Some thoughts on Jonah and History
March 10th, 2009 by Rory Shiner Posted in Theology
At church on Sunday night issue of Jonah and history came up. In what was not my finest ever question time, I stumbled out a pretty poor answer. In part of it I indicated my opinion that Jonah might be more parable than history. I thought I’d have a second bite of the cherry on that one. Here are 5 thoughts on the Bible and History:
1. If you want to say that a story containing miracles isn’t historical because it contains miracles, you need to return to your doctrine of God. If God created all things and if he upholds the Universe by the word of his power, then surely it’s no problem for him to keep a bloke alive in a fish for three days, or to cause a whole city to repent, or whatever. The presence of strange events is no reason to deny its historicity.
2. I think it’s a good instinct to assume history until proven otherwise.
3. Nevertheless, we are used to parts of the Bible that tell the truth without telling historical truth. So for example the story of the Prodigal Son or the Good Samaritan are true, but not in the sense that they tell the truth about history. We all get that they are telling a different kind of truth (“what happens”, as opposed to “what happened”), and they lose none of their power or truthfulness when we discover that they “never happened.”
4. Therefore, the question of Jonah and history is not “this is weird, maybe it didn’t happen?” It is rather: “What kind of literature is this?” If, like 1 and 2 Kings or the Gospel of Luke it presents as history, then we believe that part of the truth it is tell us is historical truth. If, however, there are clear literary indicators that it is a parable (or poem or whatever) like the Prodigal Son or the Good Samaritan, then there may be grounds for thinking it is telling the truth in a different way to the way history tells the truth. Follow?
5. On these grounds (literary, not weird-factor) I tend to think Jonah is probably more of a parable than history. That is, it is telling us the truth about what happens (people lose sight of God’s grace for the lost), but maybe not what happened. I don’t hold this view with much passion, and could easily be persuaded the other way. Feel free to give it a go.
Finally, things can be even more complicated! Have a look at the parable of the Tenants in Mark 12:1-12 and ask “What sort of truth is this telling? Stuff that happened, or stuff that happens?” See, not as easy as you think, is it?
11 Responses to “Some thoughts on Jonah and History”
By Jon Rumble on Mar 10, 2009
Hey Rores, I’m leaning towards ‘historical until proven otherwise’
An argument for not being parabolic:
1) Length – there is no other example of a parable of this length in scripture.
2) Breadth – parables are very focused, with one point. Jonah has a point, but it makes lots of points along the way.
3) Style – reads as historical narrative, interspersed with a psalm or hymn of thanksgiving (normal for Hebrew narrative).
4) Jonah – is a historical figure (2 Kings 14:25), parables’ characters tend to be unnamed and not historical.
Here’s some reading for anyone who’s interested, a couple of pages of excerpts from New Bible Commentary, New Bible Dictionary, Hard Sayings of the Bible, which summarises the issues.
ps. Rores, would it be fair to say that the point you’re making is not so much that it isn’t historical, but that it doesn’t matter – the meaning is the same?
By Brian on Mar 10, 2009
I’m with Jon.
Chapter one reads like history, particularly with reference to the named and genealogised characer of Jonah, and the named and to an extent historically significant places. Also, it seems to have a fairly narative tone and flow.
Chapter two reads more like a psalm, but its a prayer of a dude in trouble, so thats not surprising.
Chapter three reads like some interesting combination of history and parable, I think it might be just severely abridged history, (why assume that because we only have one line of Jonah’s sermon recorded that that was the whole thing), I think the author may have just written it in short story style, included only what he needed to make his point, almost parabolic history then I suppose.
Chapter four reads most like a parable, but is that a mini parable to make a point in this bit of God’s history of salvation, rather than the whole book being a big parable to make a point in god’s entire history of salvation?
Rores – Loved point 1. Good call.
Has it occurred to anyone else that this is really where the Old Testament jumped the shark?
By Eric Chu on Mar 10, 2009
I’m with Jon and Brian as well, but I can see where Rory is coming from.
The narrative is structured in a way that if read as a parable it would make a lot more sense.
The best example that I can think of at the moment is Jonah’s sermon. I think it is meant to be understood literally as that’s all Jonah preached. Because if you read chapter 4 (Spoiler) you found out that Jonah isn’t keen for the Ninevites to repent so he’s actually trying his worst – which further reflect God’s soverignty and work. Now in real life would that be what Jonah did? I don’t know but I’ve found that with the Book of Jonah, more often than not the author is making specific teaching like a parable would, but a historical text wouldn’t neccessary do so (but then there’s Acts)
So I don’t know, but Jesus certainly treats it as real history (along with Soloman and Queen of the South).
NB According to other reference of Jonah in 2Kings 14, it would have meant that he would’ve preached at least 30-60 year (the number slipped my mind) before Nineveh’s destruction, so that would be 1-2 generations for them to fall back onto their sinful ways.
By Rory Shiner on Mar 10, 2009
Firstly, there’s gotta be someone out there who agrees with me. Feel free to post a note if you do!
Secondly, I’m so not invested in this view, so happy to be argued out of it. However, in reply:
Jon:
1. Yes, it is long for a parable. That’s okay.
2. On the contrary, I do think it really has only one point.
3. Again on the contrary, I don’t think it reads much like historical narrative. Gives you very few of the details that historical narrative normally would. Read any passage you like from, say, 1 and 2 Kings, 1 and 1 Chronicles etc, and (I think) you immediately feel your in a different narrative world to Jonah.
Brian:
1. I reckon naming Jonah could be part of making it sound like a normal prophetic book, before sending you off on one of its many twists and turns. Also, I do think Jonah was historical. No problem there.
2. “Jumping the shark”. Very funny.
Eric:
I don’t think the references from Jesus are conclusive. That is, Jesus says that the men of Nineveh will stand up at the day of judgement and condemn that generation. Most people would not take this literally (that is, literally think the day of judgement will involve the Ninevites yelling at the people of first century Palestine. But who knows. Maybe it will). It could be that Jesus just draws in a famous story of pagans converting and uses that to contrast the present generation.
Good point though. If what Jesus said demanded an historical understanding of Jonah, that would be enough to sway me back.
By Nigel Gordon on Mar 10, 2009
In the original language Jonah us swallowed by a male fish and vomitted by a female fish. That might be some support for at least history that has been retold with interpretation. Or even evidence for parable.
By Liana Hunt on Mar 10, 2009
Hm, yes this very question caused the most heated morning tea debate amongst first years at college last year! Re Jon’s 2nd point that parables have only one point. I think this view (first put forward by Adolf Juelicher late 19th century) has generally been discarded in favour of one put forward by Craig Blomberg. Blomberg argues that parables make one main point associated with each main character/group of characters. Most parables make three points (eg master, good servant, bad servant), but some make one or two. For more on this: CL Blomberg Interpreting the Parables IVP 1990.
I guess the obvious caveat to this point is whether interpretive methods for NT parables can be applied to OT!
By Craig Tucker on Mar 11, 2009
Rory, I reckon there are good reasons to read Jonah as not being history. Again, not because its weird and perhaps miraculous, but because of the kind of literature it is.
I think your point about the parables was just to cite an example of a fictional story still teaching truth as inspired Scripture. A better example might be Wisdom Literature. Is Job an historical figure? Lots of reasons to suspect not – but rather an idealised character to present an issue regarding theodicy. A great example of a long book that is not historical? In fact, Jonah has a lot of similarities with Job as a wisdom book.
Do we need to find historical evidence of all Nineveh repenting? (Down to the cows.) Or is Jonah presenting us with a hypothetical Ninevah undergoing wonderful repentance in order to expose the truth of our own hardness of heart?
By Jon Rumble on Mar 11, 2009
@Nigel
I’m getting male endings for the 3 instances of the noun fish and male verb ending for vomited, am I missing something?
(Good old Logos
)
By Adrian Fry on Mar 11, 2009
Thanks for posting that document Jon, I thought the first article was the most persuasive, and that’s probably where I find myself at the moment.
Other observations:
It seems apparent to me that ‘tarshish’ refers less to a specific place and more along the idea of ‘escaping to anywhere but here’. Which follows the logic that the narrative Jonah provides meaning though metaphor rather than simply historical geography.
The idea of ‘historical until proven otherwise’- perhaps we hold to this tighter than most other people and cultures have held to this in the past. Not to say that Jonah isn’t or can’t be historically true, or that other people haven’t believed it to be true, but maybe our inclination or disposition is somewhat stronger than those preceding us.
Perhaps it is harder for us to hold something as true, while not always holding historical reliability or verifiability alongside it.
I know thats my tendency at least.
By Ben Rae on Mar 14, 2009
I’m not really persuaded that there are clear literary indicators that Jonah is a parable. Sure, it’s quite different to 1 Kings or Luke, but those books are quite different from each other and different again from books like Esther or Ruth. There are lots of different ways you can write history.
Certainly Jonah has some similarities to Job (which may or may not be historical), but it also has many similarities to Ruth (which most evangelicals would say clearly is historical).
In fact Jonah and Ruth strike me as being quite similar in their construction. Both books are relatively short, pretty much self-contained, and consist of a only a few distinct scenes and characters. Both are tightly written with many literary devices including word plays, extraordinary coincidences, and miraculous reversals.
Admittedly Ruth has more references to Israelite history outside the story, but Jonah son of Amittai is clearly an historical person (unlike Job where it’s much more ambiguous).
If it was suddenly proven that Jonah wasn’t historical I don’t think I’d lose much sleep over it, but I guess my question is, ‘What exactly are the literary reasons for concluding that Jonah is not historical?’ Does it boil down to anything more substantial than ‘Jonah is tightly written and lots of amazing stuff happens?’
PS: Craig, the cows don’t repent, but they avoid the destruction that presumably would have come on Nineveh if the people hadn’t repented. Nineveh historically repenting vs. exposing the hardness of our own hearts seems like a false dichotomy to me.
By Joshua Kuswadi on May 19, 2009
I’m convinced it’s historical too, but am happy to be persuaded otherwise. Three reasons for this are:
- The reference in 2 Kings 14.25 to Jonah son of Amittai seems to refer to the same guy.
- Jesus’ reference to Jonah as a sign for the Jewish people of his time, suggests to me that the similarities between Jonah and himself assume Jonah was a real person.
- Most convincing to me is a reason I haven’t heard or read anywhere else, so I could be relying too much on it; namely that Jonah has been kept for us as one of the 12 minor prophets. I’ve always assumed the other 11 prophets are historical people, so my default is that Jonah is too.
As I said, I’m more than happy to be persuaded otherwise. Preferably soon, since I’m in the middle of preaching through Jonah at my church