A Bible History of Baptism

Section XXXV. —Rabbinic Traditions as to the Red Heifer

According to Jewish tradition the burning of the red heifer took place but nine times, from the beginning, until the final dispersion of the nation. The first was by Eleazar, in the wilderness. (Num. xix, 3.) This, they say, was not repeated for more than a thousand years, when Ezra offered the second, upon the return of the captivity from Babylon. From that time, until the destruction of Jerusalem by Titus was about five hundred years, during which they report seven heifers to have been burned – two by Simon, the just, two by Johanan, the father of Matthias, one by Elioenai, the son of Hakkoph, one by Hananeel Hammizri, and one by Ishmael, the son of Fabi. Since then, it has been impossible for them to fulfill the rite according to the law, as the altar and temple are no more. The tenth they say will be offered by the Messiah, at his coming.22 Lightfoot finds in the increased frequency with which the heifer was burned, during the later period of Jewish history, a circumstantial illustration of the growing spirit of ritualism, which multiplied the occasions of using the ashes. It is, however, impossible to accept the account, at least, as to the earlier period, as authentic history. It is probably mere conjecture, suggested by the silence of the Scriptures, and is most improbable in itself. But the later tradition is more reliable; as, at the time when it was put upon record, the Jews were undoubtedly in possession of abundant historical materials, for the period subsequent to the return of the captivity under Ezra. According to this account, seven heifers served all the purposes of that form of purification, for five hundred years. In that time, over fifteen generations, or not less than fifty millions of Jews were consigned to the sepulcher, and the consequent sprinkling administered to the families, attendants, houses, and furniture. If we ignore all other applications of these ashes, to those defiled by the slain in battle, and to those subject to other causes of defilement, it is still evident that the sufficiency and virtue of the rite were not held to depend upon the quantity of the ashes employed, and that the amount actually used was so minute that it can not have been perceptible in the water. The manner of administration was thus true to the nature of the ordinance, as having no intrinsic virtue, in itself, but only in its significance as addressed to intelligence and faith. And it prepared the minds of the people to witness without perplexity, the change from water in which an inappreciable quantity of ashes appealed to the imagination, to that in which, while no ashes were used, the association of ideas and meaning remained the same.

Section XXXVI. —The Festival of the Outpouring of Water

Not only are the Old Testament Scriptures full of the doctrine of the outpouring of the Spirit, under the figure of living water; but one of the most remarkable of the institutions observed by the Jews from the days of the prophets here last quoted, had immediate relation to the same thing. It was called “The festival of the outpouring of water.” Its origin was by the Jews attributed to the prophets Haggai and Zechariah, under whose ministry the temple was rebuilt, and the ordinances restored; a tradition which is confirmed by internal evidence. The festival was incorporated with the feast of the ingathering, or tabernacles. That feast seems to have been the pre-eminent type of the prosperity, the rest and gladness of the kingdom of Messiah. By the law, the people were required to gather “the boughs” (in the margin, “the fruit”) “of goodly trees, branches of palm trees, and the boughs of thick trees, and willows of the brook, and ye shall rejoice before the Lord your God seven days.” – Lev. xxiii, 40. They used the fruit of the citron or lemon, with branches of the palm and the myrtle, and willows from the brook Kedron. These tied together in one bunch were called, the lulab. Early on the morning of the first day of the feast, the people, clothed in holiday garb, assembled at the temple, each having a lulab in one hand and a citron in the other, and each carrying a branch of willow, with which they adorned the altar round about. As soon as the morning sacrifice was placed on the altar, a priest descended to the fountain of Siloam, which flowed from the foot of the temple mount, bearing a golden vase or pitcher, which he filled with water. As he entered the court, through that gate which was hence called “the water gate,” the trumpets sounded. He ascended to the great altar of burnt offering, where were placed two silver bowls, one on the east side of the altar and the other on the west, one of which contained wine. Into the other, he poured the water from the golden vessel, and then mingling the water and wine, slowly poured it on the ground, as it would seem, to the east and to the west, as the bowls were placed. (Compare Zech. xiv, 8.) In the mean time the temple choir sang the Hallel to the accompaniment of instruments of music.23 Then, the people who thronged the court marched in procession about the altar, waving their lulabs, and setting them bending toward it, the trumpets sounding and the people shouting, “Hallelujah!” and “Hosanna!” with ejaculations of prayer, thanksgiving and praise, selected from the Psalms. In this service, even the little children, as soon as able to wave a palm branch, were encouraged to join. After this they went home to dine, and spent the afternoon reading the law or hearing the expositions of learned scribes. In the evening commenced the festive joy of the outpouring of the water. The water was drawn and poured out, at the time of the morning sacrifice and in connection with it, – a solemnity in the presence of which any hilarious demonstrations were inopportune. The festivity was therefore reserved until the evening. The multitude then assembled in the court of the women, that being the largest court, and the nearest approach that the women as a body could make to the holy house. On this occasion they occupied the galleries which surrounded the court, whilst the men thronged the open space. At suitable places, in the court there were great candelabra of such size and height that they overlooked the whole temple mount. A ladder stood by each, by means of which young priests from time to time ascended and replenished the oil, of which each bowl is reported by the Talmud to have held seven or eight gallons. Many of the people also carried torches, so that the whole mount was flooded with light. The festivity was begun by the temple choir of priests, who, standing in order upon the fifteen steps that led down from the court of Israel to that of the women, chanted some of the “songs of degrees,” to the accompaniment of instruments; whilst such of the people as were skilled in music joined their voices and instruments. Then, the chief men of the nation, rulers of synagogues, members of the sanhedrim, scribes, doctors of the law, and all such as were of eminent rank or repute for gifts or piety laid off their outer robes, and joined in a joyous leaping and dancing, in the presence of the multitude, singing and shouting Hosannas and Hallelujahs, and ejaculating the praises of God. Thus a great part of the night was expended, each one emulating the others in imitation of the humility of David, at the bringing up of the ark (2 Sam. vi, 15, 16); for, the excitement now indulged in, the leaping and dancing, were, at other times, accounted unbecoming the dignity of the nobles of Israel. At length, two of the priests, standing in the gate of Nicanor, which was at the head of the stairway, sounded their trumpets, and descending the steps continued to sound as they traversed the court, until they came to the eastern gate. Here they turned around toward the west, so as to face the temple. They then cried, – “Our fathers who were in this place, turned their backs to the temple of the Lord, and their faces toward the east.24 But as for us, we turn to Him, and our eyes look unto Him.” The assembly then dispersed. With slight variations, the same order was observed each of the seven days of the feast.25

The joy of the people at the ingathering of the harvest and the prosperous end of the labors of the year, – the gay and festive appearance of the city, every housetop and open space, and even the sides and top of the mount of Olives, covered with the green booths, – the extraordinary services at the temple, where more sacrifices were offered during the week than in all the other feasts of the year together, – the green willows adorning the altar and daily renewed – the processions around it, the branches carried by the people, – the trumpets, songs, and Hosannas, – and, at night, the flaming lights, the jubliant concourse, the waving of the lulabs, the music and dancing, the shoutings, songs, and trumpets, must have presented a scene of exhilaration and gladness hard to conceive. It was a saying of the rabbins, that “He that has not witnessed the festivity of the pouring out of the water, has never seen festivity at all.”

The rabbins are obscure in their explanations of the observance here described. Some would represent it as a thanksgiving for the rains by which the soil had been fertilized and the harvests matured. But with a better appreciation, Rabbi Levi is reported in the Talmud, “Why is it called the drawing of water? Says Rabbi Levi, Because of the receiving of the Holy Spirit, according to that which is written, – With joy will we draw water from the wells of salvation.” – Isa. xii, 3. That the outpouring had reference, not to the receiving of the Spirit by Israel, but to its outpouring upon the Gentiles, in the days of the Messiah, is confirmed by the tenor of the prophecies of Haggai and Zechariah, the authors of the observance, and by language of our Savior, which expositors agree in referring to this rite. Both of those prophets encouraged Judah in rebuilding the temple by the assurance that “the Desire of all nations should come” to it. – Hag. ii, 7. Said the Lord, by Zechariah, “Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion; Shout, O daughter of Jerusalem; behold thy King cometh unto thee: he is just and having salvation: lowly and riding upon an ass and upon a colt the foal of an ass… It shall come to pass, in that day, that I will seek to destroy all the nations that come against Jerusalem. And I will pour upon the house of David and upon the inhabitants of Jerusalem the Spirit of grace and of supplications, and they shall look upon me whom they have pierced, and they shall mourn for him… In that day there shall be a fountain opened to the house of David and to the inhabitants of Jerusalem, for sin and for uncleanness… And it shall be in that day, that living waters shall go out from Jerusalem: half of them toward the former sea, and half of them toward the hinder sea. In summer and winter shall it be. And the Lord shall be king over all the earth: In that day there shall be one Lord, and his name one… And it shall come to pass that every one that is left of all the nations which came against Jerusalem, shall even go up, from year to year, to worship the King, the Lord of hosts, and to keep the feast of tabernacles.” – Zech. ix, 9; xii, 9, 10; xiii, 1; xiv, 8, 9, 16.

To all this, reference is evidently had in the incident related by the evangelist, John, as occurring at this feast. – “In the last day, that great day of the feast, Jesus stood and cried, saying, If any man thirst, let him come unto me and drink. He that believeth in me, as the Scripture hath said, out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water. But this spake he of the Spirit, which they that believe on him should receive; for the Holy Ghost was not yet given, because that Jesus was not yet glorified.” – John vii, 37-39. These words of Jesus, as will hereafter appear, had distinct reference to the giving of the gospel to the Gentiles. A few additional facts will shed a clearer light upon the meaning of the festival.

The feast of tabernacles, strictly so called, was of seven days’ continuance; during which the people dwelt in booths. On the eighth day, they removed the booths and re-entered their houses. They observed that day as a distinct and peculiar festival. “On the eighth day shall be a holy convocation unto you; and ye shall offer an offering made by fire unto the Lord; it is a solemn assembly.” (Lev. xxiii, 36; Deut. xvi, 13-15.) During the seven days the offerings upon the altar had a very remarkable order. On the first day, they were “thirteen young bullocks, two rams, and fourteen lambs of the first year,” and one kid of the goats for a sin offering. These were in addition to the ordinary daily offerings. On each successive day, the number of the bullocks was reduced by one, whilst the other offerings remained the same. But on the eighth day the offering was one bullock, one ram, and seven lambs, and one goat for a sin offering. (Num. xxix, 12-38.) On this peculiar order of sacrifices, the explanations of the scribes are various. In the Talmud, Rabbi Solomon states the bullocks, whose aggregate number for the seven days was seventy, to have represented the seventy idolatrous nations; that being, as the Jews supposed, their number. These must be continually diminished, while Israel, represented by the other offerings, remains.26 Says Pool, – “The eighth day was the great day, not by divine appointment, but from the opinion of the Jews, who regarded the sacrifices and prayers of the other days as made, not so much for themselves as for the other nations; but the eighth, as being solely for themselves.”27 Hence the Targum, – “The eighth day shall be holy. Thou seest, O God, that Israel in the feast of tabernacles, offers before thee seventy bullocks, for the seventy nations, for which they ought to love us. But for our love, they are our adversaries. The holy blessed God therefore saith to Israel, Offer for yourselves on the eighth day.”28

The gospels render us familiar with the religion of the scribes. By the help of tradition it sought to divest the law of God of its claim upon the allegiance of the heart, to obscure and set aside the spiritual meaning of its rites, and to substitute a system of minute outward observances, and a fanatical pride in the blood of Abraham, which looked scornfully down on all other nations as unclean and accursed. This system was embodied in the Talmud, and culminated in the compilation of that work, several centuries after the destruction of the temple and the downfall of the nation. When, therefore, among the idle traditions which fill the pages of that work, we come upon occasional traces of a profounder spiritual exegesis, and sentiments respecting the Gentiles more in harmony with the spirit of Old Testament prophecy, we may confidently recognize them as precious vestiges of truth, which have escaped obliteration, as they were transmitted through that uncongenial channel, from a distant and purer antiquity.

Such is the conviction which will result from a careful comparison of the traditions above cited with the accounts of the rites in question, the language of the prophets, and the words of Jesus to which reference has just been made. By the light thus concentrated, we see, in the ingathering of the harvest of the holy land and the festivities following, a type and prophecy of the ingathering of the nations into the fold of Israel, under the scepter of Messiah, and the songs and joy that hail their coming. Then the solemnity of the eighth day may have anticipated the time when, opposition withdrawn, all nations “shall go up from year to year to worship the King the Lord of hosts, and to keep the feast of tabernacles,” when “the Lord shall be King over all the earth, and there shall be one Lord, and his name One.” In this light, Israel appears in her lofty character and office as the priest-kingdom, standing as mediator for the nations, and making for them offerings of atonement and intercessions. Nor less significant was the drawing of the water from

and its outpouring by the priest upon the earth, mingled with wine. From that same fountain, during the same period of Israel’s history, it was the rule to draw all water that was used at Jerusalem for purification with the water of separation, especially for those who came to the annual feasts. To this, Zechariah alludes in his prophecy of that day when “there shall be a fountain opened to the house of David and to the inhabitants of Jerusalem, for sin and for uncleanness.” – Zech. xiii, 1. By her great High Priest, was to be dispensed to Israel and through her to all the earth, the Spirit’s grace, conveying to the nations of the Gentiles the virtue of the blood of Calvary. Jerusalem and the temple were to be the source of those healing waters which were to flow to the east and to the west, “toward the former sea, and toward the hinder sea,” to gladden the world. (Zech. xiv, 8.)

Section XXXVII. —The Hellenistic Greek

After the close of Old Testament prophecy, the conquests of Alexander of Macedon, the consequent diffusion of the Greeks, and the favor which that prince and his successors showed to the Jews, introduced an intimate intercourse between them and the Greeks. By him Alexandria in Egypt was founded, designated by his own name, and intended to be the western capital of his empire. In this new Greek capital, its founder assigned the Jews an extensive section, and equal privileges with the Macedonians. After the death of Alexander, and the subdivision of his empire, the Ptolemies, the Greek kings of Egypt, continued to favor the Jews, treating them on terms of equality with the Greeks. During the same period, the persecutions suffered by the Jews of Palestine from the kings of Syria, drove multitudes into exile, many of whom were attracted to Egypt, so that the Jewish population of Alexandria was at one time estimated at nearly a million of souls, occupying two of the five districts of the city; and at least, for a time, governed by their own ethnarch, or superior magistrate. Among these Jews, and those elsewhere scattered in the Greek colonies, their own language was gradually superseded by the Greek, into which, at length, the Old Testament Scriptures were translated, in a version known as the Septuagint. Of the precise time and circumstances in which this version was made, there is no reliable information, except that it was done in Alexandria, within the first quarter of the third century before Christ. In the time of Christ, the Greek had become the language of literature and of commerce for the civilized world. Among the Jews dispersed everywhere, it was prevalent, and was extensively used even in Palestine itself, and thus became the divinely prepared channel for communicating the gospel to all nations.

But the language thus employed – the Greek of the Septuagint, the Apocrypha and the New Testament – was not what is known as classic Greek. The Jews did not learn it in the schools of Greece, nor from a study of her poets, orators, and philosophers. It was the product of social and business contact and intercourse of the one people with the other, in a land foreign to both.

Already the purity of the Attic had been lost, by the commingling of the Macedonians with the various tribes of Greece proper and her dependencies, in the armies from which Alexander’s colonists were taken; and still further by the mixed multitude which flocked to their new settlements. In the process of adaptation to the expression of Jewish thought, it was inevitably subjected to further modifications, in definition, in syntax, in order and construction – in the very tone and spirit which pervade the whole. By these modifications, the language, which had grown up as the native and coeval expression of the idolatrous religion, the arts and philosophy of pagan Greece, was adapted to become a repository for the system of divine and saving truth, contained in the Scriptures. Those Jews who resided in Alexandria and other Greek cities, who spake this Greek language, and were more or less conformed to the manners of the Gentiles among whom they lived, were known among their brethren, as Hellenists, that is, Greek Jews, and hence, the Greek dialect used by them has acquired the designation of Hellenistic Greek.

The authors of the New Testament adopted this as the language of their writings, and, in their references to the Old Testament, their quotations are mostly made, not from the Hebrew, but from the Septuagint, or Hellenistic version. It was ordinarily used by the Lord Jesus himself in his discourses. It thus appears as the source and standard of the language of the New Testament.

Together with these Greek Scriptures of the Old Testament, there have been transmitted to us several other Jewish documents of the same period, written in the same Hellenistic Greek. They are invaluable for the light which they shed upon the history, customs, and modes of thought and language of the Jews of that time; although the attempt of the church of Rome, to exalt some of them to an equal authority with the Scriptures, has tended to fix a stigma on them, as known to us under the name of Apocrypha. Incautious recourse to the rules and definitions of classic Greek is liable to deceive and mislead us in the critical study of the New Testament. But conclusions intelligently deduced from the language of the Septuagint and of the other Jewish writers of that age, are to be respected as of the highest authority on all questions of the New Testament language. On the subject of our present investigation, these authorities shed a flood of light. In them, we first find the verb, baptizo, used to designate rites of religious purifying. Once in the Septuagint, and twice in the Apocrypha, it is applied to Hebrew rites of this nature.

That the use of the word to designate religious observances is peculiar to the Hellenistic, as contradistinguished from classic Greek, is indisputable; and it is worthy of consideration, how it came to be selected from the Greek vocabulary for this purpose. The Hebrews of Egypt, in their exile from the land of their fathers, had not abandoned but rather augmented their zeal for the institutions of Moses. A circumstance in their own history, which at first might have seemed to threaten a dissolution of the ties that bound them to the temple at Jerusalem, operated in fact to renovate and strengthen them. This was, the erection by some of their number, of a temple at Onias in Egypt, in imitation of that at Jerusalem. Here, the Levitical rites were punctually observed under priests of the Aaronic line and Levites of the sacred tribe. For this they claimed warrant from the prophecy of Isaiah, xix, 19. – “In that day, shall there be an altar to the Lord in the midst of the land of Egypt.” The adherents of this movement do not seem to have been numerous, and its effect was rather to increase the devotion of the people to the temple at Jerusalem, and the ordinances there maintained. Among them, was developed the same disposition which was prevalent in Judea to give undue importance to multiplied rites of purifying; and hence an increased and constant necessity of finding, in the Greek language which they were now adopting, some word suitable to designate these rites. In that language was the verb, bapto, meaning (1) to dip; (2) to wet by dipping; (3) to wet, irrespective of the manner; (4) to dye by dipping, and thence, to dye, without respect to mode – even by sprinkling. But, as we have seen, the rites in question were not dippings, nor were they dyeings, and the word was never used by the Jews to designate them. From this root, the Greeks derived the verb baptizo. (1.) Its primary meaning, as used by them, was, – to bring into the state of mersion. This meaning had no respect to the mode of action, whether by putting the subject under the fluid, pouring it over him, or in whatever manner. In other words, it expressed not immersion, but mersion, – not the mode of inducing the state, but the state induced, – that of being embosomed in the mersing element. From this primary signification, was derived a secondary use of the word. As any thing that is mersed is in the possession and control of the mersing element, the word was hence used to express the establishing of a complete possession and controlling influence. As we say that a man is drowned, – immersed, – overwhelmed, in business, in trouble, in drunkenness, or in sleep; having, in these expressions, no reference whatever to the mode in which the described condition was brought about; so the Greeks used the verb baptizo. They spoke of men as baptized with grief, with passion, with business cares. An intoxicated person was “baptized with wine,” etc. In such use of the word, the essential idea is that of the action of a pervasive potency by which the subject is brought and held in a new state or condition. On this subject, no authority could be better or more conclusive than that of the Rev. Dr. T. J. Conant, a scholar of unquestioned eminence and whose researches on this subject were undertaken at the request of the American (Baptist) Bible Union. The result of his investigations he thus states. “The word, baptizein, during the whole existence of the Greek as a spoken language, had a perfectly defined and unvarying import. In its literal use, it meant, as has been shown, – to put entirely into or under a liquid, or other penetrable substance, generally water, so that the object was wholly covered by the enclosing element. By analogy it expressed the coming into a new state of life or experience, in which one was, as it were, inclosed and swallowed up, so that temporarily or permanently, he belonged wholly to it.”29 Dr. Dale has been at the trouble to list and enumerate no less than forty different words which Dr. Conant employs in his translations of this word of “perfectly defined and unvarying import.” It is, however, enough for our present purpose, that this distinguished scholar here expressly admits with Italic emphasis, that “by analogy,” the word “expressed the coming into a new state of life or experience, in which one was, as it were, inclosed and swallowed up, so that temporarily or permanently he belonged wholly to it.”