Jesus and Jonah...

Front matter

Chap. Copyright No......... .

Shell-—.-.

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA.

Preface

The contents of this volume, with the exception of the dissertation on The Three Days and Three Nights, were first published in the Critical Department of the Christian Standard. They are republished in more permanent form at the request of many readers, and with the hope that they will thus have a more extended circulation. If they shall cause any to more highly appreciate the inimitable story of Jouah, and to have a firmer faith in the utterances of Jesus, they will serve the purpose for which both publications have been made.

The Author.

March, 1896.

Introduction

BY PROFESSOR WILLIAM HENRY GREEN,

PRINCETON THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY.

The a titude of the Lord Jesus Christ toward the Old Testament is a source of great embarrassment to those who acknowledge him as a Divine Teacher, and yet are not in accord with his views on this subject. The puzzle is to reconcile the uniqueness of his person as the incarnate Son of God, the uniqueness of his claim to implicit reverence and confidence, aud his supreme authority as a Divine Teacher, with the admission that he was or could be mistaken in any of his teachings, or that he ever gave his sanction to the errors or mistakes of others. The difficulty created by his attestation given to other parts of the Old Testament recurs in equal measure in the language which he uses respecting the Book of Jonah. The attempt to save his authority by minimizing the force of his words can neither be acceptable to him, nor can it answer its mistaken purpose.

There is no reason for discrediting the Book of Jonah, unless it is to be found in the contents of the book itself. The extraordinary and supernatural occurrences here related can not be pronounced incredible by him who believes in the reality of the miracles recorded elsewhere in the Bible, unless their nature is such, or the occasion is such as to justify any one in affirming that they are mere freaks of power with no worthy end, mere prodigies, so out of analogy with all true viii. JESUS AND JO NAIL

miracles, that it is altogether insupposable that God could, or wou d, have wrought them. But how can any one venture upon such an assertion in view of the fact that the Lord Jesus speaks of them without in any way suggesting that they were incompatible with the character of God, and that he even puts the most marvelous of them in relation to his own stupendous miracle of rising from the dead, the one a sign to the Ninevites, the o.her to the men of Lis own generation.

JESUS AND JONAH.

I. A SYMPOSIUM REVIEWED.

I believe it to be universal with critics of the new school and their disciples, to deny the historical reality of the story of Jonah. Those of them who still believe in Jesus Christ, find it necessary to reckon with a statement from his lips, found in Matthew xii. 38-41. The passage seems to contain a positive affirmation of the reality of the two events which render the story of Jonah incredible in the judgment of most of these gentlemen, and they have felt the necessity of setting aside in some way its apparent force. The passage reads thus :

Then certain of the scribes and Pharisees answered him, saying, Master, we would see a sign from thee. But he answered and said unto them, An evil and adulterous generation seeketh after a sign ; and there shall no sign be given to it but the sign of Jonah the prophet: for as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the sea monster, so shall the Son of man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth. The men of Nineveh shall stand up in the judgment with this generation, and shall condemn it: for they repented at the preaching of Jonah ; and behold a greater than Jonah is here.

In demanding of Jesus a sign, the scribes and Pharisees denied by implication that any of the multitude of signs which he had wrought were real signs ; and their demand was for one of a different kind. In answering that no sign should be given but that of the prophet

2 JE&U8 AND JONAH.

Jonah, he could not have meant that he would give no more of the kind which he had been giving; for he did give more of these, and in great abundance; but he meant that none should be given of a d fferent kind, except the sign of Jonah. This was different, in that it was wrought upon him, and not by him, and it was therefore a more direct and manifest exhibition of power from heaven. He explains what he moans by the sign of Jonah, by adding : "As Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the sea- monster, so shall the Son of man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth." He then affirms, that because the men of Nineveh repented at the preaching of Jonah, and the men of his own generation repented not at his own greater preaching, the former sliall rise up in the judgment and condemn the latter; that is, cause them to receive a severer sentence.

To the great mass of readers in every age and country, it has appeared that Jesus here assumes as a settled fact that Jonah was in the groat fish as described in the Book of Jonah, and that the Ninevites actually repented under the influence of his preaching. So obvious does this appear that probably no human being has ever raised a question about it until after he has reached the conclusion that thoe two events are incredible. Then he must get rid of this obvious meaning, or deny the truthfulness of an assertion made by Jesus Christ. Many attempts at the former have boon made in recent years, and 1 propose, in this volume, to put every one of them to the test, so far as they have come under my notice. I do this, not because it is a matter of supreme importance in itself to know whether Jonah was swallowed by the 6sh and thrown up again, but because the question involves principles of interpretation which affect every statement made by our Lord with reference to events mentioned in the Old Testament, and in referonce to the authorship of some of its books. It is really a question as to whether Jesus is to be received as a competent witness respecting historical and literary matters of the ages which preceded his own. If he is not, then the conception of his person and his powers which believers have hitherto entertained must undergo very serious modifications, even if it shall not be totally abandoned. One of the editors of the Biblical World, Professor Shailer Mathews, has felt the need of some efforts to settle this question, and in the number of that magazine for June, 1895, he published a symposium, the origin of which he states in these words:

In order to learn how far this passage, with its explicit reference, is held by the teachers of religion to set Christ's seal upon the stor}' of Jonah, letters were sent to a considerable number of representative pastors and teachers, asking them to give the readers of the Biblical World their opinions. The following replies have been received in time for publication in this number (p. 417).

Eight replies are published, contributed respectively by Lemuel C. Barnes, Pittsburg, Pa ; J. Henry Thayer, Harvard Divinity School; Franklin Johnson, University of Chicago; William DeW. Hyde, Bowdoin College; Philip S. Moxom Springfield, Mass.; Rush Rhees, Newtown Theological Institution; A mory IT. Bradford, First Congregational Church, Montclair, N. J ; and C. J. H. Ropes, Bangor Theological Seminary.

The editor sums up the result of the symposium in the following statement at the close of the series:

It is not difficult to formulate the common belie! found in these statements of men who ditTer greatly in their attitude toward many theological questions. It is this: Christ's use of the experience of Jonah as an illustration in no way gives his sanction to the view that the Book of Jonah is history (p. 430).

It strikes me as rather singular that the editor here speaks of " Christ's use of the experience of Jonah/' when Jonah had no such experience. Does the editor here unconsciously betray the fact that the veality of this experience is so impressed on his own mind that he unintentionally concedes it while arguing against it ?

I confess myself ignorant of the special qualifications of all these eight scholars, with the exception of Professor Thayer, of Hartford, whose reputation is international; but I assume from the positions which they occupy, and from the choice made of them by the editor, that they are all men of competent attainments. I shall, therefore, treat their positions, and the reasons by which they defend them, as the best that can be said by men on their side of the question.

Professor Thayer is the only one of the eight who says plainly what he thinks of the Book of Jonah. He says :

In my judgment, the characteristics of the Book of Jonah favor the opinion that it is an apologue, or "religious novel," a composition didactic in its aim. How large a historic element it contains can hardly be determined (417).

It seems from this that the book, though a novel, contains a historic element; but how large this element is, the Professor can not determine. As fact is sometimes stranger than fiction, why not suppose that Jonah's experience in the fish is the historical element, and that the novel wss woven around this central fact? Nothing in the sentence just quoted, or in all that the Professor has said, conflicts with this supposition; and yet this is apparently the very thing of all in the book which he would most seriously doubt.

While Professor Thayer can not determine the amount of historic matter in the book, Professor Hyde is equally unable to determine what Jesus meant by his allusion to it. He says :

I should rather not commit myself to an exegesis of such a highly figurative passage as Matthew xii. 39, 40. A man's exegesis of such a passage as that is bound to be simply a reading into it of his gei eral conception of things. What it says is as plain as A, B, C. It requires no exegesis to determine that. It may mean any one of ten thousand things to as many readers. Just precisely what Jesus meant by it we shall never know (419).

This Professor has certainly made a new discovery. It is the discovery of a fact which no man ever before suspected, the fact that this passage, the meaning of which has hitherto given commentators no serious difficulty, is so obscure that it may mean any one of ten thousand things to as many readers; and that what Jesus really meant, " we shall never know/' If we have to choose between ten thousand different meanings, I am afraid that we shall never know, sure enough. But perhaps the figures can be reduced a little, as in case of the man who was starting the song, —

" My soul be on thy guard, Ten thousand foes arise."

When he got to "ten thousand," the tune suddenly rose so high that he could not reach it; but after he had made two or three vain attempts, a neighbor whispered : " Put it down to Jive hundred and you can reach it" Perhaps, when our Professor gets over the excitement of his new discovery, he will put his figures down. Scientific critics should aim at exactness.

One of these writers, Mr. Moxom, cuts the Gordian knot, by pronouncing the remark about Jonah and the fish a spurious addition to Matthew's narrative. He says:

I agree with Wendt that verse 40 is an interpolation. The sign to which Jesus refers in verse 39 is evidently the prophet preaching repentance. As Jonah preached to the Ninevites, so Jesus preached to the men of his time. There are coherency and force in the passage, verses 39 and 41 if we leave out verse 40. Verse 40 introduces a new idea, and one that is not strictly congruous with the others (420).

I suppose that a meaning of the passage is implied in these remarks, which we might count as one of Professor Hyde's ten thousand. But we shall not dwell upon it; for the writer virtually takes back what I have quoted when he says in the very next sentence : "There is, as far as I know, no evidence that verse 40 is a gloss." I suppose he means, no evidence other than conjecture; and in this he is right. Having conceded this, he goes outside the laws of textual criticism in holding the passage to be spurious. A theory which demands the erasure of Scripture to make room for itself is self-evidently unscriptural.

Only one of these writers, Professor Ropes, ventures to say explicitly what Jesus thought of the Book of Jonah. He says :

I have no doubt Jesus supposed the Book of Jonah was historical, and have no objection to believing that he thought the same of the sea-monster miracle, though the evidence is less cogent. But the attempt to use such facts in the higher criticism controversy seems to be founded on a radically erroneous view of Christ's knowledge while on earth (429).

According to lh : s writer, then, Jesus labored under a mistake in regaid to the book; for he supposed it to be historical, when it was not. Yet the same writer says in the next paragraph :

Throughout his ministry, Jesus showed full knowledge of all that \ elonged to the revelation he brought, and exercised the prophetic gifts of insight into character and future events.

This concession falsifies the preceding statement ; for, if Jesus showed full knowledge of all that belonged to the revelation which he brought, then he had full knowledge of all the Old Testament records, so far, at least, as he made use of them. But he did make a most important use of the two principal incidents recorded in the Book of Jonah. He did suppose, says our professor, i hat this book was historical; and his full knowledge implies that what he thus supposed he also knew. He knew, then, that the Book of Jonah was historical ; and the attempt to use such facts as arguments in the higher criticism controversy is not, as he affirms, founded on ''an erroneous view of Christ's knowledge while on earth."

This writer has another remark, in the line of the first one quoted above, which I must notice.

But, receiving his authority absolutely in the spheres of religion and morality, I do not see why his knowledge of the literary history of the Old Testament should have differed essentially from that of his contemporaries, any more than his knowledge of chemistry or astronomy (430).

I could better estimate this remark if I understood the writer to hold that the Old Testament has no more connection with " the spheres of religion and morality" than chemistry and astronomy have; but if he receives, as he says he does, the divine authority of Christ in the spheres of morality and religion, then he must receive as true tho c e records in the Old Testament on the truth of which Jesus based certain of his moral and religious teachings.

This inconsistency in Professor Ropes is but an illustration of the fact which will again and again appear as we proceed with this symposium, that no man can accept the divine authority of Jesus, and reject his endorsement of the Old Testament, without self-contradiction. I wonder, by the by, how this Professor ascertained that Jesus was as ignorant as his contemporaries were of chemistry and astronomy ?

Before I notice the direct arguments by which these eight writers attempt to make good their common position, I wish first to settle, if possible, what our Saviour meant by "the sign of Jonah," in the assertion, " No sign shall be given but the sign of Jonah the prophet/' Some of them take the position that Jonah's preaching to the Ninevites was the sign. Thus, Mr. Moxom says :

The sign to which Jesus refers, in verse 39, is evidently the prophet preaching repentance. As Jonah preached to the Ninevites, so Jesus preached to the men of his time. ... In brief, then, I take the meaning to be this: Jesus declines to furnish any sign in response to the demand of the Scribes and Pharisees, save the obvious one of himself preaching repentance to them, as Jonah preached to the Ninevites (420).

To the same effect Professor Ropes says :

The ques ion is: How did Jonah become a sign? Matthew replies, by the eea-monster miracle, analogous to Christ's r< surrection. But Luke xi. 30 may mean that Jonah w T as a sign 1 ke Christ, by preaching repentance in view of coming judgment. Conservatives underestimate the strength of this view by assuming it implies that Jonah's sign was only a call to repentance.

Jonah cried, " Yet forty days and Nineveh shall be overthrown." So Christ proclaimed : " Repent, or Jerusalem shall be overthrown ;" and in conduct and destiny the Jews strongly contrast with the Ninevites (428).

If the view of Luke's mean'ng here expressed is correct, it contradicts the meaning ascribed to Matthew ; and I am not sure which view the writer really takes. He certainly understands Matthew correctly ; or rather^ he understands correctly the words of Jesus reported by Matthew ; for when Jesus says, " No sign shall be given save the sign of Jonah/' and then immediately adds : " For as Jonah was in the belly of the sea monster three days and three nights, so shall the Son of man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth/' he certainly explains by the last remark what he means by the sign of Jonah. His own resurrection, after entombment for three days, is called the sign of Jonah, because of the similarity of the two miracles. This view is confirmed by the consideration that it was undoubtedly a miraculous sign which the scribes and Pharisees demanded; and the word sign in his answer must be understood in the same sense. It is also confirmed by the consideration that the word rendered sign (seemelon) is used almost exclusively in the New Testament for signs of a miraculous character. Indeed, it is the word most usually translated miracle. Those works which we call miracles are in the New Testament designated by three different Greek words. They are called mighty works (dunameis), because of the divine power exhibited in them. They are called wonders (terafa), because of the wonder which they excite in the beholder ; and they are called signs (seemeia), because they always signify something connected with the will of God.

This view is furthermore confirmed, and made, I think, altogether certain, by the parallel passage in Luke, who quotes another remark of Jesus not reported by Matthew. According to his report, Jesus said : " For even as Jonah was a sign to the Ninevites, so shall also the Son of man be to this generation" (xi. 30). This is not to be regarded as a different version of the Lord's answer, but only as an additional part of the whole answer, Luke giving one part and Matthew the other, as they very often do. Jesus then asserts that Jonah was a sign to the Ninevites, and he uses the word sign, as we have seen, in the sense of a miracle. But how could Jonah have been a miraculous sign to the Ninevites? He wrought no miracle among them ; and his preaching could not have been regarded by them as miraculous until, by means of some separate miraculous sign they were convinced that it was a miraculous prediction. That which made him a sign to the Ninevites must then have been his experience in the fish, connected as it was with the command twice given to go and cry against Nineveh.

One of the eight writers in the symposium, while agreeing with the others on the main question under discussion, avows explicitly the view just stated of the sign of Jonah. He says:

Apt, therefore, as is the story of Jonah's preaching to illustrate the relation of Jesus to his generation, the wording of Luke xi. 30, and what we know of the habits of interpretation in Jesus* day, lead to the conclusion that Luke's more general explanation of the sign of Jonah should be understood in the sense of Matthew's more concrete interpretation ; and to the conviction that in the use Jesus made of the words, the sign of Jonah was the deliverance by which he came to be the bearer to Nineveh of the effective warning which led to the people's -repentance. The

A bYMPOtilVM REVIEWED. 11

explanation of the sign of Jonah in Matthew xii. 40, and Luke xi. 30, may be paraphrased thus: As, in the personal experience of Jonah, God proved to him, and afterward to those who heard of his attempted flight, that he was the chosen messenger to the Ninevites; so in the personal experience of the Son of man will God prove to all men that he is the appointed messenger to this generation. This sign in each case is the personal exper ence of the prophet (Professor Ehees, 423, 424).

Professor Ropes also appears to take the same position, and he quotes with approval a sta'ement of the analogy drawn by Jesus, from the pen of Grass. Here is what he says of this point :

Perhaps Christ's hearers would naturally think of the sea-monster miracle as the sign of Jonah. And here, too, a good analogy may be found. " In Jonah's life a miracle occurred which could have exerted a controlling influence in vanquishing opposition to him. Yet this didn't help the Ninevites, since they learned nothing about it, but had come to the decision on the basis of Jonah's preaching alone. Even so in Christ's life, a miracle was about to occur which could exert a controlling influence in drawing men to him. Yet this w T ould no more help this generation to come to a decision than the Jonah sign helped the Ninevites; they must decide on the sole basis of Chiist's preaching" (428).

While these two writers differ from two others of the eight in agreeing that the sign of Jonah is the miracle wrought on Jonah's person, the latter, forgetting the very words of Jesus on which he is commenting, declares that the Ninevites were not helped by the sign " since they learned nothing about it." How could it be true, then, that he was a sign to the Ninevites? How could an event be a sign to a people when they had never heard of it? And, stranger still, this Professor says that the sign which Jesus was about to give by his resurrection would not help his generation to come to a decision, when the facts in the Book of Acts show that it did help them by causing many thousand to come to a decision under the preaching of the apostles.

But did the Ninevites hear of the sign of Jonah before they repented at his preaching? These men and many others answer, no ; and they so answer because the fact is not stated in the Book of Jonah. But while it is not stated in that book, it is stated by Jesus, and there is nothing in the book which conflicts with the statement. On the contrary, the book leaves the way open for the supposition that the news of the miracle reached Nineveh as soon as Jonah did, if not sooner. When he was landed from the mouth of the fish the story immediately became known to the men who found him on the seashore, or to whose house he resorted for food. It is not probable that after fasting and suffering as he did for three days, he was able at once to travel toward home. The story, then, would start ahead of him. When he reached home, we are not told that the Lord renewed immediately the command to go to Nineveh. For aught that is said in the text to the contrary, he may have remained in quiet at home for a week, or a month, before this command came to him; and certainly if God desired the sign to have its effect in advance on the Ninevites, he would delay the command sufficiently for the purpose.

That this view of the sign, and of its conveyance to the Ninevites, is correct, is finally proved by the nature of the analogy which Jesus draws. The sign which he gave to the men of his generation by his resurrection from the dead, was communicated to them in all its details by the apostles. Otherwise it could have been to them no sign. Necessarily, then, if there was a real analogy, and not a sophistical assertion of one, the sign in the person of Jonah must have been communicated to the Ninevites, and it must, as in the other case, have been the controlling evidence on which their faith and their cons<quent repentance rested. In view of all these considerations, I hope I shall not be considered too confident when I say that the sign of Jonah was the miracle wrought on his person, and that this was certainly known to the Ninevites before they repented at his preaching.

Only one of the eight writers whose symposium I am reviewing, Professor Ropes, denies that Jesus had knowledge of the literary history of the Old Testament above that of his contemporaries. The other seven, in arguing that his remark about Jonah does not commit him to the historical reality of the story, appeal to what they consider parallel remarks which convey no similar implication. Taking them in the order in which I find them, I shall carefully consider what they say on this point.

Mr. Barnes puts the argument thus :

Jesus enforce d the message upon his lettered hearers with classic point, as in speaking to the students of Princeton Dr. A. J. Gordon might have warned them against the captivating assaults of sin coming in Lke captors in the wooden horse. The Homeric question would not, thereby, be settled or even raised to consciousness in a healthy mind (p. 417).

I think that a moment's reflection will show that this last statement would or would not be true according to circumstances. If the students addressed knew that the lectunr disbelieved the story of the wooden horse, they would, of course, underhand him as not

14 JESUS AND JONAIL

intending to affirm its truthfulness. But if they believed the story themselves, and knew nothing of his belief, they would unquestionably suppose that he believed as they did. In the latter case, if he did not wish to be understood as indorsing the story, fair dealing with his hearers would demand an intimation at least of his real opinion. In the case of Jesus, his hearers believed the reality of the story of Jonah, and they had not the least thought that Jesus doubted it . when then he said that Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the fish, they could not doubt that he believed it; and he made a false impression if he did not.

Next we take Professor Thayer's statement :

To regard our Lord's use of the narrative as vouching for it as history, is to confound the province and function of a preacher of righteousness with that of a higher critic or of a scientific lecturer. As reasonably might one infer from an allusion in a modern sermon to William Tell, or Effie Deans, or the Man Without a Country, that the speaker held these personages to be thoroughly historic, and their narrated experiences matters of fact. As warrantably might we make Christ's gratuitous mention (only three verges later) of evil spirits as frequenting waterless places, the basis of a demonology for which he is to be held resj onsible (418).

As to William Tell, although I know that some critics now doubt whether he ever existed, when I hear a speaker mention something that he did, I always think that he believes the incident which he mentions, unless he gives some intimation to the contrary. If he introduces it as something that is said to have been done by William Tell, I understand him as doubting the story. As for Effie Deans, and the Man Without a Country, I confess myself so ignorant of them, that if I were to hear Professor Thayer in sober discourse mention something that either of them did, I would suppose that he was mentioning a real transaction. I stand with reference to William Tell where the Jews sto<d with rtference to Jonah ; and with reference to Effie Deans and the Man Without a Country, I stand as the Jews would have stood if they had never heard of Jonah. J<sus, then, if he did not believe the story of Jonah, would have made the same false impression on the Jews as the Professor would on me in the case of Effie D< ans.

As to our Lord's remark about evil spirits frequenting waterless places, while it would be hazardous to make it the u ba^is of a demonology for which he is to be held responsible," he certainly is to be held responsible for the remark itself. If an evil spirit, when he left a man, did not frequent waterless places, I should be glad to learn from Professor Thayer what kind of places he did frequent. If" we may judge by those that went into the herd of swine, the evil spirits were not fond of being in the water; and even before they went out of the man they kept him among the tombs, which were certainly waterless places. If, then, the statement about the evil spirit is to be taken as a parallel to that about Jonah, we should conclude that the latter was really three days and three nights in the fish. Moreover, if Jesus knew the mysterious movements of disembodied spirits, we might credit him with knowing something about men in the flesh like Jonah.