14 November 2024
Despite how much work it was, there were definitely blessings from the necessity of reviewing all my blog posts from the past couple of years. I found it necessary to rewrite at least one; I knew what I was trying to say, but I left too much hanging. I need to revisit the issue with a different approach.
In the middle of Paul's long defense of the Doctrine of the Resurrection (1 Corinthians 15:12-58) he mentions "baptism for the dead" and Christian scholars have long puzzled over it. It took a long time before I felt sure what it was about.
It's a reference to the Torah. One of our recurring themes here is just how much of the Covenant of Christ subsumes some elements of the Covenant of Moses. Surely you remember how Paul demanded the Corinthian church ostracize the guy who took up with his father's cast-off bride. The point is that it's defiling for father and son to have the same woman. It was prominent under Moses and it still matters under Christ.
The Hebrews believed in the resurrection of the dead. The Gentile audience in Corinth choked on that for the same reason they did in Athens, just 50 miles away. Paul makes an eloquent defense of this teaching. Part of it was to mention some of the Hebrew rituals regarding dead bodies.
It's a big hassle to handle dead family members. They washed the body and did some other stuff out of a very strong sense of duty to family. Once they do put the body in a tomb, they must bathe themselves and remain outside the home until nightfall simply because they touched human remains. It kept them away from family and from going to the Temple. Why would they go through this big rigmarole?
It's because they expect to see them again in Eternity. This life is not the end. This is why Joseph insisted on a Hebrew burial so that his bones could be carried to the Promised Land. In the Hebrew culture, it was a firm belief that the body they had in this life would be reconstituted in an eternal form. They didn't believe in serious embalming, only keeping the body from stinking while it rotted in its own fluids. The knew the flesh would eventually desiccate and turn to dust, but the bones must be kept in storage for the Day of Judgment. They didn't do cremation; they felt that defiled the body. Human ashes were inherently defiling.
Paul's point was this was a lot of peculiar strict observances for someone who's not there any longer. The final care of a family member's remains was part of loving them while they lived. It mattered because you would meet them again in Eternity, and they would know how you treated their body.
The Hebrew term for ritual washing after handling human remains was mikveh, and it was consistently translated into Greek as baptizo. Thus, the baptism to which Paul refers in that puzzling phrase is the ritual washing Hebrews observed after performing last rites. Hebrew people were "baptized" afterward.
The Hebrew people performed mikveh for a lot of different reasons. That's why there were public baths scattered all around Zion. Men coming into town from working or traveling would stop to bathe just in case something had defiled them during the day. It was a routine practice before heading to the Temple for one of the worship services. The business of baptism was a general purpose cleansing ritual, and someone might perform a baptism many times in their lives.
When John the Baptist came on the scene, it was used to mark a general repentance that would them make you ritually clean for your declaration of allegiance to the Messiah. It was a standard element in coming before a ruler for just about anything, in this case, a presentation of oneself as feudal vassal. The baptism/mikveh was preparation for entering the Temple, the palace of the Messiah (in theory). It was the symbolism that John preached about.
Today, the primary purpose of the baptism ritual is simply carried over from John the Baptist and how his cousin Jesus endorsed that ritual. It remains a symbol of repentance and submission to Christ.
This document is public domain except for the poem in the comment; spread the message.