drowning an ancient form of baptism?

[steph]

My boyfriend and i were discussing religion after i showed him a thread about the bible being a historical document. Anyways he was talking about something with baptism hundreds (thousands?) of years ago where they would actually DROWN the child and if they came back to life then they were saved, if they died then god didnt want them due to some devil possessing them or something. I havent really found anything on it yet, but maybe some of yall might have some insight on this topic?

 

[slingblade]

Only place I can recall hearing anything similar would be in George R.R. Martin's Ice and Fire series, as regards certain rites of The Drowned God.

Seems to me any culture that practiced routine drowning of its children wouldn't survive long...

 

[Kopji]

Maybe something like this...

King Ferdinand declared that drowning—called the third baptism—was a suitable response to Anabaptists. Water as a form of torture was an inversion of the waters of baptism under the (grotesque) belief that it could deliver the heretic from his or her sins.

http://pastorbobcornwall.blogspot.com/2007/11/baptism-by-torture-sightings.html

 

[steph]

Maybe something like this...

i read that just now and it was refering to them being sinful since they had a different religion, and therefore the only way to cleanse the earth of them was to drown them. You know kinda like with the salem witch hunts, except they allowed the choice of burning or drowning.

 

[steph]

Only place I can recall hearing anything similar would be in George R.R. Martin's Ice and Fire series, as regards certain rites of The Drowned God.

Seems to me any culture that practiced routine drowning of its children wouldn't survive long...

I am actually really glad you said that, because that is one of my boyfriends favorite authors and it very well could be where he got it from.

His dad studied religion and taught a course on it at the college if im not mistaken, and thats where he said he heard it from.

 

[steph]

perhaps it is a metaphor. i read somewhere that aesop had wrote a story and he used the word baptidzo (baptize translated in english) to describe a drowning resulting in death. If they did not die it was called bapto. Since baptizing is supposed to symbolize jesus' death perhaps that could be where the word came from and perhaps started a rumor about it. I'm still not done researching, but thats what i found so far.