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Galiet & Galiet
chaplain’s discourses of mighty might. The wardens warn him to stop worrying whether acts are just or not (T27), and the priest-chaplain admonishes him to respect the Parable of the Law’s text, by not changing the story (T217).
Job’s and K’s sufferings and punishments confound. They raise the ontological question of original sin journeying back to the Fall of Man, to the Book of Job’s fabled Satan’s whispers: “is there any one pure before God?” (4:17), to The Trial’s query “how can any one be in general guilty?” (T213). Metaphysically and politically it is a most worthy inquiry. Metaphysically, if anyone is impure or guilty, he needs to confess his sin, repent and atone; and politically, he is punished and suffers. So the Courts in both texts test and punish Job and Josef K in different ways. Job loses family, household and his health, and Josef K, his life. Yet it is not that simple. In Job’s case, we discern the divine Court’s political and criminal dimension, but in Josef K’s case, we are not sure whether the Court is totally secular or religious, or both. If secular, it is political and its punishment is a travesty of Justice; if religious, it is as political and criminal as Job’s Court.
In both ordeals and trial narratives, Moral Law and Criminal Law15 in sin and guilt entwine. Both narratives claim to be attracted by Guilt (T9) and Sin (1:8-10). And in them, the moral, religious and criminal dimension16 terrifies. Job’s Law is the Old Testament Biblical Law, and K’s Law mirrors the same Law in the use of the trial metaphor.17 Because the Law in The Trial does not seek the guilty among the general population (T8), it does suggest a higher Moral Law akin to the Last Judgment.18 If so, there is a criminal-political dimension to it. Josef K tells his uncle, Karl, he undergoes a criminal trial (T91). In Josef K’s Court, “There is arrest...interrogation, arguments for the prosecution and the defense, the hiring of an advocate, all the trappings of a criminal justice system, including, finally, execution.”19 And certainly, there are High Courts, Judges, Prosecutors, Defense Counsels,20 jurisprudence and witnesses merging in both tragedies.
15 Dodd, William. Der Prozess. Scotland: University of Glasgow French and German Publications, 1991. 21
16 Dodd, William. Der Prozess. Scotland: University of Glasgow French and German Publications, 1991. 21
17 Lasine, Stuart. “The Trials of Job and Kafka’s Josef K.” The German Quarterly, Vol. 63, No. 2, Focus: Jews and Germans/Jewish–German Literature (Spring,
1990). 187
18 Dodd, William. Der Prozess. Scotland: University of Glasgow French and German Publications, 1991. 35
19 Dodd, William. Der Prozess. Scotland: University of Glasgow French and German Publications, 1991. 21
20 Frye, Northrop. Words with Power. Being a Second Study of the Bible and Literature. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1990. 310-11 21 Gordis, Robert. The Book of God and Man. A Study of Job. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1965. 10
Tragedies High Court Jurisprudence Judge Prosecutor Defense Witnesses Counsel
The Book of Job
Religious & Criminal
Judaic Moral Law Inaccessible Sin
Yahweh
Satan The Prosecuting Angel21
Job
(No Umpire or Intercessor though he desires one)
3 friends & Elihu & the rabble
The Trial Religious & Judaic Moral Law The
The Josef K The Theatre Prosecutor (Huld & the actors23
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