so straightforwardly as historical narrative as is Jonah. T. T. Perowne comments that the setting of the book “is too exact, too detailed, too closely in accordance with facts, to be in keeping with the allegory itself.”9 Parable. In current scholarship this is the prevailing opinion. G. Ch. Aalders gives two characteristics of the OT parable: (1) simplicity, treating one central subject, and (2) an accompanying interpretation. Yet Jonah is a compound story and has no interpretation.10 The exponents