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Michael,
Adams really does answer these questions very well. Give him a read...
WRT baptism of proselytes, Adams quotes a guy by the name of John Scott Johnson who says:
There is no assured evidence available that John or any other Jew of that time, knew anything of immersion as a Bible rite. It is stated that Jews in those days immersed proselytes, but this statement lacks historical proof. God told Moses how to receive proselytes (it was by circumcision--"When a stranger...will keep the passover..let all his males be circumcised'--Ex. 12:48,) and there is no adequate historical evidence that the Jews in Christ's time added anything to God's direction. If sufficient evidence ever appears that the Essenes (it is held that they immersed) or any other body of Jews practiced such an anomaly as immersion, such a repudiation of every Bible command and example relating to purifying, it would show only how far the Chosen People had retrograded, had fallen away from obedience to God. it would not prove that John--"filled with the Holy Ghost, even from his mother's womb" (Luke 1:15)--followed a procedure so entirely without Bible precedent, and with not a word of explanation or justification. He alleged no revelation calling for such a departure from all the related commands and practices of the Old Testament. But if John was ever guilty of such an irregularity, and if he was able to "put across" to the Pharisees and Sadducees such an oddity and that the Lord Jesus, the Jehovah of the Old Testament, in fulfilling "all righteousness" (Matt. 3:15)--which is obedience to law--would have submitted to a proceeding which was not commanded, was not prefigured, and utterly disregarded His own detailed instructions to Moses. Immersion is foreign to Bible usage, is not in the Bible picture anywhere.
Commenting on this Adams goes on to say:
...True, there is evidence [from Edersheim] that at a later period the Jews laid down three requirements for the admission of proselytes: circumcision, a sacrifice, and baptism. But the sources for this are late, and by their time Jewish thought itself possibly may have been influenced by John the Baptist or even Christian practice...
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