The Expositor Volume 6 (Paperback)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: Prof. Budde for this original and suggestive commentary, which, even when it does not convince us, seldom fails to place the subject in a new light, and in textual criticism marks a turning-point. T. K. Cheyne. THE SIGN OF THE PROPHET JONAS. Not one of us probably can remember a time when he was not conscious of an internal protest against the interpretation which is to be found in all commentaries of the words in which our Lord speaks of the sign of the prophet Jonas. It has been clearly impossible to accept it, because three days and three nights did not intervene between the Crucifixion and the Eesurrection?and yet, if we must needs reject it, what other could we adopt ? There seemed to be no alternative. For the violent course suggested by some, to assume the words about " the fish's belly" and "the heart of the earth" to be a later interpolation, was manifestly inadmissible, and even if it were otherwise the difficulty would remain the same. The object of the present paper is to consider the question, whether there is really no alternative; whether there is not another interpretation both possible and probable, which is simple and free from difficulty. The difficulties which attend the interpretation of onr Lord's words with reference to the comparison between Himself and the prophet Jonah, difficulties which are by no means confined to the period of three days and three nights, are of course wholly distinct from any difficulties which beset the narrative in the book of Jonah itself; and into these last we do not now propose to enter at all. There are two passages in the Gospel of St. Matthew, and one in that of St. Luke, in which our Lord is said to have referred to the prophet Jonah. If we would rightly understand what is meant by the sign of the prophet ...