Just now I came across this:
Quote:
[Anaximander] declares, not that fishes and men came into being in the same parents, but that originally men came into being inside fishes, and that, having been nurtured there--like sharks--and having become adequate to look after themselves, they then came forth and took to the land.
FROM:
Ancient Philosophy, Philosophical Classics, third edition, Vol. 1, edited by Forrest E. Baird and Walter Kaufmann, 2000 (p. 9).
Anaximander lived ca. 620-546 B.C. According to the Baird and Kaufman, it was during his lifetime that Nebuchadnezzar conquered Jerusalem and that the prophet Ezekiel was exiled to Babylon.
This tells me that about the same time that someone was writing the Jonah story for the Jews, Anaximander was positing origins of humanity as having been inside fish. According to some other fragments also included by Baird and Kaufman, Anaximander had a variety of speculations regarding the origin of man. It is so very similar to our speculations of evolution.
Did whoever wrote the OT in its present form decide to keep the Jonah story but put God at the top to disguise it's original meaning???
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