Note 26 — Chapter I · RELATIONS BETWEEN JESUS AND JOHN THE BAPTIST.

Our accounts are not unanimous as to the signification of John’s baptism. They all, it is true, agree in stating repentance, μετάνοια, to be one of its essential requirements; for even what Josephus says of the Baptist, that he admonished the Jews, practising virtue, just towards each other, and devout towards God, to come to his baptism, ἀρετὴν ἐπασκοῦντας, καὶ τῇ πρὸς ἀλλήλους δικαιοσύνῃ καὶ πρὸς τὸν Θεὸν εὐσεβεία χρωμένους βαπτισμῷ συνιέναι,26 has the same sense under a Greek form. Mark and Luke, however, while designating the baptism of John, βάπτισμα μετανοίας, add, εἰς ἄφεσιν ἁμαρτιῶν (i. 4, iii. 3). Matthew has not the same addition; but he, with Mark, describes the baptized as confessing their sins, ἐξομολογοὺμενοι τὰς ἁμαρτίας αὐτῶν (iii. 6). Josephus, on the other hand, appears in direct contradiction to them, when he gives it as the opinion of the Baptist, that baptism is pleasing to God, not when we ask pardon for some transgressions, but when we purify the body, after having first purified the mind by righteousness, οὕτω γὰρ καὶ τὴν βάπτισιν ἀποδεκτὴν αὐτῷ (τῷ Θεῷ) φανεῖσθαι, μὴ ἐπί τίνων ἁμαρτάδων παραιτήσει χρωμένων, ἀλλ’ ἐφ’ ἁγνείᾳ τοῦ σώματος, ἄτε δὴ, καὶ τῆς ψυχῆς δικαιοσύνῃ προεκκεκαθαρμένης. We might here be led to the supposition that the words for the remission of sins, εἰς ἄφεσιν ἁμαρτιῶν, as in Acts ii. 38, and other passages, was commonly used in relation to Christian baptism, and was thence transferred unhistorically to that of John; but as in the passages quoted from Ezekiel the washing typified not only reformation but forgiveness, the probabilities are in favour of the evangelical statement. Moreover, it is possible to reconcile Josephus and the Evangelists, by understanding the words of the former to mean that the baptism of John was intended to effect a purification, not from particular or merely Levitical transgressions, but of the entire man, not immediately and mysteriously through the agency of water, but by means of the moral acts of reformation.27