442 FISH OF MOSES— JONAH— SOLOMON'S RING 



the development of the higher criticism and of comparative 



mythology hardly draw the tensely interested congregations 



of yore. 



Tylor points out that at the root of the apologue of Jonah 



lies the widely-spread Nature-myth of the sea-monster or 



dragon, of which the fight between 

 Tiamat and Marduk, and of 

 Andromeda and the sea-monster 

 are analogous developments. ^ 



Cheyne detects the hnk between 

 the original myth and the story 

 of Jonah in Jeremiah li. 34, "he 

 hath swallowed me up as a dragon : 

 he hath filled his maw with my 

 deHcates : he hath cast me out," 

 and again in verse 44, " and I 

 will bring forth out of his mouth 

 that which he has swallowed up," 



Allusions to mythical dragons 

 occur elsewhere, as in Psalm Ixxiv. 

 13, " Thou breakest the heads of 

 the dragons (or sea-monsters) in 

 the water." The curious behef in 

 a dragon or fish that swallows the 

 JONAH LEAVING THE whale's moott sprcads widc. This draws 

 M°u™- from Mr. R. C. Thompsons the 



From a 14th Century MS. in j n -i •• • i. j 



H. Schmidt jona. p. 94. fig- 1?- Comment, when it is remembered 

 The picture shows that while that Jonah was swallowed by the 



the whale's gastric juices had . ^ ^gj^ . f^^. ^j^^-gg ^ ,^Yle 



completely absorbed Jonah s o j \ 



clothes and curls, they prevailed period of the moon's disappearance 

 Srde/agShSd;.^"""^ °' at the end of the month), the coin- 



cidence is well worth considering ; 

 especially as Jonah is the Hebrew word for dove, and it was 

 at Harran, the city sacred to the Moon God, that the dove 

 was sacrificed (Al. Nadim, 294)." 



But whatever the " great fish," and whatever the story's 



^ An excellent monograph by Hans Schmidt (Jona Eine Untersuchung 

 zur vergleichenden Religionsgeshichle, Gottingen, 1907) gives 39 cuts. 

 « Op. cit., p. 53, 



