Archaeology

Review: The Ichthus Christogram and Other Early Christian Symbols

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Cover image of "The Ichthus Christogram and Other Early Christians Symbols" by J. Daniel Hays

The Ichthus Christogram and Other Early Christian Symbols, J. Daniel Hays. Kregel Academic (ISBN: 9780825448218) 2025

Summary: A study of the Ichthus Christogram, showing site examples, and their use.

Archaeologists working in the Mediterranean world from Israel to Rome have notice an eight-spoked wheel carved into walls, floors, pavements, entrances and other locations. Some have assumed that the symbol, rendered here, was a form of gameboard.

Ichthus Christogram (Illustration by Robert C. Trube)

However, biblical scholar J. Daniel Hays argues that this is neither graffiti nor a gameboard but rather a Christian symbol. Specifically it is a rendering of ICHTHUS, an acrostic standing for the first letters of “Jesus Christ, God’s Son, Savior” While many of us recognize the word as the Greek for fish and have seen fish symbols containing the word, this is different. The symbol is created by superimposing the letters of “ichthus” on top of each other.

Hays builds his case by discussing first the various symbols used by early Christians. He then discusses gameboards, usually rectangular affairs. The inability to conceive of a game played on an eight-spoked wheel and the locations of many of these wheels argues against the gameboard hypothesis. Rather, he argues that the proliferation of the symbol reflects the Christianization of the Greco-Roman world, post-Constantine.

This raises the question of what purpose the symbol had. A key idea is that Christian symbols were often used at abandoned sites of Greco-Roman worship and ritual, including baths, to serve a cleansing function and to proclaim the victory of Christ over demons associated in the Christian mind of the idols once present. Hays also argues that the symbol had a teaching function, affirming the high Christology behind the statement, particularly as Christological controversies arose.

Then in successive chapters, Hays takes us on a tour of sites around the Mediterranean. He begins in west Turkey, including cities like Constantinople, Laodicea, Ephesus, Samos, and Sardis. Then he tours the Balkan Peninsula with stops at Delphi, Pannonia, Philippi, and Stobi. Following that, he takes us through Israel/Palestine including Bethlehem, Hippos, Jerusalem, Magdala, and Sepphoris. Finally, we end up in Italy, visiting Ostia, Ravenna, and Rome.

In his conclusion, Hays notes that the use of the eight-spoked Christogram throughout the Roman empire is a testimony to the “incredible spread” of the church in the fourth and fifth centuries. This reflected not only their increasing freedom from persecution but the spiritual victory signified by the use of the symbol in former pagan spaces.

Hays provides a number of photographs of the sites he visits and examples of Christograms and other symbols. All in all, he offers a fascinating visual exploration of the history of the earliest Christian centuries.

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Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary copy of this book from the publisher for review.

Review: Excavating the Land of Jesus

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Excavating the Land of Jesus, James Riley Strange, Foreword by Luke Timothy Johnson. Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 2023.

Summary: A description of the real work of archaelogists excavating sites in the biblical world from the time of Jesus, particularly the problems they seek to solve as they try to understand how people lived in that time.

James Riley Strange believes we have misconceptions about the work of archaeologists working in biblical lands. They are not the swashbuckling heroes and treasure hunters we see on movie screens. Nor are they the ones who will give us incontrovertible proofs confirming the biblical accounts. Rather than write a book to write about the world of Jesus time, he offers us a study of how archaeologists think and go about their work, focusing on the setting of Galilee from the second century BCE to the second century CE, the setting in which Jesus’s Galilean ministry took place. His aim is to understand how people in this time and place lived and what they valued through the objects that have survived. Strange offers this definiition of the archaeolgist’s work:

Archaeology is the systematic recovery and interpretation of ancient human detritus for the sake of understanding ancient human technologies societies, and values.

The approach of this book is problem oriented and seeks to show how archaelogists working in Galilee address these problems. They include:

  • Knowing where to dig to have a reasonable hope of uncovering evidence of human activity.
  • Knowing when a site excavated is one named in the Bible or another ancient document. The work uses the problem of identifying the site of Magdala on the Sea of Galilee.
  • The problem of how to dig. Strange details the meticulous steps of digging, recording finds, and posing questions based on observations.
  • The problem of the interplay of archaeological data and ancient texts. Often ancient texts are used as clues to topography and even the possible location of sites. The text illustrates this using the travel narratives in John.
  • What can be inferred from technological artifacts about life in Jesus time? In this work, the author describes the archaeology of olive oil presses and what can be inferred about systems of food production and distribution, including impacts on such things as pottery production and road systems and maintenance.
  • Finally, what can be learned about the distinctive values of Galilean Jews versus non-Jews from the objects and buildings that survive. We learn particularly about oil lamps that have Judean origins among Galilean Jews and synagogues whose layout in miniature reproduce that of the Jerusalem temple–markers of Jewish identity and the shape of their worship.

The work concludes with personal testimonies by several archaeologists of why they dig. The author’s father captures the importance of this work when current residents on the site of Sepphoris thanked him, saying, “We are here to express our thanks to you for exposing our history for us” (p. 155).

This work offers no “evidence that demands a verdict” but rather describes the careful work of trying to understand the significance of objects found and sometimes using ancient documents like the Bible to look for clues of what may be found–all in the quest to better understand the setting in which Jesus lived and ministered. The author illustrates this well with case studies, maps, and photographs. More than that, in writing, it seems that his hope is that others might consider joining digs as volunteers for the right reasons. The invitation he offers is plain: “I hope that readers who wish to dig in Israel will do it.” So beware reader–you just could find yourself on a dig!

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Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary review copy of this book from the publisher.

Review: The Children of Ash and Elm

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Children of Ash and Elm: A History of the Vikings, Neil Price. New York: Basic Books, 2020.

Summary: A history based in archaeological research of the rise of the Vikings, their ways and beliefs, and their development as a trading, raiding, and invading power.

The story is that the gods, as they were creating, found two pieces of wood, out of which they fashioned the first man and first woman. The man was of Ash, the woman of Elm, and from these the people that became known to us as the “Vikings” sprang. Or so the Norse legends say.

Beginning with this story, Neil Price renders a history of the people known to us as Vikings. It is a story of a people who emerge from the fjords of Norway and the fastnesses of Sweden, from a collection of locally powerful lords of halls to invade and settle as far as Uzbekistan, Kabul, and Baghdad in the east and Iceland, Greenland, and the eastern shores of North America to the west. They contributed to the founding of Russia and their blood runs through William the Conqueror.

Price draws deeply on archaeological research to reconstruct the rise of these peoples in a time of volcanically-induced extended winter. The first part of this work traces their roots amid a Europe reconstituting itself after the fall of the Roman empire and the spread of Christianity, including to isolated monasteries in England that fell to early raids. Price uses archaeology to reconstruct their life, their beliefs (the Norse gods were a violent and promiscuous bunch) their burial customs (a most fascinating part of the book, including the boat burials, the rites and sacrifices, and what they were interred with), their social organization, including the employment of slaves, and their gender and sexuality.

The second part of the book traces the rise of the Vikings as a maritime culture from trading to raiding (“why trade for it when we can just take it.”) to their full scale invasions. What drives all of this is growing economic power and the needs to sustain and expand it. Price is unsparing in his accounts of the violence of these raids and invasions, and especially the consequences for women.

The third part of the book then builds upon this expansion to trace the extent of their dispersion throughout northern and eastern Europe, Russia, Constantinople and the trade routes to the east. We also learn of their dispersion from Scandinavian countries to Iceland and the attempts to settle in Greenland and North America (Vinland). Price traces the wars in England, the back and forth struggles of alternating Anglo-Saxon and Viking kings until the death of Knut in 1035 and the invasion of William, who as mentioned, was a Viking descendent.

In addition to this sweeping history, Price offers us a glimpse of the avalanche of data coming from archaeological work, from excavations, to artifacts, to DNA samples. We learn of the excavation of a warrior burial site that the warrior was a woman, from DNA evidence. Price offers evidence of fluidity in both gender roles and sexuality which might be explored further in terms of whether contemporary constructs are being read into the record, or whether the record bears out the existence of gender and sexual expression that parallel contemporary experience.

The work helps the reader enter into the worldview of these people, their maritime and military prowess, the sheer breadth of their advances and influences, and, in the end, their assimilation into Christendom. We see both the glories of the hall and the ugliness of their violence and some of their rites. The work offers maps that should be referenced to track the movements of the Vikings and a variety of illustrations of sites and artifacts referenced in the text. The references also offer extensive additional readings, as well as references for each chapter in the text.

All of this comes in a highly readable account, seasoned with Price’s wit from time to time. While there may be matters for continued scholarly debate in Price’s account, he offers an account that separates myth from fact in our understanding of these people–for example, there were no horned helmets but rather head pieces of armor and mail! This is a “go to” resource for those interested in the current research on the Vikings and their history and ways.

Review: Across A Billion Years

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Across a Billion Years

Across a Billion Years, Robert Silverberg. New York: Open Road Integrated Media, 2013 (originally published in 1969).

Summary: A group of space archaeologists from different planets make a discovery that puts them on the trail of an ancient, highly advanced race that disappeared nearly a billion years ago.

Tom Rice is a graduate archaeology researcher part of a team drawn from several different races from different planets on an expedition excavating a site on one of the planets occupied by an incredibly advanced and ancient civilization, The High Ones. Tom, in his youthful enthusiasm, is the narrator of this story. The chapters are recorded messages to his telepath sister, Lorie, whose mind can communicate across the galaxy while her invalid body is confined to a hospital bed.

The dig, like most, is tediously routine at first, allowing us to get to know the expedition’s characters–the android Kelly, the rhino-like Mirrick, Dr. Horkk from Thhh, Steen Steen, a hermaphroditic creature, Saul the stamp collector, Leroy Chang, who turns out to be kind of creepy, Pilazinool, who loves to remove and replace his robotic limbs, Dr Shein, who heads the expedition, 408b, an octopoid creature, and Tom’s love interest, Jan, who at first is more interested in the stamp collector.

The expedition shifts from tedium to intrigue when Tom discovers a sphere that is kind of a projector, that plays back scenes from The High One’s civilization. Nothing like this has ever been discovered. More than that, it puts them on a trail of discovery leading first to an asteroid where a robot has been entombed in a cave, it turns out over 800 years ago. They find the asteroid, and the robot intact, who conveniently is a universal translator. The robot in turn takes them to a home planet, abandoned “just” 275 million year ago by the Mirt Korp Ahm, as the High Ones call themselves. The planet continues to be inhabited by a fantastic assemblage of self-maintaining robots, much like Dihn Ruu, their interpreter.

It is here that Dihn Ruu learns why the aging home star of the Mirt Korp Ahm cannot any longer be seen. The planetary system has been enclosed by a Dyson sphere to conserve energy. And with this news, the explorers lay plans to head there, only to face arrest from Galaxy Central!

Will they make it to the home planet of the Mirt Korp Ahm? If they do, what will they find? Will they be received or destroyed? And how will these discoveries change them? These are interesting questions that I cannot answer without spoiling the conclusion.

Perhaps as interesting as this adventure from planet to asteroid to planet are the relationships between the members of the team. Silverberg explores the human-android relationship–are humans from a vat really different from those conceived the old-fashioned way? And why do humans inherently suspect other species?

Equally intriguing is Tom’s perception of his sister. He pities her physical disabilities and “guards” her from aspects of his life that highlight her disabilities. Silverberg gives us an interesting portrayal of how the “abled” view those “differently abled” and how the “differently abled” see things.

Oddly, it seemed to me that what Silverberg considers the least is the encounter between species, and how such contact, particularly if one is far advanced, would change the explorers civilization. Nor does there seem to be much interest in the highly advanced robotic civilization, other than as stepping stones to learn what has become of the Mirt Korp Ahm.

Nevertheless, he raises the interesting question of what a race a billion years old might be like, for humans who reckon the advance of modern civilization over less than 50,000 years. Silverberg presents us with this interesting thought experiment clothed in a chase across a galaxy.