28: BAPTISMAL RITES:
BLACK, p. 91, points out: "The prophetic conception of a new Covenant, superseding the Old Covenant of Sinai, is classically presented at Jeremiah xxxi.31. It has its roots in Hosea and appears in variant forms in Ezekiel land in Second Isaiah. .Thus was to be created a new Israel out of the Remnant of the old Israel.More importance is to be attached to the description of it as the Covenant of (divine) Mercy (berith hesedh), and "Covenant of Repentance (berith teshubha), for these names point unequivocally to the foundation of the hole Hasidaean-Essene movement in the prophet ideal of Jeremiah-Ezekiel. It was a movement of repentance in response to the divine initiative in mercy: and "repentance" appears to have been further construed as the condition of admission to the sect. p 92. Candidates for admission are investigated by him (that is, the mebaqqer or Censor ) (Bishop). If their wisdom and deeds are satisfactory, they are bought into the covenant.p. 95. 1QS vi.16 might seem to refer to the admission to the "purer waters of lustration".The sequence of baptizing rites and sacred meal is clearly implied by 1QS v.13. "These (the unrepentant) shall not enter the waters to draw near to the pure things of the holy men. ..As such lustrations were by total immersion we are here confronted with a ritual admitting a neophyte, on repentance, by a bath by total immersion" pp 96-97. BLACK continues: "We have thus a significant point of contract with the New Testament in its general presentation of the baptism of John as a baptism of repentance for the remission of sins. The discovery that the Qumran sect practiced such baptismal rites is nothing new; so too did most Jewish sects in the New Testament period. What is new is that these rites were practiced in relation to a movement of repentance, of entry into a new Covenant (and a new Covenanted Israel, the sect itself) in preparation for an impending divine judgement. The entry into the Covenant and the sect by a public confession of sins" recalls events in the Gospels." p 97.