Jonah (Spencer)
by T.J. Spencer

THE STORY: As Richard Watts Jr. outlines: ”It is the author's fanciful notion that, when Jonah was cast overboard during the tempest at sea and found himself safe in the fish's great belly, he also discovered that he wasn't alone there.

He learned that he had a captive companion, and I'll bet you can't guess his fellow prisoner's identity.

It was no less a personage than Ulysses, not James Joyce's Dubliner but the conqueror of Troy, and he had been living in the fish contentedly for several hundred years.

Fortunately, Ulysses had managed to pick up some Hebrew, and since they had very different viewpoints on things, they were able to engage in lively arguments.

Although the Greek adventurer admired Jonah's vigorous prose style, he himself preferred poetry and he thought the prophet's idea of God was nonsense.

He didn't believe in the Greek gods either, and his theory was that it was the poets who dominated man's destiny by writing tales of his great deeds.

There was another fellow in the fish's insides, a madman to whom Ulysses had given the name of Thersites.

When, however, the three escape and reach Ninevah, the madman turns out to be just a troubled industrialist who had modern ideas about doing business on credit.

The sailors from Jonah's ship turn up in Ninevah too, and there is quite a reunion.

But Jonah remains a little disillusioned because Jehovah spares the city, leaving his predictions looking a little silly.”