100 Fun Facts About Jonah

In Jonah's day, which people ruled the city he was sent to warn?

The Assyrians. Nineveh, their capital, was later sacked in 612 BC by a coalition that included the Babylonians and the Medes.

How long did Jonah remain inside the sea creature?

Three days and nights. In one rabbinic legend, the creature spent that time showing Jonah the depths, including the path Israel took through the Red Sea.

Which port did Jonah flee to in order to sail away from his mission?

Jaffa. Called Joppa in older Bibles, it is where Jonah found a ship and paid his own fare to flee 'from the presence of the Lord'.

For which destination did Jonah's ship set sail?

Tarshish. Jonah later told God why he had fled there: he had known all along that God was gracious and would spare Nineveh.

How did the sailors discover that Jonah was to blame for the storm?

They cast lots. Asked who he was, Jonah said he was a Hebrew who feared the God who made the sea and the dry land.

What did the sailors do once the storm calmed?

Offered sacrifices to God. During the storm each sailor had cried to his own god; now they worshipped the God Jonah had been fleeing.

How did Jonah leave the creature's belly?

It vomited him out at God's command, onto dry land, and God then told Jonah a second time to go to Nineveh.

What did Jonah warn would happen to Nineveh within forty days?

It would be overthrown. The whole city believed him and fasted, and when God saw them turn from their evil ways, he spared it.

What did the king of Nineveh do on hearing Jonah's message?

Put on sackcloth and sat in ashes. His decree ordered everyone, even the herds and flocks, to fast and be covered in sackcloth.

How did Jonah react when God spared Nineveh?

He was displeased and angry. He asked God to take his life, then sat east of the city to see whether it would be destroyed.

In the King James Version, what plant grew up to shade Jonah?

A gourd. When a church read Jerome's new Latin version, which called the plant ivy, the congregation broke into an uproar, as Augustine wrote to Jerome.

What made the plant that shaded Jonah wither?

A worm. God had made the plant grow just the day before, and once it withered, a scorching east wind and the sun left Jonah faint.

God says more than 120,000 people in Nineveh cannot tell what apart?

Right from left. The book ends with God asking Jonah, who had pitied a plant, whether God should not spare such a city, 'and also much cattle'.

The name Jonah is the Hebrew word for what?

Dove. It is the same Hebrew word used for the dove that Noah sent out from the ark, which came back with an olive leaf.

What was Jonah doing below deck while the storm battered the ship?

Sleeping. The captain woke him and told him to get up and call on his God, in case that god would spare them.

What did Jonah tell the sailors would make the raging sea calm down?

Throwing him overboard. The sailors tried rowing back to land first, and only threw him in when the storm grew even worse.

During which king's reign does 2 Kings place Jonah?

Jeroboam II. Though 2 Kings says this king did evil, Jonah foretold that he would win back the lost borders of Israel.

Which group of Bible books includes Jonah?

The Minor Prophets. Yet it is mostly a story about the prophet, and most scholars think it was written long after the events it describes.

On which Jewish holy day is the Book of Jonah read in full?

Yom Kippur. The whole book is read at the afternoon service, for its story of God forgiving the people of Nineveh when they repented.

What does the Hebrew text actually call the creature that swallowed Jonah?

A great fish. The whale came from Matthew's Gospel, where English Bibles from Tyndale to the King James Version say 'the whale's belly'.

In rabbinic legend, when did God make the creature that swallowed Jonah?

At the beginning of the world. It was made for this one task, so its mouth was big enough for Jonah to walk in as if entering a great synagogue.

In one rabbinic legend, what lit up the inside of the creature that swallowed Jonah?

A great pearl. Hanging inside and shining like the sun at noon, it let Jonah see all that was in the sea and the depths.

In the Midrash, which monster threatened to eat Jonah and the creature that swallowed him?

Leviathan. Jonah showed it the mark of his circumcision, the seal of Abraham, and the monster fled two days' journey away.

In rabbinic legend, what did Jonah fear people would call him if Nineveh was spared?

A false prophet. He had once foretold Jerusalem's doom, but its people repented, the city was spared, and they branded him a liar.

Jesus said that at the judgment, the men of Nineveh would do what to his generation?

Condemn it. They had repented when Jonah preached, he said, and now someone greater than Jonah was here.

The ruins of Nineveh stand in which modern country?

Iraq. The fire that destroyed the city is thought to have baked the clay tablets of its royal library hard, preserving them.

Where on the Sistine Chapel ceiling did Michelangelo paint Jonah?

Above the altar. Vasari marvelled at its foreshortening: Jonah bends back so far that the vault, which really curves forward, looks straight.

In early Christian art, Jonah's story was a popular symbol of what?

The resurrection. Jesus had compared Jonah's time inside the creature to the time he himself would spend 'in the heart of the earth'.

What kind of prayer does Jonah pray from inside the creature?

A hymn of thanks. He gives thanks for being saved while still inside, which led some scholars to argue the poem was added later.

Why couldn't a whale shark, despite its enormous size, have swallowed Jonah?

Its throat is too narrow. Though its mouth can be five feet long, its throat measures only inches across.

What is the Quran chapter named after Jonah called?

Yunus. Yet only one of its 109 verses mentions him, since Quran chapters often take their names from a single notable word or passage.

In an 1891 tale of a sailor swallowed by a whale, what happened to his skin?

It was bleached white. But the captain's wife later wrote that there was not one word of truth in the story, and that no man had been lost overboard.

In the Quran, which of Jonah's failings is Muhammad urged not to copy?

Impatience. The verse tells Muhammad to wait patiently for his Lord's decision, and not be like 'the companion of the fish', who cried out in distress.

The psychologist Abraham Maslow's 'Jonah complex' is the fear of what?

Success. Maslow meant our habit of dodging our own potential, just as Jonah tried, in vain, to run away from his calling.

Which group destroyed the mosque said to hold Jonah's tomb in July 2014?

ISIL. Its militants planted explosives and blew up the shrine, one of several holy sites the group destroyed as idolatrous.

What did archaeologists find beneath the ruins of the mosque said to hold Jonah's tomb?

An ancient palace. About 2,600 years old and never excavated, it came to light only after militants dug looting tunnels deep beneath the shrine.

At which famous 1925 court case was Jonah's story debated during a cross-examination?

The Scopes trial. Asked by Clarence Darrow how he interpreted it, William Jennings Bryan said he believed in a God who could make a whale and a man do what He pleased.

What does the sailors' term 'a Jonah' mean?

Someone who brings bad luck aboard. It goes back to Jonah's own voyage, when the sailors found he was the cause of their storm; later it came to mean any jinx.

In Turkish, which sea animal is literally called 'Jonah's fish'?

Dolphin. The name comes from the Quran's story of Jonah, who in Arabic tradition is also called 'The One of the Fish'.

In which novel does Father Mapple preach a sermon on the Book of Jonah?

Moby-Dick. A former whaler, Mapple preaches in the whalemen's chapel in New Bedford, climbing a rope ladder into a pulpit shaped like a ship's bow.

Which children's classic has its hero and his father swallowed by 'the Terrible Dogfish'?

The Adventures of Pinocchio. Collodi's Dogfish was a shark-like monster a kilometre long, but Disney's 1940 film turned it into Monstro, a whale.

Which vegetable plays Jonah in the 2002 VeggieTales movie?

In the film Jonah is swallowed by a gargantuan whale, in keeping with popular tradition rather than the Hebrew text.

By one tradition, Jonah was the boy brought back to life by which prophet in 1 Kings?

Elijah. The boy's mother was the widow of Zarephath, whose flour and oil never ran out while Elijah stayed with her.

In Islamic tradition, what did Muhammad call Jonah when he met a servant from Nineveh?

My brother. He said Jonah was a prophet of God just as he was, and the servant, Addas, kissed his head, hands and feet.

Which song from Gershwin's Porgy and Bess mentions Jonah living inside a whale?

It Ain't Necessarily So. It is sung by the drug dealer Sportin' Life, who casts doubt on one Bible story after another.

Which Kurt Vonnegut novel opens with its narrator saying 'Call me Jonah'?

Cat's Cradle. Its narrator plans a book called The Day the World Ended, about the atomic bomb, then lives through the end of the world as the sea freezes solid.

In Lucian's satire 'A True Story', how do men swallowed by a whale kill it?

They light a fire. As the whale lay dying, they wedged its jaws open with beams so they would not be trapped inside the carcass.

Which 18th-century tall-tale hero, created by Rudolf Erich Raspe, is also swallowed by a giant fish?

Baron Munchausen. He was named after a real German baron, who was deeply upset to find himself turned into a famous liar.

Scholars link Jonah to which Greek hero, noting their names in Greek differ only in the order of sounds?

Jason. A Greek cup from about 480 BC shows him hanging limp from a dragon's jaws, with the goddess Athena there to save him.

In some versions of which deuterocanonical book does a dying father cite Jonah's prophecy against Nineveh?

Tobit. Most modern Bibles, though, follow a different manuscript in which the dying Tobit names the prophet Nahum instead of Jonah.

The Book of Jonah stops abruptly, with no word on what its prophet did next, by closing on what?

A question from God is the last line: should he not care about a city of more than 120,000 people? Jonah's reply is never given, so each reader has to supply one.

What reason does Jonah finally give God for having run away from his mission to Nineveh?

He knew God was merciful, he says in the last chapter, and expected Nineveh to be let off. Fear of the journey or of the Ninevites never comes into it.

Which surprising group does the king of Nineveh's decree in the Book of Jonah order to fast?

Herds and flocks had to go hungry and thirsty beside their owners, a picture so odd that some scholars call it deliberately absurd.

What does Jonah twice ask God for in the final chapter of the Book of Jonah?

To let him die is Jonah's plea both times, the second as the sun beats down on his head. God never grants it.

Which apostle does Jesus call 'Bar-Jonah', meaning son of Jonah, in the Gospel of Matthew?

Peter is so addressed just before Jesus names him the rock on which the church will be built. The title records his father, a different Jonah, whose name is sometimes given as John.

Which ocean giant, a hunter of giant squid, could in theory swallow a person like Jonah whole?

A sperm whale regularly eats giant squid, so it could presumably swallow a person. Surviving is another matter: its stomach holds no air to breathe.

The ruins of Nineveh, the great city Jonah was sent to warn, stand on the bank of which river?

The Tigris flows past Nineveh, which stood at what was once the highest point boats could reach. That made the site a trading post thousands of years before Jonah's day.

Before doing what Jonah asked of them in the storm, what did the sailors on his ship try instead?

Rowing for the shore was the crew's last attempt to save their passenger, but the sea only grew wilder. These foreign sailors come across as more humane than the prophet they carry.

What did the terrified sailors in the Book of Jonah hurl into the sea first to lighten their ship?

The cargo went into the waves first, and with it the whole profit of the voyage. Only when that failed did the crew start looking for someone to blame.

Who came down to Jonah during the storm and urged him to call on his god for help?

The captain found his passenger below deck and told him to pray like everyone else. A pagan seaman telling God's own prophet to pray is one of the book's sharpest ironies.

When the storm first struck Jonah's ship, to whom did each of the frightened sailors cry out?

His own god was each man's first resort, which suggests a crew drawn from many nations and many faiths. By the end of the chapter all of them are praying to Jonah's.

Jonah told the sailors he feared the God of heaven, who had made which two things?

The sea and dry land, he said, which made his escape plan absurd: he was fleeing by ship from the maker of the ocean. The sailors grasped that at once and were terrified.

What does the Book of Jonah say Jonah did at the harbour before boarding the ship to flee?

Paid the fare is all the text says, but rabbinic legend made more of it: so eager was Jonah to get away that he paid the full value of the ship.

After the plant shading Jonah died, what did God send at sunrise to add to his misery?

A hot east wind arrived with the sunrise, the last of four things God 'prepares' in the book to teach Jonah a lesson.

What did Jonah build for himself outside Nineveh while he waited to see what became of the city?

A rough shelter, called a booth in older Bibles, was where he sat to watch the city. It cannot have given much shade, for he was overjoyed when a leafy plant grew up over it.

Praying inside the sea creature, Jonah says he cried from the belly of which Hebrew underworld?

Sheol was the shadowy realm of the dead, so Jonah is saying he prayed from the grave itself. Jesus later picked up the image when he compared his own burial to Jonah's ordeal.

In Jonah's prayer from the deep, what does he say was wrapped around his head as he sank?

Weeds tangled around his head, he says, as he sank to the bottoms of the mountains. The prayer reads like a drowning man's account, with no mention of any creature at all.

Jonah's ship sailed from a port in what is now Israel and met its storm on which sea?

The Mediterranean was the main sea road of its day, and sailing it meant turning his back on Nineveh, which lay far inland.

Unlike most prophetic books, which collect speeches, the Book of Jonah is almost entirely what?

Narrative fills all but one chapter, and the prophet's entire message to Nineveh takes a single sentence. The only poetry is the prayer he utters from inside the sea creature.

The Book of Jonah explores teshuva, a key Jewish concept whose name is usually translated as what?

Repentance, literally 'return', is what the story dramatises: a whole wicked city turns back and is forgiven within a single chapter.

Nineveh, spared in the Book of Jonah, finally fell in 612 BC to the Medes and which allied people?

The Babylonians and Medes took the city after bitter house-to-house fighting and razed it. For about fifty years before that, Nineveh had been the largest city on earth.

Jonah's home town, Gath-hepher in Galilee, lay five kilometres from which town of the Gospels?

Nazareth is the neighbour: the ruins of Gath-hepher sit on a hilltop beside the village of Mashhad, where locals point out a tomb said to be Jonah's.

Jonah is introduced as the son of Amittai, a name that comes from the Hebrew word for what?

Truth is the root of Amittai, which lets Jewish commentators call Jonah 'the son of truth': a man who wants strict justice for Nineveh and has little room for forgiveness.

Which group, demanding a miracle from Jesus, was promised nothing but 'the sign of Jonah'?

The Pharisees, with some scribes, had asked for proof of his authority. Jesus added that the people of Nineveh had at least listened to their prophet.

Jesus pairs the people of Nineveh who heard Jonah with which royal visitor who came to hear Solomon?

The Queen of Sheba, called 'the queen of the south' in the Gospels, travelled far to hear a wise king. Jesus's point was that foreigners had once listened eagerly, while his own generation would not.

In Christian Bibles, which one-chapter book, the Old Testament's shortest, comes just before Jonah?

Obadiah runs to just 21 verses, all aimed at the nation of Edom. Jonah, which follows it, is short too, yet its four chapters hold one of the best-known stories in the Bible.

Which later prophet's short book, unlike Jonah's, is devoted to foretelling Nineveh's destruction?

Nahum foretells the city's ruin in a few fierce chapters, with none of the mercy shown in Jonah's story. The two books sit close together, with only Micah between them in most Bibles.

Fragments of the Book of Jonah turned up among which famous collection of ancient manuscripts?

The Dead Sea Scrolls include scraps from every chapter of Jonah, copied about two thousand years ago. Their wording closely matches the standard Hebrew text used ever since.

The blue whale, the largest animal of all, could not be Jonah's captor because it eats mainly what?

Krill are almost all a blue whale eats, strained from seawater through baleen plates. It is commonly said the animal would choke if it tried to swallow a herring.

One version of Greek legend chains which princess to rocks off the port where Jonah took ship?

Andromeda was set out there for a sea monster until Perseus saved her, ancient writers such as Strabo and Josephus reported. The same harbour thus has two tales of monsters from the deep.

Whose Latin Bible called the plant shading Jonah 'ivy', sparking uproar in a North African church?

Jerome chose 'ivy', and when it was read aloud in the town of Oea the congregation protested so loudly that their bishop had to restore the old wording or lose his people.

In modern Hebrew, kikayon, the Bible's name for Jonah's leafy sunshade, refers to what?

Castor oil plant is the modern meaning. The word appears nowhere else in the Bible, so its identity has been argued over since the days of the early church.

The oldest known complete copy of the Book of Jonah, a third-century codex, is in which language?

Coptic is the language of the Crosby-Schøyen Codex, which is thought to be one of the oldest books in existence. Jonah shares its pages with four other texts.

The Book of Jonah belongs to which division of the Hebrew Bible, set between Torah and Ketuvim?

Nevi'im is the middle section of the Hebrew Bible, opening with Joshua and Judges. Jewish tradition counts just eight books in it, out of twenty-four in the whole.

Which king, boasting he shut up Hezekiah 'like a caged bird', made Jonah's Nineveh his capital?

Sennacherib moved his court to Nineveh around 700 BC and rebuilt it with new streets, squares and an aqueduct. The prophet Jonah named in 2 Kings had lived decades earlier.

Outside his own book, 2 Kings credits Jonah with rightly predicting what for the kingdom of Israel?

Restored borders came just as he foretold, when the king won back territory from Hamath down to the sea of the Arabah. That Jonah brought good news, a sharp contrast with his errand to Nineveh.

Which English writer's 1940 essay 'Inside the Whale' made Jonah an image of escape from politics?

George Orwell wrote it about the novelist Henry Miller, whom he pictured as comfortably shut away from the troubles outside, like Jonah in his dark, cushioned refuge.

Which mythologist called a stage of the hero's journey 'the Belly of the Whale', echoing Jonah?

Joseph Campbell used the phrase in The Hero with a Thousand Faces (1949) for the moment a hero is swallowed into the unknown and seems to die, only to emerge reborn.

Which Harlem Renaissance writer named her 1934 first novel after the plant in Jonah's story?

Zora Neale Hurston made the short-lived plant a picture of her hero, a philandering preacher who shares her father's first name. She finished the book in a matter of months.

The 2002 film Jonah: A VeggieTales Movie was the first cinema feature from which animation studio?

Big Idea Productions had built its name on direct-to-video cartoons before this. The film took $25.6 million at the box office, the most any of the studio's releases has earned.

Isaac Abarbanel argued Jonah could survive inside the sea creature by comparing him to what?

An unborn child lives nine months without fresh air, Abarbanel reasoned, so a short stay in the dark was no great feat. An earlier rabbi, Ibn Ezra, had treated the whole episode as a vision.

A rabbinic legend says entering the jaws of Jonah's sea creature was like entering which building?

A synagogue, and a very large one, is the comparison. The same legend says Jonah was so comfortable inside that he would not pray until God moved him to a second, more cramped creature.

The historian Al-Tabari wrote that God did what to the sea creature so Jonah could see the deep?

Made it transparent, so that Jonah looked out on the wonders of the deep and heard the creatures of the sea singing God's praises. Al-Tabari adds that not one of his bones was hurt.

Many scholars read the Book of Jonah, with its wild exaggerations, as partly which kind of writing?

Parody is a common verdict: the book sends up a prophet who runs from God, resents mercy and is outdone in piety by foreign sailors.

In rabbinic legend, Jonah's shipmates threw away their idols and went to which city to convert?

Jerusalem was their destination, the legend says, once they had seen Jonah delivered alive from the sea: they sailed back to port and became Jews.

As the storm worsened, what did the sailors on Jonah's ship beg God not to hold against them?

Innocent blood was their fear: they were about to cause a man's death and wanted no guilt for it. The pagan crew show more scruple over one life than Jonah shows over a whole city.

In the Book of Jonah, who in Nineveh acted on Jonah's warning before the news even reached the king?

The townspeople believed first and declared a fast themselves, from the greatest to the least. Only then did word reach the king, who followed their lead.

In his prayer from the deep, toward which place does Jonah say he will look once again?

The holy temple is where his thoughts turn, even though he says he has been banished from God's sight. The prayer ends with a promise to pay what he has vowed.

Which church father wrote around 409 that pagans greeted Jonah's story with loud laughter and scorn?

Augustine answered that anyone who doubts this miracle must doubt them all. He went on to read Jonah's descent into the deep as a picture of Christ's burial.

Under which spelling, borrowed from Greek, does the King James New Testament name the prophet Jonah?

Jonas is the form in the King James Gospels, following the Greek text, so one prophet goes by two names within a single Bible.