Quite often online when someone is amazed or annoyed by something (quite often an incidence of MAGA stupidity or bastardry), they will use the exclamation ‘JFC!’, short for ‘Jesus F*****g Christ’. I have been known to use a similar one; ‘JHC!’ or with increased exasperation requiring more emphasis, ‘Jesus H. Christ’, or with a tinge of disgust at my inability, for example, to pot a sitter at our weekly snooker game, ‘Jesus H. Christ on a bike’.
The exclamation ‘Jesus H. Christ’ seems to have American roots from the middle of the 1800s, with Mark Twain (1835-1910) stating that it was common in his childhood1. The exclamation ‘Christ on a bike’ is of more recent Irish origin, seemingly arising in the last couple of decades2,3.
The exclamation I used at snooker, ‘Jesus H. Christ on a bike’ seems simply to be a concatenation of ‘Jesus H. Christ’ and ‘Christ on a bike’. The origin of the ‘H.’ in the former was unknown to me, so I would occasionally wonder if it was short for Harold or Herbert. When musing on this with a colleague a few days ago, she suggested it stood for ‘Haploid’. I nearly wet myself laughing. This is because, in humans, cells are diploid, having one set of chromosomes from each parent, the paternal set (in sperm) and the maternal set (in the ovum). A haploid organism has only one set of chromosomes, and Jesus’ mother, Mary, being a virgin would produce ova with one set of chromosomes. Therefore, Jesus would have only one set of chromosomes4.
It is needless to say, that when research in genetics became established, christians realised they had a haploid problem, so they have attempted to explain it away, by stating such things like:
- Jesus has 100% Mary’s DNA with a divinely created Y chromosome to make him male.
- Jesus has 50% DNA from a human female (Mary) and 50% DNA from God, to replace that of a human male.
- Jesus has DNA created entirely by God at the time of conception5.
You have to laugh.
Sources
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jesus_H._Christ
- https://hinative.com/questions/19689258
- https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/top-20-irish-phrases-used-23738687
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ploidy
- https://whyevolutionistrue.com/2023/01/16/where-did-jesus-get-his-dna-a-dispute-between-catholics-and-evangelical-christians/
