Baptism in judiasm?

[wiggbuggie]

john the baptist was baptising people and telling them to repent and this was before Jesus started his ministry and believers being baptised in the name if the father,son, and holy spirit so is there a jewish concept to baptism?

 

[martininthefiel]

There are ritual baths, called Mikveh, in Judaism. This is a Wikipedia link describing them: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mikveh . Although they are not quite the same, they are used in conversions to Judaism and other purification.

This might be the origin, or connected to it, but Baptism is an eternal covenant, and cannot be done more than once.

 

[patrick457]

john the baptist was baptising people and telling them to repent and this was before Jesus started his ministry and believers being baptised in the name if the father,son, and holy spirit so is there a jewish concept to baptism?

Well, there is really no directly analogous practice in Judaism to Christian baptism per se. The closest equivalent is (self-administered) ritual immersion, or tevilah, in a pool of water known as a miqveh, its purpose being to purify the partaker of whatever ritual defilement he had, making him ‘clean’ under the Law. Jews took the matter of ritual purity seriously that miqvaot from the period were found all over the Holy Land, in both communal and private houses, and some people such as the Essenes would even immerse themselves many times in a single day.

Now there is a sort of ritual immersion that proselytes perform when they convert to Judaism, but whether this practice was already present at the time of Jesus is unclear.

 

[Joe_Kelley]

It appears to me that John’s baptism was more like an old-time revival meeting by the river; not an established ritual of Judaism. Just my :twocents:

 

[martininthefiel]

IDK. Could one convert to Judaism in the time of Jesus? Does anyone know?

 

[patrick457]

It appears to me that John’s baptism was more like an old-time revival meeting by the river; not an established ritual of Judaism. Just my :twocents:

Correct. It was a practice which, while having roots in ancient ritual, was something that John adapted and customized, making it unique.

One needs to remember that while we think of baptism today as some kind of initiatory ritual which marks the conversion into another religion, John’s baptism (and even the baptism in first-generation Christianity) did not have this connotation. People did not stop being Jews upon being baptized: instead John’s baptism seems to have been a sort of symbol for the cleansing and forgiveness received upon repentance, which ‘sealed’ the act. Whereas normal immersions were mostly concerned only with ritual bodily purity, ‘baptism’ probed deeper, purifying both the inside and outside. It was not so much a ‘conversion’ of one’s religion, but a ‘conversion’ of one’s heart and life.

 

[Crumpy]

On the EWTN program “I Was Glad” hosted by Fr. Ruttler, this week he explained the connection of baptism with the historical events of the Israelites passing through the Red Sea and crossing the Jordan River to enter the Promised Land.

So, the ritual baths recreated and renewed the spiritual dimension of God’s salvation that was obtained through the earlier events in the history of Israel. John’s call to repentence was re-create symbolically and to actually renew the spiritual conversion involved in those historical events. The baths near the Temple were for visitors to use before they went to the Temple.

I think that John’s baptism was more challenging to Jewish visitors. It used “living water” of the river and he added his sermon about repentence. I don’t think there’s a prayer to accompany the average mikveh. You just do it.

I think people went naked into the mikvehs, and early Christians were baptised naked. So, there may have been a very parallel mindset about that. Jesus certainly didn’t remind them to “make sure they’re good and naked.”

The crossing of the Red Sea (sea of reeds?) was not only a political escape, but a spiritual one, in which the Israelites were supposed to abandon the idol worship that they were familiar with in Egypt. So, there was already a kind of spiritual dying and rebirth involved in the historical events, which pointed forward to the conversion that is intended in the modern sacrament of Baptism.

But, the Jewish versions were on the basis of commandments in the Torah, and they did not have the same effect of Christian baptism.

but, “Jewish baptism”? It’s not in the modern Jewish vocabulary, although the baths may certainly be, depending on the branch of Judaism that you look into.

These baths are for personal sanctification and purification, and do not represent a conversion to Judaism, as far as I can tell. I got up to the point, in my reading of a Jewish commentary, that a conversion ritual was a dilemma, because I don’t think it is outlined in the Torah – other than circumcision for males. Yes, that is a symbol of covenant relationship, but I don’t read it as being a sign of conversion.

 

[patrick457]

On the EWTN program “I Was Glad” hosted by Fr. Ruttler, this week he explained the connection of baptism with the historical events of the Israelites passing through the Red Sea and crossing the Jordan River to enter the Promised Land.

So, the ritual baths recreated and renewed the spiritual dimension of God’s salvation that was obtained through the earlier events in the history of Israel. John’s call to repentence was re-create symbolically and to actually renew the spiritual conversion involved in those historical events. The baths near the Temple were for visitors to use before they went to the Temple.

I think that John’s baptism was more challenging to Jewish visitors. It used “living water” of the river and he added his sermon about repentence. I don’t think there’s a prayer to accompany the average mikveh. You just do it.

I think people went naked into the mikvehs, and early Christians were baptised naked. So, there may have been a very parallel mindset about that. Jesus certainly didn’t remind them to “make sure they’re good and naked.”

The crossing of the Red Sea (sea of reeds?) was not only a political escape, but a spiritual one, in which the Israelites were supposed to abandon the idol worship that they were familiar with in Egypt. So, there was already a kind of spiritual dying and rebirth involved in the historical events, which pointed forward to the conversion that is intended in the modern sacrament of Baptism.

But, the Jewish versions were on the basis of commandments in the Torah, and they did not have the same effect of Christian baptism.

but, “Jewish baptism”? It’s not in the modern Jewish vocabulary, although the baths may certainly be, depending on the branch of Judaism that you look into.

These baths are for personal sanctification and purification, and do not represent a conversion to Judaism, as far as I can tell. I got up to the point, in my reading of a Jewish commentary, that a conversion ritual was a dilemma, because I don’t think it is outlined in the Torah – other than circumcision for males. Yes, that is a symbol of covenant relationship, but I don’t read it as being a sign of conversion.

Good point! That these baptisms were held in areas beside the Jordan may be an intentional act of symbolism in John’s part IMHO.

 

[martininthefiel]

My understanding is that the Mikveh is always fed by ‘living waters’. Knowing the little I do know about Judaism, I can’t imagine that there are no accompanying prayers, but I don’t know this firsthand.

Conversion to Judaism does indeed involve immersion in water.

Recently, a disused Mikveh was discovered under an old synagogue in Baltimore (The Lloyd Street Synagogue). Interestingly enough, the building went from being the 1st synagogue in Maryland to being a Catholic Church, and is now a Jewish museum.

Only in America! As a Baltimore rabbi observed, “In Europe there were terrible acts of persecution; in America we were selling each other real estate.”

 

[Joe_Kelley]

…

These baths are for personal sanctification and purification, and do not represent a conversion to Judaism, as far as I can tell. I got up to the point, in my reading of a Jewish commentary, that a conversion ritual was a dilemma, because I don’t think it is outlined in the Torah – other than circumcision for males. Yes, that is a symbol of covenant relationship, but I don’t read it as being a sign of conversion.

Some years back there was an episode on Law and Order in which a Jewish convert committed a murder and escaped to Israel. Israel would not extradite him if he was a Jew. The DA appealed to a rabbinical court in Brooklyn which declared his conversion invalid because the bath was omitted. I asked in another forum if the program was accurate. An American Jew, who had emigrated to Israel, replied that the program was quite accurate and the decision was proper. [He was a fan of Law and Order, even though he has to stay up until 2am to see it in Jerusalem.]