I had a thought in class today that I want to discuss in my first blog entry. We were asked why we thought Smith included a seemingly random passage about fishing towards the end of the reading "A Description of New England," and we all concluded it was a metaphor. Some saw it as a metaphor for the abundance of possibilities in the New World, and I agree with that assessment. However, any time I see a fishing metaphor it is impossible for me to not think about Christian symbolism. Many biblical stories involve fishing, including Jesus miraculously calming a storm from a boat (Matthew 8:23-26), having his disciples catch so much fish their nets were overflowing (John 21:1-14), and paying His and Peter's taxes with a coin taken from inside a fish (Matthew 17:27). The closest passage from the Bible I can compare to Smith's writing is from Matthew 4:19 "'Come, follow me,' Jesus said, 'and I will make you fishers of men.'" This is, in his own words, Smith's message to Englishmen. His whole passage is an advertisement to his fellow countrymen to follow him to the New World. He even calls on their religious duty and faith in his attempts to convince them to come: "If he have but the taste of virtue...what to such a mind can bee more pleasant, than...building a a foundation for his Posterite, gotte from the rude earth, by God's blessing and his own industrie...?If hee have any graine of faith or zeale in Religion, what can hee doe lesse hurtfull to any; or more agreeable to God, then to seeke to convert those poore Salvages to know Christ, and humanitie, whose labors with discretion will triple requite thy charges and paines?" (15) Smith is saying good Christians have a responsibility to do good unto others and to spread the Word of God by opening the "Salvages" eyes to the Lord and civilization, as defined by Europe.While John Smith clearly thinks quite highly of himself and comes off as quite a braggart in both of the readings, I don't think he is blasphemous enough to think of himself as a Jesus-like figure, although that would make for an interesting discussion. In 1616, most Europeans were extremely devout and put all of their faith in their religion. Smith is using Christian principles to encourage men and women to go to the New World and do God's work. I do think that Smith saw himself as a "fisher of men" in trying to recruit colonizers, and perhaps he really thought he was doing God's work, but mostly I think he just wanted some help in etching his name in history.
(I consulted http://www.keyway.ca/htm2002/fisher.htm for some help in locating passages from The Bible about fishing.)
7 comments:
Hi Matt, I read your post and I think you have some awesome ideas here. I also wanted to respond to you so you knew I saw your page. I like the picture! Erin
Hey Matt,
I really enjoyed reading your blog. I do follow a lot of your ideas and you made a crazy strong connection to "fisher's of men," and John Smith. I was saying to myself,"Well..the Colonists were very strong about their biblical beliefs and faith back then," and then I came across what I was thinking in your post. After reading I thought about what Erin had said, that maybe John Smith wanted to be a leader for the people and I am leaning towards that because he's out of England, so it's not like he could get in trouble for blaspheming like that(comparing himself to Jesus) and the voice he seemed to have among the people led me to believe that even if he did blaspheme nobody would really try to stop him. Maybe he was using it as a metaphor to grab their attention and use it as a symbol to get what he wanted,control.
hey matt,
you've got a pretty mouth
I had never thought of the fishing metaphor in the sense that it could be related to Christian symbolism. But the connection was great. When I stop to think of it like Jesus who started out with a small band of followers John Smith did too. After the death of both of these men the tasks they undertook became very successful. I also think that Smith's use of fishing was an invitation to the abundance of the new world. when reading that ordinary people would marvel at the abundance.
I found it really interesting that you took John Smith's writings and how he tries to persuade others to come to America in an entirely different direction than the rest of the class, or those blogs of which I have read thus far. I think that your perception of John Smith, trying to just be a laborer of god, is very valid and something in which I had not picked up on when reading it on my own. After reading your post, especially since you even sited passages from the text and the bible in order to make the connections quite clear, I can understand where there might have been a connection between what Smith was trying to accomplish by writings these pieces, to what he thought God wanted him to do. Smith took it upon himself to help spread God's work by trying to get other Europeans to be "laborers for his harvest". Although this made Smith come off as being cocky and arrogant, seemingly only for his own selfish reasons, I definitely agree that he could in fact have been just doing what he felt he had to in order to follow god.
Matt, your insights into this passage were wonderful. Before reading your blog, the whole using fish to draw people was throwing me for a loop. But the way you pointed out how Jesus used this same technique helped me to make more sense of the passage and John Smith's methods for drawing people to the New World.
I really enjoyed your passage and your inclusion of a picture. I found your entry interesting for the fact that I didn't think of any connection between John Smith's writings and Christian symbolism. The more I read your entry the more I agreed with your statements. I feel like I have a different understanding of John Smith's work and the Christian symbolism since reading your entry.
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