With Guinness beer, Irish dancing, Dave Allen, the shamrock, the potato, linen, and three quarters of The Corrs, Ireland has contributed much to the world. To this list can be added the enduring art form of the Limerick. Retired Anglican priest Christopher Goodwins has produced a Bible paraphrase entitled The Bible in Limerick Verse. Having spent a lot of time reading the Book of Job recently for my Wisdom Literature class at Kingsley, I particularly liked the Limerick version of Job 2.
Job came out in boils everywhere
The thing that might make a man swear!
But sitting in ashes
Job scraped at his rashes,
And spent a week pulling his hair.
I don't know if it's available in Australia, but it will be available for loan from the Tabor library shortly. Thanks are due to one of my work colleagues for bringing this splendid tome to my attention.
3 comments:
The Limerick version of Job 2 portraits the suffering of Job very well (I cetainly wouldn't want to be in that state of encountering things that make a man swear, and spending a week pulling my hair!), and better still it rhymes too! Almost poetic!
Glad you're enjoying working at Tabor library!
You might be interested in this online commentary "Putting God on Trial: The Biblical Book of Job" (http://www.bookofjob.org) as supplementary or background material for your study of the Book of Job. It is written by a Canadian criminal defense lawyer, now a Crown prosecutor, and it explores the legal and moral dynamics of the Book of Job with particular emphasis on the distinction between causal responsibility and moral blameworthiness embedded in Job’s Oath of Innocence. It is highly praised by Job scholars (Clines, Janzen, Habel) and the Review of Biblical Literature, all of whose reviews are on the website. The author is an evangelical Christian, denominationally Anglican. He is also the Canadian Director for the Mortimer J. Adler Centre for the Study of the Great Ideas, a Chicago-based think tank.
Robert Sutherland
Thanks for visiting my blog and letting me know about the book. I know of Habel. He gave the opening address at a conference I attended.
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