This Postmodern Realities episode is a conversation with JOURNAL author William P. Cheshire about his article, “Has Science Swallowed the Myth of Jonah’s Whale? “. https://www.equip.org/articles/has-science-swallowed-the-myth-of-jonahs-whale/
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:20):
Hi everyone, Thank you for tuning in to the post
Modern Realities podcast, brought to you by the Christian Research
Institute and the Christian Research Journal. I'm Melanie Cogdill, Managing
editor of the Christian Research Journal. It's July twenty twenty
five and this is episode four hundred and fifty two,
(00:41):
which is a conversation about the Book of Jonah in
the Old Testament and science. Today's guest is doctor William Chesher, MD.
He is professor of neurology at the Mayo Clinic in Jacksonville, Florida.
He also holds an MA in bioethics from Trinity International
(01:01):
University and currently he is pursuing an additional MA in
science and Religion at Biola University. Bill has written an
online feature article for the Christian Research Journal, and his
article is called has Science Swallowed the Myth of Jonah's Whale?
You can read his article for free on our website
(01:22):
equip dot org. Bill, it's great to have you on
the podcast.
Speaker 2 (01:26):
Thank you for having me. It's a pleasure.
Speaker 1 (01:29):
Well. As I mentioned, Bill has written an article for
us that is very provocative. It's talking about science and
the Book of Jonahs. So I'm going to ask him
to tell us a little bit about this. Actually, what
he's doing in his article is he's taking a look
at the biblical story of Jonah and the Whale from
(01:50):
a scientific perspective, which is very interesting and just kind
of showing us that it's more than a children's story.
I'm sure we're all familiar with that Sunday school story
Jonah in the Belly of the Whale, or even theological
interpretations of everything that's happening in Jonah, with God's call
to Jonah to preach the Ninavites and all these other
(02:10):
kinds of things. But today we're doing something completely different.
We're going to talk about the science about this. But
before we kind of dig into it, I wanted to
ask Bill what actually prompted you to explore this topic
in such a unique way, And first of all, why
should Christians even care about science and the Book of Jonah?
Speaker 2 (02:29):
Well, I think questions at the interface of science and
faith have always been interesting to me and are interesting
to a lot of other people, and they challenge both
our understanding of faith and our understanding of science. How
do we reconcile them when they seem to disagree? So
In explaining Jonah's encounter with the whale, we find a
(02:49):
challenge for anyone who's a judicious and thoughtful reader living
in a scientifically informed age as we are. Is the
story a credible account given what we now know about
the sea creatures and human physiology? Did it really happen?
And can its details hold up to scientific scrutiny? Or
(03:10):
is it just fiction? Maybe a children's story made up
to teach a spiritual principle and that's all that we
can get from it. So how we answer that question
is relevant to how we view the reliability of scripture.
A story like Jonah is sometimes held up by atheist
as being proof that, well, the Bible couldn't be true.
Who would believe that? And to a skeptic, maybe a
(03:33):
skeptic would like to know, well, could this really happen?
Does it make sense? Can we integrate that with what
we know about biology and zoology? And to the Christian
our credibility is claiming that the Bible is true? Maybe
at stake and how we interpret the story? So did
it happen? Peter and tewod Peter when sixteen says that
(03:56):
the Bible is not a collection of clever life, devised myths,
and the Christian believes that the Bible is actually the
Word of God and it describes events that actually happened.
In fact, God has intervened in human history and our
story becomes his story also as he works out salvation
among us. So my approach to this text is as
(04:19):
a physician trained in science, and also as a Christian
who holds the Bible in high regard. And many will ask,
well can the two be reconciled? Aren't science and faith
in conflict with each other? And I say they can
be reconciled. You see, science and faith rough both about
knowing the truth and seeking answers to our deepest questions.
(04:44):
We find that some truths are factual and can be
empirically discovered through science, and other truths are theological, and
they intersect and they have implications one for another. When
they seem to be in conflict, I find that the
disagreement oftentimes is over misinterpret misinterpretations, and when we have
new evidence, we need to go back and look again
(05:06):
at the information we have and see how it might connect.
Scientific investigation, from my perspective, is not a threat to Christianity.
Anything that we learn can inform our faith, and I
think it can be an ally because in the end,
all truth is God's truth. So these are the sorts
(05:27):
of questions that one finds at the interface of science
and religion. And I took up the Jonah challenge in
one of my courses at Biola University. I'm taking the
program in Science and Religion. So here my strategy was
to investigate the latest evidence about Wales and tests whether
the story might actually be scientifically plausible.
Speaker 1 (05:51):
That's really fascinating because I think there seems to be
I guess Christians might look at the text in just
different ways. Is right. On one hand, many of us
believe that, like you were just saying that the Bible
is to be taken literally, it is historical fact. And
then on the other hand, you said, there's all these
(06:11):
people that doubt it. Could be skeptics. It might even
be some Christians who are really doubting their faith. They
don't know if the Biblical text is true and it
was written so long ago. And what about science. You
know a lot of people say, well, I wouldn't believe
in the Bible because science it seems like it's not credible.
And then you know there are more progressive scholars, Christian
(06:35):
scholars and religious scholars who would take the text in
the Book of Jonah and then just say, well, it's
just a moral story. It's a story for children, it's
got some spiritual meaning to it, but it's not actually
something that happened, especially somebody in the belly of the whale,
as you know, like I mentioned earlier, the Sunday School story.
So how should we interpret the story of Jonah and
(06:58):
the whale Because you said you're looking at it with
this lens of scientific discovery. Is this true? And then
also what you said to us when we started this
podcast that Christians should care about this because what we
have at stake is really the reliability of the Word
of God.
Speaker 2 (07:15):
I think that doubting is a healthy attitude. As a scientist,
you approach a question with skepticism. You want to see
if it holds up to the evidence. And in theology
also a doubt is informative to faith. As you work
through doubt and test ideas and test the promises in scripture,
you discover whether they make sense in your life and
(07:36):
in terms of what we see around us in the world.
And so doubting is a normal process and the pathway
of learning. For me, as an Anglican Christian, I hold
to the principle of biblical inerrancy. That means that the
Bible in its entirety is free from all falsehood, fraud,
or deceit. It doesn't mean that everything in the Bible
(07:59):
is meant to be taken literally, and it doesn't mean
that the Bible is written as a science textbook. So
when approaching any text in the Bible, we have to
start by asking, well, what genre is this representing? Some
parts of scripture or poetry, some are parable, some are prophecy,
some are historical. I would point to say the Parables
(08:21):
of the Kingdom in Matthew thirteen as examples of stories
that are meant to be allegorical, and there are other
examples also. But as I read the Book of Jonah,
it seems to me this is written as historical narrative,
and we should start from the perspective of the whole story.
Seems to be something that actually happened in history. Jonah
(08:43):
was on a boat, he was thrown off, he went
to Nineveh, and so forth.
Speaker 1 (08:51):
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are grateful that you are a faithful listener. So back
(10:37):
to my conversation with Bill Chesher, Well, now I want
to get more into asking you about the specific biblical
text in this book. And so in the Hebrew, does
the Hebrew specifically refer to a whale? Because you know,
(10:57):
back I was saying in Sunday school, we always think
of Jonah and the whale and all the picture books
that we see in the illustrations, the cute illustrations show
Jonah being swallowed by a whale. So is this, you know, fish,
a whale, an actual whale what we would think of
as you know, a big giant whale and the deep
sea type of animal creature.
Speaker 2 (11:20):
Well, here I have to be very careful because they
didn't teach Hebrew when I was in medical school. It
wasn't a requirement. I don't claim to be a Hebrew scholar,
but I have studied the language a bit and I
can tell you that the phrase that's translated as whale
or in the Old Testament dog god dole literally means
big fish. Now, in most English versions of the Bible,
(11:44):
we find that the word is translated as whale, and
we have to ask, well, what are the really big
fish and are they big enough to swallow a man?
And we'll get into that shortly.
Speaker 1 (11:56):
So also, are there even talking about different passages scripture,
are there other places in the Bible that we can
look to that even mentioned Jonah at all outside of
the actual Book of Jonah.
Speaker 2 (12:09):
Yes, Now this is very interesting because in the New
Testament in Matthew twelve forty, we find Jesus quoting from
the Book of Jonah and he says that Jonah was
in the belly of the fish the keitus, which is
translated from the Greek into whale in most English versions
of the New Testament. So we have Jesus pointing to
(12:31):
the story of Jonah. We find also in the septuagen
which is the Greek translation of the Old Testament, that
the word in Hebrew for big fish is translated as
in the same way as in the New Testament keitus
or whale, from the word Keitus. We get the English
word from the Latin actually Katasia, which is the scientific
(12:54):
name for the whale species. So I think a good
case could be made linguistically that we're dealing with the whale,
and I'm not familiar with any fishes that are larger
than whales. Whales are actually animals. They breathe air unlike fish,
so there are some biological distinctions. But what we should
notice here when Jesus mentions the story of Jonah is
(13:16):
that he seems to read the story historically, and this
is important because he ties the story of Jonah to
his own coming death and resurrection. For the Christian the
historical fact of jesus death and resurrection is foundational, and
so it gives me pause when studying the Book of
(13:38):
Jonah that perhaps we should consider that as historical as well.
Speaker 1 (13:43):
So, as you were doing research for your article for us,
did you find if there are any whales in antiquity?
In biblical times, did they mention that there were whales or,
as you said, big fish in the seas that around them?
Speaker 2 (14:02):
Well, I can give a personal account. It may come
as a surprise, but I once came face to face
with the whale in the depths of the Red Sea
off the coast of Israel. And you may be smiling,
but not everyone realizes that dolphins are classified as whales.
They're a type of whale. And I was scuba diving
(14:23):
off of the coast of Alot in Israel, and a
dolphin came right up to me and looked me right
in the face, and it was a magical moment. So whales,
dolphins are whales, and so there are whales actually larger
than dolphins in all of the Earth's oceans. I had
(14:44):
not been aware that there are large whales in the Mediterranean.
In fact, quite quite a lot. The most common whale
in the Mediterranean Sea is the thin whale. It's one
of the largest animals on Earth. They are less common
now than they were before the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries,
when whales were heavily hunted and exploited commercially for their oil,
(15:09):
which was valuable. It was used to know. You would
take the blubber from the whale and boil it, and
that generated a very thick oil that could be used
in lamps and for lubrication of some kinds of machines.
And they even made soap and Margarine from it. So
with increased awareness that whales have been driven nearly to
(15:29):
extinction some species of whales, there was an international band
placed on whaling in nineteen eighty six, and following that
increased awareness, there's been more and more research into whales,
so we know more about them at this point in
time and history than ever before, and we can look
into their physiology, their anatomy, their habits, and their habitats
(15:52):
and ask questions about what might have been going on
the Book of Jonah. One really interesting discovery about whales
not directly related to Jonah, but in their brains. I
can say this as a neurologist. They have spindle neurons.
Spindle neurons are very special types of cells that we
used to think existed only in humans and great apes
(16:15):
and also in elephants, and they're involved in social awareness
and complex social behavior. So we now know within the
last few years that whales also have these very specialized neurons.
So they're very interesting species. And I have a daughter
who teaches at a famous aquarium who could tell you
a lot more about whales than I can. But I'm
(16:36):
going to see her next week in Chicago. But returning
to the Mediterranean Sea. If we imagine for a moment
to ocean waves in the background, we see Jonah being
thrown overboard, and we find what kind of whale might
he have encountered in the Mediterranean Sea. I mentioned the
fin whale. It's actually the most common type of whale
(17:00):
in the Mediterranean. It's classified as a balen whale. It's
the second largest whale species on the planet. So I
would say that the fin whale definitely qualifies as what
scripture says as a big fish. It weighs forty to
fifty tons and in link that measures up to twenty
two meters, which is seventy two feet, So we're talking
(17:21):
about something huge, that is very big.
Speaker 1 (17:24):
Well, I'm sure some of our listeners are wondering. You know,
the Book of Jonah was written thousands of years ago.
This is before zoology, this is before any of our
you know, various different documentaries that we have about whales
or any kinds of sharks and things like that. There's
you know know what modern science museums back then. So
(17:45):
is it even possible that a whale could have really
swallowed a man? And also could you even survive being
swallowed by a whale. And you know, sometimes we hear
about people maybe losing limbs if they get bitten by
a shark or something like that. But I don't know,
have we heard any modern stories about somebody being swallowed
(18:08):
by an entire a large whale somewhere deep in the ocean.
So it seems to the modern mind is this even
possible at all?
Speaker 2 (18:16):
Well, this is where we're getting into the interesting details.
And so as we learn more about the science, we
can ask, well, does the scientific information that we're learning
start to converge with the biblical story or does it diverge.
Are we getting closer to the truth or are there
some incompatibilities to work with. So Happily, for Jonah, the
(18:38):
fin whale, which I've proposed as the type of whale
he encountered, lacks teeth, so he's not going to be
filaid open as he passes through through through the teeth.
There's no teeth. Instead, the thin wheel has throat pleats.
These are linear structures that expand when the whale takes
in water, and like a comb, it then filters the
(19:00):
small fish and kriel that are the whale's diet. The
fin whale feeds by lunging forward, so it's taking in
a large amount of seawater into its mouth, and then
it filters the water and retains the fish and krill.
When it does that, it increases its body size by
more than double. And the part of the whale that expands,
(19:23):
the large mouth, that is, it remains on the underside
of the whale, so you might call that the belly.
If we consider the size of the jaw of a
fin whale, its open mouth measures eight meters square and
this is three times the size of a standard door frame.
(19:43):
So it's clearly large enough to accommodate a man to
enter the whale.
Speaker 1 (19:48):
Okay, well, something that I think, you know, modern folks
might want to know is, wouldn't a whale's digestive uses,
like the acid from it dissolved Jonas skin if he's
in a whale stomach for literally three days.
Speaker 2 (20:04):
That's a very good question. So the next barrier for
Jonah in this journey into the whale, the digestive juices
in the whale stomach would be sufficient to just burn
right through his skin. But looking at the anatomy of
the fin whale, unlike the human, which has just one stomach.
The fin whale has a series of three stomachs, and
(20:25):
the first is the four stomach. It actually secretes no
gastric acid, so it would be a safe place to
hide out. And when I've looked at measurements of the
four stomach, Jonah could have fit within that space. The
problem is he couldn't have gotten there because first he
has to go through the esophagus, and the whales's esophagus
(20:47):
is only four inches wide. There's just no way to
squeeze through that. It's more difficult than Santa Claus squeezing
down a chimney. So he would have to remain in
the mouth, a large mouth where water is coming in
and out and the whale is moving about. And here
I find the greatest problem for Jonah. Air. You've got
(21:10):
two problems with limited air. Number One, if you're in
a place that has just a pocket of air to breathe,
eventually you'll run out of oxygen, right depending on how
much space there is. But also carbon dioxide that you're
breathing out accumulates, and that would tend to take your
life even more quickly than the lack of oxygen. So
(21:32):
is there enough air leftover after the whales lunging and
feeding to enable Jonah to survive. And I think there's
enough space in there, but there's so much water moving around.
You've got gushes of water at high velocity, and Jonah
would have nothing to hold on to to steady himself
(21:53):
to try to keep his mouth above the water level,
assuming there could be a pocket of air there. So
I've wrestled with this, and the other problem is eventually
in three days, in three nights, he would need to sleep.
He couldn't continuously be fighting to keep his mouth open
for that air. So what I've proposed is that to
(22:16):
solve to try to solve this problem in a way
that is satisfying scientifically, we see whales that are beached
at times or caught in shallow water as tides change,
And so I've proposed that Jonah's whale may have just
been trapped in a very shallow area of water, so
that there was some air in the mouth most or
(22:36):
all of the time that Jonah was there, or maybe
the whale was even beached and then as the tide
rose was released. Otherwise I have trouble explaining how anyone
could survive in the whales's mouth for three days and
three nights.
Speaker 1 (22:51):
I definitely think that's fascinating and just wondered in your
research if you had tried to look into any accounts
of you know, more contemporary accounts if somebody has actually
been swallowed by a whale.
Speaker 2 (23:07):
There are some very interesting accounts out there now. Last
year I was having lunch with a colleague, Ted Davis.
He's a historian of science who's now retired from Messiah University,
and he wrote a paper about a man named James Bartley.
Bartley was a sailor who allegedly was found alive within
(23:28):
the belly of a sperm whale off the coast of
the Falkland Islands. This was in eighteen ninety one. Well
Davis investigated this and has debunked the story. It turns
out it was never properly investigated at the time, but
was uncritically adopted by people who were just keen on
affirming a literal jonah and were too eager to see
(23:51):
that as proof. And so it reminds us we have
to investigate the facts behind these stories. But then there
are two more recent exams apples that are even more intriguing.
I think so. In twenty twenty one, a lobster diver
in Massachusetts named Michael Packard was diving for lobster when
(24:11):
he was swallowed by a humpback bail. This was off
the coast of Cape Cod and the whale surfaced and
then spit him out some thirty seconds later, in time
for him to breathe again and not suffocate. And this
is in the press. You can read news stories of
this online. A more brief encounter, but still proof and
(24:34):
principle that someone can fit inside the mouth of a whale.
He said it was completely dark inside. There's also the
account of Harrison o'keeene. He was on a tugboat which
capsized off the coast of Nigeria and it sank all
the way to the bottom and he was trapped inside
(24:55):
a locked bathroom. They kept the rooms in this boat
locked because of pirates, so that it wouldn't be vulnerable
if pirates were to board the craft. But once it
reached the bottom, he was upside down. He was trapped
inside this little, tiny bathroom. He had a pocket of
air that he breathed for three days until he was rescued,
(25:17):
and you can see videos of his rescue online. It's
really quite a remarkable story, not a whale, but it
shows that it would be possible to survive that long
given a sufficient pocket of air. So these are unlike
the story of Jonah, but they remind us that sometimes
very exceptional events occur. It's always important to verify extraordinary claims.
Speaker 1 (25:41):
That's really interesting. It's interesting that there's some modern examples
and then just some of the things that you pointed
to that are scientific in nature, and then instead of
contradicting scripture, it helps us appreciate the story. Would you
say that we can apply this, that science could help
us understand and recognize some of the miracles that we
(26:05):
find in other parts of scripture.
Speaker 2 (26:07):
I think so there definitely miracles in scripture that I
cannot explain scientifically. There are true miracles. And if Jesus
can turn water to wine, surely God can turn water
to oxygen for Jonah if he so wishes. And we
can't prove that a one time event that leaves no
(26:28):
evidence is not something that can be investigated by science.
In the case of Jonah, I think this may be
what philosophers call a contingency miracle. This is an extremely
rare natural coincidence that if interpreted in a religious context,
has theological significance. So what we sometimes call a coincidence
(26:50):
or a god incidence, it's just a combination of circumstances
that seem unlikely that but perhaps God is in the
detail somehow. These are not investigable by science, but they
can be encouragements to our faith. A contingency miracle then
points to God's agency, but it doesn't require God to
(27:14):
violate the laws of nature that he established. That the
laws of nature actually are further evidence for a creator,
for someone who has organized the universe in a rational
and coherent and predictable way. If we look back to
the pioneers of the scientific Revolution in the sixteenth and
(27:34):
seventeenth centuries, people like Newton, Boyle, Galileo, Kepler, Faraday, many others,
they believed that the universe was ordered rationally. They saw
the reliability of the laws of nature as a reflection
of the God, who himself is reliable in keeping his promises.
(27:56):
So they had confidence that nature could be investigated, that
we could learn through science, and that we could understand
and comprehend the world. Now, accepting the regularity of nature
doesn't exclude the possibility of miracles, but I think genuine
miracles are quite rare. The Westminster Confession says that quote God,
(28:20):
in his ordinary providence maketh use of means, yet is
free to work without above and against them at his pleasure.
So if we look at chains of causation in the
natural world, there's room in between these lines of causation
for God to act in subtle ways that science may
(28:41):
not be able to discern. So I don't rule out
the possibility of supernatural intervention. In fact, if we read
on in Jonah, we find that God answered Jonah's prayer
in the whale. That's a supernatural event, and God rescued
him from a situation that would have been very unlikely
for any of us to survive. C. S. Lewis wrote
(29:05):
that Christianity could not possibly be freed from its miraculous
elements without losing its integrity. The Christian story, Lewis wrote, quote,
is precisely the story of one grand miracle, the Christian
assertion being that what is beyond all space and time,
what is uncreated eternal, came into nature, into human nature,
(29:31):
descended into his own universe, and rose again, bringing nature
up with him. This is the Christian miracle. The story
of Jonah is an example of that type of intervention,
and Jesus death and resurrection is its fulfillment.
Speaker 1 (29:47):
A few moments ago you heard Bill quote from what
he said was the Westminster Confession of Faith. Now some
of our listeners may not know what that document is,
and a document that was a summary of a theological
systematic theology of people who were reformed in Calvinists during
(30:10):
the sixteen hundreds the mid sixteen hundreds, and it was
a group of men that met during the English Civil War.
It was people from the English Parliament as well as
theologians that they gathered at Westminster Abbey. It was called
the Westminster Assembly. They met for five years and produced
several documents, of which the Westminster Confession of Faith was one,
(30:33):
and it's called that because they met at the abbey.
So are there any other final lessons that you think
that our readers and listeners should draw from the story
of Jonah.
Speaker 2 (30:48):
I'd say a couple of things. Christians need not be
afraid of science. In fact, we need more Christians in
the sciences. There's a lot that could be learned in
science that helps us to understand the beauty of nature
and God has created, and to admire his handiwork thinking
about this theologically as I look at the story of Jonah.
(31:08):
If God arranged the extraordinarily improbable to accomplish his purposes
when Jonah was disobedient, then how much more might we
see God's loving hand guiding our affairs successfully if we
turn to him, obey jesus teachings, and align our plans
(31:29):
with biblical principles. So I think there's an opportunity here
for us to latch on to where God is going
in his plan for salvation and to see his works
in our lives. Contemplating such things fills my mind with
what I can only call whale sized wonder well.
Speaker 1 (31:53):
Now, on a fun note, since Bill is a new
guest to our podcast, we're going to ask him the
those fun rapid fire questions that we ask our new
guests on the podcast. And first of all, Bill, what
is your favorite meal?
Speaker 2 (32:09):
My favorite meal? Actually, I like salmon. I don't think
Wales eat salmon, that they might, but I'm very fond
of it.
Speaker 1 (32:17):
Would you say you're an early birder night ol?
Speaker 2 (32:21):
I was a night owl earlier in my life, but
I've become an early bird. Now that I'm older and
wiser and.
Speaker 1 (32:29):
You live in Florida, what's one of your favorite things
about living in Florida.
Speaker 2 (32:35):
Well, this is a wonderful place to practice medicine. I
live two blocks from the beach, so I can walk
to the beach anytime I want, and that's wonderful at
all times of the year, except for hurricane season.
Speaker 1 (32:48):
Well, thanks Bill for being a guest today on the
Postmodern Realities podcast.
Speaker 2 (32:53):
Oh it's been a pleasure. Thank you so much.
Speaker 1 (32:55):
You've been listening to episode four hundred and fifty two
of the post Modern Realities podcast from the Christian Research Journal.
Today's guest was doctor William Chesher, MD. He has written
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article is called has Science Swallowed The Myth of Jonas Whale?
(33:17):
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Hi everyone, Thank you for tuning in to the post
Modern Realities podcast, brought to you by the Christian Research
Institute and the Christian Research Journal. I'm Melanie Cogdill, Managing
editor of the Christian Research Journal. It's July twenty twenty
five and this is episode four hundred and fifty two,
(00:41):
which is a conversation about the Book of Jonah in
the Old Testament and science. Today's guest is doctor William Chesher, MD.
He is professor of neurology at the Mayo Clinic in Jacksonville, Florida.
He also holds an MA in bioethics from Trinity International
(01:01):
University and currently he is pursuing an additional MA in
science and Religion at Biola University. Bill has written an
online feature article for the Christian Research Journal, and his
article is called has Science Swallowed the Myth of Jonah's Whale?
You can read his article for free on our website
(01:22):
equip dot org. Bill, it's great to have you on
the podcast.
Speaker 2 (01:26):
Thank you for having me. It's a pleasure.
Speaker 1 (01:29):
Well. As I mentioned, Bill has written an article for
us that is very provocative. It's talking about science and
the Book of Jonahs. So I'm going to ask him
to tell us a little bit about this. Actually, what
he's doing in his article is he's taking a look
at the biblical story of Jonah and the Whale from
(01:50):
a scientific perspective, which is very interesting and just kind
of showing us that it's more than a children's story.
I'm sure we're all familiar with that Sunday school story
Jonah in the Belly of the Whale, or even theological
interpretations of everything that's happening in Jonah, with God's call
to Jonah to preach the Ninavites and all these other
(02:10):
kinds of things. But today we're doing something completely different.
We're going to talk about the science about this. But
before we kind of dig into it, I wanted to
ask Bill what actually prompted you to explore this topic
in such a unique way, And first of all, why
should Christians even care about science and the Book of Jonah?
Speaker 2 (02:29):
Well, I think questions at the interface of science and
faith have always been interesting to me and are interesting
to a lot of other people, and they challenge both
our understanding of faith and our understanding of science. How
do we reconcile them when they seem to disagree? So
In explaining Jonah's encounter with the whale, we find a
(02:49):
challenge for anyone who's a judicious and thoughtful reader living
in a scientifically informed age as we are. Is the
story a credible account given what we now know about
the sea creatures and human physiology? Did it really happen?
And can its details hold up to scientific scrutiny? Or
(03:10):
is it just fiction? Maybe a children's story made up
to teach a spiritual principle and that's all that we
can get from it. So how we answer that question
is relevant to how we view the reliability of scripture.
A story like Jonah is sometimes held up by atheist
as being proof that, well, the Bible couldn't be true.
Who would believe that? And to a skeptic, maybe a
(03:33):
skeptic would like to know, well, could this really happen?
Does it make sense? Can we integrate that with what
we know about biology and zoology? And to the Christian
our credibility is claiming that the Bible is true? Maybe
at stake and how we interpret the story? So did
it happen? Peter and tewod Peter when sixteen says that
(03:56):
the Bible is not a collection of clever life, devised myths,
and the Christian believes that the Bible is actually the
Word of God and it describes events that actually happened.
In fact, God has intervened in human history and our
story becomes his story also as he works out salvation
among us. So my approach to this text is as
(04:19):
a physician trained in science, and also as a Christian
who holds the Bible in high regard. And many will ask,
well can the two be reconciled? Aren't science and faith
in conflict with each other? And I say they can
be reconciled. You see, science and faith rough both about
knowing the truth and seeking answers to our deepest questions.
(04:44):
We find that some truths are factual and can be
empirically discovered through science, and other truths are theological, and
they intersect and they have implications one for another. When
they seem to be in conflict, I find that the
disagreement oftentimes is over misinterpret misinterpretations, and when we have
new evidence, we need to go back and look again
(05:06):
at the information we have and see how it might connect.
Scientific investigation, from my perspective, is not a threat to Christianity.
Anything that we learn can inform our faith, and I
think it can be an ally because in the end,
all truth is God's truth. So these are the sorts
(05:27):
of questions that one finds at the interface of science
and religion. And I took up the Jonah challenge in
one of my courses at Biola University. I'm taking the
program in Science and Religion. So here my strategy was
to investigate the latest evidence about Wales and tests whether
the story might actually be scientifically plausible.
Speaker 1 (05:51):
That's really fascinating because I think there seems to be
I guess Christians might look at the text in just
different ways. Is right. On one hand, many of us
believe that, like you were just saying that the Bible
is to be taken literally, it is historical fact. And
then on the other hand, you said, there's all these
(06:11):
people that doubt it. Could be skeptics. It might even
be some Christians who are really doubting their faith. They
don't know if the Biblical text is true and it
was written so long ago. And what about science. You
know a lot of people say, well, I wouldn't believe
in the Bible because science it seems like it's not credible.
And then you know there are more progressive scholars, Christian
(06:35):
scholars and religious scholars who would take the text in
the Book of Jonah and then just say, well, it's
just a moral story. It's a story for children, it's
got some spiritual meaning to it, but it's not actually
something that happened, especially somebody in the belly of the whale,
as you know, like I mentioned earlier, the Sunday School story.
So how should we interpret the story of Jonah and
(06:58):
the whale Because you said you're looking at it with
this lens of scientific discovery. Is this true? And then
also what you said to us when we started this
podcast that Christians should care about this because what we
have at stake is really the reliability of the Word
of God.
Speaker 2 (07:15):
I think that doubting is a healthy attitude. As a scientist,
you approach a question with skepticism. You want to see
if it holds up to the evidence. And in theology
also a doubt is informative to faith. As you work
through doubt and test ideas and test the promises in scripture,
you discover whether they make sense in your life and
(07:36):
in terms of what we see around us in the world.
And so doubting is a normal process and the pathway
of learning. For me, as an Anglican Christian, I hold
to the principle of biblical inerrancy. That means that the
Bible in its entirety is free from all falsehood, fraud,
or deceit. It doesn't mean that everything in the Bible
(07:59):
is meant to be taken literally, and it doesn't mean
that the Bible is written as a science textbook. So
when approaching any text in the Bible, we have to
start by asking, well, what genre is this representing? Some
parts of scripture or poetry, some are parable, some are prophecy,
some are historical. I would point to say the Parables
(08:21):
of the Kingdom in Matthew thirteen as examples of stories
that are meant to be allegorical, and there are other
examples also. But as I read the Book of Jonah,
it seems to me this is written as historical narrative,
and we should start from the perspective of the whole story.
Seems to be something that actually happened in history. Jonah
(08:43):
was on a boat, he was thrown off, he went
to Nineveh, and so forth.
Speaker 1 (08:51):
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are grateful that you are a faithful listener. So back
(10:37):
to my conversation with Bill Chesher, Well, now I want
to get more into asking you about the specific biblical
text in this book. And so in the Hebrew, does
the Hebrew specifically refer to a whale? Because you know,
(10:57):
back I was saying in Sunday school, we always think
of Jonah and the whale and all the picture books
that we see in the illustrations, the cute illustrations show
Jonah being swallowed by a whale. So is this, you know, fish,
a whale, an actual whale what we would think of
as you know, a big giant whale and the deep
sea type of animal creature.
Speaker 2 (11:20):
Well, here I have to be very careful because they
didn't teach Hebrew when I was in medical school. It
wasn't a requirement. I don't claim to be a Hebrew scholar,
but I have studied the language a bit and I
can tell you that the phrase that's translated as whale
or in the Old Testament dog god dole literally means
big fish. Now, in most English versions of the Bible,
(11:44):
we find that the word is translated as whale, and
we have to ask, well, what are the really big
fish and are they big enough to swallow a man?
And we'll get into that shortly.
Speaker 1 (11:56):
So also, are there even talking about different passages scripture,
are there other places in the Bible that we can
look to that even mentioned Jonah at all outside of
the actual Book of Jonah.
Speaker 2 (12:09):
Yes, Now this is very interesting because in the New
Testament in Matthew twelve forty, we find Jesus quoting from
the Book of Jonah and he says that Jonah was
in the belly of the fish the keitus, which is
translated from the Greek into whale in most English versions
of the New Testament. So we have Jesus pointing to
(12:31):
the story of Jonah. We find also in the septuagen
which is the Greek translation of the Old Testament, that
the word in Hebrew for big fish is translated as
in the same way as in the New Testament keitus
or whale, from the word Keitus. We get the English
word from the Latin actually Katasia, which is the scientific
(12:54):
name for the whale species. So I think a good
case could be made linguistically that we're dealing with the whale,
and I'm not familiar with any fishes that are larger
than whales. Whales are actually animals. They breathe air unlike fish,
so there are some biological distinctions. But what we should
notice here when Jesus mentions the story of Jonah is
(13:16):
that he seems to read the story historically, and this
is important because he ties the story of Jonah to
his own coming death and resurrection. For the Christian the
historical fact of jesus death and resurrection is foundational, and
so it gives me pause when studying the Book of
(13:38):
Jonah that perhaps we should consider that as historical as well.
Speaker 1 (13:43):
So, as you were doing research for your article for us,
did you find if there are any whales in antiquity?
In biblical times, did they mention that there were whales or,
as you said, big fish in the seas that around them?
Speaker 2 (14:02):
Well, I can give a personal account. It may come
as a surprise, but I once came face to face
with the whale in the depths of the Red Sea
off the coast of Israel. And you may be smiling,
but not everyone realizes that dolphins are classified as whales.
They're a type of whale. And I was scuba diving
(14:23):
off of the coast of Alot in Israel, and a
dolphin came right up to me and looked me right
in the face, and it was a magical moment. So whales,
dolphins are whales, and so there are whales actually larger
than dolphins in all of the Earth's oceans. I had
(14:44):
not been aware that there are large whales in the Mediterranean.
In fact, quite quite a lot. The most common whale
in the Mediterranean Sea is the thin whale. It's one
of the largest animals on Earth. They are less common
now than they were before the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries,
when whales were heavily hunted and exploited commercially for their oil,
(15:09):
which was valuable. It was used to know. You would
take the blubber from the whale and boil it, and
that generated a very thick oil that could be used
in lamps and for lubrication of some kinds of machines.
And they even made soap and Margarine from it. So
with increased awareness that whales have been driven nearly to
(15:29):
extinction some species of whales, there was an international band
placed on whaling in nineteen eighty six, and following that
increased awareness, there's been more and more research into whales,
so we know more about them at this point in
time and history than ever before, and we can look
into their physiology, their anatomy, their habits, and their habitats
(15:52):
and ask questions about what might have been going on
the Book of Jonah. One really interesting discovery about whales
not directly related to Jonah, but in their brains. I
can say this as a neurologist. They have spindle neurons.
Spindle neurons are very special types of cells that we
used to think existed only in humans and great apes
(16:15):
and also in elephants, and they're involved in social awareness
and complex social behavior. So we now know within the
last few years that whales also have these very specialized neurons.
So they're very interesting species. And I have a daughter
who teaches at a famous aquarium who could tell you
a lot more about whales than I can. But I'm
(16:36):
going to see her next week in Chicago. But returning
to the Mediterranean Sea. If we imagine for a moment
to ocean waves in the background, we see Jonah being
thrown overboard, and we find what kind of whale might
he have encountered in the Mediterranean Sea. I mentioned the
fin whale. It's actually the most common type of whale
(17:00):
in the Mediterranean. It's classified as a balen whale. It's
the second largest whale species on the planet. So I
would say that the fin whale definitely qualifies as what
scripture says as a big fish. It weighs forty to
fifty tons and in link that measures up to twenty
two meters, which is seventy two feet, So we're talking
(17:21):
about something huge, that is very big.
Speaker 1 (17:24):
Well, I'm sure some of our listeners are wondering. You know,
the Book of Jonah was written thousands of years ago.
This is before zoology, this is before any of our
you know, various different documentaries that we have about whales
or any kinds of sharks and things like that. There's
you know know what modern science museums back then. So
(17:45):
is it even possible that a whale could have really
swallowed a man? And also could you even survive being
swallowed by a whale. And you know, sometimes we hear
about people maybe losing limbs if they get bitten by
a shark or something like that. But I don't know,
have we heard any modern stories about somebody being swallowed
(18:08):
by an entire a large whale somewhere deep in the ocean.
So it seems to the modern mind is this even
possible at all?
Speaker 2 (18:16):
Well, this is where we're getting into the interesting details.
And so as we learn more about the science, we
can ask, well, does the scientific information that we're learning
start to converge with the biblical story or does it diverge.
Are we getting closer to the truth or are there
some incompatibilities to work with. So Happily, for Jonah, the
(18:38):
fin whale, which I've proposed as the type of whale
he encountered, lacks teeth, so he's not going to be
filaid open as he passes through through through the teeth.
There's no teeth. Instead, the thin wheel has throat pleats.
These are linear structures that expand when the whale takes
in water, and like a comb, it then filters the
(19:00):
small fish and kriel that are the whale's diet. The
fin whale feeds by lunging forward, so it's taking in
a large amount of seawater into its mouth, and then
it filters the water and retains the fish and krill.
When it does that, it increases its body size by
more than double. And the part of the whale that expands,
(19:23):
the large mouth, that is, it remains on the underside
of the whale, so you might call that the belly.
If we consider the size of the jaw of a
fin whale, its open mouth measures eight meters square and
this is three times the size of a standard door frame.
(19:43):
So it's clearly large enough to accommodate a man to
enter the whale.
Speaker 1 (19:48):
Okay, well, something that I think, you know, modern folks
might want to know is, wouldn't a whale's digestive uses,
like the acid from it dissolved Jonas skin if he's
in a whale stomach for literally three days.
Speaker 2 (20:04):
That's a very good question. So the next barrier for
Jonah in this journey into the whale, the digestive juices
in the whale stomach would be sufficient to just burn
right through his skin. But looking at the anatomy of
the fin whale, unlike the human, which has just one stomach.
The fin whale has a series of three stomachs, and
(20:25):
the first is the four stomach. It actually secretes no
gastric acid, so it would be a safe place to
hide out. And when I've looked at measurements of the
four stomach, Jonah could have fit within that space. The
problem is he couldn't have gotten there because first he
has to go through the esophagus, and the whales's esophagus
(20:47):
is only four inches wide. There's just no way to
squeeze through that. It's more difficult than Santa Claus squeezing
down a chimney. So he would have to remain in
the mouth, a large mouth where water is coming in
and out and the whale is moving about. And here
I find the greatest problem for Jonah. Air. You've got
(21:10):
two problems with limited air. Number One, if you're in
a place that has just a pocket of air to breathe,
eventually you'll run out of oxygen, right depending on how
much space there is. But also carbon dioxide that you're
breathing out accumulates, and that would tend to take your
life even more quickly than the lack of oxygen. So
(21:32):
is there enough air leftover after the whales lunging and
feeding to enable Jonah to survive. And I think there's
enough space in there, but there's so much water moving around.
You've got gushes of water at high velocity, and Jonah
would have nothing to hold on to to steady himself
(21:53):
to try to keep his mouth above the water level,
assuming there could be a pocket of air there. So
I've wrestled with this, and the other problem is eventually
in three days, in three nights, he would need to sleep.
He couldn't continuously be fighting to keep his mouth open
for that air. So what I've proposed is that to
(22:16):
solve to try to solve this problem in a way
that is satisfying scientifically, we see whales that are beached
at times or caught in shallow water as tides change,
And so I've proposed that Jonah's whale may have just
been trapped in a very shallow area of water, so
that there was some air in the mouth most or
(22:36):
all of the time that Jonah was there, or maybe
the whale was even beached and then as the tide
rose was released. Otherwise I have trouble explaining how anyone
could survive in the whales's mouth for three days and
three nights.
Speaker 1 (22:51):
I definitely think that's fascinating and just wondered in your
research if you had tried to look into any accounts
of you know, more contemporary accounts if somebody has actually
been swallowed by a whale.
Speaker 2 (23:07):
There are some very interesting accounts out there now. Last
year I was having lunch with a colleague, Ted Davis.
He's a historian of science who's now retired from Messiah University,
and he wrote a paper about a man named James Bartley.
Bartley was a sailor who allegedly was found alive within
(23:28):
the belly of a sperm whale off the coast of
the Falkland Islands. This was in eighteen ninety one. Well
Davis investigated this and has debunked the story. It turns
out it was never properly investigated at the time, but
was uncritically adopted by people who were just keen on
affirming a literal jonah and were too eager to see
(23:51):
that as proof. And so it reminds us we have
to investigate the facts behind these stories. But then there
are two more recent exams apples that are even more intriguing.
I think so. In twenty twenty one, a lobster diver
in Massachusetts named Michael Packard was diving for lobster when
(24:11):
he was swallowed by a humpback bail. This was off
the coast of Cape Cod and the whale surfaced and
then spit him out some thirty seconds later, in time
for him to breathe again and not suffocate. And this
is in the press. You can read news stories of
this online. A more brief encounter, but still proof and
(24:34):
principle that someone can fit inside the mouth of a whale.
He said it was completely dark inside. There's also the
account of Harrison o'keeene. He was on a tugboat which
capsized off the coast of Nigeria and it sank all
the way to the bottom and he was trapped inside
(24:55):
a locked bathroom. They kept the rooms in this boat
locked because of pirates, so that it wouldn't be vulnerable
if pirates were to board the craft. But once it
reached the bottom, he was upside down. He was trapped
inside this little, tiny bathroom. He had a pocket of
air that he breathed for three days until he was rescued,
(25:17):
and you can see videos of his rescue online. It's
really quite a remarkable story, not a whale, but it
shows that it would be possible to survive that long
given a sufficient pocket of air. So these are unlike
the story of Jonah, but they remind us that sometimes
very exceptional events occur. It's always important to verify extraordinary claims.
Speaker 1 (25:41):
That's really interesting. It's interesting that there's some modern examples
and then just some of the things that you pointed
to that are scientific in nature, and then instead of
contradicting scripture, it helps us appreciate the story. Would you
say that we can apply this, that science could help
us understand and recognize some of the miracles that we
(26:05):
find in other parts of scripture.
Speaker 2 (26:07):
I think so there definitely miracles in scripture that I
cannot explain scientifically. There are true miracles. And if Jesus
can turn water to wine, surely God can turn water
to oxygen for Jonah if he so wishes. And we
can't prove that a one time event that leaves no
(26:28):
evidence is not something that can be investigated by science.
In the case of Jonah, I think this may be
what philosophers call a contingency miracle. This is an extremely
rare natural coincidence that if interpreted in a religious context,
has theological significance. So what we sometimes call a coincidence
(26:50):
or a god incidence, it's just a combination of circumstances
that seem unlikely that but perhaps God is in the
detail somehow. These are not investigable by science, but they
can be encouragements to our faith. A contingency miracle then
points to God's agency, but it doesn't require God to
(27:14):
violate the laws of nature that he established. That the
laws of nature actually are further evidence for a creator,
for someone who has organized the universe in a rational
and coherent and predictable way. If we look back to
the pioneers of the scientific Revolution in the sixteenth and
(27:34):
seventeenth centuries, people like Newton, Boyle, Galileo, Kepler, Faraday, many others,
they believed that the universe was ordered rationally. They saw
the reliability of the laws of nature as a reflection
of the God, who himself is reliable in keeping his promises.
(27:56):
So they had confidence that nature could be investigated, that
we could learn through science, and that we could understand
and comprehend the world. Now, accepting the regularity of nature
doesn't exclude the possibility of miracles, but I think genuine
miracles are quite rare. The Westminster Confession says that quote God,
(28:20):
in his ordinary providence maketh use of means, yet is
free to work without above and against them at his pleasure.
So if we look at chains of causation in the
natural world, there's room in between these lines of causation
for God to act in subtle ways that science may
(28:41):
not be able to discern. So I don't rule out
the possibility of supernatural intervention. In fact, if we read
on in Jonah, we find that God answered Jonah's prayer
in the whale. That's a supernatural event, and God rescued
him from a situation that would have been very unlikely
for any of us to survive. C. S. Lewis wrote
(29:05):
that Christianity could not possibly be freed from its miraculous
elements without losing its integrity. The Christian story, Lewis wrote, quote,
is precisely the story of one grand miracle, the Christian
assertion being that what is beyond all space and time,
what is uncreated eternal, came into nature, into human nature,
(29:31):
descended into his own universe, and rose again, bringing nature
up with him. This is the Christian miracle. The story
of Jonah is an example of that type of intervention,
and Jesus death and resurrection is its fulfillment.
Speaker 1 (29:47):
A few moments ago you heard Bill quote from what
he said was the Westminster Confession of Faith. Now some
of our listeners may not know what that document is,
and a document that was a summary of a theological
systematic theology of people who were reformed in Calvinists during
(30:10):
the sixteen hundreds the mid sixteen hundreds, and it was
a group of men that met during the English Civil War.
It was people from the English Parliament as well as
theologians that they gathered at Westminster Abbey. It was called
the Westminster Assembly. They met for five years and produced
several documents, of which the Westminster Confession of Faith was one,
(30:33):
and it's called that because they met at the abbey.
So are there any other final lessons that you think
that our readers and listeners should draw from the story
of Jonah.
Speaker 2 (30:48):
I'd say a couple of things. Christians need not be
afraid of science. In fact, we need more Christians in
the sciences. There's a lot that could be learned in
science that helps us to understand the beauty of nature
and God has created, and to admire his handiwork thinking
about this theologically as I look at the story of Jonah.
(31:08):
If God arranged the extraordinarily improbable to accomplish his purposes
when Jonah was disobedient, then how much more might we
see God's loving hand guiding our affairs successfully if we
turn to him, obey jesus teachings, and align our plans
(31:29):
with biblical principles. So I think there's an opportunity here
for us to latch on to where God is going
in his plan for salvation and to see his works
in our lives. Contemplating such things fills my mind with
what I can only call whale sized wonder well.
Speaker 1 (31:53):
Now, on a fun note, since Bill is a new
guest to our podcast, we're going to ask him the
those fun rapid fire questions that we ask our new
guests on the podcast. And first of all, Bill, what
is your favorite meal?
Speaker 2 (32:09):
My favorite meal? Actually, I like salmon. I don't think
Wales eat salmon, that they might, but I'm very fond
of it.
Speaker 1 (32:17):
Would you say you're an early birder night ol?
Speaker 2 (32:21):
I was a night owl earlier in my life, but
I've become an early bird. Now that I'm older and
wiser and.
Speaker 1 (32:29):
You live in Florida, what's one of your favorite things
about living in Florida.
Speaker 2 (32:35):
Well, this is a wonderful place to practice medicine. I
live two blocks from the beach, so I can walk
to the beach anytime I want, and that's wonderful at
all times of the year, except for hurricane season.
Speaker 1 (32:48):
Well, thanks Bill for being a guest today on the
Postmodern Realities podcast.
Speaker 2 (32:53):
Oh it's been a pleasure. Thank you so much.
Speaker 1 (32:55):
You've been listening to episode four hundred and fifty two
of the post Modern Realities podcast from the Christian Research Journal.
Today's guest was doctor William Chesher, MD. He has written
an online feature article for the Christian Research Journal. His
article is called has Science Swallowed The Myth of Jonas Whale?
(33:17):
You can read it for free at equip dot org.
You won't want to miss out on subscribing to the
other podcasts from the Christian Research Institute. We have the
Bible answer Man podcast, which is published Monday through Friday,
with the best of the week on Saturday. It's hosted
by CRI president Hank Handagraph and is available wherever you
(33:38):
get your favorite podcasts. In addition, Hank has a podcast
called Hank Unplugged. Hank takes you out of the studio
and into his study to engage in free flowing, essential
Christian conversations on critical issues with some of the most interesting,
informative and inspirational people on the planet, and you won't
(34:00):
want to miss out on the brand new podcast from
the Christian Research Journal. Christian Research Journal Reads presents audio
versions of Christian Research Journal articles. It was a print
incarnation of almost forty five years. It's now on the
web as you know, with new articles every single week,
so you won't want to miss these audio articles of
(34:22):
some of our most popular and most accessed articles on
our website equip dot org.
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