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Someone wrote to me and asked if I knew how Baptism began, or where John The Baptist got his idea from. A very valid question, since so many people consider it as the lynch pin on which their faith stands. I couldn�t really give him an answer at the time, but I am currently re-reading Gibbons: The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. I am reading it again to see if it has any bearing or help in understanding what is happening to the US today. But that�s another story. However there is a very interesting section in Chapter 20 that reveals why Christianity was favored by Constantine to the point where he endorsed it whole heartedly. It was the concept that Baptism cleaned the slate of all your sins of the past. However he held off on the rite of Baptism until he was near death in order that he could still have the freedom to kill whomsoever he chose to until then! Since Romans were in the business of conquest and death this idea of being cleansed of this sin and burden on the soul really caught on. So, trying to find the answer to that question did begin to interest me. I could find nothing to give me a direct answer to that question! There are problems with it from the past and the present.
If Baptism with water is a purification rite that absolves one of all sins, then the very act of having a bath should work just as well, now shouldn�t it? Oh, I know, you are going to say it must be done by a holy man. Why? I can find nothing that says that John was given a holy mandate to perform this act! Or that he could pass on this holy act to anyone else. And the present day words used during this performance of saying: �I Baptise you in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost.� could not have been used until after the Synod of Nicea, when the Church proclaimed the Trinity of: God, the Son, and the Holy Ghost. So I sat and contemplated the times of John and wondered what could have moved him to start this rite. I don�t believe that bathing was high on the list of thing�s to do in Israel and in that time by these people. Water was scarce, people were living in a fairly basic mode except for the wealthy who had servants and tubs to bath in. To be blunt they must have stunk to high heaven. We know that King Herod died infected with disease (maggots?), and we know that skin sores abounded in the area and that many people had Leprosy in those days. And then the Romans came into the area and did what Romans always did; they built baths! They were very clean people because of this habit and they must surely have noticed and commented on the habits of people who did not follow their regime of cleanliness.
The strange thing about John was that some of the descriptions of him imply an unkempt dirty man! Did he all of a sudden realize that he and his people were in need of a bath? Was it that simple? And did he feel the need to use religion as a way of getting them to take a dip? If you think I am being facetious, I�m not! But sometimes the simplest of things are the cause of great events. And certainly if "The Bible Fraud" by Tony Busby is correct
then this whole story of him being baptized is fraudulant. Therefore, the
rite is something dreamed up by Paul.
