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What accident was caused by the enormous draught of fishes?
Luke: “Their net brake” ([v, 6]).
John: “For all there were so many, yet was not the net broken” ([xxi, 11]).
In Luke and John we have two different versions of a Pythagorian legend. After comparing and noting the agreements and variations of the three versions of the legend, Strauss says:
“If there be a mind that, not perceiving in the narratives we have compared the finger-marks of tradition, and hence the legendary character of these evangelical anecdotes, still leans to the historical interpretation, whether natural or supernatural; that mind must be alike ignorant of the true character both of legend and of history, of the natural and the supernatural” (Leben Jesu, p. 339).