like the whole knowledge of God—or subjects us to that knowledge itself. This is not so different from the Greek understanding of passion developed at length in the tradition of tragic drama: what we suffer becomes our teacher, and it is not reality but our vision that changes in the process. Our eyes change in time, so, though nothing changes, time changes everything.
7. But this confidence in vision poses problems, particularly when one claims to see with God’s eyes—waiting in the expectation of an end (now or then) in which one sees with such eyes: the expectation of an end is a narrative temptation endemic to the West. More than once, an end of history has been used to make mass murder make sense.
8. In the garden, the temptation was not the fruit: we have no reason to doubt that it was good to eat. The temptation was to be like gods. And that is why a story that begins with old friends meeting like gods in the court of heaven and ends as though nothing had changed should give us pause. The two were old friends. Neither could be trusted. All that accounts for the suffering of Job is a chance encounter and a series of wagers. As if nothing would change.
9. In the end, the tale survives in the teller alone. We know nothing but the tale in the telling and the trace of the teller.
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