where did baptism come from?

Baptism, Part 1: The Old Testament Roots and early Christian development of baptism.

May 04, 2023

We’re continuing our series on the sacraments, which started here.

Alright, I'm going to start this post by talking about Star Wars. If you don't like Star Wars, just hang with me; I promise, there's a good reason.

Season 3 of The Mandalorian just recently concluded, and while it's getting mixed reviews from fans of the previous two seasons, I sincerely enjoyed it. The show centers around a bounty hunter from an ancient space tribe called the Mandalorians. The Mandalorians have a deeply religious background, but many of them have given up most of the more strict religious observances of their culture. Our hero, though, belongs to a austere, devoted sect of Mandalorians who aren't even allowed to take off their helmets when another person is around. (You may have heard a nerd or two repeating their now-famous mantra, "This is the way.")

It's been noted that the story of the Mandalorians has many similarities to Jewish history, and the latest season seems to have confirmed it: in one scene a fragment of an ancient text is shown, written in a Star Wars alphabet, but when it is transliterated into our alphabet, the fragment turns out to be a passage straight out of Exodus chapter 10!1

What particularly caught my attention this season was the spiritual climax of the first few episodes of the season. Our main character has transgressed The Way of his Mandalorian brethren, and he must undergo a particular ritual before he can be accepted back into their order; a ritual that symbolizes repentance, purification, and dedication; a ritual that almost all Christians will be quite familiar with. And although they never use the word in the show, it's abundantly clear what that ritual is: Baptism.

what's baptism?

Baptism is one of the two sacraments, or ordinances, that all Christian churches recognize, the other being holy communion. Whatever denomination you may belong to, you've likely seen some form of this ritual, and hopefully, you've been baptized yourself. Anyone with a basic familiarity with the New Testament, and the Gospels in particular, will know that John the Baptist was known for (as his name suggests) baptizing people, and that Jesus told his apostles to baptize people as an element of the Great Commission.

If, however, you skim through the Old Testament real quick (go ahead, I'll wait), you'll find just as many uses of the words baptize or baptism in the English translation as you'll hear in The Mandalorian. It would seem that this ritual's first scriptural instance is in John the Baptist's ministry. But in fact, there is an Old Testament basis for John's namesake ministry tool.

Old Testament roots

Ritual washing was an important part of Jewish religious practice. As far back as Moses, we see God telling the Israelites to wash their garments as an element of ritual consecration.2 Later, Moses is commanded to wash Aaron and his sons in preparation for the priestly service.3 In Leviticus, several prescriptions dealing with uncleanliness (from touching a dead animal to rashes and leprosy) require washing to make the person clean again.4

As Jewish laws and practices grew beyond what was in the Torah, the rules for ritual washing became more concrete. For example, the washing consisted of full immersion in a mikveh, which was a special washing chamber connected to "living", or flowing, water. It also became customary for converts to Judaism to participate in a full-body washing.5

John the Baptist

So, we see that Jesus' cousin didn't invent baptism. In fact, there were other Jewish sects before and during his time who were emphasizing baptism, such as the Essenes.6 John's call to baptism was specifically connected to his call to repentance. John's prophetic role was to prepare the way for Jesus, by calling his fellow Jews to repent: confess their sins and turn back to God, and he baptized many people as an act of repentance and cleansing.

Yet John's baptism of repentance was not the same thing as Christian baptism. the book of Acts makes this clear when it tells the story of Paul meeting some Christians in Corinth. He asks them about their baptism, and they say they were baptized "into John's baptism." Paul replies "John baptized with the baptism of repentance, telling the people to believe in the one who was to come after him, that is, Jesus." The disciples were immediately baptized in the name of Jesus.7 Repentance is a part of Christian baptism, but it is not the whole.

baptism in the New Testament church

Jesus' final commandment to his apostles before ascending into heaven is known as the Great Commission, and it specifically says that as they "make disciples of all nations," they should also baptize them.8 So, it is not surprising that on the very day that the church was born, the Day of Pentecost, Peter follows his great sermon with a call for new believers to be baptized.9 Paul, after his conversion, is immediately baptized,10 and we also see baptism in the story of Philip and the Ethiopian.11

Paul's letters frequently emphasize the importance and meaning of baptism. He tells the Galatians that all who "were baptized into Christ have put on Christ".12 He also emphasizes the symbolic death of baptism, telling the Romans that "all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death".13 So, for the New Testament church, which believed in Jesus' idea of being born again, baptism represented the death of the old person and rebirth into Christian life.

Baptism wasn't without some controversy in the New Testament church, however. Paul's discussion of divisions in the church in 1 Corinthians 10-17 seems to indicate that some were bragging about who had baptized them, as if baptism by a holier saint made your sanctification greater than another's!

what do we know about baptism in the early church?

Clearly, baptism played a central role in the New Testament church, and that role continued into the centuries that followed. Following Paul's teaching, baptism was seen as a rebirth, and very early on it was connected to the creation story itself: just as the earth rose out of the waters, so does the new believer. In describing this view, Rowan Williams calls the beginning of Christian life "a new beginning of God's creative work," and he concludes that the early church "came to view [baptism] as a kind of restoration of what it is to be truly human."14

An excellent example of instructions on how baptism was performed in the first or second century is found in the Didache.15 This text instructs the faithful that baptism should be preceded by a period of fasting, by both the baptized and the baptizer. The rite should ideally be done in "living" or running water (i.e. a river rather than a lake), and in cold rather than warm water. Presumably, this is done by immersion, because the text continues by granting that if a body of water isn't available, water should be poured over the person's head three times.

However we may differ in our beliefs and practices, almost every Christian denomination, sect, and tradition throughout church history has viewed baptism as an integral part of the Christian life and the church's practices. But what baptism looks like can differ widely among different churches today. That's what we'll dive into (or shall we sprinkle?) next time.