I suppose it must be the proper thing when writing of Mosul, to expatiate upon the antiquity of Nineveh; but so much has already been written upon this subject ever since Layard first uncovered its mounds, and so well written, that to attempt adequately to treat of it here would be presumption. Suffice it to say, that around Mosul, the modern city, which stands opposite the ancient Nineveh, sometime capital of Assyria, are the remains of Nineveh, old and new, while in the neighbourhood are Kalah, Asshur, Hadra, and Khorsabad (Dar Sharrukin), some of which are being excavated by energetic Germans, who publish yearly an excellently illustrated account of their labours.
The traveller to-day is shown by the people of Mosul the mosque and minaret of Nebi Yunis, “The Prophet Jonah,” erected in Muhammadan times by Muslims, who had identified the site with that of Nineveh.
Christian, Jew, and Muslim alike pay considerable reverence to the shrine, although the two former are not allowed access to it. All believe in the ingenious story with a blind faith that should shake our modern sceptics. Unfortunately it is practically impossible, in these days of miracles explained, to believe in the fish of Jonah, that either slid across dry land, or, as Mr Fraser[11] remarks, “must have been a clever fish to swim 20,000 miles ... in three days and nights,” unless, as he sagely observes, “the fish ... according to the Scriptures, had been specially prepared, doped perhaps, as they call it in America.”
The Bible, with that protective ambiguity not always absent from its more wonderful tales, says that Jonah embarked from Tarshish. Now Tarshish, the Phœnician name for Spain, is just exactly the direction in which the unwilling Jonah would have fled in order to escape the tedious desert journey to Nineveh. We are not told how far they got when the tempest broke out, but there seems no reason why one should not assume it to have occurred promptly, and to have driven the ship back upon the Syrian coast, when Jonah might possibly have landed, if we can ignore the fish. Certainly the fish is unfortunately assertive, and its curious feat of carrying Jonah to a point three days from Nineveh is explainable only as hazarded above by Mr Fraser. Also, the Tigris is hardly deep enough even for sharks above Tikrit, many miles towards Bagdad.
At any rate, one explanation is as good as another with so Biblical a history. It would seem reasonable to suppose that Jonah, finding himself once more in Syria after his shipwreck, set forth for Nineveh, a journey which must have taken him anything between twenty and forty days.
But here, if we accept the foregoing theory, we are faced by another remarkable feat of travelling, for “Nineveh was an exceeding great city of three days journey,” which has been taken to mean that Nineveh was three days away from where the fish vomited up Jonah.
But it is a noteworthy fact that the magnitude of the city is mentioned, so to say, in a breath with the distance from somewhere, and this supports a theory which, in all humility, is here advanced.
Those unfamiliar with Eastern colloquialisms cannot be expected to know that in these lands of camel and mule travel, the unit of travel is “one day,” and since miles and furlongs do not exist—the parasang is a Persian, not an Arabian measure—“a day” means about twenty miles. Would it not be intelligible to say—when it is remembered that the name of a city still comprehends the cultivated lands about it—“Nineveh was an exceeding great city of sixty miles (in extent),” i.e., with its irrigated lands, around which was, and is, sandy waterless desert.
JONAH
The following verse[12] then reads intelligibly: “Jonah began to enter into the city a day’s journey.” He began to enter by the cultivated lands, and assuming the city to be about the centre, would reach it the second day. If, as we used to be told, Jonah was yet two days away from Nineveh when he predicted and cried, “Yet forty days ...” and so on, the obvious conclusion must credit Jonah with an exceeding great voice, or messengers to carry his word before him, or unavoidably figure him as a fatuous fellow literally “crying in the wilderness.”