Three major images in the Bible’s symbolic world are the tree, the table, and the sea. We are in this question of fish thinking about the sea: the symbolic domain of the sea includes chaos and evil—which is why eventually the sea is no more (Revelation 21)—but there is a link therefore with the Gentiles, like me.

I suspect to many readers of the Bible this is a silly question. Honestly, who cares? The idea that I constantly want to convey is that we should ask the questions we find curious about the scriptures, assuming that there are answers deeper than the obvious.

We can, of course, become enamoured of all sorts of novelty and get caught up in the esoteric at the expense of the main point of a given passage. My approach to reading the Bible is at risk of that, in theory, and because my writing tends to be exploring those sorts of side issues and minutiae I suspect readers might think that of me to a greater degree than if you were listening to my preaching, for example. You are, of course, at liberty to judge as you will.

Assuming this is not being enamoured by novelty, let’s back up a step and see where the question arises from. Had you noticed that when Jesus eats, we often see him eating fish? In fact, we only see him partaking of bread, fish, wine, and water. The theological and symbolic resonances of bread, wine, and water are—I hope—more obvious. Fish may be less so.

Of course, you might point out that he clearly ate other things, not least because we see him partaking in a Passover meal at which we assume he ate the lamb. It is unreasonable to assume that he never ate anything else. I am not saying that Jesus was a pescatarian. I am saying that the Bible does not have words that are not there for the sake of meaning and that the world is a world of symbols. Jesus’ choices, as well as the choices of the gospel writers under the inspiration of Jesus by the Spirit, are freighted with meaning that we should not take for granted.

On that basis, let’s take the question at face value: why did Jesus eat so much fish? There are three reasons.

Read More