Isn’t there a very early manuscript that describes the baptism of a baby girl only a few months old that they found in a catacomb somewhere dating back around 110 or something? I’ve read it in another thread before, but I don’t remember where…
It would be a good source for infant baptism.
-P7
See my post 271 for the document written by Dennis Kastens.
The Witness of the Catacombs
The witness of the literary texts of the early church fathers, councils and apologists for the practice of infant Baptism in the first Christian centuries receives valuable confirmation from the catacombs and cemeteries of the Middle East, Africa and southern Europe. Below are epitaphs from the 200’s of small children who had been baptized. It is interesting to note that there are no Christian epitaphs in existence earlier than 200. As soon as the era of Christian inscriptions begins, we find evidence for infant Baptism. [editor’s note- the two referenced epitaphs are in the original document].
In that century there are attributes and symbols in tombstones inscriptions of little children which allows us to clearly infer we are dealing with baptized children. The following is as early as 200 or shortly thereafter: [editor’s note- the referenced epitaph is in the original document].
In the second last line is the phrase Dei Serv(u)s which means slave of God followed by the Chi Rho symbol for Christ. The last line is the Greek ichtheos familiar as the “fish symbol” - an anagram for Jesus Christ God’s Son Savior. These words and symbols mark the one-year, two months, and four-day-old child as a baptized Christian.
From the Lateran Museum, also from the 200’s, is a Greek inscription that gives information about the religious status of the parents. It reads, “I, Zosimus, a believer from believers, lie here having lived 2 years, 1 month, 25 days.”
Also from this era are headstones for children who received emergency baptism with ages ranging from 11 months to 12 years. Since the patristic sources of the third century, as those earlier, give us to understand that the children of Christian parents were baptized in infancy, we must conclude that these emergency baptisms were administered to children of non-Christians. The inscriptions themselves confirm this conclusion. In the Roman catacomb of Priscilla is reference to a private emergency baptism that was administered to the one-and-three-quarter-year-old Apronianus and enabled him to die as a believer. The inscription reads:
Dedicated to the departed.
Florentius made this inscription
for his worthy son Apronianus who
lived one year and nine months and five days.
As he was truly loved by his grandmother
and she knew that his death was imminent,
she asked the church that he might depart from the world as a believer.
