Nephi must be answering a question asked by members of his community—why the Lamb of God needed baptism. How might Nephi and his people have understood baptism? The word itself, being derived from the New Testament Greek baptisma is anachronistic. Once again, Joseph Smith must have translated whatever word appeared on the plates with the more familiar “baptism.” But if “baptism” is technically not the word Nephi would have used, what word or action might he have meant?
As modern Christians, our understanding of baptism is so intricately linked to Christianity that we make automatic assumptions about the term, but the question must be answered in a Jewish context. John the Baptist was unquestionably baptizing in a Jewish context before Christ, and his baptism must have had a different meaning than, say, a Pauline baptism. How might Nephi and his people have understood Jesus’s baptism?
The rite of baptism embodies two ideas that are both tied to different aspects of cleanness. The first is the concept of ritual purity, and the second is the symbolic extension of the water’s cleansing power. Ritual purity establishes conceptual cleanness and uncleanness that have nothing to do with physical dirt, but rather with one’s spiritual condition. For instance, Yahweh tells Aaron: “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: And that ye may put difference between holy and unholy, and between unclean and clean” (Lev. 10:9–10).
Yahweh is not saying that drinking alcohol before entering the tabernacle will make Aaron physically dirty, but rather that it will create in him a negative spiritual condition. Cleanness and uncleanness in this context are ritual, not physical. It is cleanness, not cleanliness. In a culture that recognizes ritual conditions of purity and impurity, it is crucial to have a means of restoring ritual cleanness. The Old Testament mandates washing with water to remove ritual uncleanness, rather than physical dirtiness, on a number of occasions:
And the Lord spake unto Moses, saying,
Take the Levites from among the children of Israel, and cleanse them. 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.” (Num. 8:5–7)
Thus shall Aaron come into the holy place: with a young bullock for a sin offering, and a ram for a burnt offering.
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. 16:3–4)
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.
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. (Lev. 15:7–8)
On each occasion, ritual cleanness is restored by washing with water, although in the last case, the uncleanness lasts until evening, even after washing. In the case of Aaron attiring himself in the holy garments, he would obviously need to “clean” all of the flesh to be touched by the garments, thus requiring extensive washing of one’s entire body, perhaps even immersion.
Another example is Exodus 30:17–21:
And the Lord spake unto Moses, saying,
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.
For Aaron and his sons shall wash their hands and their feet thereat:
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:
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.
John’s baptism is certainly related to the concept of achieving ritual cleanness by washing in water. The same concept would have underlain the ritual washings of the Qumran community, as Geza Vermes, a former professor of Jewish studies at Oxford and a noted authority on the Dead Sea Scrolls, explains:
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.
The elaboration of washing for ritual purity into some baptismal form was not unusual at the time of John. Indeed, Norman Golb, holder of the Rosenberger Chair in Jewish history and civilization at the University of Chicago, notes: “Baptismal rituals were 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.”
Thus, baptism could have been a natural development of the concept of using water to restore ritual cleanness. To the Qumran community and to Christians, however, a second symbolic function of baptism was initiation into a group. Thus for Israel, baptism became the rite of cleansing for a Jewish convert. For Qumran and Christianity, baptism further connoted entry into a community of believers.
Nephi, however, speaks of baptism as ritual cleansing but does not mention its second function—as a rite of entrance into a community. This function developed as part of the Book of Mormon baptismal ritual, but not until Alma began baptizing at the waters of Mormon. The description of that experience strongly suggests that this communal function was an innovation. (See commentary accompanying Alma 4:4; see also commentary accompanying Mosiah 4:3 and 18:8.) It should also be noted that the burial/resurrection imagery symbolically attached to baptism in the New Testament probably began with Paul (Rom. 6:12, Col. 2:12) and is entirely absent from the Book of Mormon. I hypothesize that the reason lies in the different contexts. For Paul, the death and resurrection of the Atoning Messiah was an important focus of preaching; hence, burial/resurrection symbolism is effective. In contrast, the Book of Mormon spends more time on the salvific aspects of the atonement than on the resurrection, which virtually requires the New Testament context of the crucifixion. As I have already pointed out (see commentary accompanying 1 Nephi 11:32–36), the crucifixion is not central to New World Christology and symbolism.
For Nephi, immersion in water would be an obvious and culturally appropriate way to restore ritual purity and fits into the question that is being asked—that is, how someone who is the Lamb of God, and therefore presumably sinless, should be in need of a ritual cleansing. In this earlier understanding of baptism as a ritual cleansing, Nephi’s use of the term makes sense. The baptism does not remove sin in that case, but rather the state of ritual impurity, which even the Savior could not avoid. One could (and did) become ritually impure without sinning.
Nephi does not mention the second meaning baptism acquired in New Testament times—marking the baptized person’s entry into a community—because this is the function that would not have made sense at this time in the Book of Mormon. For Nephi, there is no community to enter apart from that of his people. Nevertheless, the Nephite baptism does appear to have the expanded meaning of spiritual cleansing. Because there is a different term used, it is also possible that Nephi and his people made a distinction between the function of the ritually cleansing miqveh (which would still be appropriate under the law of Moses) and the spiritually cleansing baptism which appears to be innovative in Nephi’s community.