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Intro: Admit it, you yourself have wondered about a fish swallowing a dude and all that, right?
That’s okay, I have, too. The good news is that being an ambassador or Christian casemaker doesn’t mean you have to check your brain at the door. We don’t often match the Bible read-through and the apologetics segments, but Jonah’s a well-known story and we should be prepared.
Sponsor: (none today)
Bible segment: Jonah, NASB (New American Standard Bible)
Apologetics segment:
Paraphrasing what Joe Sprinkle argues in the study notes of the Christian Standard Bible: (1)
Jonah is mentioned in 2 Kings 14:25, a historical narrative, and is described as a real person (and a prophet).
Jonah is described as demonstrating imperfect character. If a myth, he’d have been represented positively if not heroically.
As a book, Jonah is part the Old Testament. In the Hebrew Bible, this is part of a singular work called the “Book of the Twelve,” a collection of twelve Minor Prophets. If the other 11 books are considered genuine, historical prophets (they are), it’s reasonable to conclude that Jonah was considered a historical account as well when it was included.
If a God could create the cosmos ex nihilo or resurrect a dead guy, it’s not a stretch to think He could accomplish a supernatural work using a big fish with breathable air in its stomach. Or cause a plant to grow big overnight.
Was Jesus wrong? Jesus himself spoke of Jonah not only as a real person, but as if being in the fish and preaching in Ninevah were real events (Mt 12:39-41, Lk 11:29-32). Calling Jonah a myth as a man or as a story would be saying Jesus wrong.
And there are reasonable explanations for a couple accusations of historical difficulty:
Jonah, the book, appears to overstate the size of Ninevah, but
“three day walk” could refer to A) a circumference that included surrounding lands or B) the amount of time it’d take to preach on every street corner.
Too, “extremely great city” literally means “important to God,” which means it might not refer to size.
While to date there is no Assyrian evidence that the city repented, that doesn’t mean that it was “saved” long enough to affect all the art.
Take action segment:
Pray through Psalm 129
Watch The Bible Project’s video on Jonah (below) if you haven’t already.
Love you!
-R
Roger Courville, CSP is a globally-recognized expert in digitally-extended communication and connection, an award-winning speaker, award-winning author, and a passionately bad guitarist. Follow him on Twitter -- @RogerCourville and @JoinForTheHope – or his blog: www.forthehope.org.
Sources and resources
(1) Joe Sprinkle, “Jonah,” in CSB Study Bible: Notes, ed. Edwin A. Blum and Trevin Wax (Nashville, TN: Holman Bible Publishers, 2017), 1400.