“Well Chad, I’ve never really thought about that before,” was the response to a question I asked the late and dear Chana Safrai during my graduate work in Jerusalem.
I was kind of shocked. To me it was a pretty basic question that I was sure Prof Safari had thoroughly contemplated. But I also was a little proud, a feeling not often far from snooty graduate students.
My bubble would soon burst. She continued, “I haven’t thought about it because it’s a ridiculously stupid question.”
It’s hard to hide in a seminar class of eight students, but I sure tried.
The question I had asked was, “Do you think Jonah really got swallowed by a fish?”
The historicity of the Jonah story has challenged the church for quite some time. While many understand the story as fictional in nature, there remain no small number of Christians who demand this story to be one of miraculous history.
I would imagine they do so for two reasons. First, somehow denying this story’s historicity causes some to question all historicity in other parts of Scripture that do not explicitly state otherwise. Second, Jesus references Jonah being in the belly of the fish for three days in Matthew 12. Some contend that Jesus is understanding the Jonah passage to be historical, and therefore we should too.
The historicity of Jonah poses a number of problems. First, a human surviving in the belly of a fish for that long seems a little problematic. However, belief in the miraculous would allow for it. A second problem is that the gender of the fish goes back and forth between male and female throughout the chapter. Some suggest this could be a scribal error. Other early Jewish exegetes created a great story of Jonah being initially swallowed by a large male fish. The inside of the fish was so spacious that it did not move Jonah to repent. Therefore God had the male fish spit him out only to be swallowed again by a female fish. Those tight quarters did the trick. Jonah was vomited on shore and he went on his way to follow God’s call.
As amazing as this miracle would be, it is not necessarily the most far fetched. According to the story, the entire city of Nineveh, the capital of the Assyrian empire, listened to Jonah’s message, repented, and then somehow became card carrying members of the Yahweh movement. There is no other reference to this mass conversion either in or outside of this story. Furthermore, archaeological evidence would suggest that the Assyrian kingdom never stopped worshiping their own gods.
“I’ve never really thought about that before.”
Of course Chana had. However, she was telling me that I was asking the wrong question. The story was really never about the fish. Personally, I find no convincing argument that would suggest this story is historical. The idea of being swallowed alive by a fish and the unrecorded but short-lived conversion of all of Nineveh is too much to overcome. I am also perfectly comfortable with Jesus living into the story in Matthew without it being historical. But in some ways, this is irrelevant. My concern is not really whether it happened or not, but rather the fact that this is where our energy has gone.
What if the story was never about the fish? Whether the story is 100% historical, based on a sliver of historical fact, or completely fabricated in the mind of a writer does not affect the outcome of its meaning. What if we have been asking the wrong questions?
To myopically focus on the genre of Jonah has caused us to miss the difficult beauty of its message. The story of Jonah is the story of the gospel. Jonah reminds us that even though we have a just God, God’s justice is no match for God’s mercy. God relents of his intention to punish the Assyrians and offers them grace. Even when God’s people, represented by Jonah, think they know better and hope God avenges rather than restores; even when God’s people actively stand in the way of God’s redemption, nothing, not even us, can get in the way of God’s ever-widening mercy.
While scholars debate the date of Jonah’s composition, it is probably written just before, during, or after the Assyrian invasions of Israel or Judah. While not certain, it is at least plausible that Jonah’s reaction of flight rather than mere ignoring of God’s command demonstrated Jonah’s disdain for his mission. Spend a minute and read the gruesome torture inflicted upon Israel/Judah by the Assyrians. Jonah did not want the Assyrians to repent and receive God’s favor. Maybe that’s why he was so upset when they actually did?
I wonder if focusing on genre allows us to escape the reality of God’s grace, and what that grace might require of us?
12 Responses
So how does this impact the way we tell the story of Jonah to children? Or how we tell the story of Jericho, whose historical accuracy was also challenged in a recent RJ article?
I was in seminary before anyone told me that maybe there was never a whale. It shook me but I had the resources to explore this idea further. Should I have been taught the story differently from the beginning?
Amy,
I think you teach children stories like these with as much honesty as you can at their level, sort of like procreation or sex.
And no matter what, do what Chad suggests, spend as much energy as you can on the point of the story: God’s mercy and grace.
It’s amazing how children’s attention goes to where we expend our energy.
Great question Amy, as a high school teacher I asked the same question concerning freshmen. I offer one thing, you need not address everything at all ages, but please do not teach what is not true. Children grow up and it is painful for them to think their previous teacher was wrong, even worse, their pastor. With this story, if asked, I would say some see this as historical and others as a parable, but what is most important is to ask what we should learn from it.
I’ve thought about this a lot Amy. I’ve come to realize that our kids are way ahead of us than we are in this regard. They have such imagination and love stories. They can find deep meaning in story. I am not suggesting we go full on biblical criticism with our elementary school students :-). But I think the main problem comes when we teach one way to our children and then have to teach them something else as they get older. That’s where unhealthy deconstruction happens. I had a wonderful conversation with my teenage son last week about Genesis one. that’s more of a testament to how bad the football game was going more than our usual dialogue. But he was so interested that he actually listened to his dad‘s blog on the topic. He showed no difficulty in engaging legend and myth in the Bible. Of course every child is going to be different and we must use care, but I do believe that this is our problem, not theirs.
Chad and friends,
I’ve long understood Jonah as a parable, portraying the need for Jews returning from Exile to open their hearts and lives to “outsiders” instead of living in closed ghettos of exclusion. There’s a wideness in God’s mercy that militates against our narrow-mindedness. Jonah (and succeeding generations need the transformative message.
Amen to Rodney’s point. Some stories may be beyond child (adult?) comprehension when told graphically. Biblical literalism runs as much risk of becoming idolatrous as biblical criticism does. Two questions:
I wonder if God’s inspiration-monitoring is more concerned with the big-picture back-story of God’s redemption than the writer’s genre or acceptance of ancient narrative.
If God is sovereign, can God not use real-life actors in real situations to make a point? There are some stories -Abraham/Isaac, for example, or the Syro-Phonecian woman – that make much more sense to me if the actors are in on the story. The message before hand would be something like, “Yyou and I are going to teach the world (or disciples) a lesson here.”
As to the Jonah story, the “whale”
could well be the grave, the ocean or the abyss without diminishing the theme of the story.
I appreciate you asking these questions, Chad. The Bible comes alive when you do.
I have had discussions with other teachers about whether or not this story, and for that matter, the story of Job are parables or actual events. My conclusion is that it doesn’t matter. Either way, it’s true. 🙂
Do you think a being called Victor Frankenstein really brought a constructed creature to life? If that feat is impossible, how did we humans get here?
I love how imaginative immersion in a storyworld can give some of our skeptical questions a back seat to the real joy or terror of absorbing fiction. I thought of Jonah yesterday while watching the new del Toro Frankenstein, when Victor told the captain of the trapped Horisont to throw him overboard to save the crew from further threat and harm.
The line between fiction and fact is so so thin to us when children . . .such a wondrous and terrifying stage of existing. If I can grow up to believe Resurrection of the Dead Body is the actual factual undoing of every rejection and death calamity, I can believe anything is possible, even that a person or puppet could survive in a cave of whale guts like Pinocchio and Geppetto did. If Resurrection is the actual factual future, I can accept the adult disclaimer that many of the other stories in this Resurrection Good Spell Book are poems, myths, tall history tales, sentimental romances, or prequel and sequel good spells. I can also breathe easier knowing that any and all evil spells—even irrevocable ones!—cast upon us come undone on Resurrection Reveal Day, since the Jonah story tells news of a God who truly relents from following through on actual threats of calamity. How cool that we can meet, in the Jonah story, a Creator who’s learning that acting as a Victor Untethered-rock toward one’s own Creatures is monstrous. A Creator getting ready to take a radically new direction by tethering self to mortals and to mortal life, as a Creature With Us? A Tragedy-horror genre morphing into Comedy-fairy tale!
I believe the story is indeed about the fish—as well as the storm and the plants. Even if we regard the book of Jonah as an extended parable, the storm, the fish and the plants are absolutely essential to the meaning of the book, for they are all presented as how God uses creation to judge, to guide, to rescue and to teach (there’s an emphasis in the book on God’s activity in all this). If we remove the fish (and storm and plants), we take God out of the story and Jonah only becomes a moralistic story about how it’s nice to love our enemies. We also need the fish in the story because it serves as the means by which Jonah “dies,” goes to Sheol, and “comes back to life,” which is the point Jesus picks up on. We only go on God’s mission of mercy when we are crucified in Christ and resurrected in him to new life. And even then, as new creatures in Christ, we lapse into our old ways, just like Jonah did. If it’s a mistake to miss the mission of mercy because we’re focusing on the historicity of Jonah, it’s also a mistake to turn it into a moralistic lesson.
Several things strike me:
Is it really “an incredibly stupid question”? The story narrates some events. It doesn’t seem to me to be obvious that any of those events are intended by the writer to be ignored. Otherwise, why are they there? One can say, “the import of the story lies at this point, no that one,” but that’s an interpretation. How has one come to that conclusion? How do you know? They may be right, but I don’t see how it’s “incredibly stupid” to inquire. The story itself does not clearly and explicitly demand that interpretation.
If folk have arrived at the opinion that the veracity of seemingly historical narratives is irrelevant, that they’re nevertheless “true” in some poetic, spiritual, metaphorical, meaningful way, that’s fine, but, again, it doesn’t strike me as an immediate and obvious conclusion we should all intuitively arrive at (which is what it would have to be if just asking questions about that stance were “stupid”).
I most certainly agree that what the story says about God–and about the twisted emotions of his followers sometimes–is the most important theme of the story. But that could have been conveyed without the whale or the vine or the worm. Inquiring what the function of these other elements are in the story and how we should approach them strikes me as just natural curiosity, the root of responsible interpretation, and something that’s aroused by the very elements the story contains. I don’t see it as fit for condemnation or rebuke.
Thank you Chad. This story rings a bell. My husband Norman graduated from Western Theological Seminary and appeared before the Classis of Illiana to be examined for ordination. Another unnamed graduate, who graduated from New Brunswick Theological Seminary, appeared along with Norm before the Classis. The unnamed NBTS graduate was first asked if Jonah actually lived for three days in the belly of a whale. Slow to answer, the graduate said he thought it was more of a parable. This answer did not please. Norm was asked the same question, and he said he agreed with the NBTS graduate. Now both men were in trouble, and there was a real likelihood that neither would be granted the needed approval of the Classis. Just then, the Stated Clerk who was conducting the meeting of the Classis announced that it was “coffee time.” The Chair instructed Rev. Ray Hayes to take the men aside and to pray with them. When the coffee time was over and business resumed, the Chair immediately pressed ahead with the next item of business. And that’s how the unnamed graduate of NBTS and Norm passed their exam.
Hey Chad, thanks for an interesting article, as well as thanks for the interesting responses. To me and many others, such thinking casts suspicion on the whole of Christianity, in fact on religion in general. Which stories of the Bible are historically true and which are simply bazar stories told to convince non scientific thinkers of a distant past, when miracles were thought to be within the range of normal thinking. The Lord’s Supper or the sacrament of communion is a good example. Does the wine or grape juice of Communion and the bread really change into the body and blood of Jesus and in what way? Is miracle involved or not? Is God really a three person being and did the second person (Jesus Christ) really come to earth as baby Jesus to live a sinless life? Did he really feed five thousand people from a child’s lunch? Like most religions are full of bazar and miraculous ideas, Christianity is no different. And like other religions, Christian miracles are essential to the legitimacy of its faith story. But we tend to think the miracles of other religions are less than historic, just bazar wishful thinking. Only the miracles of the Bible are true. But now with the advance of the scientific mind set we can call into question the historicity of some Bible stories, such as the Jonah story. How long before the incarnation of Christ is just a bazar story with no historical substance or are we already there?