The Marcionite Explanation for Peter as the 'Catcher of Men'

There is no separate Aramaic word for 'fisherman.' The term literally means 'catcher' and has a decidedly negative connotation in the OT. Habakkuk i.14 - 16 has the King of Babylon as a 'catcher of men' for evil:

[God] you have made men like fish in the sea, like sea creatures that have no ruler.
The wicked foe pulls all of them up with hooks, he catches them in his net,
he gathers them up in his dragnet; and so he rejoices and is glad.
Therefore he sacrifices to his net and burns incense to his dragnet,
for by his net he lives in luxury and enjoys the choicest food.
Is he to keep on emptying his net, destroying nations without mercy?

Nimrod is so described in Genesis but in the Jerusalem Targum he is identified as a 'rebel ... mighty in hunting and in sins before the Lord because he was a hunter of the sons of men.' Another passage cited in both Talmuds and Midrash from Proverbs describes the adulteress as 'hunting the precious soul.' Origen similar writes of Nimrod that 'hunt means evil in this present [passage]' and asks his readers to consider 'whether or not it means evil elsewhere.' That it may have been understood to apply (secretly) to Peter can be seen to repeated Marcionite (i.e. negative) references to Peter in Origen's Commentary on Matthew.

As Edwin Abbott notes in his the Fourfold Gospel "these passages in OT together with several in the NT that imply the metaphor of Satan hunting for the souls of men, force on us the conclusion that if Jesus really said to his disciples "I will make you become fishers of men" he said something that would be very startling indeed to his hearers. On the surface it would mean, I will make you like Satan, or like Nimrod, or like the adulteress, secret ensnarers or open hunters and devourers of the souls of the sons of men.' It can only be explained, if genuine, as a paradoxical use of the metaphor ...'

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