"For example, is Jonah a parable or a real accounting? Who cares. The message that God wanted said is there - for example, that God's message is often seen more clearly by outsiders than the religiously self-righteous. That God's salvation is for all, not just the Jews. And so forth. IF there was a man named Jonah and he was swallowed by a whale, HOW does that effect my experience of God?"
The significance of Jonah as seen by the Orthodox Church is far more than a simple morality tale as you describe above, although it is certainly also that.
The Prophet Jonah's prayer from the belly of the whale is one of the half-dozen or so passages from the OT most highlighted by the Church. It is one of the Biblical Canticles that form the basis for our hymn-form known as the canon. Therefore, the irmos (or "hook") that starts each ode of the canon ties into that canticle.
The most important typology seen in the life of Jonah is that of Christ's three day burial in the tomb. This is a recurrent theme in our hymnology.
A second theme is that of us being cast about on the sea of life, and of drowning in the abyss, and our need to call out to God for salvation, just as Jonah did. And Jonah's prayer reminds us that God's profound mercy is always waiting for us, and that it is our failure to turn to Him that keeps us from experiencing that mercy: "They that observe vain and false things have abandoned mercy for themselves."
One of the things that I have thought about a fair amount lately as a result of this thread is that the Gospels usually make it clear when Christ is telling a parable. The parables are very general, for the most part, and in these parables there are rarely much specificity of detail, unless there is some point to that detail (such as identifying the Good Samaritan as a Samaritan, rather than some unspecified person.)
Christ's references to Jonah and Ninevah in St. Matthew 12 and St. Luke 11, especially when taken in the context of the entire passages, personally don't strike me as being representing a shift into parable. The specificity of whom he is talking to and of the references he makes, is not at all similar to his telling of parables. He refers to these events as having actually been there to witness them (which of course, as the Lord God of the OT, he was.)
In fact, if we are to take as as a parable Christ's words: "For as Jonas was a sign unto the Ninevites, so shall also the Son of man be to this generation," then the direct equivalency of this statement leads inexorably to Christ saying that his own death and Resurrection would be a parable.
St. John Chrysostom touches on this very point, which is not surprising, given the fact that the Cappadocian Fathers were very consistent in their teaching that the events of human history recorded in Scripture were types -- not in a mythological or allegorical sense, but in God's acting through history to reveal himself to mankind. This is from his 43rd homily explaining the Gospel of St. Matthew:
"But see how exactly He expresses it, even though in a dark saying. For He said not, “In the earth,” but, “In the heart of the earth;” that He might designate His very sepulchre, and that no one might suspect a mere semblance.
And for this intent too did He allow three days, that the fact of His death might be believed. For not by the cross only doth He make it certain, and by the sight of all men, but also by the time of those days.
For to the resurrection indeed all succeeding time was to bear witness; but the cross, unless it had at the time many signs bearing witness to it, would have been disbelieved; and with this disbelief would have gone utter disbelief of the resurrection also.
Therefore He calls it also a sign. But had He not been crucified, the sign would not have been given. For this cause too He brings forward the type, that the truth may be believed.
For tell me, was Jonah in the whale’s belly a mere appearance? Nay, thou canst not say so. Therefore neither was Christ in the heart of the earth such. [i.e. neither was Christ's 3 day burial a mere appearance. -- A.]
Whence it is clear, that they who are diseased in Marcion’s way are children of the devil, blotting out these truths, to avoid the annulling whereof Christ did so many things, while to have them annulled the devil took such manifold pains: I mean, His cross and His passion."
I apologize if I was implying that. We first are to believe the literal sense of any Scripture given, discounting it only after some verifiable and subsequent knowledge comes forth to correct past interpretations of what the literary genre was meant by the author. Honestly, we don't really know. As an orthodox Catholic, a person CAN hold to the idea that Jonah was a parable, or a real event. There is enough evidence to discount it as an historical event, but not enough for the Church to rule definitively on. The fact that Christ used many parables in explaining the Kingdom does not dimish His teachings or lessen their value to us as Christians. I reserve the right to privately hold my opinion on the matter in one direction or the other - it doesn't effect my faith on whether Jonah actually existed or not. I realize this story has nothing to do with the veracity of the Resurrection.
Brother in Christ
This is the problem with most of these metaphorical readings of miracles, whether the Church allows for such reading or not. Christian faith is based on the miracles of the Incarnation and the Resurrection. They are most definitely not metaphorical. It is an inconsistent view to take these two on faith but dismiss the other miracles, such as the creation, the rescuing of the living creatures by Noah, the exodus, Jonah, the miraculous healing and raising the dead, and the miracles of saints as fables. Possibly some of them are, -- I have my doubts about St. George leashing the dragon with the princess's garter, -- yet others, such as Jonah in the fish, are connected to our faith in a direct way, even though they look like the stuff of fables. I prefer seeing the less believable to the modern mind stories as challenges to my faith, rather than some kind of burden of faith that I am happy to put down because the Church allows me to put them down.
Note also that it is the kind of attitude characteristic of Protestantism. What part of the Deposit of Faith can we amputate and remain Christians? Let us lop off the Maccabees. Are we still Christian? Great, let us lop off the Real Presence. Still Christians? Lop off veneration of saints, virginity of Our Lady, the priesthood, the sacraments... This is not a happy road to follow.