Jonah

Chapters in this book will first be publishined individually online (Advance Access) during 2024 and afterwards in complete print and electronic editions. To view currently available chapters, see Abstracts

The Book of Jonah, perhaps the most popular among the Minor Prophets, turns the world of its audience upside down. In four short chapters, it leaves its readers hanging between a series of binary oppositions. Over the years, the interpretation of Jonah has evolved from rebellious to virtuous and back, with a character searching for a place in the story world, a text challenging the genre and practice of prophecy, and a story with afterlives in different religious traditions. More recently, scholarship on the book has been flooded with ecological concerns, swamped by emotional readings, and held against the postcolonial light. Despite its comprehensible size, Jonah’s outlook still remains ambivalent and ambiguous. This volume engages with this unruliness in a timely manner.