A Book Review

I first encountered the work of J. Daniel Hays on the eight-spoked wheel when I read his chapter on the subject in  Inscriptions, Papyri, and Other Artifacts. The topic was entirely new to me, and it immediately captured my interest, prompting me to read his book The Ichthus Christogram and Other Early Christian Symbols. Hays’s work provides a fascinating introduction to early Christian symbols—including the eight-spoked wheel—and a helpful survey of the Christianization of the pagan Roman world.

Hays and other scholars propose that the eight-spoked wheel represented the five letters of the well-known ichthus acrostic. In this acrostic, the Greek word ἰχθύς (“fish”) provides the initials of the phrase Ιησοῦς Χριστός Θεοῦ Ὑἱὸς Σωτήρ (“Jesus Christ, God’s Son, Savior”). With the sigma written as a C-shaped lunate sigma, the result is an eight-spoked wheel. This symbol appears in a variety of ancient inscriptions, and Hays argues that the evidence strongly supports the ichthus acrostic interpretation. Some of the strongest evidence includes a fragment of wall plaster bearing an eight-spoked wheel with the word ἰχθύς beneath it, a house-church pavement with one panel inscribed with a fish and another with an eight-spoked wheel, and a church wall engraved with both a cross and an eight-spoked wheel.

A popular alternate view is that the wheel served as a gambling board. Hays, however, presents compelling evidence against this theory. Drawing on the work of others, he notes that the gambling-board interpretation is entirely conjectural and that the proposed rules are far too simplistic for actual use in gambling.

After establishing the importance of Christian symbols in the Christianization of the Roman world, Hays devotes four chapters to examining the eight-spoked wheel in specific regions of the empire.

The book includes numerous black-and-white photographs that enhance the reader’s understanding of the material, as well as a diagram of the eight-spoked wheel. Unfortunately, some of the other symbols he describes—such as the one formed with the first two letters of Ιησοῦς—lack accompanying diagrams (see p. 24).

Overall, Hays offers an engaging and well-researched contribution to the study of early Christian symbols. Readers with either a general or specialized interest will appreciate his detailed examination of this unique and often overlooked subject.

Special thanks to Kregel Academic for a review copy of this book. This did not affect my thoughts in any way, so far as I know.