Jordan pictures
Nov. 27th, 2005 01:38 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
The Dukes have put some of their pictures from the Jordan trip online. The first half of the trip has captions; the second half, you have to guess what we're doing. :-) Actually, I think the only one that still needs explanation is that the next-to-last picture is of some Dead Sea scrolls.
Click the below picture to go to their album!

Click the below picture to go to their album!

no subject
You should see the crowds of Christian tourists/pilgrims we get, lining up on the banks of the Jordan, in those white gown-thingies, waiting to be dipped. Strange that, considering that John the baptist, Jesus or whoever from that era, would most certainly have been skinny-dipping at any such dunking.
no subject
Date: 2005-11-27 12:47 pm (UTC)There were facilities there for baptisms, but I've already been baptized. Still, it was a very moving experience.
Duh!?
Date: 2005-11-27 03:00 pm (UTC)This joke sort of summarized my bemusement by the whole baptism practice.
Re: Duh!?
Date: 2005-11-27 05:17 pm (UTC)As that document elsewhere points out, "Baptism is not merely an individualistic, private, or domestic occasion" -- it is the time when a person becomes part of the Christian community. So I don't think the emphasis is so much on the fact that you "need" a clergyperson as it is that you need a Christian community in order to be baptized. That's the main reason I would have felt uncomfortable being rebaptized at the Jordan -- I wouldn't have been getting baptized into a community; it just would have been me and God and some water. That's not the same thing. My impression is that generally Judaism has a more communal and less individualistic understanding of redemption/salvation/whatever than Christianity, so I think this idea should make sense to you, even though I'm not stating it very well.
Thanks
Interesting that all Christians are baptized, even those born to already families who themselves are already Christian. If baptism was postponed until adulthood, and thus involved personal choice of the person, that would make more sense to me. But if you're baptizing infants, why baptize at all, people already born into your covenant? I guess, it is more akin to Jewish circumcision, that to ritual immersion.
Re: Thanks
Date: 2005-11-28 07:17 am (UTC)I think you're right that baptism may be analogous to tevillah (is that the right word?) or to circumcision, depending on the circumstances. The idea of being born into a covenant is somewhat alien to Christianity, though. And perhaps, in a sense, that's why we have infant baptism at all -- because we don't really think of children has being born Christian, even if they're born into Christian families.
Also, don't forget that we have a separate process called confirmation as well as baptism. If you are baptized as an infant, as I was, then confirmation is when you "claim the faith of the Church proclaimed in baptism as [your] own faith." (If you are baptized as an adult, on the other hand, you get confirmed at the same time.) So we do have a ritual way of affirming that personal choice a person makes about their life of faith. Baptizing babies is a reminder, though, that God's grace precedes whatever personal decision we make.
That makes sense
Re: Thanks
Date: 2005-11-30 02:03 am (UTC)Oh, and a side note on the Hebrew shvah - it's incorporated into English (and Linguistics) as schwa, the mid-central unstressed vowel found in such words as the first syllable in "Peninsula".
Re: Thanks
Date: 2005-11-30 05:46 am (UTC)P.S. Catholicism -- WOW! ;-)
Spooky
Wow!
Date: 2005-11-28 12:28 am (UTC)