I have no doubt in my mind that Jonah did not live in a fish gut for thee days in the water. That did not occur in my opinion. You can believe that if you wish. Nor do I accept the myth that Joshua stopped the earth’s orbit around the Sun to get more day light. That is all alagory. Jesus taught in parables. Those aren’t literal stories. So does God teach in parables?
Jesus took Jonah’s experience to further detail, saying that the fish was a whale. A whale surfaces to breath.
How many of the miracles performed by Jesus do you not believe?
I believe that before the Son of God resurrected, every cell in his body had died. The body just hadn’t began to rot yet.
But, traditions around the world (China, India, Mexico, etc.) do have a long day in them. Additional roaming on the net indicates that the wording used in Joshua could also be translated into something like “the sun stopped doing what it normally does” - which folks have traced back to a solar eclipse.
I can see where some of these might just be allegories - like the parables as you say. On the other hand - I once heard a Presbyterian minister say that the virgin birth of Jesus was just a story. “I grew up on a farm. That just doesn't happen!” And somehow he tried to make the point of how sometimes the “story” is more important than the actual fact.
He was new to our church, and I invited him to our home for dinner. At the end I asked him - “So what else is just a “story” - and not actual fact? Well - let me get to the point - did Jesus rise from the dead or not? And I'm guessing that if you don't believe in a virgin birth, you don't believe in rising from the dead.”
“Well - of course not. But I figured that sermon REALLY wouldn't have gone over well.”
“Well, thanks for coming to dinner, but we will be quiting the church after all of these years. By the way - how in the world did they let you become a minister!?”
As an earlier poster stated - if one can believe in the Resurrection, then anything is believable. And I very well might be wrong that many of the stories are actual fact, and like you said - folks are free to believe it or not. But I'm just concerned for myself that when do the stories stop and the facts begin? And what might I miss out on when telling myself “Oh - that's just a story.” But - is my complete understanding of Jonah, Joshua, Passover, etc. critical to my faith? I don't think so.
Someday I would like to do a study on what Jesus said about a lot of these stories. He seems to state as fact about Jonah - “Just as Jonah was in the fish for three days, I will be in the grave for three days and...” (or something to that effect.) Of course he could just be stating the “facts” of the made-up story. Or something is lost in translation.
But if it was me - and Jonah wasn't real, I would have said something like “And Jonah? That is just a make believe story. But I WILL be in the grave three days and rise from the dead!”
Why am I not surprised?
If you doubt the accounts of the Old Testament, how can you believe Jesus was crucified and rose on the third day??
Water to Wine,
Blind to See,
Lame to Walk and
Raised the Dead.
Did Jesus perform these Miracles?
Did He also speak and the Heavens
Took their place in
The Universe????
How can you limit The Creator’s
Ability ,,
Being part of the creation?
And your opinion is worth the electrons used to post it.
And while you are certainly entitled to it, if the choice comes down to your OPINION and Scripture, guess who I'm throwing my lot in with?
As to Joshua, well it is GOD Who has spread the heavens out like a tent, so if the Earth was said to stop in it's spin/orbit then it was GOD, not Joshua, Who did the thing ... and GOD does not lie, it is impossible for Him to lie.
ALL the time?