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A brief update! I am still working on my translation of Qalonymos b. Qalonymos! It has been rough going due to financial pressures, health issues, and the stresses of being a poor disabled tranny in fascist America. In the meantime! I've prepared a small translation and introduction to the first chapter of the book of Jonah. Enjoy, and thank you!
.... Additionally, Jonah does not act according to how the tropes of prophetic literature would lead the audience to expect. In the existing prophetic literature, where there is a Call narrative aspect, while the prophetic figure may show fear (Isaiah 6), lack of confidence (Jeremiah) or rage (in the case of Ezekiel, given no choice but to accept when the breath of the deity enters him and picks him up on his feet, and he later states (Ezk 3:14) that the breath "lifted me up and took me away, so I went in bitter rage of spirit". But none do as Jonah do and skedaddle immediately upon hearing the call. A geographic note makes this passage even funnier: Jonah flees to Tarshish, which (depending on the scholar) is either to be identified with the city Tarsus in Asia Minor, or Tartessos in what is now Spain. In either case, it is to the west from the area where Judeans lived and so where Jonah would have been thought to have begun. Nineveh was located in what is present-day ʿIraq, in Mesopotamia -- exactly the opposite direction!
