Book of Jonah
book of the Hebrew Bible
The Book of Jonah is one of the twelve minor prophets of the Nevi'im ('Prophets') in the Jewish Hebrew Bible, and an individual book in the Christian Old Testament, where it has four chapters. The book tells of a Hebrew prophet named Jonah, son of Amittai, who is sent by God to prophesy the destruction of Nineveh, but attempts to escape his divine mission.
The story has a long interpretive history and has become well known through popular children's stories. In Judaism, it is the Haftarah portion read during the afternoon of Yom Kippur to instill reflection on God's willingness to forgive those who repent, and it remains a popular story among Christians. The story is also retold in the Quran.
Mainstream Bible scholars generally regard the story of the Book of Jonah as fictional, and often at least partially satirical. Most scholars consider the Book of Jonah to have been composed long after the events it describes due to its use of words and motifs exclusive to postexilic Aramaic sources.
Date
The prophet Jonah (Hebrew: יוֹנָה, Yonā) is mentioned in 2 Kings 14:25, which places Jonah's life during the reign of Jeroboam II, King of Israel, (786–746 BCE), but the book of Jonah itself does not name a king or give any other details that would give the story a firm date. Most scholars consider the Book of Jonah to have been composed long after the events it describes due to its use of words and motifs exclusive to postexilic Aramaic sources. A later date is sometimes proposed, with Katherine Dell arguing for the Hellenistic period (332–167 BCE).
“Book of Jonah” enters the record as book of the Hebrew Bible. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Book, Jonah and book can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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Object files, edition statements, performance records and contemporary criticism preserve different stages of the work’s history. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 19, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q178819. The Library of Congress control number is n79142708. 1 of 2 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank.
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This entry incorporates text from “Book of Jonah” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.