EFFECT OF SCALELESS CLASSIFICATION 415 



As may naturally be expected, this law and other decisions, 

 which by debarring so many species ^ of fish denied to the 

 people a food supply at once plentiful and cheap, were in time 

 whittled away. Fish with " at least two scales and one fin " 

 were gradually permitted. Eventually, as experience proved 

 that all fish with scales have also fins, Israel was allowed as 

 food any part of any fish on which only scales were visible. 2 



In the west this whittling was carried even further. 'Ab. 

 Zarah, 39 a, expressly states that no one need hesitate about 

 eating the roe of any fish, because no unclean fish is to be 

 found there ! 3 The Jews of Constantinople in Belon's time 

 had more scruples ; debarred of caviare proper, i.e. made from 

 the roe of the sturgeon, they discovered an excellent and legal 

 substitute in the roe of the Carp. 



It is a strange fact that these many references to fishing 

 neither in the Old, where they are mostly metaphorical, nor 

 in the New Testament, where they are chiefly historical, give 

 the specific name of a single fish family. Dag and nun are 

 the generic terms covering aU species. The large sea fish are 

 collectively termed " tannim." ^ The fish of Tobit, of Jonah, 

 of the Psalms, are only spoken of generically. None of the 

 Apostles, of whom four, Peter, Andrew, James, and John, 

 were professional fishermen, has troubled himself to identify 

 by name even the actual fish of the miraculous draught. ^ 



1 700 ! according to the Talmud, Hul., 8^'^. 



* Cf. Nidda, 51''. For authoritative decisions regarding clean and 

 unclean fish, see Hamburger, vol. I., Art. Fisch, Die judischen Speisegesetze 

 (Wien, 1895), p. 310 ff. 



' Forlong, in his Rivers of Life, asserts that even at the present day the 

 Eastern Jews do not eat fresh fish, but at marriages they place one on the 

 ground, and the bride and bridegroom walk round or step over it seven times 

 as an emblem of fecundity. 



It is curious to note the mistake of PUny in XXXI. 44 : " Aliud vero casti- 

 monarium superstitioni etiam, sacrisque Judaeis dicatum, quod fit e piscibus 

 squama carentibus." C. Mayhoff's edition (Lipsiae, 1897), however, runs, 

 XXXI. 95 : " Aliud vero est castimoniarum superstitioni etiam sacrisque 

 Judaeis dicatum, quod," etc. 



* Sir Thomas Browne, in his Miscellaneous Writings, discourses of fish 

 mentioned in the Bible. 



' Walton (in his Introduction) makes Piscator, after speaking of these 

 four Apostles as " men of mild and sweet, and peaceable spirits (as indeed 

 most fishermen are)," continues, " it is observable that it is our Saviour's 

 will that his four Fishermen Apostles should have a prioritie of nomination 

 in the catalogue of his Twelve Apostles. And it is yet more observable that 

 at his Transfiguration, when he left the rest of his Disciples and chose only 



