The particular disputation that concerns Mormon is the baptism of “little children.” Note that this is not specifically infant baptism, though it certainly includes that. The Book of Mormon specific instruction is that concerned with little children, not infant children. This may or may not be significant. We do not get enough information to clearly understand the nature of the disputed rite.
It has been asserted, however, that this is an example of how the Book of Mormon responds to issues prevalent in Joseph Smith’s day, when there were certainly disputations concerning the Catholic practice of infant baptism, and the reaction to that which required informed baptisms, necessarily indicating that infants should not be baptized, being unable to intelligently accept the meaning behind the symbol.
This assumption of modern issue-influence also assumes that the modern context was the influence because it can be demonstrated, and it also assumes that there was no ancient influence creating the same questions and issues. This is where the difficulties with our Mesoamerican documentation come in to play, for our evidence for the nature of religious rites comes from after the Conquest, and center on the Aztec beliefs, which post-date the Book of Mormon. However, we are now examining a period in the Book of Mormon that is at the close, and the time-depth difference is smaller. Once again, the persistence of religion in non-modern societies does suggest the probability of cultural continuity over much longer time periods than exist in this modern and rapidly changing world.
The Aztecs practiced an infant-washing ritual that was so similar to the Catholic baptism that it was declared to be a baptism by sympathetic Spanish Fathers. The presence of a religious belief system that produced the need to wash (and spiritually cleanse the infant) could easily influence Christian baptismal practice, just as it did in the Old World.
Some time after 100 AD, the Didache gave the following rules for baptism:
“And concerning baptism, baptize this way: Having first said all these things, baptize into the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, in living water. But if you have no living water, baptize into other water; and if you cannot do so in cold water, do so in warm. But if you have neither, pour out water three times upon the head into the name of Father and Son and Holy Spirit. (“Didache” Early Christian Fathers. Ed. Cyril C. Richardson. Macmillan Publishing Co., Inc.1970, p. 174).
The interesting part of this is the dual provision for immersion, and casting water on the head. The clear preference is for immersion, a point that is clear from other early sources of baptismal practices (Paul F. Bradshaw. The Search for the Origins of Christian Worship. Oxford University Press, 2002, p. 155). What makes the casting of the water on the head is that it is specifically mentioned as requiring the act to be repeated three times. The Didache is a document written in Greek, and certainly Greek funeral practices would be familiar to many in the Greek speaking world. The Greek preference for disposing of the dead was burial, but there was a provision for the merciful symbolic burial of someone by casting three handsful of dirt on the head. That was considered a sufficient burial if one did not have the time. This is the precise model that we see being adopted into the Didache community’s baptismal practice. The baptism has adopted the Pauline association of death and resurrection. Therefore, the immersion is the analog of a full burial. When one is unable to perform the rite properly, however, the Greek symbolic burial informs the Christian symbolic baptism, and three handsful of water “bury” where the actually burial was three handsful of dirt.
It is this cross-breeding of symbolic content that could easily have occurred to give rise to the suggestion for the need of infant baptism.