God's Big Fish Story

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Daniel Beecher (0:29)

I had to read this like six or seven times, and I still don't have a handle on what the Lord is trying to say here.

Daniel McClellan (0:35)

The idea is that Jonah is so upset about the destruction of such a small thing, but is looking forward to the destruction of such a big thing. And God's like, you really want all these people to die?

And also this cattle?

Daniel Beecher (0:51)

And the cows. What about the cows?

Daniel McClellan (0:54)

Yeah. What about the cattle, Jonah? Jonah, you never think of the cattle.

Hey, everybody, I am Dan McClellan.

Daniel Beecher (1:06)

And I'm Dan Beecher.

Daniel McClellan (1:07)

And you are listening to the Data Over Dogma podcast, where we seek to increase the public's access to the academic study of the Bible and religion and combat the spread of misinformation about the same. How are you doing today, Dan?

Daniel Beecher (1:21)

You know, it's giant fish day here on Data Over Dogma, so I'm happy about it.

Daniel McClellan (1:29)

The deadliest of catches.

Daniel Beecher (1:31)

It once caught a fish this big.

Daniel McClellan (1:35)

Or should I say it once caught me?

Daniel Beecher (1:37)

Or should I say it once caught me? Yeah, we're gonna be talking some Jonah stuff. And look, here's what today's episode is about. You and I, you just said it off the air. It's about ways that God is characterized in the Bible that might surprise you.

So stay tuned, because we're getting into this guy, this character of God is not one character.

You'd like to talk, Dan, about the univocality, the non-univocality of this book. And it becomes clear, the more you read it, these different authors have a different view of who and what God is, and we're going to be delving into it.

Daniel McClellan (2:27)

Yeah, this is something that I've said a handful of times.

There is no God of the Bible in the sense that there are numerous different gods of the Bible. And we're going to talk about two very different representations in the Book of Jonah and also in the Book of Genesis.

Daniel Beecher (2:42)

All right, well, let us dive into that with chapter and verse.

So I think we should start. The Book of Jonah is short. It is mercifully short. It is four chapters, very readable. And I got to say, I read it multiple times sort of in prep for the show. And, you know, the thing that we all remember and the thing that, you know, the reason that we all know this story is because you tell you tell it to kids because it's got this fish thing in the middle. It's got this thing where he gets gulped up by a fish. But that's like not the interesting part of this story for me. No, I mean, it's fascinating. It's yeah.

He lives for three days inside of a fish. That's crazy. But like the relationship between Jonah and God and how and how they both act in this thing, it's got me baffled, man. It's got me baffled. So I so let's go through it.

I'm going to launch us in. We start basically. There's no act one to this story. We are diving into the middle of the story because suddenly and I literally went to the book beforehand just to see, is there any set up to this at all new?

So verse one says, Now the word of the Lord came to Jonah, son of Amitai, saying, Go at once to Nineveh, that great city, and cry out against it, for their wickedness has come up before me. Now I need to know, do we have any previous references to wickedness of Nineveh? Where is Nineveh? Where is Jonah? I don't know who's what. It literally starts very much in media res. I don't know what's going on.

Daniel McClellan (4:40)

Yeah. And there's a reason for that. But so Jonah, the son of Amitai is mentioned in Second Kings 1425, which would purport to set this story pretty early in the first millennium BCE.

Now the problem with that is that it mentions Nineveh, the great city, which was made the capital of Assyria long after the Book of Second Kings places Jonah, the son of Amitai. So we have an Assyrian king, I believe it was Sennacherib, who moves the capital of Assyria to Nineveh. And so the story seems to be written from a much later perspective, looking back at claiming to be from a much earlier time. Now the Assyrians were just the ultimate villains in the time period in which the story was probably written, which is probably going to be seventh century at the very earliest, but probably a little later than that.