PhilosopherJay

Hi All,

It is rather curious that Paul tells us nothing of John the Baptist.
I propose that the original writer/s of the Pauline material had no knowledge of Baptism as a Christian ceremony. Rather, we can imagine that they used the word and forms of "baptizo" to mean immersion or submersion in Christ. What could this have meant before the baptism ceremony? This was probably just repeating a long list of talking points about the coming Christ, based on the Hebrew Scriptures, until the neophyte could repeat it by heart. We can think of it as a kind of brainwashing technique. The ceremony simply developed later as a kind of graduation ceremony/Mystery practice reflecting the actual brainwashing or immersion in Christ/Messiah/Savior ideology.

This explains why the character of John the Baptist was unknown to the early Christian writers and how the character of John the Baptist was created to illustrate the abstract concept of immersion in Christ, which we would call today by the term "brainwashing," a concept as unknown back then as flying in airplanes.
I discuss this in my blog here.

Warmly,

Philosopher Jay

ApostateAbe

Do you think your definition of the word fits the text better? Here is 1 Corinthians 1:17:

For Christ did not send me to baptize, but to preach the gospel—not with wisdom and eloquence, lest the cross of Christ be emptied of its power.

At the least, it can be discerned that the act of baptism is fundamentally different from preaching the gospel. Moreover, it can be reasoned that preaching the gospel is more important than baptism, at least to Paul. If baptism is a ritualistic act of dunking someone under water, it fits. If baptism is an act of immersing someone in the Holy Spirit as an act of brainwashing conversion, then it does not fit--baptism would have to be more important than mere preaching.

We should look for another sense of baptism only if the sense given in the gospels and Josephus does not fit the writings of Paul. Silence of John the Baptist in Paul is not enough. Not only is John the Baptist not mentioned in the authentic letters of Paul, but neither is he in the forged letters of Paul, nor the remainder of the non-gospel portions of the New Testament. It can not be inferred from Paul's silence on John the Baptist that he didn't know about him--only that he had no very pressing reason to mention him to the people we wrote to.

If you think Paul meant something different when he talked about baptism, then it would be essential to explain the drastic switch in meaning among the Christians who wrote the gospels and whoever it was who inspired Josephus in his account. Why not just stick with the definition that baptism for Paul really means getting dunked underwater?

avi

How did first and second century Roman Jews think about baptism?

It is my understanding, from reading the Jewish Encylopedia on Josephus, with a link in another post, recently, that baptism was employed by Jews of Rome, to replace circumcision for the wealthy proselytes who sought conversion to Judaism.

Thus, the ceremony had significant religious and economic implications. I doubt that Josephus would have written anything about the activity, had it consisted merely of bathing, or washing by immersion.

avi

ApostateAbe

Sure. Regardless, it was the central ritual of John the Baptist, who seemingly ignited a large Jewish following with political consequences, so I figure that would be reason enough for Josephus to write about it, but the meaning it had for Jews in Rome would certainly add to that motivation.

spamandham

Since I've statistically proven in another thread that it's unlikely any of the Pauline texts are authentic, I've decided to quit referring to these texts as "Paul", and will try to refer to the writers of various portions....

For example, when the writer of Romans 6 talks about people being baptized *into* something, this doesn't seem to fit well into the idea of a ritual.

"Or don’t you know that all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death?"

But one of the writers of 1 Cor 15 wrote this:

Now if there is no resurrection, what will those do who are baptized for the dead? If the dead are not raised at all, why are people baptized for them?

This definitely seems like some kind of ritual, since the what else could you do for the dead?

PhilosopherJay

Hi Apostate Abe,

In my blog post, I mentioned that out of the eight cases where the Pauline epistles talks about baptism, this (1 Corinthians 1:13-17) was the only place where baptism actually refers to the Christian ritual. To me, this is just an indication that we have an interpolation in the text at this point. In the other seven places it is clear that a submersion, immersion or a bathing ritual for the dead is referenced.

The use of the name Apollos in 1:12, a couple of lines before indicates that the writer is referencing Acts 18, another indication that we are dealing with an interpolation.

If an entomology text talks about the beetles eight times and in seven of the references the text talks about creeping bugs, and in one reference it talks about the music of a 1960's music group, one may suppose that the source text has two different authors. Another example would be if a text talked knowingly about Mildred Davis who starred in over a dozen films with Harold Lloyd between 1921 and 1923. Suppose the text suddenly started talking about Davis in "Whatever Happened to Baby Jane." One would be puzzled. As is well known, it was Bette Davis who starred in "Baby Jane." The most logical assumption would be that we were dealing with two different writers, one, a film buff and film historian, and the other, someone quite ignorant of films who could confuse Mildred Davis with Bette Davis.

In the same way the writer who talks about "baptism into Moses in a cloud" (1 Corinthians 10.2) is highly unlikely to be the same as one saying that God did not send me to baptize but to preach the gospel.

Warmly,

Philosopher Jay

PhilosopherJay

Hi Spamandham,

Yes, in the case of 1 Cor 15, I believe the term "baptism" is referring to the cleansing ritual of a dead body. It makes sense to me that if a person dies and the dead body is unavailable, drowns at sea, for example, and you're supposed to clean and purify the dead body for a resurrection, a living body could be substituted.

On the other hand, The idea that you could substitute a living person for a dead person in a Christian initiation ceremony seems an absurdity and something that would make the ceremony meaningless.

Warmly,

Philosopher Jay

spamandham

I agree, but what we don't know is whether a meaningless ritual was going on in the earliest Christianity and transformed into something more meaningful later, or whether it started as something more meaningful and became meaningless later.

I Prefer the former, because similar rituals pre-existed and it seems less likely to me that early Christians would have adopted such a ritual for their new religion if members were not already engaged in it from prior experience.

Imagine if a bunch of Catholics started a new branch of Christianity based on the idea that Christ is an inner state of being and not some dude form 2000 years ago. They would probably continue with the Eucharist but give it a new spin. A lot of joining Catholics would recognize the ritual of the Eucharist, but not yet quite get the newly ascribed symbolism. It would take a while for the Eucharist to 'gain meaning' and in the meantime, it would remain the same mindless ritual it is for most Catholics. I think this is actually what did happen with teh Eucharist 2000 years ago, and is also what happened with the baptism.

PhilosopherJay

Hi Avi,

I was unable to find the post about Jews in Roman using baptism as a substitute for circumcision.

I believe the John the Baptist material is another Christian interpolation in Josephus. The idea that John's baptism was for the purification of the body and not for the soul is probably best understood as an anti-Jewish calumnity. It presupposes a dichotomy between the Jews who take care of the body and Christians who clean the soul.

stephan huller

The three really important things to keep your eye on are:

1) the Marcionite gospel did NOT have a baptism by John
2) the Marcionite gospel had a reference to the apolytrosis ritual identified as baptism by Irenaeus in his discussion of the Marcosians (I take the two sects to be one and the same tradition)
3) Tertullian reports that there were sects that understood that Jesus did baptize his disciples and promoted their association with the baptism of Paul. (On Baptism)

Put this all together and there is the strong possibility that the 'baptism for the remission of sins' was developed to obscure an earlier 'heretical' form of baptism.

We should also keep in mind that the Greek βαπτίζω does not necessarily imply water immersion specifically.