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Stuff you need to know before the POCM makes sense. Ideas, rituals and myths Christianity boosted from the Pagans. Some of the Pagan's dying-resurrected godmen The Triumph of Christianity Discover mainstream scholarship about Christianity's Pagan origins What did the Christians borrow? So what?
the ideas, myths and rituals christianity borrowed from the pagans Jesus saves -- Pagan Gods saved first gods whose dad was a god and whose mom was a mortal woman Christianity has baptism -- Paganism had it first Christians share a sacred meal with their God -- Pagans did it first Christians believe in eternal life -- but Paganism believed in it first
home > Pagan Origins baptism
Jesus did miracles -- Pagan Gods did them first Jesus fulfilled prophecy -- Pagan Gods fulfilled prophecy first God and the immortal soul -- Paganism had 'em first Christianity thinks it has monotheism -- Paganism had it first Jesus' God lives in Heaven on High -- Pagan Gods lived there first pagan dead went to the underworld Jesus made clever quips -- Pagan cynic philosophers made them first
Christianity has baptism -- the world has water


Was Christianity new?  Was Christianity unique? Let's talk about some common sense.

Water is the "universal solvent". It is what we use to clean things. If you haven't used water for cleaning at some time in your life, stay at least 100 feet away from me. Thus it's not exactly big news to be told that by Pikachu that By the time of Jesus purification with water was already an ancient Pagan sacrament. What were you expecting the church to do? Start baptizing in wood chips?  Pikachu is right that Purification -- from unclean foods, or acts, or contacts -- is an idea so old it fades into pre-history. Of course it is. Being dirty has never been popular. This is also not news. The error lies in the simple-minded conclusion that this equates with some kind of borrowing or influence. It's no more evidence of that than worship of the sun in various cultures requires a theory of influence or borrowing. The sun is there and it is the most conspicuous object in the sky -- what do you expect to happen?

 

So Pikachu's nice little list of mentions of water used for purification in the Old Testament,   in Homer and so on, don't really mean a darned thing. (He is in error about the taurobolium though; that postdates Christianity.) Even the Jews did water purification, as he admits; so what does all this prove? Nothing, except that water is an excellent cleanser. Bet you didn't know that.

  

Pikachu notes that New members into the Mysteries of Isis / Osiris began their initiation with a sprinkling of purifying waters brought from the Nile.  The result of the baptism and initiation may well have been salvation, but hold on a second:

Read the words of a writer four centuries after Christianity started >

"a kind of voluntary death and salvation through divine grace." [Apuleius, Metamorphosis, Book 11, 21],

and "..we shall have salvation" [Firmicus Maternus, The Error of Pagan Religions, 22.1].
   
   
But really, as noted, what difference does it make? Tertullian may note that Pagan baptism preceded the Christian sacrament, and describe purifying water it Pagan uses, but what of it?
Baptism initiation into any religion by means of a baptism just makes sense. The real issue is: Does the deity behind the baptism have the means to make it, or what it represents, effacacious? Which does lead to a very important point: In Christianity, baptism itself is not effacacious -- it represents a cleansing that has already been perfomed within! You won't find that paralleled in pagan usage.
 I don't know what Pikachu finds useful in pagan baptisms used for purifying temples and even cities -- Christianity doesn't do that, and if you think this is meaningful, ask yourself if a car wash is a religious experience
 washing away sin -- which as noted, Christian baptism only represents; it does not actually DO

Read about the Semitic Totality Concept and Jewish backgrounds to Christian baptism >

Thought and action are so linked under the Semitic Totality paradigm that Clark warns us: "The Hebraic view of man as an animated body and its refusal to make any clear-cut division into soul and body militates against the making of so radical a distinction between material and spiritual, ceremonial and ethical effects." [An Approach to the Theology of the Sacraments, 10] Thus, what we would consider separate actions of conversion, confession, and obedience in the form of works would be considered by the Hebrews to be an act in totality.

As Beasley-Murray observes, "The conjunction of water and Spirit in eschatological hope is deeply rooted in the Jewish consciousness." This motif is found in Ezekiel 36:25-27: I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you will be clean; I will cleanse you from all your impurities and from all your idols. I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my Spirit in you and move you to follow my decrees and be careful to keep my laws. Similar sentiments are found elsewhere in Jewish literature. Here is another passage from the Qumran material (1QS 4:19-21): He will cleanse him of all wicked deeds by means of a holy spirit; like purifying waters He will sprinkle upon him the spirit of truth.

Don't believe me, I'm just a hack named Pikachu.

   
   

Church Father Justin Martyr (he lived in the 100s AD) probably was not "worried" to explain anything -- despite Pikachu's cheap psychologization. It is likely that he did have to answer charges that Christianity was imitating paganism; and his answer -- diabolical imitation (which in the same passage he also applies to the removal of footwear, allegedly stolen from Moses!) is unnecessary. The answer, in reality, is that water is the universal cleanser. 

Read Justin's words for yourself, and realize that there are a lot better answers these days from scholars >

And the devils, indeed, having heard this washing published by the prophet, instigated those who enter their temples, and are about to approach them with libations and burnt-offerings, also to sprinkle themselves; and they cause them [the pagans] also to wash themselves entirely, as they depart [from the sacrifice], before they enter into the shrines in which their images are set. [Justin Martyr, First Apology, Ch 62]

Don't believe me, believe Donald Duck.

   
   

Pikachu however seems quite worried (ha ha) that the Catholic Encyclopedia and other scholarly sources don't buy into his line. "Baptism" is in quotation marks because the Catholic Encyclopedia rightly realizes that to call it "baptism" -- when the word is identified with so much baggage in our Christianized world today -- would be ridiculous!

"These mysteries usually began with the selection of initiandi, their preliminary "baptism", fasting, and (Samothrace) confession." [Paganism, in The Catholic Encyclopedia, Volume XI.

POCM quotes modern scholars
   
 

The next time you're with Lurch
ask yourself:"What gives Pikachu the ridiculous idea that anyone thought a water cleansing was 'new' or 'unique' in itself? No one claims that."

Next time you're in church... When they get to the part about the sacrament of baptism, remember the Semitic Totality Concept, Jewish ritual ablutions, the baths at Qumran, OT passages that speak of cleansing by water, and above all, remember that water is the universal cleanser. You'll know Pikachu's simplistic appraisal of the situation is bunk -- in a culture where gullible neophytes think all they need to do is a read a text in English and announce their opinion.

Uhhhhhhhhh!

   

Real Scholarship
Modern academic orthodoxy denies a link between Pagan baptism and Christian baptism, and it bugs the heck out of Pikachu. That's why he calls it "believing" scholarship, because he can't actually answer it -- which leaves him with nothing but an attempt to hint at bias out of "believers".

Here's a great example, from a famous and widely quoted essay, talking about Pagan water purification sacraments which were around before Christianity.

It's a long quote, but it's worth reading because it sinks Pikachu like a rock>

 "We know of an ablution in the ritual of Eleusis; the laurel-wreath oration of Demosthenes speaks of purificatory ablutions in the mystery of Sabazius; the cult of Attis had its taurobolium, and the mystery of Isis knew a sanctifying baptismal bath, as did the mysteries of Dionysus and of Mithras. Upon mature consideration modern scholarship has rejected the ideas that such rites exerted an influence on the baptismal doctrine of the New Testament," [Hugo Rahner, The Christian Mystery and the Pagan Mysteries, section 3, in The Mysteries; Papers from the Eranos Yearbooks, edited by Joseph Campbell]

But don't stop there. Pikachu juxtaposes the commonality of these "baptisms" with the singularity of Christian baptism as though this somehow proves there must be some relation. There is one: the cleansing nature of water. The simple fact is that the nature of Christian ablutions -- the true non-efficacy of the water; the source of the cleansing in Jesus in particular -- make it a completely different and unrelated rite, no matter how hard you stamp your little Pokemon feet, Pikachu.

This is the kind of stuff REAL academics say. And Pikachu, a nobody with no credentials who has just rifled through a few books, wants us to pretend that he is a better authority?