`Should I Not Also Pity Nineveh?' Divine Freedom in the Book of Jonah

Bolin, Thomas M.

doi:10.1177/030908929502006706

Cited by 4 publications

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“…And yet, exactly what Nineveh signifies for Jonah’s respective interpretative communities is far from clear. For instance, Tom Bolin has argued compellingly that, read against the backdrop of ancient Greek traditions, Nineveh is not to be understood primarily for its wickedness, as the prime enemy of Israel, known for its cruelty, but rather as the “idyllic great city of long ago,” which long since had been destroyed (Bolin, 1995: 109-113; Bolin, 1997). However, it is also possible, as Ehud Ben Zvi (2003: 151) insightfully has argued, “to interweave the same basic macrostructure (or global narrative meaning) with significantly different meta-narratives.” For instance, it is possible also to interpret Nineveh in the story world in Jonah in terms of the way this city is portrayed in other prophetic books in the Hebrew Bible (e.g., Isaiah and Nahum), which has led to a long list of interpreters making the argument that Nineveh is to be “seen as a symbolic archetypal enemy of Israel and of YHWH” (Ben Zvi, 2003: 151).…”

Section: Jonah As a Postcolonial Trauma Narrativementioning

confidence: 99%

Surfing with Jonah: Reading Jonah as a Postcolonial Trauma Narrative

Claassens

2021

Journal for the Study of the Old Testament

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Jione Havea observes how over the years Jonah has repeatedly found himself hurled into a swirling sea of interpretative methods, bobbing up and down on waves of traditional, contemporary, mainstream, and marginalized approaches. This article seeks to enter these churning waters and consider how these interpretative waves flow together to form new waves, which invite us to metaphorically surf together with the prophet Jonah, who once more has been tossed into a sea of readings. I propose that several important theoretical perspectives concerning postcolonial trauma theory are valuable for the ongoing conversation regarding what it means to read Jonah in the context of colonization, both ancient and modern. In particular, this article will focus on what postcolonial trauma theorists describe as the ‘material,’ ‘spatial,’ and ‘collective’ aspects of trauma instead of the ‘individual, temporal, and linguistic’ qualities highlighted by earlier (Western) trauma theorists (Visser, ‘Decolonizing Trauma Theory,’ 253)

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Section: Jonah As a Postcolonial Trauma Narrativementioning

confidence: 99%

Surfing with Jonah: Reading Jonah as a Postcolonial Trauma Narrative

Claassens

2021

Journal for the Study of the Old Testament

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Seeking Covenantal Justice, Reading Jonah and Malachi with African Christians

Jasper

2024

Contemporary African Perspectives on the Bible

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Exploring the Spiritual Struggles of God’s Servant in the Book of Jonah

Sin¹,

Simon²

2022

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This article focuses on the spiritual struggles of Jonah, as narrated in the book bearing his name. While negative evaluations of Jonah's character have dominated recent scholarly work (for example, as a disobedient, stubborn, nationalistic prophet or anti-hero), this article argues that such categorizations are too simplistic and flat. Jonah is, instead, a complex, round character who dares to disobey and argue with God in the course of his struggle to understand and respond to God's attributes and purposes. Throughout Jonah's book, we see God's patience and mercy at work as he commissioned, disciplined, rescued, recommissioned, and educated Jonah. The article includes an inductive summary of the words and actions of Jonah, a literature review, a re-reading of the text in dialogue with scholarly voices focused on the spiritual struggle of the prophet, and a discussion of key pastoral implications for the calling, discernment and character formation of those in Christian ministry.

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`Should I Not Also Pity Nineveh?' Divine Freedom in the Book of Jonah

Cited by 4 publications

References 0 publications

Surfing with Jonah: Reading Jonah as a Postcolonial Trauma Narrative

Surfing with Jonah: Reading Jonah as a Postcolonial Trauma Narrative

Seeking Covenantal Justice, Reading Jonah and Malachi with African Christians

Exploring the Spiritual Struggles of God’s Servant in the Book of Jonah

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