Since the beginnings of Christianity, the sign of the fish has been used as a symbol of the faith. Although there is no mention of its use in Jesus’ teachings, or that of His apostles or prophets, in many ways it seems an apt symbol to use, assuming any symbol at all should be employed as it has been.

But why use the fish?

Perhaps the best place to begin answering this question is in the spelling of the Greek word itself. In English, we would use the letters ICHTHUS in order to spell or sound out the Greek word for fish phonetically. This would break down into equivalents of the Greek letters iota, chi, theta, upsilon and sigma as I -CH -TH -U -S.

To early Christians, the individual letters of the word would repre-sent an acrostic along the lines of something as follows:

·         Iota - was for the name Iasous (pronounced eeyaysoos), that is, Jesus

·         Chi - stood for the title Xristos (pronounced christoss), that is, Christ

·         Theta - stood for theos (pronounced thayoss), that is, God

·         Upsilon - was the first letter in uios (pronounced weeoss), that is, Son

·         Sigma - represented the word sotair, that is, Savior

And so of course when you put it all together you would have the phrase Jesus Christ God, Son, Savior or something like this with some minor variations.

Other associations of Jesus with fish are found often in the gospels:

·         His first apostles were fishermen

·         He said He would cause them to fish for men

·         He used fish in His teaching and in His parables

·         He instructed Peter to find tax money in a fish

·         He fed thousands of people with fish on at least two separate occasions

·         He used Jonah’s three days in a fish to signify the three days He would spend in the tomb

·         He ate fish to show He had a real body after His resurrection

·         He miraculously enabled the apostles to make a huge catch of fish after an entire night of unsuccessful fishing

·         He prepared a meal of fish for His apostles after His resurrection

Perhaps in all of this we now have some insight into what early Christians were thinking when they began to use the fish symbol, and why its use has endured to this day.