Have you guys seen this symbol before? I believe most of Christian ever seen this symbol in the church. Without any mean to bring a religion issue, here I would to try to explore simply about the symbol. I hope there is nobody will feel insulted or anything else.
I have been a Christian for the whole of my age, but never once before I questioned the meaning of this symbol. To be honest, it always looks strange to me, but I never bothered. But last month (yeah...sorry for being absent for 2 weeks) I read a nice Biblical Archeology magazine and was very moved. I always read this symbol as 'XP' or 'PX'. At first, I always correlated X with crucifixion of Jesus, I couldn't linked the 'P' with anything. What is 'P'?!
It turns out that instead of big letter P, it is read as 'Rho' from the Greek letters. The big letter X is read as Chi, thus it becomes Chi-Rho (XP). Then, how does it relate with Christianity? It turns out that these Chi-Rho are the first 2-letters of Christ in Greek, which is "ΧΡΙΣΤΟΣ" (I couldn't read any Greek, but it looks like 'Cristos' to my eyes. Probably I just correlated it with the spelling of Christ in my mother language which is 'Kristus'). Those people who created this symbol, combined these two letters in such a way to create a monogram.
Chi-Rho is not only one symbol in Christianity. Chi-Rho is also known as the 'Labarum'. It's a vexillum (military standard) firstly used by The Roman Emperor, Constantine I, after receiving his famous vision before the Battle of the Milvian Bridge in 312. The Emperor stated that he was given a vision of heavenly sign as a shield for his soldiers. Eusebius, Roman historian, who became the Bishop of Caesarea in Palestine about the year 314, said that he had heard the story of the vision from the emperor himself. After serial ponder of misfortune, seeking help from various gods and failed, The Emperor decided to ask the One God. He then looked up to the sun and saw a cross of light above it, and with it the Greek words Ἐν Τούτῳ Νίκα, means "By This, conquer."
Afterwards, the Chi-Rho became one of popular symbols to describe divinity.
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