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Well, it's Mythopoeic Season again, and one of the books on the list is Ted Chiang's Stories of Your Life, which I recommend. A couple of non-spoiler thoughts.
1. In his afterword, Chiang comments that he thinks the Book of Job wusses out by having God restore Job's good fortune at the end. I remember taking a course in Biblical Greek -- we were reading the OT in the Greek equivalent of Medieval Latin. I dropped the course because I couldn't keep up, and took a class in Caaser, which Professor Bram was generious enough to let me take at different hours, but that's another story.
Anyway, we were reading the Book of Job. And Professor Green explained that many scholars thought that it originally ended with the Voice out of the Whirlwind, and that the happy ending was a later addition. She added that one of the problems scholars had was with the beginning, where there's actually a reason for Job's suffering. I asked if that part, the part where Satan gets permission from God to torment Job, might also be a later addition, and she said that it might.
Mind, I have no idea how one determines the evidence for this sort of thing.
2. In one of the stories, a comment is made that one quality of beauty is symmetry. As this is a character's opinion in a story, I shan't hold the author to it.
At a Halloween party, I asked a woman to decorate my face. She drew a flowery vine that curled around three quarters of my face, explaining that true symmetry was artistically dead and sterile. People's faces are asymmetrical, however slightly. I think she may have said that some study was done showing that a truly symmetrical face was disturbing, but I'm not sure, and in any case, she didn't give further details.
1. In his afterword, Chiang comments that he thinks the Book of Job wusses out by having God restore Job's good fortune at the end. I remember taking a course in Biblical Greek -- we were reading the OT in the Greek equivalent of Medieval Latin. I dropped the course because I couldn't keep up, and took a class in Caaser, which Professor Bram was generious enough to let me take at different hours, but that's another story.
Anyway, we were reading the Book of Job. And Professor Green explained that many scholars thought that it originally ended with the Voice out of the Whirlwind, and that the happy ending was a later addition. She added that one of the problems scholars had was with the beginning, where there's actually a reason for Job's suffering. I asked if that part, the part where Satan gets permission from God to torment Job, might also be a later addition, and she said that it might.
Mind, I have no idea how one determines the evidence for this sort of thing.
2. In one of the stories, a comment is made that one quality of beauty is symmetry. As this is a character's opinion in a story, I shan't hold the author to it.
At a Halloween party, I asked a woman to decorate my face. She drew a flowery vine that curled around three quarters of my face, explaining that true symmetry was artistically dead and sterile. People's faces are asymmetrical, however slightly. I think she may have said that some study was done showing that a truly symmetrical face was disturbing, but I'm not sure, and in any case, she didn't give further details.