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MadamCurie wrote:
Ok, so JtB was just baptizing as others had before, I get that. That wasn’t really the point of my “why” – the question was, by baptizing them, what did it mean? They were already Jews, so… they were being baptized to be brought “back into” the Jewish faith? What was his purpose in doing the baptisms?
Ray nailed it.
The use of a mikva results in the
purificationof the object being placed in the mikva. It is a cleansingor purifying ritual. Which is what repentance is, symbolized through baptism, in the Christian way. MadamCurie wrote:I’m just confused, not in the “why was JtB allowed to baptize,” or “why were baptisms there,” but “why was JtB baptizing people who were already Jewish”?
Anything ‘unclean’ due to illness, sin, contact with the dead, menstruation, etc. needed purification via the mikva.You know, many LDS in the Nauvoo era were baptised over and over again for just this reason. Had nothing to do with entrance into the Church, after the first instance.
HiJolly
MisterCurie wrote:Do you speak Russian? I served a Russian-speaking mission and then majored in Russian at BYU.
No, but I as a young whipper-snapper in the 60’s at the height of the cold war, my older brother was learning Russian and wouldn’t let me get up in the AM with saying ‘good morning’ in Russian.
He also taught himself Judo by reading a library book and throwing me all over the backyard. Dang overachiever…
…course I couldn’t help learning something too, and got lucky and knocked out the bully in the 6th grade when I was in the 5th via Judo. I guess learning is learning, however we resent how it comes….
😳 HiJolly
Madam, I think this should be in the History and Doctrine discussion, but since so many people have already responded, we’ll leave it here. I think that baptism and mikvah are related, and did a post on it a while back at
http://mormonmatters.org/2009/04/24/history-of-baptismmikvah/ This may not be an orthodox response, but here goes. I watched a documentary a few years ago called
The First Christians. In it, former Catholic priest and now bigwig with The Jesus Seminar, John Dominic Crossan, stated that the baptism of Jesus is somewhat of an embarrassment in the gospels and that the writers of the gospels had to explain how Jesus was really greater when (at the time of his baptism), it appeared John was greater. Now, I don’t know if I agree with this line of thinking, but it is an interesting line of thought. Of course you know that John was from the tribe of Levi, so he did hold the proper priesthood authority. Christ came from the tribe of Judah, and if he were fulfilling all righteousness, then there must have been a need to be baptized by proper authority. Nonetheless, it does seem to appear that Jesus could have been a follower of John rather than the other way around. After Christ’s death, it seems that followers of Christ wanted to come up with a way to distinguish themselves from ordinary Jews. It could have been that ordinances such as baptism and the Last Supper were instituted as part of process to distinguish Christians from Jews, because during these early days, there really was no distinction. While it is evident that Christ called 12 apostles, his church really was not really organized at his death and resurrection. As such, when the gospel writers were looking back on certain events such as baptism and the sacrament, they may have been instituted as uniquely Christian ordinances. I know Crossan seems to think that some of the dialogue between Jesus and John was invented to serve this purpose.
Now some may find this line of reasoning as not as inspired as our standard Sunday School lessons, and perhaps it is not. On the other hand, perhaps these “new” ordinances were revealed after Christ’s assention into heaven as part of the “D&C” Peter, James, and John received as they were setting up the church following the death of the Savior. Perhaps mikvah was given greater significance to highlight Jesus mikvah, just as the Last Supper was made more significant, to help the new Christian community gain an identity separate from Judiasm.
Thanks, MH. That was very helpful. I think I need to go check out that documentary. I have done some reading that suggests John was likely of the Essene movement that practiced ritual washings. I don’t remember what that assumption was based on, but in all probability it was based on the geography (desert location) and the ritual itself. So I spoke to my fairly orthodox Jewish co-worker today about this. She agreed with HiJolly: HiJolly wrote:Anything ‘unclean’ due to illness, sin, contact with the dead, menstruation, etc. needed purification via the mikva.
She thought that John the Baptist’s “baptism” of Christ definately sounded like a mikva. The mikva is also used to indicate a new direction (such as at conversion, etc.).
I also like what mormonheretic mentioned:
mormonheretic wrote:This may not be an orthodox response, but here goes. I watched a documentary a few years ago called
The First Christians. In it, former Catholic priest and now bigwig with The Jesus Seminar, John Dominic Crossan, stated that the baptism of Jesus is somewhat of an embarrassment in the gospels and that the writers of the gospels had to explain how Jesus was really greater when (at the time of his baptism), it appeared John was greater. Now, I don’t know if I agree with this line of thinking, but it is an interesting line of thought. Of course you know that John was from the tribe of Levi, so he did hold the proper priesthood authority. Christ came from the tribe of Judah, and if he were fulfilling all righteousness, then there must have been a need to be baptized by proper authority. Nonetheless, it does seem to appear that Jesus could have been a follower of John rather than the other way around. After Christ’s death, it seems that followers of Christ wanted to come up with a way to distinguish themselves from ordinary Jews. It could have been that ordinances such as baptism and the Last Supper were instituted as part of process to distinguish Christians from Jews, because during these early days, there really was no distinction. While it is evident that Christ called 12 apostles, his church really was not really organized at his death and resurrection. As such, when the gospel writers were looking back on certain events such as baptism and the sacrament, they may have been instituted as uniquely Christian ordinances. I know Crossan seems to think that some of the dialogue between Jesus and John was invented to serve this purpose.
I have been reading a little bit about the historicity of Jesus and the more I read, the more likely is seems that many of the traditional Christian elements we read in the New Testament were likely added after Christ’s death and can’t be attributed to Christ himself (virgin birth, King Herod’s infanticide, moving to Egypt, new star in the heavens) and were probably included to try to Diefy and increase his status as a martyr for the new converts and spreading the gospel. I can believe that the apostles adjusted a traditional mikva experience to become their new ordinance of baptism. It actually makes a lot of sense, just like the whitewashing the LDS church has done to make it’s history clean and faith-promoting, the early Chrisitians may have whitewashed and revised their own history to make it faith-promoting. In fact, the book argues that the crucifixion was probably an actual event because the crucifixion was so counter-intuitive to what the Jews expected of the Messiah, but the Apostles may have added the doctrine of the resurrection to be able to explain that their Messiah wasn’t really gone and would be back soon to save them.
My Jewish co-worker also suggested that the last supper may have been traditional observance of the Shabbat. According to Wikipedia this is:
Wikipedia wrote:
The evening meal begins with the Kiddush, a blessing recited aloud over a cup of wine, and the Mohtzi, a blessing recited over the bread.
These types of historical parallelisms increase my belief that the historical Jesus really had very little to do with founding Christianity and that it was much more due to his followers after his death. Of course, this introduces more historicity problems into the Book of Mormon and what Christ was doing implementing traditional Chrisitian ordinances that wouldn’t be implemented until years later by his followers, as well as Mormon doctrine problems with promoting the belief that Christian ordinances are Eternal ordinances taught to Adam and all prophets throughout the history of the world. I’m inclined to go with history on this one . . .
MisterCurie wrote:I have been reading a little bit about the historicity of Jesus and the more I read, the more likely is seems that many of the traditional Christian elements we read in the New Testament were likely added after Christ’s death and can’t be attributed to Christ himself (virgin birth, King Herod’s infanticide, moving to Egypt, new star in the heavens) and were probably included to try to Diefy and increase his status as a martyr for the new converts and spreading the gospel.
Yes, but!!
MisterCurie wrote:I can believe that the apostles adjusted a traditional mikva experience to become their new ordinance of baptism. It actually makes a lot of sense, just like the whitewashing the LDS church has done to make it’s history clean and faith-promoting, the early Chrisitians may have whitewashed and revised their own history to make it faith-promoting. In fact, the book argues that the crucifixion was probably an actual event because the crucifixion was so counter-intuitive to what the Jews expected of the Messiah, but the Apostles may have added the doctrine of the resurrection to be able to explain that their Messiah wasn’t really gone and would be back soon to save them.
Yes, but!!
MisterCurie wrote:These types of historical parallelisms increase my belief that the historical Jesus really had very little to do with founding Christianity and that it was much more due to his followers after his death. Of course, this introduces more historicity problems into the Book of Mormon and what Christ was doing implementing traditional Chrisitian ordinances that wouldn’t be implemented until years later by his followers, as well as Mormon doctrine problems with promoting the belief that Christian ordinances are Eternal ordinances taught to Adam and all prophets throughout the history of the world. I’m inclined to go with history on this one . . .
Yes, but you’ve got to keep something in mind, here.
Historians and scientists have to always keep probability in mind. If it’s improbable, it must be discarded. Miracles can’t occur. That’s the secular standard.
You and I don’t have that limitation, thank God(pun intended). And I don’t think that’s a really bankrupt point of view, intellectually speaking. If probability didn’t have a valid counterpoint in reality, the Ripley’s “Believe It or Not” books never would have gotten off the ground.
In my own life, some immensely improbable things have happened. Winning the lottery not being one of them, drat the luck!
HiJolly
HiJolly wrote:Historians and scientists have to always keep probability in mind. If it’s improbable, it must be discarded. Miracles can’t occur. That’s the secular standard.
Yes, but!!!
Actually, the book I was reading compared the differences between the different Gospel accounts and then compared it to other historical documents that were written around the same time. The arguement against the divinity of Christ was not due to the miracles that were purported to have occurred, but rather based on historical facts. It was fairly compelling, although I am looking for a better documented book on the historicity of Jesus. Any suggestions?
MisterCurie wrote:HiJolly wrote:Historians and scientists have to always keep probability in mind. If it’s improbable, it must be discarded. Miracles can’t occur. That’s the secular standard.
Yes, but!!!
Actually, the book I was reading compared the differences between the different Gospel accounts and then compared it to other historical documents that were written around the same time. The arguement against the divinity of Christ was not due to the miracles that were purported to have occurred, but rather based on historical facts. It was fairly compelling, although I am looking for a better documented book on the historicity of Jesus. Any suggestions?
I think Bart Ehrman does a great job of describing the difficulties of the “historical Jesus”. He really knows his stuff, and is extremely well spoken. Interestingly, he left Christianity not because of the historical difficulties of an historical Jesus, but because of the problem of evil.
😈 My point was it is the nature of the beast (secular history) that “historical facts” don’t really exist, as the common person would understand it. We have sparse, fragmented evidence. We have probability. Seems a bit tenuous to me. Maybe I’ve just watched too much “Perry Mason” on TV.
Nevertheless, academicians have to earn their pay somehow, so they commonly overstate the case, relying on data accumulated from a rare handful of expert academicians. Meanwhile, most of the experts are not nearly so assertive, because they know the weaknesses in the data.
Then some polemicist jumps in and slaughters the whole body of information, just to stick it to somebody they don’t like. It’s a nasty world. Take it all with a grain of salt.
As it relates to the LDS Church, the one core unique belief that we have to share with the world is not so much the Book of Mormon, nor Joseph Smith, nor even the Restored Church, although all of these are great examples. it is the declaration that the rest of creedal Christianity is mistaken, and the heavens are NOT sealed. Put briefly, *continuing revelation* is what we have that the world needs to know about.
When Joseph became a prophet, the vehicle that his message had to be carried by was Christianity, considering his time & place. Nothing else would have sufficed. In like manner, the temple endowment had to be couched in an understandable, culturally acceptable vehicle. Freemasonry filled the bill. The point is that people are making covenants, improving themselves and the world, and spreading faith in God speaking and acting in the world *today*. That’s cool, powerful stuff. Regardless of somebody’s conception of “historical facts”.
HiJolly
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