The subtitle for the 2004 film Dodgeball is “A True Underdog Story.” If the viewer lets the words pass by without a double-take, he or she will likely spend the rest of the movie, which applies the “unlikely teammates make the best teams” trope to the “sport” of dodgeball, asking, “How in the world is this a true story?”
It’s not—and there’s the catch in the subtitle. Dodgeball is “A True Underdog Story.” Everything that happens is entirely made up, but as far as stories about underdogs go, it truly is one.
Sometimes, even Bible-believing Christians honestly wonder, “Is Jonah a true story?” We confess all Scripture is God-breathed and thus cannot contain error, so one cheeky answer might be: Of course it’s a true story—it’s in the Bible! But the meaning behind the question is usually this: Did the events in Jonah really happen the way they’re depicted? Was Jonah really swallowed by a great fish? Did the Ninevites really repent? Did all the stuff with the plant and the worm really happen? In other words, did the events recorded in the book of Jonah actually take place within time and history?
Two facets of the Jonah story tend to prompt this question: its biblical symbolism and Jonah’s long weekend in the belly of the great fish.
We know that the sea, fish, plants, and worms are recurring symbols in Scripture. So it’s fair to ask, “Does that mean the story of Jonah is wrapped in biblical symbolism that its author never intended to be taken literally?”
Such an assumption mistakes how biblical symbolism works. A symbol isn’t a mere empty container, a convenient launchpad for an abstract concept. In the Bible, seas mean seas. Fish mean fish. Plants mean plants. Sometimes these images are used as metaphors (Nebuchadnezzar didn’t literally swallow Judah as cited in Jeremiah 51:34), but we most often find metaphorical use of images exactly where we would expect to—in poetry. The Psalms and the Prophets take the Bible’s symbols and use them in figural, not literal, ways; however, biblical narratives ground symbols in their literal meaning, which can subsequently double or triple to supply other meanings. Crucially, though, they do so without ever ditching the literal meaning. Is there symbolic importance to the catch of 153 fish in John 21? Absolutely! But there would be no significance if they hadn’t actually caught the 153 fish.
Jonah falls within the Book of the Twelve Prophets; however, the work is written as a narrative (despite containing poetry in 2:2–9). Just as Jonah the prophet appears in the narrative of 2 Kings 14:25, this story could fall seamlessly within the Book of Kings. As an account of anything, it would flop if the details didn’t matter and only served to point to something hidden. If Jonah was not hurled into the sea, was not swallowed by a great fish, did not go a day’s journey into Nineveh, or did not rejoice at the shade of the plant, is there a story at all?
That brings me to one of the most controversial aspects of Jonah: the prophet being swallowed by the great fish.
I think we would all say: It’s not that God couldn’t preserve Jonah inside the guts of a large fish, but is that what really happened? Or is that account, and the rest of Jonah, a parable?
We need to be reminded of this from time to time: Jesus’ parables were not historical accounts. He invented those stories to illustrate the inbreaking Kingdom of God, which was so counterintuitive to the everyday Jew’s ideas of the kingdom that straight-on truth wouldn’t do. He had to, in the words of Emily Dickinson, “Tell the truth, but tell it slant.” He told stories that caught people off-guard: a despised Samaritan caring for an injured Jew after priests and Levites have turned aside, or a father running to embrace his son who squandered his inheritance in deplorable ways, or a businessman who pays the one-hour workers the same as he does the eleven-hour workers. What good farmer would let the weeds grow with the wheat? It’s ludicrous! Yet this is how Jesus described the inbreaking kingdom and its most glorious inhabitant. The parables do their job by poking you in the ribs and making you wince.
Could Jonah belong in the same genre? Does its implausible events and exaggerated angles (like the word “exceedingly” used five times) tip us off that it is a parable designed to instruct the Jews how to live post-exile? This is not an uncommon approach for commentators to take.
But I disagree.
No doubt Jonah is crafted. The story is highly stylized. Chapters 1–2 parallel chapters 3–4. Jonah’s prayer of gratitude in chapter 2 corresponds to his prayer for death in chapter 4. The story of Cain haunts the entire narrative. But authors can include facts of history and put great care into their storytelling.
Further, Jesus speaks of the Jonah story as if it really happened:
Then some of the scribes and Pharisees answered him, saying, “Teacher, we wish to see a sign from you.” But he answered them, “An evil and adulterous generation seeks for a sign, but no sign will be given to it except the sign of the prophet Jonah. For just as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the great fish, so will the Son of Man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth. The men of Nineveh will rise up at the judgment with this generation and condemn it, for they repented at the preaching of Jonah, and behold, something greater than Jonah is here” (Matthew 12:38–41).
If Jonah were a parable, why would Ninevites rise up at the judgment to accuse that generation? Fictional characters won’t rise at the judgment, no matter how compelling they may be. The only way Ninevites could rise up at the judgment would be if they had repented at Jonah’s preaching.
Further, if Jonah were a parable, why would Jesus link his own death, burial, and resurrection to it? Jesus knew those events would soon occur in his life, completely real, undeniably painful scourging, crucifixion, death, and the grave. Why would he tie them to a pedagogical yarn about a prophet being swallowed yet kept alive by a fish (wink-wink)?
If I were to rally us to a life-or-death cause by saying, “Just as Frodo Baggins survived Mount Doom and the destruction of the One Ring, we will triumph over our foes!” would you put any stock in what I said next?
I believe Jonah gives a true account of a series of events in the prophet’s life. The author crafted his story in a way that accents some of the Bible’s internal symbols and leaves its hearers and readers with questions about how to live as the people of God in this world. To say otherwise isn’t merely to run afoul of philosophical statements we make about Scripture; it is to say Jesus’ beliefs about his passion and the final judgment were largely based on a clever piece of fiction.
One question I can’t answer: how did Jonah’s story come to be known at all? If Jonah prophesied favorably to Jeroboam II toward the beginning of his reign, then the events in Jonah concerning Nineveh probably occurred sometime between 760–750 BC; however, the text we know as Jonah was likely written after the exiles returned from Babylon, perhaps around 530–520 BC.1 Jonah had been dead for over 200 years when his book came into being. How was his story known and preserved throughout all that time?
I can’t answer that. No one can. Perhaps Jonah told it on himself. I’d like to believe that; it would mean God got through to him. Upon returning from Nineveh, he told others what happened to him and the story never died. Eventually, the author of Jonah recognized the poignance of those events for the returning exiles and wove them into its crafted form.
Or perhaps God communicated the story directly to its author. It wouldn’t be the first time. Assuming Moses wrote Genesis 1, someone had to inform him how the cosmos came into being since he certainly wasn’t around to witness it (this argument is true even if, as some argue, Moses didn’t write the Pentateuch).
If the Ninevites recorded the account, it’s not in their archeological annals. They also wouldn’t have known the events of chapters 1–2 and 4. The mariners wouldn’t know anything beyond what happens in chapter 1. The worm’s not talking.
But the fish? Well, the word of the LORD came to the great fish once before (2:10). Perhaps God gave him the whole scoop at a later time.
Kelly Hahn is an elder for Trinity Christian Fellowship in Lexington, Kentucky, and he works at the University of Kentucky.
NOTES
- While the events of Jonah are pre-exilic, there is some evidence of a post-exilic authorship of the book. For example, Nineveh is referred to in the past tense (overthrown circa 612 BC), and the Feast of Booths was the first feast the Jews celebrated after returning from exile (Neh. 8:13–18; Ezra 5:4) and connects directly to Jonah 4. See further in Phillip Cary, Jonah (BTCB; Grand Rapids: Baker, 2008), 36.
↩︎