Ancient Depiction of Jonah?



 

 

M20.1 IASON and THE DRAKON

Museum Collection: Museo Gregoriano Etrusco Vaticano, Vatican City
Catalogue No.: Vatican 16545
Beazley Archive No.: 205162

Ware: Attic Red Figure

Shape: Kylix

Painter: Attributed to Douris
Date: ca 500 - 450 BC

Period: Late Archaic

 

SUMMARY

The Drakon of Kholkis disgorges the hero Jason. Behind it the Golden Fleece hangs from a tree. Athene oversees the scene, holding a small owl and wearing her gorgon-headed aigis. This version of the story is from the lost work of an unknown ancient Greek poet.
From: http://www.theoi.com/Gallery/M20.1.html

Typically, the famous story of the prophet Jonah appears to have been picked up later by the Greco-Romans, and re-cast, as we are now going to find.

Jonah, as we read, “went down to Joppa and found a ship going to Tarshish” (1:3). Legend has it that Joppa, or Jaffa, was founded by Noah’s son, Japheth. Now, Japheth became a primary god, Iapetos/Iapetus, for the Greeks. This important port of Joppa, Sennacherib of Assyria had high-handedly captured in the C8th BC. As König had noted, in relation to a Greek myth: “… it was in the neighbourhood of Joppa that Andromeda, too, was reduced to straits by a sea-monster …”. And Graves writes similarly:“An Etruscan vase shows the moribund king, whose name is given as Jason … in the jaws of a sea-monster: an icon from which the moral anecdote of Jonah and the Whale has apparently been deduced [sic]”. Wikipedia, too, tells of Jonah/Jason correspondences:

In 1995 the classicist Gildas Hamel revived a long-forgotten theory connecting the story of Jonah with that of the Greek hero Jason ("Taking the Argo to Nineveh: Jonah and Jason in a Mediterranean context," Judaism Summer, 1995; online).

 

Drawing on the Book of Jonah and Greco-Roman sources—including Greek vases and the accounts of Apollonius of Rhodes, Valerius Flaccus and Orphic Argonautica—Hamel 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, a hapax legomenon within the Hebrew Bible). ….

 

Indeed I seem to find in ‘Jason of the land of Iolchos’ quite a linguistic similarity to ‘Isaiah [as Nahum] of Elkosh’. [To understand this connection, see main article on Jonah, previous post].

 

Sayce, writing with reference to the Book of Jonah, told of the extraordinary claim by Stephanus Byzantius, that “Gaza was also called Iônê, while the sea between Gaza and the frontier of Egypt was called “Ionian”.”

"Something Greater than Jonah is Here"

Jonah and Jesus

And when we examine the story of Jonah, great is the force of the
resemblance. Jesus was sent to ‎preach repentance; Jonah also was sent: but
whereas the one fled, not knowing what should come to pass; ‎the other came
willingly, to give repentance unto salvation. Jonah was asleep in the ship,
and snoring ‎amidst the stormy sea; while Jesus also slept, the sea,
according to God’s providence, began to rise, to show ‎in the sequel the
might of Him who slept. To the one they said, “Why are you sleeping? Arise,
call you’re ‎your God, that God may save us;” but in the other case they say
unto the Master, “Lord, save us.” Then ‎they said, Call upon thy God; here
they say, save Thou. But the one says, Take me, and cast me into the ‎sea;
so shall the sea be calm unto you; the other, Himself rebuked the winds and
the sea, and there was a ‎great calm. The one was cast into a whale’s belly:
but the other of His own accord went down, where the ‎invisible whale of
death is. And He went down of His own accord, that death might cast up those
whom he ‎had devoured, according to that which is written, I will ransom
them from the power of the grave; and from ‎the hand of death I will redeem
them.
(this article is copied from St-Takla.org).

 

Saint Cyril of Jerusalem

SOMETHING GREATER THAN JONAH IS
HERE

Like the Jewish rabbis of His day,
Jesus accepted the book of Jonah as historical (Matt. 12:38-41). Jesus called
Jonah's experience in the "great fish" a "sign" of His own coming resurrection
from the dead.
Jesus had been performing miracles
as He ministered to people's needs. A group of Pharisees and scribes were
pressuring Him for a sign form heaven, a miraculous sign. They wanted to have
their sensations tantalized. It appears that they pressed him on various
occasions for these attesting miracles and He steadfastly refused. He told them
in their begging for signs that God had already given them a sign and it was
before their eyes. They refused to believe the sign.
These people were not sincere and
Jesus knew it. They were asking Him to accredit Himself by doing some striking
miracle. They demanded proof that He was the Messiah and they wanted it now.
They wanted something unmistakably from God right now. They wanted something
produced on demand for instant gratification. Where is the evidence that God is
at work in Your life? They wanted to impose their own rules on God.
Jesus responded saying, “An
evil and adulterous generation craves for a sign; and yet no sign will be
given to it but the sign of Jonah the prophet; for just as
Jonah was three days and threenights in the belly of the sea monster,
so will the Son of Man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth.
The men of Nineveh will stand up with this generation at the judgment, and will
condemn it because they repented at the preaching of Jonah; and behold,
something greater than Jonah is here " (Matthew 12:39-41).
Jonah and his strange experience
is a type of Christ and His resurrection. When Jesus said, “a greater than Jonah
is here” He was not referring to a legendary character, but a real man and a
real experience. Otherwise the comparison would not have made sense because
Christ rose from the dead. It is clear that Jesus accepted this Old Testament
account as the record of a historical fact. Just as the very big fish swallowed
up Jonah, so the earth will swallow up Jesus; and as Jonah was delivered from
his imprisonment, so will Jesus who is Jonah's great Antitype rise from the
grave.
"Something great than Jonah is
here." What is that something?
Jesus takes us back to Jonah 1:17.
"Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the sea monster." It is
no fairy tale He has in mind. It is the miracle God gave to Jonah. Jesus
reminded the Pharisees and Sadducees again of the sign of Jonah in Matt. 16:4.
There is a greater event than Jonah here. Then He openly told His disciples the
meaning of the sign after Peter's great confession of Jesus as the Messiah, the
Son of the living God (v. 16). After telling His disciples to tell no one that
He was the messiah He opened His heart to them.
Don't miss these words in v. 21.
"From that time Jesus began to show His disciples that He must go to Jerusalem,
and suffer many things from the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be
killed, and be raised up on the third day."
What was the reaction of the
disciples? It was astonishment, rejection and horror. Peter took Him aside as if
to hold Him back from suicide and began to rebuke Him saying, "God forbid it,
Lord! This shall never happen to You" (v. 22).
Jesus turned to Peter and said,
"Get behind Me, Satan! You are a stumbling block to Me; for you are not setting
your mind on God's interests, but man's" (v. 22).
This is the "something greater
than Jonah." It is the death, burial and resurrection of Jesus Christ, the Son
of the living God! That Jonah could live through his experience is nothing short
of a miracle. It was a sign given by God. The pagans of Nineveh believed the
message of Jonah and repented.
When Peter preached his
greatest sermon he reminded his audience of something greater than Jonah. He
said,

Men of Israel,
listen to these words: Jesus the Nazarene, a man attested to you by God with
miracles and wonders and signs which God performed through Him in your midst,
just as you yourselves know—this Man, delivered over by the predetermined
plan and foreknowledge of God, you nailed to a cross by the hands of godless men
and put Him to death. But God raised Him up again, putting an end to the
agony of death, since it was impossible for Him to be held in its power . . .
This Jesus God raised up again, to which we are all witnesses. Therefore having
been exalted to the right hand of God, and having received from the Father the
promise of the Holy Spirit, He has poured forth this which you both see and hear
(Acts 2:22-24, 32-33).

Dr. Luke gives an account of Jesus' conversation with the
crowds of people who were looking for a miraculous sign from heaven (11:29-32).
"As the crowds were increasing, He began to say, ‘This
generation is a wicked generation; it seeks for a sign, and yet no sign will be
given to it but the sign of Jonah. For just as Jonah became a sign to the
Ninevites, so will the Son of Man be to this generation. The Queen of the South
will rise up with the men of this generation at the judgment and condemn them,
because she came from the ends of the earth to hear the wisdom of Solomon; and
behold, something greater than Solomon is here. The men of Nineveh will stand up
with this generation at the judgment and condemn it, because they repented at
the preaching of Jonah; and behold, something greater than Jonah is here’"
(Luke 11:29-32, NASB95).
I am always intrigued by the words of Jesus. He does not
say “someone greater,” but “something greater.” Jesus does not compare Himself
with Jonah but something. Jonah experienced a kind of death, burial and
resurrection. However, Jesus experienced true death, true burial and true
resurrection. Jesus’ experience of the death, burial and resurrection was
greater. The experience of Jonah foreshadowed the real experience of Jesus.
One of the amazing things about
Jonah is that it was in the very city of Joppa where Jonah went to find the ship
that centuries later the apostle Peter received from God the revelation that
Gentiles were included in His chosen people on the same basis as Jewish people
(Acts 10). Salvation is by grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone. Both
Jewish people, non-Jewish and pagans can have a right standing with God by
simple faith in Jesus Christ alone.
Is our response to Jesus any
different? We can respond with arrogance that we know more in our modern age of
understanding than Jesus knew, or with hostility like the Jewish leaders of
Jesus' day, or we can simply bow in humble repentance and submission like the
Ninevehites.
How important is the
resurrection of Jesus Christ? The apostle Paul responded, "if you confess with
your mouth Jesus as Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised Him
from the dead, you will be saved; for with the heart a person believes,
resulting in righteousness, and with the mouth he confesses, resulting in
salvation" (Rom. 10:9-10).
The all-sufficient work Jesus
Christ includes God's free gift of eternal life. Have you received His free gift
of eternal life by grace through faith in Christ alone?

Book of Jonah's Long Tradition of Historicity

There is indisputably a long enduring Jewish-Christian tradition according to which the story of Jonah was a genuine historical account. According to D. Hart-Davies, writing in 1925:[3] “Jewish tradition, in one unbroken line, testifies to a belief in the historical character of the book …”.

And: “… the Christian Church, with remarkable unanimity has confirmed the Jewish tradition …”. By way of contrast, Hart-Davies would give the modern opinion:[4]

Such, however, is not the view which is generally held by modern theologians. The allegorical interpretation is widely accepted. Many treat the narrative as a fiction, with or without a very slight framework of history to rest upon. By many the non-historical character of the book is regarded as indisputable. A writer who ventures to maintain the opposite runs the risk of meeting, in certain quarters, with ridicule or invective. Sir George Adam Smith thus declaims: “How long, O Lord, must Thy poetry suffer from those who can only treat it as prose? On whatever side they stand, sceptical or orthodox, they are equally pedants, quenchers of the spiritual, creators of unbelief” ….

But, responded Hart-Davies, a fervent believer in the book’s historicity:[5]

A strong case, surely, does not require to be buttressed by the immoderate terms of such an apostrophe. For it must not be forgotten that the great majority of Hebraists and theologians of the Church Universal, from Jerome and Augustine to Pusey and Perowne, are included in the compass of the distinguished professor’s denunciation.

Estimates regarding the duration of the virtually universal acceptance of the historical character of the Book of Jonah range from 1800 years to “at least twenty-one centuries”.[1] The matter really depends upon a determination of its date of authorship, its terminus a quo. (See 2. Authorship and Date). We know the approximate terminus ante quem, when what Hart-Davies called the “unbroken” tradition, was broken. I shall return to this on p. 10.

It is, as I said at the start of this section, an extremely long tradition. The antiquity of the tradition, and the force of ancient Christians’ enthusiasm for the story of Jonah, is borne out in this statement by Hart-Davies:[2]

The Catacombs in Rome bear striking evidence of the belief of the early Christians. No Biblical subject was more popular for mural and sarcophagi representation, in those underground cemeteries of the disciples of Jesus, than that of Jonah’s submergence and deliverance as a symbol of faith and hope in the resurrection.

“The history of Jonas [Jonah] having been put forward so emphatically by our Lord Himself, as a type both of His own and of the general resurrection, it is not to be wondered at that it should have held the first place among all the subjects from the Old Testament represented in the Catacombs. It was continually repeated in every kind of monument connected with the ancient Christian cemeteries; in the frescoes on the walls, on the bas-reliefs of the sarcophagi, on lamps and medals, and glasses, and even on the ordinary gravestones. Christian artists, however, by no means confined themselves to that one scene in the life of the prophet in which he foreshadowed the resurrection, viz., his three days’ burial in the belly of the fish, and his deliverance from it, as it were from the jaws of the grave. The other incident of his life was painted quite as commonly, viz., his lying ‘under the shadow of the booth covered with ivy on the east side of the city’ for refreshment and rest; or again, his misery and discontent, as he lay in the same place, when the sun was beating upon his head and the ivy had withered away”.

…. Jerome … wrote a commentary on it; and the sermons and writings of Irenaeus, Augustine, Chrysostom, and other Fathers, abound in references which show conclusively that their belief in the historicity of Jonah was unquestioned. A long and bitter controversy was waged between Jerome and Augustine as to the nature of the plant which overshadowed the prophet; but, as to the historical character of the narrative itself, they were absolutely agreed.

….

Hart-Davies appended an interesting footnote to this section; one which demonstrates how well instructed in Scripture were at least the early African Christians.

When the bishop who read the lesson changed the word cucurbita (a gourd) into hedera (ivy), “the whole congregation”, he wrote, “protested, and would not allow the lection to proceed till the word to which they were accustomed was adopted”.[1]

Now, imagine what might have been the reaction of these ancient Christians had they heard from the pulpit, as I did this very year, that Jonah was a “didactic fiction”, written in “C5th BC post-exilic times”, and that it is only according to an appreciation of such a genre that one might be able to formulate an answer to a schoolchild’s simple question: “Was Jonah really in the belly of the whale?” It is all a matter of genre, we are told.

Book of Jonah

 

Jonah Chapter 1

א וַיְהִי, דְּבַר-יְהוָה, אֶל-יוֹנָה בֶן-אֲמִתַּי, לֵאמֹר.	1 Now the word of the LORD came unto Jonah the son of Amittai, saying:
ב קוּם לֵךְ אֶל-נִינְוֵה, הָעִיר הַגְּדוֹלָה--וּקְרָא עָלֶיהָ: כִּי-עָלְתָה רָעָתָם, לְפָנָי.	2 'Arise, go to Nineveh, that great city, and proclaim against it; for their wickedness is come up before Me.'
ג וַיָּקָם יוֹנָה לִבְרֹחַ תַּרְשִׁישָׁה, מִלִּפְנֵי יְהוָה; וַיֵּרֶד יָפוֹ וַיִּמְצָא אֳנִיָּה בָּאָה תַרְשִׁישׁ, וַיִּתֵּן שְׂכָרָהּ וַיֵּרֶד בָּהּ לָבוֹא עִמָּהֶם תַּרְשִׁישָׁה, מִלִּפְנֵי, יְהוָה.	3 But Jonah rose up to flee unto Tarshish from the presence of the LORD; and he went down to Joppa, and found a ship going to Tarshish; so he paid the fare thereof, and went down into it, to go with them unto Tarshish, from the presence of the LORD.
ד וַיהוָה, הֵטִיל רוּחַ-גְּדוֹלָה אֶל-הַיָּם, וַיְהִי סַעַר-גָּדוֹל, בַּיָּם; וְהָאֳנִיָּה, חִשְּׁבָה לְהִשָּׁבֵר.	4 But the LORD hurled a great wind into the sea, and there was a mighty tempest in the sea, so that the ship was like to be broken.
ה וַיִּירְאוּ הַמַּלָּחִים, וַיִּזְעֲקוּ אִישׁ אֶל-אֱלֹהָיו, וַיָּטִלוּ אֶת-הַכֵּלִים אֲשֶׁר בָּאֳנִיָּה אֶל-הַיָּם, לְהָקֵל מֵעֲלֵיהֶם; וְיוֹנָה, יָרַד אֶל-יַרְכְּתֵי הַסְּפִינָה, וַיִּשְׁכַּב, וַיֵּרָדַם.	5 And the mariners were afraid, and cried every man unto his god; and they cast forth the wares that were in the ship into the sea, to lighten it unto them. But Jonah was gone down into the innermost parts of the ship; and he lay, and was fast asleep.
ו וַיִּקְרַב אֵלָיו רַב הַחֹבֵל, וַיֹּאמֶר לוֹ מַה-לְּךָ נִרְדָּם; קוּם, קְרָא אֶל-אֱלֹהֶיךָ--אוּלַי יִתְעַשֵּׁת הָאֱלֹהִים לָנוּ, וְלֹא נֹאבֵד.	6 So the shipmaster came to him, and said unto him: 'What meanest thou that thou sleepest? arise, call upon thy God, if so be that God will think upon us, that we perish not.'
ז וַיֹּאמְרוּ אִישׁ אֶל-רֵעֵהוּ, לְכוּ וְנַפִּילָה גוֹרָלוֹת, וְנֵדְעָה, בְּשֶׁלְּמִי הָרָעָה הַזֹּאת לָנוּ; וַיַּפִּלוּ, גּוֹרָלוֹת, וַיִּפֹּל הַגּוֹרָל, עַל-יוֹנָה.	7 And they said every one to his fellow: 'Come, and let us cast lots, that we may know for whose cause this evil is upon us.' So they cast lots, and the lot fell upon Jonah.
ח וַיֹּאמְרוּ אֵלָיו--הַגִּידָה-נָּא לָנוּ, בַּאֲשֶׁר לְמִי-הָרָעָה הַזֹּאת לָנוּ: מַה-מְּלַאכְתְּךָ, וּמֵאַיִן תָּבוֹא--מָה אַרְצֶךָ, וְאֵי-מִזֶּה עַם אָתָּה.	8 Then said they unto him: 'Tell us, we pray thee, for whose cause this evil is upon us: what is thine occupation? and whence comest thou? what is thy country? and of what people art thou?'
ט וַיֹּאמֶר אֲלֵיהֶם, עִבְרִי אָנֹכִי; וְאֶת-יְהוָה אֱלֹהֵי הַשָּׁמַיִם, אֲנִי יָרֵא, אֲשֶׁר-עָשָׂה אֶת-הַיָּם, וְאֶת-הַיַּבָּשָׁה.	9 And he said unto them: 'I am an Hebrew; and I fear the LORD, the God of heaven, who hath made the sea and the dry land.'
י וַיִּירְאוּ הָאֲנָשִׁים יִרְאָה גְדוֹלָה, וַיֹּאמְרוּ אֵלָיו מַה-זֹּאת עָשִׂיתָ: כִּי-יָדְעוּ הָאֲנָשִׁים, כִּי-מִלִּפְנֵי יְהוָה הוּא בֹרֵחַ--כִּי הִגִּיד, לָהֶם.	10 Then were the men exceedingly afraid, and said unto him: 'What is this that thou hast done?' For the men knew that he fled from the presence of the LORD, because he had told them.
יא וַיֹּאמְרוּ אֵלָיו מַה-נַּעֲשֶׂה לָּךְ, וְיִשְׁתֹּק הַיָּם מֵעָלֵינוּ: כִּי הַיָּם, הוֹלֵךְ וְסֹעֵר.	11 Then said they unto him: 'What shall we do unto thee, that the sea may be calm unto us?' for the sea grew more and more tempestuous.
יב וַיֹּאמֶר אֲלֵיהֶם, שָׂאוּנִי וַהֲטִילֻנִי אֶל-הַיָּם, וְיִשְׁתֹּק הַיָּם, מֵעֲלֵיכֶם: כִּי, יוֹדֵעַ אָנִי, כִּי בְשֶׁלִּי, הַסַּעַר הַגָּדוֹל הַזֶּה עֲלֵיכֶם.	12 And he said unto them: 'Take me up, and cast me forth into the sea; so shall the sea be calm unto you; for I know that for my sake this great tempest is upon you.'
יג וַיַּחְתְּרוּ הָאֲנָשִׁים, לְהָשִׁיב אֶל-הַיַּבָּשָׁה--וְלֹא יָכֹלוּ: כִּי הַיָּם, הוֹלֵךְ וְסֹעֵר עֲלֵיהֶם.	13 Nevertheless the men rowed hard to bring it to the land; but they could not; for the sea grew more and more tempestuous against them.
יד וַיִּקְרְאוּ אֶל-יְהוָה וַיֹּאמְרוּ, אָנָּה יְהוָה אַל-נָא נֹאבְדָה בְּנֶפֶשׁ הָאִישׁ הַזֶּה, וְאַל-תִּתֵּן עָלֵינוּ, דָּם נָקִיא: כִּי-אַתָּה יְהוָה, כַּאֲשֶׁר חָפַצְתָּ עָשִׂיתָ.	14 Wherefore they cried unto the LORD, and said: 'We beseech Thee, O LORD, we beseech Thee, let us not perish for this man's life, and lay not upon us innocent blood; for Thou, O LORD, hast done as it pleased Thee.'
טו וַיִּשְׂאוּ, אֶת-יוֹנָה, וַיְטִלֻהוּ, אֶל-הַיָּם; וַיַּעֲמֹד הַיָּם, מִזַּעְפּוֹ.	15 So they took up Jonah, and cast him forth into the sea; and the sea ceased from its raging.
טז וַיִּירְאוּ הָאֲנָשִׁים יִרְאָה גְדוֹלָה, אֶת-יְהוָה; וַיִּזְבְּחוּ-זֶבַח, לַיהוָה, וַיִּדְּרוּ, נְדָרִים.	16 Then the men feared the LORD exceedingly; and they offered a sacrifice unto the LORD, and made vows.

Bible - Jonah - Chapter 1 2 3 4

http://www.mechon-mamre.org/p/pt/pt1701.htm

More Jonah and Misuse of Genre

Frank Mobbs, when basically dismissing the historicity of the Old Testament (what he calls “three-quarters of the Bible”) in his analysis for AD 2000, “How much history do the Scriptures contain?” (August 2008), could have benefitted from a serious study of Thomas Crean’s account of genre (see earlier post): "In our days, reflections upon the historicity of a Biblical book often advert to the notion of 'literary genres'. This notion is unexceptionable in itself … Holy Scripture contains many such genres. Indeed, the Second Vatican Council explicitly uses the notion, teaching that "truth is differently presented and expressed in the various types of historical writing, in prophetical and poetical texts". A fallacy is committed, however, when it is supposed that the identification of a genre … of a particular style of poetry or prose, allows one to decide upon the historicity … of what is related in that genre”.

Jonah and Genre

 

ON THE PROPHET JONAH

by Thomas Crean

 

Taken from "Living Tradition": http://www.rtforum.org/lt/lt101.html

This article will argue that the opinion which denies the historicity of the events in the book
of Jonah, an opinion quite widespread even among Catholics, is a prejudice.

 

A New Fallacy

In our days, reflections upon the historicity of a Biblical book often advert to the notion of 'literary genres'. This notion is unexceptionable in itself, nor can it be doubted that Holy Scripture contains many such genres. Indeed, the Second Vatican Council explicitly uses the notion, teaching that "truth is differently presented and expressed in the various types of historical writing, in prophetical and poetical texts".A fallacy is committed, however, when it is supposed that the identification of a genre, that is to say of a particular style of poetry or prose, allows one to decide upon the historicity or fabulousness of what is related in that genre. Since a true story and an invented story may both be related in the same variety of genres, one may not pass without further ado from the identification of a genre to a judgement on the historicity of what is said. Thus the life of a particular man or woman may be narrated in a variety of styles, as for example the life of St. Thomas Aquinas has actually been told both by careful scholarly biographies, as an edifying tale for children and as a romance for the general reader. It would obviously be a mistake if someone were to come across the last of these works and decide that because it fell into the literary genre of romance - a genre which often contains tales of imaginary people such as Don Quixote or Mr Pickwick – St. Thomas also had never existed. Conversely, one cannot conclude of a text belonging to a genre which often includes works of history that it, too, is historical: most diaries are historical, but the 'Hitler Diaries' were not.

Now, it is not hard to see that the book of Jonah does not fall into the genre of historical writing in quite the same way as, say, the book of Ezra. It contains no dates. None of the men mentioned is named, save the protagonist, not even the king of Nineveh. It is not part of a wider description of relations between the kingdoms of Israel and Assyria. It gives little topological detail. Its concern is not the typical patterns of human life, but marvels of nature and grace. Whilst ignoring matters of great interest to the historian, it relates certain little details which engage the imagination, as might the author of a work of fiction written to give pleasure, for example the sailors' drawing lots to find the cause of the storm, or the worm's eating the castor-oil plant. Such considerations as these allow one to say that the work - with the exception of the prayer in chapter two, an example of religious poetry - belongs to what one might call the genre of popular narrative and not that of learned history.

Does it follow that the events related are invented rather than real? Not at all. To reason thus would be to commit the fallacy of judging of historicity by genre, the fallacy which was criticised a moment ago. It would be to confuse a work in which the artistic imagination has served to create the style with a work in which it has provided the substance. It would also be to forget that the same life may be presented in many different genres - thus the life of blessed Jonah which is recounted in the Scriptures after the manner of a popular narrative, might in theory have been told in other ways, for example as detailed biography or poetic epic. We must therefore look elsewhere to investigate the historicity of this book, and in the absence of an express definition by the Church, our chief witnesses must be Scripture itself and tradition.

Scriptural Evidence

How does the Old Testament speak of Jonah? First of all, the author of the book of Jonah identifies the prophet as the son of Amittai. In so doing, he would seem clearly to identify him as the prophet called Jonah, son of Amittai, who is mentioned in 2 Kings 14, as having prophesied in the northern kingdom around the time of Jeroboam II. So the protagonist of the book of Jonah is presented as a real person. It does not follow from this alone that the story related of him happened in reality, since it is possible to invent stories about real people, as happens in the apocryphal gospels. Nevertheless, this fact may serve as a warning against simply assuming that this book, because it is written in the style of a popular narrative or ‘cautionary tale’, is not, therefore, also a narrative presenting historical events and happenings that really did take place.

The only other reference to the prophet Jonah in the Old Testament is to be found at the end of the book of Tobit, where Tobit warns his son to leave Nineveh "because what the prophet Jonah said will surely happen" (Tob.14, 8). For one who accepts the historicity of the book of Tobit, this would be a sufficient confirmation at least of the historicity of Jonah's preaching as related in the book of Jonah, if not of the other events narrated therein; but since many of those who hesitate to admit the reality of the events described in the book of Jonah would have similar reservations about the book of Tobit, the investigation of the Scriptural evidence must be continued.

If we turn, then, to the Gospels, it is evident that the prophet Jonah holds an important place in the Dominical preaching. It would seem that, on at least three separate occasions, the Lord compares the prophet Jonah to Himself. There is first of all the passage in Matt. 12:38-41. Some of the scribes and Pharisees, having asked for a sign, receive the reply that "as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the whale, so will the Son of man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth". It is added that the men of Nineveh will arise at the judgement to condemn those who did not repent at the preaching of the Gospel, and then, by way of climax, that the Queen of the South will do likewise. Next comes a passage further on in the same Gospel (Matt. 16:4), where the Pharisees again request a sign, but this time with the Sadducees; the Lord replies that no sign will be given them save that of Jonah, without specifying on this occasion in what this sign consists. Finally, there is found a passage in St. Luke's Gospel, 11:29-32, addressed it would seem to the multitude, that "as Jonah became a sign to the men of Nineveh, so will the Son of man be to this generation". It is added that the Queen of the South will arise at the judgement in condemnation, and then it is the men of Nineveh who this time are introduced by way of climax as also destined to arise on the last day.

Obviously, much could be drawn from these few words, but our purpose is to consider their bearing only upon the historicity of the book of Jonah. How might they be interpreted by one who denies that this book is, or was intended to be, historical in content? Such a one would perhaps reply that the Lord had used ‘the ideas of His time’ in preaching the Gospel. This, without further explicitation, is ambiguous. It could mean, in the first place, that one of the ideas used was the false one that the book of Jonah narrates real events. In that case, in using this false idea, Christ would either have known of its falsity or not. If not, one would have to say that He was either ignorant of the meaning of the Scriptures (more ignorant than some modern exegetes, and on a point as fundamental as the historicity or fabulousness of an entire book) and also in error in supposing that certain men had repented at Jonah's preaching and would rise again - but neither of these things can be said. If, on the other hand, He was aware of the falsity of the idea used and the multitude was not, then in saying that the men of Nineveh who had repented at Jonah's preaching would indeed rise again when they could not because they had never existed, He would have been confirming them in their wrong opinion and teaching them something false, which again is entirely impossible.

On the other hand, it could be argued that one of the ideas of the time was that the book of Jonah was not an account of real events; that it was universally recognised to be not only a popular narrative but also a fictional one, imaginative not only in style or genre, but also in content. Although the witness of Josephus tells against this view (Antiquities, IX, 10,2), one can at least consider how well it fits with the passages of the Gospels just quoted. Here one may want to distinguish the references to the sign of Jonah from the references to the resurrection of the Ninevites. In the first case, whilst the several analogies between Jonah and our Lord would in a sense hold good whether or not Jonah had done or suffered in reality that which is related of him, yet it can easily be seen how much the solemnity of the Lord's words would be prejudiced if he had not. To take an analogy, of which the absurdity will be unavoidable: imagine that a great popular preacher of repentance, a Savanarola or a St. Vincent Ferrer, had been asked for a sign to justify the apparent novelty of their declarations, and had replied that just as Robin Hood had been persecuted by the wealthy for defending the poor, so would he be. It would seem frivolous, futile and odd. Yet, if Jonah is to be placed on the same level as Robin Hood, the fictional hero of picturesque adventures, it is with such an answer that one would apparently have to place the answers given to the scribes, Pharisees and Sadducees according to which the sign validating the Lord's mission is the similarity to it of the life of Jonah.

In the second case, however, that of the resurrection of the Ninevites, Christ's words would be simply impossible on the hypothesis that no one supposed the story of Jonah to be true. For here there is not simply a comparison of two items, but a statement that two groups of people will exist together, the men of Nineveh who repented at the preaching of Jonah and ‘this generation’, which cannot be true if the men of Nineveh had never existed. Nor is it possible to say that this is a literary allusion, as a preacher to-day might make an allusion in his homily to, say, Lady Macbeth. It would be quite possible for a preacher to use Lady Macbeth as an example of how sin may lead to despair. What would be wholly morally impossible would be for him to say, for example: "It is not only active crimes that are punished but inner ones as well. On Judgement Day you will see Judas Iscariot punished not only for treason but also for despair. You will see Lady Macbeth punished not only for killing King Duncan but also for despair".Yet, if this sounds ridiculous, it is how the passage quoted from St. Luke would have sounded, where, after the Queen of the South's resurrection, the resurrection of the men of Nineveh is foretold by way of climax, if the story of Jonah had been generally believed in the 1^st century A.D. to be fiction.

Patristic Witness

Since it is the Fathers who are par excellence the exegetes of Holy Scripture, and since it does not seem that those doctors who succeeded them differed from them in regard to our question, I should like, in considering the witness of tradition, to limit myself to some patristic evidence concerning the historicity of the book of Jonah.

Perhaps the first patristic commentary on the book of Jonah was Origen's. This commentary, known to St. Jerome, is to-day entirely lost. Yet, before Origen we have a text of St. Irenaeus (Adversus Haereses III, 20, 1) which discusses the prophet's life and adventures. St. Irenaeus does not raise the question of the historicity of the events of the book, which he no doubt takes for granted. He notes rather that the story of Jonah is an example of the divine longanimity, and that the prophet's being swallowed up by the monster represents the original swallowing up of mankind by the ancient serpent.

 

St. Cyril of Jerusalem refers to the story of Jonah in his 14^th Catechetical Instruction, about 347 A.D.. He is defending the doctrine of the Resurrection of Christ, and with Jewish objections particularly in mind, also makes allusion to this most famous of incidents, the ingorging of the prophet by the ‘great fish’. St. Cyril says:

 

"To me both alike are worthy of credence. I believe that Jonah was preserved, for all things are possible to God; I believe that Christ also was raised from the dead".

 

It is to St. Jerome that we owe the earliest full and extant commentary on the book of Jonah. The saint composed it towards the end of the 4th century, in Bethlehem. He has no doubt but that Jonah, a type of Christ, is also a real person: indeed, in his preface, he asks that the prophet may bestow on him a renewed fervour, so that he may write as he ought. In several passages of the book, he notes certain characteristics of the historical Jonah, for example, his magnanimity in wanting to die, so that the crew of the ship should be saved. He distinguishes clearly what belongs to historia, the life and adventures of the prophet, from what belongs to tropologia, this same life as a prefigurement of the Saviour. In commenting on chapter two, he says:

 

"I am aware that some will be incredulous that a man should be preserved three days and three nights in the belly of a whale, to which the shipwreck had led him; these people are either believers or non-believers: if they are believers, they are obliged to believe much greater things."

 

Among these 'much greater things', the saint lists the preservation of the three young men in the fiery furnace (Dan.3), and Daniel's being preserved among the lions (Dan.14; Heb.11). One might also include any of the miracles of resurrection in either the Old or the New Testament.

St. Augustine argues similarly. In Epistle 102, written around 409 A.D., he is replying to a priest who had reported some objections to the Christian faith made by a mutual acquaintance of theirs, a pagan. Some of these objections, says St. Augustine, seem to stem from Porphyry, but the last, concerning the story of Jonah, and in particular his survival in the whale and the plant which miraculously sprang up over him, is presented as being a general matter of mockery among the pagans. In replying, the Bishop of Hippo says:

"Either all the divine miracles are to be disbelieved, or else there is no reason why this should not be believed. We should not believe in Christ Himself, and that He rose on the third day, if the faith of Christians feared the laughter of the pagans."

He wishes his readers to understand the symbolic significance of the narrative, which he expounds very beautifully in the course of the epistle, but he does not see that as a reason to evacuate the literal. On the contrary, it is the historical sense which grounds the mystical. The story did not happen without a purpose, but it did happen. "Non enim frustra factum est, sed tamen factum est".

With St. Augustine, there is the suggestion that it is not only the miraculous element in the book which prompts the mockery of the pagans, but also its 'lowliness', or, as we might say, its naivety of style or literary genre. They mock for example the picturesque detail of the worm which eats the castor-oil plant and so destroys the comforting shadow of one who was angry at the conversion of the pagans. It is not the first time, says St. Augustine, that this worm has been laughed at, for it is a type of Him Who was mocked on the Cross and said "I am a worm and no man". "Let the pagans go on laughing at this worm, Christ, and let them mock with proud phrases this interpretation of the prophetic mystery; yet, little by little and imperceptibly, it will consume them".

Finally, St. Augustine explains why miracles are not only possible for divine omnipotence, but also fitting for divine eloquence. For divine power is wont to express itself in deeds, as men express themselves by words, "and just as new or rare words, if used sparingly and with restraint, add splendour to human language, so divine eloquence becomes in a sense more beautiful by miraculous deeds of fit signification."

The second oration of St. Gregory of Nazianzus (362 A.D.) is sometimes cited as if it were a patristic forerunner of modern denials of the historicity of the book of Jonah. In truth, this does not appear to be the purport of the text (Orat. 2, 104-10). St. Gregory does not say, contrary to what has been suggested, that the story is absurd, but that it would be absurd or improbable if one supposed a prophet such as Jonah to have really thought that he could escape from the presence of God by going to Tarshish, or not to have desired the salvation of the Ninevites. In reality, he says - as St. Jerome was also to say-, the prophet knew by his prophetic vision that salvation for the pagans would mean the fall of Israel; this, and not literally escaping the divine presence, was the motive behind his flight:

"He saw the fall of Israel, and understood that the grace of prophecy would pass to the nations. This is what leads him to withdraw from preaching and delay the execution of his mission. He abandons the contemplation of joy (which is the meaning of the word Joppe in Hebrew), that is, the high position and dignity which he had possessed formerly, and he throws himself into the sea of sadness. This is what makes him weather the storm, fall asleep, be shipwrecked, ... be thrown into the sea and be swallowed by the whale without dying: there he invokes God, and by a wonder, he rises on the third day with Christ... . I willingly admit that he perhaps had some right, for the motive I have expounded, to be forgiven his hesitation in carrying out the office of a prophet."

It seems clear that the saint takes the prophet Jonah to be a real person, whose exploits, whilst carrying a symbolic meaning, form also a coherent history when one knows the true motive of Jonah's flight.

What is striking in these texts is how each author, though intent on highlighting the symbolical meaning of the Old Testament Scripture, is not thereby inclined in the least degree to lessen or doubt its historicity. In St. Jerome and St. Augustine in particular, awareness of the spiritual sense is in fact the great motive for the defence of the literal. St. Gregory the Great gives the reason for this in the preface to his commentary on the Book of Job: "Let us first fix the root of history, so that we may be able after to satisfy the mind with the fruit of allegories". The historical sense is thus the root which must be sunk all the deeper, as the spiritual sense grows higher.

"This we ask with insistence", St. Gregory says in the first book of the commentary, "that he who would raise his mind to spiritual understanding should not withdraw from the veneration of the history."

The objections to the historicity of the story of Jonah which the Fathers answer are thus most commonly based upon the miracles it relates, and as such, do not stand up to faith in the divine omnipotence. The Fathers seem not to have considered the possibility that the book of Jonah might be a work of fiction intended not, indeed, to deceive, but to edify and instruct. I should venture to suggest that this is because they believed that only real and historical persons were fit to symbolise the Incarnate Word, from Whose disciples, their minds having been opened to an understanding of the Scriptures, the Fathers themselves drew their learning.

Concluding Reflections

The Second Vatican Council teaches that "the words of God,expressed in the words of men, are in every way like human language, just as the Word of the eternal Father, when he took on the flesh of human weakness, became like men". Thus it is that, as Christ performed many kinds of human activity whilst on earth, Sacred Scripture contains many types of human writing. Thus also, as He was in every way like others, yet without sin, so the Holy Scriptures are in every way like other writings, yet without error. Yet, between action and words there is this difference, that whilst every human act is good or bad, speech and writing may, because of their dependence upon convention, be true, false, or fictitious. If the Fathers of the Church, of whose work we have seen a brief but, I think one may fairly say, representative sample, refuse to allow that a Scriptural book could be a work of fiction (bearing in mind no doubt the dignity of Scripture and the veneration in which the Church had always held the heroes of the Old Testament), that in itself is a very grave dissuasion for a Catholic from doing otherwise. With the book of Jonah, as we have seen, there are even more compelling reasons from the New Testament to accept its narrative as true. In modern times, misapplying the notion of a 'literary genre', and moved perhaps by a wish to escape that irrisio infidelium which troubled the Fathers so little, have some authors been deceived by appearances into judging that whatever displayed the vividness of fiction might not also enjoy the dignity of fact?

Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen on Jonah

“Was Jonah really in the belly of the whale?”, a student once asked Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen.

Fulton Sheen: “I don’t know, but the first thing I am going to do when I get to heaven is to ask Jonah: Were you in the belly of the whale?”

To which the wiseacre student replied: “What if Jonah’s not there?”
Fulton Sheen: “Then you ask him”.

 

 

Jonah in Greco-Roman Mythology

Typically, the famous story of the prophet Jonah appears to have been picked up later by the Greco-Romans, and re-cast, as we are now going to find.

Jonah, as we read, “went down to Joppa and found a ship going to Tarshish” (1:3). Legend has it that Joppa, or Jaffa, was founded by Noah’s son, Japheth. Now, Japheth became a primary god, Iapetos/Iapetus, for the Greeks. This important port of Joppa, Sennacherib of Assyria had high-handedly captured in the C8th BC. As König had noted, in relation to a Greek myth: “… it was in the neighbourhood of Joppa that Andromeda, too, was reduced to straits by a sea-monster …”. And Graves writes similarly:“An Etruscan vase shows the moribund king, whose name is given as Jason … in the jaws of a sea-monster: an icon from which the moral anecdote of Jonah and the Whale has apparently been deduced [sic]”. Wikipedia, too, tells of Jonah/Jason correspondences:

 

In 1995 the classicist Gildas Hamel revived a long-forgotten theory connecting the story of Jonah with that of the Greek hero Jason ("Taking the Argo to Nineveh: Jonah and Jason in a Mediterranean context," Judaism Summer, 1995; online).

Drawing on the Book of Jonah and Greco-Roman sources—including Greek vases and the accounts of Apollonius of Rhodes, Valerius Flaccus and Orphic Argonautica—Hamel 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, a hapax legomenon within the Hebrew Bible). ….

 

Indeed I seem to find in ‘Jason of the land of Iolchos’ quite a linguistic similarity to ‘Isaiah [as Nahum] of Elkosh’. [To understand this connection, see main article on Jonah, previous post].

Sayce, writing with reference to the Book of Jonah, told of the extraordinary claim by Stephanus Byzantius, that “Gaza was also called Iônê, while the sea between Gaza and the frontier of Egypt was called “Ionian”.”