Uncertain, Matt, xxviii. 18-20; Mark xvi. 16.
The baptism of John is mentioned in the following:—
A.D. 60-70, Mark i. 1-11.
A.D. 80-90, Matt. iii. 1-16:; Luke iii. 1-22, vii. 29, 30; Acts i. 22, x. 37, xiii. 24, xviii. 25, xix. 3, 4.
A.D. 90-100, John i. 25-33, iii. 23, x. 40.
It is best to defer the question of the origin of Christian baptism until the history of the rite in the centuries which followed has been sketched, for we know more clearly what baptism became after the year 100 than what it was before. And that method on which a great scholar[[1]] insisted when studying the old Persian religion is doubly to be insisted on in the study of the history of baptism and the cognate institution, the eucharist, namely, to avoid equally "the narrowness of mind which clings to matters of fact without rising to their cause and connecting them with the series of associated phenomena, and the wild and uncontrolled spirit of comparison, which, by comparing everything, confounds everything."
Our earliest detailed accounts of baptism are in the Teaching of the Apostles (c. 90-120) and in Justin Martyr.
The Teaching has the following:—
1. Now concerning baptism, thus baptize ye: having spoken beforehand all these things, baptize into the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, in living water.
2. But if thou hast not living water, baptize into other water; if thou canst not in cold, in warm.