Robert Eisler and the Fish

Discussion about the New Testament, apocrypha, gnostics, church fathers, Christian origins, historical Jesus or otherwise, etc.
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mbuckley3
Posts: 151
Joined: Sat Oct 28, 2017 6:47 am

Robert Eisler and the Fish

Post by mbuckley3 »

The almost-forgotten name of Robert Eisler has popped up on this forum several times recently (chronology of Pilate, Papias frg.21, Slavonic Josephus). So, separately, has the fish symbol. It was fun to find a combination of the two, spotted in an unexpected place.

Guy Stroumsa published 'The Early Christian Fish Symbol Reconsidered' in 1992 (available on his huji.academia.edu page). It is a brief stroll through the history of scholarship on the topic, then on the last lap the far-from-left- field Stroumsa reluctantly promotes an idea of Eisler's. Reluctantly, as he was "a scholar notorious for his far-fetched hypotheses. Most of Eisler's discussions in his various books are useless, but from time to time one also finds in them an interesting intuition....There is no way to discuss the soundness of Eisler's ideas. They are presented in terms which defy any attempt at logical argumentation. Yet..".

The idea here is that the Joshua : Jesus typology, familiar from, for example, Justin (Dial.75) and Tertullian (Adv.Marc.3.16), goes back to early Aramaic-speaking Christianity, as does the fish symbol. 'Nun' is Aramaic for 'fish'; so Joshua ben Nun = Joshua son of 'Fish'; or, just as 'bar nash' can mean 'a/the man', = 'the Fish'. As Joshua and Jesus are the same name, we end up with Joshua/Jesus the Fish leading the way to the promised land.

Both Eisler and Stroumsa use the one, late (? C5) passage to demonstrate that 'Nun' could be understood this way, Genesis Rabbah 97.3. Eisler freely translates, Stroumsa mis-cites, so here's the Soncino translation :

"...as when in the midst of the earth they did not die, so when in the domain of the fish they did not die. And the son of him whose name was as the name of a fish would lead them into the land : 'Nun his son, Joshua his son' [1 Chron.7.27]".


*****

For those with an interest in putting flesh on the bones of intellectual history, I recommend this part of Gershom Scholem's memoir, in the May 1980 issue of 'Commentary' magazine, where Robert Eisler has a memorable walk-on part :
commentary.org/articles/gershom-scholem/how-i-came-to-the-kabbalah
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