Abstract
In Chapter 83 of Moby-Dick, “Jonah Historically Regarded,” Melville refers to “the Good Bishop” John Jebb, a popular Anglo-Irish religious scholar well known in both Britain and America. This essay traces the rise of Bishop Jebb’s transatlantic reputation and recovers the cultural significance of his scholarly contributions to biblical apologetics, specifically with regard to the historical authenticity of the story of Jonah and the Whale. Within Melville’s chapter, Bishop Jebb’s name performs a metonymic function evoking a complex matrix of key theological and scientific theories that reveal the tension among the epistemologies of philosophy, scientific rationalism, and religious apologetics. Thus, from this fleeting, unexplained reference to “the Good Bishop,” Melville appears to suggest an interpretive key for his massive narrative: that experiential knowledge trumps both scientific reasoning and religious faith.
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