JONAH. - Prophet, son of Amittai (Hebrew 'Amit-taj') of Gath (Gath-hepher) in Galilee; he foretold to Jeroboam II (787-746) his victories (2 Kgs 14:25). A Jewish legend states that he was the son of the widow of Zarephath, raised to life by Elijah (1 Kgs 17:17-24). Unreliable traditions place his tomb at Gath-hepher, or in Assyria near the village of Nebi Yānus, "Prophet Jonah," on the site of ancient Nineveh.
J. is the hero of the book bearing his name, the fifth among the Minor Prophets of the Hebrew and Latin Bibles, the sixth in the Greek. The book contains no discourses, but only an episode from the prophet's life.
Sent by Yahweh to preach repentance to Nineveh, capital of the Assyrian Empire, oppressor of Israel, J. refuses and tries to escape God's command by boarding a Phoenician ship at Joppa. A storm arises, and lots indicate J. as the guilty party. Cast into the sea, he is swallowed by a large fish (ch. 1). In its belly J. composes a canticle (a true psalm), and after three days is vomited onto the Palestinian coast (ch. 2). After a renewed command, J. carries the message of destruction to Nineveh: in forty days the capital will be overthrown. The inhabitants repent and Yahweh spares them (ch. 3). This is what J. did not want; he grows angry and invokes death. Yahweh reproaches him for this feeling of hatred and instructs him regarding His mercy, which desires the salvation of the Gentiles, illustrated by the castor-oil plant that grows but withers on the same day, this time to J.'s great regret (ch. 4).
JONAH - J. cast into the sea and at rest after being returned by the monster. Sarcophagus (4th century) - Church of St-Caprais d'Agén.
The author's purpose is to teach that God desires the salvation of the Gentiles as well (4:2). The prophet rebuked by God embodies Jewish particularism. The universalist spirit animating this short book makes it one of the gems of Hebrew literature. This teaching, which is its essence, remains intact whether the book is considered fully historical or rather assigned to the didactic genre.
Historicity, commonly defended until the 19th century, seems taught by Jesus (Matt 12:39-41; Luke 11:29-32), who compares the example of the Ninevites to that of the Queen of Sheba (1 Kgs 10), certainly historical, and likens His own fate to that of J.: He will remain three days in the tomb, as J. in the fish. The reference in Tob 14:4 (only codex B) is entirely unreliable (R. Galdos, *Tobit*, Paris 1930, p. 296; A. Miller, *Tobia*, Bonn 1940, p. 106). Groundless are attempts to relate the text to cuneiform sources (J. B. Schaumberger). On the other hand, J.'s disobedience (cf. Jer 20:7-9), the canticle in the belly of the fish, and the total and sudden conversion of Nineveh appear implausible. Nineveh is spoken of as a past city, with inaccurate references (3:3, 6).
Jesus speaks of J. and the Ninevites for didactic purposes; He makes an illustrative reference that may be drawn from a historical fact as much as from a partially fictional or legendary account. Thus 1 Cor 10:4 and Jude 9ff. refer to Jewish legends; cf. 2 Tim 3:8; Matt 23:35; Heb 7:3, etc. Thus the liturgy wishes the deceased eternal peace "with Lazarus once poor." A body of evidence favors the parable interpretation, which is increasingly followed by modern exegetes (Lagrange, Van Hoonacker, Tobac, Lesètre, Holzhey, Gigot, Deneufel, Chaine, Feuillet, and already St. Gregory Nazianzen and R. Simon).
Noteworthy is the literary and theological dependence of J. on Jeremiah: the prophet of the nations was the principal source for the author of J. (cf. 1:14 = Jer 36:15; 3 = Jer 36; 3:8 = Jer 18:11; 23:22; 3:10b = Jer 18:7ff.). The verses of the canticle recall the Psalter. All this tends to confirm the non-strictly historical but rather didactic character of the narrative.
The style, with Aramaisms and neologisms, places J. among the latest Hebrew writings of the Old Testament. Modern critics, Catholic or Protestant, hesitate regarding the interpretation, whether symbolic (E. König), parabolic, allegorical, or mystical. The time of composition is assigned between ca. 500 and 300 BC; probably the book was composed ca. 300, during the period of greatest dispersion (v. DIASPORA) and proselytism. Against the narrower current that opposed the spread of Yahwism among the Gentiles, the need was felt to affirm the non-exclusivity of the religion of Yahweh toward pagans (cf. Isa 56:1-9). The divine authority of the book is attested by Jesus (Matt 12:39-41; Luke 11:29-32).
Francesco Spadafora
Iconography. - I. In early Christianity. The same Divine Master taught the meaning of the symbolism of the episode of the prophet J., saying: "As Jonah remained three days and three nights in the belly of the sea monster, so will the Son of Man remain three days and three nights in the heart of the earth" (Matt 12:40). J. cast into the sea and swallowed by the monster is a symbol of the faithful departed laid in the tomb,
while the monster represents eternal death from which the Lord will save the departed, as He did J. This concept is expressed in a pseudo-Cyprian oration where it is said: "As You, O Lord, heard J. from the belly of the monster, so also listen to me and cast me from death to life."
It was one of the subjects most frequently depicted in early Christian funerary art; the story is sometimes expressed in four scenes: JONAH thrown from the ship and swallowed by the monster; JONAH cast up on the shore; JONAH at rest; JONAH tormented by the sun after the plant had withered. These four scenes are painted in the cemetery “ad duas lauros.” In general, however, only the first three are represented; sometimes the ship is omitted; in some cases there is only a single scene, or merely the casting up of the prophet, as in the cubiculum called “of the veiled woman” in Priscilla, or only JONAH at rest. The storm raised by the wind is sometimes indicated by its personification; the effect of the storm is also expressed by the gestures of the sailors; one, terrified, covers his face with his hands, another is in prayer. As to the kind of plant under which the prophet rested, a controversy arose between St. Jerome and St. Augustine because in the Vulgate the Hebrew word qiqājōn was rendered as hedera (ivy), whereas in the Septuagint it is found as zōzōn.
In art the gourd is always represented, except in a fresco in Priscilla (Wilpert, Pitture, tavv. 44, 2). Sometimes in the background the city of Nineveh is also depicted, as in cubiculum A° of the cemetery of Callisto, on a sarcophagus lid from Arles, and on a graffito slab in the cemetery “ad duas lauros” in Rome. The earliest representations of the cycle of JONAH are found in Rome in mosaic in the sepulchral cell discovered in 1942 near the confession of St. Peter in the Vatican, in painting in the cemetery of Callisto (Wilpert, ibid., p. 338, tav. 26, 1), and in sculpture on the Lateran sarcophagus no. 119 (id., Sarcofagi, tavv. IX, 3; LIX, 3). Outside Rome they appear in painting in the cemetery called of St. Januarius in Naples, at Bonaria in Sardinia, and at Five Churches in Hungary. They are also represented in funerary mosaics, at Rome on terracotta slabs found in a cemetery on the Via Latina, now in the Lateran Christian Museum; in Africa at Tabarca, and on a pavement now in the Alaoui Museum in Tunis. A sculpture from Tarsus, now in the Metropolitan Museum of New York, shows JONAH thrown from the ship, swallowed and cast up by the monster. The scene of JONAH and the monster also appears on a marble slab in the Lateran Museum, from the cemetery of Praetextatus; it is found in the inscription of Beratius Nikatoras in the same Museum. It then appears on bronze lamps (R. Garrucci, Storia dell’arte cristiana nei primi otto secoli, VI, Prato 1880, tav. 471, n. 3), on terracotta lamps from Marseilles, Syracuse, Sémur-en-Auxois, Paris, Cologne, and Carthage, and on plates (R. Garrucci, ibid., VI, tav. 465, 4 and 5), on bronze medallions from Ponziano now in the Vatican, on a lead cup, on gilded glass, on gems, and on stuccoes as at Ravenna in the baptistery of St. John in Fonte (R. Garrucci, ibid., II [Prato 1876], tav. 132, 1). On the marble rims of basins from Salona preserved in Zagreb the scene of the monster casting up JONAH, on a fragment from Athens, on one from the Russian Archaeological Institute in Istanbul, from Smyrna, and on another from Laodicea now in the Tchini-Kiosk Museum in Istanbul (E. Michon, Rebords de bassins chrétiens ornés de reliefs, in Revue biblique, new series, 12 [1915], pp. 517 ff.). In miniatures, as in the manuscripts of Rabula, of Cosmas Indicopleustes, and in the Homiliary of St. Gregory of Nazianzus. In ivory, as in the casket formerly of St. Ambrose in Milan, now in the Hermitage Museum in Leningrad, or in that of the Bonn Museum; in the Brescia Casket; in the binding of the Gospel of St. Michael of Murano, now in Ravenna.
