it was a woman, baptism and an offering were required, as we read, ‘One law and one manner shall be for you and for the stranger that sojourneth with you.’ – Num. xv, 16. But what was the law ‘for you’? The covenant was confirmed by circumcision and baptism and free-will offerings. So was it confirmed with the stranger, with these three. But now, that no oblations are made [the temple being destroyed], circumcision and baptism are required. But after the temple shall have been restored, then also it will be necessary that an offering be made. A stranger who is circumcised and not baptized, or baptized and not circumcised, is not called a proselyte till both are performed.”6 Various similar statements are frequently quoted from the same writer, and from the Talmud. Respecting them the following points are to be noticed:
1. The Hebrew word which is used by Maimonides and the Talmudic writers, and is here translated, to baptize, is tābal, a word which in the books of Moses is never used to designate rites of purifying of any kind.
2. The tābalings, or Talmudic baptisms, were self-performed, and not the act of an official administrator. The reception of the person must be sanctioned by the consistory or eldership of a synagogue, and attested by the presence of three witnesses. But it was performed by the person’s own act. Being disrobed, and standing in the water, he was instructed by a scribe in certain precepts of the law. Having heard these, he plunged himself under the water; and as he came up again, “Behold he is an Israelite in all things.” If it was a woman, she was attended by women, while the scribes stood apart and read the precepts: “And as she plungeth herself, they turn away their faces, and go out, when she comes out of the water.”7 It is perfectly evident that the rite thus described is wholly foreign to any thing to be found in the Mosaic law, and that it belonged to the category of self-washings, and not to that of the sacrament, in which an official administrator was essential to the validity of the rite.
3. This baptism is an invention of the scribes, of post Biblical origin. Our sources of information are (1) the Scriptures and Apocrypha; (2) the writings of Philo and Josephus, authors, the former of whom was contemporary with Christ, and the latter with the destruction of Jerusalem, both of whom wrote largely of the institutions and history of the Jews; (3) the Targums of Onkelos and of Jonathan; (4) the Mishna; (5) the Gemaras.
The Targums are Aramaic versions of the Old Testament. The Jews, at the return from the Babylonish captivity, had lost the knowledge of the Hebrew language. It was, therefore, necessary that the public reading of the Scriptures should be accompanied with a translation into the Aramaic dialect, which they now used. (Neh. viii, 2-8.) The translations thus given were, no doubt, at first extemporaneous and somewhat variable. But they gradually assumed fixed forms, more or less accurate, as they received the impress of different schools of interpreters. At first transmitted orally, they were at length committed to writing, the Targum of Onkelos soon after the end of the second century, and that of Jonathan a century later. The former, as a rule, keeps closely to the text. The Targum of Jonathan indulges more in paraphrase. The Mishna is the text of the Oral law, the traditions of the scribes. It was reduced to writing by Rabbi Judah Hakkadosh, about the end of the first century, and is believed to be a faithful exhibit of the traditions of the Jews, as they stood at that time. The two Gemaras, with the Mishna, constitute the Talmud. They are collections of interpretations and commentaries on the Mishna, or oral law, by the most eminent scribes. The Jerusalem or Palestinian Gemara was compiled in the third and fourth centuries, and that of Babylonia one or two centuries later. The former represents the great rabbinic seminary at Tiberias, in Galilee; the latter that of Sora, on the Euphrates.8
From these sources of information, the indications are conclusive that Talmudic baptism came into use after the destruction of Jerusalem. We have seen already part of the evidence, which will be more fully developed in the following pages, that no such rite was ordained in the law, observed by Israel, or recognized in the Scriptures. The Apocrypha are equally silent on the subject. The writings of Philo and Josephus ignore such a rite; as do the Targums and Mishna. In the latter, the word, tābal, which is commonly translated, to dip, is used constantly to designate the self-washings of the law, which, as will presently appear, can not have been immersions. In fact, there is sufficient evidence that this word, in addition to its modal sense, was also used to express a washing or cleansing, irrespective of the manner. That it was so employed to describe the cleansing of Naaman, will hereafter appear. It is not until we come to the Gemara of Babylonia, dating at the close of the fifth century, long after the destruction of Jerusalem and cessation of the temple service, that we meet with any distinct account of proselyte immersion. After that it is found everywhere.
4. Whilst it is thus evident that the baptisms of the Talmud are wholly without divine warrant, they are nevertheless valuable as constituting an authentic rabbinic tradition that a purifying with water was requisite in the reception of proselytes. A key to the truth on this subject presents itself in a statement found in the Mishna. “As to a proselyte who becomes a proselyte on the eve of the passover” (that is the evening before the day of the passover), “the school of Shammai say, Let him receive the ritual bath” (tābal), “and let him eat the passover in the evening; but the disciples of Hillel say, He that separates himself from his uncircumcision is like one who separates himself from a sepulcher.”9 It thus appears that between the two schools of Jewish scribes there was a division on this subject. The one party taught that the uncleanness of the Gentiles was of such a nature as to require seven days of purifying with the water of nidda, according to the law for one defiled by the dead. The others held them subject to that minor uncleanness which ceased with the close of the day, upon the performance of the prescribed self-washing. We shall presently see that the former were correct, according to the explicit testimony of the Scriptures. But here we have a clue to the later history of Jewish practice on the subject. Upon the destruction of Jerusalem and the termination of the sacrificial services there, the rites for purifying with the water of nidda were of necessity pretermitted, as the ashes of the heifer were no longer obtainable. The rabbins were, therefore, induced to substitute the self-washing which the looser school of scribes had already espoused. At what precise time the self-washings of the law became the self-immersions of the Gemaras does not appear. But at the beginning of the Christian era, causes had been already for centuries at work which were abundantly sufficient to account for the change. From the times of the captivities, the vast multitude of Hebrews who never returned, dwelling in Babylonia and the farther east, had been exposed to the influences arising from the religions of the lands of their dispersion, as embodied in the Zend Avesta and the Shasters, the teachings of Zoroaster and of the Brahmins, and from the related manners and customs and religious rites which have their native seats upon the banks of the Indus and the Ganges. The profoundness of the operation of these influences is seen in the pantheism of the Kabala, traceable as it is to the kindred doctrines of the Zend Avesta and the Vedas.10 How conspicuous the place held by self-immersion in the religious customs of the people of the East, from the earliest ages, every one knows. The Hebrews dwelling among them were not restricted by the law to any defined mode of self-washing in fulfilling its requirements. It was, therefore, natural and inevitable for them to adopt the mode which was daily practiced before their eyes. The relations between the Jews of “the Dispersion,” and those of Palestine, were of the most intimate kind, sustained through attendance upon the annual feasts at Jerusalem (Acts ii, 9), and afterwards by continual correspondence and travel, and by the intercourse of the school at Tiberias with those of Sora and Pumbaditha. If to these facts be added the tendency by which the rabbins would seek to compensate for the absence of the water of nidda, by expanding and magnifying the self-washings which were still practicable, there remains no ground of surprise or perplexity in finding self-immersion installed among the imperative observances set forth in the Gemaras. Of the disposition to supply the place of the now impracticable rites by the enlargement of others, the Talmud affords more than one example.
I have said that the Scriptural mode of purifying for proselytes was by sprinkling with the water of nidda. Of
Maimonides, Issure Biah, Perek 13, in Lightfoot, Harmonia Evang. in Joan i, 25.
Maimonides, as above, in Lightfoot, on John iii, 23.
According to Etheridge, the final revision of the Babylonian Gemara was completed by Rabbi Jose, president of the rabbinic seminary at Pumbaditha, on the Euphrates, in the year 499 or 500. —
Tract Pesachim, cap. viii, § 8.
This is clearly shown by Etheridge, in “Jerusalem and Tiberias.” Pp. 339 et seq. The same thing is largely illustrated in Blavatsky’s “Isis Revealed.”
