The Sign of Jonah

[Paul Younan]

...it would seem to be the only option we have in the Scriptures.

Shlama Akhi,

Another option would be to not take the "3 days and nights" so literally. Aramaic, much more so than English, is a very idiomatic tongue. You would understand in English if I used the phrase "Sorry I haven't gotten back to you, I've been working day and night" that I didn't mean to have the statement taken so literally as to have you understand it to mean "24 hours."

In Aramaic the phrase "layla w'yoma" (night and day) is used all the time by women complaining about their husbands and their activities. My mother in particular used the phrase often when referring to the obsession my father and his brothers had with playing backgammon.

Idiomatic usages like this are found much more frequently in Semitic tongues than perhaps our Indo-European brethren may be accustomed to.

What I'm trying to say is that Jonah was probably not in the belly of any fish at all, and certainly there was no need for him to have been in there for 3 days and literal nights, either.....if the account of the fish and the ship are to be understood literally and not as a story meant to convey a message.

There are different ways to read scripture and I think reading it at times a bit less literally allows for a much deeper allegorical meaning than would otherwise be conveyed if restricted to a literal rendition.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that this isn't a case where Aramaic or Greek is going to shed any light. In Greek, Aramaic, English and Swahili from Friday to Sunday is 3 days. If you want to understand the 3 days so literally because Meshikha said "days and nights", then really the problem is outside the scope of linguistics and more of a case where you want to familiarize yourself more with the idiomatic usages of these phrases in literature that is contemporary to the NT or OT, up to and including modern times.