Wednesday, April 10, 2013

Gone Fishing


This shows the ice on the Lake was breaking up pretty well yesterday morning.  When I cam home last evening the Lake was completely ice free.  No freezing Saturday, Sunday, and Monday nights kept the ice breaking up.  80 degrees today.  Jump from winter to summer.
With the water lapping at the shore I sat on the deck today and used John 21:11-19 for prayer.  While Duncan's interpretation that I put in yesterday's blog is fun, I am inclined to think of this passage more along his lines.  Scholars are finding all kinds of meaning first of all in the fact that these men are going fishing when Jesus has risen from the dead and secondly in the 153 large fish.  Taking the Gospel at face value, Jesus did not continue to hang out with the disciples after the two appearances to  them in Jerusalem.  They've gone back to Galilee.  They fish for a living.  They probably enjoy it.
So it doesn't seem foolish to me that they should go fishing while they wonder about what's going on.
And since they sell fish for a living, I feel sure they must have counted them.  Maybe they didn't keep Jesus waiting as Duncan muses, but sooner or later they would have had to count that large catch of
 fish.
John, in his Gospel, almost always has two and three levels of meaning, but why not let the first level be that professional fishermen went fishing and caught 153 fish.
Another thing about the passage that amuses me is the attempt by so many translators to get around the fact that the Greek says simply Peter "was naked."  King James Version and the New Revised Standard Version have "naked."  Others go from stripped for work, he had taken his garment off, he had nothing on, he had practically nothing on, stripped to the waist, lightly clad.

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