2. Nineveh is described. Could it be in that place, in which Mosul is today?
He was sent אֶל־נִֽינְוֵ֛ה הָעִ֥יר הַגְּדוֹלָ֖ה, to Nineveh, that great city, Jonah 1:2. That city was built after Babylon, by Nimrod, that mighty hunter before Jehovah, Genesis 10:9-11. It was the Metropolis of the Kingdom of the Assyrians, situated on Hiddekel, or on the bank of Tigris, which in the age of Ammianus Marcellinus, as Scaliger shows in his Animadversionibus Eusebianis, was yet intact, that is, was yet standing out of the former ruins: but today it has been thoroughly razed, as Rabbi Benjamin says in his Itinerario.[1] Concerning its magnitude, Fuller[2] relates somewhat more from foreign authors, Miscellaneis, book III. That it was situated in the same place as is Mosol, or Mosul, or Musal,[3] today, some think, and among them the Most Celebrated Bochart, Phaleg, book IV, section 20; with others denying it, who locate Mosul, not in Assyria, but in Mesopotamia.
[1] Rabbi Benjamin of Tudela (died 1173) was a Spanish Jew, who chronicled his travels through Europe and Asia, unto the very borders of China.
[2] Nicholas Fuller (1557-1622) was an Anglican churchman, a learned divine, and a critic of considerable reputation. He excelled in the languages of the Scripture, and he applied his considerable talents to the resolution of Scripture difficulties.
[3] Mosul is in northern Iraq, on the Tigris.