Did Jonah’s visit inspire monotheism in the kingdom of Assyria?

Historical Window for Jonah’s Nineveh Visit

 Part Five (i): Did Jonah’s visit inspire monotheism in the kingdom of Assyria?

  

by

 Damien F. Mackey

 

“A strange religious revolution took place in the time of Adad-nirari III, which can be compared with that of the Egyptian Pharaoh Ikhnaton. For an unknown reason Nabu (Nebo), the god of Borsippa, seems to have been proclaimed sole god, or at least the principal god, of the empire”.

 Francis D. Nichol

 

 

Introduction

 

Whilst I would once have thought that Akhnaton’s Atonism influencing the ‘Nebo revolution’  was likely – then having king Adad-nirari III following on closely from the El Amarna [EA] age (revised) – I would now, with my lowering of this neo-Assyrian period by up to a century:

 

Re-shuffling the Pack of Neo-Assyrian Kings

https://www.academia.edu/33167712/Re-shuffling_the_pack_of_neo-Assyrian_kings

 

and with the prophet Jonah and his mission now located to the very eve of the reign of a revised Adad-nirari III (perhaps when a high official such as Ahikar was “king [governor] of Nineveh):

 

Book of Jonah’s ‘King of Nineveh’

 

consider the “strange religious revolution” of pharaoh Akhnaton and Queen Nefertiti to be entirely a different one (chronologically and theologically) from that thought to have occurred at the time of neo-Assyrian king Adad-nirari III.  

On a previous occasion I had written: My reconstruction of EA (Akhnaton and Nefertiti) in its relation to the time of Ahab and Jezebel has led me to conclude that the Baalism that the Bible records at this time was reflected in the Atonism of, principally, Akhetaton in Egypt, and that the erasure of that Baalism was done through the same agency that defaced and erased Akhnaton and his unique project. Now I learn from Mackenzie’s article (Donald A. MacKenzie, Myths of Babylonia and Assyria, 1915) that a similar régime as Akhnaton’s was effected in Assyro-Babylonia at the time of Adad-nirari III (or IV: Mackenzie), with the legendary Queen Sammuramat (or Semiramis) having unique power for a woman, likened (once more, as in the case of the Jezebel seal) to Queen Tiy. My conclusion will be that Sammuramat was Nefertiti/Tiy (Jezebel) in Mesopotamia. [End of quote] Whilst I still firmly hold Queen Nefertiti to have been the biblical bad-woman, Jezebel:

Queen Nefertiti Sealed as Jezebel

https://www.academia.edu/31088456/Queen_Nefertiti_Sealed_as_Jezebel I would now no longer extend this alter ego-ism to include Queen Tiy. And Queen Sammuramat (‘Semiramis’), for her part, can no longer belong to the EA era according to my more recent revision of her – now equating her with the significant neo-Assyrian queen, Naqia (Zakutu):

Naqia of Assyria and ‘Semiramis’. Part Two: Naqia attached to Semiramis?

 

https://www.academia.edu/31620155/Naqia_of_Assyria_and_Semiramis._Part_Two_Naqia_attached_to

The influence of the two historical queens, Nefertiti and Naqia, ought not to be underestimated. If Nefertiti were Jezebel, as I maintain, then she was one who actually spurred on her husband, and may therefore have been instrumental in fostering the strange and somewhat Indic cult of Atonism in EA’s Egypt. The very first we hear of Jezebel is in association with Baal worship (I Kings 16:31): “[King Ahab] also married Jezebel daughter of Ethbaal king of the Sidonians, and began to serve Baal and worship him”. And she, again, was apparently the wind beneath his idolatrous wings (I Kings 21:25): “… there was no one like Ahab who sold himself to do wickedness in the sight of the LORD, because Jezebel his wife stirred him up”.Likewise, Queen Semiramis may have been instrumental in the case of the (different) religious reform at the time of Adad-nirari III. Writing of “The Age of Semiramis” in his Chapter XVIII, Donald MacKenzie will make some interesting observations about her, including this one: “Queen Sammu-rammat of Assyria, like Tiy of Egypt, is associated with social and religious innovations”. Here is a part of MacKenzie’s intriguing account of this semi-legendary queen:

…. One of the most interesting figures in Mesopotamian history came into prominence during the Assyrian Middle [sic] Empire period. This was the famous Sammu-rammat, the Babylonian wife of an Assyrian ruler. Like Sargon of Akkad, Alexander the Great, and Dietrich von Bern, she made, by reason of her achievements and influence, a deep impression on the popular imagination, and as these monarchs became identified in tradition with gods of war and fertility, she had attached to her memory the myths associated with the mother goddess of love and battle who presided over the destinies of mankind. In her character as the legendary Semiramis of Greek literature, the Assyrian queen was reputed to have been the daughter of Derceto, the dove and fish goddess of Askalon, and to have departed from earth in bird form.

It is not quite certain whether Sammu-rammat was the wife of Shamshi-Adad VII [we now take this as V] or of his son, Adad-nirari IV [III]. Before the former monarch reduced Babylonia to the status of an Assyrian province, he had signed a treaty of peace with its king, and it is suggested that it was confirmed by a matrimonial alliance. This treaty was repudiated by King Bau-akh-iddina, who was transported with his palace treasures to Assyria.

As Sammu-rammat was evidently a royal princess of Babylonia, it seems probable that her marriage was arranged with purpose to legitimatize the succession of the Assyrian overlords to the Babylonian throne. The principle of “mother right” was ever popular in those countries where the worship of the Great Mother was perpetuated if not in official at any rate in domestic religion. Not a few Egyptian Pharaohs reigned as husbands or as sons of royal ladies. Succession by the female line was also observed among the Hittites. When Hattusil II gave his daughter in marriage to Putakhi, king of the Amorites, he inserted a clause in the treaty of alliance “to the effect that the sovereignty over the Amorite should belong to the son and descendants of his daughter for evermore”.[464]

As queen or queen-mother, Sammu-rammat occupied as prominent a position in Assyria as did Queen Tiy of Egypt during the lifetime of her husband, Amenhotep III, and the early part of the reign of her son, Amenhotep IV (Akhenaton). The Tell-el-Amarna letters testify to Tiy’s influence in the Egyptian “Foreign Office”, and we know that at home she was joint ruler with her husband and took part with him in public ceremonials. During their reign a temple was erected to the mother goddess Mut, and beside it was formed a great lake on which sailed the “barque of Aton” in connection with mysterious religious ceremonials. After Akhenaton’s religious revolt was inaugurated, the worship of Mut was discontinued and Tiy went into retirement. In Akhenaton’s time the vulture symbol of the goddess Mut did not appear above the sculptured figures of royalty.

What connection the god Aton had with Mut during the period of the Tiy regime remains obscure. There is no evidence that Aton was first exalted as the son of the Great Mother goddess, although this is not improbable.

Queen Sammu-rammat of Assyria, like Tiy of Egypt, is associated with social and religious innovations. She was the first, and, indeed, the only Assyrian royal lady, to be referred to on equal terms with her royal husband in official inscriptions. In a dedication to the god Nebo, that deity is reputed to be the protector of “the life of Adad-nirari, king of the land of Ashur, his lord, and the life of Sammu-rammat, she of the palace, his lady”.[465]

During the reign of Adad-nirari IV the Assyrian Court radiated Babylonian culture and traditions. The king not only recorded his descent from the first Shalmaneser, but also claimed to be a descendant of Bel-kap-kapu, an earlier, but, to us, unknown, Babylonian monarch than “Sulili”, i.e. Sumu-la-ilu, the great-great-grandfather of Hammurabi. Bel-kap-kapu was reputed to have been an overlord of Assyria.

Apparently Adad-nirari desired to be regarded as the legitimate heir to the thrones of Assyria and Babylonia. His claim upon the latter country must have had a substantial basis. It is not too much to assume that he was a son of a princess of its ancient royal family. Sammurammat may therefore have been his mother. She could have been called his “wife” in the mythological sense, the king having become “husband of his mother”. If such was the case, the royal pair probably posed as the high priest and high priestess of the ancient goddess cult–the incarnations of the Great Mother and the son who displaced his sire.

The worship of the Great Mother was the popular religion of the indigenous peoples of western Asia, including parts of Asia Minor, Egypt, and southern and western Europe. It appears to have been closely associated with agricultural rites practised among representative communities of the Mediterranean race. In Babylonia and Assyria the peoples of the goddess cult fused with the peoples of the god cult, but the prominence maintained by Ishtar, who absorbed many of the old mother deities, testifies to the persistence of immemorial habits of thought and antique religious ceremonials among the descendants of the earliest settlers in the Tigro-Euphrates valley. ….

It must be recognized, in this connection, that an official religion was not always a full reflection of popular beliefs. In all the great civilizations of antiquity it was invariably a compromise between the beliefs of the military aristocracy and the masses of mingled peoples over whom they held sway. Temple worship had therefore a political aspect; it was intended, among other things, to strengthen the position of the ruling classes. But ancient deities could still be worshipped, and were worshipped, in homes and fields, in groves and on mountain tops, as the case might be. Jeremiah has testified to the persistence of the folk practices in connection with the worship of the mother goddess among the inhabitants of Palestine. Sacrificial fires were lit and cakes were baked and offered to the “Queen of Heaven” in the streets of Jerusalem and other cities. In Babylonia and Egypt domestic religious practices were never completely supplanted by temple ceremonies in which rulers took a prominent part. It was always possible, therefore, for usurpers to make popular appeal by reviving ancient and persistent forms of worship. As we have seen, Jehu of Israel, after stamping out Phoenician Baal worship, secured a strong following by giving official recognition to the cult of the golden calf.

 

MacKenzie now proceeds to draw his hopeful religious parallel between EA and Sammuramat alongside Adad-nirari III:

 

It is not possible to set forth in detail, or with intimate knowledge, the various innovations which Sammu-rammat introduced, or with which she was credited, during the reigns of Adad-nirari IV (810-782 B.C.) and his father. No discovery has been made of documents like the Tell-el-Amarna “letters”, which would shed light on the social and political life of this interesting period.

…. The prominence given to Nebo, the god of Borsippa, during the reign of Adad-nirari IV is highly significant. He appears in his later character as a god of culture and wisdom, the patron of scribes and artists, and the wise counsellor of the deities. He symbolized the intellectual life of the southern kingdom, which was more closely associated with religious ethics than that of war-loving Assyria.

A great temple was erected to Nebo at Kalkhi, and four statues of him were placed within it, two of which are now in the British Museum. On one of these was cut the inscription, from which we have quoted, lauding the exalted and wise deity and invoking him to protect Adad-nirari and the lady of the palace, Sammu-rammat, and closing with the exhortation, “Whoso cometh in after time, let him trust in Nebo and trust in no other god”.

 

 

In light of my revisions, however, I would be more likely to conclude now with the view expressed in the following piece, conventionally dated, that this apparent unexpected reversion of Assyria to a religious form of monotheism was due to the effects of “Jonah’s mission to Nineveh” (http://bibarchae.tripod.com/001_Attendant_god_Nabu_Nimrud.htm):

 

Attendant god, 810 – 800 BC, Temple of Nabu, Nimrud (Kalhu) [see above]
This is one of a pair of statues that stood outside the doorway of the temple of Nabu, god of writing. The cuneiform inscription on it (translation available here) mentions King Adad-Nirari III (810-783 BC), and his powerful mother, queen Sammuramat (Semiramis). The end of the inscription says, “Trust in Nabu, do not trust in any other god”. Clasping the hands together over or just below the chest, with the right hand over the left, whilst in a standing position, is very common posture in mesopotamian statues, and I think it is a votive gesture done by worshippers. It is still done today, as part of the Muslim prayer ritual.

This is the first photo I took. The statue is the first thing you see on the right of room 6, the start of the Ancient Near East section on the ground floor of the west wing of the museum. Below is an excerpt from the SDA Bible Commentary that is related to it. It says that the statue is of Nabu, set up by a governor dedicated to the king, but the museum sign said it was of an attendant god and dates it older than in the article below:

 

“A strange religious revolution took place in the time of Adad-nirari III, which can be compared with that of the Egyptian Pharaoh Ikhnaton. For an unknown reason Nabu (Nebo), the god of Borsippa, seems to have been proclaimed sole god, or at least the principal god, of the empire. A Nabu temple was erected in 787 B.C. at Calah, and on a Nabu statue one of the governors dedicated to the king appear the significant words, “Trust in Nabu, do not trust in any other god” The favorite place accorded Nabu in the religious life of Assyria is revealed by the fact that no other god appears so often in personal names. This monotheistic revolution had as short a life as the Aton revolution in Egypt. The worshipers of the Assyrian national deities quickly recovered from their impotence, reoccupied their privileged places, and suppressed Nabu. This is the reason that so little is known concerning the events during the time of the monotheistic revolution. Biblical chronology places Jonah’s ministry in the time of Jeroboam II, of Israel, who reigned from 793 to 753 b.c. Hence, Jonah’s mission to Nineveh may have occurred in the reign of Adad-nirari III, and may have had something to do with his decision to abandon the old gods and serve only one deity. This explanation can, however, be given only as a possibility, because source material for that period is so scanty and fragmentary that a complete reconstruction of the political and religious history of Assyria during the time under consideration is not yet possible”.

[End of quote]

 

With Adad-nirari III greatly filled out as Esarhaddon, however, as according to my revisions, then the “scanty and fragmentary” “source material for that period” correspondingly gets filled out. The Assyrian inscription reading “… trust in Nebo and trust in no other god” is purely Yahwistic and Isaianic (26:4): “Trust in the LORD forever, for the LORD, the LORD himself, is the Rock eternal”. Nor is it surprising to find there an echo of the contemporaneous Isaiah, given that (https://www.studylight.org/commentaries/bcc/jonah-3.html)

 

Jeremiah and Isaiah both were doubtless influenced by Jonah, especially Isaiah who, in full harmony with the inevitable deductions that appear mandatory in the Book of Jonah, prophesied again and again the rejection of Israel and the acceptance of the Gentiles into the kingdom of God.

Jonah a Dove and Semiramis a Fish

 



by

Damien F. Mackey

 

 

““Jonah” means “dove,” both in Hebrew and Aramaic;

according to Diodorus, the name of Semiramis is linked to doves as well

(the etymology is probably based on the Akkadian word for “dove,” summu/summatu).

…. The fish motif: Jonah spends three days in the belly of a fish, which eventually

spits him out, reformed and almost reborn. Semiramis is the daughter of

the fish goddess Derceto, a kind of divine mermaid”.

 

Eckart Frahm

 

 

Introduction

 

As with the Noachic Flood, so with the tale of Jonah, there has sprung up an abundance of legends and mythologies whether based loosely, or more closely, upon the Hebrew original.

I touched upon just a few of these (Oannes; Jason; Endymion) in Part Two (iii) of my series:

 

Historical Window for Jonah's Nineveh Visit. Part Two: Jonah as a Contemporary of Jeroboam II. (iii) Putting Jonah Back Together: Fairytale?

 

https://www.academia.edu/32974769/Historical_Window_for_Jonahs_Nineveh_Visit._Part_Two_Jonah_as_a_Contemporary_of_Jeroboam_II._iii_Putting_Jonah_Back_Together_Fairytale

 

 

Now, whilst I have described the Hebrew versions of Noah and Jonah as the “original” ones, conventional scholarship would almost universally have it that the Hebrew texts were later versions of a, say, Greco-Roman original. This is apparent from the following article (which provides examples of other Jonah legends) whose very title betrays a presumed Hebrew dependence upon the Greeks: “Was the Book of Jonah inspired by Jason and the Argonauts?” http://semiticcontroversies.blogspot.com.au/2014/05/was-book-of-jonah-inspired-by-jason-and.html#!/2014/05/was-book-of-jonah-inspired-by-jason-and.html

 

Having recently re-read Apollonius of Rhodes' 'Argonautica' it caused me to recall that in the early twentieth century several classical scholars wondered; and even argued, that some parts of the Old and New Testament had been consciously modeled on this popular account of the exploits of Jason and his crew of heroes. In particular they focused on the story of the romance of Jason and Medea arguing; not implausibly, that the anointing of Jason by Medea was the parallel drawn on by the gospels for the anointing of Jesus. (1)

 

In the Old Testament: scholars have focused on the book of Jonah as being the principle element that has been inspired by Apollonius' account of the adventures of Jason and his crew. Gildas Hamel has argued that the name Jonah; in terms of the book, is a deliberate anagram for Jason since Jonah in Greek is 'Ionas', while Jason in Greek is 'Iason'. Indeed Jason was a common Greek name taken by Hellenizing jews in Palestine and viewing it as an anagram of the Greek way of saying Jonah would go a significant way to explain its popularity.

 

Elsewhere others have noted the similarity of story of Jonah to the Greek story of Perseus (3) and Hamel himself points out that it also bears a striking resemblance in places to the labours of Hercules. (4)

 

Hamel's thesis is simple: we know that the 'Argonautica' (in its various editions) was a widely read Greek epic (being as popular as tales about Perseus and Hercules for example) and was especially popular among the masses. Given that the jews of the period that the book of Jonah was written; the late fifth/early fourth century BC [sic], had come into significant contact with the Greeks and their ideas via the close Greek relationship and interchange of ideas with the Phoenicians and the Persians.

 

It is unsurprising that a literate and well-read jew, which the author of Jonah most certainly was, (5) would have drawn on the popular oral traditions of non-jewish peoples he had come into contact with in order to ensure a wide dissemination of his work among his target jewish audience (which was; we should note, ultimately successful). It is also worth noting that the author of the book of Jonah; which is set in eighth century Assyria, used the general story of an actual Mesopotamian legend to provide the basis for his narrative. (6)

 

This amalgamation of mythical narratives into the book of Jonah has predictably given rise to a string of claims from less than careful writers that Jason was merely a mythological derivative of Hercules (viz Robert Graves) (7) or that the 'Argonautica' validates the truthfulness of the Bible (with the assumption that it was written before it when in fact the inverse is almost certainly true). (8)

 

Aside from these enthusiastic attempts to re-write Greek religious history or validate Christian cosmogony: we can further note that there was a 'Tomb of Jason' with a drawing of what we may presume to be the Argo constructed in the first century BC in Jerusalem. (9) This in itself would be decidedly odd if there wasn't a strong tradition among the jews honouring Jason since the jews were notoriously inhospitable to Greek and Roman influences at this time. (10)

 

We also know that in some versions of the 'Argonautica' Jason meets with Triton; the merman of Greek mythology, (11) and this is perhaps transliterated via the Mesopotamian myth (12) into the famous description of Jonah's encounter with the 'big fish'.

 

While the meaning of 'Jonah' in Hebrew is 'dove' and he is guided to land by god, while Jason and the Argonauts are led through the Clashing Rocks by the good will of the gods and the agency of a dove. (13) Also worthy of note is the Hebrew term for the wind blowing Jonah along used in the original text of the book of Jonah verse 1.2; 'boreath', which is almost certainly derived from the Greek god of the north wind: Boreas. (14)

 

These are but a select few of the parallels that Hamel draws and it is clear that what he is describing is a piece of synthesis between different religious traditions and the formative works of Judaism, which clearly suggests that the idea of Judaism as a 'pure religion' or even a unique religious tradition without many non-jewish elements is increasing absurd.

 

The point being that if the book of Jonah is in effect a jewish writer combing Greek and Mesopotamian myths together then setting it in a jewish religious context: then it offers a strong counter to the idea that the Tanakh (i.e. the Hebrew Bible) is derived from God, but rather is a human work of mythology not one of divine inspiration.

 

After all if Jonah is simply Jason then are Yeshivas going to start using the 'Argonautica' as an aid to studying it?

[End of quote]

 

But, as I have consistently noted, the Greeks (and Romans) have often been credited with contributions to culture and civilisation (literary, technological, architectural, etc.) that were already in existence in far earlier times and kingdoms. And I gave a perfect example of this from the findings of Dr. Stephanie Dalley in my article:

 

Sobna (Shebna) the High Priest

 

https://www.academia.edu/31925425/Sobna_Shebna_the_High_Priest

 

Dr. Dalley has been able to demonstrate (actually in situ) that the screw pump, famously attributed to Archimedes (C3rd BC), was already being used by the Assyrians about half a millennium earlier, at the time of Sennacherib.                                       

[End of quote]

Mesopotamian Traditions of Jonah

 

 

“After Ninus’s death, Semiramis becomes the sole ruler of the

Assyrian empire, which she expands through numerous military campaigns.

When she eventually dies, after many years on the throne, she is, according to

the testimony of some witnesses, turned into a dove”.

 

Eckart Frahm

 

 

Jonah Coincides with Semiramis

 

Now it was at the time of this same Sennacherib, or at least during the hiatus period immediately after his assassination by two of his sons, when Assyria was in turmoil with no Assyrian king upon the throne - but only a high functionary, or governor - that I have identified as being, for me, the most likely period of time for Jonah’s arrival at Nineveh.

One will find the arguments for this revised scenario set out in my above-mentioned series: “Historical Window for Jonah's Nineveh Visit”.

Importantly, this precise phase of neo-Assyrian history, which featured an uncommonly powerful queen, Naqia (= Zakutu), who has actually been likened to the famous Sammuramat (Semiramis), I have in fact newly co-ordinated in my revision of Assyrian history:

 

Re-shuffling the pack of neo-Assyrian kings

 https://www.academia.edu/33167712/Re-shuffling_the_pack_of_neo-Assyrian_kings

 

with the very era of Queen Sammuramat herself.

That would make the prophet Jonah, in his visitation to Nineveh, an exact contemporary of Queen Sammuramat’s (of Semiramis’s), and might therefore explain the various Jonah-style legends associated with the Assyro-Babylonia of that queen’s day.

 

 

Eckart Frahm has discussed some of these in his article, “Of Doves, Fish, and Goddesses: Reflections on the Literary, Religious, and Historical Background of the Book of Jonah” (http://booksandjournals.brillonline.com/docserver/9789004324749_webready_content_s025.pdf?expires=1495845886&id=id&accname=id23226&checksum=7245DD80F40E9D4274F0A51B574FF013), the relevant parts of which I shall produce here with occasional comments relating to my historical reconstruction of the prophet Jonah and of Queen Sammuramat:

 

The Semiramis legend is best known in the version found in the second book (1–20) of the Bibliotheca historica of Diodorus Siculus, a first-century [BC] Roman historian writing in Greek.7 According to Diodorus, Semiramis is the daughter of the goddess Derceto of Ascalon and a Syrian youth.

 

Mackey’s comment: Likewise Queen Naqia is considered to have been non-Assyrian: “Sennacherib died in January 681 [sic] by parricide, probably at Nineveh. He was survived by his principal wife Naqia, mother of his heir Esarhaddon; her non-Assyrian name suggests that she was of either Jewish or Aramaean origin”.

 

Her mother, ashamed of her sinful union with a mortal man, exposes her newborn child in the wilderness and then throws herself into a lake, where she is changed into a fish with the head of a woman.

 

Mackey’s comment: Compare this with the Assyrian fish-man (pictured above).

 

Against all odds, the abandoned little girl survives, nurtured by doves, and is eventually recovered by a group of shepherds, whose headman, Simmas, gives her the name Semiramis, after “the word which, in the language of the Syrians, means ‘dove’ ” (Diodorus II 4.6).

 

Mackey’s comment: Jonah’s Hebrew name (יוֹנָה), too, as we read, means “dove”.

 

Raised by Simmas, Semiramis grows up and becomes a great beauty. In due course, she catches the eye of an Assyrian officer, Onnes, who encounters her while inspecting the royal herds during a journey to the Levant.

 

Mackey’s comment: “Onnes”, better known as “Oannes”, is often identified with the Assyrian fish man, and also with Jonah, whose name compares favourably with “Oannes”. Interesting that Oannes is in “the Levant”, not Assyria. And that he is “inspecting the herds”, compatible with my view that the prophet Jonah is to be identified with Amos the herdsman (Amos 7:14).

 

 

Onnes takes her as his wife, but their marriage has no future. When the Assyrian king Ninus, founder of Nineveh, makes Semiramis’s acquaintance during his siege of Bactra, he falls in love with her, forces Onnes to commit suicide, and marries her himself. After Ninus’s death, Semiramis becomes the sole ruler of the Assyrian empire, which she expands through numerous military campaigns.

 

Mackey’s comment: Though many consider that “Ninus” refers to the biblical Nimrod, apparent “founder of Nineveh” (cf. Genesis 10:11) - perhaps he is a composite of Nimrod and a later Assyrian king (or kings) - he fits very well here with Sennacherib, a builder of Nineveh, and whose death led to the empowerment of (my composite) Sammuramat/Naqia, that is, Queen Semiramis.

Frahm continues:

 

When she eventually dies, after many years on the throne, she is, according to the testimony of some witnesses, turned into a dove.

There are several conspicuous parallels between this strange story and the book of Jonah. The most important ones were identified by Moshe Weinfeld in a short but highly stimulating 1991 article.8 Weinfeld, however, was interested primarily in the etymology of the name Semiramis and dealt with the links between the two stories only in passing. This, and the fact that Weinfeld’s observations have been largely overlooked by the Hebrew Bible scholars who have written about Jonah since his article appeared, has prompted me to revisit the issue here. The main features the two stories have in common are the following:

 

• The dove motif and the names of the protagonists: “Jonah” means “dove,” both in Hebrew and Aramaic; according to Diodorus, the name of Semiramis is linked to doves as well (the etymology is probably based on the Akkadian word for “dove,” summu/summatu). As seen above, other features of the Semiramis story are likewise associated with doves.

• The fish motif: Jonah spends three days in the belly of a fish, which eventually spits him out, reformed and almost reborn. Semiramis is the daughter of the fish goddess Derceto, a kind of divine mermaid.9 It may be meaningful that the Hebrew word for fish used in the book of Jonah, דג , appears once, in Jonah 2:2, with a feminine ending.10

• Eastern Mediterranean port cities: Jonah boards a ship in Joppa, while Semiramis’s mother is worshipped in Ascalon. Both are cities on the Eastern Mediterranean. They are located some 40 kilometers apart, but during certain periods, especially in the late eighth and seventh centuries [BC], Jaffa belonged to the territory of Ascalon.11 It may or may not be noteworthy that 9 Others have suggested that the fish motif in Jonah goes back to Indian models (see Meik Gerhards, “Zum motivgeschichtlichen Hintergrund der Verschlingung des Jona,” TZ 59 [2003]: 222–47), but this seems rather far-fetched, not least because the relevant Indian texts are all very late. Among the many attempts made over the centuries to explain the episode, there are some that border on the comical. Note, for example, the suggestion by the 18th-century German professor and abbot Hermann von der Hardt (mentioned by Gerhards, “Verschlingung,” 222 n. 4) that Jonah had actually reached an alehouse on an island in the middle of the sea that was called “The Whale” (see Ludwig von Holberg, Allgemeine Kirchenhistorie von dem Jahr Christi 1700 bis 1750, Funfter Teil [Ulm/Leipzig 1773], 156–57).

…. according to the early Jewish hagiographic collection Vitae prophetarum

Jonah was born near Azotos (Ashdod), situated between Ascalon and Joppa,

whence he later moved, together with his mother(!), to Tyre.12

• The Assyrian capital Nineveh: The life journey of both Jonah and Semiramis

ends in Nineveh, capital of the Assyrian empire.

 

Mackey’s comment: That “Jonah was born near Azotos (Ashdod), situated between Ascalon and Joppa” accord tolerably well with my Jonah was born near Azotos (Ashdod), situated between Ascalon and Joppa”, that the prophet Jonah (= Micah) hailed from Moresheth-Gath (See Map).

 

 

A few other features of the two stories invite comparison as well, although

their similarities are less obvious. In Jonah 3:6, the Assyrian king bears the title

“king of Nineveh” and not “king of Assyria,” which is used for him elsewhere

in the Bible. ….

 

Mackey’s comment: “King of Nineveh”, we have found, could indicate a “governor” of the city. The likeliest candidate at the time would seem to me to be the highly important Ahikar, second only to the king of Assyria.

 

…. Finally, there is the issue of the name of Semiramis’s first husband, Onnes. As has

been observed before,14 “Onnes” is apparently derived from the name of the

Mesopotamian primeval sage Uanna(-Adapa), who was known to the Greeks

as Oannes. The Babylonians and Assyrians imagined Uanna/Oannes as a creature

with the body of a fish, which makes him the male counterpart of the mermaid-

like goddess Derceto and provides a further, albeit indirect, link with the

Jonah story. ….

 

Or, there is this other consideration (Grant R. Jeffrey, Unveiling Mysteries of the Bible, p. 107):

 

It is interesting to note that both the Greek translation of the Old Testament, the Septuagint, and the New Testament Greek text spell the name Jonah as Oannes with the addition of the letter I before it (Ioannes). The eminent Assyriologist Dr Herman V. Hilprecht revealed that in the Assyrian inscriptions the letter J in foreign words is written as I, or is dropped completely.