I sent this to the book club email list on 5-Aug-2004. Now I reproduce it here. I'd like to add a little more Moby-Dick commentary in el Blog. It's a fantastic book.
After reading Chapter 8, 'The Sermon', I wanted to re-acquaint myself
with the story of Jonah. There are plenty of free bibles on the web,
here's one: http://ebible.org/bible/web/Jonah.htm
The translations vary, and everything on the web that I found seems
rather archaic, but hey, we are reading Moby Dick after all.
I think the sermon the pastor delivers does a fantastic job of
illustrating the first quarter of this book.
1:6 So the shipmaster came to him, and said to him, "What do you mean,
sleeper? Arise, call on your God! Maybe your God will notice us, so
that we won't perish."
I recall be told in (Catholic) elementary school that the idea of this
passage was that the boat was a pantheon of religions, with everyone
onboard praying to his own god. I think that's a cool idea which is
somewhat common in the old testament, that different peoples have
different gods, and as these people interace on earth their gods may
interact above. Discretionary polytheism, let's call it.
1:7 They all said to each other, "Come, let us cast lots, that we may
know for whose cause this evil is on us." So they cast lots, and the
lot fell on Jonah.
I also love the idea of throwing dice to determine who is at fault.
1:17 Yahweh prepared a great fish to swallow up Jonah, and Jonah was in
the belly of the fish three days and three nights.
-Matt
Posted by msouthwo at August 18, 2004 11:53 AM