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According to R.B. Girdlestone**, there was no exact English equivalent for the Greek word ‘baptizo’ (and it’s variant forms) available to the translator’s of the English bible (even predating the KJV of 1611). He contends that ‘baptizo’ was a dyer’s term and signifies so as to dip and change colour or to stain. Thus out of necessity, they took a portion of the word, bapt, and added for convenience and English suffix, ize, thus rendering a very generic and inaccurate word – baptize. This was far removed from the intricacies of the original Greek words and their meanings, genders, etc. So they left us with a very ambiguous word that we have adopted into our vernacular and almost always equate it with water.
Yes and no. Certainly a similarity can be seen in that the cloth, the cucumber, and the pickle are all dipped into fluid, and permanently changed. The term is transliterated, and not at all ambiguous. It is always equated with water in the Christian teaching because that is how it was used by Jesus and the disciples since the batism of John.
tabcom;2447964 said:
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Baptize comes from the root ‘bapto’ which means to stain as with a dye. Kittle’s**
states that bapto is more accurate in it’s application of going under and perishing (i.e.; not coming out of) in it’s general usage.
Which is why the Apostles teach us that one who has been baptised in water have died, and their life is hidden with Christ in God.
Rom 6:3-4
3 Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? 4 We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, so that as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life.
** Geek literature offers many examples of baptizo, baptizomai, etc., concerning the state of something changed by an outer source, and they use water in very few of them. One may see great many examples of the Greeks using baptizo outside of water association in James Dale’s fine book ‘Judaic Baptism’**
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Indeed, there are other baptisms taught in Christianity that don’t include water, such as the baptism of fire, and the baptism of suffering, and the baptism of the HS.
** These are only three of hundreds of examples in Greek of the use of baptizo to convey a ‘state of change’ of an object. This means that to the Greek ear hearing baptizo (and it’s various derivatives), it had a greater and broader meaning than just water immersion.**
It does, but without a doubt, such an ear would hear “state of change” in relation to baptism in water. Just as the dye changes the cloth, and the pickling juice changes the cucumber, so does water baptism change the believer.
** However western thought has adopted it to be only immersion because our language is not as capable at showing nuance as the classical Attic and Koine Greek languages of 2,000 years ago.
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Perhaps, or perhaps only it’s most important reference has been retained!
I think people tend to underestimate the significant evolution that occurs in a language over 200 years, simply because those 200 years occurred 1800 years ago. I’m sorry to be so pedantic on this issue, but if you really want to look at documents from the era of the New Testament, you should look at the Didache and other first- and second-century documents whose use of words was actually influenced by the use Christ and the Apostles made of them.
