• Derceti, qtiam verwi squamis velanti))U8 artus ytugna Pata).>{tini credunt moto-HSe rtijura ; An ma^s, ut suraptis illius lilia pennis Kxtremos albis io turribus ei^eht anno«.'
I venture also to call attention to the circum- stance that the name ' Nineveh ' (Herodot. i. I03, IU6, 193, ii. I5U, iii. 155, Xii-os) is a compound with the root p) (cf. Assyr. nunu, Mi.-ih' [Del. Assyr.
ffandimrterb. 1896, p. 454a], Aram, xpi, |JQJ, e.g. Jon 2'- "). For the oft-recurring ideographic way of writing the name of this city characterizes it as Ni-nii-a or Ni-naa, ' fish-dwelling.' Hence in the first element of the name we shoulil not be disposed to find 'ni, Fett, Fettigkcit, Ueberlluss' (Frd. Delitz-sch, art. ' Ninive ' in PJiE' x. 589). It may be not impossible that nun, which on account of the following niia might \>e dillerentiated, or through n (cf. LehrgetHiiiile, ii. 51(1 f. and pi) modi- fied to nin, has been combined with nua or nnu, and thus arose yi-nu-n or Ni-nn-a.
5. The Date of the Book. — This symbolical narra- tive was written, not in the 8th cent., but in the post-exilic period.
(a) Litt-rary arguments. The story contains no positive trace that it attributwl it-self to .lonali. On the contrary, the book speaks of Jonah in the third person everywhere except in the oratin ilireetn of 1* 2'''- etc. Of course the circumstance that in any writing a name is u.sed in the third person, is no sure sign that that writing proceeds trom a dillereiit author (cf. Konig, Eiiitcitung, p. 314* on Is 7). But, all the same, it is not without significance that Hosea, who oimjus with the thinl person, in the further course of^ his storj- paa-ses t'l the use of the _//r.v/ person ; cf. ' Then sjuike .1" !■> me' (Hos 3'"') with ' Then came the word of J" to Jonah ' (Jon 3' etc.).
(b) Linguistic indications. The Book of Hosea shows what pha.'ie of dcvcloiiiiunt the Ileb. laii guage had reached in the Northern kingdom in the 8th cent. But the liniruistic character of the Book of .lonah is quite uitl'erent from this. In Hosea the occurrences of nnukhf to iin( are a' 11 : 11, whereas in Jonah the ratio is 2 (1*3*) : '
r48
JOXAU
JOXAK
(1«. 12 2»- 10 411) ; cf. in Malachi 1 anokki C^iN njn 3^) to 8 ani. In Uusea we linJ only "Cf! (some eiyht times), whereas in Jonah v is touud (tliese pas- sages are wanting in Manilelkern's Concordance, 1:21)1 II'., but are \^i\eu in Konig's Si/ntax, § 54) three times, I'- " 4'", as in Ezr 8*, 1 Cli o-" •IT'", Eu 1* etc. But in Jonah there occurs ) i^xj (1") * side by sitle with '7^7 (1'- "), while in Ec 8" the second- ary form is'i; S^j already appears (Konig, Hyntax,
§ 38U0). i::T ('myriad ) has not been recognized
by tradition in llos 8'", probably, indeed, on the authority of MSS (see K()nig, Lehigeb. ii. 22-2') ; yet in Ezekiel (IG') we have the genuinely Hebrew word nj^-i, whereas taT occurs in Jon 4", PsGS'", Ezr2'"-'»', Neh 7M. nt.^ d„ hu^ j ch 29'.
n3'!ii^n = cogUarc in Jon 1", cf. Dn 6* and Hos
10" Targ., pnnsi'nx. 'J", the God of heaven'
is found in Gn 24"-' (overlooked by G. A. Smith, ii. 497^), Jon 1", Ezr 1-, Neh P, 2 Ch 36^, and the simple ' God of heaven ' in Ps 13G*, Ezr 5'"- '"'• 71a.Li.a_ jjgjj p .,,^ jju oiei.si.u The notion
of ' command ' (verb) does not occur at all in Hosea, but it is dilUcult to imagine that he would have expressed it by n;? (Jon 2' i'-", 1 Ch 9^, Dn 1». Hit. [Aram.], Ezr 7^ etc.), for he expresses 'com- mand ' (noun) by is (5") and not by cj;o (Jon 3'
[Aram.], Ezr 4" etc., Dn 3'" etc.). Cf.,
further, p:^'^ = consedit, siluit (Jon !"'■, Pa 107^, Pr 20-°) common in Aramaic (Merx, direct. Targ. 294 ; Noldeke, ZDMG, 1868, p. 499). Taking all this into account, it is an unnatural supposition that the author of the Book of Jonah should have exhibited all the above-mentioned linguistic features to a reader of the 8th cent. B.C. He must have belonged to a period when the xvrilten lan- guage of the Israelites had already come into close contact with the Aramaic.
(c) Material indications. Nineveh, at the time when the Book of Jonah was composed, was no longer in existence. This is clear from the state- ment (3^), 'Now Nineveh was (^ri'rt, cf. Konig, ili/ntax, § 3G2»0 a great city for God' {i.e. accord- ing even to a superhuman standard). Havemick (Einl. ii. 2, p. 359) declined to accept this inter- pretation, and appealed to Gn 1- <ni; inn nii:C n¥C)- But even this passage conlirms the above as the correct explanation of Jon 3^. For to the writer of Gn 1- the earth was no longer a chaos. Further, the ' three days' journey ' of 3^, taken in connexion with ' and Jonah began to enter into the city one day's journey' (Syntax, % 330e), must refer to the distance thruugh, not round, the city (Schrader, KAT' ad loc). A diameter of such proportions would, however, presuppose a circumference such as even the combination of four cities (Gn 10'"., Keilinsch. Bihliot. ii. 117) could not have possessed. Then it would be strange that Jonah himself or a contemporary of his should not have given the name of the ' king of Nineveh ' (3^) in question. Besides this, Sayce (HCM 487, quoted by Driver, LOT^ 322) is of opinion that the title ' king of Nineveh ' could never have been applied to him while the Assyrian empire was still in existence.