Another Christian adaptation of “ichthys” is a circle comprising the letters ΙΧΘΥΣ, which, when overlapped, make a wheel with eight spokes fusing both fish and Cross, as in this early example from Ephesus in Asia Minor:
The ichthys wheel
The symbol of a fish, therefore, comprised a name-game that referenced Jesus Christ with an abbreviation of his name and some of his titles.
There were other reasons for Christians to adopt a fish as their symbol. Fish allegories abound in the Gospels. Jesus recruits some of his first disciples from among the fishermen who work on the Sea of Galilee, including St. Peter. “Follow me,” Christ says to them, “and I will make you fishers of men.” (5)
Jesus’s miracles and activities on the Sea of Galilee are also significant. The New Testament tells us that Jesus ministered near that “lake.” Jesus, we are told, taught his disciples while standing in a boat on those waters. According to the Gospel of Luke, Jesus facilitated a miraculously large catch of fish on the waters of Galilee early in his ministry. And he would do so again following his Resurrection, according to the Book of John. (6) Jesus is not only said to have walked on water on the Sea of Galilee (7) but also to have calmed a raging storm there that endangered his disciples. (8)
In addition to healing miracles performed around this body of water (9), the Gospels tell us that, having driven a multitude of demons from one man, Jesus allowed those malignant spirits to possess a herd of pigs that stampeded down a steep bank into the Sea of Galilee, where they all drowned. (10)
When some question whether Jesus paid the famous “Temple Tax,” which all Jews were commanded to pay in accordance with the Torah (11), another fish symbol appears in the Gospel of Matthew 17:24-27:
After Jesus and his disciples arrived in Capernaum, the collectors of the two-drachma Temple tax came to Peter and asked, “Doesn’t your teacher pay the Temple tax?”
“Yes, he does,” he replied.
When Peter came into the house, Jesus was the first to speak. “What do you think, Simon?” he asked. “From whom do the kings of the earth collect duty and taxes—from their own children or from others?”
“From others,” Peter answered.
“Then the children are exempt,” Jesus said to him. “But so that we may not cause offense, go to the lake and throw out your line. Take the first fish you catch; open its mouth and you will find a four-drachma coin. Take it and give it to them for my tax and yours.” (Emphasis added.) (12)
So a fish is seen providing the Jewish Temple tax for the followers of Jesus.
The Romans had repeatedly attempted to suppress the payment of the Temple tax, but it was not until the Flavians actually destroyed the Second Temple in 70 CE, about 40 years after the death of Jesus, that they abolished the payment of this tax altogether by faithful Jews across the Empire. Therefore, it seems that Jesus himself is predicting the demise of this tax within a generation—by exempting “the children” from it—just as he elsewhere famously predicts the destruction of the Temple itself will happen within that same period. (Referring to his second coming, Jesus states in the Gospel of Mark (13): “Truly I tell you, this generation will certainly not pass away until all these things have happened.”)
There are many more fish references in the New Testament. Jesus transforms a mere five loaves of bread and “two fishes” into enough food to feed a multitude of 5,000 men plus women and children, with twelve baskets of leftovers, according to all of the Gospels (14). According to Mark (15), Jesus fed a multitude with seven loaves and “a few fish,” leaving seven baskets of leftovers. The Gospel of Matthew (16) specifies that 4,000 people were fed fish on that miraculous occasion.
The fish symbolism is significant in a number of ways. Just as early Christians considered Christ to be “the Bread of Life,” as Jesus describes himself no less than three times in the Gospel of John (17), Jesus is also said to be the “Water of Life” according to John (18). Just as Jesus is the fish that he feeds to the multitudes, so is he the bread and the water, the satisfaction for those who “hunger and thirst for righteousness.”
Jesus’s feeding miracles also foreshadow the Last Supper, where he feeds his disciples (at least symbolically) with his flesh and blood. Jesus claims of the bread on this occasion, “[t]his is my flesh (or body),” and of the wine, it is “my blood” (19).
Although not a direct part of the Eucharist, as the bread and wine are, a fish became symbolic of Jesus himself. We can see the fish directly symbolizing the Eucharist in the Sacraments Chapel of the Catacombs of St. Callixtus (one of the very first artistic depictions of the Last Supper):
Eucharist depicting fish on the table, 3rd Century
One of the earliest Christian writers, Tertullian (c. 160-225 CE) argued for baptism by saying (and here we can see all of the fish allegories brought together in one conceit): "But we, being little fishes, as Jesus Christ is our great Fish, begin our life [in Christ] in the water, and only while we abide in the water are we safe and sound." (20)
The first historical naming of the fish as an official visual symbol of Christianity is by St. Clement of Alexandria (whose full name was Titus Flavius Clemens, c. 150-215 CE). In his work, Christ, the Instructor, St. Clement advises Christians to use a dove or a fish or an anchor among other symbols as their identifying “seal”:
And let our seals be either a dove, or a fish, or a ship scudding before the wind, or a musical lyre, which Polycrates used, or a ship's anchor, which Seleucus got engraved as a device; and if there be one fishing, he will remember the apostle, and the children drawn out of the water. (21)
It is interesting that the “Polycrates” mentioned by St. Clement here was a pagan tyrant of the Greek island of Samos who flourished around 530 BCE and who especially revered the god Apollo, to whom the lyre was sacred. This tyrant’s execution by the Persians (probably by being impaled or crucified) was foreseen in a prophetic dream by his daughter, who saw him “washed by Zeus [rained on] and anointed by Helios [sweated out under the sun].” (22)
Seleucus I Nicator (ca. 358-281 BCE)
The Seleucus curiously mentioned by St. Clement of Alexandria was a Macedonian general of Alexander the Great. As a founder of the Hellenistic “Seleucid Empire” following the division of Alexander the Great’s conquests, he chose to use the symbol of an anchor and fish, as on this 2nd Century BCE silver bowl (produced by one of his descendant-successors):
Silver-gilded Seleucid bowl with dolphin-and-anchor
We must ask ourselves: why would St. Clement recommend using symbols with pagan origins as Christian seals?
Fully aware of the Crucifixion, St. Clement of Alexandria instead nominates images closely associated with the Greek god Apollo and certain pagan rulers. He does not even mention the Cross at all in his list of appropriate Christian symbols, though he is writing in the late 2nd/early 3rd Centuries.
Of course, as a literary metaphor, at least, the Cross can still be counted in the earliest Christian symbolism. According to the Gospels, Jesus himself used it allegorically even before he was crucified: “Then he called the crowd to him along with his disciples and said: ‘Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up his cross and follow me.’” (23) Therefore we know that the earliest Christians were clearly aware of the symbolic importance of the Cross. And St. Clement himself refers to the Cross in a literary context. Yet he does not suggest using it as a graphic Christian symbol. (24) Why not?