Читать книгу Jonah Through the Centuries - Lena-Sofia Tiemeyer - Страница 15

Jonah, or Yunus as he is called in Arabic, is remembered in Islamic traditions as a prophet who was faithful to God and delivered his message. He is often also named Dhul-Nun (Arabic: ذو النون, meaning ‘The One of the Whale’) and Sahib al-hut (Arabic: صاحب الحوت, meaning ‘The Man of the Whale’). Most of the material about Jonah in the Qur’an serves to support Muhammad: it provides insight into and a precedent for the initial opposition that Muhammad faced from the people of Mecca.

Jonah appears six times in the Qur’an (Sura 4:163; 6:86; 10:98 [Yunus]; 21:87–88; 37:139–48; 68:48–50). These references are opaque and difficult to forge together into a coherent and cohesive narrative. It is likely that the original readers were familiar with the Book of Jonah, along with the references in the NT, and thus able to interpret the extant elusive Qur’anic references in their light.

As time went by, however, the biblical narrative faded from memory, and the Qur’anic fragments became the building blocks for creating new and alternative Jonah narratives with a sequence of events that differs drastically from the biblical original. A common outline runs as follows: God sends Jonah to Nineveh to preach a message. The people of Nineveh refuse to listen to Jonah. As a result, Jonah leaves Nineveh and boards a ship. Because of the storm, the sailors cast lots and realize that Jonah is the cause of the storm, whereupon they throw him into the sea. A gigantic fish swallows Jonah. Inside the fish, Jonah repents and glorifies God, and the fish spits him out. As Jonah is very sore from having been inside a fish, God provides a gourd plant to offer shade, and the archangel Gabriel gives him clothes (a scene often portrayed in Islamic art). In this manner, Islamic traditions transformed the biblical Book of Jonah into a new narrative with a new theme: God sends messengers, the people reject their message, and God sends punishment. They also give it a new climax: Jonah’s prayer and glorification of God inside the fish.

This modified narrative was subsequently interpreted by Islamic traditions (hadīth) and Qur’anic exegesis (tafsīr). These interpretations caused the Islamic Jonah traditions to evolve even further as they germinated new narrative details and prompted new theological questions. Two key intertwined issues came to dominate the exegetical discussions: (1) the specific character of Jonah’s sin and (2) the specific occasion when he sinned. The prevalent understanding among Islamic interpreters (e.g. Al-Qummī, Zamakhsharī, Ibn Kathīr) was that Jonah’s sin was anger and that he committed it when he ran away in wrath after his mission to Nineveh. Many Islamic scholars accordingly sought to elucidate with whom Jonah was angry (e.g. God, the Israelites, the Ninevites) or flatly maintained that, in fact, he was not angry (as prophets were infallible and thus could not be angry). Ultimately, Muhammad was compared with Jonah (Sura 68). Both prophets felt rejected by the people to whom they were sent to preach. Jonah’s enraged departure should not, however, be emulated by Muhammad; rather, Muhammad should be patient and see that God would sort things out. In parallel, other later traditions, such as the ones found in Al-Kisā’ī’s Tales of the Prophets, elaborated further, and included folkloristic motifs known from other, non-Islamic traditions.