1907.] 



HAUPT— JONAH'S WHALE. 159 



region of Arvad where Tiglathpileser I slew a sperm-whale is S. 

 of lat. 35° N. 



In the Ethiopic Bible the name Uifibar is used for the great fish 

 which swallowed Jonah. A sperm-whale might have swallowed the 

 disobedient prophet, but it is, of course, impossible that Jonah 

 should have been alive after having been in the belly of the whale 

 for three days and three nights, although it is reported in the 

 Neue Luther. Kirchenseitung 1895, p. 303, that a whaleman, James 

 Bradley was, in Feb. 1891, swallowed by a whale, and on the fol- 

 lowing day he was taken alive out of its stomach. He lay in a 

 swoon in the belly of the whale. The sailors had much difficulty 

 in restoring him to consciousness. It was not till after three months' 

 nursing that James Bradley recovered his reason.^ — After all, he 

 seems to have been more fortunate in this respect than some dis- 

 tinguished Biblical scholars. 



We need not trouble ourselves about the miraculous preser- 

 vation of the prophet : the Book of Jonah is not actual history, but 

 an apologue like the story of the good Samaritan in the New Testa- 

 ment (Luke X, 30-37) or the parable of the three rings ^ in 

 Les sing's Nathan der Weise. The Book of Jonah (which may 

 have been composed, like Ecclesiastes,^ under the reign of Alex- 

 ander Jannaeus, about 100 b. c.) represents a Sadducean^i protest 

 against the Pharisaic exclusiveness based on the conviction that 

 Divine Grace was reserved for the Chosen People, not for the Gen- 

 tiles. The present Book of Jonah seems to have displaced in the 

 Dodecapropheton a prophecy of the ancient prophet Jonah ben- 

 Amittai, of Gath-hepher, who prophesied (about 785 b. c.) at 

 the time of King Jehoahaz of Israel {cf. the Deuteronomistic ad- 

 dition in 2 Kings xiii, 4-6) the deliverance of Israel from the op- 

 pression of the Syrians, wdiich was accomplished by Jehoahaz 's 

 son, Jeroboam II (see 2 Kings xiv, 25). 



^ See Has ting's Dictionary of the Bible, Vol. II., p. 750^ 



2 This was taken from Boccaccio's Decamerane, Giornata i, Nov. Hi: 

 Melchisedech Giudco. 



3 See Haupt, Ecclesiastes (Baltimore, 1905) p. i. 



* Sadducee, righteous is a euphemistic term for unrighteous, i. e., 

 Hellenizer, freethinker; see Haupt, Ecclesiastes, p. 35, n. i, and the paper 

 The name I star in the Journal of the American Oriental Society, Vol. 

 XXVHI. 



