Literary Criticism is a hermeneutical method which pays close attention to the structure of the text. One of the first question which should be asked when conducting a literary criticism is what genre does the text fall into? When performing a literary criticism as a hermeneutical method, it is also important to establish the pericope of the text as it is extremely unlikely and impractical that a literary criticism would be written about the entire texts. It is impractical because the scriptures contain several different genres in a single book, let alone when all the scriptures combined. While technically a source criticism, it is also beneficial when working with biblical texts to ask when the …show more content…
However, after consideration, it seemed more fitting to place Jonah in the narrative genre which is what this exegesis will explain. The pericope is the entire book of Jonah. This seems like an unusually broad pericope; however, it should be considered that the popular children’s story is only a mere forty-eight verses. The character of Jonah allegedly lived sometime in the eighth century BC, but the Book of Jonah was likely written later during the time of the Achaemenid Empire (550-330 BC). Some consider the story of Jonah to parallel stories such as the Gilgamesh epic, however, apart from both title characters taking a journey to the bottom of the sea, the comparison is very slight and their respective time spent under water both have very different …show more content…
While it is unlikely that the happenings in the story are based in reality, it is not improbable that the characterization was based on an actual, historic figure. Most biblical scholars agree that the story of Jonah is a parody rather than holding a basis in actual happenings. As there is a mention of “Jonah, the son of Amittai, the prophet” in 2 Kings 14:25, it is plausible that the author of Jonah used a real, historical figure to feature as the protagonist in their narrative as Seth Grahame-Smith used an actual president in the novel, Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter, though it has no basis in reality.
“The parody, we have argued, was eclipsed in the exegetical process which thus allowed for its canonization. Unlike the Song of Solomon which was converted through allegorization, the Book of Jonah was reconverted by interpretation—or misinterpretation—to the genre which it was designed to parody. A parody of a prophet’s career became a prophetic book with a prophetic