{"id":"01KJNXJV726NNHKB6YZJ24QQEE","cid":"bafkreibujsvuzyklimakz652ribhystobejyrous7kpja2ry66axew53ja","type":"text_chunk","properties":{"char_end":810559,"char_start":802566,"chunk_index":113,"chunk_total":178,"estimated_tokens":1999,"source_file_key":"moby-dick","text":"story, is this: it was from Joppa that Jonah set sail.\r\n\r\nAkin to the adventure of Perseus and Andromeda—indeed, by some supposed\r\nto be indirectly derived from it—is that famous story of St. George and\r\nthe Dragon; which dragon I maintain to have been a whale; for in many\r\nold chronicles whales and dragons are strangely jumbled together, and\r\noften stand for each other. “Thou art as a lion of the waters, and as a\r\ndragon of the sea,” saith Ezekiel; hereby, plainly meaning a whale; in\r\ntruth, some versions of the Bible use that word itself. Besides, it\r\nwould much subtract from the glory of the exploit had St. George but\r\nencountered a crawling reptile of the land, instead of doing battle\r\nwith the great monster of the deep. Any man may kill a snake, but only\r\na Perseus, a St. George, a Coffin, have the heart in them to march\r\nboldly up to a whale.\r\n\r\nLet not the modern paintings of this scene mislead us; for though the\r\ncreature encountered by that valiant whaleman of old is vaguely\r\nrepresented of a griffin-like shape, and though the battle is depicted\r\non land and the saint on horseback, yet considering the great ignorance\r\nof those times, when the true form of the whale was unknown to artists;\r\nand considering that as in Perseus’ case, St. George’s whale might have\r\ncrawled up out of the sea on the beach; and considering that the animal\r\nridden by St. George might have been only a large seal, or sea-horse;\r\nbearing all this in mind, it will not appear altogether incompatible\r\nwith the sacred legend and the ancientest draughts of the scene, to\r\nhold this so-called dragon no other than the great Leviathan himself.\r\nIn fact, placed before the strict and piercing truth, this whole story\r\nwill fare like that fish, flesh, and fowl idol of the Philistines,\r\nDagon by name; who being planted before the ark of Israel, his horse’s\r\nhead and both the palms of his hands fell off from him, and only the\r\nstump or fishy part of him remained. Thus, then, one of our own noble\r\nstamp, even a whaleman, is the tutelary guardian of England; and by\r\ngood rights, we harpooneers of Nantucket should be enrolled in the most\r\nnoble order of St. George. And therefore, let not the knights of that\r\nhonorable company (none of whom, I venture to say, have ever had to do\r\nwith a whale like their great patron), let them never eye a Nantucketer\r\nwith disdain, since even in our woollen frocks and tarred trowsers we\r\nare much better entitled to St. George’s decoration than they.\r\n\r\nWhether to admit Hercules among us or not, concerning this I long\r\nremained dubious: for though according to the Greek mythologies, that\r\nantique Crockett and Kit Carson—that brawny doer of rejoicing good\r\ndeeds, was swallowed down and thrown up by a whale; still, whether that\r\nstrictly makes a whaleman of him, that might be mooted. It nowhere\r\nappears that he ever actually harpooned his fish, unless, indeed, from\r\nthe inside. Nevertheless, he may be deemed a sort of involuntary\r\nwhaleman; at any rate the whale caught him, if he did not the whale. I\r\nclaim him for one of our clan.\r\n\r\nBut, by the best contradictory authorities, this Grecian story of\r\nHercules and the whale is considered to be derived from the still more\r\nancient Hebrew story of Jonah and the whale; and vice versâ; certainly\r\nthey are very similar. If I claim the demi-god then, why not the\r\nprophet?\r\n\r\nNor do heroes, saints, demigods, and prophets alone comprise the whole\r\nroll of our order. Our grand master is still to be named; for like\r\nroyal kings of old times, we find the head waters of our fraternity in\r\nnothing short of the great gods themselves. That wondrous oriental\r\nstory is now to be rehearsed from the Shaster, which gives us the dread\r\nVishnoo, one of the three persons in the godhead of the Hindoos; gives\r\nus this divine Vishnoo himself for our Lord;—Vishnoo, who, by the first\r\nof his ten earthly incarnations, has for ever set apart and sanctified\r\nthe whale. When Brahma, or the God of Gods, saith the Shaster, resolved\r\nto recreate the world after one of its periodical dissolutions, he gave\r\nbirth to Vishnoo, to preside over the work; but the Vedas, or mystical\r\nbooks, whose perusal would seem to have been indispensable to Vishnoo\r\nbefore beginning the creation, and which therefore must have contained\r\nsomething in the shape of practical hints to young architects, these\r\nVedas were lying at the bottom of the waters; so Vishnoo became\r\nincarnate in a whale, and sounding down in him to the uttermost depths,\r\nrescued the sacred volumes. Was not this Vishnoo a whaleman, then? even\r\nas a man who rides a horse is called a horseman?\r\n\r\nPerseus, St. George, Hercules, Jonah, and Vishnoo! there’s a\r\nmember-roll for you! What club but the whaleman’s can head off like\r\nthat?\r\n\r\n\r\nCHAPTER 83. Jonah Historically Regarded.\r\n\r\nReference was made to the historical story of Jonah and the whale in\r\nthe preceding chapter. Now some Nantucketers rather distrust this\r\nhistorical story of Jonah and the whale. But then there were some\r\nsceptical Greeks and Romans, who, standing out from the orthodox pagans\r\nof their times, equally doubted the story of Hercules and the whale,\r\nand Arion and the dolphin; and yet their doubting those traditions did\r\nnot make those traditions one whit the less facts, for all that.\r\n\r\nOne old Sag-Harbor whaleman’s chief reason for questioning the Hebrew\r\nstory was this:—He had one of those quaint old-fashioned Bibles,\r\nembellished with curious, unscientific plates; one of which represented\r\nJonah’s whale with two spouts in his head—a peculiarity only true with\r\nrespect to a species of the Leviathan (the Right Whale, and the\r\nvarieties of that order), concerning which the fishermen have this\r\nsaying, “A penny roll would choke him”; his swallow is so very small.\r\nBut, to this, Bishop Jebb’s anticipative answer is ready. It is not\r\nnecessary, hints the Bishop, that we consider Jonah as tombed in the\r\nwhale’s belly, but as temporarily lodged in some part of his mouth. And\r\nthis seems reasonable enough in the good Bishop. For truly, the Right\r\nWhale’s mouth would accommodate a couple of whist-tables, and\r\ncomfortably seat all the players. Possibly, too, Jonah might have\r\nensconced himself in a hollow tooth; but, on second thoughts, the Right\r\nWhale is toothless.\r\n\r\nAnother reason which Sag-Harbor (he went by that name) urged for his\r\nwant of faith in this matter of the prophet, was something obscurely in\r\nreference to his incarcerated body and the whale’s gastric juices. But\r\nthis objection likewise falls to the ground, because a German exegetist\r\nsupposes that Jonah must have taken refuge in the floating body of a\r\n_dead_ whale—even as the French soldiers in the Russian campaign turned\r\ntheir dead horses into tents, and crawled into them. Besides, it has\r\nbeen divined by other continental commentators, that when Jonah was\r\nthrown overboard from the Joppa ship, he straightway effected his\r\nescape to another vessel near by, some vessel with a whale for a\r\nfigure-head; and, I would add, possibly called “The Whale,” as some\r\ncraft are nowadays christened the “Shark,” the “Gull,” the “Eagle.” Nor\r\nhave there been wanting learned exegetists who have opined that the\r\nwhale mentioned in the book of Jonah merely meant a life-preserver—an\r\ninflated bag of wind—which the endangered prophet swam to, and so was\r\nsaved from a watery doom. Poor Sag-Harbor, therefore, seems worsted all\r\nround. But he had still another reason for his want of faith. It was\r\nthis, if I remember right: Jonah was swallowed by the whale in the\r\nMediterranean Sea, and after three days he was vomited up somewhere\r\nwithin three days’ journey of Nineveh, a city on the Tigris, very much\r\nmore than three days’ journey across from the nearest point of the\r\nMediterranean coast. How is that?\r\n\r\nBut was there no other way for the whale to land the prophet within\r\nthat short distance of Nineveh? Yes. He might have carried him round by\r\nthe way of the Cape of Good Hope."},"relationships":[{"peer":"01KJNXEDHZCC8DR4EPSQD0QP4P","peer_label":"moby-dick","peer_type":"text","predicate":"derived_from"},{"peer":"01KJNXECF9R1EZKS5Z7J8A8ZSB","peer_type":"collection","predicate":"collection"}],"ver":1,"created_at":"2026-03-02T00:01:19.074Z","ts":"2026-03-02T00:01:19.074Z","edited_by":{"method":"manual","user_id":"01KJ6WPT018SDDANE6N7Q8E428"}}