Subversive Boundary Drawing in Jonah: The Variation of אשר and שׁ as Literary Code-Switching
Bibliographic record
Abstract
This study presents literary code-switching as the best explanation for the variation of אשׁר and שׁ in the book of Jonah. The use of Hebrew אשׁר and a Phoenician-based שׁ in the world of the narrative is used both to create and destroy identity boundaries. The switch between אשׁר and שׁ is the central linguistic strategy supporting the subversion of the intended audience’s natural reading sympathy (initially with Jonah) and theology (an ethnically exclusive Yahwism). Jonah’s use of שׁ represents a linguistic flight from his Hebrew identity, while the sailors’s and Ninevite king’s use of אשׁר represents their recognition of Yhwh as a god worthy of devotion. And Yhwh’s use of both אשׁר and שׁ signals the author’s view that Yhwh does not exclusively belong to (or care for) the Hebrew people.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.004 | 0.013 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.002 | 0.002 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.006 | 0.035 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.011 | 0.007 |
| Open science | 0.002 | 0.006 |
| Research integrity | 0.002 | 0.004 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.003 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".