[The AMAIC would give the priority to Jonah, instead]
....
MOTIFS COMMON TO THE
ARGONAUTICA AND
JONAH
Several parallel motifs are of considerable
significance in both stories: the names of the heroes, the presence of a dove,
the idea of "fleeing" like the wind and causing a storm, the attitude of the
sailors, the presence of a sea-monster or dragon threatening the hero or
swallowing him, and the form and meaning of the difficult word
kikayon. Looking at these
themes and motifs reciprocally illuminates both accounts.
Names
First of all, the names of the two sea adventurers
appear to be strikingly similar, at least in Greek. Jonah’s name in Hebrew,
Yônah, when transliterated in
Greek as Iônas, can easily be
seen as a metathesis of Iasôn.
Whether that was a factor in the author's choice of a name cannot be known. But
it is curious to read in the twelfth-century commentator Eustathius that an
ancient tradition thought the name Jason was a metathesis of his own father’s
name, Aisôn.**9** The fluidity
of this name, together with the personality of the hero, may explain why Jason
was one of several Greek names often used by Jews in Palestine, Egypt, and
Cyrenaica, at least from the third century BCE on.**10** Regarding Cyrenaica,
it is notable that in some of the many variants on the return of the
Argonauts,**11** the latter reach Africa and meet a Triton, the merman of
pre-Greek mythology, who announces to them that Cyrene would be the possession
of their descendants. The legends and the name of an heroic sailor
circumnavigating the sea on the first mythic long-ship would have appealed to
Jews and other peoples who were settling around the Mediterranean sea. This
interest is still in evidence at the time of the so-called “Tomb of Jason” in
Jerusalem, which is dated to the beginning of the first century BCE and contains
a Greek inscription and the drawing of a military ship.**12**
....
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