Student Sketches of Jonah in the Sea
I'm teaching a half-semester course on "Three Biblical Tales" at the moment, which includes a Friday component of spritual reflection and application. This Friday some of the students drew images reflecting Jonah's experience in the sea before the big fish rescued him from drowning. They had to come up with these images from scratch in about 7 minutes, but the results are really interesting.
Morgan's image has pieces of leaf or chaff being tossed about by the sea currents. Eventually, they become entagled and trapped in the seaweed at the bottom of the sea. The image reflects Jonah's powerlessness to save himself and perhaps his feeling of being radically adrift in a spiritual sense, given that God is acting so contrary to his ideals and desires.
Loren's image depicts layers of blue sea descending down, down, to the roots of the mountains that, in ancient poetic imagination, undergird the dry earth. The jagged lines at the top represent Jonah's spiritual turmoil and rebellion against God. They settle down as he descends to the depths of the sea and resigns himself to God's will. However, Jonah is not done with these feelings as of chp 2, since they certainly resurface when God relents for the divine decision to destroy Nineveh.
Finally, with a lighter touch, Kitty Guy drew this humorous sketch of various sea creatures contemplating how Jonah might taste. If you can't read the captions, simply click the image to greatly enlarge it.
Morgan's image has pieces of leaf or chaff being tossed about by the sea currents. Eventually, they become entagled and trapped in the seaweed at the bottom of the sea. The image reflects Jonah's powerlessness to save himself and perhaps his feeling of being radically adrift in a spiritual sense, given that God is acting so contrary to his ideals and desires.
Loren's image depicts layers of blue sea descending down, down, to the roots of the mountains that, in ancient poetic imagination, undergird the dry earth. The jagged lines at the top represent Jonah's spiritual turmoil and rebellion against God. They settle down as he descends to the depths of the sea and resigns himself to God's will. However, Jonah is not done with these feelings as of chp 2, since they certainly resurface when God relents for the divine decision to destroy Nineveh.
Finally, with a lighter touch, Kitty Guy drew this humorous sketch of various sea creatures contemplating how Jonah might taste. If you can't read the captions, simply click the image to greatly enlarge it.
posted by S and C at 7:22 PM
1 Comments:
Best class ever! I took it my first semester of seminary. I wrote my first exegesis ever on Jonah for my final paper for that class, and I ended up doing my thesis on Jonah because of that class.
-RBP
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