"Baptism" means "Dunked" Part 1

So many things in the New Testament are entertaining. The translators work to hide the fun nature of Jesus’ way of talking. The words translated as “baptism” and “baptize” are good examples. Translators use English versions of untranslated Greek words because the common meaning of these words is funny. The verb means “to dunk,” and “to dip.” The noun means a “dunking” or a “dipping.” Jesus uses these words both in ordinary and funny ways, as we will see.

Translators hide this. They want Jesus to be solemn, rather than playful. This didn’t start with our English translators. This use of the Greek, as opposed to translation, as so often is the case, begins with the Latin Vulgate.

The Greek Words

The word, “baptism,” is from the noun baptisma (βάπτισμα), which Jesus uses only six times. Half of those verses refer to the “dunkings” given by John. This Greek noun is only found in the New Testament (NT) and later works. The noun is from a common Greek verb, baptizo (βαπτιζο). Jesus uses this verb only eight times.  However, three of those verses overlap with the use of the noun, so there are only a total of eleven verses that use the noun, the verb, or both. Notice, most of the times the invented noun is used either in a reference to John or with the verb so that its meaning would be clear.

The verb means  "to dip", "to plunge", "to be drenched", "to be drowned," and "to get in deep water."  I especially like the last idea because it is the funniest. I suspect that this usage might have been common among fishermen. From the verb, we know that the noun means "dipping" or "dunking" and therefore, "temporary immersion."

There is also another noun, baptistes, (βαπτιστοῦ). Jesus uses this word three times, always to describe John the Dunker. This word is in the NT used before either of the words above, as the nickname of John. There is also another verb, that is the root of baptizo, bapto (βάψω). Jesus only used this verb in one verse of a parable. This shorter, more common word is used as a simpler form of “to dip.” It is also used specifically to describe dipping to dye cloth and dipping hot metal in liquid to temper it.

We know that the practice of dunking people in the Jordan was made popular by John and was continued by Jesus’s followers. However, the Judeans of Jesus’s time had a common practice of taking ritual baths. The bathtub used was called a mikvah. These bathtubs are commonly found in the excavation of Judean communities of the era. This was referred to, not as “dipping,” but “bathing.” Jesus never uses this word, though the Greek word meaning “washing,” specifically the hands, face, and feet is something mistranslated as “bathe.” So the innovation of Jesus’s time was dunking people outside in nature, and calling it “dunking,” not “bathing.”

Jesus Meant “Dip”

Jesus’s first use of the verb “baptize” appears during the Last Supper. This is interesting because it means that the word doesn’t appear at all during the Sermon on the Mount nor in the Gospel that has more of Jesus’s verses than any other. The verse is Matthew 26:23.

KJV: He that dippeth his hand with me in the dish, the same shall betray me.​
Literal: The one dipping in with me the hand into this bowl will turn me in.

Notice that the verb, baptizo, is not translated as “baptize” here. It is translated to its real meaning, “to dip,” because this is how Jesus used the verb. A similar verse in Mark 14:20 is translated the same way. So, in two verses, one fourth of this verb’s use by Jesus, the verb is correctly translated Interestingly, the Latin Vulgate also translated this verse with the Latin verb that means “to dip,” intinguit.

To understand this verse, it helps to know that people of Jesus’s time dipped the bread, which was often hard, into wine to soften it. This was a common practice for everyone in the Roman world, and it is still a common practice in many places today, especially among Italians, including Italian Americans, like my family when I was growing up. In our era, many of us dunk donuts in coffee. In Jesus’s era, they dunked bread into wine.

So, it is not that the translators didn’t know the meaning of the Greek word. They wanted to intentionally create a new word, one with a more religious meaning. However, since Jesus clearly used this word to mean “to dip” in his first use of it, it is impossible to make the argument that he didn’t embrace the original meaning of the verb.

A Joke Using These Words

Sometimes Jesus uses these words to be entertaining. One example is Mark 10:39. In this verse he uses the verb twice and the noun once. Here, Jesus is talking to two of his followers about what they will be going through. In Biblical translation, his meaning seems religious:

KJV: Ye know not what ye ask: can ye drink of the cup that I drink of? and be baptized with the baptism that I am baptized with?

But a literal translation has an entertaining feel.

Literal: No, you have not seen what you are asking for yourselves: do you have the power to drink this cup that I myself am drinking and the dunking that I myself am dunked to be dunked?

The end of this translation seems convoluted because I am following Jesus’s word order. I explain why below.

Because we can’t see the word forms, we cannot see the joke here. “The dunking” noun is in the form of an object of the verb. But the only verb so far that takes an object is “to drink.” It is an infinitive because the only active verb is the earlier verb, translated as “can,” but meaning “have the power.” So, Jesus asks his listeners, if they have the power to drink the dunking in which he is dunked. This is clearly a laugh line. The meaning changes with the last word of the verse, the punchline. This is the infinitive “to be dunked.” This final word changes the last clause’s meaning to:

Literal: Do you have the power to…be dunked the dunking that I myself am dunked?

This is still entertaining, but originally Jesus clearly told it like a joke where he changed the verse’s meaning with its last word. This is a common form of joke, even today. The setup is followed by a bit of nonsense as the first punchline. That is followed by the real punchline that offers a surprise twist to change the meaning.

Conclusions

So like many uncommon words Jesus uses, he used the word “baptize” and “baptism” for humor. He may have even invented the noun for that purpose because the noun is first seen in the NT.

“Baptize” and “baptism”have been manipulated by translators so they have a religious meaning. Certainly, by the time of the Vulgate, they had become religious because dunking had become a sacrament. Jesus’s listeners, however, at the time would not have heard this as religious at all. The fact that its original meaning was light-hearted is more or less typical of such changes.

There is more to say about “baptize” and “baptism” and how Jesus uses these words. The fact that he didn’t use them frequently allows us to spend more time analyzing his meaning, which is the topic of another article(s0.