6 Eckhard J. Schnabel ‘baptize’ or used expressions like ‘putting on of water’, ‘putting on God’s water’, ‘washing’, or ‘God’s washing’. Translators should always consider this problem carefully, keeping in mind the terms used by the churches in their area and the practice of the ritual itself”.8 The ″theological implications⁇ of Christian water baptism should surely not control how the Greek term βαπτίζειν is translated, particu- larly in a passage which describes an action involving water in a purely Jewish context. Christian baptism as ″introduced by the churches⁇ was unknown in Second Temple Judaism; the early Christians who used the Greek term βαπτίζειν did not coin an (artificial) loan word from another language in order to describe what they were doing when they marked the fact that people had repented of their sins, turned to God, had come to faith in Jesus, and pledged their allegiance to Jesus as Israel’s Messiah, Savior, and Lord in a public act of immersion in water. Two factors make awareness of a ″technical meaning fallacy⁇9 in the rendering of βαπτίζειν as ‘to baptize’ difficult. First, since all Bible trans- lations agree in their use of the English word ‘to baptize’ as translation of the Greek term, the only exceptions being Mk. 7:4 and Lk. 11:38 where βαπτίζειν is usually translated as ‘to wash’ or ‘to bathe’,10 readers of these translations are never informed about the standard meaning of the Greek term. Second, commentators, with very few exceptions, regard βαπτίζειν as a technical term which needs no elaboration as such,11 notwithstand- ing questions regarding the origins of Christian water baptism, the 8 Barclay M. Newman and Philip C. Stine, A Translator’s Handbook on the Gospel of Matthew (UBS Handbook Series; London/New York: United Bible Societies, 1988), p. 57. 9 D.A. Carson, Exegetical Fallacies (Second ed.; Grand Rapids: Baker, 1996 [orig. 1984]), p. 45: “in this fallacy, an interpreter falsely assumes that a word always or nearly always has a certain technical meaning-a meaning usually derived either from a subset of the evidence or from the interpreter’s personal systematic theology”. 10 An exception is Robert Young, Young’s Literal Translation of the Holy Bible (Re- printed from the Third ed.; orig. 1898; repr., Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 1995), who uses ‘to baptize’ (and ‘baptism’) even here-Mk. 7:4: “coming from the market-place, if they do not baptize themselves, they do not eat; and many other things there are that they received to hold, baptisms of cups, and pots, and brazen vessels, and couches”; Lk. 11:38: “and the Pharisee having seen, did wonder that he did not first baptize himself before the dinner”. English readers of the translation of Mk. 7:4 and Lk. 11:38 would have been mystified in the 19th century just as they are in the 21st century regarding the “baptisms of cups” and “baptisms before dinner”. 11 Cf. A. Oepke, Art. βάπτω, βαπτίζω κ.τ.λ., in Gerhard Kittel and Gerhard Friedrich, eds., Theological Dictionary of the New Testament [TDNT] (10 vols.; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1964–76), 1.530: the New Testament “uses βαπτίζω only in the cultic sense, infrequently of Jewish washings (Mk. 7:4 * D for ῥαντίσωνται in Lk. 11:38), and otherwise in the technical sense ″to baptize⁇. This usage shows that baptism is felt to be something new and strange”. Also G. R. Beasley-Murray, Art. ″Baptism, Wash,⁇ in Willem A. Van Ge- meren, ed., New International Dictionary of Old Testament Theology and Exegesis (5 vols.;