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.[1025]
As may naturally be expected, this law and other decisions, which by debarring so many species[1026] 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.[1027]
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![1028] 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.”[1029] 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.[1030]
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[1031]) 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.[1032]
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[1033] 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.[1034]
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.[1035]
(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.[1036] 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.[1037] 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.”[1038] 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.”[1039]
Mainzer, however, severely restricts this freedom of fishing.[1040] “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.[1041] 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.”[1042]
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 37⁄10 miles Klio, xiv. 338 ff.).[1043]
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,[1044] 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[1045] 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.”