This week, after studying the big political story of the Exodus, I decided to look into the story of Jonah, thinking that this would be a story without any tangible evidence. I was wrong!
First, let’s recap the story of Jonah. Here’s the Cliff-note version:
God told Jonah to travel to Ninevah (modern-day Mosul in Iraq), because the Assyrian empire was ‘evil’, following false gods and ‘wickedness’. God wanted Jonah to turn them around. It was a frightening assignment, because Ninevah was a huge city, and a hedonistic place that was likely to violently reject any outsider coming in to tell them how to live. Understandably, Jonah tried to run away from God. So God sent a storm to batter the ship he was traveling on. In a noble gesture, Jonah volunteered to be thrown overboard to save all of the sailors on the ship. According to the ancient manuscript, Jonah spent three days and nights in the belly of a large “fish”. Eventually the fish spit him out on the land and he made his way to Ninevah. Incredibly, he succeeded in his mission to turn the Ninevites around.
This story appears in both the Bible and the Quran, and to this day, Christians, Muslims, Jews, and Yasidi people believe that the tomb of Jonah can be found in Mosul. In 1294, the Ottomans built a mosque at the site called Nabi Yunus (The Mosque of the Prophet Jonah). The mosque included a wooden zarih (a type of box containing a holy relic of some kind) that may have contained either Jonah’s bones or a tooth from the fish/whale.
The mosque was destroyed by ISIS in 2014, primarily because it was a potent force for cooperation between Christians, Jews, and Muslims. Everyone got along and felt united around Jonah, so the fundamentalists decided to destroy the mosque. You can watch the explosion in this video.
This is where the story gets interesting. Before ISIS, the site was a working mosque and archaeologists were unable to dig underneath to look at the history of the site. But after the mosque was reduced to rubble, ISIS dug tunnels underneath to look for loot. They found significant artefacts and unfortunately they disturbed the site, removing at least 700 objects and selling them on the black market. (Notably, Hobby Lobby in the USA bought many of these objects and there’s an active debate about their authenticity).
ISIS was unable to remove some larger stones and inscriptions. These indicate the presence of Jonah’s tomb, as well as cuneiform writing indicating that the site was the residence of kings Sennacherib and his son Esarhaddon. In the books of Kings, Jeremiah wrote a chronicle of Sennacherib’s destruction of Babylon, his failed attempt to conquer ancient Israel, and his eventual replacement by his son Esarhaddon. So these cuneiform inscriptions line up perfectly with the books of Kings I and II in the Bible.[1]
It gets better. Because ISIS dug four extensive tunnels under the mosque in 2014-2017, multiple layers of ruins were exposed. This makes it clear that Jonah’s shrine was built on top of the palace of the Assyrian kings.
Think about it. The Assyrians had recently failed to conquer Israel, and had no reason to listen to a lone Jew. Something extraordinary must have happened here, for this Jew to be elevated to such a high status.
Ancient Assyria lends itself extremely well to archaeology because they wrote everything down on clay tablets. Excellent reference materials lay out the timelines of various campaigns, kings, and events. Based on these materials, it appears that Jonah can be dated to 824 BC and the reign of Shamsi-Adad. Shamsi’s father had failed to conquer Israel in 853 BC. When Shamsi took over, there was a period of 80 years of peace, where the Assyrians left the Jews alone. Shamsi’s great-great grandson Sennacherib took over in 704 BC, as the Assyrian dynasty was trying again to conquer everyone around them.
Here's the kicker: Close study of ancient Assyrian religion shows a shift from polytheism to something that appears very similar to the Trinity. This has very old roots, but the royal family in particular started to shift to a monotheistic concept during the 600-900 BC timeframe. Separate gods began to be described as ‘branches of the same tree’, with three branches that bear great similarity to the modern Christian concept.
Based on the ancient clay tablets, the picture looks like this:
The Assyrians tried to conquer Israel and failed (850 BC).
Jonah came to Ninevah and influenced the new king to stop attacking and also to adopt a monotheistic theology. (824 BC)
Sennacherib took control and attacked Samaria, Egypt, and others (roughly 680 BC)
The wars didn’t work out, and Jonah’s shrine was built on top of the royal residence.
Assyria declined…and Ninevah was destroyed completely in 612 BC.
None of this proves that Jonah was actually swallowed by a fish. But it does demonstrate that something special happened with Jonah, to give him enormous power of persuasion.
Many people have speculated that the “fish” (the Hebrew language lacks descriptive detail here) was a baleen whale or a sperm whale, and that Jonah could have survived in an air pocket of some kind. Maybe. I am unsure whether to read this as a fact, or as a parable.
I would like for this to be a parable, because I prefer a natural explanation for each of these bizarre Bible stories. It’s not impossible that Jonah was lodged in the esophagus of a sperm whale, able to share oxygen with the whale somehow. So maybe that really happened. I struggle to accept it as fact.
Eight hundred years later, people were asking Jesus for a “sign” that He was the Messiah. Jesus responded by saying that God had already given proof in Jonah, with the obvious parallels of descending for three days and coming back to life again. Matthew wrote Jesus’ response down. For Christians, this is the final word.
So, I started writing my blog this week, thinking that I would talk about parables and how a good story can illustrate deeper Truth. Instead, I am reminded that God is capable of anything. No matter how bizarre it seems to us, we can’t rule it out.
[1] The size of ancient Ninevah (30 miles across) also lines up with Jonah’s decription of the crossing the city in a three-day walk.