The Bible’s Book of Job opens on an ordinary day in the land of Uz, where a man carefully performs religious rituals to protect his children. This routine has never failed Job, who is described as the most righteous person on the planet. But on this particular day, every one of his children is killed when a powerful wind brings down their house.

This makes no sense! Job did nothing wrong. Three friends visit Job and mourn with him. But an epic debate erupts when they claim that, if Job is the target of God’s wrath, it must have been deserved.

Job, on the other hand, says God has deprived him of justice and demands an explanation from the Almighty. He and his friends argue through poetry – a “rap battle” with beautiful imagery, eloquent wordplay and sarcastic insults.

The Book of Job is frequently touted as a literary masterpiece for the way it challenges foundational beliefs. Many stories have been written about characters like Job, thrust into a topsy-turvy world where nothing works the way it should. Suddenly, they must rethink their understanding about how the universe operates.

As a scholar of the Hebrew Bible, I see the closest parallels in another classic book – but perhaps not one you’d expect.

Lewis Carroll’s “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland,” published in 1865, is a hallmark of children’s literature because of the way it encourages curiosity. Like the Book of Job, the novel upends literary conventions and mocks elders, teachers and religious leaders – really, anyone who tries to tell you that life will be OK if you stop asking questions and follow the rules.

It opens with a little girl named Alice, who is bored one afternoon until she sees a rabbit check its pocket watch and declare that it’s running late. She follows it down a rabbit hole and into Wonderland, a dreamlike place where cats vanish into thin air, babies turn into pigs and caterpillars smoke hookah.

Everyday logic no longer applies. Like Job, Alice must question her assumptions if she is to make sense of what is happening around her. Other fantasy worlds require swords, but Alice battles the fantastical creatures of Wonderland with words. As with Job, her ordinary day has gone upside-down, and she finds herself in a debate about reality.

Each of these books pushes back against easy answers and heavy-handed morals, which were expected in both ancient wisdom literature and Victorian children’s stories.

Proverbs in Job’s day taught that wickedness leads to punishment. Bestsellers in Carroll’s day included the “Fatal Effects of Disobedience to Parents,” a story about a little girl who burned herself to the ground after her parents told her not to play with fire.

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