was Jonah swallowed ba a fish or a whale?

Answer 1

Now a whale is not a fish; it is a mammal. So in the Old Testament we are told Jonah was swallowed by a "great fish," and in the New Testament we are told it was a "whale." Is this a contradiction?

No. And this is why.

The Bible was written in Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek - not in English. And both "whale" and "great fish" are English translations of the original words. If we look in a Greek New Testament dictionary, such as the popular James Strong's Dictionary of the Words in the Greek New Testament, we find the explanation.

The Greek word translated "whale" is ketos (pronounced kay-tos), and it means "a huge fish (as gaping for prey)." Other scholars say it can mean a huge aquatic creature, which could be a fish, a whale, or some other giant sea animal. In any case, the Bible says God prepared the creature to swallow Jonah, so it could have been a creature created for this particular purpose and no other.

When the King James Version of the Bible was released in 1611, our modern taxonomic distinctions between fishes and mammals had not yet been decided on, so the translators were justified in choosing a whale as the giant "fish." It was the greatest sea creature known to them.

I hope that I helped!! :)