The all-knowing God concept

Originally posted by jaywill

Those are all kind of late in the game to proclaim something of such significance, though.

From God's perspective all things He does are at the right time.

God is very profound. And the disclosure of His eternal purpose was unfolding over generations. No era was insignificant. Nothing is too late are too early.

At the appoin ...[text shortened]... ed.

But from [b]Job, the oldest book, it is clear that God is all-knowing.[/b]

oldest book in the Hebrew Canon is the book of Job

Where do you see that Job is the oldest book in the Hebrew Canon? I have never heard that. I have always assumed that Genesis was the oldest book in the Hebrew Canon.

Originally posted by sh76

oldest book in the Hebrew Canon is the book of Job

Where do you see that Job is the oldest book in the Hebrew Canon? I have never heard that. I have always assumed that Genesis was the oldest book in the Hebrew Canon.

Where do you see that Job is the oldest book in the Hebrew Canon? I have never heard that. I have always assumed that Genesis was the oldest book in the Hebrew Canon.

Genesis covers things before the time of Job. But biblical scholarship holds the earliest written book to be Job.

As with most things, someone would probably disagree. The Recovery Version's introduction to the book of Job has this comment:

"Time of Writing: According to the way of Job's nomadic living (1:3) and the way he offered the burnt offering for his children, it seems that this book was written at the time of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob (1:5; Gen. 22:13; 31:54), about 2000 B.C., five hundred years before Moses wrote the Pentateuch."

Originally posted by JS357
"Those are all kind of late in the game to proclaim something of such significance, though. "

I'm coming in from the outside, but how does being late in the game disqualify a POV?

What do you think of the reference I provided? It generally cycled back to the OT, even though it in some cases, started from NT springboards.

Edit: note Olympics referenc ...[text shortened]... 🙂

Are we finally having a discussion with a Judaic POV? I hope so. We need the diversity.

Being late doesn't disqualify a POV, but one has to ask why, if such a fundamental point was the intent the entire time, such a concept does not appear earlier in the OT.

I'm waiting on the question of the indication that Job was the earliest book of the OT.

The Talmud (BB 15-16) debates when Job lived, with the earliest opinion being on Moses' time and the latest being several hundred years later. There's also an opinion that he never existed but was a parable. But no Judaic source that I know of indicates that the book was written before the Pentateuch.

Edit: I apologize. I just looked it up and there is one opinion that Job lived in the time of Jacob, who pre-dated Moses by a few generations. Still, I see no indication that the book was written before the Pentateuch.

Originally posted by sh76
Being late doesn't disqualify a POV, but one has to ask why, if such a fundamental point was the intent the entire time, such a concept does not appear earlier in the OT.

I'm waiting on the question of the indication that Job was the earliest book of the OT.

The Talmud (BB 15-16) debates when Job lived, with the earliest opinion being on Moses' time and t few generations. Still, I see no indication that the book was written before the Pentateuch.

Edit: I apologize. I just looked it up and there is one opinion that Job lived in the time of Jacob, who pre-dated Moses by a few generations. Still, I see no indication that the book was written before the Pentateuch.

Put the authorship of Job aside as debatable then.

You said you felt Genesis was the oldest written book. Do you think that an all-knowing God is not revealed in Genesis then ?

I think God's omniscience is in Genesis as well. The challenge of Abraham that God would not destroy the entire Sodomite society if He knew of a minority of righteous people there is the case.

"Far be it from You to do such a thing, to put to death the righteous with the wicked, so that the righteous should be as the wicked. Far be it from You! Shall the Judge of all the earth not do justly ?" (Genesis 18:25)

Abraham expresses his confidence that God as the Judge of all the earth will do justly based on His all-knowing.

Before this you have the story of Noah. God knows the thoughts and imaginations of the hearts of every person then living in the world -

"And Jehovah saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually." (Genesis 6:5)

So even if you regard Genesis as your earliest book in the Hebrew canon, I think you still have the revelation of the all knowing God.

Originally posted by jaywill

Edit: I apologize. I just looked it up and there is one opinion that Job lived in the time of Jacob, who pre-dated Moses by a few generations. Still, I see no indication that the book was written before the Pentateuch.

Put the authorship of [b]Job aside as debatable then.

You said you felt Genesis was the oldest written book. Do ...[text shortened]... k in the Hebrew canon, I think you still have the revelation of the all knowing God.[/b]

Fair points.

What about posthumous reward or punishment? Do you see any indications of those in the Pentateuch or other early Bible books?

Originally posted by sh76
Being late doesn't disqualify a POV, but one has to ask why, if such a fundamental point was the intent the entire time, such a concept does not appear earlier in the OT.

I'm waiting on the question of the indication that Job was the earliest book of the OT.

The Talmud (BB 15-16) debates when Job lived, with the earliest opinion being on Moses' time and t few generations. Still, I see no indication that the book was written before the Pentateuch.

The time of writing may be only one element in the history of an OT book.

A possibility is that the stories and histories etc. told in these books were oral "folk" traditions that gradually took shape, and then at some point, perhaps more than once, were collected written as individual stories and then assembled and "edited" into a "book" of the OT.

Here is a review of a book on the subject:

http://articles.latimes.com/1999/mar/13/local/me-16868

And here is an overview of the subject:

http://journal.oraltradition.org/files/articles/1i/3_culley.pdf

It says in part: "The style of the Genesis stories may be understood, Gunkel argues,
only if it is seen that they are legends from oral tradition. As folk tradition,
these stories are in some real sense the common creation of the people
and thus express their spirit. The setting of these stories in the life of the
people is the family. Here Gunkel offers a picture, frequently cited, which
describes the family seated around a fi re on a winter’s evening listening
with rapt attention, especially the children, to the familiar, well-loved stories
about early times (xxxi). Gunkel also envisages a class of storytellers, wellversed
in the traditional narratives, who travelled the country and appeared
at festivals. While he agreed with Wellhausen that the basic unit in narration
was the single legend, he estimated that groups of stories were already
brought together into small collections at the oral stage (Sagenkränze).
Nevertheless, the main blocks of material in Genesis (primeval history,
the patriarchs, and the Joseph story) were assumed to have been the result
of literary collection, at which point some artistic reformulation may have
taken place."

Originally posted by sh76
[b
I'm waiting on the question of the indication that Job was the earliest book of the OT.

h.[/b]

Try reading the text by itself for the answer. There is no mention of Israel. There is no metion of the Patriarchs in the Bible. There is no mention of really any landmark that is familiar. Job even talks of beasts like the "Leviathan". This indicates to me that it is indeed the oldest of the books of the Bible.

Originally posted by sh76
Fair points.

What about posthumous reward or punishment? Do you see any indications of those in the Pentateuch or other early Bible books?

What about posthumous reward or punishment? Do you see any indications of those in the Pentateuch or other early Bible books?

What comes to mind first is the book of Daniel. A judgment of the many who sleep in the dust as the dead is indicated -

"And many of those who are sleeping in the dust of the ground will awake, some to life eternal and some to reproach, to eternal contempt." (Dan. 12:2)

This is obviously a prophecy of judgment of those dead who "awake" to be either punished or rewarded.

I think I would also have to consider Job again. At least he expects that there will be some kind of closure at the end of the world long after he is deceased.

"But I know that my Redeemer lives, And at the last He will stand upon the earth; And after this body of mine is destroyed, outside my flesh I will look on God, Whom I, even I, will look on for myself, And my eyes will see; I, and no other. " (Job 19:25-27)

Job is expecting some kind of vindication or final closure to his life before God even after his body has died and been dissolved.

At the moment these are the only two passages which clearly present a prophecy and an expectation of a patriarch that after death God will settle accounts with men.

Originally posted by whodey
Try reading the text by itself for the answer. There is no mention of Israel. There is no metion of the Patriarchs in the Bible. There is no mention of really any landmark that is familiar. Job even talks of beasts like the "Leviathan". This indicates to me that it is indeed the oldest of the books of the Bible.

Well, but Job is not really a history book. It is a tale; written like a parable. I don't know if there would necessarily be reference to historical places and events in this sort of tale.

Originally posted by sh76
Well, but Job is not really a history book. It is a tale; written like a parable. I don't know if there would necessarily be reference to historical places and events in this sort of tale.

Job mentions the land of Uz (1:1) an area associated with Edom (Lam. 4:21) west of the Arabian desert.

Originally posted by sh76
Well, but Job is not really a history book. It is a tale; written like a parable. I don't know if there would necessarily be reference to historical places and events in this sort of tale.

This link suggests that the mention of Uz by the writer of the prologue was one way to lend authenticity to the non-specific folk tale the prologue introduced. Other use of specificity (number of animals, etc.) had the same effect.

http://www.jhsonline.org/Articles/article_51.pdf