I will make you fishers of men.

This simple and elegant phrase occurs in the Christian gospels of Mark and Matthew as the words of Jesus to Simon and Andrew who received their calling by the sea of Gallilee. This short saying without prior Introduction to the hearers makes no sense whatsoever in the context it is delivered, here is why.

It is well known that the allegorical use of the "fisher" symbolism predates Christianity, in fact Christian funeral art surviving in the Roman catacombs illustrating how Christianity was actually practiced in the late first and early second century amongst other things clearly presents depictions of the Greek pagan god Orpheus cast as the fisher god side by side with the Jewish messiah.

Historians who scan through the collection of Christian art in the catacombs, will be struck by the absence of depictions of the apostolic fishermen with their nets as described in the Gospels of Matthew and Mark as well as Luke. On the contrary, all three existing images of the allegorical fisher, both the one in the Flavian gallery, (built for Domitilla, niece of Emperor Domitian )which would be roughly contemporary with the Synoptic writers and the other two in S. Callisto, which are later even to the gospel of John show the image of the "fisher" “angling” in accordance with the passage in Matt. 17:27, where Jesus says unto Peter " Go thou to the sea and cast your hook and take up the fish that first comes up."

It is therefore absolutely incredible that any depictions of "the calling" should have been so completely obliterated from the memory of the Christian artists, whilst those of a relatively minor story remained. It would be fair to say, the tradition of the apostolic calling was virtually unknown to early Christians in diaspora.

But that is not all, we can reasonably establish that the tradition of the apostolic calling was not familiar to early Christians who were at least aware of the minor (and much later) story of the coin in the mouth of the fish, neither was it a conflation of the Greek mystery cult of Orpheus with Christianity, therefore it is pertinent to look closer to home to find the source of the allegorical use of the "fisher" from which the calling of the apostles is derived. In this regard, it is easy to discern the influence of the prophetic passages in the Old Testament which gave birth both to the allegories about the net-fishing in the Christian NT.

There are three main prophecies to consider even though later Jews, or perhaps the disciples and followers of Jesus appear to have interpreted all three of them as describing a single important event of the Messianic age, the first prophecy is Amos 4:2;

"The Lord Yahweh has sworn by his holiness, that, lo, the days will come upon you, when you will be taken away with hooks and your posterity with fish-hooks."

The second prophecy to co sider is Habakkuk 1:14-17;

"And thou wilt make men like the fishes of the sea.. . . All of them he takes up with the hook, and catches them in his net, and gathers them in his drag. Therefore he sacrifices unto his net and burns incense unto his drag ; because by it . . . his meal is plenteous, etc."

The third, and most important addition is the text of Jeremiah 16:16;

" And I shall send many fishermen after them..."

These three prophecies form the basis from which the use of the terms "fish", "hooks" and "nets" for men are drawn as allegory within our context.

Despite the messianic slant on each of the above prophecies there is no doubting the context in which the metaphors are applied, there is no ambiguity in the fact that the prophecies speak of the Gentiles as the " fishers "and "hunters " sent by Yahweh against his sinful people.

Even though Amos and Habakkuk describe political events of a near future, all three prophecies use the phrase" man-fishing" simply as an image for a violent and cruel captivity inflicted on the Elect ' by their Pagan enemies, though with divine permission and according to the plans of Yahweh .

Therefore, we come full circle. The saying itself "I will make you fishers of men" would not only be unintelligible, but also decidedly misleading for the hearers.

For not only throughout the whole of the rest of the Old Testament, but also in all the parallels which may be collected from contemporary literature of the day, the phrase of the "fishing of men " has the unfortunate connotation of ensnaring people by cruel violence or by sly deceit, so that a man invited without further preliminaries to " become a fisher of men " would much more readily think that he was expected to enroll in a gang of robbers, man-hunters or slave-traders.

It is therefore appropriate to ask, would Jesus have uttered those words?

The simple answer of course would have to be, No.
Did Simon and Andrew receive their calling by the sea of Galilee as depicted in the gospels? Most assuredly not.
The entire story on careful examination is, allegorical.