"Early Christians did not represent the person of Jesus, so much as the belief that he was the Messiah, the Anointed One - 'Christ' in Greek - the Saviour. As this belief was founded above all on Scripture, the written Word of God, the earliest images of Christ were also created out of letter - and word- signs, or were visual translations of the verbal imagery of the Bible."
"God's Second Commandment . . . forbids the making and worship of idolatrous images. Since Jesus and his first followers were Jews, members of a culture hostile to images, no contemporary images of him were made. And the Gospels, written in the first century after his death, give no description of what he may have looked like."
"Some hundred years later, Christianity had attracted many non-Jewish converts. Yet although the prohibition against images was relaxed, fear of idolatry remained. The early Church had no cult images of Christ . . . "
Page 9
"The instrument of Christ's victory, the cross, was seldom represented; early Christians were reluctant to depict the gallows on which common criminals were executed. In the catacombs, they showed the cross covertly. for example in the crosspiece of a ship's anchor, the emblem of hope. Accompanying the anchor, or as a sign within an inscription, we find the
oldest symbol for Christ: the fish." page 10
http://www.scalarchives.com/web/ric...taly&prmset=on&SC_PROV=MUS&SC_Lang=eng&Sort=7 middle row, 11th down.
The Image of Christ, isbn 1 85709292 9
Hope this helps, though it might make it harder! I'd use the words 'Christian symbol' and be done with it!
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