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Interesting biblical story...

wastepanel said:
If they would have eaten 3.1415926535... fish, then we could argue the coincidence. I'm calling BS on this association due to lack of evidence. If you can find more evidence, then I'll listen. The only way I could see a very similar line would be if Jesus told them to let the fish go.

Don't jump to conclusions too fast on these things.
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O.K., lets assume the two stories have no connection..

Why did the writer of John pick the number of 153 ?

No particular reason ?

Tell that to these guys...

Results Of Googling = 1 - 10 of about 11,700 for " 153 fish "


Some of them will even reveal the significance of ' 153 ' .. Some for free, some for a small fee.. ;)
 
Well, since nobody else has called it yet:

The 153 fish you are all talking about is false. The number in Pythagoras's story is actually never revealed. Now, the pagan's did have (what the christian's used as a symbol) a fish made of circles. But the significance in that is that the width vs height ratio is 153:265 (closest number to the square root of 3). It took me some research because all the sites on Pythagoras stated the story, but never gave the number of fish. If anyone wants to refute, feel free:

Pythagoras was said to have correctly
predicted the exact number of fish caught. In his story, the mystic number is
not revealed, but in the Gospel story of Jesus the number of fish caught is
given-exactly 153! Also, in the story of Jesus' feeding the multitudes with
"loaves and fishes", Christ is quoted as trying to explain to his disciples
the importance of the numbers of loaves, fishes, baskets of leftovers,
numbers of people fed, etc. The idea is that these stories are not about a
fish eating at all but about mathematical relationships and mystical numbers
that reveal, to the initiated, hidden truths about the relationship of the
spiritual and material dimensions.

Sorry, the whole thing seemed strange to me. Sorry to burst the bubble.
 
wastepanel said:
Well, since nobody else has called it yet:

The 153 fish you are all talking about is false. The number in Pythagoras's story is actually never revealed. Now, the pagan's did have (what the christian's used as a symbol) a fish made of circles. But the significance in that is that the width vs height ratio is 153:265 (closest number to the square root of 3). It took me some research because all the sites on Pythagoras stated the story, but never gave the number of fish.

Sorry, the whole thing seemed strange to me. Sorry to burst the bubble.
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I can see the Fish People got to you. They're as sneaky as Scientologists, but with a less silly religion and not so much clout at Viacom.
 
I understand that fishing with nets was a pretty popular livelihood back in those days.
 
153 is a notable number for many reasons.

153= 1! + 2! + 3! + 4! + 5!
For those not familiar with factorials (denoted by the exclamation marks), 1! = 1; 2! = 1*2; 3! = 1*2*3; 4! = 1*2*3*4; and 5! = 1*2*3*4*5.

Also, 153 is one of few numbers that is the sum of the cube of its digits. 153 = 1^3 + 5^3 + 3^3.

Martin Gardner's alter ego, Dr. Matrix, may have noted a few other oddities associated with 153.
 
wastepanel said:
Well, since nobody else has called it yet:

The 153 fish you are all talking about is false. The number in Pythagoras's story is actually never revealed. Now, the pagan's did have (what the christian's used as a symbol) a fish made of circles. But the significance in that is that the width vs height ratio is 153:265 (closest number to the square root of 3). It took me some research because all the sites on Pythagoras stated the story, but never gave the number of fish. If anyone wants to refute, feel free:

Pythagoras was said to have correctly
predicted the exact number of fish caught. In his story, the mystic number is
not revealed, but in the Gospel story of Jesus the number of fish caught is
given-exactly 153!
Click to expand...

I've seen two versions of the Pythagoras story, one with the number of fish, one without. To me, the number of fish in the Pythagoras story isn't really important anyway. It is also interesting to note that many biblical historians and scholars believe John 21 to be a later addition to the book of John.

So Why? What is the significance of the number in John, other than to be familiar to other cultists? If the number is just something used to suggest 'a lot of fish', then whoever wrote the account sure did 'guess' a number that was sacred amongst the Pythagorean cultists, purely on accident.

I've seen he 256/153 thing too. Interesting.

http://home1.gte.net/deleyd/religion/mysticnumber153.html
 
Brown said:
153 is a notable number for many reasons.

153= 1! + 2! + 3! + 4! + 5!
For those not familiar with factorials (denoted by the exclamation marks), 1! = 1; 2! = 1*2; 3! = 1*2*3; 4! = 1*2*3*4; and 5! = 1*2*3*4*5.

Also, 153 is one of few numbers that is the sum of the cube of its digits. 153 = 1^3 + 5^3 + 3^3.

Martin Gardner's alter ego, Dr. Matrix, may have noted a few other oddities associated with 153.
Click to expand...
That's a lot of "magic" for one apparently innocuous decimal number. I'm not sure the second example would have been noticed without a positional numbering system, though. The Pythagoreans seem to have anathematised zero as a concept.
 
holy crap. was that Brown posting? Long time no see! was that a fluke post or are you back?
 
geetarmoore said:
Daggers to the heart? I don't follow.
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The Pythagoreans saw ratios of integers as fundamental to just about everything. Irrational numbers, which can't be expressed as ratios, made them very queasy. It can be shown that root-2 is irrational (I can't remember how) and it crops up in something as simple as the ratio of the diagonal of a square to its side. It undermined their entire world-view.
 
And where do the gerbils fit in?
Figth for the right to be rodent!!!!!!!!!!!!
 
David Swidler said:
It appears twice in the Song of Solomon (admittedly a much later work than Genesis).

If Gilgamesh was written in a Semitic language that's hardly surprising. Even if not, ancient Hebrew borrowed plenty of words from other language families. But a similarity in detail does not a copy make. The believer could counter that both stories preserve an earlier event, and the one written down earlier only got some of it right. Nicely unprovable, but plausible enough for many not to throw away the whole package.
Click to expand...

The Book Of The Bible (Riedel, Tracy, Moskowitz) p27

Apart from other similarities, a final proof is that in the Hebrew the word used for pitch is kofer. This is the word used in the Babylonian tale, and kofer appears nowhere else in the Bible.
Click to expand...
 
triadboy said:
The Book Of The Bible (Riedel, Tracy, Moskowitz) p27
Apart from other similarities, a final proof is that in the Hebrew the word used for pitch is kofer. This is the word used in the Babylonian tale, and kofer appears nowhere else in the Bible.
Click to expand...
Click to expand...

As I noted above, it does occur elsewhere. Not in the Pentateuch, but definitely in the Bible. Don't know what concordance Riedel, Tracy and Moskowitz were using, but they better replace it.
 
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