Notes
Jonah and the Chaos Dragon
NBP Episode 347
October 24, 2020
by Michael Heiser
Why did early Christians interpret the big fish as a monster/leviathan when it doesn’t say that?
The term used for “big fish” is “dag gadol” which no where resembles a monster. It literally means “big fish”. Nothing specific. The term “dag” for fish is used elsewhere for fish, but no where is it translated as a monstrous creature like tanninim or leviathan.
Michael Heiser gets his info mainly from Scott Noegel’s article “Jonah and Leviathan: Inner Biblical Allusions and the Problem with Dragons” published in 2015 in the scholarly journal Henoch 37:2.
“Early Christian depictions of Jonah’s “fish” as a sea dragon have long posed a problem for scholars. Some have explained it by pointing to the Septuagint’s rendering of Jonah’s “fish” as a ketos (sea creature). Yet this translation is itself problematic since it is completely out of step with treatments of the term dag “fish” elsewhere in the Bible. Others have opined the influence of Jewish midrashic traditions in which Leviathan plays a role in the Jonah story. However, said traditions cannot be dated before the 9th century CE- more than half a millennium after the artistic evidence.”
“In Christianity, Jonah was a favorite figure for allegory. Taking their lead from Jesus’ statement that Jonah was a sign, early theologians depicted him as prefiguring the Christ, descending into the “fish” like Jesus into hell/ the underworld and delivered from it in terms of God saving him for his mission, and with Jesus, of course Jesus is delivered from hell or Hades for the salvation of gentiles.” (pg.237).
Examples of early Christian theologians who interpreted Jonah this way are: Clement, Iranaeus, Justin Martyr, Tertullian, Athanasius, and Jerome. Where did they get this interpretation?
-It’s reasonable to see Jonah being swallowed and then spit out as an image of Jesus being buried and then rising again, but where do these men and others get the idea that the big fish is a monster?
The main questions to answer in this podcast:
– what exactly is the dag gadol supposed to be?
-why did the Septuagint translate it to ketos (sea creature) when it doesn’t do this for other dag in the OT? It will use ketos for leviathan in other places, but not “fish”.
-If the Septuagint uses two different terms for leviathan – ketos and drakon for tanninim or other sea monsters, but why here for the simple “fish” dag?
Noegel’s hypothesis: “I contend that the text of Jonah contains a number of linguistic and thematic features that allude to “tannin traditions” (dragon traditions or Leviathan chaos traditions) as found in several other biblical texts, and that these allusions encouraged the early identification of the dag as a sea monster.”
Noegel’s evidence for this:
The churning is in the sea, which itself is a picture of Sheol
–Jonah 1:4 But the LORD hurled a great wind upon the sea, and there was a mighty tempest on the sea, so that the ship threatened to break up. In Hebrew, the word “on” is actually “in”. So the tempest is in the water.
-Leviathan is associated with a churning sea.
-For example: Psalm 104:25-26 Here is the sea, great and wide, which teems with creatures innumerable, living things both small and great. There go the ships, and Leviathan, which you formed to play in it.
-and Job 26:5 The dead tremble under the waters and their inhabitants. Sheol is naked before God, and Abaddon has no covering (the pit is wide open, like a sea).
-and Job 26:12 By His (God’s) power He stilled the sea; by His understanding He shattered Rahab (another chaos sea monster). By His wind the heavens were made fair; His hand pierced the fleeing serpent (Nahash).
(Noegel wants readers to make the connection with these other churning sea references)
-the sailors’ fearful response Jonah 1:13 the men rowed hard to get back to dry land.” The Hebrew word for “rowed” here is hatar, which elsewhere is translated as “digging”, as in “digging through walls”. But one other place in the Bible is Amos 9:2 where it’s used for digging in the ground to Sheol. “If they dig into Sheol, from there shall my hand take them; if they climb up to heaven, from there I will bring them down.
-Noegel’s making the connection here that it is to Sheol- the underworld, which the sea is also thought of as the underworld, or opening to the underworld.
Noegel:
The sailors’ rowing invites us to recall its usage in Amos, in a prophecy also shaped by Tannin traditions. Thus, Amos’ prophecy begins by Yahweh threatening to cut open the enemy and strike him upon the head with a sword while allowing none to flee. Amos describes the enemy’s frantic attempt to dig into Sheol as an impossible attempt to escape Yahweh. “And though they bid from My sight on the floor of the sea (hayyam) then I will command the serpent (hannahash) and he will bite them (Amos 9:3).
-The Septuagint renders the serpent as drakon.
Basically, Noegel is saying: of the 8 times hatar is used in the Bible, 6 of those are for digging in a wall and the other two (Jonah 1 and Amos 9) are about Sheol. As if they (the rowers) are trying to get into Sheol but can’t, so God sends the serpent (or the big fish).
-Jonah’s prayer is like Jonah is being swallowed up into Sheol
Jonah’s prayer: Jonah 2 (ESV)
2 Then Jonah prayed to the LORD his God from the belly of the fish, 2 saying,
“I called out to the LORD, out of my distress,
and he answered me;
out of the belly of Sheol I cried,
and you heard my voice.
3 For you cast me into the deep,
into the heart of the seas,
and the flood surrounded me;
all your waves and your billows
passed over me.
4 Then I said, ‘I am driven away
from your sight;
yet I shall again look
upon your holy temple.’
5 The waters closed in over me to take my life;
the deep surrounded me;
weeds were wrapped about my head
6 at the roots of the mountains.
I went down to the land
whose bars closed upon me forever;
yet you brought up my life from the pit,
O LORD my God.
7 When my life was fainting away,
I remembered the LORD,
and my prayer came to you,
into your holy temple.
8 Those who pay regard to vain idols
forsake their hope of steadfast love.
9 But I with the voice of thanksgiving
will sacrifice to you;
what I have vowed I will pay.
Salvation belongs to the LORD!”
10 And the LORD spoke to the fish, and it vomited Jonah out upon the dry land.
-sounds like God casting a fishhook (Jonah) to draw out the leviathan in Job 41:1 “Can you draw out Leviathan with a fishhook or press down his tongue with a cord?
–Job 41:31 also refers to the leviathan making the sea boil like a pot: He makes the deep boil like a pot; he makes the sea like a pot of ointment.
-the word for “boil” or “churn” is metsulah.
–Jonah 2:3 For you cast me into the deep, into the heart of the seas, and the flood surrounded me; all your waves and your billows passed over me.
–word to focus on is nahar (used here for “flood”)
–Noegel:
The term narhar most often refers generally to a “river”, “stream”, or “canal”, or to a specific river such as the Nile or Euphrates (Gen 15:18). However, when used synonymously with the deep (tehom) (Isaiah 44:27; Ezek 31:4, 31:15, 32:2) and the sea (sea is yam) (Isaiah 50:2, Nah 1:4; Hab 3:8; Ps 24:2, 74:15) it refers to the cosmological waters that Yahweh rebukes and/or cleaves. Even when used figuratively, nahar does not mean “floor” but rather “stream” (Job 20:17). Thus, its appearance immediately after the word yammin (seas) emits cosmological reverberations, and recalls the age-old identification of the river with Leviathan, as attested in Ugaritic texts in the creature’s other name…
–Nahar in Ugaritic texts (also Canaanite, since Ugarit is Canaanite) is leviathan, the chaos monster. Baal is the God who saves the day by defeating nahar and creating order. Baal is lord of the dead, lord of Sheol. Jonah’s prayer: he’s being swallowed up into the womb of the dead.
-also, the word for “surrounds” is sabab, which means twisting, winding, coiling, like in Genesis 2 of the rivers Pishon and Gihon. The nahar (or Leviathan) is coiling around Jonah.
–Jonah 2:5 The waters closed in over me to take my life; the deep surrounded me; weeds were wrapped about my head
– “head” is actually nephesh, which doesn’t just mean soul or life, but can also mean throat or breath.
-the term for “deep” here is tehom, which is another word for tannin- chaos dragon.
–Mesopotamian chaos dragon: Tiamat
–Jonah 2:6 at the roots of the mountains. I went down to the land whose bars closed upon me forever; yet you brought up my life from the pit, O LORD my God.
-down to the land- erets– the earth, or under the earth. Ancient Near Eastern Cosmology. Jonah went under the earth, put in prison (the bars closing, locking him in. He’s dying, being choked, brought down to Sheol to be locked up forever.
–Jonah 2:2 Out of the belly: Sheol has an appetite, it devours the living, is unsatiable. See also Isaiah 5:14 and Hab 2:5. Like the sea.
(Here Heiser goes on rabbit trail about Bel of Jeremiah 51:42-44 and the imagery of Sheol being the devourer, Bel/Enlil/Marduk and the apocryphal story of Bel in Bel and the Dragon.)
Conclusion
-Noegel sees the imagery and terminology describing the fish and the sea, particularly in Jonah’s prayer and how it draws up chaos imagery/realm of the dead used in other OT passages. He concludes that the writer of the Septuagint is making it more clear by using the word ketos: Jonah is actually being conquered by the forces of chaos. He’s being punished. And because he disobeys God, he has become an agent of chaos.
-Jesus uses it as an analogy of resurrection but also for defeating chaos and death itself, victory over the devil.