• What questions is The Book of Job beginning to ask about the nature of the world - and how punishment and reward are handed out? • Elihu raises what important turning point in his discourse? 34:29-30 • What is God’s response to Job’s claims of innocence? • Unlike, the book of Job there is no satisfying epilogue to the Holocaust. What recourse is there for the Jews in WW2, Bosnia, Darfur or someone losing a loved in the face of injustice? • Do you think The Book of Job ended without the ''happy ending'' epilogue in the original form? Why? Some scholars suspect this was tacked on later, to make the story more acceptable – after all the punishment Job was restored – just what everyone hopes would happen in real life. Like Job, Frankl could have asked,'' why is this happening? what did we do to deserve this?'' What he doesn''t ask is; why does God allow evil in the world. Frankl doesn''t concern himself with questions that he is unable to answer. What he does explore in his book is the question of ''how to find meaning in the midst of suffering''. In the section entitled: "The Meaning of Suffering" Frankl states that it is not necessary to suffer to find meaning, but that suffering may well be an achievement. Both books come at the question in different ways but each explore the possibility of learning or growing from one''s experience is impossible. The Book of Job and Man’s Search for Meaning In your paper of approximately 4-5 pages (14 pt. font. and pleases use footnotes to designate the quotes you are using in your paper. I am posing a number of questions relating to both books that will aid in writing your paper. There are ''correct'' conclusions I hope you''ll reach, but there is plenty of room for you to express your own point of view, just as long as you can make a convincing argument for it. • Refer to the quote by Maimonides, "Job was a good man, not a wise one." In the prologue of the story it says that once a year Job''s children would hold a great banquet. After the feast they were purified because Job thought they may have sinned. Is this the action of an upright person or someone hedging his bets? Why was Job a good man according to the accuser (satan)? • Job''s three friends come to offer him advice. They believe they understand the divine mind, and God’s purpose in the world. They see the surface, but are convinced they can discern the hidden meaning of God’s actions towards Job. In the 21st century we still hear echoes of this kind of advice. How would you express their advice in contemporary terms? What advice would they offer to a victim of the holocaust, Darfur, or Baghdad? If Frankl. was sitting in on the conversation what do you think he would say in response to their glib superficial understanding of Job''s predicament? • Read Isaiah 11:6-8. this is the naive version of paradise as the peaceable kingdom with non-violent wolves and vegetarian lions. We yearn for a moral world. A world that blesses the good and punishes the evil. regrettably we don''t live in that world. Now read; Job 38. Each verse offers Job an image independent of human beings; scary things, frightening, incomprehensible things, evil; thunder and lightening, hungry lions, the fierce war-horse, and the vulture feeding its young on rotting flesh. Isn''t God acknowledging violence and death in the world as a natural occurrence? But, what is God also saying about the world that we live in and how we are to respond to suffering that is visited upon us? • Frankl has a clear idea of the meaning of life. How does he define it? and what advice does Frankl offer us in regards to this cruel crazy beautiful world that we live in? • What is the “will to meaning” as Frankl understands it? Is it a choice or decision that a person makes to have meaning? Or a wish or longing for meaning or a belief that meaning exists? or somehow all three. What do you think comes first, the will or the meaning? • Read Job 42. Job''s final words issue from surrender; not from submission. How do you understand the difference between the two? • Frankl says, “He who has a why to live for can bear almost any how.” In the Book of Job do you think that there is a ''why'' for Job? What is it?