Fishing from the earliest times - Blog

REASONS WHY ROD NOT MENTIONED 411iv. 19, " she opened a bottle of milk," both demand an extrusioneffected by one and only one method, whereas " jars of " fishmay have been filled by any piscatorial method.D, There is no evidence that the Israelites brought fromEgypt a single particle of Egyptian civilisation. Nomads theywere when they entered, and nomads they were when theyleft Egypt. Their kultur was taken over from the Canaanites,and their later civihsation, despite periods of subjection toEgypt, owed far less to that country than to Babylonia.Even if we grant that no actual evidence of Egyptianculture exists, the probabilities incline the other way. Theirabiding place was in no sterile or out-of-the-way corner of thatcountry, but in Goshen, where we read " they gat them possessionstherein," and was in close proximity to the great highroad, which bore the commerce between Egypt and Asia, andvice versa. They were certainly familiar with the manufactureof bricks, and presumably the building of houses, etc.E. The verse, " The fishers shall also lament and theythat cast angle in the brooks shall mourn," which may betrayknowledge of the Rod, is apparently much later than Isaiah,and may, perhaps, be assigned to the second century B.C., andrefer to the campaign of Antiochus Epiphanes in Egypt.Even if we allow that this date accounts for all omissionof AngUng during the millennium between the Exodus and thiscampaign, why is there no actual or implied reference in subsequentliterature, especially in the voluminous Talmud ?But the Jewish lack of sport is evidenced not only in theirmethods of fishing, but, what is more remarkable, in those oftheir hunting, or rather non-hunting. While Assyrian, Egyptian,and Persian Monarchs were famous for their huntingexploits, no single Jewish king, except Herod, is handed downto us dehghting in or even taking part in the chase. 1We find no Hebrew counterpart to Tiglath-pileser, with hishistorical bag of " 4 wild bulls mighty and terrible, 10 elephantsand 120 lions " on foot, and 130 speared from his chariot, or^ Herod seems, from notices in Josephus, to have been quite a sportsman,for he kept a regular stud {Ant., XVI. lo, s. 3), and hunted bears, stags, wildasses, etc., with a record bag of forty head in one day {ibid., XV. 7, s. 7 ; andB. J., I. 21, s. 13).2 E