Today\u2019s readings, my Catholic and liturgical-Protestant readers, will recall, included a passage from Jonah.<\/p>\n
Who doesn\u2019t know the story of Jonah and the whale? \u00a0Jonah rejects God\u2019s call to preach to the people of Ninevah and runs away on a ship headed in the opposite direction, but a great storm comes up, he fesses up to the ship\u2019s captain that the storm was sent by God due to his disobedience, and is thrown overboard, only to be swallowed by a whale (or, rather, a \u201clarge fish\u201d). \u00a0The end to the story is generally left out of the children\u2019s Bibles: \u00a0after he indeed turns back to preach to Ninevah and the people repent, he gets really pissed, because, in his view, they didn\u2019t deserve to receive forgiveness.<\/p>\n
Anyway, I grew up in a denomination in which we were taught that every word in the Bible was literally true and literally historical, including the creation story and the book of Jonah, and it was only much later, in reading The Catholic Study Bible (that is, an edition of the New American Bible translation with commentary and an extended introduction with historical and theological context), that I learned that this is now generally viewed as more like a parable: \u00a0\u201cNothing could be more remote from the spirit of the story than to believe that this actually happened,\u201d the Reading Guide section says, and the point of the story \u2014 God\u2019s forgiveness, offered even for the worst sinners (the Guide compares the idea of God forgiving the Assyrians to forgiveness of Nazis) \u2014 is not diminished by understanding this as story, as parable, rather than historical fact.<\/p>\n
Here\u2019s the So That\u2019s Why Bible, from Thomas Nelson Publishers (which I think has plenty of evangelical cred), which attempts to put the Bible in chronological order and provide context and explanations: <\/p>\n
Certain details of the Book of Jonah have troubled historians. \u00a0Leaving aside Jonah\u2019s extraordinary encounter with the great fish, scholars have noted that Assyrian records do not mention a mass repentence in Ninevah at this time. \u00a0Also the title \u201cking of Nineveh\u201d (Jon. 3:6) seems rather small for the ruler of an empire. \u00a0For these reasons, many have treated the book as an extended parable, not intended to be read as history. \u00a0Others though, not troubled by accounts of God doing miracles, find no reason to doubt the book\u2019s facticity.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n