The Jesus Fish – A Secret Christian Code?
There's Something Fishy about an Early Christian Motif
When I teach students the Greek alphabet and their first words of the New Testament, I often draw their attention to ἰχθύς, the Greek word for ‘fish’. The fascinating thing about icthys is that ancient Christians used it as an acronym:
I (iota) = Iésous (Jesus)
CH (chi) = Christos (Christ)
TH (theta) = Theos (God)
Y (upsilon) = Huios (Son)
S (sigma) = Sōtér (Saviour)
Taken together, it reads: Jesus Christ, Son of God, Saviour.
Growing up, I imbibed the view that the fish was used as a secret symbol for Christians to identify each other during persecution. Just as someone might stick a fish on the bumper of their vehicle as a sign that a Christian is on board, so the ancients used fish to identify believers, though in a more clandestine manner.
We find this theory about the Jesus fish represented in all sorts of popular literature:
Jeroen Temperman: “This [fish] was a secret symbol used by early Christians to help them identify one another without exposing themselves to their enemies.”1
Garth S. Jowett & Victoria O’Donnell: “Initially used as a secret sign during the time when Christians were persecuted by the Roman authorities, the fish symbolized the mission of the group it represented and did so simply and effectively.”2
Wikipedia: “The fish was originally adopted by early Christians as a secret symbol, but the many variations known today first appeared in the 1980s.”
Bible Study Tools: “During the times of persecution by the Romans in the first centuries, the fish symbol was used among Christians in hiding to display meeting places for everyone to meet and worship. They could be spotted on trees or doorways or even tombs and at the same time, the fish symbol was also used by several pagan religions so they wouldn’t bring about suspicion from anyone about what it could be.”
Early Christian History: “In the first three centuries of persecution, Christians used to identify each other by casually drawing the Ichthus, the fish in the dirt or sand. If the other person responded, it was good. If they did not, it was just an idle doodle.”
These kinds of theories about the Jesus fish are widespread online. But is there something fishy about them? In this post, I unpack the real meaning of the fish as a symbol for Christ, and examine the evidence that it was a secret code.
