2020/04/06 by Christopher Douglas · 1 voice · 1 citation
Arts and Humanities · Social Sciences · #Biblical Studies and Interpretation #Violence, Religion, and Philosophy #Religion, Theology, History, Judaism, Christianity
paper · doi:10.1093/jaarel/lfaa021
openalex publication_date 2020/04/06 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/05/21
Abstract 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.