ANNOUNCER: Some theologians have stated that Jonah was a mere parable, and that the account of Job is a mere morality play. What do you think? And why does this matter so much, that Jonah and Job were actual people? Stay with us. We’re going to talk about it for the next few minutes here on Grace in Focus. Glad you’ve joined us. This is a ministry of the Grace Evangelical Society, and our website is faithalone.org. At that website, you will find our free subscription to our magazine, also called Grace in Focus, a full-length magazine, color, great articles, and it is free. All except if you live outside of the 48 contiguous United States, you do have to pay the postage. Otherwise, it is free. We want you to have it. Get signed up today at faithalone.org. 

And now with today’s discussion, here is Bob Wilkin, along with David Renfro. 

BOB: Today we’re going to talk about a somewhat controversial issue, and that is, were Jonah and Job real people, and why does it matter? 

DAVID: Why do you say that, Bob? What’s going on in the church today that would question that? 

BOB: Yeah, I remember years ago I was at the Evangelical Theological Society, which is a group that was established in 1949 to defend the doctrine of inerrancy, and inerrancy means no errors. There are no errors in the Bible. I was talking to one of the guys, and he was saying that he thought that Jonah was a parable, that there was no real person named Jonah. Nobody was swallowed by a great fish. He didn’t really go to Nineveh, this is just a big extended parable. And I remember thinking, how can a guy be at an organization that defends inerrancy and say that you don’t believe in inerrancy? Well, he said he did believe in inerrancy. 

DAVID: That’s weird. 

BOB: But the thing is, in several places, the Lord Jesus Christ referred to Jonah. He said, as Jonah was three days in the belly of the great fish, so shall the Son of Man be three days in the belly of the earth. That is tying His resurrection, 

DAVID: Which is literal. 

BOB: Yeah. To a literal Jonah. And he also said in Matthew 12:41, the Ninevites repented at the preaching of Jonah and greater than Jonah is here. Israel should have been repenting at the preaching of Jesus, but it wasn’t. And so you can’t say that Jonah was a parable, and also say you believe the teachings of Jesus. We have a book in the Old Testament called Jonah, and that this book was understood by the rabbis to be talking about the literal prophet, 

DAVID: A real person. 

BOB: A real person. And the Lord Jesus clearly was referring to him as a real person. 

I remember years ago, I wrote an article talking about inerrancy, and I talked about how leading conservative seminaries now say that Jonah and Job were not real people, that Jonah is a parable about somebody who didn’t exist. Job is a morality play about somebody who didn’t exist. 

I made the mistake of mentioning some people by name and some schools by name. I got a call from one of the profs that I knew pretty well. And he was like, Bob, you’ve made a terrible mistake here. You’ve misrepresented my views. You’ve misrepresented these other seminary professors’ views, and you need to correct that. And I said, listen, I’m so sorry. Tell me where I got it wrong, and I’ll fix it. He went on to explain that he and the other person I mentioned in the article, both believe that Jonah was a real person, a real prophet, and that Job was a real person, probably, as well. 

So I rewrote the article, and I went on to say that their view was this, and they told me this, and by the way, I sent them the article, and they approved it before the correction article went in. You can go to our website, faithalone.org, and look up my articles on inerrancy, that there were two, one of which was a correction article. 

And what they told me was their view was that they believed Jonah and Job were probably real people. Now, I don’t think they would say they were definitely real people, because in their view, I think they would hold out the slight possibility that when Jesus refers to Jonah, maybe he was referring to someone that was not real, 

DAVID: Or just to the story, or something. 

BOB: Just to the story, or something. And of course, James refers to the patience of Job, so the book of James also supports the historicity of Job, but they would say probably both of those were real people. But they said anybody who holds that they weren’t real people, but they affirm inerrancy, hold to inerrancy. Now, does that make any sense to you? In other words, what they’re saying is, as long as you say you believe in inerrancy, you don’t need to believe that Jonah was a real person or Job was a real person. 

DAVID: My question is this, where does that stop? In other words, some stuff that happened to Job was miraculous. Of course, what happened to Jonah was one miracle after the other, is that the way they’re trying to explain the miracles away or something? If that’s true, then they got to explain away the miracles that Jesus did. Where does it stop? And what pops into my brain when this stuff starts is, you don’t want the miraculous to be taught, or the miraculous doesn’t exist, or God doesn’t do miracles. I mean, where does that stop? To me, it’s the, what people would say, the gap in the armor that would allow other philosophies, other false teaching, would come in. Well if you believe this is just a story, then why not have Jesus on the cross is just a story? Like I say, where does it stop? And what does it do to the authority of the Bible

BOB: Ultimately, it says that we are the arbiter over the Bible rather than the Bible being the arbiter over us. 

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DAVID: If what happened to Jonah, the fact that it happened to a human being is a stronger lesson to me as a believer, that God wants us to obey Him and He will do, especially with some people, do whatever it takes to get him on the right road. But if Jonah is not a real person, what happens to that lesson? 

BOB: I’ll tell you what’s really strange to me is, a lot of these conservatives who believe in a very loosey-goosey view of inerrancy, which really isn’t inerrancy, are charismatics. So they believe that God speaks to them, they believe that they speak in tongues, they believe they give prophetic messages or other people give prophetic messages. They believe that there are people that have the gift of healing today and they’re miraculously healing. And yet, when you talk about Jonah, they’re like, no, don’t think so. Or you’re talking about Job, you’re like, no, that’s too. Or a floating axe head, remember we have the floating axe head in the Old Testament and they go, no, that’s something that didn’t happen. And then they come up with all kinds of ways to explain why that’s in there, that somehow the Bible still is without errors. 

I remember hearing a guy, he gave a talk, remember in Matthew 14, Jesus is walking on the water. And Peter said, Lord, can I come out? And he says, come on and Peter walks on the water. And this guy was talking at ETS. And he said, that may have occurred as a post-resurrection appearance, and Matthew moved it up into the ministry of Jesus for his own purposes. Well, to me, that’d be a denial of inerrancy, right? I emailed the guy. He was at a seminary, a leading seminary. And I said, could I have a copy of your paper, he said, I need to talk to you first. So he gave me his phone number. 

So I called him up and we talked. And he said, you know, chronological relocation is well established. I said, can you give me an example? And he said, well, sure, the cleansing of the temple, we know from Matthew, Mark and Luke, it occurred at the end of Jesus’ ministry, at the timing of the last Passover, but John has it at the first Passover and John just moved it forward for his own purposes. I was like, why don’t we see two cleansings of the temple, which by the way, JETS, the Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society later ran an article saying, it’s absolutely clear that there are two cleansings of the temple. They occur in different parts of the temple. There are different incidents involved. But that was his proof. And he said, by the way, I wasn’t saying that’s what happened. I wasn’t saying that Matthew 14 occurred post-resurrection. I was just saying it might have. My response was so you’re saying the Scripture might have errors. He said, no, no, no, that wouldn’t be an error. 

I heard another talk at ETS one year, where the speaker said sometimes the gospel writers put words in Jesus’ mouth. Sometimes they change the meaning of what Jesus said. And this is where this goes. Ultimately, if you say we’re going to look at Jonah and say, no, no, that may be a parable. We’re going to look at Job that may be a morality play. Ultimately, we can then look at the ministry of Jesus and interpret it in light of what we think makes sense. And we can interpret the words of Jesus the way we think it makes sense. Instead of just going to the Scriptures and saying, this is what the Lord says. Now, Lord, help me understand it. 

DAVID: Yeah. What you just said is an illustration of my gap in the armor that it leads to other problems, that at some point, I wouldn’t be surprised, if the Lord tarries, fifty years from now, they’ll be quote, evangelicals, and they’ll believe that pretty much the whole Bible is a parable. 

BOB: I heard one leading evangelical conservative seminary professor and he said, we don’t know for sure that Jesus rose from the dead or that God exists. We have convictions of those things, but we can’t be sure of those things because we don’t have any concrete evidence. We weren’t there when Jesus rose from the dead, etc. And so they said, we take it by faith, that these things are true. These are our convictions. That’s where conservative scholarship is going today. 

DAVID: Yeah. Let’s see what gets me is when John will say over and over: these things I write to you that you may know, not that you may think or feel. 

BOB: So I would encourage all of you to study this issue of inerrancy. I wrote a small book on current issues in inerrancy. And I discussed this in the book. I’ve written some articles like I mentioned, you can check out at www.faithalone.org. But I hope that you have a high view of the Scriptures, that you realize this is the very word of God. This is God’s communication to us. And every word in it is accurate. Every word in it is God.

DAVID: There are no mistakes. 

BOB: There are no mistakes. 

DAVID: By the way, archaeology has proven that. There’s not one archaeological fact that contradicts the biblical word. 

BOB: You’re right. Read Josh McDowell’s book, More Than a Carpenter. It’s a helpful book in this regard. I think Lee Strobel has some good books as well. Make sure that you retain belief in the grace of God, because you need to keep grace in focus. 

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