The Meaning of βαπτίζειν in Greek, Jewish, and Patristic Literature 39 μετὰ τῶν δέκα φίλων ἀποσφάττει τὸν Γαδαλίαν καὶ τοὺς κατακειμένους σὺν αὐτῷ ἐν τῷ συμποσίῳ (“Seeing him [i.e. Gedaliah] in this condition, sunken into unconsciousness and a drunken sleep, Ismaelos sprang up with his ten friends and slaughtered Gadalias and those reclining with him at the banquet table”; R. Marcus) (i).85 4. Conclusion The evidence of the literary and documentary concerning the use of βάπτειν and βαπτίζειν in Greek and Jewish texts can be summarized as follows. (1) The basic meaning of both verbs is ″to plunge, to dip, to immerse⁇. The definition ″to put into a yielding substance⁇ can be substituted in essentially all occurrences of βάπτειν and βαπτίζειν, particularly when the verbs are used in connection with a physical substance such as water, dyes, or bodies. (2) The uses of βάπτειν and βαπτίζειν in connection with physical substances can be specified in terms of six extended meanings which focus on the result of the action of immersion: to cleanse with water (“to wash’), to make ritually clean (“to purify, cleanse⁇), to take (water, wine) by dipping a drinking vessel (“to draw⁇), to perish by submersion in wa- ter (“to drown, sink⁇), to put to death a living being (“to slaughter, kill⁇), to tinge fabric with a color (“to dye⁇, not attested for βαπτίζειν). (3) Both Greek and Jewish texts use different words for bathing and washing on the one hand and dipping or immersing on the other hand, even though the extended sense of βάπτειν and βαπτίζειν can designate the effect of the immersion in water, i.e. washing (sense 1a). (4) The physical idea of immersion is extended to non-physical reali- ties in two figurative or metaphorical senses of βάπτειν and βαπτίζειν; both verbs denote being overpowered by an abstract reality (debts, argu- ments, thoughts, passions) into which a person is ‘immersed’, and both verbs denote being overpowered by intoxicating drinks. (5) The verbs βάπτειν and βαπτίζειν share the basic, the extended, and the figurative senses, with the exception of the extended meaning ‘to dye’. The intensive verb βαπτίζειν seems to become more frequent as βάπτειν often denotes ‘to dye’, but both verbs are used across the centuries with essentially identical senses. 85 Josephus describes the murder by Gedaliah by Ishmael and the latter’s associates who had become drunk during a banquet; cf. Jer. 41:1-3 (LXX 32:1-3); the Scriptural text mentions neither a banquet nor the intoxication of Gedaliah.