In this relief from the Sessa Aurunca Cathedral, Campania (Italy), Jonah’s right finger ‘preaches’ at the empire, as represented by a walled city at left. A man, who is not pointed out by Jonah’s finger, rises above the wall. Is this man, who could be the king in the biblical narrative, listening to Jonah or staring him down? There is no connection between the two men, and there is no feeling of urgency.

This relief could be referencing two instances in the biblical narrative: first, it could be referring to Jonah preaching against the city (3:4); second, it could also be referring to Jonah arguing with God on account of the city (4:1–4). The first was after Jonah arrived; the second was just before Jonah left the city (4:5).

The gate is open, and Jonah is outside the city. But he is not far off. At his feet, an audience—some of whom could be women—appears bored. They don’t look at Jonah. They also look past us, the viewers of this relief. They are there, and not there. They fill the space between where Jonah was, east of the city (4:5) and the city itself. They testify that the hinterland is not empty (see Manoa 2010).

Behind Jonah is a booth and a creeping plant that—in the biblical narrative—gave him comfort after he left the city (4:6). The Qur'an, by contrast, relocates the plant to the ‘wide bare tract of land’ (37:145) where the fish vomited Jonah out—a moment before he enters that city. The plant moves from providing relief to an angry prophet in the biblical narrative, to providing an opportunity for a fishy prophet to rest up and recover in the Qur’anic version (see Havea forthcoming).

Scriptures move details around, as the Qur’an does to the slender plant in the hinterland of the biblical narrative (and, among many other examples, as the Gospel of John does to the so-called Synoptic Gospels). And so do readers—we move and ignore narrative details in the interests of the readings that we favour.

References

Havea, Jione. Forthcoming. ‘Would Vishnu save Jonah’s Poor Fishie? A Transtextual Query’, in Queering the Prophet: On Jonah, and Other Activists, ed. by L. Juliana Claassens et al (London: SCM)

Manoa, Pio. 2010. ‘Redeeming Hinterland’, The Pacific Journal of Theology 2.43: 65–86