FISH WITH AND WITHOUT SCALES—METHODS OF FISHING—VIVARIA
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. 81^b. 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, 21^b, 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
3-7/10 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.”
FOOTNOTES:
[1025] The classification, if unscientific and incorrect—_e.g._ Eels
possess rudimentary scales—had as its practical purpose the elimination
of the _Siluridæ_—_i.e._ the Catfish _Clarias_, _Bagrus_, _Synodontis_,
etc.—which even if, as with the Catfish, pleasant to the taste were
very unwholesome, causing diarrhœa, rashes, etc. Doctors inform me
that even in our day Jews who eat _crustaceæ_, especially lobsters,
are far more liable to these diseases than Christians—presumably from
an abstention of centuries. The ban on Eels from their infrequency in
Palestine was almost superfluous, but on the _Clarias_, which abounds
in and near the sea of Tiberias, very practical. The abstention,
whether originating from supposed reasons of health or from some
obscure tabu, was and still is prevalent in Asia, Africa, and South
America. A curious trace of it at Rome is discoverable in Numa’s
ordinance that in sacrificial offerings no scaleless fish, and no
scarus should figure (Pliny, _N. H._, XXXII. 10). The abstention is
sometimes merely partial, as with the Karayás in the Amazon valley, see
W. A. Cook, _op. cit._, p. 96.
[1026] 700! according to the Talmud, Hul., 83^b.
[1027] Cf. Nidda, 51^b. For authoritative decisions regarding clean
and unclean fish, see Hamburger, vol. I., _Art. Fisch, Die jüdischen
Speisegesetze_ (Wien, 1895), p. 310 ff.
[1028] Forlong, in his _Rivers of Life_, asserts that even at the
present day the Eastern Jews do not eat fresh fish, but at marriages
they place one on the ground, and the bride and bridegroom walk round
or step over it seven times as an emblem of fecundity.
It is curious to note the mistake of Pliny in XXXI. 44: “Aliud vero
castimonarium superstitioni etiam, sacrisque Judæis dicatum, quod fit
e piscibus squama carentibus.” C. Mayhoff’s edition (Lipsiæ, 1897),
however, runs, XXXI. 95: “Aliud vero est castimoniarum superstitioni
etiam sacrisque Judæis dicatum, quod,” etc.
[1029] Sir Thomas Browne, in his _Miscellaneous Writings_, discourses
of fish mentioned in the Bible.
[1030] Walton (in his Introduction) makes Piscator, after speaking of
these four Apostles as “men of mild and sweet, and peaceable spirits
(as indeed most fishermen are),” continues, “it is observable that it
is our Saviour’s will that his four Fishermen Apostles should have a
prioritie of nomination in the catalogue of his Twelve Apostles. And it
is yet more observable that at his Transfiguration, when he left the
rest of his Disciples and chose only three to accompany him, that these
three were all Fishermen.” As a contrast to the excellent character
given to the four fisher Apostles by Walton, a learned divine of Worms,
J. Ruchard, found it incumbent in 1479 to defend Peter from the charge
of instituting abstinence from flesh, so that he could profitably
dispose of his fish! Keller, _op. cit._, p. 335.
[1031] _B. J._, III. 10, 18. “It is watered by a most fertile fountain.
Some have thought it to be a vein of the Nile, as it produces the
_Coracin_ fish as well as that lake does, which is near Alexandria.”
[1032] Smith’s _Hist. of the Bible_ (1890), and Singer’s _Jewish
Encyclopædia_, V., p. 403, however, mention the Tunny, Herring, Eel,
etc.
[1033] See, also, E. W. G. Masterman, _Studies in Galilee_, Chicago,
1909.
[1034] Dr. Boulenger points out, however, that the affinity between the
two rivers is restricted to a few species of the Silurids and Cichlids,
whose importance is outweighed by the total absence from the Jordan of
such characteristic African families as the Polypteridæ, Mormyridæ, and
Characinidæ.
[1035] This statement of Tristram’s is controverted by Masterman, _op.
cit._, p. 44, note 1, who writes, “This is impossible. They leave the
shelter of their fathers’ mouths when about the size of a lentil, and
apparently never return.” The male Pipe fish _Syngnathus acus_ not
only carries the eggs, but also the young fish in a pouch, in a manner
similar to the kangaroo. The young, even after they have begun to swim
about, return when alarmed to the parental cavity. There are only one
or two instances of a female fish taking sole charge of the ova: of
these is _Aspreto batrachus_, which by lying on the top of her eggs
presses them in to her spongy body and carries them thus, till they are
hatched.
[1036] In islands off Northern Australia are found walking and climbing
fish, _Periophthalmus koelreuteri_ and _P. australis_, which ascend the
roots of the mangrove by the use of ventral and pectoral fins, and jump
and skip on the mud with the alertness of rabbits (_The Confessions of
a Beachcomber_, p. 204, London, 1913).
Ktesias, a possible contemporary of Herodotus, writes that in India are
little fish whose habit it is now and then to have a ramble on dry land.
[1037] Wilkinson, _op. cit._, II. p. 118.
[1038] _Encyl. Bibl._, ii. col. 1528, from Thomson, _The Land and the
Book_, p. 402.
[1039] Justinian, _Corpus Juris Civilis_, vol. I., Digest, 41, 1, 1.
[1040] _Op. cit., supra_, p. 405.
[1041] Goldschmidt’s _Der Babylonische Talmud_, vol. VI. p. 1005.
[1042] “The first fisherman has already bestowed labour on the fish,
and regards them as his property.”
[1043] Zuckermann, a leading Jewish authority, in _Das jüdische
Maassystem_, p. 31, gives, it is true, the following equivalents: 1
Parasang = 4 Mil. (Lat. _mille_ = 30 Ris) (stadia)—8000 Hebrew cubits.
Reckoning the cubit at, in round figures, 18 inches, we get a parasang
of 4000 yards, or about 2¼ miles. Later authorities, however, are
agreed that the Persian parasang was at least 3½ miles, or more.
[1044] Nehemiah xiii. 13-16.
[1045] Talmud, Ned. 20^b.