Taking the Argo to Nineveh: Jonah and Jason in a Mediterranean context

NOTES

(1.) See A. Feuillet, "Les sources du livre de Jonas," Revue biblique, 54(1947) 161-86; P.L. Trible, Studies in the Book of Jonah (Ph.D. Diss., Columbia, 1963) 107-8, 110-12; J. Sasson, Jonah. A New Translation with Introduction, Commentary, and Interpretation (The Anchor Bible, 24B; New York: Doubleday, 1990) passim.

(2.) See Sasson, op. cit., pp. 331-40.

(3.) See A. Feuillet, art. cit., p. 162; E. Bickerman, Four Strange Books of the Bible (New York: Schocken, 1967) mentions also the stories of Arion in Herodotus and Heracles' three-day sojourn in a sea cave. A. Feuillet, after reviewing the possibilities, thinks that the results are meager and unimportant. P. Trible reviews all previous proposals, op. cit., pp.

(4.) The most important work is by H. Schmidt: Jona. Eine Untersuchung zum vergleichenden Religionschichte (Gottingen, 1907), pp. 22-23. As the tide indicates, this is a broad comparative study which, in the opinion of Y. M. Duval (in: Le livre de Jonas dans la littirature chretienne grecque el latine. Paris: Etudes Augustiniennes, 1973) is carried too far. Flasch, Angebliche Argonautenbilder (Munich: F. Straub, 1870); Welcker (Alte Denkmaler); Radermacher (Mythos und Sage bei den griechen, Leipzig: R.M. Rohrer, 1938, p. 183; also Das Jenseits in Mythos der Hellenen, pp. 67ff.); Kerenyi also in The Heroes of the Greeks, London: Thames & Hudson, 1959).

(5.) Not in Feuillet or in Sasson. The work of H. Schmidt (above, note 4) is not mentioned in J. Sasson's bibliography.

(6.) Abbreviated as LIMC from now on, vol. V, books 1 and 2, see under Jason.

(7.) J. Sasson speaks of "vestiges of tales" but does not specify their origin (pp. 16-18).

(8.) A question most recently addressed by W. Burkert, The Orientalizing Revolution (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press) 1992, about the archaic period. The book appeared in German in 1984.

(9.) Eustathius, Commentarii ad Homeri Iliadem pertinentes (M. Van der Valk, Leiden: Brill, vol. 1, 1971, p.773, lines 15-17).

(10.) See Corpus Papyrorum Judaicarum, vol. 3 (1964), p. 179, 9. For Cyrenaica, see index in W. Horbury and D. Noy, Jewish Inscriptions of Graeco-Roman Egypt (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1992), p. 326. Also: A. Lalonde, "La Cyrenaique romaine des origines a fin des Severes (96 av. J.-C.-235 ap.J.-C.)," Aufstieg und Niedergang der Romischen Welt, vol. II/10.1 (1988), p. 1045. Note the names of high priests under Antiochos IV: Onias, then his brother Jason, then Menelas.

(11.) In Pindar, Pyth. 4.

(12.) See The New Encyclopaedia of Archaeological Excavations in the Holy Land, vol. 2 (Jerusalem/New York: Israel Exploration Society add Carta; Simon and Schuster, 1993), p. 751.

(13.) Apollonius, Argonautica 2.317f.; 2.555f. The use of doves may have been a most ancient technique. It is not documented in J. Rouge, La marine de l'antiquite (Paris; P.U.F., 1975), or in L. Casson, Travel in the Ancient World (London: Allen & Unwin, 1974).

(14.) Aeneid 6.190f.