The Signature of the Gospel

Three hundred and fifteen: the digits of one hundred and fifty three. The last of those three hundred and fifteen mentions sits in a verse numbered 3:15. And the verse immediately after it is the one where Peter puts Paul's writings into the canon.

The book that holds the last mention of both men, 2 Peter, is 1,553 words long.

The one hundred and fifty third mention of Peter is the single verse in all of Scripture that says why these two men belong together: the gospel to the Gentiles was committed to Paul, and the gospel to the Jews to Peter. The number lands on its own explanation.

And the fish were caught by fishers of men. Follow me, and I will make you fishers of men (Matthew 4:19). One hundred and fifty three great fishes in the net, and the net was not broken.

Consider how narrow the road to that number is. Peter is also called Simon, and also Cephas. Paul was Saul for twenty five mentions and changed name, with no explanation given in the text, in Acts 13, at the ninth verse: book five of the New Testament, chapter thirteen, verse nine. Five, thirteen, and nine, which is one plus five plus three. Move any one of those names and the count is gone.

The two men numbered 153 were the two to whom the gospel was committed, and the word for what they were to do with it stands at 153.

And the gospel is found in exactly seventy seven verses of the King James Bible. The number at the centre of the fish count is the number of verses that name the thing the fish count is about.

Galatians is the book where Paul defends the gospel he received by revelation, and it is the book where he sets his commission beside Peter's. Peter and Paul are named there seven times between them, the only book in the Bible where the two names total seven.

The phrase the gospel occurs in seven verses of Galatians, and the first of the seven is the seventh verse of the epistle.

The fifty third mention of the gospel lands on the fifty third verse of Galatians, and the verse it lands on says that the scripture preached the gospel. Not a preacher. The scripture.

Which is a startling sentence when you sit with it. Genesis was not written until Moses, some four hundred years after Abraham was in his grave. And yet Paul says the scripture preached the gospel to him. The Book is older than its own writing.

Both of the other numbers in this family lie in the same place. In Galatians 1:18 Paul writes that he went up to see Peter after three years and stayed fifteen days. Three and fifteen. The digits again.

The number of fishes in the net is the number of times the men who drew the net are named in the four Gospels. Not an approximation of it. The same number.

Two of those five share a name with somebody else and the Gospels are careful to keep them apart, which is what makes the count possible at all. There is another James, called the less, and a James who is the Lord's brother. And there is another John, the Baptist, who is spoken of far more often than the fisherman. Sort the men out from one another, as the text itself does, and what remains of the five in the boat is one hundred and fifty three.

Now walk the outside edge. One fish at the point, seventeen along the base, and the two slopes between them: forty eight fishes make the rim.

And here is where it stops being geometry. The story is told in one gospel and one only, the Gospel of John. Count how often those same five men are named inside that gospel, and the number is forty eight.

Seventeen is the same number that governs the two ends of the Bible, whose first and last verses carry seventeen vowels apiece, and the same number of days on which the flood began and the ark came to rest.

And the net was not broken.