The Meaning of IHS (Split from "Black Pope" Thread at OP's Request)

tall73

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According to the information provided in the link I cited the texts are 300 to 400 years old. Do you have anything that you could post that is contrary to the link I provided Tall?

According to the link you gave they are third or fourth CENTURY--not three hundred to four hundred years after the apostles.

A third century work would be in the two hundreds. The earliest NT manuscripts would not come at the beginning of the first century but towards the middle. So a third century Christian work dating from let's say 210 would not be 300 years old. If it was one of Paul's letters it may have been written in the 50's. That would make it about 160 years old.

Also, your article refers to one collection of 11 manuscripts. Three of those are NT manuscripts. Only one of those referenced in your article are among the examples listed in the work I was citing. Here is what your own article says about it:


P46 is the second New Testament manuscript in the Chester Beatty collection (P. II), and was a codex that contained the Pauline Epistlesdating
c. 200.

So your own article dates it at 200. That would be 100-110 years after John is believed to have passed from the scene.

The other items are dated here, which is linked to by your article:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_New_Testament_papyri


That list dates P90 at 150.
 
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tall73

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Do you have anything specific to IHS? That's the question. I certainly understand the aspect of translitteration, but I should remind you Tall that it was posed that this is common practice outside of the Catholic church, by early Protestants, and that referring to Jesus with the letters of IHS is a common practice.

Nothing you have shown so far leads me to conclude that it wasn't.



In which language? Latin? Greek? Chinese? There is no here is no "C" in the Greek.

The Greek manuscripts I think it is safe to say, used Greek. They shortened the name to an abbreviation.

Later folks used this in their own transliterated language. In the Scriptural transmissions there are examples in Armenian, Latin, etc. according to some of the works.

So the original was in Greek ,and was a SIGMA (s sound). The transliteration was sometimes rendered C and sometimes S in the Latin, which was just one place where this occurred.
 
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RND

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According to the link you gave they are third or fourth CENTURY--not three hundred to four hundred years after the apostles.

A third century work would be in the two hundreds. The earliest NT manuscripts would not come at the beginning of the first century but towards the middle. So a third century Christian work dating from let's say 210 would not be 300 years old. If it was one of Paul's letters it may have been written in the 50's. That would make it about 160 years old.

Also, your article refers to one collection of 11 manuscripts. Three of those are NT manuscripts. Only one of those referenced in your article are among the examples listed in the work I was citing. Here is what your own article says about it:


P46 is the second New Testament manuscript in the Chester Beatty collection (P. II), and was a codex that contained the Pauline Epistlesdating
c. 200.

So your own article dates it at 200. That would be 100-110 years after John is believed to have passed from the scene.

The other items are dated here, which is linked to by your article:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_New_Testament_papyri


That list dates P90 at 150.

An you are assuming that these abbreviations were found in all of the manuscripts cited. The article you provided does not state this. Neither does the one I cited. Therefore, you are grasping at straws.
 
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tall73

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Another resource explaining the transition from Greek to Latin.

I will have to address your other objections after my walk.


http://www.archive.org/stream/greeklatin00thomuoft/greeklatin00thomuoft_djvu.txt"An introduction to Greek and Latin palaeography"

With regard to the Latin contracted form of our Lord's name Jesus Christ, it is to be noted that it continued to be written by the later mediaeval scribes in Greek letters and in contracted form as it had been written in uncial -MSS.. thus : TTlS XPS, or IHC XPC. When these words came to be written in minuscule letters, the scribes treated them as if Latin words written in Latin letters, and transcribed them ihs xps, ihc xpc.

Here we have to take account of the new system of contraction which, as described above, was introduced into Greek MSS. of the early Christian period from the Hellenist treatment of the Nomina Sacra, and which was adopted by the Latin scribes from the Greek. On the native Greek system of suspension this new system, as we have seen, had no serious effect. The result was different in the case of Latin MSS. There the system of contraction, once accepted, became predominant, and, although that of suspension was not altogether superseded, yet the elaborated methods employed in the MSS. of the middle ages were in the direction of contraction, not of suspension. By transliterating the contracted forms of the following Nomina Sacra, they appeared in Latin thus: …The form IHS XPS was the first to be used in Latin; a later form IHC XPC appears in English and [FONT=&quot]Irish MSS., and then, from the ninth century, in those of the Continent. [/FONT]
 
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tall73

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tall73

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I should remind you Tall that it was posed that this is common practice outside of the Catholic church, by early Protestants, and that referring to Jesus with the letters of IHS is a common practice.

This is the original contention, made by my wife, that I have been looking at:

http://christianforums.com/showpost.php?p=43194549&postcount=14

It stands for the first three letters of Jesus' name in Greek: ΙΗΣ (transliterated as IHS in English). Τhat's not a bad thing


Now I mentioned at the outset that I didn't know what it meant. I hadn't looked into it. But I would say what I have found so far supports the plausibility that it is a shortening of the name of Jesus.

Al l the other points you have made about whether it was Catholic in origin, whether Protestants used it, etc. stemmed from later back and forth between you and Sophia. I might eventually go through all those arguments more particularly.

.
 
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tall73

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No doubt Tall, and that is not in dispute. What is in dispute is the contention that this was common practice to refer to Jesus this way. I understand that certain scribes may have used "shorthand" in their work. What no one is stating is clearly is how, when, where or even if this became comman place amougst any other religious order other than the Catholics.

What religious orders do you suppose were around before the protestant reformation?

EO ?

OO?

Nestorians? Assyrian chuch? Gnostics?

Some other pockets of believers, etc.


I am not even sure what your view of Christian history is.

My point is only that there is some evidence that this designation came out of the abbreviation of the name of Jesus, first in Greek, then in Latin.
 
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reddogs

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Well, lets just say even the Catholics and even historians and scholars are not quite clear as to its origins or meaning, so I doubt anyone can come up with a clear answer. While some evidence of pagan orgins are claimed (see below: ) here are some answers from Catholic sites and others...

Response to IHS For Chris

Dear H. S.:​
the answer is as simple as this:​
Iesus = latin for JESUS​
Hominum = latin for OF MEN​
Salvator = latin for SAVIOR So IHS= Jesus Savior of men​

Iesus Hominum Salvator....
Latin for "Jesus Saviour of Man..."


-----------------------------------
"..In His Service.."

"In Hoc Signo,"

"...they are the first three letters of Jesus’ name in Greek: iota-eta-sigma..."

"...I.H.S. This triad of initials stands for the in hoc signo of the alleged vision of Constantine, of which, save Eusebius, its author, no one ever knew. I.H.S. is interpreted Jesus Hominum Salvator, and In hoc signo. It is, however, well known that the Greek IHS was one of the most ancient names of Bacchus....In hoc signo Victor ens, or the Labarum T (the tau and the resh) is a very old signum, placed on the foreheads of those who were just initiated. Kenealy translates it as meaning "he who is initiated into the Naronic Secret, or the 600, shall be Victor" but it is simply "through this sign hast thou conquered"; i.e., through the light of Initiation..."


------------------------------------

"...originated in Rome with the early Christians, and was popularized in the fifteenth century by Franciscan disciple Bernardine of Sienna, who promoted it as a symbol of peace....

Solar and Lunar symbolism have been in continual use by the Church and are most likely continuances of Roman ceremonial symbolism. There is, however, good evidence that the initials were used to represent Bacchus, the god of wine, who early Christians identified with Jesus.
[FONT=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]The IHS emblem today most commonly represents the communion wafer, and is closely asociated with the Jesuit Order. The solar rays often depicted surrounding the emblem represent the monstrance (Ostensorium),* a decorated vessel used to display the Communion Host. The solar symbolism is probably ancient in origin, and probably borrowed from Roman ritual implements...."[/FONT]


http://altreligion.about.com/library/glossary/symbols/bldefsihs.htm

http://forums.catholic.com/showthread.php?t=155845&page=4

http://www.samandra.freeserve.co.uk/ihs.htm
 
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RC_NewProtestants

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stinsonmarri

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Good People:

The cross, CHIRO, Christ, Jesus, the SDA Logo are pagan and there is no excuse. We should have kept the Three angels logo but once again we want to be like the world. Here some infor on the subject as well:

The trinity consisted of the god Serapis (=Osiris+Apis), the goddess Isis (=Hathor, the cow-moon goddess), and the child-god Horus. In one way or another almost every other god was identified with one or other of these three aspects of the one god, even the sun god Mithras of the Persians. And they were each other; they were three, but they were also one.

Many of the theories of Egyptian religion, modified and transformed no doubt, have penetrated into the theology of Christian Europe, and form, as it were, part of the woof in the web of modern religious thought. Christian theology was largely organized and nurtured in the schools of Alexandria, and Alexandria was not only the meetingplace of East and West, it was also the place where the decrepit theology of Egypt was revivified by contact with the speculative philosophy of Greece.

Perhaps, however, the indebtedness of Christian theological theory to ancient Egyptian dogma is nowhere more striking than in the doctrine of the Trinity. The very terms used of it by Christian theologians meet us again in the inscriptions and papyri of Egypt.

Originally the trinity was a triad like those we find in Babylonian mythology. The triad consisted of a divine father, wife, and son.

The father became the son and the son the father through all time, and of both alike the mother was but another form. The Outline of History, by H. G. Wells

As with the cross and other Christian symbols, so with the labarum—it is Pagan. The insignia on the walls of the temple of Bacchus in Rome was a Roman cross and “IHS”—the three mystical letters to this day retained in Christian churches, and variously supposed to stand for “Jesus hominum salvator”—“Jesus humanity’s saviour”—or “in hoc signo.” Christian women who work this sign on altar cloths for their churches little think that they are working a Pagan sign. It was the monogram of the Pagan god Bacchus, god of the vine, but they are not far astray, for Bacchus in Hebrew was Joshua (Ieshu) which in the Phœnician writing of Canaanite is simply Ies (IHS in Greek capital letters), and in Greek Iesous, from which Jesus is derived. The embroiderers of altar cloths unwittingly admit the Pagan origin of their god. The monogram represented phallic vigour.

The common abbreviation for Iesous was IHS, which is found on many inscriptions of the “Church.” IHS was the mystery name of Bacchus, aka Tammuz. Both were known as “The Fish” god. Jesus was also associated with fish, and thus his name was used synonymously — Jesus/Iesous/Ichthus (fish).http://www.innvista.com/religion/deities/heathen-words/

Christ: The inscription “Chrestos” is to be seen on a Mithras relief in the Vatican.

Osiris, the sun-god of Egypt, was revered as Chrestos — as was Mithra. Realencyclopaedie

The word 'cross' was later substituted for the word 'stake' in the rewriting of the Christian text (Crosses In Tradition, W. W. Seymour N.Y. 1898)

Blessings,
stinsonmarri
 
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Castaway57

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The word 'cross' was later substituted for the word 'stake' in the rewriting of the Christian text (Crosses In Tradition, W. W. Seymour N.Y. 1898)

Blessings,
stinsonmarri
I think you are a Jehovah's Witness who is here to try and "convert" Adventists. When you find proof in the Bible for what you are accusing us of this time; I will listen. :confused:
 
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Pythons

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I think you are a Jehovah's Witness who is here to try and "convert" Adventists. When you find proof in the Bible for what you are accusing us of this time; I will listen. :confused:

A Jehovah's Witness is an 'Adventist'....
...They are just not Seventh-day 'Adventists'.
 
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stinsonmarri

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I think you are a Jehovah's Witness who is here to try and "convert" Adventists. When you find proof in the Bible for what you are accusing us of this time; I will listen. :confused:

You know Castaway:

I have been a SDA all of my life except when I left the church in sin. While out there I never attended any other church I club and did other horrible things. I am a historian and the cross came about with the Catholic. Most Bible Scholars will tell you that it was a stake and not a cross.

In the Hebrew Bible Deuteronomy 21:23 states that "cursed of God is everyone who hangs on a tree." In the Septuagint this became epi xylon "upon a piece of wood," and usage for "hanging" (Joshua 8:29; 10:24), then passing into New Testament usage such as Peter's 3 uses of xylon (in English Bibles "tree") compared to Paul who only uses xylon "piece of wood" once. 1 Peter: a new translation with introduction and commentary: Volume 37, Part 2 John Hall Elliott - 2000; The Acts of the Apostles - Page 98 Luke Timothy Johnson, Daniel J. Harrington - 1992

A Roman citizen of no obscure station, having ordered one of his slaves to be put to death, delivered him to his fellow-slaves to be led away, and in order that his punishment might be witnessed by all, directed them to drag him through the Forum and every other conspicuous part of the city as they whipped him, and that he should go ahead of the procession which the Romans were at that time conducting in honour of the god. The men ordered to lead the slave to his punishment, having stretched out both his arms and fastened them to a piece of wood which extended across his breast and shoulders as far as his wrists, followed him, tearing his naked body with whips. Dionysius of Halicarnassus; Roman Antiquities, VII, 69:1-2

The Gospels do not say Jesus was crucified in the original Greek, the ancient texts reveal only that Jesus carried "some kind of torture or execution device" to a hill where "he was suspended and died. He was handed over to be 'stauroun. At the time the apostles Matthew, Mark, Luke and John were writing their Gospels, that word simply meant "suspended," I am a pastor, a conservative evangelical pastor, a Christian. I do believe that Jesus died the way we thought he died. He died on the cross.There is no word in Greek, Latin, Aramaic or Hebrew that means crucifixion in the sense that we think of it, It's only after the death of Jesus - and because of the death of Jesus - that the Greek word "stauroun" comes specifically to mean executing a person on the cross, if my observations are correct, every book on the history of Jesus will need to be rewritten, as will the standard dictionaries of Biblical Greek. My research ought to make Christians a bit more humble.We fight against each other the theological stances that keep churches apart are founded on things that we find between the lines.

We have put a lot of things in the Bible that weren't there in the beginning that keep us apart. We need to get down on our knees as Christians together and read the Bible." Gunnar Samuelsson; Crucifixion in Antiquity: An Inquiry into the Background of the New Testament Terminology of Crucifixion

Erkki Koskenniemi Professor of Åbo University, Finland, was drastic in his opening when he said that "if Gunnar Samuelsson is right, then all lexica will need revision on this point." "Koskenniemi also pointed out that "if Gunnar Samuelsson is wrong, he will from this moment be known as the Gunnar Samuelsson who wrote about the cross."

First, what is the ancient - pre-Christian - terminology of crucifixion? The answer is that there was no such terminology. There was only a terminology of suspension - a group of words and idioms that were used more or less interchangeably when referring to various forms of suspension ... The problem is that no specific terminology is linked to this particular form of execution - before the execution of Jesus. Tommy Wasserman

It may come as a shock to know that there is no word such as 'cross' in the Greek of the New Testament. The word translated 'cross' is always the Greek word [stau·ros'] meaning a 'stake' or 'upright pale.' The cross was NOT originally a Christian symbol; it is derived from Egypt and Constantine. -Dual Heritage- The Bible and the British Museum

There is not a single sentence in any of the numerous writings forming the New Testament, which, in the original Greek, bears even indirect evidence to the effect that the stauros used in the case of Jesus was other than an ordinary stauros; much less to the effect that it consisted, not of one piece of timber, but of two pieces nailed together in the form of a cross. - The Non-Christian Cross; John Denham Parsons

If Jesus had been executed, mythically or historically, it would NOT have been with outstretched arms on a cruciform structure. Cutner reports that scholars have been aware of the error but have been unable to resist the TRADITIONAL MISTRANSLATION. In the 18th century - some Anglican bishops recommended eliminating the cross symbol altogether, but they were ignored. There is no cross in early Christian art before the middle of the 5th century. - Jesus: God, Man, or Myth (The Truth Seeker, 1950)

Another. . .tradition of the Church which our fathers have inherited, was the adoption of the words 'cross' and 'crucify'. These words are nowhere to be found in the Greek of the New Testament." (Koster, p. 29). -Koster, C.J. Come Out of Her My People. Johannesburg, RSA: Institute for Scripture Research, 1998

Homer uses the word 'stauros' - of an ordinary pole or stake, or a single piece of timber. And this is the meaning and usage of the word throughout the Greek classics. It never means two pieces of timber placed across one another at any angle, but always of one piece alone. Hence the use of the word 'xulon' [which means a timber] in connection with the manner of our Lord's death, and rendered tree in Acts 5:30; 10:39; 13:29; Gal. 3:13; and 1 Pet. 2:24

. . .There is nothing in the Greek N.T. even to imply two pieces of timber. . . The evidence is thus complete, that the Lord was put to death upon an upright stake, and not on two pieces of timber placed at any angle. - The Companion Bible, published by the Oxford University Press, on page 186 in the Appendixes.

The representation of Christ's redemptive death on Golgotha does not occur in the symbolic art of the first Christian centuries. The early Christians, influenced by the Old Testament prohibition of
graven images, were reluctant to depict even the instrument of the Lord's Passion. —New Catholic Encyclopedia (1967), Vol. IV, p. 486

Most scholars now agree that the cross, as an artistic reference to the passion event (Jesus' death), cannot be found prior to the time of Constantine. —Ante Pacem—Archaeological Evidence of Church Life before Constantine (1985), by Professor Graydon F. Snyder, page 27

The symbol of Phallic worship, the cross, has become the emblem of Christianity. We find the cross in India, Egypt, Tibet, and Japan...it was worn as an amulet and seems to have been specially worn by the women attached to the temples as sacred prostitutes, as a symbol of what was, to them, a religious calling. The cross is, in fact, nothing but the phallus, and in the Christian religion is a significant emblem of its pagan origin; it was adored, carved in temples, and worn as a sacred emblem by sun and nature worshipers, long before there were any Christians to adore, carve, and wear it. - The Christ by John Remsburg, Prometheus Books, 1994

You know if you would take the time out and just check out the information you would have a better handle on many things. Even though you are from Canada you can find out who I am. If you like email me and I will be glad to provide to you ministers even Elder Baker who is the Vice President of the General Conference. We went to Oakwood together and he knows me quite well. You have no clue who I am and think that because I disagree with the traditions of the church, I do not believe in the basic fundalmental principle that SDA once taught and believed in. I am not a follower or jump on anyones ship because they say they are a preacher, they lie too! What's the problem with many SDA is they want smooth words and they I am sad to say are lazy. They will not search the Scriptures deeply to found out what is correct or not. You see the whole truth is that Constantine during the Nicene Councils, many things we accept today are pagan and you just refuse to accept. However, please do not make accusations on me or anyone else that you really do not know anything about! That is just going to far and so disrespectful. I do not know how long you been in the SDA church but I have been in it for almost a live time. If you want to gain some true knowledge in fact about what I present I be glad to give it to you. I have lived and be a lot of places and countries and I am known for my research, it has been my living for over thirty five years, I just that good. I wish and pray that you would learn to listen, pray, be humble and check out the information before judging people. Take Care and,

Be Bless,
stinsonmarri
 
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