A Bible History of Baptism

On this subject, the historian Grote makes some noteworthy statements. – “The names of Orpheus and Musaeus (as well as that of Pythagoras, looking at one side of his character), represent facts of importance in the history of the Grecian mind, … the gradual influx of Thracian, Phrygian and Egyptian religious ceremonies and feelings, and the increasing diffusion of special mysteries, schemes for religious purification, and orgies (I venture to Anglicize the Greek word, which contains in its original meaning no implication of the ideas of excess to which it was afterward diverted), in honor of some particular god, distinct from the public solemnities, and from the gentile solemnities of primitive Greece… During the interval between Hesiod and Onomakritus [B. C. 610-510], the revolution in the religious mind of Greece was such as to place both these deities [Dyonisus and Demeter, the Bacchus and Ceres of the Latins] in the front rank… From all these countries [Egypt, Thrace, Phrygia and Lydia], novelties unknown to the Homeric men found their way into the Grecian worship; and there is one amongst them which deserves to be specially noticed, because it marks the generation of the new class of ideas in their theology. Homer mentions many guilty of private or involuntary homicide, and compelled either to go into exile, or to make pecuniary satisfaction; but he never once describes any of them to have either received or required purification for the crime. Now, in the times subsequent to Homer, purification for homicide comes to be indispensable. The guilty person is regarded as unfit for the society of men, or the worship of the gods, until he has received it; and special ceremonies are prescribed whereby it is to be administered. Herodotus tells us that the ceremony of purification was the same among the Lydians and the Greeks. We know that it formed no part of the early religion of the latter, and we may reasonably suspect that they borrowed from the former… The purification of a murderer was originally operated not by the hands of any priest or specially sanctified man, but by those of a chief or king who goes through the appropriate ceremonies in the manner represented by Herodotus, in his pathetic narrative respecting Crœsus and Adrastus.40 The idea of a special taint of crime, and of the necessity, as well as the sufficiency of prescribed religious ceremonies, as a means of removing it, appears thus to have got footing in Grecian practice subsequent to the time of Homer.”41

Again he says, – “Herodotus had been profoundly impressed with what he saw and heard in Egypt. The wonderful monuments, the evident antiquity, and the peculiar civilization of that country acquired such preponderance in his mind, over his own native legends, that he is disposed to trace the oldest religious names or institutions of Greece, to Egyptian or Phœnician original, setting aside, in favor of this hypothesis, the Grecian legends of Dyonisus and Pan.”42

In these statements, the eminent historian seems studiously to avoid a recognition of the direction to which all his facts so distinctly point. All the countries mentioned by him border on the Mediterranean, and were in constant and intimate communication with Egypt and Phœnicia, the relations of which with Israel are too well known to need emphasis. They were, in fact, the channels through which Hebrew ideas must ordinarily pass, in order to gain access to Greece and the continent of Europe. To whatever source the Greeks may have been immediately indebted for the novel ideas of a special stain or defilement, resulting from crime, and of ritual purifying from it, we know that they were incorporated in the laws and ritual of Moses ages before there is a trace of them in any of the countries mentioned. The disposition of Herodotus to refer them to Egypt and Phœnicia is therefore entitled to more respectful consideration than our author gives it. That the Gentile rites in question, however grossly corrupted, were derived from divine originals, must be manifest to any one who will compare the significance and beauty of the Scriptural rites as connected with the spiritual truths of revelation, which they symbolized, with the bareness and absurdity by which they are characterized, in their distorted Gentile forms, detached from the spiritual connection to which they natively belonged.

On the matters of which it treats, no authority is higher than Dr. Wm. Smith’s Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities. As to the present subject, it testifies that their purifyings, “in every case of which we have any certain knowledge were connected with sacrifices and other religious rites, and consisted in the sprinkling of water, by means of a branch of laurel or olive; and at Rome, sometimes by means of the aspergillum, and in the burning of certain materials the smoke of which was thought to have a purifying effect.”43

Of the Greek heroes the Abbe Barthelemi says, – “They shuddered at the blood they had spilt, and abandoning their throne and native land, went to implore the aid of expiation in some distant country. After the sacrifices enjoined them by the ceremony, a purifying water was poured upon the guilty hand, after which they again returned into society and prepared themselves for new combats.”44

Of the Romans, Ovid says: – “Our fathers believed purifications to be effectual for blotting out every crime and every cause of penalty. Greece was the source of the custom. She believes the guilty, when purified with lustral rites, to be freed from the guilt of their evil deeds. Thus Peleus purified the grandson of Actor; and thus Acastus, with the waters of Hæmus, cleansed Peleus himself, from the blood of Phocus. – Ah credulous people! who suppose that the dreadful crime of murder can be obliterated by (fluminea aqua), running waters.”45

The same poet describes the festival of Pales, the tutelary goddess of shepherds. Some days before her festival, cows were sacrificed and the unborn offspring torn from their bowels and burned with fire by the eldest of the Vestals, “that their ashes may purify the people on the day of Pales.” On the festival day he sings: “I am called to the Palilia… Often, truly, have I carried in my full hand the ashes of the calf and the bean stalks, hallowed purifiers. Truly I have leaped over the fires kindled in three rows, and the dripping branch of laurel has scattered the water… Go, ye people, seek the fumigation from the altar of the virgin! Vesta will give it. By the grace of Vesta, you shall be purified. The blood of a horse shall be your fumigatory, with the ashes of the calf, and third the empty husk of the hard bean. Shepherd, purify your full fed flocks in the early twilight. Water should first sprinkle them, and a twig broom should sweep the ground.”46 Again, he tells of “a fountain of Mercury near the Capanian gate. If we choose to believe those who have tried it, it has a divine virtue. Hither comes the merchant with purse-girdled tunic, and being purified, draws water which he may carry away in a perfumed vase. In this, a branch of laurel is moistened, and with the wet laurel all things are sprinkled that are to have new owners. He sprinkles his own locks, also, with the dripping bush, and with a voice familiar with deceit offers his prayers. ‘Wash away my past perjuries,’ says he: ‘Wash away the falsehoods of the past day. Whether I have called thee (Mercury), to witness, or have called upon the great majesty of Jove, wishing him not to hear; or, if I have been false to any other god or goddess, let the swift zephyrs carry away my dishonest words, and let my perjuries be obliterated by to-morrow. Let not the superior powers give heed to what I may say.’”47

In Virgil, Æneas, preparing for flight from the overthrow of Troy, says to his father, – “Do you, my father, in your hand take the consecrated things and the ancestral gods? To me, just returned from such and so recent a battle and slaughter, it were sacrilege to touch them, until I shall have washed in a living stream.”48 In another place the closing rites at the funeral pyre of Misenus are thus described, – “The same (Chorinaeus) passed thrice around his companions with water, sprinkling them with a gentle spray, and with a branch of the auspicious olive purified the men and uttered the parting words.”49

Of funeral lustrations at Rome, Adams in his Antiquities, gives this account: “When the remains of the dead were laid in the tomb, those present were, three times, sprinkled by a priest with pure water, from a branch of olive or laurel, to purify them… The friends when they returned home, as a further purification, after being sprinkled with water, stepped over a fire.50… The house itself also was purified and swept with a certain kind of a broom.” The classic writers frequently refer to similar observances among the Greeks. Thus, in Euripides, the people are perplexed as to the death of Alcestis, king Admetus’ wife, because “they do not see the lustral water before the door, as is customary at the doors of the dead.”51

The census of the population of Rome was taken every five years, and was followed by a lustration of the city. From this custom the word lustrum (a lustration), came to signify a period of five years. There was also a lustration for new born infants, when their names were given. For boys it was usually on the ninth day after birth; for girls, by some, on the eighth day, and by others, on the fifth, or the third day, while some performed it on the last day of the week wherein the child was born. “On the lustral day, a feast was prepared, over which the goddess Nundina was supposed to preside. The assembled women handed the child backward and forward around the fire burning on the altar of the gods; after which they sprinkled it with water, in which were mingled saliva and dust.”52

Philo Judaeus, was a resident of the Greek colony of Alexandria. He was a man of learning, and especially versed in the religious doctrines and rites of the Gentiles, as well as of Moses, of which he wrote largely. We have seen that, in contrasting the purifying rites of other nations with those of Israel, he says that “nearly all other people are sprinkled with unmixed water, mostly drawing it from the sea, some from rivers and others again from vessels replenished from fountains.”53 This preference of the water of the sea, probably originated in a desire to differentiate the Gentile imitations from the divine originals as observed by Israel. Of it an illustration appears in Euripides. Iphigenia speaks of Orestes and his companions, defiled with dreadful crimes, – “First would I (nipsai) imbue them with holy purifyings.”

King Thoas. “From springs of waters? Or, from spray of the sea?”

Iphigenia. “The sea spray (kluzei54) washes away all the crimes of men.”55

The rites used in the Greek mysteries illustrate the same subject. “The benefits which the initiated hoped to obtain were security against the vicissitudes of fortune and protection from dangers both in this life and in the life to come. The principal part of the initiation, and that which was thought to be most efficacious in producing the desired effects, were the lustrations and purifications, whence the mysteries themselves are sometimes called katharsia or katharmoi.”56

Those of Eleusis were a manifest imitation of the Levitical feast of ingathering or tabernacles. They were celebrated at the same season, – immediately after the bringing in of the harvest; and were in honor of Demeter, or Ceres, the patroness of agriculture. The celebration proper, continued for seven days, after which there was an additional eighth day, appropriated to the initiation of those who had been too late for the regular observances. This, again, was followed by a ninth day, which was named plēmochoai, from a vase called plēmochoē. “Two of these vessels were on this day filled with water or wine,” (Should it not be “water and wine?”) “and the contents of one thrown to the east, and those of the other to the west, while those who performed this rite uttered some mystical words.”57 From the appropriating of a ninth day to the outpouring of the water and wine, it seems probable that the mysteries were originally imitated from the Levitical feast before the festival of the outpouring was instituted; and that when the latter rite was introduced, an additional day was appropriated to it, so as to avoid any change in what had become the established and consecrated order of the preceding days.

These mysteries were of two orders. The less were celebrated at Agræ, and were essential as a preparation for the greater at Eleusis. In the preparatory rites, the candidates were required to keep themselves continent and unpolluted for nine days; and were purified with water sprinkled on them, by an officer who was thence called the hydranos.58 At Eleusis they offered sacrifices and prayers, wearing garlands of flowers; and, standing on the skin of a sacrificial animal, were again purified by the sprinkling of water by the hydranos.

That the observances thus illustrated were corrupted forms derived from the rites and institutions of Moses, is apparent. So manifest is this, that in the third and fourth centuries it was made the ground of a specious theory by means of which the advocates of paganism sought to stay the progress of Christianity. “Among those who wished to appear wise, and to take moderate ground, many were induced to devise a kind of reconciling religion, intermediate between the old superstition and Christianity, and to imagine that Christ had enjoined the very same things which had long been represented by the pagan priests, under the envelope of their ceremonies and fables.”59

There was, no doubt, an element of truth in this conception. The rites of Gentile idolatry were, it is evident, corrupted forms derived from divinely appointed institutions, partly, it may be, by tradition, from the parents of the race; but chiefly by imitation of the ritual of Moses.