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Job is suffering from illness without understanding it. His impairment and exclusion render him disabled in an abled, gloating but threatened society for which he is the laughing stock despite his exceptional piety. His psychic and spiritual breakthrough comes when God makes him reflect on and in the mirror of the wild and disorderly bodies of the two monstrosities, Behemoth and Leviathan, elsewhere in the Hebrew Bible exemplifying chaos, but now unexpectedly celebrated. Even as possible relief thanks to light-hearted humour these grotesque bodies emancipate the object of body-politics by subverting the centre of certainty and power. In this study the Bakhtinian critique of the ‘monologisation’ of the human body and its experience promised to be fruitfully combined with psychoanalytic insights about imprisoned body-images to enrich the relevance of the book of Job. Intradisciplinary and/or interdisciplinary implications: The interface of biblical hermeneutics and exegesis with other research fields in the social sciences and humanities such as psychoanalytic theory and literary criticism expanded the horizon of insight for all parties involved, not only for biblical studies.

Whereas the Song of Songs can be said to be about Eros, the Book of Job could be about Thanatos. Yet, the Song ends with a crucial reference to death, and in the Book of Job there are subtle traces of sexuality: the first chapter tells about probably promiscuous parties held by Job’s children who then die during such a feast. Job reacts by referring to the womb, which presumably has sexual connotations. The womb is once again an issue in chapters 3 and 10. Twice he mentions breasts, although negatively connoted. In his last speech, Job suddenly refers several times to hypothetical transgressions with women, which betrays his hidden desires behind his piety. In addition, apart from body-parts such as the feet, hands and heart, a tail, loins and even a nose might sometimes be interpreted as euphemisms with phallic hints. In the final chapter his three ‘new’ daughters are the most beautiful in the world, perhaps presenting him as eventually allowing his libido to be re-introjected. Through a psychoanalytical lens it is, however, possible to make sense of this unexpected presence of sexual traces in a book about death. Intradisciplinary and/or interdisciplinary implications: Approaching texts from a psychoanalytical perspective challenges historical-critical exegesis by questioning its assumption that universality dissolves into historicity. It adds unconscious aspects of a text, here interpreting unexpected traces of sexuality in a book about mourning. This is done in a divergent way by pointing out various possible understandings.

Although the prosaic frame before and after the poetic, main body of the Job narrative mentions two sets of children, one can question this and explain the change as psychological development in the parental figure, Job, himself. There are at least three clues to this: Job receives more in the end than he lost in the beginning, yet the number of his children remains the same; there is no mention of Job’s wife being traumatised by the loss of her children and as there is no mention that Job’s body is healed, it remains uncertain if he could still father children. Instead, the repeated substitutions especially in the sacrificial sections suggest that Job empathically identifies with the threatened bodies of others so that he inevitably becomes a sacrificial victim himself. Through his traumatic bodily experience, he matures and shifts to a more adult-like ego state where bodies are mentally exchanged. https://doi.org/10.17159/2312-3621/2022/v35n2a8

The question about fantasy and fiction in religion is probably as old as the first interrogation and critique of revealed religion. However, the relation between fiction and religion is a two-way street. Underlying both is imagination which brings into play the psychological dimension of both but this in turn is always based on the body. Fantasy dreamily imagines the perfect body precisely to try and fill the gap left by imperfection. As an example from religious fiction, the two monstrosities in the second divine speech virtually at the end of the book of Job will be viewed through the hermeneutical lens of abjection, as explained by Julia Kristeva. As projections of the sick protagonist’s own frustrated sexual and aggressive impulses embodied as abject animal bodies they are surprisingly celebrated by the Divine who can contain the id in its protest against the superego. In the tension between play and seriousness in this transitional space negotiated by the ego creativity rooted in the chaotic and free, polymorph perversity opens the door to the revelation from the unconscious. The fundamental question remains, however, if this creativity is purely human meaning-making or tapping into the divine through some kind of intuition.

This study is about the mouth and its parts in the book of Job on the one hand, and on psychic introjection on the other, even when these two aspects do not completely overlap. The dominance of the mouth and orality in this biblical book speaks for its symbolic and psychic implications, including dependency and depression, but also symbolisation and empathy, where psychic digestion is resymbolising what has been desymbolised by trauma. The hypothesis is therefore that the mouth plays a crucial role in the process of mourning in the Book of Job. Contribution: Interdisciplinary research into biblical texts from the perspective of psychoanalytic literary criticism adds to the broader horizons within which these texts can be analysed and interpreted. Within this frame, the focus on the mouth continues and promotes the Bodies Studies movement, which has been blossoming for over 40 years.

Not only trauma, mourning and disease, but also disability has been recognised in the Book of Job in which the body plays an exceptional role. The protagonist is suffering physically, psychically and spiritually. Although the word, חלה [be sick, ill], never occurs in the book, his body is portrayed negatively being afflicted by some unknown illness, which would probably exclude him from the community described in Leviticus 13–14. While חָרֵשׁ [be silent] occurs several times in the book, it never has the alternative meaning of deaf. Yet, his explicit empathy and sacrificial charity לַעִוֵּר [for the blind] and לַפִּסֵּחַ [for the lame] in 29:15 resonate with his own plight and undermine the possible discriminatory restrictions of like disabled in Leviticus 21:18. In this way, the Book of Job has a transgressive and yet liberating subtext, subverting the idealised body of his status quo. This subtle and veiled critique by the protagonist and therefore the book can be interpreted from a psychoanalytic perspective on physical disability and illness, where the symptoms and alleged imperfections of the body quietly cry out against social and cultural injustice of which they are the projections and mirrors when the context has silenced a concern for the body because of a lack of compassion as it is in the situation of Job. Contribution: The intersection and cross-fertilisation of Biblical Studies, Disability Studies and psychoanalytic theory as interdisciplinary approach widens the horizons and deepens the insight of all three research fields, hopefully for the benefit of those who suffer from their bodies, their psyches and their societies.

Job’s body is ‘portrayed’ in a text that can be nothing more than audible. Compared with the eyes of Job (mentioned 49 times explicitly), his ears (mentioned 13 times, i.e., four times less than his eyes, perhaps because his ears are less visible) play a much more subtle role, underlying even his final confession in 42:5-6, where it seems/sounds that his eyes gave him (only) his final in-‘sight’. That leaves the impression that his ears give him access to the second-hand testimony of tradition but his eyes to his own, personal experience. The hypothesis of this study is that a psychoanalytical perspective can give additional meaning to this polarity and cooperation of the senses for both the main character and recipient of the book of Job in that Job’s (in)sight depends on the foundation of the aural experience, even the musical experience. Contribution: A psychoanalytical perspective adds to the breadth and depth of insight gained from studying the role of the sensory experience in the narrative about the psychic and spiritual development of the protagonist in the Book of Job.

The Song of Songs is regarding Eros, whereas the Book of Job seems to be about Thanatos. Despite the dominance of the theme of death in this biblical book, no word for a corpse or even a dead body occurs. Absence is, however, hermeneutically so important that it probably constitutes its essence in that only gaps leaving questions can be interpreted. The theory of the French psychoanalyst, Mária Török, about a phantom in a psychic crypt as unknown parental bequeathal can shed some light in the darkness of this mysterious absence: God never reveals the secret deal with the Satan to the traumatised Job who consequently cannot see the hidden wisdom – the truth – of the ‘corpse’. It is possible that death is more צַלְמָוֶת [a shadow of death, a word that occurs more in Book of Job than in any other biblical book], than a body, explaining something of Job’s ambivalent attitude to physical death. Contribution: The interdisciplinary research into biblical texts as literature from a psychoanalytical perspective adds to the broader horizons within which these texts can be analysed and interpreted. This is in line with the current shift of psychoanalytical interpretations away from psychiatry to literary studies.

Compared with other biblical books that are named after its main protagonist, Job mentions many (at least 72) body parts. Yet hair is explicitly referred to only once, even when it plays a relatively significant role in other books in the Hebrew Bible. This virtual absence of hair in the book can at first glance be explained by the shaving of Job’s ‘head’ as early as 1:20, using a different verb, גזז, from the one in Leviticus 13:33 and 14:8.9, גלח, where the context is that of צָרָעַת, wrongly translated as ‘leprosy’, but probably referring to the same skin problem from which Job is suffering. This connection to the skin is important, because the two body parts seem to be almost mutually exclusive, as also suggested by 1:21 immediately after the aforementioned shaving, where Job considers himself to be essentially עָרֹם [naked]. This means that hair has, amongst other functions, also a clothing-like role in the book of Job. Three questions will hence be explored: how ‘absence’ is to be psychoanalytically interpreted and more specifically, what consequences all of this has on the virtual absence of hair in the Book of Job and, finally, what relevance this absence has for the South African context. Contribution: Applying a psychoanalytical perspective to both the body and to absence, the biblical text is contextualised on a broader horizon than what the purely historical-critical approach can render. The additional African context widens the relevance of the ancient book even further.

The body plays an important role in the book of Job – as do animals. According to psychoanalytical specifically object-relations theory, a subjective body image was partly constructed through the internalisation of external stimuli from significant others who mirrored the subject through their feedback or through their own bodies, which served as an ideal or critique to the subject. Amongst the external stimuli, animals constitute such significant others. Animals could therefore have impacted Job’s subjective body image, particularly as their bodies were described in detail by God as a response to Job’s complaints and searching. Contribution: Two theoretical and interrelated problems were acknowledged although they cannot be satisfactorily solved: the cultural aspect of the body image and the relationship to animals.

Danna Nolan Fewell (editor). The Oxford Handbook of Biblical Narrative. Christoph Stenschke Stephan Anthony Cummins & Jens Zimmermann (editors), Acts of Interpretation: Scripture, Theology and Culture. Pieter van der Zwan Hemchand Gossai (editor), Postcolonial Commentary and the Old Testament. Pieter van der Zwan

Merling Alomía, Daniel: El profeta mesiánico. Vol. 2. Pieter van der Zwan Rhonda Burnette-Bletsch, ed. The Bible in Motion: A Handbook of the Bible and Its Reception in Film. Parts 1, 2. Christoph Stenschke

Malachi. S. D. (Fanie) Snyman. S. I. (Fanie) Cronjé Bleibendes Nachwirken des Exils: Untersuchung zur kanonischen Endgestalt des Ezechielbuches. Tobias Häner. Benjamin Kilchör Origenes: Die Homilien und Fragmente zum Hohelied: Eingeleitet und übersetzt von Alfons Fürst und Holger Strutwolf. Prof. Dr. Christoph Stenschke The Deuteronomist’s History: The Role of the Deuteronomist in Historical-Critical Research into Genesis–Numbers. Hans Ausloos. Pieter van der Zwan The Formation of the ‘Book’ of Psalms: Reconsidering the Transmission and Canonization of Psalmody in Light of Material Culture and the Poetics of Anthologies. David Willgren Beat Weber

The current context of a turn to the visual and the transpersonal–psychological potential of the book of Job forms the background of this study, which aimed at focusing a psychological lens on the topic of eyes in the book of Job. This approach has the potential of seeing beyond both the literal and the figurative sense of eyes in the book of Job, gaining a vision of a transcendental reality, either in or after this life. In this way, the bodily suffering experienced by the protagonist could be illuminated as a model for every recipient. By relating the eye to other body parts mentioned in the book, a texture of meanings has been woven with a complicated and intriguing subtext for the narrative of the eye in the life of Job. This wealth of value attached to the eye in the book subverts the traditionally negative attitude to the visual in monotheistic religions and resuscitates the eye to the status of even a transcendental level.

It would seem that there has been a growing concern about the body during the composition of the Hebrew Bible, just as the body has awakened in the mind of the humanities during the last three to four decades in Western culture. Parallel to that has been a growing interest in psychological understanding often linked to the wisdom writings, and now again when the historical–critical approach has shown its limitations. The aim of psychoanalysing the body image of Job has several advantages: it allows the recipient to sense the body of the protagonist and so penetrate into the core of the narrative. Moreover, psychological sense can be made of the deeper meanings underlying certain body parts, which play a particularly important role for Job. In such a way, a network of subtexts can be accessed. This study will trace the image of Job’s body in the mind of the external world around him but more so in his own internal reality as depicted by the text. This will then constitute a body image which shifts amongst the characters and as the narrative develops. The clusters of attention imply the relations between the body parts in Job’s mind and suggest the tensions of his still unintegrated body image.

https://doi.org/10.17159/2312-3621/2019/v32n2a26

The 5 lamentations, when read as a single biblical book, outline several interacting bodies in a similar way that dotted lines present the silhouettes and aspects of a total picture. Each also represents action, building into a plot that can be interpreted psychoanalytically to render its depth and colour content. In addition, by focusing on the body and its sensations, this study can facilitate the visceral experience of the suffering of collective and individual bodies by the recipient.

Just as the text is layered by redactional processes and its effects by reception processes, so different meanings of the statue of a human body in Nebuchadnezzar’s dream can be psychoanalytically ‘excavated’. Following a typical psychoanalytical dream interpretation, the possibility has therefore been explored of the body referring to the king as an individual before it was reinterpreted as a societal, collective body, the latter serving as a defence against the anxiety which the former would cause. Re-experiencing these common, human, unconscious anxieties and processing them could facilitate psychological healing and health, especially in the postmodern, pluralistic and eco-threatened context, which the dream seems to adumbrate.

Background: The Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) made a number of recommendations in relation to interest deduction limitations as part of the Base Erosion and Profit Shifting (BEPS) project. In 2016 the South African National Treasury indicated that the interest deduction limitations contained in the Income Tax Act would be reviewed in the light of these recommendations. Aim: This paper aimed to describe funding structures of companies in South Africa liable for tax and how this relates to other characteristics, including ownership, of the companies. Setting: The research was performed using data from tax returns submitted by companies liable for income tax in South Africa. Methods: This paper reports on descriptive analyses of the research conducted. Results: The results showed that the mean interest-to-earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortisation (EBITDA) ratio for certain foreign-owned entities differed significantly from that of domestically owned entities. Conclusion: The results may present evidence of profit-shifting activities. They also highlight trends in interest-to-EBITDA ratios that may be of relevance for future legislative developments. Further related research is required if interest deduction limitations in the South African tax legislation are to be reviewed in light of the OECD proposals.

Benewens verwysings na die menslike liggaamsdeel wat soms antropomorfies op die Godsbeeld geprojekteer word, is die woord, דָי) hand), ook party keer ʼn metafoor in die Hebreeuse Bybel, en dan met ’n betekenis wat in ten minste een van ses moontlike betekeniskategorieë inpas: eufemisme vir die fallus, sykant van die liggaam, begrensdheid, onbegrensdheid, verdeling of kulturele voorwerpe waarvan die gedenkstene veral belangrik is. Soms oorvleuel hierdie kategorieë. Uit elkeen van hierdie metaforiese gebruike kan sekere afleidings gemaak word oor die destydse kollektiewe beeld van die menslike hand wat waarskynlik onbewustelik gebly het, maar tog deur metafore verraai word. Die metaforiese gebruik kan as ’n soort verplasing van die letterlike gebruik beskou word en die soeke na die onderliggende aspek van die hand wat by elkeen betrokke is, is dus eintlik ’n soort “terugvertaling” na die oorspronklike, letterlike betekenis maar gaan selfs verder deur die onbewuste beeld van hierdie liggaamsdeel na te speur.

Traditionally, there has been a tension between psychology and religion because of the Freudian critique of religion. This research intends to show that a deeper understanding of religion leading hopefully to an even deeper religiosity can be achieved by studying bodily features portrayed in a (religious) text from a psychoanalytic perspective. Just as any literary character can be �psychoanalysed� to produce new perspectives on it and on the narrative as a whole, the personality of Job invites the postmodern reader to continue understanding this book on new levels. From this approach, it becomes clear that the protagonist struggles with boundaries and individuation because of his depressive tendencies experienced in issues with reality�s harsh touch, nakedness and distance. Intradisciplinary and/or interdisciplinary implications: Just as any literary character can be �psychoanalysed� to produce new perspectives on it and on the narrative as a whole, the personality of Job invites the postmodern reader to continue understanding this book on new levels. From this approach, it becomes clear that the protagonist struggles with boundaries and individuation because of his depressive tendencies experienced in issues with reality�s harsh touch, nakedness and distance.

Volgens sekere gedeeltes in die Hebreeuse Bybel kan ʼn mens nie die aanskoue van die (aan)gesig van God oorleef nie. Andersins word weer getuig dat sekere mense die gesig van God wel gesien het, maar dit word nooit beskryf nie, ook wanneer daar selfs gepleit word dat God sy aangesig nie verberg nie, omdat die voortbestaan van alles en almal juis van die positiewe blik van God afhanklik is. Vier moontlike sielkundige verklarings word vir die afwesige gesig van God aangebied: die onsigbaarheid en oënskynlike onbeskryfbaarheid van God se gesig kan uit ʼn psigoanalitiese gesigspunt as menslike projeksie van skaamte en skuld vertolk word. Tweedens kon die moontlike falliese aard van God homoerotiese impulse gegee het, wat verdoesel moes word. Derdens is die visueel afwesige God in ooreenstemming met die tweekamerbreinteorie as regressie tot die ouditiewe geïnterpreteer word. Vierdens kan die gesig van God ook ʼn onbewuste assosiasie met die son as bewussynssimbool en van sinvolle lewensinsig wat in tye van teëspoed verborge bly, gehad het. Wanneer hierdie lig verblindend skerp is, verloor die mens in sy ervaring van God sy sig en vertolk dit as die afwesigheid van God.

�Psychoanalysing� the different forms of �scale disease� dealt with in Leviticus 13�14 can shed some light on the way the skin can be interpreted in this context. The eight psychic functions of the skin identified by Anzieu reveal how individuals meet collective anxieties on the surface of the skin where unconscious conflicts about identity boundaries are projected and inscribed.Intradisciplinary and/or interdisciplinary implications: Traditionally there has been a tension between psychology and religion, due to the Freudian critique of religion. This research intends to show that a deeper understanding of religion leading hopefully to an even deeper religiosity can be achieved by studying bodily features portrayed in a (religious) text from a psychoanalytic perspective.

The African continent contributes approximately 12% of the world’s oil production. Despite this wealth, many citizens of oil-rich African countries live in poverty, often because their governments do not collect sufficient compensation for the depletion of oil resources to fund national development or do not utilise compensation collected for the benefit of the people. In this article the extraction tax regime to collect compensation on Angola’s oil resources is compared to the regimes in other oil-rich countries to identify aspects from which Angola can learn with regard to the compensation systems of those countries. It is concluded that Angola may be able to improve its extraction tax regime by learning from governance measures over natural resource funds in Norway and Canada, by implementing measures to increase its oil royalty income in times of economic prosperity and by defining deductible costs more specifically in its production-sharing agreements.

The Song of Songs is usually appreciated for its celebration of love in the foreground, erotic or divine, if these are not regarded as different aspects of the same experience. This has perhaps led to the neglect of the celebration of life as pertinent background in a unique way in the Hebrew and even Christian Bible as a whole. In a secular world disillusioned by the perceived emphasis on death in traditional religion and therefore desperately obsessed with life, this biblical poetry may come as a surprising liberation through its critical and creative voice even within the religious canons of two world religions.