Jonah and the Whale

[Phillip_Rolfes]

Petrel,

Your quotes from the saints prove nothing. First, you keep insisting on the fact that they are from SAINTS. Yes indeed, but saints can also be wrong. Secondly, the quotes from saint Augustine don’t so much demand a literal interpretation as prove such an interpretation to be completely possible. There is a difference.

Your quote from both Trent and Vatican II are completely irrelevant in that they say nothing about the story of Jonah and the whale (or sea monster I suppose it is. ). Those quotes are about the interpretation of the Scriptures according to the sense and Spirit in which they were written. This is where the problem of biblical interpretation and identifying the genre of a text comes in. In dealing with Jonah’s story, it is necessary, according to Church teaching, to first determine what genre of writing we are dealing with. I don’t deny the possibility that it could be an historical event. Nor do I deny the possibility that the author was using an ancient genre of non-historical (according to the modern sense of history) writing in order to get a point across to his readers.

Your quote from St. Irenaeus doesn’t so much refer to the event as it does the account as contained in the Scriptures. Again, there is a difference.

So again, believing that Jonah was literally in the belly of a whale/sea monster for three days is not de fide from the Church. The Church does actually permit a wide spectrum of interpretations of Scriptures without admitting any form of heresy.

Peace.

 

[Phillip_Rolfes]

It is heresay and urban myth that the church does not require us to believe it. Admitting something which is an urban myth is easy and falls off the tongue with no effort. It is altogether a different thing to justify your admission with hard facts.

I suppose what you mean is that the Church will not excommunicate you for believing its a fiction. What does that prove though? The church won’t excommunicate you for not believing that the Holy Spirit came down with tongues of fire on the first century church. Please provide the dogmatic proclamation that we must believe that the Holy Spirit was given on Pentecost. There is none. Does that mean we are free to not believe it?

I have shown that the Council of Trent requires Catholics must not believe a sense of the scripture different to that which was received by Sacred Tradition.

Therefore what you are admitting to is that the Church does not require us to follow the Council of Trent.

The Church celebrates the Great Feast of Pentecost universally (West, East, Orient). “As we pray, so we believe.” The Church, however, does not celebrate a feast of Jonah in the belly of the whale/sea monster.

Again, the quote from Trent was irrelevant to the issue at hand. I have not admitted that the Church does not require us to follow Trent. I have admitted that the Church does require us (per Trent, Vatican II, the CCC, and the other documents and encyclicals concerning the interpretation of Scripture) to interpret the Scriptures according to the sense and Spirit in which they were written.

As far as Sacred Tradition is concerned, quoting two or three saints doesn’t prove that a literal interpretation of Jonah and the whale is, in fact, Tradition. What if some of the modern biblical scholars who deny this literal interpretation were to one day become saints. Their authority, according to your determination, would be just as definitive as that of St. Augustine or St. Irenaeus.

I wonder what St. Thomas Aquinas and St. Bonaventure had to say on the matter, if anything.

 

[Phillip_Rolfes]

You have to remember though that the narrative itself does not speak of “whale” in the sense that we understand it today, but a more vague “a great fish” (Hebrew דָּג גָּדוֹל dag gadol; Greek κήτει μεγάλῳ) AND the Greek word used in the Septuagint and the Gospels, kētos, originally denoted a sort of sea-monster: in Greek mythology, Perseus and Herakles/Hercules have slain cetea. It was only in the medieval period that the Latinized form of the word, cetus, began to refer specifically to the mammals we call ‘whales’. This explains why in early Christian art, Jonah is swallowed by a serpentine aquatic creature like the Cetus of Greco-Roman mythological art - with ears and front paws/legs no less!

http://www.theoi.com/image/img_ketosaithiopios.jpg
Perseus rescuing Andromeda chained to a rock

http://employees.oneonta.edu/farber...ristian/painting/catacombs/jonah_catacomb.jpg
Jonah

Very interesting!!! Thanks for this tidbit.

 

[Phillip_Rolfes]

One final thing, Petrel. I reread the quote from Trent. It says that no one “relying on his own skill, shall,–in matters of faith, and of morals pertaining to the edification of Christian doctrine, –wresting the sacred Scripture to his own senses, presume to interpret the said sacred Scripture contrary to that sense which holy mother Church…” Note the “matters of faith and morals” and the lack of anything to do with historical veracity. Trent was directing this at the various reformers (both within and without the Church) who were using the Scriptures to “prove” their own doctrines. This has nothing to do with interpreting the Scriptures according to the sense in which they were written.

Check out this encyclical letter from Pius XII (who is on his way to canonization). vatican.va/holy_father/pius_xii/encyclicals/documents/hf_p-xii_enc_30091943_divino-afflante-spiritu_en.html

 

[Timothysis]

Phillip Rolfes,

Excellent posts! (though you may be beating a dead whale )

 

[Phillip_Rolfes]

Phillip Rolfes,

Excellent posts! (though you may be beating a dead whale )

Thanks Tim.

 

[petrel]

I do not think that is what I affirm.

I meant “require” in the sense that one can be within the fold of the Church, take the sacraments, and hope for salvation while not believing that something contained in the Old Testament literally happened.

Well your affirmation is somewhat different to others on this forum then. I agree with what you have said, but doubting the literal facts of Jonah and adopting an allegorical interpretation is injurious to the faith and can lead to doubts on other accounts of the scripture. Over time the doubts can multiply until the person doubts matters which are de fide. This is a tactic of the enemy who seeks out cracks in our belief system to exploit.

This does not mean that someone is also not “required” to refrain from teaching error as fact, or refrain from propagating doubts, or is not required to pray for more wisdom so that the individual understanding harmonizes with the understanding of the Church.

Hope that clarifies the matter!

Thankyou, yes it does.
Unfortunately, individuals who doubt the historical facts of Jonah do not always keep it to themselves but often loudly and persistently repeat their views on forums such as this and causing potential injury to the faith of others.

 

[Phillip_Rolfes]

Petrel,

Do you believe that we are also required by the Church to accept a literal interpretation of the creation account in 1-2 Gen.? If not, then why must we accept/admit only a literal interpretation of the account of Jonah and the whale?

Your postulation that doubting the historical facticity of one event in Scripture leads to potentially doubting the historicity of the Scriptures themselves has a number of flaws.

First: it fails to recognize that within the Scriptures there are a large number of different styles/genres of writing. Not all of those genres are literal historical genres. Even within one book in the Scriptures (or one chapter for that matter) there can be a number of literary genres. Read some commentaries on the writings of St. Paul and you will see what I mean. Heck, read a commentary on Paul’s letter to the Romans and you will see what I mean. In that one letter Paul employs numerous styles of writing in order to drive his point home to his readers. This art, however, is sadly lost in translation - it doesn’t carry over from the original Greek to the English.

Second: By failing to recognize the different styles/genres you also fail to understand the original intent of the human author in writing his text (note I make no mention of the Divine Author in this case). If the intention of the human author was not to convey historical facticity particularly as we understand it today, then we cannot interpret that text as historical, although there may be historical elements within the text.

Third: By failing on the two above levels you end up not only misreading the text, but reading into the text something that may not actually be there. This is problematic on a number of levels, but ultimately leads to false interpretations based off of what we want the Scriptures to say, not on what they actually do say.

Fourth: Even if the text is conveying a historical event, you are reading the text itself anachronistically. In other words, you are imposing the modern understanding of history on an ancient text. It is important to bear in mind that the ancients, including those who penned the Scriptures, had a very different concept of history than we do today. Often times, woven into ancient historical treatise, you will find various myths, or parallels, or whatever in the account. A good example of this would be certain paintings on the walls of the Basilica of San Francesco in Assisi. In these paintings various events in the life of St. Francis of Assisi were interpreted as parallel to events in the life of Christ. You find such things also happening in ancient historical texts. It’s not so much that they are conveying historical fact, as interpreting historical events through a specific lens and with a specific purpose.

Finally: By imposing a literal interpretation of the story of Jonah and the whale without first studying the text and commentaries on the text in order to determine genre, purpose, intended audience, etc. you are ignoring the decrees of the Church that such things are to be done in order to come to a fuller understanding of what the Scriptures themselves tell us. You are also ignoring the fact that the Scriptures have multiple layers of meaning, and that no one passage in the Scriptures contain only one possible definitive meaning. This does not ignore the fact that false interpretations are indeed possible. Instead it affirms that a wide number of correct (and non-contradictory) interpretations are possible.

What is important, as Catholics, is that we realize that the story of Jonah and the whale has frequently been interpreted typologically; i.e. as pointing to Christ’s burial and Resurrection. However, this is not the only possible interpretation of the story. And whether or not Jonah was literally in the belly of a whale/sea monster, or simply imprisoned for three days has no effect on the typological understanding of the story as pointing to the burial and Resurrection of Jesus.

 

[Phillip_Rolfes]

but doubting the literal facts of Jonah and adopting an allegorical interpretation is injurious to the faith and can lead to doubts on other accounts of the scripture. Over time the doubts can multiply until the person doubts matters which are de fide. This is a tactic of the enemy who seeks out cracks in our belief system to exploit.

This entire statement is inflated at best.

 

[petrel]

Petrel,
Do you believe that we are also required by the Church to accept a literal interpretation of the creation account in 1-2 Gen.? If not, then why must we accept/admit only a literal interpretation of the account of Jonah and the whale?

Well this is exactly the point. By turning a blind eye to the people so that they accept/admit an allegorical interpretation of Genesis 1 it has opened the floodgates to the people challenging the literal truth of a large range of accounts in scripture. If indeed the church allows us to believe an allegorical interpretation of Genesis 1, it does not follow that therefore an allegorical interpretation of Jonah is allowed. If that logic were so, then every account of scripture could be regarded as allegorical unless the Pope had physically sat ex cathedra and dogmatically proclaimed each and every account of scripture. If the Pope needed to do that then it would appear to everybody and would be a fact that the Pope was the word of God and not Scripture/Tradition.

In fact the Church cannot teach that Genesis 1 is allegorical for the simple reason that nothing in the text indicates that it is allegorical, and also the Sacred Tradition is unanimous in regarding it as a literal account. The same holds true with the story of Jonah and the Whale.

Notice that you have no evidence to prove that the church allows an allegorical interpretation of Jonah. Also, no evidence can be provided to prove that the church allows an allegorical interpretation of Genesis 1. All we can say is that the church has not excommunicated anybody for believing it. That is not the same thing as allowing it. Jaywalking is against the law and just because a policemen sees it happening and does nothing does not mean that it is right, safe or allowed by the laws of the land.

Your postulation that doubting the historical facticity of one event in Scripture leads to potentially doubting the historicity of the Scriptures themselves has a number of flaws.

First: it fails to recognize that within the Scriptures there are a large number of different styles/genres of writing. Not all of those genres are literal historical genres. Even within one book in the Scriptures (or one chapter for that matter) there can be a number of literary genres. Read some commentaries on the writings of St. Paul and you will see what I mean. Heck, read a commentary on Paul’s letter to the Romans and you will see what I mean. In that one letter Paul employs numerous styles of writing in order to drive his point home to his readers. This art, however, is sadly lost in translation - it doesn’t carry over from the original Greek to the English.

My argument does not ignore the different senses of scripture. In fact it upholds it. As the Council of Trent stated, the church cannot change the sense or interpretation which it has received from the earliest times as a Sacred Tradition. Therefore it would be just as wrong to argue that the parable of the good samaritan was an account of a real story, as it is to deny that the story of Jonah is an account of real literal events.

Second: By failing to recognize the different styles/genres you also fail to understand the original intent of the human author in writing his text (note I make no mention of the Divine Author in this case). If the intention of the human author was not to convey historical facticity particularly as we understand it today, then we cannot interpret that text as historical, although there may be historical elements within the text.

Clearly the intent of the divinely inspired human author was to relate actual history in the case of the book of Jonah. It is clear from the style in which it was written, it is clear from the corroboration of Tobit 14 which I notice you have not commented on. It is clear from the statements of Jesus that the men of Ninevah would rise in the judgement (again which you have not commented on). If there were anything in Jonah which would lend us to believe that the author was writing a hyperbole then of course I would agree with you. But there is not. It is written in the style of a literal account and that is exactly how it was taken by Tobit, Jesus, St. Augustine and every church father who ever wrote on the subject. You also have the matter of Sacred Tradition. Some people think that Sacred Tradition is the writings of patristic fathers. It is much more than that. It is the inestimable, vast number of Jews and Christians who have lived from the days of Jonah until this day who ALL believed the story as a literal account. To which we compare a troublesome minority of rationalists and modernists who have endured for a mere 100 years.

Third: By failing on the two above levels you end up not only misreading the text, but reading into the text something that may not actually be there. This is problematic on a number of levels, but ultimately leads to false interpretations based off of what we want the Scriptures to say, not on what they actually do say.

So St. Augustine came to a false interpretation of Jonah which he misread, finding things in it which weren’t actually there. Incredible. Do you believe that you have a better sense of the book of Jonah in the year 2012 than St. Augustine had in ancient times?

 

[petrel]

Fourth: Even if the text is conveying a historical event, you are reading the text itself anachronistically. In other words, you are imposing the modern understanding of history on an ancient text. It is important to bear in mind that the ancients, including those who penned the Scriptures, had a very different concept of history than we do today. Often times, woven into ancient historical treatise, you will find various myths, or parallels, or whatever in the account. A good example of this would be certain paintings on the walls of the Basilica of San Francesco in Assisi. In these paintings various events in the life of St. Francis of Assisi were interpreted as parallel to events in the life of Christ. You find such things also happening in ancient historical texts. It’s not so much that they are conveying historical fact, as interpreting historical events through a specific lens and with a specific purpose.

This is utter rhetoric and spin. Either they believed that it was a true story or they did not?Was there a nation of Ninevah, did Jonah get sent there by God?, did he flee to Tarshish, did he get thrown overboard by the sailors, did he get swallowed by a whale or a big fish, did he pray in the belly of the whale, did the fish cough him up onto the land, did Jonah preach to the Ninevites, did they repent in sackcloth and ashes, did Jonah get sheltered by the gourd which sprung up in a day, did the gourd die, did God chastise Jonah for caring more about the gourd than the 60000 men of Ninevah? Yes or No. Cut out all this spin about “looking through the lens of modern times”. Yes or No. The ancients all thought Yes. Jews and Christians for nearly 3000 years thought Yes. Saints and Doctors of the church thought Yes.

Tell me. Have you read the story?

Finally: By imposing a literal interpretation of the story of Jonah and the whale without first studying the text and commentaries on the text in order to determine genre, purpose, intended audience, etc. you are ignoring the decrees of the Church that such things are to be done in order to come to a fuller understanding of what the Scriptures themselves tell us. You are also ignoring the fact that the Scriptures have multiple layers of meaning, and that no one passage in the Scriptures contain only one possible definitive meaning. This does not ignore the fact that false interpretations are indeed possible. Instead it affirms that a wide number of correct (and non-contradictory) interpretations are possible.

There is no question that there is a great deal of allegory in the book of Jonah. Jesus referred to one such allegory in reference to his death and resurrection. Noting obvious allegorical elements in a story is not the same thing as saying that the story is not literally true. This is the genius of God’s working in human history. He makes real events allegorical of future events. Only God can do that. He is the author of human history. Do you want to limit God to have the capacity of a mere human. Cannot you see that a real story can contain allegorical elements?

What is important, as Catholics, is that we realize that the story of Jonah and the whale has frequently been interpreted typologically; i.e. as pointing to Christ’s burial and Resurrection. However, this is not the only possible interpretation of the story. And whether or not Jonah was literally in the belly of a whale/sea monster, or simply imprisoned for three days has no effect on the typological understanding of the story as pointing to the burial and Resurrection of Jesus.

It has everything to do with it because Jesus used this as the only sign to the Jews of his death and resurrection. Now we are told that this sign was a fiction. So you want us to believe that God provided a fictional sign of his death and resurrection. Worse still it leads people to conclude that if Jonah in the Whale was a fiction then maybe the death and resurrection is a fiction as well. And its true. I have met Catholics who DO NOT BELIEVE IN THE RESURRECTION. They go to mass, tell their friends of their lack of believe, they take of the sacrament AND THE CHURCH ALLOWS THEM. We live in an age of apostasy and disbelief of staggering proportions, largely led by disbelief in the scriptures.

 

[Phillip_Rolfes]

Well, I can see that Tim was right, I am beating a dead whale. It is very obvious that you (Petrel) have never taken any advanced courses on the study of Scripture. You claim that the style of the story of Jonah and the whale is definitely historical. How do you know? Have you studied and analyzed the original Hebrew texts and understood the literary forms most common in the days that that text was written? Have you then compared it to the text of the Greek Septuagint? As another poster pointed out, are you at least willing to admit that the text is even vague about what kind of sea animal actually even swallowed Jonah up? These are all things that have been hotly debated for years and years now. Heck, the Scriptures themselves have been hotly debated since the Patristic period.

I do not rely on Augustine, nor do I completely trust his interpretation, because he himself was reading the Latin text of the Scriptures, which were themselves a translation of the Greek, which is itself a translation/interpretation of the Hebrew. So in his case he was working from a translation of a translation. He didn’t read either Hebrew or Greek, and I would question how familiar he was with the literary genres contained and utilized in the Scriptures. At least in this I trust modern scholars more because they at least are working from the original languages. I’m not saying, however, that Augustine’s theology is off. By the way, it has been shown by others much smarter than me that the edition of the Latin Vulgate that Augustine was working with had a number of translation errors.

I personally believe the story of Jonah and the whale to be literally true. However, it is not de fide.

Oh, and with regards to the creation account, recent popes - i.e. John Paul II and Benedict - have referred to it as myth. When they say “myth” however, they are referring to the ancient sense of the word, not our modern understanding of it as fiction/falsehood.

 

[Timothysis]

By turning a blind eye to the people so that they accept/admit an allegorical interpretation of Genesis 1 it has opened the floodgates to the people challenging the literal truth of a large range of accounts in scripture. If indeed the church allows us to believe an allegorical interpretation of Genesis 1, it does not follow that therefore an allegorical interpretation of Jonah is allowed.

In the Catholic Encyclopedia published by Our Sunday Visitor, edited by Reverend Peter M.J. Stravinskas Ph.D, S.T.D, with the Archbishop of Philadelphia and the Archbishop of Newark contributing the preface and the forward, it says (under the article Evolution) that *“since the time of St. Augustine, the Genesis account of the process of creation has been recognized to be largely symbolic.” *

Under the article Bible, it reads “Sacred scripture has one author, God. Yet God made use of the authors of Scripture as true authors to communicate revelation by means of inspiration from the Holy Spirit. Therefore, this one book (Sacred Scripture) has one author (God); however, the one book is a collection of books written in divers literary forms, each with its own individual author.”

Under Book of Jonah, "Modern exegetes regard this book, not as a historical narrative, but as a didactic short story about a reluctant prophet of the same name…Older commentators and preachers assumed the historicity of the story, partly because it was divinely inspired and partly because Jesus used Jonah in the whale as a type of His own resurrection from the grave. On second though, neither premise justifies the conclusion drawn therefrom. An inspired parable can be a fictional vehicle for conveying a truth, and fictional characters can serve as very striking types or antitypes.

 

[OraLabora]

Petrel,

Do you believe that we are also required by the Church to accept a literal interpretation of the creation account in 1-2 Gen.? If not, then why must we accept/admit only a literal interpretation of the account of Jonah and the whale?

Your postulation that doubting the historical facticity of one event in Scripture leads to potentially doubting the historicity of the Scriptures themselves has a number of flaws.

First: it fails to recognize that within the Scriptures there are a large number of different styles/genres of writing. Not all of those genres are literal historical genres. Even within one book in the Scriptures (or one chapter for that matter) there can be a number of literary genres. Read some commentaries on the writings of St. Paul and you will see what I mean. Heck, read a commentary on Paul’s letter to the Romans and you will see what I mean. In that one letter Paul employs numerous styles of writing in order to drive his point home to his readers. This art, however, is sadly lost in translation - it doesn’t carry over from the original Greek to the English.

Second: By failing to recognize the different styles/genres you also fail to understand the original intent of the human author in writing his text (note I make no mention of the Divine Author in this case). If the intention of the human author was not to convey historical facticity particularly as we understand it today, then we cannot interpret that text as historical, although there may be historical elements within the text.

Third: By failing on the two above levels you end up not only misreading the text, but reading into the text something that may not actually be there. This is problematic on a number of levels, but ultimately leads to false interpretations based off of what we want the Scriptures to say, not on what they actually do say.

Fourth: Even if the text is conveying a historical event, you are reading the text itself anachronistically. In other words, you are imposing the modern understanding of history on an ancient text. It is important to bear in mind that the ancients, including those who penned the Scriptures, had a very different concept of history than we do today. Often times, woven into ancient historical treatise, you will find various myths, or parallels, or whatever in the account. A good example of this would be certain paintings on the walls of the Basilica of San Francesco in Assisi. In these paintings various events in the life of St. Francis of Assisi were interpreted as parallel to events in the life of Christ. You find such things also happening in ancient historical texts. It’s not so much that they are conveying historical fact, as interpreting historical events through a specific lens and with a specific purpose.

Finally: By imposing a literal interpretation of the story of Jonah and the whale without first studying the text and commentaries on the text in order to determine genre, purpose, intended audience, etc. you are ignoring the decrees of the Church that such things are to be done in order to come to a fuller understanding of what the Scriptures themselves tell us. You are also ignoring the fact that the Scriptures have multiple layers of meaning, and that no one passage in the Scriptures contain only one possible definitive meaning. This does not ignore the fact that false interpretations are indeed possible. Instead it affirms that a wide number of correct (and non-contradictory) interpretations are possible.

What is important, as Catholics, is that we realize that the story of Jonah and the whale has frequently been interpreted typologically; i.e. as pointing to Christ’s burial and Resurrection. However, this is not the only possible interpretation of the story. And whether or not Jonah was literally in the belly of a whale/sea monster, or simply imprisoned for three days has no effect on the typological understanding of the story as pointing to the burial and Resurrection of Jesus.

Another great contribution illustrating what seperates Catholics from fundamentalists. It is precisely this intelligent view of exegesis that was a major contributor to my return to the Church 15 years ago.

 

[Phillip_Rolfes]

Another great contribution illustrating what seperates Catholics from fundamentalists. It is precisely this intelligent view of exegesis that was a major contributor to my return to the Church 15 years ago.

While I do, of course, believe that there is a good deal contained within our Faith that is beyond human reason (not irrational, but supra-rational), I also accept that there is a good deal that is perfectly within our grasp. It is our job to study what is within the reach of our intellect, and to humbly contemplate that which is supra-rational.

Regardless, please keep this poor sinner in your prayers. I need all the help I can get.

 

[vz71]

I find it fascinating that there are people that defend a literal view of a whale and at the same time take the words of Saints as evidence for this belief when it can be shown that the whale was not even a whale.

Did this story happen? I do not know.
I do know my salvation does not hinge upon acceptance of the literal view.
If it did, we are all in trouble since the actual meaning of the words is in question.

That being said, I have little doubt that science will eventually discover a way that this story could have happened that fits what is written in scripture reasonably well.
After all, how many things within the bible has science already found to be literal truth where people initially thought allegory?

 

[Phillip_Rolfes]

I find it fascinating that there are people that defend a literal view of a whale and at the same time take the words of Saints as evidence for this belief when it can be shown that the whale was not even a whale.

Did this story happen? I do not know.
I do know my salvation does not hinge upon acceptance of the literal view.
If it did, we are all in trouble since the actual meaning of the words is in question.

That being said, I have little doubt that science will eventually discover a way that this story could have happened that fits what is written in scripture reasonably well.
After all, how many things within the bible has science already found to be literal truth where people initially thought allegory?

Good point.

 

[patg]

I agree that the whale is pretty much beaten to death…

In spite of some assertions in this thread, the church only insists on a literalistic reading of a small handful of scripture passages. As others have said, the truth being taught is rarely dependent on the historicity of the story. The church also accepts that fiction is a perfectly valid vehicle for revelation - Jesus performed almost all of his teaching using fictional stories. Arguments which insist that finding fiction in the bible undermines faith seem totally specious and untenable to me.

This is dogmatically emphasized in Dei Verbum:

To search out the intention of the sacred writers, attention should be given, among other things, to “literary forms.” For truth is set forth and expressed differently in texts which are variously historical, prophetic, poetic, or of other forms of discourse.

The authors are also given full reign to express the truths of revelation in the form of their choosing as human authors:

*In composing the sacred books, God chose men and while employed by Him they made use of their powers and abilities, so that with Him acting in them and through them, they, as true authors, consigned to writing everything and only those things which He wanted. *

Additionally, we are required to consider what a contemporary reader would understand:

The interpreter must investigate what meaning the sacred writer intended to express and actually expressed in particular circumstances by using contemporary literary forms in accordance with the situation of his own time and culture. For the correct understanding of what the sacred author wanted to assert, due attention must be paid to the customary and characteristic styles of feeling, speaking and narrating which prevailed at the time of the sacred writer, and to the patterns men normally employed at that period in their everyday dealings with one another.

The story of Jonah is full of signs that the contemporary reader would not have taken as history. Its author had come to the realization that God loved other nations. To teach such an insight would be considered nothing short of treason to God and country. How was he to confront his people with this radical insight? The author of the book of Jonah solved this problem by composing a humorous fictional narrative as a means of teaching his audience a profound but frightening religious truth. Evidence in the setting, the plot, and the tone indicates that the intent of the author is not to report history.

For the same reasons, the birth narratives of Matthew and Luke are mostly fiction - they exactly match the same stories about other significant people of the time and clearly have the formal literary form known as Infancy Narrative.

 

[petrel]

Well, I can see that Tim was right, I am beating a dead whale. It is very obvious that you (Petrel) have never taken any advanced courses on the study of Scripture.

Well that is certainly a rather condescending comment.
It is true that I have not. I receive the scriptures like a little child, just like I pray that I will receive the kingdom of God. When I read the story of Jonah to my children they quite happily believe that it all happened. The question as to whether or not it might be just a myth never occurs to them. They believe in a simple trusting way.
I have no doubt that the cleverness of men which is encountered in “advanced courses” drives out this simplicity of faith and is the ruination of many souls, particularly in modern times where many if not most of our Catholic universities and theological colleges are overrun with modernists and rationalists.
Does this mean I am ignorant. Certainly not. I have read the scriptures all of my life and have read widely from the patristic fathers and reputable traditional Catholic theologians. I am also well versed in the various Council of the Church.

You claim that the style of the story of Jonah and the whale is definitely historical. How do you know? Have you studied and analyzed the original Hebrew texts and understood the literary forms most common in the days that that text was written? Have you then compared it to the text of the Greek Septuagint? As another poster pointed out, are you at least willing to admit that the text is even vague about what kind of sea animal actually even swallowed Jonah up? These are all things that have been hotly debated for years and years now. Heck, the Scriptures themselves have been hotly debated since the Patristic period.

I have no problem debating whether it was a whale, fish or sea monster. I use the term Whale for convenience only and am open to consider that it might have been a large fish or sea monster. This is only because the scripture and sacred tradition is disputable upon this point. However conceding that whether it was a whale or a fish is an entirely different thing to questioning whether or not there even was a sea creature which swallowed Jonah. The scriptures have been hotly debated since the patristic period it is true. But they have not been hotly debated with regards to whether or not the story of Jonah literally happened or not. That was a settled and well believed fact until the last 100 years. Just because some points of scripture have been hotly debated in the past does not give us the right to hotly debate every point of scripture, even those points which have been settled for almost 3000 years.

 

[petrel]

I do not rely on Augustine, nor do I completely trust his interpretation because he himself was reading the Latin text of the Scriptures, which were themselves a translation of the Greek, which is itself a translation/interpretation of the Hebrew. So in his case he was working from a translation of a translation. He didn’t read either Hebrew or Greek, and I would question how familiar he was with the literary genres contained and utilized in the Scriptures.

If this is true then we cannot rely on the writings of the patristic fathers at all. And yet the church constantly defers to the patristic fathers as sources of Sacred Tradition. Have a look at our catechism which cites the patristic fathers time and again. Clearly the Church takes great stock in the interpretations of the fathers despite the fact that they lacked the nuances of the Hebrew language.

At least in this I trust modern scholars more because they at least are working from the original languages. I’m not saying, however, that Augustine’s theology is off. By the way, it has been shown by others much smarter than me that the edition of the Latin Vulgate that Augustine was working with had a number of translation errors.

Incredible. You rely on modern scholars who are neither Saints nor Doctors and cast suspicion upon Augustine. Since when did a modern Catholic scholar ever look into the scriptures and come back with a glowing endorsement of the literal truth of the scripture. Rather the reverse, they come back with watered down versions which cast doubt upon things held to be true for generations. They regard themselves and their learnedness to be of greater worth than the scholars who preceded them. This of course is the height of arrogance. The Church has encouraged the study of the original languages of the scripture. But that scholarly discipline was not ordered to overthrow or cast doubt upon the established Word of God. It was ordered to flesh it out and find ever deeper and richer nuances of the revealed Word of God. Therefore much of what has passed as scholarship over the last 100 years is disordered and contrary to the intent of the Councils and various encyclicals on the subject.

I personally believe the story of Jonah and the whale to be literally true. However, it is not de fide.

Why did God even bother to divinely inspire the book of Jonah? So that we can all decide for ourselves whether to believe it or not depending on whether we think it is de fide or not? Either the Word of God has authority over us or we might as well throw the whole thing out. And by Word of God I mean the combination of Sacred Scripture and Sacred Tradition by which in combination we know certainly that the book of Jonah is a true story. of literal events.

Oh, and with regards to the creation account, recent popes - i.e. John Paul II and Benedict - have referred to it as myth. When they say “myth” however, they are referring to the ancient sense of the word, not our modern understanding of it as fiction/falsehood.

I’m not going to challenge you on this point of creation as that will just open up another can of words. But I will express a point of frustration. Instead of saying in a casual way “The pope said this or that”. How about taking the effort of finding the quote and producing it for us. I have done that with St. Augustine and many others.