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,
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.
