The Fish Story of Jonah Like You’ve Never Heard it Before
You probably know the story of Jonah, the Old Testament prophet who was swallowed by a whale (a “great fish” actually), then three days later was spit up on shore. After he dried out, Jonah then did what God had told him to do in the first place, which was preach repentance to the people of Nineveh.
Photo by Todd Cravens on Unsplash
He did, they listened, they converted and everybody lived happily ever after, just like in all the other fairy tales, right? Of all the “fish stories” you’ve ever heard, the one about Jonah is the least likely to be even remotely close to the truth.
No wonder atheists and other skeptics love to point to Jonah as evidence the Bible and Christianity are nothing more than fairy tales that no rational person believes.
Well, they’re right! Yes, I said it, but guess what, the fairy tale version of Jonah they love to deride is not what the Book of Jonah in the Old Testament is all about. And here to explain it all is Erik Manning of Is Jesus Alive? This 6:28 video just might blow your mind:
The Book of Jonah does not say he was swallowed by a whale. There are no whales in the Mediterranean Sea. The Hebrew in the Book of Jonah says he was swallowed by a great fish.
You are correct, but in popular culture, the story is often portrayed as being about “Jonah and the Whale” and that is the version skeptics deride. I’ve updated the post to reflect your point.
I’d be inclined to keep it as “Jonah And The Whale” just because skeptics deride it. Those kind of skeptics are really just fanatical atheists who will deride everything except the fairy tales they personally believe in (mostly The Communist Manifesto), and making them hate you while being provably more successful than their own fairy tales can make them has always been a more reliable way to gain converts than appeasing them.
Actually, there are both sperm whales and fin whales in the Mediterranean, and the Hebrew term used in Jonah (dag) doesn’t provide any taxonomic distinction between various sea creatures such as fish, sharks, whales, manatees, etc. In Koine Greek (though Jesus was probably speaking Aramaic or Hebrew when he spoke about Jonah), the New Testament renders the term as ketos, which means “sea monster” and likewise provides no taxonomic distinctions between the sea-dwellers to which it refers (other than to indicate they’re rather large). At the same time, either of these terms could just easily refer to basque sharks, which are quite common in the Mediterranean and also quite certainly large enough to swallow a man whole.
Nonsense. The distinction between “fish” and “whale” is one of modern biological taxonomy, and likely served no purpose to those living in the Mediterranean 2700 years ago.
In fact, in the common vernacular we don’t always maintain the rigor of the scientific jargon. To wit, today we still often call mollusks “shellfish”.
Anyone citing the distinction between “whale” and “fish” as important has no understanding of the proper interpretation of scriptures, and does far more harm than good.
While I don’t know what, if anything, swallowed Jonah, there are absolutely whales in the Mediterranean Sea including Fin Whales and Sperm Whales.
Regardless, fish or whale, I doubt anyone could survive three days in the alimentary canal or stomach of either.
the real issue becomes the prayer itself, which is almost directly from David himself, who himself is repeating a prayer practiced thousands of times over by the Jewish people. Unless of course being swallowed by an actual whale was so common at one time that it was not much of a deal 2000 years ago. Then there begins another discussion, on the term “big fish” When Jesus says “I’ll make you “fishers of men”, he is not sending out the disciples to turn people into actual fish. Fish can be both a noun and a verb in the case which it is written, which changes the context of the story. In fact, I find it mind blowing that if an actual whale swallowed Jonah, he makes no mention of it in any-way-shape-or form in his prayer, (maybe the author forgot to tell him), and Jonah makes it clearly obvious that he’s on the shoreline for the whole ordeal. I guess thats why theres 100 trillion denominations out there…lol