Today in Sunday school, as an aside to the lesson, we learned about the ichthus, or "Jesus fish", as it's often called - you know, the little guy on everyone's bumpers in the church parking lot.
Supposedly, in the early days of the church, when Christians were heavily persecuted, a person, upon meeting someone they suspected might be a fellow believer, would draw an arc in the dirt (or in chocolate cookie dough, in my imagination).
If their new friend was indeed a Christian, they would add another arch to the drawing...
One of the Greek words for fish is ichthus, spelled IXΘYΣ...
...and if our friends had drawn their fish in cookie dough...
...then after they had transferred the pieces to a cookie sheet...
...and baked them...
...they might have melted some almond bark, or white chocolate chips...
...and transferred them to the Roman equivalent of a Ziploc baggie...
...so they could pipe on the letters, which to them would not just spell out fish, but could also stand for the first letters of a clever backronym (isn't that just the coolest word - it's like an acronym, but backwards), where I stands for Iesous (Jesus)...
...X - CH - Christos (Christ)...
...Θ - Th - Theos (God)...
...Y - U - Huios (Son)...
...Σ - S - Soter (Savior)...
...or, Jesus Christ, Son of God, Savior. Pretty neat, don't you think?
It's great to be a homeschooler.
4 comments:
This is GREAT! I love the things you come up with. I am going to do this with my kids this week.
This is fantastic. Love it!
I didn't know the meaning behind those letters, thanks for enlightening me.
Very interesting; I had no idea!
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