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You can find previous episodes of “The Stone Chapel Podcast” at Lanier Theological Library.
“The Stone Chapel Podcast” is part of the ChurchLeaders Podcast Network.
This episode has been edited for clarity and space.
Danny Hays
Hi. This is J. Daniel Hays, and I’m Professor Emeritus of Biblical Studies at Ouachita Baptist University in Arkansas.
David Capes
Professor J. Daniel Hays, Danny, good to see you. Welcome to your first time here to “The Stone Chapel Podcast.”
Danny Hays
Yeah, it’s great to be here with you, David. I’ve heard about your podcast for years, so I’m glad to be on with you.
David Capes
Oh, it’ll be fun. We’ll have a great 20 minutes together. For those who don’t know Danny Hays, who is he?
Danny Hays
I’m an Air Force kid. I grew up all over, spent a chunk of my life in New Mexico, and then a chunk of my life in Texas. But I’ve been here at Ouachita Baptist University for the last 30 years, teaching Biblical Studies. Primarily Old Testament has been my field, but also hermeneutics. Some of you may know the book I co-authored with Scott Duvall, Grasping God’s Word. It’s been one of our more popular books. I spent a number of years in Ethiopia as a missionary with my wife earlier in our life. But we’ve been here in the USA the last 30 years, and where we’re enjoying life in Arkansas. We got some grandkids in the state as well. So, it’s a wonderful phase of life.
David Capes
You get to see the grandkids every once in a while. Spoil them and send them back! You’ve been a good friend through the years, and your work has just been outstanding. The book we’re going to talk about today was a bit of a surprise to me, because I didn’t know you were working on it. First of all, you’re an Old Testament fellow, and you’ve written on hermeneutics, of course. But this is called, “The Ichthus Christogram and Other Early Christian Symbols.” It is published by Kregel Academic, and it’s a really interesting book. Lots of great images in here. Being an Old Testament professor, now an emeritus professor still teaching and still active, how did you get interested in Christian symbols?
Danny Hays
For quite a number of years, my colleague, Scott Duvall, a New Testament scholar, and I were leading student groups on biblical studies trips to Israel and Turkey. We’d go to Israel often, unless they were shooting at one another. Then we’d go to Turkey. So, we were in Turkey once, in Ephesus walking along. And there on the pavement of Harbor Street was this eight-spoked wheel carved in the ground. It’s about 18 inches in diameter. There are eight spokes. I didn’t have any idea what it was. So I said, what on earth is this? My colleague said some people think this is an acronym for [the Greek word] ichthus. He used his toe on the ground and pointed out the letters. An iota and a chi. And he said it might stand for ichthus, the word for “fish,” a christogram. And I said, it’s fascinating. And he told me some people think it’s a public game board.
In fact, in academia, among those writing on ancient ruins, the consensus view is mostly that it’s a game board. But we walked a little bit further over to the church of St Mary, a few 100 yards from that, and we saw the same symbol on the side wall panel that had been in a church. I said, that’s certainly not a game board, the same symbol they’ve used here in a church. So, we got curious. But we’d go back year after year, and pretty soon, I had the students looking for these things. There’s a lot of graffiti, informal inscriptions, that people have done. You can’t do it with a can of spray paint [because it is carved into hard stone]. It’s not that kind of graffiti. Most of it is on the ground and you miss it when you’re at sites. But once we got 20 or 30 college kids looking for these things ,we started finding them.
David Capes
That’s right. Let them do the work for you.
Danny Hays
We started finding them. When you visit the sites, you’re not looking down, you’re just awed by these columns and buildings. You’re looking up, and you step right over them. Once the kids started looking for them, we suddenly started finding lots of varieties and crosses too. I thought, well, we ought to be able to determine whether it’s a game board or a Christogram. Surely somebody has written on this or done some research. I started prodding into it and trying to find someone who had addressed it, I couldn’t find anyone who’d done anything thorough. Most of the comments were fairly superficial.
I thought, I wonder if there’s a way, first to establish clearly what it means, and then second try to determine why? Why was it used? When was it used? What does it mean? That started me on this long, journey of research into things that were outside my field. But it’s not anybody’s direct field, the graffiti in the years 200 to 400 AD. I started studying ancient symbols and epigraphy and archeology and early church history and trying to pull all of these things together so that we could address this Then I continued to look for these both on site, as I visited more sites and through databases. Some symbols have been digitized and put into databases. After a couple years, I felt I could pull this together and argue a point, and I felt fairly confident about what I concluded.
David Capes
It sounds like you don’t think it’s a game board.
Danny Hays
No, I don’t. There are game boards nearby. There are some rectangles that are clearly game boards, and the Christograms are not far the game board. The idea is not outrageous, but it is incorrect.
David Capes
Now, do you see most of these on the ground, or do you see them in other places?
Danny Hays
Most of them are on the ground. I suspect there were some on the walls, but most of the walls were plastered back then, plastered and painted. And I suspect they likewise painted these things on the walls, but we don’t have any of the external material left. If you walk through ancient sites, it’s very, very rare to find some of the original plaster.
David Capes
Or color of any kind.
Danny Hays
That’s right. All of that is gone. There are very few places. We do have one of these eight spoke wheels that was plastered on a wall just south of Rome. But most of what we have archeologically is that hard stone pavement. It lasts forever because it stands up well against all kinds of erosion. So there’s a few still visible on walls. The one that is clearly on a wall in Ephesus at the big church of Saint John, I suspect that stone was taken from another site and originally carved on the ground. I think that was from a temple. It was fairly common back then to take the cut stones from other abandoned facilities when you build churches. So I think while it’s on the wall, now, I don’t think it was etched on the wall. I think it was etched on the ground.
David Capes
One of the things you point out the book is how difficult these things would have been to make. This is not graffiti that happens overnight in the dark, like you see today, on a train. Somebody tags a train. You had to have certain tools to be able to cut into this hard stone.
Danny Hays
Yes, absolutely. It’s not like you had an Ace Hardware store down the street, or, like many of us who have a pretty good chisel and hammer in the shed. Very few people had these tools to be able to cut stone, to chisel into this very hard flagstone. This is not soft limestone. Sometimes David, you can tell someone has used a very clear pattern. They’ve drawn it out. It’s exact. They took time, and they probably had some skill. But in other cases, it’s very amateurly done. He didn’t plan out that circle. He just started etching around, and he gets all eight spokes and the wheel in there, but it’s a lopsided wheel, or the spokes are not even. You see a variety of way that it was done. I think it just depends on the context. Were they doing this quickly, or was it someone who had a little more skill and had a template when he laid it out?
