Jona einmal anders? Ein biblisches Narrativ und seine interreligiöse antike Rezeption

As part of the festival "Fürth Celebrates Diversity" (April 26 – May 11), PD Dr. Christian Lange, Deputy Director of the Bavarian Research Center for Interreligious Discourses (BaFID), will give a lecture on the prophet Jonah, who spent three days in the belly of a whale.

In the German-speaking world, Jonah is primarily known as "the man with the fish" or "the man with the whale," who was swallowed by a great fish and remained inside it for three days—just as Jesus spent three days in Sheol, the realm of the dead. However, there is another significant interpretation: Jonah as the prophet to the nations. A Hebrew himself, Jonah initially resists God's command to go to the non-Hebrew city of Nineveh to proclaim its impending destruction. Yet, the people of Nineveh accept the Hebrew prophet’s call to repentance and are thus spared by God.

This second interpretation of Jonah led to a fascinating discourse in Late Antiquity between Jewish and Christian writings, as well as the Quran. This lecture aims to explore selected aspects of the late antique interpretations of the biblical Jonah narrative.