In an old Ripley's Believe It or Not (book), I read the story of a seaman on a wahler falling overboard, and being swallowed by a whale. Eventually the whale was harpooned and they discovered the mariner inside it, alive. However, he was bleached white by the gastric juices in the whale's stomach. It certainly is a case of, Believe it or Not.
could Jonah have survived in the belly of a whale?
by highdose 34 Replies latest watchtower beliefs
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00DAD
"Everybody should believe in something. I believe I'll have another drink!" - W. C. Fields
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Yan Bibiyan
If God's Son can be transferred to the womb of a virgin Israelite by means of God's Spirit, surely His Spirit could preserve Jonah in the belly of a fish.
While I may agree with the "muraculous" approach in explaining such events as alegories, there are practical considerations that completely obliterate the possibility of these things occuring in reality.
Jonah STILL needed oxygen, fresh water and protection from digestive acids.
Did the Holy Spirit create a physical barrier inside the whale?
Did the Holy Spirit create oxygen inside said physical barrier? How was the oxygen derived? For someone's life to be sustained for 3 days, X amount of oxygen is needed PERIOD.
Did the Holy Spirit use existing matter to break down and release oxygen, maybe some oxides. Was it an electrolysis using ocean water, if so what was the physical aparatus to achieve it?
I can go on and on.
I KNOW of at least a dozen reazons why this CAN'T be done.
If your answer in the inavoidability of physical limitations is that we, well, DON'T KNOW, then that's what it is.
WE DON'T KNOW.
Let's admit it and until WE KNOW, let's not just say WE KNOW because it's a MIRACLE.....Even miracles are confined within the laws of physics, termidynamics, etc, which make our very existense possible. These laws, whether instituted by God or not, are blind, impartial and unforgiving.
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Billy the Ex-Bethelite
Jonah is 100% satire. Only religious fanatics take it seriously.
When you reread it with the idea that it was intended as humor, you can pick out the irony. Jonah sleeps through a deadly storm. The fish is "appointed by God". Jonah is conscious and prays from inside the fish. In Ninevah, everyone weeps, wails, dresses in sackcloth and ashes. Then the king declares that everyone weep, wail, and dress in sackcloth and ashes. Political satire is nothing new that the king declares something after the people are already doing it. Even the animals repent and dress in sackcloth and ashes, that is some complete parody/satire. The gourd grows overnight. God "appoints" a worm.
Jonah is a funny story inserted in the Jewish Book of Fairy Tales to lighten the mood from all the murder, genocide, and rape.
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sir82
Yes, what BTEB said.
I sometimes wonder, what the original authors of Bible books would think if they knew, centuries later, that supposedly "advanced" people would take their stories so literally.
I mean, imagine if archaeologists in the year 4500 AD found a working DVD player, but the only survivng DVD was "Monty Python and the Holy Grail". Imagine if religious fanatics decided to take it as literal history....
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shamus100
Billy,
What a horrible thing to say! Apologize to god instantly or he'll release as she-bear on you and show you who the bitch is.
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cofty
Thank you Billy spot on! I also read a theory that it was a satirical polemic agains the xenophobia of the post exile period.
The real miracle was, as you said, the wholesale repentance of Nineveh. It would be like a story that somebody walked through Kabul shouting about how very cross god was and every last member of al qaeda laid down their arms and said sorry. Its supposed to sound rediculous. Then in Jonah when they all repent god lets them off and meanwhile kills a plant that is giving Jonah shade while he waits for the blood and thunder.
The whole point is that Job is far more angry about the loss of a plant than he is happy about the saving of all the Ninevites. Its political satire written in the days that Ezra and his cronies were breaking up families in the name of ethnic cleansing.
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Billy the Ex-Bethelite
What a horrible thing to say! Apologize to god instantly or he'll release as she-bear on you and show you who the bitch is.
BRING IT ON!
