Is a literal reading of the Bible an insult to its authors?

Thanks, Brian. I very much enjoyed reading your OP. I noted that the vine would be a clear reference to Israel as well.Jonah is great teaching story. It's concise. It combines memorable fantastic images with a credible main character. It draws on powerful archetypes. It falls into a satisfying ABA form with Jonah's prayer in the whale's belly representing the centre.If the book of Jonah dates from during or just after the Assyrian period, its author and audience would have been keenly aware of two things:
1. Assyria was a grave threat to the very survival of Israel, and every other country and people with in its reach.
2. The events of the story are obviously fantastic.The taxon of the sea beastie is a modern obsession. The giveaway for ancient listeners that this was a symbolic story would be the fantastic depiction of Nineveh. The real capital city of Assyria was no place to indulge itinerant foreign preachers or national self-doubt. The events described just wouldn't happen. (See Nahum for a more realistic treatment of Nineveh.)The Assyrians sought not just conquest, but terrorizing and humiliation of every nation around them. Their armies tortured prisoners in cruelly inventive ways and displayed the bodies on roadsides. In real life, no Israelite could sanely entertain the notion of heading straight for the Assyrian capital and accusing its people in a public square. That would be asking for someone to cut out your tongue, put a chain link through your cheek, and fasten you to a millstone to live out the rest of your days as a slave.Clearly, the teller of the story knew this and expected audiences to know. Of course the main character flees to the opposite end of the world. Of course the main character resents God letting these people off the hook. Try telling a story to an orthodox Jew or an American Baptist about the happy day Osama Bin Laden converts. How many smiles will you see?The moral of the story is plainly stated at the end. Get over your provincialism and self-absorption. The source of all life is more than just a totem of one nation or clan. All human beings count.But stating it just validates what you say in your OP about the power of story. Saying 'All human beings count' is easy. It's a platitude. But a story invites listeners to do more than merely repeat what they believe. It invites them to decide what they would do. Its symbols walk them through reality.Reality: not every human being asks for your tolerance. Not every human being intends to tolerate you or anyone you love. Now what?____Edited by Archer Opterix, : brev.

Right. Jonah's fish was 'especially prepared' for him. By the storyteller.You are discovering that recognizing the fish as a custom invention solves all the problems. Indeed it does. Fictional fish can eat anything. (Saint Spielberg, Jaws chapter 1) Fictional people can survive anything. (Saint Bruce Willis, Die Hard chapters 1 and 2)I like to imagine Jonah being eaten by a giant male betta. Wouldn't it be great if artists showed it to us this way? You'd have spectaculour colour, and you'd get those big fins sweeping around. And the betta attitude is totally badass. Scaling up that bad boy gives you a much more dramatic beastie than the one you usually see. But that's just me. To the storyteller it was the prayer, not the fish, that mattered. The fish is an image that frames the prayer at the centre of the tale. The prayer gets the detailed treatment.The Jonah tale is a teaching story. Like a parable? Very like a parable.____Edited by Archer Opterix, : brev.Edited by Archer Opterix, : stocked the pond.Edited by Archer Opterix, : messing around.

Read that post again. My point centred not on what a preacher might do, but on what the Assyrians would do.Your praise of martyrs only reinforces my point. There are no martyrs in the book of Jonah.You remind us that missionaries who go into hostile territory can expect terrible things to happen to them. The book of Jonah portrays a preacher going into the capital city of a brutal society determined to wipe out his people--and everything comes out okey-dokey.It is the book that fails your 'court of history.' As well it shouldn't. It isn't history.The book of Jonah is a work of the imagination.____Edited by Archer Opterix, : html.

Not at all. My line of reasoning is based on the realities of literary genre and human history.The book of Jonah has nothing in it to suggest it is history and quite a bit to suggest it isn't. So what genre is it? To find out, you have to let the story speak to you on its own terms and keep an open mind to all the possibilities.We know quite a bit about Assyria and its kings. Nineveh was home to a vast library. We have its art. Assyria's kings were not shy about recording their deeds for posterity.Surrounding societies recordede quite a bit about them as well. This includes the ancient Hebrews. The Assyrians portrayed in the book of Jonah are an idealized, anonymous, childlike lot. Read Nahum or the Kings for a very different--and realistic--picture.As the story's genre is not history, neither is it a 'miracle story' like those recorded in the Gospels. At no point does Jonah's storyteller suggest that YHWH has suspended the laws of nature. No importance attaches to the audience thinking YHWH did. Rather, the story presents a world where fantastic, far-fetched events are simply part of the way things normally work.We know this world. It is the world of fantasy.Fantastic elements are clues to literary genre. Here is a story that wears its fantastic elements on its sleeve. Storytellers who do this mean for us to get a clue. The message: 'This world is a fantasy world. I am working with symbols here. Go with me, and I will show you something interesting.'The Jonah story shows us something interesting about mercy. The people who got the point faster than anyone? Those who were most aware of the difference between fantasy and reality when it came to Assyria.____Edited by Archer Opterix, : html.Edited by Archer Opterix, : brev.