The Jesus fish is drawn with two circles. Measure it and you get a number, and the Gospel of John counts that number in a fishing net.
Draw two circles the same size, so the edge of each one runs through the center of the other. The almond in the middle has a Latin name, vesica piscis, and it means the bladder of a fish. Run the two curves past one end and you get the fish on the back of the car.
Documented RecordThe Greek word for fish is ichthys, spelled with five letters, ΙΧΘΥΣ. Each letter starts a word: Iesous, Christos, Theou, Yios, Soter. Jesus Christ, Son of God, Savior.
Documented RecordAround the year 200 Tertullian opens his book On Baptism with it: “We, little fishes, after our Ichthys, Jesus Christ, are born in water.”
Around 300 BC Euclid writes the Elements, 13 books that taught the world geometry for 2,000 years. The first thing he builds, Book 1, Proposition 1, is this drawing.
Documented RecordHe draws a line from A to B. He puts a circle on A that reaches B, and a circle on B that reaches A. Where the two circles cross he marks C, and the triangle A, B, C has three equal sides.
Engineering InferenceEvery figure in the 13 books is built on top of what came before it, and this is the first one. The fish is where the building starts.
Measure the almond. If it is 1 wide, it is the square root of 3 tall, and the square root of 3 is 1.7320508, a number whose decimals never end.
Documented RecordAround 250 BC Archimedes needs that number to measure the circle, and he closes in on it with two fractions. One sits just under it, 265 over 153. One sits just over it, 1,351 over 780.
Documented RecordDivide 265 by 153 on your phone. You get 1.7320261, and it matches the square root of 3 for the first four decimals.
In John 21 seven disciples fish all night on the Sea of Tiberias and catch nothing. At dawn the risen Jesus stands on the shore and tells them to throw the net on the right side of the boat.
Documented RecordJohn 21:11 counts the catch: “Simon Peter went up, and drew the net to land full of great fishes, an hundred and fifty and three: and for all there were so many, yet was not the net broken.”
Documented RecordAround the year 416 Augustine preaches on that verse and stacks the number up. 1 plus 2 plus 3, all the way to 17, is 153. It is a triangle with 17 rows.
Engineering InferenceThe number in the net is the number under Archimedes' fraction. The gospel of a fisherman carries the measure of the fish.
Cast the net on the right side of the ship, and ye shall find.
In Italian the almond is called the mandorla. For 1,400 years, on three continents, painters and sculptors put the holy one inside it.
Engineering InferenceOne circle is heaven and one circle is earth. The figure in the almond belongs to both.
In Matthew 6:22 Jesus says: “The light of the body is the eye: if therefore thine eye be single, thy whole body shall be full of light.”
Documented RecordThe Greek word is haplous, ἁπλοῦς. It means single, simple, without a fold.
Engineering InferenceYou live in one circle at a time, the bills on Monday and the prayer on Sunday. The single eye stands in the almond and sees both circles at once. That is what the fish opens inside of you.
The fish is a doorway. You are standing in it.
The measurements are plain geometry and you can check them with a compass and a ruler. 265 over 153 is close to the square root of 3 and is not equal to it. The reading that ties Archimedes' 153 to the 153 fish of John 21 is marked Engineering Inference. John gives the count and does not explain it.
Documented Record Stated in the source text, or measured from the drawing. Tradition Handed down in the sanctuary's own story. Engineering Inference A connection drawn across sources.