by
Damien F. Mackey
The author intends to demonstrate in this article that the prophet Jonah's intervention in Nineveh was a true historical event.
Part One:
Focus on Esarhaddon
A: Historical 'moment'
The historical 'window of opportunity' that I am going to propose here as best fitting the Jonah narrative will be one that I have already suggested before.
However, due to a then imperfect appreciation of the degree of historical revision required, I had had to drop that particular model as being unworkable.
Since that first effort, however, I have streamlined the histories of Israel, Judah, Assyria and Babylonia, and that will now make all the difference.
The historical moment that I identify as that best suiting the intervention in "the great city of Nineveh", נִינְוֵה, הָעִיר הַגְּדוֹלָה, by the prophet Jonah (Jonah 1:2), is the 'moment' when King Esarhaddon was in the throes of trying to secure Nineveh from his older brothers, two of whom had assassinated the previous Assyrian king, Sennacherib (2 Kings 19:37).
There may never have been a more dire or foreboding moment in time for the Assyrian people.
Had it not only recently been preceded by the utter rout of the proud king Sennacherib's Assyrian army of 185,000 men. (v. 35)?
And, as we are going to find out (in Appendix B), Esarhaddon's crisis situation, now, was very much due to the fact that he had been personally involved in that horrendous and unprecedented humiliation of the highly-vaunted Assyrian army.
The Book of Tobit - which will actually refer to Jonah's mission to Nineveh (Tobit 14:4) - seems to echo Jonah's threat (Jonah 3:4): “Forty more days and Nineveh will be overthrown", when it repeats that very same time period (Tobit 1:21. NRSV): "But not forty days passed before two of Sennacherib’s sons killed him, and they fled to the mountains of Ararat. A son of his, Esarhaddon, succeeded him as king". {Though other ancient authorities read for Tobit 1:21 either forty-five or fifty}.
Sennacherib himself - who was, just prior to his demise, in the process of hunting down the honourable Tobit to kill him (Tobit 1:19) - would seem to be a least likely candidate, amongst the Assyrian kings, for Jonah's repentant "the king of Nineveh" (Jonah 3:6). And I don't think any commentator has ever put forward Sennacherib as being a possible candidate.
Esarhaddon, on the other hand - {who (under the benign influence of Ahiqar) would allow for Tobit to return home (Tobit 1:22): "Then Ahiqar interceded on my behalf, and I returned to Nineveh. Ahiqar had been chief cupbearer, keeper of the signet ring, treasury accountant, and credit accountant under Sennacherib, king of the Assyrians; and Esarhaddon appointed him as Second to himself"} - seems to have been surprisingly tolerant towards exilic Israel.
A footnote to this Jonah-Tobit connection: The non-historical, composite character, the Prophet Mohammed, whose biography tells of his various associations with "Nineveh", all quite anachronistic of course (as Nineveh was completely lost from sight long before the supposed AD era of Mohammed), claimed that the prophet Jonah was his brother. "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"." (Summarized from The Life of the Prophet by Ibn Hisham Volume 1 pp. 419–421).
And the names of Mohammed's parents, 'Abdullah and Amna, are virtually identical to those of Tobit's son, Tobias, namely Tobit (= 'Obadiah = 'Abdiel = 'Abdullah) and Anna (= Amna) (Tobit 1:9).
Islam also quotes from the wise sayings of Ahiqar, and even has its own Ahiqar in Luqman, known as "the Ahiqar of the Arabs": https://books.google.com.au/books?id=_zvXrQ7W7PEC&pg=PA51&lpg=PA51&dq=luqman+and+ahiqar
B: Esarhaddon a repenting king
Moreover Esarhaddon was, as we shall soon learn, a king who, like Jonah's "king of Nineveh", was known to have clothed himself with sackcloth as if in the guise of a sinner.
And he certainly favoured the issuing of royal edicts or decrees - (see below, "a public proclamation").
He also, early, appears to have had the solidarity-support of his people (cf. Jonah 3:5-6).
Thus Izabela Eph'al-Jaruzelska, "2016 Esarhaddon's Claim of Legitimacy in an Hour of Crisis: Sociological Observations" (p. 126):
https://www.academia.edu/25716205/2016_Esarhaddons_Claim_of_Legitimacy_in_an_Hour_of_Crisis_Sociological_Observations/
"The Apology mentions the oath sworn to Esarhaddon by the people of Assyria and the king’s brothers before the gods at his nomination as Sennacherib’s successor. .... This public ceremony was intended to express submission and obedience to the king in a solemn way. This oath is invoked as the basis of the loyalty manifested by the people of Assyria when they refused to join the rebellion of those who opposed Esarhaddon’s accession to the Assyrian throne. ....
"It also furnished grounds for the homage the people of Assyria paid to Esarhaddon after his victory over the rebels. .... A public proclamation of Esarhaddon as king during his struggle with the rebels also manifests the people’s consent".
[End of quote]
Esarhaddon will turn out to be amongst the strangest and most complex kings of antiquity, possibly the most pious and superstitious of all kings, outdoing others with his cruelty and vengefulness, terrifying, at times quite mad, completely paranoid, highly literate, a phenomenal (no doubt, oftentimes, lying) propagandist, yet a king also capable of deep contrition and acknowledgement of a supreme deity.
But we shall need to meet him in his various powerful guises, or alter egos, which is an integral feature of my revision. (See Appendix A and Appendix B)
It ought to be noted that, apart from his name, Esarhaddon ("Akkadian: Aššur-aḫa-iddina, meaning "Ashur has given me a brother": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Esarhaddon), "Esarhaddon had the further name of Ashur-etil-ilani-mukin-apli". (http://www.attalus.org/armenian/kvan1.htm). "Akkadian: Aššur-etil-ilāni ... , meaning "Ashur is the lord of the gods"," (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ashur-etil-ilan), and "mukin-apli" meaning [Ashur] "(is) establisher of a legitimate heir,”: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nab%C3%BB-mukin-apli
This will become important later, in the appendices.
As Esarhaddon alone (qua Esarhaddon), though, we know from one of the king's inscriptions that he humbled himself with "sackcloth". Thus writes John H. Walton (Genesis, 2001): "The Akkadian term for sackcloth is basamu. The most relevant usage of it is in an Esarhaddon inscription in which he is said to have "wrapped his body in sackcloth befitting a penitent sinner" ....".
Cf. Jonah 3:6: "When Jonah’s warning reached the king of Nineveh, he rose from his throne, took off his royal robes, wrapped himself with sackcloth and sat down in the dust".
There may be an even more relevant text, which I like to think is a reference to the very Jonah incident. The quote is from professor A. H. Sayce (The Religions of Ancient Egypt and Babylonia, 1903), as cited by D. E. Hart-Davies in Jonah: Prophet and Patriot (1925):
"Already we possess proof from the cuneiform tablets that the Bible account of Nineveh’s repentance is described in a manner which exactly coincides with Assyrian custom. “It was just such a fast”, says Professor Sayce, “as was ordained by Esar-haddon when the northern foe was gathering against the Assyrian empire, and prayers were raised to the Sun-god to ‘remove the sin’ of the king and his people.
‘From this day’, runs the inscription, ‘from the third day of this month, even the month of Iyyar, to the fifteenth day of Ab of this year, for these hundred days and hundred nights the prophets have proclaimed (a period of supplication)’. The prophets of Nineveh had declared that it was needful to appease the anger of heaven, and the king accordingly issued his proclamation enjoining the solemn service of humiliation for one hundred days’."
[End of quotes]
This situation of anxiety, as described by professor A. H. Sayce, must almost certainly be tied up with the above: "A public proclamation of Esarhaddon as king during his struggle with the rebels also manifests the people’s consent".
Wikipedia's article "Esarhaddon" has some highly interesting information on Esarhaddon's paranoia, and his efforts to secure his safety during that above-mentioned "hundred days" period: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Esarhaddon
"As a result of his tumultuous rise to the throne, Esarhaddon was distrustful of his servants, vassals and family members. He frequently sought the advice of oracles and priests on whether any of his relatives or officials wished to harm him.[10] ....
....
Esarhaddon's paranoia was also reflected by where he chose to live. One of his main residences was a palace in the city of Kalhu originally constructed as an armory by his predecessor Shalmaneser III .... Rather than occupying a central and visible spot within the cultic and administrative center of the city, this palace was located in its outskirts on a separate mound which made it well-protected. Between 676 and 672 [sic], the palace was strengthened with its gateways being modified into impregnable fortifications which could seal the entire building off completely from the city. If these entrances were sealed, the only way into the palace would be through a steep and narrow path protected by several strong doors. A similar palace, also located on a separate mound far from the city center, was built at Nineveh. ….
....
... he performed the "substitute king" ritual, an ancient Assyrian method intended to protect and shield the king from imminent danger announced by some sort of omen. Esarhaddon had performed the ritual earlier in his reign, but this time it left him unable to command his invasion of Egypt. ….
The "substitute king" ritual involved the Assyrian monarch going into hiding for a hundred days, during which a substitute (preferably one with mental deficiencies) took the king's place by sleeping in the royal bed, wearing the crown and the royal garbs and eating the king's food. During these hundred days, the actual king remained hidden and was known only under the alias "the farmer". The goal of the ritual was that any evil intended for the king would instead be focused on the substitute king, who was killed regardless of if anything had happened at the end of the hundred days, keeping the real monarch safe. …”.
[End of quote]
Don E. Jones will write (Searching for Jonah: Clues in Hebrew and Assyrian History, 2012): "The ceremony of fasting and putting on sackcloth and ashes was not at all alien to Assyria ... the custom ... goes back to Sumerian civilization and beyond".
In the Keil and Delitzsch Commentary on the Old Testament, we read: https://www.studylight.org/commentaries/kdo/jonah-3.html
"Even the one feature which is peculiar to the mourning of Nineveh - namely, that the cattle also have to take part in the mourning - is attested by Herodotus (9:24) as an Asiatic custom.
"(Note: Herodotus relates that the Persians, when mourning for their general, Masistios, who had fallen in the battle at Platea, shaved off the hair from their horses, and adds,
“Thus did the barbarians, in their way, mourn for the deceased Masistios.” Plutarch relates the same thing (Aristid. 14 fin. Compare Brissonius, de regno Pers. princip. ii. p. 206; and Periz. ad Aeliani Var. hist. vii. 8). The objection made to this by Hitzig - namely, that the mourning of the cattle in our book is not analogous to the case recorded by Herodotus, because the former was an expression of repentance - has no force whatever, for the simple reason that in all nations the outward signs of penitential mourning are the same as those of mourning for the dead.)"
[End of quote]
Cf. Jonah 3:7-8: "By the decree of the king and his nobles: Do not let people or animals, herds or flocks, taste anything; do not let them eat or drink. But let people and animals be covered with sackcloth. Let everyone call urgently on God".
(Cf. Judith 4:10-14)
{The story of the death of Masistios could well be yet another of those countless Greek appropriations (as I have recorded) of originally Hebrew stories, in this case, the death of "Holofernes"}
"Greatest to the least", "small and great" - Compare Jonah 3:5: "The Ninevites believed God. A fast was proclaimed, and all of them, from the greatest to the least, put on sackcloth", with: "The use of this general term with the addition of the idiom TUR GAL (ṣeḫer u rabi), “small and great,” simply signifies the totality of Assyrians who were involved in the oath".
(Izabela Eph'al-Jaruzelska, op. cit., p. 127)
C: Is Esarhaddon too late for Jonah?
Presuming that Esarhaddon were Jonah's repentant king, then we must be prepared for a very extensive floruit for the prophet Jonah. He had to have been prophesying already as far back as king Jeroboam II of Israel (2 Kings 14:25): "[Jeroboam] was the one who restored the boundaries of Israel from Lebo Hamath to the Dead Sea, in accordance with the word of the Lord, the God of Israel, spoken through his servant Jonah son of Amittai, the prophet from Gath Hepher".
It should be noted that many commentators believe that aspects of the biblical text around 2 Kings 14 are hopelessly corrupt, that v. 28, for instance, about Jeroboam II, "how he recovered for Israel both Damascus and Hamath, which had belonged to Judah", "probably should be understood as referring" (for example, according to the Mercer Dictionary of the Bible, p. 419), "to the fact that Jeroboam II reconquered territory in Galilee and Transjordan held by Hamath and Damascus during the days of [Jeroboam's predecessor kings of Israel]".
In conventional terms, from the death of Jeroboam II (c. 740 BC) to the beginning of the reign of Esarhaddon (c. 680 BC), is about 60 years, meaning that Jonah at Nineveh would have to have been around 85-90 years of age.
That is a very old age for someone to have been tossed into a raging sea and swallowed by a sea monster.
The time span, at least, is easily covered by the traditional Jewish estimations of Jonah's very long life: "[Jonah] is said to have attained a very advanced age: over 120 years according to Seder Olam Rabbah; 130 according to Sefer Yuchasin ...".
In terms, though, of my revision of Assyrian and Israelite history (see Appendix A), I would estimate Jonah then to have been in his early-to-mid seventies.
Again in Appendix A we are going to find that Jewish tradition, which also vastly stretches the career of the prophet Jonah, from Jeroboam II to the Assyrian king, "Osnapper", of Ezra 4:10, has come to the conclusion that there must actually have been 'two Jonahs'.
No need to go that far, I shall be suggesting.
Many commentators favour for Jonah's king, Adad-nirari III (c. 810-783 BC), a contemporary of Jeroboam II. Adad-nirari's supposed preoccupation with the worship of Nebo is often taken as a sign of the king of Assyria's conversion to monotheism. It has been likened to pharaoh Akhnaton's Aten worship (actually henotheism). Adad-nirari may simply have been copying that earlier reform. However, according to Don E. Jones (op. cit.): "... as soon as Adad-Nirari could act on his own, he appears to have given the reform no support". Adad-Nirari had been very young when he came to the throne. "... Adad-nirari III ... was too young to rule. It would be left to Queen Sammu-ramat [Semiramis] to restore stability to Assyria through her regency": https://www.nationalgeographic.com/history/magazine/2017/09-10/searching-for-semiramis-assyrian-legend/
Some commentators favour the troubled reign (plague, rebellion, even a solar eclipse) of Ashur-Dan III (c. 772 to 755 BC).
Bill Cooper (see D. below) is convinced that Tiglath-pileser III (c. 745-727 BC) was that biblical king.
Despite Cooper's enthusiasm for his choice, Tiglath-pileser was, like Adad-nirari, like Ashur-Dan III, a typical Assyrian king with nothing during his reign to indicate a phase of serious repentance with a corresponding edict.
Is there any biblical prophet who can meet the chronological requirements of my revised Jonah, spanning from Jeroboam II to late king Hezekiah of Judah (when Esarhaddon came to the throne)?
There is one, and only one, whose superscription, at least, covers that approximate time span. He is the prophet Hosea, according to whose superscription (Hosea 1:1): "The word of the Lord that came to Hosea son of Beeri during the reigns of Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz and Hezekiah, kings of Judah, and during the reign of Jeroboam son of Jehoash king of Israel".
From Jeroboam (II) all the way down to Hezekiah - the same approximate chronological span as in my revised scenario for Jonah.
{Some critics have difficulty accepting Hosea's alleged lengthy prophetic range, and must needs 'correct' it, by replacing Jeroboam (II) in Hosea 1:1 with some later king(s) of Israel}.
Hosea is straightaway told, like Jonah, 'Go ...' (לֵךְ) (cf. Jonah; Hosea 1:2). That is an immediate likeness. And we are going to discover more like this in the course of this article.
An immediate unlikeness is that, whereas Jonah was "son of Amittai" (as above), Hosea was "son of Beeri".
The question of suitable alter egos for the prophet Jonah (e.g. Hosea) will be properly discussed in Part Two.
For example, the prophetic career of Amos had also commenced at the time of Jeroboam II (Amos 1:1), and did extend - at least according to my own revision of Amos - all the way down to king Hezekiah of Judah.
Can Amos be Jonah?
Or, was Hosea, Jonah?
D: Why "king of Nineveh"?
One of the many arguments thrown up against the prospect of the Book of Jonah's being an historical account is its supposed historically inaccurate usage of the phrase "the king of Nineveh" - which actual description the kings of Assyria are said never to have applied to themselves.
I shall come back to this point.
The complete rejection in modern times of the Book of Jonah as an historical document is well described by Bill Cooper in The Historic Jonah (EN Tech. J., vol. 2, 1986, p. 105) https://creation.com/images/pdfs/tj/j02_1/j02_1_105-116.pdf):
"Ever since the prophet Jonah first penned the little book that is known by his name, some two thousand six hundred years ago, the most extraordinary notions have circulated concerning both him and his ministry. Some early rabbis claimed that he was the son of the widow of Zarephath, the lad whom Elijah had restored to life. .... Others, yet again, imagined him to have been the servant whom Elisha sent to anoint King Jehu. .... Jonah is also pointed out as having two tombs! One lies at Nineveh, and the other at Jonah’s home-village of Gath-hepher, just a stone’s throw from the town of Nazareth. And so it has gone on down the ages, until today we are informed that Jonah did not even exist! The book of Jonah, we are asked to believe, is nothing more than a pious fable, a moral tale written some time after the return of the Jews from the Babylonian Exile; a story told around camp-fires that has all the historical validity of a Grimm’s fairy-tale.
"Unfortunately, and not without incalculable loss, this latest view has prevailed. Most modern Christian (and Jewish) authors will, if they mention Jonah at all, speak of him only in terms of parable and myth, usually in tones that amount to little less than an apology. Very few indeed, and I personally know of none, will attempt to speak of Jonah in a purely historical sense. .... This is very odd, to say the least, because Jonah enjoys more support from Jewish and Assyrian history than a great many other characters of the ancient world whose existence few historians would doubt. There is, indeed, something very sinister about the out-of-hand way in which Jonah is dismissed from serious discussion by modernist critics and historians. This sinister aspect has, perhaps, to do with the fact that Jesus spoke of Jonah in a historical sense, and He referred to Jonah in direct reference to His own forthcoming
resurrection from the dead. .... Could it be, perhaps, that if modernists can cast doubt upon the historicity of Jonah, then they will also have license to cast doubt upon the words and teachings of Jesus Christ and the truth of His resurrection? The two are intimately connected, and any dismissal of the historicity of Jonah should be treated with a great deal of suspicion".
[End of quote]
"A pious fable", "a moral tale". I have also heard a priest employ the description, "a didactic fiction", for the Book of Jonah. These very sorts of terms are used, once again, to describe the Book of Judith, e.g., "a literary fiction", about whose historical defence I can largely say with Bill Cooper: "Very few indeed, and I personally know of none, will attempt to speak of [Judith] in a purely historical sense".
Commentators who do take seriously the Jonah narrative - yes there are indeed some - for instance, Paul Ferguson in his article, "Who Was The ‘King Of Nineveh’ In Jonah 3:6?" (Tyndale Bulletin, Issue 47.2, 1996) - will attempt to show that the title, the "king of Nineveh", can be considered genuine historical usage. Ferguson, whose article is well worth reading as an overall commentary on the Book of Jonah, offers the following "Summary" (p. 301):
https://www.galaxie.com/article/tynbul47-2-05
"This article seeks to show the title ‘king of Nineveh’ is not an anachronism. Comparison with Aramaic use of the north-west Semitic mlk, important in a north Israelite context, may suggest that a city or provincial official might have been under consideration.
Cuneiform evidence seems to suggest that no distinction is made between city and province in designating a governor. Common custom was to give provincial capitals the same name as the province. This could explain the fact that the book of Jonah says the ‘city’ was a three day walk (3:3).
"I. The ‘King Of Nineveh’
The Hebrew phrase melek nînĕveh (‘king of Nineveh’) is found in the Old Testament only in Jonah 3:6. It never occurs in any contemporary documents. Most literature proceeds on the assumption that the author used this expression to refer to the king of the Assyrian empire. It has often been suggested that this wording indicates the author wrote centuries after the fall of this nation. ....
"1. ‘King Of Nineveh’ Vs ‘King Of Assyria’
If this be the case, then one must consider why, if the author of the book lived centuries after the ‘historical Jonah’ of 2 Kings 14:25, he would ignore the usual designation ‘king of Assyria’. This phrase is found thirty times in 2 Kings 18-20. ...".
[End of quotes]
Arguments such as this one by Paul Ferguson had led me, in the past, to wondering whether the Jonah incident may have occurred when Assyria did not have an actual king - say, in between the assassination of Sennacherib and the triumph of Esarhaddon - when, as I had considered, the city of Nineveh may have been represented by a stand-in high official, such as Ahiqar, who, too, presumably, would have been favourable to the message of Jonah. The king soon afterwards - but seemingly only after the people themselves had begun to repent (Jonah 3:5-6) - received the message. But there was a time delay. Perhaps, I had pondered, the future king may still have been on his way: https://www.britannica.com/biography/Esarhaddon
"Sennacherib was murdered (681) [sic] by one or more of Esarhaddon’s brothers, apparently in an attempt to seize the throne. Marching quickly from the west, Esarhaddon encountered the rebel forces in Hanigalbat (western Assyria), where most of them deserted to him, and their leaders fled. Esarhaddon continued on to Nineveh, where he claimed the throne without opposition" [sic].
(Compare instead, below, "persistent resistance by the opposition").
It is interesting that Jesus Christ himself, who will refer specifically to "the Queen of the South", will fail to make any mention whatsoever of the king of Nineveh, but only his subjects (Matthew 12:41-42):
"The 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. The Queen of the South will rise at the judgment with this generation and condemn it ...".
It can be (and is) debated as to the degree of conversion of the Ninevites - that it should not be understood that they had converted to a strict Yahwistic monotheism. Theirs was a general sort of repentance from their wicked ways of living.
"The Ninevites believed God" [Elohim] (Jonah 3:5).
Refer back to the crucial quote above from professor Sayce re "the Sun-god".
For, when we turn to consider the parallel case of the Queen of Sheba (of the South), we find that she will refer to the God of Solomon as your, not as my, or as our, God (I Kings 10:9): 'Blessed be the Lord thy God ...'.
Isaiah 7 is most instructive in this regard as the prophet begins his discussion with king Ahaz with the words (v. 11): 'Ask the Lord your God for a sign ...', but then soon switches in disgust to this (v. 13): 'Will you try the patience of my God also?'
Consider, too, in light of all of this, the startling case of Rudolph Höss, the commandant of Auschwitz, and his dramatic return to his Catholic roots just before he was hanged: "'It was a hard struggle', Höss had written toward the end. 'But I have again found my faith in my God'.” (My emphasis):
https://www.thedivinemercy.org/articles/divine-mercy-and-commandant-auschwitz
I have since dropped any former notion of an official governing Nineveh at the time of Jonah's preaching there - though someone like Ahikar, or even the family of Tobit, may have been instrumental in fostering the mass conversion subsequent to the preaching of Jonah.
Esarhaddon, as Izabela Eph'al-Jaruzelska makes abundantly clear, was confronted by revolutions and hostility all over the place, forcing him even at one stage to flee for his life (op. cit. p. 133):
"According to the Babylonian Chronicle: “On the twentieth day of the month Tebet Sennacherib, king of Assyria, was killed by his son in a rebellion (ina sīḫi). For [twenty-four] years Sennacherib ruled Assyria. The rebellion continued in Assyria from the twentieth day of the month Tebet until the second day of the month Adar. On the twenty-eighth/ eighteenth day of the month Adar Esarhaddon, his son, ascended the throne in Assyria” (Chron. "The early royal correspondence reflects this long struggle, which lasted about two months. According to Bel-ushezib (see above, section III), Esarhaddon “evaded execution [by fleeing] to the Tower (URU.a-ši-t [i…])” (SAA X 109). Likewise, Mardi, probably a Babylonian, mentions in his letter to the king how he escaped to the tower (URU.i-si-ti) together with Esarhaddon (SAA XVI 29). These two early letters corroborate Esarhaddon’s reference to his asylum (RINAP 4 1 i 39). Bel-ushezib’s emphasis that plotting the murder of Esarhaddon and his officials continued “every day” (ūmussu SAA X 109 12') implies persistent resistance by the opposition".
[End of quote]
I therefore suggest that the author of the Book of Jonah referred to the Assyrian ruler as "the king of Nineveh" because that is all that he actually was at that particular, most critical moment in time.
Esarhaddon was under extreme duress, in part because of the great debacle that had occurred in Israel, near Shechem (= "Bethulia", the Judith incident), which late sources wrongly refer to as a defeat by Egypt. Thus Izabela Eph'al-Jaruzelska (op. cit., p. 123):
"For example, the Babylonian Chronicle yields information on Esarhaddon’s great failure in Egypt, which is known only from here (Chron. 1 iv 16)".
And again: "The Babylonian Chronicle mentions the expedition of B.C. 675 [sic], but the recently translated tablet shows why it was without results. Having ordered the investment of Jerusalem and Tyre, Esarhaddon marched against Pelusium ... Egypt's chief fortress on her north-east frontier. He was overtaken by a storm. .... The number of men who perished as given in the Bible must be an exaggeration, but as the storm wrecked Esarhaddon's plans for the year his army must have suffered severely".
[End of quote]
(E. A Wallis Budge, The Mummy: A Handbook of Egyptian Funerary Archaeology, 1893, p. 75)
This late testimony as recalled by E. A. Wallis Budge needs a lot of tidying up.
Although the ultimate goal of king Sennacherib's last great western campaign was Egypt (cf. Judith 1:10-12), the Assyrian king would by no means succeed in getting that far.
For, as Isaiah had rightly foretold (37:33): 'He will not enter this city [Jerusalem] or even shoot an arrow here. He will not fight against it with shields or build a ramp to attack the city walls' - all of which Sennacherib had succeeded in doing on the earlier occasion. In that last major western campaign, this time led by Sennacherib's eldest son, Ashur-nadin-shumi (the Nadin, or Nadab, of Tobit 14:10), and not Esarhaddon, the king's youngest son, the Assyrian behemoth will not reach even as far as Jerusalem, having been stopped in its tracks in the north, near Shechem, by the ruse of Judith the Simeonite.
As with Herodotus, "Pelusium" in Egypt (perhaps confused with the like sounding "Jerusalem") has irrelevantly been brought into the Babylonian Chronicle account. There was no "storm" involved. The Judith ruse would precipitate a rout, with many soldiers of the massive Assyrian army perishing. As Budge correctly observed, the Assyrian "army must have suffered severely".
But the Bible, when properly read, does not (as Budge thought) 'exaggerate' this rout.
It took Esarhaddon, who succeeded Ashur-nadin-shumi ("Holofernes"), some time to get his army back to its full strength, 'wrecking his immediate plans'.
Historians wrongly attribute the demise of Ashur-nadin-shumi to, instead, an un-mentioned (though added in square brackets) "Sargon". I quote again from Izabela Eph'al-Jaruzelska (op. cit., p. 131):
"Another example is the tablet K.4730 (+) Sm.1876, called The Sin of Sargon, allegedly attributed in the text itself to Sennacherib, which resembles the Naram-Sin epic in style and content. This text explains that Sargon’s death on the battlefield was a result of his sin: “Was it because [he honored] the gods o[f Assyria too much, placing them] above the gods of Babylonia [ ......, and was it because] he did not [keep] the treaty of the king of gods [that Sargon my father] was killed [in the enemy country and] was not b[uried] in his house?” In light, then, of this attitude about divine support, Esarhaddon must have been highly embarrassed by his military failure in Egypt, particularly as it followed a four-year period (from the end of 677 until around 673) [sic] devoid of military achievement".
[End of quote]
Part Two:
Focus on Jonah
A: Retracing my earlier steps: Elijah to Amos
My search for the prophet Jonah has led me 'all around the mulberry bush'. Or perhaps, to be more contextual, all around the 'kikayon' (קִיקָיוֹן) bush (Jonah 4:6).
With 2 Kings 14:25 in mind, I did what other commentators tend to do, and that was to search for the Jonah incident during the time of an Assyrian ruler contemporaneous with king Jeroboam II of Israel.
Elijah
But I also went even further back than that, to a possible connection of Jonah with Elijah, based on the following sorts of similarities between this pair of prophets, taken from: http://seminary.csl.edu/facultypubs/TheologyandPractice/tabid/87/ctl/Details/mid/494/ItemID/40
"If we add to this list the fact that the phrase in Jonah 1:1 (“now the word of Yahweh came”) also introduces Elijah in 1 Kings 17:2, 8; 21:17, 28 then we are subtly led to this conclusion; one of the goals of the Jonah narrative is to compare the prophet from Gath-hepher with Elijah.
"More specific – and indeed more satirical – connections between Jonah and Elijah begin in Jonah 1:2 where Yahweh calls Jonah to, “arise, go” to Nineveh. This call to go to a foreign land is paralleled only in 1 Kings 17:9 where Yahweh commands Elijah also to “arise, go to Zarephath which is in Sidon.”
"Usually Yahweh’s word is the perfect performative, where to speak is to create. The God who says “Let there be light” and “it was so” (Gen. 1:3), commands Elijah to “Arise go to Zarapheth” (1 Kings 17:9) and Elijah “arises and goes,” (1 Kings 17:10). Following this normal biblical pattern we expect the Jonah narrative to continue, “So Jonah got up and went ... to Nineveh.” But, instead, Jonah says nothing to Yahweh and rises to flee. It’s as though outside his door Jonah hangs a large sign with the words, “Do Not Disturb!” Jonah is certainly no Elijah!"
[End of quotes]
Perhaps I should have taken that last hint: "Jonah is certainly no Elijah!"
The prophet Elijah disappears from the scene, at least qua Elijah, during the reign of Jehoram of Judah (2 Chronicles 21:12). That was well before the time of Jeroboam II. But there is always, for me, that possibility of an extension of a biblical floruit through an alter ego.
Elisha
The extraordinary prophet Elisha, 'miracles on tap', also loomed for me as a possible Jonah. He, like Jonah in the case of Jeroboam II, had advised a king of Israel, Jehoash, about the extent of his military conquests (2 Kings 13:14-19). Even though Elisha died shortly after this (v. 20), I shall be having more to say in Appendix A about the Jehoash-Jeroboam II connection, about a shortening of Israelite history, and about the identification of the "saviour" of 2 Kings 13:5.
Obviously, though, Elisha could not qualify for my prophet Jonah at the time of Esarhaddon.
My termini a quo and ad quem for Jonah have so far been determined as, respectively, Jeroboam II and early Esarhaddon. One would think, however, that there must have been more to the ministering of the prophet Jonah than just these two, chronologically far apart, occasions.
And we are going to find out that there was much more activity than that involving Jonah.
(See Part Three, A-B below)
Amos
A far more promising candidate for Jonah, however, began to loom in the person of Amos, whose prophetic witness commenced "when ... Jeroboam ... was king of Israel" (Amos 1:1). Amos, too, as with Elijah, can be likened to Jonah. Thus I have previously quoted from the book by Hadi Ghantous, Elisha-Hazael Paradigm and the Kingdom of Israel (p. 180):
... Jonah and Amos
The connections between Jonah and Amos are not as clear as those with Elijah although it is more clear that the fate of nations surrounding Israel is a major concern in both Amos and Jonah (Andersen and Freedman 1989: 236). The superscription in the book of Amos (Amos 1:1) sets Amos in the days of Jeroboam II and makes Amos a contemoprary of Jonah.
In 2 Kings 14:23-29, Jeroboam II recovers territories from the Entrance of Hamath to the Sea of the Arabah, and restore [sic] Damascus and Hamath to Judea in Israel. Similarly, Amos 1:3-5 is an oracle against Damascus; Amos 5:27 threatens Israel with an exile beyond Damascus. In Amos 6:2, Zion and Samaria are called to compare themselves with Hamath. Amos 6:14 refers to oppression from the Entrance of Hamath to the Valley of the Arabah (Pyper 2007: 351-3). In other words, both prophets deal with Damascus, Hamath, and the region from the Entrance of Hamath to the Sea/Valley of the Arabah. Amos refutes the prophetic title (Amos 7:14); Jonah is never said to be a prophet in Jonah. Amaziah warns Jonah to flee ... for his life (Amos 7:12), while Jonah almost loses his life while fleeing (Jon, 1).
"Other topical similarities can be found; singing (Amos 8:3// Jon. 2), sackcloths (Amos 8:10// Jon 3:6), wandering from sea to sea (Amos 8:12// Jon. 1:3-2:10), thirst (Amos 8:13// Jon. 4:8), and sheol (Amos 9:2// Jon. 2) (Edelman 2009: 162). These similarities pose the question whether they go beyond a mere imitation of details and indicate a fundamental similarity and connection between Amos and Jonah. ...".
[End of quote]
Jonah is well-known as 'the reluctant prophet', and this, too, may have been a trait of Amos (7:14): 'I was neither a prophet nor the son of a prophet ...'.
There is also a very Jonah-like note in Amos 9:3: "Even if they tried to hide from me at the bottom of the sea, from there I would command the Sea Serpent [הַנָּחָשׁ] to bite them". Don E. Jones (op. cit.) has made this very same connection: "There is something ominous in Amos's prophecy, the first part of which [9:3] certainly applies to Jonah ...".
While Amos qualifies chronologically as being a contemporary of Jonah's at the time of Jeroboam II, he will fall just short of early Esarhaddon (the 'moment' of Jonah's intervention at Nineveh).
See next.
Micah
Amos is, according to my revision of Israel and Judah, the same as the prophet Micah, known as "Amos redivivus". Micah (Amos) is also the Micaiah who prophesied the death of king Ahab of Israel (I Kings 22:8-28). This controversial connection (Micaiah = Micah), which has the support of some Jewish tradition (see e.g., Ginzberg, Legends, 6:355, n. 20), pitches Micah back well before king Jeroboam II. Amos is also generally considered to have been the father of Isaiah, "son of Amoz" (Isaiah 1:1). I have also identified Isaiah son of Amos with the "Uzziah son of Micah, of the tribe of Simeon" of Judith 6:15. Uzziah must have followed his father Amos northwards to Bethel (the "Bethulia" of the Book of Judith), which is the strategically vital city of Shechem, where Uzziah later became the chief magistrate. He is also described as “the prince of Juda[h]” and “the prince of the people of Israel” (Judith 8:34; 13:23. Douay), perhaps due to his father Amos's apparently royal connection with king Amaziah of Judah. "The rabbis of the Talmud declared, based upon a rabbinic tradition, that Amoz was the brother of Amaziah (אמציה), the king of Judah at that time (and, as a result, that Isaiah himself was a member of the royal family)" (article, "Amoz"): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amoz
The prophet Micah must not have lived to have witnessed the Judith incident.
He is not mentioned there (Book of Judith) as still being alive.
The Book of Jeremiah tells that Micah was yet prophesying during the reign of king Hezekiah of Judah (26:18): "Micah the Morasthite prophesied in the days of Hezekiah king of Judah, and spoke to all the people of Judah, saying,
'Thus said the LORD of hosts; Zion shall be plowed like a field, and Jerusalem shall become heaps, and the mountain of the house as the high places of a forest'."
This prediction pertained to Sennacherib king of Assyria's earlier successful invasion of Judah and Jerusalem. Micah apparently was no longer alive, though, when Ashur-nadin-shumi (= "Holofernes"), son of Sennacherib, came to the region of "Bethulia" (Bethel-Shechem) with an army of 185,000 men. Thus the prophet Micah cannot qualify for my Jonah early in the reign of Esarhaddon, who succeeded Sennacherib. Micah just misses out time wise. He must have been extremely old when he died.
B: Hosea, Isaiah
The prophet Hosea is, as determined in Part One, the only one of the prophets who - at least according to his superscription (Hosea 1:1) - spanned my requisite era from Jeroboam II unto Hezekiah. His prophetic floruit is closely matched by Isaiah's, but without (in the case of Isaiah) the inclusion of Jeroboam II (Isaiah 1:1): "The vision concerning Judah and Jerusalem that Isaiah son of Amoz saw during the reigns of Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz and Hezekiah, kings of Judah".
The names of Hosea and Isaiah, as well, are very close in meaning, both pertaining to "Salvation". Abarim Publications lists Isaiah as a name "related" to Hosea (article, "Isaiah meaning"): https://www.abarim-publications.com/Meaning/Hosea.html#.Xp5Y6u0vPnF
Previously I have written regarding the striking similarities between Isaiah and Hosea:
"The names Isaiah and Hosea are indeed of very similar meaning, being basically derived from the same Hebrew root for ‘salvation’, יֵ֫שַׁע
- “Isaiah” (Hebrew יְשַׁעְיָהוּ , Yeshâ‘yâhû) signifies: “Yahweh (the Lord) is salvation”.
- “Hosea” (Hebrew הוֹשֵׁעַ) means practically the same: “Yahweh (the Lord) is saviour”.
….
"Hosea’s/Isaiah’s Family
Though no doubt young, the prophet was given the strange command by God to marry an ‘unfaithful’ woman: “‘Go, take yourself a wife of harlotry and have children of harlotry, for the land commits great harlotry by forsaking the Lord’. So he went and took Gomer the daughter of Diblaim …” (Hosea 1:2-3). Biblical scholars have agonised over the type of woman this Gomer might have been: adulteress? harlot? temple-prostitute? But essentially the clue is to be found in the statement above that she was a citizen of the ‘land of great harlotry’: namely, the northern kingdom of Israel. ....
"A further likeness between Isaiah and Hosea was the fact that ‘their names’ and those of ‘their’ children were meant to be, in their meanings, prophetic signs. ….
- The prophet Isaiah tells us: “Behold, I and the children whom the Lord has given me are for signs and portents ...” (Isaiah 8:18).
- Similarly, the names of the children of the prophet Hosea were meant to be prophetic (Hosea 1:4, 6, 9).
"Charles Boutflower (The Book of Isaiah Chapters I-XXXIX, 1930), who has written perceptively on Isaiah’s children, has rightly noted the prophetic significance of their names and those of Hosea’s children, without however connecting Isaiah and Hosea as one: …. “Isaiah like Hosea had three known children, all of whose names were prophetic”.
[End of quotes]
It is most unlikely, one would have to think, to have two great prophets contemporaneously operating over such a substantial period of time, and each having three children whose names were prophetic. The fact is, I believe, that it was just the one prophet, who may possibly have had six children in all.
For these, and for other reasons, I have identified Hosea and Isaiah as "just the one prophet", ministering to both Israel and Judah. That to go with my already mentioned identification of the prophet Isaiah with the princely "Uzziah" of the Book of Judith.
Hosea-Isaiah is the only possible prophetic candidate, in my revised context, for Jonah son of Amittai.
Jonah's otherwise unknown father, "Amittai", must then be Amaziah, that is, Amos.
Jonah's (or probably his father's) home of "Gath-hepher", which cannot possibly have been the place of that name in Galilee - since, as the learned Pharisees well knew (John 7:52):
'.... Look into it, and you will find that a prophet does not come out of Galilee' - must then be the southern Gath of Moresheth, the home of Micah-(Amos) (1:1): "The word of the Lord that came to Micah of Moresheth ...".
"Micah is called the Morasthite, probably because he was a native of Moresheth-gath, a small town of Judea, which, according to Eusebius and Jerome, lay in a southwesterly direction from Jerusalem, not far from Eleutheropolis on the plain, near the border of the Philistine territory" ("The Twelve Minor Prophets"):
https://biblehub.com/library/barrows/companion_to_the_bible/chapter_xxiii_the_twelve_minor.htm
Although "the vision ... concerning Israel" as seen by Amos will occur at "Tekoa" (Amos 1:1), I have previously written on this:
"There are reasons, though, why I think that Tekoa would not have been the actual home of the prophet Amos. When confronted by Amaziah, the priest of Bethel, Amos retorted (7:14-15): ‘I was neither a prophet nor the son of a prophet, but I was a shepherd, and I also took care of sycamore-fig trees. But the Lord took me from following the flock and said to me, ‘Go, prophesy to my people Israel’.’
"Now, commentators such as Eugene Merrill have been quick to point out “that sycamores were abundant in the Shephelah but not around Tekoa” (The World and the Word: An Introduction to the Old Testament, 2011, p. 431, n. 4).
"So, my first point would be that Amos’s cultivating of sycamore-fig trees would be most appropriate in Moresheth, but highly unlikely in Tekoa. Moresheth, we read, “is the opposite exposure from the wilderness of Tekoa, some seventeen miles away across the watershed. As the home of Amos is bare and desert, so the home of Micah is fair and fertile” ("Micah 1", Expositor's Bible Commentary).
"My second point is that Amos, apparently a herdsman (בַנֹּקְדִים) - some think a wealthy “sheepmaster”, whilst others say that he must have been poor - was, as we read above, “following the flock” מֵאַחֲרֵי הַצֹּאן), meaning that, seasonally, he was a man on the move. Stationed at his home town of Moresheth in the Shephelah, I suggest, where he tended the sycamore trees, the prophet also had to move with the flock from time to time.
And this is apparently where Tekoa (about 6 miles SE of Bethlehem) comes into the picture".
[End of quotes]
The reason why such striking similarities can be found between Amos and Jonah (as we read above in A.) is because this was a father-son prophetic combination ranging from Israel to Judah. It is the very same reason why we find some almost identical statements and actions emanating from Micah (= Amos) and from Isaiah (= Jonah). Read, for example, Micah 4:1-3 and Isaiah 2:2-4.
"But who quoted whom?", it is asked:
https://abramkj.com/2012/12/11/which-came-first-isaiah-or-micah-comparing-isaiah-22-4-with-micah-41-3/
Well, Micah was the father, and Isaiah was the son.
Compare also Micah 1:8: "Because of this I will weep and wail; I will go about barefoot and naked. I will howl like a jackal and moan like an owl", and Isaiah 20:3: "Then the LORD said, 'Just as my servant Isaiah has gone stripped and barefoot for three years, as a sign and portent against Egypt and Cush ...'."
No doubt Jonah's prediction regarding Jeroboam II (2 Kings 14:25): "[Jeroboam] was the one who restored the boundaries of Israel from Lebo Hamath to the Dead Sea, in accordance with the word of the Lord, the God of Israel, spoken through his servant Jonah son of Amittai, the prophet from Gath Hepher", was uttered with all due awareness of his father Amos's own considerations (cf. 6:14):
"For the Lord God Almighty declares,
'I will stir up a nation against you, Israel,
that will oppress you all the way
from Lebo Hamath to the valley of the Arabah'.”
More tellingly, from my point of view, commentators have suggested that some parts of the Book of Isaiah (my Jonah) may actually have originated with Jonah. Don E. Jones, again, writes of it (op. cit.):
"Spurred by the reference in II Kings 14:25, scholars over the years have searched diligently in the Scriptures for the "Lost Book of Jonah". Hitzig and Renan have attributed the prophecies of Isaiah 15-23 to Jonah as being inconsistent with other parts of the book. Allusions to Moab, Egypt and Ethiopia, would certainly give Jonah a wider scope of action. He would know conditions in Tyre, Sidon and Damacus from the Assyrian venture.
Sargon's reign in Assyria (Isaiah 20:1) began in 721. It was by no means impossible that Jonah could still have been alive at the time of Isaiah".
[End of quote]
The view of Hitzig and Renan enables us to fill out the prophet Jonah all the more. His prophetic mission beyond Israel was not just limited to Nineveh. Isaiah, like Jonah (1:3), appears to have been very familiar, too, with the "ships of Tarshish" (e.g., Isaiah 2:16; 23:1; 60:9).
As to why (we read this earlier) the name of Hosea's father would be given as "Beeri", whereas Isaiah's father is given as "Amoz", the Book of Judith may provide something of a clue. Judith was, like Uzziah (my Isaiah-Hosea) of Bethulia, a Simeonite (cf. Judith 8:1; 9:2). The Bethulians were a closely knit bunch, with Judith's husband, Manasseh, belonging "to the same tribe and clan" as she (8:2). Uzziah, also a Simeonite, may well have been a relative of both Judith and her husband. Judith seems to have been immensely proud of her 'father', Merari, she singing, after her great victory over "Holofernes":
'For their mighty one did not fall by the hands of the young men,
nor did the sons of the Titans strike him down,
nor did tall giants set upon him;
but Judith daughter of Merari
with the beauty of her countenance undid him'.
Hosea's father, "Beeri", could possibly be that Merari, given what C. Conder will refer to (I noted this in my postgraduate university thesis, A Revised History of the Era of King Hezekiah of Judah and its Background:
https://www.academia.edu/3822220/Thesis_2_A_Revised_History_of_the_Era_of_King_Hezekiah_of_Judah_and_its_Background) as the "occasional instances in Syrian nomenclature" of the substitution of M for B. Conder was hoping by this means to establish the fairly unimportant site of "Mithilia" (or Mesilieh) as Judith's "Bethulia".
Somewhat coincidentally, we read in Genesis (26:34): "When Esau was forty years old, he married Judith daughter of Beeri the Hittite ...". Obviously no relation, though.
Consulting Abarim Publications, I find that the name "Merari" does not have Amoz (Amos) listed as a "related" name:
https://www.abarim-publications.com/Meaning/Merari.html#.XqER-O0vPnE
Perhaps Merari could have been an ancestor, rather than a direct father, of both Hosea and Judith.
One name "related" to Merari in Abarim is "Imrah", which is very much like the biblically rare name, Imlah (Imla), father of Micaiah (I Kings 22:8) - hence grandfather of Hosea-Isaiah (and Judith?).
A special mention is made in I Chronicles 4:33 to the Simeonites keeping "a genealogical record".
Part Three:
Deeper Focus on Jonah
A: A Revised life of Jonah
Here (A-B) I intend to trace in outline the life of the prophet Jonah, largely through his better known alter ego (that is, according to my revision), Isaiah (= Hosea). The historicity of the prophet Isaiah (and hence of Jonah) may perhaps be attested by a clay seal found in Jerusalem (Amanda Borschel-Dan's, "In find of biblical proportions, seal of Prophet Isaiah said found in Jerusalem"): https://www.timesofisrael.com/in-find-of-biblical-proportions-proof-of-prophet-isaiah-believed-unearthed/
"The oval-shaped bulla, however, is not intact. On its legible portion, there is an inscription with First Temple Hebrew letters that seem to spell out the name l’Yesha’yah[u] (Belonging to Isaiah). On a line below, there is the partial word nvy, which presumably spells out “prophet.” Because the bulla has been slightly damaged at the end of the word nvy, it is not known if it originally ended with the Hebrew letter aleph, which would have resulted in the Hebrew word for ‘prophet’ and would have definitively identified the seal as the signature of the prophet Isaiah,” [Dr. Eilat] Mazar said".
[End of quote]
Isaiah likely "began" his prophetic career as Hosea (1:1) "When the Lord began to speak though Hosea ...". As we know, this was during the reign of king Jeroboam II of Israel. Hosea, I have suggested, had followed his (= Isaiah's) father Amos to Bethel (= Judith's "Bethulia"), which is Shechem, in the north. There, the prophet must have made the prediction about king Jeroboam II of 2 Kings 14:25 that is attributed to Jonah.
Isaiah-Hosea fluctuated between Israel and Judah. But he was a Judaean. Professor A.H. Sayce, when commenting upon "the prophecies of Hosea", will write tellingly (though thinking that Hosea was of the north): "It was, however, the work, not of a native of that northern kingdom of Israel to which Hosea belonged, but of a Jew" ("The Book of Hosea in the Light of Assyrian Research", The Jewish Quarterly Review, Vol. 1, No. 2 (Jan., 1889), p. 162).
Our prophet famously recorded (Isaiah 6:1): "In the year of King Uzziah's death I saw the Lord sitting on a throne, lofty and exalted, with the train of His robe filling the Temple".
And, later, in Judah, he will offer a "sign" to a recalcitrant King Ahaz (Isaiah 7:11).
Uzziah, Ahaz, Hezekiah, these are all historically verifiable kings. Thus, for instance, we read in Christopher Eames' "Archaeology unearths historical fact - and proves the biblical record at the same time": https://www.thetrumpet.com/18639-so-much-archaeological-proof
"You’ve probably heard the names of many of Israel’s and Judah’s biblical kings. Do you know just how many have had their existence proved—independently—through archaeology?
These are the names thus far that have turned up in early, original contexts: kings David, Omri, Ahab, Jehu, Joash, Jeroboam ii, Uzziah, Menahem, Ahaz, Pekah, Hoshea, Hezekiah, Manasseh and Jehoiachin. The existence of these kings has been verified through scientific discovery even by the most stringent of analytical standards.
"Several years ago, the personal seal impression of King Hezekiah was found during excavations on Jerusalem’s Ophel mound. The tiny stamped clay piece reads: “Belonging to Hezekiah, [son of] Ahaz, king of Judah.” The impressive find is one of many that refer to King Hezekiah. His name also turns up in inscriptions belonging to his arch-nemesis, Assyria’s King Sennacherib".
[End of quotes]
According to Sirach 48:22-25:
"For Hezekiah did what was pleasing to the Lord,
and he kept firmly to the ways of his ancestor David,
as he was commanded by the prophet Isaiah,
who was great and trustworthy in his visions.
In Isaiah’s days the sun went backward,
and he prolonged the life of the king.
By his dauntless spirit he saw the future,
and comforted the mourners in Zion.
He revealed what was to occur to the end of time,
and the hidden things before they happened".
After Isaiah's strong warnings to King Hezekiah and his subjects about the futility of turning to Egypt for help against Assyria - just he had warned Hezekiah's father, Ahaz, not to depend upon Assyria - Sennacherib will come up against Jerusalem and will successfully lay siege to the city.
Isaiah will, at that approximate time, cure king Hezekiah of a life-threatening illness, and will afterwards promise a better outcome against the Assyrians in the face of Sennacherib's subsequent blasphemy (2 Chronicles 32:9-19).
Isaiah (as Uzziah) is back in the north, in "Bethulia", when the ill-fated Assyrian army of 185,000 arrives at his doorstep. The great man will, in fact, be soundly reprimanded by the beautiful, and younger, Judith, for agreeing upon oath to deliver the city to the Assyrians within five days if rain does not come (Judith 8:9-27). It is Moses all over again, in a watery situation, but, in the case of Moses, the reprimand had come directly from Yahweh (Numbers 20:9-13).
As Uzziah, the prophet will receive into his household the abandoned Achior (Tobit's nephew, Ahiqar), left by "Holofernes" to die amongst the Israelites whom he had verbally defended (Judith cf. 5:5-21; 6:10-19).
This is the Nadin-Ahiqar situation of betrayal as recalled by Tobit (14:10-11):
'Tobias, my son, leave Nineveh now. Do not stay here. As soon as you bury your mother beside me, leave; do not stay another night within the city limits. It is a wicked city and full of immorality; the people here have no sense of shame. Remember what Nadin [Nadab] did to Ahikar his own uncle who had brought him up. He tried to kill Ahikar and forced him to go into hiding in a tomb. Ahikar came back into the light of day, but God sent Nadin down into everlasting darkness for what he had done. Ahikar escaped the deadly trap which Nadin had set for him, because Ahikar had given generously to the poor. But Nadin fell into that fatal trap and it destroyed him. So now, my children, you see what happens to those who show their concern for others, and how death awaits those who treat others unjustly'.
Ahiqar 'came back into the light of day' thanks in large part to the courageous intervention of Judith (14:6-10):
"So they called Achior [Ahiqar] from Uzziah's house. But when he came and saw the head of Holofernes in the hands of one of the men, Achior fainted and fell to the floor. When they had helped him up, Achior bowed at Judith's feet in respect. 'May every family in the land of Judah praise you', he said, 'and may every nation tremble with terror when they hear your name. Please tell me how you managed to do this'.
"While all the people were gathered around, Judith told him everything that she had done from the day she left the town until that moment. When she had finished her story, the people cheered so loudly that the whole town echoed with sounds of joy. When Achior heard all that the God of Israel had done, he became a firm believer. He was circumcised and made a member of the Israelite community, as his descendants are to the present day".
Achior (Ahiqar), (var. Arioch), wrongly called "the leader of all the Ammonites" (Judith 5:5) - when he was actually governor of the Elamites (cf. Tobit 2:10; Judith 1:6) - was ethnically an Israelite, and the nephew of the holy Tobit. Hence he already had the background for a proper conversion to Yahwism. This needs to be contrasted with the Ninevites and their king, who - though they, too, may have imbibed some good influences from Tobit and his family long dwelling in Nineveh - had only a pagan background.
Not to be outdone in praise of Judith, but before Ahiqar had thus been summoned (Judith 14:18-20):
"Then Uzziah said,
'Judith, my dear, the Most High God has blessed you more than any other woman on earth. How worthy of praise is the Lord God who created heaven and earth! He guided you as you cut off the head of our deadliest enemy. Your trust in God will never be forgotten by those who tell of God's power. May God give you everlasting honor for what you have done. May he reward you with blessings, because you remained faithful to him and did not hesitate to risk your own life to relieve the oppression of your people'.
All the people replied,
‘Amen, amen!'"
One can perhaps now well imagine why our prophet - after his having been an eyewitness to arguably the greatest military victory in the history of Israel, and over the hated Assyrians, no less - chafed at the bit when, not too long afterwards, he was thus ordered by Yahweh (Jonah 1:2): 'Go to the great city of Nineveh and preach against it, because its wickedness has come up before me'.
The prophet, who would no doubt have shared the sentiments of his fellow-Simeonite, Judith (16:17):
'Woe to the nations that rise up against my people!
The Lord Almighty will take vengeance on them in the day of judgment;
he will send fire and worms into their flesh;
they shall weep in pain forever' [,]
knew what this, Yahweh's new command, probably meant (Jonah 4:2-3) 'That is what I tried to forestall by fleeing to Tarshish. I knew that you are a gracious and compassionate God, slow to anger and abounding in love, a God who relents from sending calamity. Now, Lord, take away my life, for it is better for me to die than to live'.
Compare Isaiah 30:18: "Yet the LORD longs to be gracious to you; therefore he will rise up to show you compassion. For the LORD is a God of justice. Blessed are all who wait for him!"
B: The name "Jonah"
The Hebrew name, "Jonah" (יונה) is generally regarded as meaning "dove".
Abarim Publications adds "vexer" (article, "Jonah meaning"):
https://www.abarim-publications.com/Meaning/Jonah.html#C.XqStmu0vPnE
The word "Jonah" is used in Hosea 7:1, for instance: "Ephraim also is like a silly dove without heart: they call to Egypt, they go to Assyria". And again in Isaiah, where the prophet recalls the seriously ill king Hezekiah's use of the word (38:14): 'I cried like a swift or thrush, I moaned like a mourning dove'.
In Appendix A, we are going to find the Assyrian king, Ashurnasirpal, using king Hezekiah's very same dove metaphor, also in the case of a dire sickness.
Given that the prophet's father had at least two names, with variations thereof, Amos (Amittai) and Micah (Micaiah), it might be expected that the son, who so faithfully (though not slavishly) imitated Amos, would likewise have had more than the one name, Isaiah (Hosea, Uzziah) and Jonah. Even more so, considering that the names of Isaiah-Hosea and his children (which may have undergone changes: cf. Hosea 1:4-11) were meant to have a symbolical significance for Israel. The prophet Isaiah, in his flight from the Lord, might later have acquired the name mindful of "a silly dove" (Hosea 7:11), that is, Jonah.
The father of the Apostle Peter is variously given as "Jona[h]" (Matthew 16:17) and as "John" (John 1:42).
There is a Babylonian tale - but written centuries after Jonah, it needs to be appreciated - that features a Jonah-like sage called Oannes, a name considered to be very close indeed to the name, Jonah.
Bill Cooper tells of it (op. cit., pp. 110–111):
"In his book, Chaldean Genesis (1876), George Smith, the Assyriologist, cites the writings of Berosus (c.330–260 BC), a Babylonian priest who recorded many of the myths and legends of the early Mesopotamians. Among many other things, Berosus records the fascinating story of a certain ‘Oannes’.
He writes:
“At Babylonia there was (in these times) a great resort of people of various nations, who inhabited Chaldea, and lived in a lawless manner like the beasts of the field.” .... In the first year there appeared, from that part of the Erythraean Sea ... which borders upon Babylonia, an animal endowed with reason, by name Oannes, whose whole body was that of a fish; and under the fish’s head he had another head, with feet also below similar to those of a man, subjoined to the fish’s tail.
His voice too, and language were articulate and human; and a representation of him is preserved to this day.”
“This being (Oannes) was accustomed to pass the day among men, but took no food at that season; and he gave them an insight into letters and sciences, and arts of every kind. He taught them to construct cities, to found temples, to compile laws, and explained to them the principles of geometrical knowledge. He made them distinguish the seeds of the earth, and showed them how to collect the fruits; in short, he instructed them in everything which could tend to soften manners and humanize their lives. From that time, nothing material has been added by way of improvement to his instructions.” ....
"It is clear from Berosus’ own narrative that the Assyrians and Babylonians held Oannes in the highest esteem. ....
"While we cannot know for certain the Assyrian equivalent of Jonah’s name, we can at least be sure that it was not dissimilar to that of Oannes. The resemblance between the two names, even before such transposition, is remarkable. .... Unknown to the Assyrians, however, was the fact that a greater than Oannes was here. Here was no mythical figure dreamed up by an undiscerning pagan philosophy. Here was a living prophet of the Ever-Living God to Whom the Assyrians, in common with all mankind, owed their very creation and continuing existence!
"Judging by the attention that marooned sea monsters attract in our own day, it is easy to envisage the tremendous impact of such a monster disgorging a living man who then proceeded to a certain city to warn it of coming destruction. To those who had been nurtured on the story of Oannes, such an event would seem that Oannes himself had returned according to all that was laid down in the ancient legends. How else could God have achieved the effect that was so necessary to the accomplishment of His Will? The Assyrians would hardly have heeded a prophet (and a despised Israelite, at that), who rode into Nineveh on donkey, or as a passenger in a desert caravan. There was only one way, it seems, in which to startle and surprise the Assyrians into a positive response to Jonah’s message, and that was by God Himself staging what has proved be one of the most spectacular events of history.
"On its own even this, perhaps, may not have been sufficient to drive the Assyrians into a response to the message that Jonah brought them. They would also need to be in particularly distressed state of mind, driven into a corner by political, economic and military events over which they had no control, and which were pushing them inexorably further towards complete devastation.
We have seen, in fact, that just such conditions prevailed at this very point in history, and thus the Assyrians may even have been importuning their gods for a teacher or deliverer of the stature and wisdom of their beloved Oannes .... Most assuredly, they were both psychologically and spiritually prepared for just such an event and message as Jonah was about to deliver".
[End of quotes]
Some of what Bill Cooper has written here makes perfect sense to me. But parts of it don't. As already noted, the story of Oannes is a late legend, post-dating Jonah. It is typical for historians to presuppose that any pagan account that resembles a biblical one always has the chronological precedence. I have spent many articles arguing that the opposite is the case. So, when a presumed c. 300 BC writer records a tale that is, in some instances, uncannily like the much older Jonah story - as Bill Cooper has well noted - my immediate reaction to this is that the Oannes legend must have arisen from the Jonah story.
Certainly the latter resonates with Berosus's description of the Mesopotamians who "lived in a lawless manner like the beasts of the field". And, again, the two names, "Jonah" and "Oannes", are indeed very similar.
It is common to identify Oannes with the Mesopotamian water god, of knowledge, Ea (Sumerian Enki). And the account of Berosus seems to have commingled Mesopotamian theology with a garbled recollection of the biblical Jonah incident.
Some of the geography of Berosus, however, "Euxine Sea" (Black Sea), "Erythrean Sea" (Indian Ocean?), is completely irrelevant to Jonah, and is, moreover, internally contradictory.
Bill Cooper is right on the mark in describing what must have been the mental state of the Ninevites at the time of Jonah's arrival - except that he has located all this to the era of king Tiglath-pileser III. Things were far, far worse, I have suggested, at my preferred moment in time of early Esarhaddon.
Moreover, God was never going to use a pagan 'theology' to reinforce his message.
The "representation of [Oannes] ... preserved to this day” (Berosus) is the well-known fish man (kullulû) of which Bill Cooper has provided a photo on his p. 111 (fig. 7).
It is the prophet Jonah himself, depicted on a wall of Ashurnasirpal's NW Palace of Nimrud (Calah).
Ashurnasirpal, though, is chronologically too early for Jonah in the context of the conventional system.
More on that in Appendix A.
Later, it is said, the figure came to be associated with the god, Dagan: ("Kulullu ("Fish Man") "Dagon"): http://symboldictionary.net/?p=300
"
This figure was known to the Assyrians as Kullulû, meaning “fish man.” The kullulu was a guardian figure, a dweller of the sacred Absu, the watery underground domain of the God Ea. Figures of the fish-man were often concealed in the construction of buildings to serve as protective charms.
From about the fourth century, the figure was associated (probably erroneously) with the god Dagan (meaning “grain”), most commonly known by his Hebrew name, Dagon. Dagan was a vegetation god, the father of the god Baal, the mythological creator of the plow. Dagon is mentioned several times in the Hebrew scriptures, where he is associated with the Philistines. It is to Dagon’s temple that the Ark of the Covenant is taken after being captured from the Hebrews; the next morning, they discover the statue of the god lying on the floor, sans head and hands".
[End of quote]
Another note on 'AD' pseudo-history. Earlier on (Part One, A), I argued for the Nineveh-connected, and hence quite anachronistic Prophet Mohammed to have been a non-historical composite, partly based on Tobias, the son of Tobit of Nineveh. Although Mohammed would be regarded by most as being a true historical character, whilst Jonah would not, I would insist upon the very opposite.
The same comment would apply to that muddle-headed navigator, Columbus (meaning "Dove"), whose maritime epic is, for me, the story of Jonah 'writ large'. Christopher Columbus sets sail (rather more enthusiastically than had Jonah) to convert the pagans.
Many, many centuries before Columbus, 1492 and all that, the Bronze Age Mediterraneans (Cretan Philistines and the Levantines) were mining tons of nearly pure copper, for their precious bronze, from far-away Lake Superior in Northern America (Gavin Menzies, The Lost Empire of Atlantis, 2001).
"Columbus" (whoever he/it may have been) did not discover America!
Not surprisingly, though, "Columbus" is supposed to have encountered "a great fish" - a description that accurately translates Jonah 2:1's dag gadol (דָּג גָּדוֹל) ("... Columbus sees a Sea Monster"):
http://anomalyinfo.com/Stories/1494-september-114-columbus-sees-sea-monster
"From a modern English translation of [his son] Ferdinand's biography, we read that sometime between September 1~14 in 1494, this curious event occurred to Columbus and his men:
"Holding on their course, the ship's people sighted a large fish, big as a whale, with a carapace like a turtle's, a head the size of a barrel protruding from the water, a long tail like that of a tunny fish, and two large wings. From this and from certain other signs the Admiral knew they were in for foul weather and sought a port where they might take refuge."
"As far as I know, no such creature exists. So what did Columbus see?
'Did It Happen...?
"This is one of those moments where the gray zone of what is considered history and what is considered not history is fully exposed.
"History is often just stories that have been agreed upon and accepted, with no hard evidence past this agreement to support it... and in the case of most of Christopher Columbus' voyages, this is the case. Ferdinand's account of his father's life is taken as authoritative on many details that no other document can confirm; yet the story above is quietly ignored, even though it has the same amount of evidence to support it as anything else in Ferdinand's biography".
[End of quotes]
Summary so far
So far, it all amounts to something quite simple.
The life of the prophet Jonah (qua Jonah) in the Bible stretches between two incidents.
The first is Jonah's prediction of the expansion of the territory of king Jeroboam II of Israel (2 Kings 14:25).
And the second is the 'great fish'-and-Nineveh incident that I have located to the beginning of the reign of Esarhaddon (late in the reign of king Hezekiah of Judah).
Most importantly, we may have managed to uncover the very Jonah incident in Nineveh thanks to professor Sayce via Hart-Davies:
"Already we possess proof from the cuneiform tablets that the Bible account of Nineveh’s repentance is described in a manner which exactly coincides with Assyrian custom. “It was just such a fast”, says Professor Sayce, “as was ordained by Esar-haddon when the northern foe was gathering against the Assyrian empire, and prayers were raised to the Sun-god to ‘remove the sin’ of the king and his people. ‘From this day’, runs the inscription, ‘from the third day of this month, even the month of Iyyar, to the fifteenth day of Ab of this year, for these hundred days and hundred nights the prophets have proclaimed (a period of supplication)’. The prophets of Nineveh had declared that it was needful to appease the anger of heaven, and the king accordingly issued his proclamation enjoining the solemn service of humiliation for one hundred days”."
Esarhaddon, who refers here to "the prophets of Nineveh", may not personally have encountered the prophet Jonah himself who had gone off sulking to "a place east of the city" (Jonah 4:5). And, typically, the paranoid king of Nineveh - who would immediately have consulted his own "prophets" upon hearing of his people's mass conversion - then over-reacted to the specified "forty days" by ordering a fast for "these hundred days and hundred nights".
{Esarhaddon was famous for fixing numbers, anyway, he having inverted the cuneiform signs used to write the number 70, the amount of years the god Marduk had determined for the destruction of Babylon, to the number 11}.
His prayers were raised to the "Sun-god", as he would not have known of Yahweh.
Shamash was the Mesopotamian Sun-god, and was the god of justice who forgave sins.
Tobit's people, and possibly Ahikar - who had only recently been in Isaiah's (Uzziah's) very house in Bethel ("Bethulia") (as we read), had witnessed Judith's victory first-hand, and had converted to Yahwism - may have generated a sense of conversion amongst the Ninevites at the preaching of this same Isaiah (= Jonah).
By now, too, the Ninevites must have heard reports of the 'great fish' incident-miracle.
In conventional history, the two (above-mentioned) Jonah interventions are separated in time by some 60 years - but by somewhat less of that time-span in my revision.
Obviously much filling-out of the prophet Jonah must needs be required.
I have supplemented his long life by identifying Jonah with (i) the prophet Hosea, whose prophetic career did span this very period, from Jeroboam II of Israel to king Hezekiah (Hosea 1:1), and with (ii) the very similar (to Hosea) prophet Isaiah.
In this regard (Hosea = Isaiah) I had noted: "It is most unlikely, one would have to think, to have two great prophets contemporaneously operating over such a substantial period of time, and each having three children whose names were prophetic".
Professor A. H. Sayce will conventionally estimate the prophet Hosea's career and age as follows (op. cit., p. 163): "According to the chronology of the Book of Kings, Hosea's ministry would have extended over a period of at least 64 years, the prophecies relating to the fall of Samaria being delivered when he was at least 84 years of age".
* * *
Now, though, the whole biblico-historical matter will become significantly more complex, with Esarhaddon, in particular, to be multi-identified due to a comprehensive folding of 'Middle' Assyrian into 'Neo' Assyrian history - a necessary consequence of the downward-in-time revision. This will serve to throw some further light upon events associated with the prophet Jonah.
My method runs counter to that often proposed by historians and biblical commentators who regard the Assyrian history as virtually sacrosanct and who thus think that it is the Bible that has to be bent to conform to it. Professor A. H. Sayce, for instance, was being wildly optimistic when he wrote (op. cit., p. 163):
"Thanks, however, to the decipherment of the Assyrian inscriptions, the true chronology of the later period of the Hebrew monarchy can now be restored. From 911 to 659 B.C. the so-called Assyrian Canon has furnished us with an accurate chronological register, in which each year is named along with the dates of the accession and death of the several Assyrian kings, and, in many cases, of the events which marked their reigns. As the Assyrian monarchs were brought into frequent contact with Israel and Judah during this period, and have been careful to record the names of the Hebrew princes whom they dethroned or compelled to pay tribute, the chronology of the two kingdoms of Samaria and Jerusalem can now be determined from the last year of Ahab to the siege of Jerusalem by Sennacherib".
[End of quote]
Edwin R. Thiele had also decided that it would be a good idea to regulate the biblical chronology in accordance with the supposedly fixed neo-Assyrian chronology.
Though Thiele's intentions to uphold the veracity of the Bible appear to have been sincere (The Mysterious Numbers of the Hebrew Kings, 1983, Ch. One, p. 33): "… never will the events of the Old Testament record be properly fitted into the events of the Near Eastern world, and never will the vital messages of the Old Testament be thoroughly or correctly understood until there has been established a sound chronology for Old Testament times", his outcome has been in no small part a disaster, with king Hezekiah of Judah, for instance, being set adrift from some very firm biblico-historical anchor points. On this, see e.g. my article:
King Hezekiah, Samaria, Assyria, and Edwin Thiele
https://www.academia.edu/8678263/King_Hezekiah_Samaria_Assyria_and_Edwin_Thiele
My Appendix A, to follow, will play utter havoc with any naïve optimism re dependence upon the text-book Assyrian chronology.
Conventionally-minded historians and biblical commentators are going to find it difficult, though, to get their heads around my radical and deep-seated revision.
What follows will best be grasped by those who have a good knowledge of 'Middle' and 'Neo' Assyrian history and the variety of kings involved therein.
Appendix A:
Moulding Assyrian history to Israel's history
Jewish tradition appears to concur with my view that Jonah at the time of Jeroboam II was well separated in time from Jonah when he witnessed at Nineveh, whose king is said to have been called "Osnapper".
So much so, in fact, that rabbinical tradition will actually speak of 'two Jonahs'.
Three years ago (16th May, 2017) I had written on this:
“König, again, will make a point reflecting on chronology; one that will be of great significance later on in this series, as we come to discuss the period of floruit of Jonah, and his age. At the same time König will tell of the Jewish tradition that the Assyrian king in the Book of Jonah was “Osnappar” (var. As[e]napper), whom König would tentatively equate with a known neo-Assyrian king, “Assurbanipal” (var. Ashurbanipal) (A History of Israel, 2nd edn., SCM Press Ltd., London, p. 313, n. 11):
Jewish tradition, however, contains also the information that the history contained in the Book of Jonah was enacted in the reign of Osnappar (Ezr 4:10) [Assurbanipal?], and, seeing that the date of Jeroboam II, and that of Osnappar were different, the rabbinical tradition spoke of two Jonahs, of whom the first was of the tribe of Zebulun and the second of the tribe of Asher (see, further, Fürst, Der Kanon d. AT nach d. Ueberlief. in Talm. und Midrasch, p. 33 f.).
[End of quotes]
No need, however, to go to the extreme of creating 'two Jonahs'. The prophet's long life can satisfactorily be accommodated by means of his alter ego, Hosea (= Isaiah).
Ezra 4:10 (cited above) refers to "... the rest of the nations which the great and honourable Osnappar deported and settled in the city of Samaria, and in the rest of the region beyond the River".
"Osnapper" (אָסְנִפִּר) is here lauded as "great and honourable", a description that the Jews would hardly have used for, say, a Sennacherib, or for the general run of other inimical Assyrian kings.
But they might well have done so in the case of the one special individual, Esarhaddon, who had repented at the preaching of Jonah (my view), who had allowed the pious Tobit to return home to his family, and who had greatly exalted Tobit's nephew, Ahikar, in the kingdom of the Assyrians.
Just as tradition has created 'two Jonahs', though there should be only one, historians have created two, three, or even five same-named Assyrian kings (as we are going to find), though, once again, there was generally only the one. The problem arises due to the over-stretching of chronology, the solution to which requires a folding of 'Middle' Assyrian into the 'Neo' Assyrian period.
Esarhaddon as Ashurnasirpal-Ashurbanipal
Kings unnecessarily duplicated
I was very greatly surprised to read the following piece of information as provided by Mattias Karlsson regarding the almost total lack of statuary depicting the, albeit megalomaniacal, Ashurnasirpal ("Early Neo-Assyrian State Ideology Relations of Power in the Inscriptions and Iconography of Ashurnasirpal II (883–859) and Shalmaneser III (858–824)", p. 39. My emphasis):
http://www.diva-portal.org/smash/get/diva2:637086/FULLTEXT01.pdf
"Staying in Nimrud, two gateway lions (A111) and a statue of the king (AI12, Fig. 18) from the second half, based on the date of the temple inscription, have been excavated from the Sharrat-niphi temple of Nimrud. .... The statue in question is the only known one which depicts Ashurnasirpal II. ...".
Clearly, the grandiloquent Ashurnasirpal is badly in need of one or more alter egos.
What happens, of course, when same-named kings become dupli- tripli- cated, due to chronological over-extension, is that scholars are forced to puzzle over whether this or that particular document, record, building, artefact, etc., belongs to King I or King II, King III, etc.
This happens in many instances, as we are going to find.
And so, in the case of the White Obelisk, some will confidently date this to the time of Ashurnasirpal I (c. 1049-1031 BC), e.g. Mattias Karlsson (op. cit., pp. 53-54):
"As for sources whose datings by scholars alternate between different time periods, the 290 cm high White Obelisk from Nineveh depicting tribute, royal warfare, cult, hunting, and banquets are in line period rather than to Ashurnasirpal II. ....This conclusion is derived from various stylistic features such as the fact that also the king’s officials wear fez-shaped hats. This clearly points to a Middle Assyrian date, since the officials and nobility of Neo-Assyrian times do not wear these headgears. .... Additionally, the coarse style which characterizes the reliefs on the White Obelisk is very different from the elegant style on the Rassam Obelisk. Since Nineveh, the provenance, was an important core city the coarseness of the reliefs can not simply be explained away as being “provincial art” from the time of Ashurnasirpal II.
Rather, it should be understood as part of a chronologically determined art development, closely related to the “Broken Obelisk” of Ashur-bel-kala (1073-1056). .... It is mostly philologists who have dated this obelisk to the second king. .... The main argument here is that the shrine bīt-natḫi, mentioned in the inscription on the White Obelisk ... is otherwise spoken of only by Ashurnasirpal I .... This may however be just another result of the hazardous preservation of sources"[,]
while others will argue that it pertains to Ashurnasirpal II (c. 883-859 BC):
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ashurnasirpal_I
"The White Obelisk[i 3] is sometimes attributed to [Ashurnasirpal I] by historians, but more usually to his later namesake, Aššur-nāṣir-apli II, because its internal content (hunting, military campaigns, etc.) better matches what is known about his reign.[3]"
The fact of the matter is that the White Obelisk belonged to just the one king Ashurnasirpal.
Along similar lines, I had, in my postgraduate thesis on King Hezekiah of Judah, folded the 'Middle' Babylonian king, Merodach-baladan I (c. 1170-1158 BC), with his namesake Merodach-baladan II of similar reign length (c. 720-709 BC), partly on the basis of historians being unsure whether a certain item of building belonged to Merodach-baladan I or to II.
Now, the comment that I made above about the surprising lack of statuary for Ashurnasirpal applies basically as well to the Assyrian king, Shalmaneser V (c. 727-722 BC, conventional dating), who lacks any known relief depiction - at least according to the article "Shalmaneser V and Sargon II"):
https://emp.byui.edu/SATTERFIELDB/Rel302/Shalmaneser%20V%20and%20Sargon%20II.htm
"The revolt of Israel against Assyria during the days of King Hoshea, last king of Israel, brought on a siege by the Assyrians (1 Kings 17). The siege was led by Shalmaneser V, King of Assyria (there is no known relief depiction of Shalmaneser V). During the siege, he died. Sargon II replaced Shalmanezer V as King of Assyria, who finished the siege and sacked Samaria". [End of quote]
And my comment will apply again, amazingly, even to that master-king, Nebuchednezzar 'the Great'.
Dr. I. Velikovsky wrote of the astonishing fact that (Ramses II and His Time, p. 184. My emphasis): "At Wadi Brissa in Lebanon, Nebuchadnezzar twice had his picture cut in rock; these are supposedly the only known portraits of this king".
Nebuchednezzar will feature most centrally in Appendix B, there now to be adorned with some impressive alter egos who are, in fact, very well represented in portraiture.
Ashurbanipal 'replicating' Esarhaddon
Fittingly, Esarhaddon is considered as a plausible candidate for "Osnapper" - along with Ashurbanipal. There is no tension at all with that in my revision, according to which Esarhaddon was Ashurbanipal.
And so here I would like to introduce my two major Assyrian alter egos for Esarhaddon: namely, Ashurbanipal and Ashurnasirpal.
Already, in Part One, B., I had quoted John H. Walton re an inscription of Esarhaddon's telling that the king had humbled himself with "sackcloth".
Walton (et al.) will repeat this in The IVP Bible Background Commentary: Old Testament, p. 780), but will now include as well "Ashurbanipal".
Esarhaddon and Ashurbanipal seem to be commonly confused in antiquity, as well as later.
One can find many instances of Ashurbanipal seemingly replicating Esarhaddon.
Previously, for example, I have written of this particular case:
"Arcadio Del Castillo and Julia Montenegro have made a valiant effort to identify the elusive biblical “Tarshish” in their article:
THE LOCATION OF TARSHISH: CRITICAL CONSIDERATIONS
Revue Biblique, 123, 2016, pp. 239-268
https://www.academia.edu/35529906/THE_LOCATION_OF_TARSHISH_CRITICAL_CONSIDERATIONS?auto=download
"But what struck me when reading through this article is yet another case of, as it seems to me, a ‘historical’ duplication, Ashurbanipal claiming what Esarhaddon claimed.
Writing of the neo-Assyrian sailing efforts, the authors tell as follows (pp. 252-254):
… the only record we have of them sailing the Mediterranean is when Sargon II gained control of Cyprus, which was further secured by his successors, Sennacherib, Esarhaddon, and Assurbanipal, 668-627 BC….
Of course, the text of the Assyrian Inscription of Esarhaddon defines the extent of the Assyrian king’s domain, in maritime terms, from one area in the direction of the other, but we believe its extent would have been within maritime limits of the Assyrian Empire itself. ....
What is conclusive is the fact that in Esarhaddon’s Inscription the reference to the kings of the middle of the sea comes after enumerating his conquests, which are listed as: Sidon … Arza … Bazu … Tilmun … Shubria … Tyre … Egypt and Pathros … and Kush. And, since Bazu seems to be situated in the northwest of Arabia and Tilmun on the Persian Gulf, very possibly Bahrain … what seems more logical is to assume that it is a delimitation in both seas of the cosmic ocean, this is the Upper Sea and the Lower Sea. So it would be a broad area that extended beyond the Mediterranean; and reference is made to it just before saying that the Assyrian king had established his power over the kings of the four regions of the Earth …. What can of course be readily accepted ... is that there is a clear parallel between the Inscription of Esarhaddon and a text of Assurbanipal, which is inscribed on Prism B: after stating that he ruled from the Upper Sea to the Lower Sea and that the kings of the rising sun and the setting sun brought him heavy tribute, Assurbanipal says that he has brought the peoples that live in the sea and those that inhabit the high mountains under his yoke … and this reference, as we understand it, is very like Esarhaddon’s text, since it is also “a general summary”. ....
[End of quotes]
And here is another example, this time from Eva Miller ("Crime and Testament: Enemy Direct Speech in Inscriptions of Esarhaddon and Ashurbanipal", Journal of Ancient Near Eastern History, Volume 6: Issue 2, 2020, “Abstract”):
"In Assyrian annals, the narrative device that we would call ‘direct speech’ is employed very rarely throughout most of Assyrian history (beyond the framing device of the entire text as royal speech), with an uptick in its popularity in the royal inscriptions of the last two well-attested Neo-Assyrian monarchs, Esarhaddon and Ashurbanipal (Gerardi 1989: 245–46). ... Esarhaddon and Ashurbanipal employ this literary feature more often than their predecessors ...".
[End of quote]
Ashurbanipal, we find, supposedly repeats Esarhaddon's efforts. Thus Wikipedia's article, "Esarhaddon": "Ashurbanipal left in 667 BC [sic] to complete Esarhaddon's unfinished final campaign against Egypt".
....
"Ashurbanipal, who would famously gather ancient Mesopotamian literary works for his famous library, had already begun collecting such works during the reign of Esarhaddon.
It is possible that Esarhaddon is to be credited with encouraging Ashubanipal's collection and education.[18]"
Name comparisons
The name "Esarhaddon" can by no means be considered a good fit for "Osnapper" (var. "Asnapper", "Asenaphar"). Ashurbanipal fits somewhat better, but an even better fit still is the name Ashurnasirpal.
Troy Lacey, in "Recent Archaeological Finds in Assyria Corroborate Scripture":
https://answersingenesis.org/archaeology/recent-archaeological-finds-assyria-corroborate-scripture/
sees this Ashurnasirpal as the type of resettling Assyrian king as depicted in Ezra 4:10, though he follows the conventional dating that has Ashurnasirpal as a "prior ruler to those mentioned above whose reign is conventionally dated from 883–859 BC". Thus he writes:
"Ashurbanipal, the author of the last inscription above, was the son of Esarhaddon and is also mentioned in Scripture but, depending on the translation, may be called by that name or by Asnappar, Osnapper, or Asenaphar in Ezra 4:10, where he is also listed as an Assyrian king who relocated non-Israelite people to the regions of Samaria.
"It is worth noting that a few of the inscriptions found in the 1987–1992 excavation, as well as the newly discovered tunnel inscriptions, corroborate biblical people and place-names, as well as the biblical accounts of Assyrian practices. For example, an inscription of Ashurnasirpal II (prior ruler to those mentioned above whose reign is conventionally dated from 883–859 BC) states,
The ancient city Calah which Shalmaneser, king of Assyria, a ruler who preceded me, had built—this city had become dilapidated; it lay dormant (and) had turned into ruin hills. I rebuilt this city. I took people which I had conquered from the lands over which I had gained dominion, from the land Suḫu, (from) the entire land Laqû, (from) the city Sirqu which is at the crossing of the Euphrates, (from) the entire land of Zamua, from Bīt-Adini and the Ḫatti, and from Lubarna (Liburna), the Ḫatinu. I settled (them) therein.
"The above Ashurnasirpal II passage not only demonstrates a prevailing methodology of resettlement as recorded to still be practice generations later, as in Ezr a 4:10 (NKJV), but the city of Calah is also mentioned in Genesis 10:11–12."
[End of quotes]
The names, "Ashurnasirpal" (Aššur-nāṣir-apli ... “the god Aššur is the protector of the heir,”): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ashurnasirpal_I
and "Ashurbanipal" (Aššur-bāni-apli, meaning "Ashur has given a son-heir"): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ashurbanipal are quite similar, both phonetically and as to meaning.
And we recall, too, that Esarhaddon had another name featuring similar elements "Ashur ... mukin apli": Ashur ... (is) establisher of a legitimate heir”.
Another similar name that is going to be important for us is that of the Assyrian king, Ashur-nadin-apli, successor of Tukulti-Ninurta. Ashur-nadin-apli was variously named, as we shall learn, Ashur-nasir-apli (that is, Ashurnasirpal).
In conventional terms, Esarhaddon's reign (c. 680-668 BC) runs far shorter than does that of Ashurnasirpal (c. 883-859 BC), but more especially than that of the very long-reigning Ashurbanipal (c. 668-625 BC), whose lengthy 43-year reign will turn out to be the correct figure for our composite "king of Nineveh" (see Appendix B).
Introducing the fish-man
Why is Ashurnasirpal, Ashurbanipal, important in the Jonah context?
Ashurnasirpal is important, I suggest, because he was the one during whose reign there was depicted the bas-relief of the fish-man figure (as reproduced in Bill Cooper's article) on the wall of his North-West Palace at Nimrud (Calah).
Was this 'the sign of the prophet Jonah' (Matthew 12:39), now depicted in carved stone by the architects of the Great King of Assyria?
Large whales were being hunted, too, at the time of Ashurnasirpal. P. Haupt, in "Jonah's Whale" (Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, Vol. 46, no. 18), tells of king Ashurnasirpal receiving as tribute from Phoenicia some teeth bones that Haupt thinks must have belonged to a sperm whale (pp. 155, 156):
"Sperm-whales are found in the Mediterranean, although they are not frequent. ... in a passage of the cuneiform annals of Assur-nacir-pal [Ashurnasirpal] we read that this Assyrian king received, as tribute from Tyre, Zidon, Arvad, and other places on the Phoenician coast, ivory teeth of the blower, the creature of the sea. This blower with ivory teeth cannot have been a narwhal ... or walrus ... these animals are not found in the Mediterranean. The sperm-whale has, on each side of the lower jaw ...from 20 to 25 conical (slightly recurved) teeth which consist of the finest ivory".
Haupt, who does not actually believe that Jonah could have survived for three days in a whale, tells, nevertheless, that (p. 162): "... the head of a giant sperm-whale may be more than 30 feet long".
The Assyrian king must have been impressed with his gift of whale teeth bones. Haupt again (p. 157):
"... Assur-nacir-pal (885-860) states that he placed two blowers of Ad-Bar-stone at the gates of the palaces in the ancient capital of Assyria, Assur, now known as Kileh Shergat ... the ideogram Ad-Bar means basalt and ... the field-director of the German excavations at Kileh Shergat reports that a great many basalt fragments of sculptures have been found, but the restoration of the figures has not been accomplished.
Assyriologists did not know that nakhiru,... blower meant sperm-whale".
The city of Calah (at Nimrud) was important, too, for Esarhaddon. Thus writes Barbara N. Porter (Images, Power, and Politics: figurative aspects of Esarhaddon's Babylonian policy, 1994, pp. 71-72): "... Esarhaddon was actively engaged in the expansion of the already large fort and palace complex, or ekal masarti, in the Assyrian city of Calah (Nimrud), not far from Nineveh. .... This building was the centerpiece of Esarhaddon's extensive program to redevelop Calah as a military and administrative center for Assyria, a program that continued to the end of his reign".
And it will be during the reign of Ashurbanipal that there occurs the first appearance of "Oannes".
Thus Frank M. Conaway (The Kundalini Yoga Christian Master Is, 2014, p. 68) writes:
"Biblical scholars have speculated that Jonah may have been in part the inspiration behind the figure of Oannes in late Babylonian mythology .... The deity named "Oannes" first occurs in texts from the library of Ashurbanipal (more than a century after the time of Jonah) [sic] as Uanna or Uan, but is assimilated to Adapa ...".
[End of quote]
Assimilating holy, miracle-working men to gods (apotheosis) is what pagans have tended to do.
Did not the Lycaonians seek to deify the miracle-working Paul and Barnabas? (Acts 14:11-12):
"When the crowd saw what Paul had done, they shouted in the Lycaonian language, 'The gods have come down to us in human form!' Barnabas they called Zeus, and Paul they called Hermes because he was the chief speaker".
Again, Daniel 2:46: "Then King Nebuchadnezzar fell prostrate before Daniel and paid him honor and ordered that an offering and incense be presented to him".
Illness
Famously, Ashurnasirpal (I, so-called), likewise Esarhaddon, likewise Ashurbanipal, suffered from a long and extraordinary illness.
Ashurnasirpal will desperately pray to the goddess Ishtar for a cure ... “lamentation over the kings underserved suffering for a persistent illness” (Donald F. Murray, Divine Prerogative and Royal Pretension: Pragmatics, Poetics and Polemics ..., 1998, pp. 266-267):
http://jewishchristianlit.com/Texts/ANEhymns/lamIshtr.html
....
‘I have cried to thee, suffering, wearied, and distressed, as thy servant.
See me O my Lady, accept my prayers.
Faithfully look upon me and hear my supplication.
Promise my forgiveness and let thy spirit be appeased.
Pity! For my wretched body which is full of confusion and trouble.
Pity! For my sickened heart which is full of tears and suffering.
Pity! For my wretched intestines (which are full of) confusion and trouble.
Pity! For my afflicted house which mourns bitterly.
Pity! For my feelings which are satiated with tears and suffering.
O exalted Irnini, fierce lion, let thy heart be at rest.
O angry wild ox, let thy spirit be appeased.
Let the favor of thine eyes be upon me.
With thy bright features look faithfully upon me.
Drive away the evil spells of my body (and) let me see thy bright light.
How long, O my Lady, shall my adversaries be looking upon me,
In lying and untruth shall they plan evil against me,
Shall my pursuers and those who exult over me rage against me?
How long, O my Lady, shall the crippled and weak seek me out?
One has made for me long sackcloth; thus I have appeared before thee.
The weak have become strong; but I am weak.
I toss about like flood-water, which an evil wind makes violent.
My heart is flying; it keeps fluttering like a bird of heaven.
I mourn like a dove night and day.
I am beaten down, and so I weep bitterly.
With "Oh" and "Alas" my spirit is distressed.
I - what have I done, O my god and my goddess?
Like one who does not fear my god and my goddess I am treated;
While sickness, headache, loss, and destruction are provided for me;
So are fixed upon me terror, disdain, and fullness of wrath,
Anger, choler, and indignation of gods and men.
I have to expect, O my Lady, dark days, gloomy months, and years of trouble.
I have to expect, O my Lady, judgment of confusion and violence.
Death and trouble are bringing me to an end.
Silent is my chapel; silent is my holy place;
Over my house, my gate, and my fields silence is poured out.
As for my god, his face is turned to the sanctuary of another.
My family is scattered; my roof is broken up.
(But) I have paid heed to thee, my Lady; my attention has been turned to thee.
To thee have I prayed; forgive my debt.
Forgive my sin, my iniquity, my shameful deeds, and my offence.
Overlook my shameful deeds; accept my prayer;
Loosen my fetters; secure my deliverance;
Guide my steps aright; radiantly like a hero let me enter the streets with the living'.
....
Did readers pick up Ashurnasirpal's reference here (seemingly straight out of Isaiah 38:14? KJV: 'I did mourn as a dove'): "I mourn like a dove"?
Ashurbanipal suffered an enduring illness. This intriguing prayer was found in Ashurbanipal’s library:
https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/iraq/article/new-fragments-of-gilgames-and-other-literary-texts-from-kuyunjik/1F360E8054C85DAC9FBF8B1BD322D416/core-reader
….
... My bed is the ground! (penitential prayer alsīka ilī)
The prayer alsīka ilī is one of the few extant examples of the group of the šigû-prayers, individual laments addressed to a deity in which the penitent acknowledges his sins and asks the god for absolution. ….
1. Incantation šigû: I have called upon you. My god, relent!
2. Relent, my god! Accept my supplication!
3. Harken to my weary prayers!
4. Learn at once the disgrace that has befallen me!
5. Keep listening to my lament, which I have made!
6. May the night bring you the tears which I weep!
7. Since the day (you), my lord, punished me,
8. and (you), the god who created me, became furious with me,
9. (since the day) you turned my house into my prison,
10. my bed is the ground, my sleeping place is dust,
11. I am deprived of sleep, distressed by nightmares,
12. I am troubled [in my ...], confused [in my ...].
B 9. I have been enduring a punishment [that I cannot bear.] ….
And Esarhaddon?
Karen Radner provides this quite unsettling account of Esarhaddon's most unusual and constant illness (in "The Trials of Esarhaddon: The Conspiracy of 670 BC", 2007):
https://www.academia.edu/441293/2003_The_Trials_of_Esarhaddon_the_Conspiracy_of_670_BC._In_P._Miglus_and_J.M._Cordoba_eds._Assur_und_sein_Umland._Isimu_Revista_sobre_Oriente_Proximo_y_Egipto_en_la_antiguedad_6_2003_165-184_published_2007_?auto=download
".... Modern day man may well be able to muster considerable sympathy for Esarhaddon whose symptoms were indeed rather alarming: As we know from the correspondence left by the royal physicians and exorcists … his days were governed by spells of fever and dizziness, violent fits of vomiting, diarrhoea and painful earaches. Depressions and fear of impending death were a constant in his life. In addition, his physical appearance was affected by the marks of a permanent skin rash that covered large parts of his body and especially his face. In one letter, the king’s personal physician – certainly a medical professional at the very top of his league – was forced to confess his ultimate inability to help the king: "My lord, the king, keeps telling me: ‘Why do you not identify the nature of my disease and find a cure?’ As I told the king already in person, his symptoms cannot be classified.” While Esarhaddon’s experts pronounced themselves incapable of identifying the king’s illness, modern day specialists have tried to use the reported symptoms in order to come up with a diagnosis in retrospect?’. ...."
[End of quote]
For something akin to this in modern times, read Richard B. Sorensen's account of Charles Darwin's strange and terrible illness in "The Darwinian Emperor is Naked" (2011):
https://www.academia.edu/42232462/The_Darwinian_Emperor_is_Naked
Unsurpassed cruelty
When, in Part One, B., I described Esarhaddon as "outdoing others with his cruelty and vengefulness, terrifying", I had particularly in mind his alter ego of Ashurnasirpal, the cruellest of the cruel amongst the generally merciless Assyrian kings.
Erika Belibtreu writes of it in her article, "Grisly Assyrian Record of Torture and Death" (Editor, H. S. (2002;2002). BAR 17:01 (Jan/Feb 1991). Biblical Archaeology Society):
https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/f4af/bb82f1b7920fa9444e29eb128bd13832cd46.pdf
"The inscriptions and the pictorial evidence both provide detailed information regarding the Assyrian treatment of conquered peoples, their armies and their rulers. In his official royal inscriptions, Ashurnasirpal II calls himself the “trampler of all enemies … who defeated all his enemies [and] hung the corpses of his enemies on posts.” † The treatment of captured enemies often depended on their readiness to submit themselves to the will of the Assyrian king:
“The nobles [and] elders of the city came out to me to save their lives. They seized my feet and said: ‘If it pleases you, kill! If it pleases you, spare! If it pleases you, do what you will!’” †
"In one case when a city resisted as long as possible instead of immediately submitting, Ashurnasirpal proudly records his punishment:
“I flayed as many nobles as had rebelled against me [and] draped their skins over the pile [of corpses]; some I spread out within the pile, some I erected on stakes upon the pile … I flayed many right through my land [and] draped their skins over the walls.” †
"The account was probably intended not only to describe what had happened, but also to frighten anyone who might dare to resist. To suppress his enemies was the king’s divine task. Supported by the gods, he always had to be victorious in battle and to punish disobedient people:
“I felled 50 of their fighting men with the sword, burnt 200 captives from them, [and] defeated in a battle on the plain 332 troops. … With their blood I dyed the mountain red like red wool, [and] the rest of them the ravines [and] torrents of the mountain swallowed. I carried off captives [and] possessions from them. I cut off the heads of their fighters [and] built [therewith] a tower before their city. I burnt their adolescent boys [and] girls.” †
"A description of another conquest is even worse:
“In strife and conflict I besieged [and] conquered the city. I felled 3,000 of their fighting men with the sword … I captured many troops alive: I cut off of some their arms [and] hands; I cut off of others their noses, ears, [and] extremities. I gouged out the eyes of many troops. I made one pile of the living [and] one of heads. I hung their heads on trees around the city.” †
"The palace of Ashurnasirpal II at Nimrud is the first, so far as we know, in which carved stone slabs were used in addition to the usual wall paintings. These carvings portray many of the scenes described in words in the annals". [End of quotes]
Erika Belibtreu now moves on to describe the grisly Esarhaddon:
"Sennacherib was murdered by his own sons. Another son, Esarhaddon, became his successor. As the following examples show, Esarhaddon treated his enemies just as his father and grandfather had treated theirs:
“Like a fish I caught him up out of the sea and cut off his head,” † he said of the king of Sidon; “Their blood, like a broken dam, I caused to flow down the mountain gullies”; † and “I hung the heads of Sanduarri [king of the cities of Kundi and Sizu] and Abdi-milkutti [king of Sidon] on the shoulders of their nobles and with singing and music I paraded through the public square of Nineveh. †".
And, finally, she tells of the abominable cruelty of Ashurbanipal, supposed son of Esarhaddon:
"Ashurbanipal, Esarhaddon’s son, boasted:
“Their dismembered bodies I fed to the dogs, swine, wolves, and eagles, to the birds of heaven and the fish in the deep….
What was left of the feast of the dogs and swine, of their members which blocked the streets and filled the squares, I ordered them to remove from Babylon, Kutha and Sippar, and to cast them upon heaps.” †
"When Ashurbanipal didn’t kill his captives he “pierced the lips (and) took them to Assyria as a spectacle for the people of my land.” † The enemy to the southeast of Assyria, the people of Elam, underwent a special punishment that did not spare even their dead:
“The sepulchers of their earlier and later kings, who did not fear Assur and Ishtar, my lords, (and who) had plagued the kings, my fathers, I destroyed, I devastated, I exposed to the sun. Their bones (members) I carried off to Assyria. I laid restlessness upon their shades.
I deprived them of food-offerings and libations of water.” †
"Among the reliefs carved by Ashurbanipal were pictures of the mass deportation of the Elamites, together with severed heads assembled in heaps. Two Elamites are seen fastened to the ground while their skin is flayed, while others are having their tongues pulled out. There is no reason to doubt the historical accuracy of these portrayals and descriptions. Such punishments no doubt helped to secure the payment of tribute—silver, gold, tin, copper, bronze and iron, as well as building materials including wood, all of which was necessary for the economic survival of the Assyrian empire". [End of quotes]
Was Ashurbanipal a vindictive type?
According to Lori L. Rowlett (Joshua and the Rhetoric of Violence: A New Historicist Analysis, 1996, p. 112): “’Ashurbanipal’s] treatment of his enemies (internal and external) is particularly horrible and vindictive …”.
And yet this - our biblical "king of Nineveh" - was surprisingly literate and scholarly, having created a marvellous royal library at Nineveh, and having also proudly proclaimed: ‘I read the beautiful clay tablets from Sumer and the Akkadian writing, which is hard to master. I had the joy of reading inscriptions on stone from the time before the Flood.’
Commenting on this, we read (originally published in Creation 9, no. 1, December 1986, p. 12):
https://answersingenesis.org/archaeology/who-said-it/
"This statement was made by King Ashurbanipal ... [who] ruled Assyria from his palace at Nineveh. He ruled in the seventh century BC. This statement of his was uncovered in 1853 by Hormuzd Rassam, who discovered Ashurbanipal’s royal library. It consisted of two adjoining high-vaulted rooms stacked high with thousands of priceless clay tablets, one of which contained Ashurbanipal’s statement which in full reads: 'I Ashur-bani-pal, within the palace, learned the wisdom of Nebo, the entire art of writing on clay tablets of every kind. I made myself master of the various kinds of writing. . .I read the beautiful clay tablets from Sumer and the Akkadian writing, which is hard to master. I had the joy of reading inscriptions on stone from the time before the flood’."
[End of quotes]
Marc Van de Mieroop considers Ashurbanipal's literacy when he writes: "The king clearly wanted to set himself apart from others by claiming knowledge of writing and of secret lore, and presented the library as something completed for his own interests". (A History of the Ancient Near East ca. 3000 - 323 BC, Blackwell, 2004, p. 245).
To balance that civilised sense of culture, again, we have the famous "Garden Party" relief, in which "... the enthroned queen and reclining king [Ashurbanipal], who feast in the arbour amid the vines, conifers and palms, hung with the grisly trophies of victory, consisting of the head and hand holding a wand of Teumman, king of Elam" (The British Museum, "wall panel; relief"):
https://www.britishmuseum.org/collection/object/W_1856-0909-53
Esarhaddon's art is most similar to Ashurbanipal's. Consider this, for example:
https://www.louvre.fr/en/oeuvre-notices/plaque-king-esarhaddon-and-queen-mother-nakija
"The king [Esarhaddon] is wearing a beard and the truncated conical tiara of the Assyrian sovereigns.
The queen's crown is crenelated, like the one worn by the wife of King Ashurbanipal on the relief known as the "Garden Party relief," now in the British Museum, London".
I have shown above that our composite "king of Nineveh", Ashurnasirpal-Esarhaddon-Ashurbanipal, shared many common features among his three alter egos. And one could easily multiply examples.
Now I need to knit this more complex version of the "king of Nineveh" into the life of Jonah.
Jonah's Jeroboam II and contemporaneous Assyrian kings
Thankfully, we appear to have an historical synchronism between an Assyrian king, Adad-nirari (III), and the supposed father of Jeroboam II, Jehoash. Thus Edwin R. Thiele writes (op. cit., p. 112): "In 1967 a stele was found at Tell al Rimah that has twelve lines dealing with a campaign of Adad-nirari III in the Mediterranean area. Of particular interest to students of the Old Testament is the mention of the receipt of tribute from "Ja'asu of Samaria,” or Jehoash".
{Jehoash, rather than his father, Jehoahaz, is generally considered to be the more preferable translation of the name Ja'asu in the Assyrian al-Rimah text, and it is the one that I accept}.
I have referred above to Jehoash as "the supposed father of Jeroboam II", because, in my revised history of Israel, I have found it necessary to merge the powerful Jehoash with Jeroboam II.
Jeroboam II is a hugely controversial king. This is clear, for example, from Todd Bolen's opening remark about him in his article, "The Reign of Jeroboam II: A Historical and Archaeological Interpretation" (2002):
https://www.academia.edu/1644551/The_Reign_of_Jeroboam_II_A_Historical_and_Archaeological_Interpretation "Jeroboam II was one such king whose importance to Israel's political history went virtually unnoticed in the biblical record. Though he ruled longer than any other king of the north, the Scriptures accord him one of the briefest treatments of all kings (2 Kings 14:23-29)".
Information like this, for me, cries out the need for an alter ego for this notable king!
As in the case of the famed king Omri of Israel, there is no mention whatsoever of king Jeroboam II in Chronicles. Surprisingly, again, the Scriptures never at all refer to "the House of Omri", despite its great reputation - the neo-Assyrian kings were still alluding to the House of Omri (as Bit Khumri) even as late as Sargon II (c. 720 BC), e.g., "all the land of the House of Omri" (Palace Door, Small Summary Inscription, Cylinder Inscription, Bull Inscription).
Omri, clearly contemporaneous with the Syrian king, Tab-rimmon, father of Ben-Hadad I (I Kings 20:34), must be merged - so I have argued - with the first king Jeroboam (I), likewise a contemporary of Tab-rimmon. See e.g. my article:
Great King Omri missing from Chronicles
https://www.academia.edu/42235075/Great_King_Omri_missing_from_Chronicles
On the Judaean side (subject matter really for Appendix B), king Abijah, also a contemporary of the Syrian Tab-rimmon, gets substantial and impressive coverage in 2 Chronicles (13:1-22), even though he is supposed to have reigned for only "three years" (I Kings 15:2). The biblical account of him would suggest that he must have reigned for much longer than this (2 Chronicles 13:21-22): "But Abijah grew in strength. He married fourteen wives and had twenty-two sons and sixteen daughters. The other events of Abijah’s reign, what he did and what he said, are written in the annotations of the prophet Iddo".
For this reason, and due to the fact that Abijah and Asa apparently had the same mother, Maacah, or Maakah (cf. I Kings 15:2; 15:10), I have merged Abijah with the long-reigning Asa.
And I felt it necessary to do the same with the later king of Judah, Amon, of only "two years" of reign, yet who supposedly was a king even more evil than his father, the very long-reigning Manasseh (2 Chronicles 33:21-23). In my scheme, Amon, in captivity, will eventually morph into Aman (Haman) of the Book of Esther.
And, finally, there is Shallum king of Israel, another wicked and murderous king, who supposedly reigned for only "one month" (2 Kings 15:13) - he, as I have determined, has needed to be expanded to embrace an alter ego in the 22-year reigning Pekah king of Israel (2 Kings 15:27).
According to my revision for early Israel, then, Jeroboam I = Omri (House of Jeroboam); his persistent foe Tibni = Tab-rimmon (perhaps); Baasha of Israel = Ahab (House of Baasha, House of Ahab).
King Ahab, of the tribe of Issachar (as Baasha) (I Kings 15:27), must have been a "son of Omri"
(16:30), not directly, but, say, through, marriage.
My revision also enables now for Jehoash (= Jeroboam II) to connect up with Jonah and 2 Kings 14:25.
The dynasty of Jehu, king of Israel, is conventionally listed as (i) Jehu followed by (ii)-(v) his four sons (2 Kings 10:30): "Therefore your descendants will sit on the throne of Israel to the fourth generation."
I now, however, would take that "fourth" to include Jehu himself, who was followed by Jehoahaz, then by Jehoash - whom I have identified as Jeroboam II - and, finally, by the short-reigning Zechariah (2 Kings 13:1-15:11). Four (i)-(iv) kings in total.
That enables for a biblical question the better to be answered: Who was the "saviour" of 2 Kings 13:5? Was it Jehoash, who thrice defeated the Syrians, as according to the prophet Elisha (2 Kings 13:19), or was it Jeroboam II, who greatly extended Israel's territory, as according to Jonah (2 Kings 14:25)?
My answer: It was Jehoash, who was Jeroboam II.
Jonah's prediction, therefore, was modelled on that of the prophet Elisha, both oracles concerning the same aggressive king of Israel.
All of this is included in my shortening of the history of Israel to which I alluded in Part One, enabling (as we progress beyond Jeroboam II) for a prophet such as Jonah, who was contemporaneous with Jeroboam II, to have been less than 85-90 years old (as in conventional terms) early in the reign of Esarhaddon of Assyria - my favoured time for Jonah's intervention.
For, regarding my radical reconstruction of late Israel, Jehu's last descendant, Zechariah = Pekahiah (murdered); Shallum = Pekah (murderer-murdered); and Menahem = Hosea (murderer).
Thus I have concluded that only three, rather than six, kings of late Israel, murder and/or are murdered, which seems to me to be a far more reasonable scenario than is the standard interpretation.
That alteration, too, will effectively lop off about a dozen or so years from the age of Jonah at Nineveh.
Now, finally, we can start bringing the Assyrian kings into proper alignment.
The perfect sequence of Assyrian kings, touching on both Adad-nirari and Jonah's "king of Nineveh", in his guise of Ashurnasirpal, can be found in this bloc (conventionally C14th-C13th-dated), taken from M. Van de Mieroop, op, cit., p. 294):
Adad-nirari I (1305-1274 BC)
Shalmaneser I (1273-44)
Tukulti-Ninurta I (1243-07)
Assur-nadin-apli (1202-1197)
Let us reconstruct this list with the aid of the life of Jonah.
Adad-nirari I must now merge into (II and) III, he becoming the king who took tribute from Jehoash = Jeroboam II early in the prophetic career of Jonah. One must think that king Jeroboam II's opportunity to take back territory stolen from Israel by Damascus and Hamath (2 Kings 14:25) had occurred when Adad-nirari defeated the city of Damascus: https://www.bible.ca/manuscripts/bible-archeology-Adad-Nirari-III-king-of-Assyria-stele-inscriptions-statues-810-783bc.htm "The defeat of Aram-Damascus by Adad-nirari III about 796 [BC] liberated Israel from Aramean oppression"."
Shalmaneser I now becomes II-IV, and the powerful, but poorly attested (as we have seen above), Shalmaneser V of the era when the capital city of Samaria was besieged by the Assyrians.
He likely, also, was the "Shalman [who] destroyed Beth-arbel" as referred to by Hosea (= my Jonah) (Hosea 10:14).
Tukulti-Ninurta I (II), I have argued, was Sennacherib, the predecessor of Jonah's king, Esarhaddon:
Can Tukulti-Ninurta I be king Sennacherib?
https://www.academia.edu/40246318/Can_Tukulti-Ninurta_I_be_king_Sennacherib
He, Sennacherib, must also be the twice-mentioned "King Jareb" of Hosea 5:13 and 10:6, for the name, Sennacherib (Sîn-aḥḥē-erība) contains that same Jareb (Iareb) element in eriba.
Ashur-nadin-apli (already briefly discussed) was also known as Ashur-nasir-apli, that is, Ashurnasirpal = Esarhaddon), our biblical "king of Nineveh".
This is the correct sequence of neo-Assyrian kings, these needing to be lifted out of c.1300-1200 BC and into c. 800-700 BC.
This 500-year (approx.) re-dating concurs well with Dr. I. Velikovsky's revision (Ages in Chaos, I, 1952) according to which the supposed C14th BC era of El Amarna (EA) (of the Eighteenth Dynasty pharaohs Amenhotep III and Akhnaton) needs to be folded into the C9th BC era of Israel's early Divided Monarchy.
What about Tiglath-pileser III and Sargon II it may well be asked?
The Book of Tobit supplies us with the original, correct sequence here:
(i) "Shalmaneser", whom Tobit faithfully served, was apparently a long-reigning king (Tobit 1:8): "But after a long time, Salmanasar [Shalamneser] the king being dead ... Sennacherib, his son ... reigned in his place". This statement does not fit the presumably short and obscure reign of Shalmaneser V, who thus needs to find his more prominent alter ego. "Shalmaneser" was the one who took into captivity the northern Israelites (e.g. Tobit's Naphtalians) (Tobit 1:10), as Tiglath-pileser III is known to have done. Hence Shalmaneser = Tiglathpileser. (I had already argued for Tiglath-pileser III as Shalmaneser V in my postgraduate thesis on King Hezekiah of Judah, and there, as well, I identified Tiglath-pileser III with Tiglath-pileser I (conventionally dated to c. 1114-1076 BC)).
Upon his death, "Shalmaneser" was (as we have just read) succeeded by:
(ii) "Sennacherib". No mention of a "Sargon" by Tobit.
In my university thesis I painstakingly identified Sargon II with Sennacherib (esp. in Vol. One, ch. 6).
Sennacherib, in turn, was succeeded by
(iii) "Esarhaddon" (Tobit 1:21).
Thus we have a nice sequential, parallel-fit between Marc van de Mieroop's 'Middle' Assyrian kings (when properly identified) and Tobit's 'Neo' Assyrian ones:
Adad-nirari I
Shalmaneser I = "Shalmaneser"
Tukulti-Ninurta I = "Sennacherib"
Assur-nadin-apli = "Esarhaddon"
Shalmaneser, in his guise as III (c. 859-824 BC, conventional dating), requires some special comment.
He would become a most problematical king for Dr. Velikovsky's revision, bestriding, as he supposedly does, the very century, the C9th, to which Velikovsky had re-located the EA era (conventionally dated to the C14th BC), whose Assyrian king is known to have been one "Assuruballit". (EA 15, 16)
This has become known in the revision as "The Assuruballit Problem" (TAP).
Dr. Velikovsky's effort at a solution was to identify Shalmaneser III with the Babylonian (Karduniash) king, Burnaburiah (or Burraburiash).
He also hopefully 'found' the name "Shalmaneser" in EA 11, written by Burnaburiash, as "Shalmaiati", who, though, was probably a woman, generally considered to have been Akhnaton's new wife Meritaten.
Revisionist Emmet John Sweeney would later start a move in the right direction by lifting Shalmaneser III out of the EA period, identifying his supposed father, Ashurnasirpal II, as EA's "Assuruballit", to be then followed by Shalmaneser III (Empire of Thebes, Or, Ages in Chaos Revisited, p. 118).
Now, I have lifted Shalmaneser III even further out of EA, into the mid-to-later C8th BC.
According to my revised system, Shalmaneser does not follow on from Ashurnasirpal, who, instead, as Esarhaddon, reigned two generations after Shalmaneser.
My compound "Shalmaneser" (I-V), now reigning for about 35 years, would have covered a historico-biblical period (as I now estimate it) going backwards from c. 722 BC (conventional Fall of Samaria and death of Shalmaneser V), then spanning the approximate decade reign of Menahem-Hoshea; the 22-year reign of Shallum-Pekah; the two years of Zechariah-Pekahiah; and the last few years of Jehoash-Jeroboam II.
The earlier part of the reign of Jehoash-Jeroboam II, already during the lifetime of the prophet Jonah, would have coincided with the fairly lengthy reign of the Assyrian king, Adad-nirari (I-III).
This puts Adad-nirari in a chronologically reasonable range of EA's Assuruballit (Ashuruballit), of whom Adad-nirari' was apparently a "great grandson": https://www.penn.museum/sites/journal/836
Appropriately, too, Adad-nirari now immediately precedes my combined Shalmaneser-Tiglath-pileser: "Tiglath-Pileser III described himself as a son of Adad-nirari in his inscriptions ...":
https://www.geni.com/people/Adad-nirari-III-king-of-Assyria/6000000003645908243
Appropriately, too, yet again, one finds Shalmaneser's alter ego, Tiglath-pileser (or "Pul"), figuring in the biblico-histories of Pekah (2 Kings 16:5, 7) and of Menahem (15:19): "Then Pul king of Assyria invaded the land, and Menahem gave him a thousand talents of silver ...", Menahem being my Hoshea: "The Assyrian king Tiglath-pileser III claimed that he made Hoshea king, and Hoshea paid an annual tribute to
him": https://www.britannica.com/biography/Hoshea
To sum up Appendix A: The "king of Nineveh" at the time of the prophet Jonah (who was also Isaiah = Hosea), was an Assyrian composite: Ashurnasirpal-Esarhaddon-Ashurbanipal, who needs to be re-connected with his 'Middle' Assyrian alter ego, Assur-nadin-apli (Assur-danin-apli), or Ashurnasirpal.
The Israelite king contemporaneous with Jonah's early prophecy (2 Kings 14:25), namely, Jeroboam II, was the same as Jehoash of Israel, and he was the "saviour" of 2 Kings 13:5.
Appendix B:
Moulding Babylonian history to Judah's history
Nebuchednezzar now becomes key
Jeremiah 51:34: "Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon has devoured me; he has crushed me. He has set me aside like an empty dish; he has swallowed me like a sea monster; he filled his belly with my delicacies; he has vomited me out".
Who could read this verse from the Book of Jeremiah without thinking of Jonah and the sea monster?
One commentary (easyenglish.bible), at least, which includes v. 35, has not missed the comparison:
https://www.easyenglish.bible/bible-commentary/jeremiah45-52-lbw.htm
"Verses 34-35 These verses describe the way in which Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, had defeated Jerusalem. They describe him like a greedy person. He was eating like a hungry animal. He had eaten Jerusalem. He had left Jerusalem empty. It was like a jar of wine that he had drunk. Also he was like a great sea snake that had filled its stomach with rich food. The rich food was the wealth from Jerusalem that Nebuchadnezzar had taken. Perhaps the people remembered the story about Jonah. A great fish swallowed Jonah. In a similar way, Babylon took into its country everything that had belonged to Israel. Jonah returned to land when the fish coughed him out".
[End of quote]
"Perhaps the people remembered the story about Jonah".
Conventionally estimated, Jonah's "story" would have needed 'remembering' because it would have occurred more than 70 years before (early Esarhaddon, c. 680 BC, to Nebuchednezzar, c. 605 BC) as an absolute minimum time span.
And add to that another 60+ years if it had occurred during the reign of Jeroboam II, as some think.
That is well over a century from when Nebuchednezzar himself had begun to reign.
But what if all of those 'conventional estimates' are wrong, and king Nebuchednezzar was, in fact, a contemporary of Jonah's?
Wouldn't that cast a whole new perspective upon Nebuchednezzar as an all-devouring sea serpent?
It may not surprise readers by now to learn that I do consider the conventional estimates to be wrong.
What might well come as a surprise to readers, though, is that I also believe Nebuchednezzar to have been a contemporary of the prophet Jonah.
And I would take it even further than that - Nebuchednezzar was, in fact, Esarhaddon himself.
See e.g. my article:
Esarhaddon a tolerable fit for King Nebuchednezzar
https://www.academia.edu/38017900/Esarhaddon_a_tolerable_fit_for_King_Nebuchednezzar
This means that Nebuchednezzar, too, is now to be identified as Jonah's "king of Nineveh", which revised scenario must offer a far deeper meaning to king Nebuchednezzar as a voracious sea monster.
The Hebrew word used for "sea monster" in this case, tannin (תַּנִּ֔י), is different from both the one used in the Book of Jonah (e.g., 1:17), dag (דָּג), and that used by Jonah's father, Amos (9:3), nachash (נָּחָ֖שׁ).
In the New Testament (e.g., Matthew 12:40), the huge creature is called cetos (kētŏs).
The meanings of this host of names tend to cover a very wide variety of creatures, including whales: e.g., sea-serpent or jackal: dragon, crocodile, sea monster, serpent, snake, whale, (huge) fish, shark.
In Appendix A, we found that the sperm-whale was being hunted, captured, and its ivory teeth traded, at the time of our "king of Nineveh" (in his guise as Ashurnasirpal).
Merging Nebuchednezzar with Ashurnasirpal-Esarhaddon-Ashurbanipal
Earlier in this article (Part One, D.) I had asserted that Esarhaddon had been involved with his oldest brother, Ashur-nadin-shumi (= "Holofernes"), in the debacle in Israel of the 185,000-strong Assyrian army:
"Esarhaddon was under extreme duress, in part because of the great debacle that had occurred in Israel ...".
This clue I had picked up from Jewish tradition, which does not refer to Esarhaddon in this context, but, most surprisingly, to "Nebuchadnezzar". Thus the Jewishencyclopedia:
http://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/articles/11407-nebuchadnezzar
"…. —In Rabbinical Literature:
Nebuchadnezzar, the “wicked one” (“ha-rasha'”; Meg. 11a; Ḥag. 13b; Pes. 118a), was a ... son-in-law of Sennacherib (Targ. to Isa. x. 32; Lam. R., Introduction, 23, says “a grandson”), with whom he took part in the expedition of the Assyrians against Hezekiah, being one of the few who were not destroyed by the angels before Jerusalem [sic] (Sanh. 95b)".
In an article that I wrote around this precious piece of information, I put forward the suggestion that Nebuchednezzar (= Esarhaddon) would have been the official second to "Holofernes" in the Book of Judith, namely, "Bagoas". (The Book of Judith in its present form contains a confusion of various names). The article to which I refer here is:
An early glimpse of Nebuchednezzar II?
https://www.academia.edu/38114479/An_early_glimpse_of_Nebuchednezzar_II
Obviously, Nebuchednezzar could not have fulfilled this Jewish tradition in the context of the lengthy conventional chronology, but he can now in mine, as Esarhaddon.
Nebuchednezzar has much in common with our composite Assyrian "king of Nineveh", Ashurnasirpal-Esarhaddon-Ashurbanipal.
He shares a terrible, alienating illness (Daniel 4:28-33) with all three names, especially Esarhaddon.
Like Esarhaddon again, particularly, Nebuchednezzar is utterly paranoid, ready to bump off his own advisers (2:5): "The king replied to the astrologers, 'This is what I have firmly decided: If you do not tell me what my dream was and interpret it, I will have you cut into pieces and your houses turned into piles of rubble'."
And, after they quite reasonably complained about this, the king only repeats it (vv. 8-9): 'I am certain that you are trying to gain time, because you realize that this is what I have firmly decided: If you do not tell me the dream, there is only one penalty for you. You have conspired to tell me misleading and wicked things, hoping the situation will change. So then, tell me the dream, and I will know that you can interpret it for me'.”
This seemingly capricious behaviour, by a king who may have been "the basest of men" (Daniel 4:17), is perhaps better understandable, at least, in the context of Esarhaddon and the revolt going on all around him. No one was to be trusted. Thus Nebuchednezzar says: 'I am certain that you are trying to gain time ... hoping the situation will change'.
Was king Nebuchednezzar looking for an excuse to kill off all of the sycophants?
His ferocious cruelty is perhaps best reflected by his other alter ego, Ashurnasirpal.
Esarhaddon would, it is known, "put numerous of his officers to the sword in Assyria" (Paul-Alain Beaulieu, A History of Babylon, 2200 BC - AD 75, 2017, p. 211).
We might recall (from Appendix A) Mattias Karlsson's surprising piece of information that there is only one statue today of Ashurnasirpal. It, though, like the statue (or image) made by Daniel's "King Nebuchadnezzar", was of 'gold' (Daniel 3:1). Karlsson (op. cit.):
"Ashurnasirpal II narrates that he commissioned a luxurious statue of himself in red gold ...".
The image in Daniel may possibly have been an image of a god, since Ashurnasirpal also told of his creating, with all of his skill, and from "the best stone of the mountain and red gold", a statue of the god Ninurta. (Andrew R. Davis, Reconstructing the Temple: The Royal Rhetoric of Temple Renovation in the Ancient Near East and Israel, 2019, p. 27).
The missing portraiture of Nebuchednezzar, about which Dr. Velikovsky had commented, can easily be accounted for in the abundant extant portraiture of his alter egos.
Nebuchednezzar's known rule length of 43-years is not well matched by Esarhaddon, whose relatively short career (according to the text books) seems to cover only the first part of the reign of Nebuchednezzar, his securing of the throne; his illness; and his building of Babylon (Daniel 4:30): 'Is not this the great Babylon I have built as the royal residence, by my mighty power and for the glory of my majesty?'
But, in these few matters, Esarhaddon is a perfect replica of Nebuchednezzar.
"[Esarhaddon] is best known for re-building Babylon (which his father had destroyed) ...".
https://www.ancient.eu/Esarhaddon/
{I do not actually think that Esarhaddon, the "son" of Sennacherib (cf. Tobit 1:21), was a direct son of Sennacherib, but more likely, as we read above, a "son-in-law of Sennacherib (Targ. to Isa. x. 32; Lam. R., Introduction, 23, says “a grandson”) ...".}
Nebuchednezzar's 43-year reign length is matched perfectly, though, by Ashurbanipal's rule of the very same length.
Ashurbanipal is a most important supplement indeed for the historical Nebuchednezzar, for whom some significant biblically-attested incidents, such as his destruction of Egypt, and of Elam, are largely unattested in any historical records pertaining to Nebuchednezzar (qua) Nebuchednezzar.
But they are not overlooked in the annals of Ashurbanipal, an expansionist king like Nebuchednezzar (and just like the vainglorious Ashurnasirpal).
Joshua J. Mark sums up Ashurnanipal's relevant conquests in his article, "Ashurbanipal":
https://www.ancient.eu/Ashurbanipal/
"He achieved the greatest territorial expansion of the Assyrian Empire which included Babylonia, Persia, Syria, and Egypt .... Ashurbanipal was a popular king who ruled his citizens fairly but was marked for his cruelty toward those whom he defeated, the best-known example being a relief depicting the defeated king with a dog chain through his jaw, being forced to live in a kennel after capture.
....
" When Ashurbanipal invaded Egypt c. 667 BCE [sic] he drove his army south as far as Thebes, sacking every rebel city in his path. The only ruler spared was the king who had remained loyal to Assyria, King Necho of the city of Sais. Necho’s son, Psamtik, had been brought back to Nineveh by Esarhaddon for re-education in Assyrian ways and beliefs and now was returned to his father to rule with him. Ashurbanipal divided the territories of Egypt between these two kings and then, in the belief that Egypt was secure, returned to Assyria to deal with problems with Elam. Tirhakah’s nephew in Nubia, however, a young man named Tatanami, recognized Egypt’s vulnerability under the new rule of the joint kings and decided to seize the opportunity.
Tatanami marched on Egypt and took each city on his route with minimal effort. At the capital of Memphis he engaged with the Egyptian-Assyrian forces under the command of King Necho. Although Psamtik was able to successfully repel the Nubian army, Necho was killed in the battle.
The Egyptians preferred the rule of the Nubians over that of the Assyrians, however, and Psamtik was driven into hiding. In 666 BCE, word of the rebellion had reached Nineveh and Ashurbanipal returned at the head of his troops and again crushed the rebels.
Their stronghold at Thebes was sacked and Tatanami abandoned his campaign and fled back to Nubia. Ashurbanipal then made Psammetichus full Pharaoh of Egypt, equipped him with Assyrian garrisons stationed at strategic points, and then again returned to Assyria in 665 BCE. Between 665 and 657 BCE he put down a rebellion in Tyre, fought the Elamites ....
....
"Ashurbanipal saw an opportunity to finally defeat his old enemy and drove his army again into Elam. The historian Susan Wise Bauer writes, “Elamite cities burned. The temples and palaces of Susa were robbed. For no better reason than vengeance, Ashurbanipal ordered the royal tombs opened and the bones of the kings bundled off into captivity” (414). When he sacked and destroyed the city of Susa in 647 BCE, he left behind a tablet which recorded his triumph over the Elamites:
Susa, the great holy city, abode of their gods, seat of their mysteries, I conquered. I entered its palaces, I opened their treasuries where silver and gold, goods and wealth were amassed...
I destroyed the ziggurat of Susa. I smashed its shining copper horns. I reduced the temples of Elam to naught; their gods and goddesses I scattered to the winds. The tombs of their ancient and recent kings I devastated, I exposed to the sun, and I carried away their bones toward the land of Ashur. I devastated the provinces of Elam and on their lands I sowed salt.
Anyone with even the slightest claim to the throne was captured and brought back to Nineveh as a slave. In keeping with Assyrian policy, Ashurbanipal then relocated enormous numbers of the population throughout the region and left the cities empty and the fields barren ...".
[End of quotes]
This piece by Joshua J. Mark more than adequately supplies for the lack of historical evidence in the records of Nebuchednezzar, as pointed out by critics, for his crushing defeats of Egypt (which took a long time to recover) and Elam (which never recovered), as foretold by the prophets Jeremiah and Ezekiel.
For more on all of this, see e.g. my article:
There’s a big hole in Nebuchednezzar II’s 'Egyptian campaign'
https://www.academia.edu/35973178/There_s_a_big_hole_in_Nebuchednezzar_II_s_Egyptian_campaign
So poorly does the historical Nebuchednezzar 'the Great' appear to stack up against the version of the Babylonian king as portrayed in the Book of Daniel, it is claimed, that commentators often turn to king Nabonidus of Babylon (c. 556-539 BC, conventional), instead, as the model upon which Daniel's "Nebuchadnezzar" must have been based.
And they are entirely correct in so doing.
But, guess what? Nabonidus was Nebuchednezzar!
And Nebuchednezzar's son, Belshazzar (cf. Baruch 1:12), was Nabonidus's well-known son, Belshazzar. He was to become, upon the death of his father, the 'Writing on the Wall' notorious "King Belshazzar" of Daniel 5.
King Nabonidus, appropriately, is considered to be an eccentric and somewhat mad, like Nebuchednezzar and his alter egos. He was also highly intelligent and an antiquarian, just like Ashurbanipal. For more comparisons, here, see e.g. my article:
Ashurbanipal and Nabonidus
https://www.academia.edu/35855917/Ashurbanipal_and_Nabonidus
And Nabonidus is thought to have suffered an enduring and alienating illness (like all of his alter egos).
Thus we read in the New World Encyclopedia article, "Nabonidus":
https://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Nabonidus
"In the Dead Sea Scrolls, a fragment known as the Prayer of Nabonidus relates that Nabonidus suffered from an ulcer, causing him to retreat from civilization and stay in Tayma until he was healed by a Jewish exorcist after praying to the Hebrew God:
'I, Nabonidus, was afflicted with an evil ulcer for seven years, and far from men I was driven, until I prayed to the most high God. And an exorcist pardoned my sins. He was a Jew from among the children of the exile of Judah… During my stay at Tayma, I prayed to the gods of silver and gold, bronze and iron, wood, stone and lime, because I thought and considered them gods…'."
[End of quotes]
Nabonidus as Nebuchednezzar (and as Daniel's "Nebuchadnezzar") is rather comprehensively covered in my article:
"Nebuchednezzar" of the Book of Daniel
https://www.academia.edu/35847164/_Nebuchednezzar_of_the_Book_of_Daniel
And like Jonah's "king of Nineveh", who "took off his royal robes, covered himself with sackcloth and sat down in the dust .... the proclamation he issued ..." (Jonah 3:6-7), so Daniel's "Nebuchadnezzar" humbled himself (Daniel 4:34), 'I, Nebuchadnezzar, raised my eyes toward heaven, and my sanity was restored', he having previously declared (3:29): 'Therefore I decree that ...'.
Nabonidus never expected to be king, like Esarhaddon (perhaps):
"... Belushezib in his letter reminds king Esarhaddon that he correctly predicted the king’s rise to the throne. He had said that “you will take over the kingship” (umma šarruti tanašši) to Esarhaddon. Esarhaddon may be the “son of a nobody” in question":
https://uu.diva-portal.org/smash/get/diva2:918132/FULLTEXT01.pdf
certainly like Ashurbanipal.
For Nabonidus was the "son of a nobody" (mār lā mamman).
I previously wrote: "Nabonidus is not singular either in not expecting to become king. Ashurbanipal had felt the same".
(New World Encyclopedia article, "Nabonidus"): "In his own inscriptions, Nabonidus himself makes no claim to known royal origins,[1] although he refers to his otherwise unknown father, Nabu-balatsu-iqbi, as "wise prince." His mother was connected to the temple of the moon god Sîn in Harran, but her ancestry, too, is unknown".
Nabonidus displayed an extraordinary devotion to the god Sin of Harran (loc. cit.):
"In most ancient accounts, Nabonidus is depicted as a royal anomaly. He worshiped the moon god Sîn (mythology) beyond all the other gods, and paid special devotion to Sîn's temple in Harran, where his mother was a priestess".
Nabonidus exalted Sin to perhaps a hitherto unheard of level.
We read in the book, Symbiosis, Symbolism, and the Power of the Past (2003, eds. W. Dever and S. Gitin, p. 247): "As Nabonidus formulates it, Sin is the ilu/ilani sar ilani, "the god(s) of the gods", which, in Beaulieu's apt judgment, "is probably the highest epithet ever given to a god in the Mesopotamian tradition ...".
Cf. Daniel 2:47: 'Surely your God is the God of gods and the Lord of kings ...'.
The phrasing in both cases is almost identical.
As I have noted on previous occasions, though, following Charles Boutflower, the historical Nebuchednezzar was capable of writing in a fashion that almost seems to border on monotheism:
"Charles Boutflower has advanced a strong argument in his In and Around the Book of Daniel for evidence of a trend towards a Marduk (Merodach) form of monotheism to be found in various inscriptions of the Chaldean potentate, Nebuchednezzar II ‘the Great’. He writes: https://archive.org/stream/inaroundbookofda00boutuoft/inaroundbookofda00boutuoft
"According, then, to this authority, No. 15 is the latest of the inscriptions of Nebuchadnezzar, and the Merodach tendency noticed by Langdon is of necessity a monotheistic tendency, for Merodach, who, as we have seen, is always foremost of the gods, appears in some passages of this inscription to stand alone. Now it is just in these monotheistic passages, these “inserted prayers” and “changes of text,” that we seem to see the work of the real Nebuchadnezzar. Thus, immediately after the introductory passage, which describes the position occupied by the king with reference to Merodach and Nebo, there follows a hymn to those divinities, col. i. 23 to ii. 39, extracted from inscriptions 19 …. But in the middle of this hymn we meet with a prayer addressed to Merodach alone: col. i. 51 to ii. 11, and this prayer, be it noted, is an entirely original addition, not found in any previous inscription. Jastrow remarks with reference to it, “The conception of Merodach rises to a height of spiritual aspiration, which comes to us as a surprise in a religion that remained steeped in polytheism, and that was associated with practices and rites of a much lower order of thought.” ....
This remarkable prayer runs thus
'To Merodach my lord I prayed,
I addressed my supplication.
He had regard to the utterance of my heart,
I spake unto him:
‘Everlasting prince,
Lord of all that is,
for the king whom thou lovest,
whose name thou proclaimest,
who is pleasing to thee :
direct him aright,
lead him in the right path !
I am a prince obedient unto thee,
the creature of thy hands,
thou hast created me,
and hast appointed me to the lordship of multitudes of people.
According to thy mercy, Lord, which thou bestowest upon
all of them,
cause them to love thy exalted lordship :
cause the fear of thy godhead to abide in my heart !
Grant what to thee is pleasing,
for thou makest my life’.” ….
And a similar exaltation of the god, Sîn, in the case of king Nabonidus, is a central feature of Paul-Alain Beaulieu’s book, The Reign of Nabonidus, King of Babylon, 556-539 B.C. (1989). Beaulieu has interpreted Nabonidus’s exaltation of the moon god, Sîn, as “an outright usurpation of Marduk’s prerogatives”.
Sîn is the ilu/ilani sa ilani, “the god(s) of the gods.”
However, considering my revised view that Nebuchednezzar ..., Nabonidus, is actually just the one Chaldean king ... then “Nabonidus’s exaltation of the moon god, Sin” would simply equate, presumably, with Nebuchednezzar’s similar exaltation of Marduk. And this indeed appears to be the case from the next section from C. Boutflower’s book, according to which Sin fuses with Marduk (Merodach), “Sin is Merodach …”.
[End of quotes]
Esarhaddon is thought to have died in (Nabonidus's beloved) city of Harran (Encyclopaedia Britannica, article, "Ashurbanipal"): https://www.britannica.com/biography/Ashurbanipal
King Nabonidus is supposed to have been an emulator of Assyrian kings, and even a king like them. That is not surprising because he was: "Nabonidus, king of Assyria and Babylon, the (great) king". (R. H. Sack, "The Nabonidus Legend, Revue d'Assyriologie et d'archéologie orientale, Vol. 77, No. 1 (1983).
Information such as this obviously changes greatly, and re-sets, the conventional date and circumstances for the destruction of Nineveh (c. 612 BC).
It also significantly affects the history of the later kings of Judah, which is tied to the Babylonian era, and may enable for yet a further enlargement of the prophet Jonah.
Jonah in light of my revised "king of Nineveh"
To continue, and to enlarge, our biography of the prophet Jonah, we need to understand that (according to my revision) kings Josiah (commenced c. 650 BC, conventional dating) and his son, Jehoiakim, of Judah - thought to be kings ruling from Jerusalem at a time some decades later than Hezekiah (d. c. 685 BC, conventionally estimated) - are actually alter egos of, respectively, Hezekiah (= Josiah) and his evil son, Manasseh (= Jehoiakim).
For a fuller treatment of this, see e.g. my article:
King Amon's descent into Aman (Haman)
https://www.academia.edu/37376989/King_Amons_descent_into_Aman_Haman_
This, of course, has great ramifications:
It means that Isaiah (= Jonah) can potentially be found as well amongst Josiah's officials.
It means that the prophet Jeremiah of the time of King Josiah (Jeremiah 1:2), can be the 'Suffering Servant' of Isaiah 53:1-12, whom Jeremiah's life so closely fits.
(This description pointing more perfectly, of course, to Jesus Christ himself).
It would mean that the "Cyrus" about whom Isaiah wrote (e.g., 45:1) was already a teenager at the time of the Jonah incident.
It means that we do not have to consider Deutero- and Trito- Isaiahs.
It may well mean that the prophet Uriah (Urijah), who was martyred during the reign of king Jehoiakim, is biblical evidence for the tradition that Isaiah was martyred during the reign of Manasseh. Thus Jeremiah 26:20-23:
"(Now Uriah son of Shemaiah from Kiriath Jearim was another man who prophesied in the name of the LORD; he prophesied the same things against this city and this land as Jeremiah did.
When King Jehoiakim and all his officers and officials heard his words, the king was determined to put him to death. But Uriah heard of it and fled in fear to Egypt.
King Jehoiakim, however, sent Elnathan son of Akbor to Egypt, along with some other men.
They brought Uriah out of Egypt and took him to King Jehoiakim, who had him struck down with a sword and his body thrown into the burial place of the common people.)".
This last needs a bit of comment as it presents us with a different name for the prophet, a different patronymic, and, possibly, a different place of residence.
I shall come back to it in the next section. But it is interesting that, according to Islamic tradition, Jonah was martyred. Thus Don E. Jones (op. cit.): "Muslim tradition indeed confirms that Jonah became a martyr and [far less likely, I believe] was buried in Nineveh".
Isaiah as Asaiah
We may meet with Isaiah (= Jonah) during Year 18 of the reign of Josiah (2 Kings 22:3), in the person of "Asaiah the king's attendant" (עֲשָׂיָה עֶבֶד-הַמֶּלֶךְ) (v. 12). This was in relation to the discovery of the Book of the Law and the subsequent consultation of the prophetess, Huldah. The incident would have occurred not long after Sennacherib's successful invasion of Judah when he besieged Jerusalem, hence: 'Great is the Lord’s anger that burns against us ...' (vv. 11-14):
"When the king [Josiah = Hezekiah] heard the words of the Book of the Law, he tore his robes. He gave these orders to Hilkiah the priest, Ahikam son of Shaphan, Akbor son of Micaiah, Shaphan the secretary and Asaiah the king’s attendant: 'Go and inquire of the Lord for me and for the people and for all Judah about what is written in this book that has been found.
Great is the Lord’s anger that burns against us because those who have gone before us have not obeyed the words of this book; they have not acted in accordance with all that is written there concerning us'. Hilkiah the priest, Ahikam, Akbor, Shaphan and Asaiah went to speak to the prophet Huldah, who was the wife of Shallum son of Tikvah, the son of Harhas, keeper of the wardrobe. She lived in Jerusalem, in the New Quarter".
The husband of the extraordinary Huldah, "Shallum son of Tikvah, the son of Harhas" would have been, I suggest, a Kohathite Levite (cf. I Chronicles 6:37), "son of Tahath, the son of Assir".
In perfect accord with my new identification here of Isaiah, there was an "Asaiah ... a prince of one of the families of the Simeonites in the reign of Hezekiah. (1 Chronicles 4:36) ...". We might recall from Part Two, A. that Isaiah, as Uzziah, was likewise a prince, “the prince of Juda[h]” and “the prince of the people of Israel” (Judith 8:34; 13:23. Douay).
Commentators would not expect, of course, to find Isaiah in office as late as the reign of King Josiah of Judah.
Now Asaiah here appears to have as an ancestor the same name as Uriah the martyr's "father" above, "son of Shemaiah" (v. 37). In the case of Uriah, the home of he (my preference), or of his "father", is given as "Kiriath Jearim", which is not far from Moresheth-Gath of Micah.
The burning question asked by commentators as to why King Josiah did not send his official delegation of impressive ministers to consult Jeremiah, or the prophet Zephaniah, all males, but sent them to consult, instead, the enigmatic woman, Huldah, can now be enlarged to include Isaiah (= Asaiah), to whom king Hezekiah had indeed sent a like delegation (Isaiah 37:5): "When the servants of King Hezekiah came to Isaiah ...".
For I am now saying that Isaiah (as Asaiah) was amongst those sent to consult Huldah.
We have found the various names for our prophet Jonah's alter egos to be somewhat similar (in sound at least, and, in some cases, in meaning): Isaiah; Asaiah; Hosea; Uzziah.
Uriah (var. Urijah) is a bit different. It would be compatible with the name "Azariah", and we know that King Uzziah of Judah was also called Azariah (2 Kings 14:21).
Isaiah, given his closeness to the kings of Judah, may have adopted both names, Uzziah and Azariah (Uriah), in honour of the king during whose reign he had prophesied.
Folding 'Middle' into 'Neo' Babylonia
Not much more needs to be added here.
Naturally, with the folding of 'Middle' Assyrian into 'Neo' Assyrian (Appendix A), the corresponding 'Middle' Babylonian must fold into 'Neo' Babylonian.
I have already mentioned the case of Merodach-baladan I needing to be folded into Merodach-baladan (so-called) II. He was an ally of King Hezekiah (Isaiah 39:1).
And in my postgraduate thesis on the same King Hezekiah of Judah, I had found that a sequence of C12th BC Shutrukid Elamite kings folds seamlessly into the succession of Elamite contemporaries of the C8th BC Sennacherib. (I can now add, of Esarhaddon).
Nebuchednezzar I (c. 1000 BC, conventional dating) now folds into Nebuchednezzar II, as yet another alter ego for our "king of Nineveh".
His famously wise ummanu, Esagil-kini-ubba, whose reputation continued right down to Seleucid times, can now merge with Assyria's wise ummanu, Aba-enlil-dari, our Ahikar - historically attested - whose fame was probably even more long-lasting (and has been picked up, as we read, in Islam).
Not surprisingly, too, we meet Ahikar as well in the Book of Daniel, as "Arioch" (cf. Judith 1:6).
I discuss this in my article:
Meeting of the wise - Arioch and Daniel
https://www.academia.edu/40551289/Meeting_of_the_wise_-_Arioch_and_Daniel
From Esarhaddon's other name, Assur ... mukin-apli, we can probably identify yet another alter ego of our "king of Nineveh" in the obscure, though very long-reigning (about 36 years), king of Babylon, Nabu-mukin-apli (c. 978-943 BC, conventional dating).
He can probably be tied to Nabonidus due to the fact that, in 'both' cases, the important Akitu festival was interrupted for nearly a decade: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nab%C3%BB-mukin-apli
"The Religious Chronicle [i 5] provides the most detail about [Nabu-mukin-apli's] reign. The Akitu festival, or New Year’s festival of Marduk and Nabû, was interrupted several times, indeed for a stretch of nine straight years, because the “Aramaeans were belligerent".”
Compare the case of Nabonidus with the Akitu festival being interrupted for the approximate decade from Nabonidus's 7th to his 17th years (Benjamin D. Thomas, Hezekiah and the Compositional History of the Book of Kings, 2017, pp. 204-205).
The same situation we find, indeed, with Esarhaddon (CAH, p. 374): "... Babylon ... the city had been sacked by Sennacherib, and the interruption of observance of the Akitu festival
which began at that time continued through the reign of Esarhaddon ...".
Finally, I have identified Nebuchednezzar with the mad, Egypt-conquering king:
Cambyses also named Nebuchadnezzar?
https://www.academia.edu/37313486/Cambyses_also_named_Nebuchadnezzar
meaning that my revision of the prophet Jonah now covers, in conventional terms, 220 years at the very least, from Jeroboam II (d. c. 740 BC) to Cambyses (d. c. 520 BC).
Conclusion
The "king of Nineveh" at the time of the prophet Jonah (who was also Isaiah/Asaiah = Hosea) - late during the reign of king Hezekiah = Josiah, of Judah - was an Assyro-Babylonian composite: Ashurnasirpal-Esarhaddon-Ashurbanipal/Nebuchednezzar-Nabonidus (Cambyses), who needs to be re-connected with his 'Middle' Assyro-Babylonian alter egos, Assur-nadin-apli (Assur-danin-apli), or Ashurnasirpal, and Nebuchednezzar I (also Nabu-mukin-apli).
The Israelite king contemporaneous with Jonah's early prophecy (2 Kings 14:25), namely, Jeroboam II, was the same as Jehoash of Israel, and he was the "saviour" of 2 Kings 13:5.
A final note: Just consider the astounding and miracle-packed early career of our "king of Nineveh".
He may have been the first person, as "Bagoas", to have observed the headless body of "Holofernes" after the departure of Judith and her maid (Judith 14:14-15): "So Bagoas went in and knocked at the entry of the tent, for he supposed that [Holofernes] was sleeping with Judith. But when no one answered, he opened it and went into the bedchamber and found him sprawled on the floor dead, with his head missing".
He was the one who sounded the alarm, precipitating the rout and mass slaughter (vv. 16-19; 15:1-7).
Back in Nineveh, a prophet who had emerged from a "great fish" preached doom over his city.
Thanks to the sincere repentance of the people, and the action of the king, Nineveh was spared that destruction, Jonah's "forty days" being extended to about forty years.
He was the king who had a Jewish prophet not only interpret his troublesome dream, but even recall it for the king.
He was the king who witnessed three young men communing with an angel inside his fiery furnace.
For his manifold sins, this king would suffer an unimaginably horrible sickness that just would not go away - that is, until he repented, and proclaimed the 'god of gods'.
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