[31]
The writer of the article in The Open Court asserts that "the Fish was
sacred to those deities who were supposed to lead men back from the
shadows of death to life."[32] If this be really the case we can
understand the connection of the symbol first with Orpheus, later with
Christ, as Eisler remarks: "Orpheus is connected with nearly all the
mystery, and a great many of the ordinary chthonic, cults in Greece
and Italy. Christianity took its first tentative steps into the
reluctant world of Graeco-Roman Paganism under the benevolent
patronage of Orpheus."[33]
There is thus little reason to doubt that, if we regard the Fish as a
Divine Life symbol, of immemorial antiquity, we shall not go very far
astray.
We may note here that there was a fish known to the Semites by the
name of Adonis, although as the title signifies 'Lord,' and is
generic rather than specific, too much stress cannot be laid upon it.
It is more interesting to know that in Babylonian cosmology Adapa the
Wise, the son of Ea, is represented as a Fisher.[34] In the ancient
Sumerian laments for Tammuz, previously referred to, that god is
frequently addressed as Divine Lamgar, Lord of the Net, the nearest
equivalent I have so far found to our 'Fisher King.'[35] Whether the
phrase is here used in an actual or a symbolic sense the connection of
idea is sufficiently striking.
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