Classical Greek Usage

I see that you have adopted my suggestion, and so in your last letter you say: “I find that the word baptizo is defined as meaning in classic Greek, ‘Dip, plunge, immerse,’ etc. If so, how can you be justified in your interpretation of what it means in the New Testament?”

I proceed at once to answer. Even admitting that the Greek lexicon which you have consulted defines correctly the classic usage of baptizo (that is a question which I will consider hereafter), this does not by any means settle the other question as to its usage in the New Testament. Very many words employed in the Greek Testament are used in a sense very much modified from that which they bear in classic Greek. This you will readily see must be so from the necessities of the case. Words are the signs of ideas: and when you wish to convey to anyone a new idea, for which his own language has no word exactly fitted, you are obliged to invent an entirely new word, or to use such words as his language affords, in a modified sense. Hence it will be found that there is not a distinctively Christian conception in the New Testament which does not need to give expression to itself through some word of classic Greek more or less changed from its classic meaning. Theos (God), Christos (Christ), metanoia (repentance), agape (love), elpis (hope), pistis (faith), hamartia (sin), sarx (flesh), ouranos (heaven) — how different are the ideas conveyed by these words to the Christian reader of the New Testament from any which they ever conveyed to the readers of Homer, Xenophon, or Thucydides!

Deipnon (supper) expressed to the mind of Plato a very different thought from that which Paul had when he spoke of the Lord’s Supper. To the Greek this word was the name for “the full meal of the day,” whenever taken. Who knows but that the Corinthians made this mistake of assuming that the word was used in its classic sense, and so fell to eating and drinking, — almost to surfeiting, — until Paul found it necessary to rebuke them, and to explain to them the nature of the ordinance? (See i Cor. 1 1: 20-30.)

The classic meaning of no word is an absolute guide to its signification in the New Testament. Whenever any distinctively Christian or ecclesiastic idea is to be expressed, the Greek word will be found used in a modified sense.

The experience of all modern missionaries to heathen lands illustrates the same law. Before they can preach to the people in their native tongue they find it necessary to explain to them that the words employed are used in a different sense from that to which they have been accustomed. So, also, in translating the Scriptures. As one of the ablest of our American missionaries said to me a few years ago: “The language of all these nations needs to be converted as much as the people.”

If, then, we admit, for the sake of argument, that baptizo in the Greek always means immerse, it still remains an open question whether its religious sense is the same or not.

Suppose it were necessary to employ some word to express the idea of “ceremonious religious cleansing in the use of water,” and no word was found in classic Greek exactly expressing that idea, what is to be done? Just what was done in numberless other cases: some word must be converted to that use.

Would it not be entirely in harmony with well-known laws of language to seize upon baptizo for that purpose?

Here is a word meaning to immerse, to envelop. One of the methods of cleaning is by immersing in pure water. This word is therefore laid hold upon to express the general idea of ceremonial cleansing with water. Certainly in this there would be no violence done to the well-known laws of human speech. For exactly that sort of thing was done, long before the times of Christ, in the case of another Greek verb closely related to baptizo. I refer to bapto. This word originally meant to dip, or immerse, somewhat the same as baptizo, as the dictionaries represent it. But as dipping or immersion was one method of coloring, or dyeing, it came to be used to mean color, or dye, without any reference to mode whatever.

I know this point has been disputed by Alexander Campbell and some other zealous immersionists. But the facts are so palpable as to compel the ablest of all the Baptist writers — Dr. Alexander Carson — to yield it entirely; and so he says: “Although this meaning arose from dyeing by dipping, yet the word has come by appropriation to denote dyeing without reference to mode... Nothing in the history of words is more common than to enlarge or diminish their signification. In this way bapto, from signifying mere mode, came to be applied to a certain operation, usually performed in that mode. From signifying to dip, it came to signify to dye by dipping, and afterwards to denote dyeing in any manner. A like process might be shown in the history of a thousand other words.”¹

The examples in which this meaning occurs are such as fully to justify the conclusion to which Dr. Carson comes.

Thus Hippocrates, speaking of a coloring fluid, says: “When it drops upon the garments, they are dyed.”

So Nearchus relates that the Indians dye their beards; and Ælian speaks of an old coxcomb who attempted to conceal his age by dyeing his hair.

Æschylus speaks of a garment dyed by the sword of Ægisthus.

Homer, in the battle of the frogs and mice, relates that Crombophagus — so Cowper names this warrior — “fell and breathed no more, and the lake was dyed with blood.”

Alexander Campbell, Dr. Gale, of England, and other Baptist writers even here insist that the lake was “dipped by hyperbole.” “The literal sense is,” says Dr. Gale, “the lake was dipped in blood.” To which Dr. Carson replies: “Never was such a figure... What a monstrous paradox in rhetoric is the figure of the dipping of a lake in the blood of a mouse!... The lake is said to be dyed, not dipped nor poured nor sprinkled. There is in the word no reference to mode.²

What now would be more natural than that baptizo, meaning originally to immerse, should come to be used in a secondary sense to convey the idea of cleansing, or purifying without reference to mode?

Of course this argument does not prove that as a matter of fact it did undergo any transition of that sort. That proof is to be submitted hereafter. For the present I am only endeavoring to show that such a change would do no violence to the laws of language. In the words of Dr. Carson, already quoted: “A like process might be shown in the history of a thousand other words.”