Verifying the Historicity of 'the Queen of the South' Confirms Jonah

Luke 11:30, 31

"For as Jonah was a sign to the Ninevites, so also will the Son of Man be to this generation".
 

"The Queen of the South will rise at the judgment with the men of this generation and condemn them; for she came from the ends of the earth to listen to Solomon's wisdom, and now one greater than Solomon is here".
 

For the historicity of "the Queen of the South", see our:

Why Hatshepsut can be the 'Queen of Sheba'

 

at:

 

http://academia.edu/3689991/Why_Hatshepsut_can_be_the_Queen_of_Sheba

 

 

The Typology of Jonah and Jesus

The story of Jonah foreshadows the redemptive work of Jesus Christ.

 

JONAH	JESUS
1. His mission was to call the gentile Assyrians of Nineveh to repentance and acknowledgement of Yahweh as the source of their salvation [Jonah 1:1; 3:1-2].	1. His mission was to call all of mankind, including the gentile nations, to repentance and into Covenant with Yahweh [Matthew 28:18-20].
2. Jonah was willing to sacrifice his life for the salvation of his shipmates [Jonah 1:12].	2. Jesus was willing to sacrifice His life for the salvation of the world [Matthew 20:28; Mark 10:45; John 1:29; 1 Timothy 2:6].
3. He was entombed in the belly of a great fish [Jonah 2:1].	3. After Jesus' death He was placed in a tomb [Matthew 27:60; Mark 6:29; Luke 23:53].
4. On the third day Jonah was "resurrected" from the belly of the fish [Jonah 2:11].	4. On the third day Jesus was resurrected from the tomb [Matthew 17:23; 20:19; 28:1-10; Mark 9:31; 10:34; 16:1-7; Luke 9:22; 18:33; 24:7; 24:46].
5. After his "resurrection" from the belly of the fish, Jonah continued his mission to call the gentile Assyrians to repentance and salvation [Jonah 3:1-3].	5. After His resurrection from the tomb, Jesus continued His mission to found the universal Church and to commission the Apostles to spread the gospel to every nation on earth ;it is a mission that continues even after His Ascension [Matthew 28:16-20; Mark 16:12-20; Luke 24:13-53; Acts chapter 1].
6. Jonah preached that Nineveh would be destroyed in 40 days if the people did not repent [Jonah 3:4].	6. After His resurrection, Jesus taught the New Covenant Church for 40 days before His Ascension [Acts 1:3].
7. Jonah taught that failure to repent sin brings judgment but salvation is a gift of God [Jonah 1:1; 3:4-5, 9-10]	7. Jesus taught that failure to repent sin brings judgment but salvation is a gift of God [Matthew 5:21-22; John 5:22-29; 8:34-36; Luke 24:47; John 3:17; 5:34; 10:19; Acts 2:21].

M. Hunt, Copyright © 2005 Agape Bible Study. Permissions All Rights Reserved.

Taken from:
http://www.agapebiblestudy.com/charts/The%20Typology%20of%20Jonah%20and%20Jesus.htm

Jonah's Prayer in Belly of Sea Monster

Jonah 2

^{1 [a]}From inside the fish Jonah prayed to the LORD his God. ² He said:
“In my distress I called to the LORD,
and he answered me.
From deep in the realm of the dead I called for help,
and you listened to my cry.
³ You hurled me into the depths,
into the very heart of the seas,
and the currents swirled about me;
all your waves and breakers
swept over me.
⁴ I said, ‘I have been banished
from your sight;
yet I will look again
toward your holy temple.’
⁵ The engulfing waters threatened me,^[b]
the deep surrounded me;
seaweed was wrapped around my head.
⁶ To the roots of the mountains I sank down;
the earth beneath barred me in forever.
But you, LORD my God,
brought my life up from the pit.
⁷ “When my life was ebbing away,
I remembered you, LORD,
and my prayer rose to you,
to your holy temple.
⁸ “Those who cling to worthless idols
turn away from God’s love for them.
⁹ But I, with shouts of grateful praise,
will sacrifice to you.
What I have vowed I will make good.
I will say, ‘Salvation comes from the LORD.’”
¹⁰ And the LORD commanded the fish, and it vomited Jonah onto dry land.

Jonah and the Great Fish

 

by Don Landis

September 5, 2006

 

Taken from: http://www.answersingenesis.org/articles/am/v1/n1/great-fish

 

.... In this issue of Answers we introduce a series designed to help you think through “apparent incongruities” (scriptures that seem impossible) and to apply apologetics (a reasoned defense of the faith) in affirming the trustworthiness of the Bible. Various authors will be featured. Think of this as an apologetics devotional … and share it with your friends!

For many, the supernatural events recorded in the Bible seem too impossible to be true. .... Such was the case for Thomas Jefferson, the third president of the United States. He actually took scissors to the Gospels and cut out all references to anything supernatural.

1 One such "apparent incongruity" is the account of a reluctant prophet named Jonah who was swallowed by a fish and yet remained alive in its belly for three days (Jonah 1:17–2:10).

To defend the Bible, some people have gone hunting for scientific explanations. What fish is big enough to swallow a man? How could Jonah breathe underwater? How could he survive the digestive juices?

There are plausible explanations for each of these questions (see below), but we must look at this event with knowledge of God’s complete power and sovereignty. Could God have prepared a great fish to be in the vicinity of the foundering ship, to scoop Jonah out of the raging sea, transport him to shore and vomit him up? Absolutely! If He is the all-powerful Creator God, preparing a fish and timing the whole event was not a great drain on His power or ability. He is in no way limited by what He created.

In Matthew 12:40, Jesus used Jonah’s experience as a basis for giving His disciples information about the circumstances of His own time in the grave. The historical fact of the account of Jonah and the fish is linked to the historicity of the Resurrection of Jesus Christ. When witnessing, we may feel pressure to try to prove the truth of the account of Jonah, but let’s never forget that the lost are saved by grace through faith (Ephesians 2:8), not by our arguing abilities.

Apologetics is a tool God may use, but we can never argue someone into the Kingdom of God. We must simply present the truth of God’s Word and let the Holy Spirit bring conversion. To deny the event is to cut out the supernatural, just like Thomas Jefferson did two centuries ago.

Don Landis is pastor of Community Bible Church in Jackson, Wyoming. He is founder and president of Jackson Hole Bible College (www.jhbc.edu), a one-year program with special emphasis on creation for young adults. Don is also the founding chairman of the board for Answers in Genesis–USA. Jonah: A plausibility study 1.

Are there "great fish" large enough to swallow a man whole?

■Of course! Keep in mind that modern animal classification systems weren’t exactly in use at the time of Jonah. Any aquatic creature could be referred to as a "fish." And we know that there are whales (blue and sperm) and even sharks (great white and whale sharks) that can swallow a man whole. The sperm whale grows to a length of up to 70 feet. Its esophagus is approximately 50 cm (20") wide and "sperm whales don’t have to chew their food - so Jonah could have been swallowed whole." 2 Two marine scientists from Sea World in San Diego hypothesize that it was a great white shark that probably swallowed Jonah.2 2.Could someone survive three days and three nights in a whale’s belly?

■This is the difficult part of the question. There are fish species that surface from the sea and gulp down air into their lungs, like the lungfish for example. But there is no explanation for how air might have been transferred to the stomach. 3.What about the digestive juices?

■The Encarta Encyclopedia reports, "When whales swallow food, it travels through the esophagus to a multi-chambered stomach that resembles the stomachs of ruminant hoofed animals such as cattle, sheep and deer. In the first stomach chamber, a saclike extension of the esophagus, food is crushed. In the second chamber, digestive juices further break down food." 3 If Jonah remained in this first chamber, he only needed to be worried about being crushed rather than digested! Sharks, however, have a much slower metabolism and a human body could last three days without deterioration.2 4.What about other stories?

■There are a number of stories that have been around for over 100 years about whales swallowing men whole. Perhaps the most famous is the story of James Bartley, a whaler on the vessel Star of the East, who reportedly was swallowed by a whale and survived. However, there are a number of questions as to the authenticity of this story, and it should not be used as a "proof" of any kind (just Google "James Bartley" and you’ll see what we mean).

 

The bottom line:

 

1.God needed to discipline a runaway prophet.

2.God did prepare a "great fish" aquatic creature.

3.God brought the runaway prophet and the "great fish" together for His glory and the salvation of a large city.

....

Ancient Depiction of Jonah?



 

 

M20.1 IASON and THE DRAKON

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

Ware: Attic Red Figure

Shape: Kylix

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

Period: Late Archaic

 

SUMMARY

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

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

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

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

 

Drawing on the Book of Jonah and Greco-Roman sources—including Greek vases and the accounts of Apollonius of Rhodes, Valerius Flaccus and Orphic Argonautica—Hamel identifies a number of shared motifs, including the names of the heroes, the presence of a dove, the idea of "fleeing" like the wind and causing a storm, the attitude of the sailors, the presence of a sea-monster or dragon threatening the hero or swallowing him, and the form and the word used for the "gourd" (kikayon, a hapax legomenon within the Hebrew Bible). ….

 

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

 

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

"Something Greater than Jonah is Here"

Jonah and Jesus

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

 

Saint Cyril of Jerusalem

SOMETHING GREATER THAN JONAH IS
HERE

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

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

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

Book of Jonah's Long Tradition of Historicity

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

….

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

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

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