MELITO OF SARDIS ON BAPTISM

BY

ROBERT M. GRANT

Melito of Sardis not only possessed an elegans et declamatorium

ingenium (Tertullian in Jerome, De viris inlustr. 24), but also
was concerned with philosophical topics. In his apology he spoke
of Christianity as "our philosophy" (Eusebius, H. E. iv. 26. 7),
and the titles of several of his lost works reveal his use of
philosophical language. He wrote On the Subjection of the Senses
the 1 On
to Faith, On Unity of Soul and Body, Truth, On Faith,
On Hospitality, and On the Corporeal God (Eusebius, H. E. iv. 26. 2).
Some of these topics may take their texts from the epistle to the
Hebrews (5.14 on the exercise of the senses, 13. 2 on hospitality,
12.29 God a fire). The first and the last, however, reflect con-
temporary Stoic thought, according to which the senses served
the principal part of the soul, where a "firm comprehen-
sion", took place (SVF III 548; cf. II 823-62), and according to
which God was corporeal (SVF II 1028-48). In the Stoic-
Jewish IV Maccabees 2.22, it is the mind which controls the
senses. 2
The most recent text of a fragment of Melito's treatise On
Baptism was printed by Harnack in his Marcion : das Evangelium
vom f remden Gott (ed. 2, Leipzig, 1924), pp. 421*-23*. For
Harnack its importance lay in the last sentence. "If the sun
with the stars and moon is washed in the Ocean, why is not
Christ also washed in the Jordan?" This he regarded as proving
that the treatise was intended to refute Marcion, whose gospel

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omits any account of Jesus' baptism. We may compare another

passage in Melito which shows that the baptism of Jesus had
great theological significance for him. This is a fragment from
his work on the Incarnation (frag. 6 Otto, p. 415), in which he
explains that Jesus' deity was evident from the miracles of his
three years' ministry after the baptism, and his humanity from
the thirty years' concealment before that time.
Harnack observes that "das ganz rhetorische und daher echt
kleinasiatische Fragment hat sein Akumen in der Verteidigung
der Taufe Jesu im Jordan". A decade ago the recovery of Melito's
Homily on the Pczssion (edited by Campbell Bonner) confirmed
the accuracy of Harnack's remark on rhetoric (cf. the important
study of A. Wifstrand in Vig. Chr. 2 [1948], 201-23, with
Bonner's remarks, 3 [1949], 184 f.). The fragment On Baptism,
however, is not only rhetorical but also philosophical. 3
According to Melito, water is used in smelting gold, silver,
copper, and iron. The whole earth is washed by rains and rivers.
Egypt is washed by the overflow of the Nile. The air itself is
washed by rain. These analogies, commonplaces of the Stoic
defence of providence, are very similar to the parallels which
Theophilus of Antioch provides for the chrism associated with
baptism (Ad Autolycusn i. 12). Theophilus tells us that ships,
towers, houses, babies, athletes, and statues are ,,anointed", 4
and like Melito concludes with the statement that the air and
the whole earth under the heaven are "anointed" with light and
air. The idea of these analogies, if not the analogies themselves,
may well come from Melito. In passing we may observe that the
analogical method as used by these apologists was later criticized.
Tertullian (De bapt. 3) refuses to use it ne laudes aquae poti?us
quam baptismi rationes videar congregasse; and Cyril of Jerusalem
(Catecla. xxi. 3, PG, 1089) explicitly states that Christian chrism
is not natural ointment.
Melito goes on to provide another example, this time from

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mythology. "There is washed even the blossoming mother of

rains, Iris, whenever, invoked by a water-bringing spirit [or wind],
she fills the rivers at the time of downpourings". It seems strange
to us that the rainbow precedes the rain, but M. Mayer (in
Roscher's rlics f ?ihrliches Lexicon ii. 321) gives examples from many
writers near Melito's time (e.g. Ovid, Metam. i. 270; "some ancient
r3
poet" quoted by Tzetzes on Iliad xv. 83).
Finally he turns to describe the "washing" of the heavenly
bodies in the Ocean. This is "a new sight". 6

The sun, accomplishing the day's course with his fiery steeds,
becomes fiery in the whirling of his course and is lighted like a lamp,
burning up the middle zone of his course. As he appears near with
ten lightning rays he beats the earth and goes importunate into
the ocean.
As a copper globe, full of fire within, flashing much light, is washed
in cold water, with a great noise, but the fire within is not quenched
but again flashes fierily - so the sun, burning like lightning, is washed
wholly but not extinguished in cold water, having its fire unquenched;
washed in a mystic baptism he rejoices exceedingly, having the water
for nourishment; for remaining one and the same he rises as a new
sun to men, made strong from the deep, purified from the baptism,
driving out the darkness of night, he begat the light of day.
On this course also the movement of the stars and of the moon by
nature operates; for they are washed at the baptistery of the sun,
like good disciples; for the stars with the moon follow in the path
of the sun, having pure light. 7

Except for the obviously Christian elements which bind this

passage to baptism, every item in it is derived from Stoic exegesis
of Homer. The most important parallel we possess is a section
of Macrobius (Sat. i. 23), which as K. Reinhardt has observed
(Kosmos und Sympathie [Munich, 1926], 353-65) is derived from
Posidonius. It is exegesis of Iliad i. 423-25.
In Macrobius we find the winged chariot of the sun, a reference
to the torrid zone, to the stars which follow the sun and are
nourished by the same moisture from the Ocean - all from

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Posidonius. We also know that Posidonius divided the earth

into five zones, the middle one being the torrid (Diogenes Laertius
vii. 156, Strabo 94). The washing of the sun in a warm bath is
described in a fragment of Aeschylus (192 Nauck) preserved in
a Homeric discussion of Strabo 33 (from Posidonius), and the
flashing flame of the sun is mentioned, as well as the stables of
his horses, in a fragment of Euripides (771 Nauck) found in the
same place. The "striking" of the sun's rays is emphasized by
Cleanthes (SVF I 502), whose ideas of the importance of the sun
strongly influenced Posidonius.
Thus in composing his De Baptismo Melito has relied on Stoic
exegesis of Homer, presumably from Posidonius or his school.
Edwin Hatch 8 long ago pointed out the Homeric exegesis present
in the Cohortatio of Pseudo-Justin and in Clement of Alexandria.
There are a good many Homeric quotations and allusions in
Theophilus of Antioch, and several in Justin and Tatian. But
Melito is the first Christian writer in whom we find Stoic exegetical
theology newly baptized for Christian use.

Sewanee (Tennessee), University of the South

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