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Dr. Jean Sheldon, Ph.D.
Subjects > Religion
Articles concering Jean Sheldon:
- [Taming the Leviathan]
- Job is one of the world's great pieces of literature, attempting to answer one of the toughest questions: "Why do bad things happen to good people?"
- Dr. Jean Sheldon wrote a dissertation entitled "The Book of Job as Hebrew Theodicy".
- Dr. Jean Sheldon is one of the leading experts on the Book of Job.
- "The Book of Job is one of the most challenging books in ancient literature - linguistically, philologically, historically, theologically, and literarily."
- The leviathan, and ancient Northwest Semitic dragon-like creature is one of the keys to understanding Job.
- The Book of Job has the largest number of hapax legommena, these are words used only once in the Hebrew Bible. This makes the book of Job very challenging to translate.
- The discovery of Ugaritic (a language of ancient Syria) is related to Hebrew, and has assisted in the understanding of Job.
- The book of Job has Egyptian and Mesopotamian influences.
- The language of Job also makes extensive use of the richness of the Hebrew language.
- Hebrew expands not by adding new words, but by adding new meanings to existing words.
- Some poetic lines in Job can be translated in different, and almost opposite, ways
- Job has many double entendres (words with multiple meanings)
- Dr. Sheldon believes that the author of Job was trying to respond to the Babylonian Creation, an ancient Mesopotamian work, Enuma Elish.
- Dr. Sheldon says of this:
- In this work, the most pristine gods–Apsu and Tiamat (salt water represented by a dragon-like creature)–make other gods who become rambunctious and noisy so that Apsu decides to kill his own offspring. Apsu’s son Ea gets wind of it and slays his father. Out of his father’s body, he builds a house in which he creates Marduk, the later hero of the myth. Eventually, the followers of Tiamat incite her to take revenge against Ea and the rest of the gods. She gathers a formidable army that the leading gods cannot face without turning and running away. Finally, Marduk is elected to take her on-for which he demands supremacy over all the other gods.
- When Marduk faces Tiamat, he uses wind to open her mouth so wide she cannot close it. Then he shoots an arrow from his new invention (a special bow) into her gut and, having disabled her, beats her head with his mace. He then cuts her in half. With one half, he banks the heavens; and with the other half, he dams up the waters of the earth. Out of her body, he creates the world. The work continues with the execution of Qingu, Tiamat’s consort, and out of Qingu’s blood mixed with clay spring human beings to be slaves for the gods. Then the gods work to build Babylon as a resting place for them and for Marduk. The tablets conclude with a banquet in Babylon (Marduk’s city) and in praise of his 50 names.
- The divine speeches of Job 38-41 are a response to Tablets IV and V, and deal with God's conflict between good and evil.
- There are eleven animals in Job 38-39, and these seem to parallel Tiamat's eleven warriors.
- Unlike in the Enuma Elish, where God conquers even and creates good out of it, in Job, God creates the world first, and then evil emerges (represented by the birth of Yam, the Sea) from the creation.
- Job is unique in that it portrays God treating evildoers with as much kindness and care as the righteous.
- From Dr Sheldon's dissertation:
- Yahweh... takes care of all his creatures -- good and bad alike.
- Yahweh provides an appropriate environment for the peculiar needs of all his creation - both prey and preyer.
- He puts limits around chaos, oversees the interactions of warring elements, ..., provides for the young of evildoers,... allows the monarch of evil to move unconquered through the deep and to rule over all those who are arrogant.
- Dr. Sheldon has coined the term "cosmological justice" which is a justice that comes from creation in which all humans are equal.
- Stories in Semitic literature similar to Job:
- Enuma Elish - Babylonian Creation
- Ludlul bel nemeqi - Poem of the Righteous
- Babylonian Theodicy
- Erra and Ishum - the Poem of Erra
- Dr. Sheldon believes the author of Job studied all those texts and was relying on his memory of them.
- Seventh-day Adventists see precedent in the inspiration and writing process of Ellen G. White, and the use of language and thought forms current in their times, the same way that the author of Job was inspired to reference a substantial library of works of his time.
- "God is always current relevant to time, place and culture".
- Critics of American Protestantism claim that too much time is spent studying the Old Testament. However Dr. Sheldon makes the case that there are significant educational benefits from the study of the Old Testament
- It is quality literature
- It speaks to the entire Near Eastern World
- Helps the individual appreciate God and the culture that he is speaking to
- For Christians to read the New Testament without the Old Testament is to be unprepared to understand the messages in the New Testament.
- Knowledge of the cultures surrounding Israel advances the meaning of the ancient biblical text.
- Shakespearean drama mirrored the Old Testament
- Medieval mystery plays mirror the Old Testament.
- In cultures other than America, bible students are often much more comfortable with the Old Testament, and wonder why God doesn't punish more often.
- Some people misunderstand the cultural message in the Bible Old Testament, and think that it's practices, such as stoning of adulterers, regardless of the time, place, and culture. Fortunately most Christians refuse to go this far.
- Dispensationalism or outright rejection of the inspiration of the Old Testament are two problematic ways of dealing with this challenge.
- Dr. Sheldon says one solution is to understand inspiration in a more biblical way.
- Some helpful texts:
- On clarity of language: Num. 12:7-8; 1 Cor. 13:8-9, 12; Heb. 8:5; John 16:25-27
- Culture: Heb. 1:1; Matt. 5:21, 33, 38; 19:9; Num. 27:1-11; 36:1-12
- Dr. Sheldon makes the case for this true function of the Old Testament:
- a divinely inspired record of the many and various ways God has dealt with individuals and nations in the many different situations and cultural languages in which He has found them. It is by understanding why God would act in so many different ways and how He adapted His ways to the people that we can both come to trust Him and to adapt ourselves to meet people where they are.
- Dr. Sheldon concludes with this view of the Old Testament:
- Only by utilizing the Old Testament to its most profitable advantage can we truly understand the New Testament.
Society of Biblical Literature
2003 SBL Annual Meeting - Atlanta, Georgia
22-25 November 2003
- S24-110 - http://www.sbl-site2.org/Congresses/AM/2003/AM_Public_Program_Review.php3?Date=2003-11-24&Start_time=16:00:00
- Hebrew Scriptures and Cognate Literature - 4:00 PM - 6:30 PM
- The Satan in the Book of Job and the Poem of Erra: An Intertextual Analysis by L. Jean Sheldon
- Modern scholarship has rightly maintained that the Satan of the book of Job is not the adversarial figure posited by Christian traditions. It is commonly concluded that the Satan is a member of the divine council and serves as agent to Yahweh on the earth. This study shows that, like Yahweh and Job, the Satan plays an ambiguous role in the book. It can be demonstrated from the Hebrew text that the Satan is not necessarily a bona fide member of the sons of Elohim nor is he the adversarial figure of later literature. In an intertextual comparison of the Satan pericopes with the Poem of Erra, the Satan may be compared with Erra (in the Poem of Erra) and his relationship to Marduk, while comparisons may be made between the following: Yahweh and Marduk; Job and Ishum. Though there are as many differences as similarities to be made between the pairs of figures, the differences also serve to clarify the possible intentions the final author of the prologue had for the sudden appearance of this cosmological character. It is even possible that a subtle rivalry may be detected between the Satan and Job, just as Ishum (Erra’s vizier) outshines Erra in subtle ways in the Poem of Erra.
Other links concerning Dr. Jean Sheldon:
- http://www.majpark.org.au/bulletin/Bulletin040321.pdf Majestic Park Baptist Church Bulletin
- Thought For The Week
- �My parents showed me a lot about a gracious God. As a result, viewing God as a loving Parent hasn’t been a difficult task. To me He is a God, who like my parents, not only has great expectations but who understands my limitations and readily gives needed encouragement.’
- [Jean Sheldon, quoted in �Making Summer Count’ by Joyce Heinrich & Annette Heinrich La Placa
- www.santarosasda.org/bulletin/030322.html Santa Rosa Church Bulletin March 22, 2003 (no longer online)
- Message - "The Prodigal Father" - Dr. Jean Sheldon, professor of religion at Pacific Union College, Angwin
Articles by Jean Sheldon
- [The Concubine's Story]
- Through raw human tragedy, a portrait of the cross.
- Inside that house, still sleeping and deliberately oblivious to her pain, are her host and her husband.
- In his own testimony he betrays the truth about his total self-centeredness: His only horror was not over what they did to her, but only over what they intended to do to him. In brief, his character remains totally devoid of the fruit of the Spirit—and even of humanity.
- From the original paper, “Reading the Bad in Our Story: A Prerequisite to Redemption,” read at the 1997 Adventist Society for Religious Studies meeting in San Francisco.
- Also available here: http://www.adventist.org/rhp/pdf/2000/1539-2000.pdf
Books by Jean Sheldon
Check out [Facts About Trees]
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