historicity has been denied. The critics, though certain of almost all
of their objections to the Bible, have not all decided whether it is
"based on history, or is a nature myth." Keunen has discovered (?) that
it is "a product of the opposition to the strict and exclusive policy of
Ezra toward heathen nations." Objection is made to the historical
statements of the book on various grounds. The objector interposes this
difficulty: "Can we conceive of a heathen city being converted by an
obscure foreign prophet?"

This objection is of kin to that which can not conceive that by a
creative act of God the universe was brought into being, or the inspired
statement that "the worlds were framed by the word of God." It is the
presence of the supernatural everywhere that is beyond the conception of
the critics.

Again, they interpose the difficulty: "How could the Ninevites give
credence to a man who was not a servant of Ashur?"

Without presenting the multiplied difficulties that rationalism has
supposedly discovered, they may be summed up in their statement
substantially, that the book of Jonah is not historical. Whatever else
it may be, whether legend, myth or allegory, it is not history.

We turn again from the fancies of "Expert Scholarship" to the testimony
of the Bible concerning itself. We discover that the prophet Jonah is
referred to several hundred years before the critics have permitted him
to live. It is written in 2 Kings xiv. 25 that Jeroboam the Second
secured the restoration of certain territory, "according to the word of
the Lord God of Israel, which he spake by the hand of his servant Jonah,
the son of Amittai the prophet, which was of Gath-hepher."