Podcasting certainly expands an audience. Teaching in this format brings so many more people to the discussion, which then lends to more thoughtful questions. We recently had this question from a listener of the podcast:
Emily writes:
I’d like to learn more about the significance of baptism in the times of the law of Moses before Christ was baptized. I’m reading in Mosiah 25-28 and the people of Limhi hadn’t been baptized but wanted to be.
We get baptized now to take upon ourselves the name of Christ and we know to do that because Christ showed us what to do and is our exemplar.
Would they have been doing the same thing before Christ came to fulfill the law?
It seems to me, that if I’m understanding it correctly, the Jews who delivered Christ up to be crucified had taken upon them Christ’s name through the ordinance of baptism.
I’d love to hear your thoughts!
Answer: This was probably not the case, but I certainly do not know! I do not believe that the Jews who had Jesus killed by the Roman State were baptized, at least in the sense modern members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints understand the ordinance.
Nephite baptism is something that can leave readers wanting more context. There are more questions than answers at this point in our historical understanding. We can read about baptism in the Book of Mormon but the practice seems to show that it did evolve (as has our practice of baptism in modern LDS history). We should also try to see the differences between baptism in the Ancient Near East and the Nephites in the Americas.
First, the baptism of John the Baptist seems to be something that historically evolved or came out of 1st century Judaism, specifically the type of thing that was practiced by the Essenes[1], a group of Jews who chose to live in the wilderness outside of the city of Jerusalem. The Essene community outside of Jerusalem practiced ritual immersion in order to maintain the religious sanctity of the community, but the ritual itself was insufficient in producing cleanliness. Rather, the immersion had to be preceded by a properly pious attitude and by actions which adequately reflected that attitude in order for the physical immersion to be effective.[2] This is exactly what we read when we hear John’s words about bringing fruit meet for repentance (see Matthew 3.8).
Ritual immersions were actually quite common in Judaism but, unlike in Christianity, were not just for conversion. Ritual baptism for conversion, according to some scholars, seems to be a rather late development[3], and yet, as Kaufmann Kohler and Samuel Krauss state, “Baptism next to circumcision and sacrifice, was an absolutely necessary condition to be fulfilled by a proselyte to Judaism. Circumcision, however, was much more important, and, like baptism, was called a “seal.”[4] Kohler and Krauss even give some evidence that perhaps baptism existed long before the exile.[5]
As late as the Maccabean era (167-37 BCE) the token of the covenant was circumcision. Many scholars argue that before period of the exile there wasn’t any real conversion at all within Judaism.[6] Later during the rabbinical period (from around the 1st century CE to the closure of the Babylonian Talmud, around 600 CE) a type of mikveh (ritual washing by immersion in special fonts) became part of the conversion process.
Immersions for ritual purposes like washings did exist as a part of the law of Moses. Exactly how much of the text of Leviticus was developed before and after the exile in 586 BCE is not clear at this point. The high priest would ritually immerse himself at least three times a year for the Day of Atonement (doing it five times during the day), Day of Pentecost and Feast of the Tabernacles. It’s also done for other reasons such as ritually cleansing for women after menstruation or men for seminal fluids (see Leviticus 15).
In the Torah this washing puts men and women into a state of cleanliness before God. Unlike the modern practice of baptism, the individual washes him or herself, rather than having to be ritually cleansed by someone else. The real significance of the rite of Baptism cannot be derived from the Levitical law; but it appears to have had its origin in Babylonian or ancient Semitic practice.[7] Indeed, ritual washings in water existed in cultures that predated the textualization of the priestly laws in the Torah. The Babylonian high priest performed ritual ablutions in water from the Tigris or the Euphrates before he carried out his daily religious performances.[8] Hugh Nibley sees very early evidence of baptism in Egypt, perhaps as early as 2600 BCE in the life of King Snefru during the beginning of the fourth dynasty. Nibley cites many scholars demonstrating the Egyptian practice of baptism in the Book of Breathings with its association with temples.[9]
Brant Gardner writes: The historical context of Mosiah suggests that baptism may not have been a universal event in Nephite/Zarahemlaite life…
Baptism’s covenantal declaration of belief in Yahweh-Messiah does not become an explicit theme in the Book of Mormon until Alma1 begins baptizing in the Waters of Mormon.
Would all of the assembled people (in King Benjamin’s speech in Mosiah 1-6) have been baptized? Certainly it is possible, but Mosiah1 (Benjamin’s father) would have had to institute it and require it of the entire people. The Zarahemlaites had forgotten Yahweh and lost most of the Mosaic law, but baptism prior to Christ’s earthly mission was known in the Old World only as a cleansing ritual. Only the Nephites, before Christ, associated that cleansing with the Messiah’s mission. Thus, the Zarahemlaites would have had no tradition of baptism connected with the Messiah, if they had any such rite at all. Mosiah might have imposed it upon the people through his authority as king, but this action would have violated the very nature of the ordinance, which requires repentance and a willing change of heart as prerequisites to accepting the Messiah. This process is inconsistent with a mandated ritual, although the Old World certainly saw later examples of politically imposed baptisms.
Nephi’s introduction of baptism reveals it as a new covenant, then and one that had an ambiguous fit into known ritual. When Benjamin declares the Messiah’s atonement, he says nothing about baptism as a requirement. Rather, he emphasizes the atonement itself and Christ as its provider. He implies that his people still understand the law of Moses as the means of atonement for sin. This information, combined with Alma’s new emphasis on baptism, suggests that, at this point in Nephite history, baptism is NOT widely practiced.
When the Spirit descended upon the assembled population of the land of Zarahemla, the collective people’s sins were cleansed. Probably many among them were not baptized, yet their faith made the atonement efficacious. In this pre-Christian environment where the forward-looking rites were mixed with the current law of Moses, it appears that the communal function of the Day of Atonement sacrifice prevailed over the association between the individual acceptance of Christian baptism. For Benjamin’s people, their communal acceptance stood in place of the individual baptism. Speaking from their understanding about the remission of sin through the application of sacrificial blood, they plead with Yahweh to “apply the atoning blood of Christ that we may receive forgiveness of our sins” (Mosiah 4.2). [10]
Notes
[1] Stephen J. Pfann, The Essene Yearly Renewal Ceremony and the Baptism of Repentance, University of the Holy Land Center for the Study of Early Christianity, Jerusalem.
[2] Ibid., p. 2
[3] Notes on the Bible, by Albert Barnes, [1834], at sacred-texts.com, see commentary on Matthew 3.6 which states, “The word “baptize” βαπτίζω baptizo signifies originally to tinge, to dye, to stain, as those who dye clothes. It here means to cleanse or wash anything by the application of water. See the notes at Mar 7:4. Washing, or ablution, was much in use among the Jews, as one of the rites of their religion, Num 19:7; Heb 9:10. It was not customary, however, among them to baptize those who were converted to the Jewish religion until after the Babylonian captivity.”
[4] Kaufmann Kohler and Samuel Krauss, Baptism, Jewish Encylclopedia. The authors state: According to rabbinical teachings, which dominated even during the existence of the Temple (Pes. viii. 8), Baptism, next to circumcision and sacrifice, was an absolutely necessary condition to be fulfilled by a proselyte to Judaism (Yeb. 46b, 47b; Ker. 9a; ‘Ab. Zarah 57a; Shab. 135a; Yer. Kid. iii. 14, 64d). Circumcision, however, was much more important, and, like baptism, was called a “seal” (Schlatter, “Die Kirche Jerusalems,” 1898, p. 70). But as circumcision was discarded by Christianity, and the sacrifices had ceased, Baptism remained the sole condition for initiation into religious life. The next ceremony, adopted shortly after the others, was the imposition of hands, which, it is known, was the usage of the Jews at the ordination of a rabbi. Anointing with oil, which at first also accompanied the act of Baptism, and was analogous to the anointment of priests among the Jews, was not a necessary condition.
[5] Baptism was practised in ancient (Ḥasidic or Essene) Judaism, first as a means of penitence, as is learned from the story of Adam and Eve, who, in order to atone for their sin, stood up to the neck in the water, fasting and doing penance—Adam in the Jordan for forty days, Eve in the Tigris for thirty-seven days (Vita Adæ et Evæ, i. 5-8). According to Pirḳe R. El. xx., Adam stood for forty-nine days up to his neck in the River Gihon. Likewise is the passage, “They drew water and poured it out before the Lord and fasted on that day, and said, ‘We have sinned against the Lord'” (I Sam. vii. 6), explained (see Targ. Yer. and Midrash Samuel, eodem; also Yer. Ta’anit ii. 7, 65d) as meaning that Israel poured out their hearts in repentance; using the water as a symbol according to Lam. ii. 19, “Pour out thine heart like water before the Lord.” Of striking resemblance to the story in Matt. iii. 1-17 and in Luke iii. 3, 22, is the haggadic interpretation of Gen. i. 2 in Gen. R. ii. and Tan., Buber’s Introduction, p. 153: “The spirit of God (hovering like a bird with outstretched wings), manifested in the spirit of the Messiah, will come [or “the Holy One, blessed be He! will spread His wings and bestow His grace”] upon Israel,” owing to Israel’s repentance symbolized by the water in accordance with Lam. ii. 19.
[6] See for instance Shaye Cohen argues in From the Maccabees to the Mishnah “The central ritual of conversion was circumcision. This practice, quite common in the ancient Orient (Jer 9:24-25), figures prominently in only a few sections of the Bible . . . All these passages assign some unusual importance to circumcision, but the Bible as a whole generally ignores it and nowhere regards it as the essential mark of Jewish identity or as the sine qua non for membership in the Jewish polity. It attained this status only in Maccabean times . . . For the Maccabees, circumcision was such an essential component of Jewish identity that upon conquering various sections of the holy land they incorporated the inhabitants into the Jewish polity, a step that meant first and foremost circumcision . . . By the end of the first century BCE, circumcision was widely known to the Greeks and Romans as a typically (though not exclusively) Jewish practice.” (43-44)
[7] Kohler and Krauss. They state: The real significance of the rite of Baptism can not be derived from the Levitical law; but it appears to have had its origin in Babylonian or ancient Semitic practise. As it was the special service administered by Elisha, as prophetic disciple to Elijah his master, to “pour out water upon his hands” (II Kings iii. 11), so did Elisha tell Naaman to bathe seven times in the Jordan, in order to recover from his leprosy (II Kings v. 10). The powers ascribed to the waters of the Jordan are expressly stated to be that they restore the unclean man to the original state of a new-born “little child.” This idea underlies the prophetic hope of the fountain of purity, which is to cleanse Israel from the spirit of impurity (Zech. xiii. 1; Ezek. xxxvi. 25; compare Isa. iv. 4). Thus it is expressed in unmistakable terms in the Mandean writings and teachings (Brandt, “Mandäische Religion,” pp. 99 et seq., 204 et seq.) that the living water in which man bathes is to cause his regeneration. For this reason does the writer of the fourth of the Sibylline Oracles, lines 160-166, appeal to the heathen world, saying, “Ye miserable mortals, repent; wash in living streams your entire frame with its burden of sin; lift to heaven your hands in prayer for forgiveness and cure yourselves of impiety by fear of God!” This is what John the Baptist preached to the sinners that gathered around him on the Jordan; and herein lies the significance of the bath of every proselyte. He was to be made “a new creature” (Gen. R. xxxix). For the term φωτιςθεῖς (illuminated), compare Philo on Repentance (“De Pœnitentia,” i.), “The proselyte comes from darkness to light.” It is quite possible that, like the initiates in the Orphic mysteries, the proselytes were, by way of symbolism, suddenly brought from darkness into light.
[8]Ablutions, Encyclopedia.com – The Authors give additional detail, “For ablutions and ritual sprinklings a special building, the bit rimki (“washing house”) was constructed next to the priest’s house or the temple. There, the life-giving water from apsu (the primeval deep of sweet waters) was used for all kinds of ablutions. Water, the creative element par excellence, was used to create order wherever and whenever this order was threatened, intentionally or not.”
[9] Hugh Nibley, The Message of the Joseph Smith Papyri, an Egyptian Endowment, Deseret Book Co., 2005, p. 135-137. Nibley writes concerning initiation rites associated with entering the sacred space of the temple: The whole section (lines 9-19) has to do with pronouncing the candidate clean. Among the Egyptians “all religious ceremonies of Pharaonic times … were prefaced by some act of ritual cleansing” (Gardiner, JEA, 36:3). The order of the universe itself remains secure only while and because the beneficent power of Osiris remains sacred and uncontaminated, rendering “the life of all things … pure and undefiled” (Iamblich., de Myst., 6:7). First, in all major rites, according to G. Jequier, came “a solemn lustration performed on the officiant himself by two priests” (Gustave Jequier and Eberhard Otto). The officiant must be washed before he can officiate. The daily temple cult began with purification: “Before entering the temple the priest had to purify himself in the sacred pool” (J. Cerny, Ancient Egyptian Religion, p. 101); and “the lustration which the king underwent before officiating as high-priest” was of a similar kind (ibid., p. 102). Though the Egyptians were very health-conscious and fanatically clean (Herodotus, Histories, 2.77; Plutarch, Of Isis and Osiris, p. 79), and the Osirian cult especially had an obsession with pollution (Theodore Hopfner, Plutarch uber Isis und Osiris, 2:165), the funerary texts being full of prescriptions for avoiding physical filth and contamination of every kind, they were no less concerned with moral cleanliness: “God loves purity more than millions of offerings, more than hundreds of thousands of fine gold … his heart delights (htp) in great purity” (Edfu Text, in Fairman, “A Scene in the Offering of Truth in the Temple of Edfu,” MDAIK, 16 (1958), p. 89). “According to the Book of Breathings,” wrote A. M. Blackman, “the Osirian dead, before entering the Hall of the Two Rights, were purified … ‘cleansed from all evil, every abomination’ …” (Aylward M. Blackman, “Sacramental Ideas and Usages in Ancient Egypt,” RT 39 (1921): 52). He is “pure from head to foot” (Pap. Leiden T32, VIII, 27).The purification rite, preceding all important ceremonies, is initiatory in nature, preparing one for another phase of existence or for some special office or calling (S. Bjerke, “Remarks on the Egyptian Ritual of ‘Opening of the Mouth’ and Its Interpretation,” Numen, 12:211) and takes place not in the temple proper but in the w’b.t., “purification room”— a sort of annex (Hermann Junker, Stundenwachen, p. 66, XIII Hr.; Wb. I:284). Every Egyptian priest, before entering the temple or undertaking to officiate, had to “go down” into a “sea” or “lake,” as did the priests in the temple at Jerusalem (S. Schott, Die Reinigung, p. 82). Even the great Thutmosis III had to “bathe in the lake (or pool) of w’b” (or “pure lake”) before visiting the temple at Karnak. Siegfried Schott traces the custom back to the coronation rites, during which the King in ritual attire had to visit the temple, purifying himself beforehand (Schott, p. 69). Coronation reliefs regularly begin with a purification scene (Jan Bergman, Ich bin Isis, p. 115). The key word w’b occurs no less than eight times in this section of the Book of Breathings. According to Jequier, the formula “I am w’b” really means that one is baptized, and that in every sense of the word, including that of being qualified by baptism “to participate in the divine life” (G. Jequier, Religs. Egyptiennes, pp. 75-76). He points out elsewhere that the translation “purification” fails to express the idea that this is “a veritable sacrament by which a person obtained rebirth, eternal life … in reality a baptism of water” (Jequier in Eg. Religion, 3 (1935):21). Gardiner compared it to Christian baptism, since in it “a symbolic cleansing by means of water serves as initiation into a properly legitimated religious life” (Gardiner, “Baptism of Pharaoh,” 6). According to Jequier, the living as well as the dead become nefer—”renewed”—through the ordinances of w’b—”immersion in the waters of the abyss” (Rel. Eg., pp. 76-77)… For the archetype of the one who passes through the waters is the Sun, emerging daily from the waters of the Underworld, fresh and reborn at dawn (Erik Hornung, Das Amduat, 2:184). “The conception,” wrote Jequier, “is the same as that of the Christian Baptism,” except that with the Egyptians “the passage through the water is a necessity and not a mere symbol” (Jequier, Rel. Eg., p. 55). In the Pyramid Texts the Heliopolitan King bathes in the solar pool of the temple and so is reborn in the watery embrace of Osiris (Blackman, “Sacramental Ideas and Usages in Ancient Egypt,” 72). It is in the waters that the solar and chthonian elements meet and blend, since the Sun upon leaving the Underworld must rise from the waters “of the eastern pool of the Temple of Heliopolis” after passing through those waters: “The old Heliopolitan belief in the rebirth of the dead through washing … not … being revivified, but of being reborn with a new and mysterious body,” is already apparent in the document in which King Snofru (the father of Cheops who built the Great Pyramid) by an ordinance of washing becomes “identified with Osiris, and yet appears emerging like the sun-god, reborn, of course, from the horizon” (ibid., 70-71).
[10] Brant Gardner, Second Witness: Analytical and Contextual Commentary on the Book of Mormon: Enos-Mosiah, volume 3, p. 165-166.