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.? 
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 amy 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, 7.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 all species. The large sea fish are 
collectively termed “‘tannim.’’4 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.5 
1 700! according to the Talmud, Hul., 83>. 
2 Cf, Nidda, 515. For authoritative decisions regarding clean and 
unclean !fish, see Hamburger, vol. I., Art. Fisch, Die jidischen Speisegesetze 
(Wien, 1895), p. 310 ff. 
3 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 Pliny in XXXI. 44: “ Aliud vero casti- 
monarium superstitioni etiam, sacrisque Judzis dicatum, quod fit e piscibus 
squama carentibus.” C. Mayhofi’s edition (Lipsie, 1897), however, runs, 
XXXI. 95: “ Aliud vero est castimoniarum superstitioni etiam sacrisque 
Judaeis dicatum, quod,’’ etc. : 
4 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 
