Read the Bible with Me!

Welcome to the Pauline Family's "Year of the Bible"! I'm reading the Bible clear through this year, and I invite you to read along with me. But first, let us pray: 

Everlasting Father,

All time belongs to you, and all the ages. In signs, in songs, in words of promise, you reassured your chosen ones, “I am with you; fear not.” You taught them through the prophets to trust that your saving deeds were not limited to the past.

When Jesus came, he fulfilled “all that was written in the Law, the Prophets, and the Psalms.”

The Church has found him everywhere in these same holy books.

Help me to find Jesus in my reading today, to listen to him, and to follow him with all my heart.

Amen.

Today's chapters are Jonah 1-4. 

It's a four-chapter day, but that covers the entire Book of Jonah. (You don't want to leave him in the fish, do you?) 

For the most part, twentieth century scholars dismissed the book's historicity outright especially on account of the fantastical account of the whale, as well as details about the size of Nineveh. But the experience of a New England lobsterman, swallowed whole by a young humpback whale in the summer of 2021 invites the skeptical to less dogmatism. As for the main character, Jonah son of Amittai is testified to in 2 Kings 14:25 as "the prophet from Gath-Hepher" during the reign of Jeroboam. Swallowed up for three days in the darkness of the whale's belly, in the depths of the deep, dangerous sea (always a symbol of chaos and death), Jonah is a type (a prophetic foreshadowing) of Christ enveloped in the darkness of the tomb. (See Matthew 12:40.) 

Jonah is a kind of anti-prophet. Whereas all the men we have been reading about responded to God's call (even if after hesitation) with generosity and impressive sacrifice, Jonah tried to escape. Other prophets spoke in God's name and pleaded with the people (and with God!) so that the threatened punishments would not fall; Jonah sat back to watch the fireworks. Other prophets were sent to preach to the people of Israel. This is where the big difference comes: Jonah was sent to preach repentance and salvation to a pagan nation.

Jonah's terrible attitude is a gentle mockery of religious close-mindedness, since the pagans of Nineveh (from the king down to the animals) modeled the ideal response to God's Word that all the prophets we have been reading called for. 

The story of Jonah and the whale is read on the Jewish Feast of Atonement, Yom Kippur.

Start reading here.

If you are looking for a solid but approachable companion to the Bible, I can wholeheartedly recommend A Catholic Introduction to the Bible: The Old Testament by John Bergsma and Brant Pitre. Although the authors are top-level Scripture scholars, they write for "real" readers. Notes include recent findings from archaeology and ancient manuscripts, and how each book of the Bible has been understood by the Church Fathers and used in Liturgy.