Bruce Arnold 
Associate Professor of Classics
Location: Cleveland, L3

The study of the liberal arts helps us to engage with the world in all its physical and human
dimensions, and this ultimately requires a sophisticated understanding of our environment and ourselves. One of the most fundamental problems in this study is engaged with how we communicate with one another. For a human being to speak is a natural capacity acquired at birth and developed through normal social existence. To write, on the other hand, is not a natural endowment, but one cultivated through centuries of civilization, the most sophisticated tool available to humanity which has enabled us to probe analytically the deep realms of human thought and experience. In this lecture Professor Bruce Arnold will discuss a critical passage from the first two chapters of the Book of Job as an example of the difficulty of hearing and understanding another human voice. Commonly we simply hear it in a way that reflects our own view of the situation rather than as a voice that is communicating something different from our own thought and even outside the realm of our own experience. The way we read the Bible and respond, therefore, as human beings to the challenge of understanding God and our own selves profoundly measures us and our capacity to form genuine social bonds with one another. In short, to be able to read well reflects our most humane capacity to hear others' voices, and to understand and sympathize with one another.