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Matthew and the Gospel of Thomas both tell of a dragnet pulled from the sea. In Matthew the bad fish are thrown away, as angels will remove the wicked at the end of the age. In Thomas a wise fisherman keeps one large fish and throws back the rest.
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2500 BCE
1000+ CE
Matthew 13:47
New Testament
47 “Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a net that was cast into the sea that caught all kinds of fish. 48 When it was full, they pulled it ashore, sat down, and put the good fish into containers and threw the bad away. 49 It will be this way at the end of the age. Angels will come and separate the evil from the righteous 50 and throw them into the fiery furnace, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.
Gospel of Thomas 1:8
Nag Hammadi
7 Jesus said, “Blessed is the lion that the man will eat, so that the lion becomes a man. And cursed is the man whom a lion will eat, and the lion will become a man.” 8 And he said, “The human being is like a wise fisherman who cast his net into the sea and drew it up from the sea full of little fish. Among them the wise fisherman found a large, fine fish. He threw all the little fish back into the sea, and chose the large fish without difficulty. Whoever has ears to hear should hear.” 9 Jesus said, “Look, the sower went out, took a handful of seeds, and scattered them. Some fell on the road, and the birds came and gathered them. Others fell on rock and they did not take root in the soil and did not produce ears. Others fell among thorns, and they choked the seeds and worms ate them. And others fell on good soil, and it produced good fruit. It yielded sixty per measure and one hundred and twenty per measure.”
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Notes and References
“... The Wise Fisherman, Gospel of Thomas 8 And he said, "The man is like a wise fisherman who cast his net into the sea and drew it up from the sea full of small fish. Among them the wise fisherman found a fine large fish. He threw all the small fish back into the sea and chose the large fish without difficulty. Whoever has ears to hear, let him hear." [...] The parable is a parable of wisdom, but the reader is not told who "the man" is that is being compared to the wise fisherman. Some interpreters have conjectured that the parable, in an earlier form, would have started with "The kingdom [rather than "the man"] is like ..." [...] That view has some support from a version of the parable quoted by Clement of Alexandria [...], who says that it is a parable "in the Gospel" (not saying which one), and it runs as follows: The kingdom of heaven is like a man who cast a net into the sea; and out of the multitude of the fishes caught, makes a selection of the better ones. [...] In the Parable of the Dragnet in Matthew 13:47-48 the fish that are obtained in the net are both good and bad, and the sorting of them refers to the final judgment. Those features are entirely lacking in logion 8. In the latter the contrast is between the small fish (plural) and the fine large one, and the sorting consists of selecting the latter. ...”
Hultgren, Arland J.
The Parables of Jesus: A Commentary
(pp. 440-441) William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2000
* The use of references are not endorsements of their contents. Please read the entirety of the provided reference(s) to understand the author's full intentions regarding the use of these texts.
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