Koine Foundations

³⁴ As Jesus left the boat, he saw a huge crowd and had compassion on them because they were like sheep without a shepherd. Then he began to teach them many things. ³⁵ It had now become late in the day, so his disciples came to him and said, “This place is desolate, and it is late in the day. ³⁶ Send the people away so that they can buy themselves something to eat in the nearby fields and villages.”
³⁷ But Jesus answered them, “You feed them.”
They replied, “Even with 200 denarii* we would not be able to go and buy enough bread to feed them.”
³⁸ He asked them, “How much bread do you have? Go. See.”
When they knew, they reported, “Five loaves of bread and two fish.”
³⁹ Then he instructed the disciples to seat everyone in groups on the green grass. ⁴⁰ So they sat down in rows by hundreds and fifties.
⁴¹ Taking the five loaves and two fish, Jesus looked up to heaven and said a blessing. Then he broke the loaves and gave it to his disciples to set before the people. He also divided the two fish for everyone. ⁴² They all ate and were satisfied. ⁴³ Afterward the disciples gathered twelve baskets full of broken pieces of bread and fish. ⁴⁴ The number of those that ate was 5000 men.
(Mark 6:34-44)

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Word Focus
fish
ἰχθύς / ichthus
<Hear It>

You have probably seen the symbol shown above on a car bumper. The symbol is a fish, and the upper-case Greek letters spell the Greek word for fish – ἰχθύς / ichthus. The fish symbol was a secret sign used by persecuted Christians of the first few centuries to identify themselves as believers to other believers and to mark meeting places.

Some clever unknown Christian in the early church realized that the letters of the word fish were an acronym that corresponded to the first letter of important names and titles of Jesus:

Ι from Ἰησοῦς / Iēsous which means Jesus <Hear It> <Post>
Χ from Χριστός / Christos which means Christ <Hear It> <Post>
Θ from Θεοῦ / Theou which means God’s <Hear It> <Post>
Υ from Υἱός / Huios which means Son <Hear It> <Post>
Σ from Σωτήρ / Sōtēr which means Savior <Hear It> <Post>

Ἰησοῦς Χριστός, ϴεοῦ Υἱός, Σωτήρ
Jesus Christ, God’s Son, Savior
<Hear It>

Fish had significance to the early Christians because several of the disciples were fisherman, Jesus called the disciples to be “fishers of men” (Mark 1:16-18), and fish show up in a number of incidents and parables recorded in the New Testament, such as the account of the Feeding of the 5000 at the top of this post.

All the words of the acronym were commented on in previous posts. In the list above, click on <Hear It> to hear the word pronounced. Click on <Post> to link to the post.

*It is difficult to give comparative values for money from ancient times. However, around the first century a common soldier or unskilled laborer would be paid one denarius per day, so a denarius was equal to one day’s wages.

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Word Focus Lexicon

Lexical Form: ὁ ἰχθύς ἰχθύος<Hear It>
Gloss: fish
Part of Speech: Third Declension Masculine Noun
New Testament Frequency: 20
Strong’s Number: G2486 (Link to Blue Letter Bible Lexicon)

Unless otherwise noted, English translations of Bible verses are by the author from the Greek text and are not quotations from any copyrighted Bible version or translation.