I think that we may venture to reply in the affirmative. These grounds have reference (1) to the ideas of Job, (2) to its vocabulary.
(1) I am well aware that the argument from the ideas of Job cannot claim a strong degree of cogency. It is possible to account for the conceptions of the author from the natural progress of the (divinely-guided) moral and religious history of Israel, and those who believe (I do not myself) that Psalms xvii., xxxvii., xlix., lxxiii., are Palestinian works of earlier date than Job will have a ready argument in favour of a purely native origin of the latter book. Still it seems to me that we can still better account for the author's point of view by supposing that he was in sympathy with an intellectual movement going on outside Israel. The doctrine of retribution in the present life, which he finds inadequate, is common to the friends and to the religion which has in all ages been that of the genuine Arab—the so-called dīn Ibrāhīm (or 'religion of Abraham'). The Eloah and the Shaddai of Job are the irresponsible Allah who has all power in heaven and on earth, and before whom, when mysteries occur in human life which the retribution-doctrine cannot solve, the Arab and every true Moslem bows his head with settled, sad resignation. The morality alike of the dīn Ibrāhīm, and of the religion of Mohammed (who professed to restore it in its purity), is faulty precisely as the religion of the three friends (and originally of Job himself) is faulty. The same conflict which arose in the heart of Job arose in the midst of the Moslem world I refer to the dispute between the claimants of orthodoxy and the sect of the Mo'tazilites (8th and 9th centuries); the latter, who were worsted in the strife, viewed God as the absolutely Good, the former as a despotic and revengeful tyrant.[1] May not this conflict have been foreshadowed at an earlier time? Is not the difficulty which led to it a constantly recurring one, so soon as reflection acquires a certain degree of maturity? It may well have been felt among the Jews, especially in the decline of the
- ↑ Kremer, Herrschende Ideen des Islams, p. 27 &c.; Kuenen, Hibbert Lectures, p. 48 &c.
