Talk:Book of Job

I, uh, deleted the original "Book of Job" after I merged it with "Guide to Job" why would someone create a "Book of Job" again and redirect it to "Guide to Job"? Now we have to do that for every book in the bible.  Mega   17:32, 15 April 2009 (EDT)
 * For that matter, why are all our biblical articles "guides" anyway? Are they supposed to be in a notably different style which differentiates them as guides rather than articles?  If not, I suggest moving them all to plainer titles - e.g. "Guide to Genesis" moved to "Genesis", etc.   18:57, 15 April 2009 (EDT)
 * That's a, er, "good idea"... will there be any conflicts with other potential article names? I can't think of any offhand.  ħ uman  22:41, 15 April 2009 (EDT)

Book of Job as Satire?
I have recently been reading a book by a liberal Christian regarding critical reading of the Bible (Thom Stark's Human Faces of God) and in it there is mention of the book of Job being best regarded as satire. The book suggests that YHWH is supposed to look like an asshole and at no point does it make him look like anything more than a show off whose actions were completely unjustified. I can see how this is possible since at the time of Job's writing YHWH was still more like a typical anthropomorphic polytheistic god who was prone to doing things that were rather screwed up. Judaism wasn't even well organized as a religion at the time. Although it sounds like most of the stuff discussed in the book is very mainstream scholarly stuff, I was wondering if anyone knew something more specific about whether there are good reasons for or against it. If it can be supported then it might be worth noting that the atheist interpretation appears to be closer to the book's original intent. Arachne1988 (talk) 22:26, 22 January 2015 (UTC)
 * Most of the Bible commentaries I've read tend to treat it as actual history. While there are some theologians that treat Job as allegory, their argument is undermined somewhat by the fact that Job is refereed to elsewhere in the Bible and no indication is given that the respective authors view Job as anything less than a real historical figure. --Inquisitor (talk) 22:59, 22 January 2015 (UTC)
 * Are the commentaries you have read apologetics or actual scholarly works? I have to check because there is a huge difference between academic views of the Bible (led by mainly liberal Christians who regularly subject the bible to higher criticism) and evangelical apologists who claim to be bible scholars but are just mere defenders of their narrow theology. The former tend to be more intellectually honest than the latter. Arachne1988 (talk) 06:40, 23 January 2015 (UTC)
 * In the book reference is made to God's 'sons' - how have they, their sisters (and other-gender-equivalents) and mother(s) been explained? Anna Livia (talk) 22:42, 16 June 2019 (UTC)