Prophet Jonah and Endymion Likenesses



 

[The AMAIC would give the priority to Jonah, however]

Taken from: http://humweb.ucsc.edu/gweltaz/courses/prophets/commentaries/Jonah/jonah.html

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ECHOES OF JASON IN THE LATER ICONOGRAPHY OF JONAH

Jonah as naked hero features prominently in later Christian iconography. Scholars have shown that ancient versions of sea stories and especially their iconography (for instance combinations of the story of Heracles and Hermione), were integrated more or less successfully in Christian retellings and illustrations of Jonah’s story.**53** I suggest that among the themes re-employed in this iconography, some of the motifs of the Jason cycle might have an important role which has not been brought to light until now, at least to my knowledge. Motifs which were common to both stories in the fifth and fourth centuries BCE (and even before?) are still fused together in the first centuries of our era. I can indicate only briefly some of the parallels and adaptations, however, while hoping that a full study of the representations of Jason and Jonah be undertaken in the future to check the hypothesis.

The transformation of motifs taken from Graeco-Roman depictions of other heroes and their re-employment in Christian and Jewish representations of Jonah have long been noted. For instance, it has been shown that the image on a sarcophagus from Santa Maria Antiqua of a naked Jonah resting languidly under a vine, closely resembles that of Endymion reclining in seemingly beatific pleasure, with his right arm stretched behind his head.**54** Structurally speaking, however, and without dismissing the aforementioned striking comparison, the presence of a ship, a sea monster to the left (not a whale or fish), a tree (not a gourd?) above Jonah, with a ram and two sheep (?) above him, and a woman standing to his right ––all of these elements make sense as the continuation of the Jason imagery. I propose therefore that the artist conflated stock images of both Jason and Endymion. I note also that this paradisiac interpretation of Jonah under the gourd, though in line with the Jewish interpretation of the sukkah and the Christian idea of resurrection, and fitting long-standing representations of Endymion and even Jason (there is an Edenic quality to the wood where the latter finds the Golden Fleece), is completely contradictory to the sense one gets of Jonah in the Hebrew story, namely that of an angry and sulking man. Furthermore, in the Biblical story, the episode of the gourd is placed after Jonah goes to Nineveh and is well separated from the storm and disgorgement episode. But in the Jewish or Christian iconography of Jonah, the gourd scene is set close by the ship and sea-monster or whale, and Nineveh is altogether absent. The simplest explanation for this juxtaposition is that painters and sculptors were fitting familiar images from Greek mythology onto Jonah's story.

In one of his letters, Augustine answers, or rather dodges, a curious question asked by a pagan friend of the Carthage priest Deogratias, who is writing to the bishop of Hippo for intellectual ammunition he might use in his discussions with that friend.**55** The question seems to be occasioned by a representation of Jonah very much like the one described above, and other similar images in which the ocean adventure and the “gourd” scene are juxtaposed. The pagan friend wishes to be enlightened about the meaning of the gourd plant growing above Jonah, who has just been disgorged by the monster.**56** This pagan man may have heard the biblical story but more certainly he has seen Jonah represented as vomited by a monstrous sea-creature on the seaside, probably naked,**57** under the gourd. The scenes of the vomiting and the gourd could be kept apart, as in the fourth century mosaic at Aquileia, for instance. Yet there are numerous representations setting both motifs side by side. One could argue that this proximity was a function of artistic convenience alone but it makes good sense to see in it the direct influence of the figurative Jason cycle.

A proper elucidation of the role of the Jason story in these traditions might help to explain some of the questions that ancient representations posed for early Christian interpreters and exhortative preaching. There are curious silences in early Christian teaching regarding, for instance, the treatment of the episode of the gourd, Jonah’s nakedness and baldness, which stand out in contrast to the images of Jonah. The latter detail forms an interesting puzzle: compare Jason on the Cerveteri cup, bearded, with long wavy and glistening hair, hanging below him like the fleece, and Jonah. Jason’s lustrous hair is also mentioned by Pindar.**58** Early pictures of Jonah, likewise, show him long-haired, occasionally bearded. An eastern Mediterranean marble figure from the second half of the third century CE, for instance, has a bearded, long-haired and naked Jonah being vomited out of a sea-monster (part whale?).**59** For the Midrash on Jonah, however, the heat inside the monster was so intense that Jonah lost his clothes and his hair. But in this case, it may have been the classical representations of yet another hero, namely Heracles, which brought about the theme of baldness and nakedness (though, as mentioned in a note above, nakedness seems to have been a standard component of any image of shipwrecked victims). As for the gourd usually shown above Jonah, it might have been part of the stock images used for Jason at a very early stage. In an Etruscan bronze mirror of the fifth- or fourth-century BCE, a long-haired Jason (HEIASUN, see plate) emerges from the dragon with sword in his right hand, fleece in his left, surrounded by what appears to be a broad-leafed plant having the shape of a vine and bearing fruit which look like melons.**60**

These are only a few of the iconographic parallels and adaptations. A thorough study of the representations of Jason and Jonah would show in detail in what way century-old images of Jason were attached to Jonah in the first centuries CE. Eventually, though, the Christian messianic interpretations of the Hebrew story asserted their influence and slowly altered the nature and presentation of the repertory of stock images.

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