Broom Hilda by Russell Myers for November 23, 2009

Now Jonah will have some company.

Let us hope so for your sake, Broomie!

First Jonah, now Broomie and Irwin! – If not “catch and release,” tickle his tummy?

ROW DANG IT!

JAD: Clarification - length of time, yes, whale, no. Some might miss exactly what you mean.

You are correct Joe Allen Doty, a great fish. The bible did not mention that it was a whale, for which many of us know, is NOT a fish!

I quit reading Broomie for a year or so - now I’m glad I’m back in the groove. This is FUNNY!

Is this why witches can’t cross water?

I think she’d be better off melting.

Do you have enough left in the ZAP battery to use i on a whale??

It’s a helluva way ti meet Pinochio.

Throughout history until relatively recently, everybody thought whales were fish. “It lives in the water, it swims, it has fins rather than feet… It’s a fish!” A very odd fish, but still a fish.

Melville goes into this in detail in Moby Dick.

maybe this is why i don’t like fish too often

“Though it is often called a whale today, the Hebrew, as throughout scripture, refers to no species in particular, simply sufficing with “great fish” or “big fish” (whales are today classified as mammals and not fish, but no such distinction was made in antiquity). While some Bible scholars suggest the size and habits of the White Shark correspond better to the representations given of Jonah’s being swallowed, normally an adult human is too large to be swallowed whole Which is why most would argue that the fish may be the Basking Shark.

“In Jonah 2:1 (1:17 in English translation), the original Hebrew text reads dag gadol (דג גדול), which literally means “big fish.” The Septuagint translates this phrase into Greek as ketos megas (κητος μεγας). The term ketos alone means “huge fish,” and in Greek mythology the term was closely associated with sea monsters, including sea serpents. Jerome later translated this phrase as piscis granda in his Latin Vulgate. He translated ketos, however, as cetus in Matthew 12:40.

“At some point cetus became synonymous with “whale” (the study of whales is now called cetology). In his 1534 translation, William Tyndale translated the phrase in Jonah 2:1 as “greate fyshe” and he translated the word ketos (Greek) or cetus (Latin) in Matthew 12:40 as “whale”. Which states “For as Jonas was three days and three nights in the whale’s belly; so shall the Son of man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth.” Tyndale’s translation was later incorporated into the Authorized Version of 1611. Since then, the “great fish” in Jonah 2 has been most often interpreted as a whale.”

– Wikipedia (for what it’s worth)

JAD:

In what language was the original Jonah story written?

Our pastor’s message this last Sunday was about Jonah, he titled it “A Whale of a Thanksgiving.”

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You all forgot Pinocchio and Gepetto.

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Nonetheless, when the story originated nobody was making a distinction between whales and fish. Not the Greeks, not the Hebrews, nobody. They thought whales were fish. Whether it was what we would now call a “fish” or what we would now call a “whale” is immaterial, because they would then have called it a “fish” either way.

If you believe that there’s a factual basis to the story, however remote, you’d have to consider that this it was most likely what we would now call a “whale” because there are not now and were not then any true “fish” which could have swallowed a man whole.

Thanks JAD.

Fungi!…

Mushrooms!…

Who cares??!! At the time, people didn’t know there were two separate kinds of animals, fish and whales, bats and birds, mammals and duck-billed platypi! So as far as they were concerned, they were the same.

Can we all just go home quietly now?

Catch & Urp – Broomie turn that oar into a broom and floor it!!

Broomie should hope that whale practices good oral hygiene; rubbing against plaque and food particle during your final moments just makes those final moments worse.