“Holy Book of Job, Batman!”

Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight (2008) is a superb example of how popular media can be used to teach the ethics of the Bible and make it relevant to contemporary society; it is a re-telling of the Book of Job that teaches its audiences how sometimes the just suffer unjustly and that true evil cannot be rationalized. The question of ethical engagement has always been a predominant issue in the biblical Book of Job, and scholars tend to believe that the answers it offers up stem from the “presupposition that an inspired scriptural writing must convey a coherent and authoritative religious teaching” in order to have a positive effect on the community it serves (Cooper 227). Therefore, according to Kolenic, “Perhaps the greatest achievement of The Dark Knight was not its staggering box office figures or eye-popping special effects, but rather its layered story in which the classic paradigm of order versus chaos is played out on the surface, and the unconscious logic of both sides of that dichotomy merge with viewers on a more profound and troubling level” (1024). The first half of this essay will demonstrate exactly how the key characters in The Dark Knight parallel the key characters in The Book of Job. The second half will detail the ethical teachings about the nature of evil that audiences will glean from watching the movie.