The Myth of Old Testament Jewish Proselyte Baptism

Matthew 3:11 I indeed baptize you with water unto repentance.

John was giving some religious leaders fits over his preaching and his baptism. John is still giving religious leaders fits over his preaching and his baptism. Matthew 3:1-8 gives the account of a portion of the ministry of John the Baptist, preaching and baptizing in the Jordan River. You have to do something with John, his preaching and his baptism, meaning you have to explain it some way or another. The baptism in Matthew 3 has been misunderstood, misapplied and attempted to be explained away since the very hours John was crying in the wilderness. John poses a problem for practically every false denomination; but especially those who practice paedobaptism, or infant baptism. They try to link baptism and circumcision and Abraham and the church to support infant baptism. One way to try and neutralize and explain away the reality of John’s baptism is to reinvent it as something it never was, namely proselyte baptism [Webster’s defines proselyte as “A new convert to some religion or religious sect, or to some particular opinion, system or party. Thus a Gentile converted to Judaism is a proselyte”]. John’s baptism was not the so called proselyte washing that many Presbyterians attempt to assert that it was; a carry over Levitical ordinance that Jesus partook of then changed. There is no scriptural ground, whatsoever, that there even was Levitical proselyte baptism practiced by the Jews in the New Testament during John’s ministry and there is nothing in the Old Testament that even hints to that assertion. I personally believe that Old Testament proselyte baptism is a myth used and oft repeated by baby baptizers to attempt to prove infant baptism and the universal church while at the same time, discredit John’s baptism and the truth of the Lord’s church. There is no question that the practice came into practice, but the key is to know when the Jews started proselyte baptism, which history will tell us but more importantly the silence of Scripture shows that Jewish proselyte baptism started well after the Bible was penned. Source after source repeats the same line about Old Testament baptism as a ceremonial immersion for Gentiles who believed in support of false notions about baptism, without giving historical or scriptural proof. Men will dismiss John’s baptism as Old Testament and give a line about Jewish proselyte baptism then move on without scriptural or historical evidence.

Let’s first consider whether or not baptism was a Levitical ceremony for converts. There simply is no proselyte baptism in the Old Testament. The scriptures are very clear Exodus 12:48-49 And when a stranger shall sojourn with thee, and will keep the passover to the LORD, let all his males be circumcised, and then let him come near and keep it; and he shall be as one that is born in the land: for no uncircumcised person shall eat thereof. One law shall be to him that is homeborn, and unto the stranger that sojourneth among you. There is the Gentile convert, but there is no baptism. The idea is you take that passage along with Exodus 19:10 And the LORD said unto Moses, Go unto the people, and sanctify them to day and to morrow, and let them wash their clothes . This is the best Old Testament answer to prove proselyte baptism. There is simply no scriptural basis. The first accounts of proselyte washing are found in the Babylonian Talmud, written in the 5th century. The custom, for lack of scriptural evidence, was inserted into the tradition. C.H. Toy wrote a very interesting paper published in the Baptist Quarterly volume 6, 1872 on Proselyte Baptism which he said “The ideas of an initiatory baptism in the Old Testament, the conception of which originated, no doubt, in the natural desire on the part of the Rabbinic teachers to obtain Scriptural support for a custom which the exigencies of the times had established.” The scriptural grounds seem to come from the cleansings and circumcision. The proselyte had to be circumcised and then had to be purified according to the Jews, not scripture. Following tradition, the Jews had to offer sacrifices but after the temple was destroyed, purification became the last order of the convert since they could not offer sacrifice. However, this was not limited to the Gentile convert as the Jewish boy ALSO had to be purified by washing because the circumcision made one unclean. The purification or the washing was on account of the circumcision. Historically, there is no basis for Jewish proselyte baptism prior to the fourth or fifth century. There are, of course, rules and regulations that accompany the ritual for the Jews after this time, even down to how many gallons of water were to be used, but prior, history is silent. To quote Toy again on the historicity of the practice “There is positively no evidence of the existence of proselyte baptism before the destruction of Jerusalem, and that the negative evidence against it up to that time, is as decisive as negative evidence can be; that there are no clear proofs of its existence before the fifth century, while it is possible that it may have been gradually coming into use for a century or two that there are reasons why the Jews should have been led to adopt some such ceremony after the destruction of Jerusalem; that the form is such as their national observances would suggest; and the way in which this rite is mentioned, is just what we should expect on the supposition that it came into use first about the third century, gradually gaining ground till, in the fifth century, in was firmly established.” I believe this to be grasping at straws and it may have started, in part, to explain away John’s baptism to the Jewish converts and Jews who were confronted with the New Testament.

Toy once more says says “If the custom of proselyte baptism arose in the inter-biblical times, we should expect to find some reference to it at least in the apocryphal books, and in Josephus and Philo. …It is difficult to see how a new (or indeed and old) ceremony of initiation could be passed over entirely without mention.” This lack of evidence becomes even more powerful when we consider those histories detail converts to Judiasm, to which baptism is silent. Toy again “Josephus mentions four prominent cases [in his history] of proselyting that one of these is given at great length, with the debates on the ceremony required, by persons who would gladly have found some other ceremony than circumcision; that he writes minutely on the customs of the Jews; and yet throughout his voluminous writings, which are very full on our Lord's time, there is not a single reference or allusion to a proselyte immersion. We seem to be not passing the bounds of moderation, then, when we say that his silence amounts very nearly to demonstration of our position.” John Broadus in A Commentary on Matthew as well as the work of John Gill on the history of this Jewish practice, tried and failed to find any historical record of Jewish proselyte baptism prior to the fourth or fifth centuries. In regards to history, the earliest Christian writers are silent on the subject of Jewish proselyte baptism, which speaks volumes as they dealt much with the Jews in polemical writings. When considering the false Jewish teachers who tried to pull Gentiles and Jew away from Christ back into the ceremony in regards to circumcision, why was there never an attempt to turn baptism into a similar work, or why was there never misunderstanding of baptism in the early days of the church? “It is hardly conceivable that proselyte baptism , if it were know to them, should not appear sometimes in their writings. Yet no mention of the rite has been produced.” C.H. Toy.

The Pharisees were full of self righteous hypocrisy in their strict keeping of the ceremonial law. Their counterparts, the Sadducees were religious liberals who did not believe in supernatural and interestingly enough, many were priests. Both groups hated Christ and both groups relied on outward works for their justification. When John was baptizing, both groups then came to the baptism. If something new was going on, they wanted to know what it was. I supposed the final nail in the coffin of the Old Testament proselyte baptism is if it was proselyte washing, why did they want it? Luke 3:7 Then said he to the multitude that came forth to be baptized of him, O generation of vipers, who hath warned you to flee from the wrath to come? Which we know from Matthew were the Pharisees. Here the pious religious leaders come to take part of the religious right. I can almost imagine them coming to see, to question, and to grace John with their presence. I can almost see them coming to give their expert opinion, since they were the religious leaders or perhaps they thought that John would be impressed with their attendance and sanctioning by their observance. John 1:19 And this is the record of John, when the Jews sent priests and Levites from Jerusalem to ask him, Who art thou? John 1:25 And they asked him, and said unto him, Why baptizest thou then, if thou be not that Christ, nor Elias, neither that prophet? First, we see that the Jews sent priest and Levites to find out who he was, and the Pharisees asked him “why do you baptize if you are not Christ, Elijah or that prophet?” Had the John been performing a common Jewish ritual, why so many questions? It was recognizable to the Scribes and Pharisees that this was of Divine origin and their questioning tells us much. Had this been a Jewish practice, the question would not have been “why baptizest thou then, if thou be not that Christ” but the question would have been “why bapzitest thou then these Jews as if they were Gentiles?” Why would the Pharisees ask who he was and what was the purpose of his baptizing? If John’s baptism was an Old Testament practice, when Jesus asked in Luke 20:4 “The baptism of John, was it from heaven, or of men?”, most assuredly the chief priests and scribes would have asserted Moses and the Old Testament, but by remaining silent, they loudly declare where and when baptism came into practice; with John. They would have said “our fathers have baptized since the wilderness.” We are to believe that even though circumcision was a major point of contention in the churches between Jews and Gentiles and false teachers, the baptism that followed was never questioned or pointed out to be separate from circumcision? The Pharisees never questioned Jesus for having a proselyte baptism or His disciples for baptizing Jews, both men and women?

“Why baptizest thou then?” Why did John baptize? If this was proselyte baptism, why did the Jews want it? If this was a common Jewish custom, why did the Pharisees ask why he was baptizing? If this was common Jewish custom, why did the Pharisees marvel that he was baptism, yet not Elijah or the Messiah? The fact is this was something new John was doing. The Jews knew this, realized it and wanted to be part of it since they perceived that John was a prophet. They saw another outward ceremony that they could be a part of, but the ax was struck to the root of their outward legalism. The biblical narrative shows without a shadow of doubt that what John was doing was a new and unique practice, something that God sent him to do. The whole idea of Old Testament proselyte baptism is a myth that is propagated and repeated as if it is common biblical history. Only one problem; Old Testament proselyte baptism is not found in the OLD TESTAMENT, or in the first centuries among any practicing Jews.