Before the Cross — The Symbols of the First Christians
Today the cross is the universal symbol of Christianity. It appears on churches, jewellery, flags, and gravestones across the world. But the earliest followers of Jesus did not use it. For nearly three centuries, they used entirely different symbols — and the reasons why tell us something important about how the Christian faith changed when it acquired political power.
Why the First Christians Did Not Use the Cross
It is easy to forget what the cross actually was in the first century. It was not a piece of jewellery or a church ornament. It was a Roman instrument of torture and public execution — reserved for slaves, rebels, and criminals. It was designed to be as humiliating as possible: a slow, agonising death on public display, intended as a warning to others.
For the earliest followers of Jesus, displaying a cross would have been roughly equivalent to wearing a noose or an electric chair around your neck today. Before the time of Emperor Constantine in the 4th century, Christians were extremely reticent about portraying the cross because too open a display of it might expose them to ridicule.
There was also the matter of persecution. In the first few centuries after Jesus’ resurrection, Christians were heavily persecuted in the Roman Empire. Public symbols of Christianity were dangerous. Believers needed symbols that were discreet — recognisable to fellow Christians but not immediately obvious to Roman authorities.
So what did they use instead?
The Fish — Ichthys (ιχθύς)
The most famous early Christian symbol is the fish, known by its Greek name ichthys (ιχθύς). Before the cross was used in Christian iconography, there was the fish. The earliest followers of Christ used it not for decoration, but for direction — scratched into walls, marked on doorways, carved onto tombs. It was a way of naming Christ without saying his name aloud.
The word ichthys was used as an acronym — each Greek letter standing for a word:
- Ι — Iēsous (Jesus)
- Χ — Christos (Christ)
- θ — Theou (of God)
- Υ — Huios (Son)
- Σ — Sōtēr (Saviour)
“Jesus Christ, Son of God, Saviour.” The entire Christian confession of faith encoded in a simple fish outline.
Clay oil lamps were pressed with the ichthys; ring seals were engraved with it. Some of the oldest known examples come from Christian burial chambers in Rome, where the symbol appeared alongside anchors and baskets of bread. The earliest solid evidence of the ichthys as a Christian acrostic comes from Clement of Alexandria around 200 CE.
The fish also connected naturally to the Gospel stories: Jesus called fishermen as his first disciples, performed the miracle of the loaves and fishes, and after the resurrection cooked fish on the shore for his disciples. Tertullian, writing at the beginning of the third century, put it memorably: “But we small fishes, named after our great ICHTHUS, Jesus Christ, are born in water and only by remaining in water can we live.”
The Anchor — Hope Hidden in Plain Sight
The anchor was one of the most widely used symbols in the catacombs and on early Christian tombs. At first glance it looks like a practical nautical symbol — which was precisely the point. To an uninitiated Roman, it meant nothing. To a Christian, it meant everything.
The anchor resembles a cross with a curved base — which may have been intentional, allowing Christians to reference the cross in a disguised form. But its primary meaning came from the Letter to the Hebrews (6:19): “We have this hope as an anchor for the soul, firm and secure.”
The anchor symbolised hope, safety, and steadfastness in faith. For early Christians, it also represented the promise of salvation through Christ.
The second-century Christian teacher Clement of Alexandria identified a dove, a fish, a ship, a lyre, and an anchor as suitable images to be engraved on Christians’ signet rings. The anchor appears in some of the oldest Christian inscriptions ever found.
The Good Shepherd
Images of a young man carrying a sheep on his shoulders appear throughout the Roman catacombs — the burial tunnels beneath Rome where early Christians buried their dead and gathered for worship in secret. This was the Good Shepherd, drawn directly from Jesus’ own words in John 10:11: “I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep.”
The image was safe because it was not exclusively Christian. In Greek and Roman art, a young man carrying a sheep was a common pastoral image — the criophoros, or ram-bearer. Christians used this existing visual language but filled it with new meaning. No Roman authority could object to a painting of a shepherd.
The Good Shepherd is one of the most frequently recurring images in catacomb art, alongside the fish and the anchor — and notably, long before the cross.
The Dove
The dove carried multiple layers of meaning for early Christians. It recalled the dove returning to Noah’s ark with an olive branch — a symbol of peace after judgment. It recalled the Holy Spirit descending “like a dove” at Jesus’ baptism (Matthew 3:16). And it represented the soul in peace after death.
A dove with an olive branch in its mouth appears as a symbol of the peace and happiness of the soul. The olive branch comes from the story of Noah, who after the flood dispatched a dove to find dry land; it finally returned with an olive branch in its mouth as a sign of returning vegetation in a habitable land.
In the catacombs, doves often appear on the graves of martyrs — those who had died for their faith — as a declaration that their souls were at peace with God.
The Chi-Rho — ☧
The Chi-Rho (☧) is formed by overlapping the first two letters of the Greek word Christos (Christ): Chi (X) and Rho (P). It predates Constantine — early symbols similar to the Chi-Rho were the Staurogram and the IX monogram — but it was Constantine who made it famous.
According to Eusebius, the day before the Battle of Milvian Bridge in 312 CE, Constantine saw a cross of light in the sky, above the sun, bearing the inscription “Conquer by this.” He had the Chi-Rho marked on his soldiers’ shields, won the battle, and subsequently adopted it as the symbol of his empire and his faith.
The Chi-Rho was a turning point: a Christian symbol adopted by a military conqueror and stamped onto the weapons of an army. It marked the moment when Christianity shifted from a persecuted minority faith to the religion of imperial power.
Alpha and Omega — Α Ω
Often combined with the Chi-Rho, the Alpha (Α) and Omega (Ω) — first and last letters of the Greek alphabet — came directly from the Book of Revelation: “I am the Alpha and the Omega, the First and the Last, the Beginning and the End” (Revelation 22:13).
It was a declaration of Christ’s eternal nature: before all things, after all things. Unlike the other symbols, this one was explicitly theological — not hidden or coded, but a direct statement of belief for those who could read Greek.
The Staurogram — The Hidden Cross
Interestingly, there was one early symbol that did reference the cross — but in a concealed way. The staurogram (⳨) combined the Greek letters Tau (T) and Rho (P) in a way that suggested a figure on a cross. The staurogram was used to abbreviate the Greek word for cross in very early New Testament manuscripts such as P66, P45 and P75, almost like a sacred abbreviation.
This shows that the idea of the cross was not entirely absent from early Christian visual language — but it appeared in abbreviated, coded form, not as an open symbol of pride.
The Pre-Christian Cross
The cross as a shape long predates Christianity. Cross forms were used as symbols, religious or otherwise, long before the Christian era. Two pre-Christian cross forms have had some vogue in Christian usage. The ancient Egyptian hieroglyphic symbol of life — the ankh, a tau cross surmounted by a loop — was adopted and extensively used on Coptic Christian monuments. The swastika, called crux gammata, composed of four Greek letters gamma, is marked on many early Christian tombs as a veiled symbol of the cross.
The Tau (T) — the last letter of the Hebrew alphabet and the T-shaped cross form — was used as a symbol in Babylonian and Assyrian religious contexts, associated with the god Tammuz. The claim, popularised by Alexander Hislop’s 1853 book The Two Babylons, that the Christian cross was deliberately borrowed from this Tammuz-worship is frequently repeated — but modern scholars have largely dismissed Hislop’s methodology as speculative and historically unreliable. His claims have been widely debunked by scholars as lacking support in primary sources — the work is seen as polemical rather than factual, influenced by 19th-century Protestant anti-Catholic sentiment.
The more accurate picture: cross-shaped forms appeared in many ancient cultures independently, because the cross is one of the most basic geometric shapes a human hand can make. That early Christians eventually adopted it as their central symbol does not automatically mean they borrowed it from pagan religion — it more likely reflects that a shape associated with Jesus’ death gradually acquired devotional meaning as Christianity became safer to practise openly.
When Did the Cross Take Over?
Constantine’s adoption of the cross was the most important development that resulted in its becoming the preeminent symbol of Christianity. The extensive adoption of the cross as a Christian iconographic symbol arose from the 4th century.
The timeline is striking:
- 1st–3rd century: Fish, anchor, Good Shepherd, dove — hidden symbols of a persecuted faith
- 312 CE: Constantine’s vision; Chi-Rho adopted as military and imperial symbol
- 313 CE: Edict of Milan — Christianity legalised
- 325 CE: Council of Nicaea — Christian theology codified by imperial authority
- 4th–5th century: The cross emerges as the dominant Christian symbol
- 6th century: The cross becomes ubiquitous on churches and monuments
- After 400 CE: The first depictions of Jesus on the cross appear — 400 years after the crucifixion
Christians did not make explicit pictures of the crucifixion for approximately 400 years after Christ’s death. A theological reason may be that the early Christians emphasised the resurrection as well as the crucifixion. The Romans crucified many people, but only one was resurrected.
What This Tells Us
The shift from fish and anchor to cross is not merely a change in aesthetics. It reflects a profound transformation in what Christianity was.
The fish was the symbol of a persecuted minority, scratched secretly into walls by people who could be killed for their faith. The cross, as it came to be used after Constantine, was stamped on shields, raised on church buildings, and worn by emperors. It was the symbol of a state religion — of power, conquest, and authority.
Whether that transformation represented the fulfilment of Christianity’s mission or its corruption is a question every believer must answer for themselves. But the history is clear: the symbols changed when the power changed.
The first Christians did not worship the cross. They worshipped the one who died on it — and was raised from it. The difference matters.
A fish scratched in a catacomb wall.
An anchor carved on a stone tomb.
A shepherd carrying one lost sheep.
These were the symbols of the first Christians —
people who had nothing but faith, and everything to lose.
Sources: Clement of Alexandria, Paedagogus (~200 CE); Tertullian, De Baptismo (~200 CE); Eusebius of Caesarea, Life of Constantine (~337 CE); Encyclopaedia Britannica, “Cross” (11th ed.); Robin Jensen, Understanding Early Christian Art (2000); Lee Ann Snyder, Ante Pacem (2003).