Jonah and Historicity I – The Nature of Truth
Whenever Jonah is mentioned, the first question I get is usually about the fish and how Jonah could survive in it, but it makes me sad that when this query is answered, people move on as if there were nothing more to the story. Often, what I sense is anxiety from Bible-believing Christians who want to affirm the truth and authority of Scripture (defined as historical and what really happened) but struggle to align the unusual elements in the story with real-life experiences. Jonah’s historicity has become for many a litmus test for correct belief, which creates enormous pressure to come down on the right side of the debate.
Truth as only literal-historical
Before jumping into the debate, I want to address a fundamental question relating to the discussion, namely the nature of truth, which the different sides define differently but treat as self-evident. For conservative Christians, truth in the Bible is defined as historical, factual, literal. This may have been a reaction to the fanciful, often allegorical interpretations of Christians from previous centuries, as well as the doubts cast on the historicity of many biblical books and characters since the Enlightenment, including the gospels and Jesus’ life. Our faith is rooted in the historic Jesus’ life, death, resurrection, and ascension, so that if these events were mere myths, then the Christian belief is a dream castle built on air (cf. 1 Cor 15:16-17). The instinct to insist on the historical foundations of our faith has eventually led to defining truth as only what is literally, factually, historically true. Given this definition, if Scripture is God’s Word and therefore true, then its historicity must be defended, and this becomes an important emphasis for this group’s interpretation.
Truth as broader than historical fact
On the other hand, many Christians note how even in the Bible we instinctively adjust our expectations to the conventions of language and the different types of literature we read. Thus, we read poetry expecting truth expressed through images rather than in strictly literal-historical mode. When encountering Psalm 74:1, ‘Why does Your anger smoke against the sheep of Your pasture?’, we understand that God’s anger does not literally smoke, nor is the psalm talking about farm animals. Rather the truth of God’s anger is brought home with the imagery of smouldering and dangerous fire as it confronts vulnerable sheep. Likewise, Jesus’ parables like the Prodigal Son or the Good Samaritan speak spiritual truths without having happened in history.[1] Thus, truth for this group has a broader definition that is not exclusively literal or historical. Evangelical scholars following this line of thought can still affirm the historic truths of the gospel because the gospel writers clearly indicate that they expect their works to be read as historical accounts (note Luke’s emphasis on eyewitnesses and his careful investigation in Luke 1:1-4 and John’s justification that he chose selected incidents from Jesus’ life that happened in the presence of his disciples – John 20:30-31). For this camp, what needs to be established then is whether the author of a book like Jonah intended us to read it as a historic account or not.
Why the debate is so heated
Understanding this background can help us appreciate why the debate is so heated, especially for those who believe that truth must be literal-historical. It is because the authority of Scripture as God’s Word hangs in the balance. However, this way of defining truth by coupling it with historicity is a relatively recent understanding connected to the Enlightenment. While it is true that the Church Fathers largely accepted Jonah’s historicity, they mostly used the story symbolically [Jonah as a type of Christ], and there were others who doubted its historicity altogether (Gregory of Nazianzus, 4th century; Theophylact, 11th century),[2] yet were not seen as heretics. In other words, the historical character of Jonah was not their primary focus, but the story’s symbolic/allegorical/typological meaning. Neither was historicity linked to the authority of Scripture in the same way for them, so that doubting Jonah’s historicity did not automatically undermine Scripture as God’s Word and truth.
In my next post, I shall examine the particular historical issues in Jonah.
[1] Outside of Scripture, we instinctively do this. Thus, we can recognise truth in stories that are fictional, and we do not demand from them to be literally true. For instance, Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings or C.S. Lewis’ Chronicles of Narnia or John Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress are manifestly not historical, but they bring home the truths about good and evil, redemption and salvation. Likewise, many pastors use in sermons the story of the bishop’s response to Jean Valjean stealing the silver candlesticks in Les Miserables to illustrate forgiveness. Although it is a fictitious incident, it speaks truth about the nature and transforming power of forgiveness that does not depend on the events taking place in history. However, those who stand for the view that truth is only historical feel that the Bible is in a category of its own and not like other books. Those on the other side of the debate, on the other hand, feel that the examples from the Bible about poetry and parables would suggest that Scripture in this respect conforms to conventions of language and expectations we might have reading different types of literature.
[2] Leslie C. Allen, The Books of Joel, Obadiah, Jonah, and Micah, NICOT (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1976), 178.
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