87

THE CONNECTION BETWEEN BAPTISM AND THE GIFT OF THE SPIRIT IN ACTS* J.C. O’Neill The

University

The

of

Edinburgh, Faculty

of

Divinity,

New

College

Mound, Edinburgh EH2LX. Scotland

Two signs of loss of nerve since the palmy days of biblical criticism are the disinclination to see the combination of independent sources as the cause of exegetical puzzles, and the ban on the possibility that the true text might only be recoverable by conjecture. Yet long-standing difficulties in

making out the church’s primitive baptismal practice are probably only to be resolved by identifying and separating the sources used in Acts, and by conjecturing that all our present manuscripts are corrupt. What is the connection between water baptism and the gift of the Holy Spirit? Our starting point is the saying of Jesus recorded in Acts 1.5 and 11.16, which in turn refers to the saying of John the Baptist in Mt. 3.11, Mk 1.8 and Lk. 3.16. The saying of Jesus in Acts says simply, ’John baptized with water and you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit...’ How are we to take these two statements, the one referring to what John did in the past, and the other to the future? There are three possibilities.’ The first is cumulative : John baptized with water and you will be baptized with water and the Holy Spirit. The second is to take the statements as referring to two separate rites, both of which remain in force: water baptism and Spirit baptism. The third is to suppose that the original force of the saying, *

I have benefitted greatly from the comments of Professor C.K. Barrett, Professor Ernest Best, Professor M.D. Hooker, the Rev. J.B. Geyer and Dr J.K. Parratt on earlier drafts of this article. 1. See J.K. Parratt, ’The Holy Spirit and Baptism: Part I. The Gospels and the Acts of the Apostles’, ExpTim 82 (1970-71), pp. 231-35 (233). ,

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88

by later tradition, was that water baptism was to be replaced by Spirit baptism or fire-of-judgment baptism.’ Before we try to decide between these three possibilities, we need to note an anomaly in the saying which demands further investigation. The first clause specifies the medium to be used in the baptism, the element of water. This first clause supposes that the immediate giver of the gift is John the Baptist and the ultimate giver God. In the second clause the passive verb, you will be baptized, supposes God as the giver: the divine passive.’ But then the Holy Spirit of God is specified as the medium. The Holy Spirit is not obviously parallel to water. When we turn to the Synoptic Gospels we find that this anomaly is at least partly removed by the use of the medium of fire for the coming baptism: ’He [the stronger one] will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire’ (Mt. 3.11; Mk 1.8 P syh** sa&dquo;’S Hipp; Lk. 3.16). The Syriac Sinaiticus of Matthew and Luke have the opposite order: with fire and the Holy Spirit. The word holy is omitted in Lk. 3.16 by 788, Clement, Ephraim, Tertullian and Augustine. We are not obliged to take Mark in most manuscripts as the original version of the saying, with no mention of fire, but may plausibly suppose that the editor of Mark omitted the word fire and that Matthew and Luke have preserved an earlier form. But is the double form, V’Lth the Holy Spirit and fire the true original? Perhaps Mark replaced fire by Holy Spirit and Matthew and Luke added Holv Spirit to fire; the difference in order in Syr Sin certainly suggests that either fire or Holy Spirit was a gloss. A glossator would have been more likely to add the Holy Spirit than to add fire. It seems possible that the original saying of John the Baptist centred on the two elements of water and fire; the kernel of the original saying was, ’I baptize [aorist present, semitic, as Matthew rightly sees]~ with water; obscured

=

2.

J. Wellhausen, Das Evangelium Matthaei ubersetzt und erklärt (Berlin: Reimer, 1904), p. 6; F.J. Foakes Jackson and K. Lake, The Beginnings of Georg I. The Acts of the Apostles I: Prolegomena I: The Jewish. Gentile and Christianity. Christian Backgrounds (London: Macmillan, 1920), pp. 339-40; K. Lake and H.J. Cadbury, IV: English Translation and Commentary (London: Macmillan,

1933), p. 7. 3. M. Reiser, Die Gerichtspredigt Jesu: Eine Untersuchung zur eschatologischen Verkundigung Jesu und ihrem frühjüdischen Hintergrund (NTAbh, NS 23; Münster:

Aschendorff, 1990), Excurs: ’Das sog. "Passivum divinum" oder "Passivum theologicum" und die eschatologischen Passiva’, pp. 255-61. 4. J. Wellhausen, Das Evangelium Marci übersetzt und erklart (Berlin: Georg Reimer, 1909), p. 5.

89 he will baptize you with fire’. In this saying the elements of water and fire are strictly parallel, and God is the ultimate baptizer who acts

through earthly agents. Does the baptism with fire mean only a baptism of destruction? That can hardly be so, since the baptism with water is clearly a blessing, a cleansing, not a baptism of destruction. And of course, water is destoo. In fact, there are two Jewish texts from the time of the New Testament in which water and fire are linked together as the two destructive elements. In Josephus, Ant. 1.70 Josephus tells of Seth, the virtuous son of Adam, whose descendants discovered the science of the heavenly bodies and their orderly array. They recorded these discoveries on pillars of brick and of stone in order to ensure their survival in the two coming destructions of the universe, by fire and by water, so that if the brick failed to resist the deluge the stone would remain: for Adam predicted the disappearance of all things in the universe, once by the violence of fire and a second time by the mighty deluge of water. In the Latin Life of Adam and Eve 49.1-50.3, after Adam’s death, Eve on knowing that she, too, was about to die, gathered together Seth and thirty brothers and thirty sisters and told them what the archangel Michael had told her and Adam. Because of their sin the whole human race had to face two judgments, a judgment of water and a judgment of fire. Eve therefore commanded her children to write the life of Adam and Eve both on tablets of clay and tablets of stone. If the world was destroyed by water, the tablets of clay would be dissolved but the tablets of stone would remain; if the world was destroyed by fire, the tablets of stone would be destroyed and the tablets of clay would remain. It appears that water and fire were linked together as the two agents of destruction. However, water is life-giving as well as destructive. We need only recall Isa. 44.3 where water that comes to the thirsty and to the dry ground is set in parallel with the pouring of the Spirit on the seed of Israel. In 1 QS 4.20-21 the members of the community are purified with the Spirit of Truth as with lustral water. If it is likely that the baptism of water is a baptism that is life-giving, to save those who receive it from destruction, then it should follow that the baptism of fire should also be life-giving, to save those who receive it from destruction. We have two passages from contemporary Jewish literature that in fact make just this connection. In Pseudo Philo’s Biblical Antiquities 38.4 the angel of the Lord Nathaniel says to Jair, who had tried to burn the seven men who refused to sacrifice to Baal, ’though

tructive,

90

they be burned with corruptible fire, yet now are they quickened with living fire and are delivered’. Fire may both destroy and give life. Philo, Dec. 46-49 explains that the voice of the Lord came out of the fire that flowed from heaven

at

Sinai. He continues,

Since the property of fire is partly to give light, and partly to burn. those who think fit to show themselves obedient to the sacred commands shall live for ever and ever as in a light which is never darkened, having his laws themselves as stars giving light in their soul. But all those who are stubborn and disobedient are for ever inflamed, and burnt, and consumed by their internal appetites, which, like flame, will destroy all the life of

those who possess

them.5

The property of fire is both to give light and to burn. In 1 Cor. 3.13-15 the fire both destroys the worthless and shows what is lasting.6 In the Hebrew Bible itself as well as in later Jewish and Christian literature there are many verses that link together water and fire both as destructive (Isa. 30.27-8; Sib. Or. 3.690; Lk. 17.26-29 [Noah and Lot]; 2 Pet. 3.5-7) and as purifying or saving (Num. 31.23; Ps. 66.12; Isa. 43.2).’ The prophet Isaiah looks forward to a day on which all the inhabitants of Jerusalem will be called holy, ’when the Lord shall have washed away the filth of the daughters of Zion, and shall have purged the blood of Jerusalem from the midst thereof by the spirit of judgment, and by the spirit of burning’ (Isa. 4.4). It may even be that the next verse, with its reference to the pillar of cloud by day and the pillar of fire by night that accompanied Israel (Exod. 13.21, 22), is another allusion to the elements of water and fire; they must have known from experiencing fogs and mists on the mountain tops that clouds were wet (Isa. 4.5: ’Then the Lord will create over the whole site of Mt Zion and over its place of assembly a cloud by day and smoke and the shining of a flaming fire by night’). The final verse of the chapter, Isa. 4.6, also refers to fire and water: the Lord will provide a canopy to protect Israel from the heat and from the deluge. Note also the linking of water and fire in a good sense in the rabbinic midrashic explanation of the word for heaven as being made up of fire 5. Translation by C.D. Yonge, The Works of Philo ludaeus, of Josephus (Bohn’s Ecclesiastical Library; London, 1855), III, p.

the Contemporary 147.

6. Professor M.D. Hooker reminded me of these verses. 7. W.D. Davies and D.C. Allison, Jr, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Gospel according to Saint Matthew, I (ICC; Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1988),

pp. 316-18.

91 and water: ’Rab said, The word n’mr is made up from the words r&dquo; and (Gen. R. 4.7; cf. b. Hag 12a).~ On the basis of this evidence I conjecture that there was a tradition current at the time of John the Baptist that God would pour out on his people water and fire to protect them from the coming destruction of the world by water and fire. I argued that water and fire were the primary centres of John the Baptist’s saying. Now we must take into account the strong possibility that the Holy Spirit was, even as early as John the Baptist, particularly associated with the coming of the fire. In 1 QS 4.20-21 the Spirit is associated with water. The connection of the Spirit with fire is even stronger. The association of the Spirit with fire is attested in Isa. 4.4, the blood of Jerusalem being purged by the spirit of judgment and the spirit of burning, and in the Pentecost story in Acts 2.3, where the Spirit’s descent is visible as tongues of fire. Tongues of fire on the heads of those blessed by God is found both in the rabbinic stories of particularly holy rabbis and in Virgil, of Aeneas (2.682-84).~ In view of this evidence, the theory, put forward with caution by Dunn,’° now stands much more secure: Jews at the time of John the

D’Q

8.

A.P.

Hayman,

’The Doctrine of Creation in

Sefer

Yesira: Some Text-critical

Problems’, in G. Sed-Rajna (ed.), Rashi 1040-1990. Hommage à Ephraïm E. Urbach, Congrès européen des études juives (Patrimoines judaisme; Paris: Cerf,

1993 ), p. 222. 9. R.B. Rackham, The Acts of the Apostles (Westminster Commentaries; London: Methuen. 1901, 1951 ), p. 18. Attempts have been made to remove the notion of the Holy Spirit from John’s original saying. Because the word ’spirit’ in the Hebrew, as in the Greek, can mean wind or breath, it has been suggested that the meaning ’wind’ was uppermost in the mind of John the Baptist, as A.B. Bruce argued long ago: A.B. Bruce, The Expositor’s Greek Testament. 1. The Synoptic Gospels (London, 1897), p. 84; Robert Eisler, IHΣOYΣ BAΣI&Lgr;EYΣ OY BAΣAEYΣAΣ: Die ntessiultisclte Unabhängigkeitshewegung vom Auftreten Johannes des Täufers bis zum Untergang Jakob des Gerechten nach schlossenen Eroberung von Jerusalem des Flavius Josephus und den christlichen Quellen (Heidelberg: Carl Winter, 1928-30), II. pp. 104-14; English translation, The Messiah Jesus and John the Baptist according to Flavius Josephus’ recently rediscovered ’Capture of Jerusalem’ and the other Jewish and Christian Sources (London: Methuen, 1931), pp. 274-79, C.K. Barrett, The Holy Spirit and the Gospel Tradition (London: SPCK, 1947), p. 126; E. Best, ’Spirit-Baptism’, NovT 4 (1960), pp. 236-43; J.D.G. Dunn, ’Spirit-and-Fire Baptism’, NovT 14 ( 1972), pp. 81-92

der neuer-

(82). 10. See

n.

9.

92

Baptist and Jesus did expect the coming of God’s Holy Spirit at the end of time, and they associated this coming with the messiah. The passages in T. Levi 18.7, 11, T. Jud. 24.2 and 4 Ezra 13.10 are not to be regarded as either Christian interpolations or as isolated and enigmatic statements but rather as clear indications that the messiah was expected to breathe the Spirit of fire onto the people, for salvation or for judgment. The conclusion seems to lie close at hand. John the Baptist said that he was baptizing with water, meaning in the power of the Holy Spirit which he inherited as a prophet, and that the Coming One would baptize with fire and Spirit in the power of the Holy Spirit which he would naturally have. John was drawing on an old tradition about the roles of water and fire. The Lord had once accompanied his people in the pillar of cloud and the pillar of fire; he would baptize them now with water and soon with fire, in order to protect them against the coming destruction by water and fire (Isa. 4.3-6). Although I have assumed for the sake of argument that John the Baptist mentioned chiefly fire in the second part of his saying, I now have discovered evidence that the reference to the giving of the Spirit would have at least been implicit and could well have been explicit. If it was a scribe or an editor who added an explicit reference to the Spirit, as I argued above, they were bringing out John’ss true intention (cf. Jn 3.5, 8). John would have believed that he himself and the Coming One would possess the Spirit, but he would also have held that the Coming One would bestow the Spirit on a wider group by the baptism of fire. This was in accordance with Isa. 4.4 as well as with the prophecy of Joel. If fire does not destroy, it vivifies those who have been previously cleansed by water. Long before Pentecost there was a lively expectation that water baptism and fire baptism were to be given by God to preserve his believers from the coming danger by water and by fire. If that is so, then the rest of the evidence in Acts falls into place, with one small exception which I shall come to at the end. In general Acts reports four typical situations, and each situation works from the assumption I have just stated. The first situation is that those who believe in the Lord Jesus should be baptized with water in order to receive also the promised Holy Spirit. This is stated explicitly in two cases: in Peter’s speech at Pentecost (Acts 2.38-41) and in Ananias’s greeting to Paul as he waited blind in a house in the Damascus street called Straiglzt, according to the account in Acts (Acts 9.17, 18). Perhaps we may accept one other account as testifying

93

baptism is followed by the gift of the Spirit. The Codex Alexandrinus of Acts 8.39 says that when the Ethiopian eunuch came up out of the water ’the Holy Spirit fell upon the eunuch and an angel of the Lord snatched away Philip’. The report that the Samaritans baptized by Philip did not receive the Spirit (Acts 8.15-17) perhaps led to the suppression of this reading by tidy scribes; but perhaps it was not the same Philip (see below). The argument from silence is not always dangerous, and it is likely that other accounts of water baptism in Acts assume that the Spirit was bestowed as well (on Lydia and her family, Acts 16.15; on the Philippian gaoler and his family, Acts 16.33; and on Crispus and many Corinthians, Acts 18.8). The account of Paul’s baptism by Ananias in Acts 22.16 does not mention the gift of the Spirit, but it surely implies the same. Notice that there are large tracts of Acts that do not even mention baptism at the reception of new followers of Jesus. To deduce from this silence that new converts were often not baptized would be as unsafe as to deduce from the paucity of reference to Sunday in the New Testament that the first day of the week was not at all important in large areas of the early church (Acts 20.7; 1 Cor. 16.2; Rev. l.10). The second typical situation to be noted is the situation of those who had received the baptism of John. These are the apostles, in all probability, and Apollos (Acts 18.25). The fact that John’s baptism is given such a prominent place in the list of qualifications for a twelfth apostle to replace Judas (Acts 1.22), in Peter’s speech to Cornelius and his friends (Acts 10.37), and in Paul’s speech in the synagogue at Pisidian Antioch (Acts 13.24) seems to imply that the apostles had been baptized by John the Baptist. The important thing for us to note is that neither the apostles nor Apollos were rebaptized. There was only one baptism, and the baptism of John was fully adequate. The supposed axiom that Christians had to have Christian baptism&dquo; does not seem to hold in the case of the apostles and Apollos. The third typical situation is of those who received first the baptism of the Holy Spirit and then were baptized with water. The clear report in Acts 10.45, 47, 48 is that when Peter was speaking to the people gathered to the same view that

11. E. Käsemann, ’Die Johannesjunger in Ephesus’, ZTK 49 (1952), pp. 14454 ; repr. in Exegetische Versuche und Besinnungen I (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1960), pp. 158-68 at p. 164; English translation in Essays on New Testament Themes (trans. W.J. Montague; London: SCM Press, 1964), pp. 136-48 with page numbers also given for Exegetische Versuche.

94 in Cornelius’s house the gift of the Spirit was poured out on them; Peter then said to his companions, ’Surely no one could withhold water and not baptize these who have received the Spirit like us’ (Acts 10.47); then he baptized them. Peter’s own account back in Jerusalem in Acts 11.17 is much shorter, and Jackson and Lake want to argue that it is a more reliable account in that it assumes that water baptism was neither given nor thought necessary. 12 The explicit mention of John the Baptist’s word about two baptisms, with water and the Holy Spirit, in the previous verse (Acts 11.16) makes it unlikely that the truncated report in which Peter says he could not hinder God implies anything other than that he baptized Cornelius and all those other Gentiles present. What else visible could Peter have done to show that he did not hinder God than to baptize them? It is worth noting that the first account of how Ananias dealt with Paul says that he laid on hands first, at which Paul received back his sight and also received the Spirit, and that he baptized Paul afterwards (Acts 9.17, 18). The gift of the Spirit preceded baptism here too. The fourth and final typical situation is the case of the Samaritans who have been baptized by Philip but who had not received the Spirit (Acts 8.12, 13, 15-17). I suspect that the reason for this is that Philip was not a prophet belonging to the circle of the apostles and their authorized agents. Philip is a common name, and the author of Acts assumed, wrongly, that Philip the freelance preacher of Jesus was the same Philip as the Philip mentioned in the list in Acts 6.5. Perhaps there were three Philips in Acts: the server at table; the one who baptized the Ethiopian eunuch, who was perhaps also the evangelist (21.8); and the freelance preacher to the Samaritans.’3 The same thing had already happened in ’Luke’s’ identification of Stephen, the prophet who preached the Son of Man without (I have argued elsewhere) knowing that his name was Jesus. Him, too, ’Luke’ identified with the Stephen of the Seven in Acts 6.5, even though the Seven were specifically said to be appointed to serve table and not to spend their time speaking the word of God (Acts 6, 2).’~ Whatever the true explanation of the case of those who had been 12. Jackson and Lake, The Beginnings of Christianity, I, pp. 340-41. 13. Cf. C.K. Barrett, ’Light on the Holy Spirit from Simon Magus (Acts 8,425)’, in J. Kremer (ed.), Les Actes des Apôtres (BETL, 48; Leuven: Leuven

University Press, 1979). 14. J.C. O’Neill, The Theology of Acts in its Historical Setting (London: SPCK, 2nd edn, 1970), p. 94.

95

baptized by Philip, the story witnesses to the assumption that water baptism was to be followed by the gift of the Spirit in the church. These four typical instances all combine to confirm a picture of two baptisms, water baptism followed by baptism with the Spirit (except in unusual circumstances where the Spirit baptism came first). Spirit baptism is explicitly said to be done by the laying of hands in Acts 8.1719 ; 9.17 ; 19.6. The only verse that contradicts this picture is Acts 19.5, which, on the face of it, reports that some men baptized by John were rebaptized in the name of the Lord Jesus. That is not the only anomalous verse in the context and we do well to look once more at the whole passage, Acts 18.24-19.7. Acts 18.24-19.7 juxtaposes two Ephesian incidents that mention the baptism of John: the story of Apollos, and Paul’s two questions to the disciples he found at Ephesus. In the first incident, Apollos, a Jew from Alexandria, had come to believe in Jesus-according to 18.25D, this happened in his native land; missionaries had already reached Egypt. Priscilla and Aquila gave him more information (his earlier knowledge was accurate but limited) and he went to Achaia and showed his fellow Jews who was the messiah by means of an exposition of Scripture. He knew only the baptism of John (Acts 18.25), yet he was not baptized again. Indeed, it appears that his baptism in the name of John and his instruction about Jesus also equipped him with the gift of the Spirit. That, at least, seems a likely reading of Acts 18.25: he was taught the way of the Lord and burning Ty 7tVEÚllan he spoke and taught accurately the things concerning Jesus. Of course the human spirit of Apollos was set alight by the instruction he received, but our author, or any author at the time (if, as I shall argue, this whole passage comes from a source) is more likely to have meant that the Holy Spirit of prophecy imbued him so that he taught about Jesus (pace Schweizer, with many forerunners).’S We note the artless threefold pattern: the way of the Lord; the burning of the Spirit; the teaching about Jesus. This artless pattern is so common in the New Testament that we should expect to find it here, too (Mt. 1.18, 20-21; 3.16-17; 4.1; 28.19 and the parallels; Jn 7.39?; 14.16-17, 26; 15.26; 16.7; Acts 2.4, 1621 ; 2.22-36; Rom. 8.9; 1 Cor. 12.3; 2 Cor. 13.13; Phil. 2.1 etc.). 15. E. Schweizer, ’Die Bekehrung des Apollos, Apg 18, 24-26’, EvT 15 (1955), pp. 247-54; repr. in Beiträge zur Theologie des Neuen Testaments: Neutestamentliche Aufsätze (1955-1970) (Zurich: Zwingli Verlag, 1970), pp. 71-79 at pp. 76-77.

96 Wendt argued that Acts 18.25 was the author of Acts’ one addition to his source, Acts 18.24-19.7.’6 Kdsemann thought that Luke’s two additions were Acts 18.25c and 19.5; Luke did not dare have Apollos rebaptized and used 19.5 to convey the impression that he was.&dquo; Conzelmann suggested that the reference to the baptism of John in Acts 18.25c and the supplementary teaching by Priscilla and Aquila in 18.26 were additions that interrupted the flow from the introduction of Apollos (Acts 18.24-25ab) to his move to Achaia (Acts 18.27-28).’~ All these theories of sources altered by Luke in pursuit of his particular theology of the church, to meet the opponents faced by his own church, fail by the very incompleteness they are forced to assume. If Luke was free to add so much, why did he not make a thorough job of it and have Apollos submit to the full Christian admission of rebaptism and laying on of hands? The only cultic act Apollos submitted to, in the text of Acts as we have it, corresponds completely to what we have already noticed to be the case with the twelve apostles: he and they received only the baptism of John, and he and they received the Holy Spirit without laying on of hands. Like them, he too had had to learn more about Jesus as he went. The reason the three scholars I have referred to thought that Luke the theologian has distorted his sources proves to be no reason. What Luke is supposed to have added for his own church’s needs was old, and standard practice from the beginning. Their theories really spring from the seeming difficulties in Acts 19.1-7, the second pericope about the baptism of John, to which we now turn. Read as it stands, Acts 19.1-7 gives the following sequence of events: some men who had been baptized in the name of John the Baptist needed to be baptized in the name of Jesus. Only then did they receive the Spirit by laying on of hands. This is the only report of second baptism in the New Testament. Let us look more closely at this second Ephesian story to mention the baptism of John. Here Paul found certain disciples who had already believed. He asked them two questions. In the first question (Acts 19.2a) he said, ’Did you receive the Holy Spirit when you believed?’ That 16. H.H. Wendt, Die Apostelgeschichte (KEK; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1913 [9th edn 3rd by Wendt]), pp. 32-33; 270-73. 17. See n. 11. 18. H. Conzelmann, Die Apostelgeschichte (HNT; Tübingen: Mohr, 1963); English translation, Acts of the Apostles (Hermeneia; Philadelphia; Fortress Press, =

1987).

97 that they had believed in Jesus, since no evangelist would have raised the question of the Holy Spirit before raising the question of whether they believed in Jesus. In Acts 19.3 Paul asked his second question: ’In which [name] were you baptized?’ This question assumed that those to whom he was speaking had obviously been baptized. It is implied that they did not believe in Jesus and that Paul knew this. If they obviously did not believe in Jesus and had just as obviously been baptized we would assume that they must have been baptized in the name of John, because we are accustomed to think that only baptism in the name of John and baptism in the name of Jesus were available. However, it is probable that members of Essene communities were baptized on full entry (1QS 3.9; cf. 4.21).’y That would give sense to Paul’s question: I know you are baptized, because of this or that characteristic mark, but I cannot tell which Name you have been baptized in. Each of Paul’s two questions assumes a set of conditions that excludes the set of conditions implied by the other. To ask, ’Did you receive the Holy Spirit when you believed?’ assumes that they had believed in Jesus. To ask, ’In what name were you baptized?’ assumes that they had not believed in Jesus, as the sequel bears out (Acts 19.4). Verse 1 reported that Paul found certain disciples. His first question (v. 2) implied that they were believers in Jesus who had not received the Holy Spirit. His second question implied that they were people who had obviously been baptized, but in what name was not clear (v. 3a). It is hard to believe that the two questions were directed to the one group, for no single group could be both believers in Jesus and not believers in Jesus. So far we have asked what Paul’s two questions implied. Let us now ask what the two sequels to the questions implied. To the first question, ’Did you receive the Holy Spirit when you believed?’, Paul received the answer, ’We had not heard that the Holy Spirit was yet available [to all]’. That implied that they wanted it if it

question implied

was

available. 20

19. We recall that the Red Sea

(1Cor. 10.2):

ϵi&sfgr;

τòν Mω&uacgr;σ&e acgr;ν

generation were baptized in the name of Moses ϵi&sfgr; τò öνoμα τo&uacgr; Mω&uacgr;σ&eacgr;ω&sfgr;. For further =

exploration of the possibility that there were others besides Jesus and John in whose name one could be baptized, see J.C. O’Neill, ’The Origins of Christian Baptism’, IBS 16 (1994), pp. 98-107. 20. Paul assumed that those to whom he

was

talking knew that the Holy Spirit

98 To the second question, ’In what name were you baptized?’, Paul received the answer, ’Baptism in the name of John’. He then honoured their commitment to John and went on to remind them that John had enjoined belief in one who was to come after him, namely the messiah. The name of the one to come is obviously unknown to them; the that is clause (if, as is likely, part of the words Paul actually said) were surely that is Christ, the reading of the Codex Bezae and the Old Latin r. These people had not heard the name of the Coming One from John and had to hear it from Paul. John’s baptism for them involved baptism of repentance and belief in the One to Come: two complementary actions of receiving the water-washing and placing the trust. Presumably they had been baptized in John’s name before John identified Jesus as the messiah. The story was about their lack of knowledge of the name of the messiah; the mention of the name brought it to a fitting climax (v. 5). One aspect of the response as we have it in v. 5 is jarring. The two complementary actions required only a completion that filled in the name. The Coming One was Jesus. Nothing prepares us for a further action, a new baptism. Once we isolate vv. 3-5, we recover a sense that has no room for the final action of baptism in v. 5. The text as it stands is so difficult that it invites conjecture. I conjecture that the verb that originally stood in v. 5 was È7tícrn~ucrav not Epa7tTio6r)oav. Scribes changed the unusual expression into the common expression by reading èPa7t’tícr8Tlcrav for È7tícr’tEucrav. So they believed in the name of Jesus. This seems to be a scribal corruption rather than an editorial act. An editor who had already recorded that Apollos did not receive any further baptism would not feel the need to make those who knew the could be received

by groups of disciples who believed. They of course knew that the individual prophets and they had read Joel which prophesied a wider distribution. These natural assumptions must rule out the surface meaning of Spirit

was

given

to

their reply, ’We have not so much as heard whether there be any Holy Ghost’ (Acts 19.2b AV). We should rather translate Acts 19.2b as follows: ’We have not heard whether the Holy Spirit is [here, sc. for us]’. The verb to be means not only to exist but also to be present or to happen, depending on the context (cf. Jn 7.39: o&uacgr;πω &gam a;&a cgr;ρ &e acgr;ν πνϵ&uacgr;μα Beyer: Wendt; pace Haenchen and Quesnel, who give no argument for holding the opposite position). H.W. Beyer, Die Apostelgeschichte (NTD, 5; Gottingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1949); H.H. Wendt, Die Apostelgesclziclite; E. Haenchen, Die Apostelgeschichte (KEK; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, rev. edn, 1959 [1956]); English translation, The Acts of the Apostles: A Commentary (Oxford: Blackwell, 1971); M. Quesnel, Baptisés dans l’esprit: Baptême et Esprit Saint dans les Actes des Apôtres (Paris: Cerf, 1985), pp. 67-69.

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baptism of John receive baptism. A scribe, however, who worked more mechanically than an editor, would rather naturally put the stock phrase ’they were baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus’ (Acts 2.38; 8.16; 10.48; Rom. 6.3; 1 Cor. 1.13; Gal. 3.27; cf. Acts 4.17, 18; 5.28, 40) in

place of the more unusual ’they believed in the name of the Lord Jesus’ (Jn 1.12; 1 Jn 3.23; 5.13; the only phrase that comes near it in Acts is È1t1. iov Kuptov ’Irlaouv; cf. Jn 3.15, 16, 18, Acts 16.31: 1tí