Today’s Scripture Reading (January
8, 2020): Jonah 1 & 2
It is one of my pet peeves, judging
yesterday’s words or actions by today’s understanding. We seem to like to do
it. Not long ago, there was a movement to remove Harper Lee’s “To Kill a
Mockingbird” from school reading lists. The reason for the removal was the use
of the “N” word in the dialogue. The problem was that the word, which is
extremely offensive to modern ears, was used very appropriately for the time frame
in which the story takes place. And it is an excellent opportunity to open a
discussion about the way that words and our reaction to them can change.
Our job, as readers of the biblical
narrative, is to do our best to understand what the words might have meant to
the first generation of readers. It is this task that urges great caution whenever
we encounter modern hot topic issues. People who believe in a very literal
interpretation of the Bible often point to the meaning of the words in our
contemporary understanding. But an actual literal interpretation of the Bible
might be impossible because it would have to start with what the first audience
to the writing understood from the words. It is that first response that would
be the literal understanding of the story. The words that we read in our Bibles
are already an interpretation of someone who translated the words into our language.
We can’t get a literal understanding from someone else interpretation of the
words. It is for this reason that I have made it a practice to read any passage
that I am studying in several translations.
All of this brings us to the absurd
argument that arises out of the story of Jonah. Could a whale have swallowed
Jonah? The contemporary argument goes that a whale could not have swallowed
Jonah because the Bible specifies that a “huge fish” swallowed him. Our
contemporary understanding is that a whale is not fish; it is a marine mammal that
is actually related to the Hippopotamus. But that argument mixes a modern
understanding with ancient words. In discovering the solution to our absurd
argument, the question that we need to ask is, “did the original audience of
the Book of Jonah, who lived seven or eight hundred years before the birth of Jesus,
consider a whale a fish?” Herman Melville entertains a similar argument in his
epic story “Moby Dick,” and his protagonist Ishmael comes to the conclusion
that if a whale lives in the water, swims, and looks fish-like, then a whale
must be a huge fish. “Moby Dick” was written more than 2500 years after the
life of Jonah. Understanding the passage from the point of view of the original
readers of the story means that a whale could have swallowed Jonah.
Or not. The reality is that there
is not an aquatic animal known today that would have the capability of
swallowing a man and then, three days later, vomit the man, alive, onto the shore.
So what does that tell us? For some, it means that the story is allegorical. It
didn’t really happen. And that might be true. The Bible does contain allegorical
stories intended to convey truth through a fictional narrative. The most common
biblical allegories are found in the parables of Jesus. Of course, it also
might be a factual story. Surely, the God who created the heavens and the
earth, could create a huge fish, or a whale, that was capable of swallowing Jonah,
keeping him alive for three days, and then vomit him onto the shore, safe and
sound, and ready to follow the will of God. But that argument I will leave with
your understanding.
Tomorrow’s Scripture Reading: Jonah 3 & 4
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