The book of Jonah is full of fascinating plots, ironies, and themes. This relatively short book has been identified as a history, an allegory, and other various genres. In the past century, its historicity, date of composition, and literary genre have been issues of debate. (1) Toward the end of the last century, rhetorical criticism by scholars such as Phyllis Trible brilliantly delineated various literary features of this book. (2) Literary criticism has contributed the discovery of many hidden satirical elements in Jonah's puns and ironies. (3) Moreover, recent scholarship on the Twelve Prophets [hereafter, "The Twelve"] has paid closer attention to reading the twelve books as a unified or anthological collection through intertextual catchwords, allusions, and motifs. (4) All these studies have helped readers approach Jonah in terms of the rich and subtle artistry inherent both within the book itself and in relation to the rest of the Twelve. By doing so, these studies have demonstrated the importance of intertextual reading from the present form of the text. This intertextual analysis can be especially useful for studying the book of Jonah because it reveals the web of literary puns and echoes, the interweaving of which provides clues to Jonah's place and function within the Twelve. (5) Analyzing both similarities and differences of interconnected terms and motifs can help readers unravel, understand, and appreciate the conceptuality of Jonah in its literary, historical, and canonical locations. The present study, therefore, will explore the possible intertextual correlations between the book of Jonah and other pertinent texts. (6) Besides many widely dis cussed intertextual cases, (7) the flood account in Genesis and the historical record of Jeroboam II in 2 Kings can offer further insights into its literary and historical aspects. Likewise, with respect to the interpretation of the formation of the Twelve, the book of Jonah has been much neglected compared to other books. Investigating the correlations of Jonah with Nahum and Joel can shed light on the composition and arrangement of the Twelve. Hence, I will examine the following four texts for their intertextual implications for the book of Jonah: (1) the flood account in Genesis, (2) the brief mention of the prophet's name during the reign of Jeroboam II in 2 Kgs 14:23-29, (3) the complementary oracles concerning Nineveh in Nahum, and (4) the uniquely identical credo formula (Exod 34:6-7) and contents in Joel. (8) Thus, the intertextual reading will delineate the creation motif extant in both Genesis and Jonah, the parallel instrumentality of Jeroboam II and Jonah signaled in 2 Kings 14, the deliberate conceptual debate between Jonah and Nahum, and the comparable call for communal reform based on YHWH'S attribute of mercy in Jonah and Joel. In light of these studies, I will assess the resulting observations both synchronically and diachronically with regard to the place and implications of this intertextual reading of Jonah within the Twelve. My thesis is that synchronically the intertextual allusions in the book of Jonah suggest its function and place, especially as a chiastic center together with Nahum, within the Twelve, and that diachronically the book of Jonah was written as a dialogue with the aforementioned correlated texts, giving expression to thematic emphases of the post-exilic communities in the Second Temple period.
