Leviathan and the Hook (Part 4)

A New Commentary on the Book of Job

One morning I was digesting the daily bread of the Scriptures when a phrase from the book of Job stuck in my throat. As I assumed I was meant to do, I reached for my Bible commentary, as I would a glass of water, for relief. But instead of assisting me with my digestion of the word of God, the author/scholar offered me grittier grain and tougher meat to consume. I read of the latest ivory tower arguments about the minutiae of the passage. I was given a seat at the head of the table to view the technical battles which are the bread and butter of scholarship. I continued to choke and was thus completely unconcerned with whose commentary was correct. In frustration, I took my issues to G.K. Chesterton’s Leviathan and the Hook for.

Leviathan and the Hook is a review of Professor E.T. Dillon’s commentary on Job. I do not have his commentary on Job. By the end of Chesterton’s essay, I have no desire to invest in what the good Professor has to say. Instead I thirst for more of the wit and wisdom of Chesterton. But to engage Chesterton I have to be willing to play along.

While discussing the question of who is best equpped to read and apply passages of the Bible, Chesterton leads us to a surprising answer. His point is not to reject scholarship or science, but to recognize that the way that they read the Bible often misses what is most important. We “everyday readers” who approach the Scriptures with a sincere and open heart have what is most needed.

I’ve spaced the sentences out and added emphasis to draw out his argument. Enjoy part 4:

It is said, of course, that this scientific quality is only applied to

the actual facts, which are the department of science.

But what are the actual facts?

There are very few facts

in connection with a work of literature which are

really wholly apart from literary tact and grasp.

That certain words are on a piece of parchment in a certain order

science can say.

Whether in that order they make sense or nonsense

only literature can say.

That in another place (say on a brick) the same words are in another order

science can say.

Whether it is a more likely order

only literature can say.

That on two bricks there is the same sentence

science can say.

Whether it is the sort of sentence one man would write on two bricks, or two men happen to write on their own respective bricks,

only literature can say.

Let me take an example from Professor Dillon's own interesting introduction.

Referring to a controversy among scholars

about the possible indebtedness

of the unknown Hebrew poet to other Hebrew writers, he says:

"On the one hand it is doubtless possible that the words: ‘Art thou the first man born? Or wast thou brought forth before the hills?’ were suggested by the verses in Proverbs, ‘Before the mountains were settled, before the hills, was I brought forth.'"¹

Of course it is possible,

but I cannot see

(as a matter of literary common sense)

why it is in the smallest degree likely.

Surely two independent people or two hundred independent people

might use so natural a phrase as that a thing was older than the hills.

We might as well bind together in chains of plagiarism

all the people who ever said that

a thing shone like the sun or

bloomed and faded like a flower.

Outside the use of hills (those rare objects) and of

being brought forth (that unusual and pathological

process²),

the two passages are not

in spirit or inspiration

in the least similar,

for the passage in Proverbs (if I remember it aright)

is an abstract, mystical excursus of which

the point is that a Logos or idea,

preceded all physical phenomena,

whereas the passage in Job

is simply a sharp, savage joke,

of which the point is that

a man is an uncommonly

unimportant fungus

on the face of the earth.

No poet would naturally take a thing from one to use it in the other:

but then to feel this is simply a matter of poetic sentiment

and science is no more use in the matter than gardening.

Science can only say that the same Hebrew word is used;

but whether the word is common, or natural, or forced, or

affected, or inevitable is a question of pure literature;

and it is the whole question at issue.

The Higher Critic, as such,

can only see that the words are the same; that is, he

can only see what a child could see.

---

---

1. Proverbs 8: 25 in 20-25: ‘The Lord brought me forth as the first of his works, before his deeds of old; I was formed long ages ago, at the very beginning, when the world came to be. When there were no watery depths, I was given birth, when there were no springs overflowing with water; before the mountains were settled in place, before the hills, I was given birth,before he made the world or its fields or any of the dust of the earth.”

2. Notice the sarcasm of both parenthetical phrases.