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F

THE

ENCYCLOPÆDIA BRITANNICA,

OR

DICTIONARY

OF

ARTS, SCIENCES, AND GENERAL LITERATURE.

EIGHTH EDITION.

WITH EXTENSIVE IMPROVEMENTS AND ADDITIONS;
AND NUMEROUS ENGRAVINGS.

VOLUME XIII.

State Hila Seulsty

OF VICCOLISI,
1876

ADAM & CHARLES BLACK, EDINBURGH.

MDCCCLVII.

[The Proprietors of this Work give notice that they reserve the right of Translating it.]

NEILL AND CO., PRINTERS, EDINBURGH.

AE +486

13

Jonah

ENCYCLOPEDIA BRITANNICA.

JONA H.

JONAH, the fifth order of the minor prophets. No era is assigned to him in the book of his prophecy, yet there is little doubt of his being the same person who is spoken of in 2 Kings xiv. 25, where he is described as the son of Amittai, and a native of Gath-hepher, in the tribe of Zebulon. He flourished in or before the reign of Jeroboam II., and predicted the successful conquests, enlarged territory, and brief prosperity of the Israelitish kingdom under that monarch's sway.

The Book of Jonah contains an account of the prophet's mission to denounce Nineveh, and of his refusal to undertake the embassy of the method he employed to evade the unwelcome task, and the miraculous means which God used to curb his self-willed spirit, and subdue his petulant and querulous disposition. After narrating his fulfilment of the Divine command we are again presented with another exemplification of his refractory temper. His attempt to ffee from the presence of the Lord must have sprung from a partial insanity, produced by the excitement of distracting motives in an irascible and melancholy heart. The mind of Jonah was dark and moody, not unlike a lake which mirrors in the waters the gloomy thunderclouds overshadowing it, and flashing over its sullen waves a momentary gleam. The history of Jonah is certainly striking and extraordinary. Its characteristic prodigy does not resemble the other miraculous phenomena recorded in Scripture; yet we must believe in its literal occurrence, as the Bible affords no indication of being a mythus, allegory, or parable. Our Saviour's pointed and peculiar allusion to it is a presumption of its reality (Matt. xii. 40). The opinion of the earlier Jews (Tobit xiv. 4; Joseph. Antiq. ix. 10, 2) is also in favour of the literality of the adventure. It requires less faith to credit this simple excerpt from Jonah's biography, than to believe the numerous hypotheses that have been invented to deprive it of its supernatural character. Some, who cannot altogether reject the reality of the narrative, suppose it to have had a nistorical basis, though its present form be fanciful or mythical. Grimm regards it as a dream produced in that sleep which fell upon Jonah as he lay on the sides of the ship. The opinion of the famous Herman

VOL. XIII.

von der Hardt, as given by Rosenmüller was, that the book Jonah. is a historical allegory, descriptive of the fate of Manasseh, and Josiah his grandson, kings of Judah. Tarshish, according to him, represents the kingdom of Lydia; the ship, the Jewish republic, whose captain was Zadok the high-priest; while the casting of Jonah into the sea symbolized the temporary captivity of Manasseh in Babylon. Others regard this book as an allegory, such as Bertholdt and Rosenmüller, Gesenius, and Winer-an allegory based upon the Phonician mythus of Hercules and the Sea-monster. Less supposed that all difficulty might be removed by imagining that Jonah, when thrown into the sea, was taken up by a ship having a large fish for a figure-head-a theory somewhat more pleasing than the rancid hypothesis of Anton, who fancied that the prophet took refuge in the interior of a dead whale, floating near the spot where he was cast over board. De Wette regards the story as not a true history, yet not a mere fiction; its material being derived from popular legends, and wrought up with the design of making a didactic work. But many regard it as a mere fiction with a moral design—the grotesque coinage of a Hebrew imagination. This opinion, variously modified, seems to be that of Semler, Michaelis, Herder, Stäudlin, Eichhorn, Augusti, Meyer, Pareau, and Maurer.

These hypotheses are all vague and baseless, and do not merit a special refutation. Endeavouring to free us from one difficulty they plunge us into others yet more intricate and perplexing. Much profane wit has been expended on the miraculous means of Jonah's deliverance, very unneces sarily and very absurdly. The species of marine animal is not defined, and the word is often used to specify, not the genus whale, but any large fish or sea-monster. There is little ground for the supposition of Bishop Jebb, that the asylum of Jonah was not in the stomach of a whale, but in a cavity of its throat, which, according to naturalists, is a very capacious receptacle, sufficiently large, as Captain Scoresby asserts, to contain a merchant ship's jolly-boat full of men. Since the days of Bochart it has been a common opinion that the fish was of the shark species, Lamia cant? carcharios. or "sea-dog" (Bochart, Op. iii. 72; Calmet's

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