Fulfilling all
righteousness
Nudity in baptism and the miqweh in Ancient Israel and the Early Church
JESUS[1]
went down to the Jordan River where his cousin John[2]
was baptising, and asked to be baptised.
Since baptism
is a ritual cleansing from sin, which John had adapted from the ancient Hebrew
tradition of the miqweh,[3]
it followed that the one undergoing it should have sins from which he needed to
be cleansed. John realised this (and that Jesus was sinless) and said to Jesus:
“I have need to be baptized by you, and do You come to me?”[4]
Jesus
answered: “Permit it at this time; for in this way it is fitting for us to
fulfill all righteousness.”[5]
Nowadays when
adult baptisms take place, the candidates are usually dressed beforehand in
white robes. This fits with the longstanding teaching of the Church that the
naked body is evil, or at the very least sexually distracting, and so should be
covered at all times.
But this very
teaching is heretical, one derived from the teachings of the Gnostic cult, who
believed that physical existence was evil, and that one should strive to be
free of the body in death.
Nothing could
be further from the true Gospel which, although it promises immense blessings
to the faithful in the life after death, first and foremost encourages us to
live this life to the fullest.
Jesus in fact
personally promises this to us: “I came that they may have life, and might have
it abundantly.”[6]
Much is known
about the ritual details of the miqweh, well documented in the 1st
century AD and in subsequent eras. However, until recently hard evidence
concerning the location and antiquity of such bathing facilities has not come
to hand.
Recent
research[7]
reveals that such facilities not only existed in the time of the Kings of Israel, but that they were specially constructed.
Archæologist
Shimon Gibson, following some years of excavations in a cave at Suba, 10
minutes’ drive westwards into the hills from the outskirts of Jerusalem, has
come to the conclusion that not only was the cave used exclusively as a miqweh,
but that it was specifically constructed for this purpose during the Iron Age –
he is vague about the precise period, but for Israel the Iron Age can be said
to have begun with the expulsion of the Philistines, who in the years that they
dominated the Judæan highlands had a monopoly on the working of iron. After
their expulsion, the Israelites began smithing iron themselves.
The cave
appears to have been in continual use in the time of the kings, abandoned
during the Exile, brought back into use following the return from Exile, and
possibly again abandoned before the 1st century BC.
His research
further confirms long-forgotten traditions dating back to before the Crusades
that John and his mother, Elizabeth,[8]
used the cave as a refuge when Herod the Great ordered the killing of all male
children under the age of two in the area around Bethlehem.[9]
It seems
that, following the early death of Elizabeth, John lived there alone, and put
the cave to its ancient use by baptising there, before he moved down to the
banks of the Jordan and continued this practice in the desert.
Gibson
surmises that John’s disciples kept doves in cages so that they could be
released to symbolise the new beginning in baptism – but he gives no detailed
explanation of this supposition, so it would seem to me that this is a
modernist’s attempt to account for the mention in the Gospels of “the Spirit of
God descending as a dove, and coming upon Him”[10]
(Jesus).
If one turns
to descriptions of the theology and ritual of the miqweh there is more
information to hand.
Dr
Ron Moseley[11] writes: “The term
mikveh in Hebrew literally means any gathering of waters, but is specifically
used in Jewish law for the waters or bath for the ritual immersion.
“The building
of the mikveh was so important in ancient times it was said to take precedence
over the construction of a synagogue.”
He writes
further: “The Mishnah attributes to Ezra a decree that each male should immerse
himself before praying or studying.
“There were
several Jewish groups that observed ritual immersion every day to assure
readiness for the coming of the Messiah. The Church Fathers mentioned one of
these groups called Hemerobaptists which means ‘daily bathers’ in Greek. Among
those used to regular immersion were the Essenes and others that the Talmud
calls tovelei shaharit or ‘dawn bathers’.”
He writes
further that “the ocean is still a legitimate mikveh”.
Referring
specifically to New Testament times, he notes:
“Historically,
we know that there were many ritual immersion baths (mikvaot) on the
Temple Mount including one in the Chamber of Lepers situated in the northwest
corner of the Court of Women (Midrash 2:5).”
Immersion was
required for both men and women on converting to Judaism – making this a
parallel with the immersion of converts to the Christian faith.
A most
curious point of entry required that pots and eating utensils made by a non-Jew
also be immersed.
And all Jews,
male and female, were required to be immersed before the Sabbath, “in order to
sensitize oneself to the holiness of the day”, and before Yom Kippur, “as a
sign of purity and repentance”.
It was also
required on a monthly basis for women, following menstruation.
Moseley is
quite specific that “in ancient times immersion was to be performed in the
presence of witnesses”.
“The person
being baptized made special preparations by cutting his nails, undressed
completely and made a fresh profession of his faith before the designated
‘fathers of the baptism’ (Kethub. 11a; Erub 15a). This is possibly where
churches, sometime later, got the term Godfathers. The individual stood
straight up with the feet spread and the hands held out in front.”
Moseley
writes further: “Because Leviticus
Note those
remarks: the person being baptised undressed
completely, and no clothing should touch him or her.[12]
The Gospel of
John makes reference to the miqweh in the preparation for the Last
Supper. When Jesus was in the upper room to partake of the Passover seder
meal (which is what the Last Supper was) He took off His clothes and put a
towel around His waist, going to each of the disciples in turn to wash his feet
– the work of a lowly servant or slave.
Only one
disciple’s response is recorded:
Simon Peter[13]
asked Him: “Lord, do you wash my feet?”[14]
After Peter
insisted that the Lord should never wash his feet, Jesus responded: “If I do
not wash you, you have no part with Me.”
Peter, giving
in, said: “Lord, not my feet only, but also my hands and my head.”
But to this
Jesus responded: “He who has bathed needs only to wash his feet, but is
completely clean; and you are clean, but not all of you.”[15]
It is clear
from Moseley’s discussion of the miqweh tradition that Jesus and the
disciples must have been to a miqweh not very long before, in
preparation not only for the weekly Sabbath but especially for the most holy
Sabbath of the Passover. They were dirty only to the extent that they had been
walking, shod in sandals, on dusty streets, and so their feet needed to be
clean before they lay down on the couches provided around the table where the
meal was to be eaten.
Moseley’s
references to nakedness in the miqweh are echoed by David Chidester,[16]
who writes that Christian baptismal candidates in the 3rd century AD were
“instructed ‘to remove their clothes’. They stood ‘naked and unashamed’
(Gen 2:25).”
He continues:
“Both intitiates and priests stood naked.”
A deacon
stood ready to anoint the initiates, but first:
“Taking off
their clothes, their ‘garments of shame’, and treading them beneath their feet,
the initiates symbolically cast off human mortality.
“By being
anointed with oils, which signified that they were receiving the Christ, the
‘anointed one’ of God, the initiates began to assume a new immortality.
“Standing naked
before the gathering of the church, they were prepared to enter the waters of
baptism.”
Chidester
confirms what I have already quoted from Moseley:
“Nakedness was also an essential ingredient in the contemporary Jewish practice
of baptizing converts. In the Jewish ritual, as in the Christian, no clothing could be allowed to intervene between the initiate’s
body and the water.”
He remarks:
“Under
ordinary circumstances, public nakedness was prohibited. As a custom associated
with animals, barbarians, and Greco-Roman pagans who frequented the gymnasium
or baths, the public exposure of the naked body to they eyes of others was
alien to Jewish thought. However, in the context of conversion, public nakedness was also part of the baptism of Jewish proselytes.
“Although
Christians displayed a similar ‘horror of nakedness’ under ordinary conditions,
they required public nakedness during the ritual of baptism.
“In that
ritual context, nakedness signified the primordial state of Adam and Eve or the
innocence of children. Nakedness was therefore an emblem of a new beginning.”
Chidester
then tackles a question of what might be appropriate:
“In the
Christian practice of anointing the naked body, a question of ritual propriety
arose: should a male deacon anoint the naked body of a woman?
“According to
one authority, the Didascalia Apostolorum from third-century
“However, the
text advised, ‘where there is no woman at hand, especially a deaconess, he who
baptises must of necessity anoint her who is being baptised’.”
Chidester
comments further:
“Although
these guidelines show a concern for maintaining a certain standard of sexual
propriety, they clearly indicate that such considerations are less important
than the requirements of the ritual that the intiates, male and female, must be
naked and anointed with oil before entering the water.
“In fact, the
nakedness of males and females together was
occasionally interpreted as a radical freedom from gender differences and human
sexuality.
“In this
respect, ritual nakedness could be interpreted as acting out Paul’s proposition
that ‘there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ
Jesus’ (Gal 3:28).”
Remember that
Jesus told Nicodemus: “Unless one is born again, he cannot see the
While Moseley
makes no mention of the nakedness of the person performing the baptism[19]
in Jewish ritual, it seems unlikely that the Church would have invented this
aspect of the procedure. Clearly, then, the Jewish person being baptised and
the Jewish person baptising were both required to be naked.
One can now
form a mental image of the naked Christ in the
It would be
wrong to see anything unseemly in this nakedness: it was required by the rabbis
(the Pharisees, that is), and was seen as being appropriate to the ritual being
performed.
The Gospels
do not spell it out that John baptised women as well as men. However, neither
do they state that only men underwent the ritual – the synoptic Gospels all
refer to “people”, not men.
The word
multitudes is also used, and there is reference to “all the country of
So it is
logical to assume that women also were baptised by John and that they, too,
were naked when entering the water.
The
implications of the findings of this article are discussed here and here.
–
Strandloper
