Could Jonah have been swallowed by a whale/giant sea creature?

[Klax (The only thing that matters is faith expressed in love.)]

See my final sentence above.

Furthermore, you are right Vance.

It is deliberately absurd hyperbole. I had fallen - for years - in to the trap of first trying to make the story work as history and then as story projecting modern sophistication on to the writer.

So thank you for that loop of cognitive dissonance, the pain, the embarrassment are worth it!

And my apologies.

[TedDavis (Dr. Ted Davis)]

@beaglelady

The Rev. John Polkinghorne, who is both an ordained priest and a brilliant scientist, says that Job is best thought of as a play.

I have long held the same view of Job, which is my favorite OT book (Jonah being next in line). I tell students that (IMO) Job is to real events what Shakespeare’s “historical” plays are to real events. I doubt that God, Job, and others actually spoke soliloquies in the Hebrew equivalent of iambic pentameter. To take the analogy further: Job is as crucial to Jewish and Christian theology as Shakespeare is to English drama.

[Ecerotops (Earl L Dunn)]

Hello Sealkin,

@Sealkin

My question is, if it is possible for God to do these things which science say is impossible, then could be possible for God to preserve a man in the belly of a sea beast for three days and have him live? That is my topic i give for today.

Even though it may be hard to understand how Jonah could have lived in the belly of a fish, and easy to understand why some may doubt whether the story may be true or not,

can’t we rely on the phrase, “Now the LORD had prepared a great fish to swallow up Jonah (Jonah 1:17).” as the key to help us uphold our trust in what was written?

Although we were not told how, the fact that the Lord prepared the fish makes a world of differences between it and other fish.

Earl

[SkovandOfMitaze (Mi)]

I am not sure if I stated it but I believe there are many reasons to conclude that the story is satire and fictional.

1. You have to reconcile the date Jonah is believed to have been wrote with the other passage that mentions him in Kings and it’s definitely the same prophet.

2. Jonah was a prophet and would have known he could flee God but traveling further away.

3. Jonah who was refusing to preach to the Assyrians ( pagans ) to save their life potentially was willing to die in the ocean to save the pagans on the ship.

4. The grammar shows that the ship was personified and had thoughts of breaking up.

5. A giant fish swallowed him. ( I’ve recently came to the conclusion he died. In Jonah 2 his prayer mentions coming from Sheol and it sounds like he died and was brought back to life).

6. The Assyrians all repented and evening made their animals wear sack cloths and yet Jonah still waited for their destruction.

7. Jonah was sad about a plant dying but had no compassion on all the people.

8. God referred to the Assyrians as so dumb that did not even know their left hand from their right.

The whole story just seems fictional by design to me.

[Reggie_O_Donoghue (RiderOnTheClouds)]

I think reading the Book of Jonah as literal truth takes away from it’s beauty. Not only in it’s message of Mercy, but also in it’s mythopoetic imagery. It’s no surprise that the master of Mythopoeia himsef, Tolkien, wrote a translation of Jonah.

[SkovandOfMitaze (Mi)]

Something else recently pointed out to me that I have never paid attention to before is that in chapter 2 it seems to say Jonah died. That as he dying right before fainting he prayed. But that he cried out from Sheol and darkness and was to the point of death.