New Britain Herald Newspaper, July 8, 1927, Page 23

S The Rev. Mr. Bellah’s Interesting Theories and How He Thinks They Confirm the Truth of One of the Most Discussed Episodes of Old Testam = 0:\ A pion of the literal truth of the Bible story of Jonah and the whale has arisen in Omaha, Nebraska, in the per- son of the Rev. Dr. C. G. Bellah, pastor of the Memorial Church of the Seventh Day Adventist, in that city, and one of the outstanding Bible scholars of his de- nomination. ANEW and vigorous cham- Dr. Bellah’s years of research have - satisfied him that it was humanly pos- sible for Jonah to have remained three days and three nights in the belly of the whale and have emerged alive and well. “The Lord,” he challenges, quoting the Bible, “had prepared a great fish to swallow up Jonah. “Why should we doubt that Bible story of a miracle, when we know that even in modern times great whales have been known to swallow men alive?” People who try to get around the whale story as figurative or allegorical, draw the Omaha pastor’s wrath, and in his lectures-as field secretary of the Mid- dle Western Administrative District of the Seventh Day Adventist Church he uses lantern slides showing that there is room enough in the belly of a whale, an- eighty-seven-foot of the sulphur bottom species, to permit a man to have a regu- lar “flat” therein—parlor, bedroom and bath. The Omaha pastor has been a believer in the story of Jonah and the whale all his life, but says that he never appre- ciated the folly of those who make fun of it until he began to collect evidence land build up his case against the scoffers. “Noted commentators on the Scrip- tures, such as Dr. Adam Clark and Mat- thew Henry, have upheld the truth of the whale story,” says Dr. Bellah. “But the people who like to make light of the truth say it was scientifically impossible. “Let us see. Let us examine the evi- dence in the case of James Bartley, who has been called the modern Jonah by 'some profane writers. “In the month of February, 1891, the whaler, ‘Star of the East,’ launched two boat loads of harpooners to pursue a whale seen spouting in the distance. One particularly superb specimen was marked out and pursued to the death. This great fish, or sea monster, was so powerful that in its death agony it lashed out with its tail and splintered one of the small boats, and the crew of that boat jumped into the sea. “All but one of them was picked up. After the excitement attending the slaughter of the whale had subsided, it was discovered that one James Bartley was missing. It was believed that he had been drowned, for he couldn’t swim. “After the whale ceased threshing about, it was pulled up alongside the whaling ship, and the work of cutting it up began. A day and a night were taken for the task. And finally the men came to the stomach of the whale. “Great was their surprise, on cutting it open, to find therein their missing comrade, James Bartley, whole and alive, although unconscious. “They had great trouble in reviving him. . They had very primitive equips ment for that. But Bartley did live, and at the end of several days he re- d gained the use of his mind and his speech and began to talk about his experience. “He remembered well being tossed into the air by the enraged whale, after Another lantern slide showing Jonah paying his fare before starting on the voyage which, the Bible tells us, ended by his being swallowed by the whale . self slipping down a narrow channel. Then he was in a large sac, and by feel- ing about he discovered, to his horror, that he was in the whale’s stomach. He could still breathe, though with difficulty, and he had a feeling of insufferable heat. The thought that he was doomed to die there occurred to him, and the anguish of it caused him to lapse into merciful unconsciousness. He remained unconscious until he was rescued. “That story, well vouched for by the captain of the ‘Star of the East’ and his crew, was printed in the respected Lit- erary Digest on April 4, 1896. Bartley stuck the voyage out, but when the whaler reached London he was obliged to go to a hospital and undergo treat- met for his nerves. His skin was tanned, evidently by the action of the gastric juices in the whale’s insides, but he lived. That is the point.” Dr. Bellah wonders how people who believe that story can s{ill doubt the Bible, in which it is speéifically stated that the great fish that swallowed Jonah was “prepared by the Lord,” the instru- ment of a miracle, and therefor not to be judged by ordinary standards. Moreover, he says that in the early days of whaling it was no uncommon thing for a man to be found whole in the belly of a slaughtered whale, al- though the man was usually quite dead. Proceeding on the assumption that the whale of the story was about eighty- seven feet long, or over eighty feet, in any case, he shows by the use of lan- tern slides that it would have been pos- sible for the prophet not only to survive, but to make himself really comfortable for the three days and three nights that passed before he was “cast up.” One slide shows the three-room-and- bath “flat” that the Omaha minister says Jonah would have had ample room for inside the whale. (An artist’s elabora- tion of this slide is reproduced at the top of this page.) Two more of the slides are used to illustrate this page— one of Jonah paying his fare before tak- ing ship, and the other of the prophet being cast into the whale’s gaping jaws. Dr. Bellah is careful to explain his An artist’s elaboration of the Rev. Mr. Bel- lah’s interesting theory that the experience of Jonah, as described in the Old Testament, is not at all improbable, and that he would have had toom for a complete housekeeping apartment of three rooms and bath in the inside of an 87-foot whale of the sulphur bottom species purpose before using his slides. He does not seek to have his hearers believe he , thinks Jonah actually lived &s the slides might suggest to a simple-minded person. There were no porcelain bathtubs in those good old days, for one thing. Cook- ing ranges, comfortable re- clining chairs and news- papers had not been in- vented. And if they had been, there was no electric light switch in the whale’s belly by which to turn on the light so one might read at his ease. What he wants to emphasize is that there was room enough for a man, even one “untouched of God,” to move about inside the whale’s belly; that a big whale’s throat is wide enough to permit a man to slip down; that the whale incident not only happened, but is scientifically explainable, even without stressing the matter of Divine intervention. In his argument, as he swings around the speaking circuit, Dr. Bellah tells his people that the only leg scoffers have to stand on, when they reject the whale story, is the claim that Jonah could not have had enough air to survive for three days and three nights; and he regards that leg as a weak one. They are talking theory, he cortends; and he points to the fact that James Bartley, an ordinary human being, who never was a prophet, nor the son of a prophet, did survive more than twenty- four hours in the belly of an ordinary whale. “How much more ready we should be to admit the possibility and the truth of the story that a specially created whale did swallow and retain one of God’s elect for three days and three nights, to serve the purpose of the Lord,” he reasons. “To some milk-and-watery Christians, the Jonah story seems incredible, merely because some unbelieving mockers try to make out that it is funny. “Many a man who will accept the Bible's statement that Joshua made the sun stand still, Lot’s wife was turned into a pillar of salt and the Israclites crossed over on the bed of the Red Sea, will balk at the Bible story of Jonah and the whale. Yet, on purely natural grounds, it is as explainable as many a fact that figures in the accepted history of the nations.” D\n Bellah is a man just turned fifty, Copyright, 1927, by Johnson Features, Ine vigorous, physically and mentally, and possessor of a famous library, well- stocked with books of Biblical lore. His mission in life, as he sees it, is to prove the literal truth of the Scriptures, and his parishioners agree with his views. “It would be well,” he says, “to re- member that Christ, when on earth, said that as Jonah was three days and nights in the whale’s belly, so He, the Son of Man, would be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth. Skep- tics will find it hard to get around that without accepting the whale story, or repudiating Christ.” He insists that there is no conflict be- tween real science and real religion, but only between scientists who do not know their science, and theologians who do not know the Bible. “If Jonah’s story had been a fake or myth, the Pharisees would have caught up Christ when he alluded to it as a fact,” Dr. Bellah argues. “They were always trying to catch Him in a lie or a half-truth. But no, it remained for mod- ern scholars to doubt the incident and make game of the truth. Jonah’s power as a prophet and preacher is the best sign he was in the whale’s belly. The marvelous experience he had passed through helped him in getting half a million converts in three days.” The “great fish” that swallowed Jonah has usually been thought of as a whale, because the whale is the biggest fish, or rather mammal, in the sea. But scien- tists who try to “reconcile” science and the Scriptures have sometimes advanced the theory that it was a shark. Sharks have swallowed human beings whole much oftener than whales, in recent times. The main objection of the scientists to the whale story has been their claim that while a great sulphur bottom whale is sometimes eighty-seven feet long, and a whale’s mouth is big enough to accom- Reproduction of a lantern slide used by the Rev. Mr. Bellah to illustrate the lecture on Jonah and showing the Old Testament prophet being thrown into the gaping jaws of the whale The Rev. C. G. Bellah of Omaha, Nebraska modate a man, and a whale’s belly is likewise plenty roomy, a human being would be squeezed to death in the pas- sage through the mammal’s throat. Then, too, they say that while a man could easily live three days and three nights without food or drink, he would not get enough air in the whale’s insides. But Jonah might have been in a state of suspended animation, they admit; the Hindus say that certain fakirs can be buried alive in the ground for days at a time, and be none the worse for their experience. In producing his evidence to prove that the Jonah incident could have hap- pened according to natural laws, Dr, Bellah carefully explains that he him- self needs no such scientific proof. The word of Christ that it happened is enough. He does not intend to prove by scientific data that it did happen as the Bible says. He merely wishes to prove that the scoffers are the foolish ones for saying it could not have happened, and is in violation of Nature’s rules.