Since the rise of critical scholarship in the nineteenth century, many writers and teachers now believe that the events recorded in this book were not historical.8They interpret this book as an allegory or as a parable.
The allegorical interpretation views the book as "a complete allegory in which each feature represents an element in the historical and religious experience of the Israelites."9This interpretation may have arisen because "Jonah"means "dove,"and the Jews had long regarded the dove as a symbol of their nation (cf. Ps. 74:19; Hos. 11:11).10Those who adopt this interpretation see the book as teaching Israel's mission and failure in being God's missionary agent to the Gentiles. Jonah's flight to Tarshish represents Israel's failure before the Exile, and the great fish symbolizes Babylon. The disgorging of Jonah stands for Israel's second chance following her restoration to the land.
The parabolic interpretation also regards the book as not historical. However, its advocates view it as simply a moral story designed to teach a spiritual lesson. Essentially the lesson is that God's people should not be narrow and introverted but outreaching and missionary in their love and concern for those outside their number who are facing God's judgment. The difference in these two interpretations is the amount of detail that its advocates press. The parabolic interpretation argues for one primary lesson in the story whereas the allegorical interpretation finds meaning in its details too.
Jewish and Christian interpreters believed that the Book of Jonah was historical until the rise of critical scholarship. Jesus Christ referred to Jonah as a historical person and to his experience as real (Matt. 12:38-42; 16:4; Luke 11:29-32).11
"If the three days' confinement of Jonah in the belly of the fish really had the typical significance which Christ attributes to it . . ., it can neither be a myth or dream, nor a parable, nor merely a visionary occurrence experienced by the prophet; but must have had as much objective reality as the facts of the death, burial, and resurrection of Christ."12
It is unlikely that the writer would have given us the name of Jonah's father if he was not a real person. Furthermore the narrator presented Jonah as a real person, not a mythical or fictitious figure.
The main argument against the book being historical is Jonah's surviving three days and nights in the fish's belly (1:17). However various writers have documented many similar miraculous deliverances.13Since such a survival is physically possible, we should not dismiss the historical view especially since Jesus endorsed Jonah's "resurrection."
Some interpreters, including myself, who hold to the historicity of the events also believe that the book contains symbolic and typical teaching.
"Whereas other prophets proclaimed in words the position of the Gentiles with regard to Israel in the nearer and more remote future, and predicted not only the surrender of Israel to the power of the Gentiles, but also the future conversion of the heathen to the living God, and their reception into the kingdom of God, the prophet Jonah was entrusted with the commission to proclaim the position of Israel in relation to the Gentile world in a symbolico-typical manner, and to exhibit both figuratively and typically not only the susceptibility of the heathen for divine grace, but also the conduct of Israel with regard to the design of God to show favour to the Gentiles, and the consequences of their conduct."14
The book is probably a prophetic narrative in its literary genre.15
"The concern of a number of OT prophetic narratives is to trace the process whereby a divine oracle was fulfilled. This book, on the contrary, breaks the pattern surprisingly by showing how and why a divine oracle, concerning the destruction of Nineveh, was not fulfilled."16
Many commentators who deny the historicity of the book regard it as a parable with certain allegorical features and its literary tone as parody or satire.17
