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Testing the Waters:

A Reevaluation of Yeshua's Five Sayings on βάπτισμα

By Hanoch Ben Keshet

 

Yohanan ben Zechariah (John the Baptist) electrified Israel with his cry for repentance and baptism to enter the looming kingdom, inadvertently unleashing a storm of baptismal debate that remains unabated to this day. In the introduction to Understanding Four Views on Baptism, John H. Armstrong writes that "nothing more quickly leads to disagreement among otherwise agreeable Christians than a discussion about the meaning and method (mode) of Christian baptism. There are almost as many reasons for disagreement about baptism as there are views and positions held by Christians on baptism."[1] Such vigorous dispute may well indicate a flawed premise that skews exegesis of NT baptism.

This essay explores an exposition method that potentially slices through the Gordian knot of New Testament baptismal controversy. Yeshua did not invalidate his Jewish disciples’ hope of national restoration in Acts 1:6, though he certainly left the timetable in the Father’s authority. In other words, Jewish expectations in NT writings must be respected (compare 1 Cor. 7:17-20) yet recognized to signify no ultimate advantage with the Almighty. Moreover, the NT is God-breathed and Yeshua’s words indeed "will never pass away." A double-edged sword proceeds from Yeshua’s mouth in apocalyptic vision and, at the very least, this implies that his words can sever knots of confusion at a blow.

Yeshua has five sayings in the Synoptic Gospels and Acts that make direct use of baptizō (βαπτίζω) and baptisma (βάπτισμα): Luke 12:50, Mark 10:38-39, Mark 11:30 [with Luke 20:4, Matt 21:25], Matt 28:19, and Acts 1:5. The five sayings are arranged chronologically according to Yeshua's life.[2] Each saying offers lessons that help define the contours and boundaries of baptizō and baptisma in the NT.  Yeshua's first two sayings show that baptizō and baptisma conveyed a range of meaning, including abstract ideas, that diverge from common expectations related to immersion. Yeshua's third saying, examined in context, illuminates the national importance of Yohanan's purification for Israel and leads to the proposal that Yohanan inaugurated Ezekiel 36:25, Israel's promised purification immediately prior to the kingdom. Yeshua's fourth saying, Matt 28:19, is his command to Jewish apostles to ensure relational transformation between disciples and the Almighty, not to perform a liturgical rite. Yeshua's fifth saying shows that Yohanan's rite is subordinate to Yeshua's spiritually-transformative, universal outpouring of the Holy Spirit. These five sayings challenge not only Christian assumptions about baptism, they also raise important questions for the Messianic Community. If Ezekiel 36:25-27 actually was inaugurated by Yohanan and Yeshua, then the Messianic Community must  reconsider current teaching and practice. We turn now to Yeshua's first saying.

 

I. Luke 12:50

I have an ordeal to be overwhelmed with,

and how distressed I am until it is completed.[3]

Luke portrayed Yeshua using the newly-coined verbal noun baptisma to bear sacred freight, what Craig Evans says is “undoubtedly a reference to his impending death.”[4] Joel Green's approach to interpreting baptisma in this verse, typifying many commentators, suggests images of immersion and perilous flash flooding, and that "the metaphor of 'baptism' may portend calamity and judgment."[5] This approach requires several interpretive stages: a) concrete action of immersion, into b) conjectured metaphorical raging floods, which are c) implicitly life-threatening by drowning, yielding d) an abstract detrimental effect, from which to imply e) Yeshua's Passover suffering and death. But if the noun baptisma simply meant an event characterized by overwhelming effect then these steps are superfluous. Yeshua faces a) an abstract ordeal that implies b) his Passover suffering and death. For this solution, one need only accept the premise that baptisma is not restricted to the concept of immersion, but that it also directly expresses abstract effects. Words commonly bear concrete senses or abstract senses, or blends of both, and it can be highly misleading to confuse them. For example, while sunrise is cool, noontime is hot, and sunset is warm, one cannot impose concrete ideas of temperature on the phrase, Itzik is cool, Rivka is hot, and their parents are warm. A metaphorical vision of Yohanan touching people with high voltage wires to electrify Israel is absurd. Likewise, Yeshua’s baptisma need not require raging floods.

We find a usage similar to Luke 12:50 in Isa 21:4 LXX where the narrator is abstractly baptized by lawlessness. Luke was certainly familiar with the LXX Isaiah; three of his five Isaiah quotes are from the LXX according to the UBS4 Greek NT.[6] If so, then Luke almost certainly knew Isa 21:4 in the LXX:

My heart wanders, and lawlessness overwhelms me [lit. baptizes me];
my soul has turned to fear (NETS)[7]

Jewish LXX translators framed baptizō to convey abstract overpowering effect to the referent; "lawlessness overwhelms" (injuriously). This verse provides diachronic support for the idea that baptizō conveys overwhelming effect in Luke 12:50. If so, then Luke's use of the noun baptisma almost certainly reflects the verb baptizō's sense of overwhelming effect. Consequently, the noun represents an event characterized by overwhelming effect, such as an ordeal. Evidence that Luke intentionally echoed Isa 21:4, though suggestive, is far too meager to be conclusive.[8]

If baptisma refers to an abstract ordeal in Luke 12:50, then other occurrences of baptisma are amenable to fresh interpretation. The baptisma of repentance for the remission of sins (Mark 1:4; Luke 3:3) might not refer specifically to immersion, but to an overarching, abstract repentance experience composed of several activities. Surely many different lawless acts are anticipated in Yeshua's ordeal-baptisma of Luke 12:50. Likewise, the baptisma of repentance may be composed of repentant people going to Yohanan, confessing sins, participating in Yohanan's rite, and his recognition of forgiveness. In other words, baptisma may likely refer to the entire process, not exclusively to the washing.

This first saying of Yeshua reveals a more flexible range of meaning for baptisma and baptizō than many imagine. The next saying suggests that NT writers portrayed contemporary senses of baptizō on Yeshua's lips.

 

II. Mark 10:38-39

A. Are you able to drink the cup which I will drink?

B. Or to be drunken with the drunkenness with which I will be made drunk?[9]

These verses offer a clear example of Hebrew parallelism found frequently in the Tanakh. According to James Kugel's terminology, A and B lines make up Hebrew parallelisms. Kugel points out that "B, by being connected to A—carrying it further, echoing it, restating it, it does not matter which—has an emphatic, 'seconding' character, and it is this, more than any aesthetic of symmetry or paralleling, which is at the heart of biblical parallelism."[10]

Robert Stein explains that A, drinking the cup, is a metaphor from the Tanakh signifying an ordeal thrust upon the referent.[11] Yeshua's ordeal is martyrdom.[12] The B line also signifies martyrdom and, like many, Stein takes baptizō and baptisma as metaphors of immersion in floods or rituals.[13] While this is possible, Mark instead may have used baptizō and baptisma for metaphorical drunkenness (ùÑÄëÌÈøåÉï) which is the express result of drinking the cup. If so, then both A and B metaphors are conceptually cohesive, both express abstract detrimental effect, drunkenness in B is an intensification of drinking the cup in A, and both metaphors occur in the Tanakh. For example, consider the ESV rendering of Ezekiel 23:32-33:

Thus says the Lord GOD:

You shall drink your sister's cup that is deep and large; . . .

you will be filled with drunkenness and sorrow.

A cup of horror and desolation, the cup of your sister Samaria;[14]

First century Greek audiences would indeed recognize baptizō in the sense of drunk. Among others, Plato indeed had used baptizō in this sense in his Symposium:

I am myself one of those who yesterday was drunk [βεβαπτισμένων][15]

Philo of Alexandria also had used baptizō in this sense in his Contemplative Life:

I know of some, who when under the influence (ἀκροθώρακες), but before they are completely drunk (βαπτισθῆναι), arrange beforehand donations and subscriptions for tomorrow's drinking bout.[16]

The following English illustration may help elucidate how baptizō can refer directly to intoxication without metaphorical vision:

The wine was drunk by the man.

The man was drunk by the wine.

Two distinct senses occur: the concrete act of drinking a liquid, and the effect of drunkenness. Also note that in the second phrase intoxication is expressed directly by was drunk. Evidently baptizō underwent a similar sort of development in Greek.

Yeshua's followers certainly launched baptizō and baptisma on a special semantic trajectory, yet fresh nuances familiar to the minority Messianic/Christian subculture would not eclipse broader contemporary usage for centuries. Mark evidently used baptizō in the familiar sense of drunk to portray Yeshua's test of martyrdom. From this vantage point it is tempting to conjecture that Matt 20:22-23 is missing Mark's B line for no more mysterious a reason than that the noble-minded Matthew, unlike working-class Mark, refused to drag baptizō and the freshly-minted baptisma down into such "low company."[17]

If drunkenness is intended in Mark 10:38-39, then Yeshua likely saw such passages as Jer 13:12-14 as a foreshadowing of his own messianic destiny. Jeremiah declared that kings on David's throne would be filled with drunkenness, together with priests and prophets and all the inhabitants of Jerusalem, all to signify impending ruin during the First Temple. Yeshua too was Israel's king by the Almighty's decree (even if the national leadership refused him) so his choice of expression, cup and drunkenness, foretold not only his own martyrdom, but Jerusalem's coming disaster as well. Unlike Jeremiah's forecast, however, Yeshua suffered unjustly. Jerusalem's cup, on the other hand, resulted from her own impiety and directly recapitulates Jeremiah's bleak promise.

Yeshua's sayings in Luke 12:50 and Mark 10:38-39 convey wide-ranging abstract effects that overshadow concrete action for baptizō and baptisma, and their senses are clarified by both diachronic usage (LXX, Plato) and synchronic usage (Philo).

In the next section we consider Yeshua's saying that refers directly to Yohanan's baptisma. Joel Green observes that, "John's baptism is more at home in later Jewish literature in which physical and metaphorical cleansing are combined."[18] Yohanan's baptisma, then, is a washing with water (concrete act) that religiously purifies (abstract effect). Although Yohanan's activity is often understood in terms of immersion, it is equally conceivable that the noun baptisma refers to a purification event. The Tanakh certainly stipulates various purification rites for Israel so there is no loss of significance for Jews if the original intent of Yohanan's baptisma is that of a purification rite. This understanding leads to the possibility that Yohanan's purification, endorsed by king Yeshua in the Temple, is actually the inauguration of Ezekiel's purification of Israel immediately prior to the promised kingdom (Ezek 36:25), and this would make Yohanan's baptisma crucial for both Israel and the Messianic Community.

 

III. Mark 11:30, Luke 20:4, Matthew 21:25

Yohanan's purification rite—was it from heaven or from man?[19]

Members of the Jewish leadership council, the Sanhedrin, publicly questioned Yeshua about his authority. Yeshua turned their inquiry on its head and demanded a public declaration of their findings on Yohanan's baptisma. R. T. France rightly rejects any thought of evasion in Yeshua's words: "Jesus' counter-question about the authority of John is not a pointless trick to escape giving a straight answer, but a clear claim to a continuity of mission: the authority by which John operated is that of Jesus also, and the implication that it is a divine authority is barely veiled."[20]

All three synoptic narratives place Yeshua's riposte just after he rode the donkey into Jerusalem whereby he publicly proclaimed himself Israel's king (Zech 9:9).[21] All three synoptists follow that event with Yeshua's cleansing of the Temple. These two deeds establish Yeshua's public claim to be messiah and his rebuke of Israel's leadership. Yeshua's retort to Sanhedrin leaders, recorded by all three synoptists, is not as an itinerant rabbi, but as Israel's king. No rivalry divides Yohanan the prophet and Yeshua the king. Instead, they are allies for Israel's kingdom.

First century Jewish readers would almost certainly recognize weighty implications: king Yeshua publicly tied his "name" to Yohanan's baptisma by endorsing it in the Temple, and by doing so he effectively added this "messianic" baptism to all other existing Torah rites for Israel (compare Matt 5:17-20).[22] Since Luke-Acts contains no subsequent command from Yeshua for any other water rite, then this declaration is the cogent source for the post-resurrection messianic baptisma in Acts. Yeshua publicly endorsed Yohanan's purification rite just before Passover, and Peter publicly commanded this national rite in Jerusalem for "all the house of Israel" by Yeshua's authority (or in Messiah's name) on Shavuot (Pentecost), only seven weeks after Passover.

From the standpoint of consistency it seems likely that Yohanan's purification rite would have originated in the Tanakh. Yeshua, as Messiah, was promised in the Tanakh. Yohanan, the messenger of Malachi[23] and voice of Isaiah,[24] was also promised. Yeshua's activity of baptizing with the Spirit was promised and was identified with Joel's outpouring (Acts 2:16-21, 33). Yohanan's activity seemingly also would be foretold since he prefigures Messiah and his activity with the Spirit. To be sure, Yohanan's purification rite lacks an identifying citation prompting commentators like Robert Stein to conclude "the origin of John's baptism is unknown."[25] But Yohanan surely knew its origin, and almost certainly Yeshua and the first disciples knew its origin. It seems likely that NT authors simply skipped familiar citations that were not germane to their narrative. For example, Isaiah's sublime suffering servant receives limited mention in the NT, and Yeshua quotes from that passage just once, "And he was numbered with the transgressors."[26] Jeremiah's new covenant is cited only twice, in Hebrews,[27] while outside Hebrews the key term "new covenant" (καινὴ διαθήκη) is found only in Luke 22:20, 1 Cor 11:25 and 2 Cor 3:6. Yet, most would agree that limited citation of these passages does not mean that NT authors lacked awareness of them. Peter said that all the prophets had prophesied about the days in which they lived (Acts 3:24). So the idea that Yohanan's baptism was recognized as drawn from the Tanakh is sound. The remainder of this section explores the hypothesis that Yohanan's baptism was the inauguration of Ezekiel's purification that ushers in Israel's kingdom.

 

Ezekiel 36:25-27

Commentators regularly note Ezek 36:25-27 on Yohanan's activity with water and on Yeshua's activity with the Spirit, but no one states explicitly that Yohanan inaugurated the prophecy.[28] Yet despite avoidance of recognizing Ezek 36:25-27's inauguration, these verses do evoke the new covenant salvation paradigm, especially verses 26-27, which promise both the removal of stony hearts and the indwelling Spirit. Let us, then, consider several points of affinity between Ezekiel's prophecy and Yohanan's activity.

A parallelism repeated six times was indispensable for the first followers of Yeshua: Yohanan baptizes with water, Yeshua baptizes with the Holy Spirit.[29] This parallelism conforms to the water-Spirit motif of Ezek 36:25-27, as well as to John 3:5 where Yeshua told Nicodemus how to enter Israel's kingdom. In Lukan terminology Yeshua baptizes his disciples (Acts 1:5) by pouring out (ἐξέχεεν) the Holy Spirit on them (Acts 2:33). If Yohanan's activity prefigures Yeshua's, then it makes sense for Yohanan's baptisma to have a similar form, which would well-match Ezek 36:25.

Luke used baptizō to describe purification of hands before eating (Luke 11:38). Daniel Wallace remarks on this verse that Yeshua "did not first allow himself to be washed before the meal" suggesting that Yeshua "would be washed by another."[30] The Tanakh indeed offers a similar example: "Elisha the son of Shafat is here, the one who used to pour water on Elijah's hands" (2 Kings 3:11). In Luke 11 baptizō is passive form, meaning Yeshua was not purified (by someone else). Luke, then, uses baptizō to bear a sense of purifying accomplished by pouring. If baptizō and baptisma bear senses of abstract effect, then Jewish rites that purify could be called baptisms no matter what their mode.

We also note in the Gospels that Yohanan actively baptized,[31] while the people, including Yeshua, were passively baptized.[32] Since Greek does contain a middle, reflexive form of the verb suitable to describe self-immersion, the actual use of active and passive verbs to describe Yohanan and the repentant people points away from mishnaic self-immersion. However their use does align with Ezek 36:25, particularly when one concurs that baptizō speaks of purifying. If this be accepted, then the sense of Yohanan's surname is "the Purifier" (not the Immerser), and Yohanan's baptisma is his purification event (not his immersion).

The Ezek 36:25 premise is fortified by a prominent allusion in no less significant a place than the prayer that Yeshua instructed disciples to pray (Luke 11:2‑4). Joel Green remarks that "reverberations of Ezek 36:16-32" are heard in Yeshua's prayer:

"I shall sanctify my great name . . . and the nations shall know that I am the LORD, says the Lord GOD, when through you I display my holiness before their eyes" (v 23). This perspective from Ezekiel is important not only for establishing the eschatological edge of the opening of this prayer of Jesus, but also for the way it summons those who pray this prayer to behave. Why must God sanctify his name? Because it has been profaned by God's own people . . .[33]

Yeshua's example for prayer reflects the Jewish community attitude of praying for the redemption of the nation as a whole, not merely for a righteous remnant. We note a strong echo of Ezekiel 36 in Yeshua's prayer:

ἁγιασθήτω τὸ ὄνομά σου (Matt 6:9 and Luke 11:2)

ἁγιάσω τὸ ὄνομά μου τὸ μέγα (Ezek 36:23, LXX)

Yeshua, then, would also be aware of Israel's need for purification prior to the kingdom in Ezek 36:25, which, evidently, Yohanan had inaugurated.

If Yohanan inaugurated Ezek 36:25 then his urgency about the looming kingdom is intelligible (Matt 3:2). Yohanan's popularity with the Jewish people also makes sense for not only was Yohanan foretold in the Tanakh, so was his purifying activity. This hypothesis explains Yeshua's demand to undergo Yohanan's rite to "fulfill all righteousness" (Matt 3:13-15) since, as a Jew, Yeshua automatically bore Israel's national impurity of Ezek 36:17 (see below). Yeshua's demand had nothing to do with his personal state. This premise also supplies a reason for Yeshua to oversee his disciples as they baptized simultaneously with Yohanan's (John 3:22 – 4:2). Yeshua and Yohanan both recognized the kingdom's nearness so they both performed Israel's end-time purification for the general public (called Yohanan's baptism in his honor since he inaugurated it and was martyred for it). This premise makes sense of Luke's comment that the crowds following Yeshua after Yohanan's arrest had received Yohanan's baptism (Luke 7:29-30).

We now turn to the question of splash versus sprinkle in Ezek 36:25, which the ESV renders:

I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you shall be clean from all your uncleannesses, and from all your idols I will cleanse you.[34]

The Hebrew verb zaraq actually speaks of a throwing action, though it is usually translated sprinkle in this verse. Indeed, the ESV rendered zaraq in Exod 9:8, 10 as Moses throwing soot into the air. Numbers 19:13, 20 contains zaraq where the likely sense is sprinkle, but the verb is also found in many other verses for splashing blood on the altar. The ESV renders Ezekiel's third use of zaraq as "throwing blood" (Ezek 42:18), so by ESV standards Ezek 36:25 could read, "I will throw pure water on you." If one throws a teacup of water the effect is sprinkling, but if one throws a larger quantity, say a gallon, the effect is a splash. Compare the ESV "throwing blood" with the NIV "splashing blood against the altar" (Ezek 42:18). The point is that the Hebrew zaraq is not bound to sprinkling, but to a throwing action, and if a considerable quantity is thrown the effect is a splash.

Why, then, would the Almighty splash pure water on collective Israel? We are evidently informed in Ezek 36:17. When Israel dwelt on the land the people's sins defiled the land "like the defilement of a woman in her menstrual impurity." God consequently scattered Israel among the nations. However, verse 24 reverses the scattering and verse 25 provides the purification. Splashing pure water provides prophetic purification for the woman (collective Israel) whose defilement has now passed (by repentance). The Jewish Soncino commentary remarks on Ezek 36:25: "Since Israel's evil ways were compared to the uncleanness of a woman in her impurity (verse 17), the forgiveness of his sins is characterized as a purification by cleansing water."[35]

Diachronistic questions about purification practices arise at this point, especially whether or not Jewish women always self-immersed to purify as they do today and did, apparently, in the late Second Temple. Ronny Reich and Yonatan Adler, who both wrote Ph.D theses on mikvaot,[36] note that although more than 800 purpose-built mikvaot have been discovered in the region, none date earlier than the second century bce (during the Hasmonean period) some 400 years after Ezekiel. In other words, no purpose-built immersion pools have been discovered that date anywhere near Ezekiel's day in the sixth century bce. One ought not assume that a woman's purification required self-immersion in Ezekiel's generation. Being well-splashed with pure water may indeed have been acceptable in the First Temple and exilic periods.[37]

Traditional Jewish practices of the Second Temple were fixed in the Mishnah by R. Yehuda Hanasi who died in 217 ce, nearly 800 years after Ezekiel. Second Temple sages endeavored to help Israel avoid transgression by devising "perimeter fences" (subsidiary rulings) to guard Torah mitzvot. The mikveh pool was one of these innovations. Leviticus 11:36 describes the water sources that remain pure, "only a spring and a cistern that gathers water," yet later sages interpreted the verse to mean, "only a spring, and a cistern, and a gathering of water (mikveh mayim)." This variation occurs in the Greek LXX[38] and coincides with the origin of purpose-built mikvaot in the Hasmonean period. The Mishnah requires tevilah, or self-immersion, in a mikveh for a Jewish woman to be purified, yet the noun tevilah does not occur in the Torah nor in the Tanakh. It is evidently Mishnaic Hebrew. Moreover, the five books of Moses never use immerse, taval, for bodily washings, though centuries later we find Naaman's washing described with taval (2 Kings 5:14).[39] Still, the Almighty had commanded Moses: "Lead Aaron and his sons up to the entrance of the Tent of Meeting, and wash them with water (Exod 29:4; 40:12) . . . Then Moses brought Aaron and his sons forward and washed them with water (Lev 8:6)."[40] These verses imply that purification with water did not demand self-immersion and could involve someone else actively performing the subject's washing.

Yohanan ben Zechariah, himself a priestly cohen, dressed like Elijah and self-identified as the voice of Isaiah. Surely the source for Yohanan's end-time ritual was Israelite culture, but did he depend on Second Temple authorities or on the prophets of the Tanakh? Yohanan could have devised a national purification based on Second Temple rulings. But why would a prophet who based his identity on centuries-old prophecies ignore Ezek 36:25, which likewise had been promised for six centuries?

In summary, all three synoptists record Yeshua endorsing Yohanan's baptisma to Jewish leaders in Jerusalem's Temple, and from a narrative perspective this was after Yeshua publicly declared himself king. Yeshua gave no command in Luke-Acts to supersede Yohanan's rite, so his Jewish followers evidently continued to perform Yohanan's rite by Messiah's authority, or in his name. Since Yohanan's rite was divinely ordained, then it likely was foretold in the Tanakh and credible evidence points to Ezek 36:25 as Yohanan's source.

The next section reevaluates the fourth and most well-known of Yeshua's five sayings, Matt 28:19-20. From the second century onward, Christians assumed that Yeshua commanded a water rite that replaced Yohanan's. But, in light of the preceding discussion, it seems highly questionable to assume that Yeshua replaced Yohanan's baptism when he had just endorsed it as God-ordained for Israel. Since Yeshua's first two sayings show baptizō and baptisma exhibiting a range of abstract meaning without reference to water, then Matthew likewise may have used baptizō in Yeshua's command to order his Jewish apostles to ensure the holy transformation of idolatrous first-century nations, without reference to water.

 

IV. Matthew 28:19-20

Go therefore, make disciples of all the nations, ensuring their true and "kosher" acquaintance of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to keep all that I have commanded you.

Does Matt 28:19-20 speak of a formal ritual, or of an actual transformative acquaintance with the Almighty? The above phrase, ensuring their true and "kosher" acquaintance, emphasizes a transformative, non-liturgical interpretation of "baptizing them into the name,"[41] as well as the responsibility borne by Jewish apostles in their contact with nations dominated by the Greco-Roman pantheon. The term "kosher" evokes the idea of concurrently applied aspects of purification and sanctification that render the Gentiles "fit" for associating with the Almighty.

Commentators have long noted that Acts and Paul's epistles record post-resurrection water baptisms that are not in the Matt 28:19 trinitarian "formula" and this alleged discrepancy has led some, such as F. C. Conybeare, Hans Kosmala and Donald Hagner, to suggest that the present trinitarian form was not in the text originally.[42] Hagner, however, does not discount the existing version outright and remarks that in contrast to Yohanan's baptism "this baptism brings a person into an existence that is fundamentally determined by, i.e., ruled by, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit."[43] Others who accept the existing form, like R. V. G. Tasker, question the idea that Matt 28:19-20 originally expressed liturgy:

[I]t may well be that the true explanation why the early church did not at once administer baptism in the threefold name, is that the words of xxviii 19 were not originally meant by our Lord as a baptismal formula. He was not giving instructions about the actual words to be used in the service of baptism, but . . . was indicating that the baptized person would by baptism pass into the possession of the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost.[44]

J. K. Howard unpacks Yeshua's saying even further:

Thus the one who is baptised "into the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit" has entered the sphere of an entirely new relationship with God. He knows God as Father in the unique way which Christ, the Son, came to reveal. Further, the knowledge of this revelation is made actual in real experience by the indwelling of the Holy Spirit.[45]

Hagner, Tasker and Howard present remarkable insights, yet in contrast to Yeshua's saying they frame the verse passively, as from a new disciple's perspective. This subtle viewpoint shift is significant because from a passive perspective the onus for deficiency falls on the disciple. But this is not a command for new believers to get baptized. Rather, Jewish apostles are made responsible to actively ensure what Hagner, Tasker and Howard teach, a breathtaking relational transformation of new disciples from the nations with the Almighty. In this light it seems inconceivable that Yeshua's command to baptize calls solely for a one-time ritual action per disciple.

Yeshua's great commission in Matt 28:19-20 has four verbs directed to the apostles. The first is "go" and it is subordinate to the imperative verb "make disciples" that follows it. After this imperative verb, two subordinate verbs are in a form that indicates durative action:

Baptizing — βαπτίζοντες (present, active, participle)

Teaching — διδάσκοντες (present, active, participle)

Both of these verbs convey continuing action in the present. Certainly teaching is a continuing process, not a one-time act in the past. So too, baptizing also indicates a continuing process, and this sense does not lend itself to punctiliar one-time ritual acts, but it impressively supports the concept of fostering and ensuring relational growth with the Almighty by instruction and example.

Matthew's community certainly included Jews who had trusted Yeshua as Messiah. Matthew's narrative stated that Yeshua, as king, endorsed Yohanan's baptism, thereby implicitly approving Yohanan's message that he baptizes with water but that the Greater One baptizes with the Holy Spirit. But there is no need for Jews in Matthew's audience to try to understand Matt 28:19-20 as a new trinitarian water rite that both supplants Yohanan's baptism and that subsumes the superior Spirit baptism. Nothing demands water in Matt 28:19 and Yeshua's public endorsement of Yohanan's baptism just weeks earlier weighs against the idea that he commanded a new rite. Instead, Yeshua made his Jewish apostles responsible for a growing relational transformation of the nations, from idolatry to pure faith in the Almighty.[46] We now turn to the last of Yeshua's five sayings, Acts 1:5, which evidently establishes the paradigm by which to understand baptism in Acts.

 

V. Acts 1:5

For Yohanan purified with water, but you will be purified with the Holy Spirit, not many days from now.

Moments before ascending Yeshua restated Yohanan's promise in Luke 3:16, thereby establishing the paradigmatic guide for baptism throughout Luke's record of Acts. Joel Green says, however, that many scholars take Peter's command in Acts 2:38 as paradigmatic for baptism in Acts.[47] But Yeshua's early followers clearly went through stages of learning, as in Acts 10–11 and in Acts 15, so it is precarious to assume that Peter fully understood baptism in Acts 1–2. Peter himself repeats Acts 1:5 verbatim in Acts 11:16 during one of the most important divine lessons (see below), and this strongly suggests that Yeshua's saying indeed is paradigmatic for Acts.

The Culy and Parsons translation[48] and their comment on Acts 1:5 that en pneumati (ἐν πνεύματι) is "probably instrumental" rather than locative, fortifies the view that Yeshua intended his disciples to be abstractly transformed—permanently purified—by being baptized with the Holy Spirit.[49] If so, then, in accord with Max Turner's conclusions (but from a line of reasoning quite different from his) the donum superadditum theory of many Pentecostal scholars for Spirit baptism in Acts cannot be sustained.[50] Permanent purification implies the new heart and new spirit promise of the New Covenant.

Yeshua made both the final statement in Luke about baptism (endorsing Yohanan's baptisma, Luke 20:1-8) and the initial statement in Acts about baptism (reiterating Yohanan's distinction between water and the Holy Spirit). Yeshua makes no command in either Luke or Acts for a new water rite to replace Yohanan's. Yeshua also personalized his restatement of Yohanan's promise when he told his disciples, "you are soon going to be baptized with the Holy Spirit." Yeshua's baptizing activity is far superior to Yohanan's because he is sending the promise of the Father, the Holy Spirit who bears power from on high (Luke 24:49; Acts 1:4-5, 8). Still, there is no sign that Yohanan's baptisma is obsolete and Acts 2:37-41 in no way hints otherwise.

Prior to Acts, Luke used baptizō and baptisma in four divergent ways: for Yohanan's rite (Luke 3:1-22; 7:29-30; 20:1-8), for the Greater One baptizing with the Spirit (Luke 3:16), for Jewish purification (Luke 11:38), and for an abstract ordeal (Luke 12:50). Confusion arises by reading unspecified usages of baptizō in Acts as a universal Christian water rite despite this diversity in Luke, despite explicit mention of Yohanan's rite seven times in Acts,[51] and despite the superiority of being baptized with the Holy Spirit. The internal evidence of Luke-Acts leads to the view that Yohanan's rite was performed for repentant Jews in Israel by Messiah's approval (Luke 20:4; Acts 2:38-41), for Samaritans (8:12-17)[52] and for the Ethiopian (likely Jewish) (8:35-38).[53] Yet, Luke also presents the apostles' dawning realization that the Holy Spirit provides true purification for Jews, and for Gentiles as well, which rituals cannot provide, not even Israel's new messianic rite.

If Yeshua's saying in Acts 1:5 is paradigmatic for Acts, then there is good reason to argue that Luke refers directly to being baptized with the Holy Spirit for Paul, (9:17-18; 22:16), for Lydia and house (16:13-15), for the Jailer and house (16:30-34),[54] and for the Corinthians (18:8). Neither water nor Spirit are mentioned so one cannot prove or disprove the claim, but Acts 1:5 better supports Spirit baptism. Apollos (18:24-28) and the Ephesians (19:1-7) were aware only of Yohanan's baptisma, but this would not mean they were Yohanan's disciples, or that they were ignorant of a supposed new Christian water rite. Instead they knew Israel's messianic purification for Jews, Acts 1:5a, but they did not yet know that Yeshua baptizes with the Holy Spirit, Act 1:5b.

Variations in Acts' baptismal formulas often draw attention and Lars Hartman comments on the form found in Acts 8:16 and 19:5: "Now, a simple inquiry reveals that Luke uses the 'into' form when he himself is the narrator. This means that the form corresponds to his natural style, presumably the mode of expression he has learnt from his own Christian surroundings."[55] If Acts 1:5 is Luke's paradigmatic guide for baptism, then his "into" style may bear greater significance than most suppose, including Hartman. Acts 8:16 contains Luke's first use of "into the name of the Lord Jesus" and his first use of the word monon in Acts. This verse contains Luke's sole use of baptizō in perfect participle form (though he uses baptizō some 31 times in Luke-Acts). Luke also used the unique periphrastic βεβαπτισμένοι ὑπῆρχον in Acts 8:16b. The ESV renders the verse:

[F]or he had not yet fallen on any of them,

but they had only been baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus.

However, Acts 8:16b may actually bear the sense that "they only were starting to be baptized into the name of the Lord Yeshua" (a process that would be completed by receiving the Holy Spirit). Luke's periphrastic style indeed supports this proposal. Acts 8:16a has a periphrastic construction with ἦν:

οὐδέπω γὰρ ἦν ἐπ' οὐδενὶ αὐτῶν ἐπιπεπτωκός (ἦν ἐπιπεπτωκός)

Moreover, Luke-Acts contains more than twenty periphrastic constructions with ἦσαν[56] so, had he wanted, Luke could have framed Acts 8:16b similarly, as follows:[57]

μόνον δὲ ἦσαν βεβαπτισμένοι εἰς τὸ ὄνομα τοῦ κυρίου Ἰησοῦ.

This makes the actual use of huperchon in Acts 8:16b stand out as unique construction, evidently expressing something striking.

The BDF says, "Ὑπάρχειν only with the perfect participle . . . is sometimes used in an analogous way to denote the beginning of a state or condition."[58] The BDF apparently views Acts 8:16b as referring to water baptism, with the periphrasis in the form of a "perfect passive infinitive."[59] But if Acts 1:5 is guiding Luke's thought, then the "beginning of a state" makes good sense. The Samaritans had only started to be baptized into Yeshua's sphere of reality and would soon fully enter it by receiving the Holy Spirit. Though dated, J. R. Lumby says of ὑπῆρχον in Acts 8:16 that "this verb seems to be used with somewhat of its original force = 'to make a beginning.'"[60] Luke's "into" style, as Hartman calls it, could be his way of describing the metamorphosis of one's sphere of reality "into the Lord Yeshua" by receiving the Holy Spirit. If so, then the Ephesians (Acts 19:1-7) were not rebaptized with water, but instead they entered the sphere where the Lord Yeshua reigns when Paul laid his hands on them and they received the Holy Spirit.[61]

The Cornelius account strongly supports Yeshua's Acts 1:5 contrast between water and Spirit, not least because Peter quotes it as his coup de grâce for the entire episode (11:16). Cornelius' house received the out-poured Holy Spirit by hearing the apostle's word and this shocked on-looking Jewish followers of Yeshua. Something, then, was not fully understood (and this is also implied by Peter's shock at the visions of unclean animal just earlier in Acts 10). Modern readers often try to find relevance by focusing on Peter's command that the Gentiles be water baptized. Yet an unstated question presents itself. Why did Peter give this command? Was he commanding Christian water baptism? Or was he needlessly ritually purifying these non-Jews (as though they were repentant Jews) with Yohanan's eschatological purification?

Then too, modern readers ought to realize that alternate textual readings exist for Peter's command in Acts 10:48. The later Byzantine tradition (or Textus Receptus) promotes a liturgical form of baptism while earlier text forms do not. The Robinson and Pierpont Byzantine text reads:

Προσέταξέν τὲ αὐτοὺς βαπτισθῆναι ἐν τῷ ὀνόματι τοῦ κυρίου.[62]

[And he commanded them to be baptized in the name of the Lord.]

In contrast, both the NA28 and SBLGNT critical texts read:

προσέταξεν δὲ αὐτοὺς ἐν τῷ ὀνόματι Ἰησοῦ Χριστοῦ βαπτισθῆναι.[63]

[So he commanded them in the name of Messiah Yeshua to be baptized.]

The subtle difference is exceedingly significant. The Byzantine version implies that "in the name of the Lord" is liturgical, thus effectively promoting Christian water baptism. Yet, the NA28–SBLGNT critical text presents Peter expressing his "apostolic authority from Messiah Yeshua" to command non-Jews to be purified. While word position in Greek sentences is not always important, the fact that this variation occurs demonstrates that the position of βαπτισθῆναι was highly significant for early scribes. If so, then the NA28–SBLGNT text implies that Acts 10:48 is not liturgical Christian baptism, but rather an apostolic command to purify the Gentiles, and Peter had mentioned Yohanan's baptisma explicitly only moments earlier (10:37). The narrative climax occurs when Peter remembers Yeshua's saying and he finally sees that Yohanan's rite is not the main source of purification (11:16), but that true purification comes through the Holy Spirit, poured out by Yeshua on Cornelius and his repentant house.[64]

If Acts 1:5 is the guide for baptism in Acts, then to this day Yohanan's baptisma retains Yeshua's approval for all Jews who turn to him in repentance.[65] Yet the Father's greater promise, the gift of the Holy Spirit, is Yeshua's utmost offer both to Jews and to Gentiles. It appears that in Acts Yeshua's outpouring of the Holy Spirit is the one unifying baptisma for the ekklesia.[66] If the foregoing is accepted, then no universal Christian water rite is found in Acts (though Yohanan's messianic rite clearly was performed for repentant Jews).

Furthermore, the contrast of Acts 1:5 implies that no water baptism can guarantee reception of the Holy Spirit. Indeed, Peter's command in Acts 2:38-39 in no way proves that the Holy Spirit's reception was inferred during the water rite. Instead, in accord with Ezek 36:25-27, repentant Jews are purified by water, and then they experience the Spirit's reception. Luke describes vivid personal knowledge of receiving the Holy Spirit in Acts as, for example, falling on them (Acts 8:15-16). The Samaritan episode in Acts 8 turns entirely on the fact that observers and recipients were well aware that the repentant had yet to receive, or had received the Holy Spirit.

A key implication of Yeshua's saying in Acts 1:5 is that the promise of a permanent purifying transformation was not previously available. No one was baptized with the Holy Spirit prior to Acts 2. This sharply distinguishes the giving of the Holy Spirit after Yeshua's resurrection from all previous experiences in the Tanakh, and in the NT prior to Shavuot. None had been baptized with the Holy Spirit because permanent purification was unavailable until after Yeshua's atoning death provided the needed sin offering for humanity. Torah sacrifices surely reflect Yeshua’s redemptive work, and the Num 19 red heifer sacrifice provides a superb illustration, not only of Yeshua’s accomplishment, but also of its relationship to the Holy Spirit's workings. Israelites could use living water[67] to purify from common Torah defilements that required bodily washing. Yet living water, by itself, could not purify Israel from severe and contagious corpse defilement of human dead. Only a specially chosen red heifer, specially sacrificed and burnt to ashes, provided that level of purification—and that solitary calf provided this purification for the entire nation. Nevertheless, according to the rite, living water was required for sprinkling the red heifer ashes in order to disperse their purifying power to anyone defiled by human dead. In a similar way the Holy Spirit, termed Living Water by Yeshua (John 7:37-39), could and did positively influence people throughout the Tanakh, though prior to Yeshua’s Passover the purifying effect was limited and provisional. Yet after Yeshua's Passover the Holy Spirit was forever charged with what we can refer to as the purifying power of Yeshua’s "ashes" since his holy mortal body “burned up,” as it were, in his transformative bodily resurrection into everlasting life. Humanity is defiled and dead in sin, yet following Yeshua’s Passover the divine transforming purifying power of his sacrifice is borne to humanity by Living Water, the Holy Spirit.

Now, after Yeshua's atoning death, his promise in Acts 1:5 is that the gift of the Holy Spirit would baptize his remnant, permanently purifying them. Spirit baptism in Acts is accordingly far, far more than a donum superadditum.

 

Epilogue

As a Christian, Emperor Constantine yielded to a widely held belief about baptism’s power of forgiveness and remained unbaptized for twenty-five years, until his deathbed in 337 ce (twelve years after he had convened the Council of Nicaea). This belief, according to Everett Ferguson, "made it seem desirable in the minds of many to delay reception of such a powerful sacrament until death approached so as to gain maximum benefits from it without risking the loss of those benefits by further sin."[68] Less than a century later, Augustine argued that Christian baptism purifies from original sin, thus justifying infant baptism, a view that prevailed for a thousand years and that remains the Roman creed. These changing views and changing practices by Christians of early centuries reveal a decided lack of consensus on baptism, and this itself reveals underlying confusion on the matter.

After the apostles' passing the ekklesia quickly fell prey to supersessionism, eventually interpreting Matt 28:19 and John 3:5 as sources for a Christian water rite that was superior to all Jewish rites, and that was believed to provide everlasting life. Acts 1:5 was interpreted as a contrast between Yohanan’s baptism and the superseding water-Spirit Christian baptism. Peter’s command in Acts 2:38 was proclaimed in the mistaken role of a supersessionist universal Christian water rite. These verses, understood in this way, paved the way for the sacramental idea that performance of a water rite conveys the Holy Spirit ex opere operato. The ekklesia thereby declared the Holy Spirit to be inescapably bound to a water rite even though Yeshua’s saying in Acts 1:5 means something wholly different. [69]

Beyond the NT, in what might be taken as guidance for relating to post-NT baptism, Michael Holmes advises a pragmatic approach to the teachings of the Apostolic Fathers, the earliest post-NT writings: "Rather than impose an extrinsic or artificial unity upon the collection, we should accept the lack of coherence for what it is: testimony to the vigorous diversity characteristic of early Christianity at this time in history."[70] Works like Ignatius, Didache, Barnabas, Justin Martyr and Irenaeus say Christian water baptism provides salvation, but "lack of coherence" in these writings ought to be cause for concern about their baptismal teachings. For example, the NT gives no indication that fasting before water baptism was observed and Acts 2:41 says explicitly "there were added that day about three thousand souls." In contrast, the Didache already explicitly commands fasting prior to baptism for as many participants as possible.

Concluding, the Gospel authors surely invested great care in Yeshua's sayings since they portray him as the unique Son, risen from the dead and humanity's judge. Yeshua's five sayings, when considered together, call both the ekklesia of the nations and the Messianic Community to conduct a thorough reevaluation of NT baptism.

 



[1] John H. Armstrong, Understanding Four Views on Baptism, Counterpoints: Church Life (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2009), 11.

[2] Yeshua's five sayings are ordered according to Kurt Aland, Synopsis Quattuor Evangliorum, 15th ed. (Stuttgart: Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft), 2005.

[3] Howard Marshall says, "The verb βαπτίζω is here used without primary reference to the rite of baptism, but in the metaphorical sense of being overwhelmed by catastrophe." Marshall, The Gospel of Luke, NIGTC eds. I. Howard Marshall and Ward Gasque, (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1978), 3:519. Compare, "I have a baptism (with which) to be baptized, and how distressed I am until it is completed." Martin Culy, Mikeal C. Parsons, and Joshua J. Stigall, Luke: A Handbook on the Greek Text, Baylor Handbook on the Greek New Testament (Waco: Baylor University Press, 2010), 442.

[4] Craig A. Evans, Luke, Understanding the Bible Commentary Series (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2011), 193–204.

[5] Joel B. Green, The Gospel of Luke, The New International Commentary on the New Testament (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2010), 508.

[6] The "Index of Quotations" section of the UBS4 lists Isa 40:3-5 in Luke 3:4-6; Isa 61:1-2 in Luke 4.18-19; and Isa 6:9 in Luke 8:10. Kurt Aland, Matthew Black, and Carlo M. Martini, eds., The Greek New Testament, 4th Revised Edition (Stuttgart: United Bible Society, 1993), 889.

[7] New English Translation of the Septuagint (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007).

[8] In Acts 2:23 Luke tells us that Yeshua's crucifixion and death (the very baptisma of Luke 12:50) were at the hands of lawless men (διὰ χειρὸς ἀνόμων), reminiscent of a lawless-acting lawless one (ὁ ἀνομῶν ἀνομεῖ) and lawlessness (ἀνομία) in Isa 21:2, 4.

[9] Compare, "Are you able to drink the cup which I will drink? Or to be baptized with the baptism with which I will be baptized?" Translation from Rodney J. Decker, Mark 9 – 16: A Handbook on the Greek Text: Baylor Handbook on the Greek New Testament (Waco: Baylor University Press, 2014), 63-64.

[10] James L. Kugel, The Idea of Biblical Poetry, Parallelism and Its History (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1981), 1-58.

[11] Robert H. Stein, Mark, Baker Exegetical Commentary on the New Testament, (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2008), 482-490.

[12] Compare R. T. France, "Here, the context demands that it be understood of suffering rather than of punishment." (France, The Gospel of Matthew, New International Commentary on the New Testament, [Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2007], 758).

[13] Stein, Mark, 482-490.

[14] See also Isa 51:17-23, Jer 13:12-13; 23:9; 25:15-38; 51:7, Hab 2:15-16, Zech 12:2.

[15] Everett Ferguson, Baptism in the Ancient Church: History, Theology, and Liturgy in the First Five Centuries (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2009), 53.

[16] Author's translation. Compare Ferguson, Baptism, 57, and Philo, Contempl. Life, 5.46 (LCL 363:140).

[17] Compare Matt 11:19, drunkard, and Matt 24.49, drunkards, which do not occur in Mark. Together with other influences, this ennobling inclination toward baptizō and baptisma, involving eternal life, probably prevented the fathers and subsequent generations from recognizing the legitimate sense of drunkenness in Mark.

[18] Green, Luke, 164.

[19] Compare, "John's baptism—was it from heaven, or of human origin?" (Mark 11:30, NIV).

[20] R. T. France, "Jesus the Baptist," Jesus of Nazareth Lord and Christ: Essays on the Historical Jesus and New Testament Christology, eds. Joel B. Green and Max Turner (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1994), 97.þ

[21] Matt 21:1-9, Mark 11:1-10, Luke 19:28-38, as well as John 12:12-19.

[22] The apostles continued to teach in the Temple (see Acts 2:46; 3:1; 4.12, 20-21, 25, 42; 6:7), which required observance of Torah purity standards.

[23] Mark 1:2; Luke 7:27; Matt 11:14; 17:10-12.

[24] Mark 1:3; Luke 3:4-6; Matt 3:3.

[25] Robert H. Stein, "Baptism and Becoming a Christian in the New Testament," Southern Baptist Journal of Theology, 2, no. 1 (Spring 1998), 6.

[26] The UBS4 "Index of Quotations" has six listings for Isaiah 53: John 12:38; Rom 10:16; Matt 8:17; Acts 8:32-33; 1 Pet 2:22; Luke 22:37 (Greek NT, 4th Revised Edition [Stuttgart: United Bible Society, 1993], 888).

[27] The UBS4 "Index of Quotations" has two references for Jeremiah's new covenant, Heb 8:8-12; 10:16-17 (Greek NT, 888).

[28] Mark Kinzer, for example, suggests that Yohanan's linkage of purifying water and empowering Spirit "recalls" Ezekiel 36:24-28, but he does not state unequivocally that Yohanan inaugurated Ezekiel's prophecy. Kinzer does suggest that the prophecy's fulfillment occurs when the baptismal mission of Yohanan's greater successor achieves the full reality of which Ezekiel prophesied. Mark S. Kinzer, Searching Her Own Mystery: Nostra Aetate, the Jewish People, and the Identity of the Church (Eugene, OR: Cascade Books, 2015), 93-94.

[29] Matt 3:11; Mark 1:8; John 1:33; Luke 3:16; Acts 1:5; 11:16.

[30] Daniel B. Wallace, Greek Grammar Beyond the Basics (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1996), 441.

[31] Active verb for baptizō: Matt 3:11a; Mark 1:8a; Luke 3:16a; John 1:26 Yohanan baptizes with water; Matt 3:11b; Mark 1:8b; Luke 3:16b Messiah will baptize with the Spirit; Mark 1:4, Mark 6:14, 24 Yohanan baptizes; John 1:25, 33a Yohanan baptizes the people; John 1:33b Yeshua baptizes the people with the Spirit; John 3:23a Yohanan baptizes the people; John 3:26 Yeshua/disciples baptize the people; John 4.1; 4.2 disciples baptize the people.

[32] Passive verb for baptizō: Matt 3:6; Mark 1:5, the people baptized by Yohanan; Matt 3:13, Yeshua baptized by Yohanan; Matt 3:14, Yohanan protests he should be baptized by Yeshua; Matt 3:16 and Mark 1:9, Yeshua baptized by Yohanan; Luke 3:7, crowds baptized by Yohanan; Luke 3:12, tax collectors baptized by Yohanan; Luke 3:21, the people baptized by Yohanan; Luke 3:21b, Yeshua baptized by Yohanan; Luke 7:29, tax collectors baptized by Yohanan; Luke 7:30, Pharisees not baptized by Yohanan; John 3:23b, the people are baptized by Yohanan.

[33] Green, Luke, 441-42.

[34] Compare a translation of the Latin Vulgate, "And I will pour [effundam] upon you clean water." Douay-Rheims American Edition Version (Baltimore, MD: John Murphy, 1899).

[35] A. Cohen, Ezekiel, Soncino Books of the Bible, 2nd ed. (New York: Soncino Press, 1983), 243.

[36] Yonatan Adler, "The Archaeology of Purity: Archaeological Evidence for the Observance of Ritual Purity in Ereẓ-Israel from the Hasmonean Period until the End of the Talmudic Era (164 bce – 400 ce)," (Ph.D. diss., Bar-Ilan University, 2011).; Ronny Reich, "Miqwa'ot (Jewish Ritual Immersion Bath) in Eretz-Israel in the Second Temple and the Mishnaic and Talmudic Periods" (Ph.D. diss., Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 1990).

[37] Isaiah 4:4 is clearly prophetic, yet the imagery supports the idea that women could be purified by someone else washing them.

[38] πλὴν πηγῶν ὑδάτων καὶ λάκκου καὶ συναγωγῆς ὕδατος, ἔσται καθαρόν·

[39] Sixteen occurrences of taval in the Tanakh demonstrate the possibility that strict immersion was not intended in Naaman's case. If, in the First Commonwealth, raḥaẓ described any form of washing, then the narrator of 2 Kings may have used taval to emphasize that Naaman did not merely wash on the river bank with his servants' help, but rather that he himself actually got into the water. This action was worthy of remark for various reasons, including Naaman's personal involvement and the fact that it left the great military leader in a decided tactical disadvantage in the face of possible attack. See the sections, Taval (èáì) A Closer Look, and, Na'aman, Raḥaẓ (øçõ) and Taval (èáì), of the unpublished paper, "Yohanan Ben Zechariah and Ezekiel 36:25," by Hanoch Ben Keshet, http://besoratyehizkel.com/YohananandEzekiel36.25.htm

[40] Tanakh, The Holy Scriptures, The New JPS Translation According to the Traditional Hebrew Text (Philadelphia, PA: Jewish Publication Society, 1985).

[41] Compare, "So go and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them into the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to keep all that I have commanded you." France, Matthew, 1107.

[42] Donald Hagner, Matthew 14 – 28, 33b, Word Biblical Commentary (Dallas: Word Inc., 1995) 887-88. See also Hans Kosmala, "The Conclusion of Matthew," Studies, Essays and Reviews, vol. 2 (Leiden: Brill, 1978) 1-16, and F. C. Conybeare, "The Eusebian Form of the Text of Matt 28:19," Zeitschrift fur Neutestamentlich Wissenschaft 2 (1901), 275-88.

[43] Hagner, Matthew, 888.

[44] R. V. G. Tasker, St. Matthew, Tyndale New Testament Commentaries (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1976), 275.

[45] J. K. Howard, New Testament Baptism, (London: Pickering & Inglis, 1970), 45.

[46] R. T. France represents many who cannot see baptizō in non-water events: "Yet now the full-blown rite of Christian baptism [sic] is introduced without any indication that this is something new. . . its sudden appearance right at the end of the gospel is surprising in the narrative context" (France, Matthew, 1116).

[47] Joel Green remarks that Max Turner's treatment of Acts 2:38 shows that many accept Peter's command as the normative form of Christian baptism (see Turner, Power from on High: The Spirit in Israel's Restoration and Witness in Luke-Acts in Journal of Pentecostal Theology Sup 9 [Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1996], 397-98). Joel B. Green, "From 'John's Baptism' to 'Baptism in the Name of the Lord Jesus': The Significance of Baptism in Luke-Acts," Baptism, the New Testament and the Church, 157n2.

[48] Compare, "For John baptized with water, but you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit, not many days from now." Martin Culy and Mikeal Parsons, The Acts of the Apostles: A Handbook on the Greek Text, (Waco: Baylor University Press, 2003), 1.

[49] Martin Culy and Mikeal Parsons, Acts, 6.

[50] Pentecostal scholars often argue that the gift of the Holy Spirit in Acts provides no soteriological effect but instead is given solely for charismatic power, making it an additional gift. Turner proves this view inadequate (Turner, Power from on High, 433-38). Moreover, from a Jewish perspective, the very terminology "Holy Spirit" bears enormous transformative implications.

[51] Acts 1:5, 21; 10:37; 11:16-18; 13:24-25; 18:24-26; 19:1-7.

[52] F. F. Bruce remarks that the Samaritans "were indubitably 'lost sheep of the house of Israel' (Matt 10:5-6)" (Bruce, The Book of Acts, New International Commentary on the New Testament, [Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1988], 167).

[53] Joseph, Moses, Daniel, Hananiah, Mishael, Azariah, Mordechai, Ezra and Nehemiah served in non-Israelite governments, and the nations listed in the Acts 2:9-11 diaspora support the idea that the Ethiopian was Jewish.

[54] Use of parachrema strongly suggests miraculous Spirit baptism since Luke only used this word in connection with supernatural events.

[55] Lars Hartman, Into the Name of the Lord Jesus: Baptism in the Early Church, Studies of the New Testament and Its World, eds. John Barclay, Joel Marcus and John Riches (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1997), 38.

[56] For example, Luke 4.20; 5:17(2); 8:2, 40; 9:32; 14.1; 15:1; 23:55; 24.13; Acts 1:10, 13, 14; 2:2, 5, 42; 4.31; 12:12; 13:48; 14.7, 26; 21:29.

[57] Compare George Benedict Winer, A Grammar of the Idiom of the New Testament, trans. J. Henry Thayer, 7th ed, (Philadelphia: Smith, English, & Co., 1869), 350.

[58] Friedrich Blass and Albert Debrunner, A Greek Grammar of the New Testament, trans. Robert Funk (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1975), 180 (§354).

[59] Blass and Debrunner (Grammar), 213 (§414).

[60] J.R. Lumby, The Acts of the Apostles, Cambridge Greek Testament (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1920), 181.

[61] Two commands by Peter, Acts 2:38; 10:48, are "in the name of Yeshua the Messiah" ἐπὶ (ἐν) τω̨̃ ὀνόματι 'Ιησου̃ Χριστου̃. Luke's two narratives in Acts 8:16; 19:5 are εἰς τò ὄνομα του̃ κυρίου 'Ιησου̃. The formulas of Peter and Luke differ. F. F. Bruce says: "There is probably a slight difference in force between this phrase (Acts 2:38) and εἰς τò ὄνομα του̃ κυρίου 'Ιησου̃ (8:16; 19:5). Here [in Acts 2:38] the ἐν is to be understood instrumentally: the name of Jesus is an attendant circumstance of baptism...ἐπὶ, [means] 'on the authority of someone.'" Bruce also says of 8:16 and 19:5: "So the person baptized 'into the name of the Lord Jesus' passes into the sphere in which Jesus is acknowledged as Lord, becoming (so to speak) Jesus' property" (F. F. Bruce, Acts of the Apostles: Greek Text with Introduction and Commentary [Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1990], 129, 221.)

[62] Maurice A. Robinson and William G. Pierpont, The New Testament in the Original Greek: Byzantine Textform (Southborough, MA: Chilton Book Publishing, 2005), 276.

[63] Nestle-Aland, Greek New Testament, 415; Michael E. Holmes, ed., Acts of the Apostles, The Greek New Testament: SBL Edition (Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2010), 267; Bruce Metzger remarks that scribes modified the verse: "The position of βαπτισθῆναι was moved forward to make it plain that ἐν τῷ ὀνόματι goes with it and not with προσέταξεν αὐτοὺς" (Bruce Metzger, Textual Commentary on the Greek New Testament, 2nd ed., [Stuttgart: Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft, 1994, 1998, 2000], 336).

[64] Compare Acts 15:7-10, purified their hearts.

[65] Compare 1 Cor. 1:13-17. Paul performed a messianic water rite not crucial to his calling to announce the good news to the nations. Crispus, leader of the synagogue, was certainly Jewish, and the others whom Paul baptized may have been as well.

[66] Compare Titus 3:4-7, and 1 Cor. 12:13, where all have been baptized with one Spirit, whether Jews, whether Greeks (εἴτε Ἰουδαῖοι εἴτε Ἕλληνες). Paul exhorted Jews to abide in their "circumcision," or calling, as Jews (1 Cor. 7:17-18). Surely they would have observed the national purification inaugurated by Yohanan and endorsed by Yeshua.

[67] Living water in Gen 26:19 demands a different understanding than the oft used translation, running water. “Isaac’s servants dug in the valley and found there a well of spring water [living water]” (ESV). Mishnaic sages understood living water as cool, sweet spring water that maintains its flow throughout summer, and it is the highest of six grades of water for purification.

[68] Ferguson, Baptism, 629.

[69] In the Lukan narrative Yeshua warned his disciples and the general public, not adversaries, of the Holy Spirit’s uncompromising sensitivity to insult (Luke 12:10).

[70] Michael W. Holmes, The Apostolic Fathers in English, (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2006), 17.