Shared ideas in Job and Deutero-Isaiah

Abstract

It has been suggested that the books of Job and of Deutero-Isaiah (Isaiah 40–55) have a variety of similarities in their linguistic features and common subject-matter and because of this, it has been argued that there is literary dependence or influence of one book upon the other. Although such an author-oriented approach, by which scholars explain similarities by the theory of literary references, has some value, there is no specific reason to understand those similarities by a sort of direct literary dependence. However, these two books are likely to include the common scribal mindset of the Persian period. Here I put forward shared ideas of God’s universal control and freedom which are distinct from the Mosaic covenant and apocalyptic ideas. With these comparisons between Job/Deutero-Isaiah and other concepts in the Hebrew Bible, I propose the dating of the two books and argue that these cultural ideas about God’s control and freedom reflect the Persian scribal idea on the formation of the two books.