DrMaddVibe
no one thinks of the gefilte inside as mocking christians.
here is some information that you probably don't know about.
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What is the origin of the Christian fish symbol?
The Greek word for fish is "ichthys." As early as the first century, Christians made an acrostic from this word: Iesous Christos Theou Yios Soter, i.e. Jesus Christ, Son of God, Savior. The fish has plenty of other theological overtones as well, for Christ fed the 5,000 with 2 fishes and 5 loaves (a meal recapitulated in Christian love-feasts) and called his disciples "fishers of men." Water baptism, practiced by immersion in the early church, created a parallel between fish and converts.
Second-century theologian Tertullian put it this way: "we, little fishes, after the image of our
Ichthys, Jesus Christ, are born in the water."
Greeks, Romans, and many other pagans used the fish symbol before Christians. Hence the fish, unlike, say, the cross, attracted little suspicion, making it a perfect secret symbol for persecuted believers. When threatened by Romans in the first centuries after Christ, Christians used the fish mark meeting places and tombs, or to distinguish friends from foes.
According to one ancient story, when a Christian met a stranger in the road, the Christian sometimes drew one arc of the simple fish outline in the dirt. If the stranger drew the other arc, both believers knew they were in good company. Current bumper-sticker and business-card uses of the fish hearken back to this
practice.
Critics of the fish symbol either decry it as tacky tokenism or point out that the fish still carries
baggage from the days when pagans used it to represent fertility or, more specifically, the female
reproductive organs. Though I agree that ichthys symbols in phone-book ads seem to commercialize faith, I don't find the pagan argument compelling. No symbol means the same thing to all people at all times. That early Christians succeeded in transforming an already
powerful symbol proves their interpretive creativity, not their ignorance or a tendency to syncretism.
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The History of the Christian Fish Symbol
The fish's first known use as a Christian religious symbol was sometime within the first three centuries AD. Christians began using the Greek word for "fish" as an anagram/acronym for "Jesus Christ God's Son, Savior." More about this later.
The fish outline is a logical symbol for the early Christian church to adopt. Not only was fish a
common food of the day, it was also used by Jesus during His ministry.
Mark 1:17 "Come after Me, and I will make you become fishers of men." Matthew 12:40 "...Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the great fish, so will the Son of Man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth." Matthew 14:17 "And they said to Him, 'We have here only five loaves and two fish.'" Luke 5:6 "And when they had done this, they caught a great number of fish, and their net was
breaking." Luke 24:42 "So they gave Him a piece of a broiled fish and some honeycomb." John 21:6 "And He said to them, 'Cast the net on the right side of the boat, and you will find some.' So they cast, and now they were not able to draw it in because of the multitude of fish."
A 'fishy' tale?
In the years following the ascension of the resurrected Jesus to heaven, the Christian church grew
rapidly. Christians soon found themselves to be the subjects of persecution by both the Romans and the
Jews. In many locales, it became dangerous to be known as a Christian. Thus, when two strangers met and thought maybe they were fellow believers, one of them would draw, on the ground, the upper half of the fish symbol.
Recognizing the symbol, the stranger would add a second curved line and complete the drawing of a fish.
It is a very simple shape to draw - just two curved strokes. It could be drawn quickly, and erased just as quickly if there was no sign of recognition on the part of the stranger.
The 'Greek' connection, #1
We do not know whether the story above is true but we do know that the fish's first known use as a Christian religious symbol was sometime within the first three centuries AD. Possibly around the 16th century Christians began using the Greek word ichthys for "fish". Ichthys is the most commonly used word in the New Testament for fish. Ichthys consists of five letters from the Greek alphabet: I-ch-th-y-s. When these five letters are used as initials for five words, we obtain this Christian Declaration: Iesous Christos Theou Yios Soter. This is an acrostic for 'Jesus Christ, God's Son, Savior.'
IXQUS ----- Ichthys ----- Jesus Christ, God's Son, Savior
I Iota the first letter in the Greek word Iesous Jesus
X Chi the first letter in the Greek word Christos Christ Q Theta the first letter in the Greek word Theos Of God U Upsilon the first letter in the Greek word Yios (Huois) Son S Sigma the first letter in the Greek word Soter Savior
Greek meaning Iesous Christos Theos Yios Soter
English transliteration ... Jesus Christ Of God Son Savior
The 'Greek' connection, #2
The Greek symbol for Alpha, the first letter of the Greek alphabet, looks very much like the fish
symbol. Rev 22:13 "I am the Alpha and the Omega, the First and the Last, the Beginning and the End."
Rev 1:8 "I am the Alpha and the Omega," says the Lord God, "who is, and who was, and who is to come, the Almighty.
The 'keyboard' fish .
Use smaller then followed by the large then, followed by the smaller then. this site won't accept the symbols.
Acrostic By taking the first letter of each of the words, another word can be made up. This is a
form of word game called an acrostic. It doesn't work in English, but in Greek, the first letters do
make up a word, and that word means "fish". The equivalent of these five Greek letters in English
is I CH TH Y S. In modern English, we do have words derived from this Greek word "ichthys" ichthyology, for example, is the name given to the scientific study of fish. Transliteration Merriam-Webster's Dictionary: "to represent or spell in the characters of another alphabet"
theYin. Can be transliterated in a Y or U. (Ixqus or Ixqys, Ichthys or Ichthus, Yios or Huios)
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True Origin of Christian "FISH" Symbol Might Outrage, Shock Jesus Worshippers
For many pop-culture Christians, the "fish" decal on the back car bumper, or attached to a key chain or door is a symbol of their religion, and a feel-good statement about Jesus Christ. Early Christians used the fish as a recognition sign of their religion. It is also identified as the "Ichthus," an acronym from the Greek, "Lesous Christos Theou Uios Soter," or "Jesus Christ the Son of God, Saviour." Oxford English Dictionary (C.E.) defines "Ichthyic" as "of, pertaining to, or characteristic of fishes; the fish world in all its orders."
But contemporary Jesus worshippers might be surprised, even outraged, to learn that one of their preeminent religious symbols antedated the Christian religion, and has its roots in pagan fertility awareness and sexuality. Barbara G. Walker writes in "The Woman's Dictionary of Symbols and Sacred Objects," that the acronym pertaining to Jesus Christ was a "rationale invented after the fact... Christians simply copied this pagan symbol along with many others." Ichthys was the offspring son of the ancient Sea goddess Atargatis, and was known in various mythic systems as
Tirgata, Aphrodite, Pelagia or Delphine. The word also meant "womb" and "dolphin" in some tongues, and representations of this appeared in the depiction of mermaids. The fish also a central element in other stories, including the Goddess of Ephesus (who has a fish amulet covering her genital region), as well as the tale of the fish that swallowed the **** of Osiris, and was also considered a symbol of the vulva of Isis.
Along with being a generative and reproductive spirit in mythology, the fish also has been identified in certain cultures with reincarnation and the life force. Sir James George Frazer noted in his work, "Adonis, Attis, Osiris: Studies in the History of Oriental Religion" (Part Four of his larger work, "The Golden Bough") that among one group in India, the fish was believed to house a deceased soul, and that as part of a fertility ritual specific fish is eaten in the belief that it will be reincarnated in a newborn child.
Well before Christianity, the fish symbol was known as "the Great Mother," a pointed oval sign,the "vesica piscis" or Vessel of the Fish. "Fish" and "womb" were synonymous terms in ancient Greek,"delphos." Its link to fertility, birth, feminine sexuality and the natural force of women was acknowledged also by the Celts, as well as pagan cultures throughout northern Europe. Eleanor Gaddon traces a "Cult of the Fish Mother" as far back as the hunting and fishing people of the Danube River Basin in the sixth millennium B.C.E. Over fifty shrines have been found throughout the region which depict a fishlike deity, a female creature who "incorporates aspects of an egg, a fish and a woman which could have been a primeval creator or a mythical ancestress..." The "Great Goddess" was portrayed elsewhere with pendulous breasts, accentuated buttocks and a conspicuous vaginal orifice, the upright "vesica piscis" which Christians later adopted and rotated 90-degrees to serve as their symbol.
Along with the fish used as a code sign for early Christian communities, the ichthys also found its
way into the ritual and decor of church rites. One case in point is the church mitre worn by prelates. Where did this originate? Dr. Thomas Inman discussed this phenomenon in his two volume opus, "Ancient Faiths Embodied in Ancient Names," (1869). He included a representation of a sculpture from Mesopotamia, observing "It is the impression of an ancient gem, and
represents a man clothed with a fish, the head being the mitre; priests thus clothed, often bearing in their hand the mystic bag..."
"In almost every instance," added Inman, "it will be recognized that the fish's head is represented as of the same form as the modern bishop's mitre." The fish also appears in another sacred iconograph, the Avatars of Vishnu, where the deity "is represented as emerging from the mouth of a fish, and being a fish himself; the legend being that he was to be the Saviour of the world in a deluge which was to follow..."
From its focus of worshipping a god-man born of a virgin to the selection of holidays and symbols, Christianity appropriated the metaphors of earlier pagan religions, grafting them into its own account of the creation and beyond. Few Jesus worshippers are aware of this. Even fewer know that when they flaunt the "Ichthus" or Ichthys on a tee-shirt, car bumper or even the door of a state legislative office as a representation which originated in Christianity, they are in fact, displaying a more ancient symbol indicative of female anatomy and reproductive potency -- the very sign of the Great Mother.
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The pre-Christian history of the fish symbol:
The fish symbol has been used for millennia worldwide as a religious symbol associated with the Pagan Great Mother Goddess. It is the outline of her vulva. The fish symbol was often drawn by overlapping two very thin crescent moons. One represented the crescent shortly before the new moon; the other shortly after, when the moon is just visible. The Moon is the heavenly body that has long been associated with the Goddess, just as the sun is a symbol of the God.
The link between the Goddess and fish was found in various areas of the ancient world:
In China, Great Mother Kwan-yin often portrayed in the shape of a fish
In India, the Goddess Kali was called the "fish-eyed one"
In Egypt, Isis was called the Great Fish of the Abyss
In Greece the Greek word "delphos" meant both fish and womb. The word is derived from the
location of the ancient Oracle at Delphi who worshipped the original fish goddess, Themis. The
later fish Goddess, Aphrodite Salacia, was worshipped by her followers on her sacred day, Friday.
They ate fish and engaging in orgies. From her name comes the English word "salacious" which means lustful or obscene. Also from her name comes the name of our fourth month, April. In later centuries, the Christian church adsorbed this tradition by requiring the faithful to eat fish on Friday - a tradition that was only recently abandoned.
In ancient Rome Friday is called "dies veneris" or Day of Venus, the Pagan Goddess of Love. Throughout the Mediterranean, mystery religions used fish, wine and bread for their sacramental meal.
In Scandinavia, the Great Goddess was named Freya; fish were eaten in her honor. The 6th day of the week was named "Friday" after her.
In the Middle East, the Great Goddess of Ephesus was portrayed as a woman with a fish amulet
over her genitals.
The fish symbol "was so revered throughout the Roman empire that Christian authorities insisted
on taking it over, with extensive revision of myths to deny its earlier female-genital
meanings...Sometimes the Christ child was portrayed inside the vesica, which was superimposed
on Mary's belly and obviously represented her womb, just as in the ancient symbolism of the
Goddess." 4 Another author writes: "The fish headdress of the priests of Ea [a Sumero-Semitic
God] later became the miter of the Christian bishops." 5
The symbol itself, the eating of fish on Friday and the association of the symbol with deity were all
taken over by the early Church from Pagan sources. Only the sexual component was deleted.
