How did Jesus 'H' Christ get his middle name ?

Kapyong

Kapyong

Writer
Registered Senior Member
Gday all :)
Here is a little essay of mine that may interest readers -


Where did the 'H' come from? What does it stand for ?
Not 'Harold', as a confused little boy used to say "Our Father who art in heaven, Harold be thy name."

A big clue is found in the Catholic vestment called the chasuble (from hooded cloak, from little house 'casa'.)
It is used for celebrating the eucharist, and has a big 'IHS' on the back :


This is a lovely Jesuit chasuble which also has the cross and the three nails with the IHS symbol.

Chasubles vary a lot, but nearly always have IHS on them :

Note the left one has an unusual red Chi-Rho symbol instead of IHS.

The large X is a Greek letter Chi X ('ch'), and the skinny P is a Greek Rho ρ ('r') - together they spell Xρ ('Chr') an early abbreviation for Christ. (More on Chi-Rho later.)

A common explanation for the IHS is that it stands for Iesous Hominum Salvator - Latin for Jesus, Saviour of Mankind.

Or even Iesous Hierosolymae Salvator (Jesus, Saviour from Jerusalem.)

It's even sometimes connected to In Hoc Signo Vinces (In This Sign You Will Conquer) a visionary message to Constantine the Great before the successful battle which made him ruler of the Roman world :

" In this sign, you will conquer ! "

The 'sign' being a cross apparently. Luckily Constantine had a painter with him that day in 312 for this image :

Actually, if you look closely (click to expand image), you will see the message is actually Greek :
" ΕΝ ΤΟΥΤΩΙ ΝΙΚΑ "

Which means "By this, conquer", later rendered as Latin "In Hoc Signo Vinces" from which we get English "In This Sign You Will Conquer".

Of course,
in the fourth century the sign of Jesus would have been the Chi-Rho, not the cross at all. Here is such an ancient carved Christian Chi-Rho (Xρ) :

This carving also has the Alpha (Α or α) and Omega (Ω or ω) on it.

Actually -
It probably boils down to scribe's abbreviations - called Nomina Sacra (meaning Sacred Names obviously.)

The early Christian scribes didn't write out names like 'Jesus Christ' in full, instead they used holy abbreviations for the important words, indicated with a line over the letters :

Here is an example showing Nomina Sacra for 'Jesus' and 'God' :

'IY' stands for Jesus in that particular Greek sentence form - using the first and last letters I and Y. There is no letter 'J' in Greek.

In Greek letters (there was no lower-case yet), 'JESUS' (IESOUS) looks like this : 'ΙΗΣΟΥΣ'.
Some scribes used a three letter abbreviation : 'ΙΗΣ'.
But Σ is an S, sometimes written ς.

As the church left Greek for Latin, they ended up with 'IHS', although it's still not clear exactly how.

Essentially 'IHS' is simply a corrupt abbreviation for 'JESUS' -
IHS = JES

For centuries Catholic Christians watched their priests celebrating the eucharist with the symbol 'IHS' on their back.

As if it stood for something like Jesus H. Saviour.
And thus many imagined that the 'H' after the 'I' for Jesus - was actually Jesus' middle name.

That's how it happened. Probably. :)
So,
no it doesn't stand for anything, apart from 'E'.


Kapyong
From original here :
http://kapyong.5gbfree.com/JesusHChrist.html
 
Kapyong said:
Gday all :)
Here is a little essay of mine that may interest readers -


Where did the 'H' come from? What does it stand for ?
Not 'Harold', as a confused little boy used to say "Our Father who art in heaven, Harold be thy name."

A big clue is found in the Catholic vestment called the chasuble (from hooded cloak, from little house 'casa'.)
It is used for celebrating the eucharist, and has a big 'IHS' on the back :


This is a lovely Jesuit chasuble which also has the cross and the three nails with the IHS symbol.

Chasubles vary a lot, but nearly always have IHS on them :

Note the left one has an unusual red Chi-Rho symbol instead of IHS.

The large X is a Greek letter Chi X ('ch'), and the skinny P is a Greek Rho ρ ('r') - together they spell Xρ ('Chr') an early abbreviation for Christ. (More on Chi-Rho later.)

A common explanation for the IHS is that it stands for Iesous Hominum Salvator - Latin for Jesus, Saviour of Mankind.

Or even Iesous Hierosolymae Salvator (Jesus, Saviour from Jerusalem.)

It's even sometimes connected to In Hoc Signo Vinces (In This Sign You Will Conquer) a visionary message to Constantine the Great before the successful battle which made him ruler of the Roman world :

" In this sign, you will conquer ! "

The 'sign' being a cross apparently. Luckily Constantine had a painter with him that day in 312 for this image :

Actually, if you look closely (click to expand image), you will see the message is actually Greek :
" ΕΝ ΤΟΥΤΩΙ ΝΙΚΑ "

Which means "By this, conquer", later rendered as Latin "In Hoc Signo Vinces" from which we get English "In This Sign You Will Conquer".

Of course,
in the fourth century the sign of Jesus would have been the Chi-Rho, not the cross at all. Here is such an ancient carved Christian Chi-Rho (Xρ) :

This carving also has the Alpha (Α or α) and Omega (Ω or ω) on it.

Actually -
It probably boils down to scribe's abbreviations - called Nomina Sacra (meaning Sacred Names obviously.)

The early Christian scribes didn't write out names like 'Jesus Christ' in full, instead they used holy abbreviations for the important words, indicated with a line over the letters :

Here is an example showing Nomina Sacra for 'Jesus' and 'God' :

'IY' stands for Jesus in that particular Greek sentence form - using the first and last letters I and Y. There is no letter 'J' in Greek.

In Greek letters (there was no lower-case yet), 'JESUS' (IESOUS) looks like this : 'ΙΗΣΟΥΣ'.
Some scribes used a three letter abbreviation : 'ΙΗΣ'.
But Σ is an S, sometimes written ς.

As the church left Greek for Latin, they ended up with 'IHS', although it's still not clear exactly how.

Essentially 'IHS' is simply a corrupt abbreviation for 'JESUS' -
IHS = JES

For centuries Catholic Christians watched their priests celebrating the eucharist with the symbol 'IHS' on their back.

As if it stood for something like Jesus H. Saviour.
And thus many imagined that the 'H' after the 'I' for Jesus - was actually Jesus' middle name.

That's how it happened. Probably. :)
So,
no it doesn't stand for anything, apart from 'E'.


Kapyong
From original here :
http://kapyong.5gbfree.com/JesusHChrist.html
Click to expand...

Yes, that's also my understanding. The H is a Greek capital eta, or long e, not a Latin H at all. I like the red hat by the way. I trust it is not tinfoil.....:biggrin:
 
Given the undeniable truth of the virgin birth, surely the H stands for "haploid"? ;)

Otherwise I also think it's from the IHC (or IHS monogram) you see on vestments.
 
Kapyong said:
Gday all :)
Click to expand...

A well thought post, and much appreciated!

A quick search on this seems to support what you are saying:

Using the name of Jesus Christ as an oath has been common for many centuries. But the precise origins of the letter H in the expression Jesus H. Christ are obscure. While many explanations have been proposed, the most widely accepted derivation is from the divine monogram of Christian symbolism. The symbol, derived from the first three letters of the Greek name of Jesus (Ἰησοῦς), is transliterated iota-eta-sigma, which can look like IHS, ΙΗϹ(with lunate sigma), JHS or JHC ("J" was historically a mere variant of "I"; see J).

For how this learned-sounding acronym could have served as the basis for vulgar slang, Smith offers the hypothesis that it was noticed by ordinary people when it was worn as a decoration on the vestments of Anglican (i.e., in America, Episcopal) clergy.[10] The "JHC" variant would particularly invite interpretation of the "H" as part of a name.
Click to expand...
From - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jesus_H._Christ

That makes sense, especially given the rate of literacy at the time :)
 
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