Editing Book of Jonah (section)

==Date==
The prophet [[Jonah]] (Hebrew: יוֹנָה, Yonā)  is mentioned in [[2 Kings 14]]:25, which places Jonah's life during the reign of [[Jeroboam II]], [[King of Israel]], (786–746&nbsp;BC), but the book of Jonah itself does not name a king or give any other details that would give the story a firm date. Most scholars consider the Book of Jonah to have been composed long after the events it describes due to its use of words and motifs exclusive to postexilic [[Aramaic]] sources.<ref> {{cite book |last=Lovelace |first=Vanessa |chapter=Jonah |editor-last=O'Brien |editor-first=Julia M. |title=The Oxford Handbook of the Minor Prophets |publisher=Oxford University Press |year=2021 |pages=449–460 |doi=10.1093/oxfordhb/9780190673208.013.34 |quote=A majority of scholars regard the book’s composition as considerably later than the events it describes. They point first and foremost to language. Jonah includes words and motifs that are found only in postexilic biblical and nonbiblical Aramaic sources (for further discussion, see Wolff 1986). This includes, for example, seafaring words such as “mariner” (mallah) and “ship” (sefina) (1:5), “sailor” (hovel) (1:6), the phrase “on whose account?” (1:7, 12), and the ascription “God of heaven” (1:9; cf. Gen 24:7) which appear rarely in the Hebrew Bible (Ps 107 and Ezek 27) but are common in postexilic biblical and Imperial Aramaic sources. Hans Walter Wolff suggests that infrequency of certain vocabulary and phrases in Jonah can be accounted for by their limited use in specific contexts (Wolff 1986, 76), but the late biblical verbal constructions that are unique to Jonah support the argument that the book is postexilic.}}</ref><ref> Wolff, Hans Walter. 1986. Obadiah and Jonah: A Commentary. Translated by Margaret Kohl. Minneapolis, MN: Augsburg.</ref> A later date is sometimes proposed, with Katherine Dell arguing for the [[Jerusalem during the Hellenistic period|Hellenistic period]] (332–167 BC).<ref>{{cite book | last1 = Dell | first1 = Katherine J | title = After the exile: essays in honour of Rex Mason | chapter = Reinventing the Wheel: the Shaping of the Book of Jonah |pages = 86–89 | editor1-last = Barton | editor1-first = John | editor2-last = Reimer | editor2-first = David James | year = 1996 | publisher = Mercer University Press | isbn = 978-0-86554524-3 | chapter-url = https://books.google.com/books?id=sUb7EDXODOwC&pg=PA85 }}</ref>

[[Evangelical]] Assyriologist [[Donald Wiseman]] takes issue with the idea that the story is late (or a parable). Among other arguments he mentions that the "Legends of Agade" (see [[Sargon of Akkad#Origin legends|Sargon of Akkad]] and [[Rabisu#The Curse of Agade|Rabisu]]) date to the time of the [[Old Babylonian Empire]], though later versions "usually taken as a late composition, propagandistic fairy tale or historical romance can now, on the basis of new discoveries of earlier sources, be shown to be based on a serious and reliable historical record".<ref name=Wiseman>Lecture "Archaeology and the Book of Jonah", delivered in January 1978, published as {{cite journal |last1=Donald Wiseman |title=Jonah's Nineveh |journal=Tyndale Bulletin |date=1979 |volume=30 |pages=29–52 |url=http://www.tyndalehouse.com/TynBul/Library/TynBull_1979_30_02_Wiseman_JonahsNineveh.pdf |access-date=2023-09-20 |archive-date=2012-01-12 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120112082129/http://www.tyndalehouse.com/TynBul/Library/TynBull_1979_30_02_Wiseman_JonahsNineveh.pdf |url-status=bot: unknown |author1-link=Donald Wiseman }}</ref>