The Old Testament Roots of the Baptism of the Messiah

Many have wondered exactly why the Messiah insisted on being baptized. Yeshua the Messiah obeyed Levitical priestly law throughout his ministry, but it is his baptism that the Messiah said gave him the legal authority to carry out his priestly ministry -- he had been truly ordained a priest and possessed authority to cleanse the Temple. The priest’s primary task revolved around the sacrificial system; the Levites’ primary task involved serving and guarding the sanctuary.

The Messiah came as one “born under law” (Galatians 4:4), meaning that he was subject to the law’s requirements, as was any Israelite. Many things that he did, or were done to him by his parents, were in obedience to Old Testament legal stipulations. For instance, In Luke’s Gospel, he was circumcised according to the law on the eight day of his life (Luke 2:21; cf. Genesis 17:10-14; Leviticus 12:3). Laws about purification were kept at his childbirth (vs. 22, 24; cf. Leviticus 12, esp. vs. 8), as was the setting apart of the firstborn male Israelite (Luke 2:23; cf. Exodus 13:2, 12, 15), through laws that are later developed in Numbers 18, where the Levites will serve on behalf of the firstborn sons. All of this, Luke says, was done, “According to the custom of the law” (Luke 2:27, cf. vs. 39).

It continues. When the Messiah became a boy of twelve, his family traveled to Jerusalem to keep the festival “according to the custom [of the law]” (Luke 2:42; cf. Deuteronomy 16:1-2). After the feast, Yeshua then went to the Temple and began learning all about the law (Luke 2:46) from the teachers. After his parents discovered him missing, they returned to the city and found him in the Temple. When they asked him what he was doing, he responded that he “must be” in his Father’s house (vs. 49). Why must he be there? While there is more than one reason, for our purposes, it is because he had been set apart for all these things relating to the law, as the preceding narrative focusing on the law has explained.

At this point, Luke immediately delves into the story of Yeshua’s baptism (Luke 3:1-22), giving us a third age of the Messiah in this short span of verses. He tells us that the Messiah is thirty years of age (3:23) when he began his ministry. In the same way that being eight days old was tied to his circumcision and to the Old Testament sacramental and legal requirement for him to be circumcised, being thirty years old ties the beginning of his ministry directly to his baptism and to an Old Testament sacramental and legal requirement for him to be baptized. His baptism is not related to Old Testament circumcision either covenantally or legally, but to an Old Testament baptism. This is what we want to begin unfolding now.

Luke and other New Testament writers reveal at least eight facts about the Messiah that relate to his baptism. These include:

Immediately after his baptism, Yeshua is tempted (Luke 4:1-13) and then, as his first official ministerial act, he enters the synagogue and reads from Isaiah 61. It says, “The spirit of the LORD is upon me, because He has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim liberty to the captives and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed, to proclaim the year of the LORD’s favor” (Luke 4:18-19).

Besides coming as one born under the law, the Messiah also came to “fulfill” the law. This is the language used especially in Matthew’s gospel. The ideas are similar to Luke. Matthew presents the Messiah’s baptism in the middle of a series of typological fulfillments that take us back to very specific Old Testament passages.

Herod tries to kill the baby Yeshua, by calling for the extermination of all boys in Bethlehem under two years of age (Matthew 2:13-15). This compares with Pharaoh trying to kill Moses by murdering all Israelite males under two years of age (Exodus 1:22). This is followed by the Messiah fleeing his home until “those who sought the child’s life [were] dead” (Matthew 2:20). The same language is used of Moses (Exodus 4:19). The Messiah comes out of Egypt like Moses (Matthew 2:15; cf. Exodus 13:18; Hosea 11:1). The Messiah is baptized in the Jordan waters as Moses led Israel through the Red Sea (Matthew 3:15-17; cf. Exodus 14:22; 1 Corinthians 10:2).

The holy spirit then leads the Messiah from the baptism to the wilderness. Matthew puts it this way, “Then Jesus was led up by the spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil” (Matthew 4:1). In the Exodus story it says, “Then Moses led Israel from the Red Sea, and they went out into the wilderness of Shur” (Exodus 15:22) where they are immediately tested (15:25). The Messiah is tempted as Israel was tempted. The Messiah goes into the wilderness for forty days, compared to Israel for forty years (Matthew 4:2; cf. Numbers 14:33-34). Finally, the Messiah leads the people to the foot of a mountain to receive the Law, just as Moses lead the people to the foot of Mt. Sinai to receive the law (Matthew 5:1ff., cf. Exodus 19:17ff).

In the typology, the Messiah’s baptism is directly related to the baptism of Israel in the Sea, thus giving it an important Old Testament backdrop. However, something else happens at his baptism that is related to a different part of the Exodus narrative. John the Baptist and the Messiah have a very odd exchange. At first, John does not want to baptize the Messiah. It is reasonable to assume that John believed the Messiah had come to the waters for repentance, since that is why John had been baptizing (Matthew 3:6, 11). But John knew the Messiah was the lamb of YEHOVAH God who takes away sin (John 1:29). He needed to be baptized by the Messiah! (Matthew 3:14). Yeshua corrects John's thinking saying, “Let it be so now, for thus it is fitting for us to fulfill all righteousness” (vs. 15). Immediately, John consents. What happened to change John’s mind?

The answer again revolves around the law and the Old Testament. Up to this point in Matthew’s Gospel, every time the word “fulfill” has been used it has meant that the Messiah fulfills something from the Old Testament (Matthew 1:22; 2:5; 15, 17, 23 etc.). After this, the Messiah fulfills the Law, by both teaching its true meaning as the True Prophet (e.g., Matthew 5:17), and by enacting it in his daily ministry as the True Priest. Since this is the way the word is normally used, it is reasonable to conclude that it is being used in the same way here.

The term “righteousness” is equally rooted to the Old Testament. According to Deuteronomy 6:25, “righteousness” is directly linked to obeying the Law. “And it will be righteousness for us, if we are careful to do all this commandment before the LORD our God, as He has commanded us.” Matthew usually uses the term in the same way. Michael Goulder points out, “Righteousness is normally in Matthew good works (3:15; 5:20; 6:1; 21:32 and probably 5:10).” [1]

In this way James Dale correctly observes, “The baptism of Christ was not a ‘Johannic baptism...It is one thing to be baptized by John and quite another to receive the ‘baptism’ of John.”

Many have wondered exactly why the Messiah was baptized. This has been a real puzzle as scholars have identified no less than eleven different answers to this problem. Perhaps the oldest solution to the question of why Yeshua was baptized, and the one that comes closest to the explanation proposed here comes from Justin Martyr (100-165 A.D.). Justin explains in his Dialogue with Trypho what Trypho the Jew saw as a common Jewish expectation concerning Messiah. Trypho says:

To “make him manifest to all” is strikingly similar to John the Baptist’s own answer, “That he might be revealed to Israel” (John 1:31). Justin’s reply is:

This anointing of the Messiah is something spoken about in the passage the Messiah read from Isaiah 61. We will be returning to it shortly.

In the meantime, in light of the context of Luke and the Messiah’s obedience -- including priestly obedience, and Matthew and the Messiah’s fulfillment of the law, it is arresting to compare our eight facts surrounding the Messiah’s baptism (above) with eight requirements for the Levitical priesthood:

The writer of Hebrews goes out of his way to tell us that the Messiah fulfilled or obeyed many Old Testament Aaronic rites. The Israelites believed that Messiah would be from the lineage of Levi (cf. Jubilees 31:14; TLevi 8:11; TBen. 11:2). But this was not the answer according to the New Testament. Rather, it -- especially Hebrews -- tells us that the Messiah could actually fulfill these rites because he was not descended from Levi biologically, yet he was a priest. Hebrews 7:11 says,

The Messiah is from the “lineage” of Melchizedek because Scripture says, “The LORD has sworn and will not change his mind, ‘You [the lord of David; vs. 1] are a priest forever after the order of Melchizedek’” (Psalm 110:4). The purpose in the whole Melchizedek discussion is not to deny that the Messiah obeyed priestly law, but rather to establish why he was doing so when he was not actually descended from Aaron. He did so because he was a priest -- in the order of Melchizedek (Hebrews 5:6-10; 6:20-7:17).

As each of these references to the Messiah orbit around his baptism and initial work in his earthly ministry, and as each find such curious Old Testament parallels in the priestly ordination and ministry, it leads us to ask whether or not there is a genuine connection here, and if so, what does it have to do with the Messiah’s baptism?

Linking baptism in some way to the Old Testament, Jay Adams notes a requirement he believes exists for becoming a priest saying, “He must be sprinkled with water (Numbers 8:6-7).” The law Adams cites is the initiation ceremony of a Levite:

Sprinkling is how many Paedobaptists practice baptism, and this seems to have its roots in something like Adams' suggestion. Though we believe Adams is on the right track in making an Old Testament legal connection to the Messiah’s baptism, we believe he is incorrect in seeing this law as being fulfilled at Yeshua’s baptism. The reason goes back to Melchizedek. Yeshua is not being initiated as a mere Levite, but as high priest.

The Old Testament makes a distinction between priests and Levites (cf. 1 Chronicles 13:2; 15:11; 23:2; Ezra 1:5; Nehemiah 8:13, etc.). All priests were to be Levites descended from Aaron, but not all Levites were priests. Levites were a broader group, needing to be descended from Levi, but not Aaron. They were divided into three clans (Kohathites, Gershonites, and Merarites) according to the three sons of Levi, the son of Jacob, and were given the physical duties of serving and guarding the tabernacle (Numbers 8:26). Priests were given the special duties of overseeing the sacrificial system of Israel (Leviticus 4:10, 26, 31, 35, etc.).

There is another Old Testament law, however, which fits all of the data we have looked at perfectly. This is found in Exodus 29:1-9. It pertains to the priest, not merely the Levite. The law consists of two acts: a washing with water and a clothing in the garments of the priesthood. Vs. 4 says, “You shall bring Aaron and his sons to the entrance of the tent of meeting and wash them with water.” Vv. 5-9 add all of the holy clothing that was to be placed on the priest. Only after completing this ritual was the priest then allowed to serve YEHOVAH God in a legal manner. This washing and clothing was his “ordination” into the priesthood (vs. 9).

This law has roots that go back to at least the days of Jacob, prior to the establishing of a priestly covenant for a specific tribe of Israelites. Jacob is on his way home with his family when, “God said to Jacob, ‘Arise, go up to Bethel and dwell there. Make an altar there to the God who appeared to you when you fled from your brother Esau.’ So Jacob said to his household and to all who were with him, ‘Put away the foreign gods that are among you and purify yourselves and change your garments’” (Genesis 35:1-2).

In Eastern Mediterranean epics, the so-called “homecoming” took place just prior to the hero bathing with water and changing his clothes. Curiously, purification (this is the only time taher is used in Genesis) is often associated with water. For example, “Anything on which any of them falls when they are dead shall be unclean, whether it is an article of wood or a garment or a skin or a sack, any article that is used for any purpose. It must be put into water, and it shall be unclean until the evening; then it shall be clean” (Leviticus 11:32). So even this priestly ordination rite, his kind of home-coming where he will now be able to serve in YEHOVAH God’s house, has ancient roots.

Returning to these priests, the writer of Hebrews makes clear that the Messiah is obeying Levitical priestly law throughout his ministry. It begins this extended argument (Hebrews 4:14-10:18) by explaining that the Messiah as high priest is called by YEHOVAH God “as Aaron was” (5:4). It then quotes Psalm 2:7 (“You are my son, today I have begotten you”) and 110:4 (“You are a priest forever, after the order of Melchizedek”). There are only two occasions in the life of the Messiah where the voice of the Father says anything like this to him: the transfiguration (Matthew 17:4; Mark 9:7; Luke 9:35; 2 Peter 1:17) and his baptism (Matthew 3:17; Mark 1:11; Luke 3:22).

Only at his baptism, however, is the holy spirit said to descend upon the Messaih “like a dove.” In the Old Testament, when the spirit comes upon someone, it is sometimes said to “clothe” them (Gideon: Judges 6:34; Amasai: 1 Chronicles 12:18; Zechariah the priest: 2 Chronicles 24:20). The word is labash. It means to “dress, be clothed” (TWOT 175.0) or “put on (a garment), wear, clothe, be clothed” (BDB 4789). It is translated by the Septuagint with enduw.

This Greek word has the same meaning in the Lexicons. In this way, we find both the washing and the clothing occurring at the Messiah’s baptism. Using this same Greek word and combining it with baptism, the Apostle Paul says, “For all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ” (Galatians 3:27). In both the baptism of the Messiah and the baptism of Israelite-Christians, the imagery is identical to that of the priestly ordination in Exodus 29:4-9.

It is now time to return to Isaiah 61, which the Messiah read immediately after his baptism in the synagogue as Luke tells us. Given these many convergences, the quote needs to be understood not merely as the anointing of Messiah (which it is), but as Yeshua being anointed into the priesthood. This is the context of Isaiah’s chapter. The word “anoint”, mishchah, is used in the ordination ceremony of the priest immediately after his washing/baptism. “You shall take the anointing oil and pour it on his head and anoint him” (Exodus 29:7). Throughout Isaiah 61 we find allusions to the priesthood and the Levitical Law. It even gives the very details of ordaining the priest. It says, “You shall be called priests of the LORD; they shall speak of you as the ministers of our God” (Isaiah 61:6).

To arrive at this conclusion it says, “Grant to those who mourn in Zion...to give them a beautiful headdress instead of ashes” (Isaiah 61:3). The law of ordaining the priest demands that a headdress be placed upon him. “Put the turban on his head and attach the sacred diadem to the turban...Bring his sons and dress them in tunics and put headbands on them” (Exodus 26:6, 8-9). Isaiah says, “Grant to those who mourn in Zion...the garment of praise instead of a faint spirit” (Isaiah 61:3).

Again, garments were to be made for the priests as his consecration, “Weave the tunic of fine linen and make the turban of fine linen. The sash is to be the work of an embroiderer. Make tunics, sashes and headbands for Aaron’s sons, to give them dignity and honor” (Exodus 28:39-40). These things were all put upon Aaron as his clothing in the ordination ceremony (Exodus 29:5-9). Other priestly references in Isaiah 61 include the priestly duty of bringing good news to the poor (Isaiah 61:1; cf. Romans 15:16), and proclaiming the year of the LORD’s favor (Isaiah 61:2; cf. Hebrews 4:9).

Thus, it is his baptism that the Messiah says gives him the legal authority to carry out his priestly ministry. We conclude this section with an observation from Ben Rose:

It goes without saying that the location of priestly service is a sanctuary. In the Old Testament, Levites and Levitical priests served in the tabernacle and/or the Temple. This changes in the New Testament and the Messiah only with respect to the type/antitype relationship. Rather than serving in a physical temple made with stones, he presently serves in the temple of his body (John 2:21). However, during the Millennium, the Messiah will have his throne in a physical rebuilt Temple in Jerusalem -- serving as High Priest to his Father, YEHOVAH God.

As High Priest, the Messiah had very specific ministerial duties. We have seen some of these in the discussion of Isaiah 61. The greatest duty the Messiah had was to offer himself as a sacrifice for sin. He would be both the sacrifice (the lamb of YEHOVAH God; John 1:29) and the sacrificer (the priest). The writer of Hebrews spends several chapters explaining how the Messiah offered the greater sacrifice in a temple not made with human hands.

If the priest’s primary task revolved around the sacrificial system, the Levites’ primary task involved serving and guarding the sanctuary. As noted above (n. 16), two words are used together with reference to this Levitical task. These are abad and shamar. Greg Beale explains their significance when used together:

It is no accident that two same two words are the original commands YEHOVAH God gave to Adam in the Garden of Eden. The verse is often translated, “The LORD God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to work (abad) it and keep (shamar) it” (Genesis 2:15). This certainly fits the context of a garden, but there is more going on here than just tilling the earth. Meredith Kline explains:

Having this relationship of the priest and Levities to the sanctuary clearly in mind, and knowing now that there is a connection between their being ordained in water (the priest with a baptism, the Levite with a sprinkling), we want to turn our attention to the relationship that baptism has with the sanctuary and thus also its priestly significance.

In the past couple of decades, scholars have given increasing attention to the theme of the Temple as it occurs not only in the tabernacle and Temple, but in other places such as the creation of the world, the garden of Eden, the story of Noah, and Mt. Sinai. One of the important features of a biblical theology of the Temple is how YEHOVAH God makes a major covenant at every major Temple in the Bible, and how He does this on a holy or cosmic mountain. In fact, each of the main covenants of the Bible correspond to one of these sanctuaries.

For example, the very first Temple was recognized long ago by Philo (20 B.C. - 50 A.D.) as being the heavens and earth. He wrote, “The whole universe must be regarded as the highest and, in truth, the holy temple of God” (Philo, De spec. leg. 1:66). The idea has its origin in Scripture. Isaiah declares, “Thus says the LORD: ‘Heaven is my throne, and the earth is my footstool; what is the house that you would build for me, and what is the place of my rest?’” (Isaiah 66:1). Similarly, one of the great Psalms of creation says, “Let us go to his dwelling place; let us worship at his footstool!...For the LORD has chosen Zion; he has desired it for his dwelling place: This is my resting place forever; here I will dwell, for I have desired it” (Psalm 132:7-8, 13-14).

Looking carefully at the Scriptures in this regard we discover that creation and the Temple both have storehouses (Job 38:22; 1 Kings 7:51), chambers (Amos 9:6; 1 Kings 6:5), vaulted domes (Amos 9:6; 1 Kings 6:15), doors (Psalm 78:23; 1 Kings 6:31), pillars (1 Samuel 2:8; 2 Chronicles 3:17), beams (Psalm 104:3; 1 Kings 6:36), curtains (Isaiah 40:22; Exodus 26:2), windows (Genesis 8:2; 1 Kings 6:4), separation of space (Genesis 1:4 and Job 26:10 with Exodus 26:33), foundations (Isaiah 6:4 and Psalm 104:5 with Ezra 3:10), workmen (Proverbs 8:30; Exodus 36:8), and measurements (Job 38:4-5; Ezekiel 42:20).

They are both built (Amos 9:6; 1 Kings 6:1); fastened (Job 38:6; 1 Kings 6:10), and hammered (Job 37:18; Exodus 39:3). They both have a firmament (Genesis 1:6; Psalm 150:1). They are both filled with lights in the firmament (Genesis 1:16-17; Exodus 26:1), lights (Job 38:18-19; Exodus 25:37); beasts (Genesis 1:24; 1 Kings 7:28-29), plants (Genesis 1:11; 1 Kings 6:29), and mountains (Amos 4:13; Micah 3:12). Thus, Michael Horton concludes, “The temple was a microcosm of creation.” [6] On the other hand, it can be also be said that, “The cosmos can be described in architectural terms as a temple would be.”

Though increasingly under attack in our day, Reformed theology has traditionally said that YEHOVAH God made a “covenant of works” at creation. In fact, it is sometimes called a “covenant of creation.” Its laws extend to the whole created order. Jeremiah calls it “the covenant with the day and night” (Jeremiah 33:20, 25). Man, as YEHOVAH’s vice-regent, is set over the earth, and holds a special moral and covenantal obligation before YEHOVAH God. We are not going to defend the covenant of works here. We simply want to note that if it is real, and we believe that it is, it occurs at the creation sanctuary and is most likely made at the holy cosmic mountain of Eden.

Connected to this is the function of baptism at creation. Baptism at creation seems like an almost absurd thought, because most of us think the term is only meaningful when people are involved. So let us consider two features also found in both creation and the Temple. These are the sea and the mikveh. Solomon called his massive 10,000 gallon water basin the “Great Sea” (1 Kings 7:23). Since he viewed the entire structure as a replica of the heavens and earth, his Sea corresponds to the seas and waters of Genesis 1. Priests bathed in Solomon’s Sea, and it was so large that they would have had to climb a ladder to do so.

Ceremonial washings such as the priests performed here were later called by the Israelites “mikvehs.” A mikveh is a ritual bath in a pool of fresh water. It is necessarily an immersion. In the Law, the ceremonial idea comes from Leviticus 15:13, “When the one with a discharge is cleansed of his discharge, then he shall count for himself seven days for his cleansing, and wash his clothes. And he shall bathe his body in fresh water and shall be clean.” Fresh water could come from an ocean, a river, rain, snow, or a place created to hold any such fresh water.

The origin of the mikveh is primordial, being related to YEHOVAH God’s design of the earth as a temple. It is also found in Genesis 1. Genesis 1:10 describes the gathering of the waters away from dry land. The word “gathering” is mikveh. This is salient because the previous verse also talks about a “gathering,” but it uses an ordinary word: qavah. Obviously, it didn’t need to use mikveh to convey the mere idea of a gathering of water.

Mikveh seems to be as much theological, perhaps even liturgical, as it is descriptive. In Exodus 7:19 and Isaiah 22:11, mikveh is used for a reservoir, which is a collection of fresh water. Yet, a curious play on mikveh occurs in Jeremiah 17:13 where the word is translated “hope.” “O LORD, the hope [mikveh] of Israel, all who forsake You will be put to shame. Those who turn away on earth will be written down, because they have forsaken the fountain of living water, even the LORD.” Our Mikveh is the “Fountain of Living Water.” This, of course, is fulfilled in the Messiah who gives us living water to drink (John 4:10).

Jews who practice mikvehs recognize that the equivalent word in Greek and English is baptism. Thus, the immersion practice of baptism has Israelitish and Old Testament roots beginning right here in the Temple. Thus, we also have new evidence that original creation was a baptism. In view of this, it should not surprise us to find someone as early as Tertullian (ca. 155-230 A.D.) saying,

His point is that the preface to all baptism comes in Genesis 1:2. Cyril of Jerusalem (ca. 315–386 A.D.) makes this connection and others in the Old Testament even clearer saying,

Following Cyril’s lead in this ancient line of exegesis, as well as modern studies on the same, we could begin to discuss other sanctuaries and the relation of covenants and baptismal waters to each of them. We could talk about the Garden of Eden as a sanctuary (Ezekiel 28:13-18), along with its river(s), and Jewish traditions that Adam and Eve were baptized in those waters after they sinned. We could look at Noah, the ark landing on "the mountains of Ararat" after the flood, the covenant YEHOVAH God made here, and Peter’s exegesis that baptism is the antitype of the flood (1 Peter 3:20-21).

We could speak about Moses and the Red Sea, which Paul speaks about as being a type of baptism (1 Corinthians 10:2), and Israel’s immediate journey to Mt. Sinai where a covenant is cut and a miraculous river flows, a river where YEHOVAH God commanded the Israelites to wash (Exodus 19:10), after which time they would become “a kingdom of priests” (19:6).41 We could also look at how the spirit is often found hovering like a bird over the baptismal waters (Genesis 1:2; 8:8; Deuteronomy 32:10-11; Matthew 3:16).

Rather than follow these fascinating trails, we only have space to summarize the importance of these persistent reoccurring themes. Each of these stories can be viewed, through typology, as kinds of new creations -- YEHOVAH God is starting over with Noah, creating a nation out of nothing with Abraham, taking Israel as his firstborn son, etc. Each story is tied covenantally to a typological new creation. Water and consecration through washing (a priestly concept) is usually close by, even with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob who each seem to symbolically cross the eastern edge of the Promise Land by going over its river, where soon thereafter a covenant is made with them.

The new creation of the new covenant (2 Corinthians 5:17; Galatians 6:15) is the antitype of these. Believers are baptized into this new creation, symbolically and sacramentally demonstrating newness of life (Romans 6:3-4; 1 Peter 3:21). This is something that goes far back into history, even to the foundations of the earth itself. It did not begin with John the Baptist or the Essenes at Qumran. We should expect to find it in the Old Testament. We do, and where ever we find it, we usually see covenants coming to the foreground.

[1] Michael D. Goulder, Midrash and Lection in Matthew: The Speaker's Lectures in Biblical Studies, 1969-71 (London: SPCK, 1974), p. 262.

[2] Justin Martyr, Dialogue with Trypho, 8, 49. Beloved Publishing LLC, 2015. Emphasis added.

[4] Ben L. Rose, Baptism by Sprinkling (Reprint from the Southern Presbyterian Journal: Weaverville, 1949), pp. 10-11.

[5] Meredith G. Kline, Kingdom Prologue (Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 2006), p. 86.

[6] Michael Horton, The Christian Faith: A Systematic Theology for Pilgrims on the Way (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2011), pp. 400-401.

[7] Tertullian, On Baptism 1.1; 3.1, cited in Alexander Roberts, James Donaldson, and A. Cleveland Coxe (eds), The Ante-Nicene Fathers, Vol. III: Latin Christianity: Its Founder, Tertullian, trans. S. Thelwall, (Buffalo, NY: Christian Literature Company, 1885), p. 670.

[8] Cyril of Jerusalem, The Catechetical Lectures of St. Cyril of Jerusalem III.5. CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform; 1st edition (2014).

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