Viktor Frankl and the Book of Job
A Search for Meaning
by Marshall H. Lewis
An analysis of the Book of Job and its themes of meaning and suffering through the writings of the existential psychologist Viktor E. Frankl.
As a Holocaust survivor, neurologist and psychiatrist Dr Viktor E. Frankl had a personal stake in the effectiveness of his approach to psychology: he lived the suffering about which he wrote. With this new reading of the Book of Job, Lewis further develops Frankl’s concept of Logotherapy as a literary hermeneutic, presenting readers with the opportunity to discover unique meanings and clarify their attitudes toward pain, guilt, and death. Key issues emerge from the discussion of three different movements, which address Frankl’s concept of the feeling of meaninglessness and his rejection of reductionism and nihilism, the dual nature of meaning, and his ideas of ultimate meaning and self-transcendence. Discovering meaning through participation with the text enables us to see that Job’s final response can become a site for transcending suffering.
Marshall H. Lewis is a psychotherapist and logotherapist who has practiced for over thirty years. He is a frequent speaker on Viktor Frankl’s theory and serves on the faculty of the Viktor Frankl Institute of Logotherapy. His graduate training in psychology and doctoral training in Bible, culture, and hermeneutics led him to write this book.
- By (author) Marshall H. Lewis
"Applying Victor Frankl's logotherapy to the book of Job, Marshall Lewis sees Job as one forced to make sense of what appears to be an absurd situation. A fresh reading of both Frankl and Job, Lewis, following Frankl, argues that while any experience can be made meaningful, in the end we are sometimes better off accepting a world in which suffering has no meaning, at least at present. A bold and ambitious reading that respects the text of Job as much as it does the texts of Frankl, the book uses Frankl to construct a new hermeneutic of reading." C. Fred Alford, Professor Emeritus, University of Maryland, College Park, and author of After the Holocaust: The Book of Job, Primo Levi, and the Path to Affliction
—
Similar Books
Cyril of Alexandria’s Christological Exegesis
Explorations of Partitive Exegesis in the Dialogues on the Trinity
Volume 70
Extracanonical Traditions and the Holy Land
Texts, Rituals, and Material Culture in Late Antique Palestine
From Joseph to Jesus
The Joseph Narrative as a Compositional Template from Old Greek Esther to the Gospel of Luke
Volume 125
Nicholas of Lyra’s Commentaries on the Gospels of Matthew and Luke
Franciscan Exegesis in a Time of Crisis
Punning in Odd or Elegant Constructions in Jeremiah
The Convergence of Linguistics, Rhetoric, and Textuality in the Hebrew Text of Jeremiah
Reformed Covenantal Eudaimonism
Wilhelmus à Brakel (1635–1711) on Highest Good, Virtue, and Law
Volume 87
The Biblical Tale of Judah and Tamar in Fourteenth-Century Iran
A Judeo-Persian Versified Account by Shāhīn with Scholarly Edition, Annotated Translation and Persian Transliteration
Volume 94, 951
The Body
Lived, Cultured, Adorned: Essays on Dress and the Body in the Bible and Ancient Near East in Honor of Nili S. Fox
The Therapeutae as the Best Paradigm for the Contemplative Life
A Contextual Reading of Philo of Alexandria's De Vita Contemplativa
