h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

A whale's esophagus is four to eight inches in diameter, so swallowing Jonah would not have been likely. Unless this was a rogue whale created especially for the purpose of removing Jonah from the people he was pestering.

There's a kind of whale with a throat large enough - but there's never been a documented instance of its actually doing it. The problem would be surviving in an acidic environment with no air.

This is a story with a multi-dimensional paternoster elevator and an angel that's morphed into a snake and a mud-brick construction that folded into a hypercube, so I think quibbling about whales is the least of its practical problems.

My quibble about whales is primarily directed at the Biblical account of Jonah. It spilled over into this story, but it's no big deal.

My complaint about people who quibble about Bible stories like this is that by doing so - whether it is to insist the story happened like that, or to demonstrate how knowledgeable they are by figuring out it didn't, , nobody bothers to get the point of the story.

Which isn't about whales.

But hey, I have a few chapters left to go on about it.

Nowadays this would be more like: 'If you don't clean up your room I'll hide your phone somewhere in it! Don't go hide in the bathroom or I'll turn of the light and kill the WiFi.'

If I remember correctly, this was only the start of the learning curve for Jonah, but I'll let you have the honours of telling that.

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