Engaging God's Problem -- Disagreements with Chapter Six

I have a lot of disagreements with chapter 6 of Bart Ehrman's Book God's Problem. Some of them trivial but others are major. Here they are:

1. One thing in this chapter that becomes clear is that Bart wants to pin on God what we have unleashed.

2. He talks of sexually transmitted disease as if it is an act of God -- last I looked sexually transmitted diseases are transmitted by sex -- a controllable behavior.

3. He states their are two authors of Job -- one for the narrative and the other for the dialogue. Is there any textual evidence for this? No. I think the problem with Job then would be that the narrative would not make much sense - -the whole book of Job hinges on the whole thing -- Job loses everything, the debate between him and his friends, God intervenes and then Job receives everything back. Without the debate, the narrative makes no sense and the debate would not make any sense without the why of 'why are they talking" Why is it that liberal scholars are so chronologically arrogant to think a single ancient author cannot use multiple styles in a book?

4. The two author theory leads to some very poor interpretation of the Bible in Job. P. 167 is particularly idiotic. The friends of Job think they are defending God but the text of Job says -- through God's mouth no less -- that Job was right and the friends were wrong. This makes no sense in the narrative part of book unless we know what they said in the poetic part. I have never have heard a more ridiculous theory.

5. Disease has its origins in death and ultimately the reason disease exists is because of us -- we didn't listen as a race to God in the garden.

6. Bart doesn't seem to address the fact that part of the answer to the problem of evil is life after death. Job's children die but where did they go? If they go to paradise they went from one party to another. If hell they went their because of their own evil. In short, Bart rarely factors in both personal responsibility and the afterlife into his discussion. They are both part of the answer the Bible has to evil but he does not put that into his factoring of what the Bible says about evil. There is also no honest consideration of Satan's involvement in being the origin of Evil. Maybe he thinks it is superstitious, but the Bible treats Satan as real and it should be considered in the discussion of what the BIBLE says about the problem of evil.

7. Job is not saying that he in outgunned he is simply saying from the Almighty's perspective he knows he cannot argue against God's justice. When Elihu speaks he never says Job sinned in doing this as Bart claims on p. 183 but that Job is not in position to question God's justice.

8. Bart accuses God of not giving Job a chance to get a word in. That is not the way the story reads -- if anything God says -- 'you got you audience, now what?" Job's response is to repent on his own -- we do not know what time God gave Job to respond and it is pure speculation to say God did not give Job a chance. The time is not recorded between God's answer and Job's response.

9. On to Ecclesiastes, Ehrman's makes the claim that is Solomon wrote the book then he would contradict himself compared to Proverbs -- I disagree -- there is a lot of agreement in Solomon's wisdom even with this book. What Ecclesiastes does is place all the other wisdom in its proper place. It is on this basis that Bart claims the book of Ecclesiastes is written in the 3rd Century BCE. How do we know? Do we have a text from that era that says so?

10. One thing that disappoints me is that Bart treats the last three chapters of the book of Ecclesiastes as if they don't exist. The book ends with a simple conclusion but it has end of the world, final judgment connotations -- fear God, obey him because He is going to bring every act to judgment. I agree that Ecclesiastes says some suffering makes no sense, but he does not draw the same conclusion -- reject the God of the Bible but to fear Him instead. Odd Huh?

Next: Agreements with Chapter Seven