Jonah

For other uses, see Jonah (disambiguation).

The Prophet Jonah, as depicted by Michelangelo in the Sistine Chapel

Jonah (Hebrew: יוֹנָה, Modern: Yona, Tiberian: jon'ɔh ; Arabic: يونس, Yunus or يونان, Yunaan ; Latin Ionas ; "Dove") was a prophet in the Hebrew Bible (Tanakh/Old Testament) and Qur'an who was swallowed by a great fish.

The Story of Jonah

Jonah is first mentioned, in 2 Kings 14:25, as a prophet in the time of King Jeroboam II. However, the only other mention of him in the Hebrew Bible is in the Book of Jonah. He was the son of Amittai ("True"), from the Galilean village of Gath-hepher, near Nazareth. God orders Jonah to prophesy to the city of Nineveh. Jonah does not want to, and tries to avoid God's command by going to Joppa and sailing to Tarshish. A huge storm arises. The sailors, realizing this is no ordinary storm, cast lots, and learn that Jonah is to blame. Jonah admits this, and states that if he is thrown overboard, the storm will cease. The sailors try to get the ship to shore but are forced to throw him overboard, and the seas calm. Jonah is miraculously saved by being swallowed by a large fish. In chapter two, while in the great fish, Jonah prays to God and asks forgiveness and thanks God for being so forgiving, and, as a result, God commands the fish to vomit Jonah out.

God again orders Jonah to visit Nineveh and prophesy to its inhabitants. He therefore goes there and walks through it, crying "In forty days Nineveh shall be destroyed." The Ninevites believe his word, and appoint a public fast, from the least of the people to the greatest; the king himself putting on sackcloth and sitting in ashes. God has compassion and does not bring His wrath against the city at that time.

Jonah is embittered by this. He questions the need for his journey, stating that since God is merciful, it was inevitable that God would yield to the Ninevites' entreaties--what need, then, for Jonah's journey? After this he retires out of the city and makes a shelter for himself, waiting to see if the city will be destroyed or not.

The Lord causes a plant (in Hebrew a kikayon) to grow over his shelter, giving Jonah some shade from the sun. Later, a worm bites the plant's root and it withers. Jonah, being now exposed to the burning heat of the sun, becomes faint and desires that God take him out of the world.

The Lord says unto him, "Do you have reason to be concerned at the death of a plant, which cost you nothing, which rises one night and dies the next; yet would you not have me pardon such a city as Nineveh, in which are 120,000 persons not able to distinguish their right hand from their left, and many beasts besides?"

Jonah in Islam

Like many important biblical characters, Jonah is also important in Islam as a prophet who is faithful to God (Allah) and delivers his messages. He is known to Muslims by his Arabic name, Yunus. Sura 10 of the Qur'an is named "Sura Yunus" after him, though there is only one reference to him in that sura, in verse 98. However, the full story of Prophet Jonah was mentioned in the quran in Surah (chapter) 37. Verses 139-149

37:139 So also was Jonah among those sent (by Us).

37:140 When he ran away (like a slave from captivity) to the ship (fully) laden,

37:141 He (agreed to) cast lots, and he was condemned:

37:142 Then the big Fish did swallow him, and he had done acts worthy of blame.

37:143 Had it not been that he (repented and) glorified God,

37:144 He would certainly have remained inside the Fish till the Day of Resurrection.

37:145 But We cast him forth on the naked shore in a state of sickness,

37:146 And We caused to grow, over him, a spreading plant of the gourd kind.

37:147 And We sent him (on a mission) to a hundred thousand (men) or more.

37:148 And they believed; so We permitted them to enjoy (their life) for a while.

37:149 Now ask them their opinion: Is it that thy Lord has (only) daughters, and they have sons?-

Note: In verse 139 god says: sent by "us", the usage of plural is a type of respect used in Arabic language, And has no reference or relation to Trinity.

When Muhammad went to the city of Ta'if to see if its leaders would allow him to preach his message from there rather than Makkah 10 years after receiving revelation, he was cast from the city by the urchins and children. Taking shelter in the garden of Utbah and Shaybah, these two members of the Quraysh tribe sent their servant, Addas, to serve grapes to their Qurayshi brother (in the Jahili culture, tribe bonds superseded their displeasure over his Prophethood.) The Prophet asked Addas where he was from and the servant replied Niniwah. "The town of Yunus, son of Matta," the Prophet replied. Addas was shocked, he knew that the pagan Arabs knew not of this Prophet. He then asked how Muhammad knew of this man. "We are brothers," the Prophet replied, "Yunus was a Prophet of Allah, and I, too, am a Prophet of Allah." Addas immediately accepted Islam and kissed the hands and feet of the Prophet.

Jonah in Christianity

Jesus made reference to Jonah when He was asked for a miraculous sign by the Pharisees and teachers of the Law.

"He (Jesus) answered, “A wicked and adulterous generation asks for a miraculous sign! But none will be given it except the sign of the prophet Jonah. For as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of a huge fish, so the Son of Man will be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth. The men of Nineveh will stand up at the judgment with this generation and condemn it; for they repented at the preaching of Jonah, and now one greater than Jonah is here." (Matthew 12:39-41)

Jonah is regarded as a saint by a number of Christian denominations. He is commemorated as a prophet in the Calendar of Saints of the Lutheran Church - Missouri Synod on September 22. On the Eastern Orthodox liturgical calendar, his feast day is September 21. He is commemorated with the other Minor prophets in the Calendar of saints of the Armenian Apostolic Church on July 31.

Jonah in Rabbinic Literature

see Jonah in Rabbinic Literature

Jonah in The Bahá'í Faith

The Bahá'í Faith generally views Jonah as a prophet, however there is a passage in the Qur'an which may support his being a Manifestation of God, as the term apostle is generally associated with Manifestations of God .

The Person of Jonah

His personal history is mainly to be gathered from the Book of Jonah, traditionally ascribed to the prophet himself, although this is not stated in Scripture. In the book, Jonah is a reluctant and uncompassionate prophet. This story contains a twofold characterization of Jonah: (1) a reluctant prophet of doom to heathen Nineveh, and (2) a "Son of man" type. The character of Jonah, who wants Nineveh destroyed, is contrasted with that of God, who is compassionate toward Jew and Gentile, human and animal.

The Fish

Depiction of Jonah and the "great fish" on the south doorway of the Gothic-era Dom St. Peter in Worms, Germany

Though it is often called a whale today, the Hebrew, as throughout scripture, refers to no species in particular, simply sufficing with "great fish" or "big fish" (whales are mammals and not fish, but no such distinction was made in antiquity). Some Bible scholars suggest the size and habits of the White Shark correspond better to the representations given of Jonah's being swallowed, however normally an adult human is too large to be swallowed whole.In Jonah 2:1 (1:17 in English translation), the original Hebrew text reads dag gadol (דג גדול), which literally means "great fish."

The Septuagint translates this phrase into Greek as ketos megas (κητος μεγας). The term ketos alone means "huge fish," and in Greek mythology the term was closely associated with sea monsters, including sea serpents. (See the Theoi Project "Ketea" for more information regarding Greek mythology and the Ketos.) Jerome later translated this phrase as piscis granda in his Latin Vulgate. However, he translated ketos as cetus in Matthew 12:40.

At some point, cetus became synonymous with "whale" (the study of whales is now called cetology). In his 1534 translation, William Tyndale translated the phrase in Jonah 2:1 as "greate fyshe," and he translated the word ketos (Greek) or cetus (Latin) in Matthew 12:40 as "whale." Tyndale's translation was, of course, later incorporated into the Authorized Version of 1611. Since then, the "great fish" in Jonah 2 has been most often interpreted as a whale.

There is anecdotal evidence that the throats of many large whales, as well as possibly the whale shark, could accommodate passage of an adult human.. The story of Jonah mentions "weeds" wrapped around Jonah's head, perhaps to shield his face with seaweed against the acid.

However, doubts have been cast that any existent whale or fish would be able to repeat the feat described, either due to size of the mouth, narrowness of the throat, or because it diverges so wildly from its normative eating habits. The largest whales- the baleen whales, a group which includes the blue whale- eat plankton, and "it is commonly said that this species would be choked if it attempted to swallow a herring." (Lydekker's New Natural History, Vol, III, p. 6) Sperm whales, on the other hand, have "a small mouth... Its food is torn to pieces before being swallowed," according to Dr. C. H. Townsend, a former Acting Director of the American Museum of Natural History and the New York Aquarium. He further states, "There is no evidence that such a feat would be possible." As for the whale shark, Dr. E. W. Gudger, an Honorary Associate in Ichthyology at American Museum of Natural History, noted, "While the mouth is cavernous, the throat itself is only four inches wide and has a sharp elbow or bend behind the opening. This gullet would not permit the passage of a man's arm." As he also in another publication noted, "The whale shark is not the fish that swallowed Jonah." (The Scientific Monthly, March, 1940, p. 227)

One may argue that applying contemporary taxonomy from a literalist perspective does little to further our understanding of this legend, written in a time when such knowledge did not yet exist (and as such was less relevant than in our time) and all large sea creatures had the same symbolism so that a generic term could easily suffice.

Jonah, Jason and Gilgamesh

In 1995 the classicist Gildas Hamel connected the story of Jonah with that of the Greek hero Jason in a similar manner as Joseph Campbell had done before ("Taking the Argo to Nineveh: Jonah and Jason in a Mediterranean context," Judaism Summer, 1995; online). Drawing on the Book of Jonah and Greco-Roman sources—including Greek vases and the accounts of Apollonius of Rhodes, Valerius Flaccus and Orphic Argonautica—Hamel identifies a number of shared motifs, including the names of the heroes, the presence of a dove, the idea of "fleeing" like the wind and causing a storm, the attitude of the sailors, the presence of a sea-monster or dragon threatening the hero or swallowing him, and the form and the word used for the "gourd" (kikayon, a hapax legomenon within the Hebrew Bible). Hamel argues the Hebrew author was reacting to and adapting this mythological material to communicate his own, quite different message.

The elements of Jonah and Jason disappearing into the sea (or monster) and the kikayon reflect those in the much older Sumerian epic of Gilgamesh. Gilgamesh obtains the plant at the bottom of the sea. Both the belly of the beast and the bottom of the sea represent the chthonic Netherworld to which the shamanic hero must descent on his quest.. In the Book of Jonah a worm (in Hebrew tola'ath, "maggot") bites the plant's root causing it to wither, in the epic of Gilgamesh the plant is eaten by a serpent. In ancient times "worm" (or wurm or wyrm) could mean maggot, worm, serpent or dragon.[2]

External links

• The Book of Jonah (Hebrew and English)

• The Book of Jonah (actual text)

• Jewish Encyclopedia: Jonah
• Catholic Encyclopedia: Jonah
• Jonah from an Islamic viewpoint

• Studies on the Book of Jonah
• A Guide to Jonah

 This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Easton, Matthew George (1897). Easton's Bible Dictionary (New and revised ed.). T. Nelson and Sons. {{cite encyclopedia}}: Missing or empty |title= (help)
 This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Emil G. Hirsch, Karl Budde, and Solomon Schechter (1901–1906). "Jonah". In Singer, Isidore; et al. (eds.). The Jewish Encyclopedia. New York: Funk & Wagnalls.{{cite encyclopedia}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)