origin of the sect still existing called “Christians of St. John,” or Mendaites, which the Arabs call el-Mogtasila, “the Baptists."[7] It is difficult to unravel these vague analogies.  The sects floating between Judaism, Christianity, Baptism, and Sabeism, which we find in the region beyond the Jordan during the first centuries of our era,[8] present to criticism the most singular problem, in consequence of the confused accounts of them which have come down to us.  We may believe, at all events, that many of the external practices of John, of the Essenes,[9] and of the Jewish spiritual teachers of this time, were derived from influences then but recently received from the far East.  The fundamental practice which characterized the sect of John, and gave it its name, has always had its centre in lower Chaldea, and constitutes a religion which is perpetuated there to the present day.

[Footnote 1:  Luke i. 17.]

[Footnote 2:  Pliny, Hist.  Nat., v. 17; Epiph., Adv.  Haer., xix. 1 and 2.]

[Footnote 3:  Josephus, Vita, 2.]

[Footnote 4:  Spiritual preceptors.]

[Footnote 5:  I have developed this point elsewhere. Hist.  Gener. des Langues Semitiques, III. iv. 1; Journ.  Asiat., February-March, 1856.]

[Footnote 6:  The Aramean word seba, origin of the name of Sabians, is synonymous with [Greek:  baptizo].]

[Footnote 7:  I have treated of this at greater length in the Journal Asiatique, Nov.-Dec., 1853, and August-Sept., 1855.  It is remarkable that the Elchasaites, a Sabian or Baptist sect, inhabited the same district as the Essenes, (the eastern bank of the Dead Sea), and were confounded with them (Epiph., Adv.  Haer., xix. 1, 2, 4, xxx. 16, 17, liii. 1, 2; Philosophumena, IX. iii. 15, 16, X. xx. 29).]

[Footnote 8:  See the remarks of Epiphanius on the Essenes, Hemero-Baptists, Nazarites, Ossenes, Nazarenes, Ebionites, Samsonites (Adv.  Haer., books i. and ii.), and those of the author of the Philosophumena on the Elchasaites (books ix. and x).]

[Footnote 9:  Epiph., Adv.  Haer., xix., xxx., liii.]

This practice was baptism, or total immersion.  Ablutions were already familiar to the Jews, as they were to all religions of the East.[1] The Essenes had given them a peculiar extension.[2] Baptism had become an ordinary ceremony on the introduction of proselytes into the bosom of the Jewish religion, a sort of initiatory rite.[3] Never before John the Baptist, however, had either this importance or this form been given to immersion.  John had fixed the scene of his activity in that part of the desert of Judea which is in the neighborhood of the Dead Sea.[4] At the periods when he administered baptism, he went to the banks of the Jordan,[5] either to Bethany or Bethabara,[6] upon the eastern shore, probably opposite to Jericho, or to a place called AEnon, or “the Fountains,"[7] near Salim, where there was much water.[8] Considerable crowds, especially of the tribe of Judah, hastened to him to be baptized.[9] In a few months he thus became one of the most influential men in Judea, and acquired much importance in the general estimation.