ABSTRACT
When writing to the churches of Rome c. 56 ce, Paul asked what seems to have been a rhetorical question, ‘Are you not aware that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus have been baptized into his death?’ (Romans 6:3). It may well be that some of the recipients were not fully aware of the connection between baptism and Christ’s death, but Paul certainly seemed to assume that all knew of the particular rite of initiation which had brought them into the koinonia of the Christian church.1 In his earlier letter to the Galatians, Paul had written, ‘For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ’ (Galatians 3:27), and in 1 Corinthians he had referred to divisions stemming from baptism. In none of the letters did Paul pause to give any lengthy explanation of baptism; he assumes that the recipients will know precisely what is being referred to. Whatever may have been the case at an earlier date, by the time of Paul’s ministry it seems that baptism was the established ritual of Christian initiation. According to Matthew’s Gospel (28:19), it was commanded by Jesus, and though many commentators take this to be a post-resurrection redaction, it nevertheless reflects the conviction of the Matthean community that the practice could be traced to Jesus himself. This at least is correct in that the Synoptic Gospels all attest that Jesus himself was baptized by John the Baptist in the Jordan. While the Fourth Gospel seems quite deliberately to avoid any hint that Jesus was baptized, nevertheless it too is clear in asserting the one-time link between the Baptist and Jesus. As James Dunn points out, the Christian story begins uniformly across all four Gospels with John the Baptist.2
