Jewish Fishing

Chapter XXXVIII. Rod Not Employed in Spite of Close Intercourse with Egypt—Reasons Suggested for Absence

The absence of any mention of Angling in Israel, and in Assyria causes wonder and surprise, especially when we remember that the relations of both nations in trade and intercourse with Egypt, where Rod fishing did obtain, appear when at peace constant and close.

In the Assyrian chapter the vexed question of the earliest date assignable for the invasion or cultural permeation of Egypt by Sumerian or Semitic influences has been considered, and the conflicting views stated.

A fair consensus of agreement holds that the Hyksos sprang from Semitic stock; but the dates suggested for their conquest of Egypt vary from 2540 down to 1845 b.c.

However this may be, the definite association with Egypt of that branch of the Semitic tribes destined in Jacob’s lifetime (Gen. xlvii. 27) to be known as Israelites, begins with the advent of Abram into that country.

King, Rogers, and Jastrow in their later works have seemingly adopted the date arrived at by Kugler from stellar researches for the first Babylonian Dynasty. If Abram were, as is now thought, the contemporary of Hammurabi, his flitting must have occurred between 2120 and 2080 b.c., but since Egyptian chronology beyond the fifteenth century is fluid, and no early positive synchronisms with Babylon survive, we cannot definitely designate any particular king in Egypt as the contemporary of either Hammurabi or Abram.

The Bible is our main authority for the continuance of the association. The stories of Jacob, of Joseph (in whose title Abrek some detect a Babylonian influence and a connection with that of Abara-rakku, the designation of one of the five great officers of state), and of Moses, are but episodes of an intercourse which, if we begin with Abram and end with Onias, lasted (with intervals of war and invasion) for some 2000 years.

Evidence of intercourse crops up again and again throughout the four centuries of the Jewish Monarchy. Thus we read (1 Kings iii. 1) of the marriage of Solomon with the daughter of Pharaoh. From Solomon’s reign onward till the birth of Christ and long afterwards, the connection between Egypt and Israel, friendly or hostile, never fails. The flight of Jeroboam to Shishak (1 Kings xi. 40) and the giving of presents, probably tribute, by Hosea to the King of Egypt (2 Kings xvii. 4) present but two instances.

Papyri recently discovered prove the settlement near Assouan of a considerable Jewish, or rather, more correctly, Palestinian colony from (say) 500-400 b.c. This, like the similar but older community at Tahpanhes, exhibits a mart of wide and keen trading. The papyri “show that the Aramaic—the common language of Syria—was regularly used at Syene (Assouan), and we readily see how five cities in the land of Egypt speak the language of Canaan and swear to Yahweh of Hosts (Isaiah xix. 18) as the oath in these papyri is by Yahu.”

After the destruction of Jerusalem by Antiochus Epiphanes, the petition by Onias to Ptolemy Philometor for permission to erect a central temple for the benefit of the many thousands of his compatriots resident in Egypt concludes the historical evidence that I call as to the continuance of the Egyptian-Israelitish connection. Its survival for centuries after the birth of our Lord is a matter of common knowledge.

The existence of this connection rests not merely on historical evidence. Recent excavations in Southern Palestine tell the same tale, or even carry it still farther back, to pre-Israelite Canaan. Thus, after referring to the tale of Sinuhé (c. 1970 b.c.), Professor G. Barton writes, “There was apparently considerable trade with Egypt at this time. Men from Palestine often went there for this purpose. Such traders are pictured in an Egyptian tomb of this period. Trade with Egypt is also shown to have existed by the discovery of Egyptian scarabs of the time of the Middle Kingdom in the excavations at Gaza, Jericho, and Megiddo. As Egypt was nearer, and commerce with it easier, its art affects the arts of Palestine more than the art of Babylon.”

R. A. Macalister writes: “Meanwhile the oldest foreign civilisation of whose influence definite relics have come to light within the land of Palestine is that of Egypt under the XIIth Dynasty.” The assertion that “almost every spadeful of earth which is turned over in Southern Palestine brings to light more evidence of Egyptian influence” seems hardly an exaggeration.

But, it may be asked, what has all this got to do with fishing? Of itself and in itself apparently nothing.

The introduction, however, of the historical facts cannot be branded as irrelevant. They demonstrate a constant association for over two millenniums with Egypt, and the deep influence of Egyptian civilisation and methods of life on Jewish policy.

And yet, notwithstanding such intercourse and such cultural influence, we can nowhere in the literature of the Bible or of the Rabbis discern either a direct mention, or (as I hope to show) an implied allusion to the use of the Rod, which as a weapon both for market and sport from c. 2000 b.c. found favour in Egypt.

The same holds true of the Land of the Two Rivers; in no Assyrian sculpture, on no Assyrian seal, can we detect any delineation or any suggestion of angling, although instances of other kinds of fishing occur frequently.

In no book of the Old or of the New Testament can be found any direct mention of the Rod. In the Talmud—a vast work of teaching and discussion—the same silence prevails. The authoritative Talmudische Archäologie (by S. Krauss, 1910) gives us fishful places such as Lake Tiberias, and many points of ichthyic or piscatorial interest such as the hook, the line, salted fish, garum, etc., but contains no reference to the Rod. Mr. Breslar, it is true, has recently girded up his loins to establish that in the Bible and the Talmud can be found at any rate the implied use of the Rod, but to a practical angler quite unconvincingly.

To account for this absence of direct mention of the Rod in the Bible various reasons have been adduced.

The first: in the only two passages, Isaiah xix. 8, and Habakkuk i. 15, where the word “angle” occurs, and in Matthew xvii. 27, “cast a hook,” and in Amos iv. 2, as contended by Mr. Breslar, its use is certainly implied. The validity of this claim remains a question (A) for Hebrew scholars, and (B) for practical fishermen.

From the point of view of the latter, the “casting,” “taking,” etc., in the above passages can be and probably were accomplished by a hand-line (with or without a weight attached to insure greater length of throw) almost as easily and as effectually as if a Rod were employed. As a matter of fact, for taking good-sized fish some of our professional sea-fishermen prefer the hand-line to that of the Rod.

The words in Matthew xvii. 27, “go thou to the sea and cast a hook” do not either in the Greek or English strongly suggest, much less necessarily imply, a Rod. To a professional fisherman of the Sea of Tiberias like Peter, the more natural, probably the only known method of casting would be by a hand-line.

Turning now to the Hebrew passages, Isaiah xix. 8, “The fishers shall also lament, and all they that cast angle in the Nile (A.V., brooks) shall mourn;” Habakkuk i. 15, “He taketh up all of them with the angle, he catcheth them in his net, and gathereth them in his drag;” Job xli. 1, “Canst thou draw out leviathan with a fish-hook?” in all these we find the same Hebrew word ḥakkāh.

The R.V. in the first two renders it “angle,” and in Job “fish-hook;” in the Greek version ἄγκιστρον, which in the Septuagint is the usual and in the New Testament (Matt. xvii. 27) the only word for hook, occurs in all three passages.

Whence or from which word can the Rod be implied, or even in fairness claimed? In Isaiah, it is answered, from the words “cast in the Nile.” But in a river, as every child knows, fishing is pursued by more methods than that of the Rod. Judging from the literature of our six Nations fishing by hand-line was far and away more general than by Rod; the ratio between the two would indeed, I think, work out at some 100 to 1.

If then the words, “cast in the Nile,” do not furnish the implication claimed, can we find any other words in the three passages which do? The one word common to them all is ḥakkāh, hook: if this fail the claimants, how or whence can they establish the implication?

Let us now see whither the implication from ḥakkāh leads us. Obviously in Job, to angling with a Rod for “Leviathan” or crocodile! The absurdity is already manifest. Let us, however, in our hunt for the snark-like implication examine the remaining tackle of this intrepid angler. Fortunately for us, conjecture as to the hook or the bait is unnecessary.

The Petrie collection at the University of London preserves a hook, which in Ptolemaic times was employed in the Nile for the capture—not of crocodiles—but merely of large fish, such as Lates niloticus. It measures over one foot in length, with a shank over 2½ inches in width.

The account of crocodile fishing by the Egyptians left us by Herodotus prescribes the bait—no less an one than a chine of pork. The line, then and now (ex necessitate rei), must have been of stout cord, possibly tied to a tree, with probably some protective material of horn, etc., to prevent erosion.

Conjure up the picture of this Egyptian piscator—even in this instance the Jew does not use the Rod, for there are no Leviathans in Palestine! Behold him “casting,” with a Rod of ancient normal length, about six feet, with a rope line of ancient normal length, from six to ten feet, a bait of even half the back of a porker! Surely a picture for gods and men, more especially the winners of our Casting Competitions, to revere with awe and envy, as a feat of strength and skill unessayable.

From these three passages I can find no reason, contextual or piscatorial, to support the contention that the Rod was used, although to us moderns such use would seem but the natural thing.

Mr. Breslar maintains that Amos iv. 2 authorises the implication. He errs either in translation or through misconception of the tackle described. The words run, “They shall take you away with hooks (ẓinnōth), and your residue with fish-hooks.” The Hebrew word for the second, ṣīrōth dūgāh, means only hooks, plain and simple, while that for the first, ẓinnōth, signifies also thorns and probably fish-spears, or harpoons.

Amos, however, far from thinking of or suggesting a Rod, is looking contrariwise at the end of a line. His metaphor is drawn from the non-angling custom prevalent and pictured in Assyrian representations of a conqueror having his captives dragged by cords fastened by presumable, but naturally not apparent, hooks firm fixed in their lips. This conception is strengthened by the fact that ḥakkāh in its primary etymological sense implies merely something connected with the jaws.

If Mr. Breslar surmises (though his words convey no such hint) that for his “rudimentary type of Rod in the Scriptures” Israel affixed a line to his fishing spear, thus squaring with my conjecture in the Introduction as to the evolution of the modern Rod, may I respectfully ask why did a race, so pre-eminently alert and proverbially acquisitive, handicap itself by the selection of such a “rudimentary type” in preference to a weapon long invented, ready to hand, and far superior?

A friend, in the hope of helping me to some authoritative information as regards Angling, suggested Jagd, Fischfang, und Bienenzucht bei den Juden in der tannäischen Zeit, by Herr Moritz Mainzer, as the very last word on Jewish fishing. Unable (owing to the War) to obtain this in book form, I tracked it eventually to some articles under the same title in the magazine, Monatsschrift für Geschichte und Wissenschaft des Judentums (1909). Except for a pearl or two such as “Fishermen, then as now in Palestine, worked lightly dressed or naked,”—was this suggested by St. John, or P. Fletcher’s, “Now when Simon heard, he girt his fisher’s coat unto him, for he was naked”?—Fischfang (at any rate) far from rewards one’s search.

Mainzer’s two sentences (p. 463) assist not at all in determining whether or not the Jews used the Rod. “Die eigentliche ḥakkāh war ein eiserner an eine Leine (ḥebhel) befestigter Haken. Die Leine selbst konnte mit einer Rute oder einem Stabe verbunden sein der zuweilen mehrere Schnüre mit Angeln trug” (the ḥakkāh proper was an iron hook fastened to a fishing ḥebhel. This line might be attached to a rod or stick, which sometimes had on it several cords with fishing hooks).

The supporting references come from no Israelitish source, but from Assyrian representations of hand-lining in Layard’s Nineveh, and from Egyptian delineations of Rod fishing in Wilkinson’s Ancient Egyptians. Not a single word does Mainzer quote from any authority on Jewish Angling. The words, “to a Rod which sometimes had on it several cords with fishing hooks,” simply translate Wilkinson’s Plate 371.

Had I weighed the title and duly appreciated the combination of Hunting, Fishing, and Bee-culture! I would have been perhaps prepared for a disappointment, but the output of, or the “cultural associations” in, a German work often defy prediction from its mere headings. Mainzer, in his Fischfang, serves to recall Porson’s lines, which are themselves but an adaptation of a Greek epigram,

“The Germans in Greek Are sadly to seek, Not five in five score But ninety-five more. All save only Hermann, And Hermann’s a German!”

Lest my own conclusion—that neither in the Old or New Testament is the implied use of the Rod established—carry little weight, I subjoin the conclusions (stated in letters to me) arrived at by two well-known Hebrew scholars.

The first comes from Professor A. R. S. Kennedy (the writer of the article on Fishing in the Encyclopædia Biblica): “In short you are entirely justified, so far as evidence goes, in saying that the Jews did not use the Rod.”

The second comes from Dr. St. Clair Tisdall: “We find in the Bible no proof of fishing with Rod and line: on the contrary the fact that no mention whatever, direct or indirect, of the fishing Rod occurs either in the Bible or (as far as my reading goes) in the Talmud, makes it almost certain that the Rod was not used by the Jews. At any rate the use of any such instrument is not implied in either Book.”

A second reason for the absence of the Rod may be that of dates. The Jews, it might be urged, were not and could not be aware of Egyptian Angling, because it sprang up subsequent to their Exodus from the country. The reply I offer involves, it is true, that bewildering factor, Egyptian chronology. But even if a thousand years are as nothing in the sight of Manetho and many others, surely one epoch correlates with another, and the shifting of one date automatically involves the shifting of others.

The date of the Exodus, like most Egyptian dates, hitherto a matter of considerable contention, is now generally agreed as falling between 1300 and 1200 b.c. Petrie fixes on “1220 b.c. or possibly rather later,” Hanbury Brown places the Flight ten years earlier, i.e. 1230, for reasons based mainly on the stele of King Menephtah.

So if the contention that the Israelites could not well know of the Rod because of its invention after their flight holds water, any representation of Rod fishing must obviously be subsequent to the year 1230 or 1220 b.c. Only two such representations exist: (A) (in Wilkinson’s Plate 370) comes from the tomb (No. 93) of Kenamūm at Thebes, and dates from about the second half of the XVIIIth Dynasty, or some 200 years before the Exodus, while (B) (in Wilkinson’s Plate 371, and in Newberry’s Beni Hasan, vol. I. Plate XXIX.) goes back to the early XIIth Dynasty or some 750 years before the Exodus.

The Exodus, whatever date be assigned, probably occurred in the time of and was occasioned by a dynasty non-Semitic, and unfavourable to Israel. The corvée enforced doubtless by the kourbash was exacted from the aliens, whose task (Exodus i. 11) included the building of two brick fortresses to block the eastern road into Egypt.

To most of us unacquainted with the making of bricks the cruelty of the Pharaonic command, “There shall be no straw given you, yet shall ye deliver the tale of bricks,” seems to consist in demanding from the sojourners the same quantity of output without their possessing, as the Egyptian workers did possess, an essential constituent in the brick-straw.

But Petrie points out that straw, so far from being an essential of the mixture, is absent from most ancient and modern bricks. The complaint arose because finely chopped straw is very useful for preventing the mud from sticking to the hand, for dusting over the ground, and for coating each lump before dropping it in the mould, thus enabling the work to go on quickly and easily. From the strawless Jew, however, was extorted for the same hours a tale of bricks equal to that of the Egyptian enjoying these advantages.

In direct opposition to Petrie, Maspero states, and Erman agrees, that the ordinary Egyptian brick, both ancient and modern, is “a mere block of mud, mixed with chopped straw and a little sand.”

Other reasons for the Jewish unfamiliarity with the Rod, viz. its merely local use, and their settlement in the North East of Egypt remote from “the River of Egypt,” would fully be met, were it not for Isaiah, with the simple statement that at present they can neither be proved nor disproved.

But the words of Isaiah xix. 8, “The fishers also shall lament, and all they that cast angle into the Nile shall mourn,” surely demonstrate—if we allow that “cast angle” is the proper technical translation, and that the two words cannot mean the mere throwing of a hook with a hand-line—that the Israelites during the 430 years (Exodus xii. 40) of their sojourn in Egypt did acquire familiarity with the methods of fishing employed by their taskmasters.

Still, even if we take it as proved that for some reason Angling was at the time of the Exodus an unknown art to the Jews, why with all the intercourse of the subsequent centuries was the knowledge of the existence and value of the Rod not acquired?

Those and other queries may have found a ready reply in the reputed but lost Book of Solomon on Fishes. It may possibly have contained some clue, such as a command or custom, totemistic or other, common to the old Semitic stock, or some trait of temperament which caused Angling to be regarded as too slow or too unremunerative a pastime.

Without its guidance one is almost driven to the conclusion that the ancient Israelites (like the early Greeks and Romans) were pot-hunters, bent on the spoil rather than on the sport of their catch, but (unlike them) continued this characteristic throughout their history, and remained to the end uninfected by the joy or passion of Angling. Their desire was fish—abundant and cheap, or better still gratis: hence when “fed up” with Manna (Numbers xi. 5) they fell a-lusting—“Who shall give us flesh to eat? We remember the fish we did eat in Egypt for nought.”

This apparent lack of the sporting instinct contrasts strangely with the fact that modern Jews rank among our foremost anglers, and that to a Jew we owe the greatest book written within the last generation, if not the practical establishment on a scientific basis of the dry-fly, that most finished form of Angling.

Dr. Kennet, Professor of Hebrew at Cambridge, while holding no brief either way, has, at my request, most kindly suggested some reasons which may conceivably account for the Biblical absence of Angling. To my mind none of these affords adequate proof of its existence.

A. The physical characteristics of the country preclude many references to fishing in the Old Testament. However keen their desire, the majority of the population were in the position of Simple Simon, when he “went a-fishing for to catch a whale.” Sea-fishing was out of the question, for with the doubtful exception of a small bit of the Galilæan coast—probably not held continuously—no part of the Mediterranean sea-shore belonged to Israel during the Monarchy, while the climate and intense heat of the Valley of the Jordan, the only real river, kept its inhabitants apart from the dwellers on the mountains.

But contra: even if the majority were Simple Simons, the numerous references (about 74) in the Bible to fishes, fishing, and fishing implements indicate a wide, if perhaps impersonal, knowledge of the practice. The fact that the larger number of these were used as metaphors or similes evidences a more than local knowledge of fishing, because for a metaphor or simile to be telling it usually must, as do the Homeric, appeal to a well-known, common, and long-established custom or craft.

B. Although fishing apparently prevailed always in the Sea of Galilee, it must be remembered that practically the whole literature of the Old Testament emanates from central and southern Palestine, and (as is the case with Egyptian literature as regards Deltaic conditions) contains but scant allusion to life among the Northern Tribes. Hence possibly the silence about the Rod, which may nevertheless have been employed.

C. The Old Testament stories, although some belong to the same period as the Homeric, are told in a manner very different from the latter. Every picture is sketched with the fewest strokes, and accordingly details are, have to be, taken for granted. Thus, although the majority of the people subsisted largely on milk, there is not one reference to milking.

But contra: this omission seems to me hardly on all fours with that of the Rod. The word milk, when not expressly limited, e.g. “of thy bosom,” or used metaphorically, signifies solely the lacteal liquid extruded from the teats of an animal, and so implies milking or a previous act of extrusion, whereas the word fishing connotes no single method of taking fish, as the Old Testament in its mention of the implements, Spear, Hook and Line, and Nets, demonstrates. Then again Job xxi. 24 (R.V. margin), “his milk-pails are full of milk,” and Judges iv. 19, “she opened a bottle of milk,” both demand an extrusion effected by one and only one method, whereas “jars of fish” may have been filled by any piscatorial method.

D. There is no evidence that the Israelites brought from Egypt a single particle of Egyptian civilisation. Nomads they were when they entered, and nomads they were when they left Egypt. Their kultur was taken over from the Canaanites, and their later civilisation, despite periods of subjection to Egypt, owed far less to that country than to Babylonia.

Even if we grant that no actual evidence of Egyptian culture exists, the probabilities incline the other way. Their abiding place was in no sterile or out-of-the-way corner of that country, but in Goshen, where we read “they gat them possessions therein,” and was in close proximity to the great high road, which bore the commerce between Egypt and Asia, and vice versâ. They were certainly familiar with the manufacture of bricks, and presumably the building of houses, etc.

E. The verse, “The fishers shall also lament and they that cast angle in the brooks shall mourn,” which may betray knowledge of the Rod, is apparently much later than Isaiah, and may, perhaps, be assigned to the second century b.c., and refer to the campaign of Antiochus Epiphanes in Egypt.

Even if we allow that this date accounts for all omission of Angling during the millennium between the Exodus and this campaign, why is there no actual or implied reference in subsequent literature, especially in the voluminous Talmud?

But the Jewish lack of sport is evidenced not only in their methods of fishing, but, what is more remarkable, in those of their hunting, or rather non-hunting. While Assyrian, Egyptian, and Persian Monarchs were famous for their hunting exploits, no single Jewish king, except Herod, is handed down to us delighting in or even taking part in the chase.

We find no Hebrew counterpart to Tiglath-Pileser, with his historical bag of “4 wild bulls mighty and terrible, 10 elephants and 120 lions ” on foot, and 130 speared from his chariot, or even of a mild understudy to Ashur-bani-pal. The Bible gives but two—Esau’s brother scarcely ranks as one—hunter-characters: Esau “a cunning hunter,” and Nimrod “a mighty hunter before the Lord.” Even the latter of these two heroes was no Israelite, but a king “of Accad,” a Sumero-Assyrian, whom some writers identify with Gilgamesh.

Such indifference to or aversion from the chase cannot either at the time of the invasion of Palestine (Exodus xxiii. 29), or subsequently be ascribed to the lack of wild beasts or of game, for we read of lions, bears, jackals, foxes, etc., and of hart, fallow deer, and antelope.

Two reasons—neither, to my mind, satisfactory—have been advanced to explain this attitude as regards hunting, a pursuit which admittedly has played, both as a necessity and a pastime, an important part in the education and evolution of mankind.

The first: the Hebrews, as described in the Old Testament, had already reached the stage of pastoral nomads, when “hunting, which is the subsistence of the ruder wanderer, has come to be only an extra means of life.”

The second: the Hebrews, hampered perhaps by certain peculiarities of their religion, or on account of the density of the population were not often induced “to revert for amusement to what their ancestors had been compelled to practise from necessity.”

Either, or both, of these reasons might have carried weight, had it not been for the existence hard by in Assyria of a people, among whom, although sprung from the Semitic stock, hunting was a recognised and popular pastime, and this despite a population far denser.

Nor, again, when we compare the culture of the two nations, can Lacépède’s previously quoted dictum that in civilisation the fisher nation is usually more advanced than the hunter nation help the Hebrews, for apart from the fact of the indisputable and immeasurable superiority of the Assyrian civilisation we discover no sign of angling in Israel.

As in their fishing, they were “out for” the meat, not for the sport, so was it, I fear, in their hunting. If they found no pleasure in the chase, they assuredly delighted in the eating of game and were dexterous trappers of animals. Their methods were:—

(a) By digging a pitfall for the larger animals, e.g. for a lion in 2 Sam. xxiii. 20;

(b) By traps, which were set in the runs of the animals (Prov. xxii. 5) and caught them by the leg (Job xviii. 9), or were set underground (ibid. 10); and

(c) By nets of various kinds—for an antelope in Isaiah (li. 20, R.V.).

Chapter XXXIX. Fish with and Without Scales—Methods of Fishing—Vivaria

In Moses’ enumeration of what the tribesmen might or might not eat, there is a careful distinction by their names of the creatures in fur and feathers, but the fishes are merely divided (as were the animals entering the ark into “clean and unclean,” Gen. vii.) into “all that have fins and scales ye shall eat: and whatsoever hath not fins and scales ye shall not eat; it is unclean unto you” (Deut. xiv. 9, 10).

This classification has often been assumed to have been taken from the prohibitions enjoined by the Egyptian priesthood, but without any authority, because we do not know what fish were actually ruled out by their dietary canon. Moses not only limits the use of fish as an article of food, as originally granted in the covenant with Noah (Gen. ix. 2, 3), but fails to discriminate between fish from the sea and elsewhere. He does, however, exclude all scaleless fish such as the important group of siluridæ, skates, lampreys, eels, and every variety of shell fish.

As may naturally be expected, this law and other decisions, which by debarring so many species of fish denied to the people a food supply at once plentiful and cheap, were in time whittled away. Fish with “at least two scales and one fin” were gradually permitted. Eventually, as experience proved that all fish with scales have also fins, Israel was allowed as food any part of any fish on which only scales were visible.

In the west this whittling was carried even further. ’Ab. Zarah, 39 a, expressly states that no one need hesitate about eating the roe of any fish, because no unclean fish is to be found there! The Jews of Constantinople in Belon’s time had more scruples; debarred of caviare proper, i.e. made from the roe of the sturgeon, they discovered an excellent and legal substitute in the roe of the Carp.

It is a strange fact that these many references to fishing neither in the Old, where they are mostly metaphorical, nor in the New Testament, where they are chiefly historical, give the specific name of a single fish family. Dag and nun are the generic terms covering all species. The large sea fish are collectively termed “tannim.” The fish of Tobit, of Jonah, of the Psalms, are only spoken of generically. None of the Apostles, of whom four, Peter, Andrew, James, and John, were professional fishermen, has troubled himself to identify by name even the actual fish of the miraculous draught.

The Jews acquired no intimate knowledge of the ichthyic branch of natural history. Although acquainted with some of the names given by the Egyptians and Alexandrians to different species (Josephus compares a fish found in the sea of Gennesaret to the Coracinus) they adopted no similar method of distinguishing them, or any classification beyond the broad division of clean and unclean. The biological knowledge concerning fish shown in the Talmud was of a very primitive order, not merely in regard to embryology and propagation, but also as to hatching.

It does, indeed, require the firmly-shut eye of faith to conceive that the fish of Raphael’s great Madonna del Pesce, which scarcely weighs two pounds and is carried on a string by the youth Tobias, can have been to him an object of danger and terror, or that it “leaped out of the river and would have swallowed him” had it not been for the Angel’s command to seize the brute (Tobit vi. 2, 3). Raphael’s cartoon is another instance of the untrammelled liberty of the Italian artist. Most of the fishes are mere nondescript piscine forms of artistic fancy, but two are certainly of the Skate or Ray family, which is never found in fresh water!

Then, again, how oddly Botticelli and other painters misconceive their man-eating fish, which must have been a crocodile strayed from the Indus or the Nile to the waters of the Tigris.

Fortunately Dr. Tristram comes to our aid as regards the fresh-water fish of modern, and probably of ancient Palestine. Of his forty-three species, only eight are common to the more westerly Mediterranean rivers and lakes. Of thirty-six found in the Jordan and its affluents, but one occurs in the ordinary Mediterranean fresh-water fauna, two in the Nile, seven in the Tigris, Euphrates, and adjacent rivers, ten in other parts of Syria, while sixteen are quite peculiar to the basin of the Jordan. The fish fauna is very isolated, but shows affinities to that of the Ethiopian zoo-geographical region, and probably dates from a geological time when the Jordan and the rivers of North-East Africa belonged to the same system.

Of these fish, two demand notice.

(1) Chromis simonis. In the rare instances where fish take any care of their eggs or young, the task nearly always devolves on the male; here, the husband performs it by taking the ova into his mouth, till their development in the large cheek-pouches causes such swelling that he is unable to use his mouth. This uncomfortable condition exists and increases until as fry about four inches long they quit the paternal abode.

(2) Clarias macracanthus, found in the Nile, as well as in the Lake of Gennesaret. In their spawning migration they have often to travel stretches of dwindling streams with water insufficient to cover them, or absent altogether. By means of an accessory bronchial organ they can live at least two whole days out of water. When they thus behold all the wonders of terrestrial existence, including its choicest perfection, Man, is it surprising that they “utter a squeaking or hissing sound,” or teste Masterman, “cat-like squeak”?

The methods of fishing in Palestine, like those (save Angling) of Egypt and the ancient world, were:—

(A) The spear, harpoon, and bident (still used in Lebanon and Syria) of which we read in Job xli. 7, “Canst thou fill his skin with barbed irons, or his head with fish spears?”

(B) The line and hook. The line occurs only in Job xli. 1, “Canst thou draw out Leviathan (i.e. the crocodile) with a fish hook (ḥakkāh), or press down his tongue with a cord (ḥebel)?” (R.V.). The hook, designated by several names, finds frequent place in descriptions and metaphors in the O.T.

The difficult verse (Job xli. 2), “Canst thou put a rope (agmōn, literally, as in R.V. margin, a rope of rushes) into his (Leviathan’s) nose?” is possibly explained by the ordinary procedure of fishermen in carrying their fish. The (marginal) “rope of rushes” will recall to many a boy and many a man how often a handy rush has served for carrying home his catch of small fish. For the crocodile, however, such means of portage, as it is the intent of the verse to make clear, would in Bret Harte’s parlance be “onsatisfactory.”

The word, it has been held, probably means a ring, placed in the mouth of a fish by a rope of reeds tied to a stake, for the purpose of keeping it alive in the water. The use of a ring would give a perfect parallelism, “a ring in his nose” and “a hook in his jaw.” Benzinger, however, makes it very doubtful whether this practice of keeping fish alive by a ring ever prevailed among the Jews.

The lure, or esca, was ground bait. Travellers maintain that even now no Nile or Palestine fish is educated enough to rise to a fly. But my friend Dr. Henry Van Dyke, author of Little Rivers and other fascinating books, shows me from a diary kept during his visit to Palestine in 1907 that this rule certainly has exceptions.

Wading from shore near the mouth of a stream flowing into Lake Tiberias, and again near the head waters of the Jordan above the Lake of Merom, he found pleasant clear streams where fish took the fly willingly. Whether this departure from traditional habit was due to the skill of the super-man, or the enticing cunning of the American flies used, viz. “Queen of the Water,” “Beaverkill,” and “The Abbey” (size No. 12 American) the diarist stateth not.

(C) The hand net (ἀμφίβληστρον), mentioned in New Testament, still holds its own in the Sea of Galilee, and the coast. It in the main resembles the Roman funda.

“It is like the top of a tent in shape, with a long cord fastened to the apex. This is tied to the arm, and the net so folded that when it is thrown, it expands to its utmost circumference, around which are strung beads of lead to make it drop suddenly to the bottom. As soon as the game is spied, away goes the net, expanding as it flies, and its leaded circumference strikes the bottom ere the fish know its meshes have closed on them. By the aid of his cord the fishermen leisurely draws up the net, and the fish with it.” A fuller description of the various nets now in use on the lake, with an account of present-day methods of fishing, will be found in Dr. Masterman’s interesting volume, chap. ii, The Inland Fisheries of Galilee (also in Pal. Explor. Fund Quarterly Statement, 1908, p. 40).

Netting was the almost universal method. On Lake Tiberias (or the Sea of Galilee, or Lake of Gennesaret) which yielded then, as it does now, a most copious supply of fish, night lines and line and hook were also in vogue. The highest value was attached to these fisheries. According to tradition one of the so-called Laws of Joshua, while reserving certain privileges to dwellers on its shores, opened its waters to every comer. Weirs and fences, because of the damage their stakes inflicted on fishing boats, were strictly forbidden.

The observance of this custom may have originated from a compact made by all the tribes, as the Talmud states, or from “the blessing” (in Deut. xxxiii. 23) conditioning the allotment of the territory of Napthali and the Sea of Tiberias—“Possess thou the sea, and the south“ (“the sea” is the alternative version in R.V. for “the west”); or perhaps (according to Baba Kamma) from an absolute order of Joshua to the tribe of Napthali (Jew. Encyc., v. 404).

By law, or rather custom, fishing was, except in private vivaria, etc., universally free; thus “in the Sea of Tiberias fishing with hook and net was everywhere allowed” (Krauss, Talmud Archäol., ii. 146,) with references to Bab. Kam. 81b. Cf. the Roman Digest which lays down that “omnia animalia quæ terra, mari, cælo capiuntur, id est feræ bestiæ, et volucres, et pisces, capientium fiunt.”

Mainzer, however, severely restricts this freedom of fishing. “Incidentally information is given of a modification of the regulation. For instance, if any one set up a net on a shore or a bank, others were not allowed to fish in proximity to it. They were only allowed to cast their nets at a distance of one parasang away.”

This sentence apparently implies that the first comer to some position on land acquired a legal temporary possession of fishing for the distance of a parasang. This regulation (extracted, apparently, from the reference 5, i.e. to Baba Bathra, 21 b) came into being (according to Rabbi Gershom, as cited by Mainzer), “because the fisherman scatters bait in the water which attracts the fish to his net. But if another person sets up his net near by, the fish at the sight of the fresh bait would swim to the other spot, and so the first fisherman would suffer loss.”

The first (comer), adds Mainzer, “by the setting up of his net has acquired a priority claim over all the fish of a definite area.”

This theory of possession appears to me quite untenable, for two reasons.

The first, because no words, judgment, or even obiter dictum contained in the reference given, support it. A Rabbi’s pious opinion does not suffice, as Baba Bathra, 21b, makes clear. The passage runs:

“Rabbi Hona said, ‘If a man who lives in a passage has set up a mill, and another in the same passage comes and likewise sets up one, the former has the right to prevent him, for he can say to him, Thou cuttest off my means of livelihood.’” In support may be quoted: “The fish net must be removed from the fish which another is already trying to catch as far as to allow the fish to escape.” “How far is that?” Rabba, son of Rabbi Hona answered, “As far as a parasang.” The case is otherwise with fish to which lines have been cast.”

My second reason is the manifest absurdity of the enormous area allotted to the individual netter. Our latest authority, Westberg, computes that the parasang was equal to 3 miles 1335 yards, or about 3⁄10 miles Klio, xiv. 338 ff.).

Let us now see how this parasang possession works out on Lake Tiberias, the only sheet of water where netting widely prevailed.

Its extreme length is about thirteen miles: its greatest width less than seven. Allowing for sinuosities of coast line, let us concede fifty miles in circumference. This extent of shore, if the area of a parasang is possessed on only one side of the netter, would suffice for 13½ netters, or, if on both sides, for 6¾ netters, i.e. a monopoly on the most prolific water, which, in Euclidian parlance, “is absurd.”

If we disregard the words “set up a net on a bank,” and allow that the parasang possession holds merely for the surface area, we are immediately confronted by two different questions.

First, does this allotted space spread from the boat by a parasang only North, or by a parasang only South, etc? Second, if not, but extends for a circumference of which the boat is the centre, how is the possessory area to be measured, known, or shown? Oppian, it is true, sings with poetical license of “Nets, Which like a city to the floods descend,” but even he does not vouchsafe to us a picture of netting on such a grandiose scale as seven and a half miles.

Before this area of possession can be definitely established, far weightier authority must be produced than a casual sentence from a commentator, whose very lateness of date is betokened by his employment of the Persian word, parasang.

In dealing with the Talmud, we must always bear in mind that a large part was written as late as between (say) 250 and 550 a.d., and by men dwelling mostly at a distance from the Holy Land, who not infrequently show themselves unfamiliar with or ignoring the conditions of the earlier days.

In early times, possibly because of the small coast-line and poor harbours which Palestine possessed on the Mediterranean, little or no reference to fishing on the coast crops up. Later, a considerable trade in fish, salted or pickled, was carried on by the Syrians (some writers even claim a monopoly in such fish for the Phœnicians) at Jerusalem, where undoubtedly in the northern part of the city a market gave its name to the neighbouring Fish-Gate.

Perhaps to avoid a similar monopoly, definite and strictly enforced prices were periodically fixed by the authorities of the town of Tiberias. By the time of Our Lord thriving fisheries had grown up on the coast, especially in the neighbourhood of Acre, so thriving indeed that the equivalent (in later Hebrew) for “carrying coals to Newcastle” or γλαῦκ’ Ἀθήναζε, became “taking fish to Acco.” On the Sea of Galilee in especial did the industry prosper; one town seems to have been built up by—it certainly derived its name, Taricheæ—from the trade of salting fish.

Four ways of preparing fish were according to custom pickled, roasted, baked, or boiled; with the latter, eggs were permissible.

The absence of vivaria till a very late period presents another instance of the lack in the ancient of the alertness so typical of the modern Jew. It is hard to deduce why Israel neglected to borrow from Egypt an institution yielding so valuable and lucrative a supply of food. If the spirit of sport, which was one of the attractions of these ponds to the Egyptian gentry, did not appeal in Palestine, the advantages of a ready store, during the hot weather, of fresh fish would surely have been obvious to and eagerly utilised by a race whose passionate plaint was for “a plenty of fish.”

Their great Eastern neighbour inculcated the same object lesson. Most Assyrian towns and temples possessed an artificial or semi-artificial piscina. Yet not till some 1600 years after the Exodus do we glean in the Talmudic term bibar (an attempt at transliteration of the Roman word, vivaria, which of itself betokens the lateness of the effort) the first indication of their employment by the Jews.

This may read as flat heresy, when compared with Isaiah’s words (xix. 10), “And they shall be broken in the purposes thereof, all that make sluices and ponds for fish.” The translation, however, in the R.V. (N.B., there is no word equalling fish in the Hebrew text), “Her pillars shall be broken in pieces, all they that work for hire shall be grieved in soul,” shatters the assertion that vivaria, or fish lakes, were early institutions in Palestine. This shattering is complete, when the only other buttress, the passage in Canticles vii. 4, “Thine eyes (are) like the fish pools in Heshbon,” falls to the ground with the R.V. rendering, “Thine eyes are as the pools of Heshbon.”

If the Israelites, on the one hand, lacked till late the constructive ability of the Romans with regard to vivaria, they, on the other, seem to have lacked or failed to apply the destructive devices employed by the latter for the wholesale slaughter of fish by poison and drugs, made familiar to us by Oppian and Ælian.

Note.—With reference to Mainzer’s absurd contention, Prof. Kennedy writes me as follows: “Naturally the working of the large drag net required considerable elbow-room, and it was understood, as Krauss points out (Talm. Archäol., ii. 145), that a fisherman would not encroach on his neighbour’s ground. If we assume, for the sake of argument, that the ancient drag was as long as those used by the Galilean fishermen of to-day—i.e. about 400 metres (437 yards) according to Masterman (op. cit., 40)—a boat’s crew, working from the beach and spreading their drag in a semi-circle, would not monopolise more than 250-280 yards of sea-front, a very different ‘proposition’ from the Talmud’s or Mainzer’s parasang.”

Chapter XL. Ichthyolatry Improbable—Fish Not in Sacrifices or Auguries

Although nothing is said of sacrificial fish, it is possible that Ichthyolatry did prevail in Israel to some extent. In Deut. iv. 18, we find an express commandment or law laid down by Moses against the making of a graven image of “the likeness of any fish that is in the water under the earth”: in Exodus xx. 4, we read, “Thou shalt not make unto thee a graven image, nor the likeness of any form that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth.”

If Ichthyolatry existed, it could hardly have sprung up among a nomad people living in the Desert, as did the Jews for years before they entered the Promised Land. Such a cult with other customs was probably adopted from the Canaanites by their conquerors. Psalm cvi. 35 ff., expressly tells us, “but they mingled themselves with the nations and learned their works; and they served their idols which became a snare unto them.” Any argument in favour of the existence of Ichthyolatry which rests mainly on Deut. iv. 18, and Ex. xx. 4, can to my mind carry little or no weight. They simply embody a comprehensive command against making a graven image of any kind whatever, celestial, terrestrial, or aquatic.

As to the observance of the commandment, Petrie writes:— “It is often assumed that the prohibition to make a graven image was as rigidly carried out in Israel as in Islam—the second monotheistic revival of the Semites. The holy of holies in Solomon’s Temple contained, however, two enormous cherubim, about 17 feet high, side by side, right across the back of the shrine.... Not only were these figures in the holiest place, but in the court stood the brazen sea on twelve oxen, and figures of lions, oxen, and cherubim covered the tanks. In earlier times Micah had a graven image, and a molten image of silver, weighing about six pounds, in his private chapel of Yahweh, served by a Levite, and they, with the ephod and teraphim, were adopted for tribal worship by part of the tribe of Dan until the captivity.”

The author adds “there was neither officially nor privately any objection to the use of images.” He also shows that even “in the holiest of all things, the Ark of Yahweh, there were cherubs, one on each side of the mercy seat, with their wings covering the mercy seat,” in which design and other religious matters he discerns clear instances of Egyptian influence.

However this may be, it is plain from Ezekiel (viii. 10-11) that the Israelites worshipped graven representations of “every form of creeping things and abominable beasts, and all the idols of the House of Israel, pourtrayed up on the wall round about. And there stood before them seventy men of the elders of Israel ... with every man his censer in his hand: and the odour of the cloud of incense went up.” Some scholars go indeed as far as the assertion that until the prophetic reformation in the seventh and sixth centuries b.c., the popular religion of Israel was about on a level with unreformed Hinduism.

We stand on surer ground in the statement that Ashtoreth, a goddess of the Zidonians and Canaanites, was worshipped by Israel, for in 1 Kings xi. 5 and 33, we read “Solomon went after Ashtoreth, the goddess of the Zidonians,” and, “because they have forsaken me and have worshipped Ashtoreth.” From this acknowledged worship of Ashtoreth, sometimes identified with Astarte and with Atargatis —undoubtedly a fish goddess—Ichthyolatry has been claimed for Israel.

From a coin of Hierapolis. See Brit. Mus. Cat. of Coins, Galatia, Pl. 18, 14, or B.V. Head, Historia Numorum (Oxford, 1911), p. 777. For Atargatis, see ante, 127.]

But Cheyne, after showing that the mistake of identification arose from Carnaim, where (Maccabees v. 26) the temple of Atargatis stood, being also called (Gen. xiv. 5) Ashtoreth-Carnaim, disputes the deduction, and denies that these goddesses were one and the same. He points out that at Ascalon there were two separate temples, one to Astarte (Ashtoreth) and one to Atargatis (Derceto), standing side by side.

Strabo, however, states (XVI. p. 748) that in Hierapolis, or Bambyce, or Magog, “there was worshipped the Syrian goddess Atargatis,” and on p. 785 that this same goddess is called by the historian Ctesias Derceto, and by others Athara. In Strabo’s day apparently the name, if not the cult, of Atargatis and Ashtoreth were considered identical.

Milton, at any rate, evinces no doubt,

“Came Ashtoreth, whom the Phœnicians called Astarte, queen of heaven, with crescent horns: In Sion also not unsung, where stood Her temple on the offensive Mount.”

The origin, the nature, and the worship of Dagon, the fish god of the Philistines, whose temple stood at Ashdod, are discussed in Chapter xxxiii.

The Scape-Goat is perhaps the best known of the Israelitish offerings to the deity. The annual ceremony of “the driving away” became a service of the highest pomp and solemnity. For it two goats were necessary: the first to be drawn by lot was killed as a Sin Offering unto Yahweh, the second, the Scape-Goat, after being laden by the High Priest with all the sins of the people for the past year, was sent away into the wilderness, “to Azazel” (Levit. xvi. 8, 10, R.V.).

This symbolic bearing away of the sins of the people is somewhat analogous to that in Lev. xiv. 4 ff., where for the purification of the leper one bird is killed, and the other, charged with the disease, let loose in the open field. In Zech. v. 5 ff., Wickedness is carried away bodily into the land of Shinar.

The resemblance of this periodic offering and of many other Jewish institutions to those of Babylon is striking. The letting loose and driving away of the Mashhulduppu, or Scape-Goat, was similarly the occasion of an annual ceremony of imposing ritual. The first account of this appears in an inscription of the Cassite period, which avows itself merely a copy of an earlier record, the original of which may well have existed in the time of Hammurabi.

To fish figuring as symbolical bearers away of sins we have references, according to Pitra, in the Talmud, though not in the Bible. On New Year’s Day (about mid-September), when in the fulness of time God will judge mankind, it was the custom (based on Micah vii., “Thou wilt cast all their sins into the sea”) to assemble near some lake or stream. If goodly numbers of fish were spied, the omen of the expiation of human sins was accepted. Forthwith the crowd jumped for joy, and shed their garments, likewise their sins, on to the fishes, who swam away, heavily laden.

Religious customs in Israel and Assyria both correspond and differ. Thus the sacrifices of fish found in Assyria are absent in Israel, although we read passim of offerings of domestic animals, of wine, of pigeons, and of doves. The former (despite Sayce and Jastrow) were guiltless of human sacrifices, the latter “sacrificed their sons and their daughters” (even) “unto demons.”

From the words of Exod. xiii. 2, and Numbers xviii. 15 f., Mr. Campbell Thompson holds that the God of Israel plainly regarded the firstborn of men and the firstlings of animals as his own. The Israelites certainly offered up some of their children, generally the firstborn (cf. Isaac), either as a tribute regularly due to their Deity or to appease his anger at times of calamity or danger. Other writers disavow a general sacrificing of the firstborn as part of the religion of Israel; they attribute individual instances occurring towards the close of the monarchy to the influence of surrounding nations.

I have come across no counterpart to the Babylonian or Roman custom of taking auguries or making oracular responses from the movements, etc., of fish. If the Hebrews apparently lacked some modes of divining which were employed by the Greeks, Romans, Arabs, etc., such as observation of the flight and cries of birds, the movements of fish, the inspection of the entrails of animals (for it was a King of Babylon, not of Israel, who “looked in the liver”), the Bible reveals signs and omens resembling or identical with those in use elsewhere.

We read, for instance, of Rhabdomancy, or divination by rods, “my people asketh counsel at their stock, and their staff declareth unto them.” Drawing of Lots, probably by different coloured stones, Astrology, and Oneiromancy, or dream divination.

Strabo reports as attached to the Temple at Jerusalem a class of official dreamers, apparently for purposes of divination or prophetic deliverances. Of the important part played by dreams in both the Old and New Testaments, those of Jacob, Joseph, Solomon, and Joseph the husband of Mary, are inter alia evidence. In the Temple institution may possibly be detected the continuance of the Semitic pre-Mosaic custom of sleeping places before a temple (as at Serabīt-al-Khādim) for dreamers in quest of omens, although the references to it in the O.T. itself are very slight, and only occur in connection with Bethel stones and Seers.

The Seers were a recognised class of persons, who by an exceptional gift could disclose to inquirers secrets of the present and immediate future (1 Sam. ix. 6, and x. 2-6). Samuel himself belonged to the college or class of Seers. Like the diviners, they received fees; thus Saul’s servant suggests the giving to the Seer, whose words invariably come to pass, “a quarter of a shekel of silver.”

As regards the diviners, etc., we find in Isaiah ii. 6, “Thou hast forsaken thy people the house of Jacob, because they be filled with customs from the East and are soothsayers like the Philistines,” and in Deut. xviii. 10-12, “one that useth divination, or practiseth augury, or an enchanter, or a sorcerer, or a charmer, or a consulter with a familiar spirit, or a wizard, or a necromancer,” all these are abominations unto the Lord.

Chapter XLI. The Fish of Tobias—Demonic Possession

The fish in Tobit, apart from its ichthyic, possesses two other points of interest, its magical and its medical power. As in Assyria we have found beliefs in magical charms very prevalent, and exorcisms of demons or devils accomplished by various methods, so with the Jews, especially with the Babylonian Jews, the interest in magical charms was very strong, and the means employed for exorcism very similar.

In both nations it is necessary to have some object into which the spirit may be attracted or driven, in point of fact a Leyden jar in which the malign influence may be isolated under control. It is all the same whether the devils are sent into the Gadarene swine or the jinni corked up in the brass bottle of Solomon. The disease (or oppressing devil) must be gently or forcibly persuaded to leave the human body and enter the dead animal or waxen figure close at hand, and so be brought into subjection, or by cleansing with water or fumigation (often with a censer) banished, and its possession or persecution of the person made of no effect.

As nowadays even Macaulay’s schoolboy wots little of the Apocrypha, a short résumé of the book of Tobit seems not amiss.

Tobit has become blind, and fallen on evil days in Nineveh; he bids his son Tobias set forth and fetch a sum of money deposited with Gabael in Media. He chooses as a trustworthy companion Azarias, who turns out to be no other than the angel Raphael, whom God, compassionating both Tobit’s plight and Sara’s subjection to a demon, has sent purposely from heaven.

On the journey Tobias (R.V.) “went down to wash himself in the Tigris and a fish leaped out of the river and would have swallowed him. But the angel said unto him, ‘Take hold on the fish.’” And the young man caught hold of the fish and cast it on the land. The angel bids him, “Cut the fish open, and take the heart, the liver, and the gall, and put them up safely,” giving as his reasons, “touching the heart and liver, if a devil or evil spirit trouble any, we must make a smoke thereof before the man or woman, and the party shall be no more vexed. As for the gall, it is good to anoint a man that hath white films in his eyes, and he shall be healed.” Of the healing of his father’s blindness we read later in xi. 11-13, where Tobias “strake of the gall on his father’s eyes.”

The great act of the drama, however, is staged in Ecbatana, where the travellers break their journey at the house of a kinsman Raguel, whose daughter Sara “had been given in marriage to seven husbands, but Asmodeus the evil spirit (or demon) slew them before they had lain with her.” Tobias, not to be daunted, marries Sara, not, however, before Raguel “took paper and did write an instrument of covenant (or marriage contract) and sealed it.”

“And when they had finished their supper, they brought Tobias in unto her. But as he went he remembered the words of Raphael, and took the ashes of the incense, and put the heart and the liver of the fish thereupon, and made a smoke therewith. But when the devil had smelled the smell he fled into the uppermost parts of Egypt, and the angel bound him” (viii. 1, 2, 3). Cf. Milton, P.L. iv. “Asmodeus of the fishy fume,” etc.

Dr. Gaster has given us a version, hitherto unpublished, in which “Tobiyah took the heart of a fish and put it in a censer and burnt it under the clothes of Sarah. And Ashmedai (the demon) received the smells and fled instantly.” This contra-demonical property in a fish appears elsewhere, e.g. in the Macedonian charm, which prescribes for one possessed the wearing of and the fumigation with the glands of a fish, to ensure that “the demons will flee from him.”

The jealous passion of demons or devils for maidens colours Asian, African, and European folk-lores. They lie in wait for married couples; sternly guard their so-called brides. Otherwise they were usually innocuous. Tobias argues with the angel, “If I go in unto her, I die as the others before: for a wicked spirit loveth her, which hurteth nobody, but those that come in unto her” (vi. 14).

According to the Testament of Solomon, Asmodeus (the demon) avows, “my business is to plot against the newly wedded, so that they may not know one another. I sever them by many calamities, and I waste away the beauty of virgin women.” In Asmodeus we recognise a male counterpart of Lilith and her dangerous relations with men. The demon, in fact, regards the virgin as his own, himself as her true and constant lover, and resents, prevents, or “avenges any infringement of his jus primæ noctis.”

The misconception, evident in the last eight words of this learned writer, as to what constituted the jus primæ noctis prevails widely. As the jus is the child, strange as the parentage may appear, of the tale of Tobias and Sara, it seems worth our while to notice the strangely erroneous views held both as to the possessor of the jus and the occasion of its exercise, and shortly to explain, even at the risk of seeming to stray from fishing into folklore, the origin and the establishment of the custom.

According to popular belief the superior or lord of the fee, among other feudal privileges, possessed, as such, the vested right of connection with the daughters of his tenantry or of holders of land under him on the first night of their marriages. Some writers on the French Revolution, indeed, indignantly class the wide and brutal exercise of this right on chaste maidens by licentious seigneurs as not the least, perhaps one of the most provocative, of the social causes, which led to the detestation and subsequent massacre of the noblesse in many départements and to the overthrow of the old landed system!

But alas! “this sad old romance, this unchivalrous story” (to vary Lucille) must go to the wall. The jus, as thus conceived and described, never in fact existed anywhere in civilised Europe. The figment of its ruthless exercise as a legal right by licentious lordlings owes its existence to a vivid imagination uninfected by one germ of truth, as Lord Hailes, M. L. Veuillot, and others clearly demonstrate.

It must come as a severe shock to preconceived ideas to run up against the dull facts of history, and thence discover that the jus primæ noctis, so far from being the barbarous privilege of deflowering an unwilling bride, was merely a right accorded by the Church to the husband on the payment of a varying fee to the bishops, etc., for the privilege of disregarding the ecclesiastical ordinance, which required that his bride should remain in a state of virginity for one, two, or three days!

Continence for one night was first enjoined in the decree passed by the Fourth Council of Carthage in 398 a.d. This, extended to “two or three days,” figured not only in the Capitularies of Charlemagne, but was received into the Canon Law, and was twice repeated in the decretals of the Catholic Church.

But what, it may be fairly asked, has the jus primæ noctis got to do with our Tobias and Sara? The history of the connection deserves tracing, not only to clear away its obscurity, but also to show how a custom—important in result but based simply on a variant version of Tobit—was by the Church early adopted and widely inculcated. The days, during which the continence enjoined on the newly married could only be disregarded if the husband had previously paid for the privilege a fee to some religious authority, came to be known as “Tobias Days.”

No searching, however diligent, of the Septuagint or of our A. or R. Versions, nor (it seems) of the Aramaic text of the tale of Tobit sheds light on the origin of the custom or of the application of the name.

The Vulgate, however, which the Roman Church adopts, sets forth the story of the abstinence of Tobias from Sara. “Then Tobias exhorted the virgin, and said unto her: Sara, arise, and let us pray to God to-day, and to-morrow, and the next day: because for these three nights we are joined to God: and when the third night is over we will be in our wedlock. For we are the children of the Saints, and we must not be joined together like the heathen who know not God.”

From this (apparently) solitary and quite different version sprang the custom of the “Tobias Days,” and the jus primæ noctis, of which the usual conception is “a monstrous fable born of ignorance, prejudice, and confusion of ideas.”

The custom of continence for varying periods probably springs from the common widespread belief (of which Tobit affords a Semitic example) that demons lie in wait to harm newly-married couples, and from the hope that if allowed free scope for making love to the bride their jealous wrath might be appeased, or the danger, at any rate, minimised. The alternative to appeasement was deception of the demon; whence women sometimes disguised themselves as men, and even wore false beards!

We find, on returning from this semi-folklore excursion, Prof. Langdon asserting that in Sumero-Babylonian religion each individual is guarded by a divine spirit or god. He is called the “Man’s God,” and the man is defined, in a religious sense, as a “Son of God.” But this term applies to no females.

This can hardly be attributed to accident, for our sources of information mention hundreds, even thousands, of men bewitched, and by demonic force abandoned by their indwelling gods, but never a woman. Women not infrequently figure as causing the condition of tabu, but never as having fallen to the powers of devils, or witches, or as being under the protection of a personal god. They never appear in the private penitential psalms.

But when we recall the high position occupied by women, not only in Babylonian society, but also in the eye of the civil law, which regarded their rights, as often as not, equal to those of men, and that women are often found as priestesses of religious orders, Langdon’s statements, resting on recent discoveries, create grounds for surprise.

To explain the anomaly he conjectures that when the texts refer to sinners, penitents, or sufferers, the title “son of his god” applies in all probability also to women.

The book of Tobit, whether Persian in its source or Aramaic in its original text, furnishes an example of demonic possession of a woman, a Hebrew of the Hebrews.

The Jewish conception of demonic possession resembles, indeed probably descends from, the Babylonian. The “seven devils” of Matt. xii. 45, Luke xi. 26, and viii. 2, simply reflect the evil spirits, called in a famous incantation The Seven, who play no small part in Babylonian mythology.

The N.T. confines the instances of evil spirits possessing mankind—more frequently in the psychical rather than in the physical sense—to the Gospels and the Acts, which illustrate demonic possession of women by (inter alias) the Canaanitish woman (Matt. xvi. 22) and Mary Magdalene, “from whom seven devils had gone out” (Luke viii. 2).

Chapter XLII. The Fish of Moses—Jonah—Solomon’s Ring

The many versions of “the fish of Moses” are but delightful explanations of the flat fish having more meat on one side than another, or being white or colourless on one side and darkish coloured on the other.

In one story the Almighty, annoyed with Moses for answering some one’s query “Who was the most knowing of men?” with a simple “I,” instead of accrediting his wisdom to God, revealed unto him, “verily, I have a servant at a place where the two seas meet, and he is more knowing than thou.” The legend, with the direction to Moses to take a fish and put it in a measure, and the fish’s escape by God’s aid, etc., is too well known for recital.

But the conclusion of Hamid of Andalusia as to the nature of the fish is not, and may be added. “The fish of Moses which I saw in the Mediterranean is of the breed of that fried fish, a half of which Moses and Joshua ate, and the other half God revived. It is about a span long. On one side it has bristles and its belly is covered with a thin skin. It has but one eye and half a head. Looking at it on one side you would deem it dead, but the other side is perfect in all its parts.”

To account for the difference in colour the legend of the Arabs runs thuswise:—“Moses was once cooking a fish, and when it had been broiled till it was brown on one side, the fire or oil gave out, and Moses angrily threw the fish into the sea, when, although it had been half broiled, it came to life again, and its descendants have ever since preserved the same peculiarities of colour.”

The half-destroyed fish which recovers life meets us also in the belief which unto this day lingers in some towns on the Black Sea, but on the Rhombus, not on the Sole, is the miracle wrought.

According to a Russian legend, the tidings of the Resurrection were brought to the Virgin Mary, when at food: incredulous and as one of little faith she flung the uneaten half of a Rhombus into the water, bidding it, were the message true, come back to life whole! And lo! this it instantly did.

Pictures of the Virgin, commemorating the incident are painted on a Rhombus, nailed to a board, thoroughly dried, and ornamented with a background of gold. A great ceremonial marks their removal to a shrine hermetically sealed. The custom, no doubt, sprang from the belief that fishing enjoyed the special protection of the Holy Mother.

Mahometan tradition abounds with fish lore of the oddest kind. The commentators of the Koran vie, indeed, with the Talmudists in the curious subjects to which they often devote serious study, and in their grotesqueness of invention. The learned Rabbi el Bassam seems to have spent fifteen whole years in the vain endeavour to discover the name of the chef who made the pottage for Esau!

The story of the fishes, who made a point of coming every Saturday morning to tempt the Hebrews to the sin of catching them illustrates Koranic invention. Thinking to avoid the sin and yet secure their seducers, the sojourners went out, dammed the channels, and ate the fish on the next day. But as there was, and in some parts of Scotland still is, little difference as regards working on the Sabbath between fishing and damming, the violation of the day—the punishment scarcely fits the crime—involved their metamorphosis into apes!

The Koran denies to the faithful on pilgrimage any hunting of game en route, but allows fishing and eating of fish from the sea. At first, eating of fish was apparently unlawful, because the name of Allah could not always be pronounced over them before they died.

To remedy this enforced abstinence from such a wealth of healthy food Mahomet blessed a knife and cast it into the sea, thus all fish were blessed and had their throats cut before they were brought to shore. “The large openings behind the gills are of course the wounds thus miraculously made without killing the fish!”

We discover in another legend that an accidental act on the part of Abraham—not a designed ceremony on the part of Mahomet—gave Mussulmans their liberty of ichthyophagy. The patriarch, after sacrificing the ram instead of Isaac, threw the knife into a stream and incidentally struck a fish, whence fishes are the only animals eaten by Mahometans without their throats being previously cut.

The place of fish in the Zodiac has been already noticed. Apparently the position of the Pisces led Kepler to believe that he had discovered the means of determining the true year of our Saviour’s birth. From the conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn and Mars in 1604, the astronomer working backward found that Jupiter and Saturn were in the constellation of the Pisces (a fish, be it noted, being the astrological symbol for Judæa) in the latter half of the year of Rome 747, and were joined by Mars in 748. Their first union in the East awoke the attention of the Magi, told them that the expected time had come, and bade them set forth for Judæa.

Astronomy has been to archæology a most helpful hand-maiden in establishing not only this but other dates of ancient, especially of Assyrian, history.

If the surmise of Isaak Walton that Seth, the son of Adam, taught his son to cast a line, and engraved the mystery of the craft on those pillars of which Masons are supposed to know so much, or even if the statement that,

“Deucalion did first this art invent Of Angling, and his people taught the same,”

could have been verified, how many discussions on the question—formerly almost as hotly combated as some religious doctrine—as to what was the first method of fishing would have been avoided. Alas! an authoritative answer is even yet to seek.

The nature of the “great fish” of Jonah will, I fear, no longer prove an attractive subject for sermons. Identification of “the beast” ranging through all the fishes of Ichthyology, from the celebrated “first, aiblins it was a whale,” down to “nineteenthly” (whose precise species I forget), will alas! with the development of the higher criticism and of comparative mythology hardly draw the tensely interested congregations of yore.

Tylor points out that at the root of the apologue of Jonah lies the widely-spread Nature-myth of the sea-monster or dragon, of which the fight between Tiāmat and Marduk, and of Andromeda and the sea-monster are analogous developments.

The picture shows that while the whale’s gastric juices had completely absorbed Jonah’s clothes and curls, they prevailed not, possibly from callosity of hide, against his body.]

Cheyne detects the link between the original myth and the story of Jonah in Jeremiah li. 34, “he hath swallowed me up as a dragon: he hath filled his maw with my delicates: he hath cast me out,” and again in verse 44, “and I will bring forth out of his mouth that which he has swallowed up.”

Allusions to mythical dragons occur elsewhere, as in Psalm lxxiv. 13, “Thou breakest the heads of the dragons (or sea-monsters) in the water.” The curious belief in a dragon or fish that swallows the moon spreads wide. This draws from Mr. R. C. Thompson the comment, “when it is remembered that Jonah was swallowed by the ‘great fish’ for three days (the period of the moon’s disappearance at the end of the month), the coincidence is well worth considering; especially as Jonah is the Hebrew word for dove, and it was at Harrān, the city sacred to the Moon God, that the dove was sacrificed (Al. Nadim, 294).”

But whatever the “great fish,” and whatever the story’s derivation, the whimsical treatment of the prophet’s imprisonment in a poem by the Rev. Zachary Boyd, Rector of Glasgow University in the seventeenth century, demands some quotation:—

“What house is this? here’s neither coal nor candle; Where I no thing but guts of fishes handle; The like of this on earth man never saw, A living man within a monster’s mawe!”

He then goes on to contrast Noah’s freedom of movement in the ark with his enforced immobility:

“He and his ark might goe and also come, But I sit still in such a straitened roome, As is most uncouth, head and feet together Among such grease as would a thousand smother; I find no way now for my shrinking hence, But here to byde and die for mine offence; Eight persons were in Noah’s hulk together, Comfortable they were each one to other. In all the earth like unto me is none Farre from all living I heere byde alone, Where I, entombed in melancholy sink, Choakt, suffocat, with excremental stink.”

I close this, as my other chapters, with a legend which makes fish directly or indirectly responsible for some historical happening.

It was through a fish (according to the Talmud) that Solomon regained his kingdom. The King one day, while bathing, confided his signet ring to one of his many concubines, Amina. Was it her eyes, I wonder, or those of that Queen, Pharaonic or other (by whose happy influence Solomon, eschewing evil and cleaving only unto her, was perhaps inspired to write The Song of Songs), which he likens to the pools of Hesbon?

A devil named Sakhar, the Talmud goes on, coming in the shape of Solomon, obtained the ring from Amina, and by virtue of its possession sat on the throne in Solomon’s guise. After forty days the devil flew away, and threw the ring into the sea. The signet was immediately swallowed by a fish, which on being caught was given to Solomon. The ring was found in its stomach, and he, who without its credentials had been compelled to beg for bread and from his appearance being changed by the devil had been regarded as a preposterous pretender, “by this means recovered his kingdom, and taking Sakhar and tying a great stone to his neck, threw him into the sea of Tiberias.”

In another version —very probable because more characteristic of Solomon, in that he annexes another wife—the King after the loss of his throne became a cook in the palace of a foreign sovereign, married his master’s daughter, bought a fish with the ring inside, and so recovered his realm.

In another legend fish play, if not a historical, yet no small part in connection with a famous historical character.

St. Brandan in his travels encountered Judas Iscariot, whose allotted punishments at any rate lacked not monotony, for after each spell of pitch and sulphur he was condemned to sit on a desolate rock in the frozen regions. To the query as to the purpose of a cloth bandage worn round the head, Judas made answer that it was an effectual charm against the ferocious fishes among which he was often doomed to be thrown, for at its sight they lost their will to bite. He had obtained this shield because on earth he had once given a piece of cloth to a naked beggar, and so, even unto him, a deed of charity was not allowed by the Almighty to pass without reward.

When, in Matthew Arnold’s poem, “St. Brandan sails the northern main” and comes across Judas on an iceberg, the fishes occur not, but the cloth appears:

“And in the street a leper sate Shivering with fever, naked, old; Sand raked his sores from heel to pate, The hot wind fevered him five-fold.

He gazed upon me as I passed And murmur’d: Help me or I die!— To the poor wretch my cloak I cast, Saw him look eased, and hurried by.”

For which act of charity Judas was permitted by the angel every Christmas night to

“Go hence and cool thyself an hour.”

CHINESE FISHING