THIS MIGHT SURPRISE YOU
The answer
"A great fish" (Jonah 1:17) — Hebrew dag gadol. No whale anywhere in the Hebrew. When Matthew 12:40 refers back to it in Greek, it uses ketos, "sea monster."
Why it’s interesting
The whale entered the story through later translation and art, not the text. The Hebrew is deliberately vague: just a very large fish, sent for the purpose.
Scholarly consensus
You can know the Bible.
Not just the stories, but the history, authorship, and scholarship behind it.