So according to this article, the story of Jonah was not a historical account, but simply an allegory.
And consistent with this, RC scholarship also teaches that that Genesis 2 (Adam and Eve and creation details) and Gn. 3 (the story of the Fall), Gn. 4:1-16 (Cain and Abel), Gn. 6-8 (Noah and the Flood), and Gn. 11:1-9 (Tower of Babel are “folktales,” using allegory to teach a religious lesson.
Also, the story of Balaam and the donkey and the angel (Num. 22:1-21; 22:36-38) was a fable, and the “sons of God” in Gn. 6 are really “the celestial beings of mythology.”
Furthermore, the records of Gn. (chapters) 37-50 (Joseph), 12-36 (Abraham, Issaac, Jacob), Exodus, Judges 13-16 (Samson) 1Sam. 17 (David and Goliath) and that of the Exodus are stories which are “historical at their core,” but overall the author simply used mere “traditions” to teach a religious lesson.
What this also means is that the Bible’s attribution of Divine sanction to wars of conquest, “cannot be qualified as revelation from God,” and things like clouds, angels (blasting trumpets), smoke, fire, earthquakes,lighting, thunder, war, calamities, lies and persecution are Biblical figures of speech.”
In addition, the sea Moses parted for Israelites to cross over that was the Reed Sea, which was “probably a body of shallow water somewhat to the north of the present deep Red Sea.” Thus rendered, the miracle would have been Pharaoh’s army drowning in shallow waters,
They also speculate that some of the miracle stories of Jesus in the New Testament (the fulfillment of of the Hebrew Bible) may be “adaptations” of similar ones in the Old Testament, and that the Lord may not have actually been involved in the debates the gospel writers record He was in, and thinks that most of which Jesus is recorded as saying was probably “theological elaboration” by the writers.`
They even cast doubt on much of the Lord’s sayings, teaching that “The Church was so firmly convinced that the risen Lord who is Jesus of history lived in her, and taught through her, that she expressed her teaching in the form of Jesus’ sayings. The words are not Jesus but from the Church.”
They ask, “Can we discover at least some words of Jesus that have escaped such elaboration? Bible scholars point to the very short sayings of Jesus, as for example those put together by Matthew in chapter 5, 1-12 - http://peacebyjesus.witnesstoday.org/Ancients_on_Scripture.html#Remarks
Now how many traditional RCs subscribe to this?
All of which impugns the overall literal nature the O.T. historical accounts, and as Scripture interprets Scripture, we see that the Holy Spirit refers to such stories as being literal historical events (Adam and Eve: Mt. 19:4; Abraham, Issac, Exodus and Moses: Acts 7; Rm. 4; Heb. 11; Jonah and the fish: Mt. 12:39-41; Balaam and the donkey: 2Pt. 2:15; Jude. 1:1; Rev. 2:14). Indeed “the serpent beguiled Eve through his subtlety” (2Cor. 11:3; Rev. 12:9), and if Jonah did not spend 3 days and 3 nights in the belly of the whale then neither did the Lord, while Israel’s history is always and inclusively treated as literal.
Good post. I’d also like to point out that there is no consistent contextual basis for separating out the “non-historical” from the “historical”, like the author of the article suggests.
The parts which modernists wish to regard as “non-historical” are simply the parts that they find inconvenient to defend in the face of attack by humanists, rationalists, atheists, etc. For example, there is no distinction in the text between the parts of Genesis that are accepted as “historical” and the parts they want to view as “non-historical”. It’s a single narrative written as if the entire work is a history, with no indication in the text that any of it is allegorical. Yet, somehow, all the parts that are most heavily ridiculed by nonbelievers just happen to be the ones that meet the mysterious standards to be deemed “non-historical”. It stretches the bounds of reason to imagine that this is just a coincidence produced by a sound exegetical method.
...And the virgin birth?.....the feeding of the multitudes?.......and the raising of Lazurus?.....and the resurrection?.....
Relax. Read C.S. Lewis on Job, he gets it. The fact that a Biblical book is allegorical (like Job) or in the style of a pious Jewish fable (like Tobit) does NOT foreclose its value or its truth. The problem with the revisionist Bible “scholars” is not literary or historiographic analysis, but that they are bad scholars in that they set out to DISPROVE scripture.