This book began as a suggestion for a contribution to a commentary series using social-science approaches for books of the Hebrew Bible originally proposed by Diana Edelman early in the 1990s. Because I had an interest in short stories in the Bible as reflections of the society in which they were written, I half-jokingly volunteered to do the social science of Jonah. To my surprise Diana accepted the offer and put my project down on her list. I had accumulated a sizable amount of material for the project when the series stalled, atrophied, and was finally shelved. I took the material on Jonah, condensed it into a single chapter, producing a volume on biblical short stories for laity and introductory students, and then proceeded to box up or throw away most of the material researched for the projected volume. Two residential moves later, Philip Davies contacted me about writing the original book for a new series for Equinox. Whatever I have left in a box for the original project is now in a storage facility. So, I began essentially from the beginning.

My own introduction to the story of Jonah was indirect. I was raised in a family that belonged to the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), so what Bible stories we knew were almost entirely from the New Testament. I know exactly when I first came across the story of Jonah.