Chapter 88 83．authenticity of jonah

Of all the legends about Jonah and the whale, which we have told before, the Turks believed most. As early as three hundred years ago, an English traveler to Turkey once testified: In Turkey, there is a temple dedicated to commemorating Jonah. In that temple, there is a magic lamp that will light up by itself without refueling. The "god" of this magic lamp comes from Jonah. It seems that the Turks are very open-minded. However, there are many people who do not believe in Jonah. This is speaking of the Greeks, the Romans, and even some Nantucketers. The Greeks and Romans, apart from the Nantucketers, were skeptics, and they doubted not only Jonah, but many, many, almost innumerable things.

An old man from Shark Harbor who claims to have been whale hunting all his life is representative of these doubters. He has gathered several reasons to refute the legend of Jonah, which we can list for him below: First, he has a "Bible" of unknown age, which has many strange pictures drawn on it. Based on these pictures and his own experience, he deduces that the whale's esophagus is very narrow and cannot swallow Jonah at all; Second, even if Jonah was swallowed by the whale, how could he endure the stomach juice of the whale? Third, Jonah was swallowed by a big whale in the Mediterranean Sea, but was spit out by the big whale in the upper reaches of the Tigris River three days later. You must know that the three-day voyage of the big whale greatly exceeded this.

All these questions of his can be clarified. First, since the mouth of the whale is very large, Jonah does not necessarily have to go to the belly; Two, Jonah may have been in the belly of a dead whale, or on a ship called "The Great Whale"; Three, the whale can take Jonah around the Cape of Good Hope, which is why they passed through Turkey. Obviously, these assertions made by the old man from Shaq Harbor are very unfounded and level. In fact, his knowledge is very shallow, and he is always based on hearsay, so he has long been refuted by authoritative whale scientists.