Prophet Jonah

Jonah or Jonas is the name given in the Hebrew Bible (Tanakh/Old Testament) to a prophet of the northern kingdom of Israel in about the 8th century BCE. He is the eponymous central figure of the Book of Jonah, in which he is called upon by God to travel to Nineveh and warn its residents of impending divine wrath. Instead, Jonah boards a ship to Tarshish. Caught in a storm, he orders the ship’s crew to cast him overboard, whereupon he is swallowed by a giant fish. Three days later, after Jonah agrees to go to Nineveh, the fish vomits him out onto the shore. Jonah successfully convinces the entire city of Nineveh to repent, but waits outside the city in expectation of its destruction. God shields Jonah from the sun with a plant, but later sends a worm to cause it to wither. When Jonah complains of the bitter heat, God rebukes him.

In Judaism, the story of Jonah represents the teaching of teshuva, which is the ability to repent and be forgiven by God. In the New Testament, Jesus calls himself “greater than Jonah” and promises the Pharisees “the sign of Jonah”, which is his resurrection. Early Christian interpreters viewed Jonah as a type for Jesus. Later, during the Reformation, Jonah came to be seen instead as an archetype for the “envious Jew”. Jonah is regarded as a prophet in Islam and the biblical narrative of Jonah is repeated, with a few notable differences, in the Quran. Mainstream Bible scholars generally regard the Book of Jonah as fictional and often at least partially satirical, but the character of Jonah may have been based on the historical prophet of the same name mentioned in 2 Kings 14:25.

Although the word “whale” is often used in English versions of the Jonah story, the Hebrew text actually uses the phrase dag gadol, which means “giant fish”. In the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, the species of the fish that swallowed Jonah was the subject of speculation for naturalists, who interpreted the story as an account of a historical incident. Some modern scholars of folklore have noted similarities between Jonah and other legendary figures, such as Gilgamesh and the Greek hero Jason.

war between good and evil in the DEAD sea

Jonah and the sea

Book of Jonah

Religious views

In Judaism

In Christianity

In the Book of Tobit

Jonah is mentioned twice in the fourteenth chapter of the deuterocanonical Book of Tobit, the conclusion of which finds Tobit’s son, Tobias, at the extreme age of 127 years, rejoicing at the news of Nineveh’s destruction by Nebuchadnezzar and Ahasuerus in apparent fulfillment of Jonah’s prophecy against the Assyrian capital.

In the New Testament

In the New Testament, Jonah is mentioned in Matthew 12:38–41 and 16:4 and in Luke 11:29–32. In the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus makes a reference to Jonah when he is asked for a sign by some of the scribes and the Pharisees. Jesus says that the sign will be the sign of Jonah: Jonah’s restoration after three days inside the great fish prefigures His own resurrection.

³⁹He answered, “A wicked and adulterous generation asks for a sign! But none will be given it except the sign of the prophet Jonah. ⁴⁰For as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of a huge fish, so the Son of Man will be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth. ⁴¹The men of Nineveh will stand up at the judgment with this generation and condemn it; for they repented at the preaching of Jonah, and now something greater than Jonah is here.”

— Gospel of Matthew, 12:39–41 (New International Version)

Matthew 12:41-42 and Luke 11:31–32 assert in parallel wording that Jesus is greater than Jonah and greater than Solomon.

Post-Biblical views

Jonah is regarded as a saint by a number of Christian denominations. His feast day in the Roman Catholic Church is on 21 September, according to the Martyrologium Romanum. On the Eastern Orthodox liturgical calendar, Jonah’s feast day is on 22 September (for those churches which follow the traditional Julian calendar; 22 September currently falls in October on the modern Gregorian calendar). In the Armenian Apostolic Church, moveable feasts are held in commemoration of Jonah as a single prophet and as one of the Twelve Minor Prophets. Jonah’s mission to the Ninevites is commemorated by the Fast of Nineveh in Syriac and Oriental Orthodox Churches.Jonah is commemorated as a prophet in the Calendar of Saints of the Missouri Synod of the Lutheran Church on 22 September.

Christian theologians have traditionally interpreted Jonah as a type for Jesus Christ. Jonah being in swallowed by the giant fish was regarded as a foreshadowing of Jesus’s crucifixion and the fish vomiting Jonah out onto the beach was seen as a parallel for Jesus’s resurrection. Saint Jerome equates Jonah with Jesus’s more nationalistic side, and justifies Jonah’s actions by arguing that “Jonah acts thus as a patriot, not so much that he hates the Ninevites, as that he does not want to destroy his own people.”

Other Christian interpreters, including Saint Augustine and Martin Luther, have taken a directly opposite approach, regarding Jonah as the epitome of envy and jealousness, which they regarded as inherent characteristics of the Jewish people. Luther likewise concludes that the kikayon represents Judaism, and that the worm which devours it represents Christ. Luther also questioned the idea that the Book of Jonah was ever intended as literal history, commenting that he found it hard to believe that anyone would have interpreted it as such if it had never been included in the Bible. Luther’s antisemitic interpretation of Jonah remained the prevailing interpretation among German Protestants throughout early modern history. J. D. Michaelis comments that “the meaning of the fable hits you right between the eyes”, and concludes that the Book of Jonah is a polemic against “the Israelite people’s hate and envy towards all the other nations of the earth.” Albert Eichhorn was a strong supporter of Michaelis’s interpretation.

John Calvin and John Hooper regarded the Book of Jonah as a warning to all those who might attempt to flee from the wrath of God. While Luther had been careful to maintain that the Book of Jonah was not written by Jonah, Calvin declared that the Book of Jonah was Jonah’s personal confession of guilt. Calvin sees Jonah’s time inside the fish’s belly as equivalent to the fires of Hell, intended to correct Jonah and set him on the path of righteousness. Also unlike Luther, Calvin finds fault with all the characters in the story, describing the sailors on the boat as “hard and iron-hearted, like Cyclops”, the penitence of the Ninevites as “untrained”, and the king of Nineveh as a “novice”. Hooper, on the other hand, sees Jonah as the archetypal dissident and the ship he is cast out from as a symbol of the state. Hooper deplores such dissidents, decrying: “Can you live quietly with so many Jonasses? Nay then, throw them into the sea!” In the eighteenth century, German professors were forbidden from teaching that the Book of Jonah was anything other than a literal, historical account.

Jonah and the giant fish in the Jami’ al-tawarikh (c. 1400), Metropolitan Museum of Art

In Islam

Quran

Jonah (يُونُس‎, Yūnus) is the title of the tenth chapter of the Quran. He is traditionally viewed as highly important in Islam as a prophet who was faithful to Allah and delivered His messages. Jonah is mentioned four times in the Quran and is the only one of the Twelve Minor Prophets to be mentioned by name. In Surah 68:48, Jonah is called Dhul-Nūn (Arabic: ذُو ٱلنُّوْن‎; meaning “The One of the Fish”). In 4:163 and 6:86, he is referred to as “an apostle of Allah”. Surah 37:139-148 retells the full story of Jonah:

So also was Jonah among those sent (by Us).
When he ran away (like a slave from captivity) to the ship (fully) laden,
He (agreed to) cast lots, and he was condemned:
Then the big Fish did swallow him, and he had done acts worthy of blame.
Had it not been that he (repented and) glorified Allah,
He would certainly have remained inside the Fish till the Day of Resurrection.
But We cast him forth on the naked shore in a state of sickness,
And We caused to grow, over him, a spreading plant of the gourd kind.
And We sent him (on a mission) to a hundred thousand (men) or more.
And they believed; so We permitted them to enjoy (their life) for a while.

— Quran, chapter 37 (As-Saaffat), verses 139–148

The Quran never mentions Jonah’s father, but Muslim tradition teaches that Jonah was from the tribe of Benjamin and that his father was Amittai.

Ahadith

Jonah trying to hide his nakedness in the midst of bushes; Jeremiah in the wilderness (top left); Uzeyr awakened after the destruction of Jerusalem. Ottoman Turkish miniature, 16th century.

Jonah is also mentioned in a few incidents during the lifetime of Muhammad. In some instances, Jonah’s name is spoken of with praise and reverence by Muhammad. According to historical narrations about Muhammad’s life, after ten years of receiving revelations, Muhammad went to the city of Ta’if to see if its leaders would allow him to preach his message from there rather than Mecca, but he was cast from the city by the people. He took shelter in the garden of Utbah and Shaybah, two members of the Quraysh tribe. They sent their servant, Addas, to serve him grapes for sustenance. Muhammad asked Addas where he was from and the servant replied Nineveh. “The town of Jonah the just, son of Amittai!” Muhammad exclaimed. Addas was shocked because he knew that the pagan Arabs had no knowledge of the prophet Jonah. He then asked how Muhammad knew of this man. “We are brothers” Muhammad replied. “Jonah was a Prophet of God and I, too, am a Prophet of God.” Addas immediately accepted Islam and kissed the hands and feet of Muhammad.

One of the sayings of Muhammad, in the collection of Imam Bukhari, says that Muhammad said “One should not say that I am better than Jonah”. A similar statement occurs in a hadith written by Yunus bin Yazid, the second caliph of the Umayyad Dynasty. Umayya ibn Abi al-Salt, an older contemporary of Muhammad, taught that, had Jonah not prayed to Allah, he would have remained trapped inside the fish until Judgement Day, but, because of his prayer, Jonah “stayed only a few days within the belly of the fish”.

The ninth-century Persian historian Al-Tabari records that, while Jonah was inside the fish, “none of his bones or members were injured”. Al-Tabari also writes that Allah made the body of the fish transparent, allowing Jonah to see the “wonders of the deep” and that Jonah heard all the fish singing praises to Allah. Kisai Marvazi, a tenth-century poet, records that Jonah’s father was seventy years old when Jonah was born and that he died soon afterwards, leaving Jonah’s mother with nothing but a wooden spoon, which turned out to be a cornucopia.

Tomb at Nineveh

Nineveh’s current location is marked by excavations of five gates, parts of walls on four sides, and two large mounds: the hill of Kuyunjik and hill of Nabi Yunus (see map link in footnote). A mosque atop Nabi Yunus was dedicated to the prophet Jonah and contained a shrine, which was revered by both Muslims and Christians as the site of Jonah’s tomb. The tomb was a popular pilgrimage site and a symbol of unity to Jews, Christians, and Muslims across the Middle East. On July 24, 2014, the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) destroyed the mosque containing the tomb as part of a campaign to destroy religious sanctuaries it deemed to be idolatrous.After Mosul was taken back from ISIL in January 2017, an ancient Assyrian palace dating to around 600 BCE was discovered beneath the ruined mosque. ISIL had plundered the palace of items to sell on the black market, but some of the artifacts that were more difficult to transport still remained in place.

Other reputed locations of Jonah’s tomb include the Arab village of Mashhad, located on the ancient site of Gath-hepher, the Palestinian West Bank town of Halhul, 5 km (3.1 mi) north of Hebron, and a sanctuary near the city of Sarafand (Sarepta) in Lebanon.

Scholarly interpretations

Historicity

The consensus of mainstream Biblical scholars holds that the contents of the Book of Jonah are entirely ahistorical. Although the prophet Jonah allegedly lived in the eighth century BCE, the Book of Jonah was written centuries later during the time of the Achaemenid Empire. The Hebrew used in the Book of Jonah shows strong influences from Aramaic and the cultural practices described in it match those of the Achaemenid Persians. Many scholars regard the Book of Jonah as an intentional work of parody or satire. If this is the case, then it was probably admitted into the canon of the Hebrew Bible by sages who misunderstood its satirical nature and mistakenly interpreted it as a serious prophetic work.

While the Book of Jonah itself is considered fiction, Jonah himself may have been a historical prophet; he is briefly mentioned in the Second Book of Kings:

He restored the border of Israel from the entrance of Hamath unto the sea of the Arabah, according to the word of the LORD, the God of Israel, which He spoke by the hand of His servant Jonah the son of Amittai, the prophet, who was of Gath-hepher.

— 2 Kings 14:25, JPS (1917)

Most scholars believe that the anonymous author of the Book of Jonah may have seized upon this obscure prophet from 2 Kings and used him as the basis for the fictional character of Jonah, but some have contended that the figure of Jonah himself is entirely legendary.

Parodic elements

The views expressed by Jonah in the Book of Jonah are a parody of views held by members of Jewish society at the time when it was written. The primary target of the satire may have been a faction whom Morton Smith calls “Separationists”, who believed that God would destroy those who disobeyed him, that sinful cities would be obliterated, and that God’s mercy did not extend to those outside the Abrahamic covenant. McKenzie and Graham remark that “Jonah is in some ways the most ‘orthodox’ of Israelite theologians – to make a theological point.” Jonah’s statements throughout the book are characterized by their militancy, but his name ironically means “dove”, a bird which the ancient Israelites associated with peace.

Jonah’s rejection of God’s commands is a parody of the obedience of the prophets described in other Old Testament writings. The king of Nineveh’s instant repentance parodies the rulers throughout the other writings of the Old Testament who disregard prophetic warnings, such as Ahab and Zedekiah. The readiness to worship God displayed by the sailors on the ship and the people of Nineveh contrasts ironically with Jonah’s own reluctance, as does Jonah’s greater love for kikayon providing him shade than for all the people in Nineveh.

The Book of Jonah also employs elements of literary absurdism; it exaggerates the size of the city of Nineveh to an implausible degree and incorrectly refers to the administrator of the city as a “king”. According to scholars, no human being could realistically survive for three days inside a fish, and the description of the livestock in Nineveh fasting alongside their owners is “silly”. The motif of a protagonist being swallowed by a giant fish or whale became a stock trope of later satirical writings. Similar incidents are recounted in Lucian of Samosata’s A True Story, which was written in the second century CE, and in the novel Baron Munchausen’s Narrative of his Marvellous Travels and Campaigns in Russia, published by Rudolf Erich Raspe in 1785. The story of a man surviving after being swallowed by a whale or giant fish is classified as ATU 1889G.

The fish

Translation

Though it is often called a whale today, the Hebrew, as throughout scripture, refers to no species in particular, simply saying “great fish” or “big fish” (whales are today classified as mammals and not fish, but no such distinction was made in antiquity). While some biblical scholars suggest the size and habits of the great white shark correspond better to the representations given of Jonah’s being swallowed, normally an adult human is too large to be swallowed whole. The development of whaling from the 18th century onwards made it clear that most, if not all, species of whale were incapable of swallowing a man, leading to much controversy about the veracity of the biblical story of Jonah.

In Jonah 2:1 (1:17 in English translations), the Hebrew text reads dag gadol (דג גדול) or, in the Hebrew Masoretic Text, dāḡ gā·ḏō·wl (דָּ֣ג גָּד֔וֹל), which means “great fish.” The Septuagint translates this phrase into Greek as kētei megalōi (κήτει μεγάλῳ), meaning “huge fish”. In Greek mythology, the same word meaning “fish” (kêtos) is used to describe the sea monster slain by the hero Perseus that nearly devoured the Princess Andromeda. Jerome later translated this phrase as piscem grandem in his Latin Vulgate. He translated kétos, however, as ventre ceti in Matthew 12:40: this second case occurs only in this verse of the New Testament.

At some point cetus became synonymous with “whale” (the study of whales is now called cetology). In his 1534 translation, William Tyndale translated the phrase in Jonah 2:1 as “greate fyshe” and the word kétos(Greek) or cetus (Latin) in Matthew 12:40 as “whale”. Tyndale’s translation was later incorporated into the Authorized Version of 1611. Since then, the “great fish” in Jonah 2 has been most often interpreted as a whale. In English some translations use the word “whale” for Matthew 12:40, while others use “sea creature” or “big fish”.

Scientific speculation

In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, naturalists, interpreting the Jonah story as a historical account, became obsessed with trying to identify the exact species of the fish that swallowed Jonah. In the mid-nineteenth century, Edward Bouverie Pusey, professor of Hebrew at Oxford University, claimed that the Book of Jonah must have been authored by Jonah himself and argued that the fish story must be historically true, or else it would not have been included in the Bible. Pusey attempted to scientifically catalogue the fish, hoping to “shame those who speak of the miracle of Jonah’s preservation in the fish as a thing less credible than any of God’s other miraculous doings”.

The debate over the fish in the Book of Jonah played a major role during Clarence Darrow’s cross-examination of William Jennings Bryan at the Scopes Trial in 1925. Darrow asked Bryan “When you read that… the whale swallowed Jonah… how do you literally interpret that?” Bryan replied that “a God who can make a whale and can make a man and make both of them do what He pleases.” Bryan ultimately admitted that it was necessary to interpret the Bible, and is generally regarded as having come off looking like a “buffoon”.

The largest whales—baleen whales, a group which includes the blue whale—eat plankton and “it is commonly said that this species would be choked if it attempted to swallow a herring.” As for the whale shark, Dr. E. W. Gudger, an Honorary Associate in Ichthyology at the American Museum of Natural History, notes that, while the whale shark does have a large mouth, its throat is only four inches wide, with a sharp elbow or bend behind the opening, meaning that not even a human arm would be able to pass through it. He concludes that “the whale shark is not the fish that swallowed Jonah.”

Cultural influence

In Turkish, “Jonah fish” (in Turkish yunus baligi) is the term used for dolphins. A long-established expression among sailors uses the term, “a Jonah”, to mean a sailor or a passenger whose presence on board brings bad luck and endangers the ship. Later, this meaning was extended to mean, “a person who carries a jinx, one who will bring bad luck to any enterprise.”

Despite its brevity, the Book of Jonah has been adapted numerous times in literature and in popular culture. In Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick (1851), Father Mapple delivers a sermon on the Book of Jonah. Mapple asks why Jonah does not show remorse for disobeying God while he is inside of the fish. He comes to the conclusion that Jonah admirably understands that “his dreadful punishment is just.” Carlo Collodi’s The Adventures of Pinocchio (1883) features the title character and his father Geppetto being swallowed by a whale, an allusion to the story of Jonah. Walt Disney’s 1940 film adaptation of the novel retains this allusion. The story of Jonah was adapted into Phil Vischer and Mike Nawrocki’s animated film Jonah: A VeggieTales Movie (2002). In the film, Jonah is swallowed by a gargantuan whale. The film was Big Idea Entertainment’s first full-length theatrical release and, on its first weekend, it earned approximately $6.5 million.

Suggested connections to legends

Joseph Campbell suggests that the story of Jonah parallels a scene from the Epic of Gilgamesh, in which Gilgamesh obtains a plant from the bottom of the sea. In the Book of Jonah, a worm (in Hebrew tola’ath, “maggot”) bites the shade-giving plant’s root causing it to wither; whereas in the Epic of Gilgamesh, Gilgamesh ties stones to his feet and plucks his plant from the floor of the sea. Once he returns to the shore, the rejuvenating plant is eaten by a serpent.

Campbell also noted several similarities between the story of Jonah and that of Jason in Greek mythology. The Greek rendering of the name Jonah is Jonas, which differs from Jason only in the order of sounds—both os are omegas suggesting that Jason may have been confused with Jonah. Gildas Hamel, drawing on the Book of Jonah and Greco-Roman sources—including Greek vases and the accounts of Apollonius of Rhodes, Gaius Valerius Flaccus and Orphic Argonautica—identifies a number of shared motifs, including the names of the heroes, the presence of a dove, the idea of “fleeing” like the wind and causing a storm, the attitude of the sailors, the presence of a sea-monster or dragon threatening the hero or swallowing him, and the form and the word used for the “gourd” (kikayon). Hamel takes the view that it was the Hebrew author who reacted to and adapted this mythological material to communicate his own, quite different message.

Adapted from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia