 According to scholars, no human being could realistically survive for three days inside a fish, and the description of the livestock in Nineveh fasting alongside their owners is "silly".The motif of a protagonist being swallowed by a giant fish or whale became a stock trope of later satirical writings.Similar incidents are recounted in Lucian of Samosata's "A True Story", which was written in the second century CE, and in the novel "Baron Munchausen's Narrative of his Marvellous Travels and Campaigns in Russia", published by Rudolf Erich Raspe in 1785.