I'll be tackling the following by Thursday. Feel free to chime in:
If God is good and if God is all-powerful (as conventional Christian theology insists) then why does God allow the total demise of a righteous man like Job? Or why does God reject Cain's offering? Or why does God permit the Canaanites to be slaughtered?
Answer these questions from the perspective of someone trained in 1) the Deuteronomic school, 2) the priestly school, and 3) the wisdom school. Note the prophets' own unique way of rationalizing suffering and God's seeming unpredictability. Which of these, if any, corresponds to your own modern understanding of God and the problem of suffering?
Choose two of the following calamities to discuss what kinds of divine comfort, if any, does the Hebrew Bible offer to victims of 1) slavery, 2) racial genocide, 3) forced dislocation from homeland, 4) sexual abuses, 5) terminal illness, or 6) death of a loved one?