The noun ιχθυς (ichtus) means fish but comes with a vast footnote. The ancients were fully aware of the hydrological cycle — from the sea rises mist, mist forms clouds, clouds produce rain, rain becomes rivers, and rivers flow back to the sea — but in the same way that the hydrological cycle gives our planet a kind of proto-soul, so the reasonable mind of man was considered seated upon a much more fundamental process that ran very much alike the hydrological cycle.

The Hebrew word for waters (seas and oceans) is מים (mayim), which looks like it is a plural of the particle of inquisition מי (mi), meaning "what?" Mists and clouds congeal in the atmosphere and become words (Genesis 2:6; see our article on νεφελη, nephele, cloud), after which the mind of homo sapiens forms (Genesis 2:7) and begins to name things (Genesis 2:19-20). Clouds give rain, and the words for rain and teacher are the same, namely מורה (moreh), which in turn relates to the familiar name Torah, or law. Rain forms rivers that flow, and the verb that means to flow (what a river does) is the same as the verb that means to shine (what a lamp does), namely נהר (nahar).

The earliest human cultures formed by rivers (see our article on the name Tigris for more on this). That means that to the ancients, water was in many ways similar to light, and since light was in many ways similar to wisdom, water and wisdom were equally alike (which helps to explain the verb βαπτω, bapto, to baptize).

The Hebrew words for fish, namely דג (dag) and דגה (daga), hence the name Dagon, come from the verb דגה (daga), to vastly increase in number, which means that the prophet Jonah wasn't gobbled up by a whale-type creature but rather by a locust-type creature, known proverbially for the vast multitudes in which it existed.

Since angels made it into popular imagination, everybody knows that an angel is a bird-like being, with bird-like wings (and please see our article on αγγελος, aggelos, for more on this). But in the same way that angels are bird-like, so prophets are fish-like.

An angel is a being who drops information into a human mind from the outside, leading to the kind of sudden inspiration that recipients describe as clear-sky lightning. A prophet, on the other hand, is someone who intuits deeper truths without consciously knowing how he arrived at these truths, or having any tangible evidence to back them up. A prophet usually has to work hard for his insights, and then even harder to have an audience pay any mind to him. Since a truthful prophet is a valuable commodity to any society, great numbers of false prophets and performers try to dazzle the masses with smoke and mirrors (genuine prophets are fish-like and pseudo-prophets are snake-like: hence Matthew 7:10). But back when the validity of information was still a matter of life and death, a "prophet" whose nonsense didn't come true would be summarily executed (Deuteronomy 18:20).

See for more on prophets our article on the word προφητης (prophetes). Also have a look at our article on the verb σκανδαλιζω (skandalizo), to night-fish or hoodwink.

In the Christian era, the noun ιχθυς (ichtus) or ΙΧΘΥΣ (ICHTHUS) was conveniently found to be an acronym of Ιησους (Iesous) Χριστος (Christos) Θεου (Theou) Υιος (Huios) Σωτηρ (Soter), or Jesus Christ God's Son Savior. But the mild profundity of this find doesn't baffle enough to warrant much following, and the link between Jesus of Nazareth and the image of the fish is obviously older and much more fundamentally scriptural.

Our noun ιχθυς (ichtus) meaning fish is used 20 times in the New Testament, see full concordance, and from it derives:

The noun κητος (ketos) refers to any large sea creature, real or imagined, from dolphins (Od.12.97) and seals (Od.4.446) to deities (namely Pontus, hence the noun ποντος, pontos, sea) to monsters sent by deities (Il.20.147, Od.5.421). Whales were known by this word and so was the constellation Cetus (same word). In the New Testament, this noun occurs in Matthew 12:40 only, in a description of the "sea beast" that swallowed up Jonah, which is unfortunate because in Hebrew that creature is simply called a דג גדול (dag gadol), a great fish — whose image is that of a very large multitude of little silvery darts, a sort of aquatic version of the swarms of locusts that Apollyon is king over (Revelation 9:11).

Many (albeit not all) serious students of the Bible agree that the story of Jonah (means dove: περιστερα, peristera) is not a piece of journalistic realism but rather a commentary on the nature, origin and progression of information technology in the ancient world, which was not written in the fantasy terms of the modern age but rather in the established vernacular of the second temple period (and see our articles on the names Esarhaddon and Phoenicia for some peripheral information).

In our paragraph on the noun κηριον (kerion), which refers to the tasteless and non-nutritional waxen part of a honeycomb (Luke 24:42), we discuss how the introduction of the alphabet to the world allowed unprecedented popular access to great human library, so that everybody could learn read, interpret and add (Exodus 19:6). But it also caused a dilution of the great literary tradition by a flood of narrative fodder that savvy merchants produced and which the masses couldn't distinguish from the foundational texts that literally sustained the language basin and supported societies (see our articles on αρραβων, arrabon, pledge, and εφφαθα, ephphatha, be opened). The very same thing happened when the printing press was invented, which triggered the scientific revolution but also the "enlightenment" in which every form of philosophical nonsense became confused with profundity, and ultimately resulted in the horrors of the 20th century. Today, as anybody can clearly see, the exact same thing is happening. The Internet and AI allow all sorts of unscrupulous creators to flood the world with brain-rot and deep-fakes. But fortunately, this thing has happened so many times before that anybody can study what certainly must happen long before it does, and make it to safety as long as safety remains accessible, which isn't going to be forever (see our article on Mesopotamia for some tips).

But, as said, in Hebrew, Jonah was gobbled up by a great fish, whereas the Hebrew equivalent of our noun κητος (ketos) is rather the noun תנין (tanin), which instead refers to serpentine (and poison-fanged: Deuteronomy 32:33) creatures of the aquatic subconscious and hence to the patron deities of nations and their intuited, rather than consciously derived, wisdom (Exodus 7:9-12, also see Isaiah 51:9, Ezekiel 29:3, 32:2, Jeremiah 51:34). Intuited wisdom is still wisdom, but it's not a solid ground for any nation to find footing in or derive trustworthy technology from. This is why God slays the תנין (tanin) with "his great and mighty sword" (Isaiah 27:1), and those who see refuge with YHWH, will trample on it (Psalm 91:13, hence Matthew 14:25). This is also why God urges his people to reason together (Isaiah 1:18), to investigate all things (1 Thessalonians 5:21), and be of one mind (Acts 1:14), so that the study of creation leads to the knowledge of the Creator (Romans 1:20), whose nature is the very unity (Deuteronomy 6:4, John 17:21-24, Ephesians 4:3-6) in which mankind is invited to partake (2 Peter 1:4, Ephesians 4:24, Hebrews 12:10).

Still, the Greek language is as different from Hebrew as a dog's mind is different from that of a shepherd (ποιμην, poimen), and where the Hebrew mind sees a great fish, the Greek mind sees a sea monster. That seems fair enough.

The origin of our noun κητος (ketos) is a mystery. Emile Boisacq (Dictionnaire etymologique de la langua grecque, 1907-1916) declares it a "mot isolé" and Robert Beekes (Etymological Dictionary of Greek, 2010) deems it "unexplained, probably a Pre-Greek word" and leaves it at that. Here at Abarim Publications we don't know either, of course, but (and see our article on the many Hebrew roots of Greek) the difference between the Greek and the Hebrew take on whatever it was that gobbled up Jonah, draws our attentions to the verb כתת (katat), to beat or hammer.

This verb כתת (katat) is used both to describe the forging of swords and ploughs and such, and also in the sense of to fragment and disperse of whatever is beaten. Adjective כתית (katit) literally means beaten, but occurs in the Bible only to denote a costly olive oil from beaten fruits (and see our article on the verb χριω, chrio, to anoint with olive oil). Noun מכתה (mekitta) refers to anything crushed or pulverized, as in: "It will break in pieces like pottery, shattered so mercilessly that among its pieces not a shard will be found for taking coals from a hearth or scooping water out of a cistern" (Isaiah 30:14), and note the pun in the word for "shard", which is חרש (heres).