At the foundation of the book of Jonah is the story itself, which I argue may be viewed as a type of wondertale. Certain literary features of the book of Jonah are an addition or a "filling out" which complements the basic structure of the tale. Based upon both form and content of the book interpreters have tried to assign it to one Gattung or another, the major arguments of which I will review in Chapter Three. Let it suffice here to say that none has been completely satisfactory, for the Jonah story has features of several types. On the one hand, it is clearly a non-historical narrative but, on the other hand, there are apparent historical references therein. The classic understanding of Märchen presupposes that those tales are devoid of historicized details or dynamism of
30 See Elliot Oring, "Folk Narratives," 121-145 in Folk Groups and Folklore Genres: An Introduction.
(Logan, Utah: Utah State University Press, 1986).
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character, so this is clearly not a strong identification. Other, more "historical" Hebrew narratives contain elements which reflect non-historiographical tendencies.31 In other words, constrictive definitions of literary form seldom apply to Hebrew texts since those texts were subject to frequent processes of redaction and refinement over long periods of time.
Scholars have identified several folkloric categories to describe certain narratives from the Hebrew Bible and identify parallels from the ancient Near East. Folk narratives are differentiated from other narratives because they purport to express the interests or traditions of society writ large, hence the recurrence of universal conventions. The Levitical purity laws, in contrast, were apparently produced by and addressed to a small and specialized segment of the population. Thus in biblical scholarship we see generally that the foundational stories of Israelite society are identified as folklore. The term
"myth" is sometimes used very inclusively but a myth is, strictly speaking, a sacred narrative "explaining how the world and mankind came to be in their present form.‖32 Myths very frequently describe the origins and nature of the world in terms that helped the ancients to understand the answers to their most fundamental theological or
cosmological questions. 33 Legends are folk narratives that claim to give factual, though aggrandized, historical truth about a single episode or event. Unlike the primeval world
31 Gunkel himself, sans the delicacy of modern political correctness, said that ―Uncivilised races do not write history; they are incapable of reproducing their experiences objectively, and have no interest in leaving to posterity an authentic account of the history of their times.‖ The Legends of Genesis, 1. The role of historiography in "historical" biblical writings is a very powerful factor to consider. The matter is taken up in numerous works but by way of introduction see John Van Seters, In Search of History:
Historiography in the Ancient World and the Origins of Biblical History (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1983), 209 ff.
32 Alan Dundes, Holy Writ as Oral Lit, 13.
33 Myths usually have a pronounced religious theme; Gunkel, Legends of Genesis, 14; Gunkel is known in the study of biblical folklore for his thesis that many aspects of the ―legends‖ of Genesis are in fact ―faded myths.‖ Arguments labeling the book of Jonah as a legend usually follow the same argument.
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of myths, legends are set in the world as we know it since their most salient feature is that they tell stories about real or purported historical or ancestral figures.34 A novel is yet another form, consisting of distinct plot elements including an introduction, progression, and denouement, but it is also distinguished from these other genres in that a novel is the work of a single writer or school as opposed to a corpus accrued in stages. Novels are also more specific in some narrative details. As literary critic Vladimir Propp said about novels, ―they are told not only as credible but as having happened in a definite location, at a definite time, and to definite people.‖35
All of these are distinguished from the tale, a blanket term for an incredibly diverse category which for purposes of simplification may be further divided into tales of the ordinary, tales of the fantastic, and fables.36 These three types are united by certain characteristics: they usually involve brief and direct plots, easily-recognizable or
archetypal characters, and are propelled by a single moral or "quest" which shapes all of the events therein. Tales involve a logical sequence of events, but this logic "is not always the logic of the everyday world...[it] may operate upon a set of extraordinary premises."37 Tales may share certain features with other narrative genres, as these categories are not always mutually exclusive. The Lugalbanda tale, though fictional, derives its significance partly from the reference to the purportedly historical personage of Lugalbanda. Most folklorists of the past considered folktales categorically artificial in
34 Following Gunkel, the most commonly cited biblical example of legends are the patriarch stories of Genesis 12-50. Gunkel used the term Sage for these stories, from which "saga" is derived to describe a closely related form. Gene Tucker makes the distinction that legends are decidedly more "spiritual" in tone than sagas; Tucker, Form Criticism of the Old Testament, 38.
35 Propp, Theory and History of Folklore, 20.
36 This division is made by Propp himself; Morphology of the Folktale, 5.
37 Oring, "Folk Narratives," 130.
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the way; even Propp declares that folktales are ―deliberate and poetic fiction‖ which
―never passes itself off as reality.‖38
"Tales of the ordinary" involve persons and events which are plausible and set in a world which follows the laws of nature as we know them. The Babylonian folktale known as ―The Poor Man of Nippur,‖ for example, though never situated within an historical context other than to say ―once in Nippur‖39 is nevertheless staged in a world that follows normal conventions. The protagonist, Gimil-Ninurta, is something of an everyman; nothing fantastic or otherworldly happens to him. His opponent, the mayor of Nippur, is never named. The story follows certain narrative conventions; other folktales likely shared the pattern of this tale in its structure and characteristics.40 Fables are differentiated in that they routinely take its audience away into a new reality and they frequently, though not as a rule, ―personify animals or plants in able to teach or
entertain.‖41 The best known collection of fables is that featuring the Greek slave Aesop, though older fables are attested from the ancient Near East. The earliest fables frequently involve a verbal contest between creatures or personifications and later Babylonian and Assyrian folk followed Sumerian predecessors after their patterns.42 The story of Etana, for example, incorporates "The Snake and the Eagle" which is presumed to have been an
38 Propp, Theory and History of Folklore, 19.
39 For a full translation and commentary see Benjamin R. Foster, From Distant Days: Myths, Tales, and Poetry of Ancient Mesopotamia (Bethesda, Md.: CDL Press, 1995), 357-362.
40 Pertinent studies of this tale are Jerrold S. Cooper, ―Structure, Humor, and Satire in the Poor Man of Nippur,‖ JCS 27 no. 3 (July 1975): 163-174, and O.R. Gurney, ―The Tale of the Poor Man of Nippur and Its Folktale Parallels,‖ AnSt 22 (1972): 149-158.
41 Tucker, Form Criticism of the Old Testament, 29.
42 So "contest literature" as a genre as identified by W.G. Lambert. Contest literature is at the heart of many fables, though other subtypes may occur; Babylonian Wisdom Literature. (repr. ed.; Winona Lake, Ind.:
Eisenbrauns, 1996), 150.
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independent unit,43 and the Hebrew Bible preserves Jotham‘s fable (Judg 9:8-15), perhaps an originally independent unit weaved into the narrative fittingly. This process of deliberately welding units of folk literature together, collecting eclectic strands of material and rearranging their constituent parts is an indispensable part of Vladimir Propp's folklore theory discussed below.