Dan:
The word baptizo means to be overwhelmed ore covered as in a burial.
I would like for you to show me where by the word for sprinkling is used in reference to baptism or where one is sprinkled by example in the new testament conversions.
This is a quote from "Fundamental Christian Theology" by H.M. Hills for Frank and those immerssionists who think that "baptizo" means to immerse and nothing else but immerse.
1. The testimony from the Lexicons. Immersionists assert that "all lexicographers define Baptizo to man to immerse, to dip, to plunge; not one to sprinkle or to pour." Whether this assertion is true or false we will leave to be determined by the lexicographers themselves. They shall decide the question.
Schrevelius, the great master of the Greek language whose Lexicon has been a standard authority for about two hundred years, defines Baptizo by mergo, abluo, lavo; that is to immerse, to wash, to sprinkle or wet. The same definitions are given by Scapula, and Hendericus. Only one of the words denotes exclusive immersion, the others signifying the application of water by other modes.
Schleusner, in his Lexicon of the New Testament, a work of the highest authority, defines Baptizo: 1. To immerse in water: 2. To wash, sprinkle or cleanse with water: 3. To baptize: 4. To pour out largely." Only one of these definitions restricts the meaning to immersion. Three of them denote the application of water by affusion.
Cole defines Baptizo: "to baptize, to wash, to sprinkle."
Suidas defines Baptizo by "mergo, madefacio, lavo, abluo, purgo, mundo; that is to immerse, moisten, sprinkle, wash, purge, cleanse.
Passor defines it "to immerse, to wash, to sprinkle."
Conlor defines it by "mersione, ablutione, etaspersione"; that is, immersion, washing, sprinkling or wetting.
Robinson defines: 'to wash, to lave, to cleanse by washing." "In reference to the rite of baptism, it would seem to have expressed not always simply immersion but the more general idea of ablution or affusion." He then proceeds through a whole column to prove that it could not always mean immersion, and must mean in many places pouring or sprinkling" (pp. 118, 119).
Grove defines it "to dip, plunge, immerse, wash, wet, moisten, stain, sprinkle, steep, imbue, dye, or color."
On the testimony of the Lexicographers, then the theory of immersionists or Baptists falls.
2. We now turn to the Septuagint translation of the Old Testament, and the Apochryphal books. This translation was made perhaps B. C. 280. It proves that the word was used long before Christ, to convey the idea of ceremonial cleansing, by the use of water. Bapto, and its derivative Baptizo were often so employed as to convey the idea of affusion, or sprinkling, and to exclude the idea of immersion.
(1) We read, Leviticus 14: 6, "As for the living bird he shall take it, and the cedar wood, and the scarlet, and the hyssop, and shall dip (or tinge) them and the living bird in the blood of the bird that was killed over the running water." Here it is evident that bapsei, the future of bapto, cannot mean to immerse, for it is impossible that the "living bird, and the cedar wood, and the scarlet and the hyssop," should all have been totally immersed in the blood of one bird.
(2) It is found in Septuagint, 2 Kings 5: 14, in the case of Naaman, a translation of the Hebrew "tawbal," which is translated fourteen times by bapto, but here by (baptizo) because it expressed not the dipping, but the resultant ceremonial cleansing of Naaman. Seven gave the idea of completeness to the Hebrew mind.
(3) In Daniel 4: 33, it is recorded that Nebuchadnezzar's body (ebaphe) was wet with the dew of heaven. Now what is the action which is here expressed by ebaphe an inflection of bapto? If we allow the Scriptures to explain their own phraseology, they will determine this to be a clear case of affusion or sprinkling, and not of immersion. Thus, "The dew fell upon the camp in the night" (Num. 11: 9). "His heavens drop down dew" (Deut. 33: 28). "As the dew falleth on the ground" (2 Sam. 17: 12).
(4) The next case is in the book of Judith, and shows conclusively that baptizo was used to express the general idea of ritual purification, in a case where immersion is excluded with absolute certainty. Judith 12: 6, 7, 9. She "purified herself" (ebaptizeto) at the fountain, not in it, and entered into her tent pure (katharos). It was in a camp of soldiers, under the eye of a guard, at a spring (epi ????). A hard pressed Baptist writer suggests that she might have found a horse-trough large enough to immerse herself in. It only shows to what silly lengths men will go to force an argument, when they make "at a spring," mean "in an imaginary horse-trough!" The purification of a Jew was almost always by sprinkling, and with running water.
(5) The next and only other use of (baptizo) in Septuagint is in Ecciesiasticus or Son of Sirach, 34: 25, and is in itself enough to settle the whole question. "He that is purified (baptizomenos) from a dead body and touches it again, what does his cleansing profit him?" To see how it was done read Numbers 19: 13, 16, 19. A clean person took a bunch of hyssop and dipped it in running water and sprinkled the unclean. See the New Testament references to the same ceremony in Heb. 9: 13, 14, and Heb. 10: 22. The whole process of cleansing was by sprinkling, and yet in the passage above quoted, and in Heb. 9: 10, it is called baptism. It is abosolutely conclusive.
Josephus, referring to this, wrote 250 years later. Baptizing by this ashes put into spring water, they sprinkled on the third day and seventh day (Josephus, Book 4, chapter 4).
These passages clearly show that baptizo had been used by Jewish Greeks to represent the idea of ceremonial cleansing by water for at least two or three centuries before Christ. Christ never explained the word, and it was in this sense therefore that He used it. It was so used when the entire cleansing was by sprinkling. Mr. Carson, the Baptist, translates the passage, "immersed on account of a dead body." This does violence to the Mosaic law, and also to the meaning of "apo," which means "from" and not on account of. Such a rendering would not be thought of but to save a needy theory.
