Dip, Pour, Sprinkle and Wash.
By President Shannon
While I filled the Professorship of Ancient Languages in the University of Georgia, I had occasion to compile a table of passages where the words dip, pour, sprinkle, and wash, in their various modifications, occur in the English Bible, with the corresponding term used in the Greek of the New Testament and the Septuagint. Dip I found in twenty-one passages. In all of these except one, bapto or baptizo is found in the Greek. The one exception is in Gen. xxxvii, 31, where Joseph's brethren took his coat and dipped (emolunan, smeared or daubed) it in the blood of a kid. Mark the great accuracy of the Greek here—the idea is that of smearing or of daubing, and the Septuagint so expressed it. Sprinkle, in some of the forms, I found in twenty-seven passages. In not a single instance is bapto or baptizo used in the Greek. Pour, I found in no less than one hundred and nineteen instances, but in not even one of them did I meet with bapto or baptizo used in the Greek. I found Wash in thirty-two cases, where reference was made, not to the whole person, but to a part, as the eyes, the face, the hands, the feet. In none of these was bapto or baptizo found, but nipto invariably.—President Shannon, of the College of Louisiana.