Jonah Story Literal or not?

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mr_silly said:
Jesus would not have referred to a story that was not true (unless you do not believe that He possessed divine discernment.)
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Jesus also spoke in parables.

Jonah was a parable - a well known one - so if he referenced it, people would know what he was talking about. Nothing more.
 
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mr_silly said:
Jesus would not have referred to a story that was not true
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Are you claiming that each and every one of the parables that He told to illustrate spiritual truths was also entirely historical?

Could it not be that Jesus spoke of those sorts of passages, even if not historically accurate, in the same sort of way we might reference Paul Bunyan or similar legendary characters, as a sort of cultural shorthand? Because after all I think we can agree that the message is true even if the events did not all happen exactly as described.
 
Jonah is actually a prophet in the court of King Jeraboam. Jonah was responsible for prophecying a great victory before the whale incident.The prophecy was about how the king would restore and extend the lands of that kingdom in Israel. I will post a link

The book that records kings and their courts tells us these people existed.

Jeroboam II restores the boundaries of Israel​

2 Kings 14:17-22 King Amaziah of Judah becomes highly unpopular and flees from Jerusalem to Lachish but is killed there in 767BC. His son Azariah (also called Uzziah) is proclaimed King of Judah in his place.

2 Kings 14:23-29 Jeroboam II becomes King of Israel in 782BC. In accordance with the prophecy of Jonah from Gath Hepher near Nazareth (see Jonah 1:1), Jeroboam II fights the Syrians and recaptures all the land lost to the east of the Jordan during the previous century - from the gates of Hamath south to the Dead Sea (see Map 59 ). This restores the boundaries of Israel to their former extent under King

from

https://www.thebiblejourney.org/bib...eroboam-ii-restores-the-boundaries-of-israel/
 
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OurLadyofSorrows said:
Jonah is actually a prophet in the court of King Jeraboam. Jonah was responsible for a great victory before the whale incident.

The book that records kings and their courts tells us these people existed.
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Absolutely. Like the Dante’s Divine Comedy, it’s a fable using people that probably existed.
 
We are not called, by teachings of the Catholic Church, to first analyze scripture literally, but rather that we first consider the literal sense.

Rather than fret over the existence of Jonah (or Job, or the Lazurus mentioned in Christ’s comments on the rich man who died and pleaded for water and warnings for his family), we are called to also examine the spiritual sense of scripture.

If we consider Jonah in light of the anagogical sense, and consider the ramifications of the lesson on our pursuit of salvation, we are well served.

See the CCC says about scriptural interpretation (I think its around para 100 to 120, or somewhere close).

Peace!
 
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Hume said:
Absolutely. Like the Dante’s Divine Comedy, it’s a fable using people that probably existed.
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Learn your history about kings and kingdoms of Israel, this is recorded in sources outside the Bible also.
 
OurLadyofSorrows said:
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Hume:
Absolutely. Like the Dante’s Divine Comedy, it’s a fable using people that probably existed.
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Learn your history about kings and kingdoms of Israel, this is recorded in sources outside the Bible also.
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Hey, fair enough.

You may want to consider the reality that these stories appeared literally centuries after the time periods in which they’re fabled to take place. 😬

Daniel. Jonah. Many others.

The importance is the moral. Not the historicity, which they always come up short on.
 
Shakespeare’s Henry V was a cool guy and probably existed and it probably all happened just like that.
 
mr_silly said:
I suggested that the recount of the sun actually moving backwards by several hours would be a good example of an event which might be difficult to accept as true. This might be a better subject for this discussion than the Book of Jonah, and it would serve to call out the closet modernists here.
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You realize that the movement of the sun doesn’t… nevermind.
 
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Anesti33 said:
mr_silly:
I suggested that the recount of the sun actually moving backwards by several hours would be a good example of an event which might be difficult to accept as true. This might be a better subject for this discussion than the Book of Jonah, and it would serve to call out the closet modernists here.
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You realize that the movement of the sun doesn’t… nevermind.
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What’s much much much more important is that if something like that actually happened then we would have testimony from literally all over the place verifying it. The Sun moving backwards would be something noticed by people all over the world and it would be recorded all over the world.

As such, the only conclusion we can arrive at for that particular story is that it is a fable or a parable meant to convey a truth. It’s not an actual historical event.
 
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Given the fact that Jesus references Jonah specifically in relation to his death and resurrection, I’ve come to view what happened to Jonah as just that.

Jonah died.

He was thrown overboard and he either drowned or died from being consumed. Then God had the fish/whale spit him up on shore and resurrected him. It wouldn’t be the first time in the OT God allowed something like that. (Well, it might be the first, I don’t recall where Jonah falls in the OT timeline, but even if it is the first it’s not the only example) It is also completely within God’s power to cause that to happen.
 
mr_silly said:
You may state that you do not believe in the veracity to these OT accounts. Unless you were there, it is just your personal opinion.
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You may state that you believe that these OT accounts are absolutely 100% historically accurate. Unless you were there, it is just your personal opinion.

NB: No one here has, as far as I can tell, claimed that they are not true, just that they may not be 100% historically accurate. Please separate “true” from “factual”; they are not exactly the same.
 
I understand how you feel. But it’s not reasonable to assume that if the sun move backwards other people would not notice it and record it.

We’d see it everywhere. In the Chinese histories, and the Central American Olmec histories, everywhere. “Holy smokes! Did you see what the sun did today!”
 
Shhhhh, shhhhh. I know.

Gotta sometimes go to them to make the point.

Heliocentrism? You modernist! 😋
 
Lol the people here claiming that all of bible is to be taken literally. Better believe that the lamb of God which is Christ is actually a lamb woth legs and horns. Anyway all i did was asked a question. You guys turned this into a whole debate out of the op. This isnt pretty
 
mr_silly said:
we might consider the OT reports of the sun standing still for hours and of the sun actually moving back several hours. Modernists would insist that these events are not remotely possible.
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In this instance, at least, the modernists would be right. If the earth had suddenly stopped rotating on its axis, nobody would have survived to tell the tale.
 
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