Fish (Hastings' Dictionary)

Fishes are very abundant in the inland waters of Pal. and Syria, except the Dead Sea, as well as in the adjacent Mediter. and the Nile. Even the intensely salt springs by the Dead Sea swarm with certain kinds of fish, while the water of that sea, which contains a large percentage of chloride of magnesium, is fatal to all animal life.

Thousands of hsh are borne by the rapid current of the Jordan into that sea, and, as soon as they reach its waters, are stupefied, and fall a prey to cormorants and kingfishers, or their bodies are washed up on the shore and feed the ravens and vultures. Tristram mentions forty-three species of fish found in inland waters. Of these the large number of twenty-two are peculiar to Pal.

and Syria, and of this number fourteen are peculiar to the Jordan Valley and one to the mountain lake of Yamtlni, S.E. of the cedars, and three inhabit only the Damascus lakes. Many of the species swarm in immense shoals in the Sea of Galilee and in the warm fountains by its shores, as well as in the Jordan and its attluents, the Leontes, the Orontes, and the lakes of xVntioch, I,Ieins, etc. Fresh, water fishes are also very abundant in all the perennial streams which flow into the Mediter.

, often ascending long distances, and not infrequently leaping up the rajiids and cascades to reach tlieir spawning places. The adjacent Mediter. is also well stocked with a large number of species of fish. The large number and great fecundity of fish is expressed in the Heb. name yj Mg, from n^ to multipli/ abundantly. They were taken from the earliest times, and many of them used as food (Gn 9, ').

Not a few of them are highly specialized in form and aspect ; yet, while a considerable num- ber of land animals and birds and even insects had names in Heb., not a single species of fish is named in the Scriptures. The only attempt at classification was into clean and unclean (Lv 1 1"-'"). The former comprised those which had fins and scales; the latter, all others. This distinction was recognized in ancient Egypt (Wilkinson, Anc. Eqyp. iii.

58, 59), and under el-HaUini, who pro- hibited the sale of unclean fish (Lane, Mod. Eipjp. i. 132). The good and bad fish (Mt 13^') may have referred to this distinction, or to some other standanl of excellence. The writer has seen a fisherman on the Mediter. coast in his an":er beat to a jelly the head of a fish to which he objected. • From /r»t and ling a suffix willi varying- force but (renerallj diniin..

seen also in chan^'elin);, darling, (atling, fondling, ftmndling, gosling', hireling, inkling, nestling, Durseliog, seedlings stripling, starveling, underling, worldling. 12 FISHEP FISHING At other times they cast them away on the shore, or back into the water. The Hebrews seem to have classified together all creatures living in the waters, whetlier ' whales ' AV, or 'sea- monsters' RV (Gn F' ; Heb.

tan- ninim), or 'gieat IVsh' (Jon 1" '7^1} Ji d/irj gddhCl), or tlie 'living creature that moveth' (Gn 1"'), or 'fisli' (v.»). Tlie fish was an object of idolatry in all the ancient world. The Philistines worshipped Dagon, the Fi.sh-god (1 S 6), who was represented with the body of a man and the tail of a fish (but see Dagon, p. 544). Hence it was forbidden to make an ima^e of a fish (Dt 4"), which to the Heb. included, as before said, all living creatures in the water (Ex 20*). G. E. Post.