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.