A Bible History of Baptism

Section XXXIX. – “Baptized from the Dead.”

The book of Ecclesiasticus, or “The Wisdom of Jesus the son of Sirach,” is one of the Apochrypha. It was written by Joshua ben Sira ben Eliezer, a priest, at Jerusalem, about two hundred years before the coming of Christ. “The original Hebrew, with the exception of a few fragments in the Gemaras and Midrashim, is no longer extant, but we have translations in Greek, Syriac, and Arabic. The work has been always held in high esteem, by both Jews and Christians, and was judged by some of the Talmudists to be worthy of a place among the canonical Scriptures.”31 In this work, the priestly author has written this proverb, “He that is baptized from the dead, and again toucheth the dead, what availeth his washing?” – Ecclus. xxxi, 30 (xxxiv, 25 of the English version). Here, it is unquestionable that reference is had to the cleansing of those who were defiled by the dead. Such persons were “baptized from the dead,” that is, purged from the defilement, incurred through the touch of the dead, by the sprinkling of the water of separation. It has been said, by Baptist writers, that the author of the proverb meant to designate the self-washing which was required of those who had been thus sprinkled. But, in the first place, we must again repeat it, the self-washings were not immersions. In the second, they were not the purification from the dead. On that point, the law was express. “The man that shall be unclean, and shall not purify himself, that soul shall be cut off from among the congregation, because he hath defiled the sanctuary of the Lord: the water of separation hath not been sprinkled upon him; he is unclean.” – Num. xix, 20. The self-washings are never called purifyings, nor alluded to by that name. Besides, as before remarked, on another point, the pre-eminence thus assigned to those washings, as compared with the sprinklings, is contrary to the whole spirit and tenor of the law, and would imply a preference given to our own righteousness, which the former symbolized, over the blood of sprinkling of the Lord Jesus, and his renewing Spirit, typified by the latter. Moreover, upon this view, we are to suppose that the author of the proverb, himself a priest, ignored that official sprinkling which must be performed by a clean person, acting in priestly capacity, and which, in his days, was performed almost invariably by the priests, and falsely attributed the consequent cleansing to the self-washing, which was a private personal duty of the cleansed. On the relative position of the two ordinances, the prayer of the Psalmist, in his deep sense of guilt and defilement is very significant. “Purge me with hyssop. Wash me.” He does not once think of self-washing, but looks up to the great High Priest for all. It was unquestionably of the sprinkled water of separation that this writer says, “He that is baptized from the dead, and again toucheth the dead what availeth his washing?” Here again we have an impregnable demonstration. We have before seen that Paul testifies that the sprinklings of the Mosaic system were baptisms. We now have the added voice of the son of Sirach certifying the same thing. By the mouth of two or three witnesses shall every word be established. These witnesses are ignorant or false, or else baptizo does not here mean, to dip, to immerse.

This conclusion is yet farther confirmed by the light which the above proverb sheds upon a passage in the writings of Paul, which has greatly perplexed expositors. “Else what shall they do which are baptized for the dead, if the dead rise not at all? why are they then baptized for the dead?” – 1 Cor. xv, 29. Paul is discussing the doctrine of the resurrection. As elsewhere in the epistle, so here, he assumes his readers to know the law of Moses. (Compare 1 Cor. ix, 8-10; x, 1-10.) To it, he, therefore, appeals. – “You know that there is in the law an ordinance for the ritual restoration of such as, by contact with the dead, have become ritually dead. But what means this rite? If the saints shall not really be raised up, to what intent is this ritual resurrection?” That such was the meaning of Paul, will hardly be questioned by any who consider, (1.) That the law of defilement by the dead, and of purification with the water of separation, was a statute of universal obligation to Israel, at home, and in foreign lands: (2.) That the ordinance and its observance were so familiar that, two hundred years before Christ, it was made the ground of the proverb above cited. As we shall presently see, it is mentioned by Philo and by Josephus as, in their days, universally observed: (3.) That it was known to Paul by the name of baptism: (4.) That it meant the giving of life to the dead: (5.) That, hence, whatever might be Paul’s allusion, it was a fact, throughout the dwellings of Israel, that, whenever death visited a house, it involved the consequent necessity of the baptism of the family and attendants, – a baptism which signified the resurrection of the dead. It is, therefore, beyond question that Paul meant to refer to that Levitical purification. Such were the facts that his readers could not but so understand him. Moreover, his expression here, and that which we have heretofore examined concerning the divers baptisms of the law, mutually illustrate each other and confirm all our conclusions on the subject.

Thus, starting with the “divers baptisms” of the epistle to the Hebrews, we have identified them with the seal of the Sinai covenant and the water of separation. We have traced the ordinance in the historical books, the Psalms and the prophets; have found it, in the time of the son of Sirach, familiarly known as baptism, and have recognized it in the New Testament itself, referred to by the same name, by that Hebrew of the Hebrews, the apostle Paul. We may add that the same apostle again refers to imitations of this ordinance in his dissuasive against “doctrines of baptisms.” (Heb. vi, 2.) Here, he alludes to those Pharisaic rites which under the same name were condemned by the Lord Jesus, who reproved them as “teaching for doctrines the commandments of men,” concerning their baptizings. (Mark, vii, 7, 8.)

Section XL. —Judith’s Baptisms

Returning to the Apocrypha, the next example of baptism occurs in the book of Judith. The book dates from the period of the Maccabean kings of Judah, between one and two hundred years before Christ; is a historical fiction, and is designed to present, in the person of Judith, an ideal type of female piety, courage, and virtue, as conceived by the Jews of that age. According to the story, “Nabuchodonosor, the king of Nineveh,” being incensed against the Jews, had doomed them to destruction. He therefore sent Holofernes, with a large army to execute his vengeance. This army being re-enforced by the Ammonites and the sons of Esau, the mighty host, enters on the siege of Bethulia, a frontier city of Judah. Surrounding the city and filling the whole country, they seize “the water and the fountain of waters,” upon which Bethulia depended for its supply. Soon, “all the vessels of water failed all the inhabitants of Bethulia, and the cisterns were emptied, so that they had not water, to drink their fill, one day; for they gave them drink by measure.” – Judith vii, 12-21.

In this extremity, the elders of the city yield to the clamor of the famished populace, and promise that if succor should not come within five days they will surrender the city to the Assyrians. It is now that the young and beautiful widow, Judith, appears on the scene. Rebuking the elders, for their lack of faith and courage, she decks herself and goes forth to beguile Holofernes, whom, in the sequel, she slays, in his drunkenness, with his own sword, and so delivers her nation. When she came to the Assyrians, “the servants of Holofernes brought her into the tent, and she slept until midnight, and she arose at the morning watch, and sent to Holofernes, saying, Let my lord now command that thy handmaid be allowed to go out for prayer. And Holofernes commanded his body-guard not to hinder her; and she remained in the tent three days, and went out nightly into the valley of Bethulia and baptized in the camp, at the fountain of water. And as she returned, she besought the Lord God of Israel to direct her way to the raising up the children of her people” – Jud. xii, 5-8.

Judith’s baptism, was evidently not one of those required by the law. It was performed statedly every night, as a preparation for prayer, and was, no doubt, one of those washings which Jewish tradition was, at that time, multiplying, and which were so rife in the days of our Savior. Judith’s maid was with her, and this baptism was no doubt performed in the ordinary mode of washing, with water poured on her hands. As to the place of her baptism, the language is explicit. It was (en) in the camp, but (epi) at and not in the fountain. Not only does the language thus forbid the supposition that she was immersed in the fountain, but the circumstances were equally conclusive. She was a young and beautiful woman, in the midst of a host of rude and licentious soldiers and followers of the army. They held the fountain with jealous care, both for the convenience of their own supply, and as the sure means of bringing Bethulia to surrender. Judith could not there be private for a moment, even at midnight, and such exposure as is imagined would have been an invitation to certain violence, even though there had been no question of defiling the very fountain whence the camp drew its supply of water.

Baptist writers, to prove that Judith, nevertheless, immersed herself, cite the fact that “as she went up (anebē), she besought the Lord God of Israel to direct her way to the raising up of the children of her people.” But Dr. Dale has pointed out the fact that the very same language occurs in a parallel place in the Septuagint Greek, where no one ever pretended to find an immersion. Rebekah “went down to the well, and filled her pitcher and went up (anebē).” – Gen. xxiv, 15, 16. The fountain of Bethulia was in the valley, to which Judith had to go down from the head-quarters of Holofernes, which would be in an elevated position, so as to command a view of the situation. To suppose the going up to be out of the water, would give her a time for prayer so brief and in circumstances so peculiar as to give the suggestion an air of ridicule.

It is well known that the impostor Mohammed was assisted in constructing his institutions by renegade Jews, who early became his proselytes. The following precept of the Koran will illustrate the practice of baptism before prayer: “O true believers, when ye prepare to pray, wash your faces and your hands unto the elbows; and rub your heads and your feet unto the ankles; and if ye be polluted … wash yourselves (all over). But if ye be defiled, and ye find no water, take fine sand, and rub your faces and your hands therewith. God would not put a difficulty upon you. But he desireth to purify you, and to complete his favor upon you, that ye may give thanks.”32 This regulation by Mohammed is remarkable in relation to that request of Peter, – “Lord not my feet only, but also my hands and my head.” – John xiii, 9. Both he and the prophet of Mecca would seem to have had in view the same custom of the scribes.

From the passages thus examined it appears that in Hellenistic Greek the word, baptizo was employed to designate two classes of cleansings, – the sacramental sprinklings of the law, and the self-imposed washings of tradition, the mode of which, whether performed by affusion or sprinkling, is not clear. As to the former: the proverb of the son of Sirach is clearly a reference to the sprinkled water of separation. To the same class, the arguments adduced entitle us to refer the baptism of Naaman. To the rites of self-washing the case of Judith is to be assigned, – not to those appointed by the law, but those imitations of the scribes which obscured the meaning of the ordinance, as appointed of God.

Section XLI. —The Water of Separation in Philo and Josephus

Philo, commonly called Judæus, was a Jew of Alexandria, who was cotemporary with the apostles. He thus expounds the laws of purification: —

“The law requires him who brings a sacrifice to be clean in body and soul; – in his soul, from all passions, disorder and vices, whether in word or deed; and pure in body, from such things as ritually defile it.33 And it has appointed a purification for each of these; for the soul, by animals suitable for sacrifice; – for the body, by (loutrōn kai perirrhantēriōn) ablutions and sprinklings… The body is purified, as I have said by washings and sprinklings; nor does the law allow a person washed and sprinkled once to enter immediately the sacred courts; but requires him to wait without, seven days; and to be sprinkled twice, on the third day and on the seventh; and after these, having washed himself, it admits him to enter and share the sacred rites. It is to be considered what judgment and philosophy there is in this. For, nearly all other people are sprinkled with mere water, the most drawing it from the sea; some from rivers, and others again out of vessels of water replenished from fountains. But Moses, providing ashes from sacrificial fire (and in what manner will be shown presently), directed that some of these should be put into a vessel, and water poured upon them; and then dipping twigs of hyssop in the mixture, to sprinkle those who were to be cleansed.

“It is now proper to explain the suitableness of these ashes. For they are not bare ashes of wood, consumed by fire, but of an animal suited to such purification. For it is required that a red heifer which has never borne the yoke be sacrificed outside the city, and that the high priest, taking some of the blood, shall seven times sprinkle with it toward the front of the temple, and shall then burn the whole animal with its hide and flesh, its viscera and dung. And when the flame declines, that these three things be cast into the midst of it; – a stick of cedar, a stick of hyssop, and a bunch of cummin. And when the fire has wholly expired, it is required, that a clean person collect the ashes and deposit them outside the city, in a clean place.”34

Josephus was a Jewish priest, who was made prisoner by Titus, in the war which ended in the destruction of Jerusalem. He afterward, at Rome, wrote his Jewish “Antiquities,” and his “History.” He thus describes the manner of purifying with the ashes of the heifer. “Any persons being defiled by a dead body, they put a little of these ashes and hyssop into spring water, and baptizing with these ashes in water, sprinkled them on the third day and on the seventh.”35 This is a literal translation from the Greek of Josephus; but differs from the popular version of Whiston. He renders it, – “They put a little of these ashes into spring water with hyssop, and dipping part of these ashes in it, they sprinkled them with it,” etc. But this is a very incorrect translation, is incongruous to the ordinance as described by Moses, and converts the account into nonsense. According to it, the ashes are in the first place put into the water, and then part of them “dipped in it!” How they were recovered from the water, in order to the dipping, and how the ashes could be dipped in the water at all, we need not inquire, as the translation is incorrect. “Baptizing with these ashes-in-water,” truly represents the original.36 “Baptizing,” was the action; the mixture of “ashes in water,” was the element; “sprinkling,” the mode; and “the third and seventh days,” the time. In fact, in using the water of separation, according to the law, there was no dipping of any sort, except of the hyssop bush, with which the water was sprinkled. The only action to which Josephus can refer, – that to which he does undoubtedly refer, – by the word, “baptizing,” is the purifying rite, of which he immediately states the form to have been a sprinkling.

To get rid of the force of this passage, Baptist writers have proposed an arbitrary alteration of the text, by the erasure of the entire clause (te kai – pēgēn) “with these ashes in water.” The change thus suggested is purely gratuitous. The reading which they propose is without the pretense of sanction from any manuscript of Josephus, and is sustained by no sound principles of criticism. Its only warrant is the necessities of the Baptist position. On the contrary, the rendering which we have given is, in some of the manuscripts of Josephus, enforced by the preposition (meta) with, after the word, “baptizing.” According to this version, the passage can be read no otherwise than as we have given it. “Baptizing with these ashes in water.”

In the writings of Josephus there is another and very characteristic notice as to the use of the water of separation. Speaking of the funeral rites, he says, “Our law also ordains that the house and its inhabitants shall be purified after the funeral is over, that every one may thence learn to keep at a great distance from the thought of being pure, if he hath once been guilty of murder.”37 We are not to suppose that the spiritual meaning of these rites had been so utterly lost by the Jews, that Josephus, a priest, a Pharisee, a man of extensive learning and reputation, imagined this to be a true account of the nature and meaning of the ordinance. But he was speaking in defense of Judaism, against the assaults of Apion, a Greek philosopher of Alexandria, at the bar of the pagan philosophy of Greece and Rome. He affects, for himself, a profoundly philosophic style and spirit, and aims to vindicate a similar character for the laws and institutions of Moses. Knowing that the truths of God as committed to Israel would be foolishness to the wise, to whose applause he aspired, he sets them aside in favor of his own “philosophic” inventions. He seems to have taken the suggestion from certain heathen observances, of which we shall see more further on.

The foregoing extracts not only illustrate the law as to the water of separation, and the use of the word, baptizo, with reference to it, but indicate the place held by the ordinance among the observances of Israel, down to the time of Jerusalem’s desolation.

Section XLII. —Imitations of these Rites by the Greeks and Romans

Placed as was Israel in the very center of the civilization of the ancient world, and on the direct line of communication between its peoples and empires, her influence upon the institutions and religious rites of other nations must have been very great, and is traceable in every direction. There is reason to believe that Greece and its colonies in Italy, from which sprang the republic and empire of Rome, derived from Israel the first great impulses of their civilization, as well as continual subsequent contributions to its maintenance and growth. Israel had dwelt in the land of Canaan about three hundred years before the supposed era of the siege of Troy, and seven hundred before the reputed date of the great poems of Homer, from the silence of which it is evident that to him letters were wholly unknown. According to the earliest Greek tradition, Cadmus, “the man of the east,” coming with a colony of Phœnicians settled in Greece, bringing with him the art of alphabetic writing. But at what age he lived, or whether he was not, in fact, wholly a mythical character is a matter of conjecture. The tradition, however, distinctly points to Phœnicia as the land whence the art was introduced into Greece; and the circumstances accord with this supposition. That the Greek letters were derived from those called Phœnician is an undoubted fact. The extensive commerce maintained by the ships of Phœnicia was a constant and efficient means of disseminating the seeds of her advancing civilization; and besides, the sages of Greece were accustomed to travel to Egypt, Phœnicia, and the east, in search of knowledge; and returned thence with acquisitions of which all Greece was the beneficiary. About four hundred years before Christ, Plato himself was in Egypt in search of knowledge, a student of the priests of On. At this time, Egypt was full of Jews, and it is not to be imagined that such an inquirer would wholly fail to catch some glimpses of the light which shone in the institutions and literature of Israel.

Many things concur to show that neither Egypt nor Phœnicia was the original fountain of much that was thus disseminated to Greece. In some instances, the attendant circumstances, and in others the internal evidence, unmistakably indicate an Israelite origin. Phœnicia was a strip of sea-coast, ten or twelve miles wide, lying between the northern part of the land of Israel and the Mediterranean Sea. Tyre and Sidon, its two chief cities, were the only practicable sea-ports on the coast of Palestine. They were distant, the former, about one hundred and twenty miles, and the latter, one hundred, from Jerusalem. Their supplies were derived largely from the fields, the vineyards, and the olive groves of Israel. (2 Chron. ii, 10; Acts xii, 20.) Except slight provincial differences, the language of the two people was the same; and the intimacy of the relations is seen in the fact that the drift of dialect in the two closely coincided. Hiram king of Tyre, was David’s intimate friend, and Solomon’s faithful and efficient ally, in the erection of the temple and his own palace, in adorning Jerusalem, and in commercial enterprises. His relation with David, and his message of salutation to Solomon (2 Chron. ii, 12) argue him a professed worshiper of the God of Israel. Thus, whilst the Phœnician territory was a mask by which Israel was concealed from the Mediterranean countries, the Phœnicians, themselves, can not but have realized a profound impression from the wonderful system of religious rites and the testimonies of religious truth which were maintained in Israel and centered around that temple on Mount Sion, which was a monument of Phœnician skill in architecture and the mechanic arts. The ideas thus communicated and the impressions thus produced must have been borne abroad by every wind that filled a Phœnician sail, and disseminated to every land that was touched by a Phœnician prow.

The art of alphabetic writing is an illustration of this. It did not originate in Phœnicia, but, as internal evidence demonstrates, – with the Arameans, of whom Israel was a branch. The Phœnician characters were the same as the Old Hebrew. Once acquired by that maritime people, the art was diffused to Greece, to Rome, and the world. The Egyptians no less than the Phœnicians were idolaters, having lords many and gods many. When, therefore, the sages of Greece returned from their explorations, prepared to whisper to their confidential disciples the sublime doctrine of the divine unity, and even to erect an altar “To the Unknown God,”38 we are justified in the conviction that at some point in the course of their travels, they had caught an echo of that voice which spake to the twelve tribes in the wilderness, – “Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God is one Lord.” – Deut. vi, 4. To the same originals undoubtedly are to be referred many of the ceremonials of their religion. Of this, the rules of uncleanness, and rites of purifying are remarkable illustrations.

Of the various forms of purification among the Greeks, Plato makes an enumeration. – “The purifications (katharmoi) both according to medicine and vaticination, both the pharmacial drugs, (pharmakois), and the vaticinal fumigations (peritheiōseis) as also the washings (loutra) in such rites, and the sprinklings (perirrhanseis); – are not all these effectual to one end, – to render a man pure, both as to body and soul?”39