Subject: Did John really baptise Jesus?? |
Bible Note: Hi, ariel... Both as a Jewish convert to Christianity and as a student of the Bible, I do not agree that the mikveh practiced by Jews has any connection with Christian baptism. Any modern sense of connection tends to arise from Christianity's influence on Judaism or as promulgated by American Judaizers. If you would like to have some sort of analogy, you could stand on much more certain Scriptural footing in seeing baptism as the Christian equivalent to Jewish circumcision. Before Christ, a child was circumcised as a sign of familial solidarity in the Old Covenant. After Christ, a child was baptized as a sign of familial solidarity in the New Covenant. In Judaism -- and there is no universal consensus, in theology or in practice -- the mikveh is a matter of achieving a ritualistic, external purity; e.g., women cleansing themselves after giving birth or at the conclusion of their period. In Christianity, baptism is an ordinance from the Lord Jesus Christ, in which the one being baptized is identifying with the death, burial, and resurrection of Christ (Romans 6:3-7; Colossians 2:11-12). All that we are in Christ -- salvifically, practically, and eternally -- is rooted in this union with Him (1 John 5:11-12). Note, that I do not deny that there are popular teachers, in Judaism and in Evangelicalism, who are attracted by the superficial similarity of these practices. Nevertheless, Jesus had great disdain for the Jewish practice that had been transmogrified by the scribes and the Pharisees. (cf Luke 11:39-40; Mark 7:3-8; Matthew 23:25-28) In Him, Doc |