ICHQUS
Carl W. Conrad
cwconrad at artsci.wustl.edu
Wed May 26 07:00:01 EDT 1999
At 10:35 PM -0500 5/25/99, Cindy Smith wrote:
>ICQUS is an acronym for IESUS KRISTOS THEOU hUIOS SWTER, or,
>Jesus Christ Son of God Saviour. The acronym also spells the Greek
>word for "fish." The fish, obviously, was an early symbol of the
>secretive Christian communities who hid in fear of Jews and Romans.
>If secret Christians saw the fish symbol on a doorway, they knew
>Christians lived there, and it was what spooks today would call a
>"safe house."
At 8:49 PM -0700 5/25/99, Daniel L Christiansen wrote:
>Cindy Smith's brief reply to Ted's question is probably what most of us
>think of when we consider the ICQUS. However, I think what Ted was
>asking for, was historical support for the idea of the fish being an
>early Christian symbol. I must admit, I don't have the references--I
>have always accepted it a face value, since it "sounds right." How
>un-scholarly of me:)
I can't add anything but more speculation to what Daniel is saying with "it
sounds right." But I've always been a little bit suspicious about the
synoptic story in Mk 1:16-20 and Mt 4:18-22 about the fishermen as
evangelists--the story that seems to be expanded in Luke's account (Lk
5:1-11) of the marvelous catch of fish (or, I suppose, some may really
believe Mk's account and Mt's are condensations of Lk's, a rather 'fishy'
notion, if you ask me). I've wondered too whether the multiplication of
loaves and fishes isn't related, in the Marcan double narratives of
wilderness feedings, to the motif of evangelization. Then I've wondered
whether this is grounded in the ICQUS anagram as a credal formula of the
GREEK-speaking missionary church--all of this casting into question whether
those stories in Mk and Mt didn't arise in a missionary community that was
already a fundamentally Greek-speaking one. This is pure speculation, I
admit (although it wouldn't surprise me if it hasn't occurred to someone
else ere this), but fuel is added to this incipient combustion by the
thought that John's gospel may very well be more historical in placing the
recruitment of Jesus' first followers among the disciples of John the
Baptist, in which case the story of their recruitment by the lakeshore in
Galilee would be a secondary development arising out of stories that
originally focused not on the fact of the recruitment of the "First Four"
but rather upon the thematic identification of disciple/apostle as a
"fisher of men."
Let me just note here, since I have linked Ted Mann's original question and
Cindy Smith's and Daniel Christiansen's responses to my own speculations of
a form-critical and redaction-critical and history-of-tradition nature,
that I am forwarding this message to the Synoptic list just in case members
of that group have any inclination to discuss this question. These
speculations I have raised really DO NOT BELONG on B-Greek but are the very
essence of "grist for the mill" of Synoptic-L. B-Greekers who are
interested should look for any repercussions of this speculation over
there, as it would be inappropriate to continue such a thread on B-Greek.
Carl W. Conrad
Department of Classics, Washington University
Summer: 1647 Grindstaff Road/Burnsville, NC 28714/(828) 675-4243
cwconrad at artsci.wustl.edu
WWW: http://www.artsci.wustl.edu/~cwconrad/
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