Talk:Book of Jonah/Archive 1

To Do
This article needs a number of things. Right now I'm working on the Early Christian Interpretations section, as well as the Modern Interpretations section. If anyone is familiar with Rabbinic and Islamic interpretations, it would be helpful to have this information as well. --Jonberglund 02:04, 17 November 2005 (UTC)

Um, it also needs some mention of Jonah being swallowed by some kind of fish/whale in the plot section. And some mention of how long he stays there, and stuff like that. There needs to be some sort of explanation of the story before all the commentary on its interpretation!

Avoidance of chapter 4
Noting in passing that other than the (not very accurate) phrase "and Jonah’s complaint of ingratitude," chapter 4 is not addressed. Proofreader77 (talk) 20:43, 4 August 2009 (UTC)

Jonah entry
I just posed a question on the Jonah entry, asking why it's separate from the Book of Jonah entry. Please pardon my ignorance if there is a good reason behind it, but I think a single entry would be stronger and have less duplicated contents. Iansocool (talk) 02:19, 18 August 2009 (UTC)


 * I asked someone who has more experience (and wisdom) here at Wikipedia, and they responded on their talk page thus:

These are not the same topics. Jonah is a bio on en.Wikipedia, about a religious prophet. Book of Jonah is about a book, more or less "another bio," written about 2500 years ago from a biblical, Judeo/Christian outlook and translated many times. Any worries are with how these topics are handled in the en.WP articles' texts. Some overlap is bound to happen and is ok, but the pith of Jonah should be sourced commentary on the life of Jonah and its wider pull upon culture and faith, whilst the pith of Book of Jonah should be sourced commentary on the biblical/Hebrew tale itself (and its history) as a work of literature. Gwen Gale (talk) 12:49, 19 August 2009 (UTC)
 * (I'll also note this on the Jonah talk page) Proofreader77 (talk) 00:17, 20 August 2009 (UTC)

The nature of the fish
Er, why is it more plausible for a fish to swallow Jonah than a whale? As far as I know, living things have been found in all manner of gullets, the only prerequisite to the possibility being that the beast neglects to chew (which would be easier for a whale, eh? Half of them have no teeth) and has less-than-potent stomach acid.. oh, and I guess you'd need oxygen in there. The only reason people like to say 'it was a whale, not a 'big fish' ' is that they're trying to make it make MORE historical sense, what with older people confusing apes for monkeys, whales for fish, etc, and with fish not really growing all that large, but this article seems to make a whale sound LESS plausible, why?

How about one of those huge extinct fish? Paradiso 06:24, 30 September 2005 (UTC)

Wny? Because Jonah uses the word for "fish," not "whale" or anything that could reasonably be translated as whale (such as Leviathan). RTFB. Archola 12:18, 24 November 2005 (UTC)

For the longest time, I was convinced that the "big fish" mentioned didn't make any sense, because a whale was a much more plausible candidate for swallowing a man. That all changed when I read "Moby Dick" by Herman Melville. I realized that even a highly educated man in the 19th century, who understood that whales have much more in common with other mammals than with fish, still insisted on calling the whale a type of fish. If Melville thought this way in the 19th century, then why not the writer of the book of Jonah?
 * Because few whales are capable of swallowing anything as large as a human being. JCScaliger 23:57, 18 October 2006 (UTC)

Yeah, this part of the bible makes about as much sense as saying that slavery is okay. Colossians 3:22 and 1 Peter 2:18.... etc. etc. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Vogey2002 (talk • contribs) 04:44, 7 January 2010 (UTC)

Clarify "atheist interpretation"
The article says:
 * The interpretative styles of Jews, Christians, Muslims, and atheists have all been employed to understand the Book of Jonah

It's possible, of course, that atheist interpretations of this book were published, but the article doesn't say anything more about it. --Amir E. Aharoni (talk) 20:36, 14 May 2010 (UTC)