That is what I cant stand about the historical critical school of thought, it goes against all traditional understanding. It makes the Bible out to be a bunch of myths and forgeries. Jesus himself quoted Jonah as history!
To be precise, Jesus alluded to Jonah as an
example. “Just as Jonah was in the stomach of the sea monster for three days and three nights, so the Son of Man will be in the heart of the earth for three days and three nights.” He didn’t say outright: “That was historical fact” or “That was just fiction, that didn’t really happen.”
Despite what some people like to say, I don’t think this saying really settles the issue of whether Jonah is historical, or even addresses it directly. To be blunt: Jesus or the early Christians are speaking a different language than us. They aren’t really interested in such questions many of us are currently preoccupied with such as whether the documentary hypothesis is true or not or whether Adam and Eve are historical or whether David’s kingdom really existed or something. Jesus alluding to Jonah is
not a statement about the work’s historicity - that’s kinda missing the point of the saying. As someone said, “Jesus Christ came into the world to be its Saviour, not an authority on biblical criticism.”
This quote addresses fundamentalists specifically, but I think it also holds water here:
The high status that the Old Testament holds in the minds of Jesus and the early Christians will be granted by the most critical as a matter of historical fact, and therefore the fundamentalist efforts to prove this are of no importance. On the other hand, the fundamentalist attempts to argue that these sayings of Jesus and the New Testament writers about Jonah, Daniel, Moses and other persons and events prove the historical accuracy of the Old Testament are futile, because they make no attempt to show that Jesus or the early Christians were interested in such questions as the authorship of books, the presence of sources, or the historical accuracy of data and figures.
Of course I’m not saying that the Bible is in error or something. What I am saying is that in trying to prove the historicity of Scripture, cherry-picking every OT quotation or allusion made by Jesus or St. Paul and saying, “Oh look, Jesus alluded to Jonah! That must mean Jonah’s story is factual!” is a weak argument. And granted, one that would not make any sense to non-Christians: we Christians would of course say that Jesus is God (as well as man), and since He is God, whatever He says could not be false. But if you’re talking to people who don’t even share that belief, that just sounds like circular reasoning.
