As I finished reading the Book of Job this morning, I pondered his friend Elihu. He is the last of the friends of Job to speak, and unlike the others, he doesn’t attack Job as much as he wishes to defend God and His justice. Job never responds to him. And when the friends of Job are ordered to offer penitential sacrifices for what they said, Elihu isn’t numbered among them.
So, I did some research to find out what was going on. I learned that some scholars believe that Elihu and his speech were inserted into the book after it was written. It’s what’s called an interpolation or textual corruption. That’s why neither God nor Job address Elihu.
But, as an Orthodox Christian, that’s not a satisfactory answer. We see this claim of corruption happen quite frequently in biblical scholarship. Academics claim this or that passage is not original. Others dispute authorship. Everywhere you turn, it seems there are critics who wish to tear down every traditional belief about scripture. It’s not surprising. Biblical scholarship is an academic field in which there are numerous atheists. These men and women view the Bible as being no different from any other ancient work, except they perhaps have an ax to grind against it because of the people who believe in it. That’s why I’m often not impressed with biblical scholars and their theories (though there are undoubtedly some good ones out there!).
So, how do we Orthodox Christians approach scripture? We believe that just as the Holy Spirit has guided the Church through the ages, He has also guided both the writing and preservation (and perhaps gentle editing) of scriptural books over the centuries. What that means is even if we found a 3,000 year old manuscript of some Old Testament books that differed somewhat from what we have today, we Orthodox Christians wouldn’t care too much. We tend to not be biblical literalists anyway. Instead, we look at what spiritual lessons the scriptures are teaching us, and we try to live by those things.
Let the biblical scholars make their noise; let them cast doubt on everything they want. But we Orthodox Christians need not be bothered by these things. We accept our scriptural canon with simplicity while expounding it with divine wisdom.
In case you’re wondering about Elihu, patristic commentators see him as zealous for the truth, though a bit pompous and arrogant. For the most part, Elihu attempted to justify God while being careful not to attack Job. Therefore, he was more correct than the other friends, but still limited in his knowledge due to the time that he lived in. The idea of good people suffering for God’s sake was not popular until the suffering Messiah arrived, so we can’t blame him for not fully grasping this concept. God did not rebuke him because his errors were fewer and less severe, and Job never had a chance to respond to him because God stepped in. In some sense, Elihu’s speech was the forerunner to God’s corrective final word.
Why “most scholars say” carries any weight in theology baffles me.
If we take an honest, objective look at our relationship to “scholarship”, and “science”, it seems clear that we are actually receiving merely what some man or woman says *about* said scholarship or science. Most of us are nowhere near the science or scholarship itself. People say stuff. It’s an expressed opinion with many degrees of separation when a newscaster or scholar says, “studies show…”. The vast majority of us have no direct view of the science or scholarship, and won’t have the time to explore or test it. There are very many opportunities for the introduction of bias in such information exchanges.