Date: Mon, 27 Jan 2003 10:29:36 -0800 (PST)
From: Tami Whitehead 
Subject: Re: (urth) Sign from the fish's belly

Just a small aside, and perhaps not even relevant (I
shouldn't even be reading these spoilers, since I have
only now started with the Long Sun set...)

But the theological twist on Jonah is, as you alluded
in your post, a resistance to God's will on Jonah's
part. He heard the call to prophecy to his enemies,
and like many prophets, did not want to go (prophets
have their different reasons, but it is pretty
consistant that they do not want to be prophets when
called, and pretty much try to get out of it when they
can...counterpose this with the Christ, or rather, the
reluctant Messiah outlined by Frazer in Golden Bough,
and you have an interesting twist).

Jonah is called to Ninevah, to save the Ninevites from
God's Destruction. He says, "God must be crazy, I am
not going to help those louts," and boards a boat for
farther Hispaniola or the like, intent on thwarting
God's will, but God sends a storm, and Jonah's boat
will be lost, and he knows why, so he urges his
shipmates to throw him overboard to appease God, which
they do, and the fish swallows him up, only later to
vomit him on the shores of Ninevah...and he was a
changed man so to speak, and preached (reluctantly)
the salvation of the enemy, who repented (to his
chagrin) and were saved. 

Now, not knowing how this fits into the Horn question,
the thing that has struck me deepest on Jonah's story
is exactly the resistance to God's will, and how the
whole thing is supposed to be a prefigurement of
Christ...whose resistance is dimmed somewhat in the
Passion in the Garden of Gethsemene, Lord if it be thy
will let this cup pass from me...I wonder...what if
Christ was more like Jonah, and really thought we
louts deserved to burn, and was finally sacrificed
while still resenting God's call, or the redemption of
us sinners? Then there is the question of the 3 days
and nites, which for Jonah served 2 purposes, to
punish and humble him, and also to put him where he
needed to be to accomplish the task given. For Christ,
the 3 days and nites are purportedly to make him
officially dead, and therefore officially risen, which
is the operative here (the Resurection supercedes the
Sacrifice. Go figure.) If the parallel is followed,
then Christ went to hell for a slightly different
reason...besides just getting the keys to hell. 

Anyhow, back to the fish thing, there are so many
sacred and prophetic fishes in Levantine, Occidental
and Western European myth, I might want another clue
to be sure we had the right angle with Jonah...there
is the old Jewish tradition that a fish eye represents
God's Mercy, being lidless and therefor never closed
to the suffering of man etc...or wise salmon who eat
acorns of wisdom in sacred pools, or flounders who
were bewitched bishops and so forth...the mitre worn
by the Pope is also a fish symbol, but you knew
that...

My, how I rambled...hehehe, just fishing folks! 

razorkittee 


--- Andrew Bollen  wrote:
> I asked this:
> 
> --- Marble prophesies for Horn regarding the
> community (at the beginning of
> OBW): "The city searches the sky for a sign, but no
> sign shall it have but
> the sign from the fish's belly."  Anybody have an
> explanation for this?
> 
> I think the answer is:
> 
> ----------------------------------------
> [Matthew 16]
> The Pharisees and Sadducees came to Jesus and tested
> him by asking him to
> show them a sign from heaven. 2 He replied, 'When
> evening comes, you say,
> `It will be fair weather, for the sky is red,' 3 and
> in the morning, `Today
> it will be stormy, for the sky is red and overcast.'
> You know how to
> interpret the appearance of the sky, but you cannot
> interpret the signs of
> the times. 4 A wicked and adulterous generation
> looks for a miraculous sign,
> but none will be given it except the sign of Jonah.'
> ----------------------------------------
> 
> Or repeated:
> 
> ----------------------------------------
> [Matthew 12:38-40]
> Then some of the Pharisees and teachers of the law
> said to him, 'Teacher, we
> want to see a miraculous sign from you.' 39 He
> answered, 'A wicked and
> adulterous generation asks for a miraculous sign!
> But none will be given it
> except the sign of the prophet Jonah. 40 For as
> Jonah was three days and
> three nights in the belly of a huge fish, so the Son
> of Man will be three
> days and three nights in the heart of the earth.
> ----------------------------------------
> 
> So it seems clear that "sign from the fish's belly"
> = "sign of Jonah". (I
> take it that Marble is repeating a phrase from the
> Chras writings here.)
> 
> Googling reveals a whole bunch of varied ravings
> about the meaning of the
> sign of Jonah, but maybe this:
> 
> - Jonah's  3 days in the belly of the fish as a
> prefigurement of Jesus'
> death & resurrection. So should we think of Horn's
> time in the pit on the
> island, or should we scrap the 3 days & nights and
> think of this as a
> prophecy of SilkHorn's return to straighten things
> out in New Viron - Horn
> having "died" and been "reborn"?
> 
> - After he is disgorged by the whale, Jonah goes to
> preach repentance to the
> heathen city of Nineveh. Suprisingly, all 120,000 of
> them immediately do so,
> covering themselves with ashes & sack-cloth etc.
> (Jonah is pissed, because
> he was hoping Yahweh would do some serious smiting,
> Nineveh being an enemy
> to Israel.) So the imagery is maybe the conversion
> of all a whole nation to
> righteousness, after the "death" and "resurrection"
> of the prophet.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> -- 
> http://www.urth.net/
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