minitru.org (Warning: This is a comic-strip style tract a la Jack Chick. But unlike Chick tracts, this one should be rated “R”.)
It looks like the early Christians appropriated yet another pagan symbol as their own. If this story is true, the fish was originally a symbol representing the source of human life, the vagina. The tract further says that two hands cupped in prayer also represents the vagina. It also sheds new light on the origin of the Jonah story (and maybe the end of Pinocchio). It also gives the (allegedly) real reason Catholics are supposed to eat fish on Friday.
Read the tract and maybe we can answer a few questions:
Is any of it true?
If it is, should Christians keep using this symbol? (After all, it wouldn’t really be yours.)
Hi, Opal!
Who the hell is the guy smoking a pipe in the last panel?
(I put this in GD just in case it turns into another witnessing thread. also, my thanks to Marvel for posting this link in the Jack Chick thread in the Pit.)
A lot of it is true. Some of it is invented and some of it is given special emphasis outside historical context. *
Why should we give up a symbol that we have remade for our purposes (much as we have remade the Saturnalia, Passover, or any number of ceremonies, feasts, symbols, or words)?
Isn’t that Bob, of the Church of the Subgenius? (Not sure of that.)
The interlinked parentheses as a symbol for the Goddess are, indeed, quite ancient.
The etymology of Mary seems wrong. Mary was a Gentile corruption of Miriam which is generally considered to be “of obscure origin” but is occasionally thought to have meant “bitterness.” The author appears to want to link Mary (Maria, whatever) to the IndoEuropean root that gave us the Latin mare, maris, “sea.” However, by taking too many shortcuts with his etymology and linking it directly to Hebrew Miryam, he undermines his credibility. (The same thing is true of his reference to the goddess, Kundu. There is an etymological link, but it is long and twisted and there is no indication that the name of the goddess “gave” us any current slang terms. If the Hebrew word nun does mean fish, it is a coincidence since the English word for a woman member of a religious order came from a Latin word with no connection to fish or Hebrew.
It is possible that the Yoni symbol on early pictures of Jesus and Mary did, indeed, derive from the concept of fertility. Note, however, that the Christian ICHTHYS symbol is never presented standing on its tail, but always parallel to the horizon. This does not “prove” that the symbols are unrelated, but a change of orientation in symbology is usually rather important, and can indicate that the symbols are unrelated.
Back on the AOL/SDMB, George (Crimson HipsterDufuz) took issue with the idea that the fish was related to the ICHTHYS acronym on the (valid) grounds that acronyms generally require widespread literacy and are not often seen before the nineteenth century. My reply, then, (which in no way demolished his objection) was that we do, in fact, have a few instances of acronyms or abbreviations showing up in fairly old artwork. That issue is unresolved.
The references to Jesus as a Fisher of Men, however, are easily and widely cited to the first and second centuries. Whether they employed the specific symbol we see on bumpers, today, is more problematic.
Well, I’d take this with a grain of salt, as the Hebrew seems to be crap.
The name Mary almost definitely comes from Miryam, a very common Hebrew name, which first appears in the Bible as the name of sister of Moses. She is famous for leading the song sung after the crossing of the Red Sea (Exodus something-or -another). The word “Mar” in Hebrew means, indeed “bitter” (ignore the different vowel; vowels in Hebrew are of little consequence); while “Yam” is Hebrew for “sea”. Any connection with “marine” is almost certainly coincidential.
More importantly, “Nun” does not mean “fish”; the word for that is “Dag”. “Nun”, in fact, is the fourteens letter of the Hebrew alphabet, and corresponds with the letter N. IANAHL (I Am Not A Hebrew Linguist), but as far as I know, the letter has no aquatic connotations.
And yes, that’s definitely Bob. Methinks the Subgenius is pulling another of his hoaxes.
Elias Auerbach, in his very interesting book Moses, claims that “Miriam” is of Egyptian origin (as, many believe, “Moses” is. See Auerbach, not to mention Sigmund Freud’s “Moses and Monotheism”). It is, he claims, derived from “Mrij” = “Beloved”. This sounds plausible, but I’d like to see some corroboration.
Doesn’t the Jesus Fish have something to do with the sun being in the constellation Pisces 2000 years ago? Vague memory about this…I gotta check my references…
The so-called “Chinese Great Mother” mentioned in the tract, “Kwan-Yin” or Guanyin, has through much of history been a male bodhisattva of mercy and compassion. Only after the 7th Century C.E. was this figure depicted as female, some representations being directly inspired by the western Virgin Mary. This later Guanyin sometimes appears accompanied by a woman holding a fish, but I’ve never heard of his/her appearing as a fish himself/herself. The name Kwan-shi-yin is most often translated as “One Who Contemplates the Sound [or “Supplications”] of the World,” and never, so far as I have found, as anything to do with female anatomy. Just another inaccuracy to supplement those already mentioned by others.
The Church of the SubGenius is a great deal of fun, but inasmuch as it is a parody of apocalyptic cults, its adherents are not to be taken very seriously on points of fact pertaining to religion. Those of my acquaintance are charming and entertaining folks, but it’s important to bear in mind that their slogans include, “Pull the wool over your OWN eyes!” and “You’ll PAY to know what you REALLY think!”
Whatever connection may exist between the vertical and horizontal versions of this symbol is surely not as simple and direct as the author(s) of this tract would have you believe. For one thing, no evidence is presented for any of the claims, and an awful lot is left to interpretation. The subtextual image of the early Christians as a monolithic authority that calculatedly and cynically ripped off other religions to appease them and/or to gain converts simply rings false. These people are more usually remembered by the numerous martyrdoms of the first through third centuries. The irony is that the presentation parodies a Chick tract, while the content is every bit as narrowmindedly dogmatic and lacking in substance, only in a different direction, and it’s only slightly better written. Admittedly, some of the other “anti-tracts” do a much better job of parodying Chick and the moral and philosophical holes in his worldview, but this one is unconvincing.
Finally, let’s not forget that we’re talking about a time when virtually every Christian was a convert from some pagan religion. If they did bring along this particular pagan symbol, was not pagan symbolism theirs to use and adapt as they saw fit? Isn’t the real “Great Debate” whether any of this matters anyway? Even assuming that everything in this tract were true, what difference would it make? It’s not as though there are a bunch of primitive fertility worshipers currently being offended by the co-opting of their favorite symbol, and if there were, one might point out that the time to complain about it was nineteen hundred years ago.
Maybe now we can turn our attention to the intentional fallacy and how it applies to the Confederate flag.
“Moses” is definately of Egyptian origin. He was so named by the Pharaoh’s daughter, because she drew him out of the water. I doubt she gave him a Hebrew name.
Punoqllads: You might want to read Freud or Auerbach, or any of a number of Bible commentaries on this. For those of us who do not believe in the literal truth of the biblical account (I’m one of those darned agnostics. I’m not an atheist, 'cause I don’t want to be damned.) there is still good reason to believe that “Moses” is of Egyptian origin. “–muse” is the ending of many an Egyptian name. It means “Child (of)”, and the beginning is the name of a god, as is “Ramses” = “child of Ra”, or “Thutmose” = “Child of Thoth”. These are theophorus names, just as an awful lot of names in the world are (“Godiva”, from “God gifu”, and “Theodore” both mean “gift of God” in old English and Greek, respectively. I suspect most theophorus names really mean that, in essence.).
“Moses” would either originally have had the name of a god at the front (which was later removed as blasphemous or inappropriate), or was deliberately formed without it (because the True Name of the Hebrew God was unpronounceable?). The original form “Moishe” resembles “–muse” so closely that the case is compelling. Both are even given the same final “-s” in Greek that is not present in the original, but shows up in the forms we are most familiar with: “Moses” and “Rameses”.
I have heard of the Church of the SubGenius, but I’m not familiar with it enough to identify their work. And that website never uses that name. Instead, it calls itself the “Luciferian Liberation Front.”
I realized most of the tracts and articles were in jest because of their constant references to aliens and UFOs. But some of that “Fish” tract seemed legitimate, so I started the thread.
My dad mentioned this hypothesis to me a couple times. The claim is that 2000 years ago, the equinox point passed out of the house of Aries and into the house of Pisces. (A “house” is the area around a Zodiacal constellation, adjusted in size so that it’s exactly 1/12 the width of the sky.) Thus, so goes the theory, we passed from the “age of Aries” to the “age of Pisces.” (Recently, the equinox point supposedly passed into the house of Aquarius, leading to the hit single “This is the Dawning of the Age of Aquarius” in the 1960s).
Jesus, the “sacrificial lamb of God”, died to symbolize the passing away of the age of Aries. 'Cause Aries is the ram, and a lamb is a baby ram, get it? He started using all this fish imagery to signify our passage into the age of Pisces.
The theory then goes on to speculate even more wildly, claiming that 2000 years earlier, we passed into the age of Aries from the age of Taurus. Remember that scene in Exodus where Moses condemns the worship of the golden calf? Well, that’s 'cause Taurus is a bull, and a calf is a baby bull, and the Israelites weren’t supposed to worship the previous age’s symbol any more!
I suppose that means that a new religious symbol based on water or waves should be catching on about now…
As for the theory about the Age of Taurus and the golden calf, the Israelites would have had to make the same interpretations of star patterns as the Greeks/Romans to independently come up with the Taurus constellation. I doubt it happened; when I look up at the stars, I only see various liquor bottles.
The Zodiacal constellations were of Babylonian origin, IIRC, and known throughout the Middle East. One of the various “explanations” of the Star of Bethlehem has the Magi (Zoroastrian scholar/astrologers) going to Jerusalem because the “star” – the conjunction of several planets that did take place at that time, according to astrology – was in Pisces, which was assigned to the Jews according to some arcane sign=country gimmick the Magi had going. (While I hold little truck with Zoroastrianism, astrology, or Star of Bethlehem explanations, it’s at least self-consistent, and exactly the sort of goofball, unexpected twist on human “wisdom” that is typical of God’s interventions, at least in my experience.)
Which brings us to Aquarius. I don’t have a clue who this was supposed to be originally, but the myth associated with the constellation says that the constellation was created to appease Laomedon, Priam’s predecessor as King of the Trojans, when Zeus stole his youngest son, Ganymedes, to be his cupbearer and, well, catamite (the words are from the same source). I’m working on plotting out a novel based on the implications of this symbology, except that reality keeps getting in the way.
As I understand it, it is the sacred duty of every SubGenius minister (motto: “Donations Cheerfully Accepted!”) to form his or her own schism, or “clench.” The presence of images of J.R. “Bob” Dobbs, High Epopt, Patron Saint of Sales, etc., strongly suggests that that’s what the “Luciferian Liberation Front” is. Maybe not. Whoever they are, nothing about their website is likely to inspire great confidence in their factual accuracy, however much one might admire their intentions.
The temple at Delphi was dedicated to Appolo. Off the top of my head, Thetis is the only Greek goddess who could be described as “fish goddess of the abyss”. Frankly, Thetis was something of a minor deity.
The tract in question is definitely SubGenius. Whether the authors' believe it to be true is open to question. It would be in line with SubGenius philosophy to spread Pagan fundamentalist lies to combat Christian fundamentalist lies (I mean that Jack T Chick tracts and the like contain lies, not Christianity in general). This gets all the fundies busy fighting each other instead of bothering us.
The temple at Delphi was dedicated to Appolo. Off the top of my head, Thetis is the only Greek goddess who could be described as “fish goddess of the abyss”. Frankly, Thetis was something of a minor deity.
The tract in question is definitely SubGenius. Whether the authors' believe it to be true is open to question. It would be in line with SubGenius philosophy to spread Pagan fundamentalist lies to combat Christian fundamentalist lies (I mean that Jack T Chick tracts and the like contain lies, not Christianity in general). This gets all the fundies busy fighting each other instead of bothering us.
How very convenient! For those who haven’t yet noticed, the current “Weird Earl’s” is a link to http://www.subgenius.com for the answers to all your questions about “Bob,” Slack, and other matters. “Slack Off!” “Have Intercourse with a Beautiful Live Girl!” “Etc.!”
