Surely you saw the symbol of fish on cars, book covers and in many other places as an allusion to Christianity. Do you know the origin of this symbol and how it became an icon of early Christianity and Christianity today? It is worth clarifying that The ancient Greeks, Romans, and other pagan peoples used fish symbols long before Christians.
But the fish quickly became associated with Christianity, especially as a secret symbol that did an almost perfect job among persecuted Christians. Despite First and second century Christians used many symbolsthat of the fish is possibly the most important.
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What does the fish symbol mean?
The first to speak of the symbol was Clement of Alexandria, around the year 150 AD, who makes a curious suggestion: he recommends that readers of one of his letters have seals engraved with the fish or the dove. Clement does not clarify the reason why he makes this recommendation, which leads us to think that the believers were very clear about the meaning of these symbols, meaning that the explanation was unnecessary.
What does the fish symbol mean?
There are several theories about what the symbol meant to early Christians:
- The first says that the famous fish was an allusion to the feeding of Christ to the five thousand with five loaves and two fish, a meal that, apparently, It was very popular among the Christian communities of the time. Some also associated the symbol of the fish with the dinner that the first Christians had or with the Lord’s Supper itself.
- The second theory has to do with the way in which Jesus He gave his disciples a name by calling them “fishers of men”.
- The third is related to the baptism in waterwhich the early church practiced by immersion, and which possibly created a parallel between new converts and fish.
Tertullian, Another church father also made an interesting mention of the symbol when he said: “We, little fish, in the image of our Ichthys, Jesus Christ“We are born in water.” But perhaps the most interesting story is one well known among Christians of the first centuries. When a Christian met a stranger on the road, he would draw an arc of the simple outline of a fish on the ground. If the stranger drew the other arc, both believers knew they were in good company.