THE NEW SCHAFF-HERZOG
administration of baptism in circumstances in which there is no likelihood that " much water " was available — for example, in a private house (Acts x, 47, where the water almost seems to have been something to be brought and expended in the act; cf. Acts ix, 18; xxii, 16), or even in the noisome jail at Philippi (Acts xvi, 33). Candor would seem to compel the admission that not only is there no stress laid in the New Testament on the mode of applying the water in baptism, but that all the allusions to baptism in the New Testament can find ready explanation on the assumption of any of the modes of administration which have been widely practised in the Churches.
In these circumstances it is not strange that appeal should be made to subsidiary lines of investigation, in the hope that by their means at least a probable judgment may be reached as to the mode in which baptism was administered in apostolic times. Of these, most frequent appeal has been made to these three: the philology of the term employed in the New Testament to designate baptism; the archeology of the rite as practised in the Churches; the inherent symbolism of the sacrament. It must be confessed that the results of this threefold appeal are less decisive than could have been wished.
It is of course true that the term " to baptize " goes back to a root which bears the sense of " deep " (cf. W. W Skeat, Etymological Dictionary of the English Language, Oxford, 1882, p. 733, no. 89). Its immediate primitive, the Greek verb baptein, from which it is formed by adding the termination -izein, which gives it a repetitive or intensive meaning (cf. Jelf's Greek Grammar, i, 331, § 330), naturally, therefore, has the sense " to dip," while " baptize " itself would primarily 3. Philo- mean " to dip repeatedly" or " to logical Con- dip effectively." Even the primitive siderations. verb, baptein, of course, acquired secondary senses founded on its fundamental implication of " dipping," but ultimately leaving it out of sight. Thus, as iron is tempered by dipping, when applied to iron baptein came to mean " to temper "; as garments are dyed by dipping, baptein came to mean, when applied to garments, " to dye "; and it soon passed on to mean simply, without any implication of the mode by which it is accomplished, " to temper," " to dye," " to steep," " to imbue," and the like. When, for example, the Greek bully threatened his fellow that he would " dye [baptein] him with the dye of Sardis " — a place famous for its red dye — ■ he meant precisely what the English bully means when he threatens his fellow " to give him a bloody coxcomb," and was as far as possible from implying that the effect would be produced by a process of dipping. So when we read in the common Greek version of Dan. iv, 30 (35); v, 21, that Nebuchadnezzar was " wet [baptein] with the dew of heaven," there is no implication whatever of the mode of the application of the dew to his person. The derivative, baptizein, of course, lent itself even more kindly to the development of these secondary senses, because, as an intensive form, it naturally emphasized the effect. Accordingly
it is rarely used more literally than of the sinking of ships by storm or by war, with the implication, of course, of their destruction; or of the bathing of persons (Eubulus, Nausicaa, 1), with the implication, of course, of their cleansing. It passes freely over into such metaphorical usages as when a drunkard is spoken of as baptized with wine, a profligate as baptized with debt, a city as baptized with sleep, a hapless youth as baptized with questions, or as when the prophet (Isa. xxi, 4, LXX) is made to say he is baptized with iniquity; the English equivalent in such cases being something like "overwhelmed," "steeped," or the like. Such a term obviously lay close at hand for application to the Jewish ceremonial lustrations, in which, not the mode, but the effect of the application of the water receives the stress. In the Greek Old Testament it has not yet, indeed, obtained the position of the technical designation of these lustrations. But the beginnings of such a usage are already traceable there (Ecclus. xxxi, 30 [xxxiv, 25]; Judith xii, 7; cf. II Kings v, 14); and by the time the New Testament was written it seems to have supplanted the term commonly employed in the Greek Old Testament [louesthat] for this purpose (cf. Cremer, s.v., and J. A. Robinson, in JTS, Jan., 1906, vii, 26, 187-189). At least that term occurs in the New Testament only once of a ceremonial lustration, and then only in connection with baptizein as explaining its effects, while baptizein occurs quite naturally in this sense (Mark vii, 4; Luke xi, 38; Heb. ix, 10) and is the term adopted, probably from such a preceding use, to designate the symbolical washing proclaimed by John the Baptist, and the Christian rite which is called " baptism.'.' In these circumstances it seems very rash to assume that the word was applied to the Christian rite in its primitive meaning of " to dip "; or indeed that any implication of that primitive meaning still clings to it in this application. The presumption is very strong that even in its preliminary use of the Jewish lustrations, it had already " lost its earlier significance of ' dipping,' or ' immersing'" and " acquired the new religious significance of 'ceremonial cleansing by water'" (J. A. Robinson, ut sup.; cf. EB, i, 473; DB, i, 238). In any event the stress of the word in its application to the Christian rite is not upon the mode in which the water is applied in it, but to its effect as a symbolical cleansing. The etymology of the word, in short, throws no clear light on the mode of applying the water in baptism in the usage of the apostles. Nor does archeology lend much more aid. It is, indeed, true that the present divergences in the practise of the Churches are the result of growth, and that behind them lies what without much straining may be called a universal usage of at least theoretical immersion. And it is true that the earliest clear intimation which has come down to us of the manner in which Christians baptized, belonging probably to about the middle of the second century (found in the seventh chapter of the Didache), contemplates normal baptism as by immersion. But it is equally true that throughout the whole patristic period no one ever doubted the entire validity of baptism administered in other modes of