In the Gospel of St. John, Jesus miraculously helps his disciples land a large catch of fish.  This supernatural feat was also performed by Pythagoras in a legend recorded by Porphyry.  Pythagoras miraculously predicted the exact number of fish that would be caught, but the story does not record what this number was.  In the gospel account Jesus makes no such prediction, but we are told that the catch numbers exactly 153 fish.  This seems on the face of it to be an irrelevant fact that the gospel writer included just for dramatic effect.  But theological scholars have concluded that it is mentioned deliberately and is highly significant.

It is likely that the number of fish that Pythagoras predicted would be caught was precisely 153.  The Pythagoreans were renowned for their knowledge of mathematics and regarded 153 as a sacred number.  It is used in a mathematical ratio that Archimedes called "the measure of the fish" to produce a mystical symbol of the vesica piscis or "sign of the fish"—the intersection of two circles which yields a fish-like shape.  This was an ancient Pythagorean symbol that was used by early Christians to represent their faith.  The fact that this mystical fish symbol can be produced from the number of fish that were caught in the account of Jesus' miracle strongly suggests it has been adapted from the original miracle of Pythagoras and that this miracle story encoded sacred geometrical formulae.

The sign of the fish is widely used today as a symbol of Christianity, but originated in Pagan sacred geometry.  Two circles, symbolic of spirit and matter, are brought together in a sacred marriage.  When the circumference of one circle touches the center of the other they combine to produce the fish shape known as the vesica piscis.  The ratio of height to length of this shape is 153:265, a formula known to Archimedes in the third century BCE as the "measure of the fish."  It is a powerful mathematical tool, being the nearest whole number approximation of the square root of three and the controlling ratio of the equilateral triangle.

For more information on this interesting fact, please visit:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vesica_piscis.

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Dan Calloway
USA
Ubuntu 6.06, "Linux for Human Beings"
MSIT Student, Capella University