baptize
with the Holy Spirit and fire (Matt. iii. 11) shows that he viewed his
baptism as a symbol, rather than as a means, of remission of sin. But it
was more than a sign of repentance, it was a confession of loyalty to the
kingdom which John's successor was to establish. It had thus a twofold
significance: (_a_) confession of and turning from the old life of sin,
and (_b_) consecration to the coming kingdom. Whence, then, came this
ordinance? Not from the Essenes, for, unlike John's baptism, the bath
required by these Jewish ascetics was an oft-repeated act. Further, John's
rite had a far deeper religious significance than the Essene washings.
These performed their ablutions to secure ritual cleanness as exemplary
disciples of the Mosaic ideal. The searching of heart which preceded
John's baptism, and the radical change of life it demanded, seem foreign
to Essenism. The baptism of John, considered as a ceremony of consecration
for the coming kingdom, was parallel rather to the initiatory oaths of the
Essene brotherhood than to their ablutions. Their custom may have served
to suggest to John a different application of the familiar sacred use of
the bath; indeed John could hardly have been uninfluenced by the usage of
his contemporaries; yet in this, as in his thought, he was not a product
of their school.

81. John's baptism was equally independent of the pharisaic influence. The
scribes made much of "divers washings," but not with any such significance
as would furnish to John his baptism of repentance and of radical change
of life. That he was not following a pharisaic leading appears in the
question put to him by the Pharisees, "Why, then, baptizest thou?" (John
i. 25). They saw something unique in the ceremony as he conducted it.

82. Many have held that he derived his baptism from the method of
admitting proselytes into the Jewish fellowship. It is clear, at least,
that the later ritual prescribed a ceremonial bath as well as circumcision
and sacrifice for all who came into Judaism from the Gentiles, and it is
difficult to conceive of a time when a ceremonial bath would not seem
indispensable, since Jews regarded all Gentile life as defiling. While
such an origin for John's baptism would give peculiar force to his rebuke
of Jewish confidence in the merits of Abraham (Matt. iii. 9), it is more
likely, as Keim has shown (JN. II. 243 and note), that in this as in his
other thought John learned of his predecessors r