Fishing from the Earliest Times

by William Radcliffe

This apparent lack of the sporting instinct contrasts strangely with the fact that modern Jews rank among our foremost anglers, and that to a Jew we owe the greatest book written within the last generation, if not the practical establishment on a scientific basis of the dry-fly, that most finished form of Angling.

Dr. Kennet, Professor of Hebrew at Cambridge, while holding no brief either way, has, at my request, most kindly suggested some reasons which may conceivably account for the Biblical absence of Angling. To my mind none of these affords adequate proof of its existence.

A. The physical characteristics of the country preclude many references to fishing in the Old Testament. However keen their desire, the majority of the population were in the position of Simple Simon, when he “went a-fishing for to catch a whale.” Sea-fishing was out of the question, for with the doubtful exception of a small bit of the Galilæan coast—probably not held continuously—no part of the Mediterranean sea-shore belonged to Israel during the Monarchy, while the climate and intense heat of the Valley of the Jordan, the only real river, kept its inhabitants apart from the dwellers on the mountains.

But contra: even if the majority were Simple Simons, the numerous references (about 74) in the Bible to fishes, fishing, and fishing implements indicate a wide, if perhaps impersonal, knowledge of the practice. The fact that the larger number of these were used as metaphors or similes evidences a more than local knowledge of fishing, because for a metaphor or simile to be telling it usually must, as do the Homeric, appeal to a well-known, common, and long-established custom or craft.

B. Although fishing apparently prevailed always in the Sea of Galilee, it must be remembered that practically the whole literature of the Old Testament emanates from central and southern Palestine, and (as is the case with Egyptian literature as regards Deltaic conditions) contains but scant allusion to life among the Northern Tribes. Hence possibly the silence about the Rod, which may nevertheless have been employed.

C. The Old Testament stories, although some belong to the same period as the Homeric, are told in a manner very different from the latter. Every picture is sketched with the fewest strokes, and accordingly details are, have to be, taken for granted. Thus, although the majority of the people subsisted largely on milk, there is not one reference to milking.

But contra: this omission seems to me hardly on all fours with that of the Rod. The word milk, when not expressly limited, e.g. “of thy bosom,” or used metaphorically, signifies solely the lacteal liquid extruded from the teats of an animal, and so implies milking or a previous act of extrusion, whereas the word fishing connotes no single method of taking fish, as the Old Testament in its mention of the implements, Spear, Hook and Line, and Nets, demonstrates. Then again Job xxi. 24 (R.V. margin), “his milk-pails are full of milk,” and Judges iv. 19, “she opened a bottle of milk,” both demand an extrusion effected by one and only one method, whereas “jars of fish” may have been filled by any piscatorial method.

D. There is no evidence that the Israelites brought from Egypt a single particle of Egyptian civilisation. Nomads they were when they entered, and nomads they were when they left Egypt. Their kultur was taken over from the Canaanites, and their later civilisation, despite periods of subjection to Egypt, owed far less to that country than to Babylonia.

Even if we grant that no actual evidence of Egyptian culture exists, the probabilities incline the other way. Their abiding place was in no sterile or out-of-the-way corner of that country, but in Goshen, where we read “they gat them possessions therein,” and was in close proximity to the great high road, which bore the commerce between Egypt and Asia, and vice versâ. They were certainly familiar with the manufacture of bricks, and presumably the building of houses, etc.

E. The verse, “The fishers shall also lament and they that cast angle in the brooks shall mourn,” which may betray knowledge of the Rod, is apparently much later than Isaiah, and may, perhaps, be assigned to the second century b.c., and refer to the campaign of Antiochus Epiphanes in Egypt.