With the Jews, although its emblematic employment was scanty, the fish occasionally figured, e.g. as a sign of Judah. In the Talmud it appears more frequently, and as symbolic of some moral quality—e.g. of innocence.[695] In Japan the carp has been for centuries the emblem of the Samurai, because of its accredited power to withstand opposition and to swim against the current of the stream.
On the advent of Christianity, numerous become the allusions in Patristic and other literature. From the repetition by Father after Father of Aquæ vivæ piscis Christus, of piscatio duplex, Ecclesia præsens et futura, and of similar sentences, the application approaches perilously near the commonplace.
Nor was its scope morally limited. St. Augustine, St. Cyprian, and others allegorise fish and fishing in both good and bad senses.
Thus, piscis pia fides quæ vivit inter fluctus nec frangitur; piscis fides invisibilium; rete Christus; sagæna Ecclesia; Christus est piscis assus discipulis, serpens Judæis, can be matched by pisces immundi, peccatores; piscis maris, dæmones; piscator Diabolus; rete, deceptio Diaboli; and sagæna, cor mulieris, which last, from a technical point of view, hardly stamps Bishop Humbertus as a proficient in our craft.
From the identification—Christus est piscis[696] —is no long step to the symbolic use of the very letters which spell the Greek word for fish: thus from ΙΧΘΥΣ = I-ch-th-u-s, is established Ἰησοῦσ Χριστὸς θεοῦ υἱὸς σωτήρ, or “Jesus Christ, of God Son, Saviour.”
This symbolic adoption in connection with their God was far from original. A fish, at first the symbol of Vishnu, was adopted by the Buddhists, and from them by the Christians of Turkestan.[697] This adoption and adaptation of a Pagan symbol was but one of the many instances where Christian policy or Christian practice took over and continued heathen customs, institutions, and vestments.[698]
Such seems to have been the trend, possibly from pursuing a policy of compromise, more probably from following the line of least resistance, of most religious changes or revivals. But while the attributes of many of the Greek gods were, at least in certain of their attributes, assimilated to Syrian and Eastern divinities, and while the Roman pantheon made room for various Egyptian new-comers, the Jew’s conception of his Deity remained practically unaffected and uninfected.
A fish frequently figures on the tombs of the early Christians in the catacombs at Rome: sometimes it bears on its back a bowl with wine and wafers of bread. Many tombs contain small fish of wood or ivory. Such fish served, we are told, as emblems and acrostics, pointing out to his co-religionists the burial place of a Christian without betraying the fact to the persecutors.
This explanation lacks confirmation, and carries little conviction, for two (among other) reasons. First: critical statistics show that fish as symbols in Christian art figured frequently both before and after Constantine. Second: fish as indicative of a burial place would by their very presence quickly defeat the object aimed at. They would indicate, as surely as pointers game, the secret grave, for the persecutors of the Christians, as history shows, were not all exactly fools.
Some authors trace back not a few of the signs[699] and usages adopted and perpetuated by the Christians to the worship of Venus, of which, when in conjunction with a fish, the underlying idea was the adoration—nearly universal—of fecundity. Two instances, which I give for what they are worth, must suffice.