Baptism, an Exploration: Part 2 (Non-biblical Roots)

The Qumran community

Beginning around 200 BC, a group of Jews, later known as the Essenes, likely arising from among the priests, made frequent ceremonial washings sacramental. While they emphasized the necessity of a changed heart, they insisted on evidencing their repentance in washings.

This is likely the first sacramental use of baptism. And this leads to a note on vocabulary. “Sacrament” has basically two senses. There’s the strong, Medieval sense that baptism forgives the sins of an unwilling recipient — such as when Charlemagne baptized Germans in the Rhine at swordpoint. This is not how I’m using the word.

The second sense is a physical human action that somehow triggers an action by God, in fulfillment of God’s promise. Thus, baptism doesn’t effect salvation except for those who have faith, but that’s not because the application of water magically forgives sins. Rather, it’s because God has made a promise that believers can count on him to keep.

In this sense, it’s fair to refer to baptism as conventionally understood by the Churches of Christ as sacramental. It’s certainly God who saves, not the water, but God forgives concurrently with a physical rite accompanied by faith: the immersion of the believer in water. And this is the use of “sacrament” most commonly used in the Protestant churches.

Proselyte baptism

There is no evidence that Jewish proselytes (converts to Judaism) were baptized in the New Testament, the Dead Sea Scrolls, Philo, Josephus, or the Jewish Apocrypha — that is, in anything dating to the early First Century or earlier. However, if a Gentile were to be converted, he would unquestionably be unclean and would have been required to be bathed — not as an initiatory rite but in compliance with the Law of Moses and its requirements to be washed after any number of events common to all mankind.

However, there are clear references to proselyte baptism in the late First Century. It appears the proselyte baptism was an evolving practice in the First Century, accelerated in part by anti-Roman zealotry, which treated all Gentiles as unclean (perhaps as being spiritually dead or diseased).

Therefore, it can neither be proven nor denied that Christian baptism was associated with proselyte baptism. There’s just not enough evidence to make the case, but it’s possible. It is, however, clearly a mistake to teach that as an established fact, and we can’t argue from something that merely might be true.

Mikvehs (Mikva’ot)

Archaeology adds an important piece to the puzzle. The Jewish Virtual Library advises —

During the Second Temple period (roughly from 100 B.C.E. to 70 C.E.), the Jewish population in Palestine had a very distinctive practice of purification within water installations known as mikva’ot. Large numbers of stepped-and-plastered mikva’ot 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 “Bezetha Hill.” A few slightly larger mikva’ot 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. In addition to this, those precluded from admission to the Temple, owing to disabilities and bodily defects, would have sought miraculous healing at these pools and this is the background for the healing accounts in the Gospel of John (5: 1–13; 9: 7, 11).

Synagogues dating to the time of Jesus had mikvehs. We’re not surprised to find them at the Temple or in private residences, but there was no reason under the Law for a mikveh in a synagogue — other than as a common resources for the village or, perhaps, for the teacher of the Law to be cleansed before he handled the text of the Torah.

It’s clear that the Jews of Jesus’ day made a point of ritual cleanness — which surely was a difficult thing given the number of things that led to being unclean — including sex with your wife!

The purpose of the immersion was to ritually cleanse the flesh of the contaminated person in pure water, but it may also have been undertaken within households before eating or as an aid to spirituality, before reading the Torah or praying. It was neither used for the cleansing of the soul nor for the redemption of sins (as with the purification procedures of John the Baptist), or any other rituals (except for the conversion of proselytes following their acceptance of the Torah and circumcision; Pes. 8:8). One assumes that disrobing took place before the immersion and that new garments were put on immediately afterwards. Ritual bathing could be conducted in the comfort of a person’s dwelling, but there were also more public mikva’ot such as those used by peasants and other workers (such as quarrymen, potters, and lime burners) who would cleanse themselves at various locations in the landscape. A few mikva’ot are known in the immediate vicinity of tombs, but they are quite rare indicating that ritual purification following entrance into tombs was not common. The mikveh was not used for general cleaning and ablution purposes: this was done in alternative installations located within the house, or in public bathhouses instead. …

Perhaps we should regard mikva’ot and stone vessels as two sides of the same coin representing the overall “explosion” of purity that took place within Judaism in the first century C.E. (“purity broke out among the Jews”; Tosef. Shab. 1:14), stemming from changing religious sensibilities on the one hand and perhaps serving on the other as a form of passive Jewish resistance against encroaching features of Roman culture in the critical decade or so preceding the Great Revolt.

We don’t know the extent to which First Century Jews added reasons for a ritual washing. We do know from the Gospels that the Pharisees insisted on washing the hands before a meal, presumably to wash off any uncleanness the person may have touched (the idea of germs came many centuries later).

However, there is no evidence that the Jews (other than the Essenes) considered washing sacramental — as somehow involved in the forgiveness of sins. Indeed, none of the Old Testament references to literal water baptism associate it with forgiveness — not that washing was never used metaphorically of forgiveness —

(Psa 51:2 ESV) 2 Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity, and cleanse me from my sin!

(Isa 1:16 ESV)  16 Wash yourselves; make yourselves clean; remove the evil of your deeds from before my eyes; cease to do evil,

But there’s no evidence that, prior to John’s baptism, the Jews generally considered a water immersion as somehow effecting forgiveness.

However, the mikvehs do teach this subtle point: Jews immersed themselves. It’s not until John the Baptist that we see people coming to someone else for an immersion. Indeed, most mikvehs were too small for two people.

But in the New Testament, baptism is always in the passive voice (be baptized) and never in the middle voice (baptize yourselves). I don’t want to get into the hair-splitting question of what would happen is someone on a desert island wanted to baptism himself. The practice among Christians was for a Christian to baptize a non-Christian into the church. There are no exceptions recorded, and that is a radical change from prior practice (other than John the Baptist).

And I leave it to the reader to ponder why that might be. If I come to faith alone, why don’t I come to the water alone? (It’s a trick question.)