That out of the way, there are elements in The Book of Jobwhich could quell an Alien Astronaut theorist’s heart.
From an apocryphal work, The Testament of Job [an Egyptian work attributed to the Therapeutae movement, written somewhere between 200 B.C. and 200 A.D.], comes this:
“he who sat in the great chariot got out and greeted job[ab]” and took his soul (LII, 647)
And from the midrash on Job in Baba Bathra, part of the Babylonian Talmud comes this:
God “gave Job a taste of the future world.”
And from The Old Testament [Douay Version], Chapters 38;1 and 40:6 is this:
“Then the Lord addressed Job out of the storm.”
Job, at the end of his tormenting and colloquy with God indicates he had an epiphany, a cosmic consciousness moment – Chapter 42:3 [Douay]:
"I have dealt with great things that I do not understand; things too wonderful for me, which I cannot know. I had heard of you by word of mouth but now my eye has seen you.”
(The new book, which opens this topic, addresses the various interpretations of The Book of Job and winds down with the matter of Shoah, or the Holocaust and the absence of God during that horrible time for Jews and humanity.)
My concern here is the choice of God or the choice of UFOs.
If there is an alien astronaut connection within the poetry and prose of The Book of Job, I leave that to others to discuss.
If there are those who think that God and the theology attendant to Him is separate from the UFO phenomenon, I leave that for them to debate.
Here, I choose to offer that God has evaporated (or died); he’s, at least, silent to the point that he may as well be dead. [See Friedman book noted in an earlier posting here]
What we have is a choice to pursue a phenomenon that has an apparent tangibility or reality, or we have a God that is immaterial, for our time, and useless as a phenomenon, as the European Jews found out in the 1940s.
We can touch UFOs [Michalak] but we can’t touch God, as was possible for Moses’ wife Sepphora [Exodus 4:24] since God has either died or is hiding out [Friedman, op. cit].
And while a UFO may not offer us sustenance or treasure, a UFO won’t torment or destroy us as God did with Job and his family.
If I have my druthers, I’ll stick with UFOs (for now) and leave God to “the ignorant multitude.” [Larrimore, Page 83]
RR
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