“And Also Much Cattle”—A New Reading of an Old Fish Story

Abstract

GOOD THINGS, WE are told, come in small packages. That maxim certainly holds true for the Biblical book of Jonah. In, for example, the Revised Standard Version of the Bible, this book takes up all of two pages, but it represents one of the major attractions of the collection that is the Bible. As with many heirloom pieces in museums, however, the wonders of the book of Jonah may not be apparent on a casual, uninformed inspection. For such disclosure to occur, the services of a knowledgeable, enthusiastic, and pedagogically astute guide are needed. In his "New Reading of an Old Fish Story" Chaim Brichto shows himself to be just such a guide with the capacity to vastly enrich the ordinary Bible reader's encounter with the book of Jonah. I would like to single out four features of Brichto's presentation that call for special commendation.First, Brichto provides his own free (but phdologcdy responsible) and very lively translation of the whole book of Jonah. Having this translation before one in the text greatly facilitates one's following Brichto's comments, just as it helps one see new nuances in a familiar story. Second, Brichto consistently points up the book's many incongruous, puzzling touches (that readers may or may not have sensed for themselves) and shows how focusing precisely on these incongruities helps get at what the author is trying to do.Third, Brichto's "reading" might well help loosen readers up in the whole way they approach their Bibles. Jonah, Brichto makes clear, is a very funny book; it's meant to get people laughing-not sitting straight-faced and solemn through the reading and hearing because that's how one is "supposed' to respond to every and any "word of God." That realization, in turn, could free readers to discern and enjoy comic elements elsewhere in the Bible. Finally, Brichto's highlighting of Jonah's God as a "softie" in the whole matter of "crime and punishment" (p. 115) should profitably stimulate his Christian readers to reexamine their suppositions about the God of the Old Testament.In light of the above comments, I wish to advert now to a few points where Brichto's presentation left me less than fully satisfied. In the first place, there are, I believe, several instances where the intended audience is not provided with suffiaent background mforrnation. It would, for example, have been desirable for Brichto to directly present the Biblical source for the book of Jonah, 2 Kings 14: 25-27, and to indicate why the author of the latter might have selected the figure alluded to in the former text as his "hero." Similarly, Brichto rightly emphasizes the books depiction of Jonah as "anti-prophet": his point would, however, have come across more vividly if he had prefaced it with some explicit treatment of the prophetic ideal of the Hebrew Scriptures.Second, and more sigruficantly, Brichto makes pronouncements on several key, controverted issues with a polemical certitude that left this reviewer nonplussed. Two points stand out in this regard: Brichto's claim that every last verse of the...