ANCHOR. While the anchor has had some currency in various cultures as a symbol relating to the sea and to virtues like constancy and hope, its religious significance became paramount only with the growth of Christianity. In fact, the anchor as we know it and as the object early Christians turned into a symbol did not appear until well into Roman times; the Greeks used an anchor that was essentially an arrangement of sandbags.

Both the appearance and the function of the anchor played a role in its development as a religious symbol. Early Christians saw in it an allegorical and disguised form of the cross. Its function became metaphorical in the New Testament in Hebrews 6:19: "We have this as a sure and steadfast anchor of the soul, a hope that enters into the inner shrine behind the curtain where Jesus has gone as a forerunner on our...