Jewish and Christian “signature features” in the Testament of Job

Abstract

Pseudepigrapha research continues to slowly embrace the “default position” when working with texts of uncertain origin: start by investigating the Christian reception of a text, before attempting to work back toward its purported Jewish provenance. Taking a pseudepigraphon as Christian until proven otherwise—as a theoretical and methodological stance—has led some scholars to break with the general consensus concerning the Jewish origins of the Testament of Job, citing a lack of any identifiable Jewish or Christian “signature features” in the work. While sympathetic to the default position, this paper considers features of the Testament that should each be considered distinctively characteristic of Judaism (the intermarriage prohibition, T. Job 45:3) and Christianity (the use of the Greek compounds ἀπροσωπόληπτός, T. Job 4:8 and προσωπολήπτης, 43:13, attested only in Christian texts). The conclusions drawn from this study support the position that the Testament of Job is a Jewish diaspora text and that the instances of Christian language are most satisfactorily explained as later Christian scribal emendation.