In this book, the author isolates the themes with which the Church in the first centuries proclaimed and celebrated the baptism of Jesus in the Jordan. Drawing on Latin, Greek, and Syrian sources, the author shows the Jordan event as the dominant paradigm of Christian baptism in the earliest centuries and its relation to growing interest in the Pauline death and resurrection themes in the fourth century. Still, the baptism of Jesus had a tenacious hold on sacramental imagination. Because it was widely looked upon as the institution of Christian baptism, this history has meaning for contemporary theology and liturical celebration of Christian baptism.
