Nephi is answering a question that must have been present in his community. The question was why the Lamb of God should have need of baptism. Before examining Nephi’s answer, we should ask how Nephi and his people might have understood baptism. Certainly the word itself, being derived from New Testament Greek is somewhat out of place. If the word is out of place, what might their word or context have been?
This question must be answered first in a Jewish context. As modern Christians, our understanding of baptism is so intricately linked to Christianity that we make automatic presumptions of the term, presumptions of a Christian context that are so strong that many have derided the Book of Mormon for mentioning baptism so many years before John the Baptist.
That cultural/religious definition of baptism is unfortunate in that it tends to prevent us from understanding the Jewish background behind baptism. After all, John was also baptizing before Christ, but John’s baptism must have had a different meaning that a Pauline baptism. Understanding the differences between a Christian baptism and a simple bath may be a crude example, but it highlights the range of meaning that can be given to the action. In the case of Nephi, how might he and his people understood the baptism of Jesus?
The root of baptism lies in two symbolic concepts. The first is the concept of ritual purity, and the second is the symbolic extension of the cleansing power of water to ritual contexts. Ritual purity has to do with concepts of clean and unclean that have nothing to do with physical dirt, but rather one’s spiritual condition. For instance, the Lord tells Aaron:
Lev. 10:8
8 ¶ And the LORD spake unto Aaron, saying,
9 Do not drink wine nor strong drink, thou, nor thy sons with thee, when ye go into the tabernacle of the congregation, lest ye die: it shall be a statute for ever throughout your generations:
10 And that ye may put difference between holy and unholy, and between unclean and clean;
The Lord is not making any recommendations about dirt, but rather spiritual condition. Cleanness and uncleanness in this context are ritual, not physical. In such a ritual condition of clean and unclean, it becomes of paramount importance to have a means of restoring “clean” when one becomes ritually unclean.
Just as water can restore the physical cleanness, so does water become a ritual purifier. The ritual washing to remove ritual uncleanness (rather than dirt) is mandated for a number of occasions in the Old Testament:
Num. 8:5-6
5 ¶ And the LORD spake unto Moses, saying,
6 Take the Levites from among the children of Israel, and cleanse them.
7 And thus shalt thou do unto them, to cleanse them: Sprinkle water of purifying upon them, and let them shave all their flesh, and let them wash their clothes, and so make themselves clean.
Lev. 16:3-4
3 Thus shall Aaron come into the holy place: with a young bullock for a sin offering, and a ram for a burnt offering.
4 He shall put on the holy linen coat, and he shall have the linen breeches upon his flesh, and shall be girded with a linen girdle, and with the linen mitre shall he be attired: these are holy garments; therefore shall he wash his flesh in water, and so put them on.
Lev. 15:7-8
7 And he that toucheth the flesh of him that hath the issue shall wash his clothes, and bathe himself in water, and be unclean until the even.
8 And if he that hath the issue spit upon him that is clean; then he shall wash his clothes, and bathe himself in water, and be unclean until the even.
In each of these occasions, ritual cleanness is restored through washing with water. In the case of Aaron putting on the holy garments, it is not hard to see that a fairly extensive washing - perhaps an immersion, but not necessarily that complete - would be required before the clothing could be put on. This would presume that the sacred nature of the clothing would require that it be put on “clean” flesh, and that therefore one’s entire body would have to be washed to be ritually clean. It is possible that the washing of the “hands and feet” in the next passage may signify the whole person rather than simply the mentioned hands and feet (see verse 21):
Ex. 30:17-21
17 ¶ And the LORD spake unto Moses, saying,
18 Thou shalt also make a laver of brass, and his foot also of brass, to wash withal: and thou shalt put it between the tabernacle of the congregation and the altar, and thou shalt put water therein.
19 For Aaron and his sons shall wash their hands and their feet thereat:
20 When they go into the tabernacle of the congregation, they shall wash with water, that they die not; or when they come near to the altar to minister, to burn offering made by fire unto the LORD:
21 So they shall wash their hands and their feet, that they die not: and it shall be a statute for ever to them, even to him and to his seed throughout their generations.
The baptism of John is certainly related to this conception of ritual cleanness through washing by water (M’Neile, Alan Hugh, D.D. The Gospel According to St. Matthew. London: Macmillan & Co. LTD. 1961, p. 33). The same conceptions would have underlain the ritual washings of the Qumran community.
Geza Vermes explains the context of this ritual baptism at Qumran:
"Ritual bathing was practised in the Community. The Damascus Rule (xi) devotes a section to purification by water, and the War Rule (xiv) foresees that the victorious Sons of Light will so cleanse themselves after battle before attending the final ceremony of thanksgiving. The Community Rule (iii, v) refers also to a purificatory rite in connexion with entry into the Covenant. This seems to have been a peculiar and solemn act similar to Christian baptism, and to have symbolized purification by the ‘spirit of holiness’. ’For it is through the spirit of true counsel concerning the ways of man that all his sins shall be expiated that he may contemplate the light of life. He shall be cleansed from all his sins by the spirit of holiness ... And when his flesh is sprinkled with purifying water and sanctified by cleansing water, it shall be made clean by the humble submission of his soul to all the precepts of God’ (CR iii).
From the same Rule it may be deduced that this ‘baptism’ was to take place in seas and rivers’ (iii), like the baptism of John and Jesus, and that true conversion was the absolute condition for the efficacy of the sacrament (v). It may be of interest to note that the nearest Jewish parallel to this rite was the baptism administered to proselytes; in the case of women it was the only ceremony of entry into the Covenant of Israel." (Vermes, G. The Dead Sea Scrolls in English. Penguin Books, 1975. P. 45).
The elaboration of washing for ritual purity into some baptismal form was not unusual at the time of John. Indeed, Golb notes: “Baptismal rituals widespread in early rabbinic and early Christian times, and antecedents in first-century B.C. and first-century A.D.Palestine can hardly be narrowed down to the practices of a single group.” (Golb, Norman. Who Wrote the Dead Sea Scrolls? New York: Scribner. 1995, p. 372).
To this point, then, we can easily see baptism as a natural development of the concept of using water to provide ritual cleanness. In Qumran, John, and Christian usage, however, there is another symbolic function that is added to the rite of baptism, and that is initiation into a group. Thus for Israel baptism became the rite of cleansing for a convert into Judaism, and for Qumran an sign of entrance into the community. Likewise in Christianity, baptism carries this connotation of an entrance into the community of the believers.
In Nephi’s context, however, what is most interesting is the absence of this latter elaboration of baptism. Nephi speaks of the baptism in its cleansing mode, but not as a rite of entrance (this will be part of the Book of Mormon baptismal ritual, but not until Alma at the waters of Mormon - where the context is highly suggestive that it is an innovation at that time). It should also be noted that the burial/resurrection imagery that is symbolically attached to baptism in the New Testament (probably beginning with Paul) is entirely absent from the Book of Mormon. This is yet another indication of the altered contexts of the Old and New World. The burial/resurrection symbolism is effective in a situation where the death and resurrection of the Savior is an important focus of preaching, such as in Paul. The Book of Mormon spends much more time on the salvation aspects of the Atonement than the resurrection, and thus the burial/resurrection theme (virtually requiring the New Testament context of the crucifixion of the Savior) would be conceptually foreign to the symbology of the New World Christ.
For Nephi, the cleansing function of the water immersion would make perfect sense, and fits into the question that is being asked - that is, how someone who is the Lamb of God, and therefore presumably clean, should be in need of a ritual cleansing. In this earlier usage of baptism as a ritual of cleansing, Nephi’s usage of the term makes reasonable cultural sense.
What would not make sense is the entry function of baptism (which is the absent function for Nephi). With Nephi, there is no community to enter apart from that of his people. The only possibility for such a function would be the inclusion of the gentile populations that I have suggested, but even for them, the ritual cleansing function would have been sufficient. It is more likely that circumcision would be seen as the mark of entering the covenant for Nephi’s people than a “baptism” that should, in their cultural context, be for a ritual cleansing.