Hey, my friends, it's Matt. This is the 10-minute Bible Hour podcast, and today we are talking about baptism.

Specifically, we're talking about how Christians have done baptism at different points in history,

and looking a little bit of the rationale of why that evolved into different things, as opposed to it just always looking like it looked

like in the Bible, which we're looking at the literal word here, baptizo. In the Bible, pretty

clearly, literally people were getting dunked. Why did that change over time? What does that mean?

And how does that affect our understanding of the big grand point of baptism,

even as we think about it today? We started talking about this yesterday. We're going to finish

talking about it right after my friend Jeffrey plays some nice music for us. Here we go. 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? Was there a ceremonial washing as well? Some people theorize that there might have been. You could maybe see some glimpses of that in the text. Clearly, baptism in part was emblematic of being washed clean of sin. So that would make sense. But again, the word baptizo is

inarguable. We have a whole bunch of extra biblical sources where the same word is used to describe

the same practice. Josephus at one point in Jewish wars talks about a sword being dipped into something. He uses Baptizo. That's written,

I mean, within a few years of when John has written. So that would be to the same people.

Josephus is from the same background. They'd be using the word the exact same way. Josephus also uses

baptizzo to describe flooding or to flood, like people flooding

into Jerusalem. He describes that at one point. Plutarch at one point gives an instruction

for somebody to plunge themselves into the sea. He uses baptize for that as well. Plutarch also

talks about somebody being overcome with financial

burden, like drowning in debt and or, you know, over your head in debt. And there, he uses the term

baptized for that kind of metaphor, that kind of image. Plato, a few hundred years, but I do not know

all these up the top of my head, obviously just to be super clear on that. Of course, I went and looked up some extra biblical sources before

we talked. So there's probably somebody who's smart enough to know all this off the top of their

head, but you're not talking to him here. Plato talked about something being soaked in wine,

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