“Do you remember my laughing at you as a boy because you translated Diodorus Siculus literally, ‘They _touched_ one another because of extreme need,’ when it ought to have been, ‘They _fed on_ one another’? I quoted to you, at the time, the saying of Pythagoras, ‘Do not _touch_ a white cock,’ _i.e._ ‘do not _feed on_ it.’ There are many instances of this meaning. Well, the Christians believed that they _fed on_ Christ. His _‘flesh and blood was mixed’ with theirs_—or they were ‘_mixed_’ with his—when they _fed on_ him in their sacred meal. If there were some Greek traditions saying ‘they _touched_ him,’ meaning ‘they _fed on_ him,’ there would naturally be other traditions about ‘_touching_’ Jesus meaning that they ‘_handled_’ him. The latter would suggest that they touched the wounds in his body inflicted during the crucifixion.” I remembered my boyish mistake, and I saw clearly that Christians would have had much more excuse for making a similar one. Scaurus added, “This also explains Ignatius’s curious use of ‘take’ (as in Mark and Matthew).” At first I could not understand what Scaurus meant; but on looking at Ignatius’s Greek, which Scaurus gave me, I perceived that the words were not “_Take hold of me_, handle me,” but “_Take_,” _i.e._ “_Take_ me,” or “_Take_ my body (as a whole).” Now “_take_” is similarly used by Mark and Matthew in the sentence “_Take_, eat, this is my body,” where Mark omits “eat.” “Moreover,” continued Scaurus, “Luke goes on to relate that Jesus said to the disciples, ‘Have ye anything to eat?’ and that _they gave_ him some broiled fish, and that he ate in their presence. Christians in Rome have been in the habit—it would take too long to explain why—of using FISH as the emblem of Christ. The sense requires ‘_he gave_,’ not ‘_they gave_.’ I think Luke has confused ‘_he gave_’ with ‘_they gave_.’ The confusion, in Greek, might arise from one erroneous letter.” After giving me several instances of such confusion, he said, “I should not be surprised if some later gospel stated the fact more correctly, namely, that _Christ gave_ the disciples ‘fish’.” This I afterwards found to be the case in the fourth gospel.