36: Baptism: Where Did It Come From?

Welcome to the Ready for Eternity podcast, a podcast and blog dedicated to inquisitive

Bible students exploring biblical truths that might not be fully explored in typical sermons or Bible studies.

My name is Eddie Lawrence. There are any number of things

God could have commanded to mark our entrance into a new life in Christ.

He chose baptism. What is the significance of immersion in water?

Let's find out. So why did

Jesus choose baptism to mark our entrance into a new life in him?

I would like to suggest that God chose immersion because it was something that the

Jews were already doing. Baptism wasn't new to first -century

Jews. It's a common misconception that immersion originated with John the

Baptist. John the Baptist appeared in the wilderness preaching a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins.

Mark 1 4. In fact, the Jews had a very long history of immersion for ritual purification.

There are a number of commands in the Law of Moses which required washing or bathing of both objects and people to restore the thing or person to a ritually pure state.

The Hebrew word translated as bathe is rakats. The word is non -specific regarding the manner of the bathing, but the rabbis understood it to be full immersion as the following quote from Professor Yonatan Adler explains.

The Tanaitic and Amoraitic rabbis were completely consistent in assuming that whenever the

Torah commands its listeners to wash, rakats, in order to remove impurity, nothing but full body immersion is intended.

This simple straightforward supposition is later taken up by the medieval sages, Rishonim, as exemplified by Rabbi Maimonides in his opening to the laws of Mikveot, in which he attributes this understanding to an oral tradition, presumably one which dates all the way back to Sinai.

Mishneh Torah, laws of Mikveot 1 2, every place that the Torah speaks of washing of flesh and laundering of clothing to purify from the impurities, nothing other than immersion of the entire body in a mikveh is meant.

And that which is said of a man with a discharge, without having rinsed his hands in water,

Leviticus 15 11, that is to say that he must immerse his entire body. And the same is true for all other impure people, that if one immersed his entire body, aside from the tip of his small finger, he remains impure.

And although all of these things are known only from tradition, literally from an oral transmission, it is nevertheless said in the written

Torah, it must be put into water, and it shall be unclean until the even, then shall it be clean.

Leviticus 11 32, a basic principle applying to all that are impure, that they should be put into water.

As you can see, the Jews from long ago considered immersion to be the mode of bathing, as it pertains to regaining a state of ritual purity.

By around 100 BC, the Jewish population of Palestine had established dedicated pools of water for the purpose of ritual immersions.

Jews refer to these pools, which we would call today baptistries, as mikveh, or in the plural, mikveot.

The existence of these mikvehot demonstrate that the Jews of the late Second Temple period were practicing immersion.

An article on Jewishvirtuallibrary .org says, large numbers of stepped and plastered mikvehot have been found in excavations in Jerusalem, in outlying villages, as well as at various rural locations.

Most of the installations in Jerusalem were in basements of private dwellings, and therefore must have served the specific domestic needs of the city inhabitants.

Numerous examples are known from the area of the upper city of Second Temple period Jerusalem, the present -day

Jewish Quarter, and Mount Zion, with smaller numbers in the City of David and the

Bezitha Hill. A few slightly larger mikvehot are known in the immediate area of the

Temple Mount, but these installations could not have met the needs of tens of thousands of Jewish pilgrims from outside the city attending the festivities at the

Temple on an annual basis. It would appear that the Bethesda and Siloam pools, to the north and south of the

Temple Mount, were designed at the time of Herod the Great to accommodate almost all of the ritual purification needs of the large numbers of Jewish pilgrims who flocked to Jerusalem for the festivals.

Burge, Kohik, and Green in their book The New Testament in Antiquity observes that the mikveh was not about hygiene, but ritual purity.

Most Jewish homes in Jerusalem during Jesus's day had a mikveh, an underground bathing chamber.

A bather entered on one side unclean and exited on the opposite side clean. Such cleansing was not about hygiene.

It was a religious ceremony readying a person or object for God's use. By the time of Jesus's ministry, immersion and the mikveh was a well -established practice.

The Jews of Israel were completely familiar and comfortable with the concept.

This explains why there is an absence in the Gospels of disciples questioning this practice.

It wasn't something strange or new. The many mikveh and pools in Jerusalem also helps to explain how the first disciples were able to immerse 3 ,000 people in a short time on the day of Pentecost.

The process of a Gentile converting to Judaism has several elements which are relevant to our own conversions.

The process of proselyte conversion surely influenced how the very first Jewish Christians viewed their own conversion to Jesus.

Scholars generally agree there is little evidence that the Jews practiced proselyte baptism prior to 70

AD. However, they don't necessarily conclude that earlier

Jews were not practicing proselyte baptism. Rabbis Hillel and Shammai debated proselyte baptism as early as the 1st century

BC. Lewis Feldman in his book Josephus Judaism and Christianity said,

Since Christian baptism is an imitation of proselyte immersion as required by Jewish law, we can establish that immersion was a requirement for conversion to Judaism before the redaction of the books of the

New Testament, that is, the latter part of the first century AD. An argument between the houses of Hillel and Shammai regarding the details of proselyte immersion already indicates that this requirement was enforced by their time.

Also, Harold Rowley in Jewish Proselyte Baptism and the

Baptism of John said, While there is no very clear evidence for the practice of baptizing proselytes at a date prior to the ministry of John the

Baptist, it is in the highest degree improbable that Judaism adopted a practice which had already become an essential practice of Christianity, and the opinion is today generally held that, despite the paucity of evidence, it is scarcely to be doubted that the

Jewish practice antedates the ministry of John the Baptist. Gentiles wishing to convert to Judaism after learning the law submitted to circumcision and immersion.

These were the final steps into the Jewish faith. The Talmud, which is the oral law, states,

When he comes up after his immersion, he is deemed an Israelite in all respects.

Rabbi Yossi says in the Talmud, One who has become a proselyte is like a child newly born.

Jeff McFadden in his book One Baptism said, The baptismal water,

Mikveh, in Rabbinic literature was referred to as the womb of the world, and as a convert came out of the water it was considered a new birth, separating him from the pagan world.

As the convert came out of these waters, his status was changed and he was referred to as a little child just born, or a child of one day.

We see the New Testament using similar Jewish terms as born anew, new creation, and born from above.

The London Encyclopedia Volume 3, under the heading of baptism, notes that a

Jewish proselyte was said to be born again when baptized. In our own conversions, we also separated ourselves from a pagan world.

We underwent a circumcision of the heart and submitted to immersion.

In this way, we are like the proselytes who converted to Judaism. Jesus repurposed something that people were already accustomed to.

Immersion was not introduced during John's ministry, nor was it introduced by Christianity.

One notable difference was that while Jewish immersion was for ritual purification, both

John's immersion and Christian immersion was for the forgiveness of sins.

In the next episode, we'll consider the Holy Spirit's role in our conversion.

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