Handout #263

Catholic exegesis in the middle of the nineteenth century

The author, Abbe Glaire, was dean of the Faculty of Theology in Paris.

In the story of the whale we read that it swallowed up Jonah, kept him for three days and three nights in his belly, and then cast him out on the sea shore. The incredulous say that all these things are impossible, and that therefore they should not have a place in a work which one wants to claim as being true and divine.

We would remark, first, that the species of fish which swallowed up Jonah is not mentioned at all in scripture. Supposing that this fish was a shark, all the difficulties would disappear. The only point which presents a serious difficulty is the existence of Jonah shut up for three days and three nights in the belly of this fish. We have to show how this man could have lived in the belly of this fish, I do not say without a miracle, but without a contradiction. There is no doubt that by his power God can suspend for a time the penetration and the voracity of the acids which are in the most carnivorous and hottest stomach ... just as on another occasion he suspended the heat of the flames for the three young men shut up in the furnace, and just as he made St Peter light enough walk on the waters. There is nothing in all this which surpasses the power of the sovereign author of nature. Jonah was full of life and did not remain motionless in the belly of this fish. He was not affected by the digestive acid.

As to the impossibility of Jonah being able to breathe, almighty God could have made the blood of Jonah so still that he did not have to breathe so frequently, just as animals which remain underground for several months or at the bottom of the sea without breathing or as children in their mothers' womb where they do not breathe. 

There is indeed nothing impossible in all that, nothing incompatible with the laws of nature, although in the circumstances all this is beyond the ordinary known laws and therefore miraculous. J.B. Glaire, Les livres saints venges ou la verite historique et divine de l'Ancien et du NouveauTestament defendue contre les principales attaques des incredules modernes et surtout desmythologues et des critique rationalists (1845).

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