Note 1091 — Chapter XLII · THE FISH OF MOSES—JONAH—SOLOMON’S RING

Sale, Sura 38 of the Koran, gives, as regards the incident, references to: (A) The Talmud, probably to the treatise Gittin, pp. 68, a, b. See Jew. Encycl., xi. 448, and cf. p. 443b. (B) En Jacob, Pt. ii.—probably to a work of this title, Well of Jacob, a collection of legends and parables by Jacob ben Solomon ibn Chabib from the Babylonian Talmud, 2 vols. (Amsterdam, 1684-85). (C) Yalkut in lib. Reg., p. 182—this is a collection of expositions of the O.T. books and first printed in 1521. Solomon’s throwing of the demon seems quite justifiable, if Sakhar and Asmodeus were under different names one and the same, for from Gittin, 68 b, we learn that the demon, after swallowing Solomon, “spat him a distance of 400 miles,” a feat in ballistics, or “the art of propelling heavy bodies,” which surpasses even the German long-range gun.