Was the ‘great fish’ in the story of Jonah called a fish because that’s how stupid people were back then?
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Were the people back then so stupid that they didn’t know that whales were mammals, they thought they were fish? The word ‘whale’ probably never even existed back then. And when modern Christians say, “It wasn’t a whale, it was a great fish,” that’s just what is written in their stupid bible even though the stupid people who wrote the bible thought whales were fish…do you think this explains it?
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I’m sensing a little animosity lol
thats the biggest hoax I have heard in a while
What baffles me is how the hell a person could get inside a whale. considering how thin their throat is (look it up). That’s why they eat plankton for crying out loud!
maybe.
more likely tho that story is just a fairy tale someone wrote down to amuse or befuddle others. bibles, qurans, torahs, etc etc are all just fictional books (just like fairy tales) anyhow.
You can hardly blame the author of the story for not knowing has animal taxonomy, since our system of classification wasn’t invented until a few thousand years later.
They weren’t stupid, they just didn’t have the Linnaeus classification system.
Things that flew (bats) were birds and things that swim (whales) were fish
well, it looked like a fish, its not like they could have looked up close! yea, alot of things in the bible dont make sense, but you choose this part to prove christians are stupid?
Back then? It seems that the IQ level of believers hasn’t risen beyond that nonsense.
No one could survive in a whale or a big fish.
The story is untrue.
Our scientific knowledge of the time knew nothing about how whales were not fish. Modern science didn’t exist then, and the bible is not scientific in ANY way.
Stupidity and ignorance are not the same thing
One involves lack of knowledge ,the other involves not using it intelligently
Thomas Jefferson didnt know a thing about computers either. Here is an example of how stupid he was in one of his letters.
By –Thomas Jefferson
“”"”Though I… am myself duly impressed with a sense of the arduousness of government and the obligation those are under who are able to conduct it, yet I am also satisfied there is an order of geniuses above that obligation and therefore exempted from it. Nobody can conceive that nature ever intended to throw away a Newton upon the occupations of a crown. It would have been a prodigality for which even the conduct of Providence might have been arraigned, had he been by birth annexed to what was so far below him. Cooperating with nature in her ordinary economy, we should dispose of and employ the geniuses of men according to their several orders and degrees.”"”"
What a dullard.
Fish are friends!
mine anyone
http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index;_ylt=AobVWGfr62DTCx5FLobO2Dnsy6IX;_ylv=3?qid=20090712164322AA86niN
Remember, ignorant, superstitious goat-herding and desert dwelling misogynists wrote that bible inthe bronze age.. What do you expect?
Jefferson was a dullard for suggesting we put people of genius to to work in areas that will most benefit society even if they feel put upon by being surrounded by people of inferior intellect?? I didn’t get that when I read it..
Why are you so into what a whale is anyway. It is in the sea, and related to the fish. But if you read in Matthew 12:40 Jesus said that For as Jonas was three days and three nights in the whale’s belly; so shall the Son of man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth. God gave the men of the Bible the Words to write in the Bible, so you take it up with God.
People weren’t stupid back then, Desi. They just had a different way of looking at the world. There are a number of similar stories found in the cultures of that time. And of course, the great fish is just a detail. The real point of Jonah has nothing to do with marine taxonomy.
Well, they also thought the world was flat until after the 15th century too.
It is not lack of intelligence you are observing it is lack of experience.
Considering that whales don’t live in the Mediterranean, the writers of the story would never have seen one. They probably heard of them from stories coming up the trade routes from the Atlantic or Indian Ocean coasts.
Desiree pointed out that whales do now and have lived in the Med, so I stand corrected. In my own defense, they’ve only recently returned after a long absence and I’d never heard of them of being there despite visiting the Med several times in the last 40 years.
Just because Pinocchio and his Cricket buddy survived doesn’t make the Jonah story true. And for the record Astro was the whales name at least it was when they went to space.
Your intelligence quotient is showing – please stop calling the kettle black.
Maybe it’s Some kind of a Very BIg fish. That is not existing anymore. Because people back then Like to haunt and Kill Animals, Birds and Fish.
SO Maybe it’s a Fish that does not exist anymore. Because the People Back there already Killed them for believe that they are very dangerous for they can take a full human.
Well It’s says ” GOd is the god of imposible.” SO maybe it’s posible
Hello! and a Great Big “Whale” to Ya’ Too!!!
and NoooooW:
Stupid IS as Stupid Does!
Yep!
How Ya’ Liiiiiikke That!??, Well, Do Ya’ Punk?
(sorry, Clint EastWood fan Here!).
sorry.
No they meant a great fish. They knew about whales since they lived near the sea and many were sailors. The symbolism conveyed by the whale differs from that of a fish. Despite you being somewhat of a pragmatist, you don’t actually believe this is a historical record of a historical person that was actually swallowed by a real whale or fish and then yet lived do you?? Now that is stupid! Do you actually beleive Superman can fly or that scenes from Star Trek are real live shots from outer space being sent by a real long cable to your house or to the theatre. Maybe you should take a course in literature or poetry.
Jonah 1:17- 2 :10. The focus is on the Lord’s sovereign control over creation to bring about His purpose. God sent the fish–not a whale, as is commonly thought–to rescue Jonah from drowning, not to punish him. Many since the 19th century A.D. have regarded Jonah as a parable or didactic fiction, as if factual history were ruled out by literary artistry or the recounting of miraculous events. If this narrative, however,whose form bears at every point the mark of a historical account, was judged unhistorical on either of these bases , then most of the Bible would follow easily along. It is pointless to ask whether Jonah really could have been swallowed by a great fish without also asking whether God really could communicate with a prophet. Every aspect of man’s encounter with God is miraculous. Jonah is clearly didactic, but it is not presented as fiction, or interpreted as such by Jesus.
Hum .. are the scientist today stupid for constantly reclassifying and reorganizing animal species?
With the whale, as the various sciences progressed people started better classifying and reorganizing classifications of everything on the planet. In the 19 th century the whale was often called a Whale-Fish. Even today as we learn more about various species science researchers are constantly re-classifying species attempting to make the classifications more accurate.
For instance Colin Groves, a professor of biological anthropology at the Australian National University as quoted by the Daily Telegraph of London (May 2005) while talking about the large increase in the number of primate classifications (just one tiny area of the planet’s animal population): “…even without all the new discoveries that have happened over the past 15 or 20 years, the number of recognized species of primates probably has increased by about a third (33%) over that time – simply because of reclassification. …”
(and that is just in primates not all animal species.)
So are today’s scientist stupid for putting the animals in the wrong classification to begin with?
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Now as far as why the critter that swallowed Jonah was probably called a big fish and not a whale . . .
In the days the book of Jonah was written many of the people that the story was being told lived inland and had never seen a whale. Plus keeping in mind that most of the boats in those days did as much sinking as they did floating even people that lived on the coast probably did not go out to sea unless they absolutely had to. Thus perhaps had never seen a whale.
So I pose the question, how would you describe a whale to someone that has never seen one? The simplest description that many people use, even today, that it looks like a really big fish.
However, an even simpler explanation, picture yourself being in Jonah’s position you are in the water, wind, rain, waves everywhere when suddenly something comes up from under you and swallows you whole. Assuming for the sake of argument, that it could happen, and you did live to tell the story later, what would you call the thing that swallowed you? Since you probably would not have seen what swallowed you, one second your in the water struggling to stay afloat, the next your inside some big critter.
So when someone asks, “What swallowed you?”
I suspect most of us would say: “I don’t know. Some kind of big fish. What ever it was it was big.”
Just something to think about.
May Our Creator watch over you and your family.