Jonah's Tarshish

The name Jonah or Jonas (Hebrew: Yonah, meaning “dove”, remains uncertain in Biblical books and other textual sources (e.g., Dead Sea Scrolls).

In the Hebrew Bible, Jonah is a Prophet of the Northern Kingdom of Israel from about the 8th century BC. He is the central figure of the 'Book of Jonah', in which he is called upon by God to travel to Nineveh and warn its inhabitants of an impending divine wrath, His judgment on Assyria's pride (Isaiah 10:5–19).

Nineveh, an ancient Assyrian city of Upper Mesopotamia, the oldest, and most-populous flourishing capital city of the Empire, located at the junction of important trade routes, on the east bank of the Tigris River, by the modern city of Mosul, Iraq. According to the Bible, it was God's doing,

Jonah boards a ship at the port of Joppa (also called Yafo, Yafa, Japho or Jaffa) in the southern and oldest part of Tel Aviv, Israel, heading to Tarshish, a much disputed place.

For at times, the appellation "Ships of Tarshish" is used without reference to any locality, denoting ships intended for a long voyage (Isa. 23:1, 14), ships of a large size (sea-going ships), whatever might be the port to which they sailed.

Some modern scholars identify Tarshish with Tartessos, a port in southern Spain, while Josephus' identification of Tarshish with the Cilician city of Tarsus is more widely accepted. Despite that, Tarshish is about 141 km north from the port of Joppa; a village in the Mountains of Lebanon at an altitude of 1,400 m; about 50 km inland from the eastern edge of the Mediterranean Sea of Phoenicia (modern Lebanon); and approximately 664 km from Nineveh.

Tarshish occurs seven times in the Old Bible. One of the most recurring is that of a place, which, used to be a station for the retinue of passengers on their way to the Bekaa Valley plains and silk road ancient trade routes by extension.

The Romans paved roads to cross Tarshish, linking the seaside with the inner-plains. Such is especially evident in “Bourj Al-Hamam” (tower of pigeons). Majdel Tarshish was a well fortressed castle in time of invasions that raided down the Bekaa. Rocky sarcophaguses of the Roman era bear witness to that glorious age.

Story has it, that caught in a storm, Jonah orders the ship's crew to cast him overboard, whereupon, he is swallowed by a giant fish that vomits him out three days later onto the shore. Whereby, he proceeds and successfully convinces the inhabitants of Nineveh to repent.

As the story goes, when Jonah was outside the city. God shields him from the sun with a plant, but later sends a worm to cause it to wither, and when Jonah complained of the bitter heat, God rebuked him.

In Judaism, the story of Jonah represents the teaching of Teshuva, which is the ability to repent and be forgiven by God. Early Christian interpreters viewed Jonah as a type for Jesus. Jonah (Arabic: Yunis) is also regarded as a Prophet in Islam and the Biblical narrative of Jonah is repeated, with a few notable differences, in the Quran. (Surah 21:87) and (Surah 68:48), Jonah is called Dhul-Nūn (meaning "The One of the Fish"). In (Surah 4:163 and 6:86, he is referred to as "an Apostle of Allah". (Surah 37:139-148) retells the full story of Jonah. In the Hadiths, Jonah is also mentioned in a few incidents during the lifetime of Prophet Muhammad.

The consensus of mainstream Biblical scholars holds that the contents of the Book of Jonah are entirely ahistorical, fictional and often at least partially satirical, but the character of Jonah may have been based on a historical Prophet of the same name mentioned in (2 Kings 14:25).

Although Jonah allegedly lived in the eighth century BC, the Book of Jonah was written centuries later during the time of the Achaemenid Empire. The Hebrew used in the Book of Jonah shows strong influences from Aramaic and the cultural practices described in it match those of the Achaemenid Persians.

Deductive reasoning contends that if the Book of Jonah was an intentional work of parody, then it was probably admitted into the canon of the Hebrew Bible by sages who misunderstood its satirical nature and mistakenly interpreted it as serious Prophetic work…

Food for thought!