A Journey with Jonah: The Spirituality of Bewilderment

The Book of Jonah, although a work of only two pages long, has made an extraordinary impact on the history of Jewish, Christian and Islamic spirituality. Jonah himself is a prophet of only one short sentence. But his story has attracted the attention of exegetes and theologians in every generation. It is a story that has appealed as much to the minds of small children as to adults. And, over the centuries it has marvellously quickened the imagination of innumerable artists, poets, playwrights and sculptors, most notably in the case of Herman Melville’s Moby Dick. In A Journey with Jonah: The Spirituality of Bewilderment, the Book of Jonah emerges as perhaps the most profoundly Christian of all the books in the Hebrew Bible, and the book that speaks with the most telling resonance for our own age. The message of the Book of Jonah is a serious and compelling one. But what surprises us again and again, is its humour, a humour which forms part of the book’s core revelation. Jonah’s author makes it possible for us ‘to perceive God’s loving laughter over narrow-minded piety’.