Jonah and moral agency

Abstract

This essay employs recent work in Psychology and Biblical Studies on moral selfhood in order to examine the portrayal of moral agency in Jonah. Viewed from this interpretive horizon, Jonah’s narrative presents a complex portrayal of moral selfhood and agency through (1) parodying motifs from prophetic literature (e.g. the call narrative and the prophet’s condemnation of foreign nations); (2) the use of didactic elements found in Israelite wisdom literature; (3) the juxtaposition of chapters in which Jonah questions, to varying degrees, the Deuteronomic model of moral agency (one and four) with those that affirm it (two and three); and (4) the characterization of Jonah as less moral than the ideal ancient audience for this work. Because of its complex portrayal of moral selfhood, the book of Jonah should be viewed as a work that attempts to cultivate introspection in its readers about the nature and extent of human agency.

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