Is there a connection between the biblical story of the prophet Jonah and the water hero of Russian folk tales?
"Unlikely …" - we say, I do not know any unusual evidence to the contrary, which leads the author of this article.
WHO SWALLOWED JONAH?
As the Bible tells us, the Lord commanded the prophet Jonah to go to preach in the city of Nineveh, because terrible atrocities were committed there. But Jonah lost heart and, deciding to flee to the city of Tarshish, boarded a ship that was heading there.
For his disobedience, the Lord sent a storm to the ship, threatening him with destruction. And then Jonah confessed to the captain his sin before God and asked him to throw him into the raging sea in order to calm the storm. The Lord not only accepted this sacrificial act as an atonement, but also forgave the prophet. He commanded the big whale to swallow Jonah, and after three days and three nights to vomit him safe and sound on land. What happened.
The Bible tells the story of Jonah in the dry language of the court chronicle, as if its author sees it as a common ordinary event. Its main meaning is that the Lord punishes for disobedience, and since He is also merciful, He forgives those who repent. The swallowing of a person by a whale with subsequent expulsion is just a technique applied by the Almighty, in which there is nothing special.
Those who consider the biblical story to be a fantastic fiction traditionally cite the anatomy of cetaceans as the main argument: the esophagus of planktivorous whales is too narrow to swallow a person, and toothed killer whales and sperm whales grind prey even before it enters the stomach.
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But in practice, the anatomical argument turns out to be untenable. According to the French oceanologist Jacques Yves Cousteau, Jonah could have ended up in the womb of a giant mero, a fish from the serran family. These giants reach three meters in length and can easily swallow a person. A characteristic feature of serranids is the swallowing of prey whole, without injuring it with teeth, and the ability to regurgitate it back.
This version is also supported by the traditional legends of Australian and Malay fishermen about people swallowed by monstrous fish: unable to digest such a large prey, the fish expelled it. True, they are about a close relative of the merou - a stone perch, reaching a weight of half a ton, but this does not change the matter. Therefore, there is every reason to assume that for a short time a person can be in the stomach of a fish from the serran family and remain alive.
WHAT CAN WATER?
According to ancient beliefs, a goblin lives in the forest, a kind of humanoid creature, set to maintain order among the inhabitants there. And in every large reservoir there is its analogue - "the master of waters", or simply water. Nowadays, few people believe grandmother's fairy tales, even if historians believe that they reflect the centuries-old folk experience.
I also did not really believe that in all sorts of fantastic past, and there are still many of them in the rural outback, there is real content. Up to one memorable day.
For the last ten years I have been in a village near the very border of the Vladimir region. There are no large bodies of water there. But after they put a dam on our pereplyuyka river, a rather large artificial lake was formed - the ultimate dream of village fishermen. One morning my neighbor Timofey, who is intolerant of alcohol, presented a surprise: he returned from fishing in one boot. According to Timothy, when he went into the water to unhook the hook caught on the leaf of the water lily, the water lily grabbed him by the leg and dragged him into the depths. “It's good that the boot slipped off, I shod it on one toe, otherwise I might be a drowned man,” he finished his night adventure saga.
Alas, I could not find a more plausible explanation than Timofeev's until my friend Oleg, a journalist by profession and an avid fisherman by vocation, told his story.
- I often went on business trips to Siberia and knew what a wonderful fishing there was, but I could not find even a day for it. Therefore, I decided to fly on vacation to go fishing. I chose the place in advance - Bear Lake in the Krasnoyarsk Territory. On its shore there was a village with the same name - Medvezhye. In it I stopped at the forester Yefimich, who lived as a bean in a spacious hut.
The next morning, early in the morning, I went to explore the lists, where I had to compete with Siberian pikes, pike-perch and bream. The lake turned out to be large - at least ten kilometers long and a kilometer wide. The depth, according to Yefimich, did not exceed ten meters, although under the high bank there were many whirlpools and holes thirty meters deep. The shoals divided the lake into three stretches, in some places, in small places, there were sparse reeds. So it was possible to fish with any tackle, even from the shore.
The water in Medvezhye turned out to be surprisingly clean, transparent and so cold that when I scooped it up with my palm to taste it, it even broke my teeth. In short, I anticipated in advance what kind of huge pike perch and bream I would carry.
True, one thing puzzled me. In a small bay at the edge of the algae in the water, the dark backs of large crucians were clearly visible, swimming in such places to feast on young stems. They usually accompany their meal with a characteristic smacking. But here the crucians could not be heard, as if they had taken water into their mouths. I made a few casts for testing, but the bait remained intact.
In the evening over tea I told Yefimitch about this strange incident. To which he seriously replied: “So, somewhere nearby, he was himself. He does not allow pampering, all the fish obey him. " To my bewildered question, who is "Himself", the forester explained: a waterman, the owner of the local lakes. “Those who saw him say that he looks like a very large catfish,” Yefimych finished with the same seriousness. "And since he showed up in Bear, while he is here, there will be no fishing."
I did not attach any importance to his forecast, and, as it turned out, in vain. Over the next two days, only a few small minnows and ruffs were caught. Real fish did not take, although I changed tackles, spinners, jigs. It seemed that the water man was dissatisfied with the arrival of the Moscow guest and, in order to protect Bear from strangers for the future, decided to leave me with nothing.
On the third day something out of the ordinary happened. Before the evening, a whole delegation of alarmed men and women came to see Yefimitch. It turned out that during the day, on grazing fenced with poles outside the village, the bear lifted a goat and threw it right there, without even touching the meat. This had never happened before, and therefore Efimich's consultation was required regarding the background of the mysterious incident.
The version put forward by him seemed to me, to put it mildly, absurd: the waterman in the lake wants to feast on fresh meat, and he asked the goblin to send the bear to the "meat procurement". So that new troubles do not happen to the village cattle, you need to quickly satisfy the desire of evil spirits.
No one objected to the forester's verdict. The battered goat was immediately dragged into his yard, chopped into hefty pieces, put them in a bucket, and Yefimitch went to please the water man. I naturally followed him.
We reached the end of the boardwalk, which extended far from the shore. Efimych first threw small pieces into the water. The setting sun shone through it to the very bottom, and it was clearly visible how small fish began to swim cautiously to the meat lying on the sand. “Scouts,” Yefimich commented. "The rest will come now, too." Indeed, soon appeared meter-long, judging by the silhouettes, pikes and burbots. They grabbed the pieces of meat that he threw from the walkways, and immediately disappeared with them in the depths. According to him, the fish themselves do not eat meat, but are attributed to the fish who sent them. “Go fishing tomorrow morning. You won't regret it,”promised Yefimitch when the bucket was empty.
I don't know what was the reason - the sacrifice the day before or something else, for example, the changed atmospheric pressure, but the bite the next day was just crazy. Wherever I cast the rod, the water immediately began to boil - just catch the hook. There were pike perch, bream, perch, roach, and burbot.
In the evening I demanded an explanation from Yefimitch. From his words it came out that the water and the goblin were not at all representatives of the evil spirits plotting against people, but brothers-colleagues, set by the Lord to keep order: one in the forest, the other in the water. Naturally, they keep in touch. Let's say he wants water meat, the goblin will help. And if the leshak wants the fish, the water one will help. Moreover, both do not tolerate pampering and vain baiting of living creatures.
- If any of the people on the lake becomes disgraceful. He will quickly cut him up: he will atone for it, make the water gulp, or even pull it to the bottom - remember what your name was, ” said Yefimych. - The year before last one geologist, who took it into his head to beat a fish with a shotgun while spawning, taught him a good lesson. He stood over the cliff at the very edge, the earth under him and collapsed - the water under the water undermined the shore. The ugly fell into the pool. And he was in a padded jacket, in boots. I barely got out. But the gun, of course, drowned.
Fortunately, nothing like this happened in my presence. Fishing, however, was excellent for the two weeks that I spent on Bear Lake.
When I listened to Oleg's story, I remembered one detail of what happened to Timofey, which I did not attach importance to at one time. He electrocuted the fish. This barbaric way of catching fish could well have provoked the wrath of a merman, if there really is one.
Now let's summarize. If we abstract from the previously distrustful word “watery”, it turns out that we are talking about the impact of certain structures from the subtle world on the course of events in our material world. Today, scientists no longer deny the possibility of the existence of such discrete energetic entities, which in the old days were called devil, water, brownie. It is also recognized that they can cause physical changes in our energy space. In other words, they force animals, in particular fish or the same bear, to perform certain actions.
But why, for example, would a water company involve intermediaries, and not act directly on a person himself? There is also an explanation for this. Most likely, the highest subject in the universal field of quantum information - the Creator, or the Supreme Intelligence, as it is also called, laid programs in the subtle-energetic essences and gave freedom of action for their implementation. At the same time, He deprived these entities of the opportunity to influence directly a person, since he is higher in the information hierarchy. In other words, for them we are in a forbidden zone, and they cannot send command energy-information pulses of the corresponding frequency to our address.
And finally, the last one. In the case of the biblical prophet, the will of the Lord was carried out by a whale or some other huge fish. When it comes to water, he, apparently, chooses for a long time a kind of "biorobot" in the form of a large fish, which performs the actions he needs: pulls people into the water or at least boots, undermines the coastal cliff, etc.. etc.
Of course, all this may seem incredible. After all, the fish are not able to understand either verbal or any other discrete by nature commands. But why not assume that there is some kind of wave process in nature, with the help of which the aquatic can control his robot fish?
Author - Sergey Demkin