Quaker Pagan Reflections

They probably should never let Pagans own Bibles, much less read them. (Too late now.) I'm up to Job . Though this post is going to be more inspired by an excerpt from Archibald MacLeish's play J.B . , based on Job, than by the Biblical text itself. Bear with me. Job is probably the central book of the Bible for Pagans, whether we've read it or not. However monotheists might come to terms with it, Job cannot satisfy the polytheistic Pagan mind. Job, of course, is the story of the long suffering and faithful man whose trust in God is put to the test by God--and thereby, indirectly, the omnipotent, omniscient God himself is tested. And (theoretically) vindicated. Theodicy: "The vindication of divine goodness and providence in view of the existence of evil," says my Oxford American Dictionary, though "suffering" is probably a better word, to my mind, than "evil". The intellectual problem, as Archibald MacLeish had his version of Satan put it,...