At the same time, it will be seen at once that to grant that the kernel of the narrative may be pre-exile is not to grant that it is historical. From a purely literary point of view it has been urged that “the marks of a story are as patent in the book of Jonah as in any of the tales of the Thousand and One Nights.” The greatest of the improbabilities is a moral one; can we conceive of a large heathen city being converted by an obscure foreign prophet? “To judge of the degree of this improbability, it is enough to read any inscription you please of an Assyrian king. Fancy Sargon or Sennacherib in the presence of Jonah. The case quoted by the Speaker’s Commentary of a Christian priest frightening a Mahometan town into repentance is not to the point, for Christians and Moslems have a common basis in theism. How could the Ninevites give credence to a man who was not a servant of Asshur?” It is obvious that in New Testament times (see Matt. xii. 39-40, Luke xi. 29-30, and Matt. xvi. 4) the symbolic meaning of the book was the most important part of it. Why should it not have been originally composed with a symbolic or allegorical object? For the hearers of Christ, one symbolic meaning was the most important, but probably enough (for Scripture is many-sided) other ages saw different meanings. The truths of the equality of Jews and heathen before God, the prophetic and missionary-character of the people of Israel, and the conditional character of prophecy, have all been suggested as possible meanings, and all possess great plausibility.

Mr Tylor (Early History of Mankind, pp. 336, 337, and Primitive Culture, i. 306) has already pointed out the close superficial resemblance between the story of Jonah and various solar myths; and indeed the former was long ago connected with the myths of Hercules and Hesione, and Perseus and Andromeda. To suppose a direct imitation of these Greek myths is, indeed, quite gratuitous. Preller’s handbook will show that the most circumstantial parallels to the Hebrew only occur in the narratives of later writers. These late narratives, however, are not improbably derived in part from earlier sources, and at any rate M. Lenormant and M. Clermont Ganneau have pointed out Babylonian and Egyptian affinities for the Greek myths in question. “In Mesopotamia the story is naturally more original and more transparent. In Mr George Smith’s translation, Tiamtu the dragon opens its mouth to swallow Bel Merodach, but in vain (Smith’s Chaldaean Genesis, by Sayce, p. 111).” A remarkable passage in Jeremiah (li. 44), evidently alluding to a popular mythic story, seems to supply a missing link between the narrative of Jonah and the original myth. “Like the latter, it describes the destroyer as the dragon, like the former, it converts both destroyer and destroyed into symbols,” no uncommon phenomenon in poetical passages of the Old Testament.

The evidences of date are difficult to seize. The use of the uncommon phrase, Yahveh Elohim (iv. 6), points to a date synchronizing with that of Gen. ii., iii., but when those chapters were written is a debatable question. Many have argued the exile or post-exile origin of the book from the supposed Aramaizing character of the style; against this view, Pusey’s introduction deserves reading. The arguments from internal evidence have been made best use of by Kuenen, who couples it with the book of Ruth as a product of the opposition to the strict and exclusive policy of - Ezra towards heathen nations. Kalisch’s theory is that the book is a romance founded perhaps on fact. “Why should not the substance of the story, though the historical annals make no allusion to such enterprise, be founded on a real fact? Jonah, being on intimate relations with his sovereign, might have been employed by him for important offices; foreign embassies were not unusual, and some such legation from the king of Israel to the king of Assyria is actually mentioned by Jonah’s contemporary Hosea (v. 13)” (Bible Studies, ii. 122).

Modern Literature.— Besides the commentaries, see Kuenen, Religion of Israel, ii. 237-44; Noldeke, Die Alttestamentt. Literatur, Leipsic, 1868, pp. 72-80; Cheyne, “Jonah, a Study in Jewish Folklore and Religion,” in Theological Review, 1877, pp. 211-19; Kalisch, Bible Studies, part ii., 1878 (reviewed by Oort, Theologisch Tijdschrift, 1878); Kohler, “The Original Form of the Book of Jonah,” in Theological Review, 1879, pp. 139-44.

JONAH, Rabbi, of Cordova, the most eminent Jewish grammarian and lexicographer of the Middle Ages, known also among Hebrew authors as R. Merinos (Marinus), but now usually called by his Arabic name Abu fl Walid Merwân ibn Janâh, was born at Cordova towards the close of the 10th century, but spent his youth partly at the neighbouring Jewish town of Lucena (Alisana), where he studied under Isaac ben Gikatila and Isaac ben Saul. He appears not to have returned to Cordova till after the death of the famous Hayyιij, the founder of a scientific Hebrew grammar based on the doctrine of triliteral roots. Though not a personal disciple of Hayyùj, Abu fl Walid adopted the general principles of his system, and early applied himself to the task of completing and correcting the observations of his predecessor on the subject of weak roots. While engaged in these studies he retired from Cordova during the siege of the town by the Berber prince Suleiman (1013 ), and took up his residence in Saragossa, where he published his first work, the Kitâb el Mustalhik, so named because it contained an attempt to supply the omissions of Hayyùj. The Jews of Saragossa were not favourably disposed to the new philology, and the writings of Abu fl Walid were not only displeasing to men of the old school, but involved him in bitter controversy with the professed disciples of Hayyιij, on whose views he had presumed to improve. The most formidable of these antagonists was Samuel Ibn Nagdela Hallevy, the prime minister of Granada. Abu Ί Walid had much to suffer from the rancour of so influential an opponent, but he persisted in his studies, which were finally crowned by the -publication of the Kitdb el Tankih, or “Book of Minute Research,” a grammatical and lexicographical work of the first order, which is still consulted by scholars, and can never be opened without admiration for the range and precision of the author’s scholarship and the soundness <of his philological method. There is more Hebrew to be learned from Abu Ί Walid than from all the later rabbins i put together. Abu Ί Walid was essentially a philologist. He had essayed poetry in his youth, was read in philosophy, and not only practised as a physician but wrote on medicine; but the devotion of his life was concentrated on the exact verbal study of Scripture. Armed with a thorough knowledge of the language and grammatical system of the Arabs, as well as of the dialects of Jewish Aramaic, he studied the Biblical idiom in the light of the cognate Semitic tongues, and in a spirit of pure scholarship, free from traditional prejudice.

The extant minor works of R. Jonah have been published, in . Arabic with a French translation by J. and H. Derenbourg, Opuscules -et Traités d'Abou , l-Walid, Paris, 1880. The first or grammatical part of the Kitâb el-Taηkih has been published in the imperfect Hebrew version entitled Sefer Harikma by Goldberg, Frankfort-on-the-Main, 1856. The lexicographical part of the Kitâb el-Usul, or Book of Roots, was published in Arabic by Neubauer, Oxford, 1875. For further details as to the life and works of Abu Ί-Walid see Munk’s articles in Journal Asiatique, 1850, 1851; and Derenbourg, oρ. cit.