My Dinner with Heidi

[Limnor]

Exactly. The sign of Jonah is no sign, no special effect, just plain text. The Ninevites heard the message, and the message convinced them. We don't need a miracle to tell us that we're on a wrong track. We already know that we are. We just need someone to make it the topic.

I’m curious and wouldn’t mind talking about this approach. Is the idea that the disciples, following Jesus’s death (and maybe the destruction of the temple?) backwards cast a story that depicted fulfilled prophecy in a guy name Jesus? Or He never existed?

Is this Bart Ehrman adjacent? I mean I think it’s interesting—do you have more details?

[Res Ipsa]

Or was it da’ vine?

I heard it was all pre-plan’t.

[Limnor]

I heard it was all pre-plan’t.

lol

[huckelberry]

The Jonah story had its whole show stolen by that fish, swallowing the guy for three days, but the actual plot of the story is interesting. Jonah gets sent to preach to the great but sinful city of Nineveh; the twist is that his preaching just works, and the city repents, with no miracles needed. And so there's no terrible judgement to vindicate Jonah and show what a great prophet he is. Jonah is disappointed, and God rebukes his hypocrisy.

An evil and adulterous generation craves a sign. Yet no sign will be given to it except the sign of the prophet Jonah, because just as Jonah was in the stomach of the sea creature for three days and three nights, so the Son of Man will be in the heart of the earth for three days and three nights. The men of Nineveh will stand up at the judgment and condemn the people living today, because they repented at the preaching of Jonah.

Jesus's reference to Jonah makes sense, but only if you discard the explanation about Jonah being in the whale for three days, as a later interpolation by an overzealous reporter who misunderstood Jesus's point. It makes no sense to say, "A wicked generation craves a sign, but it won't get a sign, except for one heck of a big sign." And it's especially silly to shift the focus from Nineveh to the miraculous whale, when nobody in Nineveh ever sees the whale—the whale is a sign to Jonah, not to the people of Nineveh. The whole point of the Jonah story is precisely that even wicked people can repent without seeing signs. That fits with what Jesus is saying.

I would not claim to be sure but perhaps Matthew is correct and the sign was to Noah not the Ninivites who in the story did not need a sign.after all it was Noah who was resisting.

[malkie]

The Jonah story had its whole show stolen by that fish, swallowing the guy for three days, but the actual plot of the story is interesting. Jonah gets sent to preach to the great but sinful city of Nineveh; the twist is that his preaching just works, and the city repents, with no miracles needed. And so there's no terrible judgement to vindicate Jonah and show what a great prophet he is. Jonah is disappointed, and God rebukes his hypocrisy.

Jesus's reference to Jonah makes sense, but only if you discard the explanation about Jonah being in the whale for three days, as a later interpolation by an overzealous reporter who misunderstood Jesus's point. It makes no sense to say, "A wicked generation craves a sign, but it won't get a sign, except for one heck of a big sign." And it's especially silly to shift the focus from Nineveh to the miraculous whale, when nobody in Nineveh ever sees the whale—the whale is a sign to Jonah, not to the people of Nineveh. The whole point of the Jonah story is precisely that even wicked people can repent without seeing signs. That fits with what Jesus is saying.

I would not claim to be sure but perhaps Matthew is correct and the sign was to Noah not the Ninivites who in the story did not need a sign.after all it was Noah who was resisting.

Probably god hadn't got around yet to sending angels with drawn swords.

[malkie]

Or was it da’ vine?

I heard it was all pre-plan’t.

Although Nineveh was near the Tigris, apparently there was nothing nearby that would count as a beach.

As a result, it was only in Jonah's imagination that he heard non-beach boys singing "Gourd, gourd, gourd, gourd vibrations".

[Physics Guy]

I’m curious and wouldn’t mind talking about this approach. Is the idea that the disciples, following Jesus’s death (and maybe the destruction of the temple?) backwards cast a story that depicted fulfilled prophecy in a guy name Jesus? Or He never existed?

Is this Bart Ehrman adjacent? I mean I think it’s interesting—do you have more details?

I don't know Ehrman well. I take this exegesis of Matthew 12:39 from a sermon by an old friend who was then an Anglican priest. We've lost touch over the years, but last I heard from him he no longer believed in God. He never held a paying job as a priest, and in the years that I knew him he never pretended to have any more faith than he actually had at the time. I don't believe that anyone would have called him a hypocrite.

He was (and I'm sure still is) a smart guy, and he noticed that citing Jonah for his three days in the belly of the sea-beast made no sense in Jesus's Matthew 12 speech. "You won't get a sign, except for a big sign." The big plot point of the Jonah story is that Nineveh repented without a sign, just from hearing the word, and this is clearly what Jesus was talking about in the context of Matthew 12. So it's pretty easy to see Matt. 12:40 as an interpolated gloss by some later editor or reciter who wasn't tracking Jesus's actual theme but thought he had it when he noticed that Jonah was inside for three days, whoa, three days just like Jesus, if you count Friday to Sunday.

So I consider Matthew 12:40 an outright mistake. It's the kind of mistake that would easily be made by some later reciter or writer who believed that Jesus had risen from the dead on the third day, but the very obviousness of the error is evidence that the rest of this passage in Matthew came from a tradition of a saying of Jesus which was independent, as a tradition about Jesus, from the resurrection tradition. If the only Jesus that ever existed was the meme of the resurrected messiah, then this speech attributed to Jesus would surely have been more consistent.

And then there's the message itself. Whoever or whatever Jesus the historical figure may have been, Jesus the character in Matthew says something here worth considering. Why do we believe things we hear? Do we need to see signs? Or can we just recognise the ring of truth when we hear it? Do we need stronger evidence, or just better pattern recognition?

[Limnor]

This is interesting PG—I’m thinking through the implications and possibilities. The theory might fit into a “Q” source hypothesis. I wonder if that’s what your friend was thinking.

[Limnor]

I’m not convinced the mention of the fish has to be a later interpolation, it seems at least possible that Jesus himself would draw that connection, given references elsewhere to the three days.

I think what you’ve said here is profound and is something I hadn’t considered: “Do we need signs, or can we recognize truth by its ring?”

Taken as a whole, I think there is more to Jesus’ death and resurrection than a morality story, though I’d agree there is plenty of moral material there. I’ve used the analogy before of a hole in the wall with a sign above it that says, “Don’t look in this hole.” I think the tendency to want to look is indicative of our nature and the biblical exposition of that nature gets at something real.

[malkie]

I’m not convinced the mention of the fish has to be a later interpolation, it seems at least possible that Jesus himself would draw that connection, given references elsewhere to the three days.

I think what you’ve said here is profound and is something I hadn’t considered: “Do we need signs, or can we recognize truth by its ring?”

Taken as a whole, I think there is more to Jesus’ death and resurrection than a morality story, though I’d agree there is plenty of moral material there. I’ve used the analogy before of a hole in the wall with a sign above it that says, “Don’t look in this hole.” I think the tendency to want to look is indicative of our nature and the biblical exposition of that nature gets at something real.

I had a hole-in-the-wall analogy once too!

The wall represents some kind of relationship with your chosen god, and all information/knowledge is available on the other side of the wall. There's a hole through which people can see stuff. From far away you can get only the tiniest glimpse of something through the hole but as you come closer to the wall/god you see more and more. When you put your eye up close to the hole, you get a really wide perspective that's not possible from far off. By adjusting your angle with respect to the wall and hole, you can choose a view that includes past, present, and future. God is on the other side, and has the entire vista from eternity to eternity open to him.