Just finished Ecclesiastes, Lamentations, and Job

Just finished Ecclesiastes, Lamentations, and Job

What's an uplifting book of the Bible to make me less depressed?

Revelations is pretty exciting. But Psalms is what you want.

>Not knowing that despair is all a finite creature--disconnected from the infinite--can experience.

You should find happiness in Job and Ecclesiastes, as they both destroy the veil of escapism.

Psalms is good; narrative-wise, Esther or Ruth are good short OT books without the angst
For NT, maybe John among the Gospels, or Philippians or Colossians among the epistles

The Gospels of course.

Jesus is the Deus Ex Machina that saves the whole cursed Jewish shitshow.

Isaiah, Psalms, Matthew.

How can you still be depressed after Ecclesiastes?

There are no happy stories in the Bible. Just read Judges and enjoy the action. It's like the Jewish version of the Iliad

The Gospel of John

>Not being uplifted by Job
The whole point of Job is that if you keep faith through awful calamity even when it is an act of God, your faith shall be rewarded and you shall be restored. If that isnt uplifting idk what is. If you want a book where the hero is bulletproof and nothing bad happens to him and he saves the day to be loved by all go read a Superman comic.

Esther

You two sound like Job's 'friends' to be honest

I agree, I'm not even religious but Ecclesiastes from what I found was probably one of the more uplifting ones, at least for me.

Song of Songs is a celebration of love.
If that evokes too many robot feels, try Philippeans. It's basically just a short letter of pump-up "you can do it" encouragement.

>The whole point of Job is that if you keep faith through awful calamity even when it is an act of God, your faith shall be rewarded and you shall be restored.

That's literally not the takeaway of Job.

Like, holy shit, that's not the lesson you should learn from it.

Read it again. Carefully.

I think the point of Job is that there isn't really a point. Shit happens to Job for cosmic reasons that he cannot know. He suffers and questions everything. Then God shows up and answers nothing. Job is changed by the encounter with God, and then he gets his shit back.

I think that tacking a moral onto it like God rewarding faith through restoration misses it. Since textual critics argue (& have for a long time) that the prose parts were added long after the poetry was written, the cosmic prelude and the restorative conclusion were not part of the plan (also Elihu's speech). It just ends with God showing up and Job praising him. If it was written during the Babylonian captivity, as a theodicy that addressed indirectly the destruction of Jerusalem, there couldn't be a happy ending added. Shit happens but God remains true (emeth).

Apocalypse

I think God gives Job some satisfactory answers, he's like FFS sake job, I'm busy with all the pebbles on the beaches and fuckin EVERYTHING in the wrold I cant be worrying about you and your fuckin oxen all the time. So Job is still a whiney Jew but he gets a bit scared because God calls his bluff and actually SHOWS UP. That's whem Job repents and praises God, and God rewards him with many grandchildren and oxen.

Does Ecclesiastes really do that? Its point is to just enjoy the time you have despite life being ultimately meaningless. The epilogue tacks on "obey the commandments" but that's obviously not the core of the piece.

About Job, I can't talk about source criticism, but thematically the prose beginning and end are totally different to the poem. In the intro Job is totally pious and doesn't question God. Then the poem starts and he's a totally different character, absolutely furious about his predicament.

LOL maybe in the proddy abridged version

YEah because the Bible was written to make people feel good!