Page "Book of Jonah" Paragraph 18

The Hebrew text of Jonah ( 1: 17 in English translation ), reads dag gadol ( Hebrew: דג גדול ), which literally means " great fish.

" The Septuagint translates this into Greek as ketos megas, ( Greek: κητος μεγας ), " huge fish "; in Greek mythology the term was closely associated with sea monsters.

Saint Jerome later translated the Greek phrase as piscis granda in his Latin Vulgate, and as cetus in.

At some point, cetus became synonymous with whale ( cf.

cetyl alcohol, which is alcohol derived from whales ).

In his 1534 translation, William Tyndale translated the phrase in Jonah 2: 1 as " greate fyshe ," and he translated the word ketos ( Greek ) or cetus ( Latin ) in as " whale ".

Tyndale's translation was later incorporated into the Authorized Version of 1611.

Since then, the " great fish " in Jonah 2 has most often been translated as " whale ".