Paedo-Baptism Answers Who did John baptize?

dsanch1120

dsanch1120

Puritan Board Freshman
Hello everyone,
I was reading through Luke’s gospel this morning, specifically where Jesus is baptized by John the Baptist. Having been studying infant baptism recently, I’ve learned that Jewish proselyte baptism was, at times, done to infants and children of their parents were baptized. Is it likely, based on this, that John the Baptist baptized not only adult Jews, but their infants and children as well?
 
Keep in mind, that John, the baptizer, was not doing something new. Jewish Washings were not a new testament phenomenon. The people he was baptizing were people that already had the sign in their flesh.

I don’t know that I’ve ever come across anybody saying that John was washing infants, or the very young, as it was a baptism of repentance.
 
dsanch1120 said:
Hello everyone,
I was reading through Luke’s gospel this morning, specifically where Jesus is baptized by John the Baptist. Having been studying infant baptism recently, I’ve learned that Jewish proselyte baptism was, at times, done to infants and children of their parents were baptized. Is it likely, based on this, that John the Baptist baptized not only adult Jews, but their infants and children as well?
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There are Jewish records of proselyte ceremonies involving full-body immersion, and possibly they included infants... but these extra-biblical ceremonies do not give us a scintilla of light by which to evaluate the dominical institution of baptism. Advocates of a biblically-based and divinely regulated baptism (as worship) have no interest or concern with such rites, as they are nothing but the commandments of men (Mt.15:9).

If there were children and infants in the crowds that attended John and his preaching, then supposing John's baptism was not immersionary and indivitual, but effusive (spray) and corporate, these too would have been baptized in the nature of the case. It is how the children of Israel gathered for worship (Dt.31:12; see Ex.10:8-9, N.B. v10, "little ones").
 
dsanch1120 said:
Hello everyone,
I was reading through Luke’s gospel this morning, specifically where Jesus is baptized by John the Baptist. Having been studying infant baptism recently, I’ve learned that Jewish proselyte baptism was, at times, done to infants and children of their parents were baptized. Is it likely, based on this, that John the Baptist baptized not only adult Jews, but their infants and children as well?
Click to expand...

Daniel,
I think John was baptizing households. When a gentile repented in the OT, all his males were circumcised. The same goes for the baptism for remission of sins. Note that he was calling the whole nation to repentance; it was in that sense a corporate rite: "Then went out to him Jerusalem, and all Judaea, and all the region round about Jordan, And were baptized of him in Jordan, confessing their sins" (Matt 3:5-6 KJV). In this sense it was like the blood of the covenant that was sprinkled on the whole nation in Exodus 24:8 KJV, including the infants (compare Heb 10:29 KJV). Compare it also to the Exodus in which the Israelites as a nation were "all baptized unto Moses in the cloud and in the sea," infants included (1 Cor 10:2 KJV).

I personally incline toward the Reformers' view that John's baptism was identical with Christian baptism, not merely a preparatory rite unto the ushering in of the Christian dispensation.
 
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