{"id":13348,"date":"2010-09-06T17:54:34","date_gmt":"2010-09-06T22:54:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/?p=13348"},"modified":"2010-10-25T11:41:37","modified_gmt":"2010-10-25T16:41:37","slug":"jonah-overboard","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/2010\/09\/jonah-overboard\/","title":{"rendered":"Jonah, overboard."},"content":{"rendered":"<p>If you haven&#8217;t heard the story in Sunday School yet, you will shortly (<a href=\"http:\/\/scriptures.lds.org\/en\/jonah\/1\">Jonah 1<\/a>). Surprisingly, the combination of God and bad weather is still a potent force in the modern era &#8212; my stake was praying for rain earlier this year. But here is a more colorful Jonah-like account with sailors, storms, and witches from the 17th century.<\/p>\n<p> <!--more--><\/p>\n<blockquote><p>In 1654, on a ship traveling from London to Maryland, sailors spread a &#8220;rumor &#8230; [that] one Mary Lee, then aboard the said ship, was a witch.&#8221; At first the captain rebuffed their urging &#8220;that a trial might be had of her&#8221;; but then, as &#8220;cross winds&#8221; rose to impede the voyage and &#8220;the ship grew daily more leaky &#8212; almost to desperation,&#8221; his attitude changed. The sailors were permitted to &#8220;search her body,&#8221; and quickly discovered &#8220;the mark of a witch upon her &#8230; [whereupon] they importuned the Master [Captain] to put her to death.&#8221; He replied that &#8220;they might do what they would, and went into his cabin.&#8221; And so, &#8220;laying all their hands to the execution of her,&#8221; they proceded finally to &#8220;hang her as a witch.&#8221;<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>This was taken from <i>The Enemy Within: 2,000 Years of Witch-hunting in the Western World<\/i> by John Demos (Viking, 2008; ellipses and parenthetical insertions in original). Perhaps sailors are just a superstitious lot. The sailors in Jonah&#8217;s tale were quick to discern a supernatural explanation for the storm they were braving. But when the lot fell on Jonah, they didn&#8217;t rush to judgment, as did the Maryland-bound crew in 1654. Instead, they did their best to save the ship through their own heroic efforts. Only when that effort utterly failed did they heed Jonah&#8217;s admirably humble request and toss him overboard. That these noble sailors were almost a bit too noble is the sort of feature that leads many scholars to classify the book of Jonah as a lesson-teaching short story or even satire rather than historical narrative.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>If you haven&#8217;t heard the story in Sunday School yet, you will shortly (Jonah 1). Surprisingly, the combination of God and bad weather is still a potent force in the modern era &#8212; my stake was praying for rain earlier this year. But here is a more colorful Jonah-like account with sailors, storms, and witches from the 17th century.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":99,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13348","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-corn"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13348","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/99"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13348"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13348\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13683,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13348\/revisions\/13683"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13348"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13348"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13348"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}