Thursday, October 8, 2020

Kirsten Nielsen on "Satan" in Job 1 being a Son of God

I have discussed Job 1:6 and its implications for Latter-day Saint Christology and Satanology at:

 

Refuting Jeff Durbin on “Mormonism” (see the section “The "Mormon Jesus" being a "Spirit Brother" of Satan--what the Bible really says”):

 

Danish biblical scholar Kirsten Nielsen offered the following comments about Satan in Job 1 and how Satan is a member of the “sons of God”:

 

The scene in heaven concerns jealousy between brothers and its consequences. The father in the Book of Job is not an earthly father but Yahweh himself. We are told that one day his sons came and stood before the patriarch in heaven, and among them came Satan also. In Job 1:6 the sons are called sons of God. But this is often not interpreted as a figurative expression representing a father-son relationship between Yahweh and sons of God; the use of the word ben is understood in the same way as that in which ben may refer to a single individual within a species in the context of other nouns . . . In his commentary on the dialogue between Yahweh and Satan, a lone scholar, Francis I. Andersen (F.I. Andersen, Job: An Introduction and Commentary [TOTC; Leicester: Inter-Varsity Press, 1976], p. 85), has drawn attention to the very free-and-easy tone that Satan uses towards Yahweh. There are no formalities, no court etiquette using ‘my Lord!’ and ‘your servant’, but a straightforward, intimate relationship. Andersen concludes from this observation that we again have evidence that Satan does not belong to the circle of Yahweh’s respectful servants. But he is wrong here, because if it is not the heavenly council that meets in the prologue to the Book of Job but a father and his sons, then the familiar form of speech is not offensive but a natural part of the relationship between a father and his eldest son. (Kirsten Nielsen, Satan the Prodigal Son? A Family Problem in the Bible [The Biblical Seminar 50; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1998], 83, 88)