Wednesday, January 26, 2022

Frederick C. Grant and Adolf Būchler on the theology of John the Baptist's Baptisms and Josephus

Sometimes, Josephus’ comment about the telos of the baptisms performed by John the Baptist support a symbolic understanding thereof:

 

. . . . not in order to the putting away [or the remission] of some sins [only], but for the purification of the body: supposing still that the soul was thoroughly purified beforehand by righteousness (Antiquities 18:117)

 

However, it appears that Josephus was imputing to the theology of John’s baptism the theology of the Essenes, and in reality, a “baptismal regeneration” understanding of John’s baptisms should be accepted. Note the following from Frederick C. Grant and Adolf Būchler:

 

The problems set by Josephus’s account of the baptism of John the Baptist (Antiquities 18.5.2 = §117) is a real difficulty form the rabbinical point of view. Josephus says that as practiced by John, baptism (immersion) followed the cleansing of the soul. It was a consecration (hagneia) of the body, the soul being already cleansed by uprightness of life. This may very probably follow the Essene rule: repentance, confession, forgiveness—this is the order, borrowed form the sin-offering; and the Essenes seem to have declared their daily immersion to have the same atoning effect as the daily atoning sin-offering in the Temple (see p. 369 [RB: quoted below]). The view (as in Judaism generally and also in the early church) was public, not private, and certainly not silent—such “confession” can readily drift into a mere feeling of sinfulness or inadequacy. But it must be acknowledged that in rabbinic literature there is no explicit reference to external means of cleansing, such as baptism. The cleansing of the proselyte from his contamination with the pollutions of idolatry is another subject. (Frederick C. Grant, “Prolegomenon,” in Adolf Būchler, Studies in Sin and Atonement in the Rabbinic Literature of the First Century [Library of Biblical Studies; New York: Ktav Publishing House, Inc., 1967], xxii)

 

But what the idea of immersion of the body after the cleansing of the soul was is not evident; while John explicitly excluded as its object to demand pardon of some sins, he did not state the meaning of the purification of the body. It is strange that Mark 1, 4 says, ‘So John the Baptist appeared in the wilderness, proclaiming the baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. (5) And they were baptized by him in the river of Jordan, confessing their sins;’ and so also Luke 3 ,3 ‘proclaiming the baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins’. Both accounts explicitly state that the sole object of the immersion was the remissions of sins, and the preparation for it was repentance during, or immediately before, the baptism, manifested by the confession of sins; so that repentance and confession formed here one act as with the Rabbis of the first century. In normal Jewish life and practice and confession of sins was to be found only in connexion with the sacrifice brought by the repentant sinner to the Temple of Jerusalem, and the forgiveness of sins mentioned by John was also the purpose of the sin-offering. It seems, therefore, probable that the three significant points connected with John’s baptism, repentance, confession and forgiveness, were borrowed from the sin-offering, as the Essenes seem to have declared their daily immersion (If it is remembered that the pious men of the beginning of the first century in Jerusalem brought every day a guilt-offering for doubtful sins to cleanse themselves from every error possibly committed, Kerith 6, 3; Tos.. 4, 4; the substitution of the daily immersion by the Essenes for such daily atonement will be better understood) to have the same atoning effect as the atoning sin-offering. Outside the Temple sins were confessed in the hearing of others (cf. Didaché, 4, 11: Confess thy sins in the congregation, and proceed not to thy prayer with a bad conscience) at the service of the public fast (It should be noted that fasting which was considered essential as an expression of self-abasement with repentance, 1 Reg. 21, 27; Joel 2, 12; Jonah 3, 5; Psalms of Solomon 3, 9; and the Rabbis, was not required by John, nor in Sibyll 4, 165 ff., ‘Wash the whole of your body in perennial streams and, in lifting up your hands to heaven, ask pardon for former days, and expiate with praise bitter impiety, and God will repent’. As a Jewish-Hellenistic ideal this agrees with John as the absence of fasting; the Essenes do not seem to have emphasized fasting) which was held on account of some great public calamity as drought or plague. There the elder among the assembled people addressed to them words of admonition to be penitent, ‘My sons, no one should be ashamed before his fellow-man, nor be ashamed on account of his accounts; it is better than he be ashamed before his fellow-man and on account of his actions than that he and his children should be oppressed by hunger’ (Tos. Ta’an 1, 18). And also ben-Zoma taught publicly, ‘If thou hast been shamed in this world, thou shalt not be shamed before God in the world-to-come’ (Exod. R. 30, 19; though the book which has preserved the statement is of a late date, the statement may still be authentic). So the Jews confessed their sins n the hearing of one another also before John; and as that was undoubtedly a strong moral means of cleansing the individual from any sin not made good by restitution, forgiveness, asking for pardon and by other acts of conciliation, the immersion as a symbolic washing of the heart and the soul concluded the purification from sins. (Ibid., 368-70, emphasis in bold added)

 

For a book-length discussion of the biblical evidence for baptismal regeneration, see my book:

 

“Born of Water and of the Spirit”: The Biblical Evidence for Baptismal Regeneration (2021).

 

For those who want a free PDF, email me at ScripturalMormonismATgmailDOTcom.