In this episode of the Enter the Bible podcast, Professor Nicholas Schaser delves into the historical and spiritual depths of baptism, tracing its origins within Jewish tradition and its significance in the Christian faith. Highlighting its dual role as a symbol of purification and a marker of Christian identity, Schaser emphasizes its urgency as a call to repentance and preparation for the coming of God's kingdom.
Guest Nicholas Schaser teaches courses in biblical and Jewish studies at Macalester College in Saint Paul, MN. He received a Masters of Theological Studies in Old Testament from Luther Seminary (2010) and a Masters of Arts in Jewish Studies from Vanderbilt University (2013). He also completed his Ph.D. in Jewish Studies and New Testament at Vanderbilt in 2017.
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Hello and welcome to another episode of the Enter the Bible podcast, where you can get answers, or at least reflections on everything you wanted to know about the Bible but were afraid to ask. I'm Katie Langston.
And I'm Kathryn Schifferdecker, and we have as our guest today Professor Nicholas Schaser. He's assistant professor of religious studies at Macalester College here in the Twin Cities of Minnesota. Saint Paul, Minnesota, to be specific. He has an emphasis on biblical studies and Jewish studies. And he has a book coming out sometime in the coming year, from the SBL press called A Ransom for Israel: Jesus' Exile and Jewish Salvation in the Gospel of Matthew. So welcome, Nick. Thank you so much for being with us today.
Thank you, Kathryn and Katie, it's a pleasure to be with you.
Good, good. Uh, so we're going to talk about a question from a listener, that was entered on the Enter the Bible website and as usual, if you have a question that you would like addressed on this podcast, we we invite you to go to that website and to the Bible. Org and send the question in. So, here's the question. When John, that is, John the Baptist was baptizing at the Jordan, was that a familiar practice to, you know, to John's people, to John's context, or was it something new that John was doing? So, um, Nick, you have, you know, a lot about both old and New Testament and Jewish practice. So we figured you would be a good person to answer this question.
Yeah, I'm happy to do so.
I've always wondered this too,so I'm excited to to learn.
Yeah. Absolutely. Yeah. So what. And this is a great question. What we're going to learn through it is that, sometimes, you know, Christian readers will make a bifurcation, a split between Christianity and Judaism, even in the first century when Jesus and his disciples were around. And it's just not quite an historical, historically accurate approach to do that, because Christianity is itself a Jewish movement. That is it is one of several what we might call Judaism's with an S, and it's a Jewish expression, the idea that it's a new religion called Christianity. Uh, just to clarify the word Christianity, indeed, the word Christian doesn't show up anywhere in any of the four gospels. In fact, it only shows up three times in the entire New Testament, twice in Acts and once in 1 Peter, and in 1 Peter it's actually it's clear that it's kind of a term of derision. So the writer of 1 Peter 4:16 says, even if you get called a Christian, you know, don't worry about it. We'll get through this. So it it really it underscores the fact that what we're dealing with here is an expression of Judaism. I often say to my students, um, and this will only be, intelligible for those watching the video, but that the New Testament is not Jew-ish. You know, it's Jewish. I mean, that that's what it is. It's a set of Jewish texts about Jewish figures, about Jewish history concerned with Jewish theology. So what John's doing at the Jordan is, is one of those Jewish instances. S o John's called the Baptist in Greek, in the Greek of the New Testament to baptize is baptis0. And literally that word means to immerse or to dunk. So it could be John the Immerser or John the Dunker, although that doesn't roll off the tongue.
No, I kind of like that, actually.
Sounds like a basketball star
Hashtag rebrand, you know.
That's right. Basketball. That's funny. So yeah. So if you really want to get Judaic about it, he would be, you know Yohanan the Dunker or the immerser. Um, and this practice, what John is up to, in its earliest form. So if we go back to the Old Testament, uh, oftentimes people, both normal Israelites and priests, would immerse themselves or bathe themselves in waters. And this was done for what's called ritual purification. And maybe at the outset, I should I should make a bifurcation between ritual purity and moral purity so you can become morally impure if you commit a sin, for example, that if you transgress the terms of the Torah, God's law to Moses. But ritual impurity is something very different. You become ritually impure in all sorts of different ways. So, for instance, menstruation would make a woman ritually impure or, um, seminal emission would make a man ritually impure. The touching of certain animal corpses or human corpses makes one ritually impure. But the thing is, is like this is not that big a deal. Um, ancient, ancient Jews wouldn't have become apoplectic about the fact that they're impure. If you read Leviticus. Actually, the the antidote for ritual impurity. It's just that you, you dunk you, you immerse yourself or you wash yourself somehow, your body and your clothing, and then you wait until the evening and you're fine again. Um, in fact, the majority of Israelite society at any given time would have been ritually impure. It's just it's just not that big a deal. The only thing that it bars is one's, um, ability to go to the temple and worship. But in regular life, I mean, again, most Israelites are ritually impure like or ritually impure adjacent most of the time. Most of the time. It has nothing to do with sin, though. So it's not to say that people are sinful. I'm not sinful if you know, some sort of liquid is coming out of my body, like I've got some sort of skin secretion, that's not my fault. I didn't do anything wrong. I just bathe, I immerse in water, and I'm pure again. So that's that's the basis, the biblical basis of what John is up to at the Jordan, though, in John's work it's it's a baptism of repentance, it says So in Greek, that word repentance is metanoia, or in Hebrew it's teshuva. The idea is to turn around from what you're doing and to walk in the opposite direction. Sometimes in New Testament commentaries, you'll get this idea of metanoia, the Greek version of this, as just like a mind change. And in certain contexts that can it can mean like you change your mind, but in Hebrew, in the Jewish theological understanding of this, to repent is to literally to turn. It comes from the root shuv, which means to return or to turn around. So that's what John is up to. It's pretty clear from Mark and Matthew and Luke. So these are synoptic gospels, that he's doing this baptism. All these people are coming to him at the Jordan River, and he's immersing them somehow or cleansing them. And and this is kind of an outward symbol for their repentance. Now, it kind of depends on the, uh, gospel that you read as, as is the case with really everything in biblical studies. But according to Mark and Luke, it is a baptism that John is doing of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. This is Mark 1:4 and Luke chapter three at the beginning of Luke chapter three. And so Luke follows Mark in saying, that's a baptism for the forgiveness of sins. Um, really, the term in Greek is a facis of your sins, which would mean a release of your sins. You are released from your sins. Uh, in Matthew, though, Matthew omits that part. So it's it's just a baptism of repentance. Why? Because for Matthew, Matthew's very clear. And this is only in Matthew at the Last Supper in Matthew 26:28, Jesus says that he's about to shed his blood, pour out his blood, for the release of sins, for the forgiveness of sins. So from Matthew, water dunking does not, isn't going to impact you eradicating the stain or the burden of sin. For Matthew, that's blood. Matthew aligns, by the way, with Leviticus itself, which which states when it comes to moral impurity, if you commit a sin, the I guess ancient detergent for the stain of sin is blood manipulation through the killing of a sacrificial animal. In Leviticus, again, as I said, immersion, water immersion is for ritual impurity. Bloodletting is for moral impurity. So Matthew aligns with Leviticus on this. Um, but that's that's what John is up to. And historically, um, if you go to other first century Jewish writers, not just the gospel writers, but say like, uh, Josephus, Flavius Josephus, the, uh, he fought against the Romans in the Jewish War from 66 to 70 CE and ultimately in the midst of war, he's captured and he's commissioned by this family, the Flavian family, to write a history about Jews and the Jewish religion. Um, scholars call it the antiquities of the Jews. And within this long text in book 18, I want to say, um, Josephus talks about John the Baptist. And Josephus, Josephus also notes that John is out there immersing people, and that this is an outward marker of their repentance and their renewed faithfulness to God. So Josephus too, uh, has the same thing that the gospel writers have. In fact, John, according to Josephus, is not the only person doing this kind of work.
According to the Vita, which is like the life kind of the biography of Josephus, there's a guy out in the wilderness who only eats certain foods and dresses strangely and immerses in cold water for the purposes of purification. That sounds a lot like John, but it's not John. It's a different, different person. I think his name is Bonbas, actually. Um, and so, you know, John's not the only person doing this stuff. Other Jews are doing it, too, and they're building on the idea that we already have laid down in the Old Testament. Now the, in the middle of the testament. Sometimes it was called the Intertestamental period, but we don't really use that terminology anymore. Well, we do talk about is the Second Temple period. So the period between the close of the Tanakh or the close of the Old Testament and the, you know, say the first century, mid first century. Um, and in this period, the Second Temple period, uh, archaeologists have found hundreds of ritual baths. Uh, in which you'd collect water and you'd immerse for ritual purification. Some are right around the temple, but some are in other places. Uh, so this is a very common. I'm talking about hundreds of these very, very common. The thing with John and the other guy that Josephus describes is that he was doing it in running water in the Jordan, what the Bible calls mayim hayim, living water. And there are certain rituals in Leviticus that necessitate running water as opposed to standing water. So so that's kind of the biblical basis here. The pool, the ritual pool in Judaism to this day is still used. It's called a mikvah. It comes from the Hebrew root verb kava, which means to gather. So if you remember at the beginning of Genesis chapter one, God gathers all the waters into a specific one into a specific place. Well, the the verb for that is kava. And that's how we get the word mikvah, which is a pool of water. So just like Christians baptize in various ways today in churches in their congregations, so too in in modern Judaism. It's just that, again, in modern Judaism, the mikvah is usually used for the purposes or most often used for the purposes of ritual purification, whereas in Christianity it's like, you know, depending on your view of baptism. By the way, I'm not a specialist in, you know, medieval to modern understandings of Christian baptism. It's about 1500 years past my pay grade. But depending on your view, um, you know, it can initiate you into the Christian community, for example. Or it can be a marker of the forgiveness of your sins or the grace that God extends to you. So there's all this theological valence in Christianity that isn't quite there in modern Judaism. There are other ways of communal initiation. For example, for instance, like the covenant of circumcision on the eighth day after a male child is born. This is brit milah in Hebrew. And so the mikvah is different than that. But to this day, you know, women, uh, after menstruation, will will, for example, immerse in the mikvah in order to be ritually clean a la Leviticus. Um, men will do this too, for different, um, uh, you know, life reasons, um, for example, converts people who convert to Judaism. They immerse in the mikvah, or both men and women before certain Jewish holidays, like Yom Kippur, for example, the Day of Atonement, which you can also read about in Leviticus chapter 16. Both men and women will immerse for the sake of ritual purity prior to, say, participating in the holiday of Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement. So it's still...
Is that true across Jewish movements. Right. Reform? Conservative. Orthodox? Yeah.
Yeah, it's a very good question. Uh, it depends. So that just like in Christianity, there are different denominations of Christianity. So to Kathryn, as Kathryn was alluding to, uh, the same is true of Judaism. So you've got Reform Judaism, Conservative Judaism, Orthodox Judaism, what's sometimes called ultra Orthodox Judaism, or in Hebrew, the haredim. Uh, yeah, depending on the, on the group, you know, the community, the denomination. It's different for these different groups. That is sometimes there will be different reasons within the groups for this kind of, uh, ritual purification. For instance, in some Haredi groups and some of like the, the most Orthodox, you know, most concerned about biblical accuracy, uh, groups that will will immerse before Shabbas, before the Sabbath. So that's that's a weekly thing. But that's not like there's nothing in the Jewish literature that says thou must immerse right before. So it's it's cultural, you know, uh, but all of it has a basis in the Bible. Um, yeah.
So, so, so a couple of questions then, you know, when. So, so what I'm hearing is that, you know, this, um, the washing or the immersing, that's that's nothing new. But perhaps there is a bit of an innovation here. And what John's doing in terms of washing, not just for ritual impurity but for repentance, is that would that be, you know, is John making that innovation or is that also something that's no pun intended in the water in that time
Yeah. Good, I like it. I love a good pun. Yeah. Great. Great question Katie. Uh, so even that the idea that it would go along with repentance or even. The elimination of one sins isn't a Johannine innovation. Uh, speaking of the Second Temple period, if we look at the corpus called the Dead Sea Scrolls, um, particularly like a text, like the community rule, which, um, just talks about, you know, what you do in the the rules for what you do in the community. So it's a good scholarly title. Um, and it will talk about immersion and in tandem with immersion , a quote unquote Holy Spirit gets involved and eliminates the sins of the sinner.
Oh, wow.
Um, Holy Spirit language itself is not a Christian innovation either. That shows up in the Tanakh multiple times in the Psalms and in Isaiah. So, yeah, I mean, um, that's not necessarily an innovation. One innovation that I, I'm reluctant to call it an innovation. How about like, how about it's a, um, it is, uh, some sort of special element in at least what the literature tells us. You know, other people could have been doing this the exact same thing that John is doing, but we don't have the literature to tell us so. So, based on the data sets that we have, one interesting element of John's work is that there's like this eschatological, uh, piece to it that is.
And define. Define eschatological for our for our listeners who are like, whoa, he just dropped a big word.
What was that? Big academese. Yeah. Uh, so eschatological, uh, it comes from the Greek word eschaton, uh, which means the end of something. So when we talk about eschatology, what we're talking about is the study of the end times, or in Hebrew, aharit hayamim the end of days, the final days. So, John, it says in the Gospels is not only dunking for the sake of repentance as an outward symbol in tandem with, according to Mark and Luke, in tandem with the forgiveness of sins. But also this idea of like, do this now, repent now, because God's kingdom is at hand. And John is very like visceral in these descriptions of like, what's going to happen at the end if you don't repent and get on God's course, uh, and get your sins dealt with, okay. When God comes, it's not going to be good for you. Uh, that is he talks about this.
The axe is lying at the root of the trees.
Exactly. That's right. So the axe lies at the root of the tree. That is, it's almost ready to be cut down. And good trees will produce good fruit, and bad trees will be thrown into an unquenchable fire. All right. Uh, so it sounds unpleasant. Absolutely. Well, and Jesus uses this very similar imagery throughout the Gospels, and even that idea of of kind of end time, uh, bliss, you know, for those who produce, produce the fruits of righteousness. That's very Jewish, too, that that's the Dead Sea Scrolls talk about this and then also the sort of punishment end of it. Um, you know, the idea of fire that comes from the Jewish idea of a place called Gehenna in Aramaic or Gehinnom in Hebrew, which is like, again, this end time eschatological place where you don't want to end up. It's this unpleasant, uh, situation, as Katie put it. So that is what if we want to talk about one thing that I see that might be different or special to John's, uh, baptism is that, uh, he's linking it with the necessity to get right with God because God's coming like next Tuesday, according to John.
And that's and that's probably well, correct me if I'm wrong, but it would seem to me that that's maybe how the once and for all nature of baptism then comes into play in Christian practice. Right? Like in Jewish practice, you're you're washing frequently, right? Uh, yeah. But in Christian practice, it's, you know, it's a one time once and for all. Uh, initiation, you know, as Lutherans for the forgiveness of sins, where God's grace comes in, you know, meets you and claims you, you know, in, in, in that moment. So it seems like this move that John the Baptist is or the John the Dunker is making, um, to, to connect it to eschatology, um, has might be a reason why that that in, in Christian practice it becomes a once and for all sort of thing.
Yeah, you know, I think it certainly becomes a once and for all kind of thing. It's again, it's what I would call a kind of a Christian identity marker. Oftentimes you use, uh, in Judaism Jewish Studies, we talk about Jewish identity markers, which are things like circumcision, uh, or Sabbath or dietary restrictions, that is, um, an identity marker or, to use biblical terminology, an ot O T, which means a sign, is something that other people can see. Yeah? And so circumcision is one of those I don't know how often people are seeing that.
You can only, you can only. Do that once.
Exactly. Only do that once. Very true. Well, you say that, but, um, there in the in the Second Temple period, there's actually an ability to reverse the marks of your circumcision. And then hypothetically, to get re circumcised. Paul actually talks about this in First Corinthians. Anybody who's called who's circumcised don't seek to remove the marks of your circumcision.
Oh, interesting
I don't even want to really think even think about how that works.
Yeah, let's not get into the details.
That doesn't sound the most exactly. Speaking of unpleasant possibilities.
That's right, that's right. So so look, the the the idea of baptism being in a once and for all thing that kind of ushers you into the Christian community. That's done because, um, Christianity as of, again, not to use the so that's another term. "Christianity" never appears anywhere in the New Testament. So just to just to be historical about it, the Jesus movement ultimately brings in non-Jews or Gentiles and other Jewish movements did this too, but not to the same extent historically. Uh, and what you get at like, say, the end of Matthew's gospel in the so-called Great Commission. This is Matthew 28:19 and 20. Jesus tells the resurrected Jesus tells his disciples, uh, "now go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the father and the son and the Holy Spirit." So because other nations, you don't have the same ethnic unity that you have in Judaism. The interesting thing about Jewishness and Judaism is that it's, uh, as my advisor, Amy-Jill Levine once said to a group of people, think of Jewishness or Judaism as an ethnicity into which one can convert.
Yeah. So with Christianity, it's by definition ethnically universal. So how do you keep an ethnically universal entity that's not bound by birth or, or, you know, heritage together? Well, you make something like baptism as your entry point marker. But Jews don't need baptism in the same way that Christians need it in order to mark Jewish identity, because they're born into a Jewish family and into a Jewish line. So it's just a difference in how how you keep the community cohered or cohesive. And that's why baptism takes on the role that it does in later Christianity.
So you've given us a whole lot, Nick, and thank you for that. So, so John's John the Baptist, uh, presence at the River Jordan, his his call to repentance, his, uh, immersing people or however he did it in the river, uh, would not have been a shocking thing. That's what I hear you saying. No, there were other, perhaps. Well, we know of at least one other person doing it. Uh, certainly that immersion in water is not a new thing. The call for repentance, uh, though not as connected with immersing in water, is also not a new thing. And it's it becomes, uh, in this Jewish, uh, this Jewish movement that then becomes, you know, Christianity, what we know is Christianity. It becomes something that we that we, uh, inherit from our Jewish ancestors in the faith, but something that has taken on, uh, again, as you just said, a perhaps a new meaning, not just perhaps, but definitely a new meaning in Christian life, that it becomes just speaking as a Lutheran, right? It becomes a means of grace. It becomes a sacrament by which God's grace is imparted to us, and by which we are claimed by God as as God's own children.
Absolutely. Yeah, exactly. So as time goes on, you know, different terminology is, you know, imputed to, to the idea or the concept of baptism. Um, 100%. And it's, you know, within the two systems capital Judaism, capital C, Christianity, those things work themselves out in different ways. That's absolutely true. Uh, it's just that, that like in the first century, in Jesus's day, uh, it's it is what it is. I mean, it's a Jewish act. Yeah. Exactly. That's right.
Yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah, yeah.
Good. That's really cool. Thank you so much. Yeah, that's that's super helpful. I learned a lot. And yeah, that answered my questions that I've had about it.
So good. I'm glad.
So thank you to our questioner who sent that wonderful question in and to Nick for being here, and especially to you, dear listener or viewer of this podcast. Thanks for being with us today. You can get more awesome resources like this on Enter the Bible. Org. We've got podcasts, videos, courses, commentaries, articles, reflections, all kinds of cool stuff. Uh, and then of course, um, wherever you're, um, you know, listening or viewing, be sure to rate and review us five stars are awesome, uh, and share the podcast with a friend. Until next time.