"Jesus saith unto them, Bring of the fish which ye have now caught.
"Simon Peter went up, and drew the net to land full of great fishes, an hundred and fifty and three: and for all there were so many, yet was not the net broken.
"Jesus saith unto them, Come and dine. And none of the disciples durst ask Him, Who art Thou? knowing that it was the Lord.
"Jesus then cometh, and taketh bread, and giveth them, and fish likewise."
We find in all these examples that bread and Fish were eaten together. Indeed, Fish was eaten with bread just as we eat cheese or butter; and St. John, in his account of the multiplication of the loaves and Fishes, does not use the word "fish," but another word which rather signifies sauce, and was generally employed to designate the little Fish that were salted down and dried in the sunbeams for future use.
As to the various species which were used for different purposes, we know really nothing, the Jews merely dividing their Fish into clean and unclean.
Still, we find that Solomon treated of Fishes as well as of other portions of the creation. "And he spake of trees, from the cedar tree that is in Lebanon even unto the hyssop that springeth out of the wall: he spake also of beasts, and of fowl, and of creeping things, and of fishes." (1 Kings iv. 33.)
Now it is evidently impossible that Solomon could have treated of Fishes without distinguishing between their various species. Comparatively young as he was, he had received such a measure of divine inspiration, that "there came of all people to know the wisdom of Solomon, from all kings of the earth, which had heard of his wisdom."
Yet, although some of his poetical and instructive writings have survived to our time, the whole of his works on natural history have so completely perished, that they have not even introduced into the language the names of the various creatures of which he wrote. So, in spite of all his labours, there is not a single word in the Hebrew language, as now known, by which one species of Fish can be distinguished from another, as to the distinction between the clean and unclean Fishes.
According to Levit. xi. the qualification for food lay simply in the possession of fins and scales. "These shall ye eat of all that are in the waters: whatsoever hath fins and scales in the waters, in the seas, and in the rivers, them shall ye eat.