Why the fish? Or what does it really symbolize etc?
As a Kid, someone told me that all it meant was that the car owner worked for Captain Highliner . For the longest time I believed them.
The Greek word for fish is ichthos, or and the first letters of Jesus Christ are I Ch (iota chi) in Greek.
The word Icthus in Greek is said to form an acronym of the phrase Jesus Christ God’s Son Saviour (it only works in Greek) - this may be the origin, or it may be something that was imposed afterwards, the symbol being used to represent ‘fishers of men’.
Apparently it represents other things; a very similar symbol was used before Christianity to represent the female genitalia; there are those that insist there is a link between this and Christian usage of it (wishful thinking on their part, I believe).
Others claim that Christians should not use it as it is somehow ‘polluted’ by previous non-Christian usage. IMHO they ought to start rethinking their stance on the symbol of the cross too and while they are at it, explain why they are happy to use the roman alphabet (a set of symbols that has been used to convey some pretty horrific and ungodly concepts in its time).
Hmm, I always thought it was a picture-pun based on
Matthew 4:19: “Follow Me, and I will make you fishers of men”. Displaying the fish shows you’ve been ‘caught’ by the Lord. Or something. This is just my own interpretation.
Back in the catacombs days, the early Christians used this symbol in graffiti to identify themselves. Without wishing to be irreverent, there is some similiarity here to the way street gangs currently use graffiti as a shorthand method of communication; policemen sometimes attend seminars to learn to decipher gang signs left spray painted on walls, traffic signs, etc.
To follow up on an earlier post, the Greek word for “fish” serves as an anagram for a phrase St. Paul used in the Epistles to describe Jesus. I had thought the phrase was sometimes given as “Jesus Christ, Lord God and Savior”, but surely there are people better qualified to discuss this than me.
A couple more thoughts: some years ago a local religious broadcaster in St. Louis visited a friend of mine at her office. She is Catholic, and she had a small statue of The Child King of Prague, a traditional representation of Jesus which she had been given by a friend of eastern European derivation, on her desk. He informed her, loftily, that this was a “graven image”. His own offices were plastered with Kitsch paintings of Christ and Jesus fish.
It would appear that the Jesus fish so beloved of many evangelical Christians is a “graven image of a thing under the sea”, and the making of such is strictly prohibited by The Ten Commandments, a point which such folks who claim to be Biblical literalists–such as the aforementioned broadcaster–ought to find that interesting to chew on.
Another friend of mine, a Jew, used to put a “Darwin” fish on her car, but she kept finding them busted off, generally after she parked her car in order to attend a conference where evangelical Christians participated. I have not heard of any similar complaints of vandalism from people with Jesus fish.
What I find humorous is that the Jesus fish evolved into… the Darwin fish, which evolved into… the “Truth” fish… which denies evolution.
Continuing the hijack:
My favorite is tthe bigger “truth” fish, eating the smaller “darwin” fish. It’s natural selection in action!
I want someone to put something along the lines of He or a pictorial representation of a helium atom, since handwriting alpha kinda looks like a fish.
While this is a common story it is completely folklore.
umm? Cite?
While this may be simply an issue of semantics regarding the understanding of "used this symbol in graffiti to identify themselves, " the fish was an early symbol used by Christians. If you mean that they did not scrawl the ikon at the edge of caves where they were hiding, you could be correct, but it would still be nice to see a reference. If you mean that they never used the symbol in any context, I would definitely like to see that documented.
The Catholic Encyclopedia records the symbol in Christian catacombs in the early second century along with a letter from Clement of Alexandria suggesting its use dating to around 150.
We’ve had discussions on ICHTHUS every so often going back to the AOL board.
The acronym theory goes:
[symbol]ICFUS[/symbol]
I = Iesous (Jesus) [symbol]Iesous[/symbol]
CH = CHristos (Christ) [symbol]Cristos[/symbol]
TH = THeo (of God) [symbol]Few[/symbol]
U = 'Uios (Son) '[symbol]Uios[/symbol]
S = Soter (Savior) [symbol]Sothr[/symbol]
The arguments for include the prevalence of the fish as an early icon in Christianity and the fact that it makes a neat package. There is, indeed, a tradition in art of using initials to represent well understood words and that initials were not unknown in the Roman Empire (remember S.P.Q.R.)
The arguments against include the fact that acronyms, as such, were not common in the ancient world (interestingly, a couple of ancient writers did use acronyms as pseudonymns) and that acronyms need a fairly literate population to be effective, and the early christians can not be supposed to have been very literate.
The oldest attestation that I can find for the ICHTHUS = Fish = Jesus dates only to the late nineteenth century. This indicates that it could have been simply speculation by a person at that time.
Fish as an icon for Jesus or Christianity is generally recognized to be linked to the statement of Jesus to Peter and company that they would be “fishers of men” along with reinforcing miracles of the loaves and fishes and of the bursting nets.
When I took a bible class we were told that back in the early days of Xianity, when it was illegal, people would hang fish in their windows to let the insiders know that that was where the ‘meeting’ was taking place that week (or that day, I can’t remember if it was daily or weekly.)
That may be a moot issue now. I understand that in modern Greek the word ichthys is not used for “fish.”
As for the “Darwin fish,” to this day I have not heard of fish fossils with half-formed limbs (incidentally, fish, like snakes, don’t chew their prey; the teeth are just used to trap the prey; source, L. M. Boyd). Fish scales are of dermal origin and their loss is quite a serious matter; reptiles’ scales are of epidermal origin and are, of course, routinely shed.
I have also noticed that in religious art, scenes of the crucifixion show a small sign reading “INRI” (from the Latin; Cecil mentions this in the first Straight Dope book, which see) over Jesus’ head. In John 19, of course, the message put there by Pilate is fully spelled out and in Hebrew, Latin, and Greek. The representations shown in medieval paintings suggests to me that the painters were good Catholics; and by dint of that, they ignored the existence of languages other than Latin, and also preferred to replace real messages with a kind of artistic shorthand.
I always thought that it had something to do with the miracle of the fish and bread.
benson, the Catholic Encyclopedia article linked above agrees that the “loaves and fish” miracle was associated with the symbol.