I came across an interesting subject and found it intriguing, so I thought I would present it to the forums to get some input and thoughts on the subject.  Its the alleged parallel between the Jesus of the New Testament (6 B.C.E.-33ad?) and Pythagoras of the 6th Century BCE. 

I will quote an excerpt from an article by Dr Joshua David Stone:

"There is an interesting story about Pythagoras that was told that demonstrates His remarkable powers. Pythagoras, in His travels, apparently one day came across some fishermen who were drawing up their nets which were filled with fish. Pythagoras told the fishermen that He could tell them the exact number of fish they had caught, which the fishermen thought to be an impossible task, given how many were caught in the nets. The fishermen said that if He was right they would do anything He said. They counted all the fish and Pythagoras was totally accurate in His estimate. He then ordered the fishermen to return the fish to the sea and for some mystical reason none of them died. Pythagoras paid the fishermen for the price of the fish and left for Crotona. Incidents like this caused Pythagoras’ fame to spread. During one of His lectures in Italy it was said that He gained 2000 disciples from that one lecture alone." http://www.iamuniversity.ch/Pythagoras-and-Biosophy

In this story, though it is not mentioned in this excerpt, Pythagoras counted 153 fish.  Take note of that number especially.  The number 153 was most significant for being the denominator in the closest fraction known, at the time.   Now we go to the story of Jesus and the fishermen in John 21:1-11.

"After these things Jesus manifested Himself again to the disciples at the Sea of Tiberias, and He manifested Himself in this way.  Simon Peter, and Thomas called Didymus, and Nathanael of Cana in Galilee, and the sons of Zebedee, and two others of His disciples were together.  Simon Peter said to them, "I am going fishing." They said to him, "We will also come with you."  They went out and got into the boat; and that night they caught nothing.  But when the day was now breaking, Jesus stood on the beach; yet the disciples did not know that it was Jesus.  So Jesus said to them, "Children, you do not have any fish, do you?" They answered Him, "No." And He said to them, "Cast the net on the right-hand side of the boat and you will find a catch." So they cast, and then they were not able to haul it in because of the great number of fish.  Therefore that disciple whom Jesus loved said to Peter, "It is the Lord."  So when Simon Peter heard that it was the Lord, he put his outer garment on (for he was stripped for work), and threw himself into the sea. But the other disciples came in the little boat, for they were not far from the land, but about one hundred yards away, dragging the net full of fish.  So when they got out on the land, they saw a charcoal fire already laid and fish placed on it, and bread.  Jesus said to them, "Bring some of the fish which you have now caught."  Simon Peter went up and drew the net to land, full of large fish, a hundred and fifty-three; and although there were so many, the net was not torn."


Between the stories we see a few parallels.  The one that strikes me the most is the number 153 and the role it played in the story.  Both stories include fishermen, nets, fish, and the number 153.  I see 2 possible theories to this parallel.  It could be that the writer of John was using the number 153 as a "generic" term for "many fish", since it was a common number at that time or, possibly, we have a writer using the pythagoras narrative to rewrite the story of Jesus as a means of proclaiming his divinity.  This appeared to be a common phenomenon in the times of Jesus and after.  I remain agnostic on the subject for now..Perhaps with more study I can come to a more solidified conclusion.  Please share your thoughts and theories!
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Good biography of Pythagoras in Eduard Schure's Great Initiates. Pythagoras was really seen as a sort of a Prophet and left his teaching which includes the first ever mentioning of Trinity, as God-Creator for him was representing number 1, which he called a Monad, and it existed in a form of two opposites, sort of +1 and -1, which pair was called Diad, altogether this was accounting to divine Triad. This remained in Hellenic paganism and later was converted in Trinity of the Christians.

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Both John and Luke have big catch stories, but they place the story at opposite ends of Jesus' career (recruiting disciples in Luke 5, post-resurrection in John). Luke has no "153." John does, but he is a frankly literary author. If 153 were already associated with fish in Hellenistic culture, then it is easy to believe that he would work into his book.

I have a hard time associating Pythagoras, a pre-Hellenisitic figure, with the number 153, especially in connection with fish. A reference would have helped the argument here. 

"Pythagoras" is poorly documented, and there are strong suspicions both that many of his followers used the name, and also that stories about him would improve with the retelling.

If it occurred to one Hellenistic author, John, to work "153" into a fish story, then it would be unsurprising if  some other Hellenistic author (or even a later one) might also work "153" into a different fish story. If that was how 153 got into Pythagoras' fish story, then that would have been centuries after the fact.

In any case, the stories are very different, despite the common element of fishing. Jesus' feat was to know that fish could be caught in the face of expert disagreement (especially in the Luke version), while Pythagoras accurately estimated the number of fish already caught. The latter feat, while impressive, is within natural human ability, while the former (presumably the point of telling the story) suggests properly miraculous control of the fish.

It is more-or-less uncontroversial that the early Chrisitian movement, especially after Paul undertook the mission to the Gentiles (as John's writings are), was heavily influenced by the dominant Hellenistic culture. So, it would be difficult to read more into this particular coincidence than that.

Which is not to say that the discussion is settled. Good post.

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Jesus and Pythagoras Similarities

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Posted on December 28th, by Derek Murphy in Pagan Christs.

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Pythagoras is one of the most intriguing and mysterious figures in ancient history. Although today known only by his mathematical legacy, he was much more than a philosopher or mathematician – he was also the founder of a very secretive spiritual cult with serious political influence, focusing on initiation of the worthy, purification, and salvation.
Born around 570BC, Pythagoras emigrated to Croton in Southern Italy, and there founded a movement that was a blend of politics and mysticism. “Without a doubt, Pythagoras aimed for a viewpoint of the divine, and the opinions he expressed were taken by his followers as sacred revelations” (To Think Like God, Arnold Hermann, 17).

Although it is difficult to separate the man from the myth, there are striking parallels between Jesus and Pythagoras; most likely due to the extensive influence Pythagoreanism seems to have had on the Greco-Roman world through other mystery cults, especially Orphism, and on Platonism. I’m not strictly concerned with comparing the actual, historical figures of Jesus and Pythagoras; I only wish to demonstrate that the myths which followers ascribed to them are similar and may have come from a common literature base.

For example, it is said that when Pythagoras arrived in Croton, he first appeared to the fishermen on the outskirts of the city and performed a certain miraculous sign; he told them exactly how many fish were in their nets, and he was right (they counted). News of the miracle spread into city and prepared the way for him (Hermann 43). In the gospels of Luke and John, Jesus later performs a similar miracle, although instead counting the fish, he causes the fisherman to catch a great quantity. In Luke, this happens at the beginning of his ministry (5:1-11); in John, it occurs after Jesus had resurrected. Interestingly, we are even given the precise number of fish caught: “Simon Peter went aboard and dragged the net ashore, full of big fish, one hundred and fifty-three of them” (John 21:1-14).

Although we are not given the exact number of fish in the Pythagorean story, the Pythagoreans regarded 153 as a sacred number due to its use in a mathematical ratio called “the measure of the fish,” which produces the mystical symbol of the Vesica Pisces – the intersection of two circles which yields a fish-like shape. The sign of the fish is still widely used today as a symbol of Christianity (Freke/Gandy, 39).

Pythagoreans believed (much like Orphics, and modern day Buddhists) in reincarnation, or a “wheel of rebirth”. Thus, they were vegetarians and also tried to cultivate purity. Although the soul was immortal, it had to be freed from the contaminating influences of the body. Only a ‘lover of wisdom’, leading the best of lives, could escape the prison of his body at the moment of death and break free of the cycle.

Tradition holds that Pythagoras gained his mystical knowledge because he’d spent 7 years in the underworld or land of the dead. Diogenes Laertius records the claim of Hieronymus, who said “that when he descended to the shades below, he saw the soul of Hesiod bound to a brazen pillar, and gnashing its teeth; and that of Homer suspended from a tree, and snakes around it, as a punishment for the things that they had said of the Gods” (Diogenes Laertius, XIX), and also mentions how Austophon says in his ‘Pythagorean’:

He said that when he did descend below
Among the shades in Hell, he there beheld
All men who e’er had died; and there he saw,
That the Pythagoreans differ’d much
From all the rest; for that with them alone
Did Pluto deign to eat, much honouring
Their pious habits. (XX)

Laertius further recounts a tale by Hermippus, about how when Pythagoras returned from the underworld, he was considered a God.

Pythagoras came up again after a certain time, lean, and reduced to a skeleton; and that he came into the public assembly, and said that he had arrived from the shades below, and then he recited to them all that had happened during his absence. And they, being charmed by what he told them, wept and lamented, and believed that Pythagoras was a divine being; so that they even entrusted their wives to him, as likely to learn some good from him; and that they too were called Pythagoreans. And this is the story of Hermippus. (XXI)

According to legend, in a past life Pythagoras had been a son of Hermes, named Aethalides. Hermes promised him any gift (except immortality), and Aethalides/Pythagoras wished to remember everything, even after death. Thus, Pythagoras remembered all of his previous lives – a proof of which is offered in another famous story. While staying at Argos, he saw a shield from the spoils of Troy nailed up to the wall. He began to weep, claiming that the shield had been his in a last life, when his name was Euphobus and that he had used it at the battle of Troy. He even offered proof: his previous name, Euphobus, was written on the inside. They took the shield down from the wall and found the name written as he had claimed (Newmann 25). In another story, he recognizes the reincarnation of an old friend in a stray dog.

And once, they say, when he passed by a dog which was being maltreated, he pitied the animal and said these words: “Stop! Don’t beat him! For he is the soul of a friend whom I recognized straight away when I heard his voice.” (Bremmer, 12)

Pythagoras also believed that the entire universe was musical: each planet made a certain vibrational frequency as it passed through the heavens, and everything on earth could be assigned to one of these seven frequencies. Thus, there are 7 notes, 7 colors of the rainbow, and 7 primarily organs of the body (in Eastern spirituality, there are also 7 Chakras).

According to a legend told by Iambilochos, when Pythagoras heard the different sound made by hammers in a forge, he realized that tones can be expressed in quantitative relationships, and hence in numerical values and geometrical measures. Using stringed instruments, he then discovered the connection between vibration frequencies and pitch. The whole world, according to Pythagoras’ theory, consisted of harmony and number. (Roob, 92)

Pythagoras taught that this life was a sentence (for a sin or evil done at the mythical level in pre-history). Therefore, we should do our time well and get out quickly, rather than avoiding our punishments and stretching the sentence out longer. Earth is not meant to be enjoyed: “Do not assist a man in laying a burden down; for it is not proper to be the cause of not laboring (also translated as ‘idleness’ or ‘lack of effort’); but assist him in taking it up” (Herman, 49). Of course Christianity has its parallels in monasticism, its valuation of the poor, the weak and the suffering, and its ascetic traditions. There are also passages like the following:

Then, speaking to all, he said, “if anyone wants to be a follower of mine, let him renounce himself and take up his cross every day and follow me. Anyone who wants to save his life will lose it; but anyone who loses his life for my sake, will save it. What benefit is it to anyone to win the whole world and forfeit or lose his very self.” (Luke 9:23-26)

Consequently, the life of a Pythagorean was “governed by strict rules and routines that covered a wide range of issues, everything from dietary restrictions to purification rites to religious taboos to the observance of decorous behavior, not to mention a host of magical practices” (Hermann 19).

Although the similarities between the actual life of Pythagoras and Jesus may be limited, it is interesting to notice the parallels between the two movements each figure left behind. As we shall see, it was the bureaucratic organization of the Christian movement, more than the originality of its beliefs or practices, which really ensured its survival; however this organization may have had its roots in Pythagoreanism. As Konstantine I. Boudouris says in The Pythagorean Community,

The Pythagorean organizations were unions of people, the members of which had accepted certain principles and doctrines, and who lived, thought, and acted collectively, and whose acts were dictated or related to the beliefs that they had accepted. Moreover, as all the sources testify, the chief characteristic of the Pythagorean movement was secrecy. Experience had taught Pythagoras that small but secretly and well-organized forces could have great results. (qtd. in Newmann 50)

While the overall tone of Pythagoras’ teaching appears concerned with morality, virtue, and religious piety, the mission of the secret group seems to have been the infiltration and takeover of the government. Thus, it functioned as a political conspiracy on the one hand, while on the other projecting the outward appearance of a bona fide political association. (Newmann, 51)

The speeches ascribed to Pythagoras that have been handed down to us are nothing particularly special; be good, honor your elders, refrain from evil, etc. There was certainly more to the movement than his words of wisdom (although there may have been much that was lost). The power of the movement was in its initiations and secrecy. Membership was extremely selective, and the initiation process not for the faint of heart. There was first a series of tests for candidates, followed by a background check involving the applicant’s personal life, relationships and behavior: “Did he talk too much or laugh on the wrong occasions? How did he get along with other students? What, for example, made him happy or sad?” (Newmann 53).

Finally there was a physical examination. If he passed these preliminaries, he was sent away for three years and totally ignored, but secretly watched. The 1999 movie Fight Club is an excellent example of the development of this sort of cult; although the three years of waiting was shortened to only three days.

If they were admitted, candidates had to turn over all of their belongings – money, properties and income – to a special board of trustees (Newmann 53, 54); and for the first 5 years, they took a vow of silence. If they were later rejected from the higher levels of initiation, they had their investments returned in double but were treated as if they were dead by members. Likewise, there is evidence that, in the earliest periods of Christianity, such socialist practices were also the rule, and strictly enforced. Luke has Jesus caution, “None of you can be my disciple without giving up all that he owns” (Luke 14:33), and according to the Acts of the Apostles, “And all who shared the faith owned everything in common; they sold their goods and possessions and distributed the proceeds among themselves according to what each one needed” (Acts 2:44).

Acts also relates the curious incident of Ananias and Sapphira, new converts to Christianity who secretly held back some of their earnings rather than sharing it with the Church whose transgression was punished by a miraculous execution. First, an example is given of Jospeh/Barnabas, who sold some land and gave all the money, as expected, to the apostles. Next we are told of a couple, Ananias and Sapphira, who sold a piece of property but kept some of the money to themselves and lied to the apostles. Peter immediately knew they were lying, and when he accused them, they fell down dead at his feet.

Peter said, ‘Ananias, how can Satan have so possessed you that you should lie to the Holy Spirit and keep back part of the price of the land?…You have been lying not to men, but to God.’ When he heard this Ananias fell down dead. And a great fear came upon everyone present. (Acts 4:32-5:11)

Like the Pythagorean cult, the early church had ‘administrators’ who were responsible for maintaining the wealth and finances of the community. This feature of early Christianity didn’t last (later converts were allowed to keep their property), but its presence and inclusion into the Bible suggests external influences. Although Judaism, especially during the decades surrounding the destruction of the temple in Jerusalem, did have socialistic sects where Christianity may have found this feature, these sects were themselves almost more similar to Pythagoreanism than to traditional Judaic worship.

Consider, for example, the Essenic communities, such as at Qumran. According to Josephus, they also shared all of their property and wealth communally, had no personal possessions, did not sacrifice animals, and focused on cleansings and purity. After a three year probation, newly joining members would take an oath that included the commitment to practice piety towards “the Deity” and righteousness towards humanity, to maintain a pure life-style, to abstain from criminal and immoral activities, to transmit their rules uncorrupted and to preserve the books of the Essenes and the names of the Angels (The Wars of the Jews. 2.137–142). They also believed in the immortality of the soul and that they would receive their souls back after death (Antiquities of the Jews, 18.18, The Wars of the Jews. 2.153–158).

Another source of commonality is the theme of secrecy, with truth being revealed only to an inner group.
The notion that Pythagoras founded a movement whose mission was the “education and enlightenment of the masses” is wonderfully romantic, yet the very sources who have sought to convey this impression have also persevered old sayings that paint a very different picture.” (Newmann 55)

The eventual fall of Pythagoreanism may have been due to the contradiction inherent in a selective, spiritual minority ruling the alienated majority. Although Jesus Christ is often heralded for his democratic inclusion of all people, there are also passages in the Bible which make it clear that not everybody would make it into the kingdom, but only the worthy, and characterize the Christian cult as a small, non-inclusive group of separatists. “So the last shall be first, and the first last: for many be called, but few chosen” (Matthew 20:16). Moreover, Jesus frequently speaks in riddles and parables, which he later explains only to his disciples. At the same time, although in theory a community of brothers, it should not be forgotten that Christianity was managed by a select authoritarian group, which demanded absolute allegiance, complete surrender of personal property, and which quickly grew in wealth and power.

Finally, like Christians, Pythagoreans were taught to fight against sin and lawlessness. They even had a custom of confessing each day’s sins:

As soon as they got up in the morning, members were required to disclose to one another a detailed account of the activities and events of the previous day. Supposedly, this exercise had a twofold aim: to train a person’s memory and to teach him to assess his conduct, in order to, as Diodorus says, “gain knowledge and judgment in all matters. (Newmann 59)

Pythagoreans had a lot of pedantic rules, which inspired a contantly introspective lifestyle.
Tradition does mention, though, a great number of taboos and prescriptions, such as ‘Do not wear a ring’, ‘Do not step over a broom’, ‘don’t use cedar, laurel, myrtle, cypress or oak to cleanse your body or clean your teeth: they are for honouring the gods’. The observance of all these rules must have made the life of the Pythagorean an extremely self-conscious one, in which a moment of carelessness could be fatal. The inclusion among these rules of having to wear white linen. (Bremmer 13)

Some of these lifestyle choices, beliefs and practices will become nearly universal in the centuries before and after the coming of Jesus Christ; mostly in various mystery cults and religions. Their inclusion into Christianity is not surprising, and yet proved problematic for Christians, who constantly needed to differentiate themselves somehow from other groups who believed very similar things and practiced that belief with similar rituals and habits. The powerful figure of Pythagoras will grow to supernatural proportions; as we have seen, he was believed to have been born of a God (Hermes, in a previous life), descended into the underworld, and taught specific instructions about surviving after death. In the religious/political system that he created, Christianity had a ready template for its own organization.

Encyclopedia > Catch of 153 fish The Catch of 153 fish is an episode in the appendix of the Gospel of John, in which seven of theTwelve Apostles were out fishing when they unexpectedly witness one of the resurrection appearances of Jesus. In the narrative, a mysterious stranger asks the apostles for fish, but when they say that they have none, the stranger tells the apostles to throw their net into the water, and the apostles are unable to pull it back due to the volume of fish. The narrative goes on to state that the (unnamed) beloved disciple identifies the stranger as Jesus, which causes Simon Peter to jump into the water, wrapping his coat around him, while the others follow in their boat dragging the net behind them. The number of fish caught is specified to have been 153. The precision of the number of fish has long been considered peculiar, and many scholars, throughout history, have argued that 153 has some deeper significance. Jerome, for example, claimed that the Greeks had identified that there were exactly 153 species of fish in the sea (modern marine biology puts the figure as something over 29,000). Mathematically, 153 is atriangular number, more precisely it is the sum of the integer numbers from 1 to 17 inclusive; more significantly, 153 also has the rare property that it is the sum of the cubes of its own digits (i.e. 153 = 1x1x1 + 5x5x5 + 3x3x3). In the time of Pythagoras, 153 was most significant for being one of the two numbers in the closest fraction known, at the time, to the true value of the square root of 3, the fraction in question being 265/153 (the difference between this and the square root of 3 is merely 0.000025......). This number frequently cropped up in geometry, most notably in a simple shape known as the vesica piscis, Greek for the body of the fish (because the shape looks like the body of a stereotyped fish), and the ratio of 153:265 was consequently known throughout the hellenic world as the measure of the fish. The fact that the measure of the fish was known to include 153, as one of its two numbers, and that the measure of how many fish the disciples are said to have caught is also 153, has not gone unnoticed by many scholars, with some suggesting that the number of fish in the New Testament episode is simply down to being the most familiar large number to the writer, or a deliberate reference to the geometric nomenclature as a sort of in-joke. It is significant that a story was told of Pythagoras, and later reported by Plato, that is very similar, even in wording, to the Biblical narrative of this event; some scholars have argued that that the entire Biblical episode is a coded reference to a geometric diagram, since Pythagoreanism saw geometry and numbers as having deep esoteric meaning, and via Hermeticism (and more minor routes) it was profoundly influential in the development of hellenic mystery religions, and in certain aspects of gnosticism, an early form of Christianity. While such themes would be unusual if the New Testament was only intended to be taken literally, several modern scholars, as well as most ancient followers of gnosticism, have argued that parts of the New Testament were written as gnostic documents. The Pythagorean diagram that can be constructed from the story of 153 fish A diagram with significance to Pythagoreanism can be constructed easily by attempting to represent the biblical scene using simple geometric shapes, whose sizes and number are dictated by the numbers given in the text, as well as by the Isopsephia values of significant words and short phrases in the narrative (the Greeks often wrote numbers by using letters of their alphabet - Isopsephia is the reverse system of working out what numbers are indicated by various words). The scene essentially involves representing Simon Peter as a circle of the same radius as the Isopsephia of the Greek words translated as Simon Peter (in any unit), and the 6 other disciples as identical circles with a single point in common and circumscribed by a circle representing the boat. Since Simon Peter is said by the narrative to have entered the water in front of the disciples, in the diagram he is shown adjacent to the boat, with a chordrepresenting his coat that has the same width as the Isopsephia of the Greek term translated as fisher's coat(in the same units as before), and with the shape of avesica piscis divided in half along its length. The net is depicted on the opposite side to Simon Peter, by a symmetrical 4x4 grid oriented so that only one point is in contact with the circle representing the ship (i.e. the grid is drawn as a rhombus), as if it had been thrown out by the ship and held only at the corner; the grid is adjusted so that it has 153:265 (the measure of the fish) as the ratio of distances between opposite corners, and has the same width as the Isopsephia of the Greek term translated as The Net. Despite the apparent simplicity of constructing the diagram, it has several additional features that the re-enforce suggestions of the diagram being deliberately encoded in the text. The Isopsephia of the Greek term translated as The Net is exactly the same as that for Fishes, and by choosing a 4x4 grid, in addition to the body of the fish (i.e. vesica piscis) that exists for the net itself we also have 16 smaller bodies of fish, due to each cell in the grid being mathematically similar to the net; by numbering each of these fish and adding up the numbers, we end up with the total of the numbers of the fish being 153, as in the biblical narrative. Also, the half vesica piscis representing Simon Peter's coat is one corresponding to the intersection of two circles of exactly the same size as the circle representing the boat, which is also true of a vesica piscis circumscribing the grid representing the net. The resulting diagram is mentioned in pre-Christian Pythagorean works, and is mentioned briefly in Plato's Timaeus; supposedly the upper portion, resembling depictions ofemergence such as the sun emerging from the horizon, represented to the pythagoreans the realm of the gods, while the central portion represented humanity, and the lower portion represented the shifting world of manifestation.