I JUST FINISHED MAPPING Jonah’s story for the new paraphrase of Jonah in the Casual English Bible.
It’s an interesting story that many Christians read as history, especially since Jonah shows up elsewhere in the Bible. But some Christians and Christian scholars as well say they read the story as fiction, but with a real person playing an imaginary role. They say they see in the story many characteristics of the kind of parables Jesus told.
I don’t think most Christians read it that way. So let me give a few reasons Christians on the fiction side of the argument say it reads like a parable.
Argument for Jonah as fiction-parable
It’s short and action-packed. It’s a bit longer than the parables Jesus told, but not that much longer than the parable of the prodigal son, which is pretty much what Jonah was for a while.
It puts Jonah in a fish’s belly for three days. Science takes a bite out of that account of the facts. Common sense wants a bite, too.
Animals wear sackcloth. All the people in Nineveh and the livestock are to wear sackcloth mourning clothes and repent of their sins so God doesn’t destroy the city. It feels like an exaggeration to help emphasize an idea. It’s hard enough to see sweaters on dogs. But sackcloth on a bull rings like fiction to some Christians.
Jonah converts a pagan nation. Israel’s prophets couldn’t even convert the Israelites.
Jonah gets crazy livid with God for sparing the converted nation. He had told the Assyrians that Nineveh had 40 days to doomsday. Didn’t happen. Jonah told God to kill him now.
Oddest ending of a Bible book. Jonah is sitting by a shade bush that just died in a day, still pouting about God’s compassion. God tells him, “You cared about a bush even though you didn’t plant it or water it. That bush was here one day and gone the next. But it’s not okay for me to care about this huge city of Nineveh? There are more than 120,000 people here” (Jonah 4:10). That’s the kind of zinger Jesus liked to end with when he told a parable.
Many, perhaps most, read it as history
I’m not trying to convert anyone, or talk them into throwing Jonah out with the baby. But there are different ways to find truth in the Bible.
If this is a parable, the lesson seems to be that God cares about everyone, not just the Chosen Nation of Israel. That lesson adds fuel to Paul’s argument: “If you’re one of the Messiah’s people, then you’re a descendant of Abraham. You’re part of the family. And you’re going to inherit what God promised,” (Galatians 3:29).
If Jonah is history, add the lesson that God does miracles and bulls can wear clothes.
Actually, both of those are probably true even if Jonah’s story is a parable.
It’s a really short story. You can read it in about 10 minutes. Give it a read if you can spare a dime.
Jonah was here
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I believe Jonah’s story to be true. Why? It’s no more extraordinary than the other accounts of God doing amazing miracles, parting the Red Sea, Extending the day, etc. Not only that. In 2 Kings , we find that Jonah was an actual prophet living during the time of Jeroboam 2. Lastly because Jesus testified of Jonas in Matthew . He confirmed the repentance of Nineveh not as a parable but as an actual city that repented at the preaching of Jonas. It the account so outlandish that God would be incapable to perform it? No, it falls in line with the entire Bible.
Hi, Dana. You could be right about Jonah being a work of nonfiction. But I think many serious biblical scholars would say your case is not a strong one. Jesus mentioned the “sign of Jonah,” which most scholars seem to interpret as a reference to 3 days in the belly of the fish…a foreshadowing of Jesus buried for 3 days (actually for just parts of 3 days). Jesus’s reference doesn’t necessarily validate the history of the Book of Jonah. Nor does the mention of the prophet himself, elsewhere in the Old Testament. But the Bible presents God as a can-do diety. Yet a pertinent question might be, Would God the Father, represented to us as the Son, put anyone in the belly of a large fish for 3 days? On the flip side, he did put me in Kansas.
I got to this site googling Nineveh. I happen to believe every word of the Bible is true. While reading Mr. Millers comment something stood out, “Jesus buried for 3 days (actually for just parts of 3 days)”. This strikes me as an attempt to minimize that our Savior was physically dead for 3 days. What else in the Bible do you feel is just to difficult to explain or prove with science? Did God really speak the universe into existence? Proverbs 3:5 Trust in the Lord with all thine heart; and lean not unto thine own understanding.
I don’t want to be disrespectful with my disagreement, this is my opinion. The majority of Christian based churches today seem to be more focused on raising money and figuring out how to explain the Bible so that it matches up with the ever changing science books and findings yet the Bible has remained unchanged other than the copyrighted versions that appeal to a watered-down feel good bunch that should be called social clubs and not churches. We need a revival throughout the world that recognizes that God as the creator of all. He has provided us with the written Word yet we choose to only accept what makes sense to us.
As for “serious biblical scholars”, It is better to trust in the Lord than to put confidence in man.