who gets swallowed by a whale in the bible
Jonah Though it is often called a whale today, the Hebrew, as throughout scripture, refers to no species in particular, simply saying "great fish" or "big fish" (whales are today classified as mammals and not fish, but no such distinction was made in antiquity). While some biblical scholars suggest the size and habits of the great white shark correspond better to the representations given of Jonah's being swallowed, normally an adult human is too large to be swallowed whole.[102] The development of whaling from the 18th century onwards made it clear that most or all species of whale were incapable of swallowing a man, leading to much controversy about the veracity of the biblical story of Jonah.[103]
Sperm whale The name sperm whale is a truncation of spermaceti whale. Spermaceti, originally mistakenly identified as the whales' semen, is the semi-liquid, waxy substance found within the whale's head (see below).[9] The sperm whale is also known as the "cachalot", which is thought to derive from the archaic French for "tooth" or "big teeth", as preserved for example in cachau in the Gascon dialect (a word of either Romance[10] or Basque[11] origin). The etymological dictionary of Corominas says the origin is uncertain, but it suggests that it comes from the Vulgar Latin cappula, plural of cappulum, "sword hilt".[12] The word cachalot came to English via French from Spanish or Portuguese cachalote, perhaps from Galician/Portuguese cachola, "big head".[13] The term is retained in the Russian word for the animal, кашалот (kashalot), as well as in many other languages.