From: spike66 (spike66@ATTBI.com)
Date: Sat Mar 30 2002 - 23:15:39 MST
>
>
>spike66 wrote:
>
>>Turns out, modern scholarship has shown that the
>>symbol predates christianity. The Ephesians stole
>>it from the pagans.
>>
>dwayne wrote:
>What? The cross?
>
No, the fish. I found a reference to something I read 20 yrs ago.
http://www.atheists.org/church/fish.html
Well before Christianity, the fish symbol was known as "the Great
Mother," a pointed oval sign, the "vesica piscis" or Vessel of the
Fish. "Fish" and "womb" were synonymous terms in ancient Greek,
"delphos." Its link to fertility, birth, feminine sexuality and the natural
force of women was acknowledged also by the Celts, as well as
pagan cultures throughout northern Europe. Eleanor Gaddon traces
a "Cult of the Fish Mother" as far back as the hunting and fishing
people of the Danube River Basin in the sixth millennium B.C.E.
Over fifty shrines have been found throughout the region which
depict a fishlike deity, a female creature who "incorporates
aspects of an egg, a fish and a woman which could have been
a primeval creator or a mythical ancestress..." The "Great
Goddess" was portrayed elsewhere with pendulous breasts,
accentuated buttocks and a conspicuous vaginal orifice, the
upright "vesica piscis" which Christians later adopted and
rotated 90-degrees to serve as their symbol.
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