THE STORY OF JONAH.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXV, Issue 19940, 8 May 1928, Page 14

THE STORY OF JONAH.

BELIEF IN AUTHENTICITY. ENGLISH THEOLOGIAN'S VIEW. [from our own correspondent.] NEW YORK, March 21. That Jonah could easily have been swallowed by a whale and survived within the " great fish" as narrated in the Bible, is maintained by Dr. Ambrose Wilson, of Queen's College, Oxford, who declares in the Princeton Theological Review that biological and historical facts prove his contention.

According to the noted British scholar and lecturer, "physiological tests entirely disprove the alleged impossibility of the story. It, is shown by study of the structure of the sperm whale," he writes, "that it is quite possiblo for a man to be swallowed alive and vomited up again after an interval, also for him to remain for two or three days within the whale." The "great fish" of the Bible would be the sperm whale or cachalot, the species which inhabits the southern waters where Jonah was voyaging. It attains a very large size, and may measure from fifty to eighty feet long. 'The head is about one-third the length of the body, very massive, high and truncated in front. It will not, therefore, be considered exorbitant if we postulate for Jonah a whale sixty feet long, with a mouth twenty feet in length, also fifteen feet in height and-nine feet in width." As to popular criticism that the whale's oesophagus or gullet is too small, Dr. Wilson asserts that this is not a question of calculated possibilities but of recorded facts. " The sperm whale," ho says, "subsists for the most part on the octopus, the bodies of which, far larger than tho body of a man, have been found whole within it. The manager of a whaling station in tho extreme north of Britain stated that the largest thing they had found in a whale was tho skeleton of a shark, sixteen feet long." Two other men have been swallowed by whales and survived, according to Dr. Wilson. Referring to a story told by Sir Francis Fox of such an example in 1891. Dr. Wilson tells of a man who was swallowed by a whale, and was not found until almost two days later when the whalers were rutting up the carcase of the monster. This man remained for two weeks a raving lunatic, duo to bis harrowing experience, but lie was finally restored to normal life. Another example of a whale swallowing a sailor, destroying part of a ship and then vomiting the man on to the wreckage of the small vessel is told by Dr. Wilson ns another instance of historical evidence. Tho story of this event was narrated in tho paper the Boston Tost Bov, in its issue of October 4, 1771.