Taking the Argo to Nineveh: Jonah and Jason in a Mediterranean context

Judaism, Summer, 1995 by Gildas Hamel

Naturally, the book of Jonah must be read, first and last, within its Hebrew context. Indeed, the text reverberates, especially to Hebrew ears, with clear echoes of biblical passages that come from the Noah story, from Jeremiah Joel, and other prophets.(1) In numerous studies, commentators have pointed out these intertextual links, while disagreeing on the exact nature of their reemployment. They wonder if the author is being ironic, satirical, parodic, allegorical, or didactic.(2) Still, the story of Jonah also reads like a maritime tale whose meaning might be enriched and its themes emerge in bolder relief, were it set against its Mediterranean background, especially Greek lore. Wedged between the empires of Mesopotamia and Egypt, ancient Israel was also a Mediterranean country, in contact by sea from the earliest times with Greek civilization, among other maritime powers. While the cultural significance of this proximity has been recognized by some nineteenth and early twentieth century scholars, the use of the comparative method often has been too sweeping and led at times to reductive results.

In recent times, relatively little attention has been paid to the connections that the Jonah story may have to Greek tales, apart from a few notable recent and not so recent exceptions; elements of the legend of Heracles and the story of Perseus and Andromeda, for instance, are strikingly similar, as Cyril of Alexandria and Jerome had noted.(3) In the end, though, these parallels have failed to impress most exegetes, who have concluded that they are not helpful in the interpretation of the book.

Yet the book of Jonah presents puzzling parallels with Jason and elements of the Argonauts' story. The parallel between Jason and Jonah, not mentioned by early Jewish or Christian writers, was evoked by a few classicists at the beginning of this century, because of an unusual representation of Jason found in 1833 in Caere (Cerveteri). Their comments are very brief, however, usually framed within a very broad comparative format, and without seeing and developing any analysis of the details that show the possible extent of cultural interaction.(4) Furthermore, the connection between the two stories seems to have been long since forgotten and has not drawn any attention in the past sixty years.(5)

What I propose is to reexamine the parallels between Jonah and Jason. In particular, I hope to show how the author of Jonah plays with one of the variants of the story of Jason, or that Jonah's story, at the very least, can be placed within the nebula of variants of Jason's tale. The saga of the Argonauts seems to have been widespread in oral, written, and pictorial forms, while numerous representations of various elements of their story, conveniently gathered now in the Lexicon Iconographicum Mythologiae Classicae,(6) are sufficient proof of its diffusion around the Mediterranean. Many stories attached to Jason as a kind of patron of navigators circulated widely. The differences to be found in the written versions of Pindar (518-438 B.C.E.), Euripides (ca. 485-ca. 406 B.C.E.), Apollonius of Rhodes (third century B.C.E.), Valerius Flaccus flourished in the first c. B.C.E.), and the so-called Orphic Argonautica, attest to the fluidity of a multifaceted tradition which one imagines to have also been a living, ever-changing, oral tradition. One may suppose that from an early date, written, oral, and iconographic versions influenced each other in multiple ways.

My thesis, therefore, is that the author of the Jonah tale used bits of this widely circulating oral cycle within the framework of his own Hebrew tradition. His is a highly literate story, the work of a writer who used chiastic structures, repetitions, puns, and ironic twists. In their reemployment in the Hebrew story, the elements of the tale of the Argonauts appear only as vestiges, although I think they are more significant than has been usually acknowledged.(7) At a minimum, their selection and the way in which they are recast suggest an antipolytheistic attitude turned against Ionians, as well as against the more obvious Ninevites. Many more elements are at work than were previously thought to be, as the study of parts of the story, especially its philological and iconographic aspects, will soon make clear-an important consideration for the ongoing debate on the nature and complexity of cultural borrowings. Such study also sheds some light on the extent of Near Eastern influence on early Greek culture.(8)

My argument will proceed as follows: First, after a rapid synopsis of the stories, the mythological motifs they have in common will be laid out in detail. Secondly, I will propose an explanation for their use and shape in Jonah. Finally, I hope to show that the use of some of these common themes persisted in the later (mostly Christian) iconography of Jonah.

The Stories

In the extant written versions of the Argonauts' tale, Jason, son of Aeson, and great-grandson of Aeolus the wind, is given by his rival Pelias the impossible task of bringing back the Golden Fleece from Colchis. this is the fleece of a ram which was sacrificed after saving Phrixus, in a story reminiscent of the Akedah in Genesis 22. The Golden Fleece is hanging on a tree in Ares, sacred wood in Colchis, Aeetes' kingdom, and is guarded by a never-sleeping dragon. At Jason's call, the bravest of the Greeks hurry to the Argo, a ship built for Jason by Argos, with Athena's help. On their way to Colchis, the country of the sunrise in the Orient, the Greeks meet with many challenges. The greatest danger they encounter in trying to reach their goal is a stormy sea in which they must pass through the shifting or clashing rocks, the Planctae or Symplegades, which the sea alternately pushes apart and brings together. Once in Colchis, they ask King Aeetes for the Fleece. He promises it to Jason, provided the latter can subjugate the brazen-hoofed and fire-breathing bulls, plow a field, and sow the teeth of the local dragon. Jason manages these feats with the crucial help of the king,s daughter, Medea. Because Aeetes goes back on his word, Jason sets out to steal the Golden Fleece. He succeeds, again with the help of Medea, who puts the ever-watching dragon to sleep with a magic potion. The Argonauts then flee with the Fleece and the king's daughter.