Dan Olinger

Last time we began our consideration of whether the Jonah story is fiction or non-fiction. We noted that the inspiration of Scripture doesn’t necessarily rule out the possibility that it’s fiction. And then we concluded, tentatively, that the evidence we’ve considered so far leans us toward non-fiction, but we have yet to consider a category of evidence that the story might be historical fiction, a fictional story made up about an actual historical character.

How do we know that historical fiction is, after, all, fiction?

Two possible ways: because the author tells us he’s fictionalized it, or because it contains things that we know didn’t happen.

The author of the book of Jonah gives us no hint that he’s fictionalizing.

Critics, then, note the unbelievable things in the story—as I listed them last time—as evidence that it’s fictionalized.

There’s no reliable record of anyone ever being swallowed by a whale, let alone surviving. (That James Bartley story is pretty suspect.)

How about the repentance of Nineveh? Well, in fact, that’s not much of a stretch. The passage doesn’t say that they became monotheistic, only that they were afraid of a foreigner’s tribal god and tried to appease him. That sort of thing happened all the time in the ancient world, where syncretistic religion was common. Douglas Stuart notes, “From Assyrian omen texts, we know of four circumstances that could move a people, and its king, to fasting and mourning: invasion by an enemy; a total solar eclipse; famine and a major outbreak of disease; and a major flood. We know that enemy nations, such as Urartu, had beaten the Assyrians in a number of military encounters in the time of Ashurdan III and that a major earthquake occurred in the reign of one of the kings with the name Ashurdan—but not for certain Ashurdan III. Moreover, on June 15, 763 bc in the tenth year of Ashurdan III, there was a total solar eclipse over Assyria” (New Bible Commentary on Jonah).

And what about the plant? Some plants do grow rapidly—we Southerners know all about kudzu—and in a very hot, dry wind (Jon 4.8), shriveling could happen in a hurry. Not outside the realm of possibility, but not common either.

But experienced Christians know what’s going on under the surface here.

The real issue isn’t the fish or the plant or the worm or the wind.

The real issue is that some people just reject the supernatural out of hand. Ax heads don’t float. You can’t feed 5000 people with 5 buns and 2 small fish. And people don’t rise from the dead.

And, in their mind, that’s that.

So Jonah never happened.

Well, I’ll grant you that I’ve never seen a miracle and that I’m pretty suspicious when other people claim that they have. It’s safe to say that they’re exceedingly rare.

In fact, even in biblical times, and even if you take the miracle claims at face value, they’re still pretty rare. With just 2 or 3 exceptions, all the recorded biblical miracles occurred in just 3 relatively brief periods of time:

• The active careers of Moses and Joshua (80
  years)
• The active careers of Elijah and Elisha (80
  years)
• The earthly lifetime of Jesus and for a few
  years following (maybe 60 years)

That’s maybe 200 or 250 years out of 6000 years of earth’s history—assuming you’re a young-earth creationist, and a fan of Ussher’s dating at that. Right at 4.2% of history at the most, and if you hold to billions of years (I don’t), that 4.2% shrinks to practically zero.

But how “scientific” is it to say that they don’t happen at all? How “scientific” is a universal negative? How often have universal negatives been debunked?

I long ago decided that rationalism simply didn’t have a strong enough record to merit my faith. I see strong evidence that the Bible is not of ordinary human origin, and I’ve seen it vindicated any number of times, and so I freely confess that I’m inclined to believe it. So the events in Jonah aren’t an obstacle to me.

I think it happened.

Note: For a clear and concise discussion of the alleged fictional nature of Jonah, see Billy K. Smith and Frank S. Page, Amos, Obadiah, Jonah, New American Commentary Series (Nashville: Broadman & Holman, 1995), pp. 209-19, “Genre and Purpose.”

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The question that’s been asked about Jonah more than any other is a simple and straightforward one—

Did any of this ever happen, or not?

Is it fiction, or is it non-fiction?

Critics point out all kinds of allegedly laughable events in the story—

• A man survived inside a fish for 72 hours (Jon
  1.17).
• The entire city of Nineveh, under the urging of
  its king, repented of their notorious and culturally ingrained cruelty and
  worshipped the true God of Israel (Jon 3.5-9).
• A plant grew large and shriveled up on 2
  consecutive days (Jon 4.6-8).

What nonsense, they say.

Well.

Let’s back waaaaay up and consider the question as carefully as we can in a blog post or two.

For starters, we should consider whether or not the question is important. Does it matter whether the story ever actually happened?

We know that the Bible contains fiction, from a fable recounted by an Israelite king (2K 14.9) to a story about a prodigal son told by Jesus himself (Lk 15.11-32). Supporters of historicity note that Jesus referred to the “fish story” (Mt 12.39-41), but we also know that literary allusion is a perfectly legitimate rhetorical device—so in theory Jesus could refer to the story of Jonah as a metaphor for his own death and resurrection without necessarily viewing it as a historical event. But I note that Jesus spoke of the men of Nineveh, who repented, condemning Jesus’ hearers because they (the men of Nineveh) had repented at the preaching of Jonah (Mt 12.41)—and that really wouldn’t make any sense if the Jonah event wasn’t actually historical.

We also know that there’s a genre we call “historical fiction,” in which stories are made up about real historical characters (e.g. Barabbas or Daniel) that are fictionalized. So the fact that Jonah is described elsewhere in the Bible as a historical figure (2K 14.25) doesn’t render it impossible in theory that the book of Jonah is a fictionalized account. As I’ve noted in my thoughts on the story of Job, sometimes you can’t answer this kind of question with absolute confidence.

But.

Having said that, I note that Jonah is independently verified in the biblical text as a historical character, and Jesus does use his experience with the fish as a figure of his own death and resurrection, and (for what it’s worth) the rabbinical traditions never seem to have entertained the idea that the story was fiction, so barring substantive evidence that it’s fiction, we ought to assume that it really happened.

What kind of evidence would that be? I think there are two kinds that we could consider.

The first is evidence that it conforms to some common fictional genre that was used at the time it might have been written—sometime between, say, around 789 BC, when Jereboam II began to reign (2K 14.25), and around 200 BC, when we know the book of Jonah was in the Septuagint. (That’s being very generous.)

Critics have suggested that it might be an allegory—but this document doesn’t seem to have the characteristics of an allegory. Whom do the various characters represent? Where are the multiple levels of meaning? Where is the object personification?

Another possibility is that it’s fable. But again, it doesn’t read like fable. For starters, it’s too long and complex. And the whale doesn’t talk, nor does the gourd or the worm.

Well, then, maybe it’s a parable. The moral lesson is there, all right. But it’s still too complicated, and the levels of meaning don’t seem to be there.

You know what it sounds like? It sounds like a narrative about an actual historical character. Our inclination to this point is to consider it non-fiction.

But I noted above that there are two kinds of evidence that a historical narrative is fictionalized. We need to consider the other type. We’ll get into that next time.

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Part 1

Last time we looked at the recurring theme of “greatness” in this brief biblical book. This time I’d like to notice a couple more literary features. 

Have you noticed the parallel structure? 

• In chapter 1, unbelieving Gentiles (the sailors), fearing the wrath of Jonah’s God, seek deliverance by responding to the prophet’s word—and throwing Jonah into the sea, with prayers that God would accept the obedience they offer. 
• In chapter 2, Jonah prays to God, praising him for his deliverance. 

• In chapter 3, unbelieving Gentiles (the Ninevites), fearing the wrath of Jonah’s God, seek deliverance by responding to the prophet’s word—and repenting of their sin, with hope that God would accept the obedience they offer. 
• In chapter 4, Jonah prays to God, raging at him for his deliverance. 

Two episodes, in exact parallel. 

And here’s the odd thing—while the unbelieving Gentiles are moving in the right direction, the allegedly believing prophet is moving in the opposite direction—against what he already clearly knows. 

In chapter 1, Jonah seeks to “flee from the presence of the Lord” (Jon 1.3, 10) despite the fact that he knows that the Lord “made the sea and the dry land” (Jon 1.9), and despite the fact that he knows God can and will send a great storm in response to his disobedience. 

In chapter 4, Jonah knows that the Lord’s nature is to show mercy to those who repent (Jon 4.2), yet he hardens his heart against the Lord’s will. 

The irony is strong in this one. 

Something else to notice—in the previous post I referred to Jonah as “the character for whom the book is named.” That may have struck you as awkward. Why not call him “the hero,” or “the main character,” or, to use the more academic term, “the protagonist”? 

Simple. Because he is none of those things. He not the main character; as I noted last time, he’s a foil. There I said that he’s a foil for the other prophets; in many ways the book of Jonah is a study in contrasts with all the other prophetic writings. But here I’ll note that within the book itself, he’s a foil as well—a foil for the true main character. 

And who is that? 

It’s not the fish. 

And, perhaps contrary to our expectations, it’s not the king of Nineveh, as positive a character as he is. (And if you know anything about the Assyrians, you’re as surprised as I am that I just called an Assyrian king a “positive character.”) 

Who’s the main character? Who’s the protagonist? 

It’s God. 

He the one doing all the things— 

• Calling the prophet and specifying his message 
• Sending a great storm—and calming it when the sailors obey the words of the prophet 
• Appointing a great fish—and graciously delivering the disobedient prophet, through regurgitation, when he prays 
• Responding with grace to the repentance of a deeply evil people by reversing his earlier pronouncement of judgment—even taking pity on the Assyrian cattle (Jon 4.11). 

The book itself doesn’t note this, but we know from later history that this repentance was short-lived. It wasn’t long before the Assyrians were at it again, perpetrating cruelty and violence all across the region, crushing any who opposed them, extorting the wealth of their neighbors, being in general just the big bully of the known world. 

And a bit more than a century later, God sent another prophet—Nahum—with a similar message of doom for Nineveh, and this threat would certainly be carried out; by the end of the century—605 BC, to be precise—near a town called Carchemish on what is now the Turkish-Syrian border, the Babylonian armies crushed the Assyrians, who in their desperation had even sought help from the Egyptians. And just like that, Assyria was history. 

As I say, God knew all that, from the beginning of time. 

But when Nineveh repented, ever so briefly and ever so imperfectly, God forgave them. And spared them. 

That’s the kind of person he is. 

You know, you are of much more worth than an Assyrian cow. Even though you can’t repent worth a nickel, God will forgive you, too. 

That’s the kind of person he is. 

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Every so often I’ve been posting my thoughts on reading various biblical books. There’s no formal plan; I just comment when I have something to say about a particular document. Along the way I’ve posted on Leviticus, Numbers, and Job—sometimes taking just one post, sometimes two. In this post and the next one, I’d like to notice some things about Jonah. (I note that so far these have all been Old Testament books. There’s no particular reason for that.)

Everybody knows the story of Jonah and the whale; we all learned about it in Sunday school. A lot of people note that the Bible doesn’t actually call it a whale—it calls it a “great fish” (“huge fish” NIV), and as we all know, whales aren’t fish.

Well, wait a minute. Of course it’s true that whales bear live young and breathe through a blowhole, while fish have scales (um, not instead of live young, but you know what I mean) and use gills to extract oxygen dissolved in water. Fair enough.

But the zoological taxonomic system, including its definitions of words like fish, was developed long after the Bible was written. (And accusing the Bible of “scientific error” for this is to apply an ex post facto law, which is specifically forbidden in the US Constitution, Article I, Section 9, Paragraph 3. So there.)

The Old Testament cultures called marine creatures “fish,” just as they called flying creatures “birds,” even if a specific flying creature (e.g. the bat [Lev 11.19]) was later to be classified with mammals, for very mammalian reasons.

So maybe it was a whale. Or maybe it was a really big fish of some kind—maybe even a special fish created just for the occasion. The point is that it was there at that moment, and that God had directed it to be. A “great fish.”

Speaking of which, have you ever noticed how often the word great is used in this short book?

• Jonah is sent to “Nineveh, that great city” (Jon 1.2; 3.2, 3; 4.11).
• God sends “a great wind” (Jon 1.4) and “a great storm” (Jon 1.4, 12) before he sends “a great fish” (Jon 1.17).
• The sailors “feared greatly” (Jon 1.10, 16).
• The people of Nineveh repented, “from the greatest to the least” (Jon 3.5), and the repentance proclamation was issued “by the king and his great ones” (Jon 3.7).
• When they repented, Jonah was “greatly displeased” (Jon 4.1)—but when the Lord sent a plant to bring him shade, he was “greatly happy” (Jon 4.6).

This is a book of extremes. God does extreme things to see that his will is accomplished, and the characters respond extremely to what they see going on around them. God’s actions greatly humble a great city and its great people.

But the character for whom the book is named is the most extreme of all—oddly extreme. He goes to great lengths to disobey the great One whose message he is appointed to deliver. He delivers it with no compassion for his hearers—compassion that is clearly the motive of the One who sent him (Jon 4.11). Jonah’s actions and reactions are extreme, like those of the other characters, but they are ironically extreme—the opposite of what we expect.

Other prophets take on difficult assignments and deliver their messages in the spirit in which God sent them—and often no one listens to them (Isa 6.8-13; Jer 13.10-11; Ezk 2.3-7). Jonah delivers the message only when he is forced to—and the people repent en masse. And then, to our astonishment, Jonah is angry at their repentance, revealing himself to be an unreconstructed bigot.

Jonah is a foil for all the rest of the prophetic writings. He is the unprophet.

Have you ever heard it said that God can’t use a dirty vessel? Oh, yes he can. And with such a small and weak messenger, he can bring a great city, filled with great men, to great repentance, and he can show them great mercy.

He’s that great.

Part 2

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