Hello, my name is Matt Whitman. This is the Ten Minute Bible Hour Podcast. This is episode something something on the book of John. We're in John chapter one. And if you're brand new to this podcast, well, sometimes we just talk about things for a second before we start talking about the Bible thing, but usually they relate. Today is such a day. Welcome, by the way. For a long time I thought I understood the origin story of military salutes, but now I realize I don't. I had been told that the military salute, and I'm picturing the one where an inferior officer is showing respect to a superior officer, and they make sort of a real flat, like knife hand kind of thing. They bend their elbow and they touch the, you know, like their the side of their forefinger to their forehead or their brow or the tip of the cap or something like that. That kind of a salute. I thought I knew where that came from. I had heard for the longest time that that was descended from the Middle Ages and knights with their visors on their armor, and they'd see another knight and they'd be like, I better show that knight who I am. So we don't start just lancing each other. So he raised up their visor and be like, There's no need for us to lance each other. Behold, I am Sir So-and-so. And the other knight would lift up his visor and be like, Behold, I am Sir So-and-So. And they would reckon each other, and it was a sign of mutual respect and a warrior context, and they would just move on. Everything's cool. And then I had been told that that just gradually morphed into a gesture that has basically the same meaning, like respect to a peer or a superior or deference in a warrior context, and that that's where you got the modern salute. But it turns out that might be hogwash, hokum, if you will. That's really disappointing to me. I was kind of hoping that was true. It looks like the people who study salutes for a living are all saying that it just comes from removing your hat in the presence of a lady or of someone, you know, a fellow gentleman who's worthy of respect, and you remove the hat as a way to say, I respect you. Maybe that's kind of out of fashion. Like tipping your hat is something that's been pretty made fun of on the internet lately, and I get it. And you know, maybe the ladies are in a place now where y'all are like, no, that's old-fashioned. We don't like to be shown respect that way anymore. But I don't think that's true, actually. I've sat through a lot of Hugh Jackman movies with ladies, and I have never once seen a woman twist up her face in disgust when prime Hugh Jackman removes his hat and bows deeply at the waist before a lady while wearing a tux with tails, and then like holds his hand out to elegantly take her onto the ballroom floor to dance. No, I think a gesture of respect like that done well, I think it still communicates what it's intended to communicate. Anyways, the point. Whatever the salute thing started with, we can imagine the provenance, the flow of intended meaning that gets us up to a modern-day salute. Now, I know in the military they're rightly very picky about this is how you salute, this is not how you salute. But you know, maybe different militaries have different opinions about exactly what a proper salute looks like, but they're all trying to communicate the same thing. Likewise, there are a lot of different reads on exactly what the action of a baptism should look like. And I do think those differences of opinion matter. I do think the theology behind it is significant and worth discussing. But the one thing that makes it very possible for Christians and people who learn about Christianity to talk about baptism and the different ways that different groups approach it is that all Christians agree that Jesus is the one who does the saving. Jesus is the point of baptism, and where Christians disagree is about how to exactly do the baptism and about exactly how Jesus uses or what role baptism plays in initiating one's relationship with Jesus. Well, in this conversation, we're going to talk a little bit about the gesture and how it has evolved. So, in the same way that somewhere back in the day, there was some kind of gesture that was like a proto-salute that evolved into the modern salute. So, back in the day, let's say, I don't know, just pick a spot here just for the sake of discussion, John won, when there's this big baptizing festival that John is carrying on out in the desert. There was a way that baptism was being done, and it is clearly morphed into a few different ways that people do it over the centuries and today. In the early going, it looks like the kind of baptisms that were happening out here in the desert were dunks. Everybody was getting dunked in water. What is unclear is if that was all that is happening. So in John chapter 1, you know, we get a few references to baptism. I baptize with water, John replied, but among you stands one you do not know. He is the one who comes after me, the thongs of whose sandals I am not worthy to untie. Then verse 31, John again says, I myself did not know him, but the reason I came baptizing with water was that he might be revealed to Israel. Now, frankly, the baptizing, it doesn't come up that much in John chapter 1. The scene is not really fleshed out, and Jesus' baptism isn't even really recorded in John. It's kind of intoned, whereas Matthew, Mark, and Luke give us a picture of that baptism, that Jesus is baptized by John the Baptist in this context. Luke 3, 21 and forward describes it like this: When all the people were being baptized, Jesus was baptized too. And as he was praying, heaven was opened, and the Holy Spirit descended on him in bodily form like a dove, and a voice came from heaven. You are my son, whom I love. With you I am well pleased. Maybe down the road we'll talk about why John doesn't give us a bunch of details about the actual moment of baptism of Jesus, but for now we're talking about what these baptisms looked like back then. Well, the word that is used for baptism across the entire New Testament is baptismo. That's the verb form, the Greek verb form, to baptize. And then the noun is baptisma. There is zero ambiguity as to what this word means in that language at that time. It means to dip, to plunge, to immerse, or to wash or clean by immersing. So obviously, later on, Christians began to baptize in some different ways and at different points in the life of the individual. In the Bible, every single baptism is of someone who is of age, to kind of understand at least what is going on. We don't see infant baptism, for example, in the Bible. And we don't see baptism by a fusion, A-F-F-U-S-I-O-N. That means like dumping a bunch of water on somebody, like you remember the ice bucket challenge from a while ago. I guess that would be uh like affusion. We don't see baptism like that in the Bible, and we don't see baptism by aspersion. Aspersion means like to sprinkle water on top of somebody. And then if you're sitting here going, like, wait a minute, well, then like what does it mean then when we say, you know, somebody's casting aspersions? Well, to cast aspersions means to just throw out little nuggets, little droplets of accusation or slander at somebody. So it really is a very interesting word picture when you think about it that way. But in the Bible, back to the point, all the baptizing that is described or alluded to in any way where we can get a picture of the details of what is going on, it's all with somebody who's old enough to know what's going on, and it's all immersion. And that's not just even because of you know a detailed description that we get of exactly how the baptism occurred, it's because of what the word means. The word baptizo is different from the word rontizo, which means to sprinkle. They just aren't the same thing. If somebody was looking at documentation from some wars or some fights from our age in English, and there's a document that describes a time when there were no guns and everybody was reduced to fist fighting, and the word punched got used a whole bunch. Nobody would ever look back on that and be like, well, some of the punches were shooting with bullets. Well, no, there is no shoot punching. Punching just means you use your fist. Shooting is a different word and it means a different thing. So we wouldn't need a graphic description of, you know, well, then the guy balled up his fist and he held it back and he swung it forward and struck the other person with his fist. Okay, so it was that kind of punching, not the kind where you get a gun and shoot a bullet. Okay, I get it. No, they're just they're different words. This isn't a theological debate. This is just what how the Bible describes what is going on. So if we want to rightly envision what's happening with John's baptism and the origin of all baptismal practices within Christianity as they happen today, the best way to picture it is people getting dunked underwater. Now, the question mark is was there more to it? I've got more that I want to cover about baptism than we have time for today. And I want to talk about why this conversation matters in the point of it all. I don't want to rush it. So I'm going to suspend operations right here, and we'll finish out our conversation about the modes and means and methods of baptism, where it started and what it's turned into. More next time around. All right, I'm Matt. This is the 10 Minute Bible Hour Podcast. Let's do this again soon.