Sellers’s Baptismology, Part 2: Baptism as Identification Amounting to a Merger

Part 1

Sellers asked what Mark 16:16 (“He that believeth and is baptized [βαπτισθεις, baptistheis] shall be saved”) would mean to us if that form of baptizō had been translated? Could it be used to argue for the necessity of a water ritual as a condition of salvation?

Or what about Acts 2:41: “Then they that gladly received his word were baptized (ἐβαπτίσθησαν, ebaptisthēsan).” Should we imagine three thousand people making their way from the upper room to the Jordan river so an apostle could dip, splash, pour, or sprinkle water on them?

There are those, Sellers warned, who try to impose one meaning on a word, but language doesn’t obey the imposers. This is especially true of the Greek word baptizō. There are no grounds for confining its meaning to “to immerse” as in a water ritual. Matthew 3:11 refers to one being baptized “with the Holy Ghost and with fire.”

Matthew 20:22 Jesus rhetorically asks His interlocuter: “Are you . . . able to be baptized with the baptism I am baptized with?” Was He referring to “being immersed in the immersion He was immersed in”? What about Luke 12:50? Did the Lord intend to refer to an immersion he was to be immersed in?

In the study of any word its history must be carefully considered. Secondary meanings arise from primary meanings, and metaphorical uses arise from literal meanings. Take as an example the word “crank.” What did this word mean when it came into our language?  It started out signifying something that was bent, and this underlying idea still persists in every use of this word. Out of it came the verb “crankle,” which meant “to zig-zag,” and he who crankled moved in a course that had many sharp bends. This idea still survives today in the word “crinkle,” and those who crinkle-crankle move in a zig-zag manner. In the seventeenth century the word “crank” was used to denote a twist (a sharp bend) in speech as will be seen in Milton’s L’Allegro:

Haste thee, Nymph, and bring with thee jest and youthful jollity, Quips and Cranks, and wanton Wiles, Nods and Becks and wreathed Smiles.

Later this word was used to describe an eccentric idea or act, then to describe a person with a mental bent or twist, and we still call such people “cranks” today. Many who read this will remember the bent bar that was used to start an automobile. And what did we call this?  A “crank,” of course.[1]

Behind baptizō is βάπτω baptō, which occurs three times in the New Testament: Luke 16:24, John 13:26, Revelation 19:13. It means “to dip.” The third instance suggests that something more:

It . . . sets forth the idea of the Lord Jesus clothed in a vesture that has been dipped in blood and is still dripping from having been so dipped. But since the history of baptō shows that it had already come to mean “to dye,” this passage should be translated, “clothed in a vesture dyed with blood.”

In the ancient East, the work of dyeing was quite prominent and important. And since most dyeing was done by dipping the material into a liquid dye, the word baptō came to mean “to dye,” as can be seen in numerous examples from Classical Greek, Koine Greek, and the Papyrus manuscripts. Dr. James W. Dale covers most of all this in his monumental work on Classic Baptism.[2]

. . . the word baptō came to be spelled baptizō . . . . This is the word that is found eighty times in the New Testament.

The Greek-speaking Hebrews . . . knew quite well that baptizō  meant both “to dip” and “to dye.” The Septuagint translators used it to render the Hebrew word for “dipping” in 2 Kings 5:14, and to translate the Hebrew word for “dyed” in Ezekiel 23:15.

The King James Version renders baptizō  in the Septuagint of Isaiah 21:4 as “fearfulness affrighted (βαπτίζει, baptizei) me.” Sellers thought “fearfulness overwhelmed me” more helpful and accurate. In

. . . one of the very early occurrences of baptizō from the papyri, cited by Moulton and Milligan, . . . baptisma means “flooded” or “overwhelmed with calamities.” This shows that this word was then in use in the metaphorical sense . . . and shows why the Lord Jesus spoke of His death as a baptism in Matthew 20:22-23; Mark 10:38-39; and Luke 12:50.

For Sellers, the most important truth of all concerning baptizō is that it “had taken on the meaning of ‘to dye’” and became a term of art for those who worked in the dyeing process. This takes us straight to the meaning Sellers wanted to highlight:

When cloth is dipped into a vat of dye, it is not simply colored. It actually takes on the character of the dye into which it is dipped. There is a merger between the cloth and the dye that is permanent. Ancient dyers understood this and spoke of baptizing cloth in purple, scarlet, or blood. This invested or imbued the cloth with a certain color. Since this process introduced a dye that entered so deeply and so extensively into the very substance of the cloth so that no part was left unaffected, the cloth was no longer called wool, silk, or linen, but was called purple or scarlet by those who dyed it and those who sold it.

In Acts 16:14 Lydia is described as “a seller of purple,” that is, the cloth that had been dyed in purple from Thyatira, a substance derived from boiled marine snails. This made baptizō suitable for referring metaphorically to a spiritual reality for which there was no one word, at least not in English. “There is no English word that fully sets forth the ideas that they were using baptizō to express.” The closest words English has, in Sellers’s opinion, are “identify” and “identification.” And this is the idea he developed.[3]

“Identification” does not, however, exhaust the meaning of “baptism.” There is also the element of merger:

If a man takes a position with a large corporation, he becomes identified with that company. And  while  such an  act  would  also signify a relationship, it would  not indicate a merger. However, if three men formed a legal partnership, they would all be identified with it, related to it and merged with it. Something like this is the concept the ancient Greeks were expressing by the word baptizō.

. . . it becomes the task of all who study the Bible in a search for God’s truth to ask each time they come upon a member of the baptō family of words what concept or idea is being set forth . . . in its context. . . .

After commissioning eleven disciples to His herald the Gospel (Mark 16:15-20), Jesus added: “He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved.” Again, since baptizō has not been translated, what meaning shall we attach to this word?

To be continued.

Notes

[1] “What Does Baptizō  Mean?,” Seed & Bread, No. 135, March 10, 1981

[2] James W. Dale, Classic Baptism: An Inquiry into the Meaning of the Word as Determined by the Usage of Classical Greek Writers, Presbyterian & Reformed Pub Co., [1867] 1989.

[3] “Baptism Means Identification,” Seed & Bread, No. 136, March 10, 1981.

Links to other posts on Otis Q. Sellers

• • • The Passover, the new meaning Christ gave it, and our relationship to it
    • Discovering Otis Q. Sellers: an autobiographical vignette
    • Otis Q. Sellers: Maverick Workman (2 Tim 2:15)
    • Getting to know Otis Q. Sellers, subversive heir to the Bible conference movement
    • Otis Q. Sellers in New York, 1978
    • Sellers’s Eschatology: Some Distinctives
    • The day Otis Q. Sellers received Christ: November 23, 1919
    • God’s Next Move? The Second Coming, not of Christ, but of His Spirit
    • From (mostly) Jewish “ekklesiai” to anti-Jewish “churches” in 80 years: Dean Stanley’s questions