REBELS WITHOUT A CAUSE (1 OF 8)
by Ross Lester
Scripture: Jonah 1:1-3
This content is part of a series.
Rebels Without a Cause (1 of 8)
Series: Jonah
Ross Lester
Jonah 1:1-3
Intro:
If you have your bibles, then please turn to Jonah. If you don't know where to find that, let me help you out, it is right between Obadiah and Micah. :) Use your table of contents. It is a well-known story stuck in there amongst the minor prophets (minor in length of content and not in weight).
They say familiarity breeds contempt, and that can certainly be true in the case of a narrative as familiar as Jonah. It's a story of a dude who got swallowed by a big fish right? Well, kinda, but that isn't even close to being the big idea of the story but we get distracted by that thing we are so familiar with, and so assume the rest.
While we are on that, some of you might be wondering if we can even take this narrative as historical and literal, or do we need to interpret it some other way because we know that fish don't swallow people and fish really don't vomit them up alive again three days later? Do they?
So, there is a lot of debate over the genre of Jonah and most of that is because of the big fish. This has led many to say that it must be allegorical or a parable, or maybe even the ancient Jewish tradition of Midrash - that is a fictional tale to prove a point that often takes literal figures and embellishes events for the purpose of making the educational point. Like fables, but with people. We don't think it is one of those things (although it is didactic and serves to teach a lesson), we agree with most of the scholars that Jonah is a prophetic narrative, a lot like 1 Kings that speaks of the prophetic work of Elijah and Elishah. In fact, according to Jewish tradition, Jonah is the next prophet in Israel after those two. Why don't we see it as allegorical?
Firstly, it isn't written like that. It is written like historical narrative. A lot of the OT is poetry, but it lets you know when it is doing that. This doesn't start "Once Upon a Time", it starts "the word o ...
Series: Jonah
Ross Lester
Jonah 1:1-3
Intro:
If you have your bibles, then please turn to Jonah. If you don't know where to find that, let me help you out, it is right between Obadiah and Micah. :) Use your table of contents. It is a well-known story stuck in there amongst the minor prophets (minor in length of content and not in weight).
They say familiarity breeds contempt, and that can certainly be true in the case of a narrative as familiar as Jonah. It's a story of a dude who got swallowed by a big fish right? Well, kinda, but that isn't even close to being the big idea of the story but we get distracted by that thing we are so familiar with, and so assume the rest.
While we are on that, some of you might be wondering if we can even take this narrative as historical and literal, or do we need to interpret it some other way because we know that fish don't swallow people and fish really don't vomit them up alive again three days later? Do they?
So, there is a lot of debate over the genre of Jonah and most of that is because of the big fish. This has led many to say that it must be allegorical or a parable, or maybe even the ancient Jewish tradition of Midrash - that is a fictional tale to prove a point that often takes literal figures and embellishes events for the purpose of making the educational point. Like fables, but with people. We don't think it is one of those things (although it is didactic and serves to teach a lesson), we agree with most of the scholars that Jonah is a prophetic narrative, a lot like 1 Kings that speaks of the prophetic work of Elijah and Elishah. In fact, according to Jewish tradition, Jonah is the next prophet in Israel after those two. Why don't we see it as allegorical?
Firstly, it isn't written like that. It is written like historical narrative. A lot of the OT is poetry, but it lets you know when it is doing that. This doesn't start "Once Upon a Time", it starts "the word o ...
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