Dear Readers:
First of all, I want to say that I realize the Bible does not necessarily say a whale swallowed Jonah and it could have been another type of sea creature (translation issues).
Here is some commentary from another website:
A whale is not a fish
Now a whale is not a fish; it is a mammal. So in the Old Testament we are told Jonah was swallowed by a “great fish,” and in the New Testament we are told it was a “whale.” Is this a contradiction?
No. And this is why.
The Bible was written in Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek — not in English. And both “whale” and “great fish” are English translations of the original words. If we look in a Greek New Testament dictionary, such as the popular James Strong's Dictionary of the Words in the Greek New Testament, we find the explanation.
The Greek word translated “whale” is ketos (pronounced kay-tos), and it means “a huge fish (as gaping for prey).” Other scholars say it can mean a huge aquatic creature, which could be a fish, a whale, or some other giant sea animal. In any case, the Bible says God prepared the creature to swallow Jonah, so it could have been a creature created for this particular purpose and no other.
When the King James Version of the Bible was released in 1611, our modern taxonomic distinctions between fishes and mammals had not yet been decided on, so the translators were justified in choosing a whale as the giant “fish.” It was the greatest sea creature known to them." (taken from: http://www.users.bigpond.com/rdoolan/jonah.html )
Here is a abreviated article written regarding the Jonah account:
"JONAH: A WHALE OF A TALE?
Anonymous
(Investigator 35, 1994 March)
SUMMARY
A central message of Jonah is that God judges people by their actions/deeds/repentance and not by where they were born. This method of judgment is the model for humans (e.g. Jonah) to follow.
When people line up with their nation or ethnic group irrespective of wrong or right, and practice for example "ethnic cleansing", they prove themselves skeptics of Scripture.
The account of Jonah in the fish’s "belly" is intended by the Bible writers to be 1iteral.
The switch to Monotheism in Nineveh (Assyrian capital) has a historical basis.
INTRODUCTION
According to the Bible Jonah was swallowed by a fish, survived, and then went to the capital city of one of the bloodiest empires of ancient times, announced imminent destruction, and the population turned to worshipping one God. The city was spared from destruction, which greatly annoyed Jonah. The story ends with God saying to Jonah:
"And should I not pity Nineveh, that great city in which there are more than a hundred and twenty thousand persons who do not know their right hand from their left…?"
Some skeptics call it "a fishy story" and others "a whale of a tale." What about it, could the events of the book of Jonah be historical?
A century ago many critics sought the origin of Jonah and the fish in Greek and Assyrian mythology. The Greeks, for example, told of a girl named Andromeda who was rescued from a sea monster by a fellow named Perseus. Another girl, a Trojan princess named Hesione was rescued from a different sea monster by Hercules. (Cheyne & Black 1914) Nowadays such comparisons of Jonah with non-Jewish mythology have been discarded. Nevertheless, most scholars still do not accept the Jonah story as historical fact.
Australasian Post, December 3, 1988:
Modern Jonah?
The biblica1 story of Jonah and the whale was repeated in Australian waters in 1820 when a crewman from the American whaler Essex was lost overboard from a harpoon boat.
Two hours later, as the whale was being stripped of its blubber, the crew noticed movement and slit open the mammal’s stomach.
The man said he remembered passing down a narrow passage and then he fainted inside a "large, noisome space."
The 24 page booklet The First Jaws by Chick Publication tells of a British sailor swallowed by a "gigantic Rhinodon shark" in the English Channel "in the early 1800s" and being cut out 48 hours later.
ALLEGORY - NO; MORAL POINTS - YES
A common approach is to view the story of Jonah as an allegory or "midrash"—a fiction which teaches a moral lesson. Jonah, in this approach, might have represented the narrow minded Jews whose concept of God was as a Jewish God. One lesson from God’s mercy, in the story, to the Assyrians is the universal Fatherhood of God. From such universal Fatherhood it would follow that God regards and treats all peoples not just Jews, impartially - even the Assyrians of Nineveh. This moral lesson is therefore similar to that of the "Good Samaritan" in the New Testament, which teaches among other things that to distinguish people along moral lines — by their good or evil conduct — is more important than the distinction of nationality.
Jews at the time of Jesus viewed Jonah as history. For example Jesus once said:
For as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the whale, so will the Son of man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth. The men of Nineveh will arise in the judgement with this generation and condemn it; for they repented at the preaching of Jonah. (Matthew 12:40-41
That the Jonah account was intended as history rather than allegory is the more obvious conclusion. Jonah is classed among the "Prophets" and all the other prophets of the Bible are presented in the Bible as literal persons. Furthermore, Jonah is named, his father is named, the town where they lived is named (2 Kings 14:25) and the period in which they lived is given. In other words the times places and characters are not vague and unspecified as they are in, say, the parables spoken by Jesus. The degree of detail associated with Jonah would anywhere in the Bible indicate that the writer is presenting alleged history and not parable or allegory.
The main intent behind the book might still be to give a moral lesson—but it’s a moral lesson based on events which are offered as real. Let’s consider then whether most of the report can, sensibly, be taken as literal history.
BIG THROATED CREATURES
Nineteenth century critics often argued that whales have too small a gullet to admit a human.
Whales are divided into two main groups—baleen whale and toothed whales. Baleen whales have numerous horny plates suspended from the upper jaw which are used for straining out tiny sea creatures. The biggest baleen whale is the Blue Whale which weighs as much as 25 elephants. Blue Whales, however, have a small gullet and rarely swallow anything larger than a penguin.
The largest of the toothed whales is the Sperm Whale. This grows to 25 metres. The diet of Sperm Whales includes large objects such as giant squids. Bullen (1923) wrote:
"and a shark fifteen feet in length has been found in the stomach of a cachelot [= Sperm Whale]." (p. 125)
Pinney (1964) quoted the Director of a Museum of Natural history:
"Many people asked me if the Bible story of Jonah is true. Could a man be swallowed by a whale? So I pushed my body partly down the throat of a dead sixty foot sperm whale. I could just squeeze through. A fat man couldn’t have made it."
Bullen wrote:
"when dying, the cachelot always ejected the contents of his stomach…" (p.69)
On one occasion Bullen saw ejected material which included:
"a massive fragment of cuttle fish - tentacle or arm - as thick as a stout man’s body…" (p. 69)
Bullen continued:
"contrary to the usual notion of a whale’s being unable to swallow a herring, here was a kind of whale that could swallow—well , a block four or five feet square apparently; who lived upon creatures as large as himself, if one might judge of their bulk by the sample to hand; but being unable, from only possessing teeth in one jaw, to masticate his food, was compelled to tear it in sizeable pieces, bolt it whole, and leave his digestive apparatus to do the rest." (p. 70)
Bullen described how he himself came close to being swallowed when a whale smashed the whaleboat throwing the whalers into the sea. (pp. 101-102)
Extract from page 69 of The Cruise of the Cachelot (1923/1944 Frank T Bullen John Murray London):
He [the mate] told me that, when dying, the cachelot always ejected the contents of his stomach, which were invariably composed of such masses as we saw before us; that he believed the stuff to be portions of big cuttle-fish, bitten off by the whale for the purpose of swallowing, but he wasn’t sure. Anyhow, I could haul this piece alongside now, if I liked, and see. Wondering at the indifference shown by this officer of forty years’ whaling experience to such a wonderful fact, I thanked him, and, sticking the boat-hook into the lump, drew it alongside. It was at once evident that it was a massive fragment of cuttle-fish—tentacle or arm—as thick as a stout man’s body…"
From p. 105 of The Cruise of the Cachelot:
Indeed, not many tears ago a popular M.P., writing to one of the religious papers, allowed himself to say that "science will not hear of a whale with a gullet capable of admitting anything larger than a man’s fist."—a piece of crass ignorance, which is also perpetrated in the appendix to a very widely-distributed edition of the Authorized Version of the Bible. This opinion, strangely enough, is almost universally held…
From: E B Pusey (1886) The Minor Prophets
A natural historian of repute relates, "In 1758 in stormy weather a sailor fell overboard from a frigate in the Mediterranean. A shark was close by, which, as he was swimming and crying for help took him in his wide throat, so that he forthwith disappeared. Other sailors had leapt into the sloop, to help their comrade, while yet swimming; the captain had a gun which stood on the deck discharged at the fish, which struck it so, that it cast out the sailor which it had in its throat, who was taken up, alive and little injured, by the sloop which had now come up. The fish was harpooned, taken up on the frigate, and dried. The captain made a present of the fish to the sailor who, by God’s Providence, had been so wonderfully preserved. The sailor went round Europe exhibiting it. He came to Franconia, and it was publicly exhibited here in Erlangen, as also at Nurnberg and other places. The dried fish was delineated. It was 20 feet long and, with expanded fins, nine feet wide and weighed 3924 pounds. From all this, it is probable that this was the fish of Jonah."
Another creature large enough to swallow a man is the voracious White Shark Carcharius vulgaris which grows to ten metres. This shark often swallows its meal without chewing and it occurs in the Mediterranean Sea—where Jonah allegedly was swallowed. The Sperm Whale occurs there too and anciently there was a Phoenician whaling industry based at the port of Joppa where Jonah embarked on the ship.
Nineteenth century scholar E B Pusey (1886) cited examples of people found, dead in the stomachs of White Sharks. In one instance a stomach contained a reindeer without horns. In another was a horse.
In 1939 a White Shark was caught which contained two smaller sharks - two metres long each - in its stomach. (Whitley 1940; Backus & Lineaweaver 1970)
[Omitted here is a xeroxed page from A Dictionary Of The Bible, Volume 1 1902, Edited by J Hastings et al, Published by T & T Clark, p. 750.]
As already stated, dying Sperm Whales often vomit out the contents of their stomach. Regarding the “fish” which swallowed Jonah the story reads:
“it vomited out Jonah upon dry land.” (2:10)
A reasonable speculation—if the story is true—would be that the “fish” which swallowed Jonah was a Sperm Whale which later became stranded in shallow water.
STRESSFUL ACCOMMODATION
The blood temperature of a whale is about the same as a human’s blood—37 degrees centigrade. Inside the stomach it might be several degrees warmer. In addition there is the problem of digestive juices—would they have killed Jonah and digested him? A scientific answer seems unavailable. Would digestive juices with their digestive enzymes, for example, cease to flow if the whale were near death? Possibly the acidity of the stomach juices would also be unpleasant unless their secretion were also inhibited.
Acidity is measured on the pH scale which varies from 0 to 14. For example:
Concentrated nitric acid 0 Orange 3.5
Gastric secretion 1 Tomato 4
Lemon juice 2 Saliva 6
Stomach juice 2 Pure Water 7
Coca cola 3 Intestinal secretion 7.5
Vinegar 3 Sea Water 8
It shouldn’t be too hard to do an experiment of placing a hand or finger in lemon juice, cola, or vinegar for varying intervals and seeing if any damage occurs.
Would there be breathable air in the stomach?
Macloskie (1942) argued that the whale has to expel superfluous water from its mouth after receiving food. In the process a creature trapped in the mouth might reach the laryngeal pouch below the larynx. The pouch is big enough to hold a human who would, in addition, use the whale’s own air supply and have no worries about digestive juices. The Bible phrase "belly of the fish" should not count against this hypothesis since ancient peoples did not distinguish as many internal organs as we do today. In other words the entire front (=ventral surface) of a fish or whale might be referred to as the "belly".
Nowadays whales are classified as mammals. However, the phrase "great fish" would have been accurate enough and more understandable for a, mainly, rural audience which didn’t differentiate many sea creatures.
For a brief period a person could survive in a whale’s stomach. In Jonah’s case the account says "three days and three nights". Some commentators argue that this means 72 hours. Others argue that the Jews counted part of a day or night as one day. If Jonah, for example, was swallowed an hour before sunrise then the previous night and the previous day-time would be included in the calculation. Jonah’s total time in the "fish" would then be as little as approximately 30 hours.
Jonah was extremely stressed by his experience. He was near death. (2:6-7) Inside the "fish" Jonah prayed. (See chapter 2) The words of the prayer were in the past tense. From this some commentators conclude that a future writer composed the prayer and the whole story is mythical. Another explanation for the use of the past tense is that Jonah was quoting the Psalms—which Jews and Christians often do during prayer. Jonah selected Psalms which had phrases appropriate to his experience. These were 120:1; 130:3; 42:7; 31:22; 69:1-2; 30: 3; 142: 2-3; 18:6; 31:6; 50:14.
Of course Jonah would have written these things down later and not while in the "belly of the fish".
MOUNTAINS
An interesting sidepoint is that Jonah says:
"Weeds were wrapped about my head
at the roots of the mountains." (2:5)
Geologist Harold L. Levin wrote:
"Eighteenth-century scientists had little knowledge of the topography of the ocean floors. They lived at a time when depth measurements were made by letting down a lead weight on the end of a rope. Not only was this method time consuming, but in the open ocean it was virtually impossible to prevent error from lateral drifting of the weight, or the ship, or both. As a result of these problems, only a limited number of soundings were made except in bays and offshore areas where such information was vital for safe navigation. Oceanographers interpreted the few measurements available as indicating that the ocean floors were monotonous flat plains. With the advent of continuous topographic profiles from echo-sounding devices, it was shown that the ocean floors are as irregular as the surface of the continents. Beneath the waves lay canyons deeper than the Grand Canyon, and mountain systems more magnificent than the Rockies." (Levin 1981 p. 320
I don’t imagine that Jonah saw the "roots of the mountains" in the Mediterranean Sea by peeking out of the mouth of the fish. Perhaps he guessed; perhaps he was "inspired". At any rate he got it right.
ADDITIONAL INFORMATION
"Here it should be noted that the Hebrew idiom, ‘three days and three nights,’ only requires a Portion of the first and third days."
(Nelson’s Complete Book of Bible Maps & Charts 1993 p. 257)
Sperm whales, with their two stomachs, large throat, and biting jaw equipped with large teeth, have well documented appetites. Sharks ten to twelve feet long appear to be swallowed as easily as Jonah was! Three undigested, ten-foot sharks were found at one time in a large bull Sperm whale’s stomach at Naden Harbour. Squid measuring over thirty feet long, and several hundred pounds in weight, were also found, nearly intact, in a forty-five foot Sperm whale’s stomach.
(Whalers No More 1987 W A Hagelund p.177)
"The title of largest confirmed man-eater on earth must surely go to this thirty-foot long member of the dolphin family, the black and white grampus or killer whale, Orcinus orca. It could, if it ever had the opportunity, eat a couple of dozen men in one Session. Eschricht records one which was found with thirteen porpoises and fourteen seals in its stomach—it had choked on the fifteenth seal. A killer whale was once shot off the United States west coast and found to have eighteen fur seals in its stomach, each one heavier and bulkier than a man.
(Man Is The Prey 1971 James Clarke p. 91)
According to an oriental method of reckoning, parts of days are included in a total of days as if they were full days. Thus in idiomatic Hebrew, as in Jonah 1:17, and in the Jewish manner of speech, as in Matthew 12:40, ‘three days and three nights’ means merely one full day and parts of two others. On this matter read 1 Samuel 30:11-13; compare Esther 4:16 with 5:1; and see Tobit 3:12-13 in the Lutheran text."
(Jonah and the Whale c. l965 P Schulze p. 4)
A major discussion on Jonah occurred in the Princeton Theological Review October 1927 and October 1928. Ambrose John Wilson of Oxford, England, cited a whaling station manager that the skeleton of a shark sixteen feet long had been found in a whale.
Wilson wrote that the temperature inside a whale is 104-106° Fahrenheit (about 41o Centigrade) and that the gastric juice would be unpleasant but not deadly. He alleged that a man named Marshall Jenkins was swallowed by a whale in 1771.
ASSYRIAN MONOTHEISM
Critics sometimes argue that the alleged repentance of the people of Nineveh capital of the Assyrian Empire would have been a bigger miracle than Jonah surviving being swallowed by a "fish".
Assyria was one of the most barbaric of ancient empires. People of captured cities were routinely burned alive, skinned alive, or had ears, noses, hands or feet chopped off.
Jonah was already a prophet during the reign of King Jeroboam of Israel. (2 Kings 14:23) Jeroboam reigned 787 to 747 BC. This places Jonah after Shalmanezer III of Assyria who during his blood-stained reign, 859 - 824 BC, led 32 war campaigns. It also puts Jonah before the equally bloody Tiglath Pileser III who ruled 745-727 BC. Jonah therefore lived when a number of comparatively weak kings ruled Assyria.
Furthermore, for about 50 years during the first half of the 8th century BC, Nineveh was repeatedly torn by civil unrest, palace intrigues, religious strife and even civil war. The book of Jonah confirms that Jonah arrived at Nineveh during a period of internal strife and violence. (See chapter 3:6-9)
Among the gods of Nineveh were Ninua the goddess of waters, Oannes a god with the head and body of a fish attached to the top of a human head, Dagon god of the sea, and Anu the highest or chief god.
We therefore have a setting in which the population of Nineveh might have listened to Jonah and turned to — at least superficially — the God Jonah proclaimed.
Consider: News of Jonah’s survival in the "fish" precedes his arrival. Different religious factions attribute Jonah’s survival to Anu, Ninua, Oannes or Dagon. Jonah arrives—possibly with a ghastly bleached, appearance (like Bartley). The King hears of great crowds listening to Jonah preaching and sees this as a means of ending civil strife and religious division and reunifying the city and the empire. The King and high officials therefore set the example, respond to Jonah, and publicly express remorse for the violence in the city. (See Jonah 3:6-9)
So far no Assyrian record about Jonah has been found.
However, there did at least once occur a swing toward Monotheism. King Adad Nirari III ruled 810-782 BC. During the first five years of his reign his mother, Queen Semiramis, was co-regent and did the governing because her son was too young. Adad Nirari’s effective rule therefore began about 806 BC. It was about this time that the swing toward Monotheism took place. If Jonah was involved in this then the response to his preaching was probably superficial since history records little or nothing more about it.
The circumference of the walls of Nineveh around 800 BC was about 3 kilometres. This increased to 12 kilometres about 700 BC. The statement that Nineveh was ‘three days’ journey in breadth" (Jonah 3:3) has therefore been criticised as another reason for thinking the whole story mythical. Possibly, however, the "three days’ journey in breadth" includes the villages and farmlands beyond the walls and also the outer fortifications involving three rivers and a mountain chain. We could also speculate that the phrases "three day’s journey" and "a day’s journey" had a meaning in Nineveh which we are unaware of."
(The References for this article are given below)
IMPORTANT NOTE TO READERS
[insertion from kendemyer the poster of this string: If anyone wants to read some more faith building material please go the following website addresses: http://www.christian-forum.net/index.php?showforum=15 and http://forums.gatherinhisname.com/forum18.html ]
The following article was taken from the following web address and readers can read the whole debate on this subject at the web address below:
http://www.adam.com.au/bstett/BJonahDebate.htm
REFERENCES
Aalders G Ch. 1948 The Problern of the Book or Jonah Tyndale Press London
Backus R H & Lineaweaver T H 1970 The Natural History of Sharks pp. 111, 113
Blond G 1954 The Great Whale Game Weidenfeld & Nicolson London
Bonomi J 1857 Nineveh And Its Palace E G Bohn London
Bullen F T 1923/1944 The Cruise or the Cachelot J Murray London
Cheyne T T & Black J S 1914 Encyclopedia Biblica New Edition in One Volume Adam & Charles Black Britain p. 1963
Clarke J 1971 Man is the Prey Panther Science Britain p. 91
Hagelund W A 1987 Whalers No More Harbour Publishing Canada p. 177
Hart-Davies D E 1931 Jonah: Prophet and Patriot Thynne & Co. London
Hastings J et al (Editors) 1902 A Dictlonary of the Bible Volume 1 T & T Clark Britain
Levin B L 1981 Contemporary Physical Geography CBS College Publishing p. 320
Macloskie C 1942 How to test the Story of Jonah Bibliotheca Sacra Volume 72 p. 336 ff
Nelson T 1982 Nelson’s Complete Book of Bible Maps & Charts Thomas Nelson Publishers USA p.257
Pinney R 1964 The Animals in the Bible Chilton Books USA pp.128, 153
Pussy, E 1886 The Minor Prophets Waiter Smith Britain pp. 257-258
Schultze H P c.1965 Jonah and the Whale
Wilson A J 1927 October The Sign of the Prophet Jonah Princeton Theological Review Volume 25 p. 636
Wilson A J 1928 October The Authenticity of Jonah Princeton Theological Review Volume 26"
[ February 02, 2004, 03:23 PM: Message edited by: kendemyer ]
First of all, I want to say that I realize the Bible does not necessarily say a whale swallowed Jonah and it could have been another type of sea creature (translation issues).
Here is some commentary from another website:
A whale is not a fish
Now a whale is not a fish; it is a mammal. So in the Old Testament we are told Jonah was swallowed by a “great fish,” and in the New Testament we are told it was a “whale.” Is this a contradiction?
No. And this is why.
The Bible was written in Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek — not in English. And both “whale” and “great fish” are English translations of the original words. If we look in a Greek New Testament dictionary, such as the popular James Strong's Dictionary of the Words in the Greek New Testament, we find the explanation.
The Greek word translated “whale” is ketos (pronounced kay-tos), and it means “a huge fish (as gaping for prey).” Other scholars say it can mean a huge aquatic creature, which could be a fish, a whale, or some other giant sea animal. In any case, the Bible says God prepared the creature to swallow Jonah, so it could have been a creature created for this particular purpose and no other.
When the King James Version of the Bible was released in 1611, our modern taxonomic distinctions between fishes and mammals had not yet been decided on, so the translators were justified in choosing a whale as the giant “fish.” It was the greatest sea creature known to them." (taken from: http://www.users.bigpond.com/rdoolan/jonah.html )
Here is a abreviated article written regarding the Jonah account:
"JONAH: A WHALE OF A TALE?
Anonymous
(Investigator 35, 1994 March)
SUMMARY
A central message of Jonah is that God judges people by their actions/deeds/repentance and not by where they were born. This method of judgment is the model for humans (e.g. Jonah) to follow.
When people line up with their nation or ethnic group irrespective of wrong or right, and practice for example "ethnic cleansing", they prove themselves skeptics of Scripture.
The account of Jonah in the fish’s "belly" is intended by the Bible writers to be 1iteral.
The switch to Monotheism in Nineveh (Assyrian capital) has a historical basis.
INTRODUCTION
According to the Bible Jonah was swallowed by a fish, survived, and then went to the capital city of one of the bloodiest empires of ancient times, announced imminent destruction, and the population turned to worshipping one God. The city was spared from destruction, which greatly annoyed Jonah. The story ends with God saying to Jonah:
"And should I not pity Nineveh, that great city in which there are more than a hundred and twenty thousand persons who do not know their right hand from their left…?"
Some skeptics call it "a fishy story" and others "a whale of a tale." What about it, could the events of the book of Jonah be historical?
A century ago many critics sought the origin of Jonah and the fish in Greek and Assyrian mythology. The Greeks, for example, told of a girl named Andromeda who was rescued from a sea monster by a fellow named Perseus. Another girl, a Trojan princess named Hesione was rescued from a different sea monster by Hercules. (Cheyne & Black 1914) Nowadays such comparisons of Jonah with non-Jewish mythology have been discarded. Nevertheless, most scholars still do not accept the Jonah story as historical fact.
Australasian Post, December 3, 1988:
Modern Jonah?
The biblica1 story of Jonah and the whale was repeated in Australian waters in 1820 when a crewman from the American whaler Essex was lost overboard from a harpoon boat.
Two hours later, as the whale was being stripped of its blubber, the crew noticed movement and slit open the mammal’s stomach.
The man said he remembered passing down a narrow passage and then he fainted inside a "large, noisome space."
The 24 page booklet The First Jaws by Chick Publication tells of a British sailor swallowed by a "gigantic Rhinodon shark" in the English Channel "in the early 1800s" and being cut out 48 hours later.
ALLEGORY - NO; MORAL POINTS - YES
A common approach is to view the story of Jonah as an allegory or "midrash"—a fiction which teaches a moral lesson. Jonah, in this approach, might have represented the narrow minded Jews whose concept of God was as a Jewish God. One lesson from God’s mercy, in the story, to the Assyrians is the universal Fatherhood of God. From such universal Fatherhood it would follow that God regards and treats all peoples not just Jews, impartially - even the Assyrians of Nineveh. This moral lesson is therefore similar to that of the "Good Samaritan" in the New Testament, which teaches among other things that to distinguish people along moral lines — by their good or evil conduct — is more important than the distinction of nationality.
Jews at the time of Jesus viewed Jonah as history. For example Jesus once said:
For as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the whale, so will the Son of man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth. The men of Nineveh will arise in the judgement with this generation and condemn it; for they repented at the preaching of Jonah. (Matthew 12:40-41
That the Jonah account was intended as history rather than allegory is the more obvious conclusion. Jonah is classed among the "Prophets" and all the other prophets of the Bible are presented in the Bible as literal persons. Furthermore, Jonah is named, his father is named, the town where they lived is named (2 Kings 14:25) and the period in which they lived is given. In other words the times places and characters are not vague and unspecified as they are in, say, the parables spoken by Jesus. The degree of detail associated with Jonah would anywhere in the Bible indicate that the writer is presenting alleged history and not parable or allegory.
The main intent behind the book might still be to give a moral lesson—but it’s a moral lesson based on events which are offered as real. Let’s consider then whether most of the report can, sensibly, be taken as literal history.
BIG THROATED CREATURES
Nineteenth century critics often argued that whales have too small a gullet to admit a human.
Whales are divided into two main groups—baleen whale and toothed whales. Baleen whales have numerous horny plates suspended from the upper jaw which are used for straining out tiny sea creatures. The biggest baleen whale is the Blue Whale which weighs as much as 25 elephants. Blue Whales, however, have a small gullet and rarely swallow anything larger than a penguin.
The largest of the toothed whales is the Sperm Whale. This grows to 25 metres. The diet of Sperm Whales includes large objects such as giant squids. Bullen (1923) wrote:
"and a shark fifteen feet in length has been found in the stomach of a cachelot [= Sperm Whale]." (p. 125)
Pinney (1964) quoted the Director of a Museum of Natural history:
"Many people asked me if the Bible story of Jonah is true. Could a man be swallowed by a whale? So I pushed my body partly down the throat of a dead sixty foot sperm whale. I could just squeeze through. A fat man couldn’t have made it."
Bullen wrote:
"when dying, the cachelot always ejected the contents of his stomach…" (p.69)
On one occasion Bullen saw ejected material which included:
"a massive fragment of cuttle fish - tentacle or arm - as thick as a stout man’s body…" (p. 69)
Bullen continued:
"contrary to the usual notion of a whale’s being unable to swallow a herring, here was a kind of whale that could swallow—well , a block four or five feet square apparently; who lived upon creatures as large as himself, if one might judge of their bulk by the sample to hand; but being unable, from only possessing teeth in one jaw, to masticate his food, was compelled to tear it in sizeable pieces, bolt it whole, and leave his digestive apparatus to do the rest." (p. 70)
Bullen described how he himself came close to being swallowed when a whale smashed the whaleboat throwing the whalers into the sea. (pp. 101-102)
Extract from page 69 of The Cruise of the Cachelot (1923/1944 Frank T Bullen John Murray London):
He [the mate] told me that, when dying, the cachelot always ejected the contents of his stomach, which were invariably composed of such masses as we saw before us; that he believed the stuff to be portions of big cuttle-fish, bitten off by the whale for the purpose of swallowing, but he wasn’t sure. Anyhow, I could haul this piece alongside now, if I liked, and see. Wondering at the indifference shown by this officer of forty years’ whaling experience to such a wonderful fact, I thanked him, and, sticking the boat-hook into the lump, drew it alongside. It was at once evident that it was a massive fragment of cuttle-fish—tentacle or arm—as thick as a stout man’s body…"
From p. 105 of The Cruise of the Cachelot:
Indeed, not many tears ago a popular M.P., writing to one of the religious papers, allowed himself to say that "science will not hear of a whale with a gullet capable of admitting anything larger than a man’s fist."—a piece of crass ignorance, which is also perpetrated in the appendix to a very widely-distributed edition of the Authorized Version of the Bible. This opinion, strangely enough, is almost universally held…
From: E B Pusey (1886) The Minor Prophets
A natural historian of repute relates, "In 1758 in stormy weather a sailor fell overboard from a frigate in the Mediterranean. A shark was close by, which, as he was swimming and crying for help took him in his wide throat, so that he forthwith disappeared. Other sailors had leapt into the sloop, to help their comrade, while yet swimming; the captain had a gun which stood on the deck discharged at the fish, which struck it so, that it cast out the sailor which it had in its throat, who was taken up, alive and little injured, by the sloop which had now come up. The fish was harpooned, taken up on the frigate, and dried. The captain made a present of the fish to the sailor who, by God’s Providence, had been so wonderfully preserved. The sailor went round Europe exhibiting it. He came to Franconia, and it was publicly exhibited here in Erlangen, as also at Nurnberg and other places. The dried fish was delineated. It was 20 feet long and, with expanded fins, nine feet wide and weighed 3924 pounds. From all this, it is probable that this was the fish of Jonah."
Another creature large enough to swallow a man is the voracious White Shark Carcharius vulgaris which grows to ten metres. This shark often swallows its meal without chewing and it occurs in the Mediterranean Sea—where Jonah allegedly was swallowed. The Sperm Whale occurs there too and anciently there was a Phoenician whaling industry based at the port of Joppa where Jonah embarked on the ship.
Nineteenth century scholar E B Pusey (1886) cited examples of people found, dead in the stomachs of White Sharks. In one instance a stomach contained a reindeer without horns. In another was a horse.
In 1939 a White Shark was caught which contained two smaller sharks - two metres long each - in its stomach. (Whitley 1940; Backus & Lineaweaver 1970)
[Omitted here is a xeroxed page from A Dictionary Of The Bible, Volume 1 1902, Edited by J Hastings et al, Published by T & T Clark, p. 750.]
As already stated, dying Sperm Whales often vomit out the contents of their stomach. Regarding the “fish” which swallowed Jonah the story reads:
“it vomited out Jonah upon dry land.” (2:10)
A reasonable speculation—if the story is true—would be that the “fish” which swallowed Jonah was a Sperm Whale which later became stranded in shallow water.
STRESSFUL ACCOMMODATION
The blood temperature of a whale is about the same as a human’s blood—37 degrees centigrade. Inside the stomach it might be several degrees warmer. In addition there is the problem of digestive juices—would they have killed Jonah and digested him? A scientific answer seems unavailable. Would digestive juices with their digestive enzymes, for example, cease to flow if the whale were near death? Possibly the acidity of the stomach juices would also be unpleasant unless their secretion were also inhibited.
Acidity is measured on the pH scale which varies from 0 to 14. For example:
Concentrated nitric acid 0 Orange 3.5
Gastric secretion 1 Tomato 4
Lemon juice 2 Saliva 6
Stomach juice 2 Pure Water 7
Coca cola 3 Intestinal secretion 7.5
Vinegar 3 Sea Water 8
It shouldn’t be too hard to do an experiment of placing a hand or finger in lemon juice, cola, or vinegar for varying intervals and seeing if any damage occurs.
Would there be breathable air in the stomach?
Macloskie (1942) argued that the whale has to expel superfluous water from its mouth after receiving food. In the process a creature trapped in the mouth might reach the laryngeal pouch below the larynx. The pouch is big enough to hold a human who would, in addition, use the whale’s own air supply and have no worries about digestive juices. The Bible phrase "belly of the fish" should not count against this hypothesis since ancient peoples did not distinguish as many internal organs as we do today. In other words the entire front (=ventral surface) of a fish or whale might be referred to as the "belly".
Nowadays whales are classified as mammals. However, the phrase "great fish" would have been accurate enough and more understandable for a, mainly, rural audience which didn’t differentiate many sea creatures.
For a brief period a person could survive in a whale’s stomach. In Jonah’s case the account says "three days and three nights". Some commentators argue that this means 72 hours. Others argue that the Jews counted part of a day or night as one day. If Jonah, for example, was swallowed an hour before sunrise then the previous night and the previous day-time would be included in the calculation. Jonah’s total time in the "fish" would then be as little as approximately 30 hours.
Jonah was extremely stressed by his experience. He was near death. (2:6-7) Inside the "fish" Jonah prayed. (See chapter 2) The words of the prayer were in the past tense. From this some commentators conclude that a future writer composed the prayer and the whole story is mythical. Another explanation for the use of the past tense is that Jonah was quoting the Psalms—which Jews and Christians often do during prayer. Jonah selected Psalms which had phrases appropriate to his experience. These were 120:1; 130:3; 42:7; 31:22; 69:1-2; 30: 3; 142: 2-3; 18:6; 31:6; 50:14.
Of course Jonah would have written these things down later and not while in the "belly of the fish".
MOUNTAINS
An interesting sidepoint is that Jonah says:
"Weeds were wrapped about my head
at the roots of the mountains." (2:5)
Geologist Harold L. Levin wrote:
"Eighteenth-century scientists had little knowledge of the topography of the ocean floors. They lived at a time when depth measurements were made by letting down a lead weight on the end of a rope. Not only was this method time consuming, but in the open ocean it was virtually impossible to prevent error from lateral drifting of the weight, or the ship, or both. As a result of these problems, only a limited number of soundings were made except in bays and offshore areas where such information was vital for safe navigation. Oceanographers interpreted the few measurements available as indicating that the ocean floors were monotonous flat plains. With the advent of continuous topographic profiles from echo-sounding devices, it was shown that the ocean floors are as irregular as the surface of the continents. Beneath the waves lay canyons deeper than the Grand Canyon, and mountain systems more magnificent than the Rockies." (Levin 1981 p. 320
I don’t imagine that Jonah saw the "roots of the mountains" in the Mediterranean Sea by peeking out of the mouth of the fish. Perhaps he guessed; perhaps he was "inspired". At any rate he got it right.
ADDITIONAL INFORMATION
"Here it should be noted that the Hebrew idiom, ‘three days and three nights,’ only requires a Portion of the first and third days."
(Nelson’s Complete Book of Bible Maps & Charts 1993 p. 257)
Sperm whales, with their two stomachs, large throat, and biting jaw equipped with large teeth, have well documented appetites. Sharks ten to twelve feet long appear to be swallowed as easily as Jonah was! Three undigested, ten-foot sharks were found at one time in a large bull Sperm whale’s stomach at Naden Harbour. Squid measuring over thirty feet long, and several hundred pounds in weight, were also found, nearly intact, in a forty-five foot Sperm whale’s stomach.
(Whalers No More 1987 W A Hagelund p.177)
"The title of largest confirmed man-eater on earth must surely go to this thirty-foot long member of the dolphin family, the black and white grampus or killer whale, Orcinus orca. It could, if it ever had the opportunity, eat a couple of dozen men in one Session. Eschricht records one which was found with thirteen porpoises and fourteen seals in its stomach—it had choked on the fifteenth seal. A killer whale was once shot off the United States west coast and found to have eighteen fur seals in its stomach, each one heavier and bulkier than a man.
(Man Is The Prey 1971 James Clarke p. 91)
According to an oriental method of reckoning, parts of days are included in a total of days as if they were full days. Thus in idiomatic Hebrew, as in Jonah 1:17, and in the Jewish manner of speech, as in Matthew 12:40, ‘three days and three nights’ means merely one full day and parts of two others. On this matter read 1 Samuel 30:11-13; compare Esther 4:16 with 5:1; and see Tobit 3:12-13 in the Lutheran text."
(Jonah and the Whale c. l965 P Schulze p. 4)
A major discussion on Jonah occurred in the Princeton Theological Review October 1927 and October 1928. Ambrose John Wilson of Oxford, England, cited a whaling station manager that the skeleton of a shark sixteen feet long had been found in a whale.
Wilson wrote that the temperature inside a whale is 104-106° Fahrenheit (about 41o Centigrade) and that the gastric juice would be unpleasant but not deadly. He alleged that a man named Marshall Jenkins was swallowed by a whale in 1771.
ASSYRIAN MONOTHEISM
Critics sometimes argue that the alleged repentance of the people of Nineveh capital of the Assyrian Empire would have been a bigger miracle than Jonah surviving being swallowed by a "fish".
Assyria was one of the most barbaric of ancient empires. People of captured cities were routinely burned alive, skinned alive, or had ears, noses, hands or feet chopped off.
Jonah was already a prophet during the reign of King Jeroboam of Israel. (2 Kings 14:23) Jeroboam reigned 787 to 747 BC. This places Jonah after Shalmanezer III of Assyria who during his blood-stained reign, 859 - 824 BC, led 32 war campaigns. It also puts Jonah before the equally bloody Tiglath Pileser III who ruled 745-727 BC. Jonah therefore lived when a number of comparatively weak kings ruled Assyria.
Furthermore, for about 50 years during the first half of the 8th century BC, Nineveh was repeatedly torn by civil unrest, palace intrigues, religious strife and even civil war. The book of Jonah confirms that Jonah arrived at Nineveh during a period of internal strife and violence. (See chapter 3:6-9)
Among the gods of Nineveh were Ninua the goddess of waters, Oannes a god with the head and body of a fish attached to the top of a human head, Dagon god of the sea, and Anu the highest or chief god.
We therefore have a setting in which the population of Nineveh might have listened to Jonah and turned to — at least superficially — the God Jonah proclaimed.
Consider: News of Jonah’s survival in the "fish" precedes his arrival. Different religious factions attribute Jonah’s survival to Anu, Ninua, Oannes or Dagon. Jonah arrives—possibly with a ghastly bleached, appearance (like Bartley). The King hears of great crowds listening to Jonah preaching and sees this as a means of ending civil strife and religious division and reunifying the city and the empire. The King and high officials therefore set the example, respond to Jonah, and publicly express remorse for the violence in the city. (See Jonah 3:6-9)
So far no Assyrian record about Jonah has been found.
However, there did at least once occur a swing toward Monotheism. King Adad Nirari III ruled 810-782 BC. During the first five years of his reign his mother, Queen Semiramis, was co-regent and did the governing because her son was too young. Adad Nirari’s effective rule therefore began about 806 BC. It was about this time that the swing toward Monotheism took place. If Jonah was involved in this then the response to his preaching was probably superficial since history records little or nothing more about it.
The circumference of the walls of Nineveh around 800 BC was about 3 kilometres. This increased to 12 kilometres about 700 BC. The statement that Nineveh was ‘three days’ journey in breadth" (Jonah 3:3) has therefore been criticised as another reason for thinking the whole story mythical. Possibly, however, the "three days’ journey in breadth" includes the villages and farmlands beyond the walls and also the outer fortifications involving three rivers and a mountain chain. We could also speculate that the phrases "three day’s journey" and "a day’s journey" had a meaning in Nineveh which we are unaware of."
(The References for this article are given below)
IMPORTANT NOTE TO READERS
[insertion from kendemyer the poster of this string: If anyone wants to read some more faith building material please go the following website addresses: http://www.christian-forum.net/index.php?showforum=15 and http://forums.gatherinhisname.com/forum18.html ]
The following article was taken from the following web address and readers can read the whole debate on this subject at the web address below:
http://www.adam.com.au/bstett/BJonahDebate.htm
REFERENCES
Aalders G Ch. 1948 The Problern of the Book or Jonah Tyndale Press London
Backus R H & Lineaweaver T H 1970 The Natural History of Sharks pp. 111, 113
Blond G 1954 The Great Whale Game Weidenfeld & Nicolson London
Bonomi J 1857 Nineveh And Its Palace E G Bohn London
Bullen F T 1923/1944 The Cruise or the Cachelot J Murray London
Cheyne T T & Black J S 1914 Encyclopedia Biblica New Edition in One Volume Adam & Charles Black Britain p. 1963
Clarke J 1971 Man is the Prey Panther Science Britain p. 91
Hagelund W A 1987 Whalers No More Harbour Publishing Canada p. 177
Hart-Davies D E 1931 Jonah: Prophet and Patriot Thynne & Co. London
Hastings J et al (Editors) 1902 A Dictlonary of the Bible Volume 1 T & T Clark Britain
Levin B L 1981 Contemporary Physical Geography CBS College Publishing p. 320
Macloskie C 1942 How to test the Story of Jonah Bibliotheca Sacra Volume 72 p. 336 ff
Nelson T 1982 Nelson’s Complete Book of Bible Maps & Charts Thomas Nelson Publishers USA p.257
Pinney R 1964 The Animals in the Bible Chilton Books USA pp.128, 153
Pussy, E 1886 The Minor Prophets Waiter Smith Britain pp. 257-258
Schultze H P c.1965 Jonah and the Whale
Wilson A J 1927 October The Sign of the Prophet Jonah Princeton Theological Review Volume 25 p. 636
Wilson A J 1928 October The Authenticity of Jonah Princeton Theological Review Volume 26"
[ February 02, 2004, 03:23 PM: Message edited by: kendemyer ]
