Jonah and the Three Fish in the Synagogue at Huqoq: Between Mosaic and Midrash

This paper contributes new evidence to ongoing debates regarding the use of rabbinic literature as a source for interpreting synagogue art from Late Antiquity. While a mosaic in a 4th-century synagogue depicts Jonah the Prophet being swallowed by three successively larger fish, this motif makes its first appearance in textual sources only in the 11th century, when it shows up in both Jewish and Islamic traditions. How can the distribution of this motif across visual and textual mediums shed light on the relationship between rabbinic midrash and Jewsih visual culture? The Jonah panel challenges teleological accounts of the dissemination of traditions from rabbinic text to synagogue art. Moreover, it suggests that scriptural interpretation was not the sole province of the rabbinic movement. This approach to the study of Jewish art and text points to a world of cultural processes that operated beyond the regnant binary between rabbinic and non-rabbinic Judaisms.