ABSTRACT
Both the liturgical and doctrinal evidence for baptism from the pre-Nicene period is sparse. First, the Christian churches seem to have grown through a period of orality, when rites and ceremonies were part of tradition handed on, but not necessarily written down. Once the tradition needed to be written down, antiquity was not in the habit of preserving old documents as collector’s items. Worn-out manuscripts were discarded and replaced by new ones. This means that what liturgical fragments and documents have survived are fortunate accidents which enable us to have some idea of the rites and practices of this period. However, since the survivals are few, we should not infer that each one is a typical rite representative of all Christian churches everywhere at that time. The liturgical documents in particular witness to a particular area or group at a particular time, and how typical a rite may have been often must remain an open question. With theological writings, we are only slightly more fortunate. Writers such as Tertullian and Origen do indeed reflect on the theological meaning of baptism, either directly or indirectly. But it is impossible to know how representative their views were, or how widely their writings were disseminated. They certainly give us some insight as to what certain articulate Christian thinkers thought. Within the parameters of these limitations, we may proceed to investigate these sources, by geographical grouping.
