Saint Andrew's Day and ...... The Tartan Epsilon Head for Glasgow

Today’s post is going to be short and to the point: our subject is Saint Andrew, whose day we celebrate today. Andrew, whose name comes from the Greek andreia, meaning manhood or valour, was born early in the 1st century AD in Galilee and was the older brother of Peter. They were both fishermen and became disciples of Christ. 

Andrew is called the Protokletos, the first called, that is, he was the first one invited to follow Jesus as an apostle - from apostolos, one who has a mission - to spread the word.  The reference to fish crops us several times in the Bible. Jesus called Andrew and Peter to him, saying he would make them ‘fishers of men’. It was Andrew who apparently told Jesus about the boy with the 5 loaves and 2 fishes which were miraculously to feed the multitude of 5,000. After the fishermen complaining there were no fish one evening, Jesus was able to cast the net and bring in a huge haul.

 Perhaps the most linguistically interesting is the fish symbol which represented Christianity. Christians are said to have taken the Greek word for the fish – Ichthys – and turned it into the acrostic: Iesous Christos Theou  Yios Soter – which means Jesus Christ, Son of God, Saviour. By using the fish symbol, Christians could secretly identify one with the other and indicate where meetings were going to be held.

There are references to Andrew preaching along the Black Sea shores, going on to Kiev and Novgorod. Consequently he is the Patron Saint of Ukraine, Romania and Russia. He is said to have founded, in AD 38, the See of Byzantium, which was later to become Constantinople, then Istanbul. Accounts have him preaching in Thrace, and in Achaea where, in the city of Patras, he was martyred by crucifixion.

Tradition has it he asked to be bound to the X-shaped cross, or saltire, as he felt unworthy of being put on the same type of cross as Jesus was. Most of his relics are kept in the Church of St Andrew at Patras where there is a special celebration every year on this day, the 30^th of November, his name-day.

 Below you can see a screen-shot of today’s post on our app Facebook page to mark the day.

           

 And Stop Press news: Angeliki Apostolidou and I – and doesn’t she have an appropriate surname for a day like today? – have been invited to present at the International Association of Teachers of English as a Foreign Language Conference in Glasgow in April 2017 - yesssss!  Looking forward to that already!