This Is The Shack That Job Built: Theodicy and Polytheism in William Paul Young’s Evangelical Bestseller
William Paul Young’s bestselling evangelical novel The Shack (2007) is a twenty-first century re-imagining of the Biblical book of Job, a re-imagining that strangely multiplies the number of divine beings responding to the problem of suffering. I argue that Young has inadvertently rediscovered the a...
| Main Author: | |
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| Format: | Electronic Article |
| Language: | English |
| Check availability: | HBZ Gateway |
| Journals Online & Print: | Drawer...
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| Fernleihe: | Fernleihe für die Fachinformationsdienste |
| Published: |
Oxford University Press
[2020]
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| In: |
Journal of the American Academy of Religion
Year: 2020, Volume: 88, Issue: 2, Pages: 505-542 |
| Standardized Subjects / Keyword chains: | B
Young, William P. 1955-, The shack
/ Old Testament
/ Theodicy
/ Polytheism
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| IxTheo Classification: | AB Philosophy of religion; criticism of religion; atheism CB Christian life; spirituality KBQ North America KDG Free church |
| Online Access: |
Volltext (Verlag) Volltext (doi) |
| Summary: | William Paul Young’s bestselling evangelical novel The Shack (2007) is a twenty-first century re-imagining of the Biblical book of Job, a re-imagining that strangely multiplies the number of divine beings responding to the problem of suffering. I argue that Young has inadvertently rediscovered the ancient Israelite polytheism of three thousand years ago, for the simple reason that justifying the gods’ ways to humans is an easier task than justifying God’s ways to humans. A “deep time” approach to contemporary religiously-interested literature illuminates the Biblical and Ancient Near East texts with which The Shack is in dialogue. Recent critical-historical Bible scholarship, meanwhile, uncovers the pantheon of gods worshipped in ancient Israelite religion, gods whose genealogical traces lead us to The Shack’s divine characters. |
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| ISSN: | 1477-4585 |
| Contains: | Enthalten in: American Academy of Religion, Journal of the American Academy of Religion
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| Persistent identifiers: | DOI: 10.1093/jaarel/lfaa021 |