Jonah in 20th Century Literature

The Bible and Critical Theory, 2011

[T]he infinity of the signifier refers not to some idea of the ineffable (the unnameable signified) but to that of a playing; the generation of the perpetual signifier (after the fashion of a perpetual calendar) in the field of the text (better, of which the text is the field) is realized not according to an organic progress of maturation or a hermeneutic course of deepening investigation, but, rather, according to a serial movement of disconnections, overlappings, variations (Barthes 1977, p. 158, his emphases). Roland Barthes's concept of the 'perpetual signifier' receives an afterlife of its own in Yvonne Sherwood's remarkable study of the book of Jonah. Sherwood's book is not quite a history of 'reception' or 'effects', nor is it exactly reader-response or deconstruction or ideological criticism, but it draws on all of those approaches and others as well, including the new field of 'memetics' (pp. 196-198). She does not pursue the history 'behind' the book of Jonah, the linguistic, cultural, or economic factors that may have led to its production. Nor is her book a commentary, even though in it she does comment in depth on every part of the book of Jonah. Instead, Sherwood traces the ways in which Jonah's 'mongrel text' (p. 236) has reproduced itself, both within and (especially) outside of the Bible, in a wide variety of written, graphic, and even televised texts.

Journal of Biblical Literature, 2003

Bible, Borders, Belongings: Engaged Readings from Oceania, edited Jione Havea, David Neville, and Elaine Wainwright, 223–38. Semeia Studies. Atlanta, GA: Society of Biblical Literature, 2014., 2014

In this essay I engage in an intertextual reading (cf. Fewell, 1992 and Hays et al., 2009) of Jonah. This particular reading will not focus exclusively on biblical intertexts, as for instance in the intertextual reading by Kim (2007). Rather, the starting point for this reading is the story of those edgy places where my life so far has been lived out. I shall come to the canonical text soon enough, but first I begin with the personal. In particular, I start with the personal boundaries and those border spaces—physical and psychological—where my sense of belonging has been both affirmed and challenged. All three of the B-words (Bible, Borders, Belongings) converge in this story of personal marginality.

2017

Is the book of Jonah History or Fiction? 3.2 Proposed Gattungen for the book of Jonah 3.3 The Nature of Prophecy and Prophetic Literature 3.4 The Problematic Classification of the book of Jonah as Prophetic Literature 3.5 The book of Jonah as a Parody on the Prophetic Traditions of the Hebrew Bible 3.6 Proposed Sitze im Leben for the book of Jonah 3.7 Summary and Evaluation 4. COMPOSITION AND REDACTION 4.1 The Major Theories on the Composition and Redaction of the book of Jonah 4.2 The Divine Names in the book of Jonah 4.3 Summary and Evaluation 5. SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION CHAPTER 3: A LITERARY-EXEGETICAL OR SYNCHRONIC ANALYSIS OF THE BOOK OF JONAH (The Whole Text)

BA Thesis , 2019

This thesis provides an overview of the literary characteristics of the Book of Jonah and discusses the literary categories that scholars have associated with it, namely historical, imaginative, or humorous literature. After a hermeneutical discussion of multiple genres within these literary categories that have been used to describe the Book of Jonah, this work concludes that the book is best described as a ‘didactic, satiric novella’.

A Dove to the Land of War, 2018

This article contains chapter 2 of the book 'A Dove to the Land of War : The Book of Jonah Translated Word for Word and Explained'.The prophet Jonah is best known for the storm at sea and his stay in the big fish which – after three days – spits him out on dry land. Less well-known is his prayer in the fish, his later performance in the big city of Nineveh and his skirmish with a tabernacle, a miracle-tree, a worm, a scorching east wind and not in the last place with God. But what is the connection between all those incoherent images? They only seem to be gathered to tell an exciting story. And yet it’s evident from the language, the style and the composition, that the book of Jonah has been written very carefully. In this chapter a literary analysis is presented which reveales the literary character of the Book of Jonah as a very constructed short story with a complex structure. Questions are raised not about what really happened to Jonah, but what the writer of this small Bible book could have meant with his imaginative text. Those questions will be answered in the following chapters of the book. Connections with other stories in the Bible and rabbinical literature will be explained by considering the story of Jonah a Midrash-story which updates certain themes from the Torah and the Prophets in the time of the Persian occupation of the land of Israel after the Babylonian exile. An e-book and a paperback edition are for sale at Amazon.com.

2023

Jonah is considered one of the 12 Minor Prophets in the Hebrew Canon. The circumstances in Jonah are dated around 785 B.C. and in the Jewish canon it is part of a larger book “The Twelve”. In Christian Scripture it is a separate book. The short account seems to oppose narrow Jewish nationalism of the eight century B.C. The short exegetical analysis I attempt follows the processes described by Henry Virkler and Karelynne Ayayo.

Journal of Hebrew Scriptures, 2009

The first part of this article reviews significant scholarly contributions on the Book of Jonah for the last ten years. Looking specifically at the work of Serge Frolov, Yvonne Sherwood, Ehud Ben Zvi, Lowell Handy and T.A. Perry demonstrates that exegesis of Jonah has entered a very fruitful period, free of the anti-Jewish biases characteristic of earlier readings and armed with more information about post-exilic Judah than ever before. Next, the article looks at God’s reference to the animals in Jon 4:11 and reads it as an expression of God’s desire for the newly submissive Ninevites to offer sacrifice to him, as the sailors do in 1:16 and Jonah vows in 2:10. Thus God is portrayed, like many ancient Near Eastern potentates, as extending his rule over peoples and exacting tribute.