5 Ridiculous Representations of Jonah and the Whale in Art History
August 24, 2022 2:54 PM Subscribe
5 Ridiculous Representations of Jonah and the Whale in Art History “In the Book of Jonah, God has an apocalyptic vibe going on and tells Jonah to go preach to the city of Nineveh and get all the citizens to repent before He destroys them all. Jonah tries to run from his responsibilities by booking a cruise, apparently not remembering the whole ‘God is omnipresent’ thing.
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Here are five artist representations of the story of Jonah and his whale. Please note that these images have been selected for composition, technical execution, and comedic value.”
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Here are five artist representations of the story of Jonah and his whale. Please note that these images have been selected for composition, technical execution, and comedic value.”
God sends a major storm to legit rock the boat, and Jonah has to admit to the sailors that, yeah, he’s trying to hide from God. Jonah, in all fairness, tells the sailors if they throw him overboard they’ll all (probably) live. So, the sailors pitch Jonah over the side, where he is promptly swallowed by a huge fish, or whale. Yes, I know a whale is a mammal and a fish isn’t, but I didn’t write the Tanach and I am not Sir David Attenborough, so just…swim with me here.
From inside the whale/fish creature of indeterminate size and shape, Jonah prays to God, be-whaling his traumatic fate. After only three days (lol Jonah wouldn’t have made it past mid-March in our quarantine timeline), God makes the whale puke Jonah back up. Then Jonah shleps himself to Nineveh after all. He could have avoided this whole situation if he had stopped delaying and just made coronavirus tests free and accessible around Nineveh and listened to what the CDC was saying! Ahem. I mean God. If he had just listened to what God was saying. This whole story is a big quarantine mood.
well, this story tends to inspire bad art
not too many people know this, but jonah was able to keep his suit crisp and clean throughout his ordeal
why is everyone so happy?
posted by pyramid termite at 3:16 PM on August 24, 2022 [3 favorites]
not too many people know this, but jonah was able to keep his suit crisp and clean throughout his ordeal
why is everyone so happy?
posted by pyramid termite at 3:16 PM on August 24, 2022 [3 favorites]
Nice to see that the author understands whale was actually written as "big fish"
posted by BrotherCaine at 3:21 PM on August 24, 2022 [2 favorites]
posted by BrotherCaine at 3:21 PM on August 24, 2022 [2 favorites]
"The story is really odd and funny in ways I'm guessing a contemporaneous audience wouldn't have noticed."
So, a lot of scholars actually think that Jonah is deliberately hilarious, and that people hearing it at the time it was written would have absolutely understood it as a slapstick parody of chump prophets who didn't want to do their jobs right. Some scholars think it would have been performed almost like a play, or a stand-up routine. And like all good parodies, it has a serious point.
Jonah is all, you sent me all the way here to threaten to rain fire down on these assholes, and instead they repent? I came here for the fucking show, and I expect to see a city get destroyed. (Sounds a lot like certain TV preachers and public Christians who are constantly mad that God hasn't gotten around to destroying all the sinners yet and engage in non-stop apocalypse porn.) And then Jonah literally announces, in the most relatable teenager verse in the entire Bible, "I'm so angry I wish I was dead!"
And then God gets to the point. God says, in the last verse, which is my favorite verse in the Bible, "And should I not also be concerned for Nineveh, that great city, which has 120,000 people who do not know their right hand from their left -- and also many animals?"
One of the problems with humor in the Bible is that people tend to read it "preacher-moan," that's sort of that rhythmic rising and falling, lulling, boring thing you probably heard growing up or saw on TV. And so it's really easy to tune out the actual meaning of the words, because you're so used to hearing it in that boring, monotone, lulling way. But if you stop it actually read it, lots of the Bible is actually is dead-ass hilarious. Jonah is probably the most laugh out loud part of the Bible, and if you read it that way and you laugh because it's so hilarious and unbelievable, and Jonah is such an idiot, congratulations, you are in line with modern Bible scholarship!
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 3:54 PM on August 24, 2022 [37 favorites]
So, a lot of scholars actually think that Jonah is deliberately hilarious, and that people hearing it at the time it was written would have absolutely understood it as a slapstick parody of chump prophets who didn't want to do their jobs right. Some scholars think it would have been performed almost like a play, or a stand-up routine. And like all good parodies, it has a serious point.
Jonah is all, you sent me all the way here to threaten to rain fire down on these assholes, and instead they repent? I came here for the fucking show, and I expect to see a city get destroyed. (Sounds a lot like certain TV preachers and public Christians who are constantly mad that God hasn't gotten around to destroying all the sinners yet and engage in non-stop apocalypse porn.) And then Jonah literally announces, in the most relatable teenager verse in the entire Bible, "I'm so angry I wish I was dead!"
And then God gets to the point. God says, in the last verse, which is my favorite verse in the Bible, "And should I not also be concerned for Nineveh, that great city, which has 120,000 people who do not know their right hand from their left -- and also many animals?"
One of the problems with humor in the Bible is that people tend to read it "preacher-moan," that's sort of that rhythmic rising and falling, lulling, boring thing you probably heard growing up or saw on TV. And so it's really easy to tune out the actual meaning of the words, because you're so used to hearing it in that boring, monotone, lulling way. But if you stop it actually read it, lots of the Bible is actually is dead-ass hilarious. Jonah is probably the most laugh out loud part of the Bible, and if you read it that way and you laugh because it's so hilarious and unbelievable, and Jonah is such an idiot, congratulations, you are in line with modern Bible scholarship!
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 3:54 PM on August 24, 2022 [37 favorites]
Interesting mention of "God is Omnipresent." The ancient beliefs were (sometimes...it changed over time and back again) that God was a localized deity which caused big problems when the faithful got hauled off to Babylon. They were now away from the Mount, and disconnected from their normal location of worship, and therefore God! Who needs the priests who control the temple if you can just worship anywhere???
Thankfully, Ezekiel began to see God's fiery chariot in the heavens, showing how God could extend influence all the way up north. Nice trick that! Sure the authors of Ezekiel were likely just making metaphors to help simple people understand that their faith needn't be destroyed because of political calamity and dislocation. But the idea of "Omnipresent" wasn't a given throughout the whole religious timeline. This had to be repeatedly driven home throughout Judaic history, including in the Jonah tale.
caveat: this is how a big complicated situation was taught to me, and might be right, wrong, or partially right. Orthodoxy is for suckers.
posted by Abehammerb Lincoln at 3:57 PM on August 24, 2022 [3 favorites]
Thankfully, Ezekiel began to see God's fiery chariot in the heavens, showing how God could extend influence all the way up north. Nice trick that! Sure the authors of Ezekiel were likely just making metaphors to help simple people understand that their faith needn't be destroyed because of political calamity and dislocation. But the idea of "Omnipresent" wasn't a given throughout the whole religious timeline. This had to be repeatedly driven home throughout Judaic history, including in the Jonah tale.
caveat: this is how a big complicated situation was taught to me, and might be right, wrong, or partially right. Orthodoxy is for suckers.
posted by Abehammerb Lincoln at 3:57 PM on August 24, 2022 [3 favorites]
To be fair, traveling by fish to Nineveh seems... kind of inefficient, as Nineveh is very far inland. On the other hand, God has many ways to get things done, so....
posted by GenjiandProust at 3:59 PM on August 24, 2022 [2 favorites]
posted by GenjiandProust at 3:59 PM on August 24, 2022 [2 favorites]
As to Biblical humor, a lot of the names, in Hebrew, are jokes.
posted by njohnson23 at 4:16 PM on August 24, 2022 [2 favorites]
posted by njohnson23 at 4:16 PM on August 24, 2022 [2 favorites]
As to Biblical humor, a lot of the names, in Hebrew, are jokes.
"He has a wife, you know."
posted by heatherlogan at 4:18 PM on August 24, 2022 [13 favorites]
"He has a wife, you know."
posted by heatherlogan at 4:18 PM on August 24, 2022 [13 favorites]
I've recently taken on a volunteer position of some responsibility, one that involves warning people about potential disasters and warning to prepare for them, and I've got to tell you, Jonah has been on my mind lately. When things go wrong and everyone looks in my direction, that's a watery, fishy feeling.
To me the story's always a combination of yeah, exactly, this big idiot, Jonah, who thinks he can run from responsibility, not realising that it'll come anyway, that everyone will pick you out and throw you into the sea; but also that even God thinks ordinary prophets should have a bit of perspective about what they care about. Which is funny, and it's true, optimistic.
posted by Fiasco da Gama at 5:42 PM on August 24, 2022 [4 favorites]
To me the story's always a combination of yeah, exactly, this big idiot, Jonah, who thinks he can run from responsibility, not realising that it'll come anyway, that everyone will pick you out and throw you into the sea; but also that even God thinks ordinary prophets should have a bit of perspective about what they care about. Which is funny, and it's true, optimistic.
posted by Fiasco da Gama at 5:42 PM on August 24, 2022 [4 favorites]
Reference was made to the historical story of Jonah and the whale in the preceding chapter. Now some Nantucketers rather distrust this historical story of Jonah and the whale. But then there were some sceptical Greeks and Romans, who, standing out from the orthodox pagans of their times, equally doubted the story of Hercules and the whale, and Arion and the dolphin; and yet their doubting those traditions did not make those traditions one whit the less facts, for all that.
One old Sag-Harbor whaleman’s chief reason for questioning the Hebrew story was this:—He had one of those quaint old-fashioned Bibles, embellished with curious, unscientific plates; one of which represented Jonah’s whale with two spouts in his head—a peculiarity only true with respect to a species of the Leviathan (the Right Whale, and the varieties of that order), concerning which the fishermen have this saying, “A penny roll would choke him”; his swallow is so very small. But, to this, Bishop Jebb’s anticipative answer is ready. It is not necessary, hints the Bishop, that we consider Jonah as tombed in the whale’s belly, but as temporarily lodged in some part of his mouth. And this seems reasonable enough in the good Bishop. For truly, the Right Whale’s mouth would accommodate a couple of whist-tables, and comfortably seat all the players. Possibly, too, Jonah might have ensconced himself in a hollow tooth; but, on second thoughts, the Right Whale is toothless.
posted by doctornemo at 6:03 PM on August 24, 2022 [5 favorites]
One old Sag-Harbor whaleman’s chief reason for questioning the Hebrew story was this:—He had one of those quaint old-fashioned Bibles, embellished with curious, unscientific plates; one of which represented Jonah’s whale with two spouts in his head—a peculiarity only true with respect to a species of the Leviathan (the Right Whale, and the varieties of that order), concerning which the fishermen have this saying, “A penny roll would choke him”; his swallow is so very small. But, to this, Bishop Jebb’s anticipative answer is ready. It is not necessary, hints the Bishop, that we consider Jonah as tombed in the whale’s belly, but as temporarily lodged in some part of his mouth. And this seems reasonable enough in the good Bishop. For truly, the Right Whale’s mouth would accommodate a couple of whist-tables, and comfortably seat all the players. Possibly, too, Jonah might have ensconced himself in a hollow tooth; but, on second thoughts, the Right Whale is toothless.
posted by doctornemo at 6:03 PM on August 24, 2022 [5 favorites]
Somewhere in the Apocrypha, (the book of Baruch, I think), I remember a fragment from a story about another guy to whom AN ANGEL OF THE LORD appeared and BADE HIM GO TO (someplace), to which the guy replies (paraphrasing here) "Why me? That's a long way from here, can't you find someone else closer? And my fields need tending, and I don't like those folks over there anyway..." (and this is why it stuck in my head) And the angel BORE HIM UP BY THE HAIR OF HIS BEARD... (like "listen here, you little shit") etc. etc.
I don't remember enough more about it to do a thorough comparison, and I don't remember when the books of the Apocrypha were cut from the canonical bible. And the only reason I was reading it was it was referenced in a novel I was reading at the time. I guess the Jonah story was more on-brand or something.
posted by coppertop at 6:21 PM on August 24, 2022 [4 favorites]
I don't remember enough more about it to do a thorough comparison, and I don't remember when the books of the Apocrypha were cut from the canonical bible. And the only reason I was reading it was it was referenced in a novel I was reading at the time. I guess the Jonah story was more on-brand or something.
posted by coppertop at 6:21 PM on August 24, 2022 [4 favorites]
Needs more Ultra Boy—Jo Nah—of the Legion of Superheroes getting his powers from being swallowed by a space whale.
posted by straight at 6:31 PM on August 24, 2022 [2 favorites]
posted by straight at 6:31 PM on August 24, 2022 [2 favorites]
The silliness of the story and attendant silly art aside, the thing that strikes me is that, while the concept of “a whale” seems to be known throughout historical times, not a single artist seems to have any damned clue what whales actually look like. They all seem to be depicted as some kind of unholy melding of a trout and a dog.
posted by Thorzdad at 6:42 PM on August 24, 2022 [5 favorites]
posted by Thorzdad at 6:42 PM on August 24, 2022 [5 favorites]
They were depicting a "big fish", which is what the Bible actually said. I don't know when the whale miss translation was introduced - the King James version?
My favorite bit of the story is that where Jonah is going originally is to Tarshish, thought to be on the far side of the Mediterranean. Knowing this it makes perfect sense that he got in a boat, but also it's cool to think about people crossing the whole Mediterranean in the Iron Age (which they did).
posted by jb at 7:08 PM on August 24, 2022 [5 favorites]
My favorite bit of the story is that where Jonah is going originally is to Tarshish, thought to be on the far side of the Mediterranean. Knowing this it makes perfect sense that he got in a boat, but also it's cool to think about people crossing the whole Mediterranean in the Iron Age (which they did).
posted by jb at 7:08 PM on August 24, 2022 [5 favorites]
MetaFilter: some kind of unholy melding of a trout and a dog
posted by kirkaracha at 7:58 PM on August 24, 2022 [3 favorites]
posted by kirkaracha at 7:58 PM on August 24, 2022 [3 favorites]
This was delightful! Growing up, I saw a lot of Jonah art, especially in homes or buildings with kids, probably because it was easy to make fanciful, less puerile than Noah’s Ark, and hey, Torah! Sometimes it seems like he’s even having a good time chilling in there. So I expected to see just run-of-the-mill crazy depictions. But these were bananas, and I loved the writing. Amazing.
I came in to say what Eyebrows did, but she beat me to it. The last words of the book of Jonah are - and I like to sing them to the tune of “and many moooorrrre” at the end of Happy Birthday ) - “and many cows.” Which is pretty much the definition of an anticlimax. And right up there with Shakespeare’s “Exit, pursued by a bear” for unexpected animal comedy.
BTW, I highly recommend the Veggie Tales Jonah, which is hilarious, only tangentially Christian (spot the subliminal crosses inside the whale, kids!) and has great songs.
posted by Mchelly at 9:34 PM on August 24, 2022 [5 favorites]
I came in to say what Eyebrows did, but she beat me to it. The last words of the book of Jonah are - and I like to sing them to the tune of “and many moooorrrre” at the end of Happy Birthday ) - “and many cows.” Which is pretty much the definition of an anticlimax. And right up there with Shakespeare’s “Exit, pursued by a bear” for unexpected animal comedy.
BTW, I highly recommend the Veggie Tales Jonah, which is hilarious, only tangentially Christian (spot the subliminal crosses inside the whale, kids!) and has great songs.
posted by Mchelly at 9:34 PM on August 24, 2022 [5 favorites]
KJV has "great fish," as do most English Bibles. My understanding is that early quasi-scientific naturalists started arguing about what kind of great fish it was, so that it would be big enough to swallow a human, and the general consensus was "whale," although a small minority said tuna. I expect "whale" probably got popularized through children's religious songs.
Never sleep on the KJV for excellent, word-for-word translations of the Hebrew, where they always try to use the same English word for the same Hebrew word throughout the Hebrew Bible, and where they torture the syntax of English to make it match closely to the syntax of Hebrew, which is part of why it's such a weirdly beautiful work of English literature. They weren't aiming for poetic: they were aiming for as accurate to the original Hebrew as they could manage in 17th century English. But doing that made it turn out very poetic. (They also worked with all manuscripts available to them, and had a pretty solid understanding of which ones had better or worse. provenance. It's a really recognizably modern scholarly process that produces a really high quality English language Bible.) When I'm trying to work in Hebrew, which I read but not very fast, I generally get out my KJV to read along in English to find where I want to be in Hebrew, because the word-for-wordness is so exact, it's much faster than working with a more modern translation like the NRSV ( My preferred English translation) which is a lot clearer and better annotated, but does not preserve the word for word feature.
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 9:44 PM on August 24, 2022 [9 favorites]
Never sleep on the KJV for excellent, word-for-word translations of the Hebrew, where they always try to use the same English word for the same Hebrew word throughout the Hebrew Bible, and where they torture the syntax of English to make it match closely to the syntax of Hebrew, which is part of why it's such a weirdly beautiful work of English literature. They weren't aiming for poetic: they were aiming for as accurate to the original Hebrew as they could manage in 17th century English. But doing that made it turn out very poetic. (They also worked with all manuscripts available to them, and had a pretty solid understanding of which ones had better or worse. provenance. It's a really recognizably modern scholarly process that produces a really high quality English language Bible.) When I'm trying to work in Hebrew, which I read but not very fast, I generally get out my KJV to read along in English to find where I want to be in Hebrew, because the word-for-wordness is so exact, it's much faster than working with a more modern translation like the NRSV ( My preferred English translation) which is a lot clearer and better annotated, but does not preserve the word for word feature.
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 9:44 PM on August 24, 2022 [9 favorites]
If only there were a photograph to compare them to.
posted by fairmettle at 9:49 PM on August 24, 2022
posted by fairmettle at 9:49 PM on August 24, 2022
I'm amazed at the last picture-- it's as though Chinese art somehow made it to Alsatia.
posted by Nancy Lebovitz at 12:04 AM on August 25, 2022 [2 favorites]
posted by Nancy Lebovitz at 12:04 AM on August 25, 2022 [2 favorites]
KJV has 'great fish' in Jonah. It's in Matthew that Jesus uses the phrase '...three days and three nights in the whale's belly' (KJV)
posted by MtDewd at 4:02 AM on August 25, 2022 [2 favorites]
posted by MtDewd at 4:02 AM on August 25, 2022 [2 favorites]
We sang the ‘Jonah-man Jazz’ at school, and many of its lyrics are still imprinted on my brain.
Nineveh City was a city of sin,
The jazzin’ and the jivin’ made a terrible din,
Beat groups playing the rock and roll,
And the Lord when he heard it said ‘Bless my soul!’.
Argh.
posted by Phanx at 5:17 AM on August 25, 2022 [2 favorites]
Nineveh City was a city of sin,
The jazzin’ and the jivin’ made a terrible din,
Beat groups playing the rock and roll,
And the Lord when he heard it said ‘Bless my soul!’.
Argh.
posted by Phanx at 5:17 AM on August 25, 2022 [2 favorites]
My understanding is that early quasi-scientific naturalists started arguing about what kind of great fish it was, so that it would be big enough to swallow a human, and the general consensus was "whale," although a small minority said tuna.
I wonder why the consensus never landed on whale sharks? They have huge mouths and there are reports of them accidentally "swallowing" divers before immediately spitting them back out. Certainly more plausible than a tuna.
posted by RonButNotStupid at 5:19 AM on August 25, 2022 [5 favorites]
I wonder why the consensus never landed on whale sharks? They have huge mouths and there are reports of them accidentally "swallowing" divers before immediately spitting them back out. Certainly more plausible than a tuna.
posted by RonButNotStupid at 5:19 AM on August 25, 2022 [5 favorites]
Also whale sharks just happen to be the world's largest fish. Just sayin'.
posted by RonButNotStupid at 5:23 AM on August 25, 2022 [3 favorites]
posted by RonButNotStupid at 5:23 AM on August 25, 2022 [3 favorites]
It might have made more sense for Jonah to be eaten by a lot of little fish, swim to Nineveh, spit the bits out, then God could reconstitute Jonah, probably with a slightly less difficult attitude. However, God had not created Clive Barker at the time, so we were spared that particular scenario....
posted by GenjiandProust at 5:27 AM on August 25, 2022 [4 favorites]
posted by GenjiandProust at 5:27 AM on August 25, 2022 [4 favorites]
We're also spared in the inevitable allegations of ancient aliens because being eaten by lots of little fish and reconstituted at a different location sounds like a two-bit biblical description of matter transporter.
Someone call the History Channel! What if Nineveh wasn't on our planet?
posted by RonButNotStupid at 5:34 AM on August 25, 2022 [2 favorites]
Someone call the History Channel! What if Nineveh wasn't on our planet?
posted by RonButNotStupid at 5:34 AM on August 25, 2022 [2 favorites]
@Thorzdad, why is that striking? Thinking it through, how could it be otherwise? Practically nobody who got to draw on maps or illuminated manuscripts was a wildlife expert, let alone an expert on marine wildlife. In the age before photographs and scientific expertise, all depictions of anything you'd never seen yourself were equally suspect, and well, if you had to draw a thing you'd never seen, you'd make something up based on what you'd heard.
Based on that, "melding of trout and dog" might not be so surprising. "Overall sort of fishlike in form but warm- and red-blooded like a deer (or dog) (or man)" would have been the extent of the typical well-informed illustrator's knowledge of whales.
posted by Aardvark Cheeselog at 8:27 AM on August 25, 2022
Based on that, "melding of trout and dog" might not be so surprising. "Overall sort of fishlike in form but warm- and red-blooded like a deer (or dog) (or man)" would have been the extent of the typical well-informed illustrator's knowledge of whales.
posted by Aardvark Cheeselog at 8:27 AM on August 25, 2022
abbot and costello's take on jonah
posted by pyramid termite at 10:34 AM on August 25, 2022 [1 favorite]
posted by pyramid termite at 10:34 AM on August 25, 2022 [1 favorite]
One of my earliest memories where I started to think this god stuff is a bunch of BS was when one of the nun's at Catholic school told this story. I was a precocious whale and shark obsessed kid. I asked did that really happen. As serious as she could be she said of course it did. She couldn't imagine someone would question it.
posted by Justin Case at 11:45 AM on August 25, 2022 [2 favorites]
posted by Justin Case at 11:45 AM on August 25, 2022 [2 favorites]
Putting in a note for Aubrey-Maturin fans and sailing ship types who might have missed a reference somewhere.
*A* 'Jonah' is the name for a nautical scapegoat. When the ship is becalmed, or the storms won't stop, etc. The superstitious sailors aboard start thinking the ship is cursed; then move on to "it's not the whole ship, it's this guy in particular that's bad luck; we should toss him over the side before he gets us all killed" - that's a Jonah.
The sailor version of 'the crops are failing, the gods must be displeased, we should find [read: choose someone as] the witch and burn her'.
posted by bartleby at 6:34 PM on August 25, 2022 [2 favorites]
*A* 'Jonah' is the name for a nautical scapegoat. When the ship is becalmed, or the storms won't stop, etc. The superstitious sailors aboard start thinking the ship is cursed; then move on to "it's not the whole ship, it's this guy in particular that's bad luck; we should toss him over the side before he gets us all killed" - that's a Jonah.
The sailor version of 'the crops are failing, the gods must be displeased, we should find [read: choose someone as] the witch and burn her'.
posted by bartleby at 6:34 PM on August 25, 2022 [2 favorites]
Thank you for introducing me to this talented/witty author - quite a persona she’s become, meantime!
posted by progosk at 1:28 AM on August 26, 2022
posted by progosk at 1:28 AM on August 26, 2022
One of my earliest memories where I started to think this god stuff is a bunch of BS was when one of the nun's at Catholic school told this story. I was a precocious whale and shark obsessed kid. I asked did that really happen. As serious as she could be she said of course it did. She couldn't imagine someone would question it.
posted by Justin Case at 11:45 AM on August 25 [1 favorite +] [!]
Your experience is very close to mine. I remember being young in Sunday School, and questioning everything. "No one lived to be 600 years old!" "Why did God flood the world, and then get sad that he did it? He was God!" "If Adam and Eve were the only two people around, wouldn't Cain and Abel have to marry their sisters?"
In the Baptist Church I went to, Sunday School teachers had no training - they were just parents of my friends. And they had no answers to my questions, except for "If it's in the Bible, it's true." If they had said that these stories were mythology, and they weren't necessarily literal, I probably would have kept going. Instead, I stopped attending, and stopped believing at an early age.
posted by Furnace of Doubt at 7:25 AM on August 26, 2022 [2 favorites]
posted by Justin Case at 11:45 AM on August 25 [1 favorite +] [!]
Your experience is very close to mine. I remember being young in Sunday School, and questioning everything. "No one lived to be 600 years old!" "Why did God flood the world, and then get sad that he did it? He was God!" "If Adam and Eve were the only two people around, wouldn't Cain and Abel have to marry their sisters?"
In the Baptist Church I went to, Sunday School teachers had no training - they were just parents of my friends. And they had no answers to my questions, except for "If it's in the Bible, it's true." If they had said that these stories were mythology, and they weren't necessarily literal, I probably would have kept going. Instead, I stopped attending, and stopped believing at an early age.
posted by Furnace of Doubt at 7:25 AM on August 26, 2022 [2 favorites]
If you missed it the first time, Kattalus posted on the Doug Metzger series Literature and History and the episodes on the Christian bible, Old and New Testament, are well worth checking out. Come for the Iliad, stay for Revelations.
posted by elkevelvet at 8:48 AM on August 26, 2022
posted by elkevelvet at 8:48 AM on August 26, 2022
IF you get to it, and you CAN'T do it...
well, there you jolly well are, aren't you?
posted by sneebler at 10:19 PM on August 26, 2022
well, there you jolly well are, aren't you?
posted by sneebler at 10:19 PM on August 26, 2022
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The Book of Jonah is hopeful, especially in comparison to most of the material in the prophetic books. The story is really odd and funny in ways I'm guessing a contemporaneous audience wouldn't have noticed. Jonah strikes me as one of the crankiest of the biblical prophets but we're spared the misogynistic language of e.g. Jeremiah, to name one.
posted by elkevelvet at 3:13 PM on August 24, 2022 [2 favorites]