qatarperegrine: (travel)
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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!
Justin and Marjorie at Wadi Rum

Date: 2005-11-27 12:35 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] shmuelisms.livejournal.com
So seeing as you've been to the Jordan river, did you do the whole baptismal routine? ;-)

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.

Date: 2005-11-27 12:47 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] qatar.livejournal.com
You'd think they'd be clued in by the fact that there's a whole church built on the spot where Jesus is supposed to have left his clothes before jumping in!

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)
From: [identity profile] shmuelisms.livejournal.com
I knew you'd already been baptized. In fact you've explicitly said as much here before (you being baptized as a Catholic, and raised Methodist, IIRC). But then I'm pretty sure most of these pilgrims have been baptized back home as well. [Many] [observant] Jews go to "ritual baths" on a semi-regular basis, some only for major holidays, some every friday - for the Sabbath, and some even go daily. So I guess maybe some Christians also do so, more than once, especially when visiting such a place as the bona fide River Jordan. Baptism, ain't exactly something I'm an expert on. :-) Always wondered why, even for this, Christians needed an assisting clergy.

This joke sort of summarized my bemusement by the whole baptism practice.

Re: Duh!?

Date: 2005-11-27 05:17 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] qatar.livejournal.com
Oops, I should have been more specific. There are some Christian churches that allow for rebaptism (e.g. the Baptists, aptly enough), but historically the Christian tradition has most often said that you are only baptized once. Baptism for us symbolizes our joining the Body of Christ and entering into covenant with God, and that never needs to be redone. (The Methodist stance on that is here.)

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

Date: 2005-11-27 09:11 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] shmuelisms.livejournal.com
Now I understand. That's interesting. Yes,you are making perfectly good sense, in this sense, you could compare your Methodist baptism, to the ritual immersion that all converts to Judaism must undergo, except that with Jews, the immersion is NOT the covenant itself, just part of the purification and rebirth involved in the process (Native Jews, don't have to immerse at all).

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)
From: [identity profile] qatar.livejournal.com
Infant baptism is another thing different (American) denominations argue about. There are some churches that say you can't enter into the covenant except through an act of will, and thus you have to be adult enough to make that decision on your own. Historically, though, it seems that the church has been practicing infant baptism since our very earliest days. (One of my pictures of Jordan, when I dig it up, is a picture of a very ancient baptismal font with a separate font for babies.) We Methodists see baptism as being a symbol of God's prevenient grace, i.e. "the divine love that surrounds all humanity and precedes any and all of our conscious impulses." Infant baptism is a statement that God is at work in the lives of our infants before they are even old enough to recognize or acknowledge that fact.

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

Date: 2005-11-28 02:49 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] shmuelisms.livejournal.com
Yes T'villah is the correct word. Although, in transliterating it, I prefer to drop the initial 'e'. The "vowel" under the first letter, is actually a Shvah which is best described as a "null-vowel" - it does NOT have a sound (Doesn't Arabic have such a "vowel"?). Although it is VERY common to fill in an 'e' when transcribing a Hebrew Shvah to English, it is phonetically incorrect (and I find it annoying ;-)). I've no idea why people insist on doing this. The 'i' vowel is also closer to the 'ee' sound, but not as long. The vagaries of Hebrew/English transcription are amusing.
The idea of being born into a covenant is somewhat alien to Christianity
I can see why Christianity would have everybody entering the covenant baptized. Seeing as historically there are no "native" Christians, it would more sense, initially to just baptize everybody who "comes to Jesus", thus the precedent would be set, and as you say, the covenant is considered much more dependent on individual choice. In Judaism we take the exact opposite approach: The covenant is historical and binding on all Jews for all Time. So someone born a Jew, is bound by this contract, whether they choose to "accept" it or not (this is also why converts are considered 'reborn'). Circumcision is NOT "entering the covenant", so much as putting your signature on the line of an existing contract (or conversely, by putting G-d's "signature" on our flesh, align ourselves with this covenant, by saying that the flesh has a higher purpose in life). If this was not so, then one could "leave" the covenant, merely by not being circumcised. To take things a step further, a Jew also can't leave the covenant by converting to another religion. I could say the Shahadah or be baptized until I was blue, and still be considered as Jewish as ever. No additional act would be required to "revert" back to Judaism.

Re: Thanks

Date: 2005-11-30 02:03 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] y-pestis.livejournal.com
Interesting synchronic explanation, but I feel the need to throw in some historical context. In medieval times I think the standard Christian belief was that anyone unbaptized (both babies and people of other religions) couldn't go to heaven - at best, would end up in purgatory. Particularly with high infant mortality rates at the time, this meant there was a clear reason to get the young'uns baptized as soon as you found a priest, so that if anything happened at least they could go to heaven.

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)
From: [identity profile] qatar.livejournal.com
Oh, good point about the babies-going-to-heaven thing. I didn't even really think about it, since it's not part of the (Methodist) church's view of baptism.

P.S. Catholicism -- WOW! ;-)

Spooky

Date: 2005-11-27 03:40 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] shmuelisms.livejournal.com
Every single time I scroll past this picture, I stop to look at it! What grabs my eye, is the "person", sitting behind you folks (to the left), holding their hands in their lap. The one with their face cut out...

Wow!

Date: 2005-11-28 12:28 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] nikki-nana.livejournal.com
What a wonderful trip! And how nice to see that Justin actually participated!

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