What Kind Of Fish Swallowed Jonah? How Did He Survive? - Swallowed By A Whale - Science Documentary

there are strange creatures in the bible that fall outside of normal scientific classification one of the most famous biblical beasts swallowed the prophet jonah whole according to the hebrew bible jonah was consumed because of his sin against god he had refused god's order to preach in a condemned city instead he fled and set sail across the mediterranean sea god then called up a terrible storm jonah told the sailors that he was to blame to satisfy god and calm the storm they would have to throw him overboard the oldest biblical texts tell us that god summoned a great fish which later texts translated as a whale but was this great fish a whale or was it something else the ancients did not have scuba gear or underwater subs what lurked in the deep dark waters of the sea was a mystery great underwater beasts would surface now and then but they would only give sailors a glimpse of their anatomy much was left to the imagination and so descriptions and illustrations of sea creatures back then often don't match what we know of sea animals today but the book of jonah was written thousands of years ago perhaps there were creatures then that no longer exist in our oceans [Music] the bible says jonah survived inside the belly of the great fish for three days and three nights he begged god forgiveness for his disobedience only then did the fish spit out jonah is it possible that a man could be swallowed whole and live what sort of fish could accomplish such a feat this is a a fossil representation of the great white shark but uh the modern shark gets to about this size this was a large shark probably 20 feet or so in length and the teeth of white sharks are large and serrated and designed for taking chunks out of their victims so as a result of most attacks by white sharks on humans resulted in serious injuries which then precludes the possibility of a human being being consumed whole by a white shark without any damage however in the past there were there were large sharks in the fossil record that were large enough to consume a human being without causing such damage these ancestors of the white shark and the mako shark grew to much larger sizes than they are today and one in particular the mega tooth shark or megalodon grew to a large size of 40 feet or so in way about a hundred million years ago this animal was the granddaddy of all sharks the apex predator the top of the food chain we know it eats such things as manatees and whales ancestors to to modern alien whales the enormous teeth of the megalodon have been found embedded in the bones of prehistoric whales this massive shark ate whales for lunch the problem with this being our choice of an animal that consumed a human hole was that it wasn't found on the earth at the same time as humans humans simply were not here at the same time the megalodon was swimming in the ocean however there are other sharks that get larger than the modern white shark these are the basking shark megamouth shark and whale shark all of which get to sizes of 20 to 40 feet in length the bass king shark and whale shark are commonly seen by divers but the megamouth shark is a rare species only discovered in 1976 what do these three sharks have in common besides their large size first and foremost all three of these species are plankton feeding sharks plankton refers to very minute shrimp-like organisms that live in the water column to feed on plankton all three species of shark whale bass king and mega mouth have very large mouths but small throats lined with gill rakers slender structures that form a fine mesh which filters the minute organisms from the water a human if it was unfortunate enough to be swallowed by one of these animals would find the civil-like structure and not be able to go any further the filter structures found in plankton eaters also rules out the largest animals in the sea baleen whales like the blue whale which grows to over 100 feet in length have civ-like mechanisms that wouldn't allow a human into their guts but what about the toothed whales the killer whale despite its fierce reputation and large teeth have never been documented as attacking a human being the sperm whales which get to 50 feet or more in length and have large teeth much like the killer whales also have never been documented as actually attacking a human being so as a result we can again take these three groups of marine mammals and cross them off our list even if one is so unlucky to be swallowed by a whale or a shark the acids in the stomach of these animals is so caustic that nobody could hope to survive even if one found themselves in the belly of this beast it looks as if there is no great fish existing today or in the past that could perform jonah's miracle but this whale may be swimming in metaphor in the book of genesis it is said that god divided the waters below heaven from the waters above perhaps searching underwater for the beast is altogether the wrong place to start perhaps we should be looking to the sky this is a 400 year old star chart an ancient mariners map of the night sky it's covered by constellations depicting all kinds of celestial beasts between the 21st and 24th of december the nights are the darkest and longest of the entire year and in 760 bce the days of jonah the winter solstice was known to ancient astrologers as the whale's belly because during those long nights there was one constellation that swallowed the sky with modern planetarium software we can actually travel back thousands of years to view the night sky from any location on earth so what i'm going to set up here is the night sky for 760 bc going to set our location just above the mediterranean and the date is december 21st so this would have been the longest night of the year during those really dark winter months now i want to bring up a constellation known as cetus now cetus was fabled to be a mythical sea monster or a giant amphibious whale and this constellation is huge it's actually the fourth largest constellation in our night sky it's made up of about 15 faint stars five of which make up the enormous head of this creature spanning down into its giant whale-like tail because it's so enormous you can actually only see it in its entirety between the months of october and january so on this date of december 21st about 8 30 in the evening you can just see that cetus is just above the southern horizon and you can see it just sitting there stretching across that part of the sky during the three longest nights of the year sailing under this constellation was called being in the whale's belly [Music] the story of jonah's whale may be carrying a simple message a man who sins is consumed by darkness and a man who begs forgiveness shall be released from darkness for millennia people have taken the biggest fish story in history literally but this beast is really swimming in the stars

Channel: I Love Docs

Views: 21,729

Keywords: I love docs, i love documentaries, documentary film, free documentaries, documentaries on youtube, syndicado, documentaries online, full documentary, award winning documentary, watch documentaries, best documentary, jonah, jonah bible, bible stories, biblical history, archaeology, science docs, short docs, jonah and the whale, real life bible, history

Id: GhJUxv4DFms

Length: 10min 16sec (616 seconds)

Published: Sun Sep 19 2021