Baptism in the early church: history, theology, and liturgy in the first five centuries

This massive and impressive work by the well-known American patristics scholar starts with looking at the possible antecedents to Christian baptism (with John the Baptist being the front-runner!) and at the meaning of the words baptisma, baptizo (= submerge, overwhelm). It then goes through the relevant NT texts relating to Jesus’ baptism and Christian baptism, including en route a look at post-NT interpretation of Jesus’ baptism. We move from there to the early church, examining the literary and the archaeological evidence from the second to the fifth centuries, ending with two chapters on Augustine and then an extensive discussion of ancient baptisteries. In the centre of the book there are twelve pages of black and white photographs. It is a masterly work, lucidly written. It covers a huge amount of ground, but even so it cannot cover everything. So NT scholars might like more on the intriguing evidence on Jesus and John the Baptist in Jn 3–4 (as discussed by Backhaus, France and others), on baptism as the way to put one’s trust in Jesus, on the connection between Jesus’ baptism and Christian baptism, on the case for infant baptism, etc. But still there is plenty of persuasive and useful comment on issues and texts, e.g., on Jn 3.5, and on Pauline texts such as 1 Cor. 6.11 and 12.13 which should not be ‘dehydrated’. David Wenham