Bible Book Club met for the third time last night. A group of six of us met in a pub and discussed the Book of Jonah. It has been harder to put out of our heads our apparent familiarity with the story this time and the group did well in spotting that a better title than Jonah and the Whale might be Jonah and the Assyrians.
This brief reflection is on one question which our group has found more fascinating than we expected. A classic Book Club questions is, 'If this were a film, who would play the parts?' It leads to much discussion about how people see the characters in their mind's eye. I for one, have Robert Powell's Jesus stuck in my head from the 1970s movie Jesus of Nazareth. When I read the gospels that is what pops into my head. So an answer to the question does impact your future reading.
Who plays Jonah? A young man? A fit man? No. A man who is grumpy. A man who jokes without laughing. A man who finds humour in the relentless inevitability of the nature of God. 'I knew you'd forgive them. Kill me now.'
Our Jonah, is Jack Dee.
We are moving on from the great Hebrew stories. Our next book is the Gospel of Mark. We meet again on December 12th. Contact me if you are interested. Steal the idea if you are not local.
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