Astronomy has been to archæology a most helpful hand-maiden in establishing not only this but other dates of ancient, especially of Assyrian, history.[1086]
If the surmise of Isaak Walton[1087] that Seth, the son of Adam, taught his son to cast a line, and engraved the mystery of the craft on those pillars of which Masons are supposed to know so much, or even if the statement that,
“Deucalion did first this art invent Of Angling, and his people taught the same,”
could have been verified, how many discussions on the question—formerly almost as hotly combated as some religious doctrine—as to what was the first method of fishing would have been avoided. Alas! an authoritative answer is even yet to seek.
The nature of the “great fish” of Jonah will, I fear, no longer prove an attractive subject for sermons. Identification of “the beast” ranging through all the fishes of Ichthyology, from the celebrated “first, aiblins it was a whale,” down to “nineteenthly” (whose precise species I forget), will alas! with the development of the higher criticism and of comparative mythology hardly draw the tensely interested congregations of yore.
Tylor points out that at the root of the apologue of Jonah lies the widely-spread Nature-myth of the sea-monster or dragon, of which the fight between Tiāmat and Marduk, and of Andromeda and the sea-monster are analogous developments.[1088]
JONAH LEAVING
THE WHALE’S MOUTH.
From a 14th Century MS.
in H. Schmidt, Jona,
p. 94, fig. 17.