” by him in retaliation (6.9, 9.17, 13.14). For example,
Job proclaims in the poetry, “I will have my say, / Come what may upon me. / He
may well slay me; I may have no hope; / Yet I will argue my case before him. / In
this too is my salvation: / That no impious man can come into his presence” (13.13
– 6). Thus, the measure of Job’s piety, evidenced by YHWH’s appearance before
him, is not his acceptance of unjust suffering in the prologue but his adamant
refusal to accept it in the poetry, even at the hands of God.
In this context, Job’s relationship with God is not that of a dictatorship, in
which God’s word is law and any dissenting voices are silenced by means of
force. Instead, it is a relationship in which God’s behavior is subject to criticism
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by those whom he has created and thus bears responsibility for, regardless of
whether he chooses to accept or neglect that responsibility. As Safire notes, this
criticism of God is the means by which Job “shattered hypocrisy and rigidity and
replaced all that with an idea of his own about proper conduct in pain” (87).
“When Job’s integrity was insulted by unfair affliction,” Safire writes, “he did
more than dissent; he rightly indicted God’s management, impugned God’s
motive, and criticized God’s aloofness” (88). However, this type of divine-human
relationship, in which God is subject to the testing of human beings as well, is
complicated by the theophany and its rhetoric of absolute power.
The Theophany: The Cosmocentric Perspective and
the Mystery of Suffering
The theophany begins when YHWH appears in the form of a violent storm
and rebukes Job harshly, saying, “Who is this who darkens counsel, / Speaking
without knowledge? / Gird your loins like a man; / I will ask and you will inform
me” (38.2 – 3). Despite his later restoration of Job in the epilogue, here YHWH
clearly challenges Job’s poetic claims and seems intent on silencing him through
intimidation. By proclaiming that Job “darkens counsel, speaking without
knowledge” (the absence of light here serving as a metaphor for ignorance),
YHWH emphasizes Job’s inability to see the true nature of both God and cosmos
from within the confines of his limited perspective, from his “worm’s-eye vantage
point in dust and ashes” (38.1; Lasine 153). Thus, YHWH suggests that Job’s
statements about him have in fact been incorrect all along, in both the prose and
the poetry. Similarly, he rebukes the friends in the epilogue for speaking untruths
about him. Therefore, YHWH points out the error of both the claims of divine
justice espoused by Job’s friends as well as the claims of divine injustice asserted
by Job in the poetry, commending neither view. Instead, the speeches of the
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theophany suggest that the dualistic conceptual framework of justice and injustice
within which the poetic debate occurs is a false dichotomy that is inapplicable to
God, who is neither moral nor immoral, neither just nor unjust. The theophany
instead implies that God is amoral and “ajust” (i.e., neither just nor unjust),
existing outside of the conceptual sphere of moral judgment.
The poet here suggests that though God’s behavior may appear immoral
and unjust from mankind’s anthropocentric perspective, which projects its own
psyche onto the mind of God, human conceptions of morality and justice fail to
reflect the true nature of the deity, who is a transcendent intelligence that exists
(like Nietzsche’s Übermensch) “beyond good and evil” and is therefore not
subject to such anthropic categorical constructs. This transcendent deity is the
familiar deus absconditus, the “hidden god” unknowable by the limited faculties
of the human mind. Job thus comes to realize, as a result of the theophany, that his
previous understanding of god (as either a just or an unjust ruler) was mistaken.
As Crenshaw explains, “His [Job’s] bitter experience has taught him in no
uncertain terms that God does not reward virtue or punish vice in every instance”
(Whirlpool 74). Therefore, despite the courage and integrity of his impassioned
speeches of protest, which continue to resonate powerfully with modern readers, it
is Job’s eventual acceptance of this alternative theology (the understanding of god
as a transcendent, amoral, and ajust deity rather than an anthropopathic one) that
earns him commendation and reward in the epilogue.
9
On this point, it will
perhaps prove useful to turn to the work of John T. Wilcox, who has effectively
elucidated the theophany by means of an insightful and nuanced analysis.
9
On the variety of biblical approaches to rendering literary images of God (naturalistic,
anthropomorphic, anthropopathic, Christocentric, transcendent, and the like), see Holbrook.
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Wilcox sees the poet reconciling the “honest, heroic realism” of Job’s
“bitterness” by means of the theophany, isolating three prevalent themes within it
that illuminate the text from a philosophical perspective (186). First, he sees the
theophany reminding Job of humankind’s ignorance about the mysteries of
existence, and rejecting the orthodox doctrine of the “Moral World Order” (the
doctrine of divine justice) defended by Job’s friends. Thus, he rightly notices a
“partial skepticism” that presents a “dichotomy between what we can know [the
falsity of the orthodox doctrine] and what we cannot know [‘the deepest truths of
nature or of God’]” (186, emphasis in original). From this revelation, Wilcox
explains, Job acquires “intellectual humility” (184). Second, YHWH’s “language
of power” reminds Job of humankind’s “weakness,” his relative lack of power and
his inability to control nature. Third, YHWH’s praise of nature (in which little
mention is made of humankind) enables Job to envision the beauty and immensity
of creation, to see it from a cosmocentric perspective rather than an
anthropocentric one. Finally, Wilcox sees Job’s reward in the epilogue as
symbolic of the peace that his intellectual humility brings, an “acceptance
analogous to his traditional patience” (99).
Wilcox’s analysis is as lucid an exegesis of the theophany as can be
produced. The speeches of YHWH from “out of the tempest,” a concrete symbol
of the awesome destructive power of both God and nature, affirm Job’s rejection
of the conventional wisdom by emphasizing the “small worth” of humankind in
their praise of the immensity of creation and the tremendous power of nature
(38.1, 40.6, 40.4). YHWH emphasizes Job’s ignorance and powerlessness by
juxtaposing them with his own cosmic knowledge and seemingly limitless power.
Rather than responding to either Job’s arguments or questions, he asserts Job’s
lack of knowledge with a series of seemingly arbitrary and irrelevant questions
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that Job is unable to answer. For example, “Where were you when I laid the
earth’s foundations?” (38.4), “Have you ever commanded the day to break?”
(38.12), “Have you penetrated to the sources of the sea?” (38.16), “Have the gates
of death been disclosed to you?” (38.17), “Have you surveyed the expanses of the
earth?” (38.18), “Do you know the laws of heaven?” (38.33), “Have you an arm
like God’s? / Can you thunder with a voice like his?” (40.9), and so on. At this
point, the reader imagines Job either frightened into submission by YHWH’s
rhetoric of power and intimidation or left dumbfounded by his whirlwind of
seemingly irrelevant questions and his failure or neglect to address any of Job’s
complaints. Remarkably, however, Job’s perspective is effectively altered by the
theophany, and he attains a new understanding of God and the experience of
suffering as a result.
Despite YHWH’s chastisement of Job, the fact that he appears at all is
significant. Applying a distinction by Martin Buber between theology and
religious experience, Kushner notes that Job has, at this point, “evolved from . . .
discussing God to encountering God,” contending that it is the contact of the
theophany, rather than its content, that engenders the shift in perspective that
effectively resolves Job’s complaints (Book of Job 157). Perhaps Job has indeed
found comfort in the contact of his deity, as Kushner argues, though this is
difficult to imagine, given the fact that the nature of that contact consists less of a
paternal embrace than a challenge by a slighted opponent. Instead, I contend that
Job has come to understand, through his experience of the numinous, the
mysterium tremendum et fascinans (the “fearful and fascinating mystery,” which
inspires awe and dread in equal measure), that his previous assertions about God
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were mistaken, as were those of his friends.
10
Job learns that God’s true nature is
neither just nor unjust, but rather amoral and ajust. Thus, he finds contentment in
the mystery of both God and suffering, in the fact that his god in not punishing
him unfairly as he had previously believed. Furthermore, he finds a modicum of
peace of mind by accepting the incomprehensibility of his circumstances, rather
than struggling against them, as evidenced by his final response to YHWH, in
which he states, “Indeed, I spoke without understanding / Of things beyond me,
which I did not know. / . . . / I had heard you with my ears, / But now I see you
with my eyes; / Therefore, I recant and relent, / Being but dust and ashes” (42.3).
Job here acknowledges that he had heard about God, via the conventional theology
of the wisdom tradition, but has now “seen” the majesty of God in the awe-
inspiring power of nature and the immensity of creation evoked by the theophany.
It should be noted here that the Hebrew is notoriously ambiguous in these
most significant of verses, allowing for multiple (often contradictory)
interpretations, as Kushner discusses at length, calling the passage “untranslatable
with any degree of certainty” (Book of Job 157-61). He does point out, however,
that the final phrase “” literally means “dust and ashes” and “is a
recognizable biblical phrase signifying insignificance,” citing examples of its use
elsewhere in the Hebrew Bible (157-8). Therefore, if Job’s submission is to be
considered genuine rather than either sarcastic or ironic (as I contend that it is),
then he is indeed admitting his own insignificance, as his prior response (in which
he says, “See, I am of small worth”) also suggests. Similarly, in the phrase here
translated as “I recant and relent” (signified by the Hebrew verbs ’and
nihamti), he is confessing not only the insufficiency of the conceptual framework
10
On the numinous, see Otto.
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of divine justice to reflect the true nature of the divine, but also the inability of
human beings to comprehend either the divine nature or the ever-elusive meaning
of suffering (42.3).
11
Therefore, he is humbled by the theophany, saying, “See, I
am of small worth,” much in the same way that a modern thinker may be humbled
by gazing up at the vastness of the night-sky and contemplating the immensity of
the universe with its myriad stars, each a distant sun equivalent to the radiant heart
of our own solar system, a universe in which the earth is but a “pale blue dot” (to
borrow a phrase from the late Carl Sagan) (40.4).
Crenshaw understands Job’s submission as an attempt at theodicy, an act
that compromises Job’s integrity. In other words, he sees it as a defense of God at
the expense of human dignity: “In a real sense,” Crenshaw writes, “Job’s silent
submission before an awesome display of power amounts to a loss of integrity,
[and] hence may rightly be termed an argument against humanity” (“Introduction”
6). Furthermore, Crenshaw sees this trend manifested throughout the Hebrew
Bible, with the effect of self-denigration and the internalization of guilt among its
authors:
Such salvaging of God’s honor by sacrificing human integrity
eventuated in a grandiose interpretation of history that amounts to a
monumental theodicy. This Deuteronomistic theology justifies
national setbacks and political oppression as divine punishment for
sin. The portrayal of Israel and Judah as corrupt to the core suffices
to justify divine abandonment of the chosen people, but such
rescuing of God’s sovereignty and freedom was purchased at a high
price, the self-esteem of humans. This tendency to save God’s honor
11
See Kushner, Book of Job 158-60 and Mitchell xxxiin5.
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by sacrificing human integrity seems to have caught on in ancient
Israel, for every effort at theodicy represents a substantial loss of
human dignity. (7)
Crenshaw’s view is bold and his analysis of the general psychology of “Old
Testament” theodicy is, in my estimation, correct, but it should be noted that the
emphasis in the book of Job hinges on what the poet considers to be an incorrect
understanding of God in the poetic debate and the forging of a new theology
represented by Job’s humble responses to the theophany. While this new theology
may indeed serve as a defense of God by transforming the experience of suffering
into an insoluble mystery, YHWH still cannot escape the claims of injustice
presented by Job’s protest, for the wager of the prologue renders any attempt at
theodicy null and void. For this reason, it is not Job’s responses to YHWH but his
poetic speeches of protest that speak to the modern world and remain as relevant
as ever in their depiction of the courageous resistance of one man in the face of
terrible oppression.
Conclusions
For the poet-author of Job, his righteous gentile protagonist stands in as a
representative of the entirety of humankind. Thus, his ignorance, his
powerlessness, and also his moral outrage at the unfairness of his suffering are
analogous to our own. Job is the universal voice of protest made text, a resounding
cry for liberation from suffering, whether at the oppressive hands of a cruel,
authoritarian power figure or as a result of indiscriminate, deterministic forces of
nature that inflict suffering senselessly and without warning.
In either case, the book of Job presents a number of differing perspectives
on the phenomenon of suffering. In the folktale of Job the Patient, preserved in the
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prose narrative framework, suffering comes as a test of faith, as it does in the
akedah of Genesis 22. Within this framework, Job suggests that the appropriate
response to suffering is to accept it without complaint. YHWH affirms the
correctness of this response by commending and rewarding Job in the epilogue.
On the other hand, Job’s wife harbors no faith in divine justice, advising her
husband to “Blaspheme God” out of spite and in order to provoke his anger, so
that he might end Job’s misery by killing him. In both views, God is the source of
suffering, but the former view commends faith in divine justice, advising the
sufferer to trust that God will ultimately restore him in the end. The latter view, on
the other hand, sees the god of Job as a cruel tyrant who meddles with human lives
for sport. The advice of Job’s wife allows for two distinct interpretations: either
she is recommending defiance in the vein of Job’s poetic speeches of protest or,
more likely, she is suggesting that he accept defeat and end his misery. Regardless,
she clearly harbors no hope for restoration, and it seems unlikely that she would
approve of such a restoration, given her position in the prologue, for a god who
destroys human lives for naught is no god worthy of worship, even if he does
eventually restore the sufferer (replacing the children that he has murdered with
new ones).
By contrast, in the poetry, Job’s friends uncritically endorse the traditional
retributive view of suffering in an attempt to defend the justice of God, insisting
that Job has earned his affliction due to some undisclosed offense. Meanwhile, Job
maintains his innocence and indicts God for acting unjustly, thereby adopting the
traditional retributive framework for the purpose of refuting its claim of divine
justice. According to the poetic Job, the world does not operate according to
divine reward and retribution, and one need only to look around at the world to see
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the truth of this fact. Thus, he ultimately rejects this traditional worldview and its
oppressive theology.
In the theophany, YHWH espouses a non-retributive view, asserting his
dominance over humanity and his lack of ethical responsibility to the beings
whom he has created. The god of the theophany, then, is a supreme creator deity
whose primary characteristic is omnipotence, a theology that deemphasizes the
notion of divine benevolence. Furthermore, YHWH asserts that human beings are
insignificant in the grand scheme of the cosmos. Therefore, he implies that they
have no right to question his authority or to demand a reason for their sufferings.
Thus, he reprimands Job for speaking in ignorance and expecting that YHWH
owes him a response or a reason for his suffering. According to this view,
suffering occurs because the cosmos is infinitely larger than human beings and
was not created for their benefit but for uncertain purposes known only to God.
Thus, suffering is an enigma impenetrable by human wisdom. In this way, the poet
has YHWH reject the wisdom worldview and its retributive view of suffering as
well.
Finally, Job’s surprising submission and repentance in response to the
theophany affirm the theophany’s view of man as an insignificant pawn who is
subject to the whims of an all-powerful god. On the other hand, the effectiveness
of Job’s demand for a divine audience seems to counter this reading, suggesting
that perhaps man is of greater significance than YHWH admits. Even the wager
itself, and the role of the adversary as a divine watcher of men who serves as the
eyes of God on earth, seems to disprove YHWH’s assertion. In the final analysis,
then, it may be surmised that Job’s response suggests an acceptance of the
amorality of God and the incomprehensibility of suffering as well as a refusal to
replace the dogmatic worldview of the wisdom tradition with any equally
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unfounded assertion, opting instead for an open-ended ambiguity that leaves the
text, and the experience of suffering, open to a plurality of interpretative
possibilities.
Perhaps the most instructive conclusion that the text imparts to modern
readers, however, is Job’s wish for an advocate, someone to stand beside him in
the midst of his affliction, a comforter and a defender against his persecutors, both
human and divine. This wish represents not only a rejection of the theology of
reward and retribution, predicated on doctrines of divine justice and power, but
also, and perhaps most importantly, a plea for compassion, which is often the only
recourse available in the midst of senseless suffering. Without the possibility for
justice, compassion is the only thing that might have helped to mitigate Job’s pain,
and it is precisely the thing that his friends failed to give him during his time of
need.
CHAPTER 4 – INTRODUCTION TO THE POPOL VUH:
BACKGROUND AND CULTURAL-HISTORICAL
CONTEXT
The Popol Vuh (or, Popol Wuj), variously translated as “Council Book”
(Tedlock 63), “Book of the Community” (Christenson 64n33), or “Counsel Mat
Book” (Christenson 64n33), is a sacred Native American text produced by the
K’iche’ (or, Quiché) people of highland Guatemala, one of a number of ethnic
groups of the Maya population indigenous to southern Mexico and northern
Central America. Located in the region today known as Mesoamerica, the pre-
Hispanic K’iche’ kingdom flourished in the central highlands of Guatemala during
the Late Postclassic period (ca. 1250 – ca. 1500 CE) and shared much of its
cultural heritage with other Mesoamerican civilizations, both contemporary and
antecedent. This common cultural heritage permeates the Popol Vuh, and is
attested by a wealth of extra-textual evidence, painted on pottery and inscribed on
stelae, found at numerous sites throughout Mesoamerica during various historical
periods.
Scholars typically divide the Popol Vuh into three major sections, each with
their own subdivisions. The first is a creation myth detailing the cosmogony of the
K’iche’ people and the creation and destruction of various types of creatures prior
to the creation of human beings. While the source of this cosmogonic myth is
thought to be of pre-Hispanic origin, the version preserved in the Popol Vuh as we
know it contains a number of elements that parallel the composite creation
narrative of Genesis (chapters 1 – 3), which raises questions about the possibility
of Christian influence in the text. While many, and perhaps all, of these parallel
features developed independently, it is possible that others may represent K’iche’
responses to the biblical cosmogony introduced to them by the Spanish, as
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scholars such as Dennis Tedlock and Timothy Knowlton have argued. However,
for the most part, the Popol Vuh as it has come down to us appears to be the
product of a genuine attempt by its authors to preserve the ancient traditions of
their people during a time of imminent threat to their collective identity, in which
these traditions were under attack and at risk of extinction, since the textual
records of those traditions had been either confiscated or destroyed (Tedlock 63,
198; Christenson 64, 305). In accordance with this view, Allen Christenson
asserts,
The authors were traditionalists, in the sense that they recorded the
history and theology of the ancient highland Maya people without
adding material from European sources. The Popol Vuh thus
contains very little direct Christian influence. By its own account it
is a faithful record of the contents of the ancient Popol Vuh text,
which could no longer be seen. (35)
For the purposes of the present study, however, the distinctions between the
two narratives (ancient Israelite and highland Maya) highlight the K’iche’
understanding of the relationship between human beings and their divine
progenitors, a relationship predicated on a pan-Mesoamerican notion of
interdependence and reciprocity between the human and divine spheres of
existence. It is through this “interpenetration” of the natural and supernatural
realms that human beings repay their debt to the gods by providing them with the
sustenance that they require, whether through remembrance and praise or through
rites of bloodletting and human sacrifice (Martin 49-52). According to this
worldview, such repayment is required because “the self-sacrifice of the divinities
led to the creation of life in the earthly space-time” (Carrasco, Aztecs 68, emphasis
in original).
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The second section, which appears to contain the oldest traditions of any of
the three sections, is an epic narrative detailing the heroic exploits of a pair of twin
culture heroes and trickster figures named Hunahpu and Xbalanque, otherwise
known as the “Hero Twins.” This section contains the Vucub Caquix (“Seven
Macaw”) episode as well as the descent of the Hero Twins to the underworld,
called Xibalba (“Place of Fright”), where they vanquish the lords of death and
disease and retrieve the bodies of their deceased uncle and father. The third section
is a mytho-historical account of the beginnings of the four tribes of the K’iche’
nation, the establishment of traditional K’iche’ religion (including the practices of
human sacrifice and auto-sacrifice), the K’iche’ conquest of the Guatemalan
highlands and the establishment of the K’iche’ state, and a genealogy of the
lineages of K’iche’ rulers up until the time of the Spanish conquest of the Maya, a
gradual process of political and spiritual domination initiated by Pedro de
Alvarádo in 1524 at the command of Hernán Cortés, himself (in)famous for his
conquest of the Mexica (popularly known as the Aztec) empire beginning with the
invasion of 1519.
Like the epic narrative poetry of ancient Greece (the Iliad and the Odyssey)
and India (the Mahabharata and the Ramayana), as well as the biblical Pentateuch
(the Torah), the Popol Vuh appears to be, in part, the product of a rich oral
tradition with roots stretching back more than a millennium into the pre-Hispanic
past. Thus, much like the Pentateuch, it is a composite corpus comprised of
diverse mythical and historical material that developed and evolved over a period
of more than a millennium by an exceedingly complex process of cultural
diffusion and syncretism. Not unlike the mytho-historical mass migration of the
ancient Israelites out of Egypt, related in the biblical book of Exodus, “the Popol
Vuh account of a mass migration of all the major Quiché lineage groups into the
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Guatemalan highlands should not be taken literally. Rather, this was more likely a
slow process carried out over a period of several centuries involving a complex
series of historical and social interactions” (Christenson 31). Furthermore,
evidence suggests that many of the K’iche’ lineages “had always lived in the
highlands” rather than having conquered and displaced the previous inhabitants,
though their authority to exercise military power may have been acquired from an
outside political and religious center, as the text states (Christenson 31). The Popol
Vuh explicitly refers to this site as the legendary Tulán Zuyua, known to the
Toltecs as Tollan (“Place of Reeds”), which, for the K’iche’ Maya, has been
variously identified as Tula de Hidalgo by Jiménez Moreno (qtd. in Florescano
140), Teotihuacán by Enrique Florescano in 1999 (qtd. in Florescano 140),
Mayapan by Christenson (91n152), and Chichén Itzá by Florescano in 2006 (140).
Thus, as Christenson explains, “the confederation of people known as the Quiché
was more likely a complex and linguistically diverse group of lineages composed
of native highland Maya, Mexicanized clans from nearby Pacific Coastal areas,
and immigrants (particularly the Cavec) from the Maya lowlands” (31). Therefore,
in his assessment (with which I am inclined to agree),
The Popol Vuh does not contain what we would call “objective
history.” It is instead a collection of traditions, partly based in
historical fact and partly based on mythic interpretation, to describe
the rise to power of their own lineages, specifically that of the Cavec
who came to dominate the highland Maya region in the fifteenth
century. This mixture of highland Maya, lowland Maya, and
Mexican-influenced cultures ultimately gave birth to the traditions
contained in the Popol Vuh. (31)
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As in the ancient Near East, such cultural cross-pollination by means of
intercultural contact is typical of Mesoamerica both before and during the
conquest, and accounts for its defining characteristic as not only a distinct,
culturally diverse geographic region but also a shared cultural space evincing a
number of significant commonalities among various groups and between disparate
historical periods.
Though the version of the Popol Vuh known to scholars today is a product
of much earlier traditions, it is purported to have been compiled and composed in
its current form by anonymous K’iche’ scribes in Santa Cruz del Quiché, the
Spanish settlement that replaced the capital of the K’iche’ kingdom after its
destruction. By comparing its genealogies with extra-textual historical records, it
has been determined that the Popol Vuh as we know it was composed sometime in
the middle of the sixteenth century, during the conquest of the Guatemalan
highlands by the Spanish, a period in which “many indigenous elites had recently
converted to Christianity” (Knowlton 3). Evidence suggests that it was written in
the K’iche’ language using a modified form of the Latin alphabet (the European
script), which had been introduced to the K’iche’ by Spanish missionaries in an
attempt to aid in the conversion of the indigenous population to Christianity.
The text itself explicitly identifies an earlier document, referred to as both
the Popol Vuh and the “original book and ancient writing” (or “the original book .
. . that was written anciently”) as its primary source (Tedlock 63, 198; Christenson
64). Enrique Florescano refers to this hypothetical source document as the
“Council Book of Q’umar Ka’aj,” the pre-Colonial capital of the K’iche’
kingdom, and identifies the date of completion of the sixteenth-century text as the
year 1554, “during the lifetime of Juan de Rojas and Juan de Cortés, who are cited
in the book as the last generation of K’iche’ kings” (129). According to the text
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itself, the unrecovered source document was already “now lost” by the time of the
completion of its sixteenth-century counterpart and remains unglimpsed by
modern eyes (Tedlock 198; Christenson 305).
Its description in the Popol Vuh, particularly the text’s emphasis on
“seeing” it, suggests that it was one of the numerous folded screen books produced
by the pre-Hispanic Maya (Tedlock 63, 198; Christenson 64, 305). Painted on bark
paper or deerskin, these screen-fold books contained pictorial representations of
important historical events, personages, and scenes from mythical episodes
accompanied by elaborate hieroglyphic writing recording astronomical and
calendrical data, mythical narratives, historical chronicles, and dynastic
genealogies. Of these books, called codices, only three (possibly four) are known
to have survived the conflagrations carried out by Spanish missionaries such as
Franciscan friar Diego de Landa, who is known to have burned at least forty Maya
codices and approximately 20,000 Maya religious images and ritual paraphernalia
in an infamous auto-da-fé (“act-of-faith”), a brutal anti-idolatry campaign
conducted in the town of Maní in Yucatán on July 12, 1562 (Chuchiak 615).
While many scholars are convinced of the authenticity of the Grolier Codex (the
fourth possible surviving codex), others consider it a twentieth century forgery
(Jordan). The aggressive suppression of indigenous religions and cultural memory
by the Spanish failed to extirpate native traditions, however, despite the concerted
efforts of numerous missionaries sent to convert the indigenous population to
Christianity and stamp out all remnants of “paganism,” “idolatry,” and “devil-
worship.” For the Spanish, as evidenced by the writings of de Landa, traditional
expressions of indigenous religious beliefs were deemed “superstition and lies of
the devil” (qtd. in Christenson 11). The Popol Vuh thus constitutes a survival and
preservation of these pre-Hispanic traditions, and, along with the Books of Chilam
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Balam of Yucatán, is among the most valuable extant textual sources for the study
of Maya beliefs, myths, and worldview during and prior to the conquest of “Nueva
España” (“New Spain”).
However, the pre-Hispanic narratives contained within the text are not
simply direct transcriptions of an antecedent source document. Rather, they are
retellings and reinterpretations of these narratives in light of the contemporary
social and symbolic crises presented by the political and spiritual conquest of the
indigenous Maya population by the Spanish conquistadores. With this conquest
came the introduction of foreign mythic elements into the traditional indigenous
discourses of Mesoamerican religions. This meeting of alien cultures with distinct
worldviews constituted one of the greatest cultural clashes in human history,
resulting not merely in the domination of native populations by outside invaders
and the subsequent suppression of native customs and belief systems but rather in
a synthesis of Old and New World traditions among the indigenous population.
Thus, the native religions were not entirely extirpated but were preserved in
modified, hybridized forms as Christian ideas and practices were absorbed and
incorporated into existing indigenous religious paradigms. As Laurence Alexander
explains,
Christianity did not convert the Maya; it was absorbed completely.
Perhaps I should say almost completely, for one major symbolic
component is lacking. This is the symbolism of evil [that] dominates
western religion: the symbolism of evil, of sin, guilt, retribution,
punishment is almost totally absent from the Maya absorption of
Christianity. It is absent because there is nothing in the Maya
symbolic to which Christianity’s symbolization of evil could be
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assimilated. Even the shamanistic rituals of purgation and cleansing
lack these composite symbolizations of evil. (8)
As Alexander here suggests, there existed among the Maya no concept of
absolute evil (as of the type familiar to the apocalyptic faiths), though the
supposed complete lack of certain other “symbolizations of evil” (a Ricoeurian
formulation) is debatable, and I would argue that some of these ideas (punishment
in particular) were indeed existent among the pre-Hispanic Maya. Regardless, it is
clear that the Maya responded to the introduction of these foreign symbolic
elements into the complex systems of indigenous belief and ritual by grafting
unfamiliar Christian theological figures and concepts onto the familiar constructs
of their own native traditions in an attempt to form correspondences between the
two. For example, “a 1545 report by the cleric Francisco Hernández . . . relates
that the Maya associated the aged pre-Hispanic god of life and creation, Itzamna,
with Dios Padre [God the Father]; the Bacab with Dios Hijo [God the Son]; and
the goddess Ix Chel with the mother of the Virgin” (Knowlton 131). Furthermore,
this cultural syncretism is evident in the many modern Latin American religious
traditions that combine indigenous beliefs and symbols with imported Christian
elements, such as the Virgin of Guadalupe, the Dia de los Muertos (“Day of the
Dead”) festival, the Fiesta of Santiago among the Tzutujil Maya, and the cult of
Santa Muerte, to provide but a few prominent examples.
1
As Davíd Carrasco
contends, the synthesis of disparate beliefs and symbols evident in these traditions
demonstrates the remarkable “religious creativity” of the indigenous peoples of the
Americas in their preservation of native religiosity in new, hybrid forms (Religions
of Mesoamerica 124-52).
1
See Carrasco, Religions of Mesoamerica 124-52.
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The earliest extant manuscript of the Popol Vuh—the version known to
modern scholars—is a transcription of the sixteenth-century text and an
accompanying Spanish translation organized in parallel columns, both produced
by Dominican friar Francisco Ximénez during the period of 1701 – 1703 (Quiroa
18-19; Christenson 12). Unfortunately, neither the “Council Book of Q’umar
Ka’aj” nor its sixteenth-century K’iche’ counterpart have come down to us. It is
also a possibility that the sixteenth-century text never existed, and that Ximénez
was the first to compose a written text of the Popol Vuh based on an oral
recitation, as some have suggested (Woodruff 104). This possibility seems
unlikely, however, given the fact that Ximénez himself makes mention in his own
writings of the existence of surviving codices among the Colonial Maya, though
he says little about their contents other than indicating their use as divinatory texts
(Woodruff 104).
This lack of any surviving versions of the text earlier than the Ximénez
manuscript presents a number of hermeneutical problems for scholars. The version
of the Popol Vuh known to modern readers has traditionally been regarded as a
pristine expression of pre-Hispanic indigenous history and religion. However,
according to Néstor Ivan Quiroa, Ximénez’s Eurocentric and Christocentric biases
may have rendered not only his Spanish translation but also his alphabetic K’iche’
transcription of the sixteenth-century manuscript unreliable. The former concern is
valid, but the latter is unconvincing. Regardless, without earlier textual sources,
we can neither definitively confirm nor deny the accuracy of either claim, though
the latter would require a deliberate forgery, a suggestion as far-fetched as it is
controversial. This concern regarding the possible unreliability of the Ximénez
manuscript is compounded by the fact that the sixteenth-century text, upon which
Ximénez’s manuscript is based, was composed after the arrival of the Spanish,
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during a period of intercultural contact, and thus may not constitute an
uncontaminated expression of indigenous traditions. Both Tedlock and Knowlton
have presented evidence of Christian influence and possible biblical allusion
embedded within various Maya texts produced during the Colonial period, but this
evidence is not definitive proof. However, the Popol Vuh itself explicitly states
that its authors are writing “about this now amid the preaching of God, in
Christendom now,” or “under the law of God and Christianity,” a fact that betrays
the exposure of its authors to Christianity and, thus, its possible engagement of
Christian teachings in its own internal narrative dialogue (Tedlock 63; Christenson
64).
In his book on Maya creation myths, Knowlton asserts that the Popol Vuh
“has its own complex colonial histories of emergent meanings in dialogic relation
to both pre-Hispanic and European antecedents” (131). Because it simultaneously
emerges out of the former and responds to the latter, it may offer insight into the
pre-Hispanic past as well as the Colonial contemporary. In a recent book on Maya
creation myths, Knowlton warns against “dismissing” such Colonial period Maya
texts as mere “concession[s] to Christian teaching” (131). Instead, he contends,
“we should consider the various aspects . . . that possibly reflect a history of
composition in dialogue with both Euro-Christian and Mesoamerican antecedents”
(131). Therefore, in Knowlton’s assessment, “the interpretation of Maya
mythologies is enriched by understanding both pre-Hispanic antecedents and the
colonial context of competing discourses in which the surviving texts are
composed” (132).
Though the Popol Vuh was written down in its current form during the
Colonial period and may therefore contain elements of Christian influence,
iconographic evidence found throughout Mesoamerica indicates that its roots
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stretch back in time to the Classic period (250 – 900 CE) and beyond, which
makes it one of the most valuable sources of insight into the pre-Hispanic past. In
fact, some of its episodes appear to have originated much earlier, during the
Protoclassic period (ca. 50 BCE – 250 CE), and possibly as far back as the Middle
Preclassic, also known as the Middle Formative period (950 BCE – 400 BCE).
Scenes from the mythic narrative of the “Hero Twins” are painted on both Classic
and Late Classic Maya pottery, and the episode involving the destruction of Vucub
Caquix appears on two stelae at the Protoclassic (also called the Late Preclassic)
site of Izapa. Furthermore, Vucub Caquix has been identified with the Protoclassic
Maya “Principal Bird Deity,” represented in the form of monumental stucco masks
sculpted onto the exteriors of pyramids at Cerros (Late Preclassic) and Nakbe
(Middle to Late Preclassic), perhaps beginning as early as 300 BCE (Miller &
Taube 137). A Zapotec form of this being is common among Late Preclassic
Zapotec iconography in Oaxaca, where it is referred to as “El Ave de Pico Ancho”
(“The Bird with the Broad Beak”). It is also represented on stelae at the
Protoclassic site of El Mirador in El Petén, Guatemala, and Maya kings at
Kaminaljuyú are known to have “adopted the Principal Bird as an important
symbol of power” (Miller & Taube 137). A bit more tenuous, yet worth
mentioning, is a pair of monumental sculptures found at the Early Preclassic
Olmec “Acropolis” of El Azuzul in Veracruz, Mexico. These twin statues
represent nearly identical seated male figures wearing pleated headdresses
(perhaps associated with rain and suggestive of priesthood) and facing east. It has
been suggested that these twin figures may be a Formative prototype or ancestor
of the later Hero Twins, whose exploits are retold in the Popol Vuh (Cyphers 172).
In addition to its preservation of antecedent mythic traditions common to
various peoples of Mesoamerica, the Popol Vuh also displays a number of pan-
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Mesoamerican cosmological and ideological features that are essential for
understanding the view of suffering suggested by the text. These features include,
first, a principle of complementarity and interdependence between such
oppositional forces as night-and-day and life-and-death, evidenced, for example,
by the half-fleshed and half-skeletonized masks of Tlatilco (an Early Preclassic
site in Central Mexico), by a similarly half-defleshed ceramic head unearthed in
Oaxaca, and by an image on page 56 of the Late Postclassic Central Mexican
Codex Borgia representing the Mexica god and culture hero Quetzalcoatl (in his
aspect as the wind-deity Ehecatl-Quetzalcoatl) and the Mexica death god
Mictlantecuhtli enthroned back-to-back in profile, each forming a mirror image of
the other, suggesting the unity of these two forces (Díaz & Rodgers 22). Though
binary categories such as these are universal motifs of human culture, the
distinction here lies in the emphasis on a complementary and interdependent
relationship between these two poles, rather than a dichotomous relationship of
mutual exclusivity and antagonistic opposition, a monistic view rather than a
dualistic view. Wendy Doniger has explained (in the context of Hindu religions)
the distinction between these two views in the following way: “one regards evil
and good as essentially different and divisible; the other regards them as
essentially harmonious and inseparable” (370). Therefore, from this perspective,
moral absolutes such as good and evil are not applicable to the forces of life and
death. As Karl Taube explains,
Although there is a contrast between the chaotic nocturnal hours and
those of the day, it is by no means a distinction between good and
evil. In Mesoamerican thought, such dualistic principles tend to be
considered in complementary opposition: both are required for
existence. Just as sleep is a necessary revitalizing counterpart of
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daytime activity, the night and sacred time infuse daily reality with
renewed power and force. (Taube 16)
Both Carrasco (Religions of Mesoamerica) and Taube (Aztec and Maya
Myths) provide clear examples of this principle from Mexica creation mythology.
For example, Taube identifies the supreme Mexica creator deity Ometeotl, God of
Duality, who “possess[es] both male and female creative principles” and is “also
referred to as the couple Tonatecuhtli and Tonacacihuatl, Lord and Lady of Our
Sustenance” as the embodiment of this interdependent opposition. He also
associates this principle with the dual creator deities Quetzalcoatl and
Tezcatlipoca, who are “sometimes allies and sometimes adversaries” who create
through combat (31). In the latter example, Taube explains, “creation is the result
of complementary opposition and conflict. Much like a dialogue between two
individuals, the interaction and exchange between opposites constitute a creative
act” (31). Such opposition and conflict does not necessarily imply a dichotomous
relationship however. As Fernando Cervantes explains,
these dualistic properties should not obscure the strictly monistic
nature of Mesoamerican religion. Negative and destructive forces
were not the enemies of positive and constructive ones. Both were
essential components of the cosmos. Life came from death; creation
from destruction. Disharmony was as necessary as harmony. (41)
By way of contrast, the apocalyptic faiths envision a utopian future in
which the malevolent forces of evil that reign in the present age will be overcome
by the benevolent forces of good, bringing eternal life in the age to come and thus
restoring the cosmos to its natural, pristine state. The monistic view, on the other
hand, maintains that life and death, good and “evil,” work in tandem for the
greater good of creation.
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A second feature is the belief in an interdependent, reciprocal relationship
between human beings and their divine progenitors, a relationship which suggests
a vision of the cosmos as a “participatory universe” that is dependent upon the
action of human beings, who play an active role in its perpetuation through
ceremonial “rites of renewal,” a term which Carrasco adopts from the late
historian of religions Mircea Eliade (Wilbert 173; Carrasco, Religions of
Mesoamerica). Carrasco sees these rites of renewal as the third of a tripartite
system of processes which he calls, “worldmaking,” “worldcentering,” and
“worldrenewing,” a system of ritual practices that serve to orient their participants
in time and space through engagement with (i.e., reenactment of) sacred narratives
(Religions of Mesoamerica). Third, this pan-Mesoamerican worldview includes a
view of time as cyclical, and thus eternally recurring, rather than linear and
directed toward a final end (as in the apocalyptic faiths). In this cosmovision, it is
human blood that “fuel[s] the cosmic motion, and, by providing that blood through
willing sacrifice, humanity play[s] its part in maintaining the cyclical life of the
cosmos” (Markman 182). In the case of the Classic Maya, this is related to their
conception of the human body, for “[i]n sacrifice, the body itself contributed to the
creation of time and space” (Houston, Stuart, & Taube 277). Thus, humanity (the
human body in particular) is an integral part of the cosmos, without which life, the
gods, and the cosmos itself cannot exist.
Related to the aforementioned principles is the idea that new life emerges
from death, evidenced by various images linking bloodshed and death with
fertility and renewal. These images include frescoes depicting bright blue streams
of water pouring from the gaping chest wounds of sacrificial victims who have
had their hearts extracted with a flint or obsidian blade, sacrificial victims
sprouting serpents or vegetation from severed necks as a result of sacrifice by
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decapitation, and rites such as the arrow sacrifice practiced by the Mexica during
the ceremonies of Tlacaxipehualiztli (“Feast of the Flaying of Men”) as well as by
the Mixtec, which allows the blood of the victim to spill upon the earth like rain,
thus nourishing it. Images such as these are clearly suggestive of fertility, and thus
symbolically represent the idea that new life emerges from death as a maize plant
sprouts from its seed. Human bones, also, were equated with seeds and thus
associated with fertility, since it was believed that the essential life-force of a
person resided within his or her bones (Markman 181). This idea of life through
death and the equation of bones with seeds is represented in a scene of the Popol
Vuh in which the severed, skeletonized head of Hun Hunahpu, the sacrificed father
of the Hero Twins, is placed in a calabash tree, which bears fruit in the form of
gourds resembling human skulls. Furthermore, the severed head of Hun Hunahpu
impregnates Xquic (“Lady Blood” or “Blood Moon”) by spitting into her palm,
thus begetting the mythical Hero Twins. Again, here, life arises from death.
Classic Maya depictions of this scene alternatively show the head of Hun Hunahpu
as a cacao pod or emerging from a maize plant, an iconographic signifier of his
identification with the Classic Maya maize god. Regardless of the type of plant
depicted, the implication of fertility and regeneration is the same. This equation of
bones with seeds is further evidenced in an episode of rebirth in which the Hero
Twins are killed and their bones ground into dust and poured into a river with the
result that the twins emerge reborn in the form of catfish before reassuming their
original forms.
These ideas are the fundamental principles that undergird the practice of
human sacrifice by many peoples of pre-Hispanic Mesoamerica. By applying
these concepts to the extant material and textual evidence, modern students of
Mesoamerican religions are better able to understand the logic behind these
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violent rites and the pre-Hispanic understanding of the suffering that they
produced. In the mythic consciousness of both the pre-Hispanic Maya and Mexica,
for example, human sacrifice was deemed a culturally acceptable practice because
it was viewed in terms of debt and necessity. For the pre-conquest Mexica, human
sacrifice functioned as a form of debt payment to gods who had sacrificed
themselves for the creation of the sun, the moon, and human beings in the
primordial, mythic past. According to Carrasco, “the Aztecs, not having a word
like ‘sacrifice,’ called the animals and humans who were ritually killed
nextlahualtin, meaning payments or restitutions. These sacrificial entities were
basically the ‘payback’—the prized gifts that would bring balance and renewal to
the gods” (Aztecs 69).
For both the pre-Hispanic Maya and Mexica, human sacrifice and auto-
sacrifice through ritual bloodletting were necessary practices that sustained the
cosmos, in part by ensuring the sun’s daily journey across the sky and its nightly
passage through the underworld. Among the Mexica, regular offerings of
disembodied hearts (called “precious eagle-cactus fruit”) were necessary to sustain
the sun in this daily journey, and to ward off the destruction of the world by
“demonic” forces called tzitzimime, the personified stars, which were expected to
descend from the night-sky to “reassert their control” and “destroy the world” at
the end of the “Fifth Sun,” the present age “named Sun 4 Movement in
anticipation of the earthquakes prophesied to one day destroy the Aztec world”
(Aztecs 71).
2
Carrasco refers to this anxiety as a “cosmic paranoia” suffered by the
Mexica, a “haunting sense of insecurity, instability, and profound threats from the
2
See Carrasco, Aztecs 75 and Taube, Aztec and Maya Myths 15 and 33-41.
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gods, nature, and the social landscape” (Aztecs 70). However, this periodic
destruction also entailed renewal in the creation of the next age.
Therefore, though this view of history may appear reminiscent of the
eschatological worldviews of the apocalyptic faiths, it would be inaccurate to
consider it an eschatological view because the destruction of the present age is not
an absolute end. Rather, it is simply a necessary part of the process of
regeneration, the moment at which the cycle of creation and destruction begins
anew. As among certain sects of Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism, and other such
“Eastern” belief systems that accept the doctrine of reincarnation (known also by
the term “transmigration” and the Greek terms and ), as
well as among such ancient Greek thinkers as Pythagoras and Socrates (according
to Plato’s Phaedo) who also supposedly subscribed to such a doctrine, the pre-
Hispanic conception of time was cyclical rather than linear. Therefore, by
definition, there is no eschatology in Mexica cosmology because there are no “last
things” (the literal meaning of the term, from the Greek , meaning “last”).
As Carrasco explains, the above “pattern of birth, fulfillment, destruction,
darkness, and rebirth is the overall worldview inside which the Aztecs dwelled,
constructed their capital, and lived their daily lives” (Aztecs 71).
In the context of this pan-Mesoamerican principle of the necessity of
destruction for regeneration and renewal, the ritual complexes of the great pre-
Hispanic city-states were designed and constructed as symbolic representations of
the cosmos in miniature. For example, the Great Temple (today known as the
“Templo Mayor”) of the Mexica capital Tenochtítlan was called Coatepec
(“Serpent Mountain”) and stood as a symbolic representation of this sacred
mountain on which Huitzilopochtli, the patron deity of the Mexica, had emerged
from the womb in full battle regalia, brandishing the xiuhcoatl (“fire-serpent”) and
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triumphing over his enemies, a myth that provided a model and charter for the
sacrificial practices performed at the summit of this temple, which was considered
the axis mundi (the “center of the world”).
3
It was within these monumental ceremonial centers that the initial sacrifices
of the gods were reenacted by human beings in imitatio deorum (“imitation of the
gods”), thus regenerating their past effects (namely, the creation of the cosmos and
the apparent motion of the celestial bodies) in the present. In Mexica society, for
example, those offered to the gods were “ritually transformed into a receptacle
containing the divine being” (Carrasco, Aztecs 69). Thus, they symbolically
became the self-sacrificed gods by adorning the ceremonial regalia associated with
them. For this reason, “the people who were to be sacrificed were called teteo
ixiptla (deity impersonators)” (Carrasco, Aztecs 65). When one of these
impersonators was killed upon the altar, he became consecrated (literally, made
sacred, which is what the word “sacrifice” means) through the act of sacrifice. In
this manner, the Mexica “repeated the creative sacrificial death the gods had
undergone in the mythic times when the two space-times [human and divine] of
the universe were first linked through sacrifice” (Carrasco, Aztecs 69).
In the pan-Mesoamerican cosmovision, human beings and the gods coexist
in an interdependent, reciprocal relationship that involves an exchange of
resources in a ritual economy: human beings repay their debt to the gods (to whom
they owe their very existence) and provide them with sustenance in the form of
sacrificial offerings of human blood, hearts, and lives as well as material goods.
The gods, in return, provide rain, victory in battle, corn and other crops, and
general prosperity to the people whom they have created for the purpose of
3
See Carrasco, Aztecs 72-75 and Religions of Mesoamerica 73-77.
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honoring and paying tribute to them. Thus, from the Mesoamerican perspective,
the divine-human relationship is a mutually beneficial symbiosis.
Furthermore, suffering appears to have had a positive value in the minds of
at least some pre-Hispanic cultures. The greater the suffering induced by the act of
sacrifice, the greater the value and efficacy of the offering and, thus, the greater
the veneration of the deity being propitiated. This positive economic value of
suffering may help to explain the costly sacrifices of children, who would have
been precious commodities in a time and place in which the infant mortality rate
was exceedingly high. In the collective estimation of Stephen Houston, David
Stuart, and Karl Taube,
The Maya body (or, more precisely, the heart) felt deeply: while
doing archaeology, only the hard-hearted specialist fails to perceive
the ancient pain associated with the burial of an infant or the anguish
that must have been felt by sacrificial victims. That adult or parental
love of children differed radically from today seems unlikely, even a
moral defamation of the past. (278)
The idea that suffering has a positive value is further evidenced in the
practice, prevalent throughout pre-Hispanic Mesoamerica, of auto-sacrifice by
means of ritual bloodletting, “the most common form of sacrifice” in the pre-
Hispanic world (Carrasco, Aztecs 65). Classic Maya kings and queens in
particular, as evidenced on the lintels of Yaxchilán, “selected the most painful
ways to let blood,” such as by perforating the foreskin (for males) or tongue (for
females) with stingray spines or other bloodletting implements, and then passing
straws or ropes lined with thorns through the open wound. This was apparently
done for two reasons: (1) to promote greater blood-flow from the wound and (2) to
induce greater physical pain and, thus, its mental-emotional corollary: suffering
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(Baudez 287).
4
Therefore, it is not merely the act of giving blood or sacrificed
bodies that constitutes the sacrificial gift to the gods, but also, in at least some
cases, the experience of pain, inflicted upon oneself and others, which “adds
value” to the sacrifice (Baudez). In Stephen Houston’s assessment, “Pain may not
be ‘good.’ In Mesoamerica, however, it was ‘moral’ in the sense of serving larger
purposes and helping to meet inescapable obligations. Pain had meaning” (336,
emphasis in original).
Pain may also have served a political purpose in pre-Hispanic
Mesoamerica. Among the Classic Maya, it seems that the torture of war captives
was practiced, at least in part, to demonstrate the power of the captors.
Representations of Maya rulers on murals and stelae show them as “emotionally
cold, carefully contained and reserved,” in contrast with tortured captives, who are
typically shown weeping, their mouths agape in agony (Houston et al. 278). One
shocking example seen among the murals at Bonampak in Chiapas, Mexico,
depicts a group of captives (possibly royal scribes) on their knees, their faces
contorted with pain as they display their bleeding, mutilated fingers to a stoic
Maya king. Their fingernails have most likely been removed and their fingers
broken, possibly as a means of severing the written record of the enemy (Jordan).
Elsewhere, captives are depicted with conventionally stylized tears on their faces
and elaborate speech scrolls emanating from their mouths, indicating vocal
expressions of suffering such as wailing or weeping. Thus, for Classic Maya
rulers, torture was a means of dehumanizing their enemies, who “lost all restraint
and, one presumes, their sense of dignity” in the process (Houston et al. 278).
Apparently, this loss of dignity served to elevate the dignity of Maya rulers by
4
See also Schele & Miller 186-90.
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contrast. According to Houston et al., “The regulated, disciplined body was that of
the captive who had lost autonomous will. But it was also that of the ruler who
emoted little if at all as a way of demonstrating his superiority” (278).
Depictions of suffering in Classic Maya art appear limited to scenes of
warfare and the torture of dishonored captives. In stark contrast to these displays
of emotion, Maya elites are depicted as stoic figures, masters of their emotions, a
feature that elevates them above the corporeal, mortal existence of human beings
and equates them with the status of powerful gods. This transcendence of
humanity can be seen as a kind of symbolic apotheosis by which these Maya kings
“became” gods, their images erected throughout ceremonial centers on stelae that
symbolized the axis mundi and in monumental sculpture resembling the stone
effigies of gods. Such visual propaganda is typical among Classic Maya art, which
often equates Maya rulers with divinities, such as the maize god, through artificial
cranial deformation (whether via stylized artistic representation or actual physical
deformity, as in the case of the Palenque king Janaab Pakal) and regalia that
associates them with this deity. Furthermore, the relative lack of explicit, graphic
images of suffering in Classic Maya art in public spaces (as compared to the
characteristically hyper-violent art of the Mixtec and Mexica, for example
5
) may
indicate a conscious effort on the part of Maya elites to promote a willingness
among their subjects to perform self-sacrifice for the state and the gods. Thus,
Maya elites are depicted letting their own blood stoically in imitation of the gods.
Auto-sacrifice is thereby presented as a sacred ideal, a form of visual propaganda
likely designed to promote the performance of sacrificial rites among the
populace.
5
See, for example, the many scenes of bloody sacrifice in such ancient Mexican codices as the
Codex Borgia and the Codex Nuttall.
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This willingness was promoted by the omnipresence of religio-political
propaganda via the construction of monumental architecture and other forms of
visual art within the ceremonial centers of these theocratic city-states, as
evidenced, for example, by the many xiuhcoatl masks on the Temple of
Quetzalcoatl facade at Teotihuacán. Taube has convincingly argued that this figure
is an “emblem of the office of war,” and notes that while it is “decidedly
Teotihuacano in origin, [it] is commonly worn by Classic Maya rulers” (Taube,
Temple of Quetzalcoatl 53). Further evidence can be seen among the many
feathered serpent, trapeze and ray, and talud-tablero forms (all associated with a
widespread cult of sacred war and veneration of the feathered serpent in Epiclassic
and Postclassic art) at numerous Mesoamerican sites bearing the prominent
influence of Teotihuacán, such as Cacaxtla and Chichén Itzá; among vibrantly
colored frescoes such as those of Bonampak and Cacaxtla, which depict, among
other things, warriors in battle regalia engaged in combat and the torture and
sacrifice of war captives; among the iconography and tzompantlis (“skull-racks”)
of the capital of the Mexica empire, Tenochtítlan; and among stelae at Copán,
Tikal, and elsewhere, which commemorate the military campaigns of kings and
glorify them by identifying them with the gods through an elaborate visual
language of power. Of Teotihuacán, Taube writes, “Clearly, there was not a
contrast between secular military offices and religious ideology, because it was a
cult of sacred war providing a divine charter for rulership” (Taube, Temple of
Quetzalcoatl 83). He goes on to contend that, “in terms of the state, the death of
[slain warriors] does represent a supreme act of self-sacrifice” (83). Thus, warfare
too, along with the suffering and death that it produces, is interpreted in sacred
terms and equated with the practice of ritual sacrifice. Therefore, suffering is
necessary for the benefit of both the gods and the state.
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Neither was the necessity of suffering escapable in the afterlife. Much like
the gloomy underworlds of ancient Greece (Hades) and ancient Israel (Sheol), the
Maya underworld was conceived not as a place of eternal punishment for sins
committed in life (the ultimate form of divine retribution), as in the example of the
Christian Hell, but the final abode of all who died, with few exceptions. As
Michael Coe explains, among the Classic Maya, “the underworld was the
destination of all those who ‘died in bed,’ . . . [while] the Maya heaven . . . was
reserved for those who suffered unusual deaths, such as slain warriors, women
who died in childbirth, and those who perished from drowning” (89). Similarly,
among the Mexica, the default post mortem destination was a gloomy underworld
called Mictlan (ruled by the death god Mictlantecuhtli) and the elect included
those killed in battle or sacrifice, thus providing a religious incentive for warriors
to die in battle for the state or to endure heart extraction for the gods. Both were
considered honorable ends by which warriors would be reborn in the floral
paradise of the sun god, a common Mesoamerican heavenly realm associated with
“the sun, heat, music, and brilliant or iridescent colors” (Taube, Flower Mountain
69). For this reason, “death on the battlefield was called xochimiquiztli (flowery
death)” and death by sacrifice was considered a solemn display of devotion to the
gods (Carrasco, Aztecs 64).
It is the goal of the present study to demonstrate the presence of the
aforementioned concepts in the Popol Vuh through the methods of close reading
and comparative analysis of both textual and extra-textual evidence discovered at
various sites throughout the Mesoamerican world. By identifying parallel
representations of these ideas in the iconography and mythology of neighboring
and antecedent peoples, the study aims to highlight their presence in the Popol
Vuh. It is through the lens of these pan-Mesoamerican principles that the pre-
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Hispanic Maya perspective on suffering emerges from the text, a regenerative
view predicated on the monistic principles of complementary opposition, the
creation of life from death, and an interdependent, reciprocal relationship between
human beings and the gods who created them in illo tempore (“in that time,” an
Eliadean formulation signifying the sacred time of the primordial, mythic past).
Thus, let us turn to the text in an attempt to illustrate the presence of this
distinctive view, as well as the now familiar retributive view, within it.
CHAPTER 5 – THE POPOL VUH: RITUAL SACRIFICE AND
THE REGENERATIVE VIEW OF SUFFERING
There has yet to be a systematic cataloguing and analysis of the numerous
and varied representations of suffering in the myths of the pre-Hispanic cultures of
Mesoamerica, in the vein of Paul Ricoeur’s study of the “symbolism of evil” in the
Hebraic and Hellenic “myths of the beginning and the end” and Wendy Doniger’s
study of the diverse origins of evil in Hindu myth. This study, in part, constitutes
an initial step toward that end. The following analysis will examine three mythic
episodes of the Popol Vuh in which representations of suffering feature
prominently, all of which serve to illustrate the pre-Hispanic Maya worldview,
and, by extension, certain pan-Mesoamerican perspectives on suffering evidenced
by the art and literature of a number of pre-Hispanic civilizations. The three
episodes most relevant to this discussion are, (1) the creation myth, by which the
gods attempt to create beings capable of “providing” for and “sustaining” them
through worship, specifically by speaking their names; (2) the demise of the
monstrous bird Vucub Caquix, who is punished for violating the relationship
between the creator gods and their creations in his arrogant attempt to elevate his
status to the level of godhood by claiming to be the sun; and (3) the defeat of the
lords of Xibalba by the Hero Twins, the resurrection of their father in the form of
the maize god (which supplies the gods with the necessary material to at last create
beings who will sustain them), and their subsequent dual apotheosis as the sun and
moon, all of which make possible the establishment of a reciprocal relationship
between the gods and human beings in which both groups provide for and sustain
the other. Within the context of the pan-Mesoamerican worldview evidenced by
these myths, suffering is a necessary fact of existence because the world is
sustained by the interaction of complementary pairs of opposing yet
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interdependent forces, which ebb and flow in a cosmic cycle of death and
regeneration. Furthermore, suffering as a product of sacrifice is a necessary gift
that provides nourishment for the gods and, thus, ensures the continuation of the
cosmos. All of these principles can be found embedded within the Popol Vuh, as
the following analysis aims to demonstrate.
The Creation: Suffering for a Greater Good
Following a brief preamble that introduces the text and its Colonial period
context, the Popol Vuh begins with the creation of the cosmos in a time of silence
“in the darkness, in the night,” when the “womb of the sky” is “empty” and neither
the earth nor human beings have yet to be conceived (Christenson 67, 68). After
successfully creating the earth (which is conceptualized as a cosmic maize field
with “four sides” and “four corners”) and separating it from the primordial waters
of the sea, the gods express the purpose of creation with a series of questions:
“How shall it be sown? When shall there be a dawn for anyone? Who shall be a
provider? Who shall be a sustainer?” (71). This series of questions encapsulates
the relationship required for the sustenance of the gods and the maintenance of the
cosmos. The “provider” and “sustainer” spoken of by the gods foreshadow the
creation of human beings. Christenson explains that the noun tzuqul (“provider”)
refers to “a provider of any kind, although generally in the sense of food,” and that
the noun (“sustainer”) refers to “one who provides sustenance, primarily in
the form of nourishment, but also nurtures in another way, such as a mother caring
for an infant” (Christenson 71n66-67). This suggests that, because human beings
are begotten by the gods, it is their responsibility to return the favor by feeding,
nourishing, and even nurturing their progenitors by the appropriate means. Thus,
human beings too play a vital role in the maintenance of the cosmos; the gods
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create it, but human beings must sustain it through ritual performance. The gods
acknowledge this necessity with the recognition that “there can be no worship, no
reverence given by what we have framed and what we have shaped, until
humanity has been created, until people have been made” (71).
The creation myth of the Popol Vuh details not only the beginning of the
cosmos and the eventual creation of human beings, but also the suffering and
destruction of various pre-human creatures that fail to serve the aforementioned
needs of the gods. These creatures are made to suffer through no fault of their
own, but rather for the failure of the gods to imbue them with the ability to
remember and worship them by speaking their names. However, it is clear that
from the perspective of the text, these destructions are justified because they are
deemed a necessary part of the process of creation, thus serving a greater good.
First, the gods create the animals and command them to “Speak therefore our
names. Worship us, for we are your Mother and your Father. . . . Speak! Call upon
us! Worship us!” (76). It is at this point that it becomes explicitly clear that the
gods’ purpose in conducting the creation is to engender beings capable of
worshipping them, specifically through the act of speech, for “only in this way
could the gods be worshipped properly—through the articulation of their names
with human speech” (Christenson 76n83). The animals, however, are incapable of
articulate human speech, “they only squawked and chattered and roared,” and
“their speech was unrecognizable, for each cried out in a different way” (76). The
gods then speak amongst themselves, saying, “They were not able to speak our
names. We are their Framer and their Shaper. . . . This is not good” (77).
Therefore, they decide to replace the animals, declaring,
You shall be replaced because you were not successful. You could
not speak. . . . Because you have not been able to worship us or call
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upon us, there will yet be someone else who may be a worshiper. We
shall now make one who will give honor. Your calling will merely
be to have your flesh eaten. Thus be it so. This must be your service.
(77)
Thus, the text states, “the animals that were on the face of the earth were
eaten and killed” (77). Not only does this feature of the myth provide an
etiological account of the origin of human carnivorism, but it also makes explicit
the gods’ reason for causing the animals to suffer, which in turn affirms the
necessity of worshipping the gods. The text makes explicit the fact that the
animals’ inadequacy is not their fault. Rather, it is “because of the way they were
made” that they were “not successful” (77). Therefore, the responsibility for
suffering, in this case, is placed upon the gods themselves. Because the animals
are incapable of serving the gods by providing them with the food and
nourishment that they require, they are “made to serve” human beings by
providing their own flesh as nourishment for humankind, as human beings will
later do for the gods (77).
After punishing the animals, the gods “try again” to “arrange for those who
will worship them” (77). The phrase “try again” here implies a degree of
uncertainty as to whether the gods will again fail in their second attempt, thus
emphasizing their mistake. Christenson here indicates that the verb means “to
arrange for something” but also carries the connotation “to experiment or test,”
which is highly suggestive of uncertainty (Christenson 77n87). Thus, the gods
make “another attempt to frame and shape man”:
Let us try again before the first sowing, before the dawn approaches.
Let us make a provider, a sustainer for us. How shall we then be
called upon so that we are remembered upon the face of the earth?
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We have already made a first attempt with what we have framed and
what we have shaped, but we were not successful in being
worshiped or in being revered by them. Thus, let us try again to
make one who will honor us, who will respect us; one who will be a
provider and a sustainer. (78)
They next create a man of mud, much like the creation of the
(meaning simply “man” or “human being,” from the Hebrew noun ,
meaning “ground” or “earth”), the primordial ancestor of the Judeo-Christian
tradition, found in Genesis 2.4b – 3.24. This man of mud, however, is “still not
good”:
It merely came undone and crumbled. It merely became sodden and
mushy. It merely fell apart and dissolved. Its head was not set apart
properly. Its face could only look in one direction. . . . At first it
spoke, but without knowledge. Straightaway it would merely
dissolve in water, for it was not strong. (78)
Tedlock considers this similarity to the biblical an implicit critique
of the Judeo-Christian creation myth presented to the K’iche’ by Franciscan
missionaries, a covert rejection of this primordial man who “[can] only look in one
direction” and “[speaks] without knowledge” (qtd. in Knowlton 132). At seeing
this creature, the gods again surmise that they’ve “made a mistake” and decide to
“undo” their creation (78, 79). Thus, they begin anew once more. Again they ask,
“How then will we truly make that which may succeed and bear fruit; that which
will worship us and that will call upon us?” (79). The phrase “bear fruit” here
again emphasizes the necessary nourishing quality of their desired creation.
Utterance of the divine names is the “fruit” that is required to feed and sustain the
gods. So again, they set out “to create framed and shaped people who will be
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[their] providers and sustainers” (80). “May we be called upon, and may we be
remembered,” they proclaim, “for it is with words that we are sustained . . . Thus,
may it be spoken. May it be sown” (80). So they create a third race of beings, this
time effigies made of wood. These effigies of wood
had the appearance of people and spoke like people as well. . . .
Nevertheless, they still did not possess their hearts nor their minds.
They did not remember their Framer or their Shaper. . . . They were
merely an experiment, an attempt at people. . . . Thus they were not
capable of understanding before their Framer and their Shaper, those
who had given them birth and given them hearts. (83-84)
Because of this, the gods determine that these creatures ought to be “ruined,
crushed, and killed” (85). To accomplish this destruction, they send a flood that
falls “down upon the heads of the effigies of wood,” presumably drowning a great
number of them (85). There also appear at the time of the flood four destructive
forces that plague the wooden people. These four destructive forces take the form
of wild beasts and man-made implements: “Chiselers of Faces, who gouged out
their eyes,” “Death Knives, which cut off their heads,” “Crouching Jaguar, who
ate their flesh,” and “Striking Jaguar, who struck them” (85). All of these beings,
the text states, “smashed their bones and their tendons”: “Their bones were ground
up. They were broken into pieces. Their faces were ground up because they
proved to be incapable of understanding before the face of their mother and the
face of their father” (86).
In addition to the flood and a host of beasts that crush, devour, and
dismember them, the animals return seeking revenge for the pain that the wooden
people have caused them by killing and eating them. Likewise, their own cooking
griddles, pots, grinding stones, and hearthstones exact revenge for burning them
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and grinding their faces. As a result, the wooden people are burned like their pots
and hearthstones, their flesh ground “like maize,” and their faces ground upon and
“crushed” by these objects (87-88). What’s more, they are eaten by their dogs as
recompense for their mistreatment and consumption of them. Thus the text relates,
“the mouths and the faces of all of them were ruined and crushed,” and those who
survived became the ancestors of monkeys today (89, 90). In addition to providing
an etiology of the flat faces and humanoid appearance of monkeys, the lex talionis
evident in this scene may reflect some guilt on the part of its tellers for the pain
caused by the slaughter and consumption of animals, or, alternatively, it may
reflect a general fear of retribution, whether natural (animal) or supernatural
(divine).
Taken as a whole, this myth illustrates the necessity, in the pre-Hispanic
worldview, of paying tribute to the gods, a tradition that undergirds the practice of
ritual human sacrifice, a religious and political institution by which the gods are
nourished and the rulers of theocratic city-states maintain control over their
subjects. The initial failed attempts of the gods highlight the necessity of this
relationship, which will come to provide a charter for the practices of human
sacrifice and auto-sacrifice, as seen in the final section of the Popol Vuh, in its
mytho-historical narratives that relate the feeding of the K’iche’ god Tohil (Tojil),
the literally bloodthirsty patron deity of the Cavec lineage, who receives
nourishment by “suckling” from his sacrificial victims like an infant from its
mother, though he does so “through their sides, under their arms” (Tedlock 156,
165). According to the text, this “suckling” is a metaphor for sacrifice by heart
extraction (Tedlock 156, 165).
Though various universal theories of sacrifice have been proposed by
Edward Burnett Tylor, William Robertson Smith, Henri Hubert and Marcel
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Mauss, James George Frazer, Sigmund Freud, Georges Bataille, René Girard,
Walter Burkert, Nancy Jay, Barbara Ehrenreich, and Douglas Hedley, precisely
how and why these extreme practices of ritual sacrifice originated among the
cultures of Mesoamerica remains uncertain, though bloodletting implements and
other ritual paraphernalia related to shamanic practice have been discovered at
various Olmec sites, which flourished during the Early and Middle Formative
period (ca. 1500 – ca. 400 BCE). While Olmec civilization is known to have been
instrumental in the development of many beliefs and practices common among
later Mesoamerican cultures (including ritual bloodletting, calendrics, and possibly
hieroglyphic writing), the Popol Vuh contains possible clues about the origins of
human sacrifice among the K’iche’. The text states that the ancestors of the
K’iche’ travel to the sacred site of Tulán Zuyua, where they “receive” their gods.
These adopted gods (Tohil among them) require offerings of human blood rather
than mere honor and praise through the remembrance and recitation of their
names. Thus, here it seems that readers are witness to the adoption of the
institution of human sacrifice by the ancestors of the K’iche’, a development that
the text preserves within its mytho-historical narrative. It is possible that they may
have acquired the Hero Twins cycle of myths from this site as well, with their
vivid descriptions of violent sacrifice in the underworld, since the creator gods
make no mention of such requirements in the creation myth that begins the Popol
Vuh. Perhaps these two myth-cycles (the creation cycle and the Hero Twins cycle)
stem from two or more distinct sources, containing their own gods and ritual
proscriptions, that became unified through the merging of once disparate groups,
each with their own stories and traditions, thus forming the confederation that
would become the K’iche’ nation.
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Ultimately, the suffering of the various pre-human creatures represented in
the creation myth demonstrates that sometimes the gods are the source of
suffering, though this suffering is clearly understood to be a necessary part of the
process of creation and the establishment of the ritual economy of
sacrificial/symbolic exchange between gods and human beings, a formulation that
becomes problematic when the gods demand human blood or lives for their
sustenance.
The Fall of Vucub Caquix: The Return of the
Retributive View
Following the cosmogonic narrative of repeated creation and destruction,
the text relates the suffering and demise of Vucub Caquix, the monstrous bird
(perhaps a deposed historical ruler) who is punished for falsely claiming to be the
sun. The text relates that he “puff[s] himself up” with pride, proclaiming, “I am
great. I dwell above the heads of the people who have been framed and shaped. I
am their sun. I am also their light. And I am also their moon” (92). This act of
“self-magnification before the Heart of Sky,” the principal creator god named
Huracán, constitutes an attempt to usurp the power of this god (Tedlock 77). In
“puff[ing] himself up” by making these pronouncements, Vucub Caquix is
arrogantly attempting to elevate his status to the level of godhood, thus violating
the proper dynamic between creator and created (91, 93). Rather than nourishing
and revering the gods, he does the opposite, claiming that worship for himself. The
Hero Twins clearly indicate that this violation must be alleviated before the
creation of human beings can take place:
Good shall never come of this. People will never be able to live here
on the face of the earth. Thus we will try to shoot him with our
blowguns. . . . [W]e will shoot him, thus causing him to be afflicted.
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. . . May it be done thus, for people cannot be created where only
gold and silver are glory. (95)
One of the twins, Hunahpu, shoots Vucub Caquix in the jaw with his
blowgun, which the text states “dislocate[s]” it, causing Vucub Caquix’s teeth to
“torment [him] with pain” (97). The stance of the author(s) on this point is clear,
for the text explicitly states, “it was good what they did” (97). Vucub Caquix flees,
but he has yet to be defeated, and the twins have not yet finished with his
punishment. They accomplish his destruction by recruiting the ancestral deities
First Grandfather and First Grandmother, called Xpiyacoc and Xmucane
respectively, to pose as healers and remove the teeth and eyes of the creature
through trickery, replacing the brilliant turquoise jewels with which they are inlaid
with “white grains of maize” (100). “Thus the basis for his pride [i]s completely
taken away,” he is defeated, and the balance of creation is restored (100).
This episode illustrates one of the primary social functions of myth: its
ability to model proper behavior, in this case by providing a negative example.
The message here is clear: hubris (a “sin” committed) leads to just suffering and a
deserved death. Both the aforementioned creation myth and the Vucub Caquix
myth serve similar ends. The creation myth is a myth of origin and, thus, identity.
It serves to inform its audience about who they are as a collective people, where
they’ve come from, and most importantly, the nature of their relationship to the
cosmos and the gods who created it. The primary function of the Vucub Caquix
myth is didactic and works in concordance with the creation myth to demonstrate
the negative consequences of forgetting or neglecting one’s identity by violating
the proscriptions established during creation. The significance of the myth’s
central focus on the punishment of hubris is the fact that such behavior constitutes
a violation of the aforementioned reciprocal relationship between human beings
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and their gods. In his boasting, Vucub Caquix is attempting to elevate himself to
the status of godhood, which disrupts the balance of creation. The Hero Twins,
then, act as agents or enforcers of the divine will who maintain social order by
restoring the balance of the divine-human relationship.
This idea is again evident in the creation of human beings later in the text.
When the gods at last succeed in creating beings who are capable of sustaining
them with worship, they realize that these beings are omniscient and quickly set
out to remedy this problem by limiting the sight of human beings so that they can
no longer see all things clearly but only that which is directly in front of them. On
the one hand, this detail provides an etiological explanation for the limitation of
human vision, a fact that itself causes a great deal of suffering by preventing
people from being able to foresee and thus prevent disaster, but the focus here,
again, is on the distinction between gods and human beings, and the relationship
between them. This limitation imposed upon human sight is a metaphor for the
limitation of human knowledge. Apparently, as with the biblical myth of the
Edenic exile, in which human beings are forbidden to eat from the Tree of
Knowledge of Good and Evil (representing divine knowledge) and are evidently
prohibited also from eating of the Tree of Life (representing immortality) for fear
that they will become like the gods,
1
human beings are not meant to acquire too
much knowledge because, if they do, they approach divinity, which, for the Maya,
disrupts the balance established by the gods and thus negates the sole purpose of
creation. Therefore, it is necessary for human beings to remain limited in their
knowledge in order not to upset the established order of the cosmos. The
limitations that human beings experience are due to the fact that human existence,
1
See Gen. 3.5 and 3.22 – 23.
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like the existence of all animals, is a corporeal existence; the human body is a
material body that is fixed in space and time, and is subject to natural degenerative
processes that result in aging and death. It is these limitations that define human
beings in contrast with their divine counterparts. If the gods are defined as
omniscient and immortal beings that see and know all, then human beings, by
contrast, are defined as mortal beings whose sight, and thus knowledge, is limited.
Thus, the myth of Vucub Caquix is, at least in part, a myth about human identity.
Ultimately, the suffering of Vucub Caquix shows that suffering sometimes occurs
as retribution for improper conduct. In other words, it comes as a just punishment
for a violation of the social order. Thus, according to the myth, Vucub Caquix (the
victim of suffering), rather than the gods, is to blame for his own suffering.
The Defeat of the Death Lords: Suffering as
Cosmic Conflict
Finally, the Hero Twins cycle of myths concludes with the defeat of the
lords of Xibalba by the twins, the resurrection of their father (the maize god of the
Classic Maya), and their ascent to the heavens as the sun and moon. Not unlike the
Adamic myth of the Fall, this myth deals in part with the source of suffering in the
world. However, unlike the Adamic myth, there is no ultimate origin of suffering
explained here. The text does identify the death lords as the source of certain types
of suffering (those caused by disease and possibly death by natural causes), but it
makes no mention of the ultimate origin of suffering itself (in contrast to the
genesis of pain and hardship that is a consequence of the exile from Eden).
Perhaps this is because suffering, for the authors of the Hero Twins myths, was
simply understood to be a necessary product of existence. The Hero Twins myth
cycle indicates that, in the world of the Popol Vuh, the cause of the generalized
suffering produced by illness is indeed the death lords who reside in the nine-
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layered underworld, among them Scab Stripper and Blood Gatherer, Demon of
Pus and Demon of Jaundice, Bone Scepter and Skull Scepter, and the two
principal lords of Xibalba, Hun Came (“One Death”) and Vucub Came (“Seven
Death”) (Tedlock 92). However, the origin of these characters is left unexplained
by the text. What is certain, on the other hand, is the fact that their powers become
limited as a result of their defeat by the twins. Before this defeat, they exercise
free reign to claim victims from the overworld at will, as they do in the case of
Hun Hunahpu and Vucub Hunahpu (the twin ball-playing father and uncle of the
Hero Twins), but after their defeat, they no longer possess such freedom.
Thus, what is most significant about this myth, for the purpose of the
present study, are the restrictions imposed upon the death lords as a result of their
defeat by the twins as well as the resurrection of their father Hun Hunahpu, whom
the death lords had decapitated before placing his head in the calabash tree and
burying his headless body in the underworld ball-court along with his brother
Vucub Hunahpu. Though Huh Hunahpu’s identification as the maize god is
nowhere made explicit in the extant version of the text known to modern readers,
his identification with this figure and successful rebirth in this form are attested to
by numerous Classic texts and images, such as the detail of a Late Classic Maya
bowl that features a depiction of the maize god, flanked by his two sons Hunahpu
and Xbalanque, emerging out of the earth, which is represented in the form of a
split turtle shell. Such evidence reveals the profound significance of Hun
Hunahpu’s resurrection for the Classic Maya, despite the fact that it is
conspicuously absent from the later text of the Popol Vuh. Ultimately, what this
cycle of myths reveals is that the defeat of the death lords represents the triumph
of the forces of order (represented by the Hero Twins) over those of chaos, a
necessary struggle of opposing, interdependent forces for the benefit of creation. It
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is this conflict that results in the resurrection of Hun Hunahpu as the maize god
and sufficiently suppresses the chaotic forces of death and disease in order to
allow for the creation of human beings out of the renewed maize crop.
In true trickster fashion, the Hero Twins manage to defeat the death lords
through deception and trickery. By disguising themselves as traveling dancers and
magicians capable of performing the miraculous resurrection of sacrificial victims,
they manage to manipulate the two principal death lords Hun Came and Vucub
Came into volunteering to be sacrificed: “Do it to us! Sacrifice us! . . . Sacrifice us
in the same way!” the two lords exclaim, after witnessing the twins’ marvelous
trick (Christenson 185). The twins oblige, and both of the principal death lords are
killed by means of heart extraction, “torn open as punishment for what they had
done,” first Hun Came and then Vucub Came, who “beg[s] humbly, weeping
before the dancers” (185, emphasis added). Thus, in an act of retribution, the
Xibalbans lose their rulers and are defeated by the twin avengers. The Hero Twins
then reveal themselves to be the twin sons of Hun Hunahpu and Vucub Hunahpu,
“avengers of the misfortune and affliction of [their] fathers” who justly repay
suffering with suffering, while the remaining death lords cower in fear, “begg[ing]
humbly” and “weeping” just as Vucub Came had done before them. “Take pity on
us, Hunahpu and Xbalanque,” they cry. “Truly we have wronged your fathers that
you have named—they who are buried at Crushing Ballcourt” (187). The Hero
Twins spare their lives but declare that the lords will no longer claim dominion
over the earth, nor will they be given praise or sacrificial offerings worthy of true
gods:
Never again will you or your posterity be great. Your offerings also
will never again be great. . . . No longer will clean blood be yours. . .
You shall surely eat only the creatures of the grass and the creatures
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of the wastelands. No longer will you be given the children of the
light [human beings], those begotten in the light. Only things of no
importance will fall before you. Only the sinner and the malevolent,
the wretch and the molester who clearly have sinned, will be given
to you. No longer will you be able to seize suddenly just any person.
(Christenson 187-88).
Here, Christenson notes a comment made by Tedlock’s Maya collaborator,
Andrés Xiloj, who states that, in modern Maya belief, it is still said that “the
Xibalbans are allowed to collect only blood that has been spilled on the ground
(through injury, illness, or violence), thus making it dirty” (Christenson 187n432).
Therefore, the Xibalbans are forced to lap the dirty blood that has been spilled as a
result of injury or unsanctioned violence, rather than the fresh, consecrated blood
of divinely sanctioned sacrifice. A very interesting and important observation can
be drawn from this detail. While the death lords are no longer able to receive
nourishment from blood-sacrifice, since they are “surely . . . not true gods,” they
do receive it from blood spilled as a result of secular violence, which suggests that
violence that occurs outside of the sacred spaces designated for the performance of
state-sanctioned, institutionalized forms of violence (i.e., within the confines of
ceremonial precincts and battlefields) actually feeds the death lords, granting them
greater power to inflict suffering upon their overworld counterparts (188).
Furthermore, note in the passage above that the death lords may still claim “the
sinner and the malevolent,” a statement that may reflect an interpretation of
disease as a punishment for wrongdoing (thereby using suffering as evidence to
infer guilt, as Job’s friends do). However, it is more likely, in my estimation, that
the statement is intended to deter criminal behavior, since the text explicitly
specifies that only those “who have clearly sinned” will be given to the death
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lords, which suggests that the practice of ritual human sacrifice may have served a
punitive function in addition to its religious purpose, a pre-Hispanic form of
modern-day capital punishment designed to maintain societal order and peace
through the exercise of controlled, state-sanctioned violence, in contrast with
chaotic, unsanctioned violence (murder or sexual assault, for example).
Ultimately, by vanquishing the death lords, the twins have made the world
sufficiently safe for the emergence of human beings, for “they [the death lords]
wanted only conflict with the people of ancient times. . . . They were strife-
makers, traitors, tempters to sin and violence. . . . They were also masters of
deception, . . . masters of harm and vexation” (188). Furthermore, by resurrecting
the maize god, the twins have provided the primordial creator deities with the
necessary material to create human beings. And finally, in ascending to the sky as
the sun and the moon, they have made it possible for human life to flourish on
earth, for there can be no maize crop without the nourishment provided by the sun,
and there can be no human beings without the sustenance provided by the
consumption of maize, which made up roughly 75% of the Maya diet and which
the Maya believed was the very substance out of which they had been created by
the gods. Accordingly, the Popol Vuh states that the flesh of the first human
beings, the primordial ancestors, was “merely yellow ears of maize and white ears
of maize.” Thus, the text states, “mere food was their flesh,” and it was this food
that was required to feed the gods (Christenson 195).
2
According to Cervantes, a
deeper understanding of the Mesoamerican interpretation of sacrifice can be
obtained by “considering the native belief that human flesh and maize were the
same matter in different transformations. Since the transformations were cyclic
2
See Christenson 192-95.
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and the cycles constantly in jeopardy, men’s actions, and human sacrifice in
particular, played a crucial part in maintaining the balance” (43).
In the end, the twins bring life from death in the resurrection of the maize
god, making the creation of human beings possible, much like the god and culture
hero Quetzalcoatl, who becomes the benefactor of human beings by descending
into the underworld to retrieve the bones from which human beings are formed (by
their mixture with the sacrificially offered blood of the gods) in a Central Mexican
myth recorded in the Leyenda de los Soles and the Histoyre du Mechique (Taube,
Aztec and Maya Myths 37-39). In renewing the maize crop through the
resurrection of their father in the form of the maize god, the twins enable the
creator gods to establish the interdependent divine-human relationship that is
necessary to sustain the cosmos. Furthermore, the apotheosis of the twins results in
the births of the sun and moon, and constitutes a shift from a time of suffering and
starvation in darkness (recorded in the mytho-historical narrative of the final
books), when the lords of death and disease have yet to be vanquished, to the time
of the first dawn, which at last allows for the fertility and abundance that enables
human life to flourish. By defeating the death lords, they make the world safe for
humankind, putting the forces of death and disease in check. In performing rituals
in imitation of the Hero Twins, such as playing the Mesoamerican ritual ballgame,
Maya elites ritually renew the death-vanquishing effect of the twins and reactivate
the restrictions placed upon the death lords through a principle of correspondence
or “sympathetic magic” (as J. G. Frazer called it), lest they once again run rampant
and unchecked. Ritual performance, therefore, not only feeds the gods and thus
sustains the cosmos, but also keeps the forces of death and disease at bay, as much
as it is possible to do so. In this final mythic episode, suffering is caused by the
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death lords, and the Hero Twins are revered as culture heroes for defeating them
and thus defeating death itself, becoming the immortal sun and moon as a result.
Conclusions
From the mythic narratives of the Popol Vuh, there emerges a regenerative
view of suffering that is confirmed by an abundance of extra-textual evidence
found in various media throughout Mesoamerica. It should be noted, however, that
a retributive view of suffering, the view that dominates much of the Hebrew Bible
and is refuted by the poet-author of the dialogues of the book of Job, is also
evident in certain episodes of the text: the fall of Vucub Caquix, the revenge of the
animals in the creation myth, and the avenging of Hun Hunahpu and Vucub
Hunahpu by the Hero Twins all illustrate this retributive view. While it is difficult
to speak of any ultimate origin of “evil” or suffering in the myths of the Popol
Vuh, it is clear that the Xibalban death lords are the source of the sufferings caused
by disease (and perhaps death as well), since the universal afterlife destination of
the Maya (other than the few exceptions listed above) is the nine-leveled
underworld of Xibalba, the “Place of Fright.” It is unclear, however, whence the
death lords originated, how they came into being, and for what purpose they exist.
Presumably they were created out of necessity by the primordial gods in
accordance with the pan-Mesoamerican principle of an interdependent and
necessary relationship between life and death, as discussed above, but this is at no
point made explicit.
It can be surmised, however, that suffering happens for a variety of reasons,
as evidenced by the preceding analysis. Suffering often comes as a result of the
malevolence of the death lords, as it does in the myth of their defeat by the twins.
It also occurs as a result of a violation of the established social order (as it does in
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the Vucub Caquix myth), and as a punishment from the gods for the failure of
their creations to sustain them by means of the appropriate rites. Ultimately,
however, suffering, through the practice of ritual sacrifice, comes to be regarded
as a necessary sacrament that is absolutely essential for the greater good of the
community. On one hand, the institution of sacrifice, whether through offerings of
blood or lives (animal or human), serves to bolster the power of the state by
promoting a willingness among its subjects to make sacrificial offerings, whether
upon an altar of stone or by risking their lives on the battlefield. On the other hand,
sacrificial practices were not limited to the populace. The practice of auto-sacrifice
was a solemn duty of ruling elites, requiring them to act as shamanic
intermediaries between the human and divine realms by regularly letting their own
blood in painful ways for the purpose of propitiating the gods and attaining divine
favor for the community, as evidenced by the lintels at Yaxchilán, for example.
3
The belief that the phenomena of suffering and death are required to perpetuate
life and to ensure the renewal of the cosmos constitutes a grand, unifying theme
that is a prominent characteristic of pre-Hispanic religions. Furthermore, as an
interpretive lens, it provides modern readers with a means to better appreciate
these cultures, which live on in hybridized forms, and to cultivate a deeper
understanding of the representations of violence (sacrificial and otherwise) and
suffering that are preserved within their iconographic and textual traditions,
among them the myths of the Popol Vuh.
3
See Schele & Miller 186-90.
CHAPTER 6: CONCLUSION – THE BOOK OF JOB AND THE
POPOL VUH: A COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS
The “Symbolism of Evil”
At this point, it will perhaps prove useful to apply a theoretical framework
from the field of comparative mythology in an attempt to determine points of
correspondence as well as divergence. Paul Ricoeur’s “typology” of the “myths of
the beginning and the end of evil,” derived from his analysis of the “symbolism of
evil” in the Hebraic and Hellenic mythic traditions, assumes (like structural
anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss) that the mythic symbols that the human mind
is capable of generating are finite, and thus that correspondences can be found
between the myths of disparate cultures that have had no historical contact. As
Ricoeur explains, “I should like to think, as Cl. Levi-Strauss does in Tristes
tropiques, that the images which the myth-making imagination and the
institutional activity of man can produce are not infinite in number, and that it is
possible to work out, at least as a working hypothesis, a sort of morphology of the
principal images” (172).
Based upon this “morphology of the principal images,” he establishes a
typology of the various myths of evil in the history of western thought. According
to this typology, myths that attempt to explain the existence of evil may be
classified under the rubric of four distinct categories or types of myths, which he
calls (1) “the drama of creation and the ‘Ritual’ vision of the world,” (2) “the
wicked god and the ‘Tragic’ vision of existence,” (3) “the ‘Adamic’ myth and the
eschatological vision of history,” and (4) “the myth of the exiled soul and
salvation through knowledge.” Ricoeur sees the Adamic myth of the Fall as the
“dominant” myth of evil in the West and distinguishes between myths wherein an
“evil” committed leads to suffering that is justly earned (exemplified by the
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Adamic myth) and those in which an evil that is suffered at the hands of a “wicked
god” leads to an “unjust deprivation” (the Tragic vision of existence, exemplified
by classical Athenian tragedy). As discussed in chapter 2, Ricoeur includes the
book of Job in the “Tragic” category, interpreting it as a myth of unjust
persecution by a wicked god. In his view, Job represents a corrective of the
Adamic myth-type, which holds man responsible for the emergence of evil in the
world, thus blaming the victim for the suffering that befalls him.
This idea becomes further developed and crystallized in the later Christian
doctrine of original sin, formulated by Augustine and others based upon the
writings of Paul, by which the stain of primordial disobedience is inherited by the
descendants of the first human couple, not entirely unlike the eastern doctrine of
karma found in various sects of Hinduism and Buddhism, which interprets
suffering as a just recompense for deeds committed in the course of one’s previous
lifetimes. But what, if anything, can Ricoeur’s typology elucidate about the myths
contained within the Popol Vuh?
In applying this typology to the Popol Vuh, the present study seeks to
answer the following questions: (1) How do the views of “evil” and suffering
suggested by these myths compare to and contrast with those found in Ricoeur’s
typology? (2) Does Ricoeur’s typology suffice to adequately explicate the myths
addressed? Do the myths suggest an additional category that is lacking in
Ricoeur’s typology? Do they suggest an alternative paradigm? And, (3) At the risk
of making sweeping generalizations, what (if any) tentative inferences can be
made about the distinctions between the collective mythologies of the “Old
World” cultures featured in Ricoeur’s analysis and the New World cultures of pre-
Hispanic Mesoamerica featured in the present study? What commonalities can be
found in the myths of these cultures? And, more importantly, what do their
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differences seem to suggest about the distinct worldviews of their respective
authors?
“Evil” in Ancient Israel and Pre-Hispanic
Mesoamerica
Perhaps surprisingly, Ricoeur’s text is one of few analyses of its kind.
Thus, though its limitations should be recognized, it remains a useful tool for the
comparative study of myths of suffering (or “evil,” in Ricoeur’s formulation).
However, the problem with employing the word “evil” in the context of pre-
Hispanic Mesoamerican belief systems is that it connotes certain culturally
specific metaphysical and theological associations that are misleading in this
context. Laurence Alexander argues that the concept of “evil per se” (i.e., absolute
evil, as found among the apocalyptic faiths and familiar to westerners through
Christianity) is an Old World conception that was nonexistent in pre-Hispanic
Maya society. Therefore, he contends, it was introduced to the Maya by the
Spanish, an imposition with disastrous consequences (namely, the upheaval of
native cosmology). As Alexander explains,
There are symbolizations of malignant spirits in Maya myth, but
these are not of the same cosmological class as the ancient gods. Al
Puch, the death god, was not expressly evil, that is, malignant; he
was one of many personified gods of the ancient Maya and does not
really represent any active or identifiable force of evil per se in the
Maya world. Thus, we cannot discover symbolizations of the type
that Ricoeur leads us to expect. . . . [T]here cannot be representations
of evil per se as Ricoeur defines them because evil is something
other, something separated, alienated from this world. Such a
representation would be incomprehensible to the ancient Maya. (7)
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Like Al Puch (a Postclassic moniker for the principal Maya death god, who
does not appear in the ancient Hero Twins myth cycle), the Xibalban death lords
too are malignant but are of a lesser “cosmological class” than the creator gods of
the K’iche’ cosmogony described in the creation myth of the Popol Vuh. In other
words, they are supernatural beings of a class between humans and the glorified
gods of creation. Fernando Cervantes independently affirms Alexander’s
argument, explaining that
such concepts [“evil and the devil”] were alien to the Mesoamerican
mind. In contrast with the typically western conception of evil . . . ,
the Mesoamerican notions of evil and the demonic were inextricably
intertwined with their notions of good and the divine. Evil and the
demonic were in fact intrinsic to the divinity itself. . . .
Mesoamerican deities represented both benevolence and
malevolence, creativity and destructiveness. (40-41)
Ironically, Alexander contends, the Spanish themselves came to represent
the embodiment of evil in the consciousness of the Maya during the Colonial
Period, a claim supported by various native accounts of the conquest, such as the
following passage derived from the Book of Chilam Balam of Chumayel (ca. 17th
– 18th century CE):
It was only because these priests of ours were to come to an end
when misery was introduced, when Christianity was introduced by
the real Christians. Then with the true God, the true Dios, came the
beginning of our misery. It was the beginning of tribute, the
beginning of church dues, the beginning of strife with purse-
snatching, the beginning of strife with blow-guns, the beginning of
strife by trampling on people, the beginning of robbery with
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violence, the beginning of forced debts, the beginning of debts
enforced by false testimony, the beginning of individual strife, a
beginning of vexation. (Roys 30)
In the above passage, the “foreigners,” the “real Christians” with their “true
God, the true Dios,” have replaced such mythical figures as Al Puch and the
Xibalban death lords as the primary source of misery and suffering among the
indigenous community. Furthermore, the suffering produced by these outsiders
serves no productive purpose; it affects no renewal. Therefore, it is wholly
external to the regenerative cosmological system of the Maya. As in the case of
ancient Israel’s mythic vision of the primordial garden of Eden, here too, in the
midst of crisis, the past is reinterpreted as an idyllic time, much like the biblical
garden and the Greek golden age:
There was then no sickness; they had then no aching bones; they had
then no high fever; they had then no smallpox; they had then no
burning chest; they had then no abdominal pains; they had then no
consumption; they had then no headache. At that time the course of
humanity was orderly. The foreigners made it otherwise when they
arrived here. They brought shameful things when they came; . . . No
lucky days were then displayed to us. (Roys 33)
In Alexander’s view, the Spanish brought not only smallpox and venereal
disease to the Maya, but also the “equally destructive . . . concept of sin, of guilt,
and of retribution from on High” (8). This “new symbolization,” he writes,
“exploded on the scene of Maya religious cosmology”:
The Spaniards did not introduce violence and cruelty to the Maya;
these things existed in plenty. But they did introduce a new imagery,
a new symbolization previously unknown to the Maya. . . . For with
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this new symbolism, the Spanish brought a new imagery, a symbolic
order of apocalypse and revelation unknown to the Maya. For the
world of the Maya was essentially a timeless world; like the Maya
long count calendar (the katun calendar), the world of the Maya
repeated itself eternally in time. But the Christian eschatology cut
across this symbolization of time; it insisted on a linear symbolism,
on a symbolism of beginning, and, most importantly, of ending and
of apocalypse. For this new symbolization the Maya were totally
unprepared, and the consequences were disastrous for Maya culture.
(8)
Similarly, Cervantes convincingly argues that the religious cosmology of
Native Americans in “New Spain” was challenged by the introduction of the
dualistic Christian theology (the binary opposition of god and the devil) into the
existing paradigm of indigenous religions, detailing how Native Americans
reinterpreted the views of the Spanish missionaries sent to stamp out diabolism
and convert the indigenous population to the Christian faith. Such notions, he
explains, were “an absurdity in Mesoamerican thought,” since destruction was
understood to be necessary for creation and, likewise, creation for destruction (42).
Like the Maya, the Mexica too responded to their brutal destruction,
subjugation, and enslavement by these foreign invaders with resounding cries of
lament. For example, one native account reads,
Broken spears lie in the road; / we have torn our hair in grief. / The
houses are roofless now / and their walls are red with blood. /
Worms are swarming in the streets and plazas, / . . . / We have
pounded our hands in despair against the adobe walls, / for our
inheritance, our city, is lost and dead. / . . . / They set a price on all
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of us: / on the young men, the priests, the boys and girls. / The price
of a poor man was only two handfuls of corn, / . . . / everything that
was once precious was now considered worthless. (Leon-Portilla
137-38)
One finds striking parallels between native accounts such as those above
and similar accounts recorded in the poetic lamentations of the Hebrew Bible,
those regarding the siege of Judah, the destruction of Jerusalem, and the
deportation to Babylon. Indeed, such comparison might constitute a fruitful area of
study in its own right. Finally, perhaps most telling of the Spanish embodiment of
evil in the eyes of the indigenous population is the fact that these invaders were
“occasionally . . . even identified with tzitzimime, the demonic stars of
Mesoamerican mythology, the sun’s enemies and monsters of death and
destruction who at the end of time would descend to kill and eat the last of
mankind” before the next creation (Cervantes 45).
Perhaps surprisingly, this pre-Hispanic lack of any conception of absolute
evil is shared by the book of Job, and indeed by virtually the entirety of the
Hebrew Bible, except perhaps for the primordial watery chaos represented by
Leviathan and Rahab (a name for and symbolic representation of Egypt), but even
these mythical beings are described in Job and elsewhere as being subdued and
vanquished by YHWH (e.g., Job 9.13, 26.10 – 14, 40.25 – 41.26; Isa. 27.1, 51.9 –
10; Ps. 74.13 – 14, 89.10 – 11).
1
Similarly, the adversary of Job is conceived as an
agent of YHWH, and enemy armies are understood to be instruments of divine
punishment. Therefore, evil in its absolute sense is a term equally inapplicable to
the myths of ancient Israel.
1
See also Jewish Study Bible 888n4, 1538n4, and 1559n4.
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In the traditional ancient Israelite view of suffering (the retributive view),
all circumstances, both good and “evil,” derive from YHWH, who is variously
conceived as a loving creator (as in the dual creation myths of Gen. 1.1 – 3.24); a
protective liberator (as in the myth of the Exodus and the social justice rhetoric of
the prophets); a divine sovereign (throughout the Pentateuch); and a jealous and
vengeful, yet conditionally forgiving, husband (as in the numerous vehement
condemnations of idolatry in the prophetic literature and the Deuteronomistic
history).
2
Thus, according to this theology, YHWH is alone responsible for both
good and “evil,” as evidenced, for example, by the following biblical verses: “Can
misfortune come to a town if the LORD has not caused it?” (Amos 3.6); “Is it not
at the word of the Most High, / That weal and woe befall?” (Lam. 3.37 – 8); and,
“I am the LORD and there is none else, / I form light and create darkness, / I make
weal and create woe— / I the LORD do all these things” (Isa. 45.6b – 7). For this
reason, Carl Jung referred to YHWH as “both a persecutor and a helper in one”
(7). In Jung’s view, “Yahweh is not split but is an antinomy—a totality of inner
opposites,” containing within him both positive and negative attributes (7).
Accordingly, Jung read the as an aspect of God rather than a third party, thus
paradoxically reasoning that “Yahweh is also man’s advocate against himself
when man puts forth his complaint,” a seemingly schizophrenic portrait of the
deity (7).
As in Job, this monistic understanding of God asserts the omnipotence of
the patron god of the ancient Israelites but does so at the cost of omnibenevolence.
According to this theology, YHWH may not be omnibenevolent, but he is just.
Thus, as in the Deuteronomistic view, all suffering that occurs, whether individual
2
See, for example, the “marriage metaphor” in Hosea.
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or collective, is deemed to be the result of disobedience to covenantal laws and is
thereby justified. This perspective evidences a collective (rather than an
individualistic) mentality, by which the entire community must be punished for the
violations of a specific subset of the population. This collective mentality is shared
by the pre-Hispanic worldviews of Mesoamerica as well, as evidenced most
prominently by the subordination of the interests of the individual to the greater
good of the community in the practice of sacrifice. Such retributive and
collectivistic attitudes do not hold unchallenged sway throughout the entirety of
ancient Israelite scripture however, for one of the features of the Hebrew Bible
that contributes to its astounding complexity is the fact that it contains within it a
plurality of voices evincing numerous, at times conflicting, perspectives. As
discussed in chapters 2 and 3, ancient Israelite literature such as the books of Job
and Qoheleth, for example, refute this retributive understanding of God and his
relationship to the experience of suffering, however distinct these texts may be
among the polyvocal compilation of competing perspectives and theologies
contained within the library of ancient Israelite texts that is the Hebrew Bible.
A much later inter-testamental development, which promotes the adversary
of Job to the role of divine adversary and antithesis of God (the embodiment of
absolute evil known today by the proper name “Satan”), redeems YHWH (by this
time the sole god of monotheistic Yahwism) from charges of divine injustice (the
case presented by the poetic Job) by transforming him as well through the
formulation of new theological understandings of the divine. According to Russell,
“Satan is the personification of the dark side of God, that element within Yahweh
which obstructs the good” (176-77). Gradually, this “dark side” becomes detached
and dissociated from God and eventually displaced onto the figure of Satan as he
becomes an increasingly prominent presence. Thus, Russell explains, “the Hebrew
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concept of the Devil developed gradually, arising from certain tensions within the
concept of Yahweh” (174). In effect, this theological development reduces the god
of the ancient Israelites to the embodiment of absolute good, thereby limiting his
domain and establishing a dichotomy of binary opposition, in which Satan
gradually replaces YHWH as the sole source of suffering and eventually becomes
the apotheosis of evil, the angelic scapegoat and author of sin in the subsequent
Jewish and Christian traditions.
3
It is from this perspective that the serpent of
Genesis 2.4b – 3.24, which the text simply describes as a snake, comes to be
reinterpreted as Satan in disguise, an identification later reflected in the symbolic
language of the Apocalypse of John: “The great dragon was thrown down, that
ancient serpent who is called the Devil and Satan, the deceiver of the whole
world” (New Oxford Annotated Bible, Rev. 12.9). As mentioned in chapter 2, this
development evidently occurs as a result of Zoroastrian influence during the
Persian (Achaemenid) period (539–332 BCE), after the conquest of the neo-
Babylonian empire by Cyrus II. It is undisputed that “Persian rule . . . allowed
considerable cultural assimilation and religious syncretism,” though the extent of
the influence of “Persian dualism, which posited the existence of two primal and
independent personifications of good and evil,” on post-exilic Judaism remains a
subject of scholarly debate (Cook 583; Avalos 679).
4
Similarly, the myths of the Popol Vuh contain no concept of absolute evil.
The Xibalban death lords are clearly malignant and may thus be considered a
source of “evil” (indeed, the Hero Twins charge them with murder and arbitrary
death-dealing), for all manner of diseases (and the sufferings that they produce)
3
See Breytenbach & Day and Russell.
4
See Cohn 220-31.
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clearly derive from these figures. However, the forces that they represent are not
entirely destroyed by the Hero Twins because they are deemed necessary
functionaries of the cosmic cycle of renewal. Thus, though their powers are
limited by the twins, the lives of most of these beings are ultimately spared and
they remain free to exercise these destructive powers in the human realm, albeit in
a limited fashion. While suffering itself was considered tragic when it occurred
outside of the context of ritual time and space, the controlled suffering produced
within the ritual context of pre-Hispanic ceremonial centers was deemed moral
due to its positive effects: namely, the renewal of the gods and the cosmos. In this
way, it was understood as a sacrificial gift not only to the gods but to the entire
human community as well.
As a method of comparison of the individual texts in discussion, it will
perhaps prove fruitful to examine the theological and anthropological views that
are suggested by each, along with the application of Ricoeur’s typology. Thus, the
following analysis will attempt to determine what each text implies about the
nature of God or the gods (its theological views) and the nature of human beings
(its anthropological views), based upon the conclusions drawn from the preceding
chapters.
Theological Views
Throughout the book of Job (until the theophany, at least), God is portrayed
as a divine tyrant who refuses to accept responsibility for human suffering. He is
the ultimate totalitarian dictator, free to exercise absolute power without restraint.
Because he is omnipotent and possesses vast, cosmic knowledge (though he
apparently needs to test human beings in order to determine how they will
respond), YHWH has no one to answer to for his actions and thus considers
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himself exempt from criticism. This god is indeed powerful, but he cannot
rightfully be called either good or just because, by his very nature, he is a
transcendent being and therefore exists outside of the confines of such human
categories as goodness and justice. According to the theophany, and Job’s
acceptance of it, the nature of the deity cannot be expressed with reference to such
anthropic constructs. He is a transcendent deity, rather than an anthropopathic one,
and is therefore unknowable and inconceivable by the limited faculties of the
human mind.
Job, on the other hand, is adamant in his emphasis on the ethical norms of
ancient Israelite society rather than its traditional theological norms. He
acknowledges the injustice of his suffering, even if YHWH refuses to. In this way,
Job acts as a foil of YHWH, highlighting his unethical behavior by contrast. Thus,
the myth of Job corresponds to Ricoeur’s Tragic myth-type because it is YHWH
and the adversary in tandem (wicked gods), rather than Job himself, who are
responsible for the sufferings caused, while Job’s friends heap further persecution
onto his affliction. Thus, Job imagines an advocate and vindicator (a ) who
might speak in his defense (as his friends fail to do) in a trial with God, vindicate
him of all charges, and perhaps even avenge him for the heinous injustice
committed against him by the divine. Though Job’s eventual submission to
YHWH suggests that the interpretation of God’s behavior as cruel and unjust is an
inadequate and ignorant understanding of the true transcendent nature of God, the
fact remains that YHWH’s treatment of Job was (by human standards) indeed
unjust and thus unjustifiable.
In contrast, the creator gods of the Popol Vuh are conceived not as divine
rulers but as divine parents who, like the god of Job, unjustly destroy the various
pre-human creatures (Ricoeur’s Tragic myth-type) in the process of creating
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human beings. However, it is clear that from the perspective of the text, this is
done in the service of a greater good. Furthermore, these gods, in some myths,
sacrifice their own blood or lives for the benefit of humankind, as the Hero Twins
do to create the sun and the moon and as numerous deities do in the corpus of
Mexica myth.
5
Like YHWH, the gods of the Popol Vuh possess the life-giving
powers of creation and fertility, but unlike YHWH they are apparently only semi-
potent, for they require the tribute of human beings as nourishment, whether
through the honor of remembrance and verbal praise (as in the creation myth) or
through the sacrifice of human blood and bodies (as in the sacrificial nourishment
of Tohil in the later mytho-historical narrative). Perhaps of paramount importance
in this ritual system is the unyielding devotion that such sacrifices display, and the
suffering that they generate, suffering that increases the value of the sacrifice.
Here, it should be noted that YHWH too requires sacrificial tribute
throughout the Hebrew Bible, including a demand in the “Covenant Code” (Exod.
22.28 – 30) evidently requiring the sacrifice of the firstborn and another instance
in which he inspires such sacrifices out of spite, for the purpose of “horrifying”
those who have committed idolatry and not kept the Sabbath (Ezek. 20.26). The
former example may be read as a dedication rather than a sacrifice, since the
eighth day is associated with circumcision, but the parallel offerings of animals
problematizes such a reading. Elsewhere, on the other hand, such practices are
expressly forbidden, as in the “Holiness Code” of Leviticus (18.21).
6
Many of the
prophetic books as well as those of the Deuteronomistic history vehemently
condemn the practice of human sacrifice as a form of idolatry, and thus a violation
5
See also chapter 4.
6
See also Deut. 18.10 – 13.
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of covenantal law (e.g., 1 Kings 11.4 – 11; 2 Kings 23.10; Jer. 7.30 – 34, 19.1 – 5,
32.30 – 35).
7
These condemnations suggest that such rites were in fact performed
among certain of the peoples of ancient Israel, for the explicit purpose of these
condemnations is the extirpation of an existent practice. Throughout the Hebrew
Bible, this practice is invariably associated with idolatry and punished by divine
retribution.
As in the mythic traditions of the Hebrew Bible, the retributive view of
suffering is clearly present among the myths of the Popol Vuh as well. The death
lords of the Popol Vuh are justly punished by the Hero Twins for crimes of deceit
and murder, rendering their suffering retributive and thus analogous to Ricoeur’s
Adamic myth-type. The slaughter of the twin fathers of the Hero Twins by the
death lords is unacceptable because it is enacted not for the purpose of honoring
and paying tribute to the gods but for personal gain, which constitutes a violation
of proper social conduct. Similarly, Vucub Caquix is righteously punished for his
hubristic violation of the social order, which also corresponds to the Adamic
myth-type. Thus, these myths serve to discourage such behaviors, and therefore to
implicitly promote their opposite by contrast, through the negative examples of the
death lords and Vucub Caquix and the righteous self-sacrificial behavior of the
Twins, who punish wrongdoers and ultimately offer their lives for the greater good
of the cosmos, the gods, and the creation of human beings.
In addition to the theme of retribution that is characteristic of the Adamic
myth-type, the myths involving the death lords correspond to another of Ricoeur’s
myth-types as well. As noted above, the death lords are supernatural beings
separate from, and of a lesser order than, the creator deities of the creation myth.
7
See also 2 Chron. 28.1 – 5 and 33.1 – 6.
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They constitute a source of suffering wholly other than that of either gods or men.
Thus, the death lords episodes of the Hero Twins cycle, though unique in their
details, roughly correspond to Ricoeur’s first myth-type: the drama of creation, by
which the cosmos is engendered through theomachy (divine combat, from the
Greek , meaning “gods,” and , meaning “battle”) between the gods and
the forces of chaos, often personified in the form of a monstrous serpent,
crocodile, dragon, sea monster, or other mythical beast.
8
This myth-type
constitutes a common mythic motif (known by the German term Chaoskampf,
meaning “struggle against chaos”) among the myth cycles of various peoples of
the ancient Near East and elsewhere in the Old World, such as the Ugaritic epic
known as the “Baal Cycle,” which includes one such symbolic cosmogonic battle
between the eponymous storm god and a deity called Yam, the personification of
the sea.
9
This myth-type is recognized by scholars as bearing close resemblance to
certain verses of the Hebrew Bible, suggesting the likely possibility of influence
through diffusionism (e.g., Job 9.13, 26.10 – 14, 40.25 – 41.26; Isa. 27.1, 51.9 –
10; Ps. 74.13 – 14, 89.10 – 11).
10
For example, the Babylonian cosmogony recorded in the (ca.
18th – 16th century BCE) features the destruction of the personification of
primordial chaos in the form of the serpentine goddess Tiamat (the sea) by the
patron sky god Marduk (associated, like Baal and other such culture heroes, with
rain and storms), who fashions the heavens and the earth from her bisected body,
8
See also Cohn 105-15; Day, ; and Kushner on Jon Levenson’s “combat theory” in
Book of Job 178-80.
9
On the Chaoskampf motif, see Day, t.
10
See Alster; Bottéro 206-07; Day, ; and Jewish Study Bible 888n4, 1538n4, and
1559n4.
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thus engendering the cosmos and establishing the patriarchal order of Babylon
(Dalley 253).
11
Like Leviathan, Tiamat is symbolically associated not with the
life-sustaining fresh water of rivers and rain, which represent fertility and
abundance, but with the chaotic, destructive power of the sea. The primordial
waters of Genesis 1, which God (or the gods: , a plural word that may be
suggestive of polytheism or, alternatively, may constitute an application of the
“majestic plural” to a singular deity) separates to create the heavens and the earth,
have been interpreted by some scholars as an analogous description of a state of
formless chaos before the ordering of creation, while the mythical Leviathan
evidences clear parallels to such figures as Yam and Tiamat.
12
Similarly, the death
lords of the Popol Vuh represent the destructive forces of chaos that must be
subdued by the Hero Twins before the creation of human beings can be brought to
fruition. The Twins, like Baal, Marduk, and other such divine chaos-vanquishers,
are culture heroes who ensure the possibility of an ordered creation by conquering
an anarchic threat. Furthermore, the death lords—not unlike Yam, Baal, Leviathan
and Rahab, Tiamat, Jörmungandr (also called the Midgard Serpent) of Norse-
Icelandic myth, Vṛtra of Vedic myth, and numerous others—are associated with
water, a mythic symbol signifying not only life and fertility but also disorder and
destruction. Accordingly, the death lords occupy the underworld, conceptualized
as a watery realm whose rivers flow with blood, a detail that again (like its
comparative analogues) constitutes a concrete symbol for the chaos that threatens
to disrupt or overthrow the order and stability of life. In this case, however, the
parallel symbolism is not the result of descent from common Proto-Indo-European
11
See also Alster, Black & Green 177, Jacobsen 178-80, Kelly 8-11, and Matthews & Benjamin
17.
12
See Day, .
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ancestry, the accepted explanation for the prevalence of Chaoskampf myths among
various Old World cultures, but rather is likely a result of the Maya association of
rainfall with caves and sinkholes, both of which were considered portals to the
underworld. In the case of the Maya of Yucatán, these sacred sinkholes (today
called cenotes, derived from the Yucatecan Maya ), such as the famous
Cenote Sagrado (the “Sacred Cenote” or “Well of Sacrifice”) of Chichén Itzá,
were considered portals by which sacrificial offerings of precious treasures as well
as human lives could be made to rain deities called Chaacs, primarily the principal
deity among them, the rain god Chaac, cognate of the Mexica Tlaloc (Carrasco,
“Cenotes”; Miller & Taube, “Cenotes” and “Chac” 58-60).
13
Anthropological Views
In the theophany of Job, the omnipotent YHWH asserts the insignificance
of human beings and their sufferings in the vast arena of creation, suggesting that
the divine perspective on suffering is one of cosmic indifference and that the
divine philosophy regarding power is akin to the brutal creed “might makes right.”
Job seems to affirm the former view (human insignificance and cosmic
indifference) in his response to the theophany, in which he humbly acknowledges
his smallness and ignorance. Here, he is metaphorically reduced to “dust and
ashes,” his creation symbolically reversed and undone by his recognition of human
insignificance and ephemerality as he anticipates a return to the dust of the earth
out of which the first ancestor was formed (Gen. 2.7), though the poet may or may
not be alluding to this myth. Thus, on the point of human insignificance, the book
of Job seems to agree with the philosophy of the theophany, as attested to by Job’s
humble submission, and yet Job defiantly asserts his significance throughout the
13
See Miller & Taube, “Cenotes” and “Chac” 58-60.
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debate through his poetic rhetoric of protest and legal indictment, which
effectively summons YHWH down from the divine sphere of the heavens and into
the human sphere on the earthly plane. Job’s outcry, then, seems to counter the
philosophy of the theophany, constituting a positive affirmation of humanity
despite the cosmic indifference asserted by YHWH.
Distinctly, the Popol Vuh attributes a far greater significance to human
beings, who play a participatory role in the cosmos, upon which the continuity of
both the gods and life itself depend. The fact that the gods require sustenance
provided by human beings implies the paramount significance of humanity in the
grand scheme of the creation, for without the participation of human beings via the
ritual performance of the appropriate rites of renewal the gods would go
unnourished and would perhaps perish, though it is unclear precisely what such a
lack would entail. Furthermore, the cosmos itself would be undone, the sun
lacking the fuel required to continue its perpetual motion through the heavens. The
world would thus be returned to the primordial time of darkness before the first
dawn was produced by the efforts of the Hero Twins.
The Popol Vuh, then, grants human beings primacy in creation while Job
seems to deny human beings this importance, in contrast to the vast majority of the
corpus of the Hebrew Bible, which instead affirms it. For example, in the first
creation account of Genesis 1.1 – 2.3, God grants the primordial couple dominion
over the earth and all of its creatures, while the covenant relationship between
YHWH and his chosen people suggests that they hold a unique position in the
favor of the divine, as discussed in chapter 2. Similarly, in the Popol Vuh, animals
are “made to serve” man by offering their bodies to be slaughtered, just as human
beings must offer their flesh and blood to the gods in propitiation. This reveals the
supreme significance of man as an integral part of a continuous, ongoing process
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of creation, in contrast to the explicit philosophy of Job, in which God’s creation is
complete and man is denied a significant position within it, though the text seems
to implicitly disprove this claim by the example of Job’s standoff with YHWH.
Finally, while various individual myths of the Popol Vuh correspond to
certain of Ricoeur’s myth-types, there exists no corollary in Ricoeur’s typology for
the overarching regenerative view of suffering that informs the entire text when
read as a unified whole and understood in the context of pre-Hispanic
Mesoamerican religions. The idea that suffering itself, if produced in the proper
ritual context and for the purpose of displaying devotion to the gods, can affect the
renewal of the cosmos is a unique perspective in the traditional discourse on the
problem of suffering. It is this view that extends the practice of ritual sacrifice
beyond the mere economics of sacrificial exchange, a system in which the primary
function of sacrifice is propitiatory rather than participatory. Propitiation was
surely a component of such practices in pre-Hispanic Mesoamerica, but within the
context of a participatory worldview, the effects of sacrificial suffering consisted
of more than the mere acquisition of goods (e.g., rain, a bountiful harvest, general
prosperity, or victory in battle) or services (e.g., the alleviation of collective
suffering by some worldly cause, whether drought, famine, epidemic, or
conquest). Such propitiation constitutes a mere utilitarian transaction that
subordinates the interests of the individual (the sacrificial “victim”) to the
collective interests of the community.
In addition to this propitiatory function, however, was the regenerative
function discussed in chapters 4 and 5. It is this function that reveals a view of
suffering as both necessary and life-affirming rather than gratuitous and life-
denying. It is in these terms that sacrificial suffering was viewed positively, even
while its secular corollary was considered anathema requiring punitive action in
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response. Thus, the two were not equivalent in the pre-Hispanic consciousness,
and to abandon the practice of sacrifice would have resulted in disastrous
consequences for both the divine and human spheres. It is for this reason,
Cervantes explains, that the bans imposed upon indigenous religious practices
(including sacrificial rites) by Europeans constituted a threat to the order of the
cosmos, for if obeyed, the indigenous population believed, these prohibitions
would “threaten to destroy the Mesoamerican corporate relationship with the
supernatural and to bring about an end to the present cosmos and a return to the
original chaos” (43). Furthermore, the replacement of the indigenous gods by a
new single omnibenevolent deity (the Christian god) neglected the necessity of the
interplay between the binary forces of chaos and order and thus constituted “an
explosive liability which put the whole cosmic order in extreme peril” (Cervantes
42).
Texts of Protest: A Departure and a Return
The present study has surveyed a number of distinct responses to the
universal problem of suffering, a dilemma that crosses all cultural boundaries,
both temporal and geographic. The study began with the greater good defense of
Christian apologetics (including the soul-making theodicy of Irenaeus) and the
free will defense of Augustine (which interprets suffering caused by moral evils as
a necessary condition of human freedom) before briefly discussing an apocalyptic
view of suffering evidenced in the example of Christian eschatology (chapter 1).
Chapters 2 and 3 consisted of an analysis of various ancient Israelite perspectives,
including an interpretation of suffering as a divine test of faith in the prose
framework of Job, conflicting interpretations of suffering as divine retribution and
divine injustice in the poetic dialogue, and a view of suffering as an ineffable
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mystery inaccessible to human beings and known only to the transcendent god of
the theophany. Finally, chapters 4 and 5 surveyed various K’iche’ Maya
perspectives evidenced in the Popol Vuh, which consisted of an interpretation of
suffering as a necessary condition of creation (a kind of greater good) in the
cosmogony, an interpretation of suffering as a form of just retribution in the
Vucub Caquix and death lords episodes, an understanding of suffering as cosmic
conflict between opposing (yet interdependent) supernatural forces (a view similar
in kind yet subtly distinct from the apocalyptic view), and an overarching view of
suffering as a necessary offering to the gods for the purpose of sustenance and the
renewal of the cosmos.
After assessing all of these perspectives through textual analysis of various
ancient Israelite and pre-Hispanic Maya myths, it is clear that the mythopoetic
(myth-making) process serves a logopoetic (meaning-making) function, and thus
constitutes a powerful means by which people make sense of suffering and
generate meaning from the raw material of life’s hardships. Furthermore, the
literary imagination, as an extension of this mythopoetic process, constitutes a tool
by which traditional mythic understandings of the past (those concerning the
meaning and nature of God or the gods, the cosmos, human beings, and the
experience of suffering) are renegotiated and reinterpreted for the present. This
process of reinterpretation is evident in Job, a literary text that appropriates an
antecedent mythic narrative (the pious folktale of the prose) in order to challenge
its traditional understandings of God and suffering. The Popol Vuh, on the other
hand, represents the opposite: an attempt to preserve traditional understandings of
the gods, cosmos, and suffering amid the imminent threat of their extinction. Thus,
both texts can be seen as a form of protest against the oppressive conditions of the
respective cultural-historical contexts in which they were written. While Job
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attempts to forge new understandings as a means of liberation from the
persecution represented by a worldview deemed oppressive, the Popol Vuh returns
to the mythic imagination of the past as a means of liberation from the
persecutions of the conquest and the suppression of traditional belief systems that
had imbued indigenous life with meaning and purpose for millennia.
When viewed through this lens of the liberating potential of myth and
literature, both texts can be understood in terms of their discursive movement. Job
constitutes a refutation and a rejection that pushes away from the old views from
within the sphere of those traditions while the Popol Vuh constitutes a preservation
that pulls toward the old views from outside the sphere of those traditions, from a
position of spiritual exile amid the domination of the Spanish conquest. Thus, Job
represents a departure from tradition while the Popol Vuh represents a return. For
Job, the doctrine of divine retribution (a component of the traditional theology of
the conventional Hebrew wisdom) constitutes an affront to justice and an unfair
persecution of the innocent. Similarly, for the Popol Vuh, the new religion of
Christianity, which denies indigenous religious traditions and thus indigenous
cultural memory, constitutes a threat to the very collective identity of a people as
well as a threat to the order of the cosmos, thus jeopardizing the stability and
continuity of life itself.
Though the views expressed within each text are distinct, the voices of their
authors are united in protest. Both cry out to their readers from across the ages,
their protests crystallized in the form of narratives constructed through the
symbolic language of myth. From their ancient pages, they call for liberation from
oppressive ideologies (whether traditional or alien), from persecution (whether
from within or outside of one’s own community), and from suffering itself, the
most urgent and timeless of human concerns—the tireless combatant of Homo
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patiens. For this reason, they remain relevant and continue to speak to readers
today, for now, as ever before, the god of Job gambles ceaselessly with human
lives, and the Maya death lords are never sated. Despite the inevitable hardships of
life, Homo patiens nobly perseveres, tasked with the challenge of forging meaning
through the creative potential of myth and literature. Thus, Homo patiens is ever
the “storytelling animal” (to borrow a phrase from Jonathan Gottschall),
continuously forging and re-fashioning meaning in response to the problem of
suffering and the uncertain purpose (or lack thereof) of existence.
The Problem of Suffering in Modern Thought
The problem of suffering remains as significant as ever but has become
increasingly difficult to resolve in the modern age. Since the Enlightenment, the
history of western thought has borne witness to a general shift in emphasis from
theodicy to anthropodicy, from concerns for cosmic justice projected outward onto
God to concerns for human justice leveled squarely on the shoulders of human
beings. As Heiman explains, “If one believes the world is ruled by a good and
powerful father figure, it’s natural to expect his order to be comprehensibly just,”
but when the evidence of history suggests otherwise, such expectations of cosmic
justice are shattered, calling into question traditional understandings of God and
his relationship to suffering (4-5). What remains is “a sadder but wiser era that has
learned to live on its own” (5). According to Heiman, part of “the meaning of
modernity” consists of a radical separation of “what earlier ages called natural and
moral evils” as well as “an attempt to stop blaming God for the state of the world,
and to take responsibility for it on our own” (4).
As Heiman’s assessment suggests, certain events of human history have
radically altered the conceptual landscape of the problem by challenging the
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reliability of traditional theistic interpretations of suffering, which has made it
increasingly difficult for those hypotheses to be sustained when tested against the
empirical evidence of human experience. These events include intellectual and
cultural developments such as the Scientific Revolution and the Enlightenment
during the 17th and 18th centuries; the Industrial Revolution (ca. 1760 – ca. 1840
CE); the birth of Darwinism, Marxism, and psychoanalysis during the 19th
century; the advent of philosophical movements such as existentialism, absurdism,
and secular humanism in the late 19th and early 20th centuries; and an overall trend
toward the increasing secularization of western civilization as a result of these
developments.
Equally significant have been the unfathomable sufferings produced by the
horrors of the modern age, among them two World Wars, the Armenian Genocide,
the Holocaust, the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the Vietnam War,
genocides in Cambodia and Rwanda, the HIV/AIDS pandemic, and ongoing
conflicts in Darfur, Uganda, and the Middle East, to name but a few prominent
examples. Indeed, a number of eminent theologians (most famously Richard
Rubenstein) have commented on the difficulty of “doing theology” (i.e., talking
about God, especially the god of Abraham) in a post-Holocaust world, a world
“after Auschwitz.” In an effort to clarify this trend in post-Holocaust Jewish
theology in particular, Zachary Braiterman has employed the term “anti-theodicy”
to refer to “the refusal to justify, explain, or accept as somehow meaningful the
relationship between God and suffering,” a trend that reflects the inability of
traditional theological understandings of God and suffering to adequately explain
the realities of human experience in the modern world and, perhaps even more
significantly, to fulfill the needs of people living and struggling for meaning
within that world, with its manifold sufferings and apparent lack of transcendental
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purpose (31). Thus, the modern era, arguably largely as a result of these events,
has witnessed a general decline in religious faith among certain populations, while
the proliferation of religiosity among others continues to reflect basic human
desires for meaning, comfort, and consolation, particularly in times of need (i.e.,
hardship and pain). While events such as those mentioned above have undoubtedly
contributed to the general decline of faith and the rise of secularism in the West,
recent years have also witnessed a revival of religious fundamentalism, a
phenomenon that perhaps suggests, as Heiman contends, not only that people
“want easy answers to the problems of a complex world” (an assertion that she
considers both “condescending” and “shortsighted” in its simplicity) but also that
they “want worldviews that express moral standpoints: that human dignity is a
good which cannot be bartered, that some actions are so vile they cannot be
redeemed” (xv).
In Kushner’s estimation, the former trend (religious decline) is primarily
due to disillusionment caused by the harsh realities of suffering in the world and
the problem
14
that it engenders for traditional theisms: “In the overwhelming
majority of cases,” he writes, “people have lost faith in God because of Hitler;
because of atrocities in Cambodia, Rwanda, Sudan, and other countries; because
of the untimely death of someone they loved; or because they look at the world,
they listen to the news, and they cannot believe there is an all-powerful,
benevolent deity in charge of things” (Book of Job 164). Thus, it is the problem of
suffering that presents what is perhaps the greatest challenge (arguably even
greater than rationalism) to theism. Indeed, as Kushner comments, “it is hard to
read of the Nazi treatment of Jews, Poles, gays, and other ‘inferior’ people and
14
See chapter 1.
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still believe in God, unless, as C. S. Lewis warned us, tragedy leads people to
conclude that God exists and he is a monster” (165).
Perhaps an even more pertinent question than how to talk about God in a
world after Auschwitz, however, is the question of how to respond (theologically
or otherwise) to the problem of suffering in a world in which the atrocities of war,
genocide, and persecution continue to occur daily across the globe, not to mention
disease, starvation, and natural catastrophes that leave tremendous suffering in
their wake. Most important of all is the need to respond to such crises with
courage and compassion, regardless of whether it is possible to derive some
greater existential meaning from them. Let us hope that the struggle to alleviate
suffering the world over may provide meaning enough to sustain the endeavor.
Collectively, all of the events listed above have forever altered (for better or
for worse) the ways in which human beings think about themselves, the world in
which they live, their relationship to that world, and their responsibility to each
other. Furthermore, they have tested the storytelling animal’s resolve for meaning-
making, a challenge to which modernist writers such as Fyodor Dostoyevsky
(1821 – 1881 CE), Friedrich Nietzsche (1844 – 1900 CE), Franz Kafka (1883 –
1924 CE), Jean-Paul Sartre (1905 – 1980 CE), Albert Camus (1913 – 1960 CE),
and even pulp-fiction icon H. P. Lovecraft (1890 – 1937 CE) have responded with
admirable integrity and creativity. Like the poet-author of Job, these thinkers have
used the literary imagination as a tool to reinterpret the mythic understandings of
the past, at times appropriating and reimagining mythic narratives through the
process of literary composition. For example, Kafka’s novel The Trial (1925)
constitutes a modern analogue of Job that replaces the divine authority of God
with the political authority of the modern totalitarian state and the akedah of
Genesis 22 with the shameful, inhuman execution of Josef K. “like a dog” on a
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symbolic sacrificial altar (231). Similarly, Camus’s essay The Myth of Sisyphus
(1942) re-envisions the tragic myth of an ancient Greek hero (condemned by the
gods to push a boulder uphill for eternity) as an analogy for the plight of modern
man, who labors in vain, performing the mundane and intrinsically meaningless
tasks of modern life (such as the tedium of factory and office work), despite the
fact that his efforts are all destined to be erased by death. Camus manages to
derive a positive outlook from this scenario, however, concluding that “there is no
fate that cannot be surmounted by scorn” and “the struggle itself toward the
heights is enough to fill a man’s heart.” (121, 123).
Even if it is not possible for the modernist to derive any sense of intrinsic,
objective meaning from existence, he or she may find satisfaction, even joy, in the
continuous process of endeavoring to create meaning where none can be
discerned, despite the difficulty of this project. In the words of Sartre, modern man
is “left alone, without excuse” in the absence of divinity, for with the figurative
“death” of God, a collective intellectual transformation mostly famously
proclaimed by Nietzsche in both The Gay Science (sec. 108, 125, 343) and Thus
Spoke Zarathustra (Prologue and sec. XXV), comes the dissolution of “all
possibility of finding values in an intelligible heaven” (Existentialism 353). In
other words, “Everything is indeed permitted if God does not exist, and man is in
consequence forlorn, for he cannot find anything to depend on either within or
outside himself,” since there is no longer any recourse to “a given and specific
human nature” within oneself nor any divinely mandated absolute “values or
commands [outside of oneself] that could legitimize [one’s] behavior” (353).
Thus, in Sartre’s words, modern man is “condemned to be free. Condemned
because he did not create himself, yet is nevertheless at liberty, and from the
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moment that he is thrown into this world he is responsible for everything he does”
(353).
15
This radical freedom, unconstrained by the mind-forged manacles of
traditional theisms and political ideologies, constitutes a burden as well as a boon
because it tasks modern man (and woman) with a formidable challenge: the
project of creating his or her own subjective meaning in the absence of any
objective one. Thus, by pouring his efforts wholeheartedly into his passions, those
higher ideals that transcend him (whether the joys of love, the pursuit of
knowledge, or the creative arts, for example), Homo patiens endures even in the
grim post-modern age, nobly striving for meaning against the odds as he has
always done, whether staring into the illimitable void of meaninglessness or into
the face of senseless suffering, the face that launched a thousand myths.
Limitations and Suggestions for Further Study
Limitations of the present study include its use of both the book of Job and
the Popol Vuh as representative texts of entire traditions spanning millennia. Thus,
it runs the risk of reducing the complexity of these traditions to broad
generalizations and oversimplifications. Therefore, further research and analysis of
additional textual materials is recommended for an increasingly detailed and
nuanced view of the perspectives on suffering manifested in these traditions. To
this effect, the hypothetical framework of the regenerative view of suffering
(outlined in chapters 4 and 5) may be applied to other cases of pre-Hispanic myth
in order to test its accuracy and to determine its applicability to other narratives of
the extant canon of Mesoamerican literature. Fortunately, among the Maya world,
this canon is ever expanding due to continuous hieroglyphic decipherment.
15
See also Being and Nothingness.
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165
Therefore, there is much room for growth in this particular area of study, which
has long been largely neglected by all but specialists working in the field of
Mesoamerican studies. Additionally, a greater breadth and depth of inquiry into
the trajectory of the problem of suffering in the post-modern world is required to
shed further light onto the various distinct perspectives that have emerged in the
wake of the 19th and 20th centuries, and to anticipate further responses to come in
the present age.
WORKS CITED AND CONSULTED
Alexander, Laurence L. “Ricoeur’s ‘Symbolism of Evil’ and Cross-Cultural
Comparison: The Representation of Evil in Maya Indian Culture”. Journal of
the American Academy of Religion 44.4 (Dec. 1976). JSTOR. 19 Oct. 2012.
Web.
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