"Who cares how many fish there were? Who counted?" asks Sara Maitland (The Tablet, 11 April) about the enigmatic catch in John 21.11. The answers to these questions are quite simply (1) the narrator (perhaps John) cared and (2) nobody counted - because the number 153 is symbolic.
The mistake usually made is to regard the figure as an actual count. However, a comparison may be made with the near-contemporary Epistle of Barnabas in which the figure 318 (the number of Abraham's followers) is interpreted by the author as a sequence of three digits, essentially as T (the sign of the Cross) followed by I - H (the first two Greek letters of "Jesus"). In a similar (but still puzzling!) way 153 surely symbolises the unity of the Church - for we read in the same verse "the net was not torn".
Perhaps, for example, the five is a reference to Jewish Christians who observe the five books of the Law while three is to remind us of those Gentile Christians on whom lesser burdens (essentially three in number) were placed, as in Acts 15.28-29: these different "species" of fish nevertheless are one in Christ.
Whatever the specific meaning of the digits, the verse serves to remind us of the Church as "unity-in-diversity", hardly a theological irrelevance in our own day.
Fr Rodney Schofield, Wye, Kent
Loading ...
