[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iyQtqdIsurU]
Have you ever heard this exclamation? Its been around since at least the mid 1800's (where we can find it in print from Mark Twain's autobiography). I recently came across an article about the origins of how people may have come to think that Jesus' middle name might begin with an H. It was one of the things that prompted this series of (Sometimes not so) Obvious Things we find in Christianity.
Before we get into the most likely explanation, I found some pretty strange or funny explanations elsewhere online that are worth going over.
One funny one - many children give the answer "Harold" - from Jesus' prayer that he taught us - "Our Father, who art in Heaven, Harold be thy name",
One seemingly very unlikely but popular one - the biologist might say "Haploid". Haploid cells are cells that contain only one set of chromosomes, and Jesus as having only one human parent might fit that description.
Many also say it stands for "holy" or "Hebrew".
Notice that all of these rely on the English language for their answers, which is another (sometimes not so) obvious thing about about Christianity - JESUS WASN'T AN AMERICAN WHITE DUDE. But we'll get to that one later...
The first thing we need to understand is how we get the name "Jesus" to begin with. The name Jesus is an Anglicized form of the Latin name Iesus, which is in turn a Latinized form of the ancient Greek name Ἰησοῦς (Iēsoũs), which is, in turn, a Hellenized form of Jesus's original name in ancient Palestinian Aramaic, which was יֵשׁוּעַ (yēšūă‘), a shortened form of the earlier Hebrew name יְהוֹשֻׁעַ (y'hoshuaʿ), which means "Yahweh is Salvation." It was a common name in those times, and indeed, the transliteration of his name into English, Joshua, is still a common one. It is, in fact, my oldest son's name.
Now, its gets a little complicated here, (but not really) Follow with me here... There were a couple of ways of abbreviating the name Jesus in ancient times. One way was to use the first two letters or characters of a person's name. In Greek the word "Christus" (Χριστός) were spelled with the Greek letters chi ⟨Χ⟩ and rho ⟨Ρ⟩. In many churches, you'll see a symbol much like the one pictured here. We call it a Chi-Rho (original, eh?) It is a symbol for the word "Christ". Incidentally, when you see people use the phrase "X-mas" around Christmastime, this is where the "X" comes from. It is literally a symbol for "Christ" - some well meaning, maybe, but uninformed people think that using X-mas is crossing out the Christ from Christmas. Its not (necessarily - I suppose it depends on the intention of the person using it)
Another symbol comes from the Greek word for "Jesus" - ΙΗΣΟΥΣ. Translated into Latin, these letters look like IHC. The Greek letter iota is represented by I, and the eta by H, while the Greek letter sigma is either in its early form, represented by C, or its final form, represented by S. Because the Latin-alphabet letters I and J were not really distinguished until the 17th century, "JHS" and "JHC" are equivalent to "IHS" and "IHC". (Confused yet?)
You may see one of the variations of this symbol in many churches as well. Most of my vestments have this monogram featured on them prominently:
[caption id="attachment_1330" align="alignnone" width="1378"]
Me and my mom :)[/caption]
Notice how the "I" looks like a "J". Now, my vestments have the "S" on them, but the early symbol would have looked like "JHC" - and people assumed that the J stood for Jesus, the C for Christ and naturally assumed the the H must have been his middle name. Nevermind that "Christ" is NOT Jesus' last name, but that's a whole other post.
One other thing... you'll notice in the image above of the "ihc" symbol, there is a ~ going through the h. This was to let the reader know that it was a contraction of the name, and not meant to be spoken the way it was spelled. That little ~ has since been stylized (like on my vestments) to look like a cross, but that was not the original intention. Its interesting to see how these things evolve over time.
Us English speaking people aren't the only one's who saw something here that wasn't there... some early Latin writers pondered that the letters meant "Jesus Hominum Salvator" - "Jesus our Savior", which really, might be the closest thing to the truth (remember that y'hoshua means "Yahweh is Salvation) even though it was derived in a roundabout way.
So, there you have it. Now, if I could just figure out where the phrase "Going to Hell in a hand basket" came from, two of my childhood questions would be answered.
JESUS H. CHRIST!
Have you ever heard this exclamation? Its been around since at least the mid 1800's (where we can find it in print from Mark Twain's autobiography). I recently came across an article about the origins of how people may have come to think that Jesus' middle name might begin with an H. It was one of the things that prompted this series of (Sometimes not so) Obvious Things we find in Christianity.
Before we get into the most likely explanation, I found some pretty strange or funny explanations elsewhere online that are worth going over.
One funny one - many children give the answer "Harold" - from Jesus' prayer that he taught us - "Our Father, who art in Heaven, Harold be thy name",
One seemingly very unlikely but popular one - the biologist might say "Haploid". Haploid cells are cells that contain only one set of chromosomes, and Jesus as having only one human parent might fit that description.
Many also say it stands for "holy" or "Hebrew".
Notice that all of these rely on the English language for their answers, which is another (sometimes not so) obvious thing about about Christianity - JESUS WASN'T AN AMERICAN WHITE DUDE. But we'll get to that one later...
The first thing we need to understand is how we get the name "Jesus" to begin with. The name Jesus is an Anglicized form of the Latin name Iesus, which is in turn a Latinized form of the ancient Greek name Ἰησοῦς (Iēsoũs), which is, in turn, a Hellenized form of Jesus's original name in ancient Palestinian Aramaic, which was יֵשׁוּעַ (yēšūă‘), a shortened form of the earlier Hebrew name יְהוֹשֻׁעַ (y'hoshuaʿ), which means "Yahweh is Salvation." It was a common name in those times, and indeed, the transliteration of his name into English, Joshua, is still a common one. It is, in fact, my oldest son's name.
Now, its gets a little complicated here, (but not really) Follow with me here... There were a couple of ways of abbreviating the name Jesus in ancient times. One way was to use the first two letters or characters of a person's name. In Greek the word "Christus" (Χριστός) were spelled with the Greek letters chi ⟨Χ⟩ and rho ⟨Ρ⟩. In many churches, you'll see a symbol much like the one pictured here. We call it a Chi-Rho (original, eh?) It is a symbol for the word "Christ". Incidentally, when you see people use the phrase "X-mas" around Christmastime, this is where the "X" comes from. It is literally a symbol for "Christ" - some well meaning, maybe, but uninformed people think that using X-mas is crossing out the Christ from Christmas. Its not (necessarily - I suppose it depends on the intention of the person using it)
Another symbol comes from the Greek word for "Jesus" - ΙΗΣΟΥΣ. Translated into Latin, these letters look like IHC. The Greek letter iota is represented by I, and the eta by H, while the Greek letter sigma is either in its early form, represented by C, or its final form, represented by S. Because the Latin-alphabet letters I and J were not really distinguished until the 17th century, "JHS" and "JHC" are equivalent to "IHS" and "IHC". (Confused yet?)You may see one of the variations of this symbol in many churches as well. Most of my vestments have this monogram featured on them prominently:
[caption id="attachment_1330" align="alignnone" width="1378"]
Me and my mom :)[/caption]Notice how the "I" looks like a "J". Now, my vestments have the "S" on them, but the early symbol would have looked like "JHC" - and people assumed that the J stood for Jesus, the C for Christ and naturally assumed the the H must have been his middle name. Nevermind that "Christ" is NOT Jesus' last name, but that's a whole other post.
One other thing... you'll notice in the image above of the "ihc" symbol, there is a ~ going through the h. This was to let the reader know that it was a contraction of the name, and not meant to be spoken the way it was spelled. That little ~ has since been stylized (like on my vestments) to look like a cross, but that was not the original intention. Its interesting to see how these things evolve over time.
Us English speaking people aren't the only one's who saw something here that wasn't there... some early Latin writers pondered that the letters meant "Jesus Hominum Salvator" - "Jesus our Savior", which really, might be the closest thing to the truth (remember that y'hoshua means "Yahweh is Salvation) even though it was derived in a roundabout way.
So, there you have it. Now, if I could just figure out where the phrase "Going to Hell in a hand basket" came from, two of my childhood questions would be answered.
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