In two recent articles in SBO, Antoni Tronina and Łukasz Niesiołowski-Spano discuss the origin of of Job. Tronina argues that Job originates from an actual man, as his name’s inclusion in the Amarna archive attests. In response Niesiołowski-Spano suggests that the motif of the loss of all of one’s children originates in the Greek myth about Niobe. Neither hypothesis was conclusively proven. The name of Job is widely attested in AO texts. There is no link between the person known as Ajjab in the Amarna letters (EA 256, 3364) and the biblical Job. Similarly, there is no one indication that that author(s) of the Book of Job knew the myth about Niobe. A much more closer parallel is „The Legend of King Keret” (KTU 1.14). For the research it would be productive to find any AO parallel for the theme of a non-benefit devotion.
