University of Virginia Library

NOTE G.

“Luke only speaks of a great multitude of fishes, but the author of John xxi. gives their number definitely at 153. In reference to this number, there is a remarkable observation of the learned father of the Church, Hieronymus. ‘The writers,’ he observes, ‘upon the nature and characteristics of animals, and among them the excellent Cilician poet Oppian, say, that there are 153 species of fishes; all these were caught by the Apostles, and none were uncaught, just as great and small, rich and poor, all sorts of men were drawn to happiness out of the sea of this world.’ Hieronymus, therefore, considers the number 153 as that of all species of fishes adopted by the writers on natural history of that time, especially by Oppian. And in the fact that exactly this number of fishes were caught by the Apostles at that time, he sees a prophetic symbol of men of all kinds being incorporated by the preaching of the Apostles into the kingdom of God. Now, as regards Oppian in his Poem upon fishing, written, however, according to the most probable supposition,


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in the last year of Marcus Aurelius, and therefore later than the fourth Gospel, we do not find any exact number of the species of fish given, and if we count their numbers, we may, according as we take in or not the sub-divisions into which many of the same species may be distributed, and count similar names twice or not, possibly make out 153, but also quite as easily more or less. Hieronymus, however, only refers to Oppian among others, and therefore there is still a probability that in some writer on natural history, now lost, that number may have been more definitely given.”—

Strauss' “New Life of Jesus,” authorised translation, 1865. Vol. II., pp. 132, 133.
 

“Comment upon Ezekiel, 47.”