“Jonah didn’t want the Assyrians in Nineveh to escape God’s judgment. Imagine a Jewish man in New York during World War II hearing God say, ‘I’m going to bring terrible judgment on Germany. I want you to go to Berlin and tell Nazi Germany to repent.’ Instead of doing it, the man heads for San Francisco and then hops on a boat for Hong Kong.”— (David Guzik)
For my blog today, I wanted to respond to my Brother in Christ, Matt Matheson’s blog about his different opinions and points on what he got from the Book of Jonah. You can find his blog here http://notbyhands.wordpress.com/2011/10/12/some-follow-up-thoughts-on-jonah/ Matt is an awesome dude that attends The Garden of Baltimore church and is definitely a very insightful dude from what I have come to know of him and very badass on the drums. Now on to the Belly of the Beast.
1. The Book of Jonah IS historical.
The Genre of Jonah is debated. The book has been read in different proposals. Those Proposals are:
- Allegory, using fictional figures to symbolize some other reality. According to this interpretation. Jonah is a symbol of Israel in its refusal to carry out God’s mission to the nations. The Primary argument against this view is that Jonah is clearly presented as a historical and not a fictional figure, seen in the specific historical and geographical details in Jonah 1:1-3, 3:2-10, 4:11 and also 2 kings 14:25.
- Another proposal is that the book is a parable to teach believers not to be like Jonah. Like allegories, parables are also based on fictional and not historical characters. Parables, however, are typically simple tales that make a single point, like a lot of the parables Jesus told, whereas the book of Jonah is quite complex and covers a multitude of ideas, themes, and historical detail.
- The last Proposal is one of the Prophetic narratives. The book of Jonah has all the marks of a prophetic narrative, like those about Elijah and Elisha found in 1 Kings, which set out to report actual historical events. The phrase that opens the book (“the word of the Lord came to”) is also at the beginning of the first two stories told about Elijah (1 kings 17:2,8) and is used in other prophetic narratives as well. Just as Elijah and Elisha narratives contain extraordinary events =, like ravens providing bread and meat for the prophets, so does the book of Jonah, as with the great fish. In fact the story of Jonah is so much like the stories of Elisha and Elijah that one would hardly think it odd if the story of Jonah were embedded in 2 kings right after Jonah’s prophetic words about the expansion of the kingdom. The story of Jonah is this presented as historical like other prophetic narratives.
There are additional arguments for the historical nature of the book of Jonah. It is difficult to say that the story teaches God’s sovereignty over the creation if God did not in fact appoint the fish, the plant, the worm, and the east wind to do His will. Jesus, moreover, treated the story as historical when he used elements of the sotru as analogies for other historical events( Matt 12:40-41) The story is not, however, history for history sake, for it is all clearly didactic, but remember, at this point, it clearly fully historical and fully didactic, as the Church Fathers Luther and Calvin agree.
2) Jonah was a prophet and this probably, and most likely was Him.
Jonah 1:1 specifically identifies the Prophet Jonah from the town of Gath-hepher in lower Galilee, The same prophet during the reign of Jeroboam II (782-753 B.C; see 2 Kings 14:23-28) as the author of the Book of Jonah. Flavius Josephus reiterates these details in his Antiquities of the Jews (chapter 10, paragraph 2). Jonah was not an imaginary figure invented to play the part of a disobedient prophet, swallowed by a fish. He was part of Israel’s prophetic history. As for the fish, the Bible doesn’t actually specify what sort of marine animal swallowed Jonah. Most people assume that it was a cachalot (also known as the sperm whale). It may very well have been a white shark. The Hebrew phrase used in the Old Testament, gadowl dag, literally means “great fish.” The Greek used in the New Testament is këtos which simply means “sea creature.” There are at least two species of Mediterranean marine life that are known to be able to swallow a man whole. These are the cachalot and the white shark. Both creatures are known to prowl the Mediterranean and have been known to Mediterranean sailors since antiquity. Aristotle described both species in his 4th-century B.C. Historia Animalium.
3) Jonah’s Prophecy or Words of warning implied repentance.
Although the threat sounds unconditional, a condition was implied: If people repent, God will relent(Jer 18:7-8. Jonah knows this condition is included (Jonah 4:2) and the king of Nineveh will hope that it is (3:9) Interesting enough the word “Overthrown”(3:4) is a word applied to the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah (Genesis 19:25, Lamentations 4:6, and Amos 4:11) and I wonder if possibly that led people to think of those historical events.
I had wonder myself at how extreme the repentance of an entire city was. But then I found something interesting in my research. The people of Nineveh worshipped a sort of Aquatic creature god. Dagon was a fish-god who enjoyed popularity among the pantheons of Mesopotamia and the eastern Mediterranean coast. He is mentioned several times in the Bible in relation to the Philistines (Judges 16:23-24; 1 Samuel 5:1-7; 1 Chronicles 10:8-12). Images of Dagon have been found in palaces and temples in Nineveh and throughout the region. In some cases he was represented as a man wearing a fish. Jonah’s experience with the fish in light of the ninevites pagan beliefs certainly gained him an instant hearing.
Another interesting thing I found in my research was In the 3rd century B.C., a Babylonian priest/historian named Berosus wrote of a mythical creature named Oannes who, according to Berosus, emerged from the sea to give divine wisdom to men. The curious thing about Berosus’ account is the name that he used: Oannes. Berosus wrote in Greek during the Hellenistic Period. Oannes is just a single letter removed from the Greek name Ioannes. Ioannes happens to be one of the two Greek names used interchangeably throughout the Greek New Testament to represent the Hebrew name Yonah (Jonah) In the Assyrian inscriptions the J of foreign words becomes I, or disappears altogether; hence Joannes, as the Greek representative of Jona, would appear in Assyrian either as Ioannes or as Oannes. What this essentially means is that Berosus wrote of a fish-man named Jonah who emerged from the sea to give divine wisdom to man – a remarkable corroboration of the Hebrew account.
4) Matt is absolutely correct, The repentance didn’t last.
Sadly, like I believe all humans, we all fall again and again. We are all dumb sheep. Bahhhhhh
5) Again I agree with Matt, this story is a Didactic and is told to teach the reader key lessons.
I love what actually Matt does with this, because it talks about the racism undertones that are accompanied in Jonah and He did a wonderful job with that and my hat is off to him. John Piper has some nice sermons on that http://www.desiringgod.org/resource-library/sermons/by-scripture/jonah
As for Matt’s last two points, I don’t know about the shelter/booth. It’s probably something we are missing to what maybe a shelter to the readers of the time period knew of then our thought of what a shelter is. As for the cattle, I think it’s God’s way of having relationship with Jonah. Jonah expresses concern over something perishing, but ironically it’s the plant and if Jonah will not allow God to have compassion on Nineveh for the sake of the people whom God created and care for, will Jonah not allow God to have compassion on Nineveh for the sake of the animals, since after all Jonah was willing to have compassion on the plants?
Again, thank you deeply to Matt for bringing up these points, it is always nice to have someone who wants to search the scriptures and dig deeper in the word and its nice to have someone who brings up points different than yours so that way you can examine yourself and grow even closer to God =)
Thanks for sharing this counter-response to Matt’s post. I feel that you really did your research and know your stuff. I deeply respect what you had to offer.
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