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OREREUS> lite FISHER 


COMPARATIVE STUDIES 
IN ORPHIC 
AND 
EARLY 
CHRISTIAN 
CULT SYMBOLISM 


iad 


2 ieee 
Ts IW Ooi a 


4 ps, \ df WW 
2 Ml) 


ROBERT EISEER. Ph.D, 


Late FELLow oF THE AUSTRIAN HISTORICAL INSTITUTE AT THE 
VIENNA UNIVERSITY, ETC. 


WITH SEVENTY-SIX PLATES 


J. M. WATKINS 
21, CECIL COURT, CHARING CROSS ROAD, W.C. 
LONDON 
1921 


LonpDon: 
WoMEN’s PRINTING Society, Lrp., 
Brick STREET, PiccaDitty, W.1. 


PREFACE. 


So many are the books and articles which have already been 
written about the symbolism of the fish in early Christianity and 
about the cult of this saered animal in the other pre-Christian 
religions, that it might seem impossible to find out anything new 
about this subject after the long and diligent researches of 
predecessors so numerous and so illustrious. Yet I hope to have 
opened an entirely new aspect of the question by discussing—as 
far as I know, for the first time—not the cult of the sacred fish 
itself, but the worship of a divine fisher, the rites and the beliefs 
which the different nations of the ancient world connected with 
this peculiar mythic figure, and finally the Christian symbolism of 
the Messianic “fisher of men,” which is indeed entirely different 
from and quite independent of the much discussed Christian 
IXOY2 allegory—of which I have proposed a new very simple 
explanation below, p.171,n.1; 187, n.1; 258, n. 1. 

As the paper and printing betray at first sight, this book had 
been printed and almost finished before August, 1914. 

The enlarged and illustrated edition in book form of the long 
series of papers which I have been allowed by the editor’s kindness 
to contribute to The Quest from 1910-14 was about to be published 
when the fatal war began that finally buried the author’s native 
land, the ancient realm of the Hapsburgs, under the ruins of an 
unfortunate oriental policy. Having done his military duty in the 
first line until the day of his complete disablement in 1917, the 
author was allowed to return to his peaceful research work and to 
wait patiently for the day when the old international relations of 
friendly competition would be resumed in a spirit of reconciliation. 

The kind private letters of congratulation and welcome 
criticism from English scholars and friends, which he has received 
in return for the presentation copies of his recent book on the 
decipherment of the Sinaitic inscriptions discovered by W. M. 
Flinders Petrie and published by A. H. Gardiner, the forthcoming 
publication of the author’s last paper on the Cadmean Alphabet in 
the Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society and the last welcome 
public manifesto of Oxford professors seem to show that this 
time is about to return. Nevertheless the author feels under 
great obligation to his publisher for presenting without further 
delay to the British public the results of the pre-war studies 
of an Austrian archeologist which could not by any means be 
published in the author’s own land during its present desperate 
economic plight. 

Unhappily the conditions of book-production throughout the 


Iv PREFACE 


whole world prevent the inclusion of the great quantity of 
corroborative and complementary: material — texts as well as 
monuments—which the author has been able to collect in the 
meantime and which would well fill another volume of the same 
size. 

Especially the somewhat scanty treatment of the Pagan 
material in the initial chapters I.-VII. could be much amplified 
and advantageously rearranged now. ‘The ultimately appended 
pp. 271ff. may give the reader a foretaste of this projected 2nd 
volume, of which a type-written copy will be placed at the disposal 
of readers in the library of the British Museum, the publisher 
being prepared to receive the names of those who may desire to 
purchase an eventual printed edition of it with many additional 

lates. 

As the illustrations have been added after the completion of 
the whole work, I have availed myself of the opportunity to add 
certain corrections and amplifications to the text of the book in the 
course of the explanations of the single monuments. Other modifi- 
cations of certain views expressed in the first and earliest chapters 
have been occasionally added in the last chapters, XXXV.-LIV., 
wherever a cross reference to the older parts of the book proved 
necessary. The reader will also find at the end of the book 
—immediately before the plates, which owing to technical 
difficulties had all to be inserted behind the text—a short list 
of supplementary corrections, additions and cross-references,— 
N.B. especially the added materials about the etymologies of 
“ Orpheus,” “ Helloi,” “ Hellenes”’ and “ Poseidon” !—so that the 
inconsistencies which seem to be unavoidable in publishing an 
extensive mass of research work in so many successive instalments 
should, to the best of my ability, be neutralised. 

There are two considerations which console me for the loose 
composition of this book: first the fact that the best and most 
instractive book on the problem of the Christian fish-symbolism 
which has been written up till now—the first, and, unhappily, at 
present the only volume of Professor Doelger’s [XOY>—has also 
been published in instalments and shows therefore no less than 
the present volume a remarkable progressive development of the 
author’s insight into the intricacies of the question ; secondly, the 
idea that, in both cases, the development of opinions may be of 
itself of interest to the student of comparative religion. Even as 
it is very instructive to note in the Appendix (Part III.) to 
Professor Doelger’s book, and in general in the later parts of his 
volume, a growing appreciation of pagan cult-monuments for the 
study of Christian ritual symbolism, even so it may be instructive 
to observe an inverse evolution in the course of my own 
investigations. 

When I first published in 1908—in a paper read before the 
Third International Congress of the History of Religions in Oxford 
—the conjectural new etymology of the name Orpheus, which 
forms the starting point of the following work, I was quite 


PREFACE ¥ 


confident that by pursuing this hypothesis into all its consequences 
I should find out a great many hitherto overlooked points of contact 
between early Christianity and Paganism, or that I should at least 
be able to throw new light on other such points, which had been 
noticed before but not satisfactorily explained until now. I believe 
that indeed that anticipation has come true. But, on the other 
hand, I have certainly been deceived in my expectations of 
discovering early extensive and important Pagan influences on the 
initial formation of Christian ritual and cult symbolism. In 1908 
I was still under the illwsion—which, I am afraid, is even to-day 
cherished by many students of comparative religion—that primitive 
Christianity was, to a great extent, a syncretistic religion. In 
particular I had been strongly impressed by the statement of 
Hichhorn and other scholars, that we must look out for a pagan, 
or, more exactly, an oriental prototype for the Hucharist, since 
a sacramental, not to speak of a theophagic rite is unknown to the 
Jewish cult-system. This apparently plausible syllogism induced, 
or, rather, seduced me to build up an elaborate hypothesis about 
a plausible connection between the obviously sacramental eating 
of fish and bread in the pericope on Jesus feeding the multitude 
and the hypothetically reconstructed cult ritual of the prehistoric 
Cananean bread- and fish-, or fish- and corn-god. A paper on this 
subject, which should originally have been included as a special 
chapter in the present volume—a now meaningless reference to it 
could not be effaced in the text of p. 49, n. 1—was also read in 
Oxford, privately printed and distributed to a great many members 
of the Congress. I hope that none of these copies survive to-day, 
for I very soon came to the conclusion that the objections which 
von Dobschiitz-Strassburg raised against that hypothesis in the 
discussion following my lecture were perfectly justified. I had to 
give up the greater part of this premature construction and I am 
perfectly convinced now that the Hucharistic rite arose out of 
a purely Jewish ritual (see chapter XLVI. of the above-mentioned 
manuscript in the British Museum). That there are Pagan 
parallels to the later developments of it into a mystic theophagy, 
can scarcely be denied, but I do not believe any more that pagan 
influences were at work in the initial stage of Christian origin. 

In the same direction I have gradually modified my views on 
other important problems of the same kind. While I claim now 
no more than to have discovered a remarkable historic parallelism 
between the two in the main independently developed lines of 
ritual symbolism in early Christianity on the one hand, in the 
Orphic mysteries on the other, I thought originally that it would 
be possible, nay, necessary, to derive the fishing-symbolism 
of the Christian baptismal rite—which cannot indeed be derived 
from the ‘Zionist’ fishing-symbolism as used by Jesus (below, 
chapter XII.)—directly from the symbolic initiatory fishing rites 
of Orphism. Indeed, in spite of certain re-touchings of the text in 
the book edition, as compared with the respective pages of The 
Quest, traces of this previous opinion may still be discerned on 


vi PREFACE 


pp. 69, 77 and 126f. The explicit palinode of this second error and 
the exposition of my present opinion about the independent 
evolution of Jewish thought—which lead to this Christian cult- 
symbolism of baptism as a mystic fishing—will be found in the 
chapters XV.-XXVI., which are all devoted to an analysis of John 
the ‘Forerunner’s’ doctrine about his “ baptism of repentance,” as 
it may be reconstructed from the extant fragments of his famous 
sermon. In this part of my work (chapter XXII.) I have had the 
satisfaction to see previous conjectures of mine corroborated by 
the publications of Dr. Scheftelowitz about the hitherto absolutely 
unknown fish-symbolism in the Rabbinic literature, which only 
appeared after I had first treated in 1909 the question of the 
Johannine aie in the South German Monthly Review (below, 
p. 151, n. 4). 

During the war (1916), Prof. Lidzbarski has at last given us 
a reliable German rendering of the Mandzean ‘Sidra de Jahya,’ 
quoted as still untranslated on p. 152. I am glad to see that the 
details of that document confirm what I said in 1912 on the sole 
authority of Miss Beatrice Hardcastle’s tentative preliminary 
translations. 

A cause of sincere regret for me is the unexpected delay in the 
publication of the second volume of Professor F. J. Doelger’s 
IXOY2,—also caused by the war—which I understand will contain 


a great number of unedited or little-known monuments; I had in 
vain hoped to the last (1920), that I should be able to quote from 
the second volume in the last chapters of my book or at least in 
the “ additions and corrections,” especially since the distinguished 
author had been kind enough nine years ago to let me use the 
advanced sheets of vol. I. and to give me many a valuable hint in 
the course of our repeated correspondence. I am _ especially 
indebted to him for having called my attention to the “Orpheus” 
on the cross reproduced on our plate XXXI. 

My lasting gratitude is due to my dear friend G. R. 8. Mead, 
B.A., M.R.A.S., whose indefatigable help has made it possible for 
me to present these essays to the English-speaking public in a form 
which owes its qualities exclusively to the editorial skill of this 
diligent reviser, while its deficiencies must be pardoned as the 
shortcomings of a foreigner, who could not always avoid the 
oon pedantic, complicated and lengthy periods of his native 
idiom. 

I have also to thank the publisher, Mr. John M. Watkins, for 
the generous forbearance which he has shown in allowing me to 
correct and supplement the text—regardless of cost—to an 
unusual extent even in the proofs, and to add such a great 
number of plates in order to enable the reader to judge the 
monuments and their explanation for himself, without referring 
to a large library of learned publications for every quotation. 
A certain number of blocks have been generously lent to the 
author. For such favours I have to express my gratitude to the 
directors of the Imperial Archeological Institute of Germany, to 


PREFACE Vii 


the Bavarian Folklore Society (Verein fiir Volkskunst und 
Volkskunde e. V. Munich), to Professor Paul Perdrizet of Nancy, 
to the Editors of the Italian archeological review ‘ Awsonia’ and 
to my learned compatriot Professor Emanuele Loewy, formerly of 
the Sapienza in Rome (for our pl. 1), to the manager of the 
“Domenica del Corriere,’ Signor Attilio Centelli in Milan, to 
Miss Jane Allen Harrison of Newnham College, Cambridge, to the 
Society for the Promotion of Hellenic Studies, to Mons. A. 
Héron de Villefosse of Paris and to the following publishing firms: 
M. Diesterweg in Frankfurt a. M., publisher of the Zeitschrift fiir 
wissenschaftliche Theologie; Hugo Heller in Vienna, formerly 
publisher of Prof. Freud’s Review ‘Imago,’ Herder ’sche Verlags- 
handlung in Freiburg i. B., B. G. Teubner-A.G. in Leipsic, 
Athenaion-Verlagsgesellschaft Neubabelsberg beri, Berlin, and 
Alfred Tépelmann in Giessen. 

I have further to thank most cordially Dr. Habich, the Director 
of the Royal Bavarian Numismatic Cabinet, for the kind and helpful 
assistance which he has given me in the somewhat complicated 
task of collecting the necessary reproductions from coin types for 
Plates XI., XII., XIV., XXI., XXVI., XXVII., Father Sofronio Gassisi 
of the Grottaferrata Basilian friars for the unedited photographs 
reproduced on pl. XLVIII. and the director of the Trieste Museum 
Prof. Alberto Puschi for the photographs of the two vases on 
plaxxXVi. 

Lord Sackville has kindly allowed the reproduction of the 
unedited Piping Orpheus in Knole Castle. It is a pleasant duty 
for me to express my gratitude for this much-appreciated favour. 

A word should finally be added with regard to the numerous 
references. This book is throughout intended for the general 
reader—this is the reason why the few absolutely necessary Greek 
quotations are given in Latin letters—and especially so in those 
parts which have previously appeared in The Quest. Yet the use 
of notes could not be avoided as strictly as the author, the editor 
and the publisher may have wished, since the book is not a mere 
synopsis of old-established results and opinions but the publication 
of new research-work, which has yet to stand the test of criticism. 
Notes had therefore to be added, in order to show to the reader 
where the author’s opinions rest on the ground established by 
previous investigations of other scholars. Yet I should have had 
to multiply their number and extent to an unbearable degree, if 
I had always referred the reader to all the previous opinions on 
the subject. Asa rule I have also avoided any polemic with older 
divergent interpreters of the texts and monuments in question, 
since specialists—who are alone interested in such discussions— 
know for themselves what other opinions have been held on the 
separate pieces of evidence, which I have tried to explain from 
a new comprehensive point of view and which therefore I must 
needs judge differently from any predecessor, whose attention was 
fixed only on one single object of my collection. The reader may 
feel sure that I do know the divergent opinions of previous authors 


viil PREFACE 


on a special subject also in those many cases where I have refrained 
from discussing them. It ‘will not help me along therefore to 
a better understanding of things, if a critic—as has been done 
already by an opponent in the pages of The Quest—repeats again 
and again that the scholar who has excavated or has edited 
a monument, or our best authority on this or that class of 
monuments, holds a different view on it from the present writer. 
Especially in the treatment of the Dionysiac myths and works of 
art, my new results are obtained because I have—on principle— 
referred as far as possible every detail in the respective traditions 
or monuments to a feature of the really existing cults and rituals, 
while previous mythologists and archeologists have attributed an 
overwhelming and certainly exaggerated importance to a supposed 
free play of the artist’s or poet’s fanciful invention. If any reader 
wants to raise such cheap ‘l’art pour l’art’ arguments—that a given 
ancient representation or combination of symbols has in most 
instances a merely decorative purpose, that little or nothing may 
be inferred for the history of religion from ‘artist’s whims,’ and 
‘ poet’s fancies,’ that in ancient iconography and mythography, as 
in modern art and fiction, “ artificis voluntas suprema lexest .. .” 
etc., etc.—to my above stated heuristic method, let me warn him 
beforehand that on these lines of discussion we shall never 
understand each other. In all other respects let me repeat again 
and again that nobody could more sincerely welcome the most 
thorough criticism and that nobody will be found less reluctant to 
give up a demonstrable error for a better explanation of the facts 
in question than the author of this modest volume. 


ROBERT EISLER. 


Feldafing, on lake Starnberg. 
All Souls’ Day, 1920. 


Preface 
Contents 


CONTENTS. 


List of Plates 


CHAPTER 


VII. 


VIll. 


ITT. 


XVI. 


XVII. 


XVIII. 


Past and Present Views on Orphism 

A New Etymology: Orpheus the Fisher 3 

The Cult of the Sacred Fish and the oes 
of the Fisher-god 

The Fisher-god in Ancient Oriental wee sphy. 
Bassareus the Fishing Fox 

The Rites of the Fish-cult Be 

Fish-Totemism in Hellas, in Bee in Latium 
and in Hgypt 

The Fisher-god as a Culture-hero ae Pevchse 
of Humanity. Hanni-Oannes 

The Orpheus and Good Shepherd Pictures 3 in 
Early Christian Art 

Orpheus and the Fisher of Men on the Christian 
Sarcophagus from Ostia. The Lamb and 
Milk-pail Glyph in the Roman Catacomb 
Paintings 

The Fish-symbolismin Harly Christian Tisai 

The Allegory of the Man-fishing in the Gospels 
and in the Old Testament. The Angler in 
the Catacombs. The Man-fishing in Ge 
Texts, especially in Jeremiah 

Jesus’ Sermon to the Galilean Fishermen 

The Penny in the Fish’s Mouth 

The Miraculous Draught Legends 

The Fore-runner of the Christ 

Micah vii., 14, 20, and the Preaching of the 
Baptist 

The Baptism of John fer} ifs Rabbinic jc Baptising 
of Proselytes bs 

The Messianic Spring 


107 
129 


138 


144 
148 


CHAPTER 


XIX. 


XX. 


XXI. 


XXII. 
XXITI. 
XXIV. 


XXV. 


XXVI. 


XXVII. 


XXVIII. 


XXIX. 


XXX. 


XXXI. 


XXXII. 
XXXITI. 


XXXIV. 


CONTENTS 


John—Oannes ? 

John—Jonah. Jonah as 3 Fisher 

The Fishes in the ee Si eenin of Bvekiel 
xvii. 6d 

The Fish- Parad in the Rabbinic Titeratuse 

The Messianic ‘ Flood of Justice’ 

The Fishes Exempt from the Deluge 

The Second Noe ie 

The Triple Baptism and the Three ena 
World Catastrophes of the Last Days. The 
Baptism of Fire. The Wind of Judgment. 
Wind Baptism and Wind Cataclysm. The 
Triple Purgation in the Mysteries. The 
Tropic Points in the Great Year 

The Fish-meal in the Christian Gataconit 
Pictures 

The Gospels on Jesus Feeding oro. People with 
Bread and Fish 

The Fish Eating in the ‘ Agape’ of ie Primitive 
Church 

The Sabbatic Fish- reat of the Tawi and ne 
Banquet of the Last Days 

The Teaching of Jesus on the Messianic ‘ Food 
from Heaven. The Manna Miracle of the 
Messiah. The Baskets with the Crumbs. 
The Messianic Fish-meal Anticipated. Alle- 
gorical Pictures of the eee The True 
Manna se : 

The Broiled Fish on fie Coal Fire 

The Fish and the Honey-comb. Pagan Belief 
concerning Bees and Honey. Bees in Jewish 


and Christian Mysticism. The ae tg 
and the Kaster Candle f 


The Fish Caught by the ‘ Virgin’ in the My stic 


Epitaph of Bishop Aberkios. The ‘ Queen.’ 
The “Shining Seal.’ The ‘Great Fish’ from 
the ‘Fountain.’ Magic Impregnation by a 
Fish. Magic Fishing for Offspring. The 
Fish as a Sex-symbol. Conception viewed as 
‘Fishing.’ The Christ Fished by the Church. 
Number Symbolism in the Aberkios Epitaph. 


PAGE 


151 
156 


163 
169 
176 
182 
184 


192 


208 


211 


216 


221 


226 
238 


247 


249 


Til. 


IV. 


CONTENTS 


APPENDICES TO CHAPTERS I.—VII. 


The Mystic Fishing-Scene in the Bakcheion of 
Melos and Lucian’s Parody of the Man- ee 
Rite. Plato on the Angling Sophist 


The ‘ Lake of Orpheus’ in Rome and the ae 
Piscine in Utina Rae Be 


The Dionysian Vintage Feast and the Com- 
munion Sacrifice of the New Grapes. The 
Eating of the Grape-god. The Fishing and 
the Sacrament of the Vine Rn 


The Fishermen in the Dionysian Initiation- 
scenes from the Roman Villain the Farnesina 
Garden. Cleopatra’s Villa? Dionysian 
Initiation. Wanderings in the Darkness. 
The Journey on the Sun-chariot. The Win- 
nowing Sieve. The Crossing of the Bridge. 
The Sudden Fall and the Fishing of the 
Neophyte. The Baptism of Wind and Fire. 
The Light in the Darkness 


Additions and Corrections 


Plates 


xi 


PAGE 


271 


277 


280 


284 


297 


Plate 


39 


LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. 


I taface pa I; 
Tle 5a. SDee sts ae 
LE pean 
TVG 5a eee: 
Wee Gye fen. NG 
View Ste poaelos 
NAY Ie ae = oti oall Nie 
VIII Sod oN he Pee 
LXer 20: 
XS a eee 
DiDUS 0 Dad Meee 
lithe « Demin 


Inscription from the Graveyard of 
the initiated Dionysos-wor- 
shippers in Cuma. 


Babylonian Orpheus-Nebo. 


Wild animals tamed and led in 
procession bylutanistsand cymbal 
player. 


Orphic Cult-image representing the 
birth of the God Phanes-Dionysos, 
from the world-egg. 


The Divine Hunter on a tombstone 
of Thracian Dionysos-worshippers. 


The hunting God of the wild vine 
of the woods, spearing a boar. 


Orpheus (?) among the animals 
blowing the decoy horn. 


The ‘Fisher of Men’ on an early 
Babylonian Monument: Patesi 
Eannatu of Lagash, who has 
caught in his net the inhabitants 
of Oumma (Gi8-hu). 

Perseus and the fisherman on coins 
of Tarsus in Cilicia. 


Figs.1,2. KalorZag-ha, the Divine 
Fisherman, on Babylonian seal- 
cylinders. 

Fig. 8. Babyloniansculpture repre- 
senting Zag-ha, the divine ‘Warden 
of the Fish.’ 

Fig. 4. The same Divinity on a 
Minoan Sealing-Stone. 

Fig 6. The God with the fish and 
the fisher-spear on a coin of 
Rabath Moba in Moab. 


Fig. 1. Development of the ideo- 
gram for the Goddess Ninua. 

Fig. 2. The ‘House of Fish’ as the 
symbol of the Carthaginian god- 
dess Anna, on Augustean coins of 
Abdera in Spain. 


Plate 


? 


9 


” 


XII. to face p. 28. 


XIII. 


ATV. 


AV. 


XIX. 


XX. 


XXII. 


XXII. 


LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS xlii 


99 


p. 


23. 


27. 


28. 


dl. 


dl. 


31. 


31. 


31. 


86. 


37. 


Fig. 1. Coins of Gades (Gadir) and 
Ituci, illustrating the transfer of 
the Phoenician fish-cult from 
Carthage to the Punic settlements 
in Spain. 

Fig. 2. Coins of Carteia in Spain, 
with the fisher-god. 

Celtic fisher-god, hooking a salmon ; 
on an engraved bronze frontlet 
for decorating a head-dress. 

The Phokos, or brown-fish, a 
particular kind of Dolphin and 
the heraldic animal of Phocea, 
devoured by a fox. 

Fig.1. The god Thor and the 
giant angling for the Midgard 
snake from a boat, using the 
head of a bull for a bait, as seen 
on the second Gosforth cross. 

Fig.2. God the Father angling 
for the mythical fish Leviathan. 

Two priests dressed up as ‘ Fishes’ 
performing a fertilisation-rite at 
the sacred tree. 

Galeoi or Galedtai, Greek shark- 
priests. 


Torres-straits islander dressed up 
as a saw-fish for the ‘saw-fish 
dance.’ 


Fig. 1. Dancer wearing a  fish- 
mask. 
Fig. 2. Different fish-dance masks. 


Assyrians feeding fish for divinatory 
purposes, as shown on_ the 
embossed brass work from the 
Palace Gates of King Salmanassar 
II., in Imghurbel (Balawat). 


The oak Zeus with the two prophetic 
doves sitting on top of the sacred 
trees. The god holds a fish in 
each hand. 


Fig. 1. Omphalos-stone, with doves 
and fish on coin of Cyzicus. 


Fig. 2. The fish and the pomegra- 
nate sacrificed to the Axe-god. 


XIV 


Plate 


7? 


29 


29 


ib) 


9 


92 


”? 


” 


LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 


XXII. to face p. 37. Fig. 3. Fragment from a Cretan 


XXITI. 


XXIV. 


XXV. 


Ay Lb: 
XXVIII. 


XXVIL.dis. 


XXVIII. 


XXIX. 


XXX, 


XXXI. 
XXXII. 


XXXII. 


XXXIV. 


3 


9) 


40. 


43. 


57. 


59. 


yase-painting of the Minoan period 
showing the sacred fish conjoined 
with the sacred double-axe. 

Fig. 4. The joint symbols of the 
axe and the fish on a Pheenician 
inscription. 

Fig. 5. Christian inscription show- 
ing the traditionally combined 
symbols of the axe, the fish and 
the dove. 

The deified soul of a deceased 
Egyptian represented in the shape 
of the sacred oxyrhynchus fish. 

Fig. 1. The cross and the A B C 
between two fishes on an early 
Christian earthenware jar. 

Fig. 2. Letters from the so-called 
fish Alphabet. 

Babylonian priest masquerading as 
‘ fish of Ea.’ 

Hermes fishing. 

The combined symbols of the ‘fish’ 
and ‘corn’ divinity on coins of 
Tlipa Magna. 

Apollo with sacred fishes and 
barley-corns. 


Painted Orpheus ceiling from the 
Domitilla catacomb. 


David as a lyre-playing shepherd 
represented in the typical attitude 
of Orpheus among the animals. 


Monkey in the attitude of an 
Orpheus with his lute luring. the 
animals and cupids driving with 
reins double teams of fishes. 


The crucified Christ as Orpheus. 


Statue of an Orphic ‘ Boukolos’ of 
the Pisistratean age. 


Christian Good Shepherd statue in 
the Lateran Museum. 


The corresponding Figures of 
Orpheus and the Fisher on a 
Christian sarcophagus. 


Plate 


99 


bP) 


99 


XXXVI. 
XXXVIT. 


XXXVITL.bdis 


» SAXVITI. 


39 


XLIYV. 


XLV. 


XLVI. 


LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS XV 


” 


” 


? 


2? 


XXXYV. to face p. 60. 


60. 
60. 


60. 


60. 


65. 


66. 


68. 


72. 


Fig. 1. Dionysos Phalen or Halieus 
as patron of fishermen. 

Fig. 2. Fishing Silen. 

Fig. 3. Thefisheramong the Satyrs. 


The Bacchic Fisher and the Maenad. 


(a) Raving Bacchante with 
“bakchos’ fishes. 

(8) Raving Bacchante with snakes. 

(c) Fawn rent asunder by Dionysos 
Omester. 

(d@) Maenad with snake, ram and 
wand. 


Fig. 1. Fisher-ring of St. Arnuld 
of Treves. 

Fig. 2. Bishop’s ring of the Diocese 
Montpellier with the fish-symbol. 

Fig. 8. Ring with fish-symbol and 
IXOY2 inscription. 

Fig. 4. Ring of Emilia with the 
fish-symbol and the dove on the 
tree. 


Catacomb-fresco. The fisher and 
the lamb with the milk-pail in 
the ‘Gallery of the Flavians.’ 


Catacomb-fresco. The Good 
Shepherd with the milk-pail. 


Catacomb-fresco. The Good 
Shepherd milking the mystic Kwe. 


Catacomb-fresco. Praying woman 
before the mystic milk-pail. 


Catacomb-fresco. The lambs 
reaching the milk-pail. Adapta- 
tion of the Orphic symbolon: 
‘ Eriphos es gala epeton.’ 


Catacomb-frescoes. Fig.1. Fisher 
angling a fish; baptism of a youth; 
descent of the dove with the olive 
branch; the healed impotent 
from Bethsaida. 

Fig. 2. Moses producing waterfrom 
the rock. 


‘Eriphos es gala epiton. The 
mystic milk-pail, 4th century 
fresco-painting from the Callisto 
catacomb. 


The baptismal fishing of men. 


xvi 


Plate XLVII. to face p. 74. 


29 


XLIX. 


bP) 


29 


99 


2 


XLVIII. 


LIT. 


LVI. 
LVII. 


LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 


p. 


p. 


141. 


> LGD. 


. 168. 


. 204. 


. 208. 


. 209. 


. 209. 


. 209. 


. 222. 
223. 


The soul having ‘ put on’ the‘ fish’ 
as‘a garment. 

Fig. 1. The thash‘lih-rite as per- 
formed ‘by members of the 
orthodox Jewish synagogue at 
Munich, on the evening of the 
2nd of October, 1918. 


Early Christian sarcophagus with 
Jonah saved by fishermen. 

Angels angling—with fishing rods, 
nets and fish-weirs—in the mystic 
Jordan. 


Roman funeral monument of the 
1st century A.D., symbolising the 
passage of the soul through the 
three elements. 


he earliest ‘fish and bread meal’ 
picture in the catacombs. 


Fig. 1. Still-life paintings of the 
2nd century from the catacomb 
of S. Lucina, showing the Friday- 
fish, the basket with the newly 
baked sabbatic ‘thanksgiving’ 
bread and the glass ‘cup of 
blessing’ filled with red wine. 

Fig. 2. The meal of the two fishes 
and the eight baskets of bread in 
the ‘chapel of the sacrament’ of 
the S. Callisto catacomb. 

Fig. 8. The other fish-and-bread 
meal in S. Callisto. 


Fig. 1. Two loaves and one fish on 
a tripod surrounded by seven 
baskets full of bread. 

Fig. 2. Eucharistic scene (man 
blessing bread and fish for a 
woman). 

Second century fresco-paintings 
illustrating the eating of bread 
and fish in the early Christian 


Agape. 

Fig. 1. From the Priscilla, 

Fig. 2. “ » Callisto Cata- 
combs. 


Pagan sacramental meal. 

The Sabbath Fish Meal. Gilt glass 
fragment from a Jewish ‘cup of 
blessing.’ 


Plate 


39 


PP) 


29 


29 


? 


9 


9? 


9 


? 


oP) 


39 


LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS XVil 


LVIII. to face p. 223. The Sabbath Fish Meal. Gilt glass 


LIX. 


LX. 


LXI. 


LXII. 


LXIII. 


LXIV. 


LXV. 


LXVI. 


LXVII. 


LXVIII. 


LXIX. 


LXX. 


LXXI. 


LXXxII. 


LXXxiil. 


peo. 
»» D. 256, n. 5. 
ED Zooe 
AO A 
ets LOO. 
Pa Ds 2OL. 


i200; 1s. 


se Oe Aria 


oe yl Ser 
spits Aoi lat abd be 


i Opa) imp 6 Pet 
eS oO. 


» p. 284. 


i) -D. 2OGK. 


ap ele 


fragment from a Jewish ‘cup of 
blessing.’ 

The miraculous ‘dressed table’ 
with the seven fishes that fell 
from heaven at the prayer of 
Jesus, on an early Christian 
earthenware lamp from Carthage. 

Buddhistic drawing: the ‘ Yoni’ in 


the shape of two fishes and a fig 
leaf. 


Fig. 1. Eros riding on a fish. 

Fig. 2. Winged Cupid holding a 
fish. 

Poseidon, Herakles and Hermes 
fishing. 

The ‘ love-fishing’ (‘erotiké agra’). 
Pompeian Wall-painting. 

Fig. 1. The ‘Potnia Thérdn’ with 
the divine Fish in her womb. 

Fig. 2. Fish painted between legs 
of horse on Mycenean potsherd. 

Fig. 8. Same, engraved on reindeer 
bone. 


Lady spinning before the sacred 
fish on the altar. 


The Vine of Dionysos Botrys and 
Dionysos Halieus on Mosaic of 
Dionysian Mystery-Hall. 


Orphic piscina in the Laberii villa 
of Uthina. 


Wine Bottle representing Dionysos 
Botrys, the deified grape. 


Fresco-painting of Dionysos Botrys. 


Mosaic of Sertei, with vine and 
fishes. 


The mystic vine, painted ceiling in 
the Catacomb of the Flavians. 


Scenes of Bacchic Initiation in the 
Farnesina Villa. 


Landscape with fishermen. 


re 


PAST AND PRESENT VIEWS ON ORPHISM. 


“‘ORPHEUS isin vogue.” Since 1895, when Erwin Rohde 
wrote these ironical words in his brilliant criticism of 
an utterly worthless book upon the subject, this fashion 
does not seem to have declined. Numerous books and 
papers on Orphism have appeared since then, and 
although we find names like Albrecht Dieterich, Salomon 
Reinach and Otto Gruppe among the contributors to 
this recent literature, the problem is still very far from 
being solved. And yet nobody can fail to perceive that 
gradually one of the most fundamental problems in 
the history of Greek religion has arisen out of what 
had been before merely one of those puzzling enigmas, 
attractive chiefly on account of their mysterious 
obscurity at once to the most learned and to the most 
fantastic antiquarians of a bygone period. 

An Orphic association, a ‘ thiasos’ with particular 
funeral rites' and consequently a particular eschatology, 


1 According to the well-known passage of Herodotus (II. 81), they 
avoided woollen garments and would be buried in linen only. A recently 
excavated stone-slab (photographic reproduction, Notizie deglr Scavi, 1905, 
p. 387) from a Greek graveyard in Cuma bears an inscription, dating from the 
first half of the Vth century B.c., as follows: “ It is not lawful for anyone to 
be buried here, unless he has been initiated into the Dionysiac mysteries.” 
This proves that the Orphics had already in this remote period reserved 
burial grounds, just as the Christians in later antiquity. Not even the bodies 
of the ‘pure’ or ‘ holy ones’ (katharot or hosiot), as they called themselves, 
might be defiled by the proximity of unpurified, uninitiated fellow-citizens. 
“T come, a pure one from among the pure,” boasts the soul of an initiate, 
according to the inscription on one of the Orphic funeral gold tablets, 
published by Murray in the Appendix to Miss J. E, Harrison’s Prolegomena 
(Cambridge, 1903, p. 661 ff.). I do not know another instance of such 
‘eschatological ’ intolerance in the whole pagan world. 


2 Its main features were the doctrines of metempsychosis, considered 
1 


2 ORPHEUS THE FISHER 


formerly known to us only through a rather controversial 
passage in Herodotus, is now palpably attested by those 
quaint gold tablets with Orphic inscriptions, excavated 
from Greek graves in Lower Italy. In the light of this 
fact nobody can venture to pretend any longer that the 
hieratic organisation of an Orphic community, as 
presupposed in the well-known Orphic prayer-book, is 
merely a literary fiction. Nor is there any reason to 
believe that, from the time of Herodotus and these 
South Italian Orphic inscriptions of the Vth, IVth, 
IIIrd and IInd centuries, down to the last years before 
our era, when the Orphic hymnology was finally brought 
into its present shape, there has been a single interval 
of time when the often-mentioned, wandering Orphic 
priests and priestly beggars could not find local support 
on their journeys from settled Orphic communities, just 
as did the Christian missionaries of the first centuries, 
when travelling from one church to another along the 
highways of the Roman empire. Literary as well as 
archeological remains—principally the latest Orphic 
poems dating from the [Vth century of our era, and 
countless representations of Orpheus among his beasts 
on Imperial coins and on Roman mosaics,’ scattered all 
over the empire from Palestine and Africa to Great 
Britain—attest the continued vitality of these cults in 
later antiquity. Romans as well as Greeks were among 


as a ‘circle of rebirths’ and as an expiation for a mythological crime, a kind 
of ‘original sin,’ committed by the remote ancestors of humanity; of a final 
deliverance from this merciless ‘ wheel of necessity’; and—precisely as in 
the parallel traditions in India—of a ‘double way’ to the aw-deld, one 
to blissful light for the initiates, one to dirt and darkness for the unclean. 
Empedocles and the ‘ Vision of Er’ in Plato’s Republic give the best idea of 
the classical development in Orphic eschatology, which expected a tran- 
scendental retribution for good and bad actions, quite unlike the dogma of 
other mysteries, where—as the Cynic Diogenes said with reference to Kleusis 
—‘a better lot was promised for the pickpocket Pataikion, because he had 
been initiated, than to the great Epaminondas, his uninitiated rival.” 


* Op. the extensive list by Gruppe in Roscher’s Lewicon, iii. 2, 1190 ff, 


VIEWS ON ORPHISM 3 


the initiated, and, if we may trust Philostratus,! even 
in Babylonia frequent representations of Orpheus or at 
least of a synonymous native deity or hero—possibly, 
as a Christian author’ allows us to suspect, Nebo of 
Mabug, the Babylonian Lord of Wisdom and of life- 
giving springs—prove the unparallelled popularity of 
these mysteries. 

In addition to this, the cult—or at least the legends 
and influence—of the mystic hierophant was by no 
means confined to the Orphic communities properly so 
designated. From the VIth century B.c. onwards, 
that is to say in a period when the existence of special 
Orphic confraternities as such, although scarcely 
deniable, is not yet explicitly stated, we find that 
apparently independent mystery-cults, such as the 
imposing ceremonies at Hleusis, were already being 
put under his personal patronage. It is tolerably 
certain that the Sicilian Orpheotelests at the court of 
Pisistratus were officially intrusted with certain reforms 
at Eleusis, possibly with the addition of the so-called 
minor mysteries of Dionysus in Agree’ to the ceremonial 
previously adhered to‘. From that time at any rate the 
name of Orpheus is connected not only with nearly 


1 Vit. Apoll. Tyan. I. 25. 


2 The Sardian bishop Melito (Corp. Apol. IX., 426) says in one of his 
letters: ‘What shall I write to you about the god Nebo [the Babylonian 
Mercury ; lit. = ‘the prophet’] in Mabug [= ‘place of emerging’] ? For all 
the priests in Mabug know that he is only a copy (sumulacrum) of Orpheus, 
the Thracian wizard.” 


8 Ernst Maass, in his Orpheus, p. 88 ff., was the first to assert the 
existence of Orphic elements in the mysteries at Agra, but, as Rohde has 
shown, on altogether inconclusive arguments. Yet the place-name ‘ Agra’ and 
the tradition (Clemens Alex., Protrept., p. 12, P., after Apollod., De Dis) that 
the orgies had been founded by a hunter named Myus (from myein, the verb 
underlying the noun mysteria) point to the fact that Dionysus, the real Myus 
or ‘initiator,’ was worshipped there under the form of ‘ Agreus,’ the ‘Great 
Hunter,’ or ‘ Za-agreus’ (see below, p. 15), that is to say, in his specifically 
Orphie réle. 


* Cp. the present writer's Weltenmantel, etc, (Munich, 1910), pp. 708 ff, 


4 ORPHEUS THE FISHER 


all the mystery, but also with a great many of the 
ordinary chthonic cults in Greece and Italy. The 
Lykomids at Phlya pretended that their hymns were 
composed by the venerable prophet; he is brought into 
connection with the Samothracian and Theban mys- 
teries of the ‘ Great Gods,? with the Laconian cults of 
Koré Chthonié, with the orgies of Hekate in Avgina,’ 
with the cults of Bendis and Kybele. Finally, we 
cannot doubt that Christian faith took its first 
tentative steps into the reluctant world of Greco- 
Roman paganism under the benevolent patronage of 
Orpheus; the fact is attested not only by numerous 
Christian interpolations in the hieratic texts of Orphism, 
but also by several well-known representations of 
Orpheus among his beasts in early Christian cemeterial 
paintings and sculptured sarcophagi (see Ch. viii.). 
Both facts, strange as this may seem, have up to the 
present day never been sufficiently accounted for. 

In addition to this fundamental importance of 
Orpheus for the history of ancient cults, his name is 
traditionally connected not only with the origin of 
Greek music, poetry, writing, and even agriculture,® but 
also with the dawn of ancient philosophy. Nearly all 
the current mystic cosmogony of different periods was 


1 The so-called ‘ Kabiri’; this is the Semitic name (meaning the ‘ Great 
Ones’) for an enigmatical trinity of Prehellenic gods; their Greek names 
Axieros, Axiokersos and Axiokersa have been successfully explained by A. B. 
Cook (Transact. I1Ird Int. Congr. Hist. Rel., Il. p. 194) with reference to the 
holy double axe (aaia, azine). 

* Paus. 2, 30, 2; the first hymn of the Orphic prayer-book is dedicated to 
Hekate, and with reference to the title and thesis of the present essay I may 
at once call the reader's attention to the fact that Hekate was generally 
believed to grant an abundant catch to fishermen (Hesiod, Theog., 448 f., and 
the scholia to these verses ; cp. Oppian’s Halieutica, 8, 28). 


* Themist. Or. XXX. p. 849 h. The legendary death of Orpheus under 
the spades and hoes of the Maenades goes back—as Frazer has proved—to a 
well-known rite of sacrificing a human representative of the corn-spirit. Op. 
p. 49 n. 1, on the identity of the divine Fish and the corn-god in the Semitic 
religions of Western Asia, 


VIEWS ON ORPHISM 5 


ascribed to him, at least in a transparently pseudepi- 
graphic way, which often left the real author’s name a 
public secret.’ 

The oldest mass of that literature (so-called 
Pelasgian inscriptions on certain time-honoured 
Thracian stone or wood slabs, whose existence, although 
attested only by Euripides and Heracleides Ponticus, 
need not be questioned) is inaccessible to our researches. 
We have, however, among the remains of three or four 
other cosmogonies of minor importance, one of which 
is considered as Prehomeric by Gruppe and Dyroff, 
abundant fragments of the principal Orphic teaching, 
the so-called rhapsodic theogony. This great mystic 
poem, again and again commented on by the Neopla- 
tonists, was considered for a long time, eg. by Eduard 
Zeller and his school, as a pasticcio from a period not 
earlier than the first century B.c., strongly tinted with 
Stoic pantheism and therefore unknown to Plato, 
Aristotle, and so of course to Presocratic philosophers, 
such as, for example, Empedocles. At present, how- 
ever, it is attributed by our best authorities, namely 
Diels, Gomperz, Kern and Gruppe, as it had been by 
Christian Lobeck, to the period before the Persian wars, 
a date which I too consider as definitely established. 
On the other hand, I have attempted in a recent publi- 
cation? to show that the current belief in an Attic origin 
for this quaint and most fantastic theogony with its 
absolutely unhellenic bisexual and polymorphous gods, 
as set forth by these competent authors, is rash and un- 
founded, as far as the ideas themselves—not the final 
literary redaction of the rhapsodies—are concerned. 

Among many other arguments, the exact correspon- 
dence between the Orphic descriptions of the Time-god 

1 Cp.p.11,n.1. * Cp. p.8,n. 4, and p. 6, n. 2, 


6 ORPHEUS THE FISHER 


Chronos agératos (‘undecaying Time’) and the Mithraic 
representations of Zrvan akarana (‘endless Time ’); the 
close relations between the Orphic Zeus ‘ Diskos’ in 
his pantheistic shape, and the familiar type of Ahura 
Mazda in the winged disk, representing, as Herodotus 
expressly states, the whole circle of the sky; the 
strange coincidence that the god Mithras has a son 
called ‘ Di-orphos”; and last, not least, the striking fact 
that the only existing Orphic idol (a representation of 
the mystic primeval god Phanes, born from the cosmic 
egg), exactly corresponding, as it does, to the rhapsodic 
description of that deity, has been able to deceive an 
authority of Cumont’s unquestionable competence 
into mistaking it for a Mithraic image—all this, I say, 
sufficiently proves that the so-called rhapsodic cos- 
mogony, or at least. the cosmogonical and religious ideas 
underlying it, could only have been conceived in 
surroundings where Iranian theology of a peculiar form, 
well known to scholars under the name of Zrvanism— 
that is, a fatalistic cult of ‘ Eternal Destiny’ conceived 
as ‘Endless Time’ and ‘Boundless Space” strongly 


1 Cp. \p. 19, n. 1. 


* The oldest explicit testimony for theexistence of this creed isa passage 
of Aristotle’s favourite pupil Eudemos of Rhodes, quoted by the Neoplatonist 
Damascius (De Princip., 125 bis, p. 822, Ruelle). Yet the absolute identity of 
the Zrvinistic cosmogonical system with the doctrines concerning ‘ Kala,’ 
that is the divinity ‘ Time,’ in certain passages of the Atharvaveda, in the 
Mahabharata, and in the Puranas (see my Weltenmantel, Munich, 1910, pp. 495 
ff.) can only be explained with regard to the Persian dominion over the Indus 
valley in the VIth century s.c. This proves that Iranian Zrvanism goes 
back at least to the VIIth and VIIIth centuries p.c. An eschatology, based 
on metempsychosis and on an eternal circle of rebirths, is quite characteristic 
of this Persian cult of ‘ Eternity.’ As it is absolutely alien to the old Vedic 
literature and appears in Indian mysticism exactly at the same time as the 
Kala-cosmogonies, even as it reappears in the same significant connection with 
an Aeon-cult in the Hermetic writings in Egypt, composed in the very period 
when Egypt was under Persian sway (cp. Flinders Petrie, Personal Religion 
in Egypt, London, 1909)—while it is entirely unknown to the genuine 
Egyptian literature—it cannot be overlooked that in Greece also the Orphic 
Chronos-cult and the Orphic eschatology of metempsychosis were introduced 
together into the national beliefs of Hellas, which knew nothing at all either 
of a divinity of ‘Endless Time’ or of an eternal ‘circle of rebirths.’ 


VIEWS ON ORPHISM 7 


influenced by the mysticism of Babylonian star-lore— 
could exercise a powerful fascination on the mind of 
Greek truth-seekers, dissatisfied with their own com- 
paratively primitive and unsophisticated national 
religion. Now the only miliew where such a syncretism 
can, nay must, have evolved, is the Ionian colonies in 
Asia Minor, in the very period before they came under 
actual Persian government. ‘Médismos,’ as the later 
Greeks styled it, must have been a spiritual creed in 
Ionia long before it began to be a political movement 
there and in Greece. The later degeneration of 
Orphism, attested by Plato’s contemptuous attitude 
towards its wandering prophets, was the result of the 
_ victorious wars of Hellas against Persia. Cyrus had 
once been welcomed by the oracle of the ‘ Orpheus-head ’ 
in Lesbos with the significant greeting: “ Mine are also 
thine’; on the other hand Herodotus (vii. 6) tells us, 
that Onomacritus, the chief priest of the Attic Orphics, 
fled to the court of Darius together with the exiled 
son of Pisistratus. 

This theory of the origin and character of Orphic 
theology is in harmony with all that can be said of the 
peculiar Orphic rites. No sound connoisseur of Greek 
moods and manners could or would have believed that, 
any more than the mystic and fantastic doctrines which 
occur in the rhapsodic theogony, archaic rites of the 
crudest and most naive symbolism—such as the Orphic 
‘sparagmos, the devouring of the sacred bull’s living 
flesh and the magical reviving of the sacrificial lamb by 
boiling it in its mother’s milk’ (a rite already prohibited 


1 Philostr. Her. 53 p. 704. 


9 One of the most important ‘symbols’ of Orphism seems to have been 
the formula “As a kid have I fallen into the milk,” recurring on most of the 
above-mentioned gold tablets from Orphic graves. The words had certainly 
an astral and cosmic significance, for, according toa well-known Pythagorean 
doctrine, the souls had to pass on their way down as well as on their return 


8 ORPHEUS THE FISHER 


as heathenish by Biblical law)—could have been the 
offspring of the most humane, most enlightened of all 
nations, such as we, after a due allowance for the possibly 
somewhat idealised pictures of the Homeric accounts, 
believe the earliest Greek population to have been. 

On the contrary, the Cretans always claimed Orphic 
and all other kindred mysteries as their own invention, 
since they were openly performed in that country but 
secretly everywhere else.’ The validity of this classical 
argument is undeniable. It agrees not only with our 
alleged origin of Orphic theology and cosmogony in 
Asia Minor, but also with the universally acknowledged 
‘Thracian’ aspects of Orpheus, and with the fact that 
his cult, as well as the legends concerning him, is 
deeply rooted only in Thracia, Macedonia, Asia Minor 
and the islands on its coast. 


to the sky through the Galaxy. And another tradition (Pliny, Nat. Hist., I. 
91; Jo. Lyd., Ostent., 10), overlooked until now although its Orphic origin 
cannot be questioned, says, that comets, passing through the Galaxy, as if 
drinking of the heavenly milk, were called ‘ tragoi’ (goats). This leads to 
the conclusion, that comets or shooting stars, crossing the Milky Way, were 
believed to be the souls of those blessed and redeemed ones, returning to 
their heavenly home after escaping from the ‘circle of necessity.’ Such a 
soul, a Buddha, as the Indian would say, had become a god, one of the ‘‘few 
real Bacchi from among the many thyrsus-bearers.” The God himself 
being worshipped under the form of the sacred kid and later on as the sacred 
goat, as Dionysus ‘ Eriphios’ or ‘ Tragios,’ the highest aim of his worshippers 
must have been to become themselves ‘ tragoi’ or ‘ eriphoi’ (ep. the satyrs, 
or rather goat-skinned acolytes, surrounding Orpheus on early vase paintings ; 
for the equation of ‘ satyr’ and ‘eriphos’ see Corp. Inscr. Latin., III., 686). 
Only as such could they hope to pass the Galaxy and reach the blissful fields 
of heaven. Many analogies, treated at greater length in the late W. 
Robertson Smith’s masterly article‘ Sacrifice’ in the Encyclopedia Britannica, 
suggest that this mystic aim was realised symbolically by wrapping oneself 
in a goatskin and by devouring at the same time the sacred animal, which 
was believed to resuscitate in the bodies of his theophagic worshippers. 
The ‘falling into the milk’ must have been symbolised by cooking the 
sacrificial meat in a milk broth; for many a popular tale—notably the story 
of Medea dismembering and cooking first a kid and then old Pelias, or 
Demeter cooking and restoring the ‘ satyrs ’ to eternal youth—bears testimony 
to the custom of boiling the victim, intended as a reviving ceremony. More- 
over milk, being the food of the newborn, must have been considered as a 
life-giving and life-restoring principle par excellence, so that boiling in milk 
would be considered a doubly efficacious charm. 


? Cp. Diodor. V.77. On the Cretan taurophagic sacrifice see Eurip. Cretans 
Fr, 472 N?; Firmic, Mat. De err. prof. relig., p. 9. Burs. Fr. xlviii. Nemethy. 


VIEWS ON ORPHISM 9 


If, then, Orphic rites really belonged to the religion 
of the Prehellenic so-called Pelasgian, Carian or 
Lelegian population of Greece, Asia Minor and the 
Islands, to those Hittites or whatever they may have 
been, who adored the wild bull caught in hunting nets 
and sacrificed by means of the holy double-axe,’ we can 
easily understand how deeply repulsive and antipathetic 
they must have been to the Greek conquerors, whose 
serene religion and mythology were as unsullied by such 
orgies as the original cult-system of their Roman 
brethren. 

Just as the British Government succeeded in 
imposing on its Indian subjects the salutary necessity 
of performing gentle rites such as the burning alive of 
widows, and other equally amiable ceremonies, in a 
severely guarded secrecy, and under continual dread of 
being surprised by ‘uninitiated’ enemies of such 
spectacles, even so may the Achezan aristocracy have 
forced a similar constraint upon the conquered so-called 
Pelasgian population. For it is hardly probable that 
any cult, at least in a primitive age, would assume 
voluntarily the humble and burdensome character of 
secret mysteries; on the contrary, the greatest possible 
pomp and publicity have always been the glory of 
a triumphant religion. Moreover, supposing that 
‘Orphism’ was the religion of the vanquished Prehel- 
lenic population, we understand at once not only the 
syncretistic character of its doctrines and the secrecy 
of its orgies, but also the nearly exclusive relation of 


1 Dionysus ‘ Axios Tauros,’ as the god is called by the women of Elis in 
an old hymn (Plutarch, Quaest. Graec., 36) is, according to an excellent 
remark al Salomon Reinach’s at the last Congress for the History of Religions, 
not at all the ‘ worthy bull,’ but the ‘ axe-bull,’ the very god represented by 
the bull-heads with the sacred double-axe between the horns, found at 
Mycene as well as in the Minoan palace of Cnossus. The hunting of the 
sacred bull with enormous nets is illustrated on the famous gold cups from 
the graves of Vaphio, now in the National Museum at Athens. 


10 ORPHEUS THRE FISHER 


its peculiar myths to two gods of distinctly barbarian 
origin, such as Dionysus and Apollo, the former being 
universally considered ag the national god of the 


but lately to his cradle in Asia Minor by an authority 
of such rank as Ulrich von Wilamowitz-Méllendorf. 


II. 


A NEW ETYMOLOGY: ORPHEUS—THE 
FISHER. 


THE very intimate relation between Apollo and 
Bacchus—remember that Delphi, for example, remained 
half a year under Apollo’s, the other half year under 
Dionysus’ protection—would well account for the close 
connection between the so-called Orphic or Dionysiacand 
the so-called Pythagorean communities. This relation 
isfirmly established through the testimony of Herodotus, 
as well as by all our historical evidence concerning the 
authors of the various Orphic poems,’ and ultimately 
by a marked affinity of rites, prescriptions and beliefs? 
(to be still more emphasised in the further progress of 
these researches), inasmuch as the mythical parallelism 
of Pythagoras and Apollo seems to correspond exactly 
to that of Orpheus and Dionysus. Just as the different 
historical ‘Orpheuses’ of Kroton and Kamarina are 
named after their mythical prototype, so, in all 
probability, the four or five historical ‘ Pythagorases’ 
are all named after the mythical Pythagoras. This was 
the Virgin’s son, who, five times reincarnated and once— 
witness, as Mannhardt perceived, his legendary golden 


1 They are all traditionally attributed either to Pythagoras himself or to 
Italian Pythagoreans like Brontin, Zopyros and others. Pythagoras of Samos 
is said to have been initiated into the Leibethrian Orpheus-mysteries by 
‘ Aglaophamus.’ 

2 The taboos against meat, woollen garments and beans are indiscrimin- 
ately attributed to the ‘Pythagorean’ and to the ‘Orphic’ church. The 
Pythagorean sacrifice of a suckling kid, mentioned by Diogenes Laertius, 
corresponds to the above (p. 7 n. 2) analysed Orphic creed. Finally the 

agoreans execrated fish-eating, a custom the origin of which will be 
discussed in ch. yi. 
1d 


12 ORPHEUS THE FISHER 


leg—dismembered and resuscitated bya magical cooking, 
travelled together with the ‘sun from his eastern 
birthplace to the golden evening lands of Hesperia in 
the West, where he died, burnt by his enemies in his 
own house or rather sanctuary, just as Apollo was wont 
to be at the end of every four-year period in the great 
Delphian Septerion-festival, commemorated in the 
well-known legend of Phlegias burning the Delphic 
sanctuary, or, as Hermann Usener has endeavoured to 
show, in the famous myth of the ‘Iliou Persis’ through 
Pyrrhos or Perseus, the mythical incendiary. 

The only difference is, that while the name of the 
mythical Pythagoras—according to the analogous title 
of ‘ Pyl-agorai’ for the messengers to the Amphictyonic 
assembly, held alternately at Pylae and in Delphi, the 
Homeric ‘Pythé,’ it signifies ‘him who speaks in 
Pytho ’—clearly confirms his identity with the Delphic 
god, the not less obvious connection between the 
personality and fate of the mythical Orpheus and the 
sufferings of the bull-god Dionysus—well-known even 
to ancient theologians'—seems to be most cunningly 
and purposely hidden behind the deep mystery lingering 
about the yet unknown meaning of this enigmatical 
name. 

It is generally admitted that no satisfactory 
etymology has been proposed for ‘Orpheus’ until now. 
We need not waste time in reconsidering the 
footless theories establishing a connection between 
Orpheus and the Indian Ribhus, any more than the 
classical pun about the ‘blooming voice’ (‘héraia 
phoné’) of the hero. Just as the Greek equivalent for 


* Proclus (in Plat. Rem Publ. 398; p. 274 f.,ed. Kroll) says: ‘ Orpheus, as 
the founder of the Dionysiac a ae is said in the myths to have suffered 


the same fate as the god himself; and the tearing in pieces is one of the 
Dionysiac rites,” 


A NEW ETYMOLOGY 18 


‘Ribhu’ would be, according to all phonetic laws, 
‘Lapheus,’ so the German word ‘ Albe, Elbe,’ compared 
with ‘ Orpheus’ by other linguists, ought to be ‘ Alphos’ 
in Greek. Still less satisfactory is Maximilian Mayer’s 
introduction of the Harpies, under their name ‘ Arpa’ or 
‘Oripsa,’ into the entirely alien camp of Orphism. 
More recent etymologies, among them an old Semitic 
one, comparing a Hebrew root meaning ‘obscure’ 
and the Greek words ‘orphnos’ and ‘orphnatos’ for 
‘dark,’ or ‘Hrebos” for the cosmic night, literally 
grope in the deepest darkness, and are obviously very 
far from elucidating the character and origin of Orphism. 
They seem to rest merely on the vague supposition 
that the name could be derived from the so-called 
chthonic character of Orpheus, notably from his 
pilgrimage to the dark underworld. Yet the hero, who 
tried to bring back, or perhaps originally succeeded in 
delivering, his wife Kurydice from the terrors of Hades, 
just as Dionysus rescued Semele, could not easily have 
been identified with his great enemy, the ruler of 
perpetual darkness, Aides, the ‘ invisible’ one. 
Accordingly the evident failure of these explana- 
tions leaves but two possibilities: either the name is 
borrowed from an unknown Prehellenic language, call 
it Pelasgian, Carian or Lelegian as you please—and 
then all further research is in vain until the Hittite 
inscriptions of Asia Minor or Dr. Evans’ ‘ Scripta Minoa’ 
have been deciphered —or, following a hypothesis 
suggested by Paul Kretschmer for all analogous cases, 
we have to consider the name as a derivation from an 


1 Which is itself certainly the Semitic ‘ ereb =‘ evening,’ that is ‘ evening- 
land.’ Since this paragraph was written, M. Salomon Reinach has proposed 
to explain ‘ Orpheus’ as ‘le sourcillewx’ (from ophrys=‘brow’). I am afraid, 
however, that this suggestion will not meet with more general approval than 
any of the others above quoted, 


14 ' ORPHEUS THE FISHER 


obsolete Greek word, which at a very early date had 
entirely or nearly disappeared from secular language. 

I think that this is obviously the case with 
‘Orpheus,’ and simply wonder why this perfectly fitting 
key to the purposely locked and bolted doors of the 
Orphic telestérion has not been used before. Indeed we 
need no ghost resuscitated from the graves of an Orphic 
cemetery to tell us what may easily be found not only 
in Gruppe’s learned and valuable article in Roscher’s 
mythological lexicon, but even in every ordinary Greek 
dictionary. 

We have ample evidence! that the sacred fish in 
the sanctuaries of Apollo in Lycia—on the very spot 
where we are most inclined to presuppose the roots of 
Ionian Orphism—were called ‘orphov. As in many 
analogous cases, this word does not seem to have been 
from the beginning a special zoological denomination of 
a single species, although it is used as such by later 
authors. Whether the word be originally Lycian, that 
is to say of Hittite origin, or Semitic, or genuine Greek 
—there is no reason to give the preference to this or 
to that assumption—I feel inclined to think that its 
original meaning was simply ‘fish’ in general. Later 
on the use of this obsolete and perhaps foreign word 
must have been confined to the peculiar kind of sacred 
fish revered at the Lycian sanctuaries. 

If this be admitted, the word ‘orpheus’ is an 
absolutely regular derivation from that old noun and 
means simply the ‘fisher.’ This etymology, plain 
and artless as it is, fits every possible requirement. 
First, the name, so explained, is perfectly synonymous 
with a well-established epiklésis of Dionysus, worshipped 


ni The testimonies will be found in the author's book Weltenmantel, 
Pp. 5, Ge 


A NEW ETYMOLOGY 15 


in the city of Haliew in Argos under the title of ‘ Halieus’ 
(‘Fisher’)... Moreover, it corresponds perfectly to the 
well-known cult-name of that specific Dionysian incar- 
nation ‘ Zagreus,’ universally acknowledged as having 
been the centre of Orphic rites and beliefs. Being 
composed of the magnifying prefix za—used e.g.in zatheos 
(archi-divine), zadélos (very clear, plain), zatherés (glow- 
ing hot)—and of the familiar word ‘agreus,’ the god’s 
name can mean just as well the ‘Great Fisher’ as the 
‘Great Hunter.’ 

Until now, only the first meaning has been taken 
into account, and indeed there is no reason for denying 
its appropriateness. Primitive hunting with nets could 
be used without considerable change of methods for 
terrestrial as well as for aquatic animals. We need 
not wonder, therefore, that both in the Greek and 
Semitic languages (tx) identical terms were used 
originally for both the ‘hunter’ and the ‘fisherman.’ 
To avoid possible ambiguity, determinating composites 
had therefore to be used. 

The genealogy of Orpheus affords an excellent 
instance: the name of his legendary father ‘ Oiagros’ 
could never mean, as Ernst Maass suggested, the 
‘lonely hunter,’ for the ‘grand veneur’ or the ‘ wilde 
Jdger’ never hunts alone, 7.e. without his heavealy 
host. It must, like ‘ Meleagros,’ signify the ‘sheep- 
hunter ’ (ois in Greek, ovisin Latin = sheep) and points 
to the well-known rite of the ‘ kriobolia,’ or ram-slaying, 
just as ‘Leagros’ means the ‘lion-hunter’ and refers 
to the ‘conjictio leonum,’ practised in the Kybele cults.’ 


1 Cp. O. Gruppe, Griech. Myth. u. Relig. Gesch., p. 1720. 


2 Cp. Augustin, City of God, 24: “Do the tympana, the civic crowns, 
the insane agitating of your bodies, the noise of the cymbals, or the spearing 
(confictio) of the ons give you any hope of an eternal life ?”’ 


16 ORPHEUS THE FISHER 


‘Taurobolos’ and ‘ Aigobolos,’ the popular epithets of 
Artemis and Dionysus, are the characteristic names for 
the merciless catcher and slaughterer of the sacred 
bull and the sacred goat. Now there is ample evidence 
that the hero or the divinity called ‘Orpheus’ was 
indeed the ‘hunter’ as well as the ‘fisher.’ The 
familiar scene of Orpheus playing on his lyre amidst a 
group of fascinated animals of every kind, so frequent 
in art and literature from Simonides and Aidschylus 
onwards, is generally explained to be an idyllic panegyric 
on the supreme power of music. Such an interpretation, 
natural as it must have been to an art-loving, enthusi- 
astic, highly cultivated nation like the classic Greeks— 
witness Plato’s theories on the ethical influence of 
music—would be entirely out of place among those 
rough Thracian or Phrygian tribes, accustomed to 
devour the palpitating flesh of the living bull. No 
doubt these tribes also conceived music as a charm, 
but not in the refined spiritual sense of later times. 
For them the sound of the lyre as well as that of the 
flute was an enchantment in the most literal sense, a 
hunting-spell intended to allure the wild beasts into the 
‘great hunter’s’ nets.’ 

If anybody doubts this statement, I invite a closer 
inspection of a very significant passage in the Natural 
History of Adlian (xii. 46), which is invaluable for our 
purpose, because it professes to render a ‘ Tyrrhenic,’ 
that is to say again a specific Asia Minor tradition. It 
relates that wild boars as well as stags were magically 
HA76 of ie ona efor), he Haroon ted opal Converge eee 
believed to exercise a powerful influence on the fish by their ‘sermons.’ The 
oldest ‘liymns’ and * poems’ of Orpheus may well have been incantations of 
the same kind as these rhetorical compositions of the Huronian fish- 


preachers ; similar ideas may even underlie the frequent Christian legends 
about different Saints preaching to the fishes of the sea, 


A NEW ETYMOLOGY 17 


drawn into the hunting nets by the cunning melodies 
of a skilled flute-player. 

We have, besides this, in Herodotus (i. 141), the 
very significant simile used by Cyrus in his address to 
an embassy of the Ionian Greeks. (Note here again the 
nationality of the actors in this quaint little scene.) 
A fisherman, said the king, watching some fishes in the 
sea, played on his flute, in the hope that they would 
come ashore. Having waited in vain, he took his net 
and caught them. When the victims floundered in the 
meshes, he said: “‘ You need not dance now, if you were 
not willing to dance when I was playing the flute.” 

As to the somewhat surprising musical experiment, 
which the Persian King attributes to his fisherman, 
it is best understood in the light of Varro’s note (De 
re rust. iii. 17) on the sacred fish in the lakes of 
Lydia, which used to gather near the shore when 
the flute-playing priest called them to the feeding 
places. 

Considering all these testimonies on the use of 
music as a hunting-charm, we cannot doubt that 
Orpheus the musician is but the mystic net-hunter 
himself, whether he is conceived as Leagros, Taurobolos, 
Aigobolos, Kriobolos or Oiagros, or finally as 
‘ Ichthyobolos,’ or ‘ Fish-catcher,’ in the proper sense of 
‘ Orpheus.’ 

Thus Orpheus-Zagreus-Halieus seems to have 
been originally the god of a primitive hunting tribe, 
catching living animals of all kinds, as his worshippers 
did, after alluring them with musical charms and vocal 
incantations, devouring them in a raw state, as they 
used to do, and perhaps occasionally keeping alive 
an animal big with young, in order to tame its 
offspring. 

B 


18 ORPHEUS THE FISHER 


In this way he must have developed gradually, 
together with his worshippers, into a less savage deity, 
chiefly concerned with the care of tame animals. 

With a hunting and fishing tribe the chief office of 
the priest, or rather sorcerer, must have been the 
magical increase of fishing and hunting ; andaccordingly 
the god or ancestral spirit who had to protect the clan, 
must have been above all a divine ‘ hunter’ or ‘ fisher,’ 
while the main interest of a herding population must 
have been the magical protection of their tame animals, 
operated by a priest or god, who really deserved the 
title of a ‘good herdsman.’ Thus Orpheus, formerly 
the ‘hunter’ and ‘fisher,’ is transformed into Orpheus 
the ‘herdsman,’ the ‘good shepherd’ (Kunomos, 
Kuphorbos), being now no more a tawrobolos, aigobolos, 
kriobolos, or ovagros, but a ‘ bowkolos’ and ‘ povmén’ ;* 
Orpheus, not only the cunning ‘fisherman’ but also 
the cautious warden of the sacred fish, which know 
his voice or the sound of his musical instrument and 
take their food willingly from his hand. 

Both titles of Orpheus, ‘hunter’ and ‘ herdsman,’ 
intimately connected as they are with animal worship 
in every possible form, could not but survive even in 
an agricultural period. We owe to Franz Cumont a 
splendid little paper on the half-wild cattle-herds of 
the goddess Anahita in Asia Minor and the rites of 
catching the animal destined for the sacrifice by means 
of the so-called taurobolion-rite,—a lifelike picture which 
recalls the scene of the South American pampas with 
their half-wild cattle under the guard of the gauchos, 


_ 1 Bowkolos (= cowherd) was the official title of certain Orphic and 
Dionysiac priests. Poimén (= herdsman) is a well-known eprklésis of 
Dionysus, Apollo, Pan, Hermes and other gods. Eunomos is the name of a 
mythic singer and lyre-player (cp. p. 51 n. 2 and 58 n. 1), Euphorbos is the 
significant name of one of the five avatdrds of the Samian Pythagoras. 


A NEW ETYMOLOGY 19 


armed with the famous lasso, hunters and herdsmen at 
one and the same time. 

If such a state of things persisted even in later 
antiquity, we may safely expect to find a god or hero 
called ‘hunter’ or ‘herdsman’ wherever animals in a 
more or less tamed condition are worshipped, or only 
kept for sacrificial use as sacred animals of a deity; 
wherever ichthyolatry also was prevalent, we shall 
expect to find a corresponding priest or god entitled the 
‘fisher,’ or occasionally, where the sacred fish were 
kept tame in pools, the ‘ warden of the fish.’ 


IIT. 


THE CULT OF THE SACRED FISH AND THE 
WORSHIP OF THE FISHERGOD. 


In order to establish a sound historical basis for 
the above proposed explanation of the name ‘ Orpheus,’ 
we have now to consider a series of facts that corres- 
pond exactly to our anticipations. In Lycia, where 
the sacred fishes (orphot) and their representative, 
the divine ‘Fish,’ Orphos or Di-orphos, the son of 
Mithra and of the Sacred Stone, were revered,! we 
find the divine Fisherman Orpheus. In Seriphos, 
where the crawfish was held to be sacred,? there 
is the mythical Dictys the ‘Net-fisher,’ intimately 
connected with the legend of Perseus.2 On the other 
hand, coins of Tarsus in Cilicia, adorned with the wolves 
of Apollo Lykios, bear the image of Perseus coupled 
with an anonymous fisherman holding a fishing-rod, a 
fishing-basket and a fish; the same local combination of 
Perseus and the fisherman recurs on a work of art as 
early as the Hesiodean ‘ Shield of Herakles.’* A female 
counterpart to this Dictys is the Cretan Artemis or 


1 On Di-orphos see the Pseudo-Plutarchian treatise De Fluv. 23,4. His. 
mother, the ‘ Sacred Stone,’ is nothing else but a well-known cult-symbol of 
the goddess Cybele. A god of the under-world Orphos, whose ‘ whip-bearer ’ 
(mastigophoros) is Hekate (cp. p.4n. 2 of this essay), may be found on a 
Carthaginian imprecative tablet of the Roman period, published by Richard 
Wiinsch (Rhein. Mus. (1900) lv. 250). 


4 Plut., De Sera Nwm. Vindic. 17. “I hear that the inhabitants of 
Seriphos bury dead crawfish. If a living one falls into their nets, they do not 
keep it, but throw it into the water again. They mourn over the dead ones 
and say that they are the delight of Perseus, son of Zeus.” 


* Dictys, the good king of Seriphos, catches in his fishing-net (dikty-on) 
the floating box in which are Danaé and the infant. See the article ‘ Dictys’ 
in Roscher’s Lewxicon. 4 Scut. Heracl. 214-216. 


20 


THE CULT OF THE SACRED FISH 21 


Britomartis Dictynna, just as is the Treezenian and 
Hpidaurian Saronia? to her legendary consort the hunter 
Saron. Finally the goddess, whom we find represented 
on archaic Greek intaglios holding on a hook a cap- 
tured fish, may be identified with Artemis ‘ Aspalis’ 
(= the ‘Fisher’ or the ‘ Angler’), an epithet which 
Hesychius attributes to the Athamanian dialect. 

Hiven our oldest monument for Greek ichthyolatry 
—the famous passage about the ‘holy fish’ (heros 
ichthys) in the Death of Patroclus saga (Il. xvi. 407f.) : 
“As when some man seated on jutting rock from out the 
sea a holy fish doth take with net and cruel brass ’— 
does not fail to make mention of this anonymous, or 
perhaps already hieronymous, fisherman with his sacred 
weapons, the ‘all-catching net’ (linos panagreus), and 
the ‘merciless trident,’—the former being as we know 
from a significant passage in Habakkuk (i. 14ff.)? and 
from corresponding cuneiform inscriptions, the object 
of a special cult in Western Asia, in Egypt® and pro- 
bably, as I shall endeavour to prove in a special essay 
on the Linos-dirges and the passion of the flax-god, in 
Greece also. 

1 A saron is a hunting-net according to the glossary of Hesychius. The 


Saronian gulf on the shores of Thessaly is named after this net-hunter Saron 
and Artemis Saronia. 


2 « Therefore they sacrifice unto their net, and burn incense unto their 
drag; because by them their portion is fat and their meal plenteous.” The 
net is taken as a symbol for Bél, “ the catch-net, the conqueror of the enemy” 
in a Sumerian hymn translated by Jastrow, Relig. Bab. wu. Ass., p. 490, as a 
symbol for Istar in another text, ibid., p. 541. As to Habakkuk’s correct 
explanation of this fetishism, cp. M. Monier Williams, Brahmanism and 
Hindooism (1891), p. 389: “On particular holy days, the merchant worships 
his books, the writer his inkstand, the husbandman his plough, the weaver 
his loom, the carpenter his axe, and the fisherman his net. Every object 
that benefits its possessor, and helps to provide him with a livelihood, 
becomes for the time being his fetish.” 


8 In Khemennu the temple of Theut was called Het Abtit or ‘ House of 
the Net,’ as Budge explains because of the holy net worshipped in this 
sanctuary. We know now from inscriptions about the Osirian mysteries of 
Abydos, that Theut was believed to leave his temple on a barge and to go a- 
fishing for the limbs of Osiris in the Nile with his sacred net. 


22 ORPHEUS THE FISHER 


With the Sumerians, a fish-god Ha-ni (according 
to Hrozny’s definitive explanation of the Berossian 
transcript ‘Oannés’; cp. below p. 46 n. 1), together 
with his consort I8-hana (the ‘house of the fish’), was 
held in great reverence, and a god Kal, with the 
epiklésis Zag-ha (or ‘fisher’),' as well as a cult-title 
Zag-ha, the ‘provost’ or ‘warden of the fish,’ is 
recorded in one of the most ancient inscriptions extant, 
the cylinder B 12, of Gudea. 

The Semites, who worshipped with funeral rites a 
fish-god Nun,? Dagon® or simply Adonis‘‘ the Lord, 
whom the Greeks called ‘Ichthys,’ son of Derketo, had 
certainly also a god called ‘Sid,’ the ‘fisherman,’ 
well-known in a diminutive form as Baal-Sid6én, the 
eponymous god of the Phoenician town Sidon,® and 
once worshipped (according to place-names such as 
Beth-saida‘) in Palestine also. Most probably Sid is 
identical with the legendary ‘ Diktys’ or ‘net-fisher,’ 
of Byblos, whom Plutarch (De Isid. viii., xv. ff.) men- 


1 Most probably this divinity is meant by the two representations of a 
god carrying two or five fishes reproduced in Revue d’Assyriologie (1905), 
p. 57, plate ii. Similar images of the divine fisher are reproduced in Milani’s 
Studi e Materials, ii. 19, figs. 133, 184, from Furtwingler’s work on ancient 
cameos, and the Recwerl des Travawa relat. a la Philol. assyr. et égypt. 


2 On Nunu, Nuni, Nun-gal in Babylonian texts s. Jastrow, l.c., p. 166 ff. 


® The funeral rites are remembered in the popular etymology, ‘dag-on’ 
(dag=fish, ’On=pain, grief, affliction), ‘piscis tristitie ’(‘ fish of wailing’), given 
for the god Dagon of Samuel (I. v. 4) in the Onomastica Sacra. Budge (The 
Gods of the Egyptians, i. 8303) mentions a god Rem, connecting his name with 
‘rem=to weep’ and comparing—although with all reserve—the jfish-god 
Remi, mentioned in the Book of the Dead, Ixxxiii. 4. On fish-cults in Egypt 
see Plutarch, De Iside et Osiride, 18. 


“ See Aclian, Nat. Anim. x. 86, on a fish called ‘Adonis.’ A strange tale 
is told of the amphibious life of this creature; it sleeps on the rocky shore 
after leaving the water with a leap, and returnsto the water when threatened 
by a bird of prey. This nonsense is clearly a rationalistic travesty of the 
god Adonis’ alternate sojourning in the over- and under-world, the latter being 
considered as a watery abyss by the majority of oriental cosmologies. 


5 Evidently with reference to the mournful character of this cult, Justin 
(118) translates Sid-6n by ‘ piscator tristitiae’ (‘fisher of mourning’). 


° Even to this day a local sanctuary exists at Beth-saida which the Arabs 
eall the ‘shrine of Ali-es-Sajjad’ (‘ Ali the Fisherman’). 


THE CULT OF THE SACRED FISH 23 


tions as the drowned and lamented son of Astarte and 
Melkart-Malkander, and with the divine fisherman, 
represented on Phoenician coins of Carteia.. The 
parallelism of this divinity with the Greek ‘Orpheus’ 
becomes most evident if we remember that the Phoeni- 
cian mythologist Philo Herennius, a native of Byblos, 
describes Sidon as a singer, gifted with a marvellous 
voice, and the inventor of hymns of praise to the gods. 
On the other hand Ernest Assman? has but recently 
suggested that the enigmatical Greek name Posidon or 
Poseidon for the god who holds the fisher-spear and 
the sacred tunny-fish, is nothing but the vulgar form 
Bo-Sidon for our Baal-Sidon, like Bo-Samin for Bal- 
Samin. 

In India, where sacred fish are still kept, Vishnu 
is frequently worshipped in the form of a fish.? The 
Buddhists of Nepal also revere Avalokiteshvara under 
the name of Matsyendranatha, ‘ Lord of Fishes.’ 

The ancient Britons, finally, held all fish as sacred 
and scrupulously avoided (according to Dio Cassius 
Ep. xxvi. 12) eating any of them “in spite of their 
great frequency in those regions.’ And indeed, as we 
should have expected, an image of a divine fisherman 
with a pointed cap, hooking a salmon, has been found 
in the sanctuary of the Celtic god Nodon, unearthed in 
Lydney Park on the shore of the river Sabrina.’ 


1 Mionnet, i. 9,54. % Philologus, \xvii, p. 185; Floss der Odyssee, p. 27. 

? Cp. e.g., Kielhorn, List of Inscriptions of Northern India, Calcutta, 
1899, no. 354; cp. p. 732. 

4 See Pischel, Sitz. Ber. Berl. Akad., 1905, p. 521. 

5 Op. E. Hiibner, Das Heihgtwm des Nodon, Bonner Jahrb., 1879, pp. 
29-46. 


IV. 


THE FISHERGOD IN ANCIENT ORIENTAL 
URANOGRAPHY. BASSAREUS—THE 
FISHING FOX. 


A GRouP of divine beings, common to Sumerian, 
Semitic, and Indian religion, and to the Prehellenic cults 
of Asia Minor, may well be expected to have left 
distinct traces in classical as well as in Oriental 
uranography. Indeed we find a whole series of con- 
stellations plainly corresponding to the alleged features 
of these mythological images. First of all the rite of 
fishing affords a satisfactory explanation for the curious 
fact that both the heavenly Fish are fastened by a long 
piece of yarn, mentioned already in cuneiform inscrip- 
tions as the dur or rikis nunu, the ‘ fish yarn,’ the linon 
of the Greek texts. Chinese uranography, originally 
derived (according to P. Kugler’s classic demonstra- 
tions) from Babylonian sources through Indian inter- 
mediaries, also delineates a hunting-net (pz) round the 
stars a 0-0 of the Bull, and another one (¢schang) round 
vvpuAx Hydra, probably destined to catch either the 
Hydra herself or the neighbouring Lion. Evidently as 
a counterpart to this ‘fish yarn,’ Teukros the Babylonian 
mentions a group of stars called the Trident in the 
neighbourhood of the Fish. 

Secondly, a constellation Halieus, or ‘ Fisherman,’ 


is found, just where we should expect it, namely, near 
24 


ASTRAL SYMBOLS OF THE FISHERGOD 25 


the Fish, as a ‘paranatellon’ to the Ram in the lists of 
‘Teukros.? 

For different reasons which cannot be developed 
here at length, we are constrained to identify this 
Greek constellation with the well-known group of the 
famous ‘hunter’ Orion, whose principal star the Arabian 
‘Betelgeuze’ had the Sumerian name of KAK-SIDI, 
which was explained by the Semites as the ‘hunting’ 
star, or, through a word-play on ‘ ssddu,’ the ‘ red-glow- 
ing’ star (compare the equivalent names of Sidon and 
Pheenix). Orion corresponds mythically to Nimrod, 
the ‘mighty hunter before the Lord’ of the Bible. 
Around this constellation we find—and this can hardly 
be a casual coincidence—all the requisites of Orphic 
mythology. 

At the feet of the gigantic Huntsman, we see the 
celestial Bull, the faithful image of the bull-god 
Zagreus, torn in pieces by the maddened women, who 
immediately afterwards murdered Orpheus himself. 
Next the Bull comes the Ram, as a celestial reflex of the 
sacred lamb (erzphos) caught in the merciless hunting- 
net of the ‘sheep-hunter.’ By the Bull we find also 
the celebrated ‘ Lyre of Orpheus’ (better known as the 
Pleiades), the powerful musical charm of the Great, 
Hunter. The hunting-net itself is clearly visible in 
Orion’s right hand on the Globus Farnese, It is gener- 
ally called lagdbolion (or net for catching a hare), on 
account of the constellation of the Little Hare under 


1 Boll, Sphdra (Leipzig, 1904, p. 263), has been too rash in rejecting this 
statement as a corruption of the original text, merely because the astrological 
influence of this constellation is said to produce not ‘fishermen’ but 
‘hunters.’ This apparent discrepancy is caused only by an inadequate 
translation of the well-known Semitic word ‘sid,’ meaning both ‘ fisher ’ and 
*‘hunter.’ The whole trouble could have been avoided, if Teukros had been 
olever enough to call the constellation Agreus instead of Halieus. 


2 Cp. Ovid, Metam. xi. 33-38. 


26 ORPHEUS THE FISHER 


Orion’s feet, but it could certainly just as well—as the 
general names in Chinese uranography prove —be called 
kriobolion, tawrobolion and ichthyobolion, or a net for 
catching ram, bull or fish. The miniature of Orion in 
the celebrated Codex Vossianus puts in his hand, instead 
of the hunting-net, the well-known crosier (pedum) of 
the herdsman, so characteristic for the mythical type 
of the Good Shepherd, Orpheus Poimén, in all its 
variations; attesting by the way the correctness of 
Hesychius’ statement that Orion was primarily called 
Boodtés, the ‘guardian of the bull,’ a denomination 
answering not only to Orion’s position in the heavens, 
but also to the name. Sib-zi-an-na, the ‘ faithful herds- 
man of the sky,’ applied by the Babylonians to certain 
stars of the Bull-group. 

The most striking fact, however, is this: Salomon 
Reinach has written a brilliant memoir on the fox- 
dress of the Thracian Orpheus, which occurs on Greek 
vase-paintings and is intended to identify the hero— 
very appropriately as we can now see—with the fox, 
the most cunning ‘hunter’ of the animal kingdom; 
that is to say, with the ‘Thracian’ fox-god Dionysos 
Bassareus.1. Now in this very same Babylonian 
uranography a constellation called the Fox is placed 
immediately beside the heavenly Fish. If it is easy 
to understand that the sacred fox could represent the 
mighty hunting god, it is more difficult to see how 
he could possibly manage to fish, although he was 


' Bassara is a Thracian word for ‘fox.’ It is of high interest to note that 
Hesychius’ gloss, “ bassaria, foxes are thus called by the Libyans,” is confirmed 
by the existence of a Coptic word, baschar, baschor, for ‘ jackal,’ occurring 
also in Reinisch’s dictionary of the Afar- and Saho-languages (cp. Muséon, 
Nonv. Série, 1904, v. p. 279f.) But Count Charencey (/.c.) is not justified in 
adducing such a fortuitous linguistic coincidence as a new proof confirming 
the old fable of the Egyptian origin of Orphism. 


? Cp. II. Rawlinson 583 a, 66/67: ““When in the month Adar the fish 
star and the fox star and the star of the God Mauma rise before the sun,”’ etc. 


ASTRAL SYMBOLS OF THE FISHERGOD 27 


certainly believed to do so by ancient zoologists. The 
solution, however, is given by a well-known popular 
tale or fable," most probably, as they all are, of Oriental 
origin. The fox was believed to fish with his tail, 
using it as a bait for the unsuspicious denizens of the 
water. Such an absurdity would never have been 
invented, if there had not been important motives for 
connecting the notions of the fox-god and the fisher- 
god himself; just as the well-known tale of the fox and 
the grapes is certainly based on some forgotten myth 
of the fox-dressed vine-god* Dionysos Bassareus. 

All this is easily explained. If the Zodiac really 
was, as we are entitled to believe, the celestial projec- 
tion and effigy of an ancient calendar and sacrificial 
time-table, it is plausible enough that we should find, 
not only the settled yearly circle of animal sacrifices, 
beginning with the fish, followed by the ram, bull and 
lion, and ending with the consecration of the first ear, 
but also an image of the priestly functionary as the 
hunter, guardian and finally killer of the sacred beasts. 
The sacrificial functions of this retiarius® or ‘ net- 
hunter,’ are not only clearly reflected on the sky, but 
also distinctly traceable in familiar myths. 

The oldest instance is the Babylonian god Marduk 
(most probably to be looked for in the constellation of 

1 H.g. Aelian, Nat. anim. vi. 24. 
2 Cp. Song of Solomon, ii. 15, the ‘foxes, the little foxes, that spoil the 
vines.”’ 

® The full-armoured Roman gladiator, fighting against his naked rival 
armed only with a net and a trident, so familiar to English readers from 
Bulwer Lytton’s Last Days of Pompewi, is certainly the survival of an old 
Etruscan hieratic performance. Itis interesting, therefore, to recall the song, 
quoted by Festus (De Signific. Verb. p. 233, Lindemann): “‘ When the retiarius 
fights against the murmillo the following song is sung : 

“ Non te peto, piscem peto ; (Not thee I chase, I chase the fish 

Quid fugis me, Galle ?” Why dost thou flee me, Gallus? _ 
Pittakos, the wise tyrant of Mityléné, is said (Festus, l.c.) to have fought with 


the net and the trident against Phryno. Hugo Winckler thinks that this 
legend originated under the influence of the different myths analysed below. 


28 ORPHEUS THE FISHER 


Orion and the Bull) who catches in his enormous net 
the monster Tiamat, represented in the heavens by the 
Whale or Cetus (Kétos), spearing her with his terrible 
weapon, the kéto-phonos triaina of the Greek fisher- 
man, and dividing her ‘like a fish’ into two halves. 
In the very same way Yahwe fights with a great 
hunting-net against the monster-fish Leviathan ac- 
cording to a distinctly mythical allusion in Ezekiel 
(xxxii. 2ff.). Moreover, we cannot doubt that the 
German myth of the god Thor, angling for the Midgard- 
snake from a boat, is a distant mirage of this primeval 
Oriental myth. Many readers of these lines may 
have seen the celebrated second Gosford cross—or at 
least the calco in the Victoria and Albert Museum— 
upon one of the sides of which this scene is repre- 
sented as a simile for Christ’s victory over the ancient 
dragon. We find the same conception, expressed in 
a very baroque way, not only in the homilies of St. 
Gregory, Honorius Augustodunensis, Rupert Tuitiensis 
and others, but as late as in Herrad von Landsberg’s 
Hortulus Deliciarum, where God the Father is portrayed 
using the genealogical tree of Jesus as a fishing-rod 
and the cross as a hook, in order to catch the monster 
Leviathan. 

Accordingly we may infer that Lucian’ was quite 
well informed, when he explained the familiar scene 
of Orpheus among his beasts by reference to the 
celestial animals of the Zodiac, and we have only to 
make clear how it may have come about that the figure 
of man and obvious symbols of the human soul, such 


: ? Or whoever wrote the treatise De astrol., ch. 10, where the seven 
strings of Orpheus’ lyre are identified with the seven planets, and the figures 
of a man—evidently Aquarius—a ram, a lion, and a bull specially enumerated 
in the description of the surrounding animals. 


ASTRAL SYMBOLS OF THE FISHERGOD 29 


as Psyché’s well-known butterfly,! are to be found 
side by side with the fish among this assembly of 


fascinated victims of the great Fisher and Hunter of 
all living beings. 


1 On the butterfly and the fish on Orphic monuments cp. Gruppe in 
Roscher’s Lexicon, s. v. ‘Orpheus,’ c. 111644. 


V. 


THE RITES OF THE FISH-CULT. 


THE problem, how Orpheus, who was from the first 
a fisher-god, came to be considered—as he certainly 
was—a ‘Fisher of men’ (just as Hermes Poimén was 
believed to be a Poimandrés or ‘Shepherd of men’) 
still remains to be solved. 

We cannot do this, however, without glancing 
rapidly at the different rites performed by the human 
prototypes of the mythical Fisher, the priests of the 
fish-sanctuaries in Western Asia. The original aim 
of their ceremonies was certainly to secure an abundant 
catch for themselves! or for the fishing population of 
the coast. For this purpose they made use first of all 
of magical imagery; hence the production of fish- 
shaped idols and of the vocal and musical incantations 
which underlie the traditions of Orpheus having been 
the first singer and musician. In addition to this 
they allured the denizens of the water by throwing in 
food at certain places,’ just as a modern angler would 
do. Divination from the movements of the sacred fish 
towards the bait? was the natural offspring of these 


1 According to Pausan. i. 38,1, the fish in the brooks near Eleusis belonged 
exclusively to the priests. In Delos the right of fishing on the coast was 
reserved for Apollo (Bull. Corr. Hell. vi. 19f.; xiv. 809f., line 36f.). In 
Halicarnassus the gods owned a thynnoskopion, and the tunny-fishing on the 
whole coast, etc. 


* The feeding of the sacred fish is described by Aelian, H. A. viii. 5. 


* On this practice, the so-called ichthyomancy, cp. Bouché-Leclereq, Hist. 
de la divination, Paris, 1879, p. 151 f., W. Robertson Smith, Relig. of the 


eee 178n., Blau, Altjiid. Zawberwesen, p. 65, Hunger, Babyl. Tieromina, 
p. : 


30 


THE RITES OF THE FISH-CULT 31 


feeding rites ;* Orpheus the singing, harping or piping 
fisher became Orpheus the prophet. But in the end 
the catching of the sacred animals must always have 
been the main feature of this so-called worship. 

No doubt the victims were sometimes left alive 
and kept in sacred pools, perhaps after having been 
finally adorned, much to their discomfort, with precious 
golden trinkets engraved with hieratic formule, which 
at times developed into entire poems—a custom which 
explains in a very simple way the strange coupling of 
titles for the Babylonian god Lugalkidia, called at 
once the “fish and the writing-table of Bel.’? But in 
most cases cooking or roasting and then sacrificial 
eating followed the capture of the holy fish? 

We have now to note a peculiar feature of this 
latter ceremony. The priests of the ichthyomorphous 
deity were themselves disguised as fishes, either by 
wearing a fish-skin over their heads and bodies, as 
Ulustrated on the well-known Babylonian stone-slabs 
in the Kuiyunjik Gallery of the British Museum, or by 
fastening fish-tails to their backs, as may be seen on 
a quaint black-figured Cumean vase-painting. This 
must have been a hunting-charm too, at least originally. 
It agrees perfectly with the widespread and still pre- 
vailing custom which hunters have of wearing some 
of the spoils taken from their victim, in order to 
maintain their power over similar animals. Notwith- 
standing this primitive purpose, the rite must have 


1 The bronze-doors of Balawat show the Assyrians standing on the shore 
of Lake Van before a series of cult-symbols feeding or catching fish for 
sacrificial purposes. 

2 Cp. Hrozny, Mitt. d. Vorderasiat. Gesellsch viii, 1903, p. 101. 

8 Only the priest is allowed to eat the holy fish in a sacrificial meal. Cp. 
Mnaseas, fr. 32, Miiller iii. 155; Diog. Laert. viii. 34. According to the 
inscription, No. 258, Dittenberger, Syll., if one of the sacred fishes perishes, 
the priests must eat it the very same day on the altar. 


32 ORPHEUS THE FISHER 


been differently interpreted in later times. We can 
be almost certain that, both by eating the god, and 
thus bringing his substance into the interior of one’s 
own body, and also by wrapping one’s own frame 
in the god’s former covering, the intention was to 
establish the closest possible connection, perhaps even 
the identification, of the deity and its worshippers. 
W. Robertson Smith has shown, in his masterly essay 
on ‘Sacrifice’ in the Encyclopedia Britannica, that 
this peculiar combination of rites is the characteristic 
feature of the so-called totemistic theriolatry, a belief 
the fundamental dogma of which consists in treating 
the offspring of man as an ever-repeated reincarnation 
of the tribe’s sacred animal. I need not enter here 
upon the controversy concerning the origin of such a 
creed. It will be sufficient to remind ourselves of 
instances such as the ant-tribe (Myrmidones) in Adgina, 
the snake-tribe of Parion, the cicada-tribe in Attica, 
the seal-tribe in Phocis, and ultimately of the Pre- 
hellenic stork-tribes of the Pelasgi. In the special 
case of fish-totemism the primitive burial rite of 
throwing the dead into the sea as a prey for the 
fishes, natural as it was to a sea-faring population,’ or 
at least to the inhabitants of the coast, combined with 
the not less natural habit of living upon the flesh of 
the same fish,’ and last, not least, the phylogenetic 
coincidence that the human embryo possesses rudi- 


1 On the familiar idea of corpses being devoured by fishes (a Mediter- 
ranean seafarer would first think of the sharks in this respect) cp. Homer, 
Il. xxi. 208, 122; Od. xv. 480, xiv. 185, xxiv. 290. The Soloman islanders 
use wooden fish-images as coffins, according to Edge, Partington, Joice, Davis 
and Codrington (Globus, Ixxxvi. 368). 


2 A good instance for a tribal name derived from the main food of the 
people is offered by Marquardt’s explanation (Hransahr, p. 156) of the 
Scythian ‘Massagétai.’ This scholar reads the name in question ‘ massjaka’ 
(from Iran. masya, Skr. matsya=fish) =‘ fisheaters,’ and identifies the Massa- 


getes with the half-mythic ‘Fisheaters’ (Ichthyophagoi) of the Greck 
geographers, 


THE RITES OF THE FISH-CULT 33 


mentary gill-clefts in an early stage of development 
—a fact which could not have for long escaped the 
attention of the medicine-men and priests—affords a 
satisfactory reason for the belief that men were but 
reincarnated fish. As a fact, throughout the whole of 
Australia the natives believe that men are changed 
into fishes after their death, and therefore scrupulously 
avoid fish-eating." The same taboo prevails among the 
African tribes of the Wamka, Wakamba, Galla and 
Somali, for they think their dead become snakes? and 
consider fish a kind of snake.2 Some of the American 
aboriginals restrict this superstition in so far that only 
their medicine-men are expected to become fish after 
death*—most probably because these sorcerers dress in 
fish-skins during the performance of their magic fishing- 
rites. 


1 Wesigarth, Australia Felix, Edinburgh, 1848, p. 93. 
2 Lippert, Seelenkult, Berlin, 1881, p. 38; Andrée, Hthnograph. Parail., 


p. 125 
8 The same idea seems to underlie the saying of Jesus in Lwke 1111, 
about the son asking for a fish and the father giving him a snake. 


4 Th. Koch, Animismus d. siidamerikan. Indianer, Leyden, 1900, p. 14. 
Cc 


vi 


FISH-TOTEMISM IN HELLAS, IN SYRIA, IN 
LATIUM AND IN EGYPT. 


Most readers of these lines know the anthropo- 
gonical theories of old Ionian philosophy, traditionally 
connected with the name of Anaximander, stating that 
men were descendants of fish. This theory has some- 
times been considered as an anticipation of Darwinism, 
or at least of the prevalent modern belief in the origin 
of organic life on the borders of land and sea. But 
such an interpretation is devoid of all plausibility ; on 
the contrary, the right clue for understanding it is 
suggested by Plutarch himself, to whom we owe the 
whole quotation from Anaximander. He compares the 
theory with the traditional opinion of the descendants 
“from the old (hero) Hellén,”’ who believed in an 
intimate kinship between their clan and certain fishes.” 


1 Plutarch, Symp. viii. 8,7, p.730 £.: ‘“ Men primordially originated in the 
interior of fishes and were nourished therein like sharks (galeoz).” The text 
is corrupt; the correction, ascertained by comparison with Plut., De Soll. 
Anim. 33, 982, is due to Déhner and has been accepted by Diels, Fragm. 
Presocr. Philos. p. 17, 1. 29. The comparison looks to the well-known fact 
that sharks do not lay eggs, but procreate living young. ‘‘ When they had 
become strong enough to help themselves they came forth and went on 
shore.” Cp. Aétios, v.19, 4; Censorinus, 4, 7; [Plut.] Strom. 2 (Theophrast.). 


2 «The descendants of the old hero Hellén sacrifice also to the ancestral 
(patrogeneio) Poseidon, for they believe, as the Syrians do, that man has 
originated in the ‘ moist.’ Therefore they also worship the fish as a kinsman 
(homogené) and foster-brother (syntrophon); this is a more reasonable 
philosophy than that of Anaximander, who does not say that fish and men 
derived their origin from a common element, but that,” etc. (for the rest see 
previous note). The value of this learned Plutarchian comparison is still 
more emphasised by the fact that Anaximander’s anthropogony was really 
connected, as we should expect it of a totemistic belief, with a tabu of the 
ancestral animal. See Plutarch, l.c.: ‘“ Anaximander, considering the fish as 
the common father and mother of mankind, zealously deprecated eating it.” 


34 


FISH-TOTEMISM 35 


This statement clearly furnishes a perfectly fitting key 
to the whole problem. We know from a passage of 
_Ailian,’ that the ‘holy fish’ mentioned without a proper 
name in Homer, was elsewhere called (h)ellops, (h)ellopos 
or (h)ellos the ‘silent one,’ or with a characteristic 
so-called Cretan termination® hellén,—an appropriate 
enough name for the speechless gods of the ocean. 
Moreover we learn from Ailian that this was a dogma 
of certain mysteries, and he declines expressly to dwell 
at greater length on the subject. But if any mysteries 
are to be connected with the ‘heros ichthys’ we can 
now safely venture to identify them with Orphism, or 
the religion of the sacred Lycian fish orphot. Moreover 
I would here call to mind the fact that the aboriginal, 
primitive and Prehellenic cult of the sacred oak, the 
sacred double-axe, the dove-goddess, afterwards called 
Didné, and the ‘swimming’ god Naios, afterwards 
identified with Zeus at Dodona,‘ was conducted by two 


1 Nat. Anim. viii. 28. ‘It is believed that what the poet [scz. Homer] 
calls the ‘holy fish’ is the ellops [=the ‘mute one’]. There is a tradition 
(logos) that it is a very rare fish and caught only in the Pamphylian sea, and 
ven there seldom. If they catch one they rejoice over their good luck, and 
adorn themselves and their boats with wreaths, and celebrate the event with 
great noise and with flute-playing. Others say that it is not this fish but the 
anthias that makes the sea safe. . . Butit is neither convenient nor my 
business to reveal the forbidden mysteries of nature.” 

2 In Hesiod, Scut. Herakl. 212, Empedocl. fr. 117, Diels, and Epicharmus 
(Athen. vii. 28? d) ‘ellopos ichthys’ = ‘silent fish’ occurs as a standing 
formula. Mrs. Rhys Davids was kind enough to remind me, after I had read 
this paper at Oxford, that ‘the silent ones’ 1s also a very common epithet of 
fish in Buddhistic literature. 

8 Cp. for example, the Phcenician harbour Arados with the Cretan 
Aradén. Both places have the same Semitic name, meaning ‘ place of refuge ’; 
yet in the one case the common Greek ending —os, in the other the archaic 
Cretan termination —én has been appended. 

4 Dodon itself means ‘dove. To the above-mentioned sacred fish 
* Adonis’ corresponds the fish whom the ancient Greeks called ‘ Zeus.’ Its 
Latin name is ‘ faber,’ that is the ‘ carpenter,’ evidently with regard to the 
sacred double-axe of the Dodonzan god, which the Greeks compared to the 
‘cutting tail’ of the hellos-fish (cp. p. 36, n. 4). The modern Greek fisher- 
men call it ‘ christopsaro’ or ‘christ fish,’ sometimes also ‘ sampzero’ ; the 
latter name is of course Italian and occurs also in the fuller form ‘ pesce dt 
S. Pietro,’ ‘fish of S. Peter.’ The German names ‘ Heringskinig,’ Mond- and 
‘ Sonnenfisch’—heside the classic ‘ Petersfisch’—also point to an ancient cult 
of this animal. 


36 ORPHEUS THE FISHER 


different classes of ministers: by priestesses called 
‘doves’ (peleiades),) and by priests who slept on the 
naked soil (chamaiewnai) and never washed their feet 
(aniptopodes),? mentioned already in the Jad under the 
name of hellot or selloi, the ‘silent ones.’ I now think 
there will be little objection if we venture to translate 
these hieratic names by the ‘ fishes,’ and thus couple 
the sacred dove with the sacred fish,’ for this is a 
combination very well known from the sanctuaries of 
Western Asia, and different totems for the men and 
for the women are regularly required by the primitive 
laws of exogamy.‘ 


1 Herodot. II. 54; Sophocl., Trach. 170; Strabo, vii. 7, 12; Suidas s.v. 
Dodona. 


2 The same tabu, namely, sleeping on the naked soil and not washing the 
dusty feet, was (according to Lucian) enjoined on the pilgrims going to and 
returning from the sanctuary of the Syrian goddess. 


8 The statue of the fish-goddess Atargatis was surmounted, according to 
Lucian’s description, bya dove. The statue of the Prehellenic earth-goddess 
in Phigalia (Pausan. viii. 5, 8) held a fish in one hand and a dove in the other. 
A coin reproduced by A. B. Cook, Class. Rev., 1904, p. 416, fig. 10, shows the 
oak-Zeus (Askraios) standing between two trees, surmounted by the sacred 
doves, and holding a fish in each hand. A stater from Cyzicus reproduced by 
Milani, Stwdi e Materials, ii. 78, fig. 258, shows an omphalos stone with two 
doves and one fish. This group is particularly interesting because the name, 
sira, of the Apollo-sanctuary in Lycia, where the sacred orphoi-fishes were 
revered, is an old word, common to all Semitic languages (Syr. serrd, Heb. 
$or, Arab, swrrd), meaning ‘navel’=omphalos (cp. my note, Philologus, lxviii., 
p. 141, 89c). Even on Christian engraved seals (see Pitra’s Spicil. Sol. iii., 
p. 577, no. 97), we find the fish, coupled with a tree, surmounted by the dove 
(no. 99, etc.). See also 55 and 57, where we find a vine, a dove and a fish; 
and also nos. 34, 35, 36, 387 and 40. It should also be remembered that 
‘Jonah,’ the name of the prophet swallowed by the mythic fish, means 
‘ Dove’ in Hebrew. 


* The same intimate connection as between the symbols of the dove and 
the fish seems to exist between the symbols of the fish and the axe. In 
Dodona Hellos, the presupposed ‘ Fish,’ the founder of the sanctuary, is said 
to have been a woodcutter (dryotomos, Pind., fr. cit. schol. Il. xvi. 234; Serv., 
Virg. Ain. iii. 466); his axe was shown there in Philostratus’ time (Imagg. ii. 
33,1). If therefore Strabo (p. 828) calls the Helloi ‘ tom-owrot’ we shall, with 
A. B. Cook (Class. Rev., 1904, xvii. 180) connect the first part of this epithet 
with temnein (‘to cut’), and take the second, instead of with Cook as a 
termination like that of the words stawros, arwra, etc., for the noun owros, 
‘tail.’ Then the whole word would signify ‘those with the cutting tail,’ and 
be based on the very natural comparison between a fishtail and the sacred 
double-axe. (Cp.names like Germ. Hammerhai, Sdgefisch, for different kinds 
of Mediterranean sharks; p. 85 n. 4.) This would give a good explanation for 
the facts that a well-known marine-god with a fishtail is called Phorkys 
(=Pherekys, Berekys; cp. parashw and pelekys, ‘ double-axe’; see the present 


FISH-TOTEMISM 37 


Now it has long been admitted that the most 
glorious name of classic antiquity, ‘Hellénes,’ as the 
‘Graioi’ called themselves after the Deucalionic flood,! 
is derived from the cult-title of these Dodonean ‘ Helloi,’ 
who are found also in the island of Kubwa. Ulrich 
von Wilamowitz-Méllendorf has established the con- 
vincing transition from psellos (psellisein=to lisp), sellos 
(at. silere), hellos to ellos, ellops, ellopos, yet wondering 
why in the world not a foreign population (as is the 
case with the synonymous denominations barbarit and 
memrec’) but the Greeks themselves should have called 


writer’s note, Philologus, lxviii. 126) ; that Phryxos (cp. Phorkys, the leader 
of the Phryges in the Homeric ship-catalogue ; Phrixos, the ‘ curled’ ram, is a 
secondary form) is coupled with Hellé, the female ‘fish’; that Prof. Newberry 
has recently found a Libyan god Ha (pronounced Gha), represented by the 
symbol of the sacred axe in Egyptian inscriptions (s. Transactions ITIrd 
Intern. Congr. Hist. Rel. ii., p. 184), while a word pronounced gha is written 
with the hieroglyph of a fish (Erman, gypt. Gramm. 180; Hommel, Der 
babyl. Ursprung der dgypt. Cultur, p. 63, no. 26, compares the Sumeric ha, 
pronounced gha, meaning ‘ fish’); that the Carian axe-god Zeus Labraundos 
possesses a pool with holy fish (Aslian, Nat. Anim. xii. 30); that a Cretan 
vase-painting of the Minoan period (Annals of the British School of Athens, 
ix., 1902-3, p. 115, fig. 75) gives us a fish and a douwble-axe, while an Assyrian 
cylinder in the British Museum (no. 89,470) illustrates the sacrifice of a fish 
to a divinity, represented by the symbol of an erected axe. Even in a Chris- 
tian inscription from the cemetery of 8. Priscilla (Pitra, Spic. Sol. iii., p. 574, 
no. 89; Bosio, Roma Sotteranea, p. 506, Aringhi, ii. 259), the traditional 
Dodonean symbols of the dove sitting on the sacred tree, the axe and the fish 
are coupled in the old way, although they are certainly used here with 
reference to the baptismal sermon of St. John, where the axe of Yahwé 
(Psalm xxxiii. 2) is said to threaten the barren trees of the unfaithful, while 
the trees bearing good fruit—namely, those upon whom the dove of the Holy 
Spirit descends, that is to say, those reborn as ‘ fishes’ by the baptism—will be 
spared. 

a Aristotle (Meteor. A 14, p. 352a, 28ff., Bekker) says that before the 
Deucalionic deluge the Greeks called themselves Graioi, afterwards Hellenes. 
This statement has certainly a mythological basis, for after the flood, related 
in the Babylonian Gilgames-epic, the goddess Ishtar complains that her 
creatures, namely men, have become ‘ like the brood of fish’; that is to say 
they are swimming about helplessly in the water. The Deucalionic flood- 
myth is distinctly localised at Delphi; Deucalion and the hero Hellén are 
mentioned in the same (principally) Delphic genealogy. The common name 
of Hellenes for the different Greek clans was chiefly propagated by the 
Delphicamphiktyony. If then Apollo is a god imported—through Crete—from 
Asia Minor, the flood-story—occurring also at Dodona—and the name ‘fish’ 
for men must belong together and to the same Prehellenic civilisation, to be 
found all over the Balkan Peninsula, the Migzan Islands, Egypt, Syria and 
Asia Minor. It is Delphic religion—remember that Dionysos Zagreus was 
especially worshipped at Delphi—that made the old, originally totemistic 
name popular all over the different branches ofthe newly united Greek nation. 

2 The Slavic name applied to the neighbouring German population. 


38 ORPHEUS THE FISHER 


their own people the Hellenes.or Sellenes,’ that is, the 
‘silent’ or ‘mute’ or ‘muttering ones.’ The solution 
of this puzzle is now to hand. 

Those who were descended from the famous old 
Hellos-Hellén believed in a totemistic kinship between 
themselves and the sacred Fish, and therefore called 
themselves the ‘silent ones,’ the ‘fishes.’ That this 
Prehellenic and, as we may safely say, Orphic doctrine 
lies at the bottom of Anaximander’s theory, should not 
be contested on the ground that the philosopher does 
not call the mythic ancestral fish either orphos or 
hellops, but galeos, that is ‘shark’; for, just in the 
same way as the god Mithra has a son called Di-orphos, 
so Apollo, who is so often identified with Mithra in 
Asia Minor, has a son called Galeos (~‘ Shark’), the 
mythical ancestor of a family or congregation of priests 
and prophets, called the Galedtai,’ exactly correspond- 
ing to the Dodonean Helloi, and mentioned—of course 
not by chance—in Attica and Sicily, the very centres of 


1 The Arcadians were proud of having inhabited their country long before 
the Greek invasion. They called themselves therefore ‘ pro-sellénoi,’ the 
‘pre-hellenic’ population. The Attic comedy made fun of this local or racial 
pride and made the Arcadians boast that their nation was older than the 
Moon (‘ Arkades pro-selénot’). Op. the quotations, s.v. ‘proselénot,’ in the 
Thesawrus of Stephanus. Thus the same change of initial letter is attested 
for Hellenes-Sellenes, as for the Helloi-Selloi at Dodona. 


? Or Galeoi. The above cited Cumean vase-painting shows most probably 
a dance of the Galeote or shark-priests. A very early cult of the shark is 
attested by the names of the Babylonian gods Lahmu and Lahkamu, derived 
according to Hommel from the West Semitic word ‘luhm,’ for ‘shark.’ As the 
word Lym signifies, according to Houtsma (Zettschr. f, alttest. Wiss. xxii. 329ff.), 
also a ‘storm’ or ‘whirlwind,’ the Semites may have considered the 
shark as a marine storm-demon, just as other fish—the remor or echineis of 
the Phystologus—were believed to produce the dreaded calms. According 
to Mnaseas (in Athenaous, vii. 62, p. 361d.; cp. ix. 403a.) the Syrian fish-god 
‘Ichthys,’ the son of Atargatis, was coupled with ‘Hésychia,’ and had a 
daughter called ‘Galéné.’ Both these names signify the sea-calm, and it is 
most probable that the Greek word-play ‘galeos-galéné’ corresponds to the 
above quoted (cp. p. 35 n. 1 about the anthias) ambiguity of the Semitic word 
for shaded : mae ra | ey = course, remember that the power of calming 
sea-storms 1s attributed by Pagan legend to Pythagoras, by th 
(Mk. 651) to the mystic IXOY> af Christianism, Aas Aine Sis 


FISH-TOTEMISM 39 


sixth-century Orphism.’ But the conclusive argument 
is that the peculiar kind of shark which the Greeks 
called galeos, and whose flesh was believed—at least in 
Rhodes—to have a most powerful life-restoring energy, 
was surnamed by the Rhodians ‘ alopéz,’ the ‘ fox’ of the 
sea; from this significant coincidence we may safely 
infer that the fox-dress of the Thracian ‘Fisher’ Orpheus 
was probably worn also by the Sicilian Shark-priests. 
Most likely orphos and galeos are originally only two 
different names, the one Lycian, the other Greek, for 
the peculiar kind of shark known to modern zoologists 
by the name of squales vulpes Linnea. 

Now, if the totemistic origin of the name ‘ Hellénes’ 
be admitted, we should expect to find corresponding 
views elsewhere, especially in Western Asia. Indeed, 
Plutarch, in the above-quoted passage, already com- 
pares the opinion of the Syrians on this subject, with 
the quoted views of the so-called ‘Hellénes.’ If we 
further, find a very old tribal name, ‘ Ha-ni,’ used as 
well in the low-lands of the Huphrates as in ethnically 
corresponding parts of Asia Minor, I do not see how 
we can avoid connecting this name with the Sumerian 
fish-gods Ha-ni or Ha-zal,’ the ‘ Fish’ or the ‘ Devourer 
of fish, with his wife [Shanna or Hanna,® and, in 
general, with the well-established old Sumerian word 
‘ha’ for ‘ fish.’ Accordingly the Hittite Syrians, or at 
least one of their principal tribes, also called themselves 
the ‘ Fishes,’ evidently with reference to the fish-dress 
of their national totem-priesthood. 


1 The proofs will be found on pp. 672s, 678: of the author’s Weltenmantel. 

2 The cuneiform ideogram admits of both readings. And indeed one 
Greek rendering of the name is ‘ Iannés Ichthyophagos.’ (Hippolyt. Philos. 
p- 18490, Du.-Schn.) 

8 Op. Revue de lV Assyriologie, 1909, p. 56, the dedication of Dungi, king 
of Lugal ‘ To Hanna, his Lady.’ 


40 ORPHEUS THE FISHER 


Another occidental instance of a similar belief 
may perhaps be found in the old enigmatical name 
‘Camasene’ for Latium, if we are justified in explaining 
it as ‘Fishland’ in connection with the certainly not 
Greek, but probably Italic word ‘kamasén,’ which the 
Sicilian poet and philosopher Empedokles (fr. 72 Diels) 
used for ‘fish’ according to the Grammarian Athenzus 
(vii. 884B). In any case the supposed existence of a 
prehistoric Latin fish-totemism would best explain the 
fact that on the day of the Volcanalia, the Roman 
praetor used to sacrifice living “ fishes instead of human 
souls” to the god of the sacred fire." 

The same idea of the fish as a simile or representative 
of the human soul is finally to be traced in Egypt, in 
so far as on a recently published sarcophagus of the 
Hellenistic period, the withdrawing soul of the 
deceased owner is not represented in the usual shape 
of the man-headed Ba-bird, but by an unmistakable 
image of the most holy ‘ sharpsnout ’ (oxyrhynchos), the 
very fish which is said (in Plutarch’s treatise, De Iside, 
18) to have devoured the generative parts of Osiris, 
and which may therefore have been considered as an 
incarnation of the god or of the ‘ Osirified’ soul. It is 
true that this explanation of the painting, which Prof. 
Spiegelberg has set forth in the Archiv. f. Religions- 
wissenschaft, xi. 574f. (‘Der Fish als Symbol der Seele’), 
has been contested by other Egyptologists. Mr. P. D. 
Scott-Moncrieff (Church Quart. Rev., Oct., 1909) seems 
to consider this sarcophagus as the coffin of a Christian, 
and the sacred sharpsnout as a variant of the familiar 
Christian ‘fish’ or [IXOY2-tessera, while Prof. Alfred 
Wiedemann takes it as an image of the mythic fish 
Ant—Ant and Abtu are the faithful companions of the 

1 Varro, De ling. lat. vii. 20; Festus, p. 238. 


FISH-TOTEMISM 41 


sun on its daily course—the sight of which is so 
fervently desired by the soul of the deceased according 
to The Book of the Dead (ch. xv. line 24). As, however, 
there is no doubt that the Egyptian Oxyrhynchites and 
the nomes and cities of Oxyrhynchos as well as those 
of Phagroriopolis and Latopolis derive their names in 
the regular totemistic way from the sacred Egyptian 
fishes,’ it does not make a great difference whether 
Prof. Spiegelberg’s very plausible view be finally 
accepted or not. 


1 Cp. Wilkinson, Manners and Customs of the Ancient Egyptians, ili. 


VII. 


THE FISHERGOD AS A CULTURE-HERO AND 
TEACHER OF HUMANITY.—HANNI-OANNHS. 


WE have already observed how a special form of 
divination—analogous to the oracles which the Romans 
obtained from the eating of the sacred birds—the so- 
called ‘ichthyomancy’ arose from the primitive practice 
of fishermen feeding their victims at certain selected 
fishing spots. Such mantic rites together with the 
use of vocal and musical incantations (cp. above p. 16) 
—primarily intended to procure an abundant catch— 
seem to offer a quite satisfactory explanation for the 
fact that a divinity called the ‘ Fisher,’ or rather the 
‘héros eponymos’ of a guild of priestly fishermen, should 
have been considered later on chiefly as a prophet 
and revealer, as the inventor of music, rhythm’ and 
poetry, and finally as the composer of all the hymnic 
and even cosmologic songs that were produced in 
course of time by the later members of this ancient 
brotherhood of fish-conjurers. 

If, further, we find even the invention of the Greek 
alphabet attributed to our mythic ‘ Fisher,” we shall 
conclude simply that the fisher-priests of the Pre- 
hellenic sanctuaries on the coast of Asia Minor played 
an important part in the still exceedingly obscure 
history of the transmission of the Semitic—so-called 
Phosnician—letter-writing from its unknown Oriental 
cradle to the Hellenic world. 


_ 7 Orpheus is believed to have built the first hexameter. On Sidon as 
inventor of hymnody cp. p. 23. ; 
2 Cramer, Anecd. Oxon. iv. 818, 15. 


42 


THE FISHERGOD AS A CULTURE-HERO 43 


Such a theory would at any rate be in perfect 
harmony with an interesting inscription of Sanherib’s! 
containing the name of a divinity whose ideogram reads 
‘Ha-ni,’ 2.e., ‘Fish of exuberance’ or Ha-zal, i.c. ‘ Fish- 
eater’ (p. 39 n. 2 above), as the god of the dup-Saru 
or ‘tablet-writers.’ It is also easy to imagine how the 
elements of the cuneiform characters, the well-known 
dove-tailed wedges, should have been compared by the 
fanciful Oriental mind to the main outline of a fish, 
especially as a good analogy for such an association of 
ideas is offered by the fish-alphabet of certain Merovin- 
gian liturgical manuscripts, the writers of which seem 
to have tried to compose a writing of a more distinc- 
tively hieratic style by forming the single characters 
out of an ever recurring fish-pattern, perhaps under the 
double influence of early Christian fish-symbolism and 
of Gnostic speculations on the mystic dignity of the 
letters of the alphabet. Such a comparison between 
the lines and columns of cuneiform inscriptions and a 
number of fish going in different directions would lead 
in a very natural way to a symbolic identification of 
reading and fishing—analogous to the mystic connexion 
between water and wisdom in Babylonian folklore— 
and thus explain the rather strange réle of the Fisher- 
god as patron of the Babylonian scribes. 

However hypothetic such a theory must necessarily 
remain until it can be confirmed by a cuneiform state- 
ment, it is obvious in any case that the above-quoted 
passage on Hani-Hazal as the god of the ‘dupsarw’ 
offers a most valuable confirmation of the authenticity 
of the Greek account of the Oannés- or Iannés-myth, as 
it is found in the extant fragments of Berossos’s Baby- 
loniaka. This Neobabylonian Bél-priest relates, that 

1 Ed. Meissner-Rost, p. 96, 1. 19. 2 Cory, Ancient Fragments, p. 23. 


44 ORPHEUS THE FISHER 


in the first year after the creation of the world a 
‘rational being’ emerged from the Persian Gulf and 
landed on the shore of Babylonia. It had the body of 
a fish; under its fish-head, however, there was a human 
face and under its fish-tail a pair of human legs. 
Images of this being, says Berossos,—and certainly 
with respect to the above-mentioned monuments (p. 31) 
—are still extant. This being, called Oannés,! passed 
the day among men without partaking of any food, and 
taught them the art of writing as well as all sciences 
and crafts, the building of cities,’ the surveying of 
land, the observation of the stars, and finally the 
sowing and harvesting of all kinds of grain and plants. 
Kvery evening it returned to the sea—thereby betraying 
its solar character to the trained eye of the modern 
mythologist. To make the resemblance with the 


1 There are at least three variants of Greek transcriptions for the Baby- 
lonian name Hani (pronounced Ghani), namely Oén, Oannés and Iannés (cp. 
p. 41n.2above). Thereader who is accustomed to the Jewish-Alexandrinian 
transcriptions of Semitic names will certainly expect a form Annés (ANNH2, 


where TT is omitted as eg. in ANANIAS2, etc.) or perhaps Ghannés 


(XANNH® as e.g. XAM for OF) instead of the strange Oannés; yet the 
substitution of an initial o for the Babylonian guttural can be parallelled from 
a Greek inscription of Syria (Waddington, Inscr. gréques et romaines de la 
Syrie, no. 2472 ‘ OAHAO®S’ where O evidently stands for y) and is explained 
by the graphic reason that the Greek 0-mukron takes the place of the Semitic 
ghayin in the alphabetical series, and that both sounds are represented in 
writing by a simple circular figure. As Assyrian writing does not distinguish 
between the different gutiurals, Berossos was free to begin ‘Hani’ with an 


Aramaic y instead of a iT (cp. p. 64 n. 1 below), if he had any reason for doing so. 
The Greek value o for this sign then offered him a transition to the dmega of 
don, ‘egg,’ thus suggesting a popular Greek etymology for the name of the 
god, who had been born from an egg (Helladios, ap. Phot. Bibl. 585a, 34, 
Bekker). The foreshortened form Oén, occurring in this connection, is due 
to the fancy of Berossos for a mystic play on the arithmetic value of the 
single letters in proper names, which the present writer has analysed in the 
Orient, Litt. Zervt. xii, 289-292 (Q=24, H=7, N=18, [=44]). The form Iannés 
is possible because of the want of any distinction in the Assyrian syllabary 
between the Semitic sounds represented by the Hebrew letters x: 7). TM » 
and (dota). To take the initial ‘I’ as a rendering of Ka (Bab. pronunciation 
la), so as to make Ja-Ghani, has been suggested by Lenormant; yet the 


hypothesis seems unsafe, as such a combination is not met with in cuneiform 
texts. 


» The reader will remember the myth of the Theban city-wall built by 
the lyre-playing of Amphion, a local double of Orpheus. 


THE FISHERGOD AS A CULTURE-HERO 45 


Lycian ‘ Fisher’ Orpheus complete, Berossos even attri- 
butes the authorship of certain then extant literary 
works to his Oannés. Another remarkable analogy to 
Orpheus, the inventor of agriculture (p. 4 n. 3 above), 
is Oannés as the sower and reaper—a feature of the 
Berossian myth, which is confirmed by a cuneiform 
list of divine names,’ where the god Hani is coupled 
with the corn-giving goddess Nisaba. This side of 
Hani’s activity is probably to be explained by the fact 
that the Babylonians adored their most frequently men- 
tioned writer-god Nebo, who is probably identical with 
Hani,’ also as the giver of abundance in the granaries, 
and as the divinity who waters the fields by means of 
subterranean springs. As to the Berossian Oannés 
teaching astrology, we can hardly avoid comparing him 
with Orpheus as author of certain pseudepigraphic 
treatises on star-lore. 

There is no doubt that this Neobabylonian Oannés 
story represents the most explicit extant version of . 
the myth describing the Fish or Fishergod as lord and 
teacher of all wisdom. Yet traces of the same com- 
bination of ideas are not only found in the Greek, but 
also in other branches of Aryan tradition. 

Thus, for example, in Irish mythic lore a prominent 
place is occupied by ‘Ho Feasa,’ the ‘Salmon of Wis- 
dom,’ the eater of which® becomes the wisest seer of 


1 TIT. Rawl. 69, 39c. 


, 2 Cp. p.8n.2above. Prof. Morris Jastrow refers me also to Zimmern, 
Surpu, ii. 175. The reader will remember that the Egyptian counterpart of 
Nebo, Hermes Theut, was revered as Lord of ‘ Het Abtit,’ the ‘ House of the 
Net’ (p. 21 n.3 above), and acts as fisher in the Osiris mysteries (Cumont, Les 
relig. ortent., p. 27871). The Greek Hermes is equally represented as fisher 
on black figured vase-paintings (Lenormant-Witte, Hlite mon. ceramogr. 
iii. pl. xiv.,cp. p. 456). Fora dedication of fishing implements to Hermes 
gs. Anthol. Palat., vi. 5, 23. 

8 With this cp. the reading ‘ Ha-zal,’in Greek ‘ Ichthyophagos’ or ‘ Fish- 
eater,’ for the ideogram of the omniscient god. On the ancient British cult 
of the divine salmon-fisher cp. p. 23 n. 5 above. 


46 ORPHEUS THE FISHER 


the world. “Unless they had eaten the salmon of wis- 
dom, they could not do it justice ” is still used by the 
Irish peasant as a proverbial saying, in order to charac- 
terise a very difficult task. In the Boyish Exploits of 
Finn MacCumhail, Finn goes to his namesake, Finn- 
eges, to learn poetry of him. Finn-eges had passed 
seven years by the river Boyne watching the salmon of 
Llin-Feic. Finally Finn takes service with him and 
the salmon is caught. But Finn had been warned not 
to eat of it. This injunction he breaks inadvertently, 
and thereby becoming possessed of all knowledge he is 
hailed as the successor of Finn. Another tradition 
mentions a mystic fountain, Connla’s Well, surmounted 
by nine magnificent hazel-trees with red nuts full of 
wisdom; when they fall into the water, they are eaten 
by salmon. This is the reason why the salmon are 
covered with red spots and are so marvellously wise.’ 
According to another Irish local saga, the Salmon of 
Llyn Llyw is the first created being of the whole world*® 
—-a legend which shows clearly the mythic and cosmic 
character of the famous ‘Salmon of Wisdom,’ and 
bears a close resemblance to the Babylonian tradition, 
that the shark-gods Lahmu and Lahamu (p. 88 n. 2 
above) were the first divinities that originated from the 
primeval depth of the Abyss (Creation Myth, tab. i.,1. 10). 

Hiven closer parallels to the Babylonian and Orphic 
ideas about the literary activity and the wisdom of the 
Fishgod than the Irish tales of Ho Feasa can be found 
in certain Indian texts that have been recently col- 


1 Cp. Kuno Meyer, Revwe Celtique, v. 197 f.; 201. Joyce, Old Celtic 
Romances, p. 414 f., n. 25. Nutt, Folk-Lore Record,iv. John Rhys, ‘Origin 
and Growth of Religion as illustrated by Celtic Heathendom,’ Hibb. Lect., 1886 
p. 553; William A. Nitze, Pwbl. Mod. Lang. Assoc. America, xxiv. 8, p. 367. : 


oF * O’Curry, Lectures on the Manners and Customs of the Ancient Irish, ii. 


$ Rhys, l.c., p. 555. 


THE FISHERGOD AS A CULTURE-HERO AT 


lected in a most valuable essay by Prof. R. Pischel 
(Sitz. Ber. d. Berliner Akad. d. Wiss., 1905, i. 506 ff.). 
We find, on the one hand in the Agnipurdna (2, ff.), 
that the Divine Fish, who saved Manu and the seven 
Rishis from the deluge, completed his benefits by re- 
vealing to these few surviving representatives of man- 
kind the purifying and redeeming Matsyapurdna or 
‘Fish-legend.’ In the Bhdgavatapurdna, 8,,, it is 
Vishnu himself who reveals in the shape of a fish an 
esoteric doctrine concerning his own divinity and who 
brings back from the depth of the waters the Vedas, 
the source of all wisdom, which had been stolen by a 
hostile demon. The following ceremony, described in 
the Varadhapurdna, 3934. refers to this myth. On the 
12th day of the first month of the Indian year, four 
golden vessels full of water, with wreaths on them, 
representing the four oceans of the world, are placed 
before the image of Vishnu; in the middle of these 
four vessels they place a bowl of gold, silver, copper 
or wood, also full of water, and put in it the god 
(Vishnu) in the shape of a golden fish. Then the god 
is addressed with the words: “As thou, O God, in the 
shape of a fish hast saved the Vedas out of the under- 
world, thus save me too, O Keshava!” ‘Then the 
golden fish is given to him who undertakes the vow of 
the ‘ Matsyadvddashwrata.’ 

Finally an excellent analogy to the Greek ‘ Orphic’ 
hymns addressing the different gods of the Orphic 
pantheon is offered by the celebrated prayer to the 
Adityas in the Rigveda, viii. 67, the authorship of 
which is attributed by the Anukramani either to 
‘Matsya Sammada,” or to ‘many fishes, that had been 


1 Matsya means ‘Fish.’ According to the Sarvdnukramant (Mac- 
donell, p. 141), it is the name of the son of Sammada ‘mahdnuna,’ the 


48 ORPHEUS THE FISHER 


caught in a net.’ That human beings are meant by 
the ‘fishes’ in this tradition, will appear from the 
Shatapathabrahmana, 138, 4, 3, 12, the Ashvalayana 
Shrautasatra, 10, 7, 8=Sankhayana Shrautasttra, 16, 
2, 22 ff., and the respective commentaries. They state, 
that on the 8th day of the horse-sacrifice, the king 
represents Matsya Sammada, and his subjects the 
denizens of the water. The latter, fishes and fisher- 
men,’ sit before the Hotar and Adhvaryu, while the 
Hotar reads an instructive passage from the Vedas, 
which is adapted to the understanding of the ‘ fisher- 
men’—a scene that will beyond doubt remind the 
reader of the well-known figure of Jesus preaching to 
the Galilean fishermen. 

The present writer does not intend to enter here 
at greater length into the arid controversy whether the 
similarity of the above-quoted Greek, Irish and Indian 
traditions to their Babylonian parallel is to be explained, 
according to the so-called ‘ Panbabylonistic’ dogma, 
on the hypothesis of a great prehistoric migration of 
Babylonian mythic motives to the East as well as to 
the West, or whether we should adhere to the principle 
of the anthropological school, that certain common 
predispositions of the human mind will produce 
independently the same primitive conceptions in 
different historical surroundings. It will be enough 
simply to remind the reader by the way of certain 
coincidences in minor details—such as e.g., the agri- 


‘king of the great fishes.’ Sayana does not call Sammada ‘ king of the great 
fishes,’ but only ‘great fish.’ According to the Sushruta, p. 19816 (Edition of 
Calcutta, 1873), mahdmina is a certain kind of sea-fish, as the name shows, a 
large kind of fish. 


* As to the net cp. p. 24 above on the fish-yarn fastening the heavenly 
fish, and p. 74 below on the Babylonian priests of Sin wrapped in fish-nets. 


® ‘Matsyahanas’ ; ‘punjisthah’ ; ‘ matsyavidah.’ 


THE FISHERGOD AS A CULTURE-HERO 49 


cultural functions of Orpheus as well as of Oannés (p. 4 
n.3; p. 45 above), which are best understood on the 
basis of certain Semitic homonymies,' and especially of 
the intimate connection existing between the fish and 
the fox symbol both in Babylonian uranography and in 
the Thracian Bassareus- and Orpheus-cult, in order 
to prepare him for a just appreciation of the fact, that 
@ migration of the main features of the Hani-Oannnés 
myth from Babylon—or wherever else the original seat 
of this divinity may be located—to Greece can be strictly 
proved from the Greek and Latin names of a peculiar 
kind of Mediterranean perch. The species in question 
is mentioned by Ovid (Hal. 108) under the name of 
‘channe, which corresponds to a Greek form yav. 
To-day itis called ‘ cano,’ xavvo (ghanno) in vulgar Greek, 
and ‘serran’ at Marseilles. In a list of marketable 
fish appended to a fifteenth century manuscript in the 
Venetian dialect containing the ‘ statuto’ of the fisher- 
men’s guild of Zara’ (Dalmatia) it appears as ‘serran o 
scrivan, the Latin scientific name being ‘serranus 
scriba’=‘writing sawtish,’* in German ‘Buchstabenfisch.’ 
This latter name is explained by Brehm as referring to 
certain black spots that are said to resemble written 
characters. It is, of course, quite improbable that the 
mere existence of any black dots or spots—probably no 
kind of fish is entirely devoid of such—should have given 
rise to such a strange name. On thecontrary, it would 


1 Cp. below, in the chapter on the ‘ Origins of the Eucharist,’ the series 
of Phoenician coins decorated with the fish and the ear of corn, and also on 
the gods Dagon and Sidon as fish and corn gods, on the fish and corn gods of 
Niniveh, on Adapa, the baker and fisher of Eridu, on Beth-LHM as ‘ House 
of Bread’ and ‘ House of the Shark,’ ete. 

2 Cp. Georg Schmidt, Piilol. Suppl., xi. 294 f. 

3 The edition of the Forma matricule marinariorwm et piscatorum Iadre, 
by Gelcich (Biblioteca storica della Dalmazia, lib. ii.), does not contain 
this list, which is written on a loose leaf and was copied by the present writer 
for the Austrian Historical Institute in the autumn of 1905. 


4 Op. p. 85 n. 4; p. 36 n. 4 on the sacred fish with the ‘ cwtting tar.’ 
D 


50 ORPHEUS THE FISHER 


be indeed a marvellous coincidence if the ‘channe’— 
which is said by Ovid to conceive of itself, just as the 
sacred ‘galeoi’ (p. 88 above) are said to conceive and 
to procreate in an irregular way, namely through the 
mouth—and the yavo of the Modern Greeks were not 
identical with the Babylonian ‘ heros ichthys’ Hani— 
é and 7 being interchangeable in Babylonian as well as 
in Hellenistic pronunciation—and that the Latin, 
Italian and German names of the ‘writer’ or ‘ letter- 
fish’ should not refer to the above-analysed character of 
the fishgod as the patron of the tablet-writers and as 
the inventor of the alphabet. 

Nobody now doubts that the art of letter-writing 
was taken over by the Greeks as well as by the Indians* 
from a common Semitic source. It cannot, therefore, 
be considered as a too bold assumption that together 
with the Semitic characters the old Semitic myth of 
the fish-shaped and fish-eating writer-god migrated on 
the one hand to the fish-revering? Indian Vishnu- 
worshippers, and on the other to the Greek priests and 
adorers of the Lycian fishergod Orpheus, and even 
—through the old Phoenician colonies on the British 
coasts — to the Gaelic salmon-fishers of Erin who 
invoked the old Celtic fishergod Nodon. 


* Cp. Halévy, Journ, Asiatique, ii. (1885) ; M. Cust, Journ. Asiat. Soc., xvi. 
(1884), p. 825. 

2 For the Indian taboo against fish-eating ep. the Mahabharata, xii. 265, 
9, xii. 36, 22, and the legal texts collected by Jolly, Recht wnd Sitte, etc., 
Strassburg, 1896, § 59, p. 157. On the cult of tame fishes by the Brahmans 
see Dubois, Mewrs, Institutions et Cérémonies de U Inde, Paris, 1825, ii. 487, 
or Crooke, Introd. to the Popular Religion and Folk-Lore of Northern India, 
Allahabad, 1894, p. 844 f. 


VIII. 


THE ORPHEUS AND GOOD SHEPHERD PIC- 
TURES IN EARLY CHRISTAIN ART. 


For if men were not fishes, the Apostles could never have been 
made fishers of men. Such fish indeed are worthy of the Lord’s 
supper, such fish can swim about in the stream of baptism, such 
fish are caught with the hook of faith and in the nets of holy 
preaching.—ST. BRUNO SIGNIENSIS, in Maitth. iv., p. 18. 


ONE of the most puzzling problems in the whole 
religious history of the ancient world is the presence 
of unmistakably Orphic symbols in the sacred art of 
early Christendom. Every student of Christian arche- 
ology is acquainted with a comparatively large number 
of catacomb-paintings, sculptured sarcophagi, gems 
and ivories,’ exhibiting the familiar Pagan type of 
Orpheus, with his Phrygian (or rather Persian) head- 
dress and the lyre, seated either among a group of the 
very different kinds of wild and tame animals, or in the 
middle of the more typically Christian flock of sheep, 
which elsewhere accompany the ‘Good Shepherd ’ 
—a mystic figure, common to Pythagorwan and 
Orphic,? to Hermetic’ and to early Christian symbol- 


1 The best catalogue raisonné of these monuments will be found in the 
appendix to Gruppe’s ‘ Orpheus’ article in Roscher’s Lewicon, c. 1202 ff. 

% Pythagoras is said to have been ‘ Eu-phorbos’ (= the ‘ Good Shepherd ’) 
in a former life. Cp. the mythical ‘herdsman’ Phorbas in Thessalian and 
Beestian legends, or still better the mythical singer ‘Eu-nomos’ (= ‘ Good 
Herder ’) whose statue, with the prophetic cicada perched on the strings of 
his lyre, was seen by Pausanias at Delphi. See also p. 20 n. 1 above. 

® Cp. G. R. S. Mead, Thrice-greatest Hermes, i. 373 ff., etc., on the figure 
of the Hermetic Poimandres or Shepherd of men. 

51 


52 ORPHEUS THE FISHER 


ism, and acceptable even to the most rigid of.the 
Judeo-Christian party on accdunt of the beautiful Old 
Testament comparison of Jahvé with a shepherd. 
There is no reason to doubt that at least the latter 
transition-type, ranging half-way between the ordinary 
Orpheus and the well-known ‘Bonus Pastor’ glyph, 
symbolises the Christ as that gentle herdsman, who 
“guides his flock, rarely by the staff, mostly with the 
sweet sound of the syrinz,’”* and who could just as well 
be understood to play the lyre of his ancestor, the 
royal shepherd David, as the pastoral reed of Pan or of 
the shepherd-god Attis ‘Syriktés,’ or the Phrygian 
flute of the unique piping Orpheus on one relievo of 
the Knole collection.? And if this is really the case, it 
is not improbable that the various beasts of the 
original Orpheus-type were meant by the Christian 
artists to illustrate the righteousness and peace, which 
are to reign even in the animal kingdom under the sway 
of the Messianic king, under David’s offspring, under 
the rod out of the stem of Jesse. ‘The wolf also shall 
dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down 
with the kid; and the calf and the young lion and the 
fatling together” (fs. xi. 1 and 6). Small wonder 
that the Orpheus-pictures could so well correspond 
with the prophet’s idea of a golden age to come; for 
there is indeed a close Orphic parallel to the above- 
mentioned text, in Empedokles’ beautiful description of 
the blessed time when long ago the mythic Orpheus- 
Pythagoras lived, who had abolished the “crime of 
devouring,” killing and sacrificing living beings. “At 
' Gregor. Nazianz. Orat. II. al. I. n.9.; Basil. Seleuc. Hom. 26. 


2 No. 16; 8. Michaelis, Ancient Marbles in Great Britain, p. 422, and 
The Quest, i. 188; cp. the piping Christin the Acts of John, ch. 95. On 
Attis Syriktés cp. the so-called Naassene mystery sermon in Hippolytos 
transl. in Mead’s Thrice-greatest Hermes, i. 188, 186. é 


ORPHEUS AND GOOD SHEPHERD PICTURES 53 


that time all were tame and friends of man—wild 
animals and birds as well—for love had bound their 
souls ” (Fr. 180, Diels). 

Nevertheless it remains a strange fact, that the 
artists employed by the early Christian communities 
should have been allowed to use the characteristic 
features of a Pagan divinity even in such details—e.g. 
in the head-dress—as could not have had the slightest 
significance in a system of Christian religious picto- 
graphy, although, in spite of the strong dependence of 
the comparatively poor and unoriginal early Christian 
art from Pagan models, nothing could have been easier 
than to Christianise the type by suppressing such 
accidental features; just as—to take the nearest 

parallel—the ‘Good Shepherd’ type itself, which is 
obviously derived from the Pagan Hermes Kriophoros, 
shows in no case such attributes as, for example, the 
winged cap, the winged sandals, the caduceus, or even 
the writing-pen of the ‘ Logios.’ 

Accordingly, the only possible explanation for these 
entirely undisguised Orpheus-images must be found in 
the supposition, that their Christian owners and 
inspirers connected the Saviour, in some quite essential 
respect, with this one Pagan prophet. It is true that 
such a view certainly goes far beyond the intention of 
the only two Patristic passages which have hitherto 
been adduced as a justification for these enigmatical 
monuments; for at least the older of the two texts’ is 

1 Clement of Alexandria, in his Sermon to the Gentiles, pp. 2 ff., Potter, 
written some fifty years after the completion of the Orpheus-pictures in the 
Roman catacombs, exhorts the Greeks to leave their Pagan poets on anti- 
quated Helikon and congregate on the Mountain of Zion, where they will 
find dwelling the divine Logos. This real ‘Eu-nomos,’ says the Church- 
Father, alluding at once to the mythic singer mentioned above (p. 53 n. 2) and 
to the Christianised Hermetic figure of the Logos as the ‘ Shepherd of men,’ 


does not sing in the metre of Terpander, but in the eternal rhythm of the 
‘New Song’ (Ps. clvi.). “ But the Thracian as well as the Theban and 


54 ORPHEUS THE FISHER 


practically a polemic against the hero, in whose worship, 
according to the testimony of our archeological 
evidence, some Christian communities seem to have 
indulged. Of course it is very surprising that an 
identification, or syncretistic confusion of Christ and 
Orpheus—of the same rather naive character as the 
blending achieved by Hellenising Hebrews between 
the Thracian beer-Dionysos Sabazios (cp. Illyr. sa- 
baium, Ital. zabbajone') and the Jewish Sabaoth or 
‘Lord of Hosts’—should have been admitted in any 
Christian, were it even in somewhat Gnosticising, 
circles.2. What can be proved from literary evidence is 
really nothing more than that some apologetic writers 
(interpreting the principle that God had not left 
Himself without witness in the Pagan world, according 
to the Stoic ideas of an all-pervading divine Logos) had 
claimed, among other authorities such as the Sibyl and 
Thrice-greatest Hermes, the mythic singer Orpheus 
also as a champion of a secret and esoteric monothe- 
ism, which they had discovered chiefly, although not 
exclusively, in such verses as Jewish or Christian 
interpolators had inserted into the Orphic scriptures ; 
and that other early theologians refused to accept these 
suspect authorities on the very good ground that, by 
exaggerating the doctrine of Logos-inspiration to such 


Methymnzan Orpheuses, call them men or more than men, are swindlers, 
befouling life under pretext of their musical achievements, bewitching 
people by some kind of sorcery, and leading them astray, to their own hurt, 
from their former celestial freedom to the lowest slavery of idol-worship.” 
Not so the singer, whose song the writer praises and who indeed tames the 
wicked, the wildest of wild animals, be they birds (that is light-minded), or 
creeping beasts (that is treacherous), or lions (that is violent), or pigs (which 
means voluptuous), etc. Eusebius, the friend of Constantine, in the fourteenth 
chapter of his panegyric on that emperor, simply compares the Logos, 
taming and redeeming mankind as if playing on an instrument, with 
Orpheus displaying his magical skill on the mystic lyre. 


' We owe this explanation of the name to Jane E. Harrison, Cambridge. 


_  # Witness our reproduction of an image of Christ on the cross, with the 
inscription ‘ Orpheos Bakkikos.’ 


ORPHEUS AND GOOD SHEPHERD PICTURES 55 


an extent, an uncontrollable amount of Pagan errors 
would be introduced into the revealed system of the 
Christian faith. 

Are we, then, really to believe that nothing else 
but these learned theological quotations from ‘ Orpheus,’ 
or these artificial comparisons between Orpheus and 
the Logos-Christ, late as they all are, can account for 
the inclusion of this singular essentially Pagan type— 
for the once occurring Erés and Psyché group (Garucci, 
tay. 20) is simply Greek imagery for divine Love 
and the Soul—into the very linited repertoire of 
Christian popular symbolism? Is not the ‘Shepherd 
of Hermas’ book a proof, that at least the Christian 
community in Rome was quite as well acquainted with 
Hermetic as they could ever have been with Orphic 
mystery-teaching? Why then is the Pagan Hermes 
Kriophoros, the Egyptian Theut or Logios, with his 
pen or his soul-awaking staff, never figured in the 
catacombs ? Why is the Sibyl, the favourite of the old 
Christian oracle-mongers—the ‘ Sibyllistz ’ of Celsus— 
and therefore of medizval and later Christian art, never 
found there? 

If all this is taken into due consideration, will it 
not appear a much sounder solution of the problem 
in question, to say that the same spirit of missionary 
diplomacy, which later on induced the Church to 
transform—in spite of the intransigent saying about 
the new wine in the old skins—e.g. the Birthday of the 
Pagan Sun-god into the modern Christmas Feast, the 
‘Rejoicing of the Great Mother’ into our ‘ Annuncia- 
tion of Mary,’—that same spirit of wise tolerance, 
which travestied so many local divinities of decaying 
Paganism into Christian saints, was already respon- 
sible for the voluntary and conscious blending of 


56 ORPHEUS THE FISHER 


the ‘Orpheus’ type with the ‘Good Shepherd’ glyph, 
as it is found in the Roman catacombs ? 

When Paul came to Athens he took advantage of 
an altar inscribed by some superstitious person to the 
still dreaded although long-forgotten ‘unknown god’ 
of the place, in order to persuade by a clever rhetorical 
stratagem the ‘pious’ Athenian people, that they 
were already worshippers of that unknowable and 
‘wholly hidden’ god of the Jews, whose true worship 
had only not yet been revealed to them by any prophet. 

May we not suppose quite as well, that Peter—or, 
if you prefer it, the unknown apostle who spread the 
first seeds of the new religion in Rome—found his 
easiest converts among the members of those secret 
societies which had _ successfully resisted all the 
persecutions of the Roman Senate during the Republic, 
and still continued in the days of Lactantius, as they 
had done in those of Huripides, “to celebrate, with 
Orpheus for their leader, the mysteries of Dionysos,”— 
among those initiates of Father Liber who are so often 
mentioned in inscriptions of the Imperial age, and 
whose doctrines we know from an exact counterpart to 
the Orphic funeral gold-labels from South Italian 
graves of the [Vth century, B.c., which has been found 
near 8. Paolo fuori, and belongs to the II[Ird century 
of our era? 

If we remember that the principal doctrines of 
Orphism, as they were fixed already in the Pisistratian 
period, offer distinct analogies with later Christian 
beliefs—such as the pessimistic valuation of terrestrial 
life, the idea of original sin, the contempt of the body 
as a prison or grave of the soul, an eschatology with 
a paradise and a hell, with purgations and a final 
retribution or expiation of sins, a developed ritual in 


ORPHEUS AND GOOD SHEPHERD PICTURES 57 


which a leading part was reserved for the priests, a 
sacrament of the cup, a dogmatism with a certain 
henotheistic tinge, with a logos-doctrine and the belief 
in a suffering god, worshipped with theophagic com- 
munion-rites—this hypothesis will be found all the 
more plausible, because it explains at once, how Jewish 
and Christian interpolations found their way into 
Orphic writings, and how the picture of Orpheus, the 
former patron of the first converts, came to be included 
in Christian funeral symbolism. 

Certainly, if such a theory is to hold good through- 
out, we must expect to find other striking points of 
contact to corroborate the conclusions which have 
first been drawn merely from those ‘Orpheus’ and 
still more from the significant ‘Orpheus-Shepherd ’ 
pictures, as we might call them. Of such similarities 
we may mention at once, even before we presuppose 
anything from the results of our recent enquiries into 
the name and character of the Pagan Orpheus, the 
identity of the priestly title ‘archiboukolos’ in extant 
Orphic inscriptions' with the name of ‘ archipoimén,’ 
or ‘chief-herdsman,’ given to the Christ in I. Peter, v. 5, 
and of the Orphic ‘bouwkoloz:’ in general with the 
‘ shepherds’ of early Christian communities, mentioned 
in Ephes. iv. 11, Acts, xx. 28, and I. Peter, v.2. If any 
reader objects, that Christ and Christian priests as 
shepherds cannot be compared with the Orphic boukolos 
or cattleherd, we would simply remind him of certain 
early Christian inscriptions,’ where the neophytes are 
not designated as the ‘sheep’ of the sacred fiock, but 
as ‘vituli lactentes,’ or ‘suckling calves,’ a mystic 


1 Corp. Inser. Lat., vi. 504, 510, 1675, etc. 


2 Quoted in De Waal’s article ‘ Mtlch’ in F. X. Kraus’ Real Hincyclopadie 
d. Christl. Altert., ii. 894. 


58 ORPHEUS THE FISHER 


figure of speech, to which corresponds the apparently 
rather disrespectful saying, “the oxen signify the 
apostles and prophets,’ in Cassiodorus’s explanation 
of the various animals in the well-known Orpheus- 
pictures (Migne, ii. 352), the only justification of which 
can be found in the existence of a Pagan title the ‘ does,’ 
or ‘oxen,’ for the initiates of a certain degree in the 
mysteries of Dionysos—two facts, which prove at 
least, that no great stress has ever been laid on the 
difference between the Pagan cattleherd and the 
Christian shepherd. 


{X. 


ORPHEUS AND THE FISHER OF MEN ON THE 
CHRISTIAN SARCOPHAGUS FROM OSTIA. 
THE LAMB AND MILK-PAIL GLYPH IN 
THE ROMAN CATACOMB-PAINTINGS. 


THE most remarkable coincidence of an Orphic 
mystery-doctrine with a Christian monument is cer- 
tainly offered by the sarcophagus of one ‘Firmus’ 
found at Ostia, now in the Lateran Museum at Rome.! 
Its front shows Orpheus in his typical costume, sitting 
under an olive-tree, on which a bird is perched, at his 
feet a ram, behind him the head of a sheep; the right 
side is unfortunately wanting, but the left shows 
nothing else but the well-known symbol of the Fisher 
with his angling rod and the mystic fish at the end of 
the line; in his left hand is a vessel, wherein to keep 
his catch. Can we avoid the conclusion, that the 
sculptor, or the inspirer, of this most important relzevo 
was perfectly well acquainted with the main doctrine 
of Orphism, sci. with the old and genuine meaning of 
the name ‘Orpheus’ as equivalent with ‘ Fisher,’ such 
as the present writer has endeavoured to explain it in 
a previous chapter of this book? And if indeed, 
on this sarcophagus, the ‘Orpheus’ and the ‘ Fisher’ 
glyph represent the exoteric and the esoteric aspects 
of one and the same divinity, may we then not compare 


1 Visconti, ‘ Dichiaraz. d’un sarcoph. di Ostia’ ; Diss. d. Pontif. Acad. 
Rom. di Arch., xv. (1864), 161 ff. Our reproduction is taken from Garucci, 
Storia dell’ arte Cristiana, v., pl. cccvii. 3. 

2 Op, the “gathering of the good fish into vessels” in Matth. xiii. 49. 

59 


60 ORPHEUS THE FISHER 


the ‘Fishermen,’ who play such an important part in 
the legendary history of the Dionysian cult—the 
Fishermen, who ferry the god over the Euripus to 
Euboea, who find and save in their nets the wooden 
image of Dionysos Phalén, or the son of Dionysos, the 
hero Thoas, or the head and the lyre of ‘ Orpheus,’ 
those Fishermen, who in Haliz, according to an old 
oracle, yearly bathe, or rather baptise, the image of 
Dionysos ‘ Halieus,’ and above all the ‘Tyrrhenian’ 
Fisherman Akoités, who acts as a prophet and martyr 
of the Bakchos religion in the ‘ Pentheus’ meta- 
morphosis of Ovid, and probably also in the lost 
Pentheus tragedy of Lykophron’—with Peter, with the 
three other apostolic Fishermen of the Gospel, and 
with their successors, the Christian bishops, who wear 
as insignia of their dignity, both the crozier of the 
‘ Shepherd ’ and the mystic ring of the ‘ Fisher,” just as 


1 The evidence is quoted in detail on p. 730 f. of my Weltenmantel (see 
p. 6 n. 2 above). 


2 The ‘ fisher-ring’ or ‘ annulus piscatorius ’ of the Pope—engraved with a 
representation of the miraculous draught—cannot be traced further back 
than to a Letter of Clement IV. to his nephew Pietro Grossi, dating from 
the year 1265. But this means only, that the custom of sealing the so-called 
‘ breves’ with this ‘secret’ (the formula runs ‘swb annulo nostro secreto’) or 
‘mystery ’ ring (for the latter expression see the letter of Hincmar of Rheims, 
ITXth cent. a.p., Migne Patrol. Lat., cxxvi. 188, “the ring, the token of 
faith . . outof the divine mysteries’’) did not arise before the XIIIth 
cent. For even now there exist two bishops’ rings which go back to the 
Merovingian age and must be called ‘fisher-rings’ on account of their 
engravings—the one, belonging to the diocese Maguelonne, the later 
Montpellier, showing a fish (Deloche, Hssaz hist. et archéol. sur les Anneaua, 
Paris, 1900, p. 289), the other, the celebrated ring of St. Arnulph, in the trea- 
sury of Metz, exhibiting a fish caught in a net, and two others swimming along- 
side (0.c. p. 86). The latter is said by Paulus Diaconus to have been thrown 
into the Mosel by its owner, in order to obtain a proof of the divine grace, 
and to have been indeed miraculously recovered in the belly of a fish, which 
fishermen presented to the bishop's kitchen (cp. also the ring of St. Avit, 
with its two dolphins, o.c. p. 311). Modern bishop’s rings are plain, without 
engraving. As it is impossible that the papal fisher-ring could have been 
taken over by the Popes from the Gallican bishops, we must suppose, on the 
contrary, that simple bishops were no longer allowed to wear the old engrav- 
ing on their rings when once the Popes began to use this formerly common 
ensign of episcopal dignity as a special secret seal. That ring and staff are 
the essential symbols of episcopal power, is well known to everyone who has 
but the slightest knowledge of the medizval controversies between the empire 
and the papacy concerning the investiture of the bishops. 


THE SARCOPHAGUS FROM OSTIA 61 


we had to compare the ‘Shepherds’ and the ‘ Archi- 
poimén ’ of early Christianity with the ‘ Archiboukolos ’ 
and the ‘ Boukoloi’ of the Pagan Father Liber? 

But let us be as cautious as possible and invite 
the sceptic, who feels not yet prepared to admit so 
much, to follow us into the so-called ‘ Gallery of the 
Flavians,’ in the Domitilla-catacomb. He will find 
there—or with greater ease at home, on Plate vii. 1 
of Monsignore Wilpert’s monumental work on the 
Christian catacomb-paintings of Rome (Freiburg, 1903) 
—the oldest specimen (dating with all probability from 
the second half of the first century, a.p.) of the very 
same Christian fisher-glyph which we have met on 
the sarcophagus of Firmus. Besides this significant 
symbol the room contains only pictures of the same 
tree (with birds) under which the lyre-playing Orpheus 
of the Ostia relievo is seated, and which is so often 
connected also with the images of the ‘ Fish’ and the 
‘Good Shepherd’ on other monuments,’ secondly a 
representation of the usual funeral meal, and thirdly 
the most remarkable symbolical group of a crozier, a 
lamb and a full milk-patt (Lat. mulctra). 

That the crozier stands for the ‘Good Shepherd ’ 
is proved by the parallels, where the ‘Shepherd’ 
carries the milk-pail, or is even represented as milking 
himself the mystic ewe. As to the rather odd 
symbolism of this latter animal, the reader should 
remember, that in Ruth, iv. 11, we find mentioned, as 
the two mothers or ‘builders of the House of Israel,’ 
Rachel, in Hebrew the ‘Ewe,’ and Leah, the ‘ Wild 
Cow.’ Using the terms of modern comparative 
sociology we should say, that the two most primitive 


1 Cp. e.g. Pitra, Spicil. Solesm., iii., pp. 576 f., nos. 80, 92, 93, 94, 97, 102, 
106. 


62 ORPHEUS THE FISHER 


subdivisions of the Chosen People, the ‘clan of the 
Ewe’ and the ‘tribe of the Wild Cow’ (b‘nch Leah), 
are both named after their respective totem-animals. 
The masscbah on the ‘sepulchre of the Ewe’ (Gen. 
xxxv. 20) must have been the oldest sanctuary of the 
first totem, whose members were (according to a 
tempting suggestion of Steuernagel) called the Js 
Rael, originally Js Rahel,' or ‘men of the Ewe ’—like 
Js Gad, ‘men of (the god) Gad,’ in the Mesha-inscrip- 
tion, or, as in Jeremiah, xxxi. 15, and Matth., ii. 18, 
where Rachel is said to weep for her children, sez. the 
Israelites, the ‘beneh Rahel,’ or ‘children of the Ewe.’ 
The rites of mystically reviving a sacrificed lamb by 
seething it in the milk of the ancestral ‘ Ewe,’ prohibited 
in the ‘Book of the Covenant,’ and certainly also of 
partaking in common of the sacred animal’s milk- 
boiled fiesh, and of the vivifying milk-broth, are easily 
explained on the hypothesis of such a totem-cult in 
the old Ewe-clan of Israel or ‘Js Rahel,’ and nothing 
could be more interesting for the historian of ancient 
religion than to see how these primitive superstitions, 
repressed by strict Jahvism, yet perhaps never rooted 
out completely from the religious consciousness of the 
am ha‘arez, were immediately revived after the 
breaking off from the Law in the earliest Christian 
Church. 

The elaborate system of theological after-thoughts 
imagined to justify and spiritualise the crude magic of 
this milk-communion, may be reconstructed as follows: 

' The softening of the guttural h in‘ in a word which contains an 7 or é, 
is quite common. ‘AS to the mispronouncing of § for s by the Israelites, the 
Sibboleth-Sibboleth story in Judges, xii. 6, is the best witness. Cp. on the 


whole question Hnc. Bibl. 4003, 4092, 4463. I need not draw the reader’s 
attention to the fact, that the figure of Jahvé as the ‘shepherd’ and the 


Js Rahel as his ‘flock’ is best understood on the background of these 
totemistic ideas about the descent of the clan from the ancestral Ewe. 


THE LAMB AND MIDK-PAIL GLYPH 63 


In The Key of Pseudo-Melito (iii. 302, Pitra), a late 
yet invaluable mine of Christian allegorism, Rachel is 
called “the Ewe of God, which is to conceive at the 
end of time.” This means, that the new spiritual 
community, the Church as the “ Israel of God” (Gal. 
vi. 16), has now replaced the old totemistic unit of the 
clan ; she is the ‘Ewe of God,’ being one flesh with 
the Christ (Hph. v. 31 f.), and His mystic bride. Her 
‘conceiving’ then refers certainly to the bringing 
forth of newborn lambs for the ‘ flock’ (J. Pet. v. 2,3) of 
God, scz. ‘ neophytes,’ symbolised as lambs, such as may 
be seen, e.g. on a well-known sarcophagus of the IVth 
century (Garucci, cccili. 2), holding in their mouths 
the heavenly crowns (IJ. Tim. iv. 8) of baptism. 

Now it is an established fact, that these apparent 
metaphors of the ‘lambs’ and the mystic ‘rebirth’ 
were taken in a very literal sense. As the Lord had 
said (Matth. xviii. 3), “ Except ye be converted and 
become as little children, ye shall not enter the 
Kingdom of Heaven,” so deceased Christians, even 
grown-up people, call themselves on their epitaphs 
‘infants.’ For, according to Tertullian (Ad Mart. i.), 
they are ‘ children ’—and even ‘sucklings’ (see above, 
p. 59)—of the ‘ Domina Mater Ecclesia,’ of the ‘ Lady’ 
(‘ Kyria,’ cp. II. John i.), the ‘Mother’ Church. That 
all this was not taken as simply figurative speech, 
becomes clear, if we note that the earliest ritual 
prescribes a drink of milk and honey for the newly 
baptised; for, according to a wide-spread ancient and 
modern custom, milk-and-honey is the first food given 
to newborn babes. The documentary evidence for this 
rite has been collected most completely by Usener 
(Rhein. Mus., 1902), while in Wilpert’s reproductions 
of the catacomb-paintings we actually find a woman 


64 ORPHEUS THE FISHER 


approaching the mystic milk-pail in a most reverent 
attitude, evidently to partake.of the initiating drink of 
rebirth. The honey, used in this ceremony, is said in 
the Melitonian Key (iii. 40, Pitra) to represent “the 
sweetness of the divine Word” (cp. Prov. xvi. 24)—for 
what mystic reasons will be shown in our later quest 
about the origins of the Eucharist. And so also was 
the milk considered by the ‘galaktophagoi,’ or ‘milk- 
drinkers’ (as Clement of Alexandria calls the Christians), 
according to the same writer, as embodying the ‘ Logos.’ 
“As the child is vivified,’ says The Epistle of 
Barnabas, vi. 12, “by honey and milk, so is the 
faithful by the Word.” From I. Pet. ii. 2, 3, and less 
explicitly also from J. Cor. iii. 2 and Heb. v. 12, it 
appears, that by the ‘milk’ some kind of preliminary 
revelation of the Logos is to be understood, corre- 
sponding to the simpler teaching which precedes the 
full initiation of the grown-up (I. Cor. 131: cp. Ls. 289), 
that is the cup of wine, the true blood of the Logos, 
which could be granted only to those who had already 
“tasted, how wholesome the Lord is.” Accordingly 
three subsequent cups are prescribed for the newly- 
baptised in the Didaskalia of the Apostles (pp. 111 ff., 
Hauler). First, a cup of water, evidently symbolising 
the spring, flowing forth from the moving rock, which 
was the pre-existent Christ, and of which the Jews 
partook, after having been baptised unto Moses 
(I. Cor, x. 1-4); mnstead of being circumcised, the 
neophytes had to drown their former selves (Col. ii. 12) 
in this water of life. The second is the milk-cup, 
symbolising, according to the canons of Hippolytus 
(xix., no. 15, p. 77), the mystic rebirth; if the milk is 
mixed with honey, we may remember, Deut. xxxii. 18, 
“the honey of the rocks” given by Jahvé to Israel in 


THE LAMB AND MILK-PAIL GLYPH 65 


the desert. The third cup only’ is the mixture of wine 
and water, which was also used in the Eucharist (cp. 
Cantic. iv. 11, v. 1). 

Accordingly the ‘Good Shepherd’ milking the 
Ewe must be understood as the Christ, or his human 
representatives, the ‘shepherds,’ who bring forth from 
the treasures of the ‘Ewe’ Rachel, the ‘Mother’ 
Church, the milk-drink of the first initiatory teaching. 
The lambs approaching the milk-pail placed on the altar 
—as we can see them in the ‘Sepulchre of Lucina’ 
(Wilpert, plate 183c)—or the lamb reposing beside the 
milk-pail and under the shadow of the crozier—as we 
found it in the ‘Gallery of the Flavians,’ and as it 
recurs four times in the catacomb ‘Ad Duas Lauros’ 
(cbid., pl. 96)—cannot but represent the first or milk- 
communion of the newly-baptised ‘children’ of the 
mystic ‘Mother,’ into whose womb, the ‘gremiuwm 
Matris Ecclesi@, they have entered,’ to be ‘reborn 
into eternity.’ 

This interpretation is in perfect harmony with the 
fact, that the mystic milk-drink is connected with the 
symbolic ‘Fisher,’ not only in the above-mentioned 
paintings of the Domitilla-catacomb, but also in the 
beautiful hymn appended to the Protreptikos of the 


1 There is a versus parennacus—* tritou kratéros egeusd”’ (“ of the third 
cup hast thou tasted ”)—quoted by Apostolios (xvii. 28, t. il., p. 692, Param. 
Gott.) as expressing the last and most beneficial stage of initiation “in the 
mysteries.” Although no hint is given as to which particular mysteries are 
meant, the notice certainly refers to a Pagan cult, whose influence on the 
above-described Christian ritual may be safely assumed. 


2 Cp. the stubborn doubt of the ‘ uninitiated ’ Jew Nicodemus in John, iii. 
4: “How can a man be born when he is old? can he enter the second time 
into his mother’s womb and beborn?’”’ ‘To this question the adept of many an 
ancient mystery-cult (s. Dieterich, Mithrasliturgie, pp. 163 ff.) could easily 
have given the necessary answer. For the reader who is not familiar with 
these ideas I will quote only a few lines from Coleman’s Hindu Myth. (p. 151): 
“For the purpose of regeneration it is directed to make an image of ee 
the female power of nature, in the shape either of a woman or of a cow. 
In this statue the person to be regenerated is enclosed and dragged through 
the usual channel.” 


i 


66 ORPHEUS THE FISHER 


Alexandrinian Clement,' where the Christ is invoked 
under many a mystic name, and among them also under 
the four figures which are of such essential importance 
for our present investigation : namely, the ‘ shepherd of 
the lambs,’ the ‘ fisher of men’ (halieus meropon),” the 
‘source of mercy *—of which they partake in the water- 
cup !—and the ‘heavenly milk’—that is the Logos— 
“which flows from the sweet breasts (apo glykeron 
maston) of the mystic bride,’* the Church. For it is 
quite obvious from all archeological as well as from 
literary evidence, that the ‘ Fisher’ also alludes mysti- 
cally to the baptismal ceremony. The whole collection 
of Roman catacomb-paintings contains only two other 
instances of this glyph beside the already-mentioned 
one in the ‘ Hypogeeum Flavium,’ both in the so-called 
‘Chapels of the Sacrament’ in 8. Callisto, and in both 
cases the meaning cannot be mistaken. On plate 27 
of Father Wilpert’s volume, the Fisher stands side by 
side with an image of Moses, smiting the rock and 
producing the spring of mercy, scz. filling the first or 
water cup for the neophytes. These two pictures are 
grouped with a third representing symbolically the 
Hucharistic meal, by the feeding of the seven disciples 
on the shore of Lake Tiberias, evidently alluding to 
the Eucharistic communion, which used to follow the 
baptism in the Karly Church. Plate 27, again 
immediately encloses the Fisher in one and the same 
frame with the baptismal scene of a man pouring water 


1 Cp. vol. I., p. 291 of Staehlin’s new edition. 
_* Jesus as ‘fisher of men’ will also be found in Gregory of Nazianzus 

(i. 1., p. 646): “ Jesus, who is called the fisherman, fishes himself with the 
drag . . .; He bears every hardship, in order to recover from the deep 
the fish, which is man.” Both passages may be illustrated by an old 
Christian gold-glass in F. X. Kraus’ Gesch. d. Christl. Kunst., p. 96. 

* Cp. Jahvé as the ‘ spring of living water’ in Jer. ii. 18, xvii. 13. 

4 Cp. Ambros. De Virginib. i. c. vi. n, 81. 


THE LAMB AND MILK-PAIL GLYPH 67 


on the head of another figure, standing apparently 
in a stream of water—whether it be the baptism of 
Christ himself or not—and with the pictogram of the 
impotent man, who carries his bed after having been 
healed in the ‘probatica piscina’ of Bethsaida—as 
the best manuscripts of John, v. 2, have it. Evidently 
the inspirer of this symbolic combination of the 
three scenes understood the ‘fishpool of the sheep,’ 
called in Hebrew Bethsaida or ‘House of Fishing,’ 
as an allegory for the ‘fishpool’ of baptism — the 
‘piscina,’ as the baptismal font is called by Optatus 
of Mileve’—wherein the ‘lambs’ are cleansed of all 
the infirmity and impotency of their previous sinful 
life? 

We are now sufficiently prepared to take up our 
original problem with increased confidence in the 
soundness of the hypothesis set forth at the beginning 
to account for the presence of the Orpheus-pictures in 
Christian funeral symbolism. For if we have found, 
on the one hand, the Fisher-glyph coupled with the 
image of the lyre-playing Orpheus and, on the other, 
the Fisher-symbol side by side with the pictogram of the 
lamb and the milk-pail, is it still too bold a step to take 
the latter group as a welcome cross-evidence for the 


1 It may be remembered, in passing, that the ‘angel’ who used to 
descend to stir up the water of the pool amidst the five porticos of this 
splendid health-resort and sanctuary (in the ancient world these twe 
conceptions were always intimately connected) in ‘ Beth Saida’ was certainly 
none else than a transparent monotheistic disguise of the old Canaanite 
Lord of the ‘ Fishing House,’ viz. of the ‘ Fisher’-god Sid, mentioned above, 
p. 22. 


2 Cp. the medieval baptismal font of Ringstad in Denmark adorned 
with three fishes, forming a triangle, in Miinter, Antiqu. Abhandlungen, 
plate 26. A similar yet older one is at Grotta Ferrata, near Rome, another 
in Rome in 8. Croce di Gerusalemme. 


3 For baptism as a healing, s., ¢.g., Faustus of Riez (Migne, P. L. xxx., 
280 ff. § 3): ‘Ask yourself, who have already been regenerated in Christ, 
: ifnot . . . without any bodily perception . . . God healed 
in you what was wounded and removed what was diseased.” 


68 ORPHEUS THE FISHER 


conclusions we had to draw from the former, and to 
compare the lamb approaching the mystic milk, the 
ritual significance of which has been analysed above, 
with the well-known Orphic formula of the South 
Italian gold-labels: “As a kid have I fallen into the 
milk” (above, p. 7 n. 2), or, still better, as Salomon 
Reinach translates: “As a kid have I encountered (cp. 
Lat. ‘incidere in,’ French ‘tomber sur’) the milk” ? 
Is it possible any longer to overlook the close parallel- 
ism between that other intentionally ambiguous 
Orphic ‘ symbolon,’ “ Beneath the bosom” or “ Into the 
womb of the Lady, the Queen of the Underworld, have 
I sunk,’ and the ‘regeneration’ of the Christian 
‘neophyte,’ or ‘newly-conceived,’ by entering into the 
‘gremium’ of the ‘Mother’ Church, whence he is 
‘reborn’ as a ‘suckling calf,” nourished by the ‘ sweet 
milk from the breasts’ of that mystic Bride, who is 
herself called, just as the Orphic Mother-goddess by 
her worshippers, the ‘Lady’ (Domima, Kyria; ep. 
p. 63 above) and even the ‘ Queen’ (Basvlissa), in the 
inscription of Abercius ? 

Usener has long ago propounded the theory, that 
the Christian rite of the honey-and-milk, water-and- 


* The Orphic initiate considers himself a “son of Earth and of the starry 
Sky.” Consequently when buried he re-enters the womb of his Mother. 
Where the uneven surface of the earth is compared with the breasts of the 
Earth-goddess, as for example in Hesiod’s expression of the Gaia eyrysternos, 
““wide-breasted Earth,’ kolpos may be taken in the more literal sense 
which allows a connection with the lactation-rite. 


2 Cp. p. 58 above, the ‘ boes,’ or ‘oxen,’ of the Dionysian mysteries. 
The ‘ Lady’ into whose womb the Orphic initiate enters for rebirth, is a 
‘horned’ goddess for the Orphic, and her son Dionysos is a ‘horned child.’ 
Accordingly, where the latter is a bull-god, as in the ‘Axios Tauros’ hymn 
the ‘Mother’ is thought of as a cow; where he is a kid, she is a she-goat. 
The recently initiated milk-suckling worshippers are, accordingly, either 
‘calves’ or ‘kids.’ The substitution of the Christian ‘lamb’ and the ‘ ewe’ 
for the kid and the she-goat is explained above, pp. 61 ff. Further, already 
in the Jewish prescription for the Passah (Hwod., xii. 5), the ‘lamb’ may be 
taken “out from the sheep or from the goats,” so that the ‘agnus dei’ too 
might be understood indifferently as a lamb or as a kid. 


THE LAMB AND MILK-PAIL GLYPH 69 


wine communion at baptism cannot possibly have 
arisen from those two verses in Canticles, or from the 
Old Testament description of the Promised Land as a 
country “flowing with milk and honey”; that it 
cannot be derived from the religion of Jahvé, who 
loathes and execrates honey-offerings (Lev. ii. 11 f.), 
but must have been taken over from the cult of 
Dionysos, whose epiphany is regularly accompanied by 
the flowing-forth of honey-and-milk fountains, and by 
the same change of water into wine which the Lord is 
made to operate by the late mystic legend of the 
wedding in Cana. The same holds good of the 
symbolism connecting the lamb and the milk-pail. 
Although there are points of contact with old Semitic 
folklore just strong enough to account for the attraction 
which Orphism exercised upon the Hellenising Jews, it 
is impossible that the mystic rebirth and lactation-rites 
could have developed in a Jewish sect simply out of 
those scriptural texts which have been subsequently 
used to justify and to spiritualise them, if such 
ceremonies had not already been in existence in those 
Pagan cult-societies from which the whole outward 
organisation of the earliest Church and even the name 
‘ekklésia’ is well known to have been borrowed. 

May we not proceed now one step further, and 
acknowledge an immediate connection between the 
Dionysian or Orphic initiation-rites, with their main 
formulas, on the one hand, and the whole baptismal 
symbolism of the earliest Christian Church, on the 
other? And if this be admitted, may we not legiti- 
mately conclude that the Christian allegory of the 
mystic Fisher is also a survival of the Bacchic ‘ orgies ’ 
and equivalent to, or even identical with, the concep- 
tion of ‘Dionysos Halieus’ or ‘Orpheus,’ the divine 


70 ORPHEUS THE FISHER 


‘ Fisher’ of the Greek, or originally Prehellenic, mystery- 
cults, into whose enigmatical figure Hellenistic theology 
had resolved all the similar Oriental gods whose names 
have been enumerated in a previous chapter ? 


X. 


THE FISH SYMBOLISM IN EARLY CHRISTIAN 
LITERATURE. 


THE thesis of our last chapter will not be accepted, 
unless we can prove it to be in perfect harmony, not 
only with the already considered archeological evidence 
from which it has been derived, but also with the 
corresponding literary texts which we have still to 
analyse. Fortunately a survey of the latter is rendered 
very easy, thanks to the learned dissertation De Pisce 
symbolico (Paris, 1855) of that admirable Benedictine 
scholar Cardinal J. B. Pitra, whose work is by no 
means superseded, or even completed, and still less 
improved, by the shallow and incompetent, yet often- 
quoted dissertation of H. Achelis, Das Symbol des 
Fisches und die Fischdenkmdler der rémischen Katacomben 
(Marburg, 1888). We owe to Pitra an abundant col- 
lection of Patristic passages concerning our subject, 
out of which only three typical ones need be reproduced 
here for the reader’s information. 

There is, first, the well-known saying of Clemens 
Alexandrinus (Pedag. iii. 11) that the fishermen, in 
performing their daily work, should always remember 
the apostles and the ‘infants’ drawn from the water. 
Secondly, the not less significant words in Tertullian 
(De Bapt. c. 1), where the Church Father compares a 
certain Pagan woman of doubtful character with a 
snake, and goes on to say: “ But we—the Christians— 


are little fishes (piscicult) after the type (secundum) of our 
71 


72 ORPHEUS THE FISHER 


great IXOY> (=Fish)' Jesus Christ, born in the water,” 
etc. Thirdly, the most characteristic testimony of all, 
in a Letter (Epist. xx.) of Paulinus of Nola to Bishop 
Delphinus, by whom the writer of the missive himself 
had been baptised. “I shall always,” says Paulinus, 
‘remember that I have been made a [spiritual] son 
of the dolphin ”—this alludes to the Bishop’s name 
Delphinus, and of course also to that dolphin pierced 
by the trident, which is so often found in the cata- 
combs, probably as a symbol for the passion of Christ 
on the cross—“ so that I have become one of those fishes 
which pass through the paths of the sea” (a quotation 
from the Vulgate of Ps. viii. 9). “I shall remember you 
not only as my father, but also as my fisher.’ For it is 
you who have let down the hook towards me, to draw 
me out of the deep and bitter flood of the world, so that 
I should be soon a prey of salvation; to die to Nature, 
for whom I had lived, and to live in God, for whom 
I had been dead. If, therefore, I am thy fish,” ete. 
These quotations agree in every respect with the 
above analysed pictograms in the catacombs; they 
supply, moreover, the authentic interpretation of the 
connection established between the fisher-symbol and 
the baptismal rite. The old self of the convert is 
believed to be drowned in baptism (Coloss. ii. 12) ; 
from the water he is ‘reborn’ by ‘putting on the 
* The initials of the words Iésous Christos Theou ‘Yios Sotér—I. Chr. 
Son of God Saviour—give the word IChThYS, that is‘ Fish.’ But the akrosti- 
chon is certainly an afterthought, and cannot possibly be the ultimate root 
of the Christian fish-symbolism. It is enough to remember, as Salomon 
Reinach has first observed, that both orthodox Polish Jews and the Catholic 
Christians of the whole world eat fish only, or at least regularly, on F ridays, 
that is, on the day of the planet Venus, in order to perceive, as Reinach has 
already done, that both Jews and Christians are deeply influenced by the 


rites of the Syrian goddess Atargatis, who was identified with the Morning- 
star, and whose son is indeed Ichthys, the sacred Fish. 


* This is an approximate translation of the word-play, “ non patrem solum, 
sed et Petrum.” 


EARLY CHRISTIAN FISH SYMBOLISM 73 


Christ’ (Gal. iii. 27), who is not conceived in this 
respect as the mystic Lamb, so that his worshippers, 
symbolically wrapped up in the God’s theriomorphic 
dress, would become lambs too, but as the mystic Fish, 
the very figure of Christ which is so often mentioned 
in old Christian inscriptions, and which is generally 
—although beyond doubt wrongly—derived from a 
famous Sibylline acrostic. By ‘putting on’ their 
mystically fish-shaped divinity—just as certain Greek 
and Assyrian worshippers of the fish-god clothe them- 
selves with fish-skins (above, p. 31), the Christian 
neophytes equally believe themselves to be symbolically 
transformed into ‘fishes’ by the baptismal immersion.’ 
As ‘reborn’ fishes they are taken up from the water, 
as Paulinus says, and as we see in the catacomb- 
pictures, by the hook, or, as others say (cp. the motto 
above, p. 51), by a net. The ‘hook’ itself is frequently 
identified with the Christ, or the Logos, whom the 
neophytes swallow in the Eucharist, immediately after 
the immersion ; and in like manner is the mystic ‘net’ 
taken as a figure of the Christ by 8. Damasus (Carm. 
vi.), Ennodius (Carm. i. 9), and S. Orientius (Marténe- 
Durand, Thes. Anecd. vy. 40). The latter conception is 
only the more interesting, first because we possess, 
besides the evidences about the above-mentioned (p. 21 
nn. 2,3) Chaldzan and Orphic fetish-cult of the sacred 
‘net,’ a precious specimen of Old-Babylonian logos- 
mysticism in a frequently recurring text,’ where the 
powerful ‘ Word’ (Amdtu) of the Divinity is said to be 
“‘a, snare prepared on the shore of the sea, owt of the 
meshes of which the fish cannot escape, and a net in which 
man is taken”; and, secondly, because a late, yet not 


1 ZL. c. 1909, p. 158 f. 
2 Transl. by Jastrow, Rel. Bab. und Assyr. ii. 49 f.; cp. i. 496 £., “Thy 
Word, the great net encircling heaven and earth.” 


74 ORPHEUS THE FISHER 


incredible, Arabian tradition (Dimesqui, in Chwolson’s 
Ssabier, ii. 397) informs us, that certain priests of the 
Babylonian moon-sanctuary in Harran, which continued 
to exist until the Mongolian invasion, wrapped them- 
selves, when entering the temple on a certain day, im 
fishing-nets, evidently with a similar intention as the 
same, or a kindred, priesthood had when they used to 
put on fish-skins. 

Those readers, finally, who in spite of all analo- 
gies still refuse to accept this explanation of the 
symbolic phrase ‘to put on the Christ,’ are invited to 
study our reproduction of an early Christian earthen 
lamp (taken from Garucci, o.c., vol. vi. pl. 474, no. 6) 
which displays a female figure wrapped in the skin of 
a fish. This image, which used to be taken for a 
primitive representation of Jonah in the belly of the 
whale, is totally different from all other examples of 
this frequently recurring glyph; it has but recently 
been correctly interpreted by one of the most learned 
students of early Christian archeology, Dr. Franz 
Joseph Doelger of Wiirzburg University,’ as symbolising 
the soul of a Christian neophyte, clothed in the 
immortalising baptismal garb of the great mystic Fish. 


' Rom. Quartalschrift, p. 163 f, 


XI. 


THE ALLEGORY OF THE MAN-FISHING IN 
THE GOSPELS AND IN THE 
OLD TESTAMENT. 


ALL this is certainly good to know; yet we must 
not forget that the Patristic texts about the newly- 
baptised as the ‘ fishes,’ and on the ‘ fishing of men’ as 
operatied through baptism, are, without exception, 
considerably later than the fisher-pictures of the Roman 
catacombs, so that they cannot tell us anything about 
the origin of the allegory, however elucidating they 
may be for its symbolic significance. Indeed all the 
scholars who have hitherto occupied themselves with 
the monuments and with the corresponding literary 
evidence, have tacitly or expressedly supposed that 
both are to be explained by the well-known inferences 
of the ‘ fishers’ and the ‘fishing of men’ in the Gospels 
themselves, namely: 


First, the ‘calling’ of the four apostles recorded 
in Mark, i. 16 ff., and with quite unsubstantial altera- 
tions in Matth. iv. 18. . 

Secondly, the ‘miraculous draught’ narrated in 
Luke, v. 1-11, and quite differently in the ‘ Petrine’ 
appendix to John (xxi. 1-11). 

Thirdly, the parable of the fish-net, in Matt. xiii. 47. 

Lastly, as a supplementary passage, the story of 


the penny im the fish’s mouth, in Matt. xvii. 27. 
75 


76 ORPHEUS THE FISHER 


But even this is in some respects a rather naive 
way of approaching so delicate a problem, considering : 
first, that the quoted gospel-texts do not allude 
anywhere openly to the baptismal rite, so that we 
cannot admit beforehand, and without a closer analysis, 
that their authors used the fishing-symbol in the same 
sacramental sense as the Christians who were buried 
in the Roman catacombs, and the later Church Fathers 
certainly did; and, second, the no less serious objection 
to the traditional attitude of Christian archeology 
towards these monuments, that the relative chronology 
of the different New Testament documents to a 
monument of such an early date as the fisher-image in 
the Domitilla-catacomb, which must have been executed 
some time during the last third of the first century, 
A.D., has not as yet been thoroughly investigated. 

The difficulties which arise from this omission, are 
sufficiently illustrated if we remind the reader, that 
‘Mark,’ the oldest of the so-called ‘ Synoptic ’ witnesses, 
is not anterior, according to some modern critics, to 
the year 70, A.D., and may even have been written one, 
two or more decades after that date ; as, moreover, it is 
not impossible that this Gospel was really composed in 
Rome,’ as so many scholars suppose, we are obviously 

* The spacious and, therefore, expensive subterranean galleries in 
question were carried out in the first century of our era, and belonged to 
historic persons of the last third of this period, such as Flavia Domitilla, a 
niece of Vespasian and Acilius Glabrio. That the paintings in these 
catacombs cannot be later additions but, on the contrary, represent the original 
and contemporaneous decorative scheme, is unanimously inferred from their 
style, by the best expert in the stylistic development of ancient fresco- 
painting, Prof. Mau, and by Monsignore Joseph Wilpert, who devoted years 
and years of most patient and minute research to the remains of 
Christian funeral art (cp. the latter’s above-quoted work, pp. 130 and 122). 


Of course such a criterion as the style of a painting allows of a certain margin, 


but an exaggerated scepticism in these very plain problems cannot be too 
careiully avoided. 


2 On Latin words, forms of expression, and Latin explanations of Greek 


phrases in Mark, see Hncycl. Bibl. 1839 (middle). On the date of Mark, 
abid. 1898. 


THE FISHING OF MEN IN THE GOSPELS 77 


at a loss to determine from any external dates, whether 
our literary or our monumental evidence represents 
the earliest tradition. This means, we cannot say 
beforehand whether the image of the mystic ‘Fisher’ 
in the ‘ Flavian’ gallery is to be explained from Mark, 
i. 17 ff.; or, vce versa, the fisher-symbolism in Mark, 
and the Gospels depending on Mark, must be derived 
from the ritual use of the earliest Christian Church in 
Rome, where Orphic mystery-doctrines, such as the 
formula of the lamb and the milk-cup, certainly 
exercised a considerable influence upon the development 
of the baptismal sacrament. 

Consequently there is beyond doubt no obstacle in 
the external chronology of our documents which could 
prevent us from assuming, that in Rome, or in other 
places where the same Pagan influence may be pre- 
supposed, the Bacchic priestly dignity of ‘ Fisher’ (cp. 
above, p. 62) was taken over by the primitive Christian 
communities, with the same facility as the correspond- 
ing Dionysian cult-office of the ‘Shepherd’ or ‘ Arch- 
Shepherd,’ and that the celebrated saying “Come ye 
after me and I will make you fishers of men,” in Mark, 
1.17, is nothing else than the etiological a posteriori 
explanation of a title, which corresponds to the Bacchic 
‘Halieis,’ exactly as the Hermetic ‘ Poimandres,’ or 
‘Shepherd of Men,’ does to the Dionysian ‘ Boukolos,’ 
or ‘ Cattle-herd.’ The parables of the fish-net (in Matt. 
xiii. 47), of the statér in the fish’s mouth (cbzd. xvii., 27), 
and the allegories of the miraculous draught (in Luke, 
v. and John, xxi.) could then be explained, with many 
modern critics, as later derivations from the original 
metaphor in Mark, i. 17 and Matt.iv.19. However a 


1 Cp., eg., Encycl. Bibl. 1788, on Matth. xiii. 47, xvii. 27; cbid., 1883 
§ 142 and 4573 on Luke, vi. 11 ; 1786, on this passage and John, xxi. 1-11. 


78 ORPHEUS THE FISHER 


more elaborate and thorough-going analysis of charac- 
teristic intrinsic features in the alleged gospel-texts 
than that which has been hitherto devoted to this 
subject by the historians of Christian origins, will 
prove in a definite manner, that so radical a view can 
not be successfully defended after all. 

The student who scans for the first time Monsig- 
nore Wilpert’s collection of Christian paintings in the 
Roman catacombs, will certainly be perplexed to see 
that no representation of the apostolic fishermen with 
their nets (as described in Mk. 1:0, 13 = Matt. 4:8, 20, 21, 
Lk. 52,5, 6 and Jn. 216,383,111; cp. Hv. Pet. 1460), is 
to be found throughout the whole volume. On the 
contrary, all the three extant images of the mystic 
fisher, both the one in the ‘Flavian’ gallery, which 
must be about contemporary with the Synoptic 
authors, and the two in 8S. Callisto, which are posterior 
even to the fourth gospel (cp. above, pp. 66 f.), show him 
angling, according to the unique passage in Matt. 1727, 
where Jesus says unto Peter: “Go thou to the sea and 
cast an hook’ and take up the fish that first comes up.” 
This is all the more astonishing, because the connec- 
tion of the fisber-glyph with a eucharistic meal of seven 
disciples’ in S. Callisto seems to presuppose vy. 2 and 12¢. 
of Jn. 21, that is a pericopé, where the greatest 
emphasis is laid upon the unbreakable net of the 
Church (v. 11). 

To assume that the angler-type of the Cata- 
combs was fixed under the prevalent influence of the 


* Even in this case it is not impossible that the Eastern Church once 
read @ text with the words: “bale amphibléstron” (cast a net) instead of 
“ bale ankistron.” See the comment in Ephraem, p. 161: ‘So when Simon 

- took his net and went to cast it into the sea,” etc. 
aoe must not lay too much stress on this detail, for in other represen- 
tations also of the eucharistic meal, which are characterised as illustrations 
of the pericopé or section on the feeding of the multitude, the partakers 


THE ANGLER IN THE CATACOMBS. 79 


legend about the ‘statér’ in the fish’s mouth, which 
is mentioned also in the earliest funeral orations 
(Const. Apost. 57) would not be absolutely impos- 
sible. For, according to a characteristic detail in 
this parable, which will be pointed out below,’ the 
‘penny’-story must have been composed some time 
during the reign of Domitian (81-96 A.p.), a date which 
could easily be brought into accord with that of the 
painting in the Domitilla catacomb (cp. above p. 61). 
Yet it is hardly credible that a passage which uses the 
symbolism of the fish and the fisher only occasionally 
and as an already fixed and well-known figure of esoteric 
speech,’ should have so completely obliterated from the 
memory of the Christian artists the picturesque details 
of the much more important pericopé of the ‘ calling’ 
in Mk. 117 = Matt. 4:8, if this story had already been 
written down in its present form, when the icono- 
graphic type of the Christian fisher was first created. 
On the contrary, if we assume that the custom of 
decorating Christian graves with the image of the 
mystic fisher was adopted already in the period when 
the new community did not yet possess anything more 
than a tradition—whether oral or written is of slight 
importance—about the mere ‘sayings’ of Jesus, we 
can easily suppose that the angler-glyph of early 
Christian art is due to the influence of the same pro- 
phetic passages in the Old Testament which gave birth 
both to the allegories about the net-fishing in the four 
above-quoted texts and to the unique mention of the 


are seven in number. S. Augustine (Migne P.L. 351966) explains the 
number seven on this occasion as a figure for the universal Church (“nostra 
universitas”), and this corresponds indeed to a very ancient oriental use of 
the number seven as an expression for a totality, which occurs in cuneiform 
inscriptions (cp. Hehn, Siebenzahl wu. Sabbat, Leipzig, 1907, pp. 5ff.). Accord- 
ingly the ‘seven’ of these pictures and in Jn. 21 are nothing else than a 
variant of the more frequently occurring ‘ twelve’ disciples. 


1 Cp. below, pp. 92ff. 


80 ORPHEUS THE FISHER 


mystic hook in Matt. 1727—passages which have been 
unduly neglected until now both by the expositors of 
the Gospel and by the archewology of Christian origins, 
although they alone contain the characteristic meta- 
phor of the angler and his fish-hook side by side with 
the parallel idea of the fisher’s draw-net. 

Three different prophecies are to be dealt with for 
our present purpose, since the later Jews, or perhaps the 
disciples and followers of Jesus exclusively, appear to 
have interpreted all three of them as describing a 
single important event of the Messianic age : 

The first prophecy is Amos 42: 


The Lord Jahvé has sworn by his holiness, that, lo, the days 
will come upon you, when you will be taken away with hooks and 
your posterity with fish-hooks. 


The second, Habakkuk 1:4. : 


And thou wilt make’ men like the fishes of the sea. 

All of them he takes up with the hook, and catches them 

in his net, and gathers them in his drag [LXX. sagéné, the same 

word as in Matt. 1347!| . . . Therefore he sacrifices unto his 

net and burns incense unto his drag; because by it . . . his 
meal is plenteous, etc. 


The third, a later but for our purposes most 
important addition’ to the text of Jeremiah (1614-21) : 


(14) Behold, the days come . . that it shall no more be said, 
Jahve liveth, that brought up the children of Israel out of the 


1 T translate the verbs in the future as they stand in the Greek version. 


2 Up to v. 18, that is in the genuine text of J., the people of Israel is 
addressed directly (“I will cast you out of this land,” etc.). It is, therefore, 
impossible to connect (with some critics) 13 and 16; 14f. is not copied from, 
but earlier than 237f. (cp. Nathanael Schmidt, Enc. Bibl. 2385) ; the psalm- 
like vv. 18ff. have no more connection with the original text of Jeremiah 
than the insertion 14-17; they may be the work of the same interpolator or 
of another scribe, who bethought himself of Isaiah 142. See below, p. 83; 
v. 21 is not a separate last gloss, but 18 must be read between 20 and 21, as 
it does uot aim at Isracl, but at the Gentiles, who shall be punished twice, 
first for their own idolatry, secondly for having brought their false gods 
into _ ahve’sland. ‘The whole of vv.14-21 belongs probably to the Maccabwan 
period. 


THE MAN-FISHING IN PROPHETIC TEXTS 81 


land of Egypt; (15) but Jahvé liveth that brought up the children 
of Israel from the land of the North, and from all the lands 
whither he had driven them: and I will bring them again into 
their land, that I gave unto their fathers. 

(16) Behold, I will send for many fishers saith Jahvé, and they 
shall fish them ; and after will I send for many hunters, and they 
shall hunt them from every mountain, and from every hill, and 
out of the holes of the rocks. (17) For mine eyes are upon all 
their ways: they are not hid from my face, neither is their 
iniquity’ hid from mine eyes. 

(19) Jahvé, my strength and my fortress and my relief in the 
days of afflictions, the Gentiles shall come unto thee from the ends 
of the earth, and shall say, Surely our fathers have inherited lies, 
vanity and things wherein there is no profit. (20) Shall a man 
make gods unto himself ? for they are not gods. 

(18) But first I will recompense their iniquity and their sin 
double ; because they have defiled my land [too], they have filled 
mine inheritance with the carcases of their detestable and abomi- 
nable things. (21) Therefore, behold, I will this once cause them 
to know, I will cause them to know mine hand and my might, and 
they shall know that my name is Jahve. 


Amos, the “shepherd of Tekoa,” and Habakkuk 
both threaten their audience with an invasion of the 
terrible man-hunting enslavers from the north-land, 
the Assyrian and Chaldean armies. The phrase of 
“making men (helpless) like the fishes of the sea” is 
clearly dependent on a typical metaphor of the deluge- 
stories (cp. above p. 87n.1). Justas the Assyrian kings 
themselves* compare an attack of their troops with an 
‘abubu,’ or storm-flood, sent by the thunder-god Adad, 
so the prophet foresees that the enemy will overpower 
Israel like a flood sent by the wrath of Jahvé, and that 
the helpless victims, the fish-brood swimming about, 


1 Originally “ their dwelling,” oxy; Oy, “ iniquity,” is a significant 
scribe's correction (tikkun soferum). Their voluntary “dwelling” abroad is 
“their iniquity ” in the eyes of the corrector, whose ‘improvement’ of the 
text lay already before the Greek translators (cp. N. Schmidt, /.c.). 


2 See the texts in Jastrow, Rel. Bab. wnd Assyr., 1. 223, 


82 ORPHEUS THE FISHER 


will be caught with net, drag or hook and led into 
captivity. ; 

If the passages are quoted in the abrupt and even 
mutilated form in which they stand above—and this is 
the very method of allegoric exegesis practised by Philo, 
by Rabbis and Church-fathers—a Messianic interpreta- 
tion can be forced upon them with little difficulty. In 
Habakkuk 1:5, he that takes up men with the hook, 
the net and the drag, must have been understood no 
longer as the Chaldzan, or as Assur, as others have 
suggested, but as the Christ. He that sacrifices unto 
the net, in v. 16, is now no more the Babylonian wor- 
shipper of Bel or Istar in the form of the net-fetish,* 
but the believer who burns incense to his net as a 
figure or symbol of the Logos-Christ (cp. above p. 73) ; 
the “ plenteous meat” and the “ fat portion” must have 
been referred to the abundant feeding of the new 
believers with the eucharist, the celebration of which 
we have found reproduced side by side with the mystic 
angler in the painting of the Callistus-catacomb 
(cp. p. 66, and p. 78 above). 

As to the Pseudo-Jeremian prophecy, it presup- 
poses the widespread, and to a great extent voluntary,? 
dispersion of the Jewish nation in post-exilic times. 
The writer knows, and deplores, that many among the 
children of Israel, especially those who are lost in 
religious indifference, swear—as most modern Jews do 
—by the principle, wbi bene ibi patria; only by force 
could such exiles be “brought back into the land, that 
Jahve gave unto their fathers.” Accordingly this 

* Cp. ¢.g. the Sumerian hymn, Rawl. iv. 2 27, no. 4, transl. by Jastrow, Rel. 
Bab. wu. Ass. i. 190, where Bél is invoked as the ‘ catching-net, which over- 
powers the country of the enemies’’; an invocation of Istar as the “net” 
will be found 10. i. 541. 


3 Op. Herm. Guthe, in Cheyne’s Encycl. Bibl. 1108, and 8S. Daiches, The 
Jews in Babylonia in the Time of Ezra, London, 1900. 


THE MAN-FISHING IN JEREMIAH 83 


Pseudo-Jeremiah, cherishing, as he does, ideals which 
would be called Zionistic in modern times, expects—not 
unlike the unknown author of Isaiah 142 — that “the 
Gentiles shall take them”—namely, the dispersed ones 
of Israel—* and bring them to their place”; he is only 
slightly less a zelot than the other interpolator who 
prophesies to the Gentiles that, in return for this good 
service in furtherance of the Messianic plans of Jahve, 
they shall be made captives of those whose “ catchers ”’ 
they had been, “the servants and handmaids” of 
the restored Israel; for our fanatic awaits only a 
“double’”’ punishment of the heathen and their subse- 
quent conversion to Jahvé. In any case there is no 
doubt that he speaks of the Gentiles as the “ fishers ”’ 
and “hunters” sent by Jahvé against his sinful people 
in the same plain sense as Habakkuk and Amos, the 
models of his style, had done many a century before. 
The only difference is that the Pseudo-Jeremiah cer- 
tainly aims from the first at the Messianic age, while 
Amos and Habakkuk describe political events of a near 
future; but all three use the phrase “ man-fishing’”’ 
simply as an image for a violent and cruel captivity 
inflicted on the ‘ Elect’ by their Pagan enemies, though 
with divine permission and according to the salutary 
plans of Jahve. 


XII. 


JESUS’ SERMON TO THE GALILEAN 
FISHERMEN. 


Now the parable of the draw-net in Matt. 18347 
shows clearly how this last prophecy was understood 
in those later times, when the history of the whole 
civilised world had become dependent on the wise and 
steady policy of Rome. No one could then reasonably 
expect any longer that the “Gentiles” would be foolish 
enough to do anything towards bringing the “lost sheep 
of Israel’’ again into the blessed land, which they had 
left, on worldly grounds, for Alexandria or Antioch, for 
Rome or Athens; and yet, according to the prophets, a 
final “gathering of the Elect” (Mk. 1827 = Matt. 2431), 
that is of the ‘chosen people,’ was to precede the 
longed-for coming of the heavenly kingdom.’ What, 
then, could be more natural than to expect it by way 
of an immediate manifestation of Jahvé? Could not 
the Lord of Hosts easily dispose of the Pagan armies 
by sending forth legions of angels, if the Gentiles 
still further delayed the foretold “fishing” of the 
stubborn exiles? Thus Jesus, who was indeed “a 
master of scripture, instructed unto the kingdom of 
heaven” and “who brought forth like a householder 
out of his treasure new and old” prophetic sayings, 
which could be interpreted in a Messianic sense, 


_ 1 Cp. Zech. 87. and eg. Targ. Jonathan to Deut. 30,4: “ When your 
dispersion shall have reached the ends of the sky, the Memra (Logos) of the 
Eternal shall gather you all together through Elias the great priest,” etc. 


84 


THE SERMON TO THE FISHERMEN 85 


describes, obviously in view of Jeremiah 16:6, the 
“gathering ofthe Elect” at the coming of the Messiah, 
in the following well-known words (Matt. 1847): 


The kingdom of heaven is like unto a net, that was cast into 
the sea, and gathered of every kind: which, when it was full, they 
drew to shore, . . . and gathered the good into vessels, and 
cast the bad away. So shall it be at the end of the world: the 
angels shall come forth— [fishing righteous and wicked with the 
great drag, as we must supply from the first part of the parallelism| 
—and sever the wicked from among the just. 


Nothing could be a more typically Rabbinic inter- 
pretation of the alleged prophecy—which was certainly 
read or quoted as ‘anagnésis’ before the audience 
precisely as e.g. the Bible-text in Dk. 4:7f.— and 
there is not the slightest reason to doubt that it is an 
absolutely authentic saying of the Lord. 

Now according to Matt. 132, Jesus sat in a boat, 
by the lake-side, when he delivered this sermon; and 
indeed it is easy to see how well adapted the parable of 
the draw-net was to the understanding of the fishing- 
population inhabiting the Galilean coast. Therefore 
the present writer considers it a very plausible hypo- 
thesis that the “calling” of the fishermen, in Mk. 1174. 
= Matt. 4:81, was originally connected in the closest 
way with Jesus’ interpretation of Jeremiah 16:6, as it 
is related in Matt. 1347. Most modern critics are well 
aware that the abrupt account in Mk. 1:7. cannot con- 
tain the full truth; indeed the evangelist evidently ex- 
aggerates the power of the divine call by foreshortening 
the sermon into one single sentence, to such a degree 
that we feel ourselves transported far away from the 
historic reality into the borderland of the miraculous. 
But even if we are ready to believe that these fishermen 
left all to follow an entirely unknown man on the in- 


86 ORPHEUS THE FISHER 


ducement of one single phrase, we must not forget 
that the short saying itself was not only unintelligible, 
but also decidedly misleading for the hearers, if they 
had not been previously made acquainted with the Mes- 
sianic interpretation of this Pseudo-Jeremian prophecy. 
For not only throughout the whole of the rest of the 
Old Testament, but also in all the parallels which may 
be collected from other literatures of a most diverse 
nature,’ the phrase of the “fishing of men” has the 
bad sense of ensnaring people by cruel violence or by 
sly deceit; so that a man invited without further pre- 
liminaries to “become a fisher of men” would much 
more readily think that he was expected to enroll in a 
gang of robbers, man-hunters or slave-traders, than 
that he was summoned to take an active part in the pro- 


1In Babylonian incantations not only are the evil spirits, demons, 
sorcerers or witches frequently accused of catching men in their nets, but also 
the great gods use as a terrible weapon a world-wide net, which is sometimes 
spiritually interpreted as their all-potent word (above p. 73). Thus, ina prayer 
itis said that Bél catches the people of Nippur instead of hunting their 
enemies: ‘“‘ Father Bél, thou throwest the net, and that net becomes a 
hostile net; . . . thou stirrest up the water and catchest the fish; thou 
throwest the net and catchest the bird.” Similarly the god Ninib, in an 
enumeration of his weapons, declares: “I carry a jishing net for the land 
of the enennes; . . . I carry a fish with seven fins.” But the best 
analogy to the parable of the net in the Last Judgment in Matt. 1347 and to 
the Christian idea of the Messiah as the ‘‘ Fisher of men”’ will be found in 
the Sama"s-hymns, where the net of the Sun-god is said to enclose all the 
lands of the earth; he who is the regent of everything below and the 
shepherd of everything above, is said to exercise justice by spreading his net, in 
order to catch wrong-doers in it (cp. the texts in Jastrow’s Rel. Bab. wu. Assyr. i. 
433-435, 461, i. 15, etc.). Inthe Egyptian Book of the Dead, ch. li., we read the 
description of a great net in the underworld in which the souls fear to be 
caught. Plato says of the “ sophist ” that he goes about through the ‘‘ meadows 
of wealth fishing men in the rivers of youth,” and compares his way of 
capturing people in the snares of persuasion with that of a slave-hunter, 
a warrior and a tyrant. Taking in a man with rhetoric or juristic 
stratagems was described in Greek as catching him with “nets” (diktyaka, 
cp. also the humorous fishing of philosophers in Lucian’s dialogue Piscator) ; 
the word griphos meaning a “net” as well as a riddle or puzzle. The 
Grand Veneur of German superstition, a soul- and man-hunting demon, is 
also described as using a dreadful net. Cp, the ‘black fisher working at his 
tricks,” in Campbell, West Highland Tales, vol. iii. no. lviii. p. 16. Even 
Christian authors, Cyprian, or the biographer of S. Maximin, for example, 
call the devil a fisher of souls. I know of no contradictory instance outside 
he special symbolic language of the Church, which forms the subject of our 


resent inquiry. See also the reproduction of a Babylonian King as fisher 
f his vanquished enemies. 


THE SERMON TO THE FISHERMEN 87 


phetically foretold gathering of the‘ Elect’ from the four 
corners of the world for the Messianic judgment. If, 
therefore, it is absolutely necessary that an explanatory 
sermon on that particular prophetic passage must have 
preceded those last decisive words of the Lord which won 
him the four Galilean fishermen as his first followers, 
the easiest course is to suppose that the special tradi- 
tion embodied in Matt. 18,7. has fortunately preserved 
for us the beginning of this most important sermon. 

At first glance it seems as if a weighty objec- 
tion could be raised against this hypothesis. For in 
Matt. 1347 apparently the fishing, as well as the sever- 
ing of the good from the bad fish, is expected as a work 
of the host of angels who are here supposed to accom- 
pany the Messiah at his coming, as in other passages 
of the Gospel concerning the parusia ; while in Mk. 117 
== Mait. 4:3 the human fishermen of the audience 
themselves are identified with the fishers, whom God 
is about to send out, according to the prophet, to catch 
the dispersed children of Israel. Weak mortals are here 
expected to undertake the superhuman task of hunting 
all the exiles from every mountain and from every hill 
and out of the holes of the rocks in all the world, so as 
to bring them back before the face of Jahvé, where 
judgment is to be passed upon them, before the 
‘Kingdom’ is finally established. But in reality 
there is no material contradiction between the two 
views, as can easily be shown by the kindred parable 
of the harvest and the reapers. In Matt. 13: the 
reapers are indeed the angels of the Messiah; but by 
their powerful interference they only finish a work 
which is to be begun by the few human messengers of 
the Lord, for: “Plenteous is the harvest, but the labour- 
ers are few”—namely among men. “ Pray ye therefore," 


88 ORPHEUS THE FISHER 


—who belong to the few ready human workers—“to the 
Lord of the harvest, that he willsend forth labourers”’ 
—these are, of course, the host of angels as in Maté. 
134:—“into his harvest” (Matt. 9371; Lk. 102, from 
Q). The whole will become only the more clear if we 
remember that for the Jews ‘maldkh’ denotes a 
human ‘messenger’ as well as an ‘angelos’ of God. 
This can, nay must, have been the connecting link be- 
tween the beginning and the conclusion of these 
aliegoric sermons, that men are not to expect with 
folded hands the coming of the Messiah, but are to 
promote as strenuously as they can the coming of the 
Kingdom. If they, themselves, act as ‘messengers’ or 
‘malakhim’ of the Lord, he will finish what they can- 
not complete without his help, and will send forth the 
legions of his heavenly host, the ‘angels’ or ‘ malakhim’ 
of Jahvé; ’tis they who will reap the major part of 
the plenteous harvest, and will take with the great 
drag what the few human anglers of man have been 
unable to catch with the hook of their preaching. 
According to the teaching of Jesus, little time is 
left before the coming of the Kingdom; it is to come 
before some of the younger among his audience will 
have tasted the bitterness of death. Accordingly 
(Matt. 10s#.) the messengers are not to go to the 
Gentiles and not to occupy themselves with the Samari- 
tans; the most imperative task is to make known to 
the lost sheep of the house of Israel the glad tidings 
that the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand, and that, 
therefore, they should repent in time, and return to 
the presence of Jahvé, according to the word of the 
prophet. The reader will notice at once that this 
historic limitation of the Messianic mission—strongly 
contrasting as it does with the late and universally 


. yf 


THE SERMON TO THE FISHERMEN 89 


rejected sayings of the Risen Christ in Mk. 16:58. - 
Mati. 28:0—accords very well with the quoted 
Jeremian prophecy, where Jahvé sends the fishers and 
hunters solely after the stubborn and indifferent 
children of Israel, while the subsequent conversion 
of the Gentiles is to be the work of God alone, who 
“causes the worshippers of the gods which are not, 
to know this once, that his name is Jahvé’’—.e. the 
“existing one” (Ha. 314). 

The second point of importance is that the parable 
of the fish-net and the story of the calling in Mark 
and Matthew no more contain the slightest allusion to 
the baptism than they aim at the conversion of the 
Gentiles. The function of the net, in Matt. 1847. 
may be thought of as a miraculous one, though it 
certainly operates in a physical and not in a mystical 
sense. Baptism, on the contrary, is from the first a 
rebirth, a condition and a means for salvation, and 
quite different from being caught in the drag of 
Matt. 1347, which contains without differentiation 
both the elect and the reprobate,’ a feature of the 
allegory which would be impossible if the ‘fish’ were 
intended for the purified and sinless neophytes drawn 
out of the baptismal font. As to the mission of 
‘fishing men,’ which is conferred on Peter and his 
comrades in the calling-story, there is no reason to 
think that they are ordered to baptise people. It is 
universally admitted by all modern critics that the 
tradition of the so-called “institution of baptism ”’ 

1 With the ‘good’ and ‘bad’ fish in the great Messianic drag-net cp. 
the quite analogous Jewish allegory in Abdt de Rabbi Natan, ch. 40: “ The 
disciples of Rabbi Gamaliel the Elder (c. 40 4.p.) were dividedinto .. . 
clean and wnelean fish. An unclean fish is one descended from low people 
and lacking good sense in spite of much Biblical, Talmudic and Aggadic 


learning. A clean fish is one born of wealthy parents possessing sagacity 
together with much learning,” etc. 


90 ORPHEUS THE FISHER 


(Matt. 28:9) was unknown to the Church when 
Galat. 29 was written, and even John 42 is still aware 
that nobody had been baptised by Jesus himself, 
although his disciples followed the example of John 
the Baptist. But even one who believes that Jesus 
instituted the Christian baptism in some more emphatic 
way than by going himself at the beginning of his 
ministry through the ceremony practised by the Fore- 
runner, will be at a loss to demonstrate with any con- 
clusive argument that Jesus bade the disciples go and 
baptise in those precise words about the catching of 
men, since even in much later times an apostle of 
Paul’s rank could bluntly say that he had been sent to 
preach and not to baptise. In any case, the text can 
perfectly well be understood without introducing the 
idea of the baptism, still less that of a baptism to be 
bestowed on the converted Gentiles. 


XIII. 
THE PENNY IN THE FISH’S MOUTH. 


A DIFFERENT decision must be arrived at concerning 
the ‘pericopé of the statér’ in Matt. 1724-27. The 
author of this legend does not intend to relate a 
miracle of Jesus, for the supernatural gift of a single 
piece of money would have been a somewhat trivial 
exercise of the Lord’s divine power. If the words were 
intended to represent anything else than a symbolic 
saying of the Master, the writer would not have omitted 
to relate their immediate fulfilment. Moreover the 
question, ‘‘ Doth not your master pay the shekel-tax ?” 
has always been understood as an indication that 
doubts had arisen in the earliest church, as to whether 
this tribute was to be paid by the followers of the 
Christ, and that the subsequent answer of Jesus to 
Peter is intended as a guiding decision in the contro- 
versy. The solution of such an annually recurring 
difficulty would, however, be devoid of any lasting 
value, if the Lord had once provided a miraculous 
expedient for himself and for Peter, instead of giving a 
definitive direction to all his pupils. 

If, then, the whole is an allegory, 1t presupposes 
assuredly the stern rule of Matt. 108-10, where the mes- 
sengers of Jesus are expressly forbidden to possess and 
therefore also to accept any money. Unlike the greedy 
beggar-priests of other Oriental cults, whose behaviour 
dishonoured their religion in the eyes of Greeks and 


Romans, and whose bad example was soon followed by 
91. 


92 ORPHEUS THE FISHER 


Christian ‘messias-mongers’ (christemporot), the original 
apostles were not allowed to accept anything beyond 
food and shelter from their brethren, either for the 
glad tidings of salvation or for the healing of the sick, 
the cleansing of the lepers, the raising of the dead, or 
for the expulsion of demons through their prayers. 
Even in the regulations of the still very early Didaché 
(116,12), where tithes of everything, even of money, 
are imposed on behalf of the settled ‘ prophets’ and 
‘teachers’ of the different communities, the original 
rule is retained for the travelling missionaries, whose 
character and antecedents are less certified for their 
temporary hosts: ‘“ When the apostle goes his way, he 
shall not receive anything but bread for the journey of 
the next day. If he ask for money he is a false 
prophet. . . . Do not listen to him who asks for 
money when inspired by the spirit; only the prophet 
who asks for others who are in need, shall not be 
judged by anyone.” Even if it had not been fore- 
seen by Jesus, the problem must have immediately 
arisen, how without infringing this salutary rule, the 
messengers were to meet, not the easy exigencies of an 
Oriental paupevr’s daily life, but the comparatively heavy 
money-tax for the Jewish sanctuary (Hx. 30:2f.P). The 
symbolic solution of this dilemma in the alleged words 
of Matthew has sometimes been explained as referring 
to the former professional work of the apostle, to which 
he is advised to return in the case of emergency. In- 
deed a Jewish scholar was always expected to support 
himself by some handicraft? and not by his teaching, a 
noble principle which accords with Plato’s views on the 


_ .' Cp. Hermas, Mand. xi. 3; Irenaus ii. 324; Euseb. Hist. Eccl. iii. 37; 
Vi. 182, 4,7, 1%. 


ol ene Midrash to Hcl. 90; Sabatier, La Didaché (Paris, 1885), to 
. kg 


THE PENNY IN THE FISH’S MOUTH 93 


money earned by the ‘sophists’ of his time, and may 
easily be exemplified from Paul, the tent-maker, up to 
Baruch Spinoza, the venerable spectacle-glass-cutter 
of Amsterdam. Nevertheless it is extremely improba- 
ble that the ‘fishing’ should be meant in the literal 
sense of the word; for not even the richest haul in a 
big drag-net, much less a single fish, and that, too, the 
first taken with the hook, would have fetched a statér 
—a guinea or more in modern currency. Accord- 
ingly there is nothing left but to accept the simple and 
convincing explanation of such Fathers as Origen,’ 8. 
Ambrose,’ S. Caesarius’ and many others, who see in 
this passage an allusion to the symbolic ‘fishing of 
men. Indeed nothing could be more obvious than that 
the ‘first fish’ is the next convert whom Peter is to 
win for the community of the Christ; from him the 
apostle is authorised—in spite of the previous com- 
mand to give freely what had been received freely—to 
accept a moderate voluntary gift, Just enough to pay 
the tax for himself and for Jesus. 

There are many critics who deny the authenticity 
of this saying; and indeed it is easy to believe that an 
exceptional justification of the later apostolic collect- 
ing ‘for Peter,’ that is for the ‘ prophets’ and ‘apostles’ 
themselves, and ‘for the Christ,’ that is, according to 
the principle in Matt. 2540, for the poor of the com- 
munity, does not go back to the Lord himself, but to 
some later authority of the new Church, who found the 
Ebionite doctrine of those that waited for the immediate 

£ Cp. Origen in Matt. xiii. 10: “That coin was not to be found in the 
house of Jesus, but in the ocean; and it lay in the mouth of that sea-fish, 
who I believe came to the surface to his own benefit, being caught by the 
hook of Peter, who had become a fisher of men, (by that hook) on which 
hung the metaphorically so-called fish; in order that from him should be 


taken the coinage with the emperor’s image,” etc. 
2 In Hexem. v. 6, 5. 3 T Dial. interr. xiv.; Gall., t. vi., p. 11 pb. 


94 ORPHEUS THE FISHER 


arrival of the Kingdom a hindrance to the further 
development and organisation of the Christian com- 
munity. Nevertheless a more conservative reader is 
always free to accept as history that once in fact the 
tax-collectors actually did demand the shekel-tax for 
the sanctuary from Jesus, who, as in the parallel story 
of Mk. 12:5¢, did not possess a single penny, and that 
he then ordered Peter, whom he had called to become 
a ‘fisher of men,’ in his usual figurative way, to raise 
the modest sum from the first benevolent and wealthy 
adherent of their little newly-formed brotherhood whom 
he might encounter in the neighbourhood. One sen- 
tence, however, must be given up in any case. The 
juristic argumentation in vy. 25f. (“What thinkest 
thou, Simon? of whom do the kings of the earth take 
tax or tribute? of their own children or of strangers ? 
Of strangers. Jesus saith unto him, then are the 
children free’’) has no sense whatever if referred to the 
old temple-duty. For neither could a contemporary 
of Jesus say that the half-shekel for Jahvé’s house was 
taken by the rulers of the earth ;* nor could any Jew, 
who had the slightest knowledge, not of the written law, 
but only of the most ordinary occurrences in his own 
country, believe for one moment that this tribute was 
due from the ‘ gér1m’ or strangers only and not from the 
‘children’ of Israel. All these difficulties, however, 


1 For even if we were to think of the petty kings of Judea, who 
governed a very small part of the earth, they had certainly no share of this 
purely clerical poll-tax destined for the expense of the temple-service 
although they might have had a certain control over its use (IJ. Kings 12 1). 
The collecting of the half-shekel was certainly made, according to the 
Mishnah (Shekalim 21), by a body of temple-treasurers (gizbarim, gazophy- 
lakes), the same who had the custody of the money owned by the national 
sanctuary or deposited there for safety, of the sacrificial plate and vestments 
and of the supplies of corn, wine and oil, for ritual purposes. The treasurer 
mentioned by Josephus, Ant. xx. 811, Im conjunction with the high priest, 
seems to have been the head of these temple-financiers. There is no sugges- 
tion whatever of any connection between the temple treasury and the public 
funds, which were kept in the royal palace (Josephus, Bell. Jud. i. 189; iv. 3,). 


THE PENNY IN THE FISH’S MOUTH 95 


vanish immediately if the saying is applied to a later 
period. After the destruction of the temple the 
Romans continued to levy the old Jewish tribute for 
Jahvé as a state-tax from every grown-up Jew for the 
benefit of the Capitoline Jupiter’s treasury,' that is for 
a fund which served as an extraordinary financial re- 
serve for the @rariwm ofthe Empire. Under Domitian 
this was exacted with increased severity not only from 
all persons who openly professed the Jewish religion, 
but also from all kinds of people whom the authorities 
chose to consider as Crypto-Jews, as well “ from those 
who observed a Jewish mode of life, without admitting 
they were Jews, as from those who concealed their 
Jewish descent in order to avoid the tribute imposed 
on their nation.’”® This means that if certain re- 
ligiously indifferent Jews neglected the sabbath and 
the fasts, the Roman officers (according to Suetonius, 
the imperial recorder, who seems to have copied the 
above quoted legal definitions from the very text of the 
Imperial decree) satisfied themselves as to the fact of 
circumcision by inspection. Since this procedure 
could of course not convict the so-called ‘God-fearing ’ 
—the Jewish proselytes who refrained from that savage 
initiation-rite—Domitian declared that the mere ob- 
servance of the ‘Jewish life’—especially the sabbatic 
rest, the frequenting of the synagogues, the customary 
fasts, etc.2—should render such devotees subject to the 
burdensome and degrading poll-tax of the Jews. 


1 Josephus Bell. Jud. vii. 6 §218. 


2 Cp. Sueton. Vita Domitiant 12: “qu vel wmprofessi Judaicam 
viverent vitam vel dissimulata ortgine vmposita gents tributa non pependissent.”’ 


3 Cp. Josephus, Contra Apionem ii. 39: ‘‘ There is not a single town, 
Greek, Barbarian or any other, nor a single nation, to which the observance 
of the sabbath as it is found among ourselves has not penetrated; whilst 
fasting and the burning of lights and many of our laws as to meats are also 
observed.” 


96 ORPHEUS THE FISHER 


Accordingly the Christians found themselves compelled 
either to pass for the authorities as Jewish proselytes 
because of their apparently ‘Jewish mode of life ’—and 
such subterfuges seem strongly condemned in Matt. 
1026-34 (Q)—or to break off in disregard of the principle 
of Matt. 5:8 (Q) from the ritual laws of the Old Testa- 
ment, thereby exposing themselves as a ‘ religio illicita ’ 
to serious persecutions from the government. The 
question had slight importance for the average circum- 
cised Jewish Christian, who might resent this tribute 
to a heathen god, but who could not by any means 
avoid it. But it must have been a serious affair, first, 
for the numerous paupers in the early Church, who 
could not pay such a comparatively heavy tax, and 
might be reduced to apostasy by the new policy of the 
Roman emperors, which must have been intended to 
prevent the further progress of Christianism among the 
poorer classes at least, and, secondly, for the ‘ apostles,’ 
‘ prophets,’ ‘teachers,’ ‘shepherds’ or however the 
clergy of the community were called, whom the 
salutary ecclesiastical discipline based on Matt. 108-10 
vowed to absolute poverty; and above all, for those 
Christian converts who had previously enjoyed freedom 
from all taxation, either as citizens of Rome or as 
inhabitants of certain privileged towns in the pro- 
vinces. ‘Thus the new policy of Domitian must on the 
one hand have caused a serious set-back to the further 
propagation of Christianism among those who enjoyed 
the privileges of Roman citizenship, and on the other 
hand have given a powerful stimulus to the growing 
‘antinomistic’ movement among the Gentile Christians, 
which at last led to the heresy of Marcion. 

I think we can no longer overlook the fact that 
Matt. 1725 obviously alludes to this critical situation 


THE PENNY IN THE FISH’S MOUTH 97 


of the Roman citizens among the members of the 
Church. The “kings of the earth” is a very appro- 
priate description of the Roman Casars; they alone 
can be said to take tax and tribute not from “their 
children,” the legally immune Roman citizens, but from 
the conquered or allied provincials, the “strangers ” 
of the gospel-text. The evangelist theoretically ap- 
proves—in the name of the Lord—the legal standpoint 
of these brethren, who refused to pay the tribute; for 
“the children (sc. of Rome) are free,’ and these 
Christian proselytes were never Jews and had not 
become Jews through their conversion. Yet he who 
wrote these lines was an opportunist and wanted above 
all to dissuade his flock from provoking the Pagan 
government by refusing the tax and thus professing 
openly a new ‘illicit’ religion. The solution of the 
controversy which he proposes in order to avoid the 
imminent ‘scandal,’ is a wise application of the 
Pauline principle (Rom. 1527): “If the Gentiles have 
been made partakers of their (sc. the poor saints’ at 
Jerusalem) spiritual things, their duty is also to 
minister unto them in carnal things’’—clad in trans- 
parent symbolism. The newly converted Christian 
neophytes, the ‘fish’ caught by the hook of S. Peter, 
will henceforth have to present to the ‘fisher’ or 
apostle, who initiates them into spiritual communion 
with the Christ, the modest offering of one statér, 
that is the double amount of the poll-tax. From the 
fund collected in this way one half is the ‘pence of 
Christ,’ from which the tax will be paid for the poor, 
who cannot find the sum for themselves, the other half 
is the ‘ pence of Peter,’ from which the unpaid clergy 
will pay their tribute. The whole regulation is nothing 
but an adaptation of the traditional Jewish law for 
Ga 


o 


98 ORPHEUS THE FISHER 


the reception of proselytes (Mishna, Pesachim 8s, 
Kerithot 21), which requires—in addition to circum- 
cision, which was dispensed with by the Pauline 
school—lustration by immersion in water (tébilah), 
that is baptism, and the presentation of an offering 
(korban). As, moreover, the oldest extant Christian 
homily, the so-called Second Letter of Clement (13. 96), 
defines the “ tribute”? we are to pay to God,’ as “re- 
pentance from a pure heart,” and as the Christian 
baptism is considered throughout the whole New 
Testament as a sacrament of repentance, it is most 
probable that the payment of one statér by the 
neophyte or the ‘fish’ was considered as a sin-offer- 
ing, atoning for his former sinful life and therefore 
appropriately connected with the baptismal rite, that 
removes the previous moral and ceremonial uncleanness 
of the Pagan convert. 

The best proof for the correctness of this hypo- 
thesis is offered by the fact, that until the end of the 
third century of our era the Christian neophytes were 
usually expected to throw coins into the baptismal font 
during the immersion.’ By fishing this money out of 
the water, the clergy obtained in a discreet way the 
necessary surplice-fees, without directly infringing the 
command to “give freely what they had received 
freely.” The invention of this artful subterfuge from 
the prescription of Matt. 102>—as such indeed it was 


1 Cp. S. Ambrose, In Hexem. v. 6, 5: “ The fish, therefore, art thou, O 
man, . . . intheconfession of whose mouth a good price is found, in 
order that the tribute of Christ may be paid.” If ‘Clement’ puts “ tribute 
for God” in place of ‘tribute for Jesus,” it is because he has said just a few 
lines before: ‘‘ We are to think about Jesus Christ as we think about God,” 
and because the Church Fathers regularly combine the statér parable with the 
tribute-money in Mark 1217. 


* As baptism was considered according to Col. 212 as a burial, and as the 
Greeks were wont to put a coin under the tongue of the deceased before 
burial, it seems quite probable that the neophytes or ‘ fishes’ held the coins 
really in their mouths and dropped them while under water. 


THE PENNY IN THE FISH’S MOUTH 99 


condemned and abolished by the Council of Elvira1— 
can only be understood as a far driven literalism, if the 
statér parable was from the first intended as a justifi- 
cation of ‘voluntary’ oblations to be obtained by the 
new clergy through the exercise of the spiritual 
‘ fishing’ function. 

The result of the above analysis of Matt. 1724-27 
accordingly is that, as the text stands,’ it refers to the 
conversion of the Gentiles, and seems definitely to con- 
nect the symbols of the fish and the fisher with the 
baptismal rite in the same way as the paintings in the 
Roman catacombs and the comments of the Fathers 
have been proved to do. This result, together with 
the above discussed fact that this text alone speaks of 
the angling which is also exclusively represented in 
the earliest extant monuments of Christian art, will 
easily be understood if we remember that the pericopé 
must have been written under Domitian, that is, some- 
what about the’ same time as the painting of the 
Flavian gallery seems to have been executed. The 
reader will notice, moreover, that while the un- 
doubtedly genuine sayings of Jesus (Matt. 1347 and 
Mk. 1v = Matt. 41) are not concerned with the con- 
version of the Gentiles and use the fishing metaphor 
only as a figure for the catechising and gathering of 
the Jews in the Diaspora which is to prepare the 
coming of the Kingdom and the final gathering of the 


1 Canon 48, Corp. Juris Canonici, c. 104, C. I. Q.1: ‘*We have decided 
to reform the abuse of the baptised throwvng coins into the font, in order to 
avoid the appearance of the priest divulging for lucre what he has received 
for love.” 

2 Wecannot exclude with absolute certainty the hypothesis that the evan- 
gelist adapted an older version—without v. 25f. (cp. p. 94 above)—to the 
requirements of a later age. But apart from the apologetic tendency to save 
at least v. 27 as a genuine saying of Jesus, I do not see the slightest motive 
for constructing such an artificial theory, especially as it is quite improbable 
that the legality of the old shekel-tax should ever have been questioned during 
the life-time of Jesus. 


100 ORPHEUS THE FISHER 


Elect, the first text which alludes to the baptism of 
the Gentiles as to a mystic ‘fishing,’ was certainly 
composed half a century after the death of Jesus, and 
most probably by an authority of the Christian Church 
at Rome, where the question of the tribute-stater had 
the greatest interest for the practical life of the 
community. 

Yet with all that, the historical interest of the 
statér-story in Matth. 172 is by no means exhausted, 
or certainly the most arresting feature of that allegory 
will be found in the fact that in it Orphic influence can 
be traced with almost as equally strong evidence as in 
the paintings of the Domitilla catacomb (s. pp. 67ff.). 
Indeed the central motive of the allegory of the statér 
in the mouth of the fish caught by the apostolic fisher- 
man is beyond doubt taken from a frequently recurring 
popular tale of the more or less miraculous acquisition 
of various mythical trinkets, which seems to have been 
very familiar to the initiates of the Dionysian mysteries. 

The limited space of which I can dispose, does 
not allow of an exhaustive comparative treatment of 
all extant versions of this story. It will be enough 
therefore to remind the reader of the previously quoted 
(p. 60 n. 2) legends about the episcopal fisher-ring of S. 
Arnulph of Tréves, which have an exact parallel in the 
life of S. Attilanus, who threw his bishop’s ring into 
the water from fear that he was an unworthy servant 
of the Lord. At his prayer, that God might let him find 
the ring again, if He could forgive his sins, the ensign 
of his dignity was recovered in the belly of a fish. The 
same story is told about 8. Kentigern, who bade the 
Pagan Scots fish in the’ Clyde and bring him the first 
fish they should take; whereon a ring of the queen, 
which the king had thrown into the water, was found 


THE PENNY IN THE FISH’S MOUTH 101 


in the belly of the fish, and in memory of this miracle 
the escutcheon of Glasgow bears to the present day a 
ring in the mouth of a salmon.! Again, an image of 
Hanswida in Folkestone represents the saint (doubtless 
owing to some special version of the same miracle) 
with two fish and half a ring. A group of kindred 
Christian legends replaces the ring, which is of course 
in all cases originally the episcopal ring presented by 
the ‘ fish,’ ¢.e. the members of the Christian community, 
by the key—evidently the ‘key of heaven,’ entrusted 
to Peter in Matt. 161. S. Mauritius loses the key of 
the sacristy of the Angers cathedral in the sea on his 
flight to England. When he was brought back by an 
embassy to France, a fish jumped into the ship’ on the 
cross-channel passage and so the key was restored. 
S. Egwin before he began a pilgrimage of repentance 
to Rome locked himself in irons and threw the key 
into the sea; when he returned by ship to England, a 
fish was caught by one of the crew, and the key of the 
saint’s chains was found in its belly. §. Benno, the 
patron of Munich, flung the key of the cathedral of 
Meissen into the Elb before departing to Rome, so that 
the excommunicated king Henry IV. might not be able 
to enter the sanctuary. When he returned, a fish was 
caught and the key found in its belly. Other trans- 
parent allegories underlie the legends of S. Lupe, who 
finds a precious stone, and of 8. Patroclus, who finds 
a pearl,’ in the mouth of a fish. 


1 This detail must be attributed in all probability to the influence of the 
Celtic legends about the ‘salmon of wisdom’ (eo feasa), recorded by Sir John 
Rhys in the Hibvert Lectures for 1886, pp. 553ff. Cp. also p. 23 n. 5 and p. 46 
above. 

2 Cp. the legend of Apollo in the shape of a dolphin jumping into the 
Cretan ship and guiding it to the place where the Delphic sanctuary was to 
be founded (Usener, Sintflwtsagen, pp. 145f.). 


® The symbol of the “ pearl to be brought from the depth of the sea” is 
familiar to the reader of Mead’s Fragments of a Faith Forgotten (pp. 406ff.), 


102 ORPHEUS THE FISHER 


The Pagan original of all these tales is best known 
in the form of the Polykrates:saga in Herodot. iii.41, 
but it recurs in Venetian folklore in the ring which 
the Doge throws into the sea at his annually repeated 
mystic marriage-feast, and in the Jewish and Arabian 
legends about the magic ring of. King Solomon. Now 
we are informed by Clement of Alexandria (Pedag. 
iii.so, p. 289 Pot.) that the ring of Polykrates, which was 
kept in the Temple of Concordia in the times of Pliny, 
bore the significant engraving of the ‘musical lyre,’ 
which was also a favourite intaglio on the seals of the 
Christians. I say the significant sign, because we have 
a further group of old myths about certain treasures or 
sacred objects, found not in the belly of a fish, but 
taken directly in the nets of certain ‘fishers,’ and 
because in the long list of objects acquired in this 
miraculous way we find above all the mystic oracle- 
giving head of Orpheus and the wizard singer’s magic 
lyre. 

This list of wonder-working objects includes, c.g., 
the wooden image or the phallos of Osiris and that 
of Dionysos; the image of the Tyrian ‘ Herakles,’ that 
is of the fisher-god Sid (cp. pp. 22f.), worshipped in 
Krythre ; the statue of the hero Theagenes, the ‘son 
of the Goddess’; the floating box containing poor 
Danaé and her infant son Perseus, or the maiden- 
mother Augé (‘ Brightness’) and her child Télephos 
(the ‘ Far-away Light’), or the Heavenly Twins them- 


from the Gnostic ‘Hymn of the Soul’ in the Acts of Thomas (c. 108). The 
Teaching of the Apostles 95 proves that the ‘pearls’ in Matt. 7, which must 
not be cast before the swine, were explained as the euwcharist, which should 
not be given to the unclean. But it is equally possible to take the ‘pearl’ as 
a symbol for the ‘kingdom of heaven’ according to Matt. 184sf. (cp. Rev. 2121, 
the pearl gates of the paradise). The ‘precious stone’ is the Christ himself 
according to 1 Petr. 246. In the Pagan original of the myth the pearl (Lat.- 
Gr. margaritum=Babyl. mdr galittw, ‘Lord of the Ocean’) is a pledge of 
the thalassokratia, assured by the ring of Polykrates as well as by the ring of 
the Duke of Venice. 


THE PENNY IN THE FISH’S MOUTH 103 


selves; the brass bottle with the jinn of The Arabian 
Nights in it and the seal of Solomon’s ring on the 
stopper; the barrel which contains the infant S. 
Gregory, the seamless coat of Christ, the gold mug, 
which the devil flung malignantly into the greedy 
fisher’s net; and finally the Apollinic tripod, cauldron 
or cup of the Seven Sages, as well as the ivory shoulder 
of Pelops, the legendary counterpart of Pythagoras’ 
fabulous golden leg. 

The legend of Hrythre about the statue of the 
Tyrian god centres round the figure of a blind yet 
prophetic fisherman, whose significant name is ‘ Phor- 
mion’=the ‘Lyre-player. But the most convincing 
proof of the ‘Orphic,’ that is Dionysiac, origin of the 
whole formula is afforded by a Neo-Greek version from 
‘Agia Anna’ (v. Hahn, no. 109—without parallels in the 
folklore of other nations), where a fisherman for some 
time catches fish, with diamonds in their bellies, and 
sells them, though in ignorance of their precious con- 
tents, to a Jew for fabulous prices. Once, however, he 
catches a beautiful ‘palamide, which he decides to 
keep for himself. In the belly of this animal he finds 
a golden cup (evidently the same which occurs in the 
Seven Sages legend and in the various sagas of the 
mythic diver). To celebrate the event and to feast on 
the fish, he invites his friends. They begin to drink 
wine from ordinary vessels, but at the end the ‘fisher ’ 


1 A kind of tunny-fish, the ‘p@lamys’ or ‘ kybton’ (=cube-fish) of the 
classic Greek, which is even now called ‘ palamyde’ at Marseilles. The name 
signifies the ‘hand-fish’ (from palamé=‘palm’). This is most interesting, 
because the ‘hand’ is a well-known symbol of the Semitic ‘ Mother-goddess,’ 
which occurs frequently, e.g., in Punic inscriptions, and because this ‘ Mother- 
goddess’ is believed to be the mother of the Fish-god Ichthys. Cp. the 
cylinder (Ward, no. 81) in the British Museum, where a goddess is represented 
standing between an erect ‘fish’ and an open ‘hand,’ and the archaic 
Beoeotian vase (no. 220, in the Museum at Athens), where the fish is to be seen 
in the womb of the Mother-goddess. 


104 ORPHEUS THE FISHER 


pours wine into the new gold cup. Immediately the 
vessel appears filled with gold coins ; the same wonder 
is repeated as often as the cup is emptied and filled 
again with wine. The ‘fisher’ understands at last 
that he has become a rich man by the power of the 
cup,! and as he had always loved music, he devotes 
himself henceforth entirely to lyre-playing and learns 
to play so beautifully, that no heart can resist the 
charm of his melodies. The reader will thus see at 
once that this Greek ‘fisher’ with his miraculous 
golden cup full of wine and his magic lyre-playing 
cannot possibly be separated from Dionysos ‘ Halieus’ 
or ‘ Orpheus.’ 

As to the various myths of the money, the trinket 
or the sacred object, found in the fish or in the meshes 
of the fisherman’s net, it is easy to show from such 
parallels as, e.g., another Neo-Greek tale (v. Hahn, no. 
91, p. 118f.), or the story of the ‘ white snake’ (no. 17 
of the Grimm collection), that they all belong originally 
to the so-called ‘ grateful animal’ type, the characteristic 
features of which consist in the liberation or saving of 
an animal by the hero of the story and in the help or 
benefit which this animal returns to its benefactor. 
For example in Grimm’s no. 17 a man saves the life of 
three fish entangled in the reeds surrounding a pool, of 
some ants crossing the road and in danger from the 
hoofs of his horse, and of some young ravens fallen out 
of their nest. The hero wants to win the hand of a 
princess and has first to perform three tasks: recover 
a golden ring, thrown into the sea by the king (just as 
Theseus in the legend about the ring of Minos in 

* Of course this is the myth of the ‘rich fisher,’ the owner of the precious 
vessel, who occurs in different versions of the Grail-romances (s. W. A. Nitze, 


‘The Fisher King in the Grail Romances,’ Publ. Mod. ae 
America, XXIV. 8, pp. 865 and 878). Lang. Assoc. of 


THE PENNY IN THE FISH’S MOUTH 105 


Bacchylides) ; collect in one night ten sacks of millet 
which have been scattered through a forest; and find 
the golden apple from the tree of life. The apple is 
brought by the grateful ravens; the millet is collected 
by the armies of the ant-king; and the ring is brought 
from the deep in a shell by one of the liberated fish. 
We may safely assume that in all the quoted cases it 
is the grateful ‘king of the fishes’ or ‘ fish-god’ who 
makes one of his subjects swallow the lost trinket, 
etc., and be caught by the hook of the merciful hero 
or who puts the precious object directly into the kind- 
hearted fisherman’s net, just as in other versions he 
shows his gratitude by saving the life of the lyre-player 
by carrying him ashore, or by granting three wishes to 
the fisher. This explains why the origin of the Pagan 
legends of this type must be looked for in the supersti- 
tions of those fishermen who were wont to venerate 
with religious awe one distinct kind of ‘tabooed’ fish, 
and accordingly expected that these grateful fish would 
grant them in return a rich take of other common fish, 
and perhaps also, as an exceptional favour, some 
trinket or talisman from the fabulous treasures of the 
all-devouring sea. 

It goes without saying that a sect like the Orphics 
or Pythagoreans, who abstained absolutely from eating 
any kind of fish, must have claimed a special recom- 
pense from the Fish-god, and that consequently the 
above-analysed type of legends enjoyed special favour 
among them. The same holds good of the Christian 
worshippers of the great mystic Ichthys or Fish, Jesus 
Christ, and we must frankly confess that the author 
of Matt. 1727 could not have chosen a more appropriate 


1 This detail points, of course, to the above explained symbol of the pearl 
in the original version. 


106 ORPHEUS THE FISHER 


symbol for the neophyte paying tribute to the apostle 
who has saved the life of his soul, than that of the 
grateful fish rewarding his saviour which occurs so 
frequently in Greek and Oriental popular tales. 


XIV. 
THE MIRACULOUS DRAUGHT LEGENDS. 


THE first passage we have to deal with is the story 
of the miraculous draught in Luke 51-11. The reason 
why it has been introduced into the context of the third 
gospel is obvious. ‘Mark’ wrote at a time when the 
‘fisher of men’ symbol had become nearly as familiar 
to the Christian Church as it is to the present reader ; 
thus he could allow himself to cut out the whole 
explanatory sermon of Jesus preceding the symbolic 
‘call,’ in order to give his account a dramatic vivacity 
which must have been wanting in the more accurate 
reproduction of the sermon and its immediate effects 
in the original ‘ Logia’ tradition. This laconic but 
impressive rendering was followed by ‘Matthew,’ who 
may have appreciated its qualities; ‘Matthew,’ how- 
ever, would not omit the beautiful parable of the draw- 
net, and so inserted it into a series of kindred similes 
in ch. 18. Still later, when the ‘call’ pericopé had be- 
come one of the fundamental texts of the new doctrine, 
its brevity must have been felt somewhat out of keeping 
with its dogmatic importance. On this account and 
for the intrinsic reasons which can be surmised from 
an analysis of this addition, the original account of 
‘Mark’ was embellished with a consciously framed 
allegory which has been successfully explained ever 


since the rise of the Tiibingen School. The vain toil- 
107 


108 ORPHEUS THE FISHER 


ing of Simon and his comrades during the whole night 
signifies the practically fruitless mission among the 
Palestinian Jews; the launching forth into the deep 
at the special bidding of Jesus and the unexpected haul 
symbolise the highly successful mission to the farther 
distant heathen lands, which Peter would not under- 
take before he had received a special divine command 
through the vision related in Acts 109-22. The sin of 
which Peter becomes suddenly conscious in verse 8 is 
his hitherto neglect of and even opposition to the 
mission to the Gentiles. The second boat called in to 
assist, is a figure of the decisive share—underrated 
from obvious motives in this allegory—which Paul 
took in the successful extension of the ‘man-fishing’ 
to the Gentiles! That the nets threatened to break 
and that the boats began to sink from the weight of 
the excessive number of fish, does not seem to signify 
—as Carpenter’ once suggested—the quarrel between 
the Petrine and the Pauline party, for this had certainly 
nothing to do with the too rapidly increased number of 
converts. I think it is an unmistakable hint of the 
imminent danger of disruption, and even submersion 
in the flood of Paganism, brought upon the original 
Church through the rapid rise of syncretistic or so- 
called Gnostic heresies among the new, originally 
Pagan Christians of the Pauline church. Consequently 
we cannot doubt that the allegory of the ‘miraculous 
draught’ contains even more obvious references to the 
conversion of the Gentiles than the previously analysed 
legend of the statér.2 As to the exact sense of the ‘ fish- 
ing’ symbol in this narrative, we may safely assume 


* Cp. on this detail the acute reasoning of P. W. Schmiedel in Cheyne’s 
Encycl. Bibl. col. 4575. 

2 The First Three Gospels, pp. 206-208. 

3 Cp. above ch. xiii. pp. 100ff. 


THE MIRACULOUS DRAUGHT LEGENDS 109 


that here too the baptising and not only the catechising 
of the converts is intended, although we must confess 
that the text itself does not afford any conclusive 
argument for deciding this important question. 

The main ‘motive’ of the story can be paralleled 
in a well-known group of popular tales. In the 
Arabian Nights, for instance, the reader will find the 
same ‘plot’ in at least two different places. In the 
story of Ali Nur ed Din and Enis en Djelis we read of 
Harun ar Raschid meeting the fisher Kerim, who is 
fishing before the gates of the imperial palace in 
Baghdad. The ruler of the believers addresses the 
fisherman with the gracious and portentous words: 
“ Bish with my luck.” The fisherman, trembling with 
joy, casts his net into the stream. When he draws it 
ashore again, the net is found bursting with innumer- 
able fish of all kind. Then the Khalifa changes dress 
with Kerim and one of the innumerable stories of 
Harun ar Raschid in disguise follows. In the original 
form of the tale, however, the ‘good luck’ of the just 
king—(a superstition on which the reader may com- 
pare Dr. J. G. Frazer’s five lectures on The Early 
History of Kingship, pp. 118, 124ff., or more especi- 
ally Odyssey, 19:09, 113)—must have been magically 
conferred on the fisherman, not only by the Khalifa’s 
words, but also by the gift of the sacred imperial 
garments; only in all probability for the sake of an 
easier transition to the following humorous adventure 
of Harun, has the story-teller inverted the much more 
rational sequence of events in his primary source. 
Still more interesting is the close analogy between 
Luke 51-11 and a variant of the alleged fable in the 
‘Story of the Three Apples’ (XVIIth Night). Harun 
and his vizier Jafar while passing through a slum of 


110 ORPHEUS THE FISHER 


Baghdad encounter an extremely poor old fisherman 
with his net and his basket, who complains about his 
misfortunes in a couplet of flowery verse. The Khalifa 
asks: “What is thy calling?” The old man answers: 
“My lord, I am a fisher, and I have a wife and 
children waiting forme at home. J left my house at 
noon and until now, past midnight, God has not per- 
mitted me to catch anything for the support of my 
family.” (Cp. the words: ‘‘ Master, we have toiled all 
the night and have taken nothing” in Luke 5s.) ‘ Wilt 
thou return,” said the Khalifa, “to the Tigris and cast 
thy net with my luck? Everything thou catchest, I 
will buy for a hundred dinars.” The fisherman is 
delighted with this proposal, goes with the Khalifa to 
the shore, casts his net into the river and catches a 
heavy box, which Harun buys for the sum named. In 
the box is found the body of a girl, who had been thus 
thrown into the water, as they soon come to discover, 
on an unjust suspicion of adultery—a conclusion which 
betrays at once the close relation of this fairy tale to 
the ‘ Danaé’ type, with the floating box containing the 
heroine and caught in the net of the fishers, and the 
fisher-king ‘ Diktys’ of Seriphos. The author of Luke 
51-11 may have known a Greek counterpart of our 
Arabian tale and equated Peter the Apostolic Fisher 
with the mythic Diktys and Jesus with a figure, which 
in the Seriphian story seems to have been Zeus, the 
lover and protector of Danaé, while adapting all minor 
details of his narrative with the greatest skill to the 
theological purposes of his gospel. 

Several significant variations of the fish-draught, 
as it is related in the third gospel, are offered by the 
parallel account in the last chapter of the evangel 
according to ‘John,’ a pericopé which is beyond doubt 


THE MIRACULOUS DRAUGHT LEGENDS 111 


a ‘tendency’ appendix to 1-20, differing not only in 
substantial details but even in the vocabulary from the 
fourth gospel, yet obviously dependent in these very 
respects on the ‘synoptic’ style! This version no 
longer distinguishes the Pauline from the Petrine boat, 
neither does it mention the temporary failure or even 
resignation of the fisherman which occurs already in 
the Pagan model of the legend. Evidently the memory 
of the dissension between Paul and the ‘ Pillars’ of the 
Jerusalem community as well as of the harm caused 
by this controversy to the first progress of the Gospel 
had faded away at that time, or at least lost its former 
importance for the rising ‘ catholic’ Church. Similarly 
the boat of the disciples is no more in danger of 
sinking, and it is expressly stated that the net 
was not rent: this means that the Church has now 
victoriously asserted itself against the dangers of the 
initial stage. 

But these alterations are of small importance 
compared with the striking fact that in John 21), 
although there is no perceptible outward motive for 
such an outburst of impetuosity, Peter leaps into the 
water to meet the Lord by swimming a distance’ of 
some 200 cubits; only after this is he able alone to 
drag the net ashore, which had before proved too heavy 


1 Cp. P. W. Schmiedel, Hine. Bibl., 2548 §40. The easiest explanation of 
these peculiarities is afforded by the plausible hypothesis of Rohrbach and 
Harnack, that it is the lost conclusion of Mark, relating the Galilean appari- 
tion of the risen Christ, announced in Mark 164, which lies at the foundation 
of both John 21 and the lost conclusion of the Gospel of Peter found at 
Akhmim (chh. 12 and 13: Magdalen and the women at the empty tomb, 
parallel to Mark 161-8; ch. 14: the twelve disciples, deeply depressed, return 
each to his home; but Simon Peter and Andrew together with Levi the son 
of Alphaios, and others take their nets and go to the lake of Galilee. : 
This would account at once for the peculiar ‘synoptic’ style and the pre- 
dominance of Peter in John 21. Consequently John 21 offers a version of the 
‘draught story’ which may be in more than one respect older than Luke 
51-11, although details such as the assertion that the net was not rent prove 
beyond doubt the writer’s, or, as we may call him, the last redactor’s 
acquaintance with the text of Lwke. 


112 ORPHEUS THE FISHER 


for all the fishermen (John 21e, 11). This feature of the 
narrative admits only of one.explanation: at a very 
early date the question (cp. e.g. Tertull. De bapt., ch. 
12) arose among those Paulinist theologians for whom 
baptism was an indispensable condition of salvation, 
whether the disciples themselves, before they were sent 
on their missions, had received the baptism of Christ— 
instituted according to them by the (probably apocry- 
phal) words: “ Teach all nations, baptising them,” etc. 
in Matt. 28:.—and where and when this important 
ceremony had been performed. Of course no such text 
was to be found in the Synoptists; yet the urgent 
theological need had to be answered if the dogma itself 
was to be maintained against possible attacks, and 
indeed different legends arose under the pressure of 
this necessity. The author of the Zacharias-legend at 
the end of the Proto-Evangelium Jacobi would not even 
believe that John the Forerunner could have baptised 
his hearers if he had not himself received the sacra- 
ment before from Jesus, and accordingly invents a 
fanciful tale to accommodate his theological pre- 
judice. Similarly in the circle in which the fourth 
gospel was composed, the ministry of Christ to the 
disciples in Luke 2227 was interpreted as having been 
the symbolic washing performed through baptism, 
without which they “could have no part with him” 
(John 13s). But even asin this very account, represent- 
ing the view of one school whose ideas the evangelist 
wishes to refute through a ‘saying’ of the Lord, Peter 
seems dissatisfied with the symbolic act of washing 
only his feet’ and begs for a more extensive cleansing 


1 The reader will remember that the African, Milanese and Gallican 
Churches continued for a considerable time to practise the footwashing 
ceremony 7m connection with the baptism (cp. J. W. F. Hoéfling, Das Sakra- 
ment der Taufe, 1846, i, 544f.). It is not impossible that in the Church of 


THE MIRACULOUS DRAUGHT LEGENDS 118 


of his body, so a party in the Church seems to have 
opposed those who allowed—as does, eg., the very 
early Didaché—a simple sprinkling with water or a 
merely partial washing, and to have insisted on the 
full immersion, in the same way as baptism is practised 
up to the present day in the Orthodox Church. To 
satisfy these and perhaps as a protest of the ‘ Petrine’ 
school against John 18:0, the voluntary immersion of 
Peter was inserted into the narrative of Lwke, if indeed 
it has not simply been preserved from the Markan 
source by the author of our appendix to John. The 
meaning of this detail is clearly that the chief of the 
Apostles received the full baptism by immersion in the 
presence of the Lord through his own fervent desire to 
approach his Saviour’; most probably the tradition 
preserved by Clemens Alexandrinus (Zahn, Suppl. 
Clem. 69), that Peter alone of all the disciples was 
baptised by Jesus himself, refers to this event in John 
21 or to a parallel account in The Gospel of Peter; for 
in John 18 the feet of all the twelve alike are washed 
by Jesus. 

The best evidence for this explanation is to be 
found in the following accidental details of our text. 


Asia Minor, where the Gospel was written, the washing of the feet alone had 
for some time even supplanted the original total immersion. Serv. ad. Ain. 
iv. 167 proves that the footwashing was a Pagan marriage custom. Accord- 
ingly its adoption as an initiation rite must belong to that circle of mystic 
marriage ceremonies, which a certain group of the Marcionites (Irensous i. 
14, p. 183, Harvey)—and probably not they alone—had derived from such 
metaphoric phraseology as Mark 219, Matt. 222f., John 829, 2 Cor. 112, Rev. 
197ff., 212, obviously under the influence of the Hebrew euphemism ‘to wash 
one’s feet’ for the coition (2 Sam. 11s, cp. 11; Midr. Num. 1. sect. Beshalah ; 
Sohar, ed. de Pauly, i. p. 47 n. 1). 

1 Cp. Matt. 1428: ‘‘Lord if it be thou bid me come unto thee over the 
water.” This is an interesting parallel also in so far as the Christ walking 
—like Jahvé in Job 98 (cp. Ps. 7720)—over the water is of course an allusion 
to the mystic ‘ fish,’ “ treading the paths of the sea”’ (Ps. 89; cp. p. 72 above, 
the quotation from Paulinus of Nola). As long as Peter believes, he too is 
one of the ‘fishes,’ caught in the net of the Divine Word, and consequently 
also able to “pass through the watery paths.” Cp., eg., S. Ambrosius in 
Hexem. V. 65: “Thou arta fish,O man .. . leap over the waves, as 
thou art a fish; the breakers of this world will not submerge thee.” 


H 


114 ORPHEUS THE FISHER 


Strange as it seems Peter does not put off his clothes 
before jumping into the water, but on the contrary 
having little on before—this is the meaning of the 
Greek word gymnos'—he puts on his over-coat (ton 
ependytén) at the critical moment—evidently not in 
order to appear more decently clad before Jesus, as 
some rather naive commentators have supposed, but 
because in the baptism the neophyte “puts on’* Jesus 
the Christ” (Gal. 827; Rom. 18:4) and through him 
immortality (1 Cor. 1553), so that “being clothed we 
shall not be found naked” (2 Cor. 53). In fact, the 
Early Christian Church, because of these three passages 
and the corresponding symbolic rite,’ was quite accus- 
tomed to call the baptism a‘ garment’ (endyma), an 
‘eternal robe,’ or even a ‘garment of immortality.” 
That the motive of the Apostle’s putting on of the 
mystic ‘ over-coat’ before beginning the successful haul- 


1 Cp. Demosth. 21216, Plato, Legg. xii. 9542; Xenoph. Anab. i. 103; and 
prior to them Hesiod, Opp. 389. Light dress is also characteristic of the 
fishermen on the monuments, ¢.g. in all the paintings, etc., which have been 
mentioned in chh. ix. and x.; also on Pagan parallels from Herculaneum or from 
the Farnesina house they have nothing on but the small perizdma, or at best 
a single short tunic. With this light dress which Peter wears before his 
immersion, we must compare the ritual prescription that the convert has 
to put off everything but the ‘small shirt’ (chitoniskos) before receiving 
baptism. In this state he is expressly called ‘gymmnos.’ Cp. the evidence in 
Anrich, Das antike Mysterienwesen, etc., pp. 200f. 


2 Gk. ‘endyet’; but cp. with the noun ‘ependytés’ in John 217 the verb 
‘ependysasthaz’ in the absolutely parallel passage 2 Cor. 52. 


* A new white linen garment was given to the neophyte in the course of 
the baptismal ceremony (cp. Héfling, l.c., 539f.). Very interesting is a letter 
of St. Jerome (Hp. 6420) in which he says: ‘“ When we are prepared to put 
on the Christ and have put off our woollen garments, then shall we be 
clothed in a white linen garment.”’ The reader will remember the statement 
of Herodotus about the aversion from woollen garments in the Orphic order 
and about the exclusive use of linen funeral robes. Yet we must not conclude 
too much from this coincidence, because the same taboos were observed in 
the mysteries known through an inscription from Andania, in the mysteries 
of Isis, and above all by the Jewish Essenes. 


: “ Cp. Basil., Migne, Patrol. Greca, xxxii. 1088 ; Greg. Naz., 2bid., xxxv. 
i, 861; Greg. Nyss., vbid., xlvi. 420; Const. Apost. viii. 6 (p. 382 Anal.); Lit. 
Basil. 776; Chrysost. 89a; Pres. auct.95b. Swain’s Syr. Hymns of Rabulas, 


land 4; Acta Thome, 182 : “ He who puts on (endyomenos) the purification 
of baptism.”’ 


THE MIRACULOUS DRAUGHT LEGENDS 115 


ing of the net might have been taken from the plot of 
the Pagan fish-draught legend, will easily be admitted 
by those readers who remember the fisherman clad in 
the luck-bearing garments of the Khalifa in the above- 
quoted fable from The Arabian Nights. 

The theological metaphor of “putting on Jesus,” 
which the author has so skilfully combined with an 
apparently insignificant detail of his source, is so very 
strange a phrase that only the frequent, almost pro- 
verbial, use of it in Christian pastoral rhetoric could 
have made us forget for a time its obviously mystic 
and enigmatical character.’ Indeed it is only since the 
recent rediscovery of the old esoteric cypher-system of 
the earliest Orphic and Pythagorean texts in all its 
archaic simplicity that we can offer an altogether 
satisfactory explanation of this symbolism. 

Whatever had been known previously of numeral 
mysticism in Harly Christian literature—e.g. the 
famous 666 in Revelations, the 888 for the name of 
Jesus (IHZOY2) in Marcus, the 801 = Omega-Alpha 
for the Dove (IIEPIZTEPA) of the Holy Spirit, etc. 
—was all based, as well as the Pagan parallels of 
‘Mithras’ (MEIOPAZ) or ‘Abraxas’ (ABPAZA2) = 
3865, etc., on the so-called Milesian or common Greek 
system of expressing numbers by the letters of the 
alphabet,—namely, A=1, B=2,T=3 .. . Stigma=6 

maa KZ... Koppa90, 
P=100, etc. Yet Carl Robert had shown years ago 
that there existed another system of number-writing, 
anterior to this decimal mode, found e.g. on inscribed 

1 It is entirely “misleading to derive the Pauline phrase from Seneca’s 
(Epist. vii. 5 [67]12) ‘indue magni viri animum,” “ put on the great man’s 
soul.” On the contrary, Seneca uses here the terminology of certain Oriental 
mysteries (cp. n. 2, p. 117 below, and e.g. Orac. Chald., p. 51 n. 2, Kroll, “ psyché 


hessamené notin,” “the soul clothed with the spirit,” and the kindred 
passages in Cumont’s Religions ortentales, p. 809, n. 54. 


116 ORPHEUS THE FISHER 


tablets of the Dodonean oracle-priests, etc., which is 
quite familiar to every reader of.Homer as the twenty- 
four cantos of the Iliad and the Odyssey are simply 
numbered with the twenty-four sequent letters of the 
Greek alphabet—A=1, B=2,T=8, . . . K=10,A= 
11, . . . ®=21, X=22, Y=23, Q=24—, without the 
supplementary signs Stigma, Koppa and Sampi used 
in the other series. Now this oldest cypher-system 
is (according to a fortunate hypothesis of Wolfgang 
Schultz, which the present writer has been able to test 
many times in his book Weltenmantel und Himmelszelt’) 
the very system used by the Orphic and Pythagorean 
mystics to conceal their innermost mystery-secrets. 
And in fact, according to this method of evaluating 
letters, the Greek word for the mystic garment, ‘ chiton’ 
(XITQN = 22+9+19+24+13=87) is an ‘isopséphon, 
as the mystics themselves call it, or numerical equiva- 
lent, for the name ‘ Jesus’ (IHZ2OY2=9+7+418+15+20 
+18=87). Of course this zs really ridiculous futility ; 
but it was a sufficient argument for “ him who had 
understanding to count the number”’ (Rev. 18:8), to 
prove conclusively to an adept of Pythagorean lore, 
that the “name” of Jesus, “into which” (literally, eis 
onoma) the Christians were baptised, could be “ put 
on’ even as a heavenly “ garment,” instead of the “old 
man” (Col. 39), the physical garment of flesh, the 
“sarkon chiton” of Empedokles (Fr. 126, Diels), 
defiled by sin and:impurity, which had been warped 
by Jahvé and woven in the depths of the earth according 
to a picturesque phrase in Psalm 18913, 15 (cp. Job. 10:1). 
I need not say that the idea of wrapping the initiate in 
a mystic robe, in order to assimilate or to identify him 


' The application of this archaic series of numeral values of the alphabet 
to the purposes of ‘isopséphic’ calculation can now be at last conclusively 
proved from Artemidoros, On. ii. 70, pp. 164-166 (Hercher). 


THE MIRACULOUS DRAUGHT LEGENDS 117 


with the divinity, is as frequently met with in the 
Pagan mysteries as it is alien to the old Jewish cult- 
system.’ If, however, the simile was used by Paul— 
obviously under the influence of Hermetism*—it can 
be safely supposed in later texts like John 21, or his 
possibly Markan source, and all the more if this piece 
of mystic number-lore is perfectly in keeping with 
other essential features of our narrative, such as the 
fact that precise numbers full of symbolic bearing are 
given both for the cubits over which Peter has to swim 
from the boat to the Lord Jesus, and for the multitude 
of ‘ great fishes’ caught in the Apostle’s net. For—as 
has been noticed by critics before’—the number 200 
represents according to Philo (in Genes. 522) ‘repentance,’ 
as though meaning that Simon needed but to repent 


? Prescriptions like Genes. 852, ‘‘ Put away the strange gods . . . be 
clean and change your garments . . . Iwillmake . . . an altar unto 
God,” may have had a certain influence on the origin of the custom of giving 
a new clean dress, after their ablution, to the proselytes—whether Jewish or 
Christian, makes little difference. On the other hand, the words of God to a 
Messianic figure such as the High Priest Joshua (Jesus, in LXX.), in Zech. 
32-5, who was clothed in filthy garments, but obtained a change of raiment 
from the Lord as a sign that God had caused his iniquity to pass from him, 
may be found to underlie the mysterious legend of Mark 93, Matt. 172, Lwke 
929. Cp. above all Is. 6110: “ The Lord hath clothed me with the garments 
of salvation, he has covered me with the robe of righteousness.’’ The only 
Jewish document, however—if it does not prove after all of Christian origin 
—-which uses such mystic expressions as “ to put on the light, after having 
put off darkness ’”’ (212), ‘‘ to put on everlastingness’”’ (158), “ the name of the 
Lord” (897), or “joy” or “love” or “divine bounty ” (207) or ‘“ holiness” 
(182) or ‘* the robe of the spirit instead of the coat of skins ’’ (258 cp. Gen. 821), 
are the newly found Odes of Solomon, written, if Harnack is right, not long 
before the destruction of the Temple, but according to his numerous 
adversaries even later than the fourth Gospel. 


2 According to a doctrine of Hermetism (Poimandres, c. 95 and kindred 
texts, cp. Mead’s Thrice-greatest Hermes, i. 418ff.) the human soul is enveloped 
when descending through the seven—or five—planetary spheres as it were in 
seven or five garments, with seven or five vicious energies; when ascending 
to heaven it has to get rid of all these foul envelopes and to replace them by 
as many heavenly robes. Now Coloss. 8sff. evidently alludes to this sym- 
bolism, as Paul exhorts the Christians to put off the “old man” together 
with the five evil qualities of anger, wrath, malice, blasphemy, filthy commu- 
nication, and to put on the Christ as the “new man,” together with the five 
virtues (12) “bowels of mercies, kindness, humbleness of mind, meekness, 
long-suffering.” Cp. also the significant passage in Acts 1412 where Paul is 
taken for an incarnation of Hermes by the people of Lystra. 


8 Cp. E. A. Abbot, Encycl. Bibl. col. 1797. 


118 ORPHEUS THE FISHER 


(cp. Luke 5s), in order to approach the Saviour by means 
of a sacrament, which is called ‘throughout the whole 
‘synoptic’ tradition, upon which the author of John 21 
is so clearly dependent,! a ‘ baptism of repentance.’ 

Again, part of the secret hidden behind the num- 
ber 153 of the fish is explained by S. Augustine 
(Tract. 123 in Joann. Ev.) on Pythagorean principles. 
Indeed, again according to Philo (vol. i., p. 10, Mangey), 
the ‘fulfilment’ of any potentiality, say 3, is 1+2+4+3= 
6; the ‘fulfilment’ of 4, the famous tetraktys, is 1+2+ 
8+4=10, etc.? Consequently the ‘fulfilment’ of 17 is 
142484+44546474+849+410+114+ 12418414416 
+16+17=153; now, as Augustine has well pointed 
out, ‘ten’ is with Philo the number of the decalogue, 
while ‘seven’ represents, according to Rev. 14, 3:1, the 
Holy Spirit. Thus ‘seventeen’ symbolises the ‘ fulfil- 
ment’ of the ‘law’ by the superaddition of ‘grace,’ the 
charismatic gift of the Spirit, which descends upon 
man in the Christian baptism, and ‘one hundred and 
fifty-three’ is again the ‘fulfilment’ of this most holy 
and most significant number ‘ seventeen.” 

1 It is quite possible that the immersion of Peter comes from the lost 
conclusion of Mark, for a comparative study of the different mythic traditions 
about the recovery of the golden ring or cup will easily convince the reader 
that the figure of a legendary diver—cp. e.g. the famous ‘ Delian diver’ with 
the‘ Delian fisher,’ mentioned below pp. 128f, or Dionysos Dyalos with Dionysos 
Halieus—occurs as a regular double of the fortunate ‘fisher,’ and because 
‘Mark’ may have had the same theological interest in a ‘baptism’ of Peter 
as the contunuator of ‘John.’ In this case even the Philonian number of the 
200 cubits may be taken from the Markan version. For as Abbot (l.c. 17972) 
has acutely noticed, the mystic two hundred occurs also in John 67 (two 
hundred shillingsworth of bread), and there the symbolism—as though 
meaning ‘not all the repentance in the world would suffice to buy the divine 
food, it must be received as the free gift of God"’—is certainly derived from 
Mark (637), that is from a chapter which contains in vv. 41-44 (ep. 819-21) a 
very obscure arithmetical riddle. Finally, if the 200 are from Mark, the 158 
fishes will also be his property. The number must then have been omitted on 


purpose in Luke 56, andit does not seem wholly improbable that the numerical 
mysticism in this pericopé of Mark should have caused its early suppression. 


__ 7 The Pythagoreans call such numbers triangular, because they may be 
illustrated by such figuresas .. . , ete. 666 in Rev., for instance, is the 
‘triangle’ of 36. 8 Migne, Patrol. Lat. iii. col. 51. 


THE MIRACULOUS DRAUGHT LEGENDS 119 


But there is something still more deeply symbolic 
concealed behind these 153 fishes. As I have pointed 
out above (pp. 111f.), the ‘fisher’ is able to draw his 
netful of converts to the shore, only after he himself has 
undergone the regenerating immersion and the immor- 
talising clothing with the Spirit in baptism; that is, 
only he who has become a ‘fish’ through putting on 
as a garment the great ‘Fish’ Jesus Christ in the 
baptismal waters (cp. pp.73f.above),can duly accomplish 
the mystic task of ‘fishing men’ and of leading his 
captives to that shore where the Messianic meal of 
the ‘roasted fish’ is waiting for them. Now, strange 
as it may appear to the ‘ uninitiated,’ even this will be 
found expressed by the number 153 for him “that hath 
understanding”; for the ‘pséphos’ of the fisherman’s 
name ‘Simon’ (ZIMQN=18+9+412+4244138=76)), if 
added to that of the Greek word for the sacred Fish 
(IxeY2=9+22+4+8+420+18=77—the reader will not 
overlook the peculiarity of this latter number), gives 
exactly the required sum 153 of the fish caught in 
Peter’s net.’ 


1 The reader will remember that this number 76 had a great astrological 
importance for the Hellenistic world, since the ‘hendekaéteris,’ the luni-solar 
period of nineteen years of the Metonian calendar, had been superseded by 
the Calippian cycle of seventy-siw (4X19) years, the so-called ‘ hekkas- 
hebdomékontaétéris., But the most striking and certainly not entirely 
fortuitous coincidence is, that the name Simdn—the classic form which 
although less accurately transliterating the Hebrew than Symeon (thus Acts 
1514, 2 Peter 11), is regularly used in the New Testament—proves to be an 
‘isopséphon’ or numerical equivalent of Oannés (QANNH2=24+1+18+18 
+7+18=76), the Béréssian Greek spelling for the Babyloman fish- and 
fisher-god Hani (cp. pp. 48f. above). The importance of this fact will be 
discussed in a following chapter. 


2 In John 21 as elsewhere Simon is also called by his ‘ honorific’ name 
‘Petros’ (=‘ Rock,’ Aram. Képhi), the bestowing of which on that anything 
but rock-like disciple of Jesus “is stillan enigma ”—to quote ¢.g. the words of 
Johannes Weiss. May it not throw new light on this name if we see that it 
isan ‘tsopséphon’ of the Greek word for ‘net’ (IIETPO2=16+5+19+417+15 
+18=90=449+10+419+20+15+13=AIKTYON)? That would mean that 
not only Jesus (p. 78 above), but also Shimeon was somehow identified with 
the Divine Word as the mystic ‘net’ in the Harly Church. Of course 
‘Petros’ is only a translation of Képha. But the Aramaic form is beyond 


120 ORPHEUS THE FISHER 


After all this various evidence of the allegorical 
or, a8 we might even say, kabbalistic character of the 
whole narrative, the reader will no longer wonder, with 
some short-sighted commentators, why in John 2110, 
Jesus bids the disciples bring some of the fish they 
have caught, and yet they are all subsequently fed 
upon the one single fish which they already find on the 
coal-fire when they come ashore; for the writer could 
certainly not have intended by his veiled symbolism to 
suggest such nonsense as that the newly-caught ‘fish ’ 
—sc. the ‘neophytes ’—were devoured by the Apostolic 
‘fishermen.’ On the contrary, nothing could be more 
plausible than to suppose that he wishes to show how 
‘some’ of the symbolically captured—namely the fully- 
initiated and proved converts—are allowed to witness 
and even to partake of the sacred communion in the 
flesh of the one redeeming ‘Fish,’ a conclusion which 
indicates that the author connected the fishing symbol 
on the one hand with the baptismal and on the other 


doubt also a number-symbol (wN=14+80+10420=111), just as W27)2, 
plural Bané r’ges, the much-disputed artificial swename ‘son of thunder’ 
borne by James as well as John, the Zebedaids (Mark 317), yields the same sum 
of 300+38+200+50+2=—555 as the Messianic name ‘Josuah ben Nun’ 
(ya J yw = 604+6+450+50+2+70+6+43004+6+4+5+410), while Jesus 
(HSOYS), ‘the name above all names’ (Phil. 29), an artificial and irregular 
Greek transliteration of Joswah, gives 888 in the Milesian system (cp. the 666 of 
the Beast in Rev. 1818). On the other hand the equally unexplained assuming 
of the name ‘ Paul’ by the Jew Saul of Tarsus will be easily understood if we 
remember that the name Saul is numerically insignificant, while IAYAO> 
(=16+1+20+11+15+418=81=9 x9), besides yielding a ‘ square’ number, is 
an ‘<dsopséphon’ of ‘Messias’ (MEDSIAS=12+5+18+418+9+41+418=81), 
Thus it becomes evident that Saul has literally ‘christianised,’ or so to sa 
‘messianised,’ his name by the change of the initial letter. With the title 
‘Petros,’ symbolising numerically the ‘net’ (diktyon) of the fisher, we may 
compare the name of ‘ Linos,’ whom Peter is said to have constituted as the 
first Bishop of Rome, and whose name, besides being a personal form for 
‘ lindén’=* fish-yarn,’ and also the well-known name of Orpheus’ grandfather, 
the lyre-player and prophet, is again a numerical symbol (AINOD=11+9+ 
13+15+18=66). The custom of building up or selecting numerically 
significant names is beyond doubt an Orphic or Pythagorean practice. Cp. 
on Pythagoras=99, or in another system 1111, on Persinos=111, on 
Brontinos=121=11X11, on Onomakritos=144=12 12, etc., the present 
writer's book Weltenmantel, etc., p. 684. 


= 


THE MIRACULOUS DRAUGHT LEGENDS 121 


with the eucharistic rite, just as the perhaps exactly 
contemporary pictographic scheme in the catacombs of 
S. Callisto has been shown to do on pp. 66f. and 78. 

As to the outline of this Pseudo-Johannine version 
of the ‘miraculous draught’ story, it is of course— 
apart from the already explained minor differences— 
about the same as that of Luke 51-11, and may accord- 
ingly have been derived either through the intermediary 
of the third gospel (cp. p. 111 n. 1 above), or through 
the now lost conclusion of Mark, or through The Gospel 
of Peter from the above described group of Pagan fish- 
and fisher-myths. The most convincing evidence for 
the accuracy of this hypothesis will be found in the 
fact that not only the motive of the miraculously rich 
haul itself, but also the importance of a certain mystic 
number of the fish caught, can be traced in one of 
these Pagan parallels. 

Indeed both the extant lives of Pythagoras, that 
of Porphyry (25) as well as that of Jamblichus (viii. 36f.), 
contain a significant story,—derived through Nikoma- 
chos of Gerasa (1st/2nd century A.D.) from a lost 
biography of Pythagoras by Apollonius of Tyana (1st 
century a.D.),? the influence of which on John 21 is too 
obvious any longer to be disregarded. According to 
this Pythagorean or, as may equally well be said 
(pp. 11f. above), Orphic tradition, the mythic prophet, 
whose previous incarnations as ‘ Huphorbos,’ or ‘ Good 
Shepherd,’ and as ‘ Delian Fisher,’ correspond exactly 
with Peter the fisher and the shepherd of God’s lambs 
in John 21:3, 15, once met on a journey between 5 yracuse 
and Kroton a band of fishermen dragging a heavy-laden 


1 See also Plutarch, Quaest. Conv. VIII. 8, III+ and De Cap. ea. Inimic. 
Utilit., 9. 

2 Op. Erw. Rohde, Minor Works, p.131; and p.112 on the fact, that after 
Apollonius’ biography nobody ventured to add any important new detail to 
the saga. 


122 ORPHEUS THE FISHER 


net ashore. By means of his miraculous wisdom the 
sage is able to foretell the precise nwmber of fish that 
will be found in the net. As his prophecy proves true 
to the letter, and as no fish dies during the counting as 
long as Pythagoras is present, the fishermen recognise 
him as a superhuman being, and willingly obey when 
he bids them accept from him the price of the catch, 
and cast all the fish again into the sea.’ 

The etiological character of this legend is perfectly 
transparent. For the Orphic and Pythagorean brother- 
hood fish or at least certain species of fish were taboo. 
To explain the origin of this totemistic prohibition the 
story of Pythagoras and the fishermen was invented, 
just as in India, where fish-eating is severely forbidden 
by the Laws of Manu, we find a close parallel in the 
older, so-called ‘B,’ version of the Brhaddevata, vi. 
88-90. The passage in question comments upon a 
certain prayer to the Adityas in the Rgveda viii. 67, 
which was composed, according to the Anukramani, 
either by Matsya (=‘Fish’) Sammada, the ‘Great 
Fish,’ or the ‘King of the Great Fishes,’ or by ‘many 
fishes caught in a net,” and relates how certain fisher- 
men saw these fish in the water, caught them with a 
net and hauled them on to dry land. Thereon the 


' As far as I can see, this Pythagorean legend has first been compared 
with John 21 by Dr. Wolfgang Schultz, Altjon. Mystik, Vienna and Leipzig, 
1907, pp. 96f. I do not wish, however, to endorse any of the rash and 
unfounded conclusions which have been drawn by this sagacious yet 
somewhat fanciful author from the close affinity of the two sagas. For 
neither can I believe that Pythagoras was ever or anywhere considered as a 
‘ Messias,’ nor do I see the slightest reason for assuming that there was ever 
an ‘ original version ’ of the story, where the presumed ‘ Messias’ Pythagoras 
liberated the caught ‘ fishes ’—according to Anaximander’s anthropogenesis 
(s. above p. 84 n. 1)—from their animal shape, thereby symbolising 
the emerging of the spiritual man from his bodily coverings. For 
nothing could be more certain than that,on the contrary, in John 21 the 
symbolic drowning of the body and the subsequent regeneration of the soul 
is operated by putting on the mystic fish (pp. 114 and 119 above), while the 
Pythagoras legend itself admits of the above fully expounded explanation 
without introducing any allegoric interpretation of the fishes at all. 

2 Above p. 48 n. 1. 


THE MIRACULOUS DRAUGHT LEGENDS 123 


fish recited this famous hymn to the Adityas;! and 
instantly these gods appeared, delivered the fish and 
promised the fishermen as a compensation for their 
loss perpetual abundance of other food on earth and 
eternal beatitude in heaven. It goes without saying, 
that both the Greek as well as the Indian tale belong 
clearly to the so-called ‘grateful animal’ type, and are 
excellent instances for indicating how the first half of 
all these stories—the liberation of this or that animal 
by the hero—must have arisen, not from Buddhist 
loving-kindness to all living creatures, as Benfey 
supposed, but from the all-pervading totemistic 
superstitions of primitive mankind. 

In the Greek version the hero is of course the 
fisher-god himself, the ‘ Délios Halieus Pyrrhos,’ that is 
Apollo, as the exclusive owner of the fishing-rights 
along the coasts of Delos (above p.80 n.1), as the ‘Pythian 
speaker’ or ‘ Pythagoras’ and as the Delphic incendiary 
‘Pyrrhos’ (p..12 above). The peculiar ‘Orphic’ or 
‘Pythagorean’ feature of the legend is the importance 
attached to the nwmber of fish caught. The fact that it 
is not disclosed to the ‘ uninitiated’ either by Porphyry 
or by Jamblichus, will not prevent us from guessing it 
with comparative certainty. For just as the 153 fish 
in Peter’s net have been found foreshadowed by the 
‘mséphos,’ or ‘number,’ of the Apostle’s mystic desig- 
nation as ‘Simon,’ the newly baptised ‘zchthys’ or 
‘fish,’ so nothing can be more probable than that the 
tradition about the ‘avatar’ or former incarnation of 
Pythagoras as ‘ Delios Halieus Pyrrhos’ should supply 
the arithmetical key for the mystic fisher story. 

1 The characteristic features of the prayer are (v. 8): “‘ May not this 
yarn fasten us!” and (v. 11): “Save us, O Aditi (=Endlessness), who hast 


mighty sons (the Adityas) in the deep and in the shallow water, from him 
who wishes to kill us; may our posterity not be harmed by any!” etc. 


124 ORPHEUS THE FISHER 


Indeed the three above-quoted Greek epithets are 
beyond doubt numerical symbols. ‘Delios’ (AHAIOZ 
=447411+9+415+18) and ‘Halieus’ (AAIEY2=1+4 
11+9+5+20+18) both yield the mystic sum of 64, 
which is ‘ square’ (8x8)—square numbers are the most 
powerful, according to Censorinus’—and ‘cubic’ (4x 4X 4) 
at the same time, and is moreover composed of a series 
of the first impair or uneven and therefore lucky 
numbers (14+8+5+7+9+11+418+15)?  ‘Delios’+ 
‘Halieus’ is consequently 128, the seventh power of 
the Dyad (2x2x2x2x2x2x2), and moreover the 
‘pséphos’ of two other mystic terms of Pythagoras, 
namely of ‘autos theios’ (AYTOZ OEIOZ=1+4204+19+4 
15+18+84+5+9+15+418=128), “he himself a god,” 
and of ‘ tetraktys * (TETPAKTY2=1945+419+17+1+4+ 
10+19+20+18=128), the great Delphic mystery of 
Pythagorism. Ifthe third name ‘ Pyrrhos’ (I1YPPOZ 
=16+20+17+17+4+15+18=103) is added to the already 
analysed group of letters, the total sum is 128+103= 
231. Now this apparently harmless number is in 
reality an exact counterpart to the 153 in John 21. 
Like the last mystic sum it is a Pythagorean ‘ triangle,’ 
namely, the total sum or ‘fulfilment’ of the numeral 
series from 1 to 21,—that is 1+2+84+4454+6474+8+4+ 
9+10+11412418414415+16+17+18+4 19+ 204 21 
=251. Again 21 is the product of the most sacred 
numbers 38 and 7, just as 17, the basis of the ‘fulfil- 
ment’ 158, is the sum of the sacred 10 and the not less 
powerful 7. May we not then safely assume under 
these circumstances, that 231 fish, corresponding with 


1 De Die Natali 14. * On all these peculiarities of the number 64 s. 
Philo, Quest. in Gen. i, 91. * Pythagoras was himself identified with 
the ‘Tetraktys,’ or ‘Great Four,’ because his name gives, after a special 
system, which has also been re-discovered by Dr. Schultz, Arch. f. Gesch. 
d. Philos. xxi, p. 248ff., the mystic sum of 1111 (cp. p. 120 n. above). 


THE MIRACULOUS DRAUGHT LEGENDS 125 


the ‘name’ and ‘number’ of the ‘Delian Halieus 
Pyrrhos,’ were taken and counted in his presence, just 
as Pythagoras, who could remember all his previous 
incarnations, had predicted it to the Sicilian fishermen ? 

And if this reconstruction of the numeric symbol- 
ism in the Pythagoras saga is correct, can we overlook 
for a moment the strict analogy between the ‘gematria’ 
in John 21 and this Pagan parallel? But even if the 
sceptic should be unwilling to admit so much, the 
influence of the Pythagorean legend on John 21, and 
perhaps already on the lost Marcan conclusion, cannot 
reasonably be questioned. For it is quite unlikely that 
the Christian author would have mentioned a precise 
number of fish at the end of his narrative, had he not 
known the Pagan version in which the prophet had 
foretold the exact total at the very outset of the net- 
fishing, all the more as the fulfilment of such an 
arithmetical prophecy is a far more impressive wonder 
than the very ordinary occurrence of a rich haul after a 
period of unfruitful toiling as relatedin Luke. Indeed, 
no folklorist, accustomed to compare the different 
versions of one and the same popular tale, will venture 
to deny that the fish narrative, which contains the 
numeric prophecy without giving the mystic number, 
the second, which gives the number of fish in the catch 
but omits the prophecy, and the third, which suppresses 
both corresponding details, are but regular and easily 
explicable variants of one original plot. Most probably 
the lost conclusion of Mark was directly dependent on 
the alleged Pythagoras saga, and it was because of this 
too obviously Paganist detail that it was cut off from 
the rest of the gospel at a very early date; Luke must 
have known this version, but did not find it necessary 
to omit more than the characteristic Pythagorean 


126 ORPHEUS THE FISHER 


number-symbol. The attitude of the Egyptian Gospel 
of Peter towards the lost Marcan source is unfortu- 
nately no longer to be determined. But it is easy to 
see why an enthusiastic reader and defender of the 
fourth gospel (cp. 2127), which is as a whole permeated 
with a symbolism of the same abstruse kind, should 
have regretted the condemnation of Mark [17] and 
appended a somewhat modernised edition of it (cp. p. 
111 above), at the end of the ‘ pneumatic’ evangel. 
Thus the final result of our minute analysis of 
early extant texts containing the Christian fish- and 
fisher-symbolism seems to correspond in a most tempt- 
ing way to the conclusions which had been arrived at 
by the previous study of archeological evidence in chh. 
viii. and ix. The parable of the draw-net in Matt. 1847 
and the conclusion of the otherwise lost sermon to the 
Galilean fishermen, the ‘calling’ of Peter, Andrew and 
the sons of Zebedee, in Mark 17= Matt. 4:8, are genuine 
sayings of Jesus. But in these the fishing of men 
symbol is nothing but a transparent Messianic meta- 
phor, taken from the Old Testament, devoid of any 
mystic meaning, and 7m no way connected with the 
idea of a spiritual rebirth or with the rite of baptism, 
the latter indeed having never been administered by the 
Lord himself. The remaining three texts, on the con- 
trary, without exception presuppose Christian prosely- 
tism among the ‘Gentiles,’ and are consequently the 
likeliest already to show the first distinctive traces of 
that retroactive influence of Hellenistic paganism, 
which was to play such an important part in the early 
development of the new, originally Jewish, sect. In 
fact, just as the fisher-glyph has been found side by 
side with a pictogram illustrating the Orphic formula 
‘‘As a kid have I encountered the milk,” in the Domi- 


THE MIRACULOUS DRAUGHT LEGENDS 127 


tilla catacomb, and coupled with the image of the lyre- 
playing Orpheus on the ‘Firmus’ sarcophagus from 
Ostia, so the New Testament legends about the 
miraculous draughts of Peter—Lwuke 51-11, John 211-14— 
can be shown to be closely related to typical fisher 
tales of Pythagorean or Orphic origin. 

Yet it would be unsafe to conclude from this 
observation—which indicates an intimate acquaintance 
of the Gentile Christians with Orphism even in the first 
century of the Church—that the whole characteristic 
blending of the mystic fishing symbolism with the con- 
ception of a spiritual rebirth in the Christian baptism 
is due exclusively to the ‘ syncretistic’ theology of the 
‘ecclesia ex gentibus.’ 

fF’. C. Conybeare has shown that we cannot speak 
of the ‘institution’ of a Christian baptism suz generis 
by Jesus, since the original text of Matt. 28 contained 
only the words, ‘‘ Go ye therefor and teach all nations 
in my name,” without the manifestly late Trinitarian 
formula, “ baptising them in the name of the Father 
and the Son and the Holy Ghost.” 

Thus baptism, as performed in the earliest 
Christian Church, may have originated and developed 
independently of any teaching of Jesus, ether from a 
kindred Pagan rite or, more probably, from the only 
two Jewish antecedents we know of: viz. the Rabbinic 
‘baptism of the Proselytes,’ and John the so-called Fore- 
runner’s ‘baptism of repentance.’ Consequently, before 
we can venture to attribute any such marked feature as 
the fish-symbolism in the Christian initiatory cere- 
monial to the influence of a Hellenistic Mystery-cult, 

1 Zeitschrift f. neutestam. Wissensch. 1901, p. 275ff. From the gloss in 
Jn. 42‘ Jesus himself baptised not, but his disciples’ and from Tertullian, de 


Bapt. ch. 11, we can see that there was a party in the church, who neglected 
baptism, as alien to Jesus’ own teaching. 


128 ORPHEUS THE FISHER 


we are bound to investigate as carefully as possible the 
whole range of thought underlying these Jewish proto- 
types of the Christian baptism, in order to see whether 
the idea cannot be derived from the Palestinian milieu 
of the first, so-called ‘apostolic’ generation of adherents 
to the new Messianic creed. 


XV. 


THE FORERUNNER OF THE CHRIST. 


THE whole of our knowledge concerning the life 
and ministry of John the Baptist is derived in the first 
place from a few rather insignificant lines in Josephus 
(Antigqg. xviii. 52), and secondly from the traditions 
incorporated into the gospels. The latter are all 
the more valuable because they contain fragments 
of John’s preaching, which are probably copied from 
‘some loose leaf circulating among the disciples of the 
Baptist. Yet in dealing with our Christian sources we 
must not allow ourselves to be influenced by the 
specifically ‘Christian’ and therefore necessarily ana- 
chronistic view, that John was a ‘forerunner’ of Jesus 
or even (as the fourth Evangelist puts it) a witness 
of the Nazarene prophet’s Messianic vocation. For 
though it is manifest that the son of Zachariah the 
priest came forward to prepare the way for a mightier 
one coming after him, who certainly was meant to be 
the expected Messiah of the Jews, it by no means 


1 “ Joannes, surnamed the Baptist, was a good man, and commanded the 
Jews to practise virtue, both as to justice towards one another and piety 
towards God, and so to assemble for a general [ritual] bathing ; for this 
washing would be acceptable to God if they made use of it, not in order to 
obtain the remission of single infringements [of the law], but for the 
purification of the body, provided that the soul was thoroughly purified 
beforehand by righteousness.” 

129 


130 ORPHEUS THE FISHER 


follows that his own ministry had anything whatever 
to do with the entirely different one of Jesus and his 
apostles. It is not the traditional retrospect of the 
movement started by the Baptist, but only a prospect 
into the, at that time, still vague and undecided future 
of the Jewish nation, that will enable us to understand 
the individual life and aims of the last shining light of 
Old Testament prophecy. 

The history of John’s infancy in the third gospel 
is generally admitted to be a pious legend artificially 
composed to suit a series of parallel motives in the 
Old Testament birth-stories of Isaak, Samson and 
Samuel. The name of the father may have been faith- 
fully handed down to us owing to a custom of using 
the patronymic ‘ bar Zachariah’ for the Baptist; less 
reliable—but in any case historically unimportant—is 
the tradition as to the mother’s name Elisheba; for 
(as Holtzmann has suggested) it might be somewhat 
more than a coincidence that the two heroines of this 
‘gospel of infancy,’ Miriam and Elisheba, bear the 
names of Aaron’s sister and wife. The priestly descent 
of John seems trustworthy, although Brandt has lately 
questioned it on the ground that official observance 
considered the water of the Jordan, which the Baptist 
used for his rite, as unfit for purification. 

This argument will not stand, however, because 
the choice of the Jordan-water is most probably deter- 
mined by the influence of Ezekiel’s prophecy (4718) of 
the spring that shall gush forth in the Messianic future 
from under the threshold of the sanctuary, and shall 
run down to the ‘ Arabah’ (the ‘desert’ valley of the 
lower Jordan) in order to ‘heal’ its waters as well as 
those of the Dead Sea. As it is an acknowledged fact, 
that the main idea of John’s baptism was evolved from 


THE FORERUNNER OF THE CHRIST 131 


two predictions of Ezekiel (86:25-') and Zachariah (18°), 
» there is no difficulty in assuming that the Baptist, who 
firmly believed in the completion of the times (Matt. 
32), identified the Messianic and purifying fountain 
of Zachariah with Ezekiel’s spring flowing down into 
the valley of the Jordan® and turning its slow brackish 
stream into a river of living water. 

In any case, whether John was a priest by birth- 
right or not, nobody can fail to perceive that he was 
deeply imbued with a knowledge of the scriptures and 
derived the inspiration for his whole life and ministry 
almost exclusively from the study of the Old Testament. 

To begin with his peculiar dress: like the prophets 
of old and more especially like the expected renewer of 
the world, Elias, he wore garments of skin. Yet his 
intention was probably not that of by such cheap 
means posing as an inspired prophet of God, after the 
manner of the vain impostors whom we find ridiculed 
by Zechariah (1344). On the contrary, both the skin 
cloak of the old Israelitish prophets and that of John 
must be understood with regard to the ancient mythic 
tradition (Gen. 8a), that Jahveé clothed the first human 
pair after their fall in coats of skin (‘6r), according to 


1 Then will I sprinkle clean water upon you and ye shall be clean: 
from all your filthiness and from all your idols will I cleanse you. A new 
heart also will I give you and a new spirit will I put within you. . . . Ye 
shall keep my judgmentsanddothem. . . . Yeshall be my people and I 
will be your God.” 

2 “Tn that day there shall be a fountain opened to the house of David 
and to the inhabitants of Jerusalem for (removing) sin and uncleanness.”’ 


8 When the fourth gospel gives the names of the places where John 
baptised, as ‘ Aenon Salim’ (= ‘Strong Fountain of Salvation’) and ‘ Beth 
Arabah, it surely means to hint at these two prophecies of the Messianic 
spring and the water flowing down to the Arabah. Similarly the so-called 
Epistle of Barnabas (1110f.) as well as the commentaries of Theodoret (Patrol. 
Graeca |xxxi., col. 12448) and Jerome (Patrol. Lat. xxv., col. 472; cp. also 
Epistle lxix. to Oceanus) explain the mystic stream of Ezekiel (471-12) as a 
symbol of the baptismal waters. All this is almost certainly taken overfrom 
the original tradition of the Baptist’s school. 

4 «The prophets shall be ashamed everyone of his vision . . . neither 
shall they wear a rough garment to deceive.” 


182 ORPHHUS THE FISHER 


a Rabbinic legend,’ in exchange for their lost garments 
of light (67). Consequently the rough garb of hairy 
skins must have appeared to the meditative expositors 
of that naive haggddah as the providentially ordained 
clothing of penitent sinners, and therefore also of such 
leaders as would give their people the example of 
repentance. 

Just as the Baptist found the reason for his pecu- 
liar dress in the biblical Paradise legends, his peculiar 
diet seems equally to be determined by the ‘law con- 
cerning food,’ first laid down for primeval man (Gen. 
1ox®), Only after the deluge had God allowed his crea- 
tures, in the so-called Noahic covenant, the use of 
animal food, apparently out of concession to the greed 
and voracity of a weaker generation. Accordingly a 
man who refused to profit by this later indulgence, 
would feel sure of acquiring special merit in the eyes 
of Jahvé. Moved by such considerations, then, most 
probably, the Baptist abstained from eating any animal 
whatever, and lived, according to a rigorous interpreta- 
tion of the scriptures, on the seed-filled fruit of the 
carob or locust-tree (ceratonia siliqua), which the Jews 


1 Bereshith Rabba, § 20. Cp. The Sohar ii. 229b. See also the newly- 
discovered Odes of Solomon (25s): ‘‘ I am covered with the robe of the spirit 
and He has taken off from me the garments of skin.” 


2 The best proof of this view will be found in the tradition that Banus, 
the anchoret, with whom Josephus (Vita, ch. 2) says he lived a hermit’s life 
in the desert for three years, wore garments made of the bast of trees. 
Now since we read in the Syriac Cave of Treasures (Bezold, p. 7), that such 
clothes were softer than the silk or linen garments of kings, we shall scarcely 
believe that a bast dress was worn for the purpose of physical mortification. 
The solution is offered by a passage in the Book of the Bee, by Solomon of 
Basra (Budge, p. 24), which proves that certain Rabbis shrank from the 
conclusion that God cruelly slaughtered some of the newly-created animals 
for the sake of their skins; the word ‘dr was therefore explained to mean 
the bast or inner bark of trees, ‘ becawse it serves as a skin to the trees.” 
Thus Banus, too, chose his clothing with regard to Gen. 821. 


* “ Behold, I have given you every herb bearing seed which is upon the 
face of the earth, and every tree on which is the fruit of a tree yielding seed ; 
to you shall it be for meat: and it was so.” 


THE FORERUNNER OF THE CHRIST 1388 


considered, on account of a prophecy in Isaiah (12), as 
the food of repentance par excellence. It was these 
same carob-pods to which also the prodigal son is forced 
to descend in his deepest degradation.? 

As to his drink, it goes without saying that he 
usually quenched his thirst with water. If he also 
drank the honey of the wild bees (Mk. 17, Matt. 8s), he 
probably followed Dewt. 322 and Ps. 81v, where it is said 
that God makes Israel suck honey out of the clefts in 
the rocks. Thus the Johannine diet must not be con- 
sidered as the ascetic caprice of a penitent, who simply 
chose locusts out of the many possible varieties of 
contemptible food, but as an outcome of the severest 
possible, if we may say so ultra-pharisaic, interpretation 
of the scriptures. A valuable confirmation of this 
theory will be found in the message of the angel to 
Zachariah (Lk. 1s), which prophesies—of course ex 
eventu—that John was to be a Nazirite. For most 
probably the old taboo (Num. 66), that a Nazirite was 
not to come into contact with any ‘dead being’ (nefes 
meth), was understood by a later age as referring also 
to slaughtered animals,—an extended interpretation 
that was practically equivalent to a prescription of 
a vegetarian life for the ‘consecrated’ devotees. In 
fact Graetz’ long ago conjectured that the notorious 
abstinence from meat and wine practised by the Essene 


1 “Tf ye be willing and obedient, the good of the land shall ye eat; but 
if ye refuse and resist, carob-pods shall ye eat ’—thus quoted in the Midrash 
Wajikra Rabba, 35, in support of the familiar Jewish proverb: “ Israel needs 
carob-pods to make him repent.” 

2 The oriental Christians have never forgotten that John observed a 
strict vegetarian diet. Therefore the Ebionite Gospel reads enkrides (= ‘ oil- 
cakes’) instead of akrides (= ‘ locusts’). Others preferred achrades, wild 
growing wheat (Acta SS. Jun. iv. 692); the Athiopian version has ‘tops of 
vegetables’; the Monophysite ‘ revelation on the locusts of John,’ the ‘ roots of 
certain desert plants’; the Slavic Josephus, ‘ reeds, roots and wood shavings,’ 
‘no wine, no animal, no bread.’ The real philological solution of the puzzle 
is due to T. K. Cheyne, Enc. Bibl. 2138. 


8 Geschichte d. Juden, vol. ili., p. 658. 


134 ORPHEUS THE FISHER 


order and later kindred sects—Hbionites, Monophysites, 
etc.—was theoretically based on some such expansion 
of the Nazirite rule. 

However this may have been, it is obvious that 
the Nazirite’s vow of the Baptist had strongly con- 
tributed to the rise of the popular opinion, that John 
was a Messianic character of some description or other ; 
for it is well known that the prophecy about the 
‘sprout’ (neser) from the root of Jesse (Is. 11s), the 
longed-for ‘ saviour’ (neser, Gk. sotér) of Israel, was mys- 
tically interpreted by some as referring to a born 
Nazarene (noseri, Gk. nazoraios = Matt. 2). Others 
deduced from the same passage, that the Messiah was 
to be a carpenter (Ar. bar nasar ; cp. Jesus as the tekton 
in Mk. 63), that is a second Noah, sawing the timber 
for a new ark of salvation.’ Still others that he 
was to be a Nazirite, as Samson the redeemer of 
Israel from the yoke of the Philistines had _ been.’ 
Such people will of course have been much impressed 
by the fact, that the prophet who announced the immi- 
nent approach of God’s kingdom (Matt. 33) and, ina 
covert way, also (Matt. 3) the coming of the Messianic 
‘carpenter’ whose axe was already laid unto the root 


1 The belief that a second Noah was to save the righteous of Israel 
through another deluge is well illustrated by a newly-discovered Samaritan 
Midrash (below ch. xvii.) and by the words: ‘As it was in the days of Noe, 
so shall it be also in the days of the Son of Man; they did eat, they drank, 
until the day that Noe entered the Ark and the flood came and destroyed them 
all,” in the ‘Little Apocalypse’ (Matt. 2437, Lk. 1726). As to Noah the 
carpenter, cp. with Gen. 614, 22, Baidawi’s commentary to Surah xi. 40 of the 
Koran, where a graphic description will be found of Noe preaching repentance 
to his wicked generation without any success, until God orders him to build 
the ark. Then the people mock at him for suddenly turning carpenter 
from prophet. 

2 In Mk. 124, Lk. 431, Jn. 669, Jesus is in fact called ‘the holy (or 
consecrated one) of God.’ This, however, is the technical term for ‘ Nazirite,’ 
as applied, e.g., to Samson in the Greek version of Judges 187, 1617. On the 
other hand, the Pharisees argue against the Messianity of Jesus (in Matt. 1119, 
Lk. 734) from the fact that he is ‘gluttonous anda wine-bibber,’ which means 
the contrary of a ‘consecrated one of God,’ of a Nazirite. Besides, it cowld be 


deduced from Gen. 93 and 21, that Noah did not touch meat or wine till after 
the deluge. 


THH FORERUNNER OF THE CHRIST 185 


of the trees, lived himself the ascetic life, by which the 
‘consecrated one of God’ was to prepare for his divine 
mission. To them the Pharisees addressed their con- 
temptuous argument (Matt. 11s) against the Baptist, 
that his abstention from wine and meat was not due 
to a vow of consecration, but to his being possessed by 
a devil—of course one that abhorred strong drink and 
animal food—in fact, just as if a modern sceptic were 
to say: “Let him alone, he is a hysteriac, and not an 
ascetic.” Thus we can easily understand, that when 
the Baptist came forward he was, on account of his garb 
of repentance, taken by the people for Malachi’s Elias 
redivivus or, more vaguely, for the prophet foretold 
in Deut. 18:5 (Matt. 212), and, because of his Nazirite 
and penitent’s diet for the expected ‘holy one of God,’ 
for the great Nazir-Neser, the Saviour of the Last Days 
(Jn. li#.). That he himself anxiously avoided any con- 
firmation of the concrete hopes attached to his person 
(Jn. 12022) is too human a feature and too parallel to 
the analogous attitude of Jesus, for us to attribute it 
to the well-known anti-baptistic tendency of the fourth 
gospel. On the contrary, the statement of Jn. 1s, that 
the Baptist himself claimed to be “the voice of one 
crying in the wilderness ” (Is. 403), is wholly incredible.’ 
Thus, summing up our evidence, we see that John did 
not come forward as a prophet or visionary—profes- 


1 A learned Palestinian Jew would doubtlessly have read in his Hebrew 
Bible: “A voice crieth: In the wilderness prepare ye the way of the Lord, 
make straight in the desert the highway for our God.” On the contrary, 
the erroneous Greek version (based on a defective copy of the original), “ The 
voice of him that crieth in the wilderness, Prepare ye, etc.” (omitting the 
parallel “ in the desert”), used already by the Synoptics, offered an opportunity 
to the author of the fourth gospel, who had identified Jesus with the Word, 
to equate the forerunner with an equally mystic ‘ Voice’ in the wilderness. 
Last, not least, Malachi 81, 2 likens the messenger, who is to prepare the way 
before God, to a refiner’s fire, which is to purify the sons of Israel, a figure 
of speech applied by John not to his own person, but to the mightier one 
coming after him. The first to identify John himself with that Messianic 
messenger seems to have been Jesus (Matt. 1110, Lk. 727). 


136 ORPHEUS THE FISHER 


sions that were in fact definitely discredited by the 
words of Zechariah (18:2). There is no trace whatever 
to be found in his remaining words, that he ever claimed 
to have received an immediate revelation from above 
or that he ever pretended to work miracles. As far as 
we can see he merely appears as a ‘teacher’ (rabbi) and 
expositor of the Law, of course in manifest opposition 
to the professional doctors, the so-called ‘ scribes.’ 

In order to estimate the historical importance of 
this inspired leader we shall certainly not start from 
the rather condescending judgment of Josephus, who 
calls him “a good man.” What we must try to explain 
from our sources is, on the contrary, the fact that Jesus 
could have called him “the greatest [prophet] among 
those that are born of women” (Matt. 11n, Lk.72s), most 
probably even without adding the subsequent rather 
inconsequent restriction, “but he that is least in the 
kingdom of God' is greater than he.” At first sight 
nothing in the ethical teachings of the Baptist seems 
to justify such a superlative estimate. He came, as 
Jesus says (Matt. 21s), “in the way of righteousness,” 
or, as Josephus has it, ‘‘ he taught the Jews to practise 
virtue both as to justice towards one another and piety 
to God.” This means, that his ideal was the old 
Jewish seddkah, the legal principle of justice, a re- 
ligious swum cuique involving faithfulness to our duties 

' Manifestly those ‘in the kingdom of God’ are contrasted here with 
the others “‘ that are born of women.” Thisis equivalent to the theory of the 
Christian neophyte’s ‘ rebirth from above,’ through which he is initiated into 
the ‘kingdom of God.’ This is certainly—as Dr. Martin Dibelius has 
acutely observed—not the language of Jesus, but that of the Church. The 
intention is to emphasise the superiority of Christendom, be it in its humblest 
disciple, even to the greatest prophets of Old Testament Judaism; the 
Church has the immediate knowledge (gnésis) of that Christ, who is foretold 
only more or less clearly by the prophets. The words were added in order 
to refute those disciples of the Baptist (cp. Clem. Recogn. i. 60; Ephraem 
Syr. Hv. Haxpos., ed. Moesinger, p. 288) who placed John above Jesus on the 


latter’s own testimony, which of course they must have known in its original 
unrestricted form. 


THE FORERUNNER OF THE CHRIST 187 


both towards God and our fellow-men. Single ex- 
amples of his moral teachings are given by Dk. 8ue, 
beyond doubt from good tradition. The publicans 
shall exact no more than that which is due to them; 
the soldiers shall be content with their wages and not 
abuse their function as police by doing violence to 
people or bringing false denunciations against them; 
whoever has the least superabundance of clothing? 
or meat, shall give of it to his brother in need. These 
plain, nay trivial, exhortations show that John was 
untouched by those latest Jewish ideals, such as man’s 
forgiveness of his neighbour, the influence of which is 
so manifest in the teaching of Jesus himself; in fact 
by that new ethic of love propagated throughout the 
Christian world by the Sermon on the Mount, but 
taught as well by the Jewish sage of the second cen- 
tury B.c. who wrote The Testaments of the XII. 
Patriarchs® ; neither did he dream of the redeeming 
‘antinomistic’ ideas liberating man from the heavy 
yoke of the petrified Jewish ceremonial legalism, which 
inspire the opposition of the Jewish ‘ Haggadists’ 
against the doctrinaire teachers of the Law* and 
underlie so many sayings of the Galilean teacher. 
What then could have induced Jesus to place John 
above the greatest teachers and reformers of old Israel, 
above e.g. an Isaiah or Jeremiah? Can it be the insti- 
tution—if institution there was—of the new peculiar 
purificatory rite, known to a later age (Acts 182s, 193) as 
the ‘ baptism of John’ or ‘ baptism of repentance,’ or 
rather the new spiritual meaning he must have given 
to this ceremony in his teaching ? 


1 Op. Is. 3315f. 2 Cp. with Lk. 711, Is. 36,7. _ * Cp. R. H. Charles in 
the Transactions of the IIIrd Intern. Congress for the Hustory of Religions, 
i. 810. 4 §. Joel, Blicke in die Religionsgeschichte, Breslau, 1888, i. p. 28, 
on Philo’s criticism of antinomistic allegorism, and A. Horodezky, Arch. f. 
Rel. Wiss. xv. pp. 111ff. 


AVL 


MICAH VII.u2. AND THE PREACHING OF THE 
BAPTIST. 


It is obvious that for an answer to these questions 
we shall have to turn to the few extant remains of the 
single but doubtlessly genuine sermon of the Baptist. 
What has been handed down to us of this utterance 
seems at first sight to be entirely devoid of unity.t I 
believe, however, that this appearance is mainly due to 
an early transposition of one sentence which can be 
restored quite easily to the right place, after the break 
of thought occasioned by this accident of tradition has 
once been noticed. The correct sequence of verses 
seems to be the following :? 


7 O generation of vipers, who [of the prophets] has shown you 
escape’ from the wrath to come ? 


1 This is e.g. T. K. Cheyne’s judgment (Hnc. Bibl. 2500). 


2 The parentheses in square brackets are meant to supply, by way of 
commentary, the connecting thoughts that may be read between the lines of 
this very laconic sermon itself, and thus to prove its coherence. 


® The traditional text ‘‘ warned you to flee from the wrath to come” is 
certainly in itself a plausible translation of the Greek. Still the hypo in the 
verb can mean to show surreptitiously an escape; it need not, however, 
necessarily convey any other sense than merely that of ‘pointing out,’ 
‘teaching’ (= submitting to one’s attention) a possibility of escape. A 
physical flight from the hand of the Almighty has never seemed practicable 
to th e Jewish mind as is proved by the story of Jonah (13f.). Thus John can 
only be understood to denounce as vain certain ritual outward ways of atoning 
for sins, such as ¢.g. mere ceremonial washings. The Jews are confident 
of having in the Law, revealed to them as the descendants of Abraham, sure 
me ans of expiating any failure. It may have been this faith in the official 
me thods of atonement that the Baptist wished to shake by his terrible words. 
Still, we must not forget that the Greek version may not render quite 
ac curately the original sense of the lost Aramean sermon. Perhaps John 
m eant to say: ‘‘ Who foretold to you that you would escape (= be safe) from 
t he wrath to come ?’’—intending thereby to shake the self-righteous super- 


138 


THER PREACHING OF THE BAPTIST 189 


9 Think not to say within yourselves [we are not descendants 
of vipers] we have Abraham for our father [with whom God has 
established an eternal covenant]; for I say unto you, that God is 
able of these stones (Aram. ’ab’najja") to raise up [other] children 
(Aram. b*’najja’ ; note the word-play) unto Abraham [if he choose 
to destroy you on account of your wickedness]. 2 Repent ye! for 
the kingdom of heaven is at hand! 10 The axe is already laid unto 
the root of the trees; every tree which bringeth not forth good 
fruit is [to be] hewn down and cast into the fire. 

8 Bring forth therefore fruits meet for repentance.” [Here 
Luke has appropriately inserted the above quoted moral examples. | 

11 I indeed sprinkle you with water, but he that cometh after 
me—he, whose shoes I am not worthy to bear,‘ is mightier than 
I—he shall cleanse you with wind’ and with fire ; 12 whose winnow- 
ing fan is [ready] in his hand, and he will throughly purge his 
floor, and gather his wheat into the garner, but he will burn up the 
chaff with unquenchable fire. 


stition of the Jews, that the ultimate judgment would be directed only 
against the Gentiles, and not against the sons of Abraham (Cp. below p. 183 
n. 3 on the belief that the Israelites would be exempt from the final deluge). 
I have therefore tried to cover both possibilities with my translation. 


1 Tt has been supposed that John here alludes to the twelve memorial 
stones of the twelve tribes set up by Joshua (420) on the bank of the Jordan. 
This can have very well been the opinion of that scribe to whom the reading 
‘Beth-abarah’in Jn. 128 isdue. If John preached atthe ‘ Place of Crossing ’ 
—meaning apparently where the Israelites had passed the boundary river of 
the Holy Land—he can well have hinted at the alleged monuments of this 
memorable event. It seems to me, however, that the phrase gains more 
vigour if any ordinary stones are meant. Cp. Arch. f. Rel. Wiss. xv. 306. 


2 That is, the trees which are to be felled have been already marked 
with a slight cut of the axe at the roots. 


3 Matt. 82 has been torn out of its original context, to be prefixed as a 
kind of general ‘motto’ to the whole sermon. In its place 38s has been 
substituted; for, of course, this phrase can be understood only after the 
comparison of men with fruit-bearing trees has been brought forward in v. 10. 


4 Lk.: ‘the latchet of whose shoes I am not worthy to unloose.” 


5 * Pnewmati’ ; the word ‘ hagi6z,’ on which the traditional interpretation 
“with the holy Spirit” rests, is beyond doubt inserted by the Christian 
redactor of the original source, for according to Acts 192 (‘‘we have not so 
much as heard whether there be any holy Ghost”’) the conception of a holy 
Spirit was entirely unknown to the school of the Baptist. Besides the 
beneficent ‘charisma’ of the Spirit-baptism cannot have been paralleled 
in this way with the dreaded judgment by fire. Finally, winnowing is a 
purgation of corn by means of the wind and not through the help of the holy 
Ghost. 

6 The agricultural metaphors are transparent allegorical descriptions of 
the three baptisms mentioned in v.11. Like the husbandman in Lk. 13s, 


140 ORPHEUS THE FISHER 


The first problem for the expositor of this powerful 
sermon is the strange rudeness of the orator’s address 
to his audience. The difficulty has been felt by ‘ Mat- 
thew,’ who tried to justify it by the supposition that 
John was apostrophizing ‘the Pharisees and Sad- 
ducees.’ If the common source had contained this 
detail, Luke would not have omitted it. Besides 
Lk. Ts: proves that the Pharisees precisely did not 
come to John’s baptism on the shore of the Jordan ; and 
finally nobody will think it in itself probable that 
only Pharisees and Sadducees composed the casually 
gathered audience of the Baptist. The true reason for 
this rebuke, which is certainly unintelligible in its 
present abruptness, was undoubtedly once to be found 
in the lost exordiwm of our sermon. Supposing that 
John drew the inspiration of his harangue, as well as 
the idea of his whole ministry, from the prophetic 
writings of the Old Testament, it will not be too diffi- 
cult to find the one text in the scriptures that can have 
served as a text (anagnodsis) to his sermon about the 
expiating power of baptism. A prophetic passage in 
Micah 7 allows us to account for nearly every detail in 
it. The passage runs as follows: 


14 Feed thy people with thy rod, the flock of thine inheritance, 


John concedes an ultimate respite to the ‘barren trees,’ that are marked 
already with the axe for felling, and waters them through his baptism; if 
then they bear fruit, well; if not they will be cut down by God’s judgment, 
by the cleansing of the world through terrible storms (see below pp. 200f.) as 
they are described in Isaiah 2i2f.: ‘* The Day of the Lord of Hosts shall be 
upon . . . all the cedars of Lebanon . . . and upon all the oaks of 
Bashan,” etc., “and all the loftiness of man shall be bowed down,’ etc. 
Thus the cutting down of the trees symbolises the dreaded baptism with 
wind, which is to be followed by the burning of the eradicated stems (cp. Syrian 
Apocalypse of Baruch, 871) the final ‘ baptism with fire’ of the Day that 
cometh burning like an oven (Mal. 319). Similarly in v. 12 John’s baptism 
of water stands for the irrigation (Hnc. Bibl. 79 §5), which is to make the 
crops grow; the winnowing symbolises the cleansing of the world through 
the ‘ wind of judgment’ and ‘of destruction’ (Isaiah 44; cp. below p. 197), 
and the burning of the chaff the ultimate refining of humanity by a 
conflagration of the present world. - 


THE PREACHING OF THE BAPTIST 141 


dwelling in the solitude in the midst of the gardenland. 

16 The heathen shall see that and be confounded . . . their 
ears will be deaf; 17 they shall lick the dust, like serpents, like 
those creeping on the earth; they shall move out of their holes 
and be afraid of Jahvé our God and shall fear because of thee. 
is Who is a God like unto thee, that pardoneth iniquity and passeth 
over the transgression of the remnant of his heritage, that re- 
taineth not his anger for ever, because he delighted in mercy ? 
19 He will turn again (jaschub), he will have compassion upon us, he 
will subdue our iniquities. Yea, thow wilt wash away (thash*lih) 
all our sins into the depths of the sea. 2 Thou wilt fulfil the truth 
to Jacob, the mercy to Abraham, which thow hast sworn unto our 
fathers from the days of old (ep. Gen. 1765). 

There can be no doubt that this passage forms one 
group with the two above (p. 131) quoted prophecies in 
Ezekiel and Zechariah, the influence of which on the 
Baptist’s teaching is generally admitted. It is equally 
calculated to fill the chosen people with confidence in 
God’s ultimate forgiveness of all their sins; at the end 
of days, say all these prophets, Jahvé will wash away 
from Israel the filth of its sinfulness and flush it into 
the sea. Moreover, a peculiar and certainly very 
primitive rite of expiation, which is practised by the 
Jewish Church up to the present time, is justified by 
the Rabbis through these lines in Micah, which are in 
fact recited during the ceremony in question: On the 
Jewish New Year’s Day old and young congregate on 
the shore of the nearest river, by preference on a 
bridge ; whenever they catch sight of fish they shake 
their clothes over them in order that their sins may be 
carried away by the frightened creatures into the far-off 
sea! This crude superstition, closely analogous to the 


1 Cp. Buxtorf, Synagoge Jud., ch. xxiv. In most German, Polish or 
Russian towns this strange ceremony can still be witnessed on every Jewish 
New Year’s Day. Helen Boehlau, a well-known German novelist, has seen 
it on the bridge over the Ilm at Weimar, and mentions it in her last work 
Tsebies. S.also Abrahams, Festival Studies (London, 1906), p. 91, and Jew. 
Ene. xii, 66. 


142 ORPHEUS THE FISHER 


rite of the scapegoat that carries the sins of Israel into 
the desert, or to the loosed bird’ of Lev. 147 that bears 
the leper’s disease into the open—cannot be a product 
of the later, refined and certainly more spiritual Judaism.’ 
Supposing, then, that it may have existed as early as in 
the days of John, and that the crowd which the Baptist 
happened to address, had gathered on the banks of the 
Jordan for no other purpose than this thash*lth, then 
nothing could be more plausible than that John took 
the very text of Micah’s which was recited on such 
an occasion, as a welcome starting-point for his 
sermon on a really effective and spiritual way of 
atonement. 

The first verse of our quotation—very similar as 
it is to the other watchword “ feed my lambs,” which 
is later on given to Peter in Jn. 21—may have sounded 
in the ears of the Baptist as a summons to take up the 
vacant ministry of a shepherd over Israel,? and that 
all the more because “ dwelling in the solitude in the 
midst of the rich garden land’ could seem to allude to 
his own hermit’s life in the desert. From the second 
line, where Micah compares the stubborn Gentiles to 
serpents and threatens them with the dreadful fate of 
eating excrement,’ which is allotted to the snake- 
shaped souls of the damned in Shedl, John evidently 


1 See Enc. of Rel. and Eth. vy. 668, Jew. Enc. ii. 282 and vii. 435, on the 
swinging of an expiatory fowl (Kapporetz), 

* It may be derived from Babylonia, since we read in an Assyrian 
prayer (Thompson, Semitic Magic, London, 1908, p. 186, Scheftelowitz, 
Arch. f. Rel. Wiss. xiv. p. 849 n. 2): ‘“ May the fish carry away my pain, may 
the river flush it far off.” 

* Old Christian art generally pictures the Baptist with the attribute of 
a shepherd’s rod. Cp. the words of the Baptist in the Mandwan treatise 
(Genzad R. p. 191, Petermann): ‘‘I cast men into the Jordan as sheep before 
the shepherd.” 


* Heb. Karmel ; if it is to be taken as a proper name, it will remind us 
of the famous Carmel, the traditional site of Hlijah’s activity. 

* HugoW inckler has shown that this is the real sense of the Oriental 
euphemism ‘to lick dust.’ 


THE PREACHING OF THE BAPTIST 143 


takes the impressive address “ generation of vipers,” 
which he draws like a whip-lash across the face of his 
audience. Only comparison with the prophecy of 
Micah, which proves that this invective to the J ews is 
equivalent to arraigning them as heathens damned to 
perdition, enables us to understand why it should call 


out the indignant retort: “We have Abraham for our 
father!” 


XVII. 


THE BAPTISM OF JOHN AND THE RABBINIC 
BAPTISING OF PROSELYTES. 


Botu the charge brought against the Jews in 
these initial words and their reply to it must of course 
be explained with reference to John’s main idea: I 
mean the conviction underlying his whole mission, 
that a ‘baptism of repentance’ was necessary for 
Israel’s salvation in the imminent Last Judgment. To 
estimate again the religious signification of this pecu- 
liar theory, we must remember that according to a 
Rabbinic observance—the pre-Christian origin of which 
is no longer questioned nowadays'—a Gentile who 
wished to join the Jewish church in the quality of 
a ‘newcomer’ (advena, proselytés), had to submit to a 
purifying, nay regenerating, bath in the presence of 
legal witnesses. While the convert stood in the water, 
his teacher delivered to him a short lecture containing 
a series of greater and minor commandments from the 
Law. At the end of this lecture the Gentile pupil 
dipped his head completely under the water, thereby 
symbolically drowning his old impure self.2. After this 
immersion he rose from under the water reborn as a 
true Israelite or son of Abraham—a mystic rebirth 
operated in the same way as in so many Pagan mystery- 
rites. Indeed it was taken so literally, that after it 


’ Cp. E. Schiirer, Gesch. d. jiid. Volkes «1. Zeitalter Jesu Christi, III* 1808. 
2 Cp. Coloss. 212,“ buried . . in baptism.” 
144 


THE BAPTISM OF JOHN 145 


the ‘neophyte,’ or ‘newly created,’ ‘new-born babe,’ 
could no longer inherit from his former relatives nor— 
a still more significant restriction—even commit the 
crime of incest with one of them.' Legally and spirit- 
ually this simulated voluntary death of the Gentile had 
severed all previous bonds of blood; he had sacrificed 
his old defiled and forfeited life to the wrath of the 
deity and received a new life through divine grace, evi- 
dently according to the promise in Hsekiel 362-2 (cp. 
11): 

I will sprinkle clean water upon you .. . cleanse you 
from your filthiness and your idols . . . and give youa new 
heart and a new spirit. : 

Now it could not have been difficult for a man 
who knew the scriptures as John did, to see that this 
passage in Ezekiel, from which the Rabbis derived 
their theory of the regenerating rite of the tebslah gerim, 
or ‘proselytes’ baptism,’ could only be understood as 
referring to such Gentiles, if the passage were entirely 
removed from its context, which clearly refers to the 
Israelites only. Ezekiel meant certainly to predict the 
baptism of regeneration first to Israel itself, and that, 
too, not as a customary rite, to be instituted in the 
immediate future, but as a unique miraculous event of 
the Last Days. 

From this obvious fact the Baptist drew a con- 
clusion, the historical importance of which can hardly 
be exaggerated: Israel in all its wickedness and cor- 
ruption had forfeited its natural birthright in the 
covenant of its righteous ancestor Abraham with 
God—the promise of Jahvée’s special favour and 
permanent protection ; now that generations had filled 


1 Mishna Jebamoth XI2. Jeb. babli, 62a, Jeb. jerwsh. 4a, etc. Cp. W. 
Brandt, Zetschr. f. alt. test. Wiss. Beih. xviii. 56-62. 


K 


146 ORPHEUS THE FISHER 


to the brim the measure of idolatry and iniquity, 
the Jews were no better than heathen. If the present 
generation of Abraham’s sons persisted in their evil 
ways, God would assuredly destroy them without pity ; 
being almighty, he could do that and still “fulfill the 
truth to Jacob, the mercy to Abraham, which he had 
sworn in the days of old”; for could he not create—as 
he was doing continually through the ‘baptism of the 
proselytes,’ according to the scribes—a new Israel out 
of the Gentiles, nay out of inanimate stones, just as he 
had once hewn, like stones (‘abanim), a long succession 
of sons (banim), from the formerly barren rock of 
Abraham (Js. 511), the elected foundation stone of 
the whole world ?? 

Thus physical kinship with the patriarchs could 
in no way be considered a guarantee against the wrath 
to come.” The only way leading to salvation was to 
become a member of the new spiritually created Israel 
by submitting to the ‘ baptism of the Gentiles,’ however 
humiliating that might be to the racial pride of a Jew; 
thus this older rite became a true ‘ baptism of repent- 
ance. For what deeper and sincerer consciousness of 
sin and moral depravity could be imagined than that 
which brought a proud and self-righteous Jew to the 
point of considering his old self, drowned through the 

1 Cp. Jalkut Numert, § 766, fol. 248c. Venet. edit.: ““Why is Abraham 
called a rock by the prophet? Because the Holy One (Blessed be He) said 


of him: I have found a rock thereon to ground and build the world ’’—a 
notable prototype of the saying in Matt. 61is. 


* Cp. the saying, ‘‘ Whoever is not chaste, compassionate and charitable, 
cannot claim to descend from the seed of Abraham,” in the treatise Jebamoth 
vii. fol. 71. According to Matt. 1234, 2333, Jesus also used the invective 
‘ generation of vipers,’ that means ‘heathens,’ for those sons of Abraham 
who failed to do the works of Abraham (Jn. 839). And likewise Mohammed 
(Koran, Sura II. 118f.) makes God say to Abraham: ‘‘ My covenant does not 
extend to the wrong-doers among thy progeny.”—Cp. also the Rabbinic 
doctrine, Mishna, Sanh. x. 1-4, that the sinners in Israel will not share in 


the blessings of the future world which are promised to the chosen people 
by God. 


THE BAPTISM OF JOHN 147 


voluntary burial of baptism, like that of a mere heathen 
idolater ? Having in this way freed himself through 
repentance from the bondage of previous sinfulness, he 
had but to practise righteousness, “ both as to justice 
towards one another and piety towards God,” in order 
to remain what he had become through the ‘ baptism 
of repentance ’—namely a member of the truly Chosen 
Nation, the ‘ people made ready for God’ (Lk. 117), that 
is to say of that righteous ‘remnant’ of Israel, to 
whom the prophets of old had really ‘“ foretold escape 
from the wrath to come.” 


XVIII. 


THE MESSIANIC SPRING. 


It remains to be explained how the Baptist could 
have come to the belief, that he by his own preaching 
was to bring about the outburst itself of the longed-for 
Messianic Fountain, which was to heal the brackish 
waters of the Arabah and remove sin and uncleanness 
from the house of David (above, p. 181). God had said 
through the mouth of His prophet: “J will sprinkle 
you with clean water,’ etc. Who then could dare to 
usurp His function and thereby—as Jesus said of the 
Baptist and his followers—“ storm the kingdom of 
heaven and take it by force like a robber’’?' 

It is one thing to have had the abstract conviction 
that the Messianic reign was at hand ; this could easily 
be gained from calculations concerning the seventy 
weeks in Daniel 92, and the ‘fulness of the times’ 
(Gal. 44). But quite another matter is John’s appar- 
ently much more concrete belief that Zechariah’s and 
Hizekiel’s Spring had already begun to flow down from 
the sanctuary to the Arabah, a belief, without which 
the son of a priest would certainly not have dreamed of 
using the unclean Jordan waters for his purificatory 
purpose. Yet even for this innermost problem of the 
Baptist’s religious consciousness a probable solution 
may be found in the scriptures. I hope to prove else- 
where that all the prophetic passages about the abun- 

* Matt, 2132—an expression which obviously means actively to accelerate 


the coming of the Messianic time, instead of !patientl iti it. 
ee aT tp y awaiting it. See 


148 


THE MESSIANIC SPRING 149 


dant water flowing forth from Mount Zion are ultimately 
dependent on the following prophecy of Isaiah (281s), 
which had been mutilated at a very early date in the 
official copies through Pharisaic influence, but re- 
mained well known in its original extension till the 3rd 
century of our era: 


Behold I lay down in Zion a living stone, a stone of proba- 
tion, a precious threshold-stone for a foundation. Out of its hollow 
shall flow forth rivers of living water; he that believeth on me 
shall not suffer from drought (16 sibbash, lit. = shall not dry up; 
cp. Jo. 738, 635, 1 Peter 24, Ps. 869). 

It is evident that in this allegory by ‘living stone’ 
is meant faith in Jahvé, the real foundation-stone of 
the temple. The living water flowing from it and 
watering the believer can only be the ‘spirit’ of God, 
which is described in Isaiah 302 as an overflowing 
stream, reaching to the midst of the neck and sifting 
the nation with the sieve of vanity. Even if some 
among the later parallels’ to this Isaian text may have 
considerably materialised the prophetic image of the 
living water, it is highly probable that in the times 
of John there was a school among the Rabbis, which 
understood the Messianic water of life in its original 
spiritual sense’?; indeed, the so-called Dorshé Reshu- 
moth, or Palestinian expositors of the scriptures on the 
— lines of allegory, who were contemporary with and even 
prior to their Alexandrian emulator Philo,’ regularly 
explained the water which was miraculously given to 
the Israelites in the desert, as a figure for the Law or 


1 Bzek. 471-13; Joel 418; Zech. 148; Odes of Solomon 67. ; Rev. 221. 


2 Cp. Amos 524: “ Let righteousness run down as a mighty stream and 
justice like waters.” Is. 458: “Let the skies pour down righteousness,” or 
20. 551f.; or 119, “ The earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord, as 
the waters cover the sea.’’ See also the “‘ waters of wisdom” in Ecclus. 153, 
Enoch 395, 481, 491; Wisd. Solom. 522. 


8 Op. Lauterbach’s paper in The Jewish Quarterly Review, I. 201ff. 


150 ORPHEUS THE FISHER 


Word of God. If John knew this symbolism and ap- 
proved of it, why should he wait any longer for the 
literal gushing forth of a Messianic Spring for purifica- 
tion and for its marvellously atoning water, when the real 
source of life was at hand any moment in the revealed 
Word which quenches man’s spiritual thirst ? Could he 
not feel confident that the prophecies about the Mes- 
sianic Spring foretold in reality nothing else but a new 
powerful proclamation of the Divine Law to Israel in 
the Last Days? And if he understood them so, what 
could be more natural than that this deep insight into 
their meaning gave him the inner conviction of being 
indeed the humble instrument chosen by God to work 
the final purification of Israel ? Oscillating between a 
spiritual symbolism and the material reality, he can 
very well have thought it necessary at the same time 
to fulfill as far as possible the literal meaning of these 
scriptural passages above referred to ; and so, when— 
as Josephus (above, p. 146) describes the Baptist’s 
method—‘“the soul had been previously cleansed by 
righteousness,” that is on the one hand by the moral 
exhortations of the Preacher (L&. 31-14), and on the other 
hand by a confession of sins on the part of the peni- 
tents (Matt. 3c), the old body was to be drowned in 
the waters of the Jordan, to which faith, the real re- 
deeming spring descending from God’s sanctuary to 
the desert, would have imparted life-giving qualities. 
If he could thus induce Israel to ‘return’ from its 
ways of wickedness, God could be expected to realise 
his promise too,“ to turn again and wash away their sins 
into the depths of the (Dead) Sea,” as Micah has it. 


Such readers as are unfamiliar with this typical attitude of religious 
experience should remember Rudyard Kipling’s masterful and highly 
suggestive description of the Teshoo Lama’s search for and discovery of the 
river of Buddha’s arrow in Kim. 


XIX. 


JOHN—OANNES ? 


IT is more than a century since Charles Francois 
Dupuis, the famous Parisian lawyer and professor of 
rhetoric, first declared’ that John the Baptist was a 
purely mythical personage and his name the equivalent 
of that of the Babylonian fish-clad divinity Iannés or 
Oannés.? Quite recently the same theory has been 
repeated in Prof. Arthur Drews’ much-discussed book 
on the so-called ‘Christ-myth,* a work of far less 
original, yet in other respects quite similar character 
to that of Dupuis. 

If then I venture to support that part of Dupuis’ 
assertion which refers to a possible connection between 
the two names—as I have already done before Drews 
took up the question*—lI feel confident that no reader 
of the preceding chapters will think that I am thereby 
encouraging this renewed attempt to deny the his- 
toricity of a Pre-Christian teacher, whose peculiar 
activity is attested beyond any reasonable doubt by 
the authority of Josephus.’ 


1 In his very learned, in parts highly ingenious but as a whole hopelessly 
fantastic book, Origines de tous les Cultes (Paris, 1795), vol. iii. pp. 619f. and 
683. 

2 Both forms are attested in our sources. In two places the manuscripts 
would even allow us to read Idannés, in itself a possible rendering of the 
Babylonian *Ka-Hani, which Lenormant believed to be the original of 
Berossus’ enigmatical Greek spelling. Cp. above p. 44 n. 1. 

8 Vol. ii., p. 271, of the German edition. 

4 Stiddeutsche Monatshefte, Dec. 1909, p. 652. 

5 Op. above p. 129 n.1. To suspect the authenticity of this passage is 
absolutely nonsensical. 

151 


152 ORPHEUS THE FISHER 


On the other hand, I am fairly convinced that the 
rapid propagation of John’s ideas, and especially the 
spreading of his fame into the low-lands of South 
Babylonia, has indeed a good deal to do with the 
striking resemblance of his traditional name to that of 
the primeval Babylonian fish- and fisher-god, the teacher 
and lord of all wisdom. 

Readers will remember that the Mandwans 
(=Gnostics) or Subbas (=Baptists), who still exist in 


the marshes round Bussorah, have preserved such rich _ 


traditions about ‘Jahja Johanna” that Ignatius a 
Jesu, the first Christian missionary who worked among 
them, believed he had rediscovered in them the last 
remains of the ‘ Disciples of John’ who are repeatedly 
mentioned in the Gospels. 

Under these circumstances it is very remarkable 
that in the still untranslated Mandean Sidra d’ Jahja 
(or Book of John),’? we meet with a series of fragments 
on a divine being called the ‘ fisher of souls.’ Now this 
title, which, if the current views about the Christian 
origin of the fish-symbolism were correct, should be 
reserved to Jesus and his Apostles, and which has 
scarcely been transferred to John a posteriori by a late 
Christian afterthought, is bestowed upon the Baptist 
by some occidental witnesses—e.g. the deservedly 
famous Ambrosian choral chant alluding to the 
baptism of Jesus by John: 

He sunk the hook into the deep, 
Fished forth the Word of God. 

Taking this striking fact into due consideration, 
we shall have to inquire whether there is not a certain 
probability that also among the ‘Disciples of John,’ 


1 Cp. A. L. Beatrice Hardcastle, ‘Fragments from the Mandwan Tradi- 
tions of Sahn the Baptist,’ The Quest, vol. i., pp. 435ff. 


* Op. Mark Lidzbarski, Das Johannesbuch der Mandder (Gressen, 1910). 


JOHN—OANNES ? 1538 


even as in the earliest Christian Church, the converted 
and baptised members of the community were called 
‘the fishes,’ while those who operated the ‘ regenera- 
tion’ of new believers through the rite instituted by 
the master —foremost among them the ‘Baptist’ 
himself—were known by the honorific title of ‘fishers.’ 

If such were really the case, we should no longer 
be puzzled either as to John being called a ‘fisher,’ or 
about his alleged identification with the mythic 
Mandean ‘fisher of souls,’ who is himself — most 
probably—the old Babylonian fish-clad and fisher-god 
Hani-Oannés, especially if we compare Jesus’ remark 
that the Baptist ‘neither ate nor drank” with 
Berossus’ striking statement’ that Oannés was never 
seen to partake of any human food during his daily 
sojourns among men, between his morning rising from 
the sea and his evening return to the deep. We should 
indeed not hesitate even to presuppose that the same 
syncretism of John and Oannes, which seems so natural 
with Neo-Babylonian Gnostics, existed also among the 
more immediate Jewish followers of the Baptist, seeing 
that an influence of the Babylonian belief in ever new 
incarnations’ of the primeval Oannes on the Messianic 
hopes of the later Jews is far from being incredible. 
In chh. 12f. of IV. Esra (temp. Domitian, 81-96 a.D.), 
the Redeemer of the world, the celestial ‘Man,’ is 
expected to rise from the ‘heart of the Ocean’ before 
his coming, as Daniel (713) says, with the clouds of the 
sky; for: 

As no man can search or discover that which is in the depths 


of the Ocean, even so no mortal can see the Son of God nor His 
hosts except in the hours of His day. 


1 Fragm. Hist. Grec., ed. Miiller, ii. 496f. 
2 Berossus knows as many as six such reincarnations in past times. 


154 ORPHEUS THE FISHER 


There is a striking difference between this vision 
and that of Daniel, where the four beasts rise—even as 
Tihamat the Old Dragon—from the waters of the 
Ocean, while the ‘Son of Man’—like Marduk, the 
Redeemer, the Son of Ha—descends from the heights of 
the sky. 

Hermann Gunkel has well observed that the above- 
quoted reason for this alteration, as given in the text 
itself, is wholly unsatisfactory. As, however, no better 
explanation has been offered until now for this remark- 
able feature of late Jewish eschatology, I venture to 
suggest that Pseudo-Hsra conceived his ‘Son of Man’ 
as the ultimate reincarnation of that primeval fish-clad 
Benefactor of mankind, of whose seven successive 
manifestations or risings from the Erythrean sea, in 
previous eons, he may have read, either in the works 
of Berossus, which enjoyed a wide popularity in the 
Hellenistic world, or in certain pseudepigraphic works 
that were attributed to Oannes himself in those days, 
and which most probably circulated wherever the 
wandering ‘Chaldean’ astrologers and magicians 
tendered their begging-bowls. This is all the more 
credible since we shall see below (p. 171 n.1), that 
according to a current Jewish doctrine, the Messiah 
will be reborn as a ‘ Fish’ (ben-Nun). 

Now if really certain later Israelite thinkers, 
perhaps originally Jews of the Babylonian or Syrian 
Dispersion, identified their pre-existent Messiah, who 
was to deliver Israel under the astral sign of the 
Fish,’ with the old Oannes, Iannes or Ioannes, and 
therefore expected the ultimate Redeemer of Israel to 
rise from the ‘heart of the Ocean,’ if on the other hand 
the most enthusiastic followers of the Baptist believed 

1 See Scheftelowitz, Arch. f. Religionswiss., xiv. 47ff. 


JOHN—OANNES ? 155 


him and not Jesus to be the Redeemer, who lived 
hidden and unknown on earth to return with the 
clouds from the sky on the Day of Judgment, it is by 
no means impossible that the baptising ‘fisher of 
souls’ should have been considered by some of those 


who believed in him, as the reborn fish-clad Hani- 
Oannés. 


XX, 
JOHN—JONAH. 


However that may be, there is perhaps another 
identification of our hero with a mythic character, 
which should first be considered because of its far more 
transparent historical origin. We owe to W. Brandt? 
the very plausible conjecture—approved also by T. K. 
Cheyne’*—that in the original (oral?) tradition Matt. 
1239,40(= Lk. 1130)-1 was connected with Matt. 117, so 
that a testimony of Jesus to John was converted by the 
Christian author of Q, the non-Markan source of matter 
common to Matt. and Lk., into a testimony of Jesus to 
himself. According to this hypothesis Jesus would 
have said 


Matt. 1239 An evil and adulterous generation Lk. 1129 
looketh for a sign, but there shall be no 
sign given to it, save the sign of the prophet 


Jonah. 

Matt. 12404 For as Jonah was a sign unto the Lk. 1130 
Ninevites, so shall [he’] also be to this 
generation. 

1 Hvuangelische Geschichte, 4592. 2 Ene. Bibvl., 2502. 


* The present writer himself is responsible for the transposition of some 
verses, which seems inevitable to him, in order to obtain a logical connection 
of ideas. 


* Here Lk. alone has preserved the trustworthy text, while Matt. is 
manifestly altered. 

° The word ‘he,’ which must be added in English to express the identity 
of subject in both parts of the sentence, has no equivalent either in the Greek 
or in a Semitic original. The subject can be the same in both phrases, 
either because the comparison of Matt. 1617 ‘ bar-Jona’ with Jn. 142 ‘ hyios- 
Idannou’ (in both cases the father of Peter) shows that Jona and Joanan could 
be taken as the same name (see also ch. xli. of the Greek Physiologus: “ The 
‘dove’—Greek peristerd, but in Hebrew Jonah—which is Johannes the 


Baptist . . . ”), or because Jesus could mean “so shall he—the re-born 
Jonah—hbe again a sign to you.” 


156 


JOHN—JONAH 157 


Matt. 124 The men of Ninive shall rise in the Lx. 1132 
Judgment with this generation and shall 
confound it, because they repented at the 
preaching of Jonah; and behold a greater 
Jonah is here.' 

Matt. 1242 The Queen of the South shall rise up Zk. 1131 
in the Judgment with this generation, and 
confound it; for she came from the utter- 
most parts of the earth to hear the wisdom 
of Solomon ;’ and behold a greater Solomon 


is here. 

Matt. 117 But what went ye out into the wilder- Lk. 724 
ness to see ? A reed® shaken with the wind ? 

Matt 118 What then went ye out for to see? A Lk. 725 
man clothed in soft raiment * 

Matt. 119 What then went ye out for to see? A Lk. 726 


prophet? Yea, I say unto you, even more 
than a prophet! 
Matt. 1111 Verily, I say unto you, among them Lf, 728 
that are born of women, there hath not 
risen a greater’ than Jonah’—the Baptist ! 


Matt. 1113 For all the prophets and the Law’ have Lk. 1616 
prophesied until Jonah. 
Matt. 1112 But from the days of Jonah—the LA. 1616 


Baptist—untilnow the Kingdom of Heaven 


1 The traditional reading “a greater than Jonah,” is probably due to the 
author of Q. 

2 Sc. without waiting for him to work a sign in order to prove the divine 
origin of his wisdom. 

8 According to Hzek. 296 the reed is an appropriate symbol for weakness 
and unreliability. Jesus, of course, alludes to Jonah breaking down under 
the task which Jahvé had laid on his shoulders. 

4 The glossator who added “ behold they that wear soft clothing are in 
king’s houses,” wished to lead the reader on the way to the right understand- 
ing of the verse. Of course, the words aim at ‘Solomon in all his glory ” 
(Matt. 625 ; cp. “ gorgeously apparelled”’ in Lk. 725), and the sense is: Did ye 
wish to “behold King Solomon with the crown” (Cant. 811; cp. I. Kings 
1024), and to ‘‘ hear his wisdom ”’ ? 

5 Lk.’s addition ‘ prophet” does not agree with the preceding verse. 
For the (interpolated) rest of this verse see above p. 36 n. 1. 

8 See last page n. 5 on the identification of the names Jonah and 
Joannes in Matt. 1617, Jn. 142. 


7 Alluding to Dewt. 1818, 15. 


158 ORPHEUS THE FISHER 


is being stormed and the violent appro- 
priate it by force. 
Matt. 1110 For this is he of whom it is written, Lk. 827 
‘Behold I send my messenger before thy 
face, which shall prepare thy way for thee. 


Matt. 1114 And if ye will receive it, he is Elias’ 
who is for to come. 

Matt. 1115 He that has ears to hear, let him hear. 

Matt. 1116 But whereunto shall I liken this 


generation, etc. 
The comparison of the Baptist with Elias is want- 
ing in Lk. It is, however, beyond doubt genuine, for 
the combination of the second greater Jonah and the 


1 This much debated saying presupposes the Jewish conviction that men 
could accelerate the coming of the Kingdom and even force it down 
immediately by certain actions, either of obedience or of disobedience to the 
commandments of God. Thus it is said in Shab. 118b (cp. Jer. Ta‘an. 64a), 
that the Messiah and the final redemption would come at once, tf all Israel 
were to observe two successive Sabbaths, nay keep one single Sabbath rightly 
as it ought to be kept. It is quite an analogous idea, that the fervent repen- 
tance of John and his disciples could be strong enough to bring the Kingdom 
of Heaven down by force. That such an apparent violation of the Divine 
plans of Providence was not always considered as sinful, hybris, may be seen 
from the repeated saying in the Talmud, that God loves to be conquered by a 
sinner through repentance. For the contrary view, cp. the Rabbinic comments 
on Canticles 27: “I conjure you . . . donot stir up, do not awake love, 
until He pleases.” This double entreaty is said on the one hand to charge 
the Israelites not to cast off the yoke of the secular powers by force and not 
to return by means of a revolution into the promised land, on the other hand 
to warn the Gentiles against making the yoke of Israel unbearable, For in 
both cases the wrongdoers would be guilty of forcing the Messianic Day to 
dawn before rts tume. In this connection Rabbi Chelbo uses the technical 
term of “pressing against the Messianic Time,” which is the exact counter- 
part of the Evangelic expression ‘storm the kingdom’ or ‘take it by force.’ 
Rabbi Oniah even says, that four generations have already perished, because 
they tried ‘to invade the Kingdom’ and mentions—along with others—the 
generation of Bar-kokhba, the Pseudo-Messiah. Quite possibly the compari- 
son of the Old Testament Jonah and the Baptist extends its influence even 
to this verse. The over-zealous Jonah quarrels with Jahvé, because He 
defers again and again in His forbearance the foretold Day of Judgment. 
Even so the greater Jonah, the Baptist, dares in his burning zeal to realise 
arbitrarily and at once God’s plans of an ultimate purification of the 
repentant Israel immediately preceding the Last Judgment, forcing thereby 
Jahvé in a certain way to accelerate the coming of the Kingdom. Jesus, of 
course, attributes an over-zealousness to the Baptist and the violent ones. 
Yet, as does also the author of the Book of Jonah, he thinks that God does 
not disapprove at all of such men, who are “eaten up by the zeal for his 
house,” and that indeed the Baptist’s and his followers’ fervent repentance 
had somehow brought nearer the Kingdom. Therefore, because he prepares 
the os way, instead of merely foretelling it, he is the greatest among 
mortals. 


JOHN—JONAH 159 


reborn foretold Elias accords with Rabbinic passages 
such as the Midrash Rabba to Leviticus §15, where 
Jonah is connected—even as in certain Christian cata- 
comb paintings’\—with Elias. It agrees, moreover, with 
Jesus’ conviction that, according to the Scriptures, he 
who was the prophesied Elias, was also doomed to 
suffer martyrdom. The Passion of Elias had been 
foretold—according to a fortunate discovery of Dr. 
Rendell-Harris—in a pre-Christian Midrash? on the 
ascension of Phinehas the High Priest; but as the 
Baptist was in the opinion of Jesus not only the reborn 
Elias but also a‘ greater Jonah,’ he was doubly destined 
to be swallowed by the Great Fish, whose belly is Sheél 
(Jonah 22). It is very remarkable, that even for this 
belief Jewish parallels can be produced; for in later 
kabbalistic writings the first of the two subsequent 
Messiahs, the one who loses his life in the fight against 
the evil powers, the Messiah ben Joseph, is identified 
with the prophet Jonah.’ 

Now the theory of Cheyne and Brandt is that the 
above-quoted sermon of Jesus plays on the similarity 
or even equivalence of ‘Jonah’ with the Baptist’s 
name ‘Johanan.’ The more I study the whole problem, 
however, the more I feel inclined to go boldly one step 
further and ask: Was the ‘ Forerunner’ already called 
Johanan when Jesus delivered this important sermon, 
or does he not rather owe that name—indirectly of 
course —to this very comparison of him with the 
prophet Jonah, which became popular for a time 


1 Wilpert, pl. 160, fig.2. According toPs. Epiph. (De Vit. Proph.), Jonah 
was the son of the widow, who had been resuscitated from death by Hlias. 

2 In Ps.-Philo’s Liber Antiquitatum Biblicarwm, a most interesting 
haggadic paraphrase of the so-called Octateuch, on the pre-Christian origin 
of which see W. T. Woodhouse, Hnc. Bibl. 254§15. Phinehas is to be reborn 
as Elias, caught up, sent up to the world at a later date, when he shall be put 
to death. 

8 Op. Elijahu ha-kohen Midras Talpijoth, Varsovy, 5635, fol. 238. 


160 ORPHEUS THE FISHER 


through the authority of Jesus? In fact, if Jesus 
surnamed the Baptist ‘Jonah’ as he nicknamed Simon 
‘Képha’’ and the Zebedaids ‘ Bené Rége3,’ later readers 
of his sayings, who were ignorant of his reasons, 
because they found the decisive words torn asunder 
and fundamentally modified (cp. above, p. 156ff) in Q, 
may easily have taken ‘Jonah’ for what it often is, 
vig. an abbreviation of Johanan, while at the same time 
they retained the good old tradition that this was the 
true, significant or ‘spiritual’ name of the Baptist, 
given him by Jesus, which means for a Christian 
author, by God himself. 
What leads me to suppose such a development is 
a striking detail concerning the name or rather the 
names of our hero in Luke’s ‘Gospel of Infancy’ (1:9), 
where we are told that on the eighth day, when the 
family assembled to circumcise the child, “they called 
him Zachariah after the name of his father.” More- 
over vy. 61 expressly informs us that none of the 
Baptist’s kindred was called John. Now since we 
know other cases of Jews being called by the name of 
their fathers—though the practice is unusual nowadays 
and seems to have always been rather uncommon—and 
as the whole dissension about the child’s name is 
certainly not derived from the Old Testament parallels 
which have been used to build up the pious legend of 
the Baptist’s earliest life, I have long ago suspected 
that his real name was Zachariah b. Zachariah and 
that Ioannés (for Johanan, and this again for Jonah) 
was only another surname,’ even as was ‘ the Cleanser’ 
(ho Baptistés). 
1 The analogous cases ‘ Jesus who is called the Christ’ (Matt. 116), Simon- 
Petros-Képha’, John or Andrew ben R¢ges, Justus-Josef or Jesus bar Sabbas. 


Saulos-Paulos, Thomas-Didymos, Johannes-Markos, Simeon-Niger, Silas- 
Silvanus are treated by Dessau, Hermes, xlv. (1910), p. 847ff. 


JONAH AS FISHER 161 


Just as the ‘ prophecy’ of the angel in Lk. lu, “he 
shall not drink wine or strong drink,” is devised to 
explain the well-known and historical Nasirate of the 
Baptist, so also the angelic order, “thou shalt call him 
John,’* must be a late, and therefore possibly quite 
gratuitous, attempt to explain the hero’s more popular 
name ‘ Idannés.’ 

If the secondary names Johanan or Idannés were 
really—as I believe—syncretised with the very similar 
titles Hani-Iannés-Oannés or Idannés, then this 
must be a later development by some among John’s 
followers, seeing that it transcends the strictly scrip- 
tural, and therefore genuinely Jewish circle of ideas. 
This identification may have been favoured by the 
existence of a most extraordinary Jewish tradition 
which represents Jonah as at least a would-be ‘ fisher.’ 
When the prophet of Gath-Hefer was in the belly of 
the whale (says the Midras Jalkut Jonah, §1) he 
prayed the great fish to bear him quickly to the 
Leviathan, for he desired to catch the monster with a 
fish-line, in order, when safe on the shore again, to 
prepare with its flesh a meal for the pious—that is, the 
legendary Messianic fish-banquet which will be dealt 
with in a later chapter. This over-bold undertaking— 
another attempt on the part of Jonah to ‘storm the 
Kingdom of Heaven’ and to bring about by force the 
Messianic state of things—had, to be sure, no success, 
but quite the contrary. From the typical representa- 
tion, on early Christian sarcophagi, of fishermen spread- 
ing their nets by the shore, towards which the great fish 
vomits forth Jonah, we can guess that he who had 
dared to ensnare the primeval monster fell himself into 
the nets of the fishermen, a typical fate familiar to 


1 Cp. Gen. 1719, “ thou shalt call his name Isaac.” 
L 


162 © ORPHEUS THE FISHER 


the comparative mythologist from the legends of 
the fisher-god Dionysos Halieus, the fishing goddess 
Diktynna, the marine deity Proteus, etc. The strange 
idea of the swallowed man fishing from the whale’s 
belly will somehow remind the reader of the Babylo- 
nian priestly fishermen clothed in fish-skins like their 
fish-clad god Oannes, and we may be sure that in those 
days many a Babylonian Jew must have taken the 
frequent images of such priests on the monuments 
surrounding him, for representations of the famous 
prophet whom the Bible credits with the astonishing 
success of having humbled to sincere repentance the 
proud king of Assur and all the Ninivites—just as in 
our own days critics have often been struck by the 
tempting idea of a possible connection between the 
Jonah-motive and the Oannes-type. 

However this may have been, the alternative as to 
whether the Baptist’s original name was Johanan b. 
Zachariah or rather Zachariah b. Zachariah is ulti- 
mately of very slight importance. What really matters 
for the general history of those times is that he was 
certainly likened to Jonah and Elijah by Jesus, and 
most probably also to the Babylonian fisher-god 
Oannés-Hani by some of his disciples. 


XXI. 


THE FISHES IN THE MYSTIC STREAM OF 
EZEKIEL XLVII. 


For our special purposes the main question still 
remains, whether John and his followers really con- 
ceived—as we were led to believe (cp. above, p. 153)— 
the regenerating rite of submersion in water as a 
‘fishing of men’ in the same allegorical way as the 
early Christian Church; and if so, how they arrived at 
this symbolism. 

In order to find a satisfactory solution of this 
problem we must start from the remarkable synoptic 
tradition (Mk. 1;, Matt. 3c)—not expressly confirmed, 
but also not contradicted by Josephus'—that John 
preached and baptised exclusively by the shore of that 
very Jordan which was considered unfit for cleansing 
by the Rabbis, owing to its being a mixture of running 
and stagnant water (Parah, viii. 10). Indeed, this 
single feature is sufficient to establish a sharp distinc- 
tion at once between the ‘baptism of repentance’ and 
its immediate antecedent the Rabbinic ‘baptism of 
the Proselytes’ (cp. above ch. XVII.) on the one hand 
and on the other its subsequent development in the 
Christian baptism of initiation. Acts 83. show that 
the latter could be performed in any wayside pool, in 


1 See the quotation above, p. 129n.1. The place-names connected with 
John’s baptism in the fourth gospel are purely symbolical (above p. 181 
n. 8) and cannot therefore be used to supplement the synoptic account; the 
arguments against the baptism in the Jordan, which have quite lately been 
proffered by W. Brandt, are all but convincing. 


163 


164 ORPHEUS THE FISHER 


accordance with the general anti-pharisaic anti-formal- 
istic tendency of early Christianity, as determined by 
the attitude of Jesus and some of his most prominent 
followers. 

Nothing, however, would justify us in attributing 
to a man like John, whose whole life was dominated 
by ultra-pharisaic speculations (cp. above, pp. 132ff.), 
the same anti-nomistic, or rather anti-Jewish, motives 
that underlie the fundamental indifference of Chris- 
tianity as to the physical qualities of the baptismal 
water. If he neglected purposely the natural deficien- 
cies of the Jordan water, he must have had beyond 
doubt a mystic reason for so doing. As I have already 
stated,’ the only justification of this nature is offered 
by Ezekiel’s prophecy (47ff.) about the healing water 
running down to the unclean Jordan from the temple- 
hill of Zion in the longed-for time of Messianic deliver- 
ance, and by the manifest belief of the Baptist that 
those times were now at hand. 

This hypothesis is proved to be correct by the 
existence of other features in John’s teaching which 
manifestly depend on certain characteristic details of 
the same prophecy. : 

Thus, for instance, the very comparison of the 
righteous who “justify God [in His prophecies] by 
being baptised with the baptism of John,” to frwit- 
bearing trees, which begins the second half of the 
Baptist’s sermon (vv. 10, 8),is again manifestly derived 
from Ezekiel’s description of the Messianic water of 
life. For there the prophet says (ch. 47) : 

12 Behold on the bank of the river many trees. . . . By the 
river upon the banks thereof, on this side and on that side, shall 


' Cp. the abolition of all possible Judaising distinctions between ‘ allowed ’ 
or ‘forbidden’ waters for baptism in the so-called Teachings of the Apostles. 


2 Cp. above, pp. 180 and 148ff. 


THE FISHES IN EZEKIEL XLVII 165 


grow all trees for meat, whose leaf shall not fade, neither shall the 
fruit thereof be consumed; they shall bring forth new fruit month 
after month, because their waters issue from the sanctuary: and 
the fruit thereof shall be for meat and the leaf thereof for medicine. 


Nothing could be more natural than that John, 
who understood the life-giving water descending from 
the sanctuary as the Law emanating from God’s eternal 
abode,’ should also take the trees on the bank of this 
mystic river in a figurative sense: (1) according to the 
famous words (Ps. 1): 

Blessed is the man . . . whose delight is in the Law of 
God . . . Heshall be like a tree planted by the rivers of water, 


that bringeth forth his fruit in his season ; his leaf also shall not 
wither.’ 
—words which occur in the same Psalm from which 
he also manifestly derives his impressive comparison 
of the wrong-doers with the chaff on God’s floor;? and 
(2) according also to the picturesque and impressive 
words of the prophet Jeremiah (17s-) : 

Thus saith Jahvé: Cursed be the man that trusteth in man 

he shall be like a barren juniper shrub in the desert 

(arabah) . . . he shall inhabit the parched places in the 
wilderness, a salt land and not inhabited. Blessed the man, that 
trusteth in Jahvé and whose hope is Jahvé, for he shall be as a tree 
planted by the waters . . . that spreadeth out her roots by 
the river, and shall not mind when heat cometh, but her leaf shall 
be green ; and shall not be careful in the year of drought, neither 
shall cease from yielding fruit, 


1 Cp. above, p. 148. 

2 The Letter of Barnabas (ch. 11, p. 160 of Hennecke’s Neutest. Apocryph.) 
also connects Ezek. 4712 with Ps. 13-6, and explains them as symbolising 
‘‘ that we descend into the water full of sin and filth, but rise from it loaded 
with fruits, since we carry the fear of God in our hearts,” etc. That “ the 
leaves of the tree shall not fade” (cp. Ezekiel’s prophecy ‘“‘it shall be for 
medicine ”’) is interpreted by ‘ Barnabas’ in the sense that “every one of 
your words, going forth from your mouth in faith and love, shall help many 
to conversion and hope.” 

8 Cp. Matt. 312, “he will burn up the chaff with unquenchable fire,” with 
Ps. 14, ‘the ungodly are not so, but like the chaff, which the wind driveth 
away.” 


166 ORPHEUS THE FISHER 


—words that invite combination with Ezekiel’s vision 
by mention of the Arabah, the desert salt land around 
the Dead Sea, and comparison with the sermon of John 
by the symbolic contrast of the barren unfruitful shrub 
with the fruit-bearing tree. | 

Supposing then, with great probability, that 
Exsckiel 47 was the main point of departure for the 
development of the symbolism underlying John’s 
regenerating baptism of repentance, we cannot help 
asking ourselves, whether the doctrine of the Baptist 
and his school should have neglected another prominent 
feature of this prophecy—I mean vv. 9 and 10: 

Wheresoever the river shall come everything that moveth 
shall live; and there shall be a very great multitude of fish, 
because these waters shall come thither . . . and it shall come 
to pass [that] the fishers shall stand by it from En-Gedi unto 
En-Eglaim; they’ shall be a [place] to spread forth nets [for all 
fish] according to their kinds. 

Want of space prevents an exhaustive discussion 
of what Ezekiel himself may have meant by these 
words. It is of course quite possible to understand 
them with C. H. Toy (Enc. Bibl. 1466, §14) in their 
most literal sense. But, on the other hand, it is pretty 
certain that almost from the first there were readers 
of this chapter who would not by any means be 
satisfied with a literal interpretation of this high- 
spirited passage. Unfortunately, owing to the un- 
favourable attitude of the Rabbis towards the allegorical 
exegesis of the scriptures, the Pre-Christian specula- 
tions of the Palestinian Dorshé Reshuméth? on 
Ezekiel 47.10 have not been handed down to us. It is 
not impossible, however, to reconstruct them from 


* Sc. En-Gedi and En-Eglaim, or rather the spots where the water of 
these two potent and still extant springs flow into the Dead Sea. 


2 Cp. above, p. 149 n. 3. 


THE FISHES IN EZEKIEL XLVII 167 


what we have, namely from the commentaries of the 
Christian Fathers, by eliminating the specially Chris- 
tian features of their symbolism, while retaining those 
elements which clearly correspond to genuinely Jewish 
ideas. 

To begin with Theodoret’s Commentary on Ezekiel. 
The Church Father refers the prophecy about the 
mystic stream to the sacrament of baptism, by saying 
“all those that are washed in the redeeming waters 
will reach salvation.” He means of course the Chris- 
tian baptism, but the words could quite as well be 
used by a disciple of John, since the latter’s baptism 
is intended to save the repentant and regenerate new 
Israel from the ‘ wrath to come.’ Theodoret continues : 

Ezekiel says also that the water will be full of fish and 
frequented by many fishermen: for many are they who through 
these waters will be fished for redemption, and numerous are they 
to whom the catching of this booty is entrusted. . . . And 
Hzekiel says also that the multitude of fish will not resemble the 
number contained in a river but in the largest ocean; for the new 
people’ will not be equal in number to the old, but similar to the 
ocean of the nations, and it will fill the habitable world. 

Equally Jerome’ identifies the mystic stream 
running down from the threshold of Ezekiel’s temple 
to the desert with the pure water of regeneration, 
which God promises to sprinkle over Israel in Ezekiel 
364 This water signifies, as he says several times, the 
grace of God to be obtained through baptism. By the 
fishermen, however, that stand on the river’s banks the 
same fishers are meant, to whom the Lord Jesus said, 
“‘T will make you to become fishers of men,” of whom 


1 Migne, Patrol. Gr. Ixxxi. c. 1244 B. 
2 Cp. the ‘ready people prepared for the Lord’ by John in Lk. 17. 
Theodoret means, of course, the New Israel of the Universal Christian Church. 


8 Comm. in Ezek. 47, Migne, Patrol. Lat. xxv. c. 467, 472ff. 
4 Cp. above, p. 181 n. 3. 


168 ORPHEUS THE FISHER 


we also find written in Jeremiah [16%]: “Behold I 
shall send many fishers that shall fish you.” 


And numerous species, nay kinds of fishes, will live in the 
once dead sea.2 All these different fishes . . were drawn from 
the water at the bidding of the Lord by Peter, and their number 
was 153. Indeed those who have written about the nature and 
properties of animals, those who have studied the Halieutica (fish- 
ing-books) as they are called, both in Latin and Greek—among 
whom the most learned is the Cilician poet Oppianus—say that 
there are exactly 153 kinds of fish,* and all these kinds were 
caught by the Apostles. 


Similarly in the Oriental Church, Ephraim Syrus* 
says—obviously alluding to Ezekiel 4710: 


Out of the stream, whence the fishers came up, He was baptised 
and came up, Who encloseth all things in His net. 


How popular this allegorical interpretation of 
Ezekiel 470 must have been with early Christianity at 
large, can be seen from the fact that in more than one 
sanctuary Christian artists have represented the mystic 
Jordan full of aquatic animals and fishes and peopled 
with the angelic fishermen of Matt. 1847-49.° 


* Cp. on this verse above pp. 80ff. 2 Cp. the ‘ocean of nations,’ 
that is ‘ of pagans,’ in the above-quoted commentary of Theodoret. 


8 Unhappily this quotation cannot be verified. The copious literature of 
ancient fishing-books mentioned in Athenzeus is entirely lost, except the poem 
of Oppian, which does not contain anything of this kind and is indeed not 
really quoted by Jerome as his authority. The Church Father merely wants 
to ‘show off’ with the one name of a ‘ halieutic’ author that he knows. The 
precious scrap of information itself is probably derived through some—may 
be even Christian—bestiary from another fishing-book. I need hardly say 
that my explanation of the number 153 in Jn. 21 (above, pp. 118ff.) is by 
no means inconsistent with this, as I believe, quite trustworthy tradition, 
viz, that some ancient, and then of” course pythagorising, fishing-book 
estimated the total number of existing fish-species at 158. If the author of 
Jn. 21 knew this theory, he meant to say 2IMQN + IXOYD match with 
all the different kind of ‘fishes’ caught in the world-embracing net of the 
Church. * Select Works of Ephraim, Morris, p. 16. 


_ * Op. the frieze running round the edge of the mosaic in the apse of S. 
Giovanni'in Laterano (reprod. Wickhoff, Roman Art, London, 1900, p. 169) 
executed by Jacopo Torriti at the bidding of Pope Nicolas IV., the original 
of the picture being a mosaic of the 4th century B.c.; a similar frieze is in S. 
Maria Maggiore, and there exist drawings of lost mosaics of the cupola of S. 
Costanza —also from the 4th century, where like motives are displayed (cp. 
Eugéne Miintz, Revue Archéol., Nouy. Série, vol. xxxvi., 1878, pp. 272ff.). 


XXII. 


THE FISH-SYMBOLISM IN THE RABBINIC 
LITERATURE. 


Now, with the one exception of Jerome’s explanation 
for the phrase “ according to their kinds ” in Ezek. 4710 
with regard to Jn. 21u, the whole above-quoted allegor- 
isms are purely Jewish. I have already pointed out? 
that a spiritual interpretation of the ‘living water ’— 
the main subject of Hzekiel’s vision—is frequently 
met with in later Jewish literature, and is indeed 
typical of the later strata of the Old Testament itself. 
As to the fishes representing the ‘new’ or regenerate 
righteous ‘ Israel of God,’ everybody would have believed 
until quite lately that the comparison presupposes the 
well-known fish-symbolism of the early Christian 
Church. Fortunately, Dr. J. Scheftelowitz of Cologne, 
a younger Jewish scholar of uncommon erudition in 
comparative religions, has recently’ succeeded in show- 
ing from hitherto neglected Rabbinic documents, that 
the fish living and breathing in the midst of the waters 
was quite a common symbol for the faithful Israelite, 
brought up and moving his whole life long in the 
waters of the sacred Law, as early at least as in the 
time of Rabban Gamaliel the Elder, who was the 
teacher of Paul and consequently a contemporary both 
of Jesus and of John. 


1 Cp. above p. 149, n. 2. 
2 Arch. f. Rel. Wiss., 1911, xiv. 2ff., 321ff. 
169 


170 ORPHEUS THE FISHER 


Commenting upon the comparison in Habakkuk 
1u, which I have analysed in a previous chapter,’ Rabbi 
Shemuel (beginning of the 8rd century A.D.) says for 
example : 

Therefore are the sons of man compared here with the fishes: 
as the fishes of the sea die as soon as they come on the dry land, 
thus men perish as soon as they depart from the holy doctrine and 
the holy precepts. 

Elsewhere we read: 

The fishes grow up in the water, yet whenever a drop falls 
down from above they snap at it greedily, as if they could not 
swallow enough water from their water. Exactly so Israel grows 
up in the water of the sacred doctrine; but whenever they hear a 
new interpretation of the Scriptures, they accept it eagerly, as if 
until then they had not heard any words of sacred teaching from 
their own fountain of water. 


In the age of Hadrian this comparison must have 
been commonly understood, since it is applied as a 
matter of course by R. Akiba. At a time when the 
public exercise of the Jewish cult was severely pro- 
hibited, R. Akiba, being about to initiate his Jewish 
pupils into the study of the Law, was asked by one 
Pappos, whether he did not dread the Roman authori- 
ties. He answered with the following parable: 


The fox saw the fishes swim to and fro in a river from fear of 
the fishermen’s nets. He advised them to avoid the dangers of 
the water by coming up on the dry land, where the foxes would 
live in peace with them, as their ancestors had done in the days of 
Paradise. But the fish declined the proposition, saying that if 
they were threatened by persecutions even in the water how much 
more should they dread the dry land, which means certain death 
to them. And the same fate, said Akiba, would await the Jews, if 
they abandoned the life-giving water of the holy Torah. 


And the famous commentary Bere3ith Rabba (ch. 
97) reads : 


' Cp. above, pp. 80 and 82. 


RABBINIC FISH-SYMBOLISM 171 


As the Israelites are innumerable, even so are the fishes; as 
the Israelites will never die out on the earth, the fishes will never 
die out in their element. Only the son of a man named ‘ Fish’ 
could lead Israel into the Land of Promise, namely Joshuah ben- 
Nun (=Fish), a descendant of J oseph.' 


The great favour which the comparison of Israel 
with fishes must have enjoyed can be estimated by the 
fact that even the Targumim’ have been influenced. by 
its constant use. The blessing of Jacob on his grand- 
sons Hphraim and Manasseh runs simply (Gen. 481) : 
“They shall be greatly multiplied in the midst of the 
earth.” ‘To multiply’ is here daghah, which is intim- 
ately connected with ddgh, daghah (‘fish’) and daghan 
(‘corn’). This coincidence is intentionally emphasised 
by the version of the Targum Onkelos, where the blessing 
is rendered: “ May they be multiplied even as the fishes 
of the sea.’ On this version alone rests the Rabbinic 
theory’ that the Israelites as descendants of Joseph are 
protected for ever against the ‘evil eye,’ because Jacob 
has called them ‘fishes of the sea’; for as the fishes 
are covered by the water (= the Law) and therefore 
proof against the evil eye, even so are the Israelites 
protected against every such influence. In the 
kabbalistic book Haz-Zohar there is a significant story 


1 Cp. I. Chron. 720-27. The descent from Joseph is mentioned here, because 
the Messiah, the re-born Joshuah, or—in the Greek version—Jesus, will again 
be a ‘ ben-Joseph’ ; in order to lead Israel into the Messianic Blessed Land, he 
will also have to be a ‘ ben-Nwm,’ a‘ Son of Fish’ or—quite as bar-nasha, ‘son 
of man,’ is in many places equivalent to the simple word ‘ maa,’ as ben-bakar 
is ‘an ox,’ ben-zd’'n ‘a sheep’—a ‘Fish’ himself. This is beyond doubt the 
ultimate reason why Jesus the Nazarene is called the ‘Fish’ im the early 
Christian mystery-language. Indeed the very Greek form Iésows for Joshuah 
is only chosen in order to imitate by the mystic pséphos 888, obtained through 
this spelling (cp. above, p. 120 note), the equally peculiar Hebrew gematria 
of Jehashuah ben-Nun=555, and thus to make the name of the future Messiah 
really “a name which is above all names” (Phil. 29). Cp. Arch. Rel. Wiss. 
xvi. 803. 

2 The old Aramzan translations of the Scriptures, that were made for 
the purpose of public reading in the synagogues after the hieratic Hebrew 
language itself was no longer generally understood in Palestine. 


8 See the testimonia collected by J. Scheftelowitz, l.c., p. 345f. 


172 ORPHEUS THE FISHER 


of an astonishingly learned child who is being greatly 
admired by certain Rabbis. The mother therefore 
implores them to look on the boy with a favourable 
eye. He himself however says: 

I do not mind the evil eye, for Iam the son of a mighty fish, 
and fishes are proof against the evil eye. For Israel is compared 
in the blessing of Jacob to the fishes of the sea. 

Even the Zodiacal Fishes are believed to signify 
that neither evil eye nor any star has power over 
Israel. 

The pious students of the sacred Law are with 
special frequency compared to fishes: 

As a fish delights in water, even so a master of scripture 
continually dives into the streams of balm, etc.’— 

The pupils of Rabbi Gamaliel the Elder were divided into four 
kinds of fish: into clean and unclean fish from the Jordan 
(=brackish water fishes) and fish from the Ocean, according to 
their low or high descent, and to the degree of their learning and 
quickness of understanding.” 


All this new material which Dr. Scheftelowitz has 
placed at our disposal, enables us at last to prove an 
hypothesis which the present writer put forward as 
early as in 1908.2. If the Baptist’s comparison of the 
righteous with fruit-bearing trees is based on Hzekiel 
472, if he baptises in the ‘unclean’ Jordan water, 
because of his conviction derived from the same 
chapter, that the waters of the Arabah and the Dead 
Sea are healed in the Messianic time through a mystic 
influx from the sanctuary of God, i.e. through the 
living Word of God, through “righteousness flowing 
down like a stream” (Amos 5) in order to restore the 
pure Law all over Israel and to heal even the worst 
and most hopeless corruption of those who are cursed 


' Midrash Tanhuma to Deut. 532. 2 Aboth de R. Nathan, ch. 40. 
5 Cp. ‘ Die Taufe des Johannes,’ Siidd. Monatshefte, 1908, nr. 12. 


RABBINIC FISH-SYMBOLISM 178 


with the curse of living in the salt land of the Arabah 
(Jeremiah 17;)—then he could not avoid interpreting 
also the numerous fish in Hzekiel’s life-giving stream, 
as signifying, according to popular Rabbinic symbolism, 
the truly pious Israelites in their life-element, the 
sacred waters of the divine Torah. 

If it was really the main idea of John’s baptism! 
that not only the Gentiles but also the sons of Israel 
have to ‘turn back’ from the ways of wickedness, and 
regain their forsaken birthright as sons of Abraham, by 
being reborn through a regenerating baptism as true 
Israelites, because they “have abandoned God the 
fountain of living water” (Jeremiah 23)—what could 
be more natural than that John should have called the 
unregenerate pagan-like Jews an ‘offspring of vipers,” 
reserving the honorific name of ‘fishes’ for those 
repentant ones that have been ‘reborn from the 
water”? even as Tertullian* contrasts his adversary, 
the heretic woman, as a ‘ viper’ with the little innocent 
‘ fishes ’ swimming in the baptismal font of the Church ? 

As the serpent can slough his old skin, so should 
the ‘ generation of vipers’ strip themselves of their old 
ego by drowning it in the Jordan; then—just as the 
Rabbis believed that fish can originate spontaneously 
(through what we would call a generatio equivoca) in 
water,°—would they be reborn as true Israelites, as 
fishes, who could henceforth live in water, in “ the place 
of life for the fish,’ that is to say in the true Law of God. 


1 Cp. above, ch. XVII. 2 Cp. above, p. 142. 

8 Jn. 85. In the formula “reborn from the water and the spirit,” the 
second half is the characteristic Christian modification of the Baptist’s 
theory. Cp. p. 189 n. 5. 

4 Cp. above, p. 71. 

5 Treatise Chulin 68b., Midras Rabba to Lament., p. 58. Cp. also the 
so-called Jozer prayer for the New Moon Sabbath. 

6 Aboda Zara, 40a. 


174 ORPHEUS THE FISHER 


As to the many fishermen standing on the banks of the 
Messianic river, John has certainly explained them, as 
Jerome did a few centuries afterwards, as identical with 
the Messianic fishers and hunters of Jeremiah 1615 and 
with the powerful fishers in Habakkuk 1:;s—those 
same idolatrous ones, who vainly try, by means of a 
heathenish magical rite,’ to discharge their sins on the 
innocent fish in the streams of their land: God will 
make them like the fish of the sea, by overflowing them 
with the mystic water from his sanctuary; after that 
he will send the fishers, who “ take all of them with the 
hook, who catch them in their net and gather them in 
their drag,” the fishers, who shall fish them from out of 
the ‘ ocean of the heathen,’ from out of all the lands 
whither the Divine wrath has driven them. For they 
are not hid from God’s face, neither is their iniquity 
concealed from His eyes. 

And the final result of all these disquisitions ? 
We know that Jesus underwent the baptism of John, 
and that he never thought of instituting another 
different baptism of his own. We know further that 
no authentic saying of Jesus connects the figure of the 
fish or the fisherman with the baptismal rite instituted 
by John. On the other hand, no Rabbinic saying has 
ever been discovered in which the Pharisaic ‘ baptism 
of the Proselytes’ is described as a ‘fishing of man.’ 
If therefore we find as early as in Matt. 17«—that is 
under the reign of Domitian—the newly baptised 
Christian spoken of as ‘a fish that cometh up from the 


1 Cp. above, p. 141 n. 1, 


* See the proofs offered by Conybeare in the Zeitschr. f. N. T. Wiss., 
1901, p. 275ff., for the theory that the original text of Matt. 2819 was only 
"2 So ye Lay and teach all nations in my name,” and did not contain the 
manifestly later words ‘‘ baptising them in the name of the Fath 
Son and the Holy Ghost.” ‘ ones 


RABBINIC FISH-SYMBOLISM 175 


water, there is, as far as I can see, only one explana- 
tion for this fact and for the whole fish-symbolism in 
the Christian initiatory rite: namely, that this allegori- 
cal way of speaking has been taken over, together with the 
baptism of repentance itself, from the school or rather sect 
of John into the ‘ Christian’ Church by such teachers 
as Apollos from Alexandria, Andrew bar-Jonah, the 
brother of Simon Peter, and John bar-Zabdai, who 
are represented in our sources (Acts 182, Jn. 135), as 
having been disciples of the Baptist before they dis- 
covered the ‘mightier one,’ who was to come after 
John, in the humble person of Jesus the Nazarene. 


1 Above, pp. 93-96. 


XXIII. 


THE MESSIANIC ‘FLOOD OF JUSTICE.’ 


In his last vision of the restored sanctuary on 
Mount Zion, Ezekiel beholds drops of water oozing out 
from under the threshold of the temple. Like a small 
runlet these drops trickle down from under the right 
side of the house on the right or auspicious side of the 
altar; then they drip through under the enclosing walls 
of the temple-precinct, and a thousand cubits farther 
they reach already over the ankles of one who passes 
through them. Again a thousand steps further down 
the seer crosses the stream a second time; but now 
the waters are up to the loins. Still another thousand 
cubits further the river has swollen to such a size that 
the waters—waters to swim in—could no more be 
passed over. With this the description of the wonder- 
fully rapid growth of the stream stops abruptly; but if 
the reader’s imagination follows these significant sug- 
gestions to the end, the image of a flood will inevitably 
rise before his spiritual eye. 

We can safely suppose that the prophecy drifts 
quite intentionally into this current of ideas; for a 
very old Canaanite legend—parallels to which are to 
be found all over Palestine and Syria'—relates that in 
the great Noahic cataclysm the fountains of the cosmic 


1 Cp. Gaster in Folklore, ii. p. 204, Feuchtwang in Monatschr. f. Gesch. 
u. Wiss. des Judentwms, liv. pp. 535-552, 718-729; Wellhausen, Reste 
arab. Heidentuwms, p. 103; Clermont-Ganneau, Archaeological Researches in 
Palestine, London, 1896, pp. 287-289. 


Ba 176 


THE MESSIANIC FLOOD 177 


deep broke forth from under the ‘eben shethiya,’ or 
foundation-stone of the world, which afterwards be- 
came the foundation-stone of the Jerusalemic temple. 
Moreover Rabbinic traditions know of other instances 
when the waters, locked beneath this sacred seal of the 
universe, broke loose and had to be stayed by the mercy 
of God, so as to prevent a new universal destruction of 
mankind. At every Feast of Tabernacles a special 
libation of water was poured on the sacred rock, in 
order to ensure, by imitative magic, the necessary 
*“ moisture of the deep that coucheth below” for the 
land of Israel, according to the popular belief that the 
rock on top of Mount Zion could withhold or supply at 
will the waters of the primeval abyss. Thus it be- 
comes obvious that Hzekiel expected the parching 
drought, which causes the sterility of a certain region 
in the midst of the elsewhere blessed land, to be 
definitely removed, by means of a new flood, breaking 
forth in the Messianic future from the rock-hewn 
threshold of God’s house’—a belief which was in perfect 
harmony with the wide-spread Oriental idea that the 
end of the present gon will be marked by a cosmic 
inundation. It is well known that other prophets also’ 
expected a beneficent result from this final outpouring 
of water, at least for Israel, while some® thought of it 
as of an ultimate divine chastisement after the manner 
of the first cataclysm. 

As the son of a priest of the sanctuary of Jerusalem, 
the Baptist, whose teaching was so deeply influenced 
by the study of Hzekiel’s forty-seventh chapter,* must 
have been intimately acquainted with the traditions 


1 Cp. above, pp. 148ff. 2 Joel 418; Zech. 148; Od. Sol. 67#.; Rev. 22. 


3 Nah. 18; Is. 1022f., 2815, ist, ete. Cp. H. Gressmann, Urspr. der israél.- 
jiid. Eschatologie (Gottingen, 1905), pp. 64ff., 160ff., 173. 


4 Cp. above, pp. 180f., 148ff., and ch. XXI. 
M 


178 ORPHEUS THE FISHER 


about the Noahic flood rising from the cave under the 
sacred rock on Mount Moriah. Consequently he can- 
not have failed to realise that’ Ezekiel meant to describe 
what could be appropriately called the initial stage of 
the Messianic flood, especially since this feature of the 
prophet’s vision agrees perfectly with all the rest of 
John’s ideas about his baptism, as we have tried to 
analyse them in the previous chapters. 

Indeed, among the many biblical passages that 
seem to have determined his own spiritual or mystic 
interpretation of Ezekiel’s stream,’ the most influential 
appears to have been Isaiah 10zt.: 

The remnant shall return, the remnant of Jacob, to the mighty 
God. For though thy people Israel be as the sand of the sea, a 
remnant [only] of them shall return. For consumption is decreed 
—a flood of justice” For the Lord of Hosts shall make an 
extermination, even determined, in the midst of all the land.’ 

A passionate seeker, searching—as John did—the 
scriptures, in order to learn the decisions of the Lord 
about the impending final judgment of Israel, and to 
discover the possible ways of escape from the ‘ wrath to 
come,’ must have concluded from the above-quoted 
prophecy of Isaiah, that God had decreed a thorough 
separation of the righteous ‘remnant’ of Israel from 
the great multitude of wrong-doers, by means of a 
‘flood of justice,’ which should bring about pitiless 
extermination for the great majority of stubborn 
trespassers, but a salutary return to Jahvé and an 
expiation of previous faults or defilements for the 
‘chosen’ remnant. The unavoidable comparison of 


1 Cp. above, p. 149 n. 2. 


* ‘ Shotef s¢dakah,’ lit. ‘ flowing justice’; cp. in Is. 2815, 18, the expression 
‘shot shotef’ the ‘ flowing scourge,’ a metaphoric name for the deluge, which 
recurs also in the Koran(8912). 


* The same sentence recurs in Js, 2822, and that too with reference to a 
future deluge, 


THE MESSIANIC FLOOD 179 


Isaiah 102, and kindred prophecies about a final destruc- 
tive deluge, with Ezekiel 471«, and the other foretellings 
of a beneficent Messianic outpouring of living, purifying 
waters over Israel,’ must have confirmed John in his 
idea, that the same flood would mean at once a miracu- 
lous cleansing, nay a regeneration and final salvation, 
for those repentant ones who reverently submit to 
God’s decree by a voluntary drowning of their old 
sinful self, and a sudden definitive annihilation for the 
impenitent ungodly ones who scorn the prophet’s 
inspired preaching and his God-given ‘baptism of 
repentance.’ The former would be saved ‘through the 
waters,’ would pass unharmed through the Jordan, the 
boundary river of the ‘ promised land,’ into the ‘ kingdom 
of heaven,’ while the others, as enemies of God, would 
be overwhelmed without any pardon by the ‘ flowing 
scourge,’ the stream of living water running down from 
Jahvé’s sanctuary on Mount Zion, even as the Egyptian 
army was drowned in the same Red Sea which had 
offered a safe passage to the God-guided children of 
Israel. 

The best proof that this was indeed the line of 
thought followed by the Baptist and his school is 
offered by the fact that the Christian Church, which 
almost incontinently took over John’s ‘baptism of 
repentance,’ appears to be perfectly well acquainted, 
first with the typological relation between the Noahic 
flood and the baptismal immersion, and secondly with 
the spiritual equivalence of the baptismal water and 
the Red Sea, through which the Israelites had to pass 
into the Land of Promise. As to the latter, the reader 


will remember 1 Cor. 101,2?: 


1 Cp. above, p. 177 n. 2. 
2 Of later witnesses cp. Ambros., Migne, P.L. xiv. 867; Sedulius, xix. 567 ; 
Augustin, xxxv. 1728; xxxvi. 917; xxxvii. 1087, 1411, 1420 and many others. 


180 ORPHEUS THE FISHER 


Brethren, I would not that ye should be ignorant, how that 
all our fathers . . . all passed through the sea and were all 
baptised . . . in the sea. +, 

The former is stated in the still more fundamental 
passage 1 Peter 32,' where the author says: 

The long-suffering of God waited in the days of Noah while 
the ark was a preparing, wherein few [that is eight souls] were 
saved through the water, the like figure whereunto’ baptism doth 
also now save us—not the putting away of the filth of the flesh, 
but the prayer to God for a good conscience.’ 

The meaning is that in the days of Noe the sin- — 
fulness of mankind had reached its culminating point. 
Even the few righteous souls who survived the deluge 
in the ark, were forced by God to pass through the 
waters into safety. But while for them the flood meant 
only a salutary purification—owing to the long-suffering 
of God, who after all did not allow the waters to increase 
too quickly for the sake of those few pious ones—the 
impenitent rest of humanity were utterly exterminated. 
In the same way the repentant who undergo John’s 
baptism in the Jordan, are saved ‘through the water’ 
of it; a final flooding and symbolic drowning (Coloss. 
2:2)’ is not spared them, but after they have thus sub- 
mitted to the decree of God, they are sure to escape the 
real drowning, which is to be the ultimate fate of those 
who refuse to ‘ justify God by being baptised.’ 


1 The deluge as a‘ type’ of baptism will also be found with Optat., Migne, 
P.L. xi. 894; Augustin, xlii. 268; Fulgent., Ixv. 543; Gregor. Magn. Ixxviii. 
er Bruno Carthus. cliii. 414; Rupert Tuit. clxvii. 340 ; Joannes Beleth, ccii. 

* There is a Rabbinic legend (Genes. r., sect. Noah, vii. 7; Sohar, i. 68 p 
(ed. de Pauly) vol. i. p. 404 (that even Noe and his family were surprised, when 
at last the flood came, by its rapid growth, and carried by the waves into 
the ark. 

* Namely, ‘unto the water of the flood.’ 

* Cp. Lk. 111, on the special prayers—referring of course to the rite of 
baptism—which were taught by John to his disciples. 


* On baptism as a symbolic death see also Anselm of Canterbury, Migne, 
P.L, clviii. 544, or Hincmar of Rheims, cxxvi. 105. 


THE MESSIANIC FLOOD 181 


Thus the rite of John appears to be really what 
Albert Schweitzer’ has first proclaimed it to be,—namely 
a purely eschatological sacrament, a ceremony, which 
is expected to offer a guarantee against the ‘wrath to 
come,’ by anticipating mimically—if this expression be 
tolerated—one of its main manifestations, namely the 
final deluge foretold by the prophets. 


1 Von Reimarus zw Wrede (Strassburg, 1906), pp. 873ff. 


~ 


XXIV. 


THE ‘FISHES’ EXEMPT FROM THE DELUGE. 


THE essential correlation between the original 
‘baptism of repentance’ and the ‘flood of justice’ of 
the dreaded Last Days—however much it may have 
been obscured, in the course of that fatal historic 
development which led to evolving an established, 
self-centred, universal Christian Church, out of an 
informal, narrow Jewish circle of Messianic visionaries 
—offers moreover an unexpected clue to the eschatolo- 
gical significance, inherent not only in the Baptist’s 
regenerative rite itself, but also in the fish-symbolism 
connected: with it, as it has been studied in chapter 
XXII. 

The connecting link between this fish-symbolism 
and the eschatological ideas about the final deluge is to 
be found in an apparently insignificant detail of the 
Mosaic flood-story. As the Rabbis have observed,' the 
waters in Noe’s time destroyed “all flesh wherein there 
is the breath of life from under heaven,” according to 
the words of Gen. Tz “all that was on the dry, died”; 
no extermination, however, was decreed for the fishes 
that were in the sea. Indeed, as a matter of course, they 
could not have come to harm through an inundation 
of the earth. 

Whatever explanation may have been given for 
the alleged exception of the fishes from the universal 


' Sanh, fol. 108a, Seb. fol. 118b, Kidd. fol. 18ab, and Genesis rabba to 6,12. 
182 


THE ‘FISHES’ EXEMPT FROM THE DELUGE 183 


destruction of all flesh at the time of the first deluge, 
we can prove from the quoted texts that it was con- 
sidered as a distinctive feature of the first, watery 
cataclysm; consequently we may safely suppose that 
those allegorists, who took the ‘fishes in the water’ 
as a metaphoric phrase denoting the pious Israelites 
living in the righteousness of the Law—foremost among 
them, as we have tried to show,? John the Baptist 
himself—must have understood the sparing of the 
fishes in the primeval deluge as a prototype of the 
salvation granted to the righteous Jews in the final 
cataclysm. Of course, according to John’s peculiar 
eschatalogy, only the true repentant Israel, namely, 
those that had been ‘ reborn from the water ’ as ‘ fishes,’ 
could hope to escape the avenging flood. The ‘ fishes’ 
or baptised ones will be—as we read over and over 
again in the Christian authors*—‘ safe in the water’ ; 
they will be able to ‘perambulate the paths of the 
ocean,’ ‘to leap over the waves,’ and ‘the breakers will 
not submerge them,’ even in those terrible days when 
the whole earth will again be covered by the last 
cataclysm. 


1 The passage Kidd. f. 18ab, treats of (legally) incestuous marriages. The 
context shows that the Rabbi’s considered the deluge to have been caused in 
the main by the fact, that (Genes. 612) ‘ all flesh had corrupted its way upon 
the earth,’ viz., that in the ‘ generation of the Flood’ incestuous unions were 
common among all living beings. (Sohar (ed. de Pauly), vol.i., p. 68a.) Now 
according to the popular superstition (above p. 178 n. 5) fishes originate in 
the water without any intercourse of the sexes in any way, so that the 
denizens of the water cannot be guilty of such a crime. 


2 Above, pp. 172¢f. 


8 The popular idea was, on the contrary, that the whole nation of Israel 
was to remain untouched by the final flood. This conviction is combated as 
early as in Isaiah 285. Cp. H. Gressmann, Palaestina-Jahrbuch, 1911, p. 424. 
It rests on the belief that the land of Israel had also been left untouched by 
the primeval flood; in Hzek. 2223., the highland of Judah is called ‘a land 
that has not been cleansed nor rained upon in the day of indignation.’ The 
Talmud (Sebahim, Le.; cf. Pirké di R. Eliezer, §23) quotes this passage in 
support of the above described theory. 


4 Cp. above, pp. 72 and 1138 n. 1. 


XXV. 
THE SECOND NOE. 


Tuus John appears to play, in the great Messianic 
drama of the Last Days, the réle of the ‘just man’ who 
is to save a righteous remnant of Israel, ‘ through the 
water,’ by means of sincere repentance, even as Noah, 
the ‘just and perfect’ (sadik tomim) man of old, pre- 
served the few righteous souls in the ark through the 
deluge of his time—a feature of his ministry which is 
all the more important, because a recently discovered 
Samaritan Midrash’ proves that the Jews really 
attributed the functions of a second Noah to their 
expected Messiah. 

This most interesting text begins with a remark- 
able etymology of the peculiar technical term ‘ Ta‘eb,’ 
which is always applied to the future Redeemer in 
Samaritan writings, and must have been popular also 
in the Aramaic colloquial dialect of the ancient Pales- 
tinian Jews, although—as far as I know—it does not 
occur in any Rabbinic texts. Its literal sense is ‘ he 
that comes back’ or ‘returns,’ that is to say the 
‘returned, reincarnated or reborn? Joshuah® But our 


* Ed. by Adalbert Merx, Zeitschr. f. alt. Wiss. Beih. xvii., 1909, p. 82. 


* Josephus, Bell. Jud. iii. 85 (cp. Antigg. xviii. 13) attests that the 
Pharisees believed in a reincarnation of the just, their souls being sent afresh 
into pure bodies in the revolution of ages. This accounts us well for Herod 
Agrippa’s idea that Jesus was the reborn Baptist, as for the disciples taking 
Jesus for the reborn Elijah. See Conybeare, Myth, Magic, Morals (London, 
1909), p. 294, and above p. 159 n. 2 on Phinehas being reborn as Elias. 


® According to Merx’s most important discovery it is expressly stated in 
the Samaritan Ms. Or. 8393 of the British Museum, that the Ta‘eb will be 
called Joshwah. 


184 


THE SECOND NOE 185 


treatise understands the ‘returning one’ in that 
spiritual sense which is suggested by the frequent 
exhortation shubhwu! (Aram. tubhw !) ‘turn back!’ in 
the prophets of the Old Testament; it equates ‘ ta‘eb’ 
with ‘ sha‘eb,’ ‘he who repents,’ or even ‘he who turns 
back, makes repent’ others.' In this way the word 
Ta‘eb is made to correspond to Noham, a name given— 
obviously for the purposes of popular etymology— 
to Noe in Gen. 5,2? and which can be translated 
‘repenting.’ 

The story itself is a spiritualising variation of the 
deluge-story working on a long series of mystic word- 
plays’; while Jahvé says to Noah in Gen. 6u, “make 
thee an ark” (ébah), his order to the Ta‘eb will be 
‘make thee a conversion’ (or repentance, shubah, Aram. 
tubah). For the measures and details of the ark (¢bah) 
in Gen. 61. the Midrash substitutes the spiritual 
features of the enjoined ‘conversion’ (shubah), for the 
cubits of the ark the number of days in the ‘year of 
conversion.’ As the ark is lined (A-f-r) with pitch 
(k-f-r) within and without, the ‘repentance’ shall be 
‘expiated’ (£-f-r) inwardly and outwardly with ‘ atone- 


1 The translation T’a‘eb=Oonverter is also offered by Abu’l Fath, Merx, 
lic. p. 42. See Jew. Enc. v. 212 on the Messiah’s name Hadrah, ‘‘ because 
he leads the people to conversion.” 

2 Read with Wellhausen, De Gent. p. 38, n. 3, ‘and he called his name 
Nobam(Masoret. text‘ Noah ’),saying this same shall comfort us (yenakamenu).” 
The inconsistency of the traditional text has already preoccupied the Rabbis. 
Cp. Beresh.rabba § 25: ‘ According to R. Johanan name and explanation do 
not tally ; either he named him Noah [sc. and then we should expect another 
etymology], or he named him Nakhman”; Maimonides (Sepher-ha-Jashar, 
sect. Beresh. p. 5b, edition of Leghorn, 1870) thinks that Noah was called 
by his father Menahem (Comforter) on account of the difficulty involved in 
Gen. 529. This is most interesting, because Menahem is often mentioned 
as a Messianic name, an ‘isopséphon’ to Sema (‘Branch’), which coinci- 
dence must have been known to Zechariah, when he alluded in his prophecy, 
612 (“the man whose name is the Branco . . . shall build the temple of 
the Lord”) to Nehemiah (‘Jahvé comforts’). As to the verb ‘ndham,’ ‘ to feel 
rueful or repentant,’ cp. the dictionary of Gesenius-Buhl, s.v. 

8 This method of ‘explaining’ a text allegorically by changing single 
letters in certain words is enumerated under the name ‘ temura,’ in the long 
series of ‘legitimate’ methods of Rabbinic exegesis. 


186 ORPHEUS THE FISHER 


ment’ or ‘ propitiation,’ (k-f-r). As Noe was to put a 
‘light ’-opening (sdhar, window, lit. brightness, light) 
into the ark and to finish it above in a cube, the Ta‘eb 
will add ‘light’ or ‘ enlightenment’ to the ‘conversion’ 
by doing righteous deeds,and thus finish it ‘from above’: 
«“ And the door of the conversion shalt thou set in the 
side thereof, that is righteous and honest deeds shalt 
thou work,” etc. Where Elohim says to Noah: “ Behold 
I bring a flood of water upon the earth to destroy all 
flesh from under heaven; but with thee will I establish 
my covenant,” etc., our Midrash makes him say to the 
Messiah-Ta‘eb : 


Behold, I bring a [flood of] conversion [and] of divine favour 
(ragén) about the earth, to save Israel and to gather it from any- 
where under the sky. I shall perform my covenant, which I have 
erected with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. And thou shalt enter 
into the conversion, thou and thy house and the whole house of 
Israel with thee, and take with thee all kind of . . . praying’ 
and fasting® and purification, which thou performest, and take all 
unto thee, and it shall be for conversion for thee and for them. 
And the Ta‘eb did everything as God commanded him. 

The ark (¢*%bah) saved Noah from the flood of perdition, and the 
conversion (shubah, tubah) will save the ‘ Penitent one’ (Ta‘eb) and 
all the sons of Israel from the flood of perversion (panutha).* 


Then follows another very interesting pun on the 
Semitic word ¢-b-) for ‘ark,’ which can only be under- 
stood on the ground of belief that the Ta‘eb—besides 
being a second Noe—was first of all a new Joshuah. In 
the first character he was to save Israel by taking it 


1 Cp. above p. 180, n. 4. 
2 Cp. Matt. 1118, on the Baptist, who neither ate nor drank. 


® The ‘ panutha’ is the present world of wickedness. With the phrase 
‘the flood of the panutha,’ cp. the ‘ocean of wickedness’ from which the 
divine Fisher draws forth the neophytes in the hymn concluding the 
Paedagogus by Clement of Alexandria. Jerome in Ezek. 47: “All kinds of 
men are drawn forth from the sea of this (present) world” ; Ambrosius, 


Hexuem. V6s: “O man . . . the floods of this world will not 
submerge thee,” etc. 


THE SECOND NOE 187 


‘through’ the waters into the ‘ark,’ or mystically into 
the conversion ; while in the second he was to lead it 
through the Jordan into the realm of promise,’ or 
mystically into the kingdom of heaven. This is ex- 
pressed in our Midrash by substituting for the word 
fark’ (¢ebsh) in Gen. 7, (“Come thou and thy whole 

house into the ark’) the phrase ('éréz) t;bah, ‘the good 
land’: 


And Elohim said to the Ta‘eb: Come thou and thy whole 
house into the good land, for thee have I seen righteous before me 
in this generation. Out of the whole Israel, of the clean ones 
myriads shalt thou take with thee, the male and the female to 
keep seed alive upon the face of all the earth. And it came to pass 
in the year 6000° (cp. Gen. 76) that the flood of the cursed won 
(or ‘ of perdition,’ panutha) came upon the earth, and the Ta‘eb 
and his sons and the sons of Israel went into the < conversion > 
and [thus] into the good land in view of the [rising] flood of 
perdition, And myriads and myriads came to the Converter (or 
Rueful one—Sha‘eb), to the conversion and the good land, as 
Elohim had promised to Moses. 


The deciding influence that was exercised on the 
Messianic movements among the Jews at the beginning 
of our era, by the main ideas which we find expressed in 
this newly discovered Samaritan Midrash, can best be 
seen and appreciated in the well-known story’ of 
Theudas’ revolt. When Cuspius Fadus was procurator 
of Judea, a certain ‘conjurer’ (goés), Theudas by name, 
persuaded a great number of people—about four hun- 


1 Cp. also above, p. 183 n. 3, the belief in an immunity of the land of 
Israel against the flood. Besides, the reader will remember that Joshuah 
is the ‘Son of Nun,’ that is ‘the Fish’ (above, p. 171 n. 1), while on the 
other hand in the Indian flood-story Manu ig saved by a fish—most pro- 
bably a reflection of the Babylonian fish- and water-god Ea who saves 
Hasisatra from the deluge sent by Bel. 

2 According to Sanh. 97a, Epistle of Barnabas 15, the whole duration of 
the world is 7,000 years; with the year 6,000 begins the millennium or 
Messianic reign. 

® Josephus, Antigg. 20. 5.1, § 97f.; cp. Acts 536. 


188 ORPHEUS THE FISHER 


dred—to take all their earthly possessions with them 
and to follow him to the river Jordan; ‘for he told 
them,’ as Josephus says, ‘that he was a prophet,’ or— 
as the still more significant version in Acts has it, ‘he 
gave himself out to be somebody’—meaning of course 
the new Joshuah, or in the Septuagint Greek the expected 
‘Jesus.’ In this quality he would perform the charac- 
teristic miracle of the ‘Joshuah,’ that is, divide at the 
word of command the river, and thus provide a dry 
passage through it for the sons of Israel. The unfor- 
tunate Theudas must have felt quite confident that if 
he thus tempted the long-suffering of God, he would 
really succeed ‘in storming the kingdom of heaven,” 
in bringing about the prophesied Messianic reign and 
in defeating the enemies of God’s chosen people. 
Destiny, or rather the wisdom of the Roman policy, 
decided against his claims. For, when Fadus saw that 
Theudas had deluded many, he did not ‘permit them 
to gain aught by their folly,’ that is to organise a 
national revolt under the guidance of the ‘new 
Joshuah,’ but sent a squadron of cavalry against them, 
which dispersed the credulous crowd and slew many of 
them, before the intended Messianic experiment could 
be carried out. 

It is obvious that the arrest and subsequent exe- 
cution of John the Baptist by order of the Tetrarch 
was primarily due—as Josephus gives us to under- 
stand—not to his private offence against the royal 
family, but to a similar suspicion to that which was 
aroused later on by the strange undertaking of Theudas. 


* The covert way of speaking of Theudas’ claim is easy to understand 
on the part of a Christian author, to whom it must have seemed an unutterable 
blasphemy. Cp. also the fanatical Egyptian Jew, who made the Zealots 
believe, that—just as in Joshwah’s miracle of Jericho—they would be able to 
overthrow the walls of Jerusalem by the sownd of their trumpets (Joseph. 
Antiqg. 26). 2 See above, p. 158 n. 1. 


THE SECOND NOE 189 


Both John’s baptism in the Jordan and the attempted 
crossing of the river under Theudas seem to be politi- 
cally entirely harmless, as long as their Messianic aims 
—which are deliberately passed over in silence by 
Josephus, although they alone can explain the quick 
and energetic reaction of the authorities against both 
Movements—are not duly taken into account. No 
harm could have been done if a man simply led a 
caravan of pilgrims through a ford of the Jordan; but 
it could have become dangerous, if by a miracle, which 
might—for all that Fadus knew about Jahvé Sebaoth— 
just as well succeed as not, the fanatic could induce 
four hundred Zealots to recognise him as the ‘new 
Joshuah,’ that is the predestined victorious leader of 
the last fight against the unbelieving foes of Israel 
And, similarly, nothing could be more inoffensive for the 
secular power than the preaching of John about the 
cleansing of body and soul by water and righteousness, 
as it is rendered in Josephus. In this case, however, 
we can fortunately check the Flavian courtier’s diplo- 
matic account, by means of the fragments of John’s 
sermon which are incorporated in the Gospels, and 
which contain the decisive eschatological cry: ‘ The 
kingdom of heaven is at hand !’—a proclamation of very 
bad augury for all the temporary holders of earthly 
power in that age. 

More than this, the parallelism of the Baptist’s 
preaching and ministry with the above-quoted Midrash 
about the second Noe leaves little if any doubt, that 
John was not only believed to be the predestined 
redeemer of the righteous remnant from the last flood, 
but that he himself considered his mission in the light 
of these same eschatological ideas about an impending 
new cataclysm and the necessity of a rapid conversion, 


190 ORPHEUS THE FISHER 


which underlie also the well-known words of Jesus in 
Matt. 24s78.= Dk. 17268. (Q) : 

As the days of Noe were, so shall also the coming of the Son 
of Man be. For as in the days that were before the flood they 
were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until 
the day that Noe entered into the ark, and knew not until the 
flood came and carried them away; so shall also the coming of the 
Son of Man be. Then shall two be in the field, the one shall be 
received! and the other left behind. Of two that are grinding at 
the [same] mill the one shall be received, and the other left 
behind. 


In the light of this comparison, especially the 
threat of the axe that is already laid to the roots of the 
unfruitful, impenitent trees, appears to be a dvrect 
menance of the Baptist against his adversaries. It is 
true that the Church has explained the axe, in John’s 
sermon, as referring to ‘the mightier one,’ so that 
either God Himself or the Messiah could be understood 
to wield the axe in the Last Judgment. If, however, 
we are right in assuming that the Baptist himself acts 
as the second Noe, it is probably his own axe which he 
hints at; for in all the later traditions about the 
flood, the beginning of the last stage of the tragedy is 
marked by Noe’s beginning to fell the timber for the ark. 
Consequently this simile of John’s could be understood 
as a covert hint, that the prophet was ready to give up 
preaching at any moment for a more active hastening 
of the ‘ Kingdom of God,’ by taking up arms at the head 
of the ‘ regenerate’ Israel against those that withstood 
the coming of the longed-for Messianic theocracy. 


1 Se. ‘by the Son of Man into the ark,’ that is into the ‘ conversion’ and 
salvation. 


2 Cp. the references, in the Jew. Enc. ix. 820, and above, p. 184 n. 1, 
to an Arabian tradition that, before the cataclysm, people mocked at Noe 
for having become a carpenter—the Messianic carpenter of course !|—after 
having been a prophet. 


THE SECOND NOE 191 


Kach impenitent ‘barren’ tree that would thus be cut 
off by the axe of the second Noe, would mean a beam 
more for the ark of salvation that was to save Israel 
from the final deluge. Small wonder then if the most 
prominent of the foes whom the Baptist had already 
singled out for the prophesied ‘ cutting off,’ by a violent 
attack on his private life, thought it better—as 
Josephus has it—to get John out of the way in good 
time, before he could raise the people to open revolt, 
than to run the risk of things coming to the worst, and 
being forced to repent when it would be too late! 


XXVI. 


THE TRIPLE BAPTISM AND THE THREE 
ELEMENTARY WORLD CATASTROPHES 
OF. THE LAST DAYS. 


THE Samaritan text which has been discussed in 
the last chapter identifies the second Noe with the 
Ta‘eb or—to use the familiar term—with the Messiah. 
John’s sermon, however, proves that in spite of his 
conviction of being the reborn ‘ Repentant’ or ‘ Con- 
verter’ Noham, he did not believe himself to be the 
Messiah, the final Redeemer of Israel. A stronger one 
than he was to come after him, and to finish, with 
‘pneuma’ and fire, what the Baptist had begun with 
water. 

It is true, that we have two obviously inconsistent 
versions of this important prophecy, since Mark 1x: 

I indeed have baptised you with water, but he shall baptise 
you with the Holy Ghost— 
does not speak of fire at all. Critics of high rank? 
have even supposed that this shorter text is the only 
authentic rendering of a once independent utterance 
of the Baptist. They assume, that when this saying 
was arbitrarily inserted by a later narrator into the 
sermon, the fragments of which are preserved in the 


* 'T. K. Cheyne, Enc. Bibl. 2500 ahs following Bakhuyzen, Toepassing 
van de conjecturaal Kritieck, 1880, p. 1198. 


192 


THE BAPTISM OF FIRE 193 


third chapters of both Matthew and Luke, it was arti- 
ficially linked to vv. 10 and11: ‘... . cast the barren 
trees into the fire... burn the chaff with wnquench- 
able fire .. .’ by adding the words ‘and with fire’ to the 
prophecy about the impending baptism in the Holy 
Spirit. 

The reverse of this hypothesis is true; the foretold 
baptism in fire proved a stumbling block to the later 
Christians, because—as, in fact, all the rest of the 
Jewish eschatological expectations—it never became 
true. Origen’ for example says: 


The apostles were baptised with the Holy Ghost after the 
ascension (sci. of Jesus); but where and when they were baptised 
with fire, the scripture does not say. 


This is the reason, why ‘Mark’ restricted John’s 
prophecy to a Messianic ‘baptism with the Spirit,’ 
which could be considered as realised in the legendary 
experience of the Apostles in Acts 2 and in the ‘ gift of 
the Spirit’ through the imposition of hands? in the 
Christian baptism and confirmation rites. 

We cannot doubt therefore that the future baptism 
of fire in ‘ Matthew’s’ and ‘ Luke’s’ account of John’s 
sermon was indeed an authentic feature of the 
Baptist’s eschatology. Being accepted as such, it has 
been rightly combined by many expositors with the 
preceding similes of the burned chaff and of the barren 
trees, that are cast into the flame; it has conse- 
quently been identified with the impending judgment 
of the world by fire, as it is described in many 
picturesque prophecies of the Old Testament, and as 
it was expected by Jesus, as well as by the earliest 


1 Homil. «xiv. in Lwk., Migne, Patrol. Gr. xiii. 961. 2 The ‘ hand’ is 
the symbol of the ‘spirit.’ Cp. Is. 811: “Thus Jahvé spake to me through 
the power of the hand (=of the spirit).” See Weltenmantel, p. 188, and Clem. 
Hom. xi. 26, Recogn. vi.9: ‘‘The spirit of God as it were his hand has 
created everything.” 


N 


194 ORPHEUS THE FISHER 


Christian Church, The reader will remember that in 
Luke’s rendering of Jesus’ sermon about the Last Days 
(Q), the comparison with the age of Noe is followed, in 
the characteristic corresponsive rhythm of Oriental 
rhetoric, by the doubtlessly genuine sentence (172s) : 

Likewise also as it was in the days of Lot; they did eat, they 
drank, they bought, they sold, they planted, they builded ; but the 
same day that Lot went out of Sodom it rained fire and brimstone 
from heaven and destroyed all. Hven thus shail it be in the days 
when the Son of Man is revealed. 

Similarly in 2 Peter 80, the mention of the Noahic 
cataclysm of water will be found side by side with the 
prophecy of a future world-conflagration : 

in the water . . . the world that then was being 
overflowed with water perished. But the heavens and the earth 
which are now, by the same [divine] word are kept in store 
reserved unto fire, until the day of judgment and perdition of 
ungodly men.’ 


The author of this Epistle admitted a cosmic in- 
undation only in the past; for the future his eschatology 
was satisfied with the prospect of a universal conflag- 
ration. He follows in this respect the Rabbinic theory,’ 
that God was bound by his promise in Gen. 911.15,? not 
to bring a second deluge on the world. Since, however, 
this same passage supports quite as well the restrictive 
interpretation that God promises not to exterminate 


1 Cp. 2 Thess. 17f., “When the Lord Jesus shall be revealed . . . in 
flaming fire taking vengeance.” With this cp. Tanhwma Yelamdenw to 
Judges (towards the end), where the Messiah is expected to burn up his 
enemies with his fiery blast. 


_ > Cp. Sebahim 116a below: When the revelation took place at Mount 
Sinai and when the thick cloud, thunders and lightnings were upon the 
mountain, the people in the camp trembled. Being afraid that a new 
deluge was threatening, they sent in the absence of Moses to the seer Bileam. 
They got the answer that they were not to fear a second deluge, on account 
of God’s promise, Gen. 91. A flood of fire, however, was not impossible. See 
on the ‘fire flood’ (Rabbinic mabbul Sel 23) Bousset, Antichrist, p. 159; 
Srbyll. ii. 296, iii. 542, 689, iv. 174; Hippolyt. Ref. ix. 80. 

* “T will establish my covenant with you: neither shall all flesh be cut 
off any more by the waters of a flood, neither shall there be any more a flood 
to destroy the earth.” 


THE BAPTISM OF FIRE 195 


all flesh, and not to destroy the earth itself, by any future 
flood which He is to send, that is to say, always to spare 
a remnant of life on earth in all future world-catas- 
trophes, we shall not be astonished to see that Jesus 
and his master the Baptist believed in an ultimate 
flood as well as in an ultimate conflagration, both 
being more or less openly described in the prophets. 

To understand fully the ideas of the Baptist we shall 
only have to modify very slightly the current thesis, 
that the Messianic baptism of fire, foretold by John, is 
nothing else than the Last Judgment of humanity in 
‘the Day that cometh burning like an oven.” As his 
baptism in water is not simply identical with the final 
deluge, which is to purify the world, but a symbolic 
and, for the repentant ones, an apotropaic and protective 
anticipation of it (pp. 180f.), even so does he expect 
that the ‘ Mightier One’ coming after him will purge 
the righteous remnant of Israel, ‘like a refiner,’ in a 
baptism of fire, so that then they shall be proof as gold 
against the last flame, which is to exterminate the 
sinners—the idea being evidently based on Malachi, 313: 

Behold, I will send my messenger and he shall prepare the 
way before me .. . heislikearefiner’s fire . . . andhe 
shall sit as a refiner and purifier of silver and he shall purify the 
sons of Levi and purge them as gold and silver. 

We have seen (p. 150) that John considered—ac- 
cording to a familiar Rabbinic symbolism—/is baptism 
in the miraculously ‘vivified’ water of the Jordan 
above all as a baptism in the ‘water of the Sacred 
Law,’ in the ‘flowing righteousness’ of the Divine 
Word. A similar spiritual conception of the ‘ baptism 
in fire ? underlies the story of the first Pentecost after 

1 Malachi, 819. 2 Cp. Sohar, vol. v. p. 893 (de Pauly): ‘‘ Those who 


study the Law are purified by fire, symbolising the written, and by water 
symbolising the oral Law.” 


196 ORPHEUS THE FISHER 


the crucifixion, in Acts 2f., which is obviously intended 
to be a record of the fulfilment of John’s concluding 
prophecy. Fire descends and rests upon the chosen 
ones, but it is not the devouring fire of judgment ; 
quite on the contrary, the comparison of the narrative 
with its original model—Philo’s description of the 
revelation on Mount Sinai'—shows, that the ‘ tongues 
as of fire’ are merely a symbolism for the ‘Voice’ or 
Word of God, derived from Jeremiah 239: “Is not my 
word like as a fire?” and Isaiah 3802.3, where the 
‘tongue’ of Jahvé is said to be ‘as a devouring fire’ and 
his breath kindling ‘like a stream of brimstone.” Sup- 
posing that the interpretation of the Messianic ‘baptism 
of fire’ in Acts agrees with John’s ideas about this 
miracle of the Last Days—and why indeed should it 
not ?—we shall necessarily conclude, that the Baptist 
expected, even like Jesus (Lk. 172s), a rain of fire and 
brimstone to destroy at last the stubborn transgressors 
of the divine Law, just as had once been the fate of 
the Sodomites; but the righteous chosen ones would 
only experience a marvellous descent upon them of the 
Logos or ‘Voice’ and ‘Breath’ of God, which is, 
according to the prophets, ‘as a devouring fire’ and 

1 Philo, De Decalogo, 9 and 11; vol. ii. 185f. 188, 295, ed. Mangey ; Ph.’s 
Works, English translation by Yonge, iii., 146, etc. He says that the Law was 
given by means of God’s Voice, which spread itself abroad ; there went forth 
all over the earth an invisible sound, which became changed into flame-like 
five; the flame became articulate in the dialect to which the listeners were 
accustomed. Cp. Talm. Shabb. £.88b; Midr. Schemoth rabba, ch. 5, as quoted 
in Brandt, Hv. Gesch. p. 374 n.1. With this cp. the miracle in Acts 26, that 
every man heard those that spoke under the impulse of the fiery tongues, 
speak in his own language. The idea of a revealing ‘ Voice’ of God, which 


is thus described by Philo, is familiar to the Rabbis under the name of the 
‘ Bath Kol.’ 


2 Op. Hine. Bibl. 611: “It is probable that the Hebrews like the Greeks 
(s. Il. xiv. 415, Od. xii. 417) and the Romans (Plin. H.N. 8515) associated the 
ozonic smell which often so perceptibly accompanies lightning discharges 
with the presence of sulphur. This may help to explain the passages which 
describe the overthrow of Sodom and Gomorrha as having been brought 
about by a rain of fire and brimstone from heaven.” 


THE ‘WIND OF JUDGMENT’ 197 


‘similar to a stream of brimstone’; purged like gold 
and silver through this fire of divine grace, they will be 
proof against the destroying flames of the last cosmic 
conflagration. As the Midrash about the second Noe! 
distinguishes, in the future deluge, on the one hand a 
flood of perdition for the wicked ones, on the other 
hand a flood of divine favour (ras6n) and of conversion 
for the repentant ones, and as John, looking to cer- 
tain Old Testament prophecies, probably opposed the 
symbolic drowning in the salutary inundation caused 
by the Messianic spring from under the temple, to the 
‘wrath to come’ in the shape of a universal cataclysm, 
even so the salutary baptism of the chosen ones in the 
fiery blast of God, which is to accompany the revelation 
of John’s mightier successor, shall make them proof 
against the devouring fire of the Last Judgment.? 
Thus it remains only to see, whether the ‘ baptism 
in pnewma,” which is mentioned by John alongside of 
his own ‘washing in water’ and of the Messianic 
purgation through fire, can be explained on the same 
lines as the two other purifications. An affirmative 
answer to this question will at once appear quite 
plausible if we remember, first, that the Baptist could 
find in Isaiah 44 (cp. 5713) the prophecy, that God will 


1 Cp. above, p. 186. 


2 Cp. Sibyll. ii. 252ff.: “« And then (in the last Judgment) all will have to 
pass through the burning fire and the unquenchable flame. The just ones 
will all be saved but the ungodly will perish,” etc. A good analogy is offered 
by the 3lst chapter of the Bundahish—the Pahlvi translation of a lost 
section from the Avesta—where the ultimate purgation of the world by a fire 
that makes all metals melt, is expected to be most torturing for the sinners, 
but for the pure ones as mild as a bath in tepid milk. 


8 Cp. above, p. 189 n. 5, on the word hagidi (holy) being a Christian 
interpolation into the original text of John’s sermon. There is no ques- 
tion here of the ‘Holy Spirit’ in the technical sense of this theological 
personification, no more than of a ‘sacred’ Water or ‘ sacred’ Fire in the two 
other baptisms, although both elements, the water flowing down from God’s 
sanctuary and the fire ‘from Jahvé’ (Gen. 1924, Dan. 710) could equally well 
claim the attribute of holiness in this connection. 


198 ORPHEUS THE FISHER 


“purge the blood of Jerusalem from the midst thereof by 
the wind of judgment and by the wind of destruction,” 
and, secondly, that those very Old Testament passages, 
from which John has derived his simile of the ‘ mightier 
one’ winnowing his harvest, speak expressly of the 
wind, which is to carry away the chaff and stubble’; in 
doing so they even use the same Hebrew word ruah, 
which is translated by ‘pnewma’ both in the Greek 
version of Isaiah 44, and of John’s sermon. 

Accordingly the Baptist’s prophecy must be trans- 
lated—as I have done before :° 


I indeed wash you in water, but he that cometh afterme... 
shall cleanse you with wind and with fire. 


The foretold purging by means of wind is to be 
understood as the same eschatological trial which is 
described, in the next line of the sermon, as a fanning 
of the harvested grain against the wind; since in reality 
it is by no means the winnower’s fan, but the wind 
itself, that separates in this procedure the grain from 
the chaff,* and thus enables the harvester to ‘gather 
the one into his garner’ and to burn the other ‘with 
unquenchable fire.’ In Isaiah 27:2 the Baptist had read 
that “in that day Jahvé will thresh corn from the 


1 The decisive word ‘ wind’ in these two terms, which seem predestined, 
for the use of eschatalogical speculations, is indeed ‘ pnewma’ in the Greek 
version, rwah (wind, breath; A.V. ‘spirit ’) in the Hebrew original. Isaiah 
44 is quoted by Origen, Hom. in Jerem. ii. 2f., as referring to a future 
‘baptism with the spirit of judgment,’ which is different from the baptism in 
water and the baptism in fire. 


* “Thou shalt fan them and the wind (rwah) shall carry them away and 
the whirlwind shall scatter them,” Isaiah 4116, cp. 402+, and Ps. 8314: “ Make 
them as stubble before the wind (rwah).”’ 


5 Above, p. 139. 


* Cp. H. W. Hogg on the modern Syrian method of winnowing, Enc. 
Bibl. 84: “The winnowers stand to the east of the heap and toss the daris 
(mixed mass of grain, chopped straw and chaff) against the wind or straight 
up, or simply let it fall from the inverted fork, according to the strength of 
the evening west breeze. While the chaff is blown away some ten to jifteen 
feet or more, the straw falls at a shorter distance; the heavy grain 
falls almost where it was,’’ ete. 


THE WIND-BAPTISM 199 


channels of the Euphrates to the stream of Egypt and 
gather up the Israelites one by one”; he had taken over 
this picturesque metaphor and enriched it by adding, 
from the other above-quoted texts, the idea of a win- 
nowing of Israel, whereby the true sons of Abraham, 
that is the righteous ones, are to be separated from the 
chaff of the ‘ungodly.’ As in the case of the baptisms 
by water and fire, both the good and the wicked ones 
will be subject to the trial; but the one will remain 
unharmed and be gathered into the kingdom, the other 
will be tossed by the wind, the breath or wrath of 
Jahvé,! into the fire of condemnation. 

The beneficent effect on the chosen ones of this 
‘mighty wind rushing down from heaven’ is described 
in the Pentecost-story of Acts 2, as we are told by the 
author himself in the discourse of Peter (2:7), with 
regard to the prophecy of Joel 22-32 (815) : 

I will pour out my breath (whi) upon all flesh ; and your sons 
and your daughters shall prophesy, your old men shall dream 
dreams, your young men shall see visions; and also upon the 


servants and the handmaids in those days will I pour out my 
breath— 


a prodigy, which is to precede the other signs and 
miracles that herald the Day of Judgment. The reader 
will notice, that the introduction of this text, in order 
to explain mystically the ‘ wind of judgment’ (Isaiah 41) 
as the ‘breath of Jahvé’ and the ‘spirit’ of prophecy, 
perhaps also as the ‘ new spirit’ which God is to put 
into the interior of the believers after having them 
cleansed with water (Hzek. 8627, cp. above, p. 131 n. 1), 
is exactly parallel to John’s alleged identification of 


1 Cp. Haod. 158,10: ‘With the blast of thy nostrils the waters were 
gathered together . . . thou didst blow with thy wind, the sea covered 
them”; Ps, 1815: “ The foundations of the world were discovered, O Lord, at 
the blast of the wind of thy nostrils.” 


200 ORPHEUS THE FISHER 


the Messianic life-giving water with the sacred Law 
of God, and of the fire with the Voice and Word of the 
Divinity, on the basis of othe? scriptural passages. 

As to the general ‘destruction,’ which the same 
avenging blast is to bring upon the impenitent sinners, 
the necessary explanation is to be found in certain 
Midrashic traditions that mention a third cosmic 
catastrophe, to wit a deluge of wind, along with the 
watery cataclysm which befell the generation of Noe, 
and with the deluge of fire that destroyed the contem- 
poraries of Lot; we read, e.g. in the Syrian Apology of 
Pseudo-Melito (Corp. Apol., ed. Otto, ix. 432) : 

There was once a deluge of wind, and the men who had been 
reserved for it were killed by a tremendous storm from the north, 
and only the just ones were left to witness the truth. Another 
time there was a deluge of water, all the men and animals perished 
but the righteous ones were preserved in the wooden ark by order 
of God. And just so in the Last Days, there will be a flood of fire, 
and the earth with all its mountains, and men with all the idols 
they made unto themselves, and even the sea and its islands will 
be set aflame, but the just ones will be saved, as their like were 
saved in the ark from the water of the cataclysm.’ 

The Book of the Bee (ed. Budge, p. 40f.) and the 
Cave of Treasures (ed. Bezold, p. 82) inform us when 
this catastrophic ‘ ventilation’ of the world occurred : 
after the deluge of water, the men of Babylon decided 
to build a tower as high as the sky itself, and to live 
on top of it in order to be safe from any future inunda- 
tion of the earth. But God opened the store-houses 
of the winds and overthrew by fearful storms all their 

' Cp. also the Mandan theory (Brandt, Mand. Rel., p. 123), that man- 
kind was destroyed three times : once by the sword and the plague, when there 
remained only Ram and Rud; a second time by a universal conflagration, when 
Surbaj and Sarhabiel remained ; the third time by floods of water, so that only 
‘Nuh in the Ark’ survived. Also Bereshit Rabba, $23: ‘there were three 


deluges ’—strange enough all of water !—‘ one in the time of Enoch, one in 
Noe’s time and one during the building of the Babylonian tower.’ 


——— 


THE WIND-CATACLYSM 201 


buildings. Only Abraham who had left the land before 
by a divine commandment was saved from the universal 
destruction. 

This story can be proved, if it is not, as the 
present writer believes, in the main identical with the 
original Jahvistic version underlying the confused 
account of Genesis 1112, 12:4 (J)—to be at least older 
than the Baptist’s age. For in Book III. of the 
Sibyllines (vv. 101f.), which was written about 140 B.c., 
by an Egyptian Jew living in the reign of Ptolemy VII. 
(Physkon), there is already mention of the overthrow 
of the tower of Babel by an outbreak of the winds 
which had been held back for the purpose by the Most 
High. Similarly in the Book of Juwbilees (102)—a 
Pharisaic production of the last century before the 
Christian era, written in Palestine itself—the tower is 
destroyed by a tremendous storm. Again the same 
statement occurs in Josephus’ Antiqgq. I. 4, 2 (pp. 21f., 
_ ed. Bekker), in Bereshit Rabba, ch. 8, in Sanhedrin 9a, 
and in the Mekhiltha Beshallah (ed. Weiss, p. 87). 
Besides, in Josephus, in Bereshit Rabba, xxxviii. 7, 
in the Mekhiltha and in Tanhwma (ed. Buber, xxviif.) 
the wish to escape a second deluge is given as the 
reason why the tower was built. A few Rabbis 
thought the tower had been destroyed by a water flood 
(above, p. 200, n. 1); others (Bereshit Rabba, l.c., 
Sanhedrin, l.c.) that one third of it was consumed by fire, 
one third sank into the earth, one third remained as a 
warning for future generations. The reason for these 
divergencies will soon become transparent (below, 
p. 206). 

Consequently a ‘seeker’ like John, who eagerly 
collected all possible information about the Last Things 
from the scriptures, and who knew this story of an aerial 


202 ORPHEUS THE FISHER 


cataclysm overthrowing the tower of Babel,’ could not 
fail to complete the terrible series of threats, “ As it was 
in the days of Noe” and “As it was in the days of Lot 
so shall it be in the days of the Son of Man,” by the 
prophecy: As it was in the days of Abraham, so shall it 
be when the Messiah comes. They continued in their 
evil works and would not repent,’ until God ordered 
Abraham to leave the land, and then a storm from 
heaven destroyed the town, and a whirlwind scattered 
the rebellious people helpless all over the world.’ 

The resulting idea of three subsequent comple- 
mentary purgations of the world through elemental 
catastrophes, the last of which is to be one of fire, could 
then seem to correspond in a striking way with the 
sentence of Zechariah 138s. : 


It shall come to pass, saith the Lord, that in all the land two 
parts therein shail be cut of and die ; but the third shall be left 
therein. And I will bring the third part through the fire‘ and will 
refine them as silver is refined, and will try them as gold is tried; 
[thus] they shall call on my name and I will hear them. I will 
say: This is my people; and they shall say: The Lord is my God. 


Of course I do not mean to pretend that this highly 
complicated eschatology, which expects the Last Judg- 


1 The reader will not overlook that the legend about the confusion of 
languages preceding the overthrow of the Babslonian tower is an exact 
‘antitype’ of the ‘ linguistic’ miracle in Acts 24,7. In both cases a marvellous 
outpouring of the Divine Breath or Spirit exercises an overpowering 
influence on the spirits, voices or tongues of men. 


2 In the Mekhiltha Beshallah Shirah, c. 5, it is expressly stated, that 


before the catastrophal punishment God tried in vain to make the tower- 
builders repent. 


® This feature is wanting in Genes. 11. See however the Arabian tradi- 
tion in Yakut I. 448f., and in the Lisan al Arab, xiii. 72, translat. by D. B. 
Macdonald, Jew. Ene, xiii. 72: “God designed to each nation its appointed 
speech” and then the wind scattered them all to their appointed lands. 


* Cp. Sibyll. Oracles iii. 544: ‘The creator of heaven and earth will pour 
out fire on the world and only the third part of hwmanity will remain (see 
also wbid. v. 103). Tanhwma to Judges, ed. Buber, 10, explains the ‘ third 
part’ of Zech. 138 as being the nation of Israel, which alone will escape the 
fire of Gehenna on accownt of the merits of the Patriarchs (ep. above p. 188f.). 


THE TRIPLE PURGATION IN THE MYSTERIES 208 


ment to consist in an ultimate flooding, a last venti- 
lation and a final fiery refining of the world, and 
believes that these three equally necessary purifications 
can be anticipated by the repentant true Israelites, in 
the shape of three symbolic baptisms, in water, spirit 
and fire, could have been independently evolved by any 
thinker, however speculative his mind may have been, 
merely from those Bible-texts on which the system is 
based a posteriori; on the contrary, it is easy to see 
that the theory of three correlative elemental purifica- 
tions and of three elemental world-catastrophes betrays 
a strong influence of extra-biblical ideas. 

First of all, the belief in the efficacy of comple- 
mentary purgings of the soul through the hostile 
elements of water, air and fire is common to all the 
Hellenistic mysteries. Before the initiate of Apuleius 
(Met. xi. 23) is deemed worthy to approach the divinity, 
he has to ‘travel through all the elements.’ On the 
other hand, in Virgil’s mystic description of the under- 
world (vi. 739ff.), we hear that some of the souls are 
purified by being exposed to the winds—even as Paolo and 
Francesca in Dante’s purgatory; the wickedness of 
others is washed away by water, while still others are 
purged through fire. To this passage Servius, the learned 
commentator of the Aineid, adds the following 
instructive words : 

Every purgation is effected either by water or by fire or by 
air; therefore in all the mysteries you find these three methods of 
cleansing : they either disinfect you with (burning) sulphur (cp. 
above, p. 196 n. 2), or wash you with water, or ventilate you with 
wind ; the latter is done in the Dionysiac mysteries— 


alluding evidently to the use of the mystic winnowing- 
shovel (liknon) by the Bacchic initiates." Accordingly, 


1 Sery. Georg. I. 165: “the mysteries purge men as a sieve the corn.” 


204 ORPHEUS THE FISHER 


the Orphic under-world was believed to contain rivers 
of water, air and fire,) through which the souls had to 
pass subsequently on their ‘pilgrimage to their final 
abode. A more or less distinct knowledge of such 
Hellenistic ideas seems to underlie John’s idea of three 
complementary baptisms. 

Still more obvious are the foreign influences on the 
development of the above-analysed scheme of three 
cosmic catastrophes, at the end of the present world’s 
duration. We know from the Gospels (Matt. 1923) that 
the contemporaries of John and Jesus were quite 
familiar with the idea of a total destruction of the world, 
to be followed by an equally total ‘renewal’ (apokata- 
stasis) or ‘rebirth’ (palingenesia*’) of the cosmos (cp. Is. 
662). I have shown elsewhere how this belief in a 
plurality of subsequently revolving worlds developed as 
an essential element of the Irano-Babylonian and Old 
Tonian astro-mystic religion of the Aton (Zrvanism), 
and how intimately it is connected on the one hand 
with the mystic notion of Eternity, on the other hand 
with the astrological idea of ‘ great,’ ‘divine,’ ‘cosmic’ 
or ‘world’-years which was so familiar both to Old 
Ionian cosmology and to Stoicism, the leading philo- 
sophy of the Hellenistic age. It is indeed to Stoic 
authors that we owe the principal fragments of the 
Babylonian priestly writer Berossos, concerning the 

1 See my Weltenmantel wu. Himmelszelt, p. 480n.8; with this cp. Origen, 
ed. Lommaitzsch, v. p. 179f.: ‘Even as John was waiting at the shore of the 
Jordan for those that came to be baptised. . . . . even so the Lord 
Jesus will stand in the river of fire beside the flaming sword and will baptise 
in this river everyone, who wishes to enter paradise at the end of this life 
und is still in need of purgation,” etc.; and Sohar, iv. p. 280f. (de Pauly) : 
“Then the soul is led to the Stream of Fire, through which every soul must 
pass to be purified. Some souls are utterly consumed in it, but the worthy 
ones are offered as holocausts to the Ancient of Days”; finally Cumont, 
Astrology and Religion, New York, 1912, p. 192f. and the funeral monument 
reproduced on our plate. 


* =Hadata ‘Alma in the Kaddish Prayer. 


THE TROPIC POINTS IN THE ‘GREAT YEAR’ 205 


duration of the ‘ world-years’ and the final catastrophes 
which divide one ‘zon’ from the next.' 

This essentially astrological theory presupposes a 
certain position of the stars at the beginning or crea- 
tion of the world, which is called the ‘thema mundi.’ 
As soon as this position is repeated through the 
eternal revolution of the sky, the world-process has 
reached its natural end and begins again, proceeding 
precisely in the same way as in the first age? Hvery 
such cosmic revolution or world-year has its tropical 
points, just as a single solar year. When the sun, 
in its annual course, reaches the Lion or the Crab, we 
note the summer solstice of each year, with its dry 
‘fiery’ weather; on the contrary, when the sun passes 
through Capricorn, the Fishes, or through Aquarius, 
the ancients experienced the ‘watery’ rainfalls of a 
southern winter. Consequently, says Berossos, when 
once all the planets meet in the watery part of the 
zodiac, a universal deluge is bound to come over the 
world; if they all congregate in the opposite part of 
the zodiac, the result is the dreaded ‘ekpyrosis’ or world- 
conflagration, etc.2 It is obvious that these specula- 
tions offered a plausible explanation both for the 
biblical accounts of past catastrophes, such as the 
cataclysm of Noah’s generation or the conflagration of 
Sodom and Gomorrah in the days of Lot, and for the 
prophetic descriptions of the ultimate judgment, 
whether it was expected to be brought about by water 


1 Cp. Bidez, Bérose et la grande Année, Mélanges, Paul Frédericq, 
Bruxelles, 1904, pp. 9-17. 


2 Thus it comes about, that the future Messiah could be believed to be 
the repetition or rather reincarnation (Samarit. ta‘eéb=redivivus) of some 
hero of the past, a new Noe or Joseph, a new Moses or Joshua, a new David 
or Jonah, a new Elias, etc. Cp. above, p. 184, n. 2. 

8 Cp. on the belief in recurring world-catastrophes and the corollary 
notion of world-years, Hugo Gressmann, l.c., p. 167ff., where however the third, 
aerial, deluge is not considered. 


206 ORPHEUS THE FISHER 


or by fire. Of course it depended on rather arbitrary 
suppositions, about the ‘ thema mundi’ and the probable 
length of the ‘great year,’ whether the cataclysm of 
the present world was foreseen as a conflagration or as 
an inundation, an uncertainty which is clearly reflected 
by the Rabbinic legend, that Noah was asked by his 
contemporaries, whether the flood he foretold to them 
would be one of fire or water, or by that other curious 
tradition, that the Noahic flood was one of boiling 
water. But the decisive feature of these speculations 
for our present purpose is the fact, that the watery and 
the fiery deluge do not exhaust the circle of possibili- 
ties. For the usual division of the solar year among 
the ancients was neither one of summer and winter, 
which is used by Berossos, nor the now common 
scheme of four seasons, but a tripartite one that dis- 
tinguished spring, summer and winter.’ The climatic 
character of each of these seasons was explained, by 
the astrological doctrine, on the principle of a predomi- 
nance of either the watery element—in winter—or the 
fiery one—in summer—or finally of the air in the 
spring,’ which is in fact regularly characterised by the 
great equinoctial storms all around the Mediterranean. 
Consequently the third elemental world-catastrophe, 
an overthrow of the cosmos by gigantic storms, was also 
held necessary once in the cowrse of each eon. 

It is this system which John seems to have used 
—whether for the first time or not, we cannot say—in 


* Cp. also above, p. 201, the uncertainty of the Jewish sages about the 
question, whether the tower of Babel was destroyed by water (above, p. 200, 
n. 1), by wind or by fire. 

* Cp. Homer Jl. III. 8, Od. t 519, y 118; Hesiod, Opp. 448ff., Aeschyl. 
Prometh. 458. Three seasons were distinguished by the Egyptians, Diodor. 
- Lino 26, and the Teutons, Tacit. Germ. 26, See Ideler’s Chronology I. 

® See the passages from Greek astrological manuscripts and from the 
Jewish Sepher Yesirah and the Sohar in my book Weltenmantel, ii. 4514, 5. 


THE TRIPLE BAPTISM 207 


order to harmonise the different and apparently con- 
tradictory prophetic descriptions about the Last Judg- 
ment of the whole creation, which was to be brought 
about, according to one opinion through the ‘ flowing 
scourge’ of a deluge, according to another through the 
‘ wind of judgment’ and ‘destruction,’ according to a 
third through an unquenchable fire. The resulting 
scheme, which he expresses both openly in the words, “I 
sprinkle you with water, He will cleanse you with 
wind and fire,” and allegorically through his agricul- 
tural similes, means to convey the impressive notion of 
a triple elemental ‘baptism’ and purifying ‘apokata- 
stasis’ of the world, that is to precede its renewal and 
final ‘rebirth’ for eternity, in order on the one hand 
to destroy gradually and completely the sinners, and to 
serve on the other hand as a sacramental ‘ regenera- 
tion’ for the chosen remnant of true, repentant Israel, 
even as God had purified the world through water, 
wind and fire in the primeval days of Noe, Lot and 
Abraham. 


XXVII. 


THE FISH-MEAL IN THE CHRISTIAN 
CATACOMB PICTURES. 


THE early Christian fish-symbolism has been 
analysed in the preceding chapters, especially with 
regard to the original meaning of the baptismal rite. 
This curious circle of mystic allegorism is not, how- 
ever, confined to the esoteric doctrine of the Christian 
initiatory ceremony ; as has been occasionally’ observed 
before, it is essentially connected also with the eucharist, 
the central sacrament of Christianity. 

Indeed even the earliest extant figure of the 
Messianic fisherman in the ‘ Gallery of the Flavians ?— 
dating from the last decades of the 1st century a.p.°— 
is found in immediate juxtaposition not only with the 
mystic symbols of the baptismal initiatory logos-drink, 
namely the ‘lamb and milkpail’ group, but also with 
the following interesting picture of an evidently sacra- 
mental fish-meal. In spite of the seriously damaged 
state of the monument, we can still distinguish, beyond 
any possibility of doubt, two beardless men, sitting 
on a couch, one talking to the other, and a server 
approaching them from the right with a jug in his. 
hands. On the little three-footed table before the 
guests lies the repast—a fish and three small round 
loaves of bread. As the pictures of the lamb and the. 

* Above, p.66. * Above, pp. 61f. and corr. plate. | * Above, Dp. t6, 0 Le 


* See Wilpert, Malereien der Katacomben Roms. pl. vii. 3 and our plate.. 
208 


THE FISH-MEAL IN THE CATACOMB-PICTURES 209 


milkpail allude to the milk-drink of the neophyte, 
while the fisherman symbolises the spiritual catching 
and the baptism of the convert, we are amply justified 
in attributing beforehand to the fish-and-bread meal of 
the two believers as well the character of a sacrament, 
the dominating importance of which is emphasised by 
the central position of this remarkable painting in the 
decorative scheme of the whole vault. 

The same sacred meal is evidently intended in the 
catacombs of 8. Lucina (2nd century 4.D.), where has 
been discovered’ a still-life painting of two fish and two 
baskets of bread and between the bread in the baskets a 
glass cup of red wine—the latter suggesting by analogy 
the probable contents of the jug of the server in the 
first mentioned picture. 

Again, in the so-called ‘chapels of the sacrament,’ 
in the catacombs of S. Callisto (1st half of the 3rd 
century A.D.), while the figure of the fisher is once 
found with a pictorial representation of the baptismal 
rite, in another instance’ it is combined with a painting 
that depicts seven youths reclining round a table and 
partaking of two large fish on plates before them on the 
table. Beside the table we notice exght baskets full of 
bread, four on each side. 

A similar composition can be found on the ceiling 
of the same catacomb; but this time we see two loaves 
and one fish on a tripod, with three baskets of bread 
standing on the one, and fowr on the other side of it. 

In an adjacent chamber also there is a picture of 
a man and a woman and between them again a three- 
legged table. The woman turns towards the table and 
raises her arms in an attitude of prayer.’ Among 

1 See our reproductions from Wilpert, plate xxviii. 

2 See plate reproduced from Wilpert, pl. xxvii. * See our plates. 

0 


210 ORPHEUS THE FISHER 
the different dishes on the table we see a loaf of bread 


and a fish. The man is taking hold of the fish and of 


another loaf placed underneath it. 

In the so-called Greek Chapel of the Priscilla 
cemetery (beginning of the 2nd century a.D.), the meal 
is celebrated on a lawn. A pillow is laid on the grass 
in an open hemicycle; before it stand a cup and two 
plates, in the one two fish, in the other five loaves. 
Seven persons partake of the meal, among them a 
woman. On both sides of the symposion we see baskets 
of bread, three on the left, four on the right (see plate). 

As abbreviated symbols of this same meal-sacra- 
ment the joint images of fish and bread occur beyond 
doubt not infrequently in early Christian funeral 
inscriptions. In the catacombs of Plautilla, for 
instance, on the road to Ostia, a freed slave of the 
Flavian family, Titus Flavius Eutyches, is buried. 
His epitaph ends with the words: ‘Farewell, be- 
loved!’ and with the crude glyphs of two loaves and 
two fishes." Another stone-slate with two fishes and 
five loaves, found in the cemetery of 8. Hermes, in 
1845, is now in the Museo Kircheriano.’ 


1 A. de Waal, Roma sacra, p. 68. 
* H. Achelis, Das Symbol des Fisches, pp. 97f. 


XXVIII. 


THE GOSPELS ON JESUS FEEDING THE 
PEOPLE WITH BREAD AND FISH. 


THE literary remains that can be compared with 
these monuments, begin with two texts (A and B) 
that are found incorporated respectively in Mark 63-4 


and Mark 819. 
A. 


And Jesus, when he came 
out [sc. from the ship], saw 
much people, and was moved 
with compassion towards them, 
because they were as sheep not 
having a shepherd, and he be- 
gan to teach them many things. 

And when the day was now 
far spent, his disciples came 
unto him and said: This is a 
desert place and now the time 
is far passed. Send them away, 
that they may go to the country 
round about and into the vil- 
lages and buy themselves bread. 
For they have nothing to eat. 

He answered and said unto 
them: Give ye them to eat. 
And they said unto him: Shall 
we go and buy two hundred 
pennyworth of bread and give 
them to eat ? 


211 


B. 


In those days the multitude 
being very great and having 
nothing to eat, Jesus called his 
disciples unto him and saith 
unto them: 

I have compassion on the 
multitude, because they have 
now been with me three days 
and have nothing to eat. 


And if I send them away 
fasting to their own houses 
they will faint by the way; 
some of them have come from 
far. 


And his disciples answered 
him: From whence can a man 
satisfy these with bread here 
in the wilderness ? 


212 ORPHEUS THE FISHER 


He said unto them: How 
many loaves have ye? Go and 
see. And when they knew, 
they say: Five, and two fishes. 

And he commanded them 
to make all sit down by com- 
panies upon the green grass. 

And they sat down like 
garden-beds one after the other 
by hundreds and by fifties. 

And when he had taken 
the five loaves and the two 
fishes, he looked up to heaven 
and said the blessing, brake the 
loaves’ and divided the two 
fishes for all of them. 

And they did all eat and 
were filled. And they took up 
twelve baskets full of frag- 
ments. 

And they that did eat of 
the loaves and of the fishes’ 
were’ five thousand men. 


And he asked them: How 
many loaves have ye? And 
they said: Seven. 


And he commanded the peo- 
ple to sit down on the ground. 


And he took the seven loaves 
said grace, and brake and gave 
to his disciples to set before 
[them] ; and they did set [the 
bread] before the people.’ 


So they did eat and were 
filled. And they took up of the 
crumbs that were left seven 
baskets. 

And they that had eaten 
were about four thousand. 


1 The following words, “and gave [them] to his disciples to set before 


them,” are taken over from the other version. 


There is no reason why 


Jesus should distribute the fishes personally, but the loaves with the aid of 
the Twelve. Besides the interpolation mars the significant antithesis, 
which has been set forward in v. 37, namely that the disciples cannot feed 
the multitude, while the Lord himself zs able to assuage their hunger. In 
B this contrast is wanting in the dialogue, so that in this version there is no 
objection to the intercession of the disciples in the réle of the later ‘ deacons.’ 


2 Mark 87, which follows, ‘‘and they had a few small fishes and he 
blessed them and commanded to set them also before [the people],” is 
evidently an inorganic interpolation with regard to the fishes mentioned in 
the parallel account. The proof is, that the fishes are not even mentioned in 
he preceding dialogue of v. 5, an omission which was noticed and corrected 
by Matt, 1534. 


* The words “ and of the fishes” are entirely out of place after “ frag- 
ments,” because they would presuppose the words “of the bread” in the 
preceding part of the sentence. They are necessary however in v.44. They 
have evidently been transposed into the wrong line by a scribe’s error. 


4 “About” in some manuscripts is taken from B; A has the ewxact 
number, because of the ranks of 50 and 100 men in v. 40. 


THE FISH-MEAL IN THE GOSPELS 2138 


These two parallel stories, which are both referred 
to as relating two different events in a pretended and 
very obscure’ ‘ saying of the Lord’ (Mark 81:),?, must 
be considerably anterior to our oldest gospel, since 
they show traces of having been harmonised to a 
certain extent by additions from one to the other and 
vice versa. Such a proceeding would, of course, never 
have been attempted by a compiler who took A and 
B as accounts of two different feeding-miracles. The 
retouchings cannot, therefore, be due to Mark or to 
the unknown author who made up 8,’ but rather to 
an earlier generation of readers, who found A and B 
beyond doubt already in two different written gospels. 

A third account (C) of a fish-meal celebrated by 
Jesus—this time after his resurrection—seems to have 
been contained in the now lost conclusion of Mark.’ 
Of this we still possess a somewhat retouched‘ copy 
from the hand of the last editor of the fourth gospel 
(John 211-15). 

Just as, in the Flavian gallery, the fish-meal is 
placed beside the figure of the Messianic fisher and the 
milk-symbol of baptism, and just as the fisher and the 
baptismal scene are combined with the fish-meal in 


1 Cp. above p. 118, n. 1. 


2 « When I broke the jive loaves among five thousand, how many baskets 
full of fragments took ye up? They say unto him, Twelve. And when the 
seven loaves among four thousand, how many baskets full of fragments took 
yeup? And they said, Seven. And he said unto them, How is it that you do 
not understand ?””—Alas, even now we must say, if we are sincere, How is it 
that we do not understand this calculation ? 


3 Cp. above p. 111, n. 1. 


4 In v.7 the introduction of the ‘“‘ beloved disciple” is certainly due to 
the editor, who must have added the words: ‘‘ Therefore that disciple whom 
Jesus loved saith unto Peter, It is the Lord,” and changed the sentence 
‘Hence Simon Peter, who understood that it was the Lord,” etc., into 
“Simon Peter heard, that it was the Lord.” Similarly in v. 11 the close, 
‘and for all there were so many, yet was not the net broken,’’ can only have 
been written a long time after Luke 56. Cp. above pp. 108,111. All the rest 
of the chapter may well belong to the original end of Mark. 


214 ORPHEUS THE FISHER 


S. Callisto, even so do we find in C the previously 
analysed story of the miraculous draught of 158 fishes' 
prefixed to the picturesque ‘scene of how the seven 
disciples Peter, Thomas, Nathanael, the two sons of 
Zebedee and two other unnamed ones, on approaching 
the shore, see a heap of glowing coals and a fish 
roasting on them, and a loaf of bread. All of them 
know, that it is the Lord who bids them: “ ‘Come and 
breakfast’; and he taketh the bread and giveth them 
and the fish likewise.” 

In Matthew, A and B are copied with unimportant, 
however significant, stylistic corrections; C is omitted. 
Luke, however, returns to the original position of those 
readers who correctly understood A and B to refer to 
the same event. He reproduces only A as the more 
explicit version, adding the doubtlessly symbolic state- 
ment, that the feeding took place in Beth-Saida, the 
‘house of fishing,’ omitting however the symbolic ‘ two 
hundred pennyworth of bread’ in the speech of the 
disciples. As to C, he inserts the story of the miracu- 
lous draught—again without the symbolic number of 
153 fishes—in the chapter on the calling of the first 
apostles. The meal-scene itself is replaced by an 
analogous tale (D) with a slightly different tendency ; 
it relates (Luke 241) how the risen Lord appears to his 
disciples and says unto them : 


Have ye here any meat? and they gave him a piece of a 
broiled fish <and of an honey-comb>. And he took it and did eat 
before them <and gave them of it>. 


As to John, we owe to him—or rather his con- 
tinuator and editor—the preservation of C from the 


1 Cp. above pp. 118f. 


* The words in brackets are only contained in minor manuscripts. 


THE FISH-MEAL IN THE GOSPELS 215 


lost conclusion of Mark. Of the parallel accounts A 
and B he has, like Lwke, copied only the first—with the 
addition of a few details. He knows that the loaves 
were made of barley. He further tries to establish an 
ideal relation of the fish-meal with the Lord’s supper 
properly so-called, by putting its date expressly shortly 
before the passover. As the fourth gospel is well 
known to omit deliberately the synoptic ‘ institution 
of the eucharist’ at Jesus’ last passover-meal, the 
evangelist has evidently intended to convey the idea, 
that the fish-meal of that one evening ‘shortly before 
the passover’ was the real ‘Lord’s supper.’ This is 
evident also in the sermon at Capernaum about the 
eating of the Christ as the bread from heaven, which 
follows the fish-meal-story in John, and stands in the 
place of the ‘many things’ that Jesus ‘taught’ the 
five thousand according to Mark. 


XXIX. 


THE FISH EATING IN THE ‘AGAPAX’ OF 
THE PRIMITIVE CHURCH. 


Even the most perfunctory comparison of the 
cited monuments from the Roman catacombs with our 
texts will convince the reader that these earliest extant 
pictures of the sacramental fish-meal are by no means 
allustrative of the evangelical tradition of such an 
incident in the history of Jesus. In none of these 
pictures do we find one of the persons distinguished in 
such a way as to suggest the artist’s intention of 
characterising the Saviour himself.’ Neither can we 
take the little society, represented in all these com- 
positions as partaking of the sacred meal, for the 
disciples of Jesus, since in one of the quoted cases a 
woman is seen among them.’ Besides, the always 
recurring regular hemicyclic eating-couch and the 
carefully-laid table with its plates are not at all in 
harmony with the traditions about those improvised 
‘feedings’ in the gospels. The most picturesque 
details of the gospel-texts—such as the fish on the 
coal-fire or the multitude grouped as it were in 
regular garden-beds—are nowhere to be traced in the 
monuments. 


* Cp. on the contrary the frequently recurring composition (Wilpert, p. 
292ff. plates 45, 54, 68, 74), yiueee bannato pending ate fer is ee fe 
touch baskets of bread with what seems to be a magic rod. Here it is quite 
possible to understand the scene with Wilpert and other authors as the 
multiplication of the bread by Jesus. Indeed I believe myself, that this is 
the meaning of this composition. 2 Wilpert p. 28f. 


216 


THE FISH EATING IN THE CHRISTIAN AGAPA 217 


The conclusion of this is, not that the aforemen- 
tioned texts were unknown to the catacomb-painters,! 
but that they did not think in their meal-pictures of 
illustrating them; what they portrayed was simply a 
ritual fish-and-bread-banquet, as the Christians still used 
to celebrate rt at the time when these pictures were made? 
As this religious meal was—according to the monu- 
ments—not confined merely to fish and bread, it can 
easily be identified with the so-called ‘agape’ or 
‘love-feasts’ of the earliest Church, which were given 
up later on for reasons that do not interest us here. 

Those few features that seem to be derived from 
the gospels, can much better be accounted for in an 
entirely different way. The number seven of the par- 
takers of the meal, for instance, must not have anything 
to do with John 212, since we know from Augustine’ 
that in this very passage the seven disciples were 
understood as symbolising the ‘universal’ Church, an 
explanation that is perfectly justified by the well- 
known oriental use of the number ‘seven’ to denote 
‘a great many” or a totality.” In the Jewish Church, 
to the present day, a ceremony is not valid unless at 
least ten grown-up men are present. The author of 
John 212, as well as the unknown painters of these 
catacomb frescoes, may well have been influenced by 
the idea of seven persons being necessary to make up a 
sacramental symposion. As to the baskets full of 
bread, which have always been supposed to derive from 


1 Cp. n. 1 on preceding page. 
2 Cp. Dean Plumptre in Smith-Cheetham’s Dict. Christ. Biog.s.v.‘ Agape,’ 
3 Migne, P. L., 351966 


4 Cp. Deut. 71, . . “many nations . . . the Hittites and the 
Girgashites and the Amorites and the Canaanites and the Perizzites and the 
Hivites and the Jebusites, seven nations greater and mightier than thou.” 
See Wilpert, p. 286, on the ‘herd’ of seven ‘ sheep.’ 


5 Hehn, Siebenzahl w. Sabbat (Liepzig, 1907), pp. 5ff. 


218 ORPHEUS THE FISHER 


that characteristic detail in the gospels about the 
feeding of the multitude, how can this be, if in one 
case (above, p. 209) the painter does not show us seven 
or twelve baskets, as we should expect according to 
Mark 81, but eight, four on each side of the table, so 
that no casual error about the number is admissible ? 
On the other hand, the representation of the baskets in 
these pictures can again be explained quite indepen- 
dently from these bible-passages. We know from 
discussions in the Mishna (Berakhoth 8,, Bésé 27) that 
it was customary at the regular meals in a household 
to sweep up the crwmbs that had fallen ‘between the 
couches’ after each course.’ At a sacramental eating 
of consecrated food—especially of such mysterious 
character as the eucharistic bread and the broiled 
fish, which Augustine’ identifies with the body of 
the suffering Christ—nothing could be more natural 
than that even these smallest morsels of the meal 
should be reverently collected and put up in baskets, 
so “that nothing be lost” (John 62), even as nowadays 
in the Catholic Church minute precautions are pre- 
scribed so that not the smallest crumb of the conse- 
crated wafers may be wasted. If the seven guests of 
our pictures represent, as they probably do, a great 
‘many’ partakers of the sacred meal, it is quite 
natural that baskets full of remains should have been 
collected during the ‘agapé.’ Besides, we must not 
forget, that in the catacomb of S. Lucina the two 
baskets are certainly not meant to contain the crumbs 
or remains of the bread, but the still unbroken sacred 


* According to Pesah. 111b., Hul. 105b., a special good spirit, named 
Nakid=Cleanliness, was believed to bless with plenty him who lets no 
crumbs of bread lie on the ground. 


? Migne, P.L., 351966. Cp. the parallel sayings of other Fathers in Délger 
Iohthys, p. 42. 


THE FISH HATING IN THE CHRISTIAN AGAPAL 219 


loaves themselves' together with the cup of wine. 
Consequently in the meal-scenes, too, the baskets 
could contain the fresh eatables, that is, the contribu- 
tions of the different partakers to their picnic-like 
common repast, and not at all the crumbs which are 
so familiar to the spectator from his knowledge of the 
analogous gospel-stories. 

Nowhere in the whole New Testament is an 
incident to be found to which could be referred those 
two meal-pictures where only two persons partake of 
the bread and the fish; and little wonder, if all the 
above-described paintings do not represent any incident 
from the evangelical history, but contemporary meal- 
ceremonies of the earliest Christian Church. In fact, 
the nearest analogies to the S. Callisto fresco, with 
the man before the table and the woman turning in 
an attitude of blessing towards the fish, which is held 
by the man, will be found in two early Christian funeral 
inscriptions. A certain Aberkios—probably the Bishop 
of Hieropolis (about 180 4.p.)—says in his epitaph : 

Paul I chose as my guide. Faith’ led the way and gave me 
everywhere for food a fish from a fountain, a great, great one, aclean 
one, whom a holy virgin had caught. That one she (sc. Faith) gave 
ever to eat to the ‘Friends.’ Having good wine and offering it, 
mingled with water together with bread 

Another early Christian epitaph, of one Pectorios, 
found at Autun, in 1839 (in the Greek original an 

1 The same statement applies also to the composition described above, 
p. 216 n. 1, since the man touching the baskets with the magic rod cannot, of 
course, intend to multiply the crumbs. That bread was usually carried and 
kept in baskets is clear from Genesis 4016. Cp. Sotah 48b: ‘‘ He who having 
bread in his basket still says, what shall we eat to-morrow, is one of those 


of little faith’ and S. Jerome, Hpist. ad Rustic., n. 20 p. 947, Vall.; ‘ He who 
carries the body of the Lord in the wicker-basket and his blood in the glass-cup.” 


2 In Greek, Pistis—a female personification reminding us immediately 
of the woman blessing the fish in the S. Callisto picture. 

8 On the Fish caught (that means conceived) by the virgin see chapter 
XXXIV. below. 


220 ORPHEUS THE FISHER 


acrostichon forming the word :x6vs=fish) says to the 
reader : 


~ 


Divine race of the Heavenly Fish, 

Among all the mortal ones, take and taste the [one] immortal 
spring of the god-given waters. 

Refresh, O Friend, thy soul with the ever-flowing flood of 
blissful wisdom. 

Take the Saviour’s honey-like food, the meat of the Saints. 

Eat, O starving one,’ holding the fish in thy hands.” 


The reader will observe that both inscriptions 
mention a sacred drink—wine in the one, water® in the 
other—to be consumed together with the fish and 
the bread, and that they tally in this respect with the 
monuments, while on the contrary none of the fish- 
meal stories in the New Testament contains the 
slightest mention of any beverage distributed by Jesus. 

Considering all these circumstances no reasonable 
doubt can be entertained as to the fact that the earliest 
Church was wont to celebrate a mystic fish-meal, which 
seems to have been closely related to, but not identical 
with, the properly so-called eucharistic rite of the 
‘bread-breaking.’ As no such rite is practised in the 
communion services of any modern Christian Church, 
we must either conclude that it has completely fallen 
into oblivion in a later stage of Christian history or— 
identify rt resolutely with the private observance of a fish- 
diet which is still enjoined for every Friday by the 
Roman Catholic as well as by the Eastern Churches. 


1 This alludes to Isaiah 551 (below p. 236). 
® Cp. the man holding the fishin our reproduction of the S. Callisto fresco. 


* On the use of pure water instead of the eucharistic wine in certain 
early Christian churches see Clem. Alex. Strom. I.,19,96. Epiphan., Panarion 
xxx. 16; xiii. 3; xlvi. 2; xlvii. 1; Cyprian, Epist. 85. 


XXX. 


THE SABBATIC FISH-MEAL OF THE JEWS AND 
THE BANQUET OF THE LAST DAYS. 


As to the origin of this latter custom, we know for 
certain that the Christians have taken it over from the 
Jews, with whom it obtains up to the present day, and 
that, too, to such an extent, that in Galicia, for instance, 
one can see Israelite families, in spite of their being 
reduced to the extremest misery, procuring on Fridays 
a single gudgeon to eat, divided into minute fragments, 
at night-fall.. This practice, which is not enjoined by 
any Mosaic law, can be traced back to the earliest post- 
exilic times.” Whence the Jews in their turn derived 
it, can easily be guessed from the fact that this fish- 
eating is celebrated both by Christians and Jews on 
Fridays. As late as in the sixteenth century A.D. a 
Rabbi, Salomon Luria, raised a protest against this, 
and admonished his co-religionists to eat the customary 
fish-meal on the Sabbath itself and not on Fridays 
(Sabbath eve) as they used to do,’ and still persist in 


1 Cp. Salomon Reinach, Orpheus, Hist. générale des Religions (Paris, 
1909), p. 29; Israel Abrahams, Jewish Life in the Middle Ages, p. 150. 

2 Op. Nehemiah 1816: “There dwelt men of Tyre also therein (sc. in 
Jerusalem), who brought fish and sold them on the Sabbath unto the 
children of Judah and in Jerusalem.” The Talmud says that one must eat 
big fishes in honour of the Sabbath (Sabbat 118c; Jalkut to Is. 58), men- 
tions the piety of a man who always bought the most beautiful fish for the 
Sabbath, and states that of the two dishes of a holyday meal the one shall 
always consist of fish (Mishna Bésa 2,1; Talm. Bésaltc). Bread, wi: and 
fish as sabbatic dishes are also praised in the medizval sabbath-songs. On 
all these texts see Scheftelowitz, Arch. f. Relig. Wiss. xiv. p. 19f. 


3 Scheftelowitz L.c. 
PRT 


~ 


222 ORPHEUS THE FISHER 


doing. Now everybody knows that Friday—Dves 
Veneris, Venerdt, Vendredi—is so called, because the 
day with the ancients was sacred to the goddess of the 
planet Venus, to Istar, or, as the Sabians of Harran 
in Mesopotamia call the lady of this day, to Beltzs. 
The Rabbis were of course strongly prejudiced against 
this system of dedicating the days of the week to the 
Pagan gods—Samas (Sun), Sin (Moon), Nergal (Mars), 
Nabu (Mercury), Bel (Jupiter), Beltis and Ninib 
(Saturn)—and therefore opposed it by attributing the 
tutelage of the single days to the seven archangels 
Raphael, Gabriel, Sammael, Michael, Izidkiel, Hanael 
and Kephirel.t Nearly all of these names, however, 
are transparent disguises of the divinities those angels 
were to supplant. Kephir-el, for instance, is ‘ Lion- 
god,’ because of the lion-headed god Saturn (Ninib) of 
Saturday, Micha-el, the ‘ Balance-god,” stands for the 
soul-weighing Mercury, Hermes or Nabu, etc. Similarly 
Hana-el, who is thought to preside over Friday, can be 
easily recognised as the well-known Babylonian Fish- 
goddess Hana or Is-hana’ or Nina, the Istar of Ninive, 
the Atargatis of the Syrians. As fish-sacrifices to 
this divinity and fish-meals of her worshippers are 
well attested,’ it becomes exceedingly plausible that 
the Jews grew accustomed to their Friday fish- 
eating during the Babylonian exile. Later on the 
Pagan character of this rite was of course completely 
obliterated, and the fish were eaten in ‘honour of the 
Sabbath,’ just as throughout modern Europe Christmas, 


1 Weber, Altsynagogale palist. Theologie, p. 164; 2nd ed. (1897), p. 169. 
2 See for this etymology the author’s Weltenmantel, p. 267 n. 8. 


8 Cp.on this divinity, Hommel’s Appendix, ‘ Die Schwurgéttin Is hanna,’ 
to the Rev. Sam. A. B. Mercer’s ‘The Oath in Babylonian Liter. ’ 
(Paris, Geuthner, 1912). : Roaor ees 


4 See Dolger, Ichthys, pp. 480£. 


THE SABBATIC FISH-MEAL OF THE JEWS 223 


Epiphany or St. John’s Day are being celebrated with 
primeval Pagan ceremonies of forgotten meaning and 
origin. 

The hypothesis that the fish-meal represented in 
the catacomb paintings-is to be explained as this 
customary Jewish and Christian fish-eating on the 
Sabbath eve, enables us also—and this is its chief 
merit—to account for the bread and the cup of wine 
that go with the fish, as well in the paintings as in 
the corresponding inscription. For another indispens- 
able feature of the Jewish sabbath eve’s supper is the 
‘hallah,’ the loaf of newly-baked bread,’ which is called 
‘ barkhath,’=‘ blessing,’ by the modern Jews, and a 
cup of wine, named ‘6s Sel berdkha,’ or ‘cup of bless- 
ing.” The ‘blessing’ referred to is in both cases the 


1 According to Ta‘an, 24b. the housewife bakes the new bread for the 
whole week on Friday afternoon. Sometimes—in Austria and Poland for 
instance—the hallah is sprinkled with poppy seed, probably because the 
poppy is sacred to the same Great Mother goddess, as is the fish. 


2 Hither from birkhath, construed state of berakhah=blessing (that 
name as well as another—tascher—is popularly derived from Prov. x. 22: 
‘Brrxwatu Adénai hi Ta’asuir’=‘ the blessing of the Lord maketh rich’) or 
a dialect pronounciation of the plural berakhdth=‘ blessings.’ Cp. Syriac 
burctho=eAoyia, as the blessed bread, the pain béni of France is even 
nowadays called in the Syrian Church (see on this word O. H. Parry, Sia 
Months in a Syrian Monastery, London, 1895, p. 841, n.*). Wilpert Fractio 
Panis, Freiburg i. B. 1895, p. 11f. has reproduced a fresco painting from an 
Alexandrinian catacomb, which shows above an altar the miraculous multipli- 
cation of ‘the fish and the bread. One sees the apostles Peter and Andrew 
with an inscription, which runs ‘ tas ewlogias tow Christo esthiontes '=‘ eating 
the berakdth of the Messiah.’ The meaning is not, of course, that they ate 
‘the blessings’ of the Christ, but the plural ewlogiai denotes simply the 
‘eulogised ’ food, which can indeed be eaten, even as the Syrian burctho and 
the Jewish berakhdth technically denote the blessed bread and not the 
blessing itself. See further Cyril of Jerusalem, Cat. iii, 13, 6, where 
he says of Judas: “Just now his hands had received the ewlogies (tas 
eulogias=the blessed bread) and already he merited his death through the 
money of treason.” Cp. the same author in Migne, P.G. 74, 140; Suicer, 
Thesaurus, s.v. ewlogia; A. Struckmann, Die Hucharistielehre des hl. Cyrill 
von Alewandrien, 1910, p. 187. It goes without saying that the use of the 
word ewcharistia(i) =‘ thanksgiving(s) ’ for the consecrated and broken Friday 
loaf is quite parallel to that of the expression ‘ewlogia(z)’ for the same 
object. 


3 Mentioned under this very name (Greek: potérion eulogias) in I. Cor. 
1016. A fragment of such a sabbath cup for blessing wine, made of guilt 
glass, is reproduced on the plate corresponding to this page. 


224 ORPHEUS THE FISHER 


regular Jewish formula of ‘thanksgiving for the fruit 
of the earth’ and ‘for the fruit of the vine.’ It was 
the rule on Sabbaths, as well as on all holydays, to 
‘sanctify’ (kiddush)' the principal meals by ‘blessing’ 
wine and bread in the following way: The ‘ berakha,” 
or ‘thanksgiving,’ is first pronounced over the afore- 
mentioned cup of wine, which is then handed round to 
all the partakers. Then the ‘blessing’ is said over 
two loaves of bread, one of which is broken and divided 
in morsels for the company. Great importance is. 
attributed to this ceremonial by the Rabbis : 

Whoever says the blessing over a full cup of wine, will get his. 
share in this and in the other life (Berakhoth, 51a). 

The real motive, however, for representing so often 
this sabbatic meal of fish, bread and wine on the walls. 
of early Christian sepulchres will be found in certain 
important texts,’ from which we gather that the Jews. 
conceived the bliss of the future Messianic reign under the 
image of a great banquet,’ the main course of which consists: 
of a dish of fish. At the end of the meal God will give 
to the most worthy, to King David, the ‘cup of bless- 
ing’—n.b. one of fabulous dimensions—and he will 
pronounce the thanksgiving over it. 

The origin of this idea—which recurs also in the 
Mahomedan eschatology’—is of course to be looked for 
in the theory, based on Jeremiah 251, 2910 and Daniel 


1 On this ‘kiddush’ rite as underlying the ceremonial described in the- 
synoptic account of the Last Supper, cp. Box, ‘ Jewish Antecedents of the: 
Kucharist,’ Jowrn. Theol. Studies, 1902, pp. 357ff. and G. Loeschke, 
Zeitschr. f. wiss. Theolog. 1912, pp. 200ff. 


2 Scheftelowitz l.c. (above p. 168, n. 2). 


® Se‘udat or ‘ banquet’ is indeed one of the many metaphoric names for: 
the ‘ Kingdom’ in the Rabbinic literature. 


* This is the reason, why single fishes, and whole baskets full of fishes, 
are found painted on the vaults of the Jewish catacombs in the Vigne. 
Rondanini along the Appian Road (Délger, Ichthys, p. 122). 


5 Scheftelowitz, p. 38, n. 8. 


THE FISH-BANQUET OF THE LAST DAYS 225 


9z2, that the Messianic age will dawn at the end of 
seventy weeks of years, so that it may deservedly be 
called a great or world’s Sabbath. Consequently, as 
Sabbath eve is celebrated by the faithful week after 
week by a meal with a dish of fish, and inaugurated 
with the ‘ Avddush,’ the blessing and breaking of bread 
and the thanksgiving over the cup, even so will the 
chosen after thew final resurrection eat fish, break the 
bread and bless the cup on the eve of the final Sabbath, 
when the days of the Kingdom begin. It is, beyond 
doubt, the hope of partaking in this final Messianic 
sabbath-meal which the funeral art of early Chris- 
tianity has tried to express in the before-cited banquet- 
scenes. 


1 Cp. also the ‘ chiliastic’ theory (Barnabas’ Epistle ch. xv., Sanhedrin 
97a), that the present world is to last six of the ‘days of God’ (Psalm 904, 
2 Peter 38), that is 6,000 years. Then follows the last Millennium as the 
Sabbath of creation or Great Sabbath of the Lord—the Messianic reign of 
1,000 years. 

2 A medieval Jewish writing (Scheftelowitz l.c. p. 20. n. 2) says expressly 
that the sabbatic fish-meal is an anticipation of the Messianic fish-banquet. 


P 


XXXII. 


THE TEACHING OF JESUS ON THE MESSIANIC 
‘FOOD FROM HEAVEN.’ 


As the archeology of Christian origins would be 
entirely wrong in considering the pictures analysed in 
ch. xxvii. as simple illustrations to the evangelic 
feeding-stories—losing thereby the opportunity of 
properly utilising some of the most ancient and 
valuable witnesses about the nature of the primitive 
Christian ‘ agapé’—so should we also be ill-advised, if 
we yielded to the temptation to neglect these same 
traditions as entirely devoid of historical value and 
biographical interest, merely because it might now 
appear possible to take them as nothing more than 
projections of the customary fish-and-bread meal of 
the earliest Church into the earthly life of the Christ— 
invented in order to justify the preservation of this 
originally Jewish rite by the example of Jesus, just 
as the command of the risen Lord—“Go ye and 
baptise all nations,” etc.—has been arbitrarily inserted 
into the concluding verses of Matthew, in order to lend 
the authority of Jesus to the Christian development of 
the baptism of John and his disciples. For in that 
case we should expect a mention of the ‘cup of blessing,’ 
and above all—if not in A or B at least in © or 
D—an express order of Jesus, to repeat for ever this fish- 


and-bread meal, analogous to the word: “This do ye in 
226 


THE MANNA-MIRACLE OF THE MESSIAH 227 


remembrance of me” (J Cor. 10 and Luke 221), in the 
Pauline account of the Last Supper. 

In pursuing therefore resolutely this further line 
of research, we shall best start from the feeding of the 
4,000 (B), where—in the original text—no mention 
occurred of any fish.’ To understand this tradition, we 
must remember that the popular Jewish eschatology 
expected the Messiah to repeat the Mosaic miracle of 
the Manna,’ just as the Christ was expected to renew 
the marvellous production of life-giving water from the 
bare rock in the wilderness.* Hunger and thirst—this 
is of course the meaning of these hopes—will be un- 
known in the Kingdom of God, where a miraculous 
fertility is to reign throughout: the earth will bring 
forth her fruits in myriads; a single vine will have a 
thousand branches; every branch of it a thousand 
clusters; every cluster a thousand grapes; and every 
grape will yield a barrel of wine. They who have been 
hungry will have plenty to eat, for in those times the 
manna will fall again from heaven, and they that live 
to see the end of the times, will again eat of it.4 A 
wheat-ear will grow higher than the mountains of 
Judah ; yet it will not be difficult to harvest its grains, 
for God will send a wind, to scatter the ‘corn from 
heaven’ (Psalm 72«)—changed already into flour—all 
over the earth,’ etc. 

Even if the fourth gospel (Jn. 63.) did not expressly 
compare the multiplication of the bread by Jesus to 

1 Cp. above p. 212, n. 3. 


2 Cp. Jean Réville, Le #me Evangile, p. 175 (2nd ed. p. 178). 


8 « Ag the first Goél (=Moses) has produced a fountain, so willthe second 
one bring forth water ” (Schoetgen, Der wahre Messias, I. 361). See also the 
expression ‘the waters of the Messiah’ in Hecl. R. 1, 9. 

4 Syrian Apocalypsis of Baruch, ch. 29, ed. Charles, p. 54. Cp. 
Fragm. of Papias in Jren. v. 383. 


5 2 Kethuboth 111b. 


228 ORPHEUS THE FISHER 


the manna-miracle of Moses, we should not fail to 
perceive that the story of the miraculous feeding of the 
multitude is intended to show that Jesus was indeed 
the true Messiah, who could at will feed as many of the 
hungry in Israel as he chose. The multiplication itself 
is well known to be modelled on the prototype of an 
Elisha-legend in 2 Kings 44.’ Indeed it is only with 
regard to this prototypic passage, that the fourth 
gospel makes the multiplied loaves consist of barley. 
Because Elisha lets his servant ‘set before’ the people, 
Jesus does not himself distribute the bread, but orders 
the Twelve to ‘set’ the bread ‘before’ the multitude— 
an artificial method of composition, the result of which 
is best characterised by the criticism of a small school- 
boy, who remarked indignantly to his father: ‘‘ Now 
isn’t it too bad, dad, that the apostles themselves did 
not get anything to eat and yet it was their bread that 
the Lord Jesus gave to the other men!’? Indeed, as 
Jean Réville’ has acutely observed, the disciples ana- 
chronistically act in this story the réle of the later 
‘deacons’ (Acts 616) in the ceremonial of a Christian 
‘agapé. Still more influenced by the familiar notion 
of a Christian ‘love-feast ’ is the detail of the fragments 
that are collected in the baskets. The Elisha-legend 
says only that the hundred men ate and left of the 
bread. In the Christian parallel, however, this is im- 
proved upon by means of a reminiscence from the cere- 


1 “A man from Baal-Shalisha . . brought the man of God bread of 
the first fruits, twenty loaves of barley and full ears of corn in the husk 
thereof. And he said, Give unto the people, that they may eat. And his 
servitor said, What, should I set this before an hwndred men. He said again, 
Give the people, that they may eat, for thus saith the Lord, They shall eat 
and shall leave thereof. So he set it before them, and they did eat, and left. 
thereof according to the word of the Lord.” 


‘ aie A—if we abstract from the interpolation—no such difficulty is to 
e felt. 


® Les Origines de l Hucharistie (Paris, 1908) p. 59, n. 1. 


THE BASKETS WITH THE CRUMBS 229 


monial of an agapé, as it was celebrated in the houses 
or meeting-places of the community, where the crumbs 
that fell ‘between the couches,’ used to be swept up 
in an orderly way.’ But who would think of sweeping 
the ground for the sake of cleanliness after an impro- 
vised meal in the middle of the wilderness? And where 
did the seven or twelve baskets come from in such a 
place? It becomes all the more evident that this detail 
can only be derived from the domestic meal-ceremonial 
of the Church, if we read in the prototypic manna- 
legend, that the Israelites were expressly forbidden to 
keep anything of that miraculous food for the next day.’ 

As to the numbers in this version, the ‘seven’ 
loaves and ‘seven’ baskets are simply the usual 
sacred number of these things; just as the ‘twelve’ 
baskets in the A version; or, ‘ seven’ is chosen here as 
the typical dwnar number in order to allude to the 
popular conception of the moon as a loaf of bread, 
that always grows whole again however often pieces 
may have been cut off it,? and to the equally popular 
comparison of the moon to a basket ;* while the four- 
thousand (40100) may—with some probability—be 
explained as suggested to the narrator by the two Old 
Testament prototypes, since one hundred men are fed 
by the ‘man of God’ Elisha, while on the other hand 
the manna is given to Israel during forty years.’ 

From this account the parallel feeding of the five 
thousand (A) differs in three main points: first of all 


1 Cp. above, p. 218, n. 1. 

2 Indeed in the modern Syrian church the eucharistic bread too must 
be baked fresh for each celebration and not reserved ‘as the manna in the 
wilderness ’ according to Exod. 1619£. (O. H. Parry, l.c., p. 339). 

3 Aug. Schleicher, Litt. Marchen, etc. (Weimar, 1857), p. 33. 

4 On ‘buginnu,’ the ‘basket’ of the Babylonian Moon-god, see Frank 
Leips. Sem. Stud. II. 2, p. 18f. 35 1. 7, p. 43a. 


5 Deut. 82, 3. 


280 ORPHEUS THE FISHER 


the meal is enriched by the addition of fish to the 
bread ; secondly the locality of the feeding is described 
as a meadow with fresh green grass, so that the group 
of reclining eaters look like the beds of a garden in it, a 
peculiarity that has certainly a deeper meaning, since 
also in the above mentioned (p. 210) fresco of the 
Capella Graeca of S. Priscilla the fish-meal is celebrated 
on a verdant ground’; finally the two hundred penny- 
worth of bread, the five fishes and two loaves and the 
five instead of four thousand participants—grouped in 
a hundred ranks of fifty men each—denote a more 
developed numerical symbolism. 

As to the fish, they cannot be derived from the 
Manna-legend, unless the words of Moses in the latter 
(Num. 112): “Shall (all) the flocks and the herds be 
slain for them, to suffice them? Or shall all the fish of 
the sea be gathered together for them to satiate them ? ”— 
be considered a sufficient reason for their introduction. 
Neither is it possible that the meal should be charac- 
terised as a sabbath-eve’s supper, since it appears in 
the story as the merest chance that some, apparently 
cured fish, as they were frequently used for traveller’s 
provisions,’ are found in the wallet of one of the dis- 
ciples. It is plain, however, from what has been said 
before’ about jish being the principal dish of the Messianic 
meal, that in the author’s intention the fortuitous, or 
rather providential, presence of this peculiar meal 
enables Jesus to celebrate something like an anticipa- 
tion of that real banquet of the Kingdom, which is to 
take place when the Son of Man will return in glory 
from the clouds of the sky. 


’ See algo the meal depicted in the Vincentius-grave Wilpert, p. 893. 


2 Cp. Hnc. Bibl. 1529 §7. In the 5th Surat of the Koran fish is 
pep ieesty called ‘ the food of the travellers.’ * Cp. above, p. 224, n. 4. 


THE MESSIANIC FISH MEAL ANTICIPATED 231 


This obvious explanation accounts also for the 
insistence of the author—who is emphatically followed 
in this respect by the fourth gospel'—on the garden- 
like appearance of the spot. For the fish-meal of the 
saved in the Kingdom takes place in ‘Gan Eden,’ the 
Garden of (the recovered) Paradise. Consequently its 
anticipation must be enacted in a grassy, garden-like 
place. 

In studying the more complicated numerical 
symbolism of this piece, it is best to depart from the 
‘two hundred pennyworth’ of bread, since this has 
already been acutely explained from Philonic principles 
by H. A. Abbot.2 According to the Alexandrian philo- 
sopher’ and his Neo-pythagorean mysticism, the number 
200 denotes repentance. The unknown evangelist to 
whom we owe the A account of the feeding-miracle, 
then probably wanted to suggest by this detail in the 
reply of the disciples, that not all the repentance in 
the world could buy the bread from heaven for Israel ; 
as a free gift it must be expected from the Divine 
Grace. 

As to the five instead of the seven loaves, there is 
the constant tradition in the Church,‘ from the earliest 
Fathers up to St. Bernard of Clairvaux, that they 
symbolise the technically so-called Pentateuch, the five 
books of the Mosaic Law. As to the two fishes— 
contrasted with the undefined number in the interpo- 
lation to B’ and with the seven fishes in a Mahomedan 
parallel’—the Patristic opinion is not so unanimous. 

1 Jn. 620: ‘* Now there was much grass in the place.” 

2 Hne. Bibl. 1797; cp. above, p. 118,n.1. * On Gen, 522. 

4 Cp. Pitra, Spic. Sol. iii. 526, § ii. 5 Cp. above, p. 212, n. 2. 

6 According to the 5th Surah (112-115) of the Koran, God sends a fully 
dressed table—analogous to the‘ Tischlein deck dich’ of the German fairy tale 


—from heaven atthe prayer of Jesus. Ibn Abbas and Al Dschalalam say that 
there were seven loaves and seven fishes on this matdah (Hughes, Dict. of 


282 ORPHEUS THE FISHER 


Some take the fishes as symbolising the Christ, an 
idea which is beforehand excluded by the plural 
number of fish, in spite of all ‘the artificial subtleties 
to distinguish two different personalities of the 
Christ—the suffering and the glorified, the anointed 
King and the anointed High Priest, etc. Many 
Fathers, however, explain the two fishes, quite in 
accordance with the equation of the five loaves with 
the five books of Moses, as representing ‘ the Prophets 
and the Psalms,’ that is to say ‘the Prophets and the 
Hagiographa’ (in Hebrew, Nebijim v Kethubsm), the 
two remaining main divisions of sacred books, that 
make up, together with the Pentateuch, the Thorah 
properly so-called, the canon of Holy Scripture. To 
symbolise by ‘ fishes’ sacred books or inscriptions—the 
latter in case we should by preference refer the two 
fishes to the two stone tables of the Law'—is very much 
in the line of old Oriental allegorism ; since we have 
Babylonian inscriptions where a certain sacred fish is 
called the ‘writing-table of Bel,’ and the Fish-god 
Hani acclaimed as the patron of the dup-Ssarrwu or 
tablet-writers, most probably because the well-known 
dove-tailed wedges of cuneiform writing led the popular 
fancy to a comparison of them with a shoal of fish 
swimming in various directions.” 

Finally the number ‘five thousand ’—instead of 
‘four thousand’ in B—is certainly to be explained 
according to the hint given in the sentence “they sat 


down in groups of 100 x 50.’* As in B, the number 100 


Islam, p. 110). This probably goes back to some unknown apocryphal 
gospel, since there has been found in Carthage an early Christian earthen- 
ware lamp, impressed with a stamp showing seven fishes lying on a table 
(see our reproduction from Revwe archeol., 1901, i. 24ff). Cp. also the ‘ seven 
fishes of Istar’ in an old Sumerian hymn, Hommel, Die Schwurgittin shanna, 
p. 66. Other Koran commentators talk of nine fish and nine loaves. 


' Severian. Gabalit. in Pitra, Spic. Solesm. iii. 527. 
? Cp. above pp. 81,n.2 and 438. ° Greek: ‘ana hekaton kai ana pentekonta.’ 


ALLEGORICAL FEATURES IN THE LEGEND 233 


is derived from the hundred men fed with bread by 
Blisha; 50 however is written in Hebrew with the sign 
2, that is the letter N, which is pronounced Nan, i.e. 
‘Fish.’ The reader, who remembers from a preceding 
chapter’ the familiar Jewish allegorism of calling a 
pious Israelite a ‘fish,’ will easily be able to decipher 
the numerical symbolism of the multitude grouped in 
ranks of ‘50’ (3) as suggesting that the hundreds of 
men, fed by Jesus on that occasion, were all ‘fishes,’ 
that is pious Israelites. 

The most important result of this analysis is 
certainly that the Patristic equation of the food given 
by Jesus—the five loaves and two fishes—with the 
‘ Thorah- Nebym- Kethubim’ (Pentateuch, Prophets and 
Hagiographa), that is with the whole Sacred Scriptures, 
may indeed very well correspond to the original mean- 
ing of the unknown author of A. But, however this 
writer’s intentions may be explained, we meet in any 
case as early as in Matthew 16n,’ with the express 
statement, that the loaves in the two feeding-stories 
are not meant for real bread, but for the word of God, 
which is‘ leavened,’ that is putrefied and perverted by 
the ‘ leaven,’ that is by the doctrine of the Pharisees. 
This interpretation—which was elaborately exposed 
later on and complicated by the logosophic identifica- 
tion of the Messiah with the Word of God in the Gospel 
of John—is in perfect harmony with the fact that the 
common source from which Matthew and Luke derived 
a series of ‘sayings’ of Jesus, makes the Lord quote 
the famous sentence about the manna in Deuteronomy 
83, “Man doth not live by bread only, but by every 


1 Above pp. 169ff. 


2 “How is it that you do not understand, that I spake not to you 
concerning loaves of bread ?” 


234 ORPHEUS THE FISHER 


[word] that proceedeth out of the mouth of God,” in 
reply to the challenge, “If thou be the Son of God 
command that these stones be made bread,’’—that is, 
in reply to an expectation which reflects the popular 
belief in the material blessings conveyed by the Messiah, 
in the same way as the analogous question in John 63: 


What sign shewest thou then, that we may see [it] and 
believe thee? What dost thou work? Our fathers did eat 
manna in the desert, as it is written (Ps. 782), He gave them 
bread from heaven to eat. 


Such words as these would fit admirably into a 
situation, which may perfectly well be believed to have 
called forth the remarkable action—so full of deepest 
eschatological meaning—of the historic Jesus feeding 
the multitude. He may have been followed by a 
multitude of hearers to a lonely place, where he taught 
them about the impending Kingdom until nightfall. 
Then from the deeply excited hungry crowd of ardent 
believers in the Messianic hopes of Israel, the passionate 
cry for a sign may have arisen: If the banquet of the 
final Sabbath was as near as that, why could he not 
give them here and now a foretaste of it? Could he 
not change the stones into food (lit. bread) or let manna 
drop from heaven as Moses had done in the wilderness ? 

With the quiet calm, which is so impressively 
felt even in the distorted and made-up versions of our 
gospels, he made them all sit down, took from the 
wallet of one of his disciples the frugal supper of the 
little company, some bread and—may be—some cured 
fish. Then he looked up to heaven, said the berakhah 
in praise of the Creator of all food, broke the bread in 
the customary manner of the Jewish householder, and 
gave a morsel to each. And before disappointment 
could be felt among the partakers of this remarkable 


> 


TEACHINGS OF JESUS ON THE TRUE MANNA _ 285 


communion-meal, he began to teach them anew: how 
it is written (Deut. 83) that man doth not live by food 
only, but by the word of God. He taught them—as 
his contemporary the Alexandrian philosopher tells 
his readers over and over again,! and as the Palestinian 
‘allegorists,’ the ‘dorshé reshuméth’ of his age, knew 
quite as well’—how the real manna and the true ‘ bread 
from heaven’ is the divine Spirit, the revelation, that 
had been given to Israel on Mount Sinai,—even as the 
water that Moses drew from the rock, was in reality 
nothing else than the wholesome Law brought down 
from the mountain of God.* Had not the Lord said 
through the mouth of Amos, the herdsman of Tekoa 
(S1o#.) : 


Behold, the days come . . . whenI will send a hungeron 
the land, not a hunger of bread, nor a thirst for water, but of 
hearing the words of Jahvé. 

And they shall wander from sea to sea and from the north 
even to the east, they shall run to and fro to seek the word of 
Jahvé. In that day shall the fair virgins and young men faint for 
thirst. 


He reminded them of Jahvé’s promise, given 
through the prophet Isaiah (551) : 


1 Philo, II. Leg. all. 21; III. Leg. all. 59, 61; Quod. det. pot. ws. 81; 
Quis rer. div. haer. 15 and 39; De profug. 25, De migr. Abraham 5. 


2 Cp. Lauterbach, Jew. Quart. Review, vol. i. p. 8327. In Sanhedr. 7T0b, 
it is said that the tree of knowledge, from which Adam ate, was wheat—a 
theory which by the by recurs in the Korén. This shows that the gigantic 
wheat-stalk in Kethuboth (above, p. 227 n. 5) from which the heavenly corn is 
to fall down in the Messianic time, was identified with the tree of knowledge 
of good and evil in Paradise. The manna descending from the tree of know- 
ledge—what can it be but the Law, which teaches men to discern good and 
evil? Cp. ‘ the bread of knowledge’ and ‘ the water of wisdom’ in Surah. 153 
ibid. 24, the marvellous vine is identified with Wisdom itself. 

8 The mystic equation of the manna and of the water in the wilderness 
is also found in the Christian authors. See eg. Raban Maur. (Migne cxii. 
995), Vener. Guisbert (ibid. cxvi. 42, 50, 56), Rupert Abb. (2bid. clxvii. 902), 
Garner. de S. Victore (ibid. excili. 279). 

4 Cp. Mark, 83: “If I send them away fasting to their own homes they 

will faint by the way : for divers of them come from far,” 


236 ORPHEUS THE FISHER 


As the rain cometh down and the snow from heaven and 
returneth not thither, but watereth the earth and maketh it bring 
forth and bud, giving seed for sowing and bread for eating, so shall 
my Word be that goeth forth out of my mouth. 

He reminded them perhaps of the powerful words 
of the prophet opening this very chapter : 

Ho every one that thirsteth, come ye to the waters, and he 
that has no bread, come ye, buy and eat! yea come, buy wine and 
milk without money and without price. Wherefore do ye spend 
money for that which is not food? and your labour for that which 
satisfieth not? Hearken diligently to me and eat ye that which is 
good !” 

Well may he have concluded with the saying 
(Jn. 617) : 

Labour not for the meat which perisheth, but for the meat 

which endureth unto everlasting life—for the word of God! 
And then dismissed the multitude with the 
blessing : 

Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteous- 
ness ; for they shall be filled! (Matt. 56). 

If this hypothetic reconstruction of the ‘teaching’ 
of Jesus, which is so emphatically mentioned in the A 
document, be admitted as plausible, I would ask the 
most critical reader, whether there is any difficulty in 
believing that a crowd which had been addressed in 
such or similar words,’ could feel really satiated in a 
deeper sense with ‘bread from heaven,’ and believe 
themselves to have been marvellously given a foretaste 
of the true Messianic meal ? 

As far as I can see, there is not the slightest 


1 Cp. Jeremiah, 15ic: Thy words . . . Idideat . . Thy word 
was unto me the joy . . ofmineheart . . . OLord. . 

* Cp. Shepherd of Hermas, xi. If: “I prayed unceasingly. . . . He 
asked me: What supper hast thou eaten? Lord, I answered, words of the 
Lord have I eaten the whole night.” Proto-Evangel of James 14: “.. Prayer 


shall be food and drink unto me.” 


TEACHINGS OF JESUS ON THE TRUE MANNA 287 


reason to deny the historicity of this symbolic ‘banquet’ 
of the Messiah, celebrated by Jesus somewhere on the 
Shore of the Galilean Lake. More than this, the con- 
viction that such an impressive incident really occurred 
during the short earthly career of the Nazarene prophet, — 
is alone able to account for the ecstatic visions of his 
disciples, who even after his tragic death still beheld 
their deceased master feeding them on the flesh of one 
broiled fish. 


XXXII. 


THE BROILED FISH ON THE COAL FIRE. 


In the light of these results, the incident related 
in C does not appear to be a literary variant to A and 
B, but rather a psychological reflection of the real facts 
underlying the latter. A special explanation is wanted 
only for one detail, wz. for the fact, that Mark 
designedly contrasts the one roasted fish of this feeding 
with the ‘two’ or ‘some’ fishes mentioned in his 
source (A and B). An uncautioned observer might 
easily feel tempted to explain this emphasis on the one 
fish, on the authority of Augustine, with reference to 
the well-known early Christian symbolism of Jesus as 
the IChThYS or divine ‘ Fish,’ as it is met with, e.g. 
in the epitaph of Aberkios. Against this, however, 
militates the striking fact, that the fourth evangelist, 
while equating Jesus himself with the bread of the 
feeding-miracle (‘I am the bread of life ’), does not even 
think of the still more effective argument of allowing 
the Christ to say: ‘Iam the Fish of the living." And 
if John does not betray any acquaintance with the 
ichthys symbolism, can we venture to attribute this 
idea to Mark ? 

Moreover there is an entirely different and very 
plausible solution of the whole difficulty. We know 
from a great many testimonia,” that according to an old 


1 Thus, (IXOYZ ZONTON) in an early Christian epitaph. (Doelger, 
p. 160, fig. 9). 2 Scheftelowitz lec., p. 6ff. 


238 


THE EATING OF LEVIATHAN’S FLESH 239 


Jewish belief, the great cosmic fish Leviathan will rise 
from the primeval deep at the endofthe times. Jahve, 
or, with his aid, the angel Gabriel, will fish up the great 
monster,’ dismember and cook it, and then feed the 
pious on it at the great Messianic banquet. Its taste will 
be like that of a fish from the lake of Tiberias.’ 

At the bottom of this eschatologic idea there are 
two essentially different notions. First, the concep- 
tion that the beginuing of the new xon will be exactly 
similar to the days of creation: as Jahvé caught and 
slew Rahab, the great monster, before he created the 
world,* even so will he slay Leviathan before the 
renewal of the cosmos. Second, a naive popular 
theory of retaliation: according to Jonah 2:3, the belly 
of the great fish is identical with Sheol, the pale of 
Hell. During the whole of the present world the belly 
of the great monster—Hades—has devoured the 
children of man. On the last day, however, God will 
force it to render up all its victims, as the Leviathan 
had to vomit forth Jonah. More than that, after 
this resurrection of the dead, the ‘living ones’ in 
Paradise will have their revenge on Death itself and 
devour in their turn the great monster. Revenge will 
be sweet, and the flesh of the world-encompassing 
whale will be as delicate as the best fish from the 
Tiberiad. And if they have thus eaten up Death itself, 
blessed immortality will of course reign over the world. 
Consequently the eating of the Leviathan’s flesh at 
the Messianic banquet is in itself, like the eucharist in 


1 Cp. above p. 28. 

2 The banquet of the Last Days is regularly called se‘wdat hal-lwidthan 
or ‘ Leviathan-meal’ (cp. e.g. Abboth iii. 16). 

3 Jalkut to Job § 41. 


4 See Zimmern (Alter Orient, ii. 3, pp. 8f.), on Ps. 74;89; Is.51; Ezek, 
823; Job 9 and 26, etc. 


240 ORPHEUS THE FISHER 


the Christian doctrine, the ‘medicine of immortality ’* 
for the chosen. ; 

Nothing seems more probable than that the 
visionary dreamer, who saw the risen Jesus feed his 
disciples on the one fish from the Galilean Lake, meant, 
this meal to be intended for a foretaste of the great. 
feast, the life-giving flesh of Leviathan, and the coal- 
fire on which the fish was roasted for a symbol of the 
final conflagration of the world—the one fire, which is 
large enough to roast a fish, that occupies a seventh 
of the whole ocean !? 


1 Ignat. Antioch. Hp. ad Hphes 202. 24 Esra 652.. 


XXXITT. 


THE FISH AND THE HONEYCOMB. 


As to the fish-meal in D (Lwke 24),! it presents 
few difficulties. Unbelievers must have combated the 
belief in the resurrection of Jesus by raising the 
objection that what was seen, had been merely a 
vision (phantasma), as indeed the disciples themselves 
believed they saw a ghost (pnewma, Luke 24:s).2 Now the 
mere visionary apparition of a deceased man’s ‘image’ 
or ‘angel’ to his friends or relatives is not and was never 
considered—least of all by the ancients of whatever faith 
—a miracle transcending the ordinary course of nature. 
Therefore Luke represents the risen Christ as. having 
been touched. To those who did not believe in the 
reanimation of the crucified body and qualified the 
apparitions of Jesus as those of a mere bodiless spirit, 
the most fervent believers opposed a vision intended to 
prove that after his crucifixion Jesus still manifested 
bodily functions: he was seen to eat. That he should 
have eaten a fish and nothing else, is clearly deduced 
from the fact, that through his death and resurrection 
he had already entered the Kingdom of Heaven, and 


1 Above, p. 214. 


2 Similarly in Mark 649 the disciples think that they see nothing but a 
phaniasma of Jesus walking on the water. Cp. Brandt, Huang. Geschichte, 
p. 367, n. 1, on the Marcionite version of Luke. 


On the contrary, in the cases of Oannés (above, p. 44) and John the 
Baptist (p. 153), the legends insist on their heroes not having eaten or 
drunk in order to let them appear as supernatural beings. 

241 


242 ORPHEUS THE FISHER 


therefore ate of the food of the pious in Paradise 
(above, p. 225, n. 2). 2 

The addition of the honeycomb in some manu- 
scripts! immediately reminds us of the ‘honey-like 
food of the Lord’ in the Pektorios-epitaph (above, 
pp. 219f.). The detailin question is, no doubt, somehow 
connected with the well-attested eucharistic use of 
honey in some early Christian communities,’ although, 
of course, drinking honey—or a mixture of milk and 
honey—is not quite the same thing as eating some 
wax from a honeycomb. 

Yet a rapid look at the manifold mystic doctrines 
concerning bees and their products,’ current among 
the ancients, will easily convince us that the reasons 
for considering honey a sacred food were equally valid 
also for the wax-combs. We know that the Greeks 
considered the bees as prophetic,* nay divine, animals’; 
playing on the similarity of the words melos (=‘ song’) 
and melt (=‘ honey ”*), they believed that honey given to 
a child would convey to it the gift of sweet eloquence 
and poetical genius—witness all the legends of bees 
filling with honey the mouth of the infant Homer, 
Sappho, Pindar or Plato. Bees were supposed to 
produce the nectar, or melitoma, which was the favourite 
drink of the gods,’ to have led men to the oracle-places 


1 It is unknown to Clemens Alexandrinus, Origen and to the best 
codices. 


2 Above, p. 68f. 


® See W. Robert Tornow, De Apiwm Mellisque Significatione, etc., 
Berlin, 1893, and A. B. Cook, ‘The Bee,’ etc., in Journ. of Hell. Studies, xv. 
pp. 1ff. 


* Aristotle’s works, ed. Bekker, pp. 627, B10; 885, A22; Arat. Prognost. 
v. 296; Aeclian, Hist. Anim. i.11; v. 18. 


° Petronius 56, ‘apes divinas bestias,’ and the rest of the testimonies 
collected by Tornow, p. 103. 


* See the quotations in Tornow, pp. 105ff. 


" Batracho-myomachia, v.89; Homeric Hymn to Mercury, v. 42. 


PAGAN BELIEFS CONCERNING BEES AND HONEY 248 


of the divinities,’ or even to have built temples for the 
gods. Priests and priestesses of Apollo, Artemis, 
Demeter, Cybele, bore the title of bees or king-bees.’ 
Besides, bees were praised as models of chastity, because 
they were supposed to mould their offspring out of 
wax without any intercourse of the sexes.? Another 
frequent superstition—the so-called bougonia myth*— 
was that bees generated spontaneously in the bodies 
of dead animals, so that they could be considered as 
symbolical of immortality, as of a new form of life 
coming forth after death’s apparent victory over the 
body. Moreover, the antiseptic action of honey— 
preventing the corruption of organic matter just as 
the sugar in a modern preserve—was well known to 
the ancient medical practitioners. According to 
Herodotus (i. 198), the Babylonians buried dead bodies 
in honey, while the Persians used wax for embalming 
purposes.” The fable of Glaukos (Hygin. Fab. 136) 
about the miraculous reviving effect of honey on a 
corpse which had fallen into a honey pail, shows that 
honey was popularly esteemed a real antidote for 
death,° nay as the longed-for pharmakon athanasias or 
‘medicine of immortality,” a term which we know to 
have been occasionally applied by Christians to the 
eucharistic substances in general. Add to all this the 
superstitions which are based on the once mysterious 
phenomenon of the so-called honey-dew found on trees 


1 Pausanias, ix., p. 60510. 

2 Cook and Tornow, ll.cc. Egypt. Bjt, Greek Battos=‘ bee’ is the Lybian 
title of the kings of Kyrene and Lower Egypt. 

3 Plin. xi. 5 (16); Aelian, Hist. Anim., i. 58; Aristotle, p. 553, A18, ed. 
Bekker ; Virg. Georg. iv. 200. 

4 Cp. the references in Bochart’s Hierozoicon 4101, and for the explanation 
of this theory Baron Osten Sacken in the Bulletino della Socteta Hntomo- 
logica Italiana, tom. 25 (1893). 

5 Tornow, pp. 126f.; Hc. Bibl. 2106 (small print). 

6 Thirty little bronze bees were found in a Sardinian grave (Arch. Zett., 
1857, p. 30). 7 Above, p. 240, n. 1. 


244 ORPHEUS THE FISHER 


or other plants, which led to the idea of a specially 
divine honey (in Greek aero-meli), supposed to fall from 
the sky or the stars, and identified by some ancient 
authorities with the manna of Exodus." 

No doubt the same ideas were current also among 
the Semites. The Babylonian word nubtw for bee 
resembles a female form of nabiw (= prophet), just as 
in Hebrew deborah (= bee) is intimately connected with 
d-b-r (=speak). The legendary prophetess (n*hiah, 
Judges 44, cp. Babylonian nubtu = bee) Deborah (= Bee), 
who lived under the ‘ bee-palm ’ (t6mer-deborah) between 
Rama and Bethel, and whose so-called ‘grave’? was 
shown below Bethel under the ‘oak of weeping’ 
(Gen. 35s), is certainly the sacred bee, inhabiting the 
hollow trunk of the sacred oak, which, as Hesiod says 
“on top bears the glands, in the middle the bees,” 
and, considered as the logos, the mystic ‘word,’ or 
messenger,’ of the oak and thundergod, if she be an 
historic character, the bee-priestess or prophetess of 
Jahve, the god in the oak-tree and in the thunderstorm. 
That the Hebrews as well as the Philistines knew the 
above-mentioned bowgonia myths, is certified by the 
famous riddle of Samson (Judges 14s), and that the 
Semites, too, believed in honey-rains from above, by 
the Babylonian divine name Ku-anna (=Honey from 
heaven).' 


1 Suidas, s.v. ‘ akris.’ 


* The sacred stones of Semitic goddesses are often called their ‘ graves. 
See the ‘grave’ of Ai (=IStar) in Sippar (Coder Hammurabbi ii. 26), of 
Aphrodite in Paphos, of Athar in Damascus and of the moon-goddess in 
ciate anita Clemens Rom. Recogn. i. 24, v. 18, vi. 21, and Justin, 
XXxv. 2, 2. 


® The conception of a divine ‘word’ is primitive with the Semites and 
entirely independent of later Hellenistic speculations. Cp. Hubert Grimme 
on amr (logos) in Arabic inscriptions of the 7th century B.c., and Zimimern, 
A.Or. vii. 3, p. 11, or Béllenriicher on amdtu (=the word) in old Babylonian 
hymns to Sin and Nergal. 


4 ITI. Rawl. 67, 84; Hommel, Grundriss, p. 2672. 


BEES IN JEWISH & CHRISTIAN MYSTICISM 246 


Honey was burnt to the Ba’alim by their wor- 
shippers (Hzek. 161), and offered among the first-fruits 
also to Jahvé (Levit. 212), on whose altar it could not, 
however, be burnt as a meal-offering. Honey, which 
was extensively eaten by the Pythagoreans (Tornow, 
o.c. p. 126) was also produced in great quantity by the 
Jewish Essenes (Philo. 2633, Mangey) and formed part of 
the diet of Jewish ascetics (cp. above, p. 183, on John 
the Baptist). 

Because it was thought to be the production of 
* prophetic’ or ‘ speaking’ animals, it is often compared 
with the ‘word’ or ‘wisdom’ of the divinity by the 
Hebrew poets. The word of Jahvé is ‘sweeter than 
honey and the honeycomb’ (Ps. 1910, cp. 1191s), the 
pleasant speech of a congenial man being also ‘as an 
honeycomb, sweet to the soul and health to the bones’; 
even so is wisdom comparable to honey (Prov. 24:3) and 
to a honeycomb (Heclus. 2420). 

Therefore nothing could be more natural than 
that the Christian Church should have taken over all 
these ideas, which had always been the common 
property of Jewish and Hellenic superstition ; thus we 
find Ambrose’ and Augustine’ likening the bees to 
chaste virgins, and Lactantius (I. 8s) comparing their 
alleged parthenogenetic procreation to the incarnation 
of the Logos. Even such a late author as Casarius of 
Heisterbach,’ who could not possibly know anything of 
Pausanias’ account (X. p. 6181), that the first sanctuary 
in Delphi had been bwilt by bees of wax and bee-wings 
speaks of bees building a temple for the infant Christ. 

But the most explicit testimony is certainly offered 

1 De Virginibus i. 
2 Cw. xv. 27. 


3 Dial. Mirac., ed. Strange, Dist. ix., De Corp. Christi, c. 8. Cp. Aug. 
Stéber, Hlsdss. Sagenbuch, Strassburg, 1842, p. 86. 


246 ORPHEUS THE FISHER 


by the remarkable bee-hymns, which are to be found 
in certain old sacramentaries immediately before the 
‘Blessing of the Easter Candle.’ The one in the 
Gelasian sacramentary,’ beginning with the words ‘ Deus 
mundi conditor,’ runs as follows: 


O God, creator of the world, author of light, maker of the 
stars, God, who hast recovered with manifest light the world that 


previously lay in darkness . . . . we offer to thy majesty, in 
this most holy nocturnal vigil, out of thy own gifts a candle 
made of wax oil and papyrus. . . . But since we marvel at 


the origin of this substance, we must necessarily praise the 
offspring of the bees. Indeed the bees are most frugal in what 
they eat and most chaste in their procreation. They build cells 
formed of liquid wax, which are unequalled by the master art of 
human experience. With their feet they gather flowers and from 
the flowers they produce honey. They do not shew forth births, 
but collecting them with the mouth they produce the swarms of 
conceived offspring, even as in a miraculous example Christ came 
forth from the mouth of the Father. In them virginity becomes 
fruitful without giving birth, and therefore God deigned to have a 
mother after the flesh from love of unblemished virginity. Such 
worthy offerings are therefore brought to thy sacred altars and 
Christianity has no doubt that thou art pleased with them. 


In a slightly different version from other manu- 
scripts’ the ‘ praise of the bees’ is worded as follows: 
The bees are superior to all the other animals which are 


subject to the rule of man, because in spite of the extreme small- 
' ness of their bodies, their hearts conceal the most powerful minds. 


Then follows a lengthy description of their gather- 
ing the sweetness from the flowers. 


When they return to their home, some of them build with 
an incomparable art the cells out of a gluey liquor, others produce 
the honey, others transform the flowers into wax, others form the 
young ones with their mouths, others make nectar from the 


1 Cp. Sacramentariwm Gelasianum, ed. Wilson, Oxford, 1894, p. 80. 
2 Migne, Patrol. Lat., \xxviii. c. 335. 


THE BEE HYMNS AND THE BASTER CANDLE 247 


collected flower leaves. O thou really blessed and lovable bee, the 
sex of which is neither violated by the males, nor harmed by the 
foetus, nor is thy chastity destroyed by child-birth, even as the 
holy Mary conceived as a virgin, as a virgin gave birth, and 
remained a virgin for ever. 


Consequently we may well suppose that originally 
a honeycomb was mentioned along with the broiled 
fish as food of the risen Lord, because this production 
of the virgin bee was believed to be wnpolluted by the 
stain of original sin, even as the fishes (cp. above, pp. 
173 n. 5 and 183 n. 1) were considered ‘a more sacred 
food ’ than other meat,’ evidently for the reason that 
popular belief attributed a parthenogenetic origin to 
this species of living beings. 

For the late author, however, who inserted the 
words ‘and gave them of it’ (above, p. 214, n. 2) into the 
context, thus adding another instance of the risen 
Jesus’ eating in communion with his disciples to the 
original narrative of the Christ, proving his bodily 
resurrection against the doubts of the Docetic heresy, 
both the fish and the waxen honeycomb were evidently 
familiar eucharistic symbols of the eaten god’s mystic body. 

The above-quoted bee-hymns refer, indeed, to the 
blessing of the so-called Easter candle. Now Catholic 
readers will certainly remember that up to the present 
day the wax of the Haster candle—which must be 
absolutely pure—is marked with five grains of incense, 
shaped like little nails and disposed in the form of a 
cross, which are intended to represent the five wounds 
of the crucified Christ.? Consequently the wax of the 


4 


1 Tertullian, Adv. Marc. 114; cp. Vincent. Bellovac. Spec. xxx. ec. 78, 
p. 2274: “The earth not the sea has been cursed by God [scv. before the 
deluge]. . . . Thisis the reason why we read of God eating of a fish, but 
not of the flesh of any other animal,” etc. 

2 Cp. Wetzer-Welte, Kath. Kirchenlexikon, Freiburg, 1895, vol. ix.S . 
1136f. 


248 ORPHEUS THE FISHER 


candle itself is supposed to symbolise the human body 
of the incarnate Logos and Light from heaven. 

The same symbolic interpretation of wax is mani- 
fest in another ancient rite, known to us through the 
violent discussions which it has aroused between the 
Greek and the Latin Church. It was customary in 
Rome and in the whole Occident to make little dambs 
out of the consecrated wax of the Paschal candle and 
to keep them for the octave of Easter, when they were 
distributed to the communicants after the Lord’s 
supper. The Greek theologians accused the Roman 
Church of including these wax lambs in the eucharistie 
consecration rite. In reality they were only taken 
home by the people and burnt together with incense 
in order to purify the houses by this fumigation. 
While refuting the libellous charges of the Greeks and 
Bulgarians, Amalarius of Trier (Hittorp, I. 342) gives 
the following explanatory reason for this rite: 

The wax symbolises, as Gregory [the Great] says in his 
sermons, the humanity of the Christ; for the honeycomb consists 
of honey in wax; the honey in wax, however, is the divinity in 
the humanity. The lambs, which the Romans make [of wax], 
symbolise the immaculate Lamb, which was made for our benefit. 

Here again the use of wax as a symbol for the 
flesh of the Agnus Det, the redeeming victim of Good 
Friday, is obviously a very ancient tradition. Thus it 
becomes exceedingly probable that the late author, 
who wrote the sentence of the disciples eating together 
with Jesus of the broiled fish and the honeycomb, 
understood this meal as a communion-meal in the flesh 
and blood of the Christ, including both his divine and 
his human essence. 


XXXIV. 


THE ‘FISH’ CAUGHT BY THE ‘VIRGIN’ IN 
THE MYSTIC EPITAPH OF BISHOP ABERKIOS. 


In the previous discussion of fish, bread and wine as 
the mystic food consumed in the love-meals of the 
primitive Church, we already mentioned incidentally 
the much-discussed epitaph of one Aberkios'—probably 
the bishop Avirkios Markellos of Hieropolis in Phrygia 
Salutaris, who lived, according to the Church History 
of Eusebius, towards the close of the 2nd century 4.p.— 
the inscription itself being certainly anterior to an 
imitation of part of its context on another man’s tomb- 
stone dating from the year 216 ap. The document 
runs as follows: 


* As the citizen of an elect city, 
I have erected this [monument] while I lived, 
in order to have in [due] time a place where to bury my body. 
My name is Aberkios ; I am a disciple of a holy shepherd 
* who feeds flocks of sheep on mountains and plains, 
who has great eyes that oversee everything. 
It is he who taught me the true writings [of Life], 
who sent me to Rome, to visit the majesty (basileian), 
to see a gueen (dasilissan) with golden garb and golden sandals. 
° There I saw a people wearing a shining seal. 
And I saw too the plain of Syria and all the towns, 
Nisibis, where I crossed the Huphrates. Paul I had as my 
guide (epo[dénta]).? 


1 The endless literature of the subject is conveniently summed up and 
catalogued in Dom Cabrol’s Dictionary of Christian Antiquities, s.v. 
* Abercvus.’ 

2 The inscription is mutilated here. The ‘Life of Abercius’ of Byzan- 
tine origin, supplied epochon, Hirschfeld ep’ ochdn, Hilgenfeld epoptén, 
Lingens eporeuthén. My restoration is based on Aeschylus, Pers. 657, where 
we find epodod for ephodod=‘ lead on the way.’ 

249 


250 ORPHEUS THH FISHER 


Faith however always went ahead and set before me as food 
a fish from a fountain, a huge one, a clean one, 
% which a holy virgin has caught. 

This she gave to the friends ever to eat as food, 

having good wine, and offering it watered, together with bread. 

Aberkios had this engraved when 72 years of age in truth. 

Whoever can understand this, let him pray for Aberkios, etc. 

As the last line of our quotation gives us quite 
plainly to understand, a number of words, which we 
have italicised, are obviously used in an unusual meta- 
phorical sense, that is to say as terms of a Christian 
mystery-language. 

The ‘holy shepherd,’ whom Aberkios praises as 
his master, is certainly Jesus, whose large fascinating 
eyes are such a marked feature of the Christ-type in 
the old Christian mosaics. The ‘flocks’ which he feeds 
on mountains and plains, are the churches scattered 
throughout the high- and low-lands of the ancient 
world; the ‘true writings of Life’ are the gospels. 
The Christ—possibly in a dream or in a vision—has 
sent the bishop on a pilgrimage to Rome. Even 
according to the most sceptical critics,’ at the end of 
the second century a.D. the supremacy of the Church 
of Rome was certainly recognised in the Kast. 

Accordingly, we have not the least hesitation in 
admitting that a Christian bishop of Phrygia might 
have likened the ekklesia (community of Christians) in 
Rome to a ‘queen’s’ supreme ‘majesty.’ We know 
that Justin Martyr called the town of Rome a ‘ queen’ 
(dasilis), and we have, moreover, the epitaph of a Pagan 
official, one Antony Theodore, Katholikos of Egypt and 
Phoenicia, who prides himself on having lived for a long 
time in the ‘queen-city of Rome’ (basilewousa Rdmé) 
and of having seen its marvels. Neither are the old 


1 E.g. Von Manen in nce. Bibl. 4157. 


THE ‘QUEEN’; THE ‘SHINING SEAL’ 251 


epical epithets ‘with golden shoes and golden garb’ 
difficult to account for in their application to a female 
personification of the Church, as it is met with, e.g., in 
the Shepherd of Hermas, in Valentinus or Clement of 
Alexandria. We know from the Sermons of Methodios 
(Or. viii. c. 8), that the 45th Psalm—a marriage-hymn 
in honour of an Israelite king—was interpreted as 
celebrating the marriage of the King Messiah with the 
‘Church,’ the ‘queen’ who stands on the right of the 
king in a gold-woven garment (vv: 10 and 14ff.).1.| Even 
in late medieval papal documents, we encounter the 
same idea, that Jesus Christ, the King of kings, clothes 
the Church, as his queen and bride, with a golden 
garment, and places her on the right of his throne.” 

The ‘ people’ distinguished by the ‘shining seal’ 
are the Christians, who have received the ‘seal’ of 
baptism, which is called shining with reference to the 
bright white garment of the newly initiated.’ Paul, 
the apostle, whose journey to Rome was on record in 
Acts, is the teacher, whose example invites Aberkios to 
visit the famous capital of the Empire, that is ‘who 
puts him on the way.’ ‘Faith’ (Pistis), a female 
personification, to be met with not infrequently on 
Pagan monuments, leads him from one community of 
‘friends,’ that is fellow-believers, to the other, and 
everywhere sets before him the mystic ‘ fish,’ which is 
to be eaten by them in common, together with wine 
and bread. 

What remains to be explained and what has given 
rise to many discussions, are the various mystic 
epithets which are given to the ‘fish.’ Why, indeed, 


1 Cp. Conybeare, Arch. f. Rel. Wiss. IX., pp. 78f. 
2 Weltenmantel wnd Himmelszelt, p. 297 n. 2 (Suppl.). 
3 Cp. Doelger, Sphragis, Paderborn, 1912, pp. 87f. 


252 ORPHEUS THE FISHER 


is he called the ‘all great one’’ and the ‘clean one’ 
why a ‘fish from the fountain’; and why is he 
considered the catch of a ‘holy virgin ’ ? 

We have seen before that, in Jn. 219, 13, the roasted 
and eaten fish probably symbolised the Leviathan, the 
fish which is to be the main dish of the great Messianic 
Banquet. If this mythic monster animal were meant 
here as well, we could understand why that world-en- 
compassing beast should be called ‘panmegethés’ (‘ all- 
great’), and also why it should be designated as ‘clean,’ 
since we have special decisions of the Rabbis that the 
Leviathan is to be reckoned among the clean (=eat- 
able) fish, because of its scales and fins. But we do 
not know of any myth which tells us that the Leviathan 
will be caught at the end of times by a ‘virgin’; on 
the contrary, it is always either God the Father or the 
Archangel Michael or, possibly, the Christ, who is 
supposed to perform this heroic deed; neither can we 
explain why the Leviathan, who lives at the bottom of 
the sea (Psalm 10427), should be called a ‘fish from a 
spring,’ evidently in the sense of a freshwater’ or river 
fish? 

Consequently, we must suppose that the ‘fish’ 
signifies in this connection something else or some- 


1 The only other passages where the Christ is called the ‘ great’ fish are 
to be found in Prosper Aquitanus and in Paschasius Radbert’s Commentary to 
Matthew, quoted by Pitra, Spic. Solesm. iii. 525f. In the well-known passage 
of Tertullian where the Christians are called ‘little fishes’ after the image of 
the IXOY2, we should expect to find the latter called the ‘great Fish.’ 
Nevertheless, the epithet is wanting here. Little fishes swimming against 
a big one are represented in a Syracuse catacomb painting, O. Wulff, Gesch. 
d. Altchristl. u. byz. Kunst, p. 74. 


» Cp. the Christ as a ‘freshwater fish’ (aquae vivae piscis) in St. Paulin, 
Ep, xiii., p. 897. 

® See Richardus a S. Laurentio: ‘Mary is a river; in this river was 
born that unique and eternal fish Jesus Christ,” etc. The idea of the birth 
in the river is of course originally derived from the idea of the Messiah’s 
rebirth in the Jordan during his baptism. Cp, also above, pp. 173 n. 5 and 


NG 1, the Rabbinic idea of a parthenogenetic origin of the fishes from 
water. 


THE ‘GRHAT FISH’ FROM THE ‘FOUNTAIN’ 258 


thing more than simply the Leviathan. Indeed it is a 
priort quite legitimate to expect here an allusion to the 
well-known fish-symbol of the suffering Messiah’ him- 
self. Even as the Christian Fathers, beginning with 
Augustine (416 a.D.),? take the roast fish of John 21, 
which was originally meant to suggest the Leviathan of 
the Jewish fish-banquet on the eve of the final world- 
sabbath, as a symbol for the suffering Christ, so also 
Aberkios evidently alludes to a food which is somehow 
connected with the ‘ continually’ celebrated rite of the 
Christian bread- and wine-communion (ll. 16f.). 

Now, since it is well known that, for reasons 
which cannot be discussed here, the Christian Church, 
beginning at least from the age of Paul, if not indeed 
from the evening of the Last Supper, believed firmly 
and fervently that it ate the Christ himself, or at least 
of his ‘mystic’ body, in the blessed bread and wine of 
their ritual communion meals, nothing could be more 
probable than the following interpretation of the 
‘clean’ and ‘ world-wide’ fish in our inscription. The 
Jews expected to eat at the end of time the huge, yet 

‘ Levitically considered ‘clean,’ that is ritually eatable, 
fish Leviathan. For the Christian devotee, who 
believes that Jesus is the Messiah who has already 
come and instituted the permanent Messianic Sabbath- 
eve’s meal, the ‘fish,’ whose eating gives immortality, 
is Iésous Christos Theou ‘Yios Sotér—the reborn 

1 Cp. above, pp. 171 nu. 1, 187 n. 1. I say, of the suffering Messiah, 
because I have come across a Midrashic tradition (Vekh. Sherah, 9; Sanhedr. 
92b; Pirké di R. Eliezer, xviii.) reporting that Nun (=F ish) the father of 
Joshuah, a prominent Ephraimite, of whom the Bible itself does not contain 
any mention, was the leader of an attempted, but unsuccessful, departure of 
the Jews from Egypt, who found a violent death at the hands of the 
Egyptians. The Messiah ben Nun (=Ichthys) may therefore well have been 


conceived also as a reincarnation of this mythic hero, who had suffered for 
the deliverance of his oppressed nation. 


2 Délger, IXOYS, pp. 42i. The formula, evidently of Latin, Western 
origin, is “ piscis assus est Christus passus.” 


254 ORPHEUS THE FISHER 


Joshuah ben Nun (=Fish) or reborn Nun (=Fish)— 
who gave at the Last Supper his own body to eat 
to his ‘friends’ and followers. The true ‘great’ 
(=exalted) and ‘clean’ (that is=sinless’) ‘ Fish’ of the 
Christians is the Messiah himself. To him who 
believes in the Messianity of Jesus, his ‘Faith’ offers 
daily the true Messianic ‘ Fish.” 

If this is the correct solution of the puzzle set us 
by the bishop of Hieropolis, it should offer as well a 
plausible explanation why it is said the ‘Fish’ was 
caught by a? Holy Virgin. The first thought of the 
modern reader would be to identify this ‘ Holy Virgin ’ 


1 Op. the dogmatic discussions about the sinlessness of the Christ, which 
are incorporated into the narratives of Jesus’ baptism in Matth. and Lk. 


2 A question of minor importance cannot—at least as far as I can see—be 
decided from the text of Aberkios’ epitaph: we cannot distinguish whether 
Aberkios really lived on the ‘ purer and more holy food’ (above, p. 247 n. 1) 
of fish (with bread and wine) during his whole journey, or whether he only 
means to say, that he ate the eucharistic bread and wine everywhere together 
with ‘friends,’ consuming thereby symbolically the body of the Christ-Fish. 
No doubt the catacomb-frescoes, and even later monuments such as a cele- 
brated mosaic of Ravenna and still later medieval miniatures, seem to 
represent the eating of a real fish in the course of the agapé. But, on the 
other hand, extant early Christian bread-stamps from Coptic graves in Egypt 
(see reproductions of such stamps from the Kaiser Friedrich’s Museum in Berlin, 
in Wulff’s catalogue, nos. 1435, 1440f., 1561) show, that it was customary to 
impress the image of a fish on the eucharistic bread and to drink the wine of 
the ‘cup of blessing’ from glasses decorated with engraved images of fishes 
(Garucci, Storia dell’ arte Cristiana, vi., pl. 490; Kraus, Real Hnc., i. 517). 
This would have no sense whatever, if the bread and the wine had been 
eaten with real fish. On the contrary, it is a very effective method of 
reminding the participants of the communion, that in the material shape of 
the bread and the wine they partake of the mystic ‘Fish’ Jesus, just as 
other Christian bread-stamps with the agnus Dei in the Cluny and Ash- 
molean Museums were to remind the eater of the consecrated wafer that he 
was mystically eating the true Passah-lamb of the new covenant. Most 
probably the development of the real fish-meal into a symbolic ‘fish’- 
communion is parallel to the supplanting of the original love-meal (agapé) 
of the small primitive congregations by the mere symbolic communion-meal 
of the later mass-ceremonial. At the end, the real fish-eating subsisted 
only in the—quite unofficial and only traditional—eating of the Friday-fish, 
just as the eating of a real Kaster-lamb was—unofficially—continued along- 
side the real Kaster-communion. 


_  * No definite article is added to parthenos in Greek, and that quite 
intentionally, so that indeed a Pagan, uninitiated reader may be induced to 
think of nothing else but of one of the innumerable ‘kedeshoth’ or ‘conse- 
crated’ maidens of Oriental shrines. This is, indeed, what has happened to 
such modern scholars as have advocated the Pagan character of the epitaph. 


MAGIC IMPREGNATION BY A_ FISH 255 


with Mary’, and to seek for some myth about the Blessed 
Virgin drawing the infant Jesus—like a fish—from the 
water, even as the Egyptian princess did with Moses’. 
As a fact we know of no such legend, although this 
certainly does not give us the right to say that such a 
story never existed, especially since we know of a great 
many Mdrchen and sagas where the supernatural birth 
of the hero from a virgin or a formerly barren woman 
is brought into connection with the catching and 
eating of a certain fish—called in some instances the 
‘king of the fishes’ or ‘ father of fishes.” 

In some instances the impregnation of the heroine 
is brought about by a drink of water from a certain 
spring, and there is at least one version where the 
incorporation of the fish is combined in a characteristic 
way with the fertilising draught of water.“ Now it is 
indeed remarkable that we have a (Mandaan) tradition’® 
which purports that Mary conceived through drinking 
water from a certain spring at the bidding of God. In 
spite of its late date, the primitive character of this 
legend is evident for intrinsic reasons, and it may well 
have been already in existence at the time when the 
author of the Proto-Evangel of James related how Mary 
received the annunciation zn the very act of fetching a jar 


1 Thus de Rossi, Wilpert and other authors. 


3 A midrash about the infant Moses being drawn out of a jfish-pond in 
Wiinsche, aus Israels Lehrhalten, Leipz., 1907, p. 165. 


8 Most of the folk-tales containing this motwe have been collected and 
analysed by HK. Sidney Hartland, The Legend of Persews, London, 1894, ch. 
ii., ‘The King of the Fishes Type.’ Other instances not directly connected 
with the Perseus legend are to be found, <bid. pp. 73ff. 

4 Op. Powell and Magnusson, Icelandic Legends, coll. by Jan Arnason, 
London, 1864/66, p. 485; Maurer, Islandische Volkssagen, Leipzig, 1860, 
p. 284. The story is about an earl’s wife, to whom three women in blue 
mantles, the Norns, appear in a dream and command her to go to a stream 
near by and lay herself down to drink of it and try to get into her mouth a 
certain trout she will see there, when she will at once conceive. Everything 
happens as foretold, etc. 


5 Brandt, Manddische Religion, p. 67; Dolger, o.c., p. 94. 


256 ORPHEUS THE FISHER 


of water from the well... As there are indeed later 
traditions’ about the Virgin Mary eating a fish and 
spinning’ in this same situation, we should not be at 
all astonished if we should one day meet, in some until 
now unknown or unedited apocryphal gospel-fragment, 
the typical variant of this miraculous birth-legend. 

Fortunately, however, we need not wait for such a 
discovery to explain the crucial line about the ‘ virgin’s 
fish’ in the Aberkios epitaph. Even now we are 
perfectly acquainted with the strange symbolism that 
underlies as well Aberkios’ mystic description of the 
supernatural birth of the ‘ Fish’ as all the Mdrchen 
and sagas quoted on the preceding page, n. 3. 

In the folk-lore of the most different parts of the 
world we find—for complex and different reasons, all of 
which, however, modern psycho-analysis would not find 
hard to explain‘—a highly developed sex symbolism 
connected with the idea of a fish. 

To begin with far-away India, we see in a collec- 
tion of Buddhist symbols’ the yonz, or female organ, 
represented by a fig-leaf and two fishes in a character- 
istic position. The Love-god himself is called minaketu, 
minadhvaja, minalauhana, minduka = ‘he who has 
the fish for his symbol.’ There is on record an Indian 
version of the typical Médrchen, how a queen, her 
servant and a cow became pregnant by eating of a 


' The earliest illustrations of this scene are mentioned by Délger, o.c., 
p- 94. 


2 Dahnhard, Natursagen, ii. vol., ch. 1. 
8 Ibid., p. 253, cp. below p. 262, n. 6, and pl. Ixv. 


* Cp.the author’s paper,‘ Zur Seawalsymbolik des Fisches, in Sigm. 
Freud's review, Imago, 1914, p. 165-195. 


> Jowrnal of the Royal Asiatic Society (old series), vol. xviii., p. 392, 
pl. ii. See the reproduction on our plate lx, 


MAGIC FISHING FOR OFFSPRING 257 


boiled fish and of the fish-broth.'_ The Hindus use 
fish-soup for the same purpose of strengthening 
virility? as modern popular medicine in Europe 
prescribes the eating of caviare or any other fish-roe. 
They finally practise a strange fishing-rite in the 
course of their marriage ceremonies, which presupposes 
the idea of a close analogy between fishing and the act 
of conception. The newly-married couple enter the 
water, turn their faces towards the rising-sun* and try 
to catch some fish with a garment. While doing this 
they ask a Brahmacharin: ‘What seest thou?’ He 
answers: ‘Sons and cattle.* If they take much fish, 
they hope for many children.’ There is also a variant 
of this marriage-oracle: an artificial fish is kept moving 
in a bowl full of water, and the bride is expected to 
shoot an arrow at it, thus mimicking a fish-hunting of 
a different kind, somewhat similar to the modern 
pike-shooting as it used to be practised on Austrian 
lakes and probably elsewhere too. This very same 
arrow-shooting at a golden fish occurs also as a 
marriage test in the Mahabharata, i. 1859. In South 
India another somewhat worn-down variant of the 
ceremony has been recorded; sc. that the bride has to 


1 See Scheftelowitz, o.c., pp. 371 and 392. 
2 Pischel, Site.-Ber. Berl. Akad. d. Wiss., 1905, p. 580. 


8 Cp. with this the many instances of a belief in impregnation by the 
rays of the morning sun, collected by Hartland, Perseus, vol. i., pp. 99, 137£. 
170. 


4 Cp. with the mention of cattle in this connection the innumerable 
fairy tales where, together with the heroine, a cow or other animal is made 
pregnant by the caught fish. 


5 For this and the following customs the testimonies are quoted in full 
Wiener Zeitschr. f. Kunde des Morgenl. xviii. 299f.; xx. 291; xxii. 431. Cp. 
Pischel, l.c. 


6 K.g. in Montenegro, see the photograph Country Life, vol. xxxv., 
p. 359. Hoernes, Natur-w. Urgesch. d. Menschen, Vienna, 1909, p. 488, fig. 
180 (Andamanians shooting arrows at fish). 


B 


258 ORPHEUS THE FISHER 


fish out of the water-bowl a ring—obviously as the 
symbol of the coveted matrimonial union.’ 

Nearly all these features of Indian folk-lore can be 
paralleled from Greek sources. The Greek word 
delphys’—intimately related to delphis=dolphin’ is 
given by old lexicographers (e.g. Hesychios) as a name 
for the womb. Similarly ‘myllos,’ the name of the 
fish which to-day is known as the sea-mullet, was used 
in Sicily to denote the female organ.’ A figure of 
the Greek love-god Eros riding on a fish is found on 
a coin reproduced by Imbhoof-Blumer (Thier und 
Pflanzenbilder auf griechischen Miinzen, pl. xxiii. 11)*; 
another winged cupid holding a fish in his hand is 
embossed on a gold bractea of the Cabinet des 
Médailles in Paris.’ Instances of the fairy-story about 
the virgin impregnated by a fish abound in Hahn’s 
collection of Neo-Greek and Albanian Mdarchen (nos. 
8; 112; 64 var. 3; 22, etc.) Finally two black-figured 
vase-paintings®’ and the extant fragment of the 
philosopher and poet Epicharmus’s comedy ‘The 
Marriage of Hebe’ or ‘The Muses’ prove that the main 
course of a Greek marriage-banquet consisted of fish. 
Our comic author describes the innumerable kinds of 
fish that were served on this occasion to the Olympian 


' Tt may be interesting to note that, according to T. F. Thiselton Dyer, 
Popular Customs in England, etc., p. 257, in England too the marriage-ring 
used to be thrown into a milkpail filled with ‘sillabub’ (a mixture of milk, 
cider or wine and sugar) and fished out again by the bride. The popular 
wedding-ring-fishing at the shore of S. Lucia in Naples, is illustrated in the 
Dominica del Corriere, Milan, 13th of Sept., 1908. 


* See Pradel, Archi fiir Religionswissenschaft, 1909, p. 152. 


5 Athen. xiv. 647a. Cp. myllas=a harlot. The sea-mullet was sacred 
to Proserpine and offered and worshipped at Eleusis Ail. Nat. An. 951. 


“ Many other coins of the same type are to be found on the collotype 
plate added to Usener’s Sint/lutsagen, p. 278, nos. 1, 2, 8, 4, 14, 22. 


° Now. Ann, de U'Inst. archéol., i., 1836, pl. A. fig. 2 (wrongly interpreted 
by de Witte as an image of Aphrodite Kolias). 


6 Cp, plate Lxi. 


THE FISH AS A SEX-SYMBOL 259 


assembly and how Zeus had the one ellops—the ‘ holy 
fish’ of the mysteries (above p. 35, n. 1)—which could 
be procured, put aside for himself and his wife,! while 
the vase-painters show the bridegroom Herakles fishing 
as hard as he can with the assistance of the gods 
Hermes and Poseidon. These mythic examples can 
happily be paralleled from human life: we hear that 
the Alexandrian guild of fishermen offered a sacred 
fish, called ‘lewkos’ (=white fish), to Berenice, the 
bride of Ptolemy Soter, on the eve of her wedding-night.? 

With the Indian ‘fishing’ for offspring we may 
finally compare a whole series of Pompeian fresco- 
paintings, where a girl is represented in the act of 
angling fishes with the help of the love-god Hros. The 
symbolism of these images*—one of which has been 
discovered in the brothel of Pompei—is clear enough, 
if we remember that even to-day the male organ is still 
vulgarly called ‘70 pesce’ in Naples* and the whole 
South of Italy. 

Not, of course, with the same coarse literality, but 
still palpably enough, the same idea is expressed in the 
delightful poem ‘ First Love-Song of a Girl’ of the 


1 Athen. 282d.; Epicharm. Fr. 71. The Fragm. 154, Rz., of the Pseudo- 
Hesiodean ‘ Marriage of Ceyx,’ may also refer to the fish eaten in the course 
of the marriage-banquet. The pertinent words are: “ But after they had 
satiated their craving for food . . . they brought the mother’s mother, 
so that she may die, well bruised and broiled . . . with her children.” 
It is obvious that here reference is made to the eating of an alleged 
ancestral animal, and it is possible that Plutarch, Sympos. viii. 84, p. 730E., 
refers to these verses, where he quotes, after stating that the Poseidon-priests 
worshipped the fish as a kindred animal (cp. above, p. 37, n. 2), a passage from 
the ‘ Marriage of Ceyx’: “ Even as fire consumes the wood out of which wt 
was kindled—as the author says, who interpolated the ‘ Marriage of Ceyx’ 
into the works of Hesiod—even so Anaximander demonstrated that fish was 
mother and father together to man, and therefore protested against eating it.” 


2 Mlian, x. 46; Strabo, xvii. 812; Athen. vii. 17, p. 284, Cas.; Seneca in 
St, August. De Cw. Det. xvi. 10. 


3 See our plate Ixiii. 


4 Dolger o.c., p. 109. 


260 ORPHEUS THE FISHER 
famous Swabian parson Eduard Moericke’ (written 
about 1830) : ; 


SONG OF A GIRL’S FIRST LOVE. 


What’s in the net there? Let me feel! 
How with dread I shake, though! 
Shall I catch a splendid eel ? 
Shall I grab a snake, though ? 


Blind love chides my 
Doubting speech, 

Swiftly guides my 
Downward reach. 


It slips through my fingers, 
O rapture unblest ! 

It snuggles, it lingers, 
Then glides to my breast. 


It bites, ah the smart now! 
It bites through the skin, 

And down to my heart now 
It hurries within. 


I can’t get it out there, 
The strange eerie thing 
That’s flapping about there 

All curled in a ring. 


Oh for some deadly potion! 
It circles so fast, 

And with blissful emotion 
"T will kill me at last! 


Quite possibly the motive is taken from an 
unknown popular song. Anyhow it is beyond doubt 
very ancient and primitive,” since we have a highly 


1 Gesammelte Schriften, 22nd edition, Leipzig, 1905, vol. i. p. 38. Iowe 

me translation to the kindness of Dr. Charles Wharton Stork of Philadelphia, 
a. 

2 De Witte, Nowy. Ann. Inst. arch. i., 1836, quotes, in his article on 
Aphrodite Kolias, a satiric Campanian vase-picture of a phallos-merchant, 
selling phallot, one of which is characterised as a fish with fins, from Millin, 
Trovs Peintures de Vases du Musée de Portici, pl. I. According to Sal. Reinach, 
in the bibliography given in his Repertoire des Vases antiques, Millin’s 
engraver arbitrarily invented all three paintings. If this is true, they would 
ony illustrate the popular comparison of the phallos with a fish in the 18th 
century. 


THE FISH AS A SEX-SYMBOL 261 


archaic Boedtian vase-painting of the geometrical 
style, representing the ‘Great Mother’ of the Gods 
carrying the ‘fish’ in her womb.’ Besides, the only 
apparent reason why fishes in general, or special fishes, 
like the anchovy (aphyé),’ or—in Syracuse—the baion,’ 
or—elsewhere—the pompilos* (said to have originated 
from the blood that dropped from the emasculated Sky- 
god into the ocean), or the phalarts (the name of which 
reminds Athenzeus of the phallos)*, or the mackerel 
(kolias or kolias=sea-lizard ; k6lé or kolotés =< lizard ’ 
being a euphemism for phatllos*), should be sacred to 
the Love- and Fertility-goddess Aphrodite, as well as 
to her Asiatic incarnations Cybele, Artemis, Derketo, 
Ishtar, Anahita, etc., and also to the primitive German 
mother-goddesses, is to be found in the popular 
metaphor comparing the male organ to a fish.’ 

Nor is this symbolism in any way confined to Greek 
folk-lore. Délger (0.c., p. 429) has very acutely observed 
that we find on a whole series (e.g. his figg. 71, 74) of 
Babylonian seal-cylinders (as well as on the monuments 
cited p. 260 n. 4) the figure of the fish side by side 
with a characteristic glyph representing the female 
organ, and that the phallos and the fish are found to 


1 Cp. plate lxiv. In Tiryns a potsherd has been found (Schliemann, 
Tiryns, p. 112, fig. 20) which shows the fish placed between the legs of 
a horse; a very similar group on a prehistoric engraving (Piette l’Anthr., 
Paris, 1894, p. 144, fig. 14). Scheftelowitz, o.c., p. 381, thinks that both 
drawings were painted in order to strengthen magically the fertility of the 
owner’s animals. 

2 Athen. vii., p. 325s. 

8 See Hesych., s.v. ‘ basdtis,’ on the Syracusian Aphrodite Baiétis. 

4 Athen. vil., p. 282z. 

5 Athen. vii., p. 325s. 

6 See the testimonies collected by de Witte, o.c. (n. 2 of preceding page). 


1 There is no doubt, under the circumstances, that Pythagorean number- 
symbolism must have been well aware of the ‘isopséphy’ of PAAAOD= 


21+1+411+11+15+18=77=IXOYS (below: p. 266). 


262 ORPHEUS THH FISHER 


interchange ad libitum among the apotropaic signs on 
Syrian door-lintels. A 

Accordingly it is not in the least astonishing to 
find the ‘ fish-meal’ (se‘adat dadgim) celebrated also in 
the course of the old Jewish marriage ceremonial.’ 
The Jews in Morocco call one of the days of the 
wedding-week the ‘fish-day,’ because on it the bride- 
groom sends quantities of fish to the bride. In Fez 
these fishes are thrown over the feet of the bride. 
The Sephardic Jews in Bosnia perform a special fish- 
dance at the marriage festival,’ and the same custom is 
recorded from Turkey. Sometimes a net full of fishes 
is placed on the threshold for the bride to step over 
when she enters her husband’s house.® 

In Russia a fish-net is thrown over the bride after 
she has put on her wedding garments,* and similarly 
with the Gurians a woman lying-in is covered with a 
great net.? The explanation for this symbolic fish- 
net is to be found in a Suaheli marriage-hymn, where 
the singer compares the bride to a fish-net. ‘“ Each fish 
will go into it,” he says.6 This same fish-net—we are 
obviously in this connection to think of a small net of 
conical shape, as it was and is still used to catch fish 
by civilised and savage people, and as we find one 
represented on the bishop-ring of St. Arnulph (above, 


1 Talm. Semahot, Pereqg 8 and14; and the folklorist evidence offered 
by Scheftelowitz, o.c., p. 376. 


2 After the rings have been exchanged, all the relatives assemble 
in the bridegroom’s house. One of the family-members after the other 
places before the feet of the bride one or more fish, the heads of which are 
decorated with flowers, the bodies with leaf-gold. Then she has to jump 
over all the fishes. 


8 Wien. Zeitschr. f. Kunde des Morgenlandes, xx. 292-295. 
“ Frazer, Golden Bough, 2nd ed., vol. i. p. 339. 
* Ploss, Das Web, etc., 7th edition, vol. ii., p. 415. 


6 ve Sitien wnd Gebratiche der Swaheli, 1908, 126; Scheftelowitz, 
0.¢., p. 892, 


CONCEPTION VIEWED AS FISHING 263 


pl. xxxvu1., 1) and on the vase-painting of Chachrylios 
(below, pl. xxxv., 3)—recurs also in the Russian ver- 
sions of the above-quoted fairy-tale which relates 
the miraculous impregnation of a woman by means 
of a caught fish: “A beggar advised the king to 
assemble girls and boys of seven years old, and to make 
the maidens spin’ and the boys in one night net together 
a net, in which a carp with golden fins is to be caught 
for the queen to eat, when she will immediately become 
pregnant.” Inanother one of Afanasieff’s Mdrchen the 
beggar prescribes a silken draw-net netted by night for 
the same purpose.” There can finally be no doubt that 
the Orphic mystery-doctrine when it compares the 
generation of a living being to the netting of a net,’ is 
thinking of this symbolic fish-net. 

If, moreover, the comparison of the act of concep- 
tion with fishing can be proved to be the common 
property of Jews as well as Greeks, we may quite 
legitimately presuppose the same metaphor also in a 
Christian monument like the epitaph of Aberkios. If 
the ‘great’ and ‘clean fish’ eaten by the faithful with 
bread and wine is to be understood for the Messiah, 

1 The Louvre Museum contains an until now unexplained early 
Babylonian sculpture (pl. lxv. after De Morgan, Mém. Delég. en Perse, Paris, 
1900, tome i., pl. xi.), representing a woman spinning before a portable 
altar, on which the sacred or at least the sacrificial fish is seen to repose. 
The woman is beyond doubt spinning a ‘lucky’ fish-yarn, but it is quite 
possible that the whole rite is meant to ensure a ‘ fish’ to herself, and should 
therefore be classed among the innumerable love- or fertility-charms. 
In any case the phallic symbolism of the spindle, the piercing of which causes 
the maiden to fall asleep, until awakened by a kiss, is well-known to the 
folk-lore of all nations. According to Clemens Alex., v. 236f., the spun yarn 
(mitos) itself was symbolic of the sperma for the Orphic initiates; and the 
game idea recurs in the Atharva Veda xii. 17 (Scherman, p. 43): ‘ Who has 


put into him (sc. man) the sperma, so that the yarn should be woven further 
and further ?” 


2 Sydney Hartland, The Legend of Perseus, vol.i., p. 73. 


8 Plato, Tim. p. 1079; Aristotle, De Gen. Anim. ii. 1, 618c.; cp. my 
Weltenmantel, p. 242 n. 5. The mystery-term nsed in this connection is 
KYPTO>=10+204+17+19+15+18= 9 , and isopséphon to the divine fish 


AIOP®#O2X (below, p. 267). 


264 ORPHEUS THE FISHER 


then the ‘Holy Virgin,’ who has caught this ‘ Fish,’ 
must be meant for the mother of the Christ, whether 
Mary, the mother of Jesus ‘after the flesh,’ or—as we 
prefer to believe with Conybeare’ and Délger,’ consider- 
ing the archaic character of the whole monument—the 
spiritual mother of the Logos, the personified Church.* 
Then the ‘fount’ from which she has ‘ caught,’ that is 
conceived, can only be God the Father, who calls 
himself, according to Jeremiah 213, the fount of ‘living 
waters,’ who is described in Philo* as ‘ the most ancient 
ever-flowing fount of living water,’ as the ‘fountain of 
the most ancient Logos,’ etc., and of whom the Gospel 
of the Hebrews’ says, that as ‘the fountain of the whole 
Holy Spirit’ he descended on Jesus at the baptism in 
the Jordan, reposed on him and uttered the words: 
“Thou art my first-born son,” etc. 

Délger® has shown that baptism itself was called a 
‘spring’ or ‘fountain’ in the second century, and 
therefore proposes to introduce this sense of the 
mystery-word also into the Aberkios inscription. But 


1 Arch. f. Rel. Wiss. ix. 78. 
2 Ichthys, p. 97-112, 


® For the Church as the mother of the Christ, see the testimonies 
collected by Conybeare, l.c., namely Hippolyt., ch. 61, De Antichr., p. 41, ed. 
Achelis, where he comments on the pregnant woman in Rev. 121-6; Clem. 
Alex., Paedag., p. 102, Sylb., and the passage from Methodios quoted above, 
p. 251. Cp. further the Christmas sermon of Proklos, Archbishop of 
Constantinople (484-47 a.p.), Migne, P.G., 65, 709b.: “Come ye and let us 
look at the invisible way of the ship, in the midst of the sea [Prov. Sol. 
3019], which has sunk into the deep the arch fiend, but fished [out of the sea] 
the first-created ” (scz. the Messiah, as the heavenly Adam, one of the pre- 
mundane creations of God). Here again we have the idea of the ‘ ship,’ that 
is according to so many testimonies (Wilpert, in Kraus’ Real. Encycl. ii. 
729ff.) the Church fishing the Christ out of the water. It is interesting to 
note, however, that in the later German Christmas carols, paralleled with 
el sermon by Usener, Sint/luts. 129, the ‘ ship’ is explained as a symbol 
of Mary. 


“ De fuga, 82ff., i. 5387, Mangey = §198, Wendland; Qu. det. pot. ins. i. 
207; cp. De somn. ii. 1, 690. 


5 Quoted by Jerome, in his Commentary to Isaiah 117. 5 o.c. p. 95. 


THE CHRIST FISHHD BY THE CHURCH 265 


the testimonies' which he quotes, show clearly that 
baptism is only mystically called a fountain or spring, 
in so far as, according to the prophets,? God the 
‘fountain of living water’ will make a mystic spring of 
redemption and cleansing gush forth in the Last Days, 
and in so far as the Christians (Hp. Barnabe, ch. 11) 
identified this purificatory fountain or spring with 
the waters of baptism. If we interpret the ‘Fish’ 
(=Iésous Christos Theou ‘ Yios Sotér,=Jesus, Messiah 
and Son of God) ‘from the Fountain’ in the sense of 
‘from the Baptism,’ this would also give a good meaning 
along the line of the so-called Adoptionist theology,* 
which taught that Jesus became Christ and Son of 
God, not by his physical birth from the Virgin, but | 
through the descent of the Spirit at the baptism in the 
Jordan. This doctrine, which was censured as hereti- 
cal in later times, but which is according to Harnack 
the truly primitive Christian idea about the genesis 
of the Messiah, will still be found expressed in our 
inscription, even if ‘ Fish from the Fountain’ should 
only mean the Messiah ben Nun descended from God, 
the ‘ Fountain of Living Water,’ as long as the ‘ catch- 
ing of the Fish by the Virgin’ is understood as the 
mystic conception of the Logos-Christ by the ‘ Church’ ; 
because, according to the familiar idea of the Church 
‘regenerating ’ the neophyte, that is giving a second, 
new birth from above to the convert by means of his 
baptism, the Church can only be said to have conceived 
(=fished) the Christ at the moment when the Holy 
Spirit descended on the water and uttered the words: 
«“ Thou art my beloved son; to-day have I begotten thee.” 


1 Op. especially Physiolog. c. 6, ‘‘ wash thrice in the ever-flowing fountain 
of repentance” with the Sibylline verse, ‘“‘but God will give repentance.” 

2 Cp. above, pp. 149ff., 177. 

® Cp. article ‘ Adoptionism,’ in Hasting’s Enc. Rel. and Ethics. 


266 ORPHEUS THE FISHER 


There are, however, two possibilities, which would 
permit us to attribute a perfectly ‘catholic’ sense—in 
the later meaning of the term—to the poem of the 
Hieropolitan bishop. The first would be to explain 
with Wilpert the ‘ Virgin,’ who caught the ‘ Fish,’ as 
the Virgin Mary, supposing, of course, in this case the 
existence of a corresponding legend concerning her virgin 
birth. The second would be to understand the ‘catching 
of the Fish,’ not as the conception of the Messiah by his 
Mother—whether St. Mary or the Holy Mother Church 
—but as the symbolic expression for the mystic union 
between the Messiah and his spiritual ‘ Bride,’ since 
the Church was even more frequently celebrated as the 
spouse of the Christ than as his mystic mother. 

This shows at any rate that we must not press the 
meaning of any of these intentionally mysterious 
expressions, but content ourselves with guessing the 
principal meaning of the document, even if we cannot 
exactly determine by it the precise dogmatic position 
of the priestly poet. 

Yet there is still one more surprise in store for the 
student who tries his wit on this much debated in- 
scription; for I think it can amply be proved that 
where Aberkios invites him ‘who understands this’ to 
pray for his soul, he means, even as the author of 
Rev. 18:8, also him ‘ who has understanding to count the 
number,’ not only him who knows how to explain the 
mystery-words. 

Indeed, first of all, the name Aberkios itself is an 
tsopséphon or numerical equivalent for ‘fish.’ 

IXOY2=9+42248+4204+18=77=142+4+5417410 
+9+15+18=ABEPKIOZ,'’ implying that—according 


' On the system of evaluating the letters ‘according to their ee 
the alphabet,’ see above, p. 116 n. 1. & position in 


NUMBER SYMBOLISM IN ABERKIOS’ EPITAPH 267 


to the expression of Tertullian (above, p. 252 n. 1)— 
Aberkios himself is a ‘fish’ or baptised Christian 
after the image of the ‘great Fish’ Jesus. 

This fact is all the more striking, since in the 
Church History of Eusebius the name of the bishop of 
Hieropolis is not spelt Aberkios but Avirkios Markellos. 
This suggests at once that the spelling of the name on 
the tombstone—and also in the Byzantine Life of 
Aberkios—was adopted intentionally by the bishop 
because of its arithmomantic connection with Ichthys. 
But what are we to say, if we find that ‘ Avirkios’ too 
yields a mystic number ? 

AYIPKIOZ =1+420+9+417410+9+4154+18=99 
which is again the famous and frequently recurring 
magical number of ‘ Pythagoras,’ 

ITYOATOPA>=16+4+20+8+41x8+154+17+4+1+418=99 
and of the ‘ Divine Fish’ Di-orphos, 

AIOP®OZ=44+9+415+174+21415 +18=99 

mentioned as the son of Mithras in the Pseudo- 
Plutarchian treatise on the names of rivers and moun- 
tains,’ most probably the mythic representative of the 
sacred orphoi-fishes, which were revered on the coasts 
of Asia Minor. Is it too bold to conclude from so 
remarkable a coincidence, that this man Avirkios 
seems to have been a member of an Orphic and Pytha- 
gorean mystery-socrety before he became a Christian, and 
that, like many other Pythagoreans,” he bore an arith- 
momantically significant name? that he changed the 
spelling of his name—as another Saulos-Paulos’—in 
order to Christianise it through the new numerical 
allusion to the famous Ichthys formula ? 

If this be the case, it is only natural that he 
should have used the traditional Orphic and Pytha- 


1 Cp, above, p. 20 n. 1. 2 Cp. above, p. 120 note. 


268 ORPHEUS THE FISHER 


gorean number-lore also in his Christian mystery-poem. 
Indeed, we can hardly doubt that he really meant to 
do so. When he characterises his episcopal town of 
Hieropolis as a ‘select,’ ‘elect city’ (eklekté polis), 
he is probably alluding to the coincidence, that 
‘ Hieropolis,’ 

IEPOILOATIZ =9+5+4174154+164154114+9418=115 
is a numerical equivalent of ‘ Jerusalem,’ 

IEPOYZAAHM=9+5+17415+420+18+4+1+411+7+ 
12=4115 
the ‘holy city’ par excellence, and the terrestrial 
antetype of the Church as the ‘new’ or ‘heavenly’ 
Jerusalem; when again Aberkios calls himself the 
‘disciple’ of a ‘shepherd,’ he was almost certainly 
playing on the isopséphia of the Greek words for 
‘shepherd ’ and ‘ disciple,’ 

TIOIMHN=164+154+9+41247+18=72=124+1+48+47 
+19+7+18=MASHTH>? 
If he calls—according to Pitra’s convincing restoration 
—the gospels ‘writings of Life,’ he could hardly be 
ignorant that the word ‘ writings ’ 


1 Indeed Jerusalem 7s regularly called Hieropolis by Philo. That the 
Alexandrian did so for reasons of ‘isopséphy’ would be difficult to prove, in 
spite of the marked Neo-Pythagorean features in his philosophy. But since 
Josephus, in his Contra Apionem i. 22, offers the otherwise quite inexplicable 
form ‘Jerosalémén,’ the one merit of which is to yield again the number 115 
of Hieropolis, it is probable that Philo too was moved by the consideration of 
this gematria. 


2 There is every probability, that he did not himself invent this 
isopséphic pair of mystery-terms. The name Orpheus itself—which is 
manifestly anterior to all Pythagorean number-symbolism—does not accord- 
ingly yield a very significant pséphos (96). But we find the name spelt 
Orphas (OPPAS), whoch yields 72, the number of IIOIMHN (shepherd) and 
MAOHTH® (disciple), on the treasury of the Sikyonians in Delphi (Roscher, 
Myth. Lew., s.v. ‘ Orpheus,’ c. 1062, 1. 29), even as on a vase-painting from 
Ruvo (0.c., c. 1180, 1. 2) an Orpheus-picture is inscribed with the name 
OIPEY> (=the ‘bucking one,’ suggesting the idea of a phallic demon, 
which is not astonishing in a Dionysiac figure—cp. the vase-painting, with 
an erotic symplegma close by the lyre-playing Orpheus, Ann. d. Ist, xvii., 


1845, tav. d’ agg. M.—and in a mystic ‘fisher ’"—cp. above, p. 268 aint! 
the number 88. y 2 ve, p ), yielding 


NUMBER SYMBOLISM IN THE ABERKIOS EPITAPH 269 


TPAMMATA=8+4+1741412412414194+7=66 
and ‘of Life’ 
ZQH2=6+244+7+18=55, together 121=11x11. 

Again the crucial question, who is the ‘ Queen,’ 
whom Aberkios intends to visit at Rome, is answered 
already by the fact that the numerical value of the 
word basilissa, which the inscription uses here, is 
equal to that of the name ‘ Jesus’ (above, p. 116) 

BAZIAIZ2A=241+184+94114+9418+1841=87= 
IHZOY%2. 
This means the ‘Queen’ is the ‘Church,’ who—being 
isotelés, that is ‘of equal worth’ with Jesus—becomes 
his mystic bride.’ 

Again, the ‘shining seal’ is also numerically 
characterised as being identical with the ‘name of 
Jesus,’ the mark, with which the faithful are sealed 
through baptism’: 

ZOPALTIZ=18421417414849+418=87=IHZOY2. 
But the most interesting feature of this highly com- 
plicated mystery-poem is the sum 318, which is arrived 
at by evaluating numerically the words ‘a Fish from a 
Fountain, a world-wide and clean one’: 


IXOYE=9 42248420418 = 17 
ANO=1+16415 = $2 
MHIHE=164+74+347+418 = 51 
MANMETEOH>=1641413+412+4 
54+34+64+8+7+18 = 88 


KAOAPOZ=104148+414174+15+18= 70 
318 
1 Cp. Hippolyt., ed. Bonwetsch i. 1, 369, quoted by Délger, p. 108 n. 4. 
I have given many instances for pairs of pagan divinities with ‘isopsephic’ 
names (¢.g7. ZEYZ=49=KOPH, ZAY=25=HPA), in Pherecydes, in my 
Weltenmantel. 
2 Cp. Hippol. Comm. to Daniel iv. 34, where Jesus, the son of God, is 
called the ‘ final seal.’ . 


270 ORPHEUS THE FISHER 


For this very number—written by the Greek TI H— 
is explained by the author of the Epistle of Barnabas 
(9s), a document from the time of the Emperor Hadrian 
and certainly anterior to Aberkios, by Clemens of 
Alexandria, by Hippolytus of Rome, and the African 
writer Pseudo-Cyprian,' as symbolising Jesus by the 
letters IH,? and the cross by the figure T. There can 
be little doubt that even as Augustine in his formula 
‘wiscis assus est Christus passus’— Aberkios wanted 
to characterise the eaten ‘fish’ as the symbol of the 
suffering Messiah (above, p. 253 n. 1). 

If we observe finally, that the words for ‘ bread’ 
and ‘ wine’ 

OINOZ=1549+138+154+18=70=1+17+419+415+18 
Ae LG) > 
in the line about the mystic communion-meal of the 
Kucharist, are tsopsephic and that kerasma (=mixture 
of wine and water) 

KEPAZMA=10+5+41741+418+124+1=64' 

is numerically equivalent to the word halieus for the 
mystic ‘Fisher’ (AAIEY2,, above, p. 124), we have 
mentioned the principal features of arithmomantic 
mysticism in this strange epitaph. 


' See the full quotations in Délger’s work, p. 356. 


* See the epigraphic examples for the familiar use of this abbreviation 
for ‘ Jesus’ collected by Délger, pp. 856-858, 382. 


* Cp. above, p. 124 n. 2, on the many mystic peculiarities of this number. 


APPENDICES. 
1s 


THE MYSTIC FISHING-SCENE IN 
THE BAKCHEION OF MELOS, AND LUCIAN’S 
PARODY OF THE MAN-FISHING RITE. 


Preruaps the most important monument of Greek 
mysticism, which a kind fate has handed over to our 
historic curiosity, seems to be the mosaic pavement of 
the Bakchic mystery-hall,’ which the British school of 
Athens, under the direction of Messrs. R. C. Bosanquet, 
D. Mackenzie and Cecil Smith, unearthed in May, 1896, 
at Tramithia, on the island of Milo, the ancient Melos.? 
The roof of this sanctuary—the plan of which resembles 
the telestérion of the Bakchic initiates at Athens—was 
supported by seven columns on each side, the entrance 
being probably situated on the narrower side to the 
west, the altar on the east side. The floor was decorated 
with the following five panels, enumerated as they 
succeed each other from the entrance to the altar: 
(1) decorated with a geometric pattern; (2) probably 
a figure-subject, now completely destroyed; (3) a large 
central, double-sized panel with geometric pattern ; 
(4) decorated with the reproduction of a circular pond 


1 Cp. Dion. Prus. I. 33, p. 163, 21ff., about a man about to be initiated 
and introduced ‘evs mystikon tina oikon.’ fs 


2 The intention of the building is ascertained beyond doubt by the 
following monuments: an inscription, which mentions one ‘ Alexander, the 
founder of the [society of the] holy initiates’; the statue of a priest with 
the ivy and flower wreath of Dionysos inscribed: ‘ Marcus Marius Trophimus, 
the hierophant—the initiates’; an altar or basis inscribed ‘to Dionysos 
Trieterikos’ (=‘ D. of the mystic feast celebrated every 3rd year’; cp. the 
52nd hymn of the Orphic prayer-book, which addresses Bakchos Trieterikos) ; 
and a bust of Aurelia Euposia ‘ dedicated by the initiates of the altar in her 
own building’ (Journ. Hell. Studies, xviii. 74-80.). On other examples of 
such ‘ bakcheia’ or Orphic Mystery halls sometimes in private houses (Paws. 
I., 2, 5 on Pulytion’s house) as the earliest Christian cult rooms, see Kern in 
Pauly- Wiss I1., 2783, 4469. 


271 


272 ORPHEUS THE FISHER 


or piscina full of water, containing all kinds of 
fish, in the midst of them a barge (restored) with a 
fisherman in it, holding, by means of a fishing-line, 
“the loose end of which passes under his left arm” 
(l.c. p. 72), “a@ globular object with a slender neck,” 
which “looks. like nothing so much as a gourd- 
shaped glass bottle, three parts full of a dark purple 
liquid the upper part being empty and transparent”’ 
(p. 73). Around the pond are grouped four Dionysian 
theatre-masks. Over the fisherman’s head we read the 
inscription : 

MONON MH YAQP=‘ ONLY NO WATER!’ 

In spite of the inscription, which sounds like nothing 
so much as the popular German proverb of our merry 
anti-temperance men ‘nur koa wasser !' the bottle-like 
object has admittedly ‘ baffled’ the English excavators, 
because it ‘does not correspond with any known kind 
of fishing appliance.’ 

This is certainly most true and undeniable as 
long as we think of real fish, which no sane fisherman 
would try to capture in a wine-bottle. But things 
appear in an altogether different aspect if this is—as 
I do not doubt for a moment—a representation of a 
scene from the mysteries, namely of the mystic man- 
fishing of initiation, of the priestly ‘fisher’ alluring, 
with the inspiring, soul-exciting, sacred drink of 
Dionysos, the myst@ who have dressed themselves up 


? Sir John Sandys, Journ. Hell. Stud. xviii. 72, has tried to explain this 
inscription by comparing it with an epigram of Martial (I. xxxv.), who says 
of an ancient Greek chased silver bowl, decorated with fishes: ‘ Look at the 
fishes, add water: they'll swim.” He thinks that the artist meant to say: 
The fishes in my mosaic would certainly swim—life-like as they are— only 
(that they have) no water.’ This clever suggestion“will not work, however, 
—as Prof. Crusius+-kindly reminds me—for the very simple grammatical 
reason that this would have to be monon owx hyddr—not monon mé hydir— 
in Greek, where even in the most vulgar and debased language the difference 
between ow and mé was never forgotten. 


PLATO ON THE ANGLING SOPHIST 273 


as ‘dolphins’ and ‘fishes,’ and have received in this 
attire the symbolic ‘baptism’ or drowning of their 
Titanic nature, and perhaps also eaten of the sacred 
bakchos-fish. As to the symbolon' ‘only no water,’ it 
becomes easily intelligible, if we remember that 
Kimpedocles* calls the real, aquatic fish ‘hydato- 
thremmones’=the ‘waterfed ones’; thus the inscrip- 
tion says: ‘Fishes have they become, only do not 
give them water any more’! The cup of unmixed 
wine® will make them real bakchoi ! 

It is quite characteristic that the only literary 
texts which compare with our monument, are certain 
parodistic allusions in comic authors and the remarkable 
passage in Plato’s Sophisies (221 B) where the great 
Athenian philosopher compares the disciple hunting 
professional conversationalist of his age satirically to 
the ‘aspalieutes’ or ‘fisherman. As Aristophanes 
has boldly satirised the Bakchic initiation of the 
candidate by the Silenus in the scene between Socrates 
and Strepsiades in his Clouds, which has been so 
cleverly analysed by Miss Jane Hi. Harrison,’ even so 
an unknown comic author, who knew both the 
fish-masquerade of the Dionysian initiates and the 
corresponding cult-symbolon ‘only no water,’ has 
satirised the myth of the ‘thyrsiones,’ by saying, that 

! Cp. the ‘ symbole’ and ‘akousmata’ of the Pythagoreans (Diels, Fragm. 


I. p. 279ff.), all of which are similar short sentences with mé, e.g. ‘kardvan mé 
esthiein,’ ‘not eat the heart!’ etc. 

2 On Nature, fr. 21 v. 11 and fr. 22 v.10 (ed. Diels, Fragm. Vorsoor. I. 
181f.). 

8 Dionysos is the god of unmixed wine, akratophoros (Gruppe, Hdb. 
p. 1418 n. 4, p. 1414, n. 1). One of the minor demons in his pageant is called 
Akratos or Akratopotes=Drinker of unmixed wine (vbid. p. 40 n. 8). 

4 ¢ Asnalos’=‘ fish,’ a word of unknown etymology, probably altogether 
prehellenic is quoted by Hesych from the language of the Athamantes, 
a semi-barbarous Epirotic tribe closely related, according to Ovidius, met. xv. 
811, to the Dodonacan oracle (cp. above p. 35). 


5 Prolegomena to the study of Greek Religion. 


274 ORPHEUS THE FISHER 


the god changed them into fishes, because they were 
wine-mongers and had ‘baptised ’—that is falsified— 
wine with water !’ : 

On the other hand, we have two highly character- 
istic passages in the works of Lucian, whose sharp 
stylus did not spare a single one of the philosophic 
schools of his time, any more than Jews or Christians, 
who ridiculed Mithras as well as Cybele, and Isis no less 
than the Syrian goddess. This delightfully frivolous 
author, in his fantastic traveller's diary, The True 
History (chap. ii.), describes how he travelled eighty 
days and nights westward from the so-called ‘Columns 
of Heracles ’—which is the Strait of Gibraltar,—when 
he suddenly reached an unknown island, where he finds 
a Greek inscription: “ Unto this place Heracles and 
Dionysos have come” (on their journey). There they 
find the footprints of the two gods, and besides, as 
definite proofs that Dionysos had once blessed the 
island with his presence, a deep river full of Chios 
wine, which has its source in the roots of certain 
marvellous living vines. In this wine river they find a 
multitude of fish, which resembled wine in taste and 
colour, and inebriated those that ate them, so that 
you had to mix them with ordinary water-fish, to 
mitigate their excessive vinosity. 

This passage alone would of course not suffice to 
prove Lucian’s acquaintance with the wine-bibbing 
‘fish’ of the Dionysian mysteries ; we have, however, 
a still more interesting and unmistakable allusion in 
his charming dialogue The Fisherman or the Revenants. 
The great satirist represents himself as sitting, to- 
gether with Truth, Philosophy, and other Virtues, ag 
well as with Plato, Aristotle, Pythagoras, Diogenes 

1 Schol. Oppian. Hal. I. 649, p. 295, 18. 


TO FISH PHILOSOPHERS 275 


and the other great philosophers of the past, on the 
Acropolis of Athens. There he borrows from the 
priestess of the sanctuary, a fishing rod and line, which 
has been dedicated by a fisherman of the Pirzwus to 
Athéné Polias'; he then puts a fig and a gold-piece’ as 
bait on the end of the line, and dangles it from the 
battlements of the Acropolis towards the different 
quarters of Athens, to fish philosophers. The many 
who get caught by this powerful bait, are thrown down 
again from the rock as worthless pretenders. In the 
end Philosophy bids Lucian crown the few true philo- 
sophers of his age with a wreath and brand the others 
with the sign of a fox or of an ape. I think it is 
manifest, now, that Lucian playfully alludes to the 
Dionysian fishing of the initiates, even as Aristophanes 
has likened the ‘thinking shop’ of Socrates to an 
Orphic mystery-hall and Plato himself the ‘sophist’ 
to an angler; hence the delightful ambiguity of 
the whole man-fishing scene. The fig—besides its 
transparent symbolic value—is an allusion to the 
phallic ‘ fig ’-Dionysos, ‘ Sykeatés,” and to ‘ the fig as the 
guide to a holy life,’ the ‘ holy fig’ of the mysteries* ; 
the wreathed few true philosophers are the few true 
bakchot, with the sacred ivy-wreath, among the many 
wand-bearers ; while the branding of the false philo- 
sophers as fowes, or sly hypocrites, alludes to the 


1 There are Attic coins that show the head of Athéné and some fishes 
(Imhoof-Blumer, Tier- w. Pflanzenbilder auf Miinzen, pl. iii., nos. 29f.; pl. vi. 
no. 46). 


2 Cp. on the sausage and the purse in the modern man-fishing rite of 
Laufen my paper in ‘Bayrische Hefte fiir Volkskunde’ II. 1915, p. 74, n. 1. 
The fig is of course meant here as the well-known sex-symbol, as though to 
say, lust and lucre. 


* Sosibios in Athen. III. xiv. p. 78¢; Hesych s.v. 


4 See on these evident mystery-terms Athen. iii. 6, p. 74d, Hesych. and 
Phot. s.vv. ‘ hiera syké.’ 


276 ORPHEUS THE FISHER 


‘stigmatised initiates ” and the ‘ bassarai ” or she-foxes 
of the Bakchic mysteries. 

It may not be too bold, therefore, to use the satyric 
parody of Lucian as a means for reconstructing the 
Dionysian man-fishing rite. There was certainly no 
room for a real immersion in water in or near the 
mystery-hall of Melos; so we may then suppose that 
some water was poured on to the panel of the mosaic 
floor which shows the fishing-scene; the initiates were 
then made to step into this water and then a priestly 
initiate of the god, clad in a fawn-skin, washed away 
the clay, with which their faces had been besmeared, by 
pouring water over them from a bowl (cp. Demosth de 
cor.318). Then fish-masks may have been given them or 
fish-tails may have been fastened to their backs (above 
pls. xvi. and xix.). Finally the priestly ‘ fishermen,’ 
probably standing on the spot of the floor which is 
marked by the little mosaic barge, may have offered 
them—to the soundof lyre and lute music (above p. 17) 
performed by the song- and dance-leaders of the thzasos, 
who are mentioned in several inscriptions—a draught 
of wine from a full glass-bottle, suspended at the end 
of a fishing-line, in the way illustrated on the Melian 
mosaic. Finally, a noose or net may have been cast over 
(cp. above p. 272.) or fastened round the initiate (cp. 
above p. 74) or he may have been pushed or driven or led 
into the meshes of a net by the ‘ dolphins’ (thyrsiones) ° 
This seems to follow from the fact that we have a great 


* *Bromio signatae mystides’ are mentioned in the sepulcral poem Corp. 
Inscr. Lat. WII. 686. On the ivy-leaf used as a brand-mark of the Bakchic 
initiates see [J]. Maccab. ii. 29. 30, and the other passages quoted by Délger 
Sphragis, Paderborn, 1911, p. 42f. 

2 ‘Foxes’ and once even an arch-vixen (archibassara are mentioned in 
the Dionysian inscriptions and in literary texts). See Gruppe, Hdb. p. 213 
n.16; p. 1410 n.9; Journ. Hell. Stud. lc. p. 79. Above p. 26 n. 1 and 27, 
also pl. xiv. 

* Cp. my paper in Bayr. Hefte f. Volkskwnde II., 1915, p. 92. 


THE LAKE OF ORPHEUS 277 


many inscriptions, where a local Orphic or Dionysian 
community, church, thiasos, or however one should call 
it, is mentioned as the speira (Lat. spira) of the place.’ 
Now this word means a ‘mesh’ of a net, but it is also 
a technical term for the cord which passes through the 
top meshes of a net and serves to draw it together, 
when the catch is in it. The adherence of the new 
member to the ‘net’ of the community was certainly 
somehow symbolised in the initiation act, were it only 
by the neophyte’s touching it, as the boy running after 
the naval car of Dionysos and the drag hanging down 
from its stern apparently suggests, on the Attic vase 
painting reproduced on p. 216 of my paper in the 
Bavarian Folklore Journal, I., 1914. 


II. 


THE ‘LAKE OF ORPHEUS’ IN ROME AND THE 
ORPHIC PISCINE IN UTINA. 


HowEVER plausible it may be to suppose that in the 
telestérion of Melos the Dionysian baptism and sub- 
sequent ‘fishing’ were only symbolically enacted on 
dry land (above p. 276), it is nevertheless highly pro- 


1 See e.g. Buresch, Lydia, 11, no. 8: the spetra of Dionysos Kathegemon 
(= ‘the leader’ videl. of the mystic way) with its ‘ cattle herds’; the speira 
of the Midapedités, again with the ‘guide’ Dionysos for their leading god in 
Pergamon (Ziebarth, Griech. Vereinswesen, p. 50); a sperra with an Mero- 
phantés telesphoros (a ‘ teacher of the secrets,’ who can lead to perfection), 
Revue Htud. anc. iii. 275; the Dionysian spetra of the Asvanot with a speir- 
archos, ‘ leader of the net,’ Ziebarth, l.c., p. 56; the speira of the Romans in 
Tomi; the speira of the Traianesians (inhabitants of the Traianian harbour 
of Ostia near Rome), Ziebarth, J.c., p. 62; «bid. the ‘sacred speira’ of 
Dionysos ; Corpus Inscr. Lat. vi. 261, the basis of a statue of Hekaté (cp. 
above, p. 4 n. 2) dedicated by the spira of the place. Other mentions of the 
spire and the spirarchés in Wissowa’s Hdb. of Roman Religion, p. 248 n. 6. 
Note that SITEIPA=18+16+5+9+417+1=6§6=AINOZ2 (above pp. 120 note 
and 269). 


* See on the spira as the string surrounding the drag-net of the retvarius 
(above p. 273) Daremberg-Saglio, Dictionn. des Antiq. class., s.v. ‘gladiator,’ 
col. 1586. 


278 ORPHEUS THE FISHER 


bable that in some Orphic communities real immersion 
and fishing ceremonies were practised. At least, this 
seems the only explanation for the fact that there 
existed at Rome an artificial ‘Lake of Orpheus’ of 
circular shape surrounded by steps, so that the whole 
building resembled a theatre, that is the old Dionysian 
stage. On the top row of the steps was placed a plastic 
group of Orpheus surrounded by his beasts and by 
birds,! the sacred fish or ‘orphoi,’ being probably kept 
in the ‘lake’ or artificial pond itself. Of this structure 
nothing remains, but the Roman churches S. Agata e 
S. Lucia in Orfea and S. Martino in Orfea have still 
preserved the name. 

On such a pond or lake’—in Greek the limné of the 
‘Dionysos of the Lake ’—a sacred barge or ship (above pl. 
XLV. and p. 272) would have to be used for the ceremony. 
This would explain the late, yet quite unsuspicious, 
tradition’ that Orpheus was the inventor of ship build- 
ing. Asa Christian baptism had not necessarily to be 
performed in a special ‘ baptistery,’ as the Jewish ‘ bath 
of the proselytes ’ could be performed in any public bath, 
and as Apuleius was taken by the priest of Isis ‘to the 
next baths “to receive his baptism of initiation, even so 
the Dionysian immersion could probably be performed 


1 Martial x. 19,6; Notitia wrbis regionwm xiv., reg. v., Esquiliana ; see 
Gruppe in Roscher’s Dictionary, s.v. ‘Orpheus,’ col. 1194, and Richter, 
Topographie v. Rom, 2nd edit. Munich, 1901, p. 372. 


* The Pompeian fresco, Presuhn, Ausgr. v. Pomp. 3, 6, shows the lyre- 
playing Orpheus sitting on the bank of a little pool. 


* Who built the first ship? Orpheus the teacher of Hercules”; question 
and answer in a little Middle-Latin conversation-book of the 6th century .D. 
(Max Foerster, Roman. Forschwngen, xxvii. p.342ff.). This is obviously a late 
echo of the extensive ancient literature on ‘inventions’ (‘ hewrémata’), other 
remains of which abound, e.g. in Pliny. As to the unusual statement of Orpheus 
being the teacher of Heraklés—the function being generally attributed to 
Linos—cp. the Pompeian fresco, Helbig, Camp. Wandgem., no. 898, illustr. 
wbid., pl. x., which shows the figures of Orpheus and Heraklés (both inscribed 
with their names) ag leaders of the nine Muses. 


* Metam. xi., ‘ad proximas balneas.’ 


THE ORPHIC PISCINE IN THE LABERII VILLA 279 


in any bath that offered the necessary seclusion from 
profane spectators. At least the mosaics which remain 
from the Roman ‘ House of the Laberii’ in Uthina (now 
Oudna, in North Africa) strongly suggest the possi- 
bility that such a use was made of the piscina or 
‘fishpond’—as the basins for the cold bath were 
commonly called’'—in the private baths of this villa. 
There the pavements in the different rooms of the 
house itself exhibit: two different versions of the 
fishing-scene, which we have found in the Bakcheion of 
Melos as symbolic of Dionysos Haliews; medallions of 
Helios—the god, whom Orpheus is said to have adored 
on the Pangaion,’—and of Athene—the goddess, who is 
said to have saved the heart of the dismembered 
Dionysos ;° side by side with medallions of Bakchos, 
Silenus and Pan; then Dionysos in the middle of a great 
vintage scene; and a panel with hunting scenes, symbolic 
of Dionysos as Zagreus or the ‘grand veneur’ (above 
pls. V., VI., Vil.), and with scenes from the life of the 
herdsmen,* who play such an important mystic rdle in 
the cult and myths of Dionysos Poimén’ (above p. 181). 
The bath-house or therme of the villa, which was first 
mistaken for a Christian basilica by the French exca- 
vators, shows in immediate juxtaposition with the 


1 Cp. Doelger, Ichthys, p. 5, nn. 1 and 2; ibid. pp. 85f., the author gives 
testimonies for the Christian baptism being performed in the cold baths of 
private houses, and tells the interesting story, how the therma@, or private 
baths, of one Novatius were turned into a Christian baptistery in the middle 
of the 2nd century a.p. Later, the water-basin proper of the baptismal font 
was termed ‘lacus,’ which compares with the ‘lacus Orphi’ above p. 273, 0.1. 

2 See Gruppe in Roscher’s Dictionary, s.v. ‘Orpheus,’ coll. 119950-60, 
108444, 109261. 

8 Abel, Fragm. Orph. 198-200. 

4 Cp. especially the milking scene with the Christian counterpart on 
our pl. xli. 

> The only subject in the house which does not apparently belong to the 
Dionysian circle, is Europa on the bull. But see Gruppe, p. 4039, on Huropa 
as a ritual symbol of the soul carried over the boundary waters of Hades by 
the bull god. 


280 ORPHEUS THE FISHER 


piscina, a mosaic of Orpheus playing the seven-stringed 
lyre in the midst of the enraptured animals, so that 
this artificial pond, filled with running water by a 
special aqueduct, appears to be an exact counterpart to 
the above-described ‘lake of Orpheus’ in Rome.’ 


Li 


THE DIONYSIAN VINTAGHE-FEAST AND THE 
COMMUNION SACRAMENT OF THE 
NEW GRAPES. 


THE comparison of the Melian mosaic with the 
above-mentioned African parallels proves that the juxta- 
position of the panel with the vines surrounding the 
altar, with the hare, the kids or wild goats’ (eriphot) 
and the birds, a cock, a crane and several jays (kissai or 
‘ivy-birds’ in Greek’), all of which are busily pecking 
the clusters of the sacred plant, is certainly not due to 
a mere decorator’s fancy. The cult-symbolism of this 
vintage-scene as well as of the corresponding composi- 
tion in Uthina and of the vine-frieze surrounding the 
‘triumph of Bakchos’ near the fishing-scene on the 
Hadrumetum mosaic is easily explained : we know from 
an inscription of the initiates of Dionysos Botrys (the 
‘grape’), in Western Thracia,* that, especially in the 


1 See reproductions of all these mosaics in Monwments Piot, vol. iii. pp.177, 
229, and pll. xx., xxii. Another mosaic with the fisher-scene has been found 
in a building of the ancient Hadrumetum (now Sousse) in front of the apse, to 
the left of which there is a great mosaic with the triwmph of Dionysos, while 
on the right side of a destroyed composition there remain medallions with 
animals, a ship and a Ganymede carried off by the eagle, the image of the soul, 
that ascends to heaven (Dieterich Mithrasliturgie, p. 184, n. 3), to share 
there the everlasting banquet of the gods (Revue archéol., 1897, II. pl. xi. 
pp. 8-22). A little statue of Dionysos was also found on the spot. 


2 Cp. the coloured detail plate ii. in the Journ. Hell. Stud. xviii. 

* On the jay or kissa being sacred to Dionysos, see Corn. 86, p. 184. 

‘ Found in Alistrati. See Bull. corr. hell., 1900, p. 817; cp. Papadopoulos 
Kerameus (‘ Syllogos’ of Constantinoples, parartéma xvi. p. 108.). Perdrizet, 


Cultes et Mythes dw Pangée, p. 89. A coarsely sculptured grape is figured on 
top of the inscribed slab. 


THE EATING OF THE GRAPE GOD 281 


mysteries, the god was not only worshipped as the 
protector or donor of the vine, but also as the ‘spirit’ 
incarnated bodily in the grapes' and in the vine. Such 
ideas are evidently survivals of a primitive fetishistic, 
scarcely animistic stage of religion, yet none the less 
historic realities, even if unlikely to be congenial to the 
developed spiritualised and systematic theology of later 
ages. 

If Cotta, the Academician, in his polemic against 
the Stoics,’? asks whether, though the corn is sometimes 
called, by way of a familiar metaphor,® Ceres and the 
wine Bakchos, you would expect anyone to be so foolish 
as to believe what he eats to be a god ?—the answer 
cannot be the negative anticipated by Cotta, when we 
remember the numerous instances of theophagic rites 
which modern folk-lore has put on record. Indeed the 
‘mystic vine’ of Dionysos,* or rather its grapes, were 
beyond doubt sacramentally eaten by the initiates, in 
an annual celebration, at the time when the earliest 
grapes could be gathered in the most favoured sun- 
flooded corners of the god’s sacred vineyard.’ We have 


1 Cp. the Pompeian fresco (Gazette archéol. 1880, p. 10, pl. 2) on our pl. 
lxxi.; the head in the Vatican with grapes sprouting out of the god’s hair 
and beard (Mueller- Wieseler, Denkin, 2,344), and the characteristic wine-bottle 
on pl. Ixvili. Analogous ideas underlie the Aryan-cult of the deified Soma— 
or Haoma—drink. 


2 Cicero, De Nat. Deor. iii. 16, 41. 


8“ Genere quidem sermons wsitato,”’ that is with a figure of speech, 
which was called katachrésis in the Hellenistic theory of rhetoric. 


4 Lygdamus (in the 8rd book of Tibull’s ‘ Elegiacs’) 61. 


5 There was an anticipated vintage-feast celebrated in August with the 
grapes of a specially precocious and probably specially tended sacred vine. 
T believe, that it is this peculiar feast-day, which is meant in the glossary 
of Hesychius s.y. ‘protrygaia’=‘ anticipated vintage.’ If Hesychius says 
that this day is sacred to Dionysos and Poseidon, we are immediately 
reminded of the fishing-scene coupled with the vintage or the sacred vine in 
the Melian and North-African mosaics, since Poseidon Agreus (Diodor. v. 694; 
Lucian, Piscat. 47; Anthol. Palat. vi. 88, Varro. iii. 17,, etc.) = ‘ the Fisher ’ is 
of course the patron-god of fishery and a genuine doublet to Dionysos 
Zagreus and Halieus. Cp. also the legend about Dionysos fighting Poseidon 
for the island of Naxos (Plutarch. Qu. Conv. ix. 6), which reflects the conquest 
of ap old sanctuary of the Phenician fisher-god Ba‘al-Sidon (above, p. 28) by 


282 ORPHEUS THE FISHER 


in fact a fragment of Euphorion,’ which tells us about 
the following regularly-recurring miracle of the god: 
while the women are dancing frenziedly in honour of 
Dionysos during his annual mysteries, the mysterious | 
ephemeral or one-day grapes are ripened; they begin 
ripening in the morning, are mature at noon, made 
must of in the evening, and this fresh must does not 
diminish or come to an end before the termination of 
the feast, however much may be drunk of it. 

It is most certainly this sacramental vintage and 
communion of the newly-ripened grapes, which is meant 
in the vines- and vintage-mosaics both of the Melian 
and the kindred North African mosaic pavements, and 
possibly also on the two decorative companion vases 
(pl. xxxvi.), where a Meenad with the grape-bunch and 
the mystic chest in her hand forms the counterpart to 
the Bakchic ‘ fisher.’ 

When Prof. Bosanquet published the above illus- 
trated mosaic from the mystery hall of Milo, he 
immediately called attention tot he numerous parallels 
which’ early Christian art offers to the panel with the 
vines; he mentions as an example of the adoption of 
a perfectly pagan design the famous vintage-mosaic on 
the ceiling of the ambulatory of S. Costanza at Rome’), 
a Church built about the middle of the fourth century, 
where little amorini—that is angelic genzi, or glorified 
souls, as they were typified in the earliest stage of 
Christian iconography—are seen to pluck the grapes, 


the more recent Thracian and Greek fisher-god Dionysos Halieus. At Hyrie, 
Anthedon and Tanagra (Gruppe, Hdb. 619) the kindred gods Dionysos and 
ALA are found side by side, without any trace of their pre-historic 
rivalry. 


+ Fragm. 132; Meineke, Anal. Alex., p. 144, Schol. Townl. (cp. Schol. 
ABD) toN 21. See H. Usener, Der hl. Tychon, Leipzig, 1907, p. 82 n. 2. 
* de Rossi, Musaict Cristiani XVII., XVIII. Coloured paper casts and 


Faas drawings in the South Kensington Museum according to Bosanquet, 
+» Dp. 69L, 


FISHING AND THE SACRAMENT OF THE VINE 283 


to lead the wains and to tread the wine-press. The 
same motive is to be found in exactly the same execu- 
tion in the above mentioned—Dionysiac— mosaics of 
Northern Africa. “The same symbolism,” says Prof. 
Bosanquet quite correctly, “is Dionysiac in the one 
case, Christian in the other, ’” e.g., in the mosaic paved 
apse of Ancona, where every leaf of the vine has the 
form of a cross and the words of Isaiah V.1, are added 
in the Vulgate version as an inscription.’ 

Moreover Prof. Bosanquet has accurately observed 
—in spite of his having overlooked Tiimpel’s paper on 
Dionysos Halieus’*) and therefore also the Dionysiac 
symbolism of the fishing-scene in Melos, Hadrumetum, 
Uthina, etc.—that in the North African Christian 
mosaics of Oriéansville (Algier) and of Sertei—in the 
ancient Mauretanian Svtifiene (pl. LXx.)—we can observe 
the same juxtaposition of the fishing-scene with the 
sacred vine as we have found it in the Bakcheion of 
Melos, perhaps because to the Christian the fish as 
well as the vine had a mystic meaning.* 

As a matter of fact this combination is by no 
means confined to Christian art in the African province. 


1 Prof. O. Wulff, director of the department of early Christian antiquities 
in the Berlin Kaiser Friedrich’s museum, has gone so far (Altchristl. w. 
Byzant. Kunst, Berlin, 1918, p. 3815) as to think a Christian origin possible for 
the mosaics of the Melian mystery hall. This is quite out of the question 
for one who remembers the characteristic finds mentioned above, but it is a 
very significant error. 


2 Beside the Christian mosaics of this type from Syria and Palestine 
(Kabr-Hiram, Jerusalem, Madeba, etc., Bosanquet, l.c., p. 70) many other 
instances might be quoted: see H. Le Blant, Recherches sur ’istovre de la 
parable de la vigne aux premiers siécles chrétvens, Paris, 1869; Kiinstle, 
in Kraus Realencycl., I1., 982. The vintage scene on sarcophagi, ¢.g. 
Le Blant, Sarcoph. d la Gaule, p. 44, 70, 84, 94, 151, and the porphyry- 
sarcophagus of Constantia, the daughter of Constantine, Visconti, Museo 
Pio-Clementino, VII.,11f. Cp. further Kraus, Gesch. d. Chrostl. Kunst, I., 
1228. 


8 Philologus N.F. II., 1889, p. 682. 
+1, cp. 70; ni. 4. 


284 ORPHEUS THE FISHER 


In the very Church of S. Costanza, from the ambulatory 
of which Prof. Bosanquet has quoted the vintage-scene 
with the amorini, there were also in the cupola friezes 
with fishing scenes resembling those reproduced on 
our pl. L.’ 

Still more important is the fact, that we find a 
typical example of a vault ornamented with the mystic 
vine (pl. Lxxi), in the very same catacomb of the 
Flavians in S. Domitilla, which contains some of the 
earliest monuments of Christian funeral art (end of 
first century A.D.), and among them the Orphic 
symbol-group of the lamb and the milk-pail (above 
pls. XXXIX.-III. and XLv.), and side by side with it the 
oldest examples of the angling fisher in Christian art 
(above pls. XXXIX., XLIV.) and of the messianic fisher- 
meal (reproduced on our pl. xLiv., fig. 2, ch. XXVIII.). 


IV. 


THE FISHERMEN IN THE DIONYSIAN 
INITIATION-SCENES FROM THE ROMAN 
VILLA IN THE FARNESINA GARDEN. 


THE most instructive representation of the Bakchic 
grape-sacrament, however—again side by side with the 
image of the Dionysian fishing-rite—is to be found in 
the delightful plasterwork from the ceilings of a small 
Roman villa, which has been excavated in the garden 
of the world-famous Villa Farnesina on the shore of 


? Cp. above, p. 168, n. 5, and de Rossi, Mus. Crist., tav. 4. 


THE VILLA OF CLEOPATRA? 285 


the Tiber in 1878, and is now on view in the Museo 
delle Terme in Rome.! = 

The building was sumptuously decorated in a style 
which combined the features of a select town-house 
with those of a country villa. Its date is unanimously 
placed in the period of Cesar or Augustus. A recent 
and certainly somewhat audacious conjecture of a 
German scholar* would have it that it was built by 
Cesar for Cleopatra, when he received the visit of the 
Kgyptian Queen in Rome. This hypothesis would 
account, as well for the selection of the specific 
Dionysian elements in the decoration, which are the 
subject of this chapter—since the cult of Dionysos, the 
alleged ancestor of the Ptolemzans, was the official 
religion of the royal family of Alexandria*—as for the 
occasional occurrence of such Hellenised Egyptian types 
as the Zeus Ammon, mentioned below p. 292, and 
finally also for the addition of erotic scenes and of the 
fine Aphrodité* picture in one of the rooms. 

The marvellous beauty and delicacy of the plaster- 
work and of some of the frescoes—among the latter 
signed masterpieces of one Seleukos—really make the 
villa seem worthy of accommodating a royal guest. 
But, on the contrary, the house may quite well have 
been the property of some other person, devoted to the 
cult of Bakchos and Aphrodité, the patrons of life’s 


1 There are excellent photographs of all these monuments by Alinari’ 
lithographic reproductions in the ‘Supplements’ to the Monwmenti dell’ 
Istituto archeologico (plate numbers quoted in the course of the description), 
and in a separate edition of the same plates under the title: Lessing and Mau, 
Wandschmuck evnes rémischen Hauses, etc. 


2 Ippel, Der dritte pompejanische Stil, p. 41. 


8 Op. for instance the Bakchic still-life scene on the celebrated ‘cup of 
the Ptolemzans,’ Furtwangler, Gemmen, vol. iii., figg. 108'f. 


4 The reader will perhaps remember that Venus was claimed as his 
mythic ancestor by Julius Caesar, and Cleopatra was certainly not less 
fervent a worshipper of Aphrodité as Queen Bereniké. 


286 ORPHEUS THE FISHER 


chief amenities, perhaps of a man who had some con- 
nection with the stage, of a great actor, poet or 
composer. i 

Our own interest in it is centred on the rich cycle 
of Bakchic subjects, beginning with a series of Diony- 
sian and theatrical symbols in a landscape-frieze from 
a semi-circular corridor,’ and four little pictures in a 
frieze,? that render scenes from the life of poets, actors, 
etc., whom their ivy crowns characterise as protégés of 
the tutelary divinity of the Greek stage. While these 
have apparently no immediate religious signification, 
the scene of a great wall-painting,* from one of the 
bedrooms, is evidently supposed to be in the surround- 
ings of a Bakchic sanctuary. It represents the nursing 
of the infant Dionysos by a Bakchante—characterised 
by her thyrsos-staffi—under the supervision of two 
priestesses, one of whom holds a fan, while the other 
also carries the sacred wand. From the same room 
comes a marvellous archaic picture of Aphrodité,° 
sitting on a throne with a flower in her hand, with 
Eros and one of the Graces, a conjunction which 
reminds us of the Orphic Aphrodité-hymn, where the 
goddess is praised as the throne-mate of Dionysos. 
These pictures in that ancient Pagan sleeping chamber 
were evidently what a Madonna and a Santo Bambino 
would be in the bedroom of a medieval or modern 
Catholic house. 


_) No. 1464 in Helbig’s Oatalogue of Roman Antiquities (new German 
edition of 1913) [the numbers of the first edition in brackets], room xix. of 
the Museum in the Terme Diocleziane. 

® No. 1479, ibid. [1128]. 

3 In Ziebarth’s Griechisches Vereinswesen, the reader will find a large 
number of inscriptions mentioning a cult association of the famous so-called 
* Dionysian artists.’ 

“ No. 1477, Helbig [1118] ; room xxii. of the Museum. 

5 0, 1479 [1128]. 


DIONYSIAN INITIATION 287 


But the most important witness to the unknown 
proprietor’s personal creed is to be found in the in- 
comparably delicate plasterwork of the vaulted ceilings.! 
Of the general aspect of these vaults pl. LXx11. may give 
a faint idea. The main motives of the framed composi- 
tions—three of which are grouped on some such scheme 
as we see on pl. LXXII., round a profile-head either of 
Dionysos or of Aphrodité with her typical flower—have 
long been identified as scenes of Bakchic initiation,’ 
but never sufficiently explained in all their highly 
interesting details. We, too, must content ourselves 
with an analysis of the most transparent and 
unmistakable scenes. . 

We see, first, on the left of no. 1327 (Helbig),’ 
three women offering a bloodless sacrifice before an 
altar with an ithyphallic idol of Dionysos; they carry 
a Wwinnowing-sieve (liknon), bowls with first-fruits, 
wreaths and thyrsos-wands. On the right, a Bacchante 
is lighting a fire on an altar* by means of two torches, 
A satyr stands behind her and accompanies the sacred 
action with the exciting music of his double-flute. On 
the left side of the altar a drunken Silenus leans, with 
a thyrsos in his left hand; behind him a deeply veiled 
WOMan. 

The landscape in the middle reveals the sacred 
grove round a Bakchic sanctuary; along the walls of 
the buildings and on the sinuous and uneven paths of 
the grove or garden we see the candidates for initia- 
tion groping about with outstretched hands and 


1 Helbig, nos. 1327-1332; Lessing-Mau, Lc., pls. xii-xv.; Mon. Istit. 
Suppl. xxxil.-xxxvi. 


2 Mau, U.c., i. p. 14. 
8 Mon. Istit. l.c. pl. xxxiv., Lessing-Mau, pl. xiv. 


4 Cp. Gruppe, Hdb., pp. 1415f. 786 un. 3 and 854 on the fire-lighting as a 
function of Dionysos. 


288 ORPHEUS THE FISHER 


stumbling steps, blindfolded with a thick veil over 
their heads. In another similar landscape’ with a 
kindred group of buildings’ in it, we see another such 
blindfold disciple crossing a stream on a bridge, and 
about to kneel before a priestess who comes to meet 
him. Still in another tableau,? we may observe those 
who are being initiated in the act of ascending the 
steps of a steep stairway. 

It is clear that the sacred grove here serves as an 
antitype of the au-dela, of the holy meadows and 
groves of Persephoneia, and the buildings as models 
of the ‘palaces of Hadés,’ while the blindfold disciples 
are having an object lesson to prepare them for the 
final pilgrimage to the abode of the blessed in the 
dark underworld. We have a fragment of Themistios,’ 
where he says that “the departing soul suffers the 
same passion as one of those that pass through the 
great mysteries . . . . Hirst wanderings and 
tiresome windings, gruesome and resultless journeyings 
through the darkness ; then, before the end, all those 
powerful sensations, shivering and trembling, sweating 
and horror. After this, the soul suddenly encounters a 
marvellous light, and reaches pure realms and meadows, 
replete with voices and dances and the majesty of 
sacred sounds and sights. In the midst of these it 
moves about, now perfect, free and liberated, celebrates 
the orgies with wreath on head and enters the presence 
of the holy and pure, gazing down on the uninitiated 
and impure mob of the living, walking and driven 
forward in deep mud and fog, and remaining in these 


1 No. 1880, Helbig ; Lessing-Mau, l.c. pl. xv.; Mon. Istit. xxxy. 
2 No. 1831, Helbig ; pl. xiii. Lessing-Mau; pl. xxxii. Mon. Istit. 


® Ap. Joh. Stob. Flor. iv. p. 107 M; Maass, Orpheus, p. 808f.; Dieterich, 
Mithraslitwrgre p. 168. 


WANDERINGS IN THE DARKNESS 289 


evils from fear of death and for want of faith in the 
blessings of that other world.” 

Similarly Apuleius describes his experiences during 
the initiation :' “I have entered the realm of death 
and trodden the threshold of Proserpine, have passed 
through all the elements’ and yet returned. In the 
middle of the night I saw the sun shining with bright 
light.” The bridge over the waters of death,‘ the 
stairway leading to the summit of the happy mountain,’ 
etc., are all familiar features of eschatological folk-lore. 
Indeed, we know quite well—through fragmentary 
quotations from the Orphic poem the ‘ Descent to 
Hades ”* on the often-quoted gold tablets’—some of the 
instructions about the topography of shadow-land, 
which are so precious for those who would be ‘ right 
wary ’ in following the way leading to bliss and eternal 
divine drunkenness (methé aidnios), and in avoiding 
the other branch of the mystic Y, which leads to filth, 
darkness and eternal oblivion : 


“Thou shalt find to the left of the house of Hades a 
well-spring and by the side thereof standing a 
white cypress. 

To this well approach not near. 


1 Metamorph. xi. 23. 


2 This is obviously the stage of initiation, which Themistios describes as 
causing awe, fear, horror, etc. See also the letterpress of our pl. li. 


3 This is, of course, the marvellous light in Themistios’ description. Cp. 
on the sun shining in the other world for the initiates, Rohde, Psyche, 4th 
ed., ii. 210 n. 1. 


4 Arch. f. Rel. Wiss. xiv. 322f.; Gruppe, Hdb., p.404; Grimm, Deutsche 
Miarchen ii. 794; Liebrecht to Gervase of Tilbury, p. 90ff. 


5 Weltenmantel, p. 299f. 

6 This is at least the plausible opinion of Dieterich. 

7 English critical text by Jane HE. Harrison, Prolegomena, etc., p. 660ff. 
At 


290 ORPHEUS THE FISHER 


But thou shalt find another (cypress'), and from the 

Lake of Memory 
Cold water flowing forth.. Guardians will be before it; 
Say (unto them): I am a child of Earth and Starry 

Heaven. 

But my race is of Heaven (alone). This ye know 
yourselves. 

Lo, now, am IJ parched with thirst and I perish, 

Quickly, give me the cold water flowing forth from 

Memory’s Lake, 

And of themselves will they give thee to drink from 
the holy well-spring, 

And thereafter shalt thou have lordship together with 
the rest of the heroes.” 

Another tablet enjoins on the soul always to 
keep to the right as soon as it has left the ight of the 
sun, and hails the pilgrim to the blessed land with a 
reference to the unprecedented sufferings, which he 
has gone through during his initiation : 
ff Hail thou who hast suffered the passion 

thou never hadst suffered before 
Thou art become God from man, a kid thou art fallen 

into milk.’ 
Hail, hail to thee journeying to the right always 

to the holy meads and groves of Persephoneia.”’ 

Then there is a scene’ where women are seen 
offering at an altar before a sacred pillar a triptych, 
the whole probably representing the peculiar Orphic 
‘image-offering,’ mentioned by Empedoclés.! 

1 Cp. the two cypresses right and left from the Hades door on the 


funeral ash-chest of Ince Blundell Hall, Michaelis Ancient Marbles in Great 
Britain, p. 317. 


2 Cp. above, p. 7, note 2 and pl. xlvii. 


* No. 1828, Helbig 1041D, left side; Lessing-Mau, pl. xiv.; Mon. Ist., pl. 
XXXiv, 


“ See the author’s paper in Arch. f. Rel. Wiss., xiii. 625. 


THE JOURNEY ON THE SUN-CHARIOT 291 


Two other scenes are illustrative of the Phaéton 
myth: in the one we see the youth, accompanied by 
his aged tutor, approaching the Sun-god Hélios, 
who is seated on his throne, and asking to be allowed 
once only to drive the sun-car ; in the second composi- 
tion the Seasons or the Sun-daughters are preparing 
the sun-car and harnessing the horses. 

I suppose that Phaéton is introduced here as the 
type of the soul that drives the chariot of the sun to 
heaven,’ as Parmenidés describes his mystic journey 
to the realm of night, and as we find also occasionally 
pictured the ascension and apothedsis of Roman 
emperors.” It is well-known that the Egyptian ‘ Book 
of the Dead ’—an other-world guide-book of similar 
purpose to the Orphic Hadés-literature—contains 
certain magic formule, which are supposed to enable 
the soul to Jump on board the barge of the Sun-god, 
when the latter passes through the underworld on his 
daily journey, and thus to escape the eternal sub- 
terranean darkness. Nothing could be more probable 
than the existence of a parallel idea in the eschatology 
of the Dionysian mysteries, at least in Alexandria, 
where Dionysos the god of the Ptolemies had been 
intentionally identified with Osiris. To know the 
words of Phaéton, that constrained Hélios to let him 
mount the heavenly chariot, to know of this precedent, 
and to remind the god of it, would enable the initiate 
to obtain the same favour and ‘to have’ thereby— 
as Pindar says—‘ the sun equal always by night and 
day.” Besides, we know from the extant fragments 

1 See Dieterich, Mithrasliturgie, pp. 197f.; ep. p. 183f. 
2 Cumont, Myst. de Mithra, i. 292; Daremberg-Saglio, s.v. ‘ Diptychon,’ 


276; Dieterich, l.c., p. 184 n. 1. 


3 Olymp. ii. 61f. On Pindar’s eschatology having been influenced by 
the Sicilian Orphics I need not say anything here. 


292 ORPHEUS THE FISHER 


of Orphic literature,’ that Phaéton was identified in 
the Bakchic mysteries with Dionysos himself in his 
primeval incarnation as Phanés Protogonos (cp. above 
pl. iv.); so that an initiate, who had become another 
‘Bakchos,’ through the initiations, could by right 
expect the same privilege from Hélios as the mythic 
Phaéton. 

The landscapes on the right and the left from the 
Phaéton scenes contain graceful colonnades, the roofs 
of which are supported by the statues of one and the 
same divinity several times repeated—of Zeus-Ammon 
in the first, Hermés in the second, and Démetér in the 
third case. These architectural features are probably 
symbolic of the palaces of the respective gods, and the 
presence of the initiates among them* seems to signify 
the future ‘life with the gods’ of the pure,* which 
awaits the initiate when the chariot of the sun shall 
have carried him to the blissful realms. 

Right and left from the landscape with the tiny 
little neo-mystés crossing the bridge, there are two 
scenes,’ which are evidently illustrative of the blessed 
life of ‘ perpetual divine drunkenness,’ which is led by 
the followers of Dionysos, and of the ceremonies, by 
which a man may become a thyrsos-bearer and member 
of the ‘ thiasos.’ 

On the right side a Silenus stands in the middle 
and looks down at a Bacchante, who stoops before him 
and is petting a tame panther. Behind the Silenus a 
drunken satyr is seen reclining on his back on the 


1 Abel, Fragm. Orph. 15210, cf. 57. 


_ > A cattle-herd (cp. above p. 57 and pls. xxviii. and xlvii. on the boes of 
Dionysos) is seen grazing in the midst of the colonnades of Zeus. 


* See Rohde, Psyche, 4th ed., ii. 279, n. 1, on the Platonic passages, 
where this dogma will be found. 


* No. 1880 [1071], Helbig. 


THE WINNOWING SIEVE 2938 


ground, and being caressed by another Bacchante. 
The left hand scene is badly damaged, but it was 
certainly a scene of Bacchic initiation, for the remains 
of a priestess carrying the sacred winnowing sieve are 
still to be distinguished. 

Finally, in another composition (reproduced on 
our plate LxXxII.) we see round a most beautiful bearded 
Dionysos bust on the left, another scene of initiation, 
this time quite complete: the candidate, who is repre- 
sented in smaller (childlike) proportions than the other - 
figures, evidently because of the fiction that through the 
initiation he is newly born into another life, and whose 
face is veiled with a cloak drawn over his head, is led 
by a priestess towards the Silenus, who holds—again 
under the covering of a veil—the mystic winnowing 
sieve. Under the veil we have to suppose the objects 
the uncovering of which formed a central feature of 
all the mystery-ceremonies,' among them the sacred 
phallos of the god, the symbol of the new ‘generation 
from above.’ Behind the priestess, who guides the 
neophyte, on a low base stands a ‘cysta mystica’; a 
Bacchante steps forward with a tympanon in her 
lowered left hand. On the opposite side, the scene 
is terminated by a high, square pillar, beside which 
a holy tree is visible. Lying beneath the pillar is a 
goat’s head—either a remnant from a preceding goat- 
sacrifice or an animal mask, to be used by the future 
‘kid’ or ‘ goat’ or ‘ satyr.’ 

In the centre of the picture, on the right, a young 
satyr is sitting on a goat-skin spread over a rook. 
With raised right hand he bends down a tendril of a 
high-growing vine for the little naked initiate, who 


1 These things are called deigmata (=things shown) in the mystery- 
language, and distinguished from drdmena (=things acted) in the mystery- 
language. 


294 ORPHEUS THE FISHER 


stands there a little awkwardly, enjoying his newly 
acquired dignity of ‘thyrsos-bearer.’ He is seen now 
to hold the sacred wand which gives him the right to 
partake of the new grapes from the ‘mystic vine.’ 
Behind him stands a Bacchante with a cup in her right 
hand; a second satyr is pouring wine into a mixing- 
vessel from a skin bag. 

The landscape in the middle (see our detailed pl. 
LXXIII.) shows again the buildings, which make up the 
Bakcheion in the sacred grove; to the left a little turret 
with a small open court before it. In front, between 
two vases, which are placed on top of the walls round 
the little fore-court, stands an ithyphallic image. At 
the entrance of the opposite building a female figure is 
seen leaning against a parapet, fascinated by the sight 
of the image and lost in deep meditation. In the 
centre of the foreground two women are performing 
some mystic action over a sacred rock or rough rock- 
altar. But the most interesting features of this 
landscape are the following details on the right side: 
The building in the centre is connected with a small 
temple and turret on the right by means of a bridge. 
This proves that between the two buildings a stream is 
supposed to flow down to the foreground, round a cliff, 
which is situated opposite the rock with the two 
officiating women, and on which we see two fishermen, 
the one balancing very gracefully on the outmost pro- 
jection of the ‘jutting rock’ in the typical position 
given to the angler by Greek art of every age, and 


casting his line, by means of a flexible rod, into the 


1 For this detail, which is not sufficiently clear in the photograph, Prof. 
Emanuele Loewy, Professor of Archeology at the Sapienza in Rome, has been 
kind enough to examine the original and ascertain that there is nothing 
placed on the bare rock and that the officiating priestess has nothing in her 
hands. No flame is visible above the rock, although strokes, which are 
meant to suggest grass growing in the background, might lead the uncautioned 
observer into this error. 


SUDDEN FALL AND FISHING OF NHOPHYTE 295 


afore-mentioned stream. The other fisherman is 
standing and occupied with baiting his line. There 
-can be no reasonable doubt that—like all the rest of 
the figures in these little plaster-relievos—the fishermen 
also have to play their part in the Bakchic initiation 
rites, however often such fishermen may appear 
together with shepherds, hunters and the like as mere 
staffage-figures in other Hellenistic landscapes. With- 
out wishing to assert that this is the only possible 
interpretation, I should’ like to direct the readers’ 
attention to the tiny figure of a candidate for initiation 
who is just crossing the bridge over the river, on the 
way from the smaller building on the right to a square 
landing-platform with two corner-pillars for fastening 
boats on the opposite side of the river; this neomysiés 
meets, on that very narrow bridge without a railing, 
another larger figure—obviously a priestess as in the 
paralle] instance described above p. 293. If we remem- 
ber that so many of the folk-lore traditions about the 
bridge of souls emphasise the danger of falling down 
from this giddy and narrow passage way ; if we consider, 
moreover, that it really must be very difficult for a 
blindfold person to cross such a narrow bridge guided 
only by the voice of the priestess, who may be thought 
to call him nearer and nearer; if we remember, more- 
over, Themistios’ allusions to a sudden frightening of 
the initiate on his way through the darkness (above p. 
288), the Orphic allusion to a quite unprecedented 
painful experience and the accident of the initiate’s 
‘falling into the milk,’—I do not think it a too risky 
interpretation to suppose that the initiate is being 
intentionally misled here by the voice of the priestess— 
as it were the soul being led astray by temptations— 
until he really tumbles down from the bridge into the 


296 ORPHEUS THE FISHER 


water beneath, from which he is then fished out again after 
this symbolic and purificatory drowning by the fishermen 
occupied with their work’a little down the river.’ 

If this explanation be admitted, we should 
have another testimony—beside the mosaic from the 
mystery-hall of Melos (see above p. 272)—that the 
neophyte had to be ‘fished’ from the water, that is, 
mystically conceived anew (above pp. 268ff.), before he 
could -be admitted to the grape- and new-wine 
sacrament represented in both cases in the panel 
next to the fishing-scene. This ceremony would then 
represent the purification of the soul by water, the 
scene around the altar, on which a fire is lit by means 
of burning torches, by the veiled woman in the back- 
ground, the purification by fire, and the several times 
recurring winnowing-sieve, the wind-baptism or ‘ venti- 
lation ’ of the initiate (cp. p. 208). Unhappily, we cannot 
say how the fire and wind-ceremonies were performed in 
detail; but it is easy to imagine how the blindfold 
initiate, groping about in the darkness, would be 
frightened and impressed, when he was suddenly 
fanned with mighty winnowing-shovels, or when 
sulphur torches were swung round him, without his 
knowing where the wind and the fire came from. 
Most certainly there was, however, an exchange of 
questions and answers between the hierophant and 
the neophyte, which gradually enlightened the candi- 
date about the subsequent trials through which he 
had to pass, until finally the veil was removed from his 
eyes and the light dawned upon him that shineth for 
ever in the darkness. 

' Cp. above on pl. xlix. (to p. 161), Jonah saved by fishermen. The analogy 
is especially valuable, because there too the rescuing fishermen are represented 


as angling, while in all the other numerous myths about the ritually drowned 
person being saved by fishermen nets are used for the purpose. 


ADDITIONS AND CORRECTIONS. 


Page 4,n.2. Cp. about the Aiginean—and later on—Roman 
Orphic mysteries of Hekate, the evidence of the inscriptions, etc., 
collected by G. Wissowa, Relig. w. Kult. d. Romer, Munich, 1902, 
p. 816, ns. 10-13. I believe now that the so-called ‘ Chaldean 
oracles’ are characterised as the bible of these mysteries by the 
predominance given to the cosmically interpreted Hekate in their 
theology (Kroll, De Orac. Chald., pp. 27ff., 49, 69; Ziegler, Arch. 
Rel. Wiss., XIII., 1910, 266ff.). 

Page 18. The list of hundreds of new divine names from the 
eight languages of Boghask6éj discovered by my Swiss friend 
Dr. E. Forrer, does not contain anything like “ Orpheus,” although 
a goddess “ Ri-a’”—evidently the ‘Rheia’ of the Greek—ocecurs 
frequently. Accordingly we may adhere with great confidence to 
the proposed Greek etymology. For the sake of completeness 
I mention the new etymology by O. Kern, Orpheus, Berlin, 1920, 
pp. 16ff., who derives O. from orph(an)os and explains it as ‘the 
hermit,’ or ‘solitarian.’ He has however noticed on p. 8, n. 3, that 
there must be a connection of ‘Orpheus’ and the ‘ orphoi’ fish. 

Page 14. Cp. about the orphos-fish G. Schmidt, Philologus, 
Suppl. XI., p. 287f. It is identified with the wreck-fish, polyprion 
cernuum—a six-foot long giant perch, weighing more than a hundred 
pounds, highly estimated on account of its delicious flesh. 
According to Couch it is sometimes caught at the coast of 
Cornwall. According to this author it is sometimes seen reclining 
for a time on the wooden wreck of a ship, stranded in more 
southern seas, until carried off again by a higher wave, a descrip- 
tion which will remind the reader of the story about the dolphin 
jumping into the Cretan ship and guiding it to Apollon’s later 
sanctuary at Delphi. The fishermen of Morea call the serranus 
gigas (French serran le méron), orphos. In modern Crete the name 
is applied to the labrus maculatus (spotted lip-fish) also called 
‘ pietropsaro,’ 8t. Peter’s fish (cp. below, p. 85, n. 4), and pronounced 
rophos. This is important in so far as it shows that the word 
orphos—previous unsatisfactory etymologies in Boisacq’s Dict. 
étym. de la Langue Grécque, Paris, 1916, s.v., p. 720—is to be derived 
from’roph-ein ‘to swallow’ (*srobh) Lat. sorbeo (*srbh), Lithuanian 
surbiti ‘to suck,’ Armen. arbi ‘I drank,’ ‘arb’ ‘drunken revellery,’ 
etc. (see Boisacg, l.c., p. 844, about this stem), and applies to the 
voracity of the kind, which is expressly mentioned by the authors 

297 


298 ADDITIONS AND CORRECTIONS 


‘that describe the Lycian ichthyomantic oracle. Accordingly the 
word is neither ‘ Hittite,’ nor Semitic, but true Greek and cannot 
have been an old word for ‘fish’ in general. “Orpheud”’ means 
therefore not ‘to fish’ in general, but ‘to handle’ or catch the 
orphoi (cp. Engl. ‘whaling,’ ‘whalery’), videl. ‘ to prophesy by means 
of the orphoi or ‘“ yoracious” fish.’ Orpheus or Orphites (Lycian 
inscription of 149 A.D., Petersen-Luschan, IL., p. 124, no. 161), other 
instances in Pape-Benseler, 2nd ed., 1079, or Orphondas (Fick- 
Bechtel, p. 431) is the ‘ orphos-guard’ or ‘orphos-priest’ (cp. Eng). 
‘ whaler,’ French ‘ balénier ’). 

Page 18. Orpheus the herdsman is represented with his 
shepherd’s rod on a sculptured slab of the Mantua Museum, 
Labus, Museo di Mantova L., p. 12 (‘Orfeo . . . con pedo pastorale ’). 

Page 22, n. 4.  Afilian’s tale about the Adonis-fish may be 
compared with the above-quoted habit of the wreck-fish. So it 
might be true to life after all. 

Page 25, last line but one of the text. The “lagobolion ’ is not 
a “net for catching hares’ but a crooked throw-stick for killing 
them, a kind of boomerang. 

Page 26, n. 1. The case of the same word for ‘fox’ in the 
Thracian (Schol. Lykophr., 771, 1348), Lybian, Coptic, Afar and 
Saho languages is no more unparallelled or enigmatic. Similarly 
Sappho’s word ‘herpis’ (‘the trailing one’) for ‘ vine’ occurs as 
irp in Egyptian (Copt. HPII), cp. the author’s new book Kenit. 
Weih inschr., Freib., 1919, p. 760). ‘The reader will remember that 
the Agean people appear as allies of the Lybians in the wars of 
Sahure’ and Merneptah. My friend Dr. Forrer tells me, that the 
well-known Egyptian verb SDM ‘to hear,’ the very paradigm of 
Egyptian grammars, occurs in the form isdum-asuwar ‘to hear’ 
in the new ‘Luvian’ language of Asia Minor and Prehellenic 
Greece, which he has extracted from the Boghask6j tablets. If 
we remember that the Libyans (Egypt. Rb.w., the w-plural cor- 
responding to the y in Lib-y-a) are called Lub-im in the Old 
Testament and that bi may be an Asianic plural suffix, even as 
in Kas-pi-oi for the “ Kassi’ of Cuneiform Texts, in Torre-bi-oi (from 
Turra), Perrhae-bi-oi from *Perrha, etc., Lulu-bi from Lulu-ta, 
ete., that the North African coasts have always been inhabited 
by racial kinsmen of the opposed Mediterranean coasts and 
islands, there is nothing strange in this linguistic coincidence. 
There is nothing improbable in the hypothesis of a prehistorie 
Luvian and Chalybian (H’ nb.w) colonisation of North Africa if 
we think of the later Greek colonies of Kyrene and Naukratis and 
of the ‘ Carian fort’ (Karikon teichos) at Mogador. 

Page 85. The name ‘the silent ones’ for the ‘fishes’ 
corresponds perfectly to the common new Greek word ‘alogo,’ the 
: speechless’ one, for the ‘horse.’ The Pythagorean order is called 
coetus silentum,’ the ‘confraternity of the silent ones’ (Lucan, 
6, 518; Ovid. met. 15, 66; etc.). The ‘ellops’ is the caviar- 
sturgeon (G. Schmidt, Philol. Suppl. XI., 281). Zeus must have 
it to eat it together with Hera, Epicharm, Athen. VII., 287. 


ADDITIONS AND CORRECTIONS 299 


According to Sammonius Serenus (Macrob. III., 16, 15; Athen. 
VIL., 48, p. 294 5), a certain amount of sensation was caused in 
Rome, when under Septimius Severus at a sacrificial meal an 
ellops was served wreathed and to the sound of flute-playing as it 
were with divine honours. Maybe the Syrian Empress Julia 
Domna had reintroduced this old ichthyolatric rite. Its 
delicious flesh—compared by the parodistic poet Matron (4th cent. 
B.C.) to ‘ambrosia’—became a fashionable dish for some time in 
my land too, when the fish had been served under its Hungarian 
name of ‘ fogosh,’ applied to those caviar-sturgeons that are caught 
in the Danube, to King Edward in the imperial castle of Vienna. 

Page 35,n.3. Dr. F. M. Cornford reminds me that the first 
literary mention of the name Orpheus itself occurring in Ibykos of 
Rhegion (‘onomaklytos Orphén’) fr. 10 Bergk shows this Cretan 
termination in -én. 

Page 36. As ‘to wash one’s feet’ is a metaphoric expression 
for ‘to marry’ (see the author’s paper on John 13sff. in 
Zeitschrift fiir neutest., Wiss., 1918, p. 268) ‘aniptopodes’ is 
probably equivalent to ‘celibataries. A Lydian inscription 
(Tralles, Bull. corr. hell VII. 276) is dedicated by one ‘ Lucia 
Aurelia Emilia descended from an ancestry of temple-prostitutes 
and aniptopodes (=celibataries), herself prostituted according to 
an oracle. The ritual of sleeping on the naked soil and the 
prohibition against the washing of one’s feet occurs also in India. 
See Oldenberg, Relig. d. Veda, pp. 417 and 424. 

Page 37. First line read ‘supposed’ for ‘admitted.’ In the 
sixth line read ‘parallelism of the words’ for ‘transition from.’ 
Wilamowitz v. Mcellendorf (Hinleit, i.d., até. Tragedie, Berlin, 1889, 
p. 258): “psellizo, sellizo, ellos, ellops offer a phonetically un- 
impeachable etymology for Hellenes, Hellopes,” has not meant, 
of course, to derive these words from one another. Psellizo means 
literally to lisp, sellizo and Latin silere refer to the speech defect, 
which the French call ‘zezayer’ (cp. siboleth—pronunciation of 
Benjamin), hellos and ellos (*hellizein and “ellizein)—the syllable 
ell- in all these onomatic words corresponding to the German 
sound-picture word ‘lallen’ for ‘ stammer’—is the cockney defect 
of adding or dropping aitches (called ‘dasynein’ or ‘psiloun’ by 
Greek grammarians), ellops is composed of edJ-and the Homeric word 
*ops, opos, ‘voice.’ I believe now, that Hellenes, Hellopes=‘ the 
silent’ or ‘muttering ones’ is only a popular Greek etymology of 
the name, even as the explanation of ‘Hellas’=‘town’ Etym. 
Magn. 331, 84 from hella=Lat. sella ‘seat’ (cp. German 
“~Wohnsitz”) which would give the sense the ‘sedentary ones’ 
for ‘Hellenes’ in contrast with nomadic invaders. As the French 
language is not the German language of the Franks but the 
Romanic one of the Latinised Gauls, as ‘Bavarian’ is not the 
language of the Celtic Boii, Greek is probably not the language of 
the Hellénes or Hellopes—who may have been the former 
inhabitants of the peninsula, mentioned as H’n b w in Egyptian 
documents thousands of years before the Dorian invasion and 


300 ADDITIONS AND CORRECTIONS 


whom I believe to be identical with the ‘Chalybes’ of the Pontic 
regions in the north of Asia Minor (see my book on Kenite 
inscriptions, p. 74f.), even as the Illyrian Kassiopes are probably 
identical with the Kaspians or Kossaeans of Asia. 

Page 58, line 2f.: read ‘for mutual love was glowing.’ 

Page 68. The king suckled by a goddess is frequently 
represented on Egyptian monuments (Naville, Deir el bahari 
TV., pl. 104f. The XIth dyn. temple at D. el Bahari L., pls. 28, 30.) 
Even so, on the so-called “stéle des vautours” it is said of 
Eannatu of Lagas, “Ninharsag de sa mamelle sacrée l’allaita 
(Heuzey-Thureau-Dangin, p. 44). The church mystically suckling 
her children may be seen on a sarcophagus from Salona, Wulff., 
Altchristl. Kunst, p. 172, fig. 167, op. p. 80, fig. 68. 

Page 74. Dr. F. J. Délger is now Professor for Comparative 
Religion in Minster. 

Page 88. Lines 14 and 16 read mal ’akhim. 

Page 94. Line 10 end, after ‘wealthy’ add ‘pious Jew or,’ 
since Scheftelowitz has shown that the ‘fish’ was a well-known 
symbol for the pious Jew before it became a symbolon of the 
Jewish Messianists or Christians. 

To page 95, n. 2. Cp. Epictet in Arrian. diss. II. 9, ed. 
Upton, London, 1741, I. 214f., who says that many Greeks were 
called because of their Jewish, Syrian or Egyptian way of (religious) 
living Jews, Syrians or Egyptians. 

To page 114, n. 8. Augustin, sermo 876, says, that wool 
is ‘carnale aliquid’ (‘something fleshly’), while linen is 
‘spiritale’ (‘spiritual’). This is purest Orphic or Pythagorean 
vegetarianism. 

Page 115. As to the number-symbolism of letters, I see from 
The Quest, 1920, XI., p. 552, that Th. Simcox Lea and Fred. Bligh 
Bond have published a book (Materials for the Study of the 
Apostolic Gnosis, Oxford, 1919) on the subject, which I could not 
obtain in any German library. 

To page 122. Tenne, Volkssagen aus Pommern, p. 351, cp. 
Mélusine IT., p. 238f.: a fisherman must never tell the number of 
fish he has caught; if asked, he must understate it. This custom 
is evidently presupposed by the Pythagorean anecdote. 

To page 190, n. 2 cp., add. to page 190, about the deluge 
being heralded by angels felling the trees in the garden of this 
world. See besides my paper Siiddentsche Monatshefte, VI., 647, 
where I have tried to show that the ‘axe’ of God and his 
winnowing shovel’ may be astrally interpreted. Htymol. 
Gudianum 581, shows that the stars of Orion * * * were inter- 
preted as a pick-axe (‘skeparnon’) and Schiaparrelli, Astron. im 
AT, p. 62ff., explains the constellation mizré, Job 879 as ‘the 
winnowing shovels.’ John may well have accompanied his 
threatening sermon with the gesture of pointing towards the 
awe which is so often attributed to the Baptist in later Christian 
art. 


To page 148, cp. Odes of Solomon about the water of the 


ADDITIONS AND CORRECTIONS 801 


temple-fountain gushing forth and spreading over the whole ‘face 
of the earth.’ 

Page 157. Correct “to the Greek translator of the Aramaic 
original of the Logia.” The Aramaic can be rendered both ways 
indifferently. 

1574. Correct “above p. 15, n. 4,” for “ p. 36, n. 1.” 

Page 159, n. 2. I owe the knowledge of this important 
parallel to Dr. Rendell Harris, but could not insert any thanks to 
the distinguished scholar in the proofs. 

To page 160 ‘Bné RegeS’ cp. Rendell Harris’ excellent book 
Boanerges, Cambridge, 1918. 

To page 182, cp. Flemish and Pomeranian fables about 
‘the fish during the deluge’ (Zeitschr. d. Vereins f. Volkskunde, 
XVI., 1906, p. 391f., §11) “you could not destroy us” they say 
triumphantly to the Lord when he overlooks the results of the 
cosmic catastrophe. 

To page 183, n.1. See Revue archeol. IV., series XXIT., 1913, 
p. 417, new fragment of a Manichean gospel (Bordham and 
Conybeare, Hibb. Journ., July 1918, 805-818: flesh born in the 
water, flesh of fish is created without corruption, therefore the 
followers of Christ are not to eat any flesh but that of fishes. 

To page 190. See the ‘midras Semhazai and Azazel,’ 
Winsche, Isr. Lehrhailen, Leipz., 1907, vol. I., p. 8; Bin Gorion L., 
817: the deluge is heralded by the following dream-vision of one 
of the worst sinners—he sees a great park planted with all kinds 
of trees and in it angels, armed with axes, cutting down the trees, 
except one with three branches (Noe and his three sons) ! 

To page 198, cp. the tradition in Voyage de Siam des Péres 
Jesuites, 296, Hartland Perseus, p. 114: after a gradual degenera- 
tion of the human race the sea will be dried up and the earth 
destroyed by fire. Converted into dust and ashes, it will be 
purified by a wind, which will carry off all remains of con- 
flagration. So sweet an odour will then ‘exhale from the purified 
soil, that it will draw from heaven a female angel, who will eat of 
this sweet smelling substance, become pregnant and bring forth 
twelve sons and daughters to regenerate the world.’ This is 
a most interesting parallel to the Orphic legend about the origin 
of men from the ashes of the burnt Titans, destroyed by the 
lightning fire of Zeus. 

To page 200. The Babylonian original of the Syrian wind- 
flood legend has at last turned up in the Nippur-text discussed 
by Langdon, Proc. Soc. Bibl. Archeol., 1914, 189: once on a time 
the spirit, the wrathful word, the deluge gathered all, the raging 
storm uttered its roar of terror, the devastating spirit with its 
seven winds caused the heavens to moan. The violent storm 
caused the earth to quake, the storm-god in the vast heavens 
shrieked and there were little and great hailstones. The surviving 
god-king is Tag-Tug, a gardener (cp. Noe, cultivating the vine 1) 
and Prof. Sayce has called attention to the fact that the 
Sumerian ideogram Tug may be read nahu “to rest,’ ‘to comfort’ 


802 ADDITIONS AND CORRECTIONS 


in Semitic. This is the Babylonian tradition : Noe was the hero of 
the wind-flood story, Hasisatra the survivor of the watery 
cataclysm. 

To page 225. See Aboth. 8, 8, where the learned table- 
conversation about scriptural questions is called ‘ eating of the table 
of the Lord.’ Cp. with this the early Christian dispnosophistic 
treatise ‘Coena Cipriani.’ 

To page 230, cp. Sibyll. III., 86, the eating of the heavenly 
bread in the green garden of Paradise. Also Apocalypse of Peter, 
Hennecke New Test. Apocr., p. 216. 

To page 231, Sohar III., 271, vol. VI., p. 39, two loaves of 
bread symbolising the two tables of the Lord. 

To page 234, cp. Wiinsche, Israels Lehrhallen, I1., 72, the 
Jews asking three signs as his credentials from a Pseudo-Messiah ; 
among them, that he should produce the Manna of old. 

To page 242. The honeycomb as an immortalising food 
from heaven occurs in the midrash of Aseneth, see Schiirer, Gesch. 
d. Volkes Israel, III1., p. 400, n. 26. 

To page 248. The Glaukos fable in Apollod. III., 1, 2. 
Tertullian, Ad Nationes, II., 9, God pervades matter as honey 
fills the wax combs. 


PLATES. 


Plate I., to face p. 1. 


INSCRIPTION FROM THE GRAVEYARD OF THE INITIATED DIONYSOS 
WORSHIPPERS IN CUMA. 


Transcription: Ou themis entoutha keisthai i me ton bebachcheumenon ; see trans- 
lation on p. I, n. 1. On the other side see Tertullian, de idolatria c. h. 14: ‘licet 
conuivere cum ethnicis, commort non licet.’ ‘ We may live together but not die together 
with the Gentiles.’ Cp. moreover the notice in Jamblichos' Life of Pythagoras, 154, 
that this prophet and saint of the Orphic community forbade the burning of corpses 
with the well-known Christian opposition to the funeral pyre of pagan antiquity. 


Plate IV., to face p. 6. 


~ 
ORPHIC CULT-IMAGE REPRESENTING THE BIRTH OF THE GOD 
PHANES-DIONYSOS, FROM THE WORLD-EGG. 


” Probablyefound*in Rome, at present in the"Royal Museum of Modena. ¢ 


(Reproduced from Revue archéol., 1902, 1, 1x., pl. i.) 


For a full explanation of all the details of the composition from Orphic texts, see the 
author’s book Weltenmantel und Himselszelt, Munich, 1910, vol. ii., p. 4oo-406. The 
inscriptions on the marble lead to the conclusion that it was first used as an Orphic 
cult-image in a Dionysos sanctuary, among the ‘founders’ of which were a certain 
Euphrosyne and her husband Felix. The inscription mentioning the man together with 
his wife was cancelled when Felix in his dignity of ‘pater sacrorwm’ (‘father of the 
mysteries ') of a Mithraic church had the same sculpture set up at his own expense in a 
Mithraic sanctuary, from which we know women were excluded on principle. For the 
Mithriasts the image represented the birth of Mithras from the heavenly egg 
(Weltenmantel, pp. 4roff.), a fact which illustrates ina striking way the close affinity of the 
Orphic and the Mithraic or Zrvanistic theogonies. The case is exactly analogous to the 
use of the Orpheus typeas an image of the Christ in the Christian catacombs (above p. 51). 


Plate V., to face p. 15. 


THE DIVINE HUNTER ON A TOMBSTONE OF THRACIAN 
DIONYSOS-WORSHIPPERS, 


Stele of Podgori, now in the Louvre-Museum. Cp. Heuzey, Mission de Macédoine, Paris, 
| 1876, p. 153, and Perdrizet, Bull, Corr. hell., 1900, p. 305, Pl. xlil.=Cultes et mythes du Pangée, 
| Paris-Nancy, pp. 2t f. and pl. i. (this and the following block having been kindly lent by the 
| latter distinguished scholar). The inscription on the stone says that the deceased leaves a legacy 
| “to the Initiates of Dionysos’ on condition that they will annually offer for him a sacrifice on 
_ the day of the rose-feast. The hunting god of this monument is not called by any individual 
| name, but simply ‘¢heos hévon’ “heroe-god’ or ‘god-man’ (deified human being). The son of 
| Zeus and Semele may well have been thus called. Cp. the dedication ‘‘ Heroi”’ of a bas-rilievo, 

representing a heroe with his hunting-spear, petting a tame hind, by one Pythodoros son of 
| Protagoras found in Lechonia (Volo) on the peninsula of Magnesia, published by O. Kern, 


Hermes, XXXxvii., 1902, p. 629, fig. 7. 


Plate VI., to face p. 15. 


THE HUNTING GOD OF THE WILD VINE OF THE WOODS, SPEARING A BOAR 


Round the god the Sileni’orwine-demons (‘ zeila’ is Thracian for ‘ wine’) harvesting grapes, 


Stele of Melnik, now in the Brussels Museum. Cp. Perdrizet, Revue archéolog 1904, i., 20 
pl.i., and Cultes et mythes du Pangée, p, 21, pl.ii., who has acutely observed that the God coattee 
. “haric yey o ] i j ' i 
yt Urs er ies: name A sdoules in the dedication on this stone (cp. Clermont-Ganneau Recueil 
aarcnéot. Orrvent., vi., 2£4)—is none else but Dionysos 7 5 i t Reinbics 
2 no se ysos Zagreus, this latter name being explained 
as the ‘great hunter’ by Euripides, in an ety a1 i YBoHf,, in the Evvoice 
{ y E AS) an etymological allusion, Bacch. 118 i 
er t , j gical allusion, . 118off., i 
Magn., p. 406, 49, Gaisford; Etym. Gud., p. 227, 40; Cramer. 4 necd. Oxor ee "4 = Tae 
of these monuments, Prof. Farnell’s sc icism inst’ 1 ¢ Hasse Ce 
: 1 1 7 atnel’S scepticism against the correctness of this anci 
explanation of the name Zagreus seems exaggerated, cy es 


Plate VIT., to face p. 16. 


ORPHEUS (?) AMONG THE ANIMALS BLOWING THE DECOY HORN. 


Previously unpublished. Small marble relief (h. 0'27, 1. 0°34). 
No. 16 in the conservatory-wall of Knole Castle, near Sevenoaks, Kent. 


Reproduced by kind permission of the owner, Lord Sackville, from a photograph by H. Essenhigh-Corke. 


According to Bady’s Guide to Knole (1839), these and other antiques of Knole were brought there from the continent 
by the 3rd Duke of Dorset (1745-1799). The late Prof. Michaelis of Strassburg gives the following cescription in his 
Ancient Marbles in Great Britain, p. 422: ‘‘In the middle, in rocky scenery, sits a man of almost child-like stature ina 
short chiton and with a Phrygian cap, playing on a curved flute. He would be taken for a herdsman if the scenery did 
not rather suggest an Orpheus; for around him are placed a boar listening attentively, a goat, a ram, a lion or panther 
mangling a horse and so evidently not fully tamed by the art of the musician, and a bear. On the left are the remains ofa 
tree.’’ Indeed it is hardly possible to think here of a simple herdsman, as it were, calling for help on his curved horn, 
because wild beasts have attacked his herd. First of alla herd composed of a boar, a goat, a ram and a horse would 
certainly be very uncommon: secondly the listening attitude of at least the boar and the goat, and above all the peaceful 
behaviour of the shepherd, would remain unexplained. Moreover, a purely decorative, bucolic genre-scene would not be 
in the line of the sculptor of this apparently barbaric, certainly not Greek, marble. It is far more plausible that he 
wanted to depict a group of the most different tame and wild animals gathered round a heroic or divine (?) Phrygian 
herdsman, who has lured them magically by the sound of his primitive wind instrument, even as Aelian, xii. 46, describes 
the stag and boar hunting method of the ‘Tyrrhenian’ flute-player. The group of the panther and the horse show 
clearly—and this makes the monument so important for our purpose—that the music is not supposed here to tame the wild 
animals, as in the evidently secondary development of the Orpheus legend, but only to lure them to the piper. When 
pp. 16f. of this book first appeared in The Quest Mrs. Ada Thomson kindly referred me to pp. 133ff. of W. W. Skeat, 
Malay Magic, London (Macmillan), 1900, where the author describes the Malay method of luring wild pigeons by the call 
of the bulwh dikut, or ‘bamboo pigeon call,’ a primitive wind-instrument, which the hunter plays after hiding himself in 
aspecially-built leaf hut, and after murmuring certain inczntations (quoted in full, o.c. pp. 35ff.), Mr. Skeat adds the 
remarkable sentence: “the call (of the decoy-trumpet) will occasionally for some unexplained reason attract to the spot wild 
animals, especially mouse deer and tigers. Is it not possible, that the story of the lute of Orpheus may have had its origin in 
some old hunting custom of the kind?” The reader will also remember the German Volksbuch of the Rat-Piper of Hameln 
and the Rattenmamsell alluring mice and rats with her Jew’s harp in Ibsen’s Klein-Eyolf. The belief in the influence of 
music on animals may be further illustrated by Aelian’s stories of the Libyans taming horses and elephants with the 
playing of flutes, of the music-loving dolphins, of the hy menatos song recited to help the stallion in covering the mares 
(Nat. An. xii. 44f.), and of the bird of prey agreus (=the hunter) that decoys the young ones of other birds by his sweet 
song. Ibid. xii. 43, the use of cymbals by the net-fishers is described in detail. 

As to the little fellow with the decoy trumpet on the Knole marble, I am not positive as to Orpheus being meant. 
The childish figure could be interpreted as the infant Dionysos Zagreus (=the great hunter), playing a shepherd’s horn, 
which might be called a ‘bull-roarer,’ even as the whirligig rhombos, his toy, according to Abel, Fragm. Orph., 196. If 
there existed an Orphic legend about all the animals gathering round the infant god Dionysos, this would explain at least 
why the helpless little victim of the Titans would be called the ‘ mighty hunter.’ But the marble may also be a votive- 
offering of a successful decoy-horn blowing hunter to some local barbaric hunter-god, since nothing is known about the 
place where this coarse sculpture was found. If it is of Thracian origin, one might think of the hunter-god or hero 
Rhesos (Thrac. =‘ king ’)—probably identical with the Thracian Zagreus (our plates v. and vi.) of whom the Lemnian 
author Philostratus (Heroic, p. 680) says that when he hunts, wild boars, deer and other wild animals come of thew own free 
will to his altar to be sacrificed there (cp. Perdrizet Cultes et mythes du Pangée, pp. 20f.). Quite lately Miss Jane E. 
Hatrison has reminded me of Euripides, Alkestis 579ff., where A pollon ‘ eulyvos,’ the ‘good lyre player’ is described as 
shepherding by the sound of his lyre the ragged lynxes and the lions from the woods of Othrys as well as the spotted 


fallow fawns of:the place. 


Plate VIII., to face p. 17, cp. 80ff. 


THE ‘FISHER OF MEN’ ON AN EARLY BABYLONIAN MONUMENT: 
PATESI EANNATU OF LAGASH, WHO HAS CAUGHT IN HIS NET THE 
INHABITANTS OF OUMMA (GIS-HU). 


(Reproduced from plate ii. in Léon Heuzey and F. Thureau-Dangin's La Restitution 
matérielle de la Stele des Vautours, Paris, 1909.) 


In the inscription of the monument (@.c., p. 51) we read: ‘‘ Over the men of Oumma, 
I, Eannatum, the great drag of En-Lil have I thrown," etc. 

Similarly in a more recent inscription (Cum, Inscr, Western Asia, i., pl. 36, 1. 21; 
cp. L. W. King, ‘ Sennaherib and the Ionians,’ Journ, Hell. Stud., xxx., 1910, p. 327ff.) 
King Sargon boasts of having ‘caught like fish in a net,’ the Ionian pirates, and of 
having thus restored peace for Tyrus, a phrase which offers indeed a close analogy to 
the saying of Cyrus in Herodot. i. rq1 (p. 17); cp. below pp. 8off. on Habakkuk i. ra4ff. 
As to the custom of decoying fish by the sound of flutes and cymbals see Aelian, nat. an. 
6, 31f., 12, 43, Strabo xvili., p. 799. Athen, vii., p. 328f. 

An Egyptian parallel is quoted by Sethe, Mitt. Vorderas. Ges. 1916 xxi., p. 326 from 
Bergmann, AMierogl. Inschy. 70; Rougé, Edfow 164. The text says that the God Horus 
of Edfu ‘carries as fishes—the Jawanu (nomadic desert tribes), as water-fowl the Setiu 
(Asiatic beduins), the ‘Ammu' as his prey, the Phenicians as his captives.’ Cp. also 
Aeschylos, Pers. 426. 


Plate [X., to face p. 20. 


PERSEUS AND THE FISHERMAN ON COINS OF TARSUS IN CILICIA. 


Reproduced from Journ. Hell. Studies, xviii., 1898, pl. xiii., nos. 15-17. 
The following description of these types is given by Imhof-Blumer, /.c., pp. 177f. 


Obv. Bust of Marcus Aurelius. Obv. Bust of Gordian. Obv. Bust of Decius. 

Rev. Perseus, nude with Rev. Similar group, only the Rev. Perseus, nude with 
winged sandals, standing on fisherman stands on the left, is winged sandals, standing on left, 
right. His long cloak is fastened beardless and of relatively inan attitude of surprise, raising 
round his neck and hangs down smaller stature than Perseus. his right hand to his mouth and 
behind, covering his back. In The little cult image has no holding in his left the harp and 
his right hand he holds the harp distinguishable attribute. drapery. Opposite the hero 
and in his left, which is raised, stands a bearded fisherman to 
the cult image of Apollo and the the right in a short chiton and 
wolves. boots. He holds in his left hand 

Opposite the hero stands a over his shoulder a fishing rod 
bearded fisherman in a short and basket and in his right a 
chitén. The figure is turned large fish. 


slightly to the right and the head 
to the left. A fishing rod is in 
his outstretched hands, with a 
fishing basket hanging at the 
upper end and a large fish at the 
lower. 


The subject represents an unknown local legend of Tarsus. From the fact that Perseus is so often 
represented with the cult-image of Apollo Lykios in his hand, and from many extant legends about ancient 
cult-images being landed by fishermen and then set up for worship, I should infer that Perseus, the hero and 
founder of the City of Tarsus, was credited with erecting in Tarsus the statue of the Lycian Apollo on his 
omphalos, which may have been marvellously found by a fisherman (perhaps Diktys) in the belly of a large 
fish. It should also be noticed that Aelian, Nat. Anzim1., iii., 28, 37, xili., 26, mentions a fish of the Red Sea, 
called ‘ Perseus’ as well by the Greeks as by the Arabs, who both are said to worship Perseus, the son of 
Zeus. The fish in the hand of the fisherman on our coins may possibly be this marine name-sake or 
theriomorphic double of the hero, However this may be, it is remarkable that the description of the 
Hesiodean ‘ Shield of Herakles’ contains the following scene with the same mythic figures that are found 
acting on the coins of Tarsus: Perseus, and the fisherman (Overbeck, Schriftquellen, p. 31), the sacred 
choir of the Pierian Muses and Olympus resounding from their clear voices, in the midst of them Apollo 
playing the lyre. Alsoa harbour, in it dolphins chasing the ‘silent fishes.’ ‘‘ But on the shore sat a fisherman 
holding in his hands the net for the fishes, as if he were just casting it. On it [s.c. the shield] was also 
Perseus the chivalrous, the son of fairhaired Danaé,”’ etc. Then follows a description of his costume. 
Cp. Studnitzka in Serta Harteliana, pp. 75f. and fig. 10, who, however, has overlooked our coins. An 
Apollon donakites ‘the Angler’ is mentioned by Hesych. See E. Maass, Griech. u. Sem. etc. Berlin 1902, 
835. See also Schol. Pind. Isthm. 5158, the legend about the body of Melikertes being found by Donakinos 
(‘angler’) and Amphimachos. 


Plate X., to face p. 22. 


Figg.1,2. KAL OR ZAG-HA, THE DIVINE FISHERMAN, ON BABYLONIAN 
SEAL-CYLINDERS. 


(Reproduced from Revue d'Assyriologie, 1905, p. 57, and from Milani, Studi e Materiali 
vol. ii. p. 19, fig. 133.) 


Plate X. bis, to face p. 22. 


Fig. 3. 


BABYLONIAN SCULPTURE, REPRESENTING ZAG-HA, THE DIVINE 


“WARDEN OF THE FISH.’ 


(Reproduced from Revue d’ Assyriologie, 1905, pl. ii.) 


Fig. 4. 


THE SAME DIVINITY ON A 
MINOAN SEALING-STONE. 


(Reproduced from Milani, /.c. fig. 134.) 
On p. 21 this figure has been erroneously 
described, according to certain older 
authors, as female. 


Fig. 5. 


THE GOD WITH THE FISH AND 
THE FISHER-SPEAR ON A COIN 
OF RABATH MOBA IN MOAB— 
a town which is too distant from the 
sea to be dedicated to the Poseidon of the 
Greeks. Evidently the typical image of 
this god stands here for a Semitic 
fisher-god, maybe Poseidon Adonazos, 
mentioned by Hesych s. v. Adonaios. 
See also Rendell Harris, Boanerges, 

Cambridge, 1913, pp. 269f. 404. 
(Reproduced from de Saulcy, Numits- 
matique dela Terre Sainte, pl. xx.,No. 11.) 


Plate XI., to face p. 22. 


Fig.1, DEVELOPMENT OF THE IDEOGRAM FOR THE GODDESS 
NINOA. 


According to a sketch of Prof. Hommel's(p. 48 of his appendix, ‘ Die Schwuygéttin 
Ish-hana,’ etc., to Rev. Sam. A. B. Mercer, é Oath in Babyl. and Assyr. Literature, 
Paris, Geuthner, 1912). The pronunciation NINA or NINUA—the name is obviously 
identic with the name of the city Nineveh—has quite lately been found on the Assur- 
tablet 4128, I. 6 (Weidner, Mitt. Vorderas. Ges. 1921, xxvi., p. 17, N. I). 


Fig. 1. 


eae of CET 
‘det. EP ab oder es Fawr 
‘at orngerchriebenem FF< 


bo koe reach ; 


=) 

The original ideographic type is the sacred tower (mountain sanctuary) of the 
goddess, surmounted by a star, and the crude outline of a fish in the interior of the 
temple. The later ideogram is composed of the sign ish for ‘house’ and the inserted 
sign ha=‘fish.’ Sometimes (cp. the inscription quoted below, p. 39 n. 3) the goddess is 
simply called ‘ Hanna,’ a name which would be regularly transcribed ‘ Anna’ in Greek 
or Latin texts. Now ‘Anna’ appears, as has been observed by other scholars 
(O. Rossbach in Pauly-Wissowa, Realencyclop., i. 2223),as one of the many names of the 
patron-goddess of Carthage, who is elsewhere called Dido (=dodah=‘ beloved one’) or 
Elissa (cp. Elusa=Arab. halasa, the morning star; Zettschr. d. Deutsch. Morgenl. 
Gesellsch., xxxviii., 647f.). 


Fig.2. THE ‘HOUSE OF FISH,’ PERHAPS AS THE SYMBOL OF THE 
CARTHAGINIAN GODDESS ANNA, ON AUGUSTEAN COINS OF ABDERA 


IN SPAIN. 
Fig. 2. 
= 
Za 22808 
(oe - 04° 
DWI 4 


sD 


Oe 
9Ye00900° 


Reproduced from Al. Heiss Description des Monnaies antiques de l’ Espagne, pl. xlv., 


nos.g-11. The city is of Phenician origin; up to the reign of Tiberius its coins bear 
Phenician inscriptions, 


N.B.—Cp. the star in the pediment above the architrave of the temple with the star 
surmounting the ideogram of Ishanna. 


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Plate XIII., to face p. 23. 


CELTIC FISHER-GOD, HOOKING A SALMON; ON AN ENGRAVED BRONZE :!FRONTLET FOR DECORATING 
A HEAD-DRESS. 


Found in the sanctuary of Nodon, the Celtic ‘ God of the abyss’ (Noddyns), the extant mosaic pavement of which is decoratec 
with a pattern of salmons and sea monsters. Leon 

Reproduced from Bathurst and C. W. King, Roman Antiquities at Lydney Park (London), Longmans, Green, 1879, pl. xiii. 
fig. 2; cp. pp. 3of. 


Plate XIV., to face p. 27, . 1. 


THE PHOKOS, OR BROWN-FISH, A PARTICULAR KIND OF DOLPHIN AND 
THE HERALDIC ANIMAL OF PHOCAA, DEVOURED BY A FOX. 


Coin of Phocza in the Munich numismatic cabinet. 


Reproduced from a plaster cast, which I owe to the kindness ot the Director, 
Dr. Habich. An old engraving of this coin is to be found in Beger, Gotha Numismat, 
PP. 494, 104, 4. As to the fish-eating fox, it seems that this is really move than a mere 
fable. See the article on the fox in Brehm’s Ttevleben and Dahnhardt, Natursagen iv., 
219ff. As to the foxes in the vineyards, p. 27, n. 2 cp. Theokrit i., 47. Th. Reinach, 
Cultes et Mythes, p. 115. To p. 27,n.3 cp. my paperin ‘“ Bayr. Hefte f. Volkskunde,” 
1915, pp, 106ff. 


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Plate XVI., to face page 31. 


TWO PRIESTS DRESSED UP AS ‘FISHES’ PERFORMING A FERTILISATION-RITE AT THE 
SACRED TREE. 


Cp. below p. 261 on the ‘ fish’ as a phallic or fertility symbol. 


ee 


(\ : 
HANS 


Other reproductions 


Babylonian seal-cylinder reproduced from Jastrow, Bildermappe, fig. 216, pl. lv. 1 
of these fish-clad priests on seal-cylinders may be found in W. Hayes Ward’s Seal-cylinders of Western Asia, 


Washington, rg1o, figg. 686-689, and in Délger’s Ichthys, p. 119, fig. 4. 


Plate XVI1., to face p. 31. 


GALEOI OR GALEOTAI, GREEK SHARK-PRIESTS 
on a black-figured vase-painting. 
Reproduced from Mitt. des vém aycha@ol. Instituts, vol. ii., 1887, pl. viii. On the 


Cumzean origin and Ionic style of the painting, see Furtwangler, Archaeol. Anzeiger, 
1889, p. 51. 


The drawing represents a procession or dance of three old men, lifting their hands 
in the attitude of prayer, in ritual nakedness, with the hinder part of a shark-like fish 
tastened to their backs. The reverse of the vessel shows three women in a similar 
action, not masquerading, however, as fishes, but clothed in ordinary garments. Dimmler, 
the first interpreter of the painting, has taken our figures for representations of fish- 
tailed divinities, Tritons of an otherwise unparalleled type—namely with human legs. 
Of course, there is the analogy of Centaurs being represented on archaic vase-paintings 
with one pair of human legs .and only the hinder part of a. horse projecting from their 
backs. Yet I believe with Hoernes, Urgeschichte dey bildenden Kunst in Europa, Vienna, 
1898, p. 148, that the idea of anthropomorphic divinities with animal heads, skins, tails, 
wings, etc., arose necessarily from seeing the priests or magicians enacting the divine 
animal or theriomorphic god by way of masquerade with animal skins, heads, tails, etc. 
Thus the fancy image of a Centaur with one pair of human legs is probably influenced 
by a reminiscence of the familiar ‘ hippot’ or ‘ polot’=‘horse’ priests of Demeter and 
Bakchos (S. Wide, Athen, Mitt., xx., 1894, p. 281; Lakon. Culte, 791, 179; the author's 
Weltenmantel, etc., p. 80,n. 1.) Evenif the Cumzan painter wanted to depict half-fish 
shaped divine beings he must have done it in this singular way, because his memory was 
certainly haunted by the image of priests masquerading as sharks by fastening fish-tails 
to their backs. Yet since there is no reason to doubt the purely human character of the 
three dancing women on the other side of the vessel, it seems most natural to explain 
our picture also as representing a sacred dance of human beings. Dédlger’s description 
(Ichthys, p. 450; suppl. to p. 428) of our figures as the ‘ familiar satyrs ’ endowed for ence 
through an artist’s whim with fish-tails, is of course purely gratuitous and not likely to 
find any followers. If, however, the fish-tails could be interpreted as those of dolphins, 
not of sharks, the men could also be ‘ Dionysian dolphins’ or ‘ thyrsiones’ (cp. ch. xxxvii 
of the type-written MS. to vol. ii. in the British Museum). 


Plate XVIII, to face page 31. 


TORRES-STRAITS ISLANDER DRESSED UP AS A SAW-FISH FOR THE 
‘SAW-FISH DANCE.’ 


{Reproduced from pl. xviii., fig. 2 of Reports of the Cambridge Anthropological Expedition 
to Torres-Straits, vol. v.) 


After a photograph taken by A. C. Haddon at Waiben, Thursday Island, in 
November, 1888. The mask shows the head of the saw-fish on,the shoulders of the 
performer and above it the entire body of the’fish with its characteristic tail (cp. mask A 
on fig 2 of the following plate). A song was sung during the dance which proves that 
the object of the ceremony was to bring about the special weather of the season, when 
“fish are coming, we must build fish-weirs in their route’’ (Haddon, lL.c. p. 343). 


Plate XIX., to face page 31. 


Fig.1. DANCER WEARING A FISH-MASK. 


Drawing by a Torres-Straits Islander 


C7 
ENG 


SS 


Sy 


NTHITIGBS 


1 Ay [| 
LF 


We LS 
HAL A \X) 


St rel Soden 


ft bee 


Fig. 2 


DIFFERENT FISH-DANCE MASKS. 
Drawings on bamboo tobacco-pipes in the British and Oxford Museums 


Both figures are reproduced from the Reports of the Cambridge (Anthropological 
Expedition to Torvres-Straits, vol. v., p. 344. Cp., l.c. p. 345: ‘‘ There can be little doubt 
that most of the masks of this che iracter were e mployed i in magical ceremonies that had 
relations to fishing operations."’ 


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Plate XX1I., to face p. 36, 1 3. 


THE OAK ZEUS (ASKRAIOS, FROM ASKRA=‘OAK') WITH THE TWO 
PROPHETIC DOVES SITTING ON TOP OF THE SACRED TREES. THE 
GOD HOLDS A FISH IN EACH HAND. 


2 


Figg. 1 and 3 are reproduced from examples preserved in 


Coins of Halicarnassus. 
the Royal Bavarian Numismatic Cabinet - Fig. 2 from one in the British Museum (Cat. 
Greek Coins of Caria, p. £11, no. 88), illustr. Class. Review, 1903, p. 416. As to the some- 
what primitive modelling of the fishes in nos. rand 3, cp. the fish on the Stroganoff-ring 
below, pl. xxxviii., fig. 3. 


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Plate XXII1., to face p. 40. 


THE DEIFIED SOUL 
OF A DECEASED EGYPTIAN REPRESENTED IN THE SHAPE OF 
THE SACRED OXYRHYNCHUS FISH. 


Egyptian sarcophagus from the Hellenistic period. 
Reproduced from Archiv. f. Religtonswissenschaft, vol. xii., P. 574. 


Besides the literature which is quoted in the text, cp. A. Wiedemann, ‘ Dey Fisch Ant’ 


in Sphinx, xiv. 6. pp. 231-244, and E, Mahler, ‘Das Fischsymbol auf agyptischen 
Denkmalern,’ ZDMG, 1913, pp. 37-48. 


Plate XXIV ., to face p. 43. 


THE CROSS AND THE A-B-C BETWEEN TWO FISHES ON AN 
EARLY CHRISTIAN EARTHENWARE JAR. 
Excavated on the site of ancient Carthage. 


Reproduced after fig. 20 in Dom Cabrol’s Dictionary of Christian Antiquities, vol.i., c. 53 
(de Rossi, Bull. Arch. crist., Rome, 1880, pl. viii.). 


Fig. 3. 


<i 


Fig.2. LETTERS FROM THE SO-CALLED FISH (OR FISH AND DOVE) 


ALPHABET. 
Often used in liturgical manuscripts of the Merovingian period. 


Reproduced after Comte Bastard d’Estang, Peintures et Ornemens des Manuscrits, 
-etc., pl. 22, of the copy in the Royal Library of Munich. 


Many other examples are to be found on the preceding and the following plates or 
the same work and elsewhere. Cp. on these ‘ ichthyomorphic’ letters and their symbolic 
character, Pitra, Spic. Solesm. iii. 581, no. 169, 170 


7 ] + ’ ‘ ? ’ 
In Chinese literature a letter is figuratively called a ‘ fish-document ’ or ‘ pair of fish 


or ‘pair of carp.’ ‘The coming and going of fish’ means the same as correspondence. 
(Dr. Laufer in The Open Court, July, 1911, p. 409.) 


Plate XXV., to face p. 44. 


BABYLONIAN PRIEST MASQUERADING AS ‘FISH OF EA.’ 
From scene of exorcism on a brass bell of the Berlin Museum. 


Reproduced from fig. 7oa, pl. xxi., of Morris Jastrow’s Btildermappe sur Religiomr 
Baby loniens und Assyriens, Giessen, 1912; cp. col. 48 of the corresponding text.) 


Priests in the same attire and also in the act of banishing demons with animal heads 
will be found on the well-known and often reproduced bronze relief, Jastrow, No. roo 
(cp. fig. 2 in Dolger’s Ichthys, p. 114). 


Also on a great wall sculpture executed in alabaster, excavated in Nimrud, now in 
the British Museum (Layard, Monuments, ii., pl. 6). Reproduced in Jastrow, Bilder- 
mappe, fig. 95, pl. xxxi. Such fgures are described by Berossos (Cory, Ancient Fragments, 
p. 22) as the ‘many still extant images of Oannes’ (Hani). 


With regard to the Babylonian tradition about Oannes Ichthyophagos (p. 45, n. 3) 
emerging from the Persian Gulf, it is interesting to find in Pliny vi., 24, Pomponius 
Mela lii., 8 and Strabo xvi., 746 a description of a fish-eating people at the Carmanian 
coast, elothing ttself into fish-skins (most probably derived from the expedition report of 
Alexander’s Admiral Nearchos). This would lead to the conclusion, that the Babylonians 
attributed the origin of their own (Sumerian) picture writing to animmigration of the Hant, 
who may be identical with the later Hani-Rabbateans (or Galbateans ?) of ‘Great Hani’ 
in North Syria—from the Carmanian shore of the Persian Gulf to the low-lands of 
Southern Babylonia. Such an immigration would be a prehistoric parallel to the 
invasion of Mesopotamia by large fleets of Indian pirates from the Sindh and 
Beloochistan during the Califate of Motacim (Masotdi, Tanbih, p. 354, 1. 4ff.) On the 
alleged Dravidic face ty pe of the ancient Sumerian, cp. H. R. Hall, Ancient Hist., Neay 
East, London, 1920, p. 173, Il. As to the Greek form Oan-nes for HA-NI it is easily 
explained since we know that the sign HA ‘fish’ has also the values KUA or HUA, 
As to the possible reading HA-ZAL “‘ Fish-eater '’ see Hippolyt. ref. V. 136, Reitzenst. 
Poim. 84: the Assyrians say, ‘‘that with them the first man was called Iannes 
Ichthyophagos, but with the Chaldeans Adam’ (probably the A-DA-PA of the famous 
legend of Eridu, reading PA as MA, even as PI is regularly read ME, WE!). This 
equation of Adam and Iannes may underlie a strange Maltese tradition, Canning’s 
friend Sir Hookham Frere, English Ambassador in Madrid was told by a trustworthy 
Maltese teacher, that when the Maltese—as the reader may remember an Arabic 
speaking people !—talk openly about their religion, they are wont to say: ‘everybody 
knows that the first man was called Adam, but that he had fish-scales [above p. 34, n. 1], 


vee know.’ (J. v. Bunsen, Agyptens Stelle in der Weltgeschichte, V. Gotha 1857, 
p. 2994.) 


Plate XXVI., to face p. 45, n. 2. 


HERMES FISHING. 


Black-figured vase in the Pancoucke collection, Boulogne-sur-Mer. 


Reproduced from Lenormant-de Witte, Elite de Monuments cévamographiques, 
vol. iii., pl. lxxv. The vase mentioned in the text, p. 452, is reproduced on the plate 
facing p. 259. Cp. The Open Court, 1911, pp. 391ff., on the Japanese merchant-god Ebis 
pictured as a fisherman. Pausanias vii., 22, 2, mentions sacred fish of Hermes Agoraios 
—possibly the tutelary god of the fish-market—kept in a fountain at Pharoi in Arcadia 
Hermes invoked by fishermen Oppian, Halieut. iii. 26. 


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yiediayunoo ojeweay sty opissuole pauoueur st oym ‘nwyey pos ayy jo Axenjoues, 
=(91qery UJopour ul wyey weg ‘do) my 7-yjagq yods A{peursiao sem (z1r ‘d ‘Sggr ‘M.qqq) 
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sue oy (bg6 “797g ‘UA UL SatuOWT}s9} OY} Vas) AyINbyUL ut aA pasput !, YSY 91191, = 
(‘UIWIp) 40-dvp puke , U109 ,=uvAvp Jo aatjsasanus yj}0q SI aweU sry ‘uoseq 10—suorjdriosutr 
tatoflaund Ul snyI—uesed por oy} 0) sy ‘Sx pue or | “yz6‘d “1 tA “7Q1g7 ‘AYyaS/1a yy JAS 
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‘u9-WIN pal[vo ose st (enuiN uo "Ix ‘[d aaoqe ‘do) , YSy ay} Jo asnoy, ssappos oy} suoiy 
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=yvuvs s1qe1y sareduioo sy piom paurejdxaun yous 0} ‘sueiqeay 94} 4q yvuirs paureu 
ST (UIBITA 94} JO UBIS [eORIpOZ aYyY pay[eo UY] pur yaerD oy} ‘a[{duiexa s}zt Surmoyjoy 
‘pue Asojomse uviuopAqeg se ‘4va u409=) votds uolje[[a}suod oy} ey) ‘JORJ OY) 0} UO 
-W9}7e paleo Sey [BWIUTOFY BOUTS “BuIjSo19}UL a0 94} [[e SI SIV, ‘YSyY oy} YWWM apis Aq 
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uresy TT pur “ay ray yd ‘au8udsq ‘yuv unopyy ‘sosaq ‘sstay{ ‘[y wor poonpoiday 


‘NIVdS NI 


Lavad aNV IONLI AO 


‘YNOVW VdITI JO SNIOO NO ALINIAIC .NYOO, (INV .HSIA, FHL AO STOANAS GANIANOO AHL 


"(1 agony) OF °f aavf 09 “TIA XX 21d 


Plate XXVIII. bts, to face p. 49, n. 1. 


APOLLO WITH SACRED FISHES 


AND APOLLO WITH A FISH AND THREE BARLEY-CORNS. 


Coins of Leontini in Sicily (Brit. Mus. Catal. of Greek Coins of Sicily, p. 92, no. 55. 
and p. 94, nos. 76f.). (The autotype reproduction from a specimen in the Royal Bavarian 
collection.) 

As to the fishes, cp. the sacred fish at Sura, the Lycian sanctuary of Apollo (above 
p. 14. n. 1) and the Delian Apollo as owner of the fishing-rights along the coasts of the 
island (above pl. xx). In Athens the people also dedicated the produce of the fishing 
on the coast to Apollo (Boeckh, Staatshaushalt der Athener, i., 414). As to the combina- 
tion of the fish and the barley-corns, cp. the text to the preceding plate. The combina- 
tion seems to imply, that in Leontini Apollo succeeded a Phoenician corn-and fish-god 
akin to the one worshipped in the Phoenician settlements in Spain. The lion-head— 
alluding to the name of the city—may be compared with the god in the lion’s mask on 
the coins of Gadir (above, pl. xii.). 


Plate XXVIII., to face p. 51. 


PAINTED CEILING FROM THE DOMITILLA CATACOMB (ard century 4.D.). 


(Bottari, Scult. e Pitt. Sagre, Rome, 1746, 2, 63. Roller, Catac. de Rome, 1, 36, 3. Sybel, 
Christl. Anttke, vol. i., p. 155.) 


Centre: Orpheus among his animals (horse, ram, leopard, snake, tortoise, rat, tiger, 
lion, peacock, and other birds). Around: Daniel in the den of the lions; the raising of 
Lazarus; David with the sling ; Moses bringing forth water from the rock ; and, alterna- 
ting with these’ scenes, symbolic pictures of sheep and cattle (cp. on the ‘calves’ and 
‘oxen’ in the flock of the Christ, above p. 57 and the text to pl. xlvii.) grazing in Paradise. 
In the four corners four images of Noe’s dove with the olive branch, symbolising the 
salvation of the pious from the final deluge (below, ch. xxv.). Y 

On the symbolism of the tamed animals around the prophet, cp. the Jewish theory 
based on Is. xi. 1-6 (p. 52 of the text), that in the Messianic age complete peace will 
reign among the animals and between them and men (Stbyll. iii. 787-791; Philo De Praem. 
et Poen., § 15, vol. ii., p. 421f., Mangey; Jubilees, 37, 21ff.; Apoc. Baruch 73,6; Targum to 
Is. xi. 6; cp. Sifra, 111a; Paul Volz, Jiid. Eschatol., Tubingen, 1903, p. 346 n.e). This 
state will be reached, when—according to Js. v. 14—the virgin will become pregnant and 
give birth to a son, who is to live on the Paradisic food of milk and honey, and whose 
name will be ‘Immanu-el'=‘ God with us.’ Now, strangely and without any reason in 
the Hebrew pronunciation, this name is quoted in the New Testament (Matt. i. 23) as 
Emmanuel, In view of the many other instances of mystic numerical speculation on 
Orphic, Pythagorean and Christian names that will be found discussed on pp. 115-120, 
the reader might be interested to learn that Emmanuel, ELMMANOYHA = 
§+12+12+1+13+15+20+7+11=96 is an isopsephon (on the term and the system of 
calculation, see p. 116 n.1) of Orpheus, OP®HY > =15+ 17+21+5+20+18=96. Suchan 
argument could well convince a former Orphic and Pythagorean initiate that the Messiah 
Emmanuel, prophesied in the scriptures of the Hebrews, would be a reincarnation of the 
mythic Orpheus. The belief that with the coming of Jesus the Christ the Kingdom of 
Heaven had already begun to influence the animal world is manifest in certain legends. 
Thus St. Thekle is said to have baptised a lion, St. Thomas a donkey, St. Philip a 
leopard and a kid. If we hear in the ‘ Miracles of St. Eustathios’ (Nestle, ZNTW, 1910, 
p. 88) that lions listened to John the Baptist, we may suppose that the Baptists also 
identified their hero with Orpheus, they too using perhaps arithmo-mystical arguments 
(LQANH®-—this orthography is the regular one in Christian inscriptions and in the 
Codex B of the New Testament [Westcott-Hort App. 159]—being isopsephic (=72) with 
OPPAY, an odd orthography of the name, which hasbeen found on the treasury of the 
Sikyonians in Delphi. In the Mandzwan Book of John recently translated by M. 
Lidzbarski, Giessen, 1915, p. 86, the Baptist says: ‘before the sound of my voice and 
the sound of my sermons the fishes offered me their salutations, before the sound of my 
voice the birds made their bows.’’ 

In the hymn of Damasus and Hieronymus, published by de Rossi, Bull. Arch. crist., 
4/5, 1887, p. 29ff., the Christ is praised as having united ‘the various tongues into one 
song; So that animals and birds are able to know their God.' Indeed Clemens of 
Alexandria discusses seriously the Xenokratean idea, that animals too have a certain 
knowledge of the divinity (Strom. v. 13). On the other hand in the Ethiopic Book of 
Henoch, chs. 89, 10, 55, 66, the Jews are symbolised by sheep, the other nations by a 


long list of wild animals. Thus Orpheus would be an appropriate symbol for the 
mission among the Gentiles, 


Plate XXIX., to face p. 52 (I. 11.) 


DAVID AS A LYRE-PLAYING SHEPHERD (cp. Genes. 420f.) REPRESENTED 
IN?THE TYPICAL ATTITUDE OF ORPHEUS AMONG THE ANIMALS.* 


Title page from the Chludow-Psalter (Cod. 139 of the Bibliothéque Nationale in Paris). 

Reproduced from Wickhoft, Roman Avt, pl. xiv. This composition, which recurs in 
a whole group of illustrated psalter-manuscripts (Wickhoff /.c. p. 183, n.*), and certainly 
goes back to the initial stages of Christian art, is highly important for us, because it 
shows who is meant by the Orpheus-shepherd among the domestic animals (described 
on pp. 51f.) in the catacombs. As amatter of fact, this particular Christian Orpheus 
type should regularly be interpreted as a lyre-playing shepherd David, and the Christian 
Orpheus among the wild and tame animals is the reborn Messianic King David, the rod 
out of the stem of Jesse, according to Isaiah xi. t and 6 (p. 52 of the text). Note the 
sacred pillar with the Dionysian kratéry or mixing-bowl on top and the fillet fastened 
round it (cp. below, pl. Ixxv.). The Dryad Echo is listening in rapture behind the pillar. 
The muse behind the singer was in the Pagan original, the Muse Kalliope, Orpheus’ 
mother; the Christian artist has inseribed her as ‘ Melody.’ In the corner on the right 
we see the mountain-god of the locality, intended in the original for the Thracian Hzemus 
or Olympus, but whom the Christian painter has inscribed as ‘Mount Bethlehem ’ (!). 
The architecture in the back-ground, which stands now for the city-gates of Bethlehem, 
were intended in the original to suggest a Bakchic sanctuary like the buildings on 
our pl.lxxv. To the texts quoted p.52 n.1, cp. the newly discovered mosaic of the Basilica 
Theodoriana in Aquilea (Jabrb. Kunsthist. Inst. Zentr. Komm., 1915, pl. vii.), 
representing the ‘good shepherd’ carrying the lamb, with the reed-pipe, but without a 
vod, amidst a congregation of various animals, such as a Stag, an antelope, a pheasant, 
snake-eating storks, sheep, goats, fishes and birds. 


* The first to observe the iconographic connexion of this David with the Orpheus- 
type was—as far as I know—Strzygowski in the Zeitschr. d. deutschen Paldstina Verewns, 
Igol, p. 146. Cp. the same author in Kern, Orpheus, Berlin, 1920, p. 63, pl. 1, about the 
early Christian ivory representing Adam in Paradise in the guise of an Orpheus among 
the beasts; also Strzygowski, Avmenia, p. 294, on an Armenian frieze with Adam 
amidst thirty-two difterent animals. The midras of Solomon's reign over the animal 
kingdome(Winsche, Jsv. Lehrh. I1., p. 1), should also be remembered. 


Plate XXX., to face p. 54, n. 


MONKEY IN THE ATTITUDE OF AN ORPHEUS WITH HIS LUTE LURING 
THE ANIMALS AND CUPIDS DRIVING WITH REINS DOUBLE TEAMS OF 
FISHES. 


SSS Ss 
SSSee 
LIES 


Centre and frieze of a mosaic excavated in Soussa (1882) on the site of the ancient Hadru- 
metum (see Bullet. des Antiqu. afric. v., 1887, p. 380; Ibid., 1885, p. 213; Revue del’ Afrique 
francaise, v., 1887, p. 394; these periodicals were not to be obtained in any German library ; 
I have to thank Monsieur A. Héron de Villefosse for procuring the little block in Paris), now in 
the Louvre in Paris (Catalogue somm. Marbres Antiques, nos. 1797/1798). The parodistic repre- 
sentation of Orpheus as an ape compares on the one hand with the celebrated attack of Gregory 
of Nazianzus on the Emperor Julian, where he calls this last great Pagan theologian an ‘ape’ 
of Christianity, on the other hand with the theory of Justin, that the Mithraic sacrament of the 
bread is a devilish Pagan-imitation of the Christian Eucharist. While Clemens of Alexandria 
calls Orpheus a swindler (p. 54, note in our text), the Christian inspirer of this unique parodistic 
Orpheus mosaic would characterise Orpheus—evidently because of the similarity between certain 
Orphicand the parallel Christian rites (below, chs. xxxvi.; vol. II., xl., xli., xlvi., lii.)—as an ‘ape’ 
mimicking the lyre-playing of the real Eunomos, the ‘ Logos’ alluring his faithful to Mount Zion 
by the ‘new song’ of divine reason (above ip. 54 note) and the ‘fishes’ (below, ch. xlvii.) of 
Orpheus as beings that are driven along by their lusts (evotes) or passions (lat. cupidines) only. 
The monument—a Christian counterpart to the Pagan caricature of the crucified Christ with the 
head of a donkey from the Palatine barracks, now in the Lateran Museum—is a document of 
that hostility between the African Christians and the unconverted votaries of the Dionysian 
mysteries, which once induced, according to Tertullian (Apolog. 37), the partakers of the 
Bacchanalia to penetrate with violence into the Christian cemeteries of Carthage and desecrate 
the tombs there. On the other hand, even as Wuensch, Sethianische Verfluchingstafeln, p. 110, 
has denied that the ass-headed crucified god of the Palatine is meant as a caricature, explaining 
it on the contrary as a gnostic picture of the Egyptian god Seth-Typhon, as identified with the 
crucitied Christ, there is just a slight possibility that the ape in the present mosaic may be meant 
to represent the kynokephalos-ape of the Egyptian god Thot, the Lord of Wisdom and patron 
god of musicians, who could easily be identified with Orpheus by some syncretistic worshipper. 


Plate XXX1., to face p. 54. 


THE CRUCIFIED CHRIST AS ORPHEUS. 


Hematite seal-cylinder in the Kaiser Friedrich Museum of Berlin. Reproduced 
from a drawing (five times the size) by A. Becker, executed under the supervision of 
the present writer after plaster impressions, which were most kindly supplied by Dr. 
Wulff, director of the Early Christian and Byzantine Collection of this Museum. 


Sa 


The engraving shows the crucified Christ hanging ona cross, the astro-mystical 
interpretation of which is made evident by the superposition of the crescent and the seven 
stars; most probably the Pleiads or ‘ Lyre of Orpheus,’ are meant. Then the cross itself 


is probably to be identified with * * *, the main stars of Orion, whom the ancients (see 
* 


Gruppe’s Handbook, p. 9484) sometimes held to be the constellation of Dionysos. The 
inscription ‘Orpheos Bakkikos’ is intended to identify the crucified Messiah with the 
‘Orpheus’ of the Bacchic mysteries, The ring-stone, which certainly belonged to an 
Orphic initiate, who had turned Christian without giving up completely his old religious 
beliefs, is attributed to the 3rd or the 4th century a.p. It cannot be much earlier 
in any case considering the late introduction of the cructfixus type into Christian art. 


Plate XXXII, to face p. 57. 


STATUE OF AN ORPHIC ‘ BOUKOLOS'’ (6rH cenTury B.c.). THE SO-CALLED 
‘CALF-BEARER’ FROM THE ACROPOLIS. 


~ 


Attic work of the Pisistratian period—according to the inscription on its basis— 
dedicated by Rhombos, the Son of Palos, who is probably represented here in the réle of 
an Orphic * cattleherd’ or ‘ boukolos,’ that is to Say, as a dignitary of the Dionysian 
mysteries, which flourished in Athens at that very time; see the author’s book 
“Weltenmantel,’ etc., pp. 710f. Pisistratos bore the name Bakis (Suid, s.v.), and 
the new Lydo-Hellenic bilingual inscription Littmann, Sardis, vol. vi., Leiden, 1916, 
Pp. 39, Shows that Bakis is Lydian for Dionysos. That means that Pisistratus wore the 
title Bakis, because he was an illuminate, one of the “few bacchot’ among the many 
wand-bearers. 


Reproduced from Brunn-Bruckmann, Denkmaler, pl. vi. (Ersatztafel). The inscrip- 
tion is discussed by Winter, Athen. Mitt., xiii., 1888, p. 113. The meaning of the 
figure—which at one time was explained, incredibile dictu, as Theseus, shouldering the 
vanquished Minotaur !—has always been a puzzle to archaologists. The current 
opinion is, that Rhombos wished to emphasize his piety by being portrayed in the 
attitude of carrying a sacrificial victim to the altar, Yet the analogous Christian ‘Good 
Shepherd’ and Pagan Hermes ‘Kriophoros’ statues suggest far more plausibly 
that the ‘calf’ is to be explained as denoting symbolically a lasting quality or dignity of 
the dedicator. It may be noticed as a remarkable coincidence, if nothing more, that 
the man Rhombos is called by the name of one of the mysterious Orphic symbols— 
astragalos, sphaira, strobilos, mela, RHOMBOS, esoptron, pokos-—which are enumerated 
by Clemens Alex., Cohort, p. 5 (Rhombos=the ‘ bull-roarer’), 


A portrait statue of a certain Biton in the same attitude was seen and described in 
the Lyceum of Argos by Pausanias, ii. 195. 


An Orpheus carrying a shepherd’s rod is to be seen ona sculpture of the Museum 
of Mantua; see Gruppe in Roscher's Lex, Myth., vol, ili. 1, c. 1198, p, 49. 


Plate XX XIII, to face p. 57. 


CHRISTIAN GOOD SHEPHERD STATUE IN THE LATERAN MUSEUM 
(2ND CENTURY A.D.) 


Reproduced from the frontispiece in L. v. Sybels, Christliche Antike. * 


The Jewish texts about the Good Shepherd Moses, carrying the lost lamb home on 
his shoulder, and on the Messiah as the second Moses and Good Shepherd of Israel, 
have been collected by J. Scheftelowitz, Archiv f. Religionswissenschaft, xiv. 3rf. 


On the type itself, cp. Bergner, Der gute Hirt in der altchristlichen Kunst, 1890, and 
Clausnitzer, Die Hirtenbilder in der altchristlichen Kunst, Dissert., Erlangen, 1904. 


Plate XXXIV., to face p. 59. 


THE CORRESPONDING FIGURES OF THE FISHER AND ORPHEUS 


MIOVLCISAN IMASANCT 


SS 


| EX 
« » BSS 
__AM 


on a Christian sarcophagus from Ostia, now in the Lateran Museum (cp. Ficker, 
Altchristl. Bildwerke im Lateran, no. 156, p. tor; the inscription FIRMI DULCIS 
ANIMA SANCTA=‘ The holy soul of sweet Firmus,’ in CIL xiv., 1905). Previous 
reproductions and descriptions in Visconti, Dichiarazione dt un Sarcophago dt Ostia, 
Dissertaztoni della pontificia Academia romana archeologica, L. xv., pp. 159ff., Rome, 
1859; F. X. Kraus, Realencyclopadie, ii. 563; Roller, Les Catacombes de Rome, 1879, pl. lvi. 
and Garucci, Storia dell’ Arte Cristiana, tav. ccecvii. 3. The costume and position of 
this Orpheus is strangely reminiscent of tbe well-known Mithras figures. The type is 
exactly repeated as centre-piece of another, quite similar sarcophagus in the Lateran 
Museum (O. Wulff, Altchy. u. byz., Kunst, Berlin, 1913, p. tof. fig. 87). Another similar 
sarcophagus, excavated at the Lungara in 1905 (Wulff, /.c., p. roo, fig. 88, now in the 
Museo delle Terme), opposes the fisher to the ‘Good Shepherd’ glyph. As to the 
peculiar ornamentation of these so-called ‘strigilated’ sarcophagi, Wulff has well 
observed, /.c., p. 106, that no other class of Christian sarcophagi is so profusely decorated 
with pagan scenes. ‘A certain number of these coffins betray by their bulging form 
their descendency from the wooden, channelled Bacchic vine-vat; even the lion-masks on 
both sides, the fictitious decoration of the bung-holes, are seldom wanting on older 
samples.’ The apparently baroque idea of burying the dead in wine-vats is probably 
a typic custom of Dionysian initiates, intended to secure the bliss of eternal drunken- 
ness (above p. 289). In the Dipylon cemetery of Athens (Athen. Mitt., 1893, pp. 165, 
184), the corpses in certain graves were found wrapped in vines (cp. with this the 
Christian mystic symbolon ‘to abide in the vine’ John 15, 4), Corn, beans—the tabooed 
beans of Orpheus and Pythagoras!—and wine-seeds were found in old graves under 
the Forum Romanum (v. Duhn, Arch, f. Rel. Wiss., xi., p. 412). 


Plate XXXV., to face p. 60. 
Big. 1, 


DIONYSOS PHALEN OR HALIEUS AS PATRON GOD OF FISHERMEN, 
ED FIGURED ATTIC VASE-PAINTING IN THE MUSEUM FOR ARTS AND INDUSTRIES OF VIENNA (5th century .c.) 


The charming little picture has been published by R. v. Schneider, Arch. Epigr. Mitt. a. Osterr. Ungarn, 1879, p. 742. 


Fig. 2 Fig. 3. 
FISHING SILEN. THE FISHER AMONG THE SATYRS OF THE BACCHIC 
FIFTH CENTURY RED FIGURED WINE-CUP IN THIASOS. RED FIGURED CUPS PAINTED BY CHACHRYLION 
THE BRITISH MUSEUM. (transition from 6th to 5th century s.c.), found in Orvieto; 


Bourguignon Collection, Naples. 


\fter Hartwig, Meisterschalen Stuttgart, 1893, p. 59, fig. 8. 


Atter}Hartwig, Meisterschalen, pl. v.; text on pp. 54-60. 


Plate XX XVI., to face p. 60. 


‘ 


THE BACCHIC FISHER AND THE MAENAD ON A PAIR OF DECORATIVE (BOTTOMLESS) 

COMPANION AMPHORAE (4th century B.c.), trom the excavations of Rudiae and Caelium, near Lecce, 

Ostrogovic Collection, Nos, 53 and 55, unedited, now in the City Museum of History and Fine Arts 
of Trieste. 


Fig. 1. Fig. 2, 


Each of the two figures is enclosed in an architectonic frame representing a little ‘aedicula’ or temple- 
cell. The Bacchante carries the “mystic chest’ and a big grape. With the left hand she feeds a eee 
fallow-fawn. The fisher enters the little sanctuary with two big fishes hanging on his carrying volte 
(cp. joes ernhctyy any DR and 3). On the reverse of both vases a big, very sketchy female head accede 
to Prof. Alberto Puschi, the Director of the said Museum, to whose kindness I also owe the two photographs, 
S: a 


meant for a Maenad’s face. See R, v. Schneider, Arch.-epioy ; 8 ; ; 
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Plate XXX VIII, to face p. 60, n. 2. 


Fig. 1. 
‘ FISHER-RING' OF S. ARNULD, BISHOP OF TREVES. 


At present in the treasury of the Cathedral of Metz. 


Reproduced from Cabrol, Dictionn. des Antiquités chrétiennes, vol. ii. c. 2184, fig. 675 
cp. Deloche, Essai historique et archéologique sur les Anneaux, Paris, 1900, p. 86; Le 
Blant, Inscript chrét. de la Gaule, vol. i., p. 421. ; 

The modern plain and unengraved bishops’ rings are prescribed by the Synod of 
Milan (Deloche, Mém, Acad. Inscr. Bell. Lettres, xxxv. 1896, p. 235, 0. 3); on p. 239, 
hdwever, the author quotes instances which prove, that for a long time the severe 
prohibition of inscriptions or engravings of whatever kind on bishops’ rings was 
occasionally neglected. The earliest quotation of the ring as the essential symbol of 
episcopal power dates from the 7th century a.p. (Deloche, o.c., p. 237). 


Fig. 2. 


BISHOP’S RING OF THE DIOCESE MAGUELONNE, THE LATER MONT- 
PELLIER WITH THE FISH-SYMBOL ENGRAVED ON THE SEAL-STONE, 


Reproduced from Cabrol, /.c., p. 2201, fig. 723; cp. Deloche, Essat, etc., p. 228, ccliv. 


Fig. 3. 
THE FISH AND THE INSCRIPTION (1)XOY> 


on the ring of an unknown owner found near Rome, now in the collection of 
Count G. Stroganoff. Reproduced from Cabrol, l.c., c. 2193, fig. 684; cp. Bull. Arch. 
crist., 1873, pl. [V.-V., no. 6. Garucci, Storia dell'’Arte cristiana, vol. vi., pl. 477, no. 24, 
p. 116, no. 74; Doelger, Ichthys, p. 342, fig. 55. 
Fig. 4. 
RING OF ONE ‘EMILIA’ IN THE BRITISH MUSEUM. 


With the Fish on one, the dove of Noah on the olive tree (cp, the text to pl. xx., no. 5) 
on the other sealing-stone. Reproduced from Cabrol, /.c., c. 2203, fig. 729; cp. Dalton, 
Catalogue of Early Christian Antigg. in the British Museum, no. 49. See also no, 48 in 
the same Catalogue, where a ring with fisher angling a fish and the inscription 
‘SALVATOR’ (=saviour) will be found reproduced, 


Plaie XX XIX., to face p. 61. 


THE FISHER AND THE LAMB WITH THE MILK-PAIL AND THE CROZIER. 


Reproduced from the author’s own rude fountain-pen sketches after the 


CATACOMB PAINTINGS FROM THE SECOND HALF OF THE FIRST CENTURY 


THE FLAVIANS, DOMITILLA CEMETERY. 
Direct photographic reproductions in Wilpert's Catacomb-Paintings, pl. vii.; the 
blocks could not be obtained, and a reproduction from the rather unsatisfactory plat 


A.D. IN THE GALLERY @] 


se could not be reprinted here, as the original 
es themselves has proved impossible. 


Plate XL., to face p. 61. 


THE GOOD SHEPHERD AMONG HIS LAMBS CARRYING THE MILK-PAIL. 
To the right and the left trees, symbolising Paradise. 


Third century painting from the catacomb of S. Tucina. 


(Reproduced from Wilpert, pl. 66.) 


In the catacomb of Praetextatus (4th cent. A.p.), the milk pail of the good shepherd 
is replaced by the usual cylindrical case, containing book-rolls—the so-called 
‘ bibliotveke.’ Cp, p. 64 on the ‘ milk’ being symbolic of religious elementary instruction 
of the neophyte. 


Plate XLI., to face p. 61. 


THIRD CENTURY FRESCO-PAINTING FROM THE COEMETERIUM MAIUS. 
(Reproduced from Wilpert, pl. cxvii., 1. 


The Shepherd milking The Good Shepherd with The Lamb and the 
the Ewe. the lost sheep. milk-pail. 


The trees are symbolic of Paradise, the female figure in praying attitude represents the soul ot the 
deceased entering the realms of eternal bliss. 


Plate XLII, to face p. 63. 
WOMAN IN PRAYING ATTITUDE (SO-CALLED ORANS) HAVING REACHED 
THE MYSTIC MILK-PAIL. 


Mutilated 4th century fresco painting rom the Domitilla Catacomb. 
(Reproduced from Wilpert, pl. clxxxiii. 2.) 


The outline of the missing part of the ovans-figure is added from an analogous con- 
temporary type on pl. cxxiy. (4th century, Catacomb of Vigna Massimo) in order to make 
the scene inore intelligible for those readers who are less familiar with the typology of 
early Christian art. As to the painter’s intention of representing a so-called ovans before 
the milk-pail, we should have to take it for granted even if we had not Wilpert’s 
authority for the attempted restoration. Nothing else can be thought of. 


Plate XLITII., to face p. 65. 


THE LAMBS REACHING THE MILK (THE MILK-PAIL BEING PLACED ON AN ALTAR), 
CHRISTIAN ADAPTATION OF THE ORPHIC SYMBOLON 
“eviphes es gala epeton.’ 


Third century catacomb-painting from the Domitilla Catacomb. 


(Reproduced from Wilpert, pl. 83c.) 


PAINTINGS FROM THE SO-CALLED ‘CHAPELS OF THE SACRAMENT’ 


The fisher angling a fish. 
(Math. xvii. 27?.) 


Cp. below pl. xlvi., 


Moses producing water 
from the rock. 


Baptism of a youth (prob- 
John baptising 
Jesus). 


ably St. 


to face p. 72. 


Plate XLIV., to face p. 66. 


S. CALLISTO. 


tFig. 1. 


(Reproduced from Wilpert, pl. 27.) 


granting salvation 
final flood). 


Fig. 2 


Theangler with the fish. As 
the figure is placed im- 
mediately beside the meal 
of fish and bread, we should 
compare'the apostle’s prayer 
in the Acts of Thomas, 
ch. xlvii. (p. 164): ‘‘O Jesus, 
God from God, Saviour . . 
who.catchest the fishes for the 
breakfast and for the princi- 
pal meal, who fillest us all 
with a little bread,” etc. 


The descent of the spirit in 
the shape of a dove, the 
latter carrying an olive leaf 
as did the dove of Noe (cp. 
above p. 189 on baptism as 


IN THE CATACOMBS OF 


The impotent man healed in 
the piscina of Bethsaida 
(Jn. v. 2) carrying his bed. 
Cp.Chrysost. c. Ebrietatem, 
p. 444: ‘The Christians are 
Jishes in the word and in the 
spirit (logtkous kat pneumatt- 
kous), who are thrown in to 
the water of baptism as it 
were into the pool of Beth- 
saida, the symbol of the 
baptismal font.’ 


in the 


Fish 


and_ bread 
identified by previous authors with the 
feeding of the seven disciples on the 
shore of the lake Tiberias (cp. below 


meal, erroneously 


p. 217. Onp. 66 1. 23, the words ‘ by 
the feeding Tiberias’ should 


therefore be cancelled). 


~ 


Plate XLV., to face p. 68. 


“ Briphos es gala epeton” 


THE MYSTIC MILK-PAIL, 4rH CENTURY FRESCO PAINTING FROM THE 
CALLISTO CATACOMB 


(Reproduced from Wilpert, pl. cxxxvi. 1.) 


this time grouped not with the Christian symbol of the lamb, but with the Orphic 
ertphos (kid, young he-goat) and not with the crozier of the Christian good shepherd, but 
with the caduceus of Hermes, the guide of souls, whom the Orphic Hymn xxviii. praises 
as the ‘ prophet of the Logos 'to men, A more exact illustration of the Orphic eviphos es 
gala epeton could hardly be imagined. Thata goat-like animal—the very eviphos of our 
group—recurs frequently in the corners of the painted vaults in the Catacombs has 
already been observed by v. Sybel, Christl. A ntike, i.174. The two ducks in the upper 
picture may also have a symbolic value. See Rom. Quart. Schr., 1911, pp. 44ff. on a 
stone slab from the Kyriaka Catacomb with the figures of an ox (above p. 57 last lines 
p. 58 and pl. xxviii., and of a duck, and the inscription ANATE (=duck) and BOIDION 
(=young ox.) 

I believe now—1918—that the symbolism of the ‘ox’ for the teacher of the church is 
connected with Paul, 1 Cor. 9, of. and that the upper picture of this illustration 
represents the lake with the ‘ water-fowl’—symbolic of the souls of the just ones in 


Paradise—as seen in the fourth sky by the visionary author of Baruch's Apocalypse 
ch, 10, cp. below pl. t., to face p. 168 n. 5. 


Plate XLVI., to face p. 72. 


THE BAPTISMAL FISHING OF MEN. 


certainly the personified Jordan, as a comparison with the parallel figure inscribed ‘Jordan,’ on the mosaic of pl. 1. will easily 
prove. On the left a naked figure—the neophyte—is seen to jump head foremost into the water from the top of acolonnade. In 
the water the submerged candidate is turned into a fish that swims about among ‘fishes of all kinds’ (cp. above, p. 168 n. 3). On 
the rock, which is, probably, according to 1 Cor. 104, symbolic of the ‘Christ, since it also offers to the spectator the sight of a 
great door, probably in remembrance of him who said ‘I am the door,’ etc., we see two fishermen, fishing, as Pauline Nolanus 
says (p. 72), out of the life-giving Messianic water those that are to become the prey of salvation. The lid of the receptacle, 
which is at present in the baptistery of the Basilian friars in Grottaferrata, is decorated with a frieze of dolphins. 

Reproduced from a photograph by Vasari, Rome, which the author owes to the kindness of Father Sofronio Gassisi of 


On an early Byzantine (age of Constantine) stone vessel for storing holy water—that is, at the present day, water blessed 
on the day of Epiphany, but originally, perhaps, water from the Jordan, since the nude figure pouring out water from an urn is 
Grottaferrata. 


Plate XLVILI., to face p. 74. 


THE SOUL HAVING ‘ PUT ON’ THE ‘FISH’ AS A GARMENT 


Early Christian earthen-ware lamp in the Museum of Marseilles. 


Reproduced from R. Garucci, Storia dell’arte Cristiana, vol. vi. tav. 474, no. 6= 
Doelger, Ichthys, p. 120, fig. 5. Garucci, o.c. tay. vi. p. 111, has already seen that the 
fish is thought of hereasagarment. Cp. the doctrine of the Jewish Kabbalists (Michael 
Epstein, Sefer kisur sené luhot habberit, Firth, 1732, f. 56a ; Scheftelowitz, Arch. }. Rel.- 
Wiss. xiv. 365) that the souls of the righteous are clothed after their departure in the skin 
or covering of a fish. 

The usual explanation of the figure as a Jonah swallowed by the fish is not 
incompatible with the proposed one, since the Midras, Jonah (A. Winsche, Aus Israels 
Lehrhallen, ii. 53), cp. Sohat, ii. 198, French transl. by de Pauly, iv. 196, says that Jonah 
in the belly of the fish typifies the soul of man swallowed by Sheol. 


Plate XLV III., to face p. 141. 


THE THASH®LIH-RITE AS PERFORMED BY MEMBERS OF THE ORTHO- 
DOX JEWISH SYNAGOGUE AT MUNICH, ON THE EVENING OF THE 
zNpv OF OCTOBER, 1913 (1st OF TISHRI, 5674). 


Two Jewish gentlemen standing on the shore of the little island-garden under the 
Maximilian Bridge over the Isar and reciting Micah 7 19-20 in sight of the flowing water 


ER 
Elderly Jewish gentleman and boy on the opposite bank of the same island shaking 


their overcoats over the river. 
Reproduced from the author’s own photographs (see his paper in the Bayrische 


Hefte fiir Volkskunde i. no. 2, pp. 114). 

To avoid undesirable notice, the community does not walk in procession from the 
synagogue to the water, and the rite itself is performed quite unobtrusively and somewhat 
hurriedly. The photographer had of course to keep at a certain distance, so that better 
snap-shots could not be obtained in the evening light, A much more picturesque 
illustration of the same rite as performed by Galician Jews will be tound in the Jewtsh 
Encyclop., xii. 66 (plate). A very good photograph taken in a little Russian town during 
the war in Scherl’s weekly, Die Woche, 1916, No. 53- 

N.B. (to p. 142, 1.5). It is no mere supposition that this rite existed in the days of 
John and Jesus. As Kalman Schulman has acutely observed (Ha-Meliz, 1868, viii., no. 14), 
it was already a time-honoured ancestral custom of the Jews, when the Halicarnassian 
decree, quoted by Josephus, Antiqq. xiv.,10, § 23, allowed the Israelite inhabitants of the 
town ‘to perform their sacred rites according to the Jewish laws and fo have theiv places 
of praying at the sea-coast according to the tradition of theiy fathers.’ As no other 
Jewish rite is known to be celebrated at the shore of the water, there is no doubt, that the 
privilege refers to the Thash*lih-ceremony. 

Christian interpreters also connected Micah Trof. with the baptism of John, see 
Rupertus abb. Tuit. Migne, Patrolog. Lat. clxviii., 525 ad loc.: ‘‘He will wash our sins 
into the depths of the sea . . . that isto say, he will destroy in the baptism of Christ 


all our sins.” 


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Plate LI., to face p. 204, . I. 


ROMAN FUNERAL MONUMENT OF THE ist CENTURY A.D., SYMBOLIS- 
ING THE PASSAGE OF THE SOUL THROUGH THE THREE ELEMENTS. 


(Reproduced from Jahreshefte des dsterr. arch. Instituts Wien, xii., 1910, p. 203.) 


“ Above the portrait of the deceased there appear first two busts of the winds facing 
each other. Higher up, on the architrave, are two tritons and two dolphins, which 
evidently represent the idea of the aqueous element. Finally, at the top of the stone in 
the pediment, we see two lions which, as on the Mithraic monuments, are symbols of 
fire, the igneous principle.’’ (Cumont/.c.) Of course the ‘winds’ stand here for the 
atmosphere; the dolphins, etc., for the ‘upper waters’ of the Bible, the ‘ heavenly 
okeanos,’ as the Greek cosmologists called it; and the lions for the uppermost fiery 
heaven or empyveum, through all of which the soul has to pass to its final abode. 

For the remarkable representation of the sky as the attics—reposing on columns—of 
a vaulted temple, cp. the analogies illustrated and analysed on p. 620 of the author's 
Weltenmantel und Himmelszelt. 

As to the ‘stream of fire,’ p. 204, cp. the midrash, Winsche, Isy. Lehrh., 1907, Leipzig, 
p. 130, where it is called rijon (evidently from a Latin ‘regio ignis'): ‘if even the angels 
bathe in this stream of fire to renew themselves, how much more should the children of 
man long after this purification.’' 

The passage through the three elements as a mystic ‘ peivasmos’ may be familiar to 
the reader from the famous scenes in Mozart's ‘ Magic Flute,’ the libretto of which is 
derived from the Abbé Terasson’s historic novel Sethos, the favourite reading of Frederic 
the Great, who again uses the text of Apuleius quoted p. 203. The passage of Servius 
tbid. has already been compared with the sermon of John by Sal. Reinach, Cultes, 
Mythes, Religions, vol. ii., 1334. 


Plate LII., to face p. 208. 


THE EARLIEST ‘FISH AND BREAD MEAL’ PICTURE IN THE 


CATACOMBS. 


N 


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ix 


End of 1st century fresco-painting from the ‘ Gallery of the Flavians’ in the Domitilla Catacomb. 

From a drawing, reproduced in F. X. Kraus, Geschichte der christl. Kunst, fig. 20 (the galvano having been 
kindly lent by the publishing firm Herder & Co., Freiburg, 1b -)s 1e 

pl. vii., is unhappily too blurred to give a satisfactory idea of the composition to our readers. 


The photographic reproduction of Wilpert, 


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Plate LIV., to face p. 209. 


Fig. 1. 


TWO LOAVES AND ONE FISH ON A TRIPOD SURROUNDED BY SEVEN 
BASKETS FULL OF BREAD. 


Second Century painting from a vault in the Catacombs of S. Callisto. 


(Reproduced trom Wilpert, pl. xxxviii.) 


Fig. 2. 


EUCHARISTIC SCENE (MAN BLESSING BREAD AND FISH FOR A PRAYING 
WOMAN). 


From a painting in another room of the same Catacomb. 


(Reproduced from Wilpert, pl. xli.) 


The woman has been explained as either ‘ Pistis’ (=‘ Faith,’ cp. p. 219, n. 2) or as a personifi- 
cation of the ‘Church’ (De Rossi in Pitra, Spic. Solesm., ili. 567) ; but it is the man who blesses 
the mystic food and the woman who waits for it in praying attitude. 


Plate LV., to face p. 209. 


SECOND CENTURY FRESCO-PAINTINGS ILLUSTRATING THE EATING OF BREAD AND 
FISH IN THE EARLY CHRISTIAN AGAPAE, 


Fig.1. FROM THE PRISCILLA AND 


Fig.2, FROM THE CALLISTO CATACOMBS. 
(Reproduced from Wilpert, pl. xv.) 


Plate LV J. 


PAGAN SACRAMENTAL MEAL FROM A FUNERAL MONUMENT IN THE 
BRITISH MUSEUM. 


Reproduced after Perdrizet, Reliefs Mysiens, Bullet. corr. Héllén, 1899, p. 592, pl. iv. ; 
note the dancer and the dancing girl, the flute player and the man refilling the jugs from the 
wine-vat. 

A mystic fish-eating is illustrated by the monuments from the cult of the Samothracian 
Kabirim in F, X. Doélger’s admirable book Ichthys, vol. i., Rome, 1910, p. 144ff. 


Plate LVITI., to face p. 221-2. 


THE SABBATH FISH MEAL, 
Gilt glass fragment from a Jewish ‘ cup of blessing,’ 


Reproduced from O. Wulff's Altchristl. u. byz. Kunst, Berlin, 1913, Pp. 73, fig. 59, the 
block having been most kindly lent by the publishing firm ‘ Athenaion’ Neu-Babelsberg. 


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Cp. pl. Iviii., to p. 223, n. 3. The design shows the so-called ‘ark of the covenant’ of 
a synagogue, containing the scrolls of the law, the uppermost scroll being—as usual 
even now—crowned with the high-priestly crown; the ark is opened and one scroll 
taken out of it. Right and left from the ark a seven-branched candlestick, a ram’s horn 
(the ‘shofar’), aloaf of unleavened bread and two palm-branches (/ulabim), In the 
centre the round couch (sigma) and the table, on it the sabbatic fish dressed on a plate. 
The inscription reads: ‘‘bibas cum eulogia son pa(nton),” drink with the ‘thanksgiving 
of all thine (people),’ The two first words are Latin, the last three Greek and evidently 
a_liturgical formula (Greek and Hebrew being the only legal cult-languages of the 
Hellenistic synagogue). 


Plate LVITII., to face p. 223, . 3. 


GILT GLASS FRAGMENT FROM A JEWISH ‘CUP OF BLESSING’ 
(Found in Rome). 
(Reproduced after the lithographic plate published by de Rossi, Archives de l’Ovient 


Latin, ii. 1884, for the Zeitschr. f. wiss. Theologie, the publisher of the latter having 
kindly lent us the block.) 


The design shows the temple of Jerusalem, with the two columns Boaz and Jakin, 
the forecourt with its portico and the stone breastwork which fences off the ‘court of 
the Gentiles.’ In the court we see the seven-branched candlestick, the two silver 
vessels for pouring out water and wine at the feast of tabernacles, the Jwlab or festal 
thyrsos for the same feast, the ethvogim (apples of paradise), which are also used for 
this occasion, a little amphora, probably representing the jar with the manna, outside of 
the court two of the festal tabernacles (sukkoth) and two palm trees. 

The mutilated inscription consisted of two lines, one inside and one outside of 
the portico. The two initial words of the first have been happily restored by de 
Rossi into otkos ivé[né]s; then follows on the other side labe eulogia, where we would 
expect eulogtan. De Rossi has indeed thought it necessary to supply an n at the end, 
but as there is no room left for one more letter and as the accusative eulogia (happily 
explained by Le Blant, Revue archéol., 1878, p. 302,as the plural of a neuter word 
eulogion of vulgar Greek) occurs also on the little ampullas of St. Menas, we prefer to 
leave the text as it stands. Of the exterior line only the concluding words son panton 
remain. De Rossi has conjectured from another inscription on a glass cup, that the 
beginning was ‘ pie zésais meta ton son panton.’ But this is first of all probably too long 
a phrase for the space available, secondly it forces de Rossi to divide the inscription into 
two disconnected parts. 

According to his explanation the words otkos ivénés=‘house of peace’ point to the 
image of the temple. Then the inscription would address the owner of the cup with 
the words ‘ take the eulogy (=kos sel berakah =blessed wine) [drink and you will live 
with] all your people.’ According to my opinion a simpler solution may be offered : 

The ‘house of peace,’ so-called because of Psalm |xxvi. 3, compared with Gen. xiv. 18, 
with regard to the popular etymology of Salem (Jeru-salem)=' peace,’ the place where 
Melchisedek first blessed bread and wine—is implored to accept the thanksgivings of 
N. N.—the owner of the cup—and of all the sons of Israel: ‘otkos tré[né]s labe eulogia 
[tou .. . kai ton] son panton’=‘ house of peace, take the ‘‘ blessings”’ of N. N. and of all 
thy people.’ ; i 

The contrast of this temple picture with the synagogue-design of the preceding plate 
seems to show that this fragment is anterior to the destruction of the temple. 


zo. 


Plate LIX., to face p. 231. 


THE MIRACULOUS ‘DRESSED TABLE' WITH THE SEVEN FISHES 

THAT FELL FROM HEAVEN AT THE PRAYER OF JESUS (p. 236, n. 6), AS 

REPRESENTED ON AN EARLY CHRISTIAN EARTHENWARE LAMP FROM 
CARTHAGE. 


: Sorwene ee 
za Sa we 
mae Te THT Reh oo eam 


(Reproduced from Revue archéologique,1got, i, 24ff.) 
‘Cp. Psalm 78, 19: ‘They said, Can God furnish a table in the wilderness ?' 


Plate LX., to face p. 256, note 5. 


BUDDHISTIC DRAWING, REPRESENTING THE ‘ YONI ' (=FEMALE ORGAN) 
INeTHE SHAPE OF TWO FISHES AND A FIG LEAF, 


(Reproduced from Journal of the Royal Astatic Society, vol. xviil. p. 392, pl. ii.) 


Cp. an old Italian prayer, containing the words ‘matrona nuota come pesce’=‘ the 
matrix swims like a fish,’ quoted in the Archiv f. Relig. Wiss., 1909, p. 153, and Marcell, 
De Medicam. xxix, 23, where ‘a fish or a dolphin’ are recommended as preservatives 
against uterine cramps. 


Plate LXT., to face p. 258. 


Fig. 1. 
EROS RIDING ON A FISH AND HOLDING A MANDRAGORE (?). 


Medallion in the Bonn Art Museum reproduced from Imhoof Blumer, T/ier-und 
Pflanzenbilder auf griechischen, Minzen, pl. xxiii. 11. 


Fig. 2. 
WINGED CUPID HOLDING A FISH. 


Gold bractea (ancient love-token) in the Cabinét des Médailles of Paris. Reproduced 
rom Nouv, Ann, de l'Instit. Archéol, i., 1836, pl. A, fig. 2. 


Plate LXILI,, to face p. 259. 


POSEIDON, HERAKLES AND HERMES, FISHING. BLACK-FIGURED 
LEKYTHOS IN THE HOPE COLLECTION. 


Reproduced from Lenormant-de Witte, Elite de Monuments cévamographiques, vol. iii., 
pl. xiv. 


See previous reproductions in Christie, Disquis. upon Greek Vases, pl. xii., No. 81; 
Millin, Gal. Mythol., cxxv., 466. A reproduction from a new photograph is given by 
Miss Tillyard in Essays and Studies, presented to Dr. Ridgeway, Cambridge, p. 186. 

The same subject is depicted on a black-figured bowl mentioned as being in the 
collection of Sir Edmund Lyons, by de Witte, 0.c., p. 45, n. 6. 


Plate LXIII, to face p. 259. 


LOVE-FISHING—GREEK : evotiké agra.* 
(GIRL—HELPED BY CUPID—ANGLING A FISH.) 


Pompeian fresco-painting, reproduced after the line engraving in the Museo Borbonico, 
vol. iv., pl. 4, of the Naples edition. 


The frequent repetitions of the same or a very similar composition are enumerated 
in Helbig, Wandgemelde, 346-355. In two instances (346and 354) the female figure wears 
a little coronet; in no. 352 the coronet is replaced by a wreath of ivy, the well-known 
sacred leaves of Dionysos (cp. plate xxxvii. bis, with the Bacchic Menad carrying a fish). 
Some scholars have therefore interpreted the main figure of this image as representing 
Aphrodite herself. But as Zahn has pointed out (Archeol. Beitr., p. 214) this is quite 
unnecessary (the coronet may be the bridal crown mentioned by Synes. Ep. 3, p. 639 H.), 
however possible it is to think of a group of Eros and Aphrodite. With regard to the 
erotic symbolism of the ‘fishes’ and the ‘dishing,’ discussed in the text, it may be 
mentioned that one of the above enumerated copies of this composition was found in the 
brothel of Pompeii. The Babylonians called a whore (gadistu) ‘ba’artum sa musi’— 
‘fisher of the night.’ For other reproductions see Museo Borbonico, ii. 48; Gell., ii. 42, 
p. 109, Z. 18; Zahn, i. 20; Panofka, Bilder antiken Lebens, xviii. 4, etc. 


* This expression is used—as the late Prof. Crusius kindly informed me—by the 
orator Alciphron, O. iii, fr. 6, p.9g6. A Welsk story of a fished sweet-heart may be found 
in Folklore, vol. xi., p. 338. 


Plate LXIV., to face p. 261. 


Bier 


THE ‘GREAT MOTHER’ OR ‘POTNIA THERON '—‘LADY OF THE BEASTS’— 
WITH THE DIVINE ‘FISH’ IN HER WOMB. 


(Archaic Boiotian vase reproduced from Ephémeris aychaioligiké, 1892, pinax x0) 


Oy 


The symmetrically placed animals right and left from the goddess are the well-known lions 
of Cybele, On her hands are the peacocks—well known as the sacred birds of Hera in Samos 
and Argos, The bull-head in the vacant space left from the ‘Mother’ is the symbol of the 
bull-god, associated with Cybele or Atargatis or however we may call her. For the ‘arm’ 
with the thunder-cross or swastika on the right as symbol of Hermes- (Arma), cp. Philologus, 
lxviii., pp. 204 and 182 n. Under the lions the two summits of the world-mountain. 

See also above pl. xi. the Babylonian ideogram of the goddess Ninua, the ‘house of 
the fish,’ where ‘house’ may be symbolic for ‘womb’ (see the analogies in Philologus, 
l.c., pp. 164 ff.) 


Fig, 2. 


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fe 
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i 
* 


Mycenian potsherd in the National Museum of Pre-historic engraved bone of reindeer. 
Athens. Reproduced after Piette, L’Anthropologie, Paris, 
Fish and symbolic rhomboid painted between 1894, p- 144, hg. 44. 


the legs of a horse (explained as a fertility charm 
by Hoernes, Urgesch. d. Kunst, Vienna, 1896, 
Pp. 15.) 


Plate LXV., to face p. 263, n. 7. 


LADY SPINNING BEFORE THE SACRED FISH ON THE ALTAR. 


Early Babylonian black stone-relief (ard or 4th millennium, B.c.) excavated in Tello, now in 
the Louvre. 


Reproduced rom Morgan, Mém. Déleg. en Perse, vol. i., pl. xi. The high rank of the 
cowering lady (or priestess?) is proved by the fan-bearer standing behind her. According to 
Lucian’s description (de Dea Syria, 32) the idol of the Syrian mother-goddess was represented 
with a distaff in her hand; as the god ‘Fish’ is called her son by the Lydian author Xanthos 
(Athen. p. 346, 1.) and sacred fishes are sacrificed every day on her altar (Mnaseas in Athen. 
l.c.) there may be a connection between the cult of the mother-goddess and this sacrificial scene. 
Cp. also p. 256, n. 3, Mary, the Virgin, spinning in the moment of the conception of the 
Christ, the mystic ‘Fish.’ The seven round objects (the last one broken) placed around the 
fish on the altar may be seven sacrificial cakes. 

A third person was represented on the right side of the altar but only the hem of a long 
robe is preserved. 


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Plate LX VII, to face ps 279s 


ORPHIC PISCINA OF THE 3rp CENTURY 4.p., FOUND IN THE VILLA OF 


THE LABERII IN UTHINA 
(North Africa.) 


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Reproduced from the Plan added to Gauckler’s paper in the Monwments Piot, iii. 


The most ancient coins found during the course of these excavations were some of 
Alexander Severus, the most recent ones some of Constantine. So the date is well 
defined. The other rooms—not reproduced here—in Gauckler’s plan, for the hot and 
steam baths, are later additions to the original room for cold baths (baptisms ?) only 
(p. 225, /.c.). The water ran into the basin from a marble statue, representing a cupid 
riding on a dolphin, which has been found on the spot (p. 222, fig. 13 /.c.), and compares 
with the fish-driving cupids of pl, xxx., and with pl. Ixi., fig. 1. 


Plate LXVIII., to face p. 281, n. 1 


. 


WINE-BOTTLE REPRESENTING DIONYSOS-BOTRYS, THE DEIFIED GRAPE, 


Reproduced rom Perdrizet, Cultes et Mythes du Pangée, p. 90, pl. iii. (theedistinguished 
author having kindly lent us this block). i 


Plate LXIX., to face p. 281, 1. 1, 


DIONYSOS-BOTRYS, THE DEIFIED GRAPE, 


Pompeian Fresco Painting 


1880, pl. 2, p. x1, Perdrizet, Cultes et Mythes du Pangée, p. 
kindly lent us this block) 


in the Museum of Naples. Reproduced from Gazette Archéologique, 


90, pl. iii. (the distinguished author having 


Plate LX X., to face p. 282. 


MOSAIC PAVEMENT WITH THE JOINT SYMBOLS OF THE VINE AND THE 
FISHES FROM THE CHRISTIAN BASILICA AT SERTEI, NORTH AFRICA. 


Reproduced from Mélanges G. B. de Rossi, p. 345 A mosaic with the same vine- 
pattern—the grapes being eaten by doves—from a Christian basilica built between 
324 and 340 A.D., at Orleansville, Algeria, is reproduced on pl. 47 of the Revue archéo- 
logique, iv., pl. 78. This mosaic filled the whole nave of the church, while the pavement 
of the apse contains fishes, which perhaps belonged to a representation of the miraculous 
draught-legend (l.c. p. 3). Cp. also in Mél. d’Arch. et d’Hist., 1894, p. 391, the mosaic 
with seven rows of fishes in the Church of Bishop Alexander in Tipasa, the pavement 
with the fishes and fishing puttoes in Aquilea (above pl. 1. text), the mosaic with the fishes 
in the dome of Parenzo (Neumann, dey Dom. von Parenzo, p. 26, 2nd to 3rd century), 
the 6th century example in S. Maria Formosa in Pola, Gnirs, Mitt. der Centy. Comm., 
1900, p. 57ff. and the Dalmatian pagan parallel from Lastua, Kubitschek, Rém. Mosatken, 
p.351ff. Still another Christian mosaic with swimming fishes is in S. Savino in Piacenza, 
another of Byzantine origin was excavated in Bettir in Palestine, Revue Brblique, 1910, 
pl. i. and ii., p. 254. A full account of all these monuments will probably be found in the 


still unpublished 2nd volume of Prof. Doelger’s IXOY2. 


Plate LXX1., to face p. 284. 


THE MYSTIC VINE. 


Fresco-painted ceiling in the Gallery of the Flavians (1st cent. A.D.). 


Domitilla Catacomb. 


Reproduced after Wilpert, pl. vii. (cp. above, pl. xxxix.) 


Possibly the ever-recurring prophecy of Messianic bliss in the Old Testament: 
“each man will sit under his vine "’ has something to do with this decoration cf an early 
Christian vault, Besides it has not been observed until now, that the Sumerians called 
the vine GIsH-TIN ‘tree of life’ and that there is a Patristic tradition as well as a Rabbinic 
tradition about the tree of life in Paradise having been a vine. Cp. the mosaic of the 
apse of San Clemente in Rome, Kraus, Gescl. d. Christi. Kunst, ii. 247, fig. 183. 

In Egyptian pyramid texts the ‘ Paradise’ garden of the gods is described as a 
vineyard (W. M. Mueller, Mitt. Vorderasiat. Ges., xvii, 1gt2, p. 306. This vineyard 
seems to be meant in a Thebanian grave, the vault of which is decorated with a painted 
vine-bower, with the gods Osiris and Anubis sitting under a vine (Virey, La Tombe des 
vignes, Réc. Trav. 21, 1899, p. 144, fig. 17; 22, 1900, p. 86, fig, 20). 


Plate LXXII., to face p. 286ff. 


SCENES OF BACCHIC INITIATION. 


Plaster-work on the vault of a bed-room of the Roman Villa, excavated in the garden of the Farnesina, at present in the 
Museo delle Terme, Rome; Age of Czsar or Augustus. 


Bust of Dionysos. 


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Bie ee 
She eS 
FS peer 


MN Dorecctnssy 


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Priestesses and Silenus initiating The two Fishermen The ‘thyrsos-bearer’ admitted 
a Dionysian ‘ thyrsos-bearer.’ (see detail on pl. Ixxv.). to the communion of the grape 
and the new wine, 


Reproduced from Monumenti dell’ Instituto, suppl. pl. xxxv. 


Plate LX XII1., to face p. 294. 


THE LANDSCAPE WITH THE BACCHIC FISHERMEN. 


Detail from the Plaster-decoration with Bacchic scenes on the Bed-room ceilings of the Roman Villa excavated int 
Gerden of Villa Farnesina. At present in the Musee delle Terme in Rome. Age of Caesar or Augustus. 


Reproduced from a Photograph by Alinari (no. 6281). 


Explanation on p. 2o4ff. 


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Orpheus, the Fisher 


DATE DUE BORROWER'S NAME 
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Bisler 
Orpheus 


THEOLOGY LIBRARY 


SCHOOL OF THEOLOGY AT CLAREMONT 
CLAREMONT, CALIFORNIA 


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