A Basic Introduction to Christian Symbols

Easter is coming soon and you will see various symbols related to it. One of the most frequent is the Easter egg. Christians adopted the egg as a symbol of Jesus' resurrection from the dead very early. As the egg's shell appears lifeless and a live chick comes out of it, so also the sealed tomb broke open and Jesus emerged alive.

The eggs are colorfully decorated as an expression of joy at the resurrection and the confident hope it gives Christians that they, too, shall rise.

Not only will you see various Christian symbols in churches; but you will also see them on greeting cards, decorations, jewelry, and on gravestones in cemeteries. It helps to be a bit familiar with Christian symbols and their meaning.

(The images used in this Instructable are from Google Images.)

The familiar Easter bunny is not a Christian symbol. For Christians Easter is properly "the Festival of Our Lord's Resurrection from the Dead," but that is a mouthful and Christians usually just say 'Easter.' The word "Easter" properly refers to springtime, fertility, and new life associated with the passing of the deadness of winter and the rejuvenation of the earth. Rabbits multiply rapidly and the Easter bunny is really a symbol of fertility. Bunnies and fertility have more in common with a pagan worship of the earth than they do with a Christian celebration of Easter.

The butterfly is also a Christian symbol of the resurrection of Jesus. A cocoon appears lifeless, and yet a beautiful butterfly emerges alive.

Sometimes the image you see below is superimposed over a butterfly. It is a simple Greek cross (arms of equal length) with the letters for the Greek word meaning "victory" or "conqueror." The famous running shoe with the swoosh uses the same word in its name, but because the Greek alphabet does not readily and completely come over into the alphabet we use in English and many other languages, some letters are represented differently. So, some spell it Nike and others spell it Nika. It is the same word, however.

Nika is used in the Greek New Testament, particularly at Romans 8:37, which says, "We are more than conquerors through Christ Who loved us."

Below is a variation on the NIKA symbol. The letters in the top half of the graphic represent "Jesus" and "Christ." The Greek alphabet has no "J", but uses an "I" with a "Y" sound. Jesus is Yesus. The "C" at the end is one way Greek speaking people have written an "S" over the centuries. The tilde over the two letters represents an abbreviation for whatever other letters come between the first and last letters of a word. Some early handwritten manuscripts of the Greek New Testament also make use of this device, especially for some very common words. The second set of letters looks like an "X" and a "C" (S). The "X" is the Greek letter chi. It has a "CH" sound. It is the first letter in the word "Christ." You can guess the symbol means "Jesus Christ - Conqueror".

Someone who studies fish is an ichthiologist or, more properly, ichthyologist. "Ichtys" is the Greek word for 'fish.' You have probably seen the outline of a fish on someone's automobile bumper. Maybe it had the Greek letters inside it as you see in the graphic below.

The Greek letters are (left to right) iota-chi-theta-upsilon-sigma. While they spell the Greek word 'fish,' they also serve as an acrostic for the Greek words that mean "Jesus Christ, God's Son, Savior."

During years of hard persecution Christians used the fish symbol as a sign of recognition among each other. While talking with someone in the outdoors, a Christian could idly make an arc in the dirt. If the other person were a Christian, he could make a second arc to complete the image of a fish. It was something non-Christians did not know and was a safe way to identify oneself without risking arrest and persecution.

This is a common and frequent symbol for 'Jesus.' As you might guess, the letters are Greek because Greek was the common language for the first centuries of Christendom. In this case, the "S" appears as we would write it. You already learned about the "I". What appears to be an "H" or "h" is actually an eta. It is a vowel with a sound like a long "A" in English. It is the second letter in the name "Jesus."

To us this looks like a "P" and an "X". You already know that the "X" is a chi, is the first letter in the Greek spelling of 'Christ,' and has a "CH" sound. The "P" is a rho. It has an "R" sound and is the second letter in the Greek spelling of 'Christ.' The graphic shows three variations on a Chi Rho symbol. You may see this on banners, on altars, on clerical vestments, and on jewelry.

The alpha and the omega are the first and last letters of the Greek alphabet. In order to say He is everything, Jesus said in the Book of Revelation that He is the First and the Last, the Alpha and the Omega.

Once I was in someone's home. It was during the 1970s in the era of super graphics when people painted wild bands of color on their walls and ceilings. My hostess had a couple of broad bands of color that raced around her living room and down a hallway. There were some butterflies on the ceiling, too. At the end of the hallway were the letters A and Z. After a few minutes I had to ask her if the A and the Z represented an alpha and an omega, and if the butterflies represented Jesus' resurrection from the dead. She smiled and said they did. It was her way of provoking a conversation that would allow her to talk about Jesus and what He means to her.

The letters INRI are not Greek, but Latin. It was one of the three languages Pilate used when he placed the charges against Jesus above Him on the cross. It means, "Jesus Nazarenus, Rex Iudaeorum" or "Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews." You will often see it on altars, perhaps in cemeteries.

For some reason, a lot of nautical terminology found its way into Christian things very early. The main body of the church is the nave, which is a term for the body of a ship. The image of an anchor lends itself to incorporating a cross, long a Christian symbol because in the New Testament St. Paul often refers to the whole Christian Gospel with one word: the cross. ("The preaching of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing." and so on.) The anchor was chosen to be a symbol of hope. In this life, Christ is the anchor that gives us a footing amid the vagaries of life.

The cross most familiar to us from jewelry, church steeples, signs, and everything else is a Latin cross. The Greek cross was already mentioned in Step Three. This cross is made from antique nails. It is a replica of the Coventry Cross. When the Cathedral at Coventry (begun in the Thirteenth Century) was bombed and burned during the Coventry Blitz of World War II, people found iron nails from a roof beam. They made a cross with some of them. The Latin cross fits our imagination of what a cross would be from the description in the Four Gospels.

The Jerusalem Cross has two interpretations as I learned them. It has a history going back to the Crusades. The first interpretation is that the five crosses represent the five wounds of Christ. The second is that they represent the Gospel going from Jerusalem out to the four corners of the world. See my Instructable: https://www.instructables.com/id/Cut_Nail_Jerusalem_Pectoral_or_Wall_Cross/

The Gospel of John describes Jesus as the Lamb of God Whose blood takes away the sin of the world. In Revelation John describes Jesus as the lamb Who was slain and is alive again, Who is worthy to receive power and honor and glory. The graphic shows the victorious lamb of Revelation.

St. Patrick chose the three leafed clover as a symbol of the Christian belief that God is three persons: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit; but yet one God. The graphic shows a triquetra. There are three points or corners, and yet all are tied together in one.

At Jesus' baptism in the wilderness by John, the Holy Spirit descended on Jesus in the form of a dove.

These are the basic Christian symbols you will see whether in a church or not. Once you are aware of them and of their meaning, you will likely notice more of them in your daily travels than you knew before.