 In the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, the species of the fish that swallowed Jonah was the subject of speculation for naturalists, who interpreted the story as an account of a historical incident.Some modern scholars of folklore have noted similarities between Jonah and other legendary figures, specifically Gilgamesh and the Greek hero Jason.Jonah is the central character in the Book of Jonah, in which God commands him to go to the city of Nineveh to prophesy against it "for their great wickedness is come up before me," but Jonah instead attempts to flee from "the presence of the Lord" by going to Jaffa (sometimes transliterated as "Joppa" or "Joppe"), and sailing to Tarshish.