1. Luke 11:29; Matt. 12:39; 16:4. Jonas is the Greek form of the Hebrew name Jonah. The forms Jonah, Jonas, and Jona are used interchangeably in this article.

2. Jonah’s experience is recognized as “a foreshadowing of Jesus’ own death and resurrection” in the LDS Bible Dictionary. “Bible Dictionary,” in Holy Bible (Salt Lake City: The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, 1979), s.v. “Jonah.”

3. “Hugh urged that Jonah be seen as a figure of Christ, and yet he cautioned that not every detail in the book ought be pushed to fit such a pattern.” Barbara Green, Jonah’s Journeys (Collegeville, Minn.: Liturgical, 2005), 21.

4. See for example texts of Tertullian, Ambrose, Cyril of Jerusalem, Jerome, Augustine, and Theodore of Mopsuestia, collected in The Twelve Prophets, ed. Alberto Ferreiro, Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture 14, ed. Thomas C. Oden (Downers Grove, Ill.: Intervarsity, 2003), 128–47. Analyzing the strengths and possible meanings of these Early Christian typologies remains for further investigation.

5. Bruce R. McConkie, The Promised Messiah (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 1978), 448. For discussions of the use of typology in ancient Israelite and early Christian literature, see Noel B. Reynolds, “The Israelite Background of Moses Typology in the Book of Mormon,” BYU Studies 44, no. 2 (2005): 14–18; and Kristian S. Heal, “Joseph as a Type of Christ in Syriac Literature,” BYU Studies 41, no. 1 (2002): 29–49.

6. “Bible Dictionary,” s.v. “Jonah.” Linguistic parallels with Jeremiah “point to a time after Jeremiah and after the composition of Deuteronomy–2 Kings, a time in the late exilic or the postexilic period.” James Limburg, Jonah: A Commentary (Louisville: Westminster/John Knox, 1993), 28–31. “The date of writing then may have been in the 8th century [BC], but was more probably not earlier than the 6th century,” and the author is unknown, according to the New Bible Dictionary, 3d ed. (Leicester, England: Intervarsity Press, 1996), 604. The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, 3d ed. (Oxford University Press, 1997), 899, states, “Considerations of language, style, and theology suggest it [book of Jonah] was written in the post-exile period” (late 5th to 4th century BC). Sidney B. Sperry, The Voice of Israel’s Prophets (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 1952), 331, summarizes that “most present authorities” date the book of Jonah between 450 BC and 300 BC.

7. The Bible identifies Jonah as the “son of Amittai” (Jonah 1:1). Sperry dates this Jonah around 788 BC, during the reign of King Jeroboam II (2 Kgs. 14:25). Sperry, Voice of Israel’s Prophets, 326.

8. Ehud Ben Zvi, Signs of Jonah: Reading and Rereading in Ancient Yehud, Journal for the Study of the Old Testament Supplement Series 367 (London: Sheffield Academic, 2003), 4.

9. Personally, I prefer a symbolic interpretation of the book of Jonah rather than a literal one.

10. The Book of Mormon prophet Nephi described scriptural changes and deletions of such Christian passages as having “the most plain and precious parts of the gospel of the Lamb . . . kept back” (1 Ne. 13:28, 34). The book of Moses teaches that Moses’s knowledge of the Only Begotten as the Savior was lost from his record (Genesis) “because of wickedness” and that in time “the children of men shall esteem my words as naught and take many of them from the book which thou shalt write” (Moses 1:23, 32–33, 41).

11. David R. Seely, “Jehovah, Jesus Christ,” in The Encyclopedia of Mormonism, ed. Daniel H. Ludlow, 4 vols. (New York: Macmillan, 1994), 2:720–21; Roger R. Keller, “Jesus Is Jehovah (YHWH): A Study in the Gospels,” in Jesus Christ, Son of God, Savior, ed. Paul H. Peterson, Gary L. Hatch, and Laura D. Card (Provo, Utah: Religious Studies Center, Brigham Young University, 2002), 120–51.

12. John W. Welch, “The Factor of Fear in the Trial of Jesus,” in Jesus Christ, Son of God, Savior, 284–312.

13. Shon Hopkin, “’My God, My God, Why Hast Thou Forsaken Me?”: Psalm 22 and the Mission of Christ,” BYU Studies 52, no. 4 (2013): 131–32.

14. For example, “One question often asked is whether Jonah actually died at this time. Did he lose his life when suddenly swallowed by this denizen of the deep? Some conservative Bible scholars believe that he died and point out that this best typifies what happened to Christ. However, a type is a prefigure or foreshadow of the real thing and it should never by unduly pressed.” William L. Banks, Jonah, the Reluctant Prophet (Chicago: Moody, 1966), 46. See also Lyn Mize, “Jonah’s Death, Burial, and Resurrection,” at First Fruits Ministry, http://www.ffruits.org/v03/jonah.html.

15. The leviathan, a sea monster, appears in Job 41, Isaiah 27:1, and Psalm 104. Sheol is the Hebrew term for the abode of the dead, a grave, and the underworld.

16. Limburg, Jonah: A Commentary, 62; Limburg says the word translated belly may have the sense of womb, entrails, breast, or even “where teaching is stored up,” the heart.

17. Luke 12:54–57 and Mark 8:11–13 report similar discussion wherein Jesus says it is evil to seek for a sign, but he does not specifically mention Jonah.

18. Bruce R. McConkie, The Mortal Messiah: From Bethlehem to Calvary, Book 2 (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 1980), 222–24.

19. Richard D. Draper, “Jesus’ Prophecies of His Death and Resurrection,” in From the Last Supper through the Resurrection: The Savior’s Final Hours, ed. Richard Neitzel Holzapfel and Thomas A. Wayment (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 2003), 18–19.

20. “Three points us to what is real, essential, perfect, substantial, complete, and Divine.” E. W. Bullinger, Number in Scripture (Eyre and Spottiswoode, 1894), 108. See also Gerhard Delling, “treis,” in Gerhard Kittel and Gerhard Friedrich, eds., Theological Dictionary of the New Testament (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1972), 8:216–25. The number three appears several times in the book of Jonah. Jonah is commanded to arise three times—twice by the Lord and once by the shipmaster (1:2, 6; 3:2). He went down three times on his flight from the Lord—down to Joppa, down into the ship, and down into the sides of the ship (1:3; 1:5). The story hinges on three greats—the great fish, the great city, and the great wind. Nineveh’s size is described as a three days’ journey (3:3). Most important is the time Jonah spends in the great fish (1:17).

21. Janet Howe Gaines, Forgiveness in a Wounded World: Jonah’s Dilemma, Studies in Biblical Literature 5 (Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2003), 56.

22. See, for example, discussions in Ruth Rachel Specter, On What Day Did Christ Die? (New York: Exposition, 1959); Annie Jaubert, The Date of the Last Supper (New York: Alba House, 1965). A Wednesday crucifixion allows for a Wednesday night–Thursday Passover, followed by a day in which the women bought spices for Jesus’s body, and then a Friday night–Saturday Sabbath, accommodating Mark 16:1 and Luke 23:55–56.

23. James D. Smart, “The Book of Jonah,” in Interpreter’s Bible, 12 vols. (New York: Abingdon, 1956), 6:886–87.

24. Smart, “Book of Jonah,” 6:886–87.

25. The verb translated “‘to faint away’ is used elsewhere in the Bible to describe (1) the onset of death when a person’s life begins to slip away (Lam. 2:12), (2) the loss of one’s senses due to turmoil (Ps. 107:5), and (3) the loss of all hope of surviving calamity (Pss. 77:4; 142:4; 143:4). All three options are reflected in various English versions: ‘when my life was ebbing away’ (JPS, NJPS), ‘when my life was slipping away’ (CEV), ‘when I felt my life slipping away’ (TEV), ‘as my senses failed me’ (NEB), and ‘when I had lost all hope’ (NLT).” The NET Bible, at Biblia.com, http://biblia.com/bible/gs-netbible/Jon%202.1-10.

26. For a description of Day of Atonement, see Gerald N. Lund, “Old Testament Types and Symbols,” in Literature of Belief: Sacred Scripture and Religious Experience, ed. Neal Lambert and M. Gerald Bradford (Provo, Utah: Religious Studies Center, BYU, 1981), online at https://rsc.byu.edu/archived/literature-belief-sacred-scripture-and-religious-experience/2-old-testament-types-and. Also see Hebrews 9:25–28; 10:18–21.

27. Smart, “Book of Jonah,” 6:887.

28. Nineveh’s circumference was about 7.75 miles at its heyday. A. Kirk Grayson, “Nineveh,” in Anchor Bible Dictionary, ed. David Noel Freedman (New York: Doubleday, 1992), 4:1118–19. For a discussion of the symbolism of threes in Jonah, see note 19.

29. Forty symbolizes probation, testing, or trial, as in Noah’s forty days of rain, Moses on the mount for forty days, Israel’s forty years in the wilderness, and Jesus’s forty days of fasting. Alonzo Gaskill, The Lost Language of Symbolism (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 2003), 137–38; Matt Slick, “What Is Biblical Numerology?” Christian Apologetics and Research Ministry, http://www.carm.org/questions/numbers.htm (accessed July 28, 2014).

30. “No document yet discovered tells of any mass conversion at Nineveh. Ishtar and other native deities were still worshipped at Nineveh down to the fall of the city in 612 B.C.E.” Millar Burrows, “The Literary Category of the Book of Jonah,” 83–84, cited in David Marcus, From Balaam to Jonah: Anti-prophetic Satire in the Hebrew Bible, Brown Judaic Studies (Atlanta: Scholars, 1995), 100.

31. Those who find the four chapters of Jonah to have a chiastic pattern include Rudolf Pesch, Das Markusevangelium, Teil I (Freiburg: Herder, 1976); Yehuda T. Radday, “Chiasm in Joshua, Judges, and Others,” Linguistica Biblica (1973): 27–28:6–13; Marcus M. Ladd, And He Spake unto Me: Structural Revelations and Prophetic Pattern in 1 Nephi (Charleston, SC: Tafiat Publishing, 2011); Duane L. Christensen, “Narrative Poetics and the Interpretation of the Book of Jonah,” in Directions in Biblical Hebrew Poetry, ed. Elaine R. Follis, JSOT Supplement Series 40 (Sheffield, UK: Sheffield Academic Press, 1987), 29–48; Duane L. Christensen, “The Song of Jonah: A Metrical Analysis,” Journal of Biblical Literature 104 (1985): 217–31. Scholars who see shorter chiasms include Norbert Lohfink, Jonathan Magonet, Ernst R. Wendlend, and Angelico di Marco. See also Paul B. Simmons, “The Book of Jonah (Arranged in the Style of Pervasive Parallelism),” and correspondence from Chirstie Frandsen, both in the Chiasmus Archive at L. Tom Perry Special Collections, Brigham Young University. See the bibliography at Chiasmus Resources, http://chiasmusresources.johnwwelchresources.com/biblio. Yehuda T. Radday, rather than seeing a chiasmus structure encompassing the book of Jonah’s entire four chapters, illustrated a chiastic structure solely from within chapter one. He puts forward another within chapters three and four combined. He also intimated an observation that Jonah’s poetic prayer (2:3–9) is not an integral part of the book. He stated, “The argument sometimes voiced in favor of considering it [Jonah’s chapter 2 prayer] an integral part of the book on the ground that its removal would destroy the symmetry between the first two and the last two chapters is unsound.” Yehuda T. Radday, “Chiasmus in Hebrew Biblical Narrative,” in Chiasmus in Antiquity: Structures, Analyses, Exegesis, ed. John W. Welch (Hildesheim: Gerstenberg, 1981; reprint Provo, Utah: Research Press FARMS, 1998), available at Neal A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship, http://publications.maxwellinstitute.byu.edu/fullscreen/?pub=1131&index=5.

32. Many scholars have held the psalm (Jonah’s prayer, 2:2–9) to be an interpolation, but it need not be so viewed. New Bible Dictionary, 604. Sidney B. Sperry concluded, “There can be little question that the book is a unity. Even Jonah’s prayer in chapter two, consisting as it does of passages nearly all parallel to others in the Psalter, has a vital unity of its own and is not a mere string of quotations.” Sperry, Voice of Israel’s Prophets, 326–27.