History of baptism
[1] By the third and fourth centuries, baptism involved catechetical instruction as well as chrismation, exorcisms, laying on of hands, and recitation of a creed.
In the West, affusion became the normal mode of baptism between the twelfth and fourteenth centuries, though immersion was still practiced into the sixteenth.
For example, Jews who (according to the Law of Moses) became ritually defiled by contact with a corpse had to use the mikvah before being allowed to participate in the Holy Temple.
[4] Immersion in the mikvah represents a change in status in regards to purification, restoration, and qualification for full religious participation in the life of the community, ensuring that the cleansed person will not impose uncleanness on property or its owners.
[citation needed] During the Second Temple period (c. 516 BCE–70 CE), the Greek noun baptmos was used to refer to ritual washing in Hellenistic Judaism.
[11][12][13] Mandaeans revere John the Baptist and practice frequent full immersion baptism (masbuta) as a ritual of purification, not of initiation.
[14]: 109 [15][16] Early religious concepts and terminologies recur in the Dead Sea Scrolls, and yardena (Jordan) has been the name of every baptismal water in Mandaeism.
[12] According to Mandaean sources such as the Haran Gawaita, the Nasurai inhabited the areas around Jerusalem and the River Jordan in the 1st century AD.
According to John D. Turner, it originated in the 2nd-century CE as a fusion of two distinct Hellenistic Judaic philosophies and was influenced by Christianity and Middle Platonism.
Founded by Valentinus in the 2nd century CE, its influence spread widely, not just within Rome but also from Northwest Africa to Egypt through to Asia Minor and Syria in the East.
[citation needed] Baptism has been part of Christianity from the start, as shown by the many mentions in the Acts of the Apostles and the Pauline epistles.
Kirsten Marie Hartvigsen distinguishes between immersion and submersion and considers both as possible early-Christian forms of baptism,[39] as does Christian Strecker.
During this time, catechumens attended several meetings of intensive catechetical instruction, often by the bishop himself, and often accompanied by special prayers, exorcisms, and other rites.
[52] At dawn following the Paschal Vigil starting the night of Holy Saturday, they were taken to the baptistry where the bishop consecrated the water with a long prayer recounting the types of baptisms.
The catechumens disrobed, were anointed with oil, renounced the devil and his works, confessed their faith in the Trinity, and were immersed in the font.
They were then anointed with chrism, received the laying on of hands, clothed in white, and led to join the congregation in the Easter celebration.
[62] For the Lutherans, baptism is a "means of grace" through which God creates and strengthens "saving faith" as the "washing of regeneration"[63][64] in which infants and adults are reborn.
[65][non-primary source needed] Since the creation of faith is exclusively God's work, it does not depend on the actions of the one baptized, whether infant or adult.
[67][68] Because it is faith alone that receives these divine gifts, Lutherans confess that baptism "works forgiveness of sins, delivers from death and the devil, and gives eternal salvation to all who believe this, as the words and promises of God declare.
[27] Anabaptists (a word that means "rebaptizers") rejected so thoroughly the tradition maintained by Lutherans as well as Catholics that they denied the validity of baptism outside their group.
