Fishers of Christ?

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Giuseppe
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Fishers of Christ?

Post by Giuseppe »

According to Dujardin, the famous anagram formed by the five letters of the word Ichthus would not be at the origin of Jesus being named "fish" and pictured as such in the Catacombs.

He writes:
"This suggestion is absurd: the anagram was framed not before but after the symbol, in order to justify the use of the word Ichthus".
"It is also obvious that Christians would not adopt a shortened form calculated to invite ridicule." (p.54)

The Serpent of the Naassenes was a fish, Tertullian called Jesus "our fish" and Joshua was the son of Nun, "fish".

If Fish is an ancient title of Jesus, then the apostles made "fishers of men" became more precisely researchers of Christ. Or, alternatively, fishers of Christians.
Nihil enim in speciem fallacius est quam prava religio. -Liv. xxxix. 16.
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Ben C. Smith
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Re: Fishers of Christ?

Post by Ben C. Smith »

Giuseppe wrote: Thu Aug 10, 2017 8:03 am According to Dujardin, the famous anagram formed by the five letters of the word Ichthus would not be at the origin of Jesus being named "fish" and pictured as such in the Catacombs.

He writes:
"This suggestion is absurd: the anagram was framed not before but after the symbol, in order to justify the use of the word Ichthus".
"It is also obvious that Christians would not adopt a shortened form calculated to invite ridicule." (p.54)

The Serpent of the Naassenes was a fish, Tertullian called Jesus "our fish" and Joshua was the son of Nun, "fish".
I have been doing quite a bit of study on the topic of "fish" or "fishing" in the early Christian texts, and I agree that the symbol preceded the anagram. I may post something further about this entire issue sometime, since it is far reaching and involves a lot of different media (texts, catacomb iconography, cultural associations, and so on).

Some of my interest stems from a simple question: why does Jesus try a piece of fish in Luke 24.41-43? He has already proven his physicality in 24.36-40. It is not likely to be a eucharistic reference, either (assuming from certain iconographic images and from the feedings of the 5000 and 4000 that fish can take on eucharistic connotations), since the eucharist is associated, not with the resurrection, but with the parousia in passages such as Matthew 26.29 = Mark 14.25; Luke 22.15-18; 1 Corinthians 11.26; Didache 9.4; 10.5. The gospel of the Hebrews associates the eucharist with the resurrection (appearance to James), but this eucharist involves bread and possibly wine, not fish. So I suspect that the fish in Luke 24.41-43 is a leftover from a resurrection story such as we find in John 21 (and such as I hypothesize for the lost ending of Mark), in which the fish is symbolic of the apostolic commission: be(come) fishers of men. Fishing was an ancient metaphor for the use of rhetoric and persuasion to draw people to one's point of view (Petronius, Satyricon 3; Jeremiah 16.16; Origen, Commentary on Matthew 13.10).

Also, I think that the disciples were depicted as fishermen in the gospels precisely because of this metaphor (and because of Jeremiah 16.16).
If Fish is an ancient title of Jesus, then the apostles made "fishers of men" became more precisely researchers of Christ. Or, alternatively, fishers of Christians.
My suspicion is that Christ became a fish because Christians were the fish being drawn in by apostolic preaching. If Christians are "little fish" (as they are sometimes called), then Christ must be the "big fish" (as, again, he is sometimes called). I doubt the image went in the other direction, with Christ first being thought of as a fish and then Christians as fishlings, so to speak; the image of a rhetoritician or preacher drawing people in with persuasive words is simply too powerful, culturally speaking; I think that was the origin of the image, and not some cultic association of a pescine Christ.

This lines up with the fish being inserted into the eucharist as a symbol of the elements (which were in turn a symbol of Christ's body and blood by this time, after an earlier period in which they were simply the elements of a formal meal), a maneuver no doubt facilitated by the Jewish image of the great messianic banquet consisting of the flesh of Leviathan (notice here again the trajectory of eucharist to parousia instead of eucharist to resurrection of Christ).

Incidentally, here is possibly the most famous use of the fish acrostic (and certainly a most complex one!). Sibylline Oracles 8.217-250:

ΙΗΣΟΥΣ ΧΡΕΙΣΤΟΣ ΘΕΟΥ ΥΙΟΣ ΣΩΤΗΡ ΣΤΑΥΡΟΣ

Ἱδρώσει δὲ χθών, κρίσεως σημεῖον ὅτ' ἔσται.
Ἥξει δ' οὐρανόθεν βασιλεὺς αἰῶσιν ὁ μέλλων,
Σάρκα παρὼν πᾶσαν κρῖναι καὶ κόσμον ἅπαντα.
Ὄψονται δὲ θεὸν μέροπες πιστοὶ καὶ ἄπιστοι
Ὕψιστον μετὰ τῶν ἁγίων ἐπὶ τέρμα χρόνοιο.
Σαρκοφόρων δ' ἀνδρῶν ψυχὰς ἐπὶ βήματι κρίνει,

Χέρσος ὅταν ποτὲ κόσμος ὅλος καὶ ἄκανθα γένηται.
Ῥίψουσιν δ' εἴδωλα βροτοὶ καὶ πλοῦτον ἅπαντα.
Ἐκκαύσει δὲ τὸ πῦρ γῆν οὐρανὸν ἠδὲ θάλασσαν
Ἰχνεῦον, ῥήξει τε πύλας εἱρκτῆς Ἀίδαο.
Σὰρξ τότε πᾶσα νεκρῶν ἐς ἐλευθέριον φάος ἥξει
Τῶν ἁγίων· ἀνόμους δὲ τὸ πῦρ αἰῶσιν ἐλέγξει.
Ὁππόσα τις πράξας ἔλαθεν, τότε πάντα λαλήσει·
Στήθεα γὰρ ζοφόεντα θεὸς φωστῆρσιν ἀνοίξει.

Θρῆνος δ' ἐκ πάντων ἔσται καὶ βρυγμὸς ὀδόντων.
Ἐκλείψει σέλας ἠελίου ἄστρων τε χορεῖαι.
Οὐρανὸν εἱλίξει· μήνης δέ τε φέγγος ὀλεῖται.
Ὑψώσει δὲ φάραγγας, ὀλεῖ δ' ὑψώματα βουνῶν,

Ὕψος δ' οὐκέτι λυγρὸν ἐν ἀνθρώποισι φανεῖται.
Ἶσα δ' ὄρη πεδίοις ἔσται καὶ πᾶσα θάλασσα
Οὐκέτι πλοῦν ἕξει. γῆ γὰρ φρυχθεῖσα τότ' ἔσται
Σὺν πηγαῖς, ποταμοί τε καχλάζοντες λείψουσιν.

Σάλπιγξ δ' οὐρανόθεν φωνὴν πολύθρηνον ἀφήσει
Ὠρύουσα μύσος μελέων καὶ πήματα κόσμου.
Ταρτάρεον δὲ χάος δείξει τότε γαῖα χανοῦσα.
Ἥξουσιν δ' ἐπὶ βῆμα θεοῦ βασιλῆος ἅπαντες.
Ῥεύσει δ' οὐρανόθεν ποταμὸς πυρὸς ἠδὲ θεείου.

Σῆμα δέ τοι τότε πᾶσι βροτοῖς, σφρηγὶς ἐπίσημος
Τὸ ξύλον ἐν πιστοῖς, τὸ κέρας τὸ ποθούμενον ἔσται,
Ἀνδρῶν εὐσεβέων ζωή, πρόσκομμα δὲ κόσμου,
Ὕδασι φωτίζον κλητοὺς ἐν δώδεκα πηγαῖς·
Ῥάβδος ποιμαίνουσα σιδηρείη γε κρατήσει.
Οὗτος ὁ νῦν προγραφεὶς ἐν ἀκροστιχίοις θεὸς ἡμῶν
Σωτὴρ ἀθάνατος βασιλεύς, ὁ παθὼν ἕνεχ' ἡμῶν.

JESUS CHRIST, SON OF GOD, SAVIOUR; CROSS
[The first letters of each respective line in Greek spell out this phrase!]

And the earth shall perspire, when there shall be the sign of judgment. And from heaven shall come the King who for the ages is to be, present to judge all flesh and the whole world. Faithful and faithless mortals shall see God the Most High with the saints at the end of time. And of men bearing flesh he judges souls upon his throne, when sometime the whole world shall be a desert and a place of thorns. And mortals shall their idols cast away and all wealth. And the searching fire shall burn earth, heaven, and sea; and it shall burn the gates, of Hades' prison. Then shall come all flesh of the dead to the free light of the saints; but the lawless shall that fire whirl round and round, for ages. Howsoever much one did in secret, then shall he all things declare; for God shall open dark breasts to the light. And lamentation shall there be from all and gnashing of teeth. Brightness of the sun shall be eclipsed and dances of the stars. He shall roll up the heaven; and of the moon the light shall perish. And he shall exalt the valleys and destroy the heights of hills, and height no longer shall appear remaining among men. And the hills shall with the plains be level and no more on any sea shall there be sailing. For the earth shall then with heat be shriveled and the dashing streams shall with the fountains fall. The trump shall send from heaven a very lamentable sound, howling the loathsomeness of wretched men and the world's woes. And then the yawning earth shall show Tartarean chaos. And all kings shall come unto the judgement seat of God. And there shall out of heaven a stream of fire and brimstone flow. But for all mortals then shall there a sign be, a distinguished seal, the wood among believers, and the horn fondly desired, the life of pious men, but it shall be stumbling block of the world, giving illumination to the elect by water in twelve springs; and there shall rule a shepherding iron rod. This one who now is in acrostics which give signs of God thus written openly, the Savior is, Immortal King, who suffered for our sake.

ΤΙ ΕΣΤΙΝ ΑΛΗΘΕΙΑ
Giuseppe
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Re: Fishers of Christ?

Post by Giuseppe »

the image of a rhetoritician or preacher drawing people in with persuasive words is simply too powerful, culturally speaking; I think that was the origin of the image, and not some cultic association of a pescine Christ.
This quote does me to think about what Secret Alias wrote about Philippians 4:19 and the meaning of chreiai as sayings attributed to Jesus by the various Christians not by some oral tradition but simply by spiritual possession by which Jesus himself talks via his apostles.

The real speaker of "persuasive words" would be only one: the archangel Jesus.
Nihil enim in speciem fallacius est quam prava religio. -Liv. xxxix. 16.
davidbrainerd
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Re: Fishers of Christ?

Post by davidbrainerd »

Fish are out of place on land, like Jesus as the Good Stranger was out of place in the Demiurge's world. Fish come from the deep, the unkown, as he was unknown prior to his appearance. Plenty of Marcionite explanations I can think of. Fish don't procreate by sex in the normal sense of the term, so they're "celibate"...
Secret Alias
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Re: Fishers of Christ?

Post by Secret Alias »

... 'fish' in Hebrew = 50 which is the messianic jubilee which is evidenced at Qumran https://books.google.com/books?id=erY3A ... ee&f=false which is the best explanation IMHO https://books.google.com/books?id=I7xhD ... ee&f=false "Joshua son of nun" might well have been interpreted Joshua, the messiah who comes at the jubilee. FWIW the crossing of the Jordan occurs on a jubilee in ALL traditions that maintained a connection to sabbatical cycles. From Singer and Adler:
The Samaritans in their “Book of Joshua.” date the first month of the first Sabbatical cycle and of the first jubilee cycle as beginning with the crossing of the Jordan and the entrance of the Israelites into their possession https://books.google.com/books?id=OFhLA ... gQ6AEILDAB
Samaritans because of their interest in periods of favor and disfavor calculate eras from entry into Israel (which obviously was the beginning of a period of favor because it was a jubilee) http://thesamaritanupdate.com/

Book of Jubilees, chapter 15, says:
the cloud was lifted up on the first (day) of the first month, of the first year of the period of seven years of the Jubil (Jubilee) even from the beginning of the entering in of the children of Israel
“Finally, from so little sleeping and so much reading, his brain dried up and he went completely out of his mind.”
― Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, Don Quixote
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neilgodfrey
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Re: Fishers of Christ?

Post by neilgodfrey »

Have any useful nuggets been retrieved from Eisler's "Orpheus the Fisher"?
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g_n_o_s_i_s
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Re: Fishers of Christ?

Post by g_n_o_s_i_s »

Secret Alias wrote: Fri Aug 11, 2017 3:22 pm ... 'fish' in Hebrew = 50 which is the messianic jubilee which is evidenced at Qumran https://books.google.com/books?id=erY3A ... ee&f=false which is the best explanation IMHO https://books.google.com/books?id=I7xhD ... ee&f=false "Joshua son of nun" might well have been interpreted Joshua, the messiah who comes at the jubilee. FWIW the crossing of the Jordan occurs on a jubilee in ALL traditions that maintained a connection to sabbatical cycles. From Singer and Adler:
The Samaritans in their “Book of Joshua.” date the first month of the first Sabbatical cycle and of the first jubilee cycle as beginning with the crossing of the Jordan and the entrance of the Israelites into their possession https://books.google.com/books?id=OFhLA ... gQ6AEILDAB
Samaritans because of their interest in periods of favor and disfavor calculate eras from entry into Israel (which obviously was the beginning of a period of favor because it was a jubilee) http://thesamaritanupdate.com/

Book of Jubilees, chapter 15, says:
the cloud was lifted up on the first (day) of the first month, of the first year of the period of seven years of the Jubil (Jubilee) even from the beginning of the entering in of the children of Israel
Would there be any connection with Irenaeus claim that Jesus was over 50 years old when he died?
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