In Christianity, baptism (from the Greek noun ''baptisma''; itself derived from ''baptismos'', ritual washing) is for the majority the rite of admission (or adoption), almost invariably with the use of water, into the Christian Church generally and also membership of a particular church tradition. Baptism has been called a sacrament and an ordinance of Jesus Christ.

In some traditions, baptism is also called christening, but for others the word "christening" is reserved for the baptism of infants.

The New Testament reports that Jesus himself was baptized. The usual form of baptism among the earliest Christians was for the candidate to be immersed totally (submersion) or partially (standing or kneeling in water while water was poured on him or her). While John the Baptist's use of a deep river for his baptism suggests immersion, pictorial and archaeological evidence of Christian baptism from the 3rd century onward indicates that a normal form was to have the candidate stand in water while water was poured over the upper body. Other common forms of baptism now in use include pouring water three times on the forehead.

Martyrdom was identified early in Church history as "baptism by blood", enabling martyrs who had not been baptized by water to be saved. Later, the Catholic Church identified a baptism of desire, by which those preparing for baptism who die before actually receiving the sacrament are considered saved. As evidenced also in the common Christian practice of infant baptism, baptism was universally seen by Christians as in some sense necessary for salvation, until Huldrych Zwingli in the 16th century denied its necessity.

Today, some Christians, particularly Quakers and the Salvation Army, do not see baptism as necessary, and do not practice the rite. Among those that do, differences can be found in the manner and mode of baptizing and in the understanding of the significance of the rite. Most Christians baptize "in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit" (following the Great Commission), but some baptize in Jesus' name only. Most Christians baptize infants; many others hold that only believer’s baptism is true baptism. Some insist on submersion or at least partial immersion of the person who is baptized, others consider that any form of washing by water, as long as the water flows on the head, is sufficient.

"Baptism" has also been used to refer to any ceremony, trial, or experience by which a person is initiated, purified, or given a name—see Other initiation ceremonies.

Etymology

The English word "baptism" is derived indirectly through Latin from the neuter Greek concept noun ''baptisma'' (Greek βάπτισμα, "washing-ism"), which is a neologism in the New Testament derived from the masculine Greek noun ''baptismos'' (βαπτισμός) which is a term for ritual washing in Greek language texts of Hellenistic Judaism during the Second Temple period, such as the Septuagint. Both of these nouns are nouns derived from ''baptizein'' (βαπτίζω, "I wash" transitive verb) which is used in Jewish texts for ritual washing, and in the New Testament both for ritual washing and also for the apparently new rite of ''baptisma''. The Greek verb root ''bpt'' in turn is hypothetically traced to a reconstructed Indo-European root *''gwabh-'' or *''gwebh-'' in the suffixed zero-grade form *''gwəbh-yo-'' The Greek words are used in a great variety of meanings.

New Testament meaning of the related Greek nouns and verbs

The New Testament contains four related words; two verbs and two nouns:

''baptein''—to wash something

''baptizein''—to wash, often a person in a ritual context

''baptismos''—Jewish ritual washing

''baptisma''—the new Christian rite

As Christians of different traditions dispute whether total immersion (submersion) is necessary for baptism, the precise meaning of the Greek noun ''baptisma'' in the New Testament has become important for discussion.

Meaning of the Greek verb ''baptizein''

The Greek-English Lexicon of Liddell and Scott gives the primary meaning of the verb ''baptizein'' (1st Person ''βαπτίζω'' ''baptizô''), from which the English verb "baptize" is derived, as "dip, plunge", and indicates that the dipping or plunging need not be complete, as when a sword is plunged into a throat or into a foetus or when wine is drawn by dipping a cup in the bowl; for New Testament usage it gives two meanings: "baptize", with which it associates the Septuagint mention of Naaman dipping himself in the Jordan River, and "perform ablutions", as in .

Although the Greek verb ''baptizein'' does not exclusively mean dip, plunge or immerse (it is used with literal and figurative meanings such as "sink", "disable", "overwhelm", "go under", "overborne", "draw from a bowl"), lexical sources typically cite this as a meaning of the word in both the Septuagint and the New Testament.

Other meanings of the verb ''baptizein''

Two passages in the New Testament indicate that the verb ''baptizein'' when applied to washing in a context unrelated to Christian baptism, did not always indicate submersion. The first is Luke 11:38 which tells how a Pharisee, at whose house Jesus ate, "was astonished to see that he did not first wash (''ἐβαπτίσθη'', aorist passive of ''βαπτίζω''—literally, "be baptized") before dinner." This is the passage that Liddell and Scott cites as an instance of the use of '''' to mean ''perform ablutions''. Jesus' omission of this action is similar to that of his disciples: "Then came to Jesus scribes and Pharisees, which were of Jerusalem, saying, Why do thy disciples transgress the tradition of the elders? for they wash ('''') not their hands when they eat bread." The other New Testament passage pointed to is: "The Pharisees…do not eat unless they wash ('''', the ordinary word for washing) their hands thoroughly, observing the tradition of the elders; and when they come from the market place, they do not eat unless they wash themselves (literally, "baptize themselves"—''βαπτίσωνται'', passive or middle voice of ''βαπτίζω'')".

Scholars of various denominations claim that these two passages show that invited guests, or people returning from market, would not be expected to immerse themselves ("baptize themselves") totally in water but only to practise the partial immersion of dipping their hands in water or to pour water over them, as is the only form admitted by present Jewish custom. However, in the first of the two passages, it is actually the hands that are specifically identified as "washed" (Mark 7:3), not the entire person, who is simply described as having washed (Mark 7:4–5). Accordingly, standard lexicography identifies the meaning of βαπτίζω here as 'immerse'. The Liddell-Scott-Jones Greek-English Lexicon (1996) cites the other passage (Luke 11:38) as an instance of the use of the verb ''baptizein'' to mean "perform ablutions", not "baptize". References to the cleaning of vessels which use βαπτίζω also refer to immersion.

The lexicographical works of Zodhiates and Balz & Schneider likewise say that in the second of these two cases, , the verb ''baptizein'' means that, after coming from the market, the Pharisees only immersed their hands in collected water. They understand the meaning of βαπτίζω to be the same as βάπτω, to dip or immerse, a verb used of the partial dipping of a morsel held in the hand into wine or of a finger into spilled blood.

A possible additional use of the verb ''baptizein'' to relate to ritual washing is suggested by Peter Leithart (2007) who suggests that Paul's phrase "Else what shall they do who are baptized for the dead?" relates to Jewish ritual washing. In Jewish Greek the verb ''baptizein'' "baptized" has a wider reference than just "baptism" and in Jewish context primarily applies to the masculine noun ''baptismos'' "ritual washing" The verb ''baptizein'' occurs four times in the Septuagint in the context of ritual washing, ''baptismos''; Judith cleansing herself from menstrual impurity, Naaman washing seven times to be cleansed from leprosy, etc. Additionally, in the New Testament only, the verb ''baptizein'' can also relate to the neuter noun ''baptisma'' "baptism" which is a neologism unknown in the Septuagint and other pre-Christian Jewish texts. This broadness in the meaning of ''baptizein'' is reflected in English Bibles rendering "wash," where Jewish ritual washing is meant, for example Mark 7:4 states that the Pharisees "except they wash (Greek "baptize"), they do not eat", and "baptize" where ''baptisma'', the new Christian rite, is intended.

Derived nouns

Two nouns derived from the verb ''baptizo'' (βαπτίζω) appear in the New Testament: the masculine noun ''baptismos'' (βαπτισμός) and the neuter noun ''baptisma'' (βάπτισμα):

''baptismos'' (βαπτισμός) refers in to a water-rite for the purpose of purification, washing, cleansing, of dishes; in the same verse and in to Levitical cleansings of vessels or of the body; and in perhaps also to baptism, though there it may possibly refer to washing an inanimate object. According to Spiros Zodhiates when referring merely to the cleansing of utensils ''baptismos'' (βαπτισμός) is equated with ''rhantismos'' (ῥαντισμός, "sprinkling"), found only in and , a noun used to indicate the symbolic cleansing by the Old Testament priest.

''baptisma'' (βάπτισμα), which is a neologism appearing to originate in the New Testament, and probably should not be confused with the earlier Jewish concept of ''baptismos'' (βαπτισμός), Later this is found only in writings by Christians. In the New Testament, it appears at least 21 times: :*13 times with regard to the rite practised by John the Baptist; :*3 times with reference to the specific Christian rite (4 times if account is taken of its use in some manuscripts of , where, however, it is most likely to have been changed from the original ''baptismos'' than vice versa); :*5 times in a metaphorical sense.

Manuscript variation: In , some manuscripts have neuter noun ''baptisma'' (βάπτισμα), but some have masculine noun ''baptismos'' (βαπτισμός), and this is the reading given in modern critical editions of the New Testament. If this reading is correct, then this the only New Testament instance in which ''baptismos'' (βαπτισμός) is clearly used of Christian baptism, rather than of a generic washing, unless the opinion of some is correct that may also refer to Christian baptism.

The feminine noun ''baptisis'', along with the masculine noun ''baptismos'' both occur in Josephus' Antiquities (J. AJ 18.5.2) relating to the murder of John the Baptist by Herod. This feminine form is not used elsewhere by Josephus, nor in the New Testament.

History

Background in Jewish ritual

Although the term "baptism" is not used to describe the Jewish rituals, the purification rites in Jewish laws and tradition, called "Tvilah", have some similarity to baptism, and the two have been linked. The "Tvilah" is the act of immersion in natural sourced water, called a "Mikvah" In the Jewish Bible and other Jewish texts, immersion in water for ritual purification was established for restoration to a condition of "ritual purity" in specific circumstances. For example, Jews who (according to the Law of Moses) became ritually defiled by contact with a corpse had to use the mikvah before being allowed to participate in the Holy Temple. Immersion is required for converts to Judaism as part of their conversion. Immersion in the mikvah represents a change in status in regards to purification, restoration, and qualification for full religious participation in the life of the community, ensuring that the cleansed person will not impose uncleanness on property or its owners ( and Babylonian Talmud, Tractate''Chagigah'', p. 12). This change of status by the mikvah could be obtained repeatedly, while Christian baptism, like circumcision, is, in the general view of Christians, unique and not repeatable.

During the Second Temple period the Greek noun ''baptismos'' was used to refer to ritual washing in Hellenistic Judaism.

John the Baptist

John the Baptist adopted baptismal immersion as the central sacrament in his messianic movement, seen as a forerunner of Christianity.

Early Christianity

Baptism has been part of Christianity from the start, as shown by the many mentions in the Acts of the Apostles and the Pauline epistles. Christians consider Jesus to have instituted the sacrament of baptism. How explicit Jesus' intentions were and whether he envisioned a continuing, organized Church is a matter of dispute among scholars.

Early Middle Ages

Infant baptism became common, alongside the developing theology of original sin, displacing the earlier common practice of delaying baptism until the deathbed. Against Pelagius, Augustine insisted that baptism was necessary for salvation even for virtuous people and for children.

Middle Ages

In 895, the provincial Council of Tribur commented on the traditional teaching that that the triple immersion in baptism was an imitation of Christ for the three days he spent in the tomb, and the rising from the water an imitation of the resurrection of Jesus. The linking of the baptismal immersion in and rising from the water with the burial and resurrection of Jesus arguably goes back to Saint Paul, and the linking of the triple immersion with the three days in the tomb is found in Cyril of Jerusalem (c. 313-386) and Gregory of Nyssa (c.335-after 394).

The 12th century saw the meaning of the word "sacrament" narrowed down and restricted to seven rites, among them that of baptism, while other symbolic rites came to be called "sacramentals".

In the period between the 12th and the 14th centuries, affusion became the usual manner of administering baptism in Western Europe, though immersion continued to be found in some places even as late as the 16th century. Throughout the Middle Ages, there was therefore considerable variation in the kind of facility required for baptism, from the baptismal pool large enough to immerse several adults simultaneously of the 13th century Baptistery at Pisa, to the half-metre deep basin in the 6th century baptistery of the old Cologne Cathedral.

Both East and West considered washing with water and the Trinitarian baptismal formula necessary for administering the rite. Scholasticism referred to these two elements as the matter and the form of the sacrament, employing terms taken from the then prevailing Aristotelian philosophy. The Catechism of the Catholic Church, while teaching the necessity of both elements, nowhere uses these philosophical terms when speaking of any of the sacraments.

Reformation

In the 16th century, Martin Luther considered baptism to be a sacrament. For the Lutherans, baptism is a "means of grace" through which God creates and strengthens "saving faith" as the "washing of regeneration" in which infants and adults are reborn. Since the creation of faith is exclusively God's work, it does not depend on the actions of the one baptized, whether infant or adult. Even though baptized infants cannot articulate that faith, Lutherans believe that it is present all the same. Because it is faith alone that receives these divine gifts, Lutherans confess that baptism "works forgiveness of sins, delivers from death and the devil, and gives eternal salvation to all who believe this, as the words and promises of God declare." In the special section on infant baptism in his Large Catechism, Luther argues that infant baptism is God-pleasing because persons so baptized were reborn and sanctified by the Holy Spirit.

Swiss Reformer Huldrych Zwingli differed with the Lutherans by denying sacramental status of baptism. Zwingli identified baptism and the Lord's supper as sacraments, but in the sense of an initiatory ceremony. His understanding of these sacraments as symbolic differentiated him from Luther.

Anabaptists (a word that means "rebaptizers") rejected so thoroughly the tradition maintained by Lutherans as well as Catholics that they denied the validity of baptism outside their group. They "rebaptized" converts on the grounds that one cannot be baptized without wishing it, and an infant, who does not understand what happens in a baptism ceremony and who has no knowledge of the concepts of Christianity, is not really baptized. They saw as non-biblical the baptism of infants, who cannot confess their faith and who, not having yet committed any sins, are not in the same need of salvation. Anabaptists and other Baptist groups do not consider that they ''re''baptize those who have been baptized as infants, since, in their view, infant baptism is without effect. The Amish, Restoration churches (Churches of Christ/ Christian Church), Hutterites, Baptists, Mennonites and other groups descend from this tradition. Pentecostal, charismatic and most non-denominational churches share this view as well.

Mode and manner

A Christian baptism is administered in one of the following forms, performing the action either once or thrice:

Aspersion

Aspersion is the sprinkling of water on the head.

Affusion

Affusion is the pouring of water over the head.

Immersion

The word "immersion" is derived from late Latin ''immersionem'', a noun derived from the verb ''immergere'' (''in'' – "into" + ''mergere'' "dip"). In relation to baptism, some use it to refer to any form of dipping, whether the body is put completely under water or is only partly dipped in water; they thus speak of immersion as being either total or partial. Others, of the Anabaptist tradition, use "immersion" to mean exclusively plunging someone entirely under the surface of the water (submersion). The term "immersion" is also used of a form of baptism in which water is poured over someone standing in water, without submersion of the person. On these three meanings of the word "immersion", see Immersion baptism.

When "immersion" is used in opposition to "submersion", it indicates the form of baptism in which the candidate stands or kneels in water and water is poured over the upper part of the body. Immersion in this sense has been employed in West and East since at least the 2nd century and is the form in which baptism is generally depicted in early Christian art. In the West, this method of baptism began to be replaced by affusion baptism from around the 8th century, but it continues in use in Eastern Christianity.

Submersion

The word Submersion comes from the late Latin (''sub-'' "under, below" + ''mergere'' "plunge, dip") and is also sometimes called "complete immersion". It is the form of baptism in which the water completely covers the candidate's body. Submersion is practiced in the Orthodox and several other Eastern Churches, as well as in the Ambrosian Rite. It is one of the methods provided in the Roman Rite of the baptism of infants.

Apparel

Until the Middle Ages, most baptisms were performed with the candidates naked—as is evidenced by most of the early portrayals of baptism (some of which are shown in this article), and the early Church Fathers and other Christian writers. Typical of these is Cyril of Jerusalem who wrote "On the Mysteries of Baptism" in the 4th century (c. 350 AD):

The symbolism is threefold:

1. Baptism is considered to be a form of rebirth—"by water and the Spirit"—the nakedness of baptism (the second birth) paralleled the condition of one's original birth. For example, St. John Chrysostom calls the baptism "λοχείαν", i.e., giving birth, and "new way of creation…from water and Spirit" ("to John" speech 25,2), and later elaborates:

:

2. The removal of clothing represented the "image of putting off the old man with his deeds" (as per Cyril, above), so the stripping of the body before for baptism represented taking off the trappings of sinful self, so that the "new man," which is given by Jesus, can be put on.

3. As St. Cyril again asserts above, as Adam and Eve in scripture and tradition were naked, innocent and unashamed in the Garden of Eden, nakedness during baptism was seen as a renewal of that innocence and state of original sinlessness. Other parallels can also be drawn, such as between the exposed condition of Christ during His crucifixion, and the crucifixion of the "old man" of the repentant sinner in preparation for baptism.

Changing customs and concerns regarding modesty probably contributed to the practice of permitting or requiring the baptismal candidate to either retain their undergarments (as in many Renaissance paintings of baptism such as those by da Vinci, Tintoretto, Van Scorel, Masaccio, de Wit and others) and/or to wear, as is almost universally the practice today, baptismal robes. These robes are most often white, symbolizing purity. Some groups today allow any suitable clothes to be worn, such as trousers and a t-shirt—practical considerations include how easily the clothes will dry (denim is discouraged), and whether they will become see-through when wet.

Meaning and effects

There are differences in views about the effect of baptism for a Christian. Some Christian groups assert baptism is a requirement for salvation and a sacrament, and speak of "baptismal regeneration". Its importance may be understood by an informed knowledge of their interpretation of the most fundamental and basic meaning of the "Mystical Body of Christ" as found in the New Testament. This view is shared by the Catholic and Eastern Orthodox traditions, and by Churches formed early during the Protestant Reformation such as Lutheran and Anglican. For example, Martin Luther said:

The Churches of Christ and The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints also espouse baptism as necessary for salvation.

For Roman Catholics, baptism by water is a sacrament of initiation into the life of the children of God (''Catechism of the Catholic Church'', 1212–13). It configures the person to Christ (CCC 1272), and obliges the Christian to share in the Church's apostolic and missionary activity (CCC 1270). The Catholic Tradition holds that there are three types of baptism by which one can be saved: sacramental baptism (with water), baptism of desire (explicit or implicit desire to be part of the Church founded by Jesus Christ), and baptism of blood (martyrdom). Pope Pius XII, in his encyclical ''The Mystical Body of Christ'', June 29, 1943, includes ''all baptized Christians'' as members of Christ, members of the one true Church, which is the body of Jesus Christ himself, as God the Holy Spirit has taught through the Apostle Paul. (''Mystici Corporis Christi''–full text) (''the bold emphasis provided here is not in the encyclical'')

By contrast, most Reformed (Calvinist), evangelical, and fundamentalist Protestant groups recognize baptism as an act of obedience to and identification with Jesus as the Christ. They say that baptism has no sacramental (saving) power, and only testifies outwardly to the invisible and internal operation of God's power, which is completely separate from the rite itself.

Churches of Christ consistently teach that in baptism a believer surrenders his life in faith and obedience to God, and that God "by the merits of Christ's blood, cleanses one from sin and truly changes the state of the person from an alien to a citizen of God's kingdom. Baptism is not a human work; it is the place where God does the work that only God can do."

Christian traditions

The liturgy of baptism in the Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, Lutheran, Anglican, and Methodist traditions makes clear reference to baptism as not only a symbolic burial and resurrection, but an actual supernatural transformation, one that draws parallels to the experience of Noah and the passage of the Israelites through the Red Sea divided by Moses. Thus, baptism is literally and symbolically not only cleansing, but also dying and rising again with Christ. Catholics believe that baptism is necessary for the cleansing of the taint of original sin, and for that reason infant baptism is a common practice. The Eastern Churches (Eastern Orthodox Church and Oriental Orthodoxy) also baptize infants on the basis of texts, such as , which are interpreted as supporting full Church membership for children. In these traditions, baptism is immediately followed by Chrismation and Communion at the next Divine Liturgy, regardless of age. Orthodox likewise believe that baptism removes what they call the ancestral sin of Adam. Anglicans believe that Baptism is also the entry into the Church and therefore allows them access to all rights and responsibilities as full members, including the privilege to receive Holy Communion. Most Methodists and Anglicans agree that it also cleanses the taint of what in the West is called original sin, in the East ancestral sin.

Eastern Orthodox Christians usually insist on complete threefold immersion as both a symbol of death and rebirth into Christ, and as a washing away of sin. Latin Rite Catholics generally baptize by affusion (pouring); Eastern Catholics usually by submersion, or at least partial immersion. However, submersion is gaining in popularity within the Latin Catholic Church. In newer church sanctuaries, the baptismal font may be designed to expressly allow for baptism by immersion. Anglicans baptize by submersion, immersion, affusion or sprinkling.

According to a tradition, evidence of which can be traced back to at latest about the year 200, sponsors or godparents are present at baptism and vow to uphold the Christian education and life of the baptized.

Baptists argue that the Greek word originally meant "to immerse". They interpret some Biblical passages concerning baptism as requiring submersion of the body in water. They also state that only submersion reflects the symbolic significance of being "buried" and "raised" with Christ. Baptist Churches baptize in the name of the Trinity—the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. However, they do not believe that baptism is necessary for salvation; but rather that it is an act of Christian obedience.

Some "full gospel" charismatic churches such as Oneness Pentecostals baptize only in the name of Jesus Christ, citing Peter's preaching baptism in the name of Jesus as their authority. They also point to several historical sources that maintain that the early church always baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus until development of the Trinity Doctrine in the 2nd century.

Ecumenical statements

In 1982 the World Council of Churches published the ecumenical paper ''Baptism, Eucharist and Ministry''. The preface of the document states:

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A 1997 document, ''Becoming a Christian: The Ecumenical Implications of Our Common Baptism'', gave the views of a commission of experts brought together under the aegis of the World Council of Churches. It states:

, baptisms follow from Peter's preaching baptism in the name of Jesus and lead those baptized to the receiving of Christ's Spirit, the Holy Ghost, and life in the community: "They devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers" as well as to the distribution of goods to those in need.}}

Those who heard, who were baptized and entered the community's life, were already made witnesses of and partakers in the promises of God for the last days: the forgiveness of sins through baptism in the name of Jesus and the outpouring of the Holy Ghost on all flesh. Similarly, in what may well be a baptismal pattern, 1 Peter testifies that proclamation of the resurrection of Jesus Christ and teaching about new life lead to purification and new birth. This, in turn, is followed by eating and drinking God's food, by participation in the life of the community—the royal priesthood, the new temple, the people of God—and by further moral formation. At the beginning of 1 Peter the writer sets this baptism in the context of obedience to Christ and sanctification by the Spirit. So baptism into Christ is seen as baptism into the Spirit. In the fourth gospel Jesus' discourse with Nicodemus indicates that birth by water and Spirit becomes the gracious means of entry into the place where God rules.

Validity considerations by some churches

Since the Catholic, Orthodox, Anglican, Methodist and Lutheran Churches teach that baptism is a sacrament that has actual spiritual and salvific effects, certain key criteria must be complied with for it to be valid, i.e., to actually have those effects. If these key criteria are met, violation of some rules regarding baptism, such as varying the authorized rite for the ceremony, renders the baptism illicit (contrary to the Church's laws) but still valid.

One of the criteria for validity is use of the correct form of words. The Roman Catholic Church teaches that the use of the verb "baptize" is essential. Catholics of Latin Rite, Anglicans and Methodists use the form "I baptize you…." Eastern Orthodox and some Eastern Catholics use the form "This servant of Christ is baptized…" or "This person is baptized by my hands…." These Churches generally recognize each other's form of baptism as valid.

Use of the Trinitarian formula "in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit" is also considered essential; thus these churches do not accept as valid baptisms of non-Trinitarian churches such as Oneness Pentecostals.

Another essential condition is use of water. A baptism in which some other liquid was used would not be considered valid.

Another requirement is that the celebrant intends to perform baptism. This requirement entails merely the intention "to do what the Church does", not necessarily to have Christian faith, since it is not the person baptizing, but the Holy Spirit working through the sacrament, who produces the effects of the sacrament. Doubt about the faith of the baptizer is thus no ground for doubt about the validity of the baptism.

Some conditions expressly do not affect validity—for example, whether submersion, immersion, affusion or aspersion is used. However, if water is sprinkled, there is a danger that the water may not touch the skin of the unbaptized. If the water does not flow on the skin, there is no ablution and so no baptism.

If for a medical or other legitimate reason the water cannot be poured on the head, it may be poured over another principal part of the body, such as the chest. In such case validity is uncertain and the person should later be conditionally baptized in the prescribed manner.

For many communions, validity is not affected if a single submersion or pouring is performed rather than a triple, but in Orthodoxy this is controversial.

According to the Catholic Church, baptism imparts an indelible "seal" upon the soul of the baptized and therefore a person who has already been baptized cannot be validly baptized again. This teaching was affirmed against the Donatists who practiced rebaptism. The grace received in baptism is believed to operate ''ex opere operato'' and is therefore considered valid even if administered in heretical or schismatic groups.

Recognition by other denominations

The Catholic, Lutheran, Anglican, Presbyterian and Methodist Churches accept baptism performed by other denominations within this group as valid, subject to certain conditions, including the use of the Trinitarian formula. It is only possible to be baptized once, thus people with valid baptisms from other denominations may not be baptized again upon conversion or transfer. Such people are accepted upon making a profession of faith and, if they have not yet validly received the sacrament of confirmation or chrismation, by being confirmed. In some cases it can be difficult to decide if the original baptism was in fact valid; if there is doubt, conditional baptism is administered, with a formula on the lines of "If you are not yet baptized, I baptize you…."

In the still recent past, it was common practice in the Roman Catholic Church to baptize conditionally almost every convert from Protestantism because of a perceived difficulty in judging about the validity in any concrete case. In the case of the major Protestant Churches, agreements involving assurances about the manner in which they administer baptism has ended this practice, which sometimes continues for other groups of Protestant tradition. The Catholic Church has always recognized the validity of baptism in the Churches of Eastern Christianity, but it has explicitly denied the validity of the baptism conferred in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

Practice in the Eastern Orthodox Church for converts from other communions is not uniform. However, generally baptisms performed in the name of the Holy Trinity are accepted by the Orthodox Christian Church. If a convert has not received the sacrament (mysterion) of baptism, he or she must be baptised in the name of the Holy Trinity before they may enter into communion with the Orthodox Church. If he has been baptized in another Christian confession (other than Orthodox Christianity)his previous baptism is considered retroactively filled with grace by chrismation or, in rare circumstances, confession of faith alone as long as the baptism was done in the name of the Holy Trinity (Father, Son and Holy Spirit). The exact procedure is dependent on local canons and is the subject of some controversy.

Oriental Orthodox Churches recognise the validity of baptisms performed within the Eastern Orthodox Communion. Some also recognise baptisms performed by Catholic Churches. Any supposed baptism not performed using the Trinitarian formula is considered invalid.

In the eyes of the Catholic Church, all Orthodox Churches, Anglican and Lutheran Churches, the baptism conferred by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is invalid. An article published together with the official declaration to that effect gave reasons for that judgment, summed up in the following words: "The Baptism of the Catholic Church and that of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints differ essentially, both for what concerns faith in the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, in whose name Baptism is conferred, and for what concerns the relationship to Christ who instituted it."

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints stresses that baptism must be administered by one having proper authority; consequently, the Church does not recognize the baptism of any other church as valid.

Jehovah's Witnesses do not recognise any other baptism occurring after 1914 as valid, as they believe that they are now the one true church of Christ, and that the rest of "Christendom" is false religion.

Officiator

There is debate among Christian churches as to who can administer baptism. The examples given in the New Testament only show apostles and deacons administering baptism. Ancient Christian churches interpret this as indicating that baptism should be performed by the clergy except ''in extremis'', i.e., when the one being baptized is in immediate danger of death. Then anyone may baptize, provided, in the view of the Eastern Orthodox Church, the person who does the baptizing is a member of that Church, or, in the view of the Catholic Church, that the person, even if not baptized, intends to do what the Church does in administering the rite. Many Protestant churches see no specific prohibition in the biblical examples and permit any believer to baptize another.

In the Roman Catholic Church, canon law for the Latin Rite lays down that the ordinary minister of baptism is a bishop, priest or deacon, but its administration is one of the functions "especially entrusted to the parish priest". If the person to be baptized is at least fourteen years old, that person's baptism is to be referred to the bishop, so that he can decide whether to confer the baptism himself. If no ordinary minister is available, a catechist or some other person whom the local ordinary has appointed for this purpose may licitly do the baptism; indeed in a case of necessity ''any'' person (irrespective of that person's religion) who has the requisite intention may confer the baptism By "a case of necessity" is meant imminent danger of death because of either illness or an external threat. "The requisite intention" is, at the minimum level, the intention "to do what the Church does" through the rite of baptism.

In the Eastern Catholic Churches, a deacon is not considered an ordinary minister. Administration of the sacrament is reserved to the Parish Priest or to another priest to whom he or the local hierarch grants permission, a permission that can be presumed if in accordance with canon law. However, "in case of necessity, baptism can be administered by a deacon or, in his absence or if he is impeded, by another cleric, a member of an institute of consecrated life, or by any other Christian faithful; even by the mother or father, if another person is not available who knows how to baptize."

The discipline of the Eastern Orthodox Church, Oriental Orthodoxy and the Assyrian Church of the East is similar to that of the Eastern Catholic Churches. They require the baptizer, even in cases of necessity, to be of their own faith, on the grounds that a person cannot convey what he himself does not possess, in this case membership in the Church. The Latin Rite Catholic Church does not insist on this condition, considering that the effect of the sacrament, such as membership of the Church, is not produced by the person who baptizes, but by the Holy Spirit. For the Orthodox, while Baptism ''in extremis'' may be administered by a deacon or any lay-person, if the newly baptized person survives, a priest must still perform the other prayers of the Rite of Baptism, and administer the Mystery of Chrismation.

The discipline of Anglicanism and Lutheranism is similar to that of the Latin Rite Catholic Church. For Methodists and many other Protestant denominations, too, the ordinary minister of baptism is a duly ordained or appointed minister of religion.

Newer movements of Protestant Evangelical churches, particularly non-denominational, allow laypeople to baptize.

In The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, only a man who has been ordained to the Aaronic Priesthood holding the priesthood office of Priest or higher office in the Melchizedek Priesthood may administer baptism.

A Jehovah's Witnesses baptism is performed by a "dedicated male" adherent. Only in extraordinary circumstances would a "dedicated" baptizer be unbaptized (see section ''Jehovah's Witnesses'').

Other traditions

Anabaptist

Anabaptists ("re-baptizers") and Baptists promote adult baptism, or "believer's baptism". Baptism is seen as an act identifying one as having accepted Jesus Christ as Savior.

Early Anabaptists were given that name because they re-baptized persons who they felt had not been properly baptized, having received infant baptism, sprinkling, or baptism of any sort by another denomination.

Anabaptists perform baptisms indoors in a baptismal font, a swimming pool, or a bathtub, or outdoors in a creek or river. Baptism memorializes the death, burial and resurrection of Jesus. Baptism does not accomplish anything in itself, but is an outward personal sign or testimony that the person's sins have already been washed away by the cross of Christ. It is considered a covenantal act, signifying entrance into the New Covenant of Christ.

Baptist

For the majority of Baptists, Christian baptism is the immersion of a believer in water in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. It is an act of obedience symbolizing the believer's faith in a crucified, buried, and risen Saviour, the believer's death to sin, the burial of the old life, and the resurrection to walk in newness of life in Christ Jesus. It is a testimony to the believer's faith in the final resurrection of the dead.

Churches of Christ

Baptism in Churches of Christ is performed only by full bodily immersion, based on the Koine Greek verb ''baptizo'' which is understood to mean to dip, immerse, submerge or plunge. Submersion is seen as more closely conforming to the death, burial and resurrection of Jesus than other modes of baptism. Churches of Christ argue that historically immersion was the mode used in the 1st century, and that pouring and sprinkling later emerged as secondary modes when immersion was not possible. Over time these secondary modes came to replace immersion. Only those mentally capable of belief and repentance are baptized (i.e., infant baptism is not practiced because the New Testament has no precedent for it).

Churches of Christ have historically had the most conservative position on baptism among the various branches of the Restoration Movement, understanding baptism by immersion to be a necessary part of conversion. The most significant disagreements concerned the extent to which a correct understanding of the role of baptism is necessary for its validity. However, members of the Churches of Christ reject this, arguing that since faith and repentance are necessary, and that the cleansing of sins is by the blood of Christ through the grace of God, baptism is not an inherently redeeming ritual. Rather, their inclination is to point to the biblical passage in which Peter, analogizing baptism to Noah's flood, posits that "likewise baptism doth also now save us" but parenthetically clarifies that baptism is "''not'' the putting away of the filth of the flesh but the ''response of a good conscience'' toward God" (1 Peter 3:21). One author from the churches of Christ describes the relationship between faith and baptism this way, "''Faith'' is the ''reason why'' a person is a child of God; ''baptism'' is the ''time at which'' one is incorporated into Christ and so becomes a child of God" (italics are in the source). Baptism is understood as a confessional expression of faith and repentance, rather than a "work" that earns salvation.

Reformed and Covenant theology view

Paedobaptist Covenant theologians see the administration of all the biblical covenants, including the New Covenant, as including a principle of familial, corporate inclusion or "generational succession". The biblical covenants between God and man include signs and seals that visibly represent the realities behind the covenants. These visible signs and symbols of God's covenant redemption are administered in a corporate manner (for instance, to households), not in an exclusively individualistic manner.

Baptism is considered by the Reformed churches as the visible sign of entrance into the New Covenant and therefore may be administered individually to new believers making a public profession of faith. Paedobaptists further believe this extends corporately to the households of believers which typically would include children, or individually to children or infants of believing parents (see Infant baptism). In this view, baptism is thus seen as the functional replacement and sacramental equivalent of the Abrahamic rite of circumcision and symbolizes the internal cleansing from sin, among other things.

Catholic

In Catholic teaching, baptism is believed to be usually essential for salvation. This teaching dates back to the teachings and practices of 1st-century Christians, and the connection between salvation and baptism was not, on the whole, an item of major dispute until Huldrych Zwingli denied the necessity of baptism, which he saw as merely a sign granting admission to the Christian community. The Catechism of the Catholic Church states that "Baptism is necessary for salvation for those to whom the Gospel has been proclaimed and who have had the possibility of asking for this sacrament." Accordingly, a person who knowingly, willfully and unrepentantly rejects baptism has no hope of salvation. This teaching is based on Jesus' words in the Gospel according to John: "Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter into the Kingdom of God."

Catholics are baptized in water, by submersion, immersion or affusion, in the name (singular) of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit—not three gods, but one God subsisting in three Persons. While sharing in the one divine essence, the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are distinct, not simply three "masks" or manifestations of one divine being. The faith of the Church and of the individual Christian is based on a relationship with these three "Persons" of the one God. Adults can also be baptized through the Rite of Christian Initiation of Adults.

It is claimed that Pope Stephen I, St. Ambrose and Pope Nicholas I declared that baptisms in the name of "Jesus" only as well as in the name of "Father, Son and Holy Spirit" were valid. The correct interpretation of their words is disputed. Current canonical law requires the Trinitarian formula and water for validity.

The Church recognizes two equivalents of baptism with water: "baptism of blood" and "baptism of desire". Baptism of blood is that undergone by unbaptized individuals who are martyred for their faith, while baptism of desire generally applies to catechumens who die before they can be baptized. The Catechism of the Catholic Church describes these two forms:

The Church has always held the firm conviction that those who suffer death for the sake of the faith without having received Baptism are baptized by their death for and with Christ. This ''Baptism of blood'', like the desire for Baptism, brings about the fruits of Baptism without being a sacrament. (1258)

For catechumens who die before their Baptism, their explicit desire to receive it, together with repentance for their sins, and charity, assures them the salvation that they were not able to receive through the sacrament. (1259)

The Catholic Church holds that non-Christians who seek God with a sincere heart and, moved by grace, try to do God's will as they know it through the dictates of conscience can also be saved without water baptism as they are said to desire it implicitly. As for unbaptized infants, the Church is unsure of their fate; "the Church can only entrust them to the mercy of God" (Catechism, 1261).

Jehovah's Witnesses

Jehovah's Witnesses believe that baptism should be performed by complete immersion (submersion) only when an individual is old enough to understand its significance. They believe that water baptism is an outward symbol that a person has made an unconditional dedication through Jesus Christ to do the will of God. They consider baptism to constitute ordination as a minister.

Prospective candidates for baptism must express their desire to be baptized well in advance of a planned baptismal event, to allow for congregation elders to assess their suitability. Elders approve candidates for baptism if the candidates are considered to understand what is expected of members of the religion and to demonstrate sincere dedication to the faith.

Most baptisms among Jehovah's Witnesses are performed at scheduled assemblies and conventions by elders and ministerial servants and rarely occur at local Kingdom Halls. Prior to baptism, at the conclusion of a pre-baptism talk, candidates must affirm two questions:

Only baptized males may baptize new members. Baptizers and candidates wear swimsuits or other informal clothing for baptism, but are directed to avoid clothing that is considered undignified or revealing. Generally, candidates are individually immersed by a single baptizer, unless a candidate has special circumstances such as a physical disability. In circumstances of extended isolation, a qualified candidate's dedication and stated intention to become baptized may serve to identify him as a member of Jehovah's Witnesses, even if immersion itself must be delayed. In rare instances, unbaptized males who had stated such an intention have reciprocally baptized each other, with both baptisms accepted as valid. Individuals who had been baptized in the 1930s and 1940s by female Witnesses, such as in concentration camps, were later re-baptized but recognized their original baptism dates.

Mormonism

In Mormonism, baptism has the main purpose of remitting the sins of the participant. It is followed by confirmation, which inducts the person into membership in the church and constitutes a baptism with the Holy Spirit. Latter-day Saints believe that baptism must be by full immersion, and by a precise ritualized ordinance: if some part of the participant is not fully immersed, or the ordinance was not recited verbatim, the ritual must be repeated. It typically occurs in a baptismal font. In addition, Latter-day Saints do not believe a baptism is valid unless it is performed by a Latter-day Saint priest or elder. Authority is passed down through a form of apostolic succession. All new converts to the faith must be baptized or re-baptized. Baptism is seen as symbolic both of Jesus' death, burial and resurrection and is also symbolic of the baptized individual discarding their "natural" self and donning a new identity as a disciple of Jesus.

According to Latter-day Saint theology, faith and repentance are prerequisites to baptism. The ritual does not cleanse the participant of original sin, as Latter-day Saints do not believe the doctrine of original sin. Mormonism rejects infant baptism and baptism must occur after the age of accountability, defined in Latter-day Saint scripture as eight years old.

Latter-day Saint theology also teaches baptism for the dead in which deceased ancestors are baptized vicariously by the living, and believe that their practice is what Paul wrote of in . This occurs in Latter-day Saint temples.

Non-practitioners

Quakers

Quakers (members of the Religious Society of Friends) do not believe in the baptism of either children or adults with water, rejecting all forms of outward sacraments in their religious life. Robert Barclay's ''Apology for the True Christian Divinity'' (a historic explanation of Quaker theology from the 17th century), explains Quakers' opposition to baptism with water thus:

Here John mentions two manners of baptizings and two different baptisms, the one with water, and the other with the Spirit, the one whereof he was the minister of, the other whereof Christ was the minister of: and such as were baptized with the first were not therefore baptized with the second: "I indeed baptize you, but he shall baptize you." Though in the present time they were baptized with the baptism of water, yet they were not as yet, but were to be, baptized with the baptism of Christ.|Robert Barclay, 1678}}

Barclay argued that water baptism was only something that happened until the time of Christ, but that now, people are baptised inwardly by the spirit of Christ, and hence there is no need for the external sacrament of water baptism, which Quakers argue is meaningless.

Salvation Army

The Salvation Army does not practice water baptism, or indeed other outward sacraments. William Booth and Catherine Booth, the founders of the Salvation Army, believed that many Christians had come to rely on the outward signs of spiritual grace rather than on grace itself. They believed what was important was spiritual grace itself. However, although the Salvation Army does not practice baptism, they are not opposed to baptism within other Christian denominations.

Hyperdispensationalism

There are some Christians termed "Hyperdispensationalists" who accept only Paul's Epistles as applicable for the church today. They do not accept baptism or the Lord's Supper, since these are not found in the Prison Epistles. They also teach that Peter's gospel message was not the same as Paul's. Hyperdispensationalists assert:

The great commission^[] and its baptism is directed to early Jewish believers, not the Gentile believers of mid-Acts or later.

The baptism of is Peter's call for Israel to repent of complicity in the death of the Messiah; not as a Gospel announcement of atonement for sin, a later doctrine revealed by Paul.

Water baptism found early in the Book of Acts is, according to this view, now supplanted by the one baptism foretold by John the Baptist. The one baptism for today, it is asserted, is the "baptism of the Holy Spirit". This, "spirit" baptism, however, is unlikely given the texts and facts that the baptisms of the Eunuch and the household of Cornelius were explicitly in water. Further evidence points to the humanly administered Great Commission which was to last until the end of the world. Therefore, the baptism the Ephesians underwent was water by context. Likewise, Holy Spirit Baptism is recorded as only occurring twice in all the book of Acts to selected individuals. Finally, it is argued that only Jesus possessed the power to baptize with the Holy Spirit and with Fire which eliminates any mortal ever doing.

John answered, saying to all, "I indeed baptize you with water; but One mightier than I is coming, whose sandal strap I am not worthy to loose. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire".

Many in this group also argue that John's promised baptism by fire is pending, referring to the destruction of the world by fire.

John, as he said "baptized with water", as did Jesus's disciples to the early, Jewish Christian church. Jesus himself never personally baptized with water, but did so through his disciples. Unlike Jesus' first Apostles, Paul, his Apostle to the Gentiles, was sent to preach rather than to baptize but did occasionally baptize, for instance in Corinth and in Philippi, in the same manner as they.^cf. He also taught the spiritual significance of the submerging in baptism and how one contacts the atoning death of Christ in such.

Other Hyperdispensationalists believe that baptism was necessary only for a short period between Christ's ascension and mid-Acts. The great commission and its baptism was directed to early Jewish believers, not the Gentile believers of mid-Acts or later. Any Jew who believed did not receive salvation or the Holy Spirit until they were baptized. This period ended with the calling of Paul. Peter's reaction when the Gentiles received the Holy Spirit before baptism is worthy of note.

Comparative summary

Comparative Summary of Baptisms of Denominations of Christian Influence. (This section does not give a complete listing of denominations, and therefore, it only mentions a fraction of the churches practicing "believer's baptism".)

! Denomination	! Beliefs about baptism	! Type of baptism	! Baptize infants?	! Baptism regenerates / gives spiritual life	! Standard
Anglican Communion	"Baptism is not only a sign of profession, and mark of difference, whereby Christian men are discerned from others that be not christened, but it is also a sign of Regeneration or New-Birth, whereby, as by an instrument, they that receive Baptism rightly are grafted into the Church; the promises of the forgiveness of sin, and of our adoption to be the sons of God by the Holy Ghost, are visibly signed and sealed; Faith is confirmed, and Grace increased by virtue of prayer unto God."	By submersion, immersion, pouring, or sprinkling.	Yes (in most sub-denominations)	Yes (in most sub-denominations)	Trinity
Apostolic Brethren	Necessary for salvation because it conveys spiritual rebirth.	By submersion only. Also stress the necessity of a “second” Baptism of a special outpouring from the Holy Spirit.	No	Yes	Jesus
Baptists	A divine ordinance, a symbolic ritual, a mechanism for publicly declaring one's faith, and a sign of having already been saved, but not necessary for salvation.	By submersion only.	No	No	Trinity
Christadelphians	Baptism is essential for the salvation of a believer. It is only effective if somebody believes the true gospel message before they are baptized. Baptism is an external symbol of an internal change in the believer: it represents a death to an old, sinful way of life, and the start of a new life as a Christian, summed up as the repentance of the believerit therefore leads to forgiveness from God, who forgives people who repent. Although someone is only baptized once, a believer must live by the principles of their baptism (i.e.,death to sin, and a new life following Jesus) throughout their life.	By submersion only	No	Yes	The Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit (although Christadelphians do not believe in the Nicean trinity)
Disciples of Christ	Baptism is an outward and public sign of God's grace made manifest in the individual. In submersion, one symbolically experiences dying with Christ, and then rises with Him.	Usually by submersion	No	No	Trinity
Churches of Christ	Churches of Christ have historically had the most conservative position on baptism among the various branches of the Restoration Movement, understanding baptism by immersion to be a necessary part of conversion.	No (at least 8 years old)	Yes	Father, and the Son, and the Holy Ghost (The LDS church doesn't believe in the nicean creed
[[Jehovah’s Witnesses	Baptism is necessary for salvation as part of the entire baptismal arrangement: as an expression of obedience to Jesus' command (Matthew 28:19–20), as a public symbol of the saving faith in the ransom sacrifice of Jesus Christ (Romans 10:10), and as an indication of repentance from dead works and the dedication of one's life to Jehovah. (1 Peter 2:21) However, baptism does not guarantee salvation.	By submersion only; typical candidates are baptized at district and circuit conventions.	No	No	Jesus
! Denomination (continued)	! Beliefs about baptism	! Type of baptism	! Baptize infants?	! Baptism regenerates / gives spiritual life	! Standard
		By sprinkling or pouring.	Yes	Yes	Trinity
Methodists (Arminians, Wesleyans)	The Sacrament of initiation into Christ's holy Church whereby one is incorporated into God's mighty acts of salvation and given new birth through water and the spirit. Baptism washes away sin and clothes one in the righteousness of Christ.	By sprinkling, pouring, or immersion.	Yes	Yes, although contingent upon repentance and a personal acceptance of Christ as Saviour.	Trinity
Pentecostalism	Water Baptism is an ordinance, a symbolic ritual used to witness to having accepted Christ as personal Savior.	By submersion. Also stress the necessity of a “second” Baptism of a special outpouring from the Holy Spirit.	No	Varies	Trinity
	Being baptized is an ordinance directed and established by Jesus and the Apostles.	By submersion. Also stress the necessity of a baptism of a the Holy Spirit (Acts 2:38; 8:14–17, 35–38).	No	Yes	Jesus
	A sacrament, a symbolic ritual, and a seal of the adult believer’s present faith. It is an outward sign of an inward grace.	By sprinkling, pouring, immersion or submersion		No	Trinity
	Only an external symbol that is no longer to be practiced.	Do not believe in Baptism of water, but only in an inward, ongoing purification of the human spirit in a life of discipline led by the Holy Spirit.	—	—	—
[[Revivalism	A necessary step for salvation.	By submersion, with the expectation of receiving the Holy Spirit.	No	Yes	Trinity
Roman Catholic Church	"Necessary for salvation for those to whom the Gospel has been proclaimed and who have had the possibility of asking for this sacrament"	Usually by pouring in the West, by submersion or immersion in the East; sprinkling admitted only if the water then flows on the head.	Yes	Yes	Trinity
	Not stated as the prerequisite to salvation, but a prerequisite for the admission to the church. It symbolizes death to sin and new birth in Jesus Christ. "It affirms joining the family of God and sets on apart for a life of ministry."	No	No	Trinity
	One of two sacraments. Baptism is an outward sign of God's inward grace. It may or may not be necessary for membership in a local congregation. However, it is a common practice for both infants and adults.	By sprinkling, pouring, immersion or submersion.		No	Trinity
Anabaptist	Baptism is considered by the majority of Anabaptist Churches (anabaptist means to baptize again) to be essential to Christian faith but not to salvation. It is considered a biblical ordinance along with communion, feet washing, the holy kiss, the Christian woman's head covering, anointing with oil, and marriage. The Anabaptists also have stood historically against the practice of infant baptism. The Anabaptists stood firmly against infant baptism in a time when the Church and State were one and when people were made a citizen through baptism into the officially sanctioned Church (Reformed or Catholic). Belief and repentance are believed to precede and follow baptism.	By pouring, immersion or submersion.	No	No	Trinity

Other initiation ceremonies

Many cultures practice or have practiced initiation rites, with or without the use of water, including the ancient Egyptian, the Hebraic/Jewish, the Babylonian, the Mayan, and the Norse cultures. The modern Japanese practice of Miyamairi is such as ceremony that does not use water. In some, such evidence may be archaeological and descriptive in nature, rather than a modern practice.

Mystery religion initiation rites

Apuleius, a 2nd-century Roman writer, described an initiation into the mysteries of Isis. The initiation was preceded by a normal bathing in the public baths and a ceremonial sprinkling by the priest of Isis, after which the candidate was given secret instructions in the temple of the goddess. The candidate then fasted for ten days from meat and wine, after which he was dressed in linen and led at night into the innermost part of the sanctuary, where the actual initiation, the details of which were secret, took place. On the next two days, dressed in the robes of his consecration, he participated in feasting.}} Apuleius describes also an initiation into the cult of Osiris and yet a third initiation, of the same pattern as the initiation into the cult of Isis, without mention of a preliminary bathing.

The water-less initiations of Lucius, the character in Apuleius's story who had been turned into an ass and changed back by Isis into human form, into the successive degrees of the rites of the goddess was accomplished only after a significant period of study to demonstrate his loyalty and trustworthiness, akin to catechumenal practices preceding baptism in Christianity.

Mandaeanism

Mandaeans revere John the Baptist and practice frequent baptism as a ritual of purification, not of initiation.

Gnostic Catholicism and Thelema

The Ecclesia Gnostica Catholica, or Gnostic Catholic Church (the ecclesiastical arm of Ordo Templi Orientis), offers its Rite of Baptism to any person at least 11 years old. The ceremony is performed before a Gnostic Mass and represents a symbolic birth into the Thelemic community.

Baptism of objects

The word "baptism" or "christening" is sometimes used to describe the inauguration of certain objects for use.

The name ''Baptism of Bells'' has been given to the blessing of (musical, especially church) bells, at least in France, since the 11th century. It is derived from the washing of the bell with holy water by the bishop, before he anoints it with the oil of the infirm without and with chrism within; a fuming censer is placed under it and the bishop prays that these sacramentals of the Church may, at the sound of the bell, put the demons to flight, protect from storms, and call the faithful to prayer.

''Baptism of Ships'': at least since the time of the Crusades, rituals have contained a blessing for ships. The priest begs God to bless the vessel and protect those who sail in. The ship is usually sprinkled with holy water.

"Debaptism"

Mainline Christian churches see baptism as a once-in-a-lifetime event that can be neither repeated nor undone. They hold that those who have been baptized remain baptized, even if they renounce the Christian faith by adopting a non-Christian religion or by rejecting religion entirely.

In addition to ''de facto'' renunciation through apostasy, heresy, or schism, the Roman Catholic Church envisaged from 1983 to 2009 the possibility of formal defection from the Church through a decision manifested personally, consciously and freely, and in writing, to the competent church authority, who was then to judge whether it was genuinely a case of "true separation from the constitutive elements of the life of the Church ... (by) an act of apostasy, heresy or schism." A formal defection of this kind was then noted in the register of the person's baptism, an annotation that, like those of marriage or ordination, was independent of the fact of the baptism and was not an actual "debaptism", even if the person who formally defected from the Catholic Church had also defected from the Christian religion. The fact of having been baptized remains a fact and the Catholic Church holds that baptism marks a person with a lasting seal or character that "is an ontological and permanent bond which is not lost by reason of any act or fact of defection."

Some atheist organizations offer certificates of "debaptism". One such group is the Italian Union of Rationalists and Agnostics. Another is the British National Secular Society. Not even those who provide the certificates consider them as having legal or canonical effect. The Church of England refuses to take any action on presentation of the certificate, while the Roman Catholic Church treats it as any other act of renunciation of the Catholic faith and, if it considers it seriously meant, makes the appropriate annotation in the baptismal register.

Using a hair dryer, some atheist groups have conducted tongue-in-cheek "debaptism" ceremonies, not intended to be taken seriously.

See also

Related articles and subjects

Anabaptist

Baptism by fire

Baptism of desire

Baptism of Jesus

Baptismal clothing

Baptistery

Believer's baptism

Catechumen

Chrismation

Christifideles

Conditional baptism

Consolamentum

Disciple (Christianity)

Divine filiation

Emergency baptism

Infant baptism

Jesus-Name doctrine

Prevenient Grace

Ritual purification

Sacrament

Theophany

Water and religion

People and ritual objects

Baptismal font

Baptistery

Chrism

Godparent

Holy water

Holy water in Eastern Christianity

John the Baptist

Mikvah

Notes

Further reading

External links

"Writings of the Early Church Fathers on Baptism"

"Baptism." Encyclopædia Britannica Online.

"Water Baptism" Dispensationally Considered

"River Baptism"Video

Category:Baptism Category:Christian terms Category:Conversion to Christianity Category:Judeo-Christian topics Category:Lutheran sacraments and rites Category:Christian behaviour and experience Category:Rites of passage

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Coordinates	°′″N°′″N
name	Anne Frank
birth name	Annelies Marie Frank
birth date	June 12, 1929
birth place	Frankfurt am Main, Weimar Germany
death date	Early March 1945 (aged 15)
death place	Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, Lower Saxony, Nazi Germany
nationality	German until 1941Stateless from 1941
notableworks	''The Diary of a Young Girl'' (1947)
influences	Cissy van Marxveldt
signature	Anne Frank signature.svg }}

Annelies Marie "Anne" Frank (; 12 June 1929 early March 1945) is one of the most renowned and most discussed Jewish victims of the Holocaust. Acknowledged for the quality of her writing, her diary has become one of the world's most widely read books, and has been the basis for several plays and films.

Born in the city of Frankfurt am Main in Weimar Germany, she lived most of her life in or near Amsterdam, in the Netherlands. By nationality, she was officially considered a German until 1941, when she lost her nationality owing to the anti-Semitic policies of Nazi Germany (the Nuremberg Laws). She gained international fame posthumously following the publication of her diary, which documents her experiences hiding during the German occupation of the Netherlands in World War II.

The Frank family moved from Germany to Amsterdam in 1933, the year the Nazis gained control over Germany. By the beginning of 1940, they were trapped in Amsterdam by the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands. As persecutions of the Jewish population increased in July 1942, the family went into hiding in the hidden rooms of Anne's father, Otto Frank's, office building. After two years, the group was betrayed and transported to concentration camps. Anne Frank and her sister, Margot, were eventually transferred to the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, where they both died of typhus in March 1945.

Otto Frank, the only survivor of the family, returned to Amsterdam after the war to find that Anne's diary had been saved, and his efforts led to its publication in 1947. It was translated from its original Dutch and first published in English in 1952 as ''The Diary of a Young Girl''. It has since been translated into many languages. The diary, which was given to Anne on her 13th birthday, chronicles her life from 12 June 1942 until 1 August 1944.

Early life

Anne Frank was born on 12 June 1929 in Frankfurt, Germany, the second daughter of Otto Frank (1889–1980) and Edith Frank-Holländer (1900–45). Margot Frank (1926–45) was her elder sister. The Franks were liberal Jews, did not observe all of the customs and traditions of Judaism, and lived in an assimilated community of Jewish and non-Jewish citizens of various religions. Edith Frank was the more devout parent, while Otto Frank was interested in scholarly pursuits and had an extensive library; both parents encouraged the children to read.

On 13 March 1933, elections were held in Frankfurt for the municipal council, and Adolf Hitler's Nazi Party won. Antisemitic demonstrations occurred almost immediately, and the Franks began to fear what would happen to them if they remained in Germany. Later that year, Edith and the children went to Aachen, where they stayed with Edith's mother, Rosa Holländer. Otto Frank remained in Frankfurt, but after receiving an offer to start a company in Amsterdam, he moved there to organise the business and to arrange accommodations for his family. The Franks were among approximately 300,000 Jews who fled Germany between 1933 and 1939.

Otto Frank began working at the Opekta Works, a company that sold fruit extract pectin, and found an apartment on the Merwedeplein (Merwede Square) in Amsterdam. By February 1934, Edith and the children had arrived in Amsterdam, and the two girls were enrolled in school — Margot in public school and Anne in a Montessori school. Margot demonstrated ability in arithmetic, and Anne showed aptitude for reading and writing. Her friend Hanneli Goslar later recalled that from early childhood, Frank frequently wrote, although she shielded her work with her hands and refused to discuss the content of her writing. The Frank sisters had highly distinct personalities, Margot being well-mannered, reserved, and studious, while Anne was outspoken, energetic, and extroverted.

In 1938, Otto Frank started a second company, Pectacon, which was a wholesaler of herbs, pickling salts and mixed spices, used in the production of sausages. Hermann van Pels was employed by Pectacon as an advisor about spices. He was a Jewish butcher, who had fled Osnabrück in Germany with his family. In 1939, Edith's mother came to live with the Franks, and remained with them until her death in January 1942.

In May 1940, Germany invaded the Netherlands, and the occupation government began to persecute Jews by the implementation of restrictive and discriminatory laws; mandatory registration and segregation soon followed. The Frank sisters were excelling in their studies and had many friends, but with the introduction of a decree that Jewish children could attend only Jewish schools, they were enrolled at the Jewish Lyceum. Anne became a friend of Jacqueline van Maarsen in the Lyceum. In April 1941, Otto Frank took action to prevent Pectacon from being confiscated as a Jewish-owned business. He transferred his shares in Pectacon to Johannes Kleiman and resigned as director. The company was liquidated and all assets transferred to Gies and Company, headed by Jan Gies. In December 1941, Frank followed a similar process to save Opekta. The businesses continued with little obvious change and their survival allowed Frank to earn a minimal income, but sufficient to provide for his family.

Time period chronicled in the diary

Before going into hiding

For her 13th birthday on 12 June 1942, Anne Frank received a book she had shown her father in a shop window a few days earlier. Although it was an autograph book, bound with red-and-white checkered cloth and with a small lock on the front, Frank decided she would use it as a diary, and began writing in it almost immediately. While many of her early entries relate the mundane aspects of her life, she also discusses some of the changes that had taken place in the Netherlands since the German occupation. In her entry dated 20 June 1942, she lists many of the restrictions that had been placed upon the lives of the Dutch Jewish population, and also notes her sorrow at the death of her grandmother earlier in the year.

Frank dreamed about becoming an actress. She loved watching movies, but the Dutch Jews were forbidden access to movie theaters from 8 January 1941 onwards.

In July 1942, Margot Frank received a call-up notice from the Zentralstelle für jüdische Auswanderung (Central Office for Jewish Emigration) ordering her to report for relocation to a work camp. Otto Frank told his family that they would go into hiding in rooms above and behind Opekta's premises on the Prinsengracht, a street along one of Amsterdam's canals, where some of his most trusted employees would help them. The call-up notice forced them to relocate several weeks earlier than had been anticipated.

Life in the ''Achterhuis''

On the morning of Monday, 6 July 1942, the family moved into their hiding place, a secret annex. Their apartment was left in a state of disarray to create the impression that they had left suddenly, and Otto Frank left a note that hinted they were going to Switzerland. The need for secrecy forced them to leave behind Anne's cat, Moortje. As Jews were not allowed to use public transport, they walked several kilometers from their home, with each of them wearing several layers of clothing as they did not dare be seen carrying luggage. The ''Achterhuis'' (a Dutch word denoting the rear part of a house, translated as the "Secret Annexe" in English editions of the diary) was a three-story space entered from a landing above the Opekta offices. Two small rooms, with an adjoining bathroom and toilet, were on the first level, and above that a larger open room, with a small room beside it. From this smaller room, a ladder led to the attic. The door to the ''Achterhuis'' was later covered by a bookcase to ensure it remained undiscovered. The main building, situated a block from the Westerkerk, was nondescript, old and typical of buildings in the western quarters of Amsterdam.

Victor Kugler, Johannes Kleiman, Miep Gies, and Bep Voskuijl were the only employees who knew of the people in hiding, and with Gies' husband Jan Gies and Voskuijl's father Johannes Hendrik Voskuijl, were their "helpers" for the duration of their confinement. These contacts provided the only connection between the outside world and the occupants of the house, and they kept the occupants informed of war news and political developments. They catered for all of their needs, ensured their safety, and supplied them with food, a task that grew more difficult with the passage of time. Frank wrote of their dedication and of their efforts to boost morale within the household during the most dangerous of times. All were aware that, if caught, they could face the death penalty for sheltering Jews.

On 13 July 1942, the Franks were joined by the van Pels family: Hermann, Auguste, and 16-year-old Peter, and then in November by Fritz Pfeffer, a dentist and friend of the family. Frank wrote of her pleasure at having new people to talk to, but tensions quickly developed within the group forced to live in such confined conditions. After sharing her room with Pfeffer, she found him to be insufferable and resented his intrusion, and she clashed with Auguste van Pels, whom she regarded as foolish. She regarded Hermann van Pels and Fritz Pfeffer as selfish, particularly in regard to the amount of food they consumed. Some time later, after first dismissing the shy and awkward Peter van Pels, she recognised a kinship with him and the two entered a romance. She received her first kiss from him, but her infatuation with him began to wane as she questioned whether her feelings for him were genuine, or resulted from their shared confinement. Anne Frank formed a close bond with each of the helpers and Otto Frank later recalled that she had anticipated their daily visits with impatient enthusiasm. He observed that Anne's closest friendship was with Bep Voskuijl, "the young typist... the two of them often stood whispering in the corner."

In her writing, Frank examined her relationships with the members of her family, and the strong differences in each of their personalities. She considered herself to be closest emotionally to her father, who later commented, "I got on better with Anne than with Margot, who was more attached to her mother. The reason for that may have been that Margot rarely showed her feelings and didn't need as much support because she didn't suffer from mood swings as much as Anne did." The Frank sisters formed a closer relationship than had existed before they went into hiding, although Anne sometimes expressed jealousy towards Margot, particularly when members of the household criticised Anne for lacking Margot's gentle and placid nature. As Anne began to mature, the sisters were able to confide in each other. In her entry of 12 January 1944, Frank wrote, "Margot's much nicer... She's not nearly so catty these days and is becoming a real friend. She no longer thinks of me as a little baby who doesn't count."

Frank frequently wrote of her difficult relationship with her mother, and of her ambivalence towards her. On 7 November 1942 she described her "contempt" for her mother and her inability to "confront her with her carelessness, her sarcasm and her hard-heartedness," before concluding, "She's not a mother to me." Later, as she revised her diary, Frank felt ashamed of her harsh attitude, writing: "Anne, is it really you who mentioned hate, oh Anne, how could you?" She came to understand that their differences resulted from misunderstandings that were as much her fault as her mother's, and saw that she had added unnecessarily to her mother's suffering. With this realization, Frank began to treat her mother with a degree of tolerance and respect.

The Frank sisters each hoped to return to school as soon as they were able, and continued with their studies while in hiding. Margot took a shorthand course by correspondence in Bep Voskuijl's name and received high marks. Most of Anne's time was spent reading and studying, and she regularly wrote and edited her diary entries. In addition to providing a narrative of events as they occurred, she wrote about her feelings, beliefs and ambitions, subjects she felt she could not discuss with anyone. As her confidence in her writing grew, and as she began to mature, she wrote of more abstract subjects such as her belief in God, and how she defined human nature.

Frank aspired to become a journalist, writing in her diary on Wednesday, 5 April 1944: She continued writing regularly until her final entry of August 1, 1944.

Arrest

On the morning of 4 August 1944, the ''Achterhuis'' was stormed by the German Security Police (''Grüne Polizei'') following a tip-off from an informer who was never identified. Led by Schutzstaffel Oberscharführer Karl Silberbauer of the Sicherheitsdienst, the group included at least three members of the Security Police. The Franks, van Pelses and Pfeffer were taken to the Gestapo headquarters, where they were interrogated and held overnight. On 5 August, they were transferred to the Huis van Bewaring (House of Detention), an overcrowded prison on the Weteringschans. Two days later they were transported to Westerbork. Ostensibly a transit camp, by this time more than 100,000 Jews had passed through it. Having been arrested in hiding, they were considered criminals and were sent to the Punishment Barracks for hard labor.

Victor Kugler and Johannes Kleiman were arrested and jailed at the penal camp for enemies of the regime at Amersfoort. Kleiman was released after seven weeks, but Kugler was held in various work camps until the war's end. Miep Gies and Bep Voskuijl were questioned and threatened by the Security Police but were not detained. They returned to the ''Achterhuis'' the following day, and found Anne's papers strewn on the floor. They collected them, as well as several family photograph albums, and Gies resolved to return them to Anne after the war. On 7 August 1944, Gies attempted to facilitate the release of the prisoners by confronting Karl Silberbauer‎ and offering him money to intervene, but he refused.

Deportation and death

On 3 September 1944, the group was deported on what would be the last transport from Westerbork to the Auschwitz concentration camp, and arrived after a three-day journey. On the same train was Bloeme Evers-Emden, an Amsterdam native who had befriended Margot and Anne in the Jewish Lyceum in 1941. Bloeme saw Anne, Margot and their mother regularly in Auschwitz, and was interviewed for her remembrances of the Frank women in Auschwitz in the 1988 television documentary ''The Last Seven Months of Anne Frank'' by Dutch filmmaker Willy Lindwer and the 1995 BBC documentary ''Anne Frank Remembered''.

In the chaos that marked the unloading of the trains, the men were forcibly separated from the women and children, and Otto Frank was wrenched from his family. Of the 1,019 passengers, 549 — including all children younger than 15 — were sent directly to the gas chambers. Frank had turned 15 three months earlier and was one of the youngest people to be spared from her transport. She was soon made aware that most people were gassed upon arrival, and never learned that the entire group from the ''Achterhuis'' had survived this selection. She reasoned that her father, in his mid-fifties and not particularly robust, had been killed immediately after they were separated.

With the other females not selected for immediate death, Frank was forced to strip naked to be disinfected, had her head shaved and was tattooed with an identifying number on her arm. By day, the women were used as slave labor and Frank was forced to haul rocks and dig rolls of sod; by night, they were crammed into overcrowded barracks. Some witnesses later testified Frank became withdrawn and tearful when she saw children being led to the gas chambers, others reported that more often she displayed strength and courage, and her gregarious and confident nature allowed her to obtain extra bread rations for her mother, sister and herself. Disease was rampant and before long, Frank's skin became badly infected by scabies. The Frank sisters were moved into an infirmary, which was in a state of constant darkness, and infested with rats and mice. Edith Frank stopped eating, saving every morsel of food for her daughters and passing her rations to them, through a hole she made at the bottom of the infirmary wall.

In October 1944, the Frank women were slated to join a transport to the Liebau labor camp in Upper Silesia, which Bloeme Evers-Emden was also a part of. But Anne was prohibited from joining because she had developed scabies, and her mother and sister opted to stay with her. Bloeme went on without them.

On 28 October, selections began for women to be relocated to Bergen-Belsen. More than 8,000 women, including Anne and Margot Frank and Auguste van Pels, were transported, but Edith Frank was left behind and later died from starvation. Tents were erected at Bergen-Belsen to accommodate the influx of prisoners, and as the population rose, the death toll due to disease increased rapidly. Frank was briefly reunited with two friends, Hanneli Goslar and Nanette Blitz, who were confined in another section of the camp. Goslar and Blitz both survived the war and later discussed the brief conversations they had conducted with Frank through a fence. Blitz described her as bald, emaciated, and shivering and Goslar noted Auguste van Pels was with Anne and Margot Frank, and was caring for Margot, who was severely ill. Neither of them saw Margot as she was too weak to leave her bunk. Anne told both Blitz and Goslar she believed her parents were dead, and for that reason did not wish to live any longer. Goslar later estimated their meetings had taken place in late January or early February, 1945.

In March 1945, a typhus epidemic spread through the camp and killed approximately 17,000 prisoners. Witnesses later testified Margot fell from her bunk in her weakened state and was killed by the shock, and a few days later, Anne died. They state this occurred a few weeks before the camp was liberated by British troops on 15 April 1945, although the exact dates were not recorded. After liberation, the camp was burned in an effort to prevent further spread of disease, and Anne and Margot were buried in a mass grave, the exact whereabouts of which is unknown.

After the war, it was estimated of the 107,000 Jews deported from the Netherlands between 1942 and 1944, only 5,000 survived. It was also estimated up to 30,000 Jews remained in the Netherlands, with many people aided by the Dutch underground. Approximately two-thirds of this group of people survived the war.

Otto Frank survived his internment in Auschwitz. After the war ended, he returned to Amsterdam, where he was sheltered by Jan and Miep Gies as he attempted to locate his family. He learned of the death of his wife, Edith, in Auschwitz, but he remained hopeful that his daughters had survived. After several weeks, he discovered Margot and Anne had also died. He attempted to determine the fates of his daughters' friends and learned many had been murdered. Susanne ''Sanne'' Ledermann, often mentioned in Anne's diary, had been gassed along with her parents, though her sister, Barbara, a close friend of Margot, had survived. Several of the Frank sisters' school friends had survived, as had the extended families of both Otto and Edith Frank, as they had fled Germany during the mid 1930s, with individual family members settling in Switzerland, the United Kingdom, and the United States.

''The Diary of a Young Girl''

Publication

In July 1945, after the Red Cross confirmed the deaths of the Frank sisters, Miep Gies gave Otto Frank the diary, along with a bundle of loose notes that she had saved in the hope of returning them to Anne. Otto Frank later commented that he had not realized Anne had kept such an accurate and well-written record of their time in hiding. In his memoir, he described the painful process of reading the diary, recognizing the events described and recalling that he had already heard some of the more amusing episodes read aloud by his daughter. He also noted that he saw for the first time the more private side of his daughter, and those sections of the diary she had not discussed with anyone, noting, "For me it was a revelation... I had no idea of the depth of her thoughts and feelings... She had kept all these feelings to herself". Moved by her repeated wish to be an author, he began to consider having it published.

Frank's diary began as a private expression of her thoughts and she wrote several times that she would never allow anyone to read it. She candidly described her life, her family and companions, and their situation, while beginning to recognise her ambition to write fiction for publication. In March 1944, she heard a radio broadcast by Gerrit Bolkestein—a member of the Dutch government in exile—who said that when the war ended, he would create a public record of the Dutch people's oppression under German occupation. He mentioned the publication of letters and diaries, and Frank decided to submit her work when the time came. She began editing her writing, removing sections and rewriting others, with the view to publication. Her original notebook was supplemented by additional notebooks and loose-leaf sheets of paper. She created pseudonyms for the members of the household and the helpers. The van Pels family became Hermann, Petronella, and Peter van Daan, and Fritz Pfeffer became Albert Düssell. In this edited version, she also addressed each entry to "Kitty," a fictional character in Cissy van Marxveldt's ''Joop ter Heul'' novels that Anne enjoyed reading. Otto Frank used her original diary, known as "version A", and her edited version, known as "version B", to produce the first version for publication. He removed certain passages, most notably those in which Frank is critical of her parents (especially her mother), and sections that discussed Frank's growing sexuality. Although he restored the true identities of his own family, he retained all of the other pseudonyms.

Otto Frank gave the diary to the historian Annie Romein-Verschoor, who tried unsuccessfully to have it published. She then gave it to her husband Jan Romein, who wrote an article about it, titled "Kinderstem" ("A Child's Voice"), published in the newspaper ''Het Parool'' on 3 April 1946. He wrote that the diary "stammered out in a child's voice, embodies all the hideousness of fascism, more so than all the evidence at Nuremberg put together." His article attracted attention from publishers, and the diary was published in the Netherlands as ''Het Achterhuis'' in 1947, followed by a second run in 1950.

It was first published in Germany and France in 1950, and after being rejected by several publishers, was first published in the United Kingdom in 1952. The first American edition was published in 1952 under the title ''Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl'' and was positively reviewed. It was successful in France, Germany and the United States, but in the United Kingdom it failed to attract an audience and by 1953 was out of print. Its most noteworthy success was in Japan (ironically, an ally of Germany during the war), where it received critical acclaim and sold more than 100,000 copies in its first edition. In Japan, Anne Frank quickly became identified as an important cultural figure who represented the destruction of youth during the war.

A play based upon the diary, by Frances Goodrich and Albert Hackett, premiered in New York City on 5 October 1955, and later won a Pulitzer Prize for Drama. It was followed by the 1959 movie ''The Diary of Anne Frank'', which was a critical and commercial success. The biographer, Melissa Müller, later wrote that the dramatization had "contributed greatly to the romanticizing, sentimentalizing and universalizing of Anne's story." Over the years the popularity of the diary grew, and in many schools, particularly in the United States, it was included as part of the curriculum, introducing Anne Frank to new generations of readers.

In 1986, the Netherlands State Institute for War Documentation published the "Critical Edition" of the diary. It includes comparisons from all known versions, both edited and unedited. It also includes discussion asserting its authentication, as well as additional historical information relating to the family and the diary itself.

Cornelis Suijk—a former director of the Anne Frank Foundation and president of the U.S. Center for Holocaust Education Foundation—announced in 1999 that he was in the possession of five pages that had been removed by Otto Frank from the diary prior to publication; Suijk claimed that Otto Frank gave these pages to him shortly before his death in 1980. The missing diary entries contain critical remarks by Anne Frank about her parents' strained marriage, and discuss Frank's lack of affection for her mother. Some controversy ensued when Suijk claimed publishing rights over the five pages and intended to sell them to raise money for his U.S. Foundation. The Netherlands Institute for War Documentation, the formal owner of the manuscript, demanded the pages be handed over. In 2000, the Dutch Ministry of Education, Culture and Science agreed to donate US$300,000 to Suijk's Foundation, and the pages were returned in 2001. Since then, they have been included in new editions of the diary.

Reception

The diary has been praised for its literary merits. Commenting on Anne Frank's writing style, the dramatist Meyer Levin commended Frank for "sustaining the tension of a well-constructed novel", and was so impressed by the quality of her work that he collaborated with Otto Frank on a dramatization of the diary shortly after its publication. Meyer became obsessed with Anne Frank, which he wrote about in his autobiography ''The Obsession''. The poet John Berryman wrote it was a unique depiction, not merely of adolescence but of the "conversion of a child into a person as it is happening in a precise, confident, economical style stunning in its honesty".

In her introduction to the diary's first American edition, Eleanor Roosevelt described it as "one of the wisest and most moving commentaries on war and its impact on human beings that I have ever read." John F. Kennedy discussed Anne Frank in a 1961 speech, and said, "Of all the multitudes who throughout history have spoken for human dignity in times of great suffering and loss, no voice is more compelling than that of Anne Frank." In the same year, the Soviet writer Ilya Ehrenburg wrote of her: "one voice speaks for six million—the voice not of a sage or a poet but of an ordinary little girl."

As Anne Frank's stature as both a writer and humanist has grown, she has been discussed specifically as a symbol of the Holocaust and more broadly as a representative of persecution. Hillary Rodham Clinton, in her acceptance speech for an Elie Wiesel Humanitarian Award in 1994, read from Anne Frank's diary and spoke of her "awakening us to the folly of indifference and the terrible toll it takes on our young," which Clinton related to contemporary events in Sarajevo, Somalia and Rwanda. After receiving a humanitarian award from the Anne Frank Foundation in 1994, Nelson Mandela addressed a crowd in Johannesburg, saying he had read Anne Frank's diary while in prison and "derived much encouragement from it." He likened her struggle against Nazism to his struggle against ''apartheid'', drawing a parallel between the two philosophies with the comment "because these beliefs are patently false, and because they were, and will always be, challenged by the likes of Anne Frank, they are bound to fail." Also in 1994, Václav Havel said "Anne Frank's legacy is very much alive and it can address us fully" in relation to the political and social changes occurring at the time in former Eastern Bloc countries.

Primo Levi suggested Anne Frank is frequently identified as a single representative of the millions of people who suffered and died as she did because, "One single Anne Frank moves us more than the countless others who suffered just as she did but whose faces have remained in the shadows. Perhaps it is better that way; if we were capable of taking in all the suffering of all those people, we would not be able to live." In her closing message in Melissa Müller's biography of Anne Frank, Miep Gies expressed a similar thought, though she attempted to dispel what she felt was a growing misconception that "Anne symbolises the six million victims of the Holocaust", writing: "Anne's life and death were her own individual fate, an individual fate that happened six million times over. Anne cannot, and should not, stand for the many individuals whom the Nazis robbed of their lives... But her fate helps us grasp the immense loss the world suffered because of the Holocaust."

Otto Frank spent the remainder of his life as custodian of his daughter's legacy, saying, "It's a strange role. In the normal family relationship, it is the child of the famous parent who has the honor and the burden of continuing the task. In my case the role is reversed." He also recalled his publisher's explaining why he thought the diary has been so widely read, with the comment, "he said that the diary encompasses so many areas of life that each reader can find something that moves him personally". Simon Wiesenthal later expressed a similar opinion when he said that Anne Frank's diary had raised more widespread awareness of the Holocaust than had been achieved during the Nuremberg Trials, because "people identified with this child. This was the impact of the Holocaust, this was a family like my family, like your family and so you could understand this."

In June 1999, ''Time'' magazine published a special edition titled "Time 100: The Most Important People of the Century". Anne Frank was selected as one of the "Heroes & Icons", and the writer, Roger Rosenblatt, described her legacy with the comment, "The passions the book ignites suggest that everyone owns Anne Frank, that she has risen above the Holocaust, Judaism, girlhood and even goodness and become a totemic figure of the modern world—the moral individual mind beset by the machinery of destruction, insisting on the right to live and question and hope for the future of human beings." He also notes while her courage and pragmatism are admired, it is her ability to analyze herself and the quality of her writing are the key components of her appeal. He writes, "The reason for her immortality was basically literary. She was an extraordinarily good writer, for any age, and the quality of her work seemed a direct result of a ruthlessly honest disposition."

Denials and legal action

After the diary became widely known in the late 1950s, various allegations against the diary were published, with the earliest published criticisms occurring in Sweden and Norway. The allegations in the Swedish Nazi magazine ''Fria ord'' ("''Free Words''") in 1957 came from the Danish author and critic Harald Nielsen, who had written antisemitic articles about the Danish-Jewish author Georg Brandes at the beginning of the twentieth century. Among the accusations was a claim that the diary had been written by Meyer Levin, and that Anne Frank had not really existed.

In 1958, Simon Wiesenthal was challenged by a group of protesters at a performance of ''The Diary of Anne Frank'' in Vienna, who asserted that Anne Frank had never existed, and who challenged Wiesenthal to prove her existence by finding the man who had arrested her. He began searching for Karl Silberbauer and found him in 1963. When interviewed, Silberbauer readily admitted his role, and identified Anne Frank from a photograph as one of the people arrested. He provided a full account of events and recalled emptying a briefcase full of papers onto the floor. His statement corroborated the version of events that had previously been presented by witnesses such as Otto Frank.

Opponents of the diary continued to express the view that it was not written by a child, but had been created as pro-Jewish propaganda, with Otto Frank accused of fraud. In 1959, Frank took legal action in Lübeck against Lothar Stielau, a school teacher and former Hitler Youth member who published a school paper that described the diary as a forgery. The complaint was extended to include Heinrich Buddegerg, who wrote a letter in support of Stielau, which was published in a Lübeck newspaper. The court examined the diary, and, in 1960, authenticated the handwriting as matching that in letters known to have been written by Anne Frank, and declared the diary to be genuine. Stielau recanted his earlier statement, and Otto Frank did not pursue the case any further.

In 1976, Otto Frank took action against Heinz Roth of Frankfurt, who published pamphlets stating that the diary was a forgery. The judge ruled that if he published further statements he would be subjected to a fine of 500,000 German marks and a six-month jail sentence. Roth appealed against the court's decision and died in 1978, a year before his appeal was rejected.

Otto Frank mounted a further lawsuit in 1976 against Ernst Römer, who distributed a pamphlet titled "The Diary of Anne Frank, Bestseller, A Lie". When another man named Edgar Geiss distributed the same pamphlet in the courtroom, he, too was prosecuted. Römer was fined 1,500 Deutschmarks, and Geiss was sentenced to six months imprisonment. On appeal the sentence was reduced, but the case against him was dropped following a subsequent appeal because the statutory limitation for libel had expired.

With Otto Frank's death in 1980, the original diary, including letters and loose sheets, were willed to the Dutch Institute for War Documentation, who commissioned a forensic study of the diary through the Netherlands Ministry of Justice in 1986. They examined the handwriting against known examples and found that they matched, and determined that the paper, glue and ink were readily available during the time the diary was said to have been written. Their final determination was that the diary is authentic, and their findings were published in what has become known as the "Critical Edition" of the diary. On 23 March 1990, the Hamburg Regional Court confirmed its authenticity.

In 1991, Holocaust deniers Robert Faurisson and Siegfried Verbeke produced a booklet titled ''The Diary of Anne Frank: A Critical Approach''. They claimed that Otto Frank wrote the diary, based on assertions that the diary contained several contradictions, that hiding in the ''Achterhuis'' would have been impossible, and that the prose style and handwriting of Anne Frank were not those of a teenager.

The Anne Frank House in Amsterdam and the Anne Frank Funds in Basel instigated a civil law suit in December 1993, to prohibit the further distribution of ''The Diary of Anne Frank: A Critical Approach'' in the Netherlands. On 9 December 1998, the Amsterdam District Court ruled in favour of the claimants, forbade any further denial of the authenticity of the diary and unsolicited distribution of publications to that effect, and imposed a penalty of 25,000 guilders per infringement.

Legacy

On 3 May 1957, a group of citizens, including Otto Frank, established the Anne Frank Stichting in an effort to rescue the Prinsengracht building from demolition and to make it accessible to the public. The Anne Frank House opened on 3 May 1960. It consists of the Opekta warehouse and offices and the ''Achterhuis'', all unfurnished so that visitors can walk freely through the rooms. Some personal relics of the former occupants remain, such as movie star photographs glued by Anne to a wall, a section of wallpaper on which Otto Frank marked the height of his growing daughters, and a map on the wall where he recorded the advance of the Allied Forces, all now protected behind Perspex sheets. From the small room which was once home to Peter van Pels, a walkway connects the building to its neighbours, also purchased by the Foundation. These other buildings are used to house the diary, as well as changing exhibits that chronicle different aspects of the Holocaust and more contemporary examinations of racial intolerance in various parts of the world. It has become one of Amsterdam's main tourist attractions, and in 2005 received a record 965,000 visitors. The House provides information via the Internet, as well as travelling exhibitions, for those not able to visit. In 2005, exhibitions travelled to 32 countries in Europe, Asia, North America and South America.

In 1963, Otto Frank and his second wife, Elfriede Geiringer-Markovits, set up the Anne Frank Fonds as a charitable foundation, based in Basel, Switzerland. The Fonds raises money to donate to causes "as it sees fit". Upon his death, Otto willed the diary's copyright to the Fonds, on the provision that the first 80,000 Swiss francs in income each year was to be distributed to his heirs, and any income above this figure was to be retained by the Fonds to use for whatever projects its administrators considered worthy. It provides funding for the medical treatment of the Righteous among the Nations on a yearly basis. It has aimed to educate young people against racism and has loaned some of Anne Frank's papers to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C. for an exhibition in 2003. Its annual report of the same year gave some indication of its effort to contribute on a global level, with its support of projects in Germany, Israel, India, Switzerland, the United Kingdom and the United States.

The Merwedeplein apartment, in which the Frank family lived from 1933 until 1942, remained privately owned until the first decade of the 21st century, when a television documentary focused public attention upon it. In a serious state of disrepair, it was purchased by a Dutch housing corporation, and aided by photographs taken by the Frank family and descriptions of the apartment and furnishings in letters written by Anne Frank, was restored to its 1930s appearance. Teresien da Silva of the Anne Frank House, and Anne Frank's cousin Bernhard "Buddy" Elias also contributed to the restoration project. It opened in 2005 with the aim of providing a safe haven for a selected writer who is unable to write freely in his or her own country. Each selected writer is allowed one year's tenancy during which to reside and work in the apartment. The first writer selected was the Algerian novelist and poet, El-Mahdi Acherchour.

In June 2007, "Buddy" Elias donated some 25,000 family documents to the Anne Frank House. Among the artifacts are Frank family photographs taken in Germany and Holland and the letter Otto Frank sent his mother in 1945, informing her that his wife and daughters had perished in Nazi concentration camps.

In November 2007, the Anne Frank tree was scheduled to be cut down to prevent it from falling down on one of the surrounding buildings, after a fungal disease had affected the trunk of this horse-chestnut tree. Dutch economist Arnold Heertje, who was also in hiding during the Second World War, said about the tree: "This is not just any tree. The Anne Frank tree is bound up with the persecution of the Jews." The Tree Foundation, a group of tree conservationists, started a civil case in order to stop the felling of the horse chestnut, which received international media attention. A Dutch court ordered the city officials and conservationists to explore alternatives and come to a solution. The parties agreed to build a steel construction that would allegedly prolong the life of the tree up to 15 years. However, it was only three years until gale-force winds blew down the tree on 23 August 2010.

Over the years, several films about Anne Frank appeared and her life and writings have inspired a diverse group of artists and social commentators to make reference to her in literature, popular music, television, and other forms of media. These include ''The Anne Frank Ballet'' by Adam Darius, first performed in 1959, and the choral work ''Annelies'', first performed in 2005. The only known footage of the real Anne Frank comes from a 1941 silent film recorded for her newlywed next-door neighbor. She is seen leaning out of a second-floor window in an attempt to see the bride and groom better. The couple survived the war and gave the film to the Anne Frank House, a museum in Amsterdam.

In 1999, ''Time'' named Anne Frank among the heroes and icons of the 20th century on their list ''The Most Important People of the Century'', stating: "With a diary kept in a secret attic, she braved the Nazis and lent a searing voice to the fight for human dignity". Philip Roth called her the "lost little daughter" of Kafka.

In 2007 a group of Dutch historians included Anne Frank as one of the topics of an official "Canon of Dutch History", which is a list of fifty topics that aims to provide a chronological account of Dutch history to be taught in primary and secondary schools

See also

Hélène Berr – a French diarist

Hana Brady – Jewish girl and holocaust victim; subject of the children's book ''Hana's Suitcase''

Helga Deen – wrote a diary in Herzogenbusch concentration camp (Camp Vught)

Etty Hillesum – wrote a diary in Amsterdam and Camp Westerbork

Věra Kohnová – a Czech diarist

David Koker – wrote a diary in Herzogenbusch concentration camp (Camp Vught)

Janet Langhart – Writer of one act play "Anne and Emmett"

Rutka Laskier – a Polish diarist

People associated with Anne Frank

Tanya Savicheva

Sophie Scholl – German student executed by the Nazis

''Searching for Anne Frank: Letters from Amsterdam to Iowa'' (book)

Henio Zytomirski – Polish boy who was a holocaust victim

Notes and references

Bibliography

; This edition, a new translation, includes material excluded from the earlier edition.

Frank, Anne and Netherlands State Institute for War Documentation (1989). ''The Diary of Anne Frank, The Critical Edition''. Doubleday. ISBN 0-385-24023-6.

; With a note from Miep Gies.

van der Rol, Ruud; Verhoeven, Rian (for the Anne Frank House); Quindlen, Anna (Introduction); Langham, Tony & Peters, Plym (translation) (1995). ''Anne Frank – Beyond the Diary – A Photographic Remembrance''. Puffin. ISBN 0-14-036926-0.

Westra, Hans; Metselaar, Menno; Van Der Rol, Ruud; Stam, Dineke (2004). ''Inside Anne Frank's House: An Illustrated Journey Through Anne's World''. Overlook Duckworth. ISBN 1-58567-628-4.

Jacobson, Sid and Colón, Ernie (2010). ''Anne Frank: The Anne Frank House Authorized Graphic Biography''. Farrar, Straus and Giroux. ISBN 978-0-8090-2685-2.

External links

Anne Frank Center, USA

Anne Frank House

Anne Frank Trust UK

Anne Frank-Fonds (Foundation)

BBC: ''The Diary of Anne Frank''

Video: The only existing film images of Anne Frank

Anne Frank's last remaining close relative, Buddy Elias, ''BBC News'' video interview about Anne, 25 February 2011

Dina Porat, Biography of Anne Frank, Jewish Women Encyclopedia

The History Channel:Anne Frank

Video: What Anne Frank Might Have Looked Like at 80 by ''The London Telegraph''

United States Holocaust Memorial Museum – Exhibition "Anne Frank: An Unfinished Story" and Encyclopedia Anne Frank

Category:1929 births Category:1945 deaths Category:Bergen-Belsen concentration camp victims Category:Children who died in Nazi concentration camps Category:Deaths from typhus Category:Dutch diarists Category:Dutch Jews Category:Dutch people of German descent Category:Dutch people of World War II Category:Dutch women writers Category:Historians of fascism Category:German diarists Category:German expatriates in the Netherlands Category:German Jews Category:German women writers Category:Jewish refugees Category:Jewish women writers Category:People from Amsterdam Category:People from Frankfurt Category:Stateless persons Category:Teen writers Category:Women diarists Category:Women in World War II Category:Writers who died in Nazi concentration camps Category:Auschwitz concentration camp inmates

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Coordinates	°′″N°′″N
Name	Saint John the Baptist
Birth date	c. 5 BCE
Death date	c. 36 CE (aged 38-42)
Feast day	June 24 (Nativity), August 29 (Beheading), January 7 (Synaxis, Eastern Orthodox), Thout 2 ( Coptic Orthodox Church)
Venerated in	Bahá'í Faith, Islam, Assyrian Church of the East, Roman Catholic Church, Eastern Orthodox Church, Eastern Catholic Churches, Oriental Orthodox Churches, Anglicanism, Lutheranism, Mandeanism
Titles	Prophet, Preacher, Forerunner, Martyr
Attributes	Cross, sheep, camel-skin robe
Patronage	patron saint of French Canada, Newfoundland, Puerto Rico, Knights Hospitaller of Jerusalem, Florence, Turin, Porto, Genoa, Cesena, Jordan, Xewkija and many other places
Major shrine	Church of St. John the Baptist, Jerusalem
Prayer attrib	}}

John the Baptist(Hebrew: יוחנן המטביל, ''Yoḥanan ha-mmatbil'', ''Yahyá'' or يوحنا المعمدان ''Yūhannā al-maʿmadān'', Aramaic: ܝܘܚܢܢ ''Yoḥanan'') (c. 6 BCE – c. 36 CE) was an itinerant preacher and a major religious figure who led a movement of baptism at the Jordan River. Some scholars maintain that he was influenced by the Essenes, who were semi-ascetic, expected an apocalypse, and practiced rituals conferring strongly with baptism, although there is no direct evidence to substantiate this. John is regarded as a prophet in Christianity, Islam, the Bahá'í Faith, and Mandaeism.

Most biblical historians agree that John baptized Jesus at "Bethany beyond the Jordan," by wading into the water with Jesus from the eastern bank. In addition to the Canonical gospels, John the Baptist is also mentioned by Jewish historian Josephus, in Aramaic Matthew, in Pseudo-Clementine, and in the Qur'an. Accounts of John in the New Testament appear compatible with the account in Josephus.. There are no historical accounts of John the Baptist from around the period of his lifetime.

John anticipated a messianic figure who would be greater than himself, and, in the New Testament, Jesus is the one whose coming John foretold. Christians commonly refer to John as the precursor or forerunner of Jesus, since John announces Jesus' coming. John is also identified with the prophet Elijah, and is described by the Gospel of Luke as a relative of Jesus. Some of Jesus' early followers had previously been followers of John.

The beheading of St. John the Baptist is a standard theme in Christian art, in which John's head is often depicted on a platter, which represents the request of Herod's stepdaughter, Salome. He is also depicted as an ascetic wearing camel hair, with a staff and scroll inscribed ''Ecce Agnus Dei'', or bearing a book or dish with a lamb on it. In Orthodox icons, he often has angel's wings, since Mark 1:2 describes him as a messenger.

Gospel narrative

All four canonical Gospels record John the Baptist's ministry, as does the non-canonical Gospel of the Hebrews. They depict him as proclaiming Christ's arrival. In the Synoptic Gospels (Mark, Matthew, and Luke), Jesus is baptized by John.

Birth and infancy

The Gospel of Luke includes an account of John's infancy, introducing him as the son of Zachariah, an old man, and his wife Elizabeth, who was barren. According to this account, the birth of John was foretold by the angel Gabriel to Zachariah, while Zachariah was performing his functions as a priest in the temple of Jerusalem. Since Zachariah is described as a priest of the course of Abijah and his wife, Elizabeth, as one of the daughters of Aaron, this would make John a descendant of Aaron on both his father's and mother's side.

The Gospel of Luke states that Jesus was conceived when Elizabeth was about six months pregnant, and when her cousin Mary came to tell her about her news, Elizabeth's unborn child "jumped for joy" in her womb. There is no mention of a family relationship between John and Jesus in the other Gospels, and the scholar Raymond E. Brown has described it as "of dubious historicity". Géza Vermes has called it "artificial and undoubtedly Luke's creation". On the basis of the account in Luke, the Catholic calendar placed the feast of John the Baptist on June 24, six months before Christmas.

Zachariah had lost his speech at the behest and prophecy of the angel Gabriel, and it was restored on the occasion of Zachariah naming John.

The many similarities between the accounts of the birth of John and that of Samuel in the Old Testament have led scholars to suggest that the Gospel of Luke story of the birth of John and of the annunciation and birth of Jesus are modeled on that of Samuel.

Ministry

All four canonical gospels relate John's preaching and baptism in the River Jordan. Most notably he is the one who recognizes Jesus as the Messiah and baptizes him. The baptism marks the beginning of Jesus' ministry. The Gospels of Mark, Matthew and (most clearly) Luke relate that Jesus came from Galilee to John in Judea and was baptized by him, whereupon the Spirit descended upon Jesus and a voice from Heaven told him he was God's Son. The Gospel of John does not record John's baptizing Jesus, but John introduces Jesus to his disciples as the "Lamb of God" (John 1:29-36).

Considered by Christians to be without sin, Jesus nevertheless received John's baptism, which was for the repentance of sins (Mark 1:4). This is addressed in the Gospel of Matthew's account, which portrays John's refusal to baptize Jesus, saying, "I need to be baptized by you." Jesus persuades John to baptize him nonetheless (Matthew 3:13-15).

The Gospel of John reports that Jesus' disciples were baptizing and that a debate broke out between some of the disciples of John and another Jew about purification. In this debate John argued that Jesus "must become greater," while he (John) "must become less" (John 3:22-36). The Gospel of John then points out that Jesus' disciples were baptizing more people than John (John 4:2). Later, the Gospel relates that Jesus regarded John as "a burning and shining lamp, and you were willing to rejoice for a while in his light" (John 5:35). The Book of Acts portrays the disciples of John as eventually merging into the followers of Jesus (Acts 18:24-19:6), a development not reported by the Gospels except for the early case of Andrew, Simon Peter's brother (John 1:35-42). Scholars such as Harold W. Attridge contend that John's status as a "self-conscious and deliberate forerunner of Jesus" is likely to be an invention by early Christians, arguing that "for the early church it would have been something of an embarrassment to say that Jesus, who was in their minds superior to John the Baptist, had been baptized by him."

Death

In the Gospel accounts of John's death, Herod has John imprisoned for denouncing his marriage, and John is later executed by beheading. John condemned Herod for marrying Herodias, the former wife of his brother Philip, in violation of Old Testament Law. Later Herodias' daughter Salome dances before Herod, who offers her a favour in return. Herodias tells her to ask for the head of John the Baptist, which is delivered to her on a plate (Mark 6:14-29). The first century Jewish historian Josephus gives a slightly different account in his ''Antiquities of the Jews''. Josephus writes that Herod had John arrested because John had so many followers that Herod feared they might begin a rebellion. Herod later had him executed (''Ant.'' 18.116-118). It is possible that both accounts are true. Josephus writes about John's death in a section detailing some of Herod's political dealings. Herod regarded John as a threat, he spoke against Herod and had many followers, so Herod wanted to get rid of him. The Gospels recall the teaching of John, that he called for Israel to purify herself through baptism (Matthew 3:1-12). So the Gospels' description of John's death focuses on the final reason Herod had for arresting John, which was religious. So it may have been that Herod wanted John arrested because he was a political threat, and John's condemnations of Herod's marriage was "the final straw". See James D.G. Dunn, ''Jesus Remembered'' pp377–379.

John the Baptist and Old Testament prophecy

Christians believe that John the Baptist had a specific role ordained by God as forerunner or precursor of Jesus, who was the foretold Messiah. The New Testament Gospels speak of this role. In Luke 1:17 the role of John is referred to as being "to turn the hearts of the fathers to the children, and the disobedient to the wisdom of the just; to make ready a people prepared for the Lord." In Luke 1:76 as "...thou shalt go before the face of the Lord to prepare his ways" and in Luke 1:77 as being "To give knowledge of salvation unto his people by the remission of their sins."

There are several passages within the Old Testament which are interpreted by Christians as being prophetic of John the Baptist in this role. These include a passage in the Book of Malachi 3:1 that refers to a prophet who would ''prepare the way of the Lord'':

and also at the end of the next chapter in Malachi 4:5-6 where it says,

The Jews of Jesus' day expected Elijah to come before the Messiah; indeed, some modern Jews continue to await Elijah's coming as well, as in the Cup of Elijah the Prophet in the Passover Seder. This is why the disciples ask Jesus in Matthew 17:10, 'Why then say the scribes that Elias must first come?.' The disciples are then told by Jesus that Elijah came in the person of John the Baptist,

These passages are applied to John in the Synoptic Gospels. The Gospel of John indicates that John the Baptist did not fully appreciate his status,

Josephus

An account of John the Baptist is found in all extant manuscripts of the ''Jewish Antiquities'' (book 18, chapter 5, 2) by Flavius Josephus (37–100):

As with other passages in Josephus relating to Christian themes concern remains over whether the passage was part of Josephus's original text or instead a later addition - it can be dated back no further than the early 3rd century when it is quoted by Origen in ''Contra Celsum''. According to this passage, the execution of John was blamed for a defeat Herod suffered c. 36 CE. Divergences between the passage's presentation and the Biblical accounts of John include baptism for those whose souls have already been "purified beforehand by righteousness" is for purification of the body, not general repentance of sin (Mark 1:4

Christian

Early Jewish Christian sects

Among the early Judaistic Christian groups the Ebionites held that John, along with Jesus and James the Just - all of whom they revered - were vegetarians. Epiphanius of Salamis records that this group had amended their Gospel of Matthew, known today as the Gospel of the Ebionites, to change where John eats "locusts" to read "honey cakes" or "manna".

===Eastern Orthodox Church=== The Eastern Orthodox faithful believe that John was the last of the Old Testament prophets, thus serving as a bridge between that period of revelation and the New Covenant. They also teach that, following his death, John descended into Hades and there once more preached that Jesus the Messiah was coming, so he was the Forerunner of Christ in death as he had been in life. According to Sacred Tradition, John the Baptist appears at the time of death to those who have not heard the Gospel of Christ, and preaches the Good News to them, that all may have the opportunity to be saved. Orthodox churches will often have an icon of St. John the Baptist in a place of honor on the iconostasis, and he is frequently mentioned during the Divine Services. Every Tuesday throughout the year is dedicated to his memory.

The Eastern Orthodox Church remembers Saint John the Forerunner on six separate feast days, listed here in order in which they occur during the church year (which begins on September 1): September 23 — Conception of St. John the Forerunner

January 7 — The Synaxis of St. John the Forerunner. This is his main feast day, immediately after Theophany on January 6 (January 7 also commemorates the transfer of the relic of the right hand of John the Baptist from Antioch to Constantinople in 956)

February 24 — First and Second Finding of the Head of St. John the Forerunner

May 25 — Third Finding of the Head of St. John the Forerunner

June 24 — Nativity of St. John the Forerunner

August 29 — The Beheading of St. John the Forerunner

In addition to the above, September 5 is the commemoration of Zechariah and Elisabeth, St. John's parents. The Russian Orthodox Church observes October 12 as the Transfer of the Right Hand of the Forerunner from Malta to Gatchina (1799).

Catholic Church

thumb|200px|Tomb of St. John the Baptist at a [[Coptic Orthodox Church of Alexandria|Coptic monastery in Lower Egypt. The bones of St. John the Baptist were said to have been found here.]]‎ The Roman Catholic Church commemorates St. John the Baptist on two feast days:

June 24 – Nativity of St. John the Baptist

August 29 – Beheading of St. John the Baptist

Relics

The burial-place of John the Baptist was at Sebaste in Samaria, and mention is made of his relics being honored there around the middle of the 4th century. The historians Rufinus and Theodoretus record that the shrine was desecrated under Julian the Apostate around 362, the bones being partly burned. A portion of the rescued relics were carried to Jerusalem, then to Alexandria, where on May 27, 395, they were laid in the basilica that was newly dedicated to the Forerunner on the former site of the temple of Serapis. The tomb at Sebaste continued, nevertheless, to be visited by pious pilgrims, and St. Jerome bears witness to miracles being worked there.

What became of the head of John the Baptist is difficult to determine. Nicephorus and Symeon Metaphrastes say that Herodias had it buried in the fortress of Machaerus (in accordance with Josephus). Other writers say that it was interred in Herod's palace at Jerusalem; there it was found during the reign of Constantine I, and thence secretly taken to Emesa, in Phoenicia, where it was concealed, the place remaining unknown for years, until it was manifested by revelation in 453. However, the decapitation cloth of St. John is kept at the Aachen Cathedral. The Coptic Christian Orthodox Church also claim to hold the relics of St. John the Baptist. These are to be found in a monastery in Lower Egypt between Cairo and Alexandria. It is possible, with permission from the monks, to see the original tomb where the remains were found. An obscure and surprising claim relates to the town of Halifax in West Yorkshire, United Kingdom, where the Baptist's head appears on the official coat-of-arms. A legend first recorded in the late 16th century and reported in William Camden's ''Britannia'' accounts for the town's place-name, as 'halig' (holy) and 'fax' (face), by stating that the first religious settlers of the district brought the 'face' of John the Baptist with them.

Several different locations claim to possess the severed head of John the Baptist. Among them: Umayyad Mosque in Damascus; San Silvestro in Capite in Rome; and the Residenz Museum in Munich, Germany (official residence of the Wittelsbach rulers of Bavaria from 1385 to 1918). Further heads, no longer available, were once held by the Knights Templar at Amiens Cathedral in France (brought home by Wallon de Sarton from the Fourth Crusade in Constantinople), at Antioch in Turkey (fate uncertain), and the parish church at Tenterden in Kent, where it was preserved up until the Reformation.

The saint's right hand, with which he baptised Jesus, is claimed to be in: the Serbian Orthodox Cetinje monastery in Montenegro; Topkapi Palace in Istanbul; and also in the Romanian skete of the Forerunner on Mount Athos. The saint's left hand is allegedly preserved in the Armenian Apostolic Church of St. John at Chinsurah, West Bengal, where each year on "Chinsurah Day" in January it blesses the Armenians of Calcutta. A crypt and relics said to be John's and mentioned in 11th and 16th century manuscripts, were discovered in 1969 during restoration of the Church of St. Macarius at the Monastery of Saint Macarius the Great in Scetes, Egypt; Additional relics are claimed to reside in Gandzasar Monastery's ''Cathedral of St. John the Baptist'', in Nagorno Karabakh;

Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints

According to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, latter-day revelation confirms the biblical account and also makes known additional events in the ministry of John the Baptist. According to this belief, revelation reveals that John was "ordained by an angel," when he was 8 days of age, to overthrow the kingdom of the Jews and to prepare a people for the Lord. They also claim that he was baptized while yet in his childhood.

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints teaches that John the Baptist appeared on the banks of the Susquehanna River near Harmony Township, Susquehanna County, Pennsylvania (present-day Oakton) as a resurrected being to Joseph Smith, Jr. and Oliver Cowdery on May 15, 1829, and ordained them to the Aaronic priesthood. According to LDS doctrine, John the Baptist's ministry has operated in three dispensations: he was the last of the prophets under the law of Moses; he was the first of the New Testament prophets; and he was sent to confer the Aaronic priesthood in our day, the dispensation of the fulness of times. They also believe John's ministry was foretold by two prophets whose teachings are included in the Book of Mormon: Lehi and his son, Nephi (Book of Mormon 1 Nephi 11:27; Nephi 31:4-18;).

Islam

Honorific prefix	Prophet
Name	''Yahya''Prophet, Seer, Messenger, Forerunner of Jesus
Birth date	6-2 B.C.
Parents	Zachariah and Elizabeth
Relatives	Cousin of Jesus, Nephew of Mary
Other names	New Testament: John the Baptist
Birth place	Jerusalem
Resting place	Umayyad Mosque, Damascus
Known for	Being a gift from God to his father Zachariah, Prophesying with the scripture, Attaining wisdom in youth
Title	}}

John is also honored as a prophet in Islam as ''Yaḥyā ibn Zakarīyā'' (), translated literally as "John, son of Zechariah". He is believed by Muslims to have been a witness to the word of God, and a prophet who would herald the coming of Jesus. His father Zechariah was also an Islamic prophet. Islamic tradition maintains that John was one of the prophets that Muhammad met on the night of the Mi'raj, his ascension through the Seven Heavens. It is said that he met John and Jesus in the second heaven, where Muhammad greeted his two 'brothers' before ascending with archangel Gabriel to the third heaven. John's story was also told to the Abyssinian king during the Muslim refugees' Migration to Abyssinia. According to the Qur'an, John was one on whom God sent peace on the day that he was born and the day that he died.

Name

John's name in Arabic, ''Yahya'', was present in Arabia before the Qur'an was revealed.Muslim exegetes frequently connected the name with the meaning of "to quicken" or "to make alive" in reference to John's mother's barrenness, which was cured by God, as well as John's preaching, which, as Muslims believe, "made alive" the faith of Israel. The Qur'an accords the significance of John's name to the fact that it was a new name for mankind, in that no one previously had been named "John". Other scholars hold that John's name, which they state connects with the meaning of "He shall live", referred to his legacy, in that his memory will remain in the mind of the faithful for the generations to come.

John in the Qur'an

In the Qur'an, God frequently mentions Zechariah's continuous praying for the birth of son. Zechariah's wife, mentioned in the New Testament as Elizabeth, was barren and therefore the birth of a child seemed impossible. As a gift from God, Zechariah was given a son by the name of "John", a name specially chosen for this child alone. In accordance with Zechariah's prayer, God made John and Jesus, who according to exegesis was born six months later, renew the message of God, which had been corrupted and lost by the Israelites. As the Qur'an says: }} John was exhorted to hold fast to the Scripture and was given wisdom by God while still a child. He was pure and devout, and walked well in the presence of God. He was dutiful towards his parents and he was not arrogant or rebellious. John's reading and understanding of the scriptures, when only a child, surpassed even that of the greatest scholars of the time. Muslim exegesis narrates that Jesus sent John out with twelve disciples, who preached the message before Jesus called his own disciples. The Qur'an says of John: John was a classical prophet, who was exalted high by God, for his bold denouncing of all things sinful. Furthermore, the Qur'an speaks of John's gentle pity and love for all creatures and his humble attitude towards life, for which he was granted the Purity of Life:

John is also honored highly in Sufism as well as Islamic mysticism, primarily because of the Qur'an's description of John's chastity and kindness. Sufis have frequently applied commentaries on John's passages on the Qur'an, primarily concerning God-given gift of "Wisdom" which he acquired in youth as well as his parallels with Jesus. Although several phrases used to describe John and Jesus are virtually identical in the Qur'an, the manner in which they are expressed is different.

Other views

Mandaean view

John the Baptist plays a large part in some Mandaean writings, especially those dating from the Islamic period. They view John as the only true Messiah.

Bahá'í view

There are numerous quotations in the writings of Bahá'u'lláh, Founder of the Bahá'í Faith mentioning John the Baptist. He is regarded by Bahá'ís as a lesser Prophet. Bahá'u'lláh claimed that his Forerunner, the Báb, was the spiritual return of John the Baptist. In his letter to Pope Pius IX, Bahá'u'lláh wrote:

"O followers of the Son! We have once again sent John unto you, and He, verily, hath cried out in the wilderness of the Bayán: O peoples of the world! Cleanse your eyes! The Day whereon ye can behold the Promised One and attain unto Him hath drawn nigh! O followers of the Gospel! Prepare the way! The Day of the advent of the Glorious Lord is at hand! Make ready to enter the Kingdom. Thus hath it been ordained by God, He Who causeth the dawn to break."

However, Bahá'ís consider the Báb to be a greater Prophet (Manifestation of God) and thus possessed of a far greater station than John the Baptist.

Gnostic and anthroposophic views

In Gnosticism, John the Baptist was a "personification" of the Old Testament prophet Elijah. Elijah did not know the True God (as opposed to the Abrahamic God), and thus had to be reincarnated in Gnostic theology. As predicted by the Old Testament prophet Malachi, Elijah must "come first" to herald the coming of Jesus Christ. Modern anthroposophy, initiated by Rudolf Steiner, concurs with the idea that the Baptist was a reincarnation of Elijah, in line with the Synoptic Gospels (e.g. Mark 9:11-13, Matthew 11:13-14, Luke 7:27), although the Gospel of John explicitly denies this (John 1:21). Furthermore, after his beheading at Machaerus his soul is said to have become the inspiring group genius of Christ's disciples. According to Steiner, the painter Raphael and the poet Novalis were more recent incarnations of John the Baptist.

Unification church

The Unification Church teaches that God intended that John help Jesus during his public ministry in Judea. In particular, John should have done everything in his power to persuade the Jewish people that Jesus was the Messiah. He was to become Jesus' greatest disciple. John's failure to do so was the chief obstacle to the fulfillment of Jesus' mission.

In art

John has been one of the saints most frequently appearing in Christian art. The ''Baptism of Christ'' was one of the earliest scenes from the ''Life of Christ'' to be frequently depicted in Early Christian art, and John's tall thin, even gaunt, and bearded figure is already established by the 5th century. Only he and Jesus are consistently shown with long hair from Early Christian times, when the apostles generally have trim classical cuts; in fact John is more consistently depicted in this way than Jesus. In Byzantine art the composition of the ''Deesis'' came to be included in every Eastern Orthodox church, as remains the case to this day. Here John and the Theotokos (Mary) flank a Christ Pantocrator and intercede for humanity; in many ways this is the equivalent of Western Crucifixions on roods and elsewhere, where John the Evangelist takes the place of John the Baptist (except in the idiosyncratic ''Isenheim Altarpiece''). John the Baptist is very often shown on altarpieces designed for churches dedicated to him, or where the donor patron was named for him or there was some other connection of patronage - John was the patron saint of Florence, among many other cities, which means he features among the supporting saints in many important works.

A number of narrative scenes from his life were often shown on the predella of altarpieces dedicated to John, and other settings, notably the large series in grisaille fresco in the Chiostro del Scalzo, which was Andrea del Sarto's largest work, and the frescoed ''Life'' by Domenico Ghirlandaio in the Tornabuoni Chapel, both in Florence. There is another important fresco cycle by Filippo Lippi in Prato Cathedral. These include the typical scenes: the ''Annunciation to Zechariah'', John's birth, his naming by his father, the ''Visitation'', John's departure for the desert, his preaching in the desert, the ''Baptism of Christ'', John before Herod, the dance of Salome, and his beheading.

His birth, which unlike the Nativity of Jesus allowed a relatively wealthy domestic interior to be shown, became increasingly popular as a subject in the late Middle Ages, with depictions by Jan van Eyck (?) in the Turin-Milan Hours and Ghirlandaio in the Tornabuoni Chapel being among the best known. His execution, a Church feast-day, was often shown, and by the 15th century scenes such as the dance of Salome became popular, sometimes, as in an engraving by Israhel van Meckenem, the interest of the artist is clearly in showing the life of Herod's court, given contemporary dress, as much as the martyrdom of the saint. Salome bearing John's head on a platter equally became a subject for the Northern Renaissance taste for images of glamorous but dangerous women (Delilah, Judith and others), and was often painted by Lucas Cranach the Elder and engraved by the Little Masters. These images remained popular into the Baroque, with Carlo Dolci painting at least three versions. John preaching, in a landscape setting, was a popular subject in Dutch art from Pieter Brueghel the Elder and his successors.

As a child (of varying age), he is sometimes shown from the 15th century in family scenes from the life of Christ such as the ''Presentation of Christ'', the ''Marriage of the Virgin'' and the ''Holy Kinship''. Leonardo da Vinci's versions of the ''Virgin of the Rocks'' were influential in establishing a Renaissance fashion for variations on the Madonna and Child that included John, probably intended to depict the cousin's reunion in Egypt, when after Jesus's Flight to Egypt John was believed to have been carried to join him by an angel. Raphael in particular painted many compositions of the subject, such as the Alba Madonna, La belle jardinière, Aldobrandini Madonna, Madonna della seggiola, Madonna dell'Impannata, which were among his best known works. John was also often shown by himself as an older child or adolescent, usually already wearing his distinctive dress and carrying a long thin wooden cross - another theme influenced by Leonardo, whose equivocal composition, reintroducing the camel-skin dress, was developed by Raphael Titian and Guido Reni among many others. Often he is accompanied by a lamb, especially in the many Early Netherlandish paintings which needed this attribute as he wore normal clothes. Caravaggio painted an especially large number of works including John, from at least five largely nude youths attributed to him, to three late works on his death - the great ''Execution'' in Malta, and two sombre Salomes with his head, one in Madrid, and one in London.

Amiens cathedral, which holds one of the alleged heads of the Baptist, has a biographical sequence in polychrome relief, dating from the 16th century. This stresses the execution and the disposal of the saint's remains.

The death of John remained a popular subject throughout the Baroque period.

A remarkable Pre-Raphaelite portrayal is Christ in the House of His Parents by John Everett Millais. Here the Baptist is shown as a child, wearing a loin covering of animal skins, hurrying to bring a bowl of water to soothe the injured hand of Jesus. Artistic interest enjoyed a considerable revival at the end of the 19th century with Symbolist painters such as Gustave Moreau and Puvis de Chavannes (National Gallery, London). Oscar Wilde's play ''Salome'' was illustrated by Aubrey Beardsley, giving rise to some of his most memorable images.

In poetry

The Italian Renaissance poet Lucrezia Tornabuoni chose John the Baptist as one of biblical figures on which she wrote poetry.

Commemoration

As a patron saint

Saint John the Baptist is the patron saint of Jordan, his beheading is said to have taken place in Machaerus in central Jordan.

Saint John the Baptist is the patron saint of Puerto Rico, and its capital city San Juan bears his name. In 1521, the island was given its formal name "San Juan Bautista de Puerto Rico", following the usual custom of christening the town with both its formal name and the name which Christopher Columbus had originally given the island, honouring John the Baptist. The indistinct use of "San Juan Bautista" and "Puerto Rico" for calling both the city and the island led to a reversal in practical use by most inhabitants due largely to a map-making error. Therefore by 1746 the name for the city (Puerto Rico) had become that of the entire island, while the name for the island (San Juan Bautista) had become the name for the city. The official motto for the island of Puerto Rico also references the saint, ''Joannes Est Nomen Eius'' (translated, "John is his name").

He is also a patron saint of French Canada, and Newfoundland. The Canadian cities of St. John's, Newfoundland (1497) and Saint John, New Brunswick (1604) were both named in his honor. In the UK Saint John the Baptist is the patron saint of Penzance, Cornwall. His feast day is June 24, celebrated in Quebec as the ''Fête Nationale du Québec'', and in Newfoundland as Discovery Day.

Also on the night from June 23 to 24, Saint John is celebrated as the patron saint of Porto, the second largest city in Portugal. An article from June 2004 in The Guardian, remarked that "Porto's Festa de São João is one of Europe's liveliest street festivals, yet it is relatively unknown outside the country".

He is also patron of the Knights Hospitaller of Jerusalem, Malta, Florence, and Genoa, Italy.

John is patron saint of Xewkija-Gozo, Malta, which remember him with a great feast on the Sunday nearest to June 24.

The Baptistines are the name given to a number of religious orders dedicated to the memory of John the Baptist. Saint John is also the patron saint of Lian, Batangas, Calamba City, Laguna, San Juan, Metro Manila (Philippines) and the Roman Catholic Diocese of Charleston which comprises the entire state of South Carolina. St. John the Baptist is (along with St. John the Evangelist) claimed as a Patron Saint by the fraternal society of Free and Accepted Masons (better known as the Freemasons).

Festivity

In many Mediterranean countries the summer solstice is dedicated to St. John. The associated ritual is very similar to midsummer celebrations in the Anglo-Saxon tradition.

Locations, churches, and other establishments in his name

Armenian Apostolic Monastery of Gandzasar, Nagorno Karabakh

Monastery of Saint John the Baptist, a 4th century Armenian monastery in the Taron province of historic Armenia that contained the relics of Saint John the Baptist (which were moved there from Caeserea)

Maronite Catholic Monastery of Saint John the Baptist, Beit Mery, Lebanon

Romanian Skete Prodromos (the name is the Greek for "The Forerunner") on Mount Athos, holding relics believed to be of John the Baptist

St John's College of The University of Oxford, Oxford, England

Puerto Rico was originally named San Juan Bautista; San Juan (then called Puerto Rico) is now its capital city.

St. John's, Newfoundland, was founded on his feast day June 24, 1497.

Exactly 34 years later San Juan del Río, Querétaro, Mexico was founded on June 24, 1531.

Saint John, New Brunswick was named after the Saint John River which was named by Samuel de Champlain

Fête nationale du Québec — also known as la St- Jean-Baptiste — is the provincial holiday of Quebec, celebrated on June 24 of every year

Prince Edward Island, a Canadian province, was originally called ''Île de St-Jean'' or St. John's Island.

St. John's University located in Queens, New York; St. John's is the second largest Roman Catholic university in the United States.

Mission San Juan Bautista, one of the original 18th century missions in northern California.

The City of San Juan in Metro Manila, the Philippines. Also known by its formal name ''Sn Juan del Monte'', the ''Pinaglabanan'' church is dedicated to this saint.

12th century cathedral in Kamień Pomorski (Poland) with a famous 17th century organ

St. John Ambulance and the Venerable Order of St. John.

Sovereign Military Hospitaller Order of St. John of Jerusalem, of Rhodes and of Malta (commonly referred to as the Sovereign Military Order of Malta)

The College of Saint Benedict and Saint John's University and Saint John's Abbey in Collegeville, MN.

St. John's wort is named after St. John because it is traditionally harvested on his feast day, June 24.

The city of Sveti Ivan Zelina and the village of Sveti Ivan Žabno in Croatia were named after John the Baptist. Both have churches dedicated to him.

Famous churches

Two different Churches of St. John the Baptist in Ein Karem, traditional place of his birth

Basilica of St. John Lateran

St. John the Baptist of Coventry

St. John the Baptist of Burford, a large parish church reflecting the wealth generated by the town's wool trade, and substantially completed in the 15th century.

The parish church adjoining Stokesay Castle, one of the very few constructed under the Commonwealth.

St. John the Baptist in St. John's, Newfoundland (Basilica-cathedral)

St. John the Baptist in St. John's, Newfoundland (Anglican Cathedral)

San Giovanni Battista of Cesena (cathedral)

San Giovanni Battista of Rimini (cathedral)

San Giovanni Battista Turin (cathedral)

Saint-Jean-Baptiste d'Audresselles

St. John's Cathedral of Valletta

Greek Orthodox Church of St John the Baptist Located on Ha-Notsrim street in the Christian Quarter, Old Jerusalem

Church of St. John the Baptist, Mudgee, New South Wales, Australia

St. John's (Episcopal) Church, Elizabeth, New Jersey, where the youngest signer of the United States Constitution is buried, Jonathan Dayton, and the 1769 wedding site of the parents of Elizabeth Ann Seton (first American Roman Catholic saint)

Chapel of St. John the Baptist (Capela de São João Baptista), 18th century, at the time an expensive chapel in Europe. It is in the Igreja de São Roque (Lisbon)

Cathedral of St John the Baptist, Warsaw, Poland. Coronation and Burial Site of Stanislaw August Poniatowski, last King of Poland.

Monastery of St John The Baptist Bigorski, Macedonia. Built in 1020, destroyed by the Turks in the 16th century and then rebuilt in 1743. Famous for its iconostasis.

Cathedral of St John the Baptist in Charleston, South Carolina

St. John the Evangelist Parish (Bergenfield, NJ)

Film and television portrayals

John the Baptist has appeared in a number of screen adaptations of the life of Jesus. Actors who have played John include Robert Ryan in ''King of Kings'' (1961), Mario Socrate in ''The Gospel According to St. Matthew'' (1964), Charlton Heston in ''The Greatest Story Ever Told'' (1965), David Haskell in ''Godspell'' (1973), Michael York in ''Jesus of Nazareth'' (1977), and Andre Gregory in ''The Last Temptation of Christ'' (1988).

See also

Baptism of Jesus

Biblical narratives and the Qur'an

Cultural and historical background of Jesus

Ebionites

Johannite

Legends and the Qur'an

Messengers from John the Baptist

Prophets of Islam

Stories of The Prophets

References

Notes

Books on John the Baptist

Brooks Hansen (2009) ''John the Baptizer: A Novel''. New York: W. W. Norton. ISBN 978-0-393-06947-1

Murphy, Catherine M. (2003) ''John the Baptist: Prophet of Purity for a New Age''. Collegeville: Liturgical Press. ISBN 0-8146-5933-0

Taylor, Joan E. (1997) ''The Immerser: John the Baptist within Second Temple Judaism''. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans. ISBN 0-8028-4236-4

W. Barnes Tatum (1994) ''John the Baptist and Jesus: A Report of the Jesus Seminar.'', Sonoma, California: Polebridge Press, 1994, ISBN 0-944344-42-9

Webb, Robert L. (1991) ''John the Baptizer and Prophet: a Socio-Historical Study''. Wipf and Stock Publishers. ISBN 978-1-59752-986-0 (first published Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1991)

Accounts in ancient literature

Josephus wrote that "...Herod slew him, who was a good man, and commanded the Jews to exercise virtue, both as to righteousness towards one another and piety towards God, and so to come to baptism; for that the washing would be acceptable to him, if they made use of it, not in order to the remission of some sins, but for the purification of the body; supposing still that the soul was thoroughly purified beforehand by righteousness." (Josephus, AJ, 18.5.2)

Islamic view

J.C.L Gibson, ''John the Baptist in Muslim writings'', in ''MW'', xlv (1955), 334-345

Passages in the Qur'an

Appraisals for Yahya: 6:85, 19:7, 19:12, 19:13, 19:14, 19:15

Yahya's prophecy: 3:39, 6:85, 19:12

External links

''Catholic Encyclopedia'': St. John the Baptist

"John the Baptist" from the ''Jewish Encyclopedia''

Prophet Yahya (John) in the light of Islamic tradition.

Relics of John the Baptist

Gandzasar Monastery, Nagorno Karabakh

Prophet Yahya (John) in the light of Islamic tradition.

Prophet John (Yahya)

Category:0s BC births Category:1st-century Christian saints Category:1st-century Romans Category:30s deaths Category:Apocalypticists Category:Baptism Category:Founders of religions Category:Judaism-related controversies Category:New Testament people Category:People celebrated in the Lutheran liturgical calendar Category:People executed by decapitation Category:Prophets in Christianity Category:Prophets of Islam Category:Roman era Jews Category:Saints from the Holy Land

ar:يوحنا المعمدان an:Sant Chuan Baptista arc:ܝܘܚܢܢ ܡܥܡܕܢܐ az:Vəftizçi Yəhya bn:ইয়াহিয়া be:Іаан Прадцеча br:Yann ar Badezour bg:Йоан Кръстител ca:Joan Baptista cs:Jan Křtitel cy:Ioan Fedyddiwr da:Johannes Døberen de:Johannes der Täufer dv:ޔަޙްޔާގެފާނު et:Ristija Johannes el:Ιωάννης ο Βαπτιστής es:Juan el Bautista eo:Johano la Baptisto eu:Joan Bataiatzailea fa:یحیی fo:Jóhannes Doyparin fr:Jean le Baptiste fy:Jehannes de Doper ga:Eoin Baiste gl:Xoán o Bautista ko:세례자 요한 hy:Հովհաննես Մկրտիչ hsb:Jan Křćenik hr:Sveti Ivan Krstitelj bpy:সাও জোয়াও বাটিস্টা id:Yohanes Pembaptis os:Иоанн Аргъауæг it:Giovanni Battista he:יוחנן המטביל ka:იოანე ნათლისმცემელი sw:Yohane Mbatizaji kv:Тöвся Иван лун lbe:ЯхӀя идавс la:Ioannes Baptista lv:Jānis Kristītājs lt:Jonas Krikštytojas li:Johannes de Duiper ln:Yoane Mobatisi hu:Keresztelő János mk:Свети Јован Крстител ml:യഹ്‌യ arz:يوحنا المعمدان ms:John Pembaptis nl:Johannes de Doper ja:洗礼者ヨハネ no:Johannes Døperen nn:Døyparen Johannes oc:Yahia pl:Jan Chrzciciel pt:João Batista ro:Ioan Botezătorul ru:Иоанн Креститель sc:Giuanne Battista sq:Gjon Pagëzori simple:John the Baptist sk:Ján Krstiteľ sl:Sveti Janez Krstnik so:Nabi Yaxye C.S. sr:Јован Крститељ sh:Ivan Krstitelj fi:Johannes Kastaja sv:Johannes Döparen tl:San Juan Bautista th:ยอห์นผู้ให้รับบัพติศมา tr:Yahya (peygamber) uk:Іван Хреститель ur:یحییٰ علیہ السلام vec:San Zuane Batista zh:聖若翰洗者

Coordinates	°′″N°′″N
Background	solo_singer
Birth name	Kenneth Arnold Chesney
Birth date	March 26, 1968
Origin	Luttrell, Tennessee, U.S.
Instrument	vocals, guitar, bass
Height	5'7.5" (1.71 m)
Genre	Country
Occupation	singer-songwriter
Years active	1993–present
Label	Capricorn, BNA
Associated acts	Buddy Cannon, George Strait, Dave Matthews, Uncle Kracker, Gretchen Wilson
Website	Official website }}

Kenneth Arnold "Kenny" Chesney (born March 26, 1968) is an American country music singer and songwriter. Chesney has recorded 15 albums, 14 of which have been certified gold or higher by the RIAA. He has also produced more than 30 Top Ten singles on the U.S. ''Billboard'' Hot Country Songs charts, 20 of which climbed to the top of the charts.

Over the life of his career, Chesney has been honored with numerous awards from the Academy of Country Music (ACM), Country Music Association (CMA), American Music Awards (AMA), Country Music Television (CMT), Billboard Music Awards (BMA), People's Choice Awards (PCA), and the French Country Music Awards (FCMA).

Chesney recently produced and co-directed a film for ESPN, "The Boys Of Fall". Chesney has received six Academy of Country Music awards (including four consecutive Entertainer of the Year Awards from 2005 to 2008), as well as six Country Music Association awards. He is one of the most popular touring acts in country music, regularly selling out the venues at which he performs. His 2007 ''Flip-Flop Summer Tour'' was the highest-grossing country road trip of the year.

The Country Music Association honored Chesney with the Entertainer of the Year award in 2004, 2006, 2007, and 2008. Other notable awards include the Academy of Country Music's 1997 New Male Vocalist of the Year, 2002 Top Male Vocalist of the Year, and the Triple Crown Award in 2005. He was awarded his fourth consecutive Entertainer of the Year award from the Academy of Country Music on May 18, 2008.

Early life

Chesney was born on March 26, 1968, in Knoxville, Tennessee at St. Mary's Medical Center and raised in Luttrell, Tennessee, better known as the home of Chet Atkins. He is the son of David Chesney, a former elementary school teacher, and Karen Chandler, a hair stylist in the Knoxville area. Chesney has one sibling, a younger sister named Jennifer Chandler. In 1986 Chesney graduated from Gibbs High School where he played baseball and football. Chesney received his first guitar for Christmas and began teaching himself to play. Chesney studied advertising at East Tennessee State University in Johnson City TN, where he was a member of the ETSU Bluegrass Program and the Lambda Chi Alpha fraternity. In 1989 Chesney recorded a self-released demo album at Classic Recording Studio in Bristol, Virginia. He sold 1,000 copies while performing at the local clubs in Johnson City and used the money from album sales to help buy a new guitar. Chesney graduated from East Tennessee State in December 1990 with a degree in advertising. After graduation he headed to Nashville and performed at several local clubs. He became the resident performer at The Turf, a honky tonk bar in the city's historic district.

Career and awards

''Signing first publishing and record deals''

In 1992, the head of publisher/writer relations at BMI, Clay Bradley, recommended Chesney to his friend at Opryland Music Group, Troy Tomlinson, by saying: "I met this kid today from East Tennessee. He’s a good singer, a good songwriter, and more than anything, I think you’re going to really like him as a person.” For the audition for Tomlinson, Chesney performed five songs. Tomlinson's reaction was enthusiastic, later telling HitQuarters:

"First of all I was attracted to the songs, because I thought that he painted great pictures in his lyrics, particularly for someone who had not been around the typical Music Row co-writes. I thought that he sang very well too. But more than anything there was a kind of this ‘I-will-do-it’ look in his eyes - I was really drawn in by the fact that he was so set on being successful in this business."

Chesney left the audition with a songwriter’s contract. An appearance at a songwriter’s showcase the following year led to a contract with Capricorn Records which had recently started a country division. He released his debut album ''In My Wildest Dreams'' in April 1994. When Capricorn closed its country music division in Nashville and moved to Atlanta, Georgia Chesney signed with BNA Records.

''In My Wildest Dreams (1994)''

Chesney's first album, ''In My Wildest Dreams'', was released on the independent Capricorn Records label in 1994. The album's lead-off singles, "The Tin Man" and "Whatever It Takes", both reached the lower regions of the ''Billboard'' Hot Country Singles & Tracks charts. The album sold approximately 10,000 copies before Capricorn Records closed its country music division later that year.

''All I Need to Know (1995)''

After Capricorn's closure, Chesney signed with BNA Records, which released his album ''All I Need to Know'' in 1995. The album produced three hit singles. "Fall in Love" and "All I Need to Know" both reached the Top Ten, while "Grandpa Told Me So" peaked at #23. "The Tin Man" was also included on this album, although it was not released as a single at the time.

''Me and You (1996-1997)''

Released in 1996, Chesney's second major-label album was ''Me and You''. Although its lead-off single peaked just outside the Top 40 on the country charts, the album's title track (which was reprised from ''All I Need to Know'') and the single "When I Close My Eyes" (which was previously recorded by Larry Stewart on his 1993 debut album ''Down the Road'') both peaked at #2 on the ''Billboard'' country charts. ''Me and You'' was also Chesney's first gold-certified album. A cover of Mac McAnally's 1990 single "Back Where I Come From" was also included on this album. Although Chesney's version was never released as a single, it has become a regular song played during his concerts. In recognition of his successful year, Chesney was honored with the 1997 Academy of Country Music's New Male Vocalist of the Year award.

''I Will Stand (1997-1998)''

''I Will Stand'', Chesney's third album for BNA, was released in 1997. "She's Got It All" was the album's lead-off single, becoming Chesney's first #1 single, spending three weeks at the top of the ''Billboard'' country charts. The album's second single, "A Chance", peaked just shy of the Top Ten. In 1998, "That's Why I'm Here" went to #2 on ''Billboard'' and reached the top of the charts on ''Radio & Records'', giving Chesney his third #1 single overall.

''Everywhere We Go (1999)''

''Everywhere We Go'', released in 1999, was Chesney's fourth album for BNA. The album produced two consecutive #1 singles in "How Forever Feels" and "You Had Me from Hello" (the latter inspired by a line in the movie ''Jerry Maguire''). The album also produced two more hits, including "She Thinks My Tractor's Sexy" and "What I Need to Do", which peaked at #11 and #8 on the country charts, respectively. ''Everywhere We Go'' was Chesney's first platinum-selling album.

''Greatest Hits (2000)''

By 2000, Chesney released his ''Greatest Hits'' compilation album. It included four new tracks, as well as updated versions of "Fall in Love", "The Tin Man", and "Back Where I Come From". The new version of "The Tin Man" was one of the disc's three singles, along with two of the new tracks, "I Lost It" and "Don't Happen Twice".

''No Shoes, No Shirt, No Problems (2002-2003)''

The album ''No Shoes, No Shirt, No Problems'' was released in 2002. The lead-off single, "Young", peaked at #2, while the follow-up "The Good Stuff" spent seven weeks at #1, becoming ''Billboard's'' #1 country song of the year for 2002. The video for "Young" was honored by CMT with the Video of the Year and Male Video of the Year awards for 2002. In 2003, ACM honored Chesney as Top Male Vocalist of the Year, while "The Good Stuff" received the award for Single Record of the Year. The following year, CMT recognized the video produced for "No Shoes, No Shirt, No Problems" as the Hottest Video of the Year.

''All I Want for Christmas Is a Real Good Tan (2003)''

In 2003, Chesney recorded ''All I Want for Christmas Is a Real Good Tan''. The album's title track peaked at #30 on the country charts from holiday airplay.

''When the Sun Goes Down (2004-2005)''

2004 saw the release of Chesney's album ''When the Sun Goes Down''. Its lead-off single, "There Goes My Life", spent seven weeks at the top of the ''Billboard'' country charts. On April 21, 2004, the accompanying video was honored by CMT with the Male Video of the Year award. The album's title track, "When the Sun Goes Down", a duet with Uncle Kracker, was also a #1 single. The video from the third single from the album, "I Go Back", was honored on April 11, 2005, with the Male Video of the Year by Country Music Television.

''When the Sun Goes Down'' was honored with the 2004 CMA award for Album of the Year, while Chesney was honored as the Entertainer of the Year. He was also presented with the American Music Award's 2004 Artist of the Year award.

''Be as You Are'' and ''The Road and the Radio (2005-2006)''

In January 2005, Chesney released the album ''Be as You Are (Songs from an Old Blue Chair)'', supporting the album with his ''Somewhere in the Sun Tour''.

In the spring of 2005, Chesney was honored with the prestigious Triple-Crown Award presented by the Academy of Country Music. This award was presented after Chesney's 2004 Academy of Country Music's Entertainer of the Year award was combined with 1997's New Male Vocalist of the Year award and 2003's Top Male Vocalist of the Year award. The following year, on May 23, 2006, Chesney was honored with his second Entertainer of the Year at the Academy of Country Music Awards.

Chesney released his second album of the year in November, ''The Road and the Radio'', producing three #1 singles. "Living in Fast Forward", "Summertime", and "Beer in Mexico" all hit #1, while "Who You'd Be Today" and "You Save Me" broke the Top Five.

''Live: Live Those Songs Again (2006)''

''Live: Live Those Songs Again'' is Chesney's first live album. Released on September 19, 2006 on BNA Records, the album includes live renditions of 15 songs, including 11 singles. "Live Those Songs", "Never Gonna Feel Like That Again", "On the Coast of Somewhere Beautiful", and "Back Where I Come From" were never released by Chesney as singles, while "Back Where I Come From" had been released as a single from Mac McAnally's 1990 album ''Simple Life''.

Collaborations

Chesney, along with Tim McGraw, contributed to a version of Tracy Lawrence's single "Find Out Who Your Friends Are", which can be found on Lawrence's album ''For the Love''. The official single version, featuring only Lawrence's vocals, was released in August 2006, but did not reach the Top 40 on the country charts until January 2007, when ''For the Love'' was released. After the album's release, the version with McGraw and Chesney began receiving significant airplay, helping to boost the single to #1 on the country charts. The song became Lawrence's first #1 single in 11 years, as well as the second-slowest climbing #1 single in the history of the ''Billboard'' music charts.

Chesney also co-wrote Rascal Flatts' 2007 single along with Neil Thrasher and Wendell Mobley, "Take Me There", which served as the lead-off single to their album ''Still Feels Good''.

Chesney also recorded a duet with Reba McEntire on her #1 2007 album, ''Reba: Duets''. "Every Other Weekend" peaked at #15 on the ''Billboard'' Hot Country Singles chart and #104 on the ''Billboard'' Bubbling Under Hot 100 Singles chart. The album has sold 2.1 million copies world-wide and is certified Platinum by the RIAA for sales of over 1 million. "Every Other Weekend" was the final single from the album.

''Super Hits (2007)''

On November 7, 2007 Chesney was named the CMA Entertainer of the Year for the third time in four years. The following week, on November 15, 2007, the compilation ''Super Hits'' album was released as part of Sony BMG's ''Super Hits'' series.

''Just Who I Am: Poets & Pirates (2007-2008)''

On September 11, 2007, Chesney released the album ''Just Who I Am: Poets & Pirates''. The album represented a move to a more gulf and western sound with a number of "breezy, steel-drum island songs." Kanye West's album ''Graduation'', as well as 50 Cent's album ''Curtis'', were released on the same day. Kanye West and 50 Cent were in the midst of a competitive sales war, with 50 Cent claiming he would end his solo rap career if West sold more albums than he did (remarks he later retracted as terms with of contract conflicted with the promise). Kenny Chesney, however, decided he would give country music a place in the competition, claiming country artists were just as popular as rap artists. Chesney came in third place in the number of record sales between the three musical artists.

The album's lead-off single, "Never Wanted Nothing More", became Chesney's 12th song to hit the top of the ''Billboard'' country charts. On the U.S. ''Billboard'' Hot Country Songs chart dated for the week ending September 15, 2007, Chesney's single "Don't Blink" debuted at #16, setting a new record for the highest debut on that chart since the inception of SoundScan electronic tabulation in 1990. This record was broken one week later by Garth Brooks' song "More Than a Memory", which debuted at #1 on the same chart, making it the first song ever to do so. The third single off of ''Just Who I Am'' album, "Shiftwork", a duet with George Strait peaked at #2 on the ''Billboard'' country chart. During the week of June 28, 2008, the fourth single, "Better as a Memory", became Chesney's 14th single to hit the top of the ''Billboard'' Hot Country Songs chart. Chesney started his ''Poets and Pirates Tour'' on April 26, 2008 at Williams-Brice Stadium in Columbia, South Carolina. During the introduction of his set, his boot was caught between a hydraulic lift and the lip of the stage surface, crushing his foot and causing a severe hematoma from the ankle down, with most of the damage centering in his toes. It took approximately 30 seconds to pry his foot loose as he squatted down on the stage while the band continued to play an extended introduction of the song. When Chesney finally freed himself, he stood up and kept holding his hand on his knee as he began to sing.

Chesney did not acknowledge the injury during the early part of his performance. However, he was visibly limping and seemed to rest near a drum riser while leaning over and holding his knee during the instrumental breaks of his hit songs. As he came offstage, a doctor from the University of South Carolina cut off Chesney’s cowboy boot and immediately began treating the foot injury. X-rays taken later revealed several crushed bones in his right foot.

The injury did not cause him to postpone any shows, saying "He (the doctor) told me it's going to hurt – though nothing could hurt worse than Saturday, I don't think – and they can give me something to deaden the pain when I get out there. I also have to have a doctor standing by should something give, but I'm going to tape it up, and I'm going to get out there."

On May 19, 2008, just a day after being honored as the ACM Entertainer of the Year at the 43rd Annual Academy of Country Music Awards, Chesney criticized the lack of choice in the producers' awarding the honor based on fan votes. "The entertainer of the year trophy is supposed to represent heart and passion and an amazing amount of sacrifice, commitment and focus," he said. "That's the way Garth won it four times, that's the way I won it, that's the way Strait won it, Reba, Alabama all those years. That's what it's supposed to represent."

''Lucky Old Sun (2008-2009)''

On July 24, 2008, Chesney announced that he would be releasing a new single off an upcoming album entitled ''Lucky Old Sun''. The song was titled "Everybody Wants to Go to Heaven", and for the chart week of August 16, 2008, it debuted at #22 on the ''Billboard'' Hot Country Songs chart. The album was released on October 14, 2008. "Everybody Wants to Go to Heaven" became a #1 hit. It was followed by a cover of Mac McAnally's 1990 single "Down the Road".

Chesney's 2009 tour was titled the ''Sun City Carnival Tour'' and featured both small and large venues in order to keep his ticket prices down. The tour included a performance at Gillette Stadium again, marking the fifth year in a row that he played at the Foxboro, Massachusetts football field.

''Greatest Hits II (2010)''

On May 19, 2010, ''Greatest Hits II'' was released with two new tracks. In February, "Ain't Back Yet" was sent to country music radio stations. The #1 hit "Out Last Night" was the lead single.

''Hemingway's Whiskey (2010-present)''

In July 2010, Chesney released "The Boys of Fall" as the lead-off single from his album ''Hemingway's Whiskey'', which was released in September 2010. The song hit #1 on the Hot Country Songs chart for the week of October 9, 2010, marking Chesney's eighteenth number one hit.

He then appeared at the 44th Annual Country Music Awards on November 10, 2010.

The second single from ''Hemingway's Whiskey'', "Somewhere with You", was released in November 2010. The song debuted at #35 on the country chart for the week of November 6, 2010. It then hit #1 in January 2011.

Chesney produced and narrated a biographical film, ''The Color Orange'', on his favorite football player growing up, University of Tennessee quarterback and Canadian Football League hall-of-famer Condredge Holloway. The film was produced for ESPN's "Year of the Quarterback" series, and premiered on February 20, 2011.

Personal life

Chesney owns a 60' Sea Ray yacht and also has a home in the U.S. Virgin Islands. He spends time in the Caribbean and includes island-themed songs in some of his work, such as those on his 2005 album ''Be As You Are''.

On May 9, 2005, Kenny Chesney married actress Renee Zellweger in a ceremony on the island of St. John. They had met in January at a tsunami relief benefit concert. On September 15 of that same year, after only four months of marriage, they announced their plans for an annulment. Zellweger cited fraud as the reason in the related papers, but after media scrutiny of her use of the word "fraud", she qualified the use of the term, stating it was "simply legal language and not a reflection of Kenny's character". Chesney later suggested the failure of his marriage was due to "panic" from the intense media scrutiny surrounding it. In an interview by 60 Minutes with Anderson Cooper, Chesney commented on the failed marriage. "The only fraud that was committed was me thinking that I knew what it was like…that I really understood what it was like to be married, and I really didn't." The annulment was finalized in late December 2005. Kenny Chesney's family still resides in east Tennessee.

Philanthropy

Chesney's most recent charity work includes working with the V Foundation. Founded by the late Jim Valvano, the V Foundation is a charitable organization dedicated to saving lives by helping to find a cure for cancer. Valvano, former coach of the North Carolina State Wolfpack Basketball team, died on April 28, 1993 following a year-long battle with cancer.

In 1998, Chesney recorded a limited-edition single titled "Touchdown Tennessee". The single was a tribute to John Ward, a former broadcaster for the University of Tennessee Volunteers' football team; St. Jude Children's Research Hospital and the John Ward Scholarship Fund received a portion of the single's sales.

Tours

Chesney has won the Billboard Touring Award for Top Package Tour four consecutive years between 2005 and 2008.

Greatest Hits Tour 2001

No Shoes, No Shirt, No Problems Tour 2002

Margaritas N' Senorita's Tour 2003

Guitars, Tiki Bars & A Whole Lotta Love Tour 2004(w/Rascal Flatts)

Somewhere In The Sun Tour 2005 (w/Gretchen Wilson, Uncle Kracker, Pat Green)

The Road & The Radio Tour 2006 (w/ Dierks Bentley & others)

Flip-Flop Summer Tour 2007 (w/ Brooks & Dunn, Sugarland, Sara Evans & Pat Green)

The Poets & Pirates Tour 2008 (w/ Keith Urban, LeAnn Rimes, Gary Allan & Sammy Hagar)

Sun City Carnival Tour 2009 (w/ Miranda Lambert, Sugarland, Lady Antebellum & Montgomery Gentry)

2010 With A Two Tour 2010 (Festivels)

Goin' Coastal Tour 2011 (w/ Zac Brown Band, Uncle Kracker & Billy Currington)

Discography

;Studio Albums

1994: ''In My Wildest Dreams''

1995: ''All I Need to Know''

1996: ''Me and You''

1997: ''I Will Stand''

1999: ''Everywhere We Go''

2002: ''No Shoes, No Shirt, No Problems''

2003: ''All I Want for Christmas Is a Real Good Tan''

2004: ''When the Sun Goes Down''

2005: ''Be as You Are (Songs from an Old Blue Chair)''

2005: ''The Road and the Radio''

2007: ''Just Who I Am: Poets & Pirates''

2008: ''Lucky Old Sun''

2010: ''Hemingway's Whiskey''

;Compilation albums

2000: ''Greatest Hits

2006: ''Live: Live Those Songs Again

2008: ''Super Hits''

2009: ''Greatest Hits II

Awards

1997 ACM New Male Vocalist of the Year

2002 CMT Male Video of the Year: Young

2002 CMT Video of the Year: Young

2003 ACM Single Record of the Year: The Good Stuff

2003 ACM Top Male Vocalist of the Year

2004 AMA Artist of the Year

2004 CMA Entertainer of the Year

2004 CMA Album of the Year: When The Sun Goes Down

2004 CMT Hottest Video of the Year: No Shoes, No Shirt, No Problems

2004 CMT Male Video of the Year: There Goes My Life

2005 ACM Entertainer of the Year

2005 ACM Triple Crown Winner

2005 CMT Male Video of the Year: I Go Back

2006 CMA Entertainer of the Year

2006 ACM Entertainer of the Year

2006 CMT Male Video of the Year: Who You Be Today

2006 BMA Best Male Country Artist

2006 BMA Best Country Artist

2007 CMT Male Video of the Year: You Save Me

2007 PCA Favorite Male Singer

2007 ACM Entertainer of the Year

2007 CMA Musical Event of the Year: Find Out Who Your Friends Are

2007 CMA Entertainer of the Year

2008 ACM Entertainer of the Year

2008 ACM Vocal Event of the Year: Find Out Who Your Friends Are

2008 FACM Best Duo of the Year: Every Other Weekend

2008 CMA Entertainer of the Year

See also

List of best-selling music artists

References

External links

Official Website

Official Film Website for Kenny Chesney: Summer in 3D

Kenny Chesney : News : 2010 With A Two Tour 2010 Tickets

Category:1968 births Category:Living people Category:American country singers Category:American country singer-songwriters Category:American male singers Category:BNA Records artists Category:Musicians from Tennessee Category:East Tennessee State University alumni Category:People from Knoxville, Tennessee Category:LGBT Musicians from the United States

pdc:Kenny Chesney de:Kenny Chesney es:Kenny Chesney fr:Kenny Chesney it:Kenny Chesney nl:Kenny Chesney no:Kenny Chesney pt:Kenny Chesney ru:Чесни, Кенни simple:Kenny Chesney fi:Kenny Chesney sv:Kenny Chesney

While the term ''Holocaust victims'' generally refers to Jews, the Nazis also persecuted and often killed millions of members of other groups they considered inferior (''Untermenschen''), undesirable or dangerous.

The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM) states: “The Holocaust was the murder of six million Jews and millions of others by the Nazis and their collaborators during World War II."

In addition to Jews, the targeted groups included Poles (of whom 2.5 million gentile Poles were killed) and some other Slavic peoples; Soviets (particularly prisoners of war); Romanies (also known as Gypsies) and others who did not belong to the "Aryan race"; the mentally ill, the Deaf, the physically disabled and mentally retarded; homosexual and transsexual people; political opponents and religious dissidents. Taking into account all of the victims of Nazi persecution, they systematically killed an estimated six million Jews and mass murdered an additional eleven million people during the war. Donald Niewyk suggests that the broadest definition, including Soviet civilian deaths would produce a death toll of 17 million.

Despite often widely varying treatment (some groups were actively targeted for genocide, while others were mostly not), these victims all perished alongside one another, some in the concentration camps, some as victims of other forms of Nazi brutality, according to the extensive documentation left behind by the Nazis themselves (both written and photographed), eyewitness testimony (by survivors, perpetrators, and bystanders) and the statistical records of the various countries under occupation.

Ethnic criteria

The paramilitary campaign to remove certain classes of persons, but above all Jews from Germany using methods of extreme brutality, is known as the Holocaust. The Holocaust was carried out primarily by German forces and certain collaborative persons, both German and otherwise. As the war started, millions of Jews were concentrated in ghettos. In 1941, massacres of Jews took place; by December Hitler had decided to exterminate the European Jews. In all, more than 60% of the Jews in Europe were murdered in the Holocaust. The world's Jewish population was reduced by a third, from roughly 16.6 million in 1939 to about 11 million in 1946. Even sixty years later, there are still fewer Jews in the world today than there were prior to 1940.

In January 1942, during the Wannsee conference, several Nazi leaders discussed the details of the "Final Solution to the Jewish Question" (''Endlösung der Judenfrage''). Dr. Josef Bühler, the State Secretary for the Central Government, urged Reinhard Heydrich, the conference chairman, to proceed with the Final Solution in the General Government. They began to systematically deport Jewish populations from the ghettos and all occupied territories to the seven camps designated as ''Vernichtungslager,'' or extermination camps at Birkenau, Belzec, Chelmno, Majdanek, Maly Trostenets, Sobibór and Treblinka. The author Sebastian Haffner, published the analysis in 1978 that Hitler, from December 1941, accepted the failure of his goal to dominate Europe on his declaration of war against the United States, and that his withdrawal thereafter was sustained by the achievement of his second goal—the extermination of the Jews. Even as the Nazi war machine faltered in the last years of the war, precious military resources such as fuel, transport, munitions, soldiers and industrial resources were still being diverted away from the war towards the death camps.

Poland, home of the largest Jewish community in the world before the war, had had over 90% of its Jewish population, or about 3,000,000 Jews, killed. The penalty imposed by the Germans for hiding Jews was death and this was carried out mercilessly. Some Poles hid Jews and saved their lives despite the risk to them and their own families. Although detailed reports on the Holocaust had reached western leaders, public awareness in the United States and other democracies of genocidal mass murder of Jews in Poland was extremely poor at the time; the first references in ''The New York Times'' in 1942 were not front-page news, these articles were more in the nature of 'unconfirmed' reports.

Greece, Yugoslavia, Hungary, Lithuania, Bohemia, the Netherlands, Slovakia, and Latvia each had over 70% of their Jewish population destroyed. Belgium, Romania, Luxembourg, Norway, and Estonia lost around half of their Jews, the Soviet Union over one third; even countries such as France and Italy had each seen around a quarter of their Jewish population killed. Denmark was able to evacuate almost all of its Jews to nearby Sweden, which was neutral during the war. Using everything from fishing boats to private yachts, the Danes whisked their Jews out of harm's way. Some Jews outside Europe under Nazi occupation, were also affected by the Holocaust.

Poles

The Nazi occupation of Poland was one of the most brutal episodes of the war, resulting in more than two million deaths, not including some three million Polish Jews. The five million Poles killed, Jewish, Roman Catholic and Orthodox, accounted for 14% of the country's population. Poles were one of Hitler's first targets of extermination, as outlined in the speech he gave to Wehrmacht commanders before the invasion of Poland in 1939. The intelligentsia and socially prominent or influential people were primarily targeted, although mass murders were committed against the general Polish population, as well as against other groups of Slavs. Hundreds of thousands of Roman Catholic and Orthodox Poles were sent to Auschwitz and the other concentration camps, the intelligentsia were the first targets of the ''Einsatzgruppen'' death squads. The anti-Polish campaign culminated in the near-complete destruction of the capital Warsaw, ordered by Hitler and Himmler in 1944.

Soviet Slavs and POWs

During Operation Barbarossa, the Axis invasion of the Soviet Union, millions of Red Army prisoners of war (POWs) were arbitrarily executed in the field by the invading German armies (in particular by the Waffen SS), died under inhuman conditions in German prisoner of war camps and during death marches, or were shipped to concentration camps for execution. The Germans killed an estimated 2.8 million Soviet POWs through starvation, exposure and summary execution, in a mere eight months over 1941 and 1942. According to the US Holocaust Museum, by the winter of 1941, "starvation and disease resulted in mass death of unimaginable proportions". Up to 500,000 were killed in the concentration camps.

Soviet civilian populations in the occupied areas were also heavily persecuted (in addition to the barbarity of the Eastern Front frontline warfare manifesting itself in episodes such as the siege of Leningrad in which more than 1.2 million civilians died). Thousands of peasant villages across Russia, Belarus and Ukraine were annihilated by German troops. During the occupation, Russia's Leningrad, Pskov and Novgorod region lost around a quarter of its population. Some estimate that as many as one quarter of all Soviet civilian deaths (five million Russian, three million Ukrainian and 1.5 million Belarusian) deaths at the hands of the Nazis and their allies were racially motivated. The Russian Academy of Science in 1995 reported civilian victims in the USSR, including Jews at German hands, totaled 13.7 million dead, 20% of the 68 million persons in the occupied USSR, including 7.4 million victims of Nazi genocide and reprisals; 2.2 million deaths of persons deported to Germany for forced labor; and 4.1 million famine and disease deaths in occupied territory. There were an additional estimated 3.0 million famine deaths in the territory not under German occupation. These losses are for the entire territory of the USSR in its 1946-1991 borders, including territories annexed in 1939-40. The deaths of 8.2 million Soviet civilians including Jews, were documented by the Soviet Extraordinary State Commission

Romanies (Gypsies)

The Nazi genocide of Gypsies was ignored by scholars until the 1980s, opinions continue to differ on its details. Some say that, proportional to their population, the death toll of Romanies (Roma (Romani subgroup), Sinti, and Manush) in the Holocaust was the largest of any group of victims. Others say that the genocide of these groups began later than the genocide of the Jews and that a smaller proportion was killed. Hitler's campaign of genocide against the Romani population of Europe involved a particularly bizarre application of Nazi "racial hygiene" (or a type of selective breeding). Despite discriminatory measures, some Romani groups, including some of the Sinti and Lalleri of Germany, were spared deportation and death, the remaining Romani groups suffered much like the Jews. Between one quarter and one half of the Romani population was killed; 500,000 to 1,500,000 people. In Eastern Europe, Romanies were deported to the Jewish ghettos, shot by SS ''Einsatzgruppen'' in their villages or deported and gassed in Auschwitz and Treblinka.

Disabled people

Following a eugenics policy, the Nazis believed that the disabled were a burden to society because they needed to be cared for by others; they were also considered an affront to Nazi notions of a society peopled by a perfect, superhuman Aryan race. Around 375,000 individuals were sterilized against their will because of their disabilities.

People with disabilities were also among the first to be killed by the Nazis; the United States Holocaust Memorial museum notes that the T-4 Euthanasia Program, established in 1939, became the "model" for future exterminations by the Nazi regime, and set a precedent for their attempted Jewish genocide. The T-4 Program was established in order to maintain the "purity" of the so-called Aryan race by systematically killing children and adults born with physical deformities or suffering from mental illness; this included use of the first gas chambers. Although Hitler formally ordered a halt to the T-4 program in late August 1941, the killings secretly continued until the war’s end, resulting in the murder of an estimated 275,000 people with disabilities.

Non-Europeans

The Nazi regime promoted xenophobia of all "non-Aryan" races. African (black sub-Saharan or North African) and Asian (i.e. East Asian and South Asian) residents in Germany, and black prisoners of war (like the French colonial troops captured during the Battle of France), were also victims. Japan signed the Tripartite Pact on September 27 1940, with Germany and Italy and was therefore part of the Axis Pact; no Japanese people were known to be deliberately imprisoned or killed. South Africans and white Europeans of non-Jewish ancestry from other continents were exempt, as were many Latin Americans of "evident" Germanic or "Aryan" ancestries, but not mestizos.

German homosexuals

Homosexuals were also targets of the Holocaust, as homosexuality was deemed incompatible with Nazism because of their failure to reproduce the "master race". This was combined with the belief among the Nazis that homosexuality could be contagious. Initially homosexuality was discreetly tolerated while officially shunned. By 1936 Heinrich Himmler led an effort to persecute homosexuals under existing and new anti-homosexual laws. More than one million homosexual Germans were targeted, of whom at least 100,000 were arrested and 50,000 were serving prison terms as convicted homosexuals. An additional unknown number were institutionalized in state-run mental hospitals. Hundreds of European homosexual men living under Nazi occupation were castrated under court order. It is estimated that between 5,000 and 15,000 homosexual men were imprisoned in concentration camps, but it is difficult to put an exact number on how many perished in them. According to Heinz Heger, an Austrian survivor, homosexual men "suffered a higher mortality rate than other relatively small victim groups, such as Jehovah's Witnesses and political prisoners." Male homosexuals in Nazi concentration camps were identified with a pink triangle on their shirts. Lesbians were not normally treated as harshly as homosexual men: they were labeled "anti-social", but were rarely imprisoned for engaging in homosexuality.

Political criteria

Political prisoners

Another large group of the victims were various German and foreign civilian activists opposed to the Nazi regime from all over the political spectrum, as well as captured WWII resistance fighters (a great many of whom were executed during or immediately after their interrogation, especially in Eastern Europe); sometimes also their families. German political prisoners were, for example, a substantial group among the first Dachau inmates, (the prototype Nazi concentration camp). The political People's Court became infamous for the enormous number of death sentences handed down.

Leftists

German communists were among the first people to be sent to concentration camps. They concerned Hitler due to their ties with the Soviet Union and because the Nazi Party was intractably opposed to communism. Rumours of pending communist violence were started by the Nazis as justification for the Enabling Act of 1933, the law which gave Hitler his original dictatorial powers. Hermann Göring later testified at the Nuremberg Trials that it was the Nazis' willingness to repress German communists that prompted Hindenburg and the old elite to cooperate with them. Hitler and the Nazis also hated German leftists because of their resistance to Nazi racism. Many leaders of German leftist groups were Jews who were especially prominent among the leaders of the Spartacist Uprising in 1919. Hitler referred to Marxism and "Bolshevism" as a means of "the international Jew" to undermine "racial purity" and survival of the Nordics or Aryans (sometimes of all white Europeans), as well as stirring up socioeconomic class tension and labor unions against the government or state-owned businesses. Within concentration camps such as Buchenwald, German communists were privileged in comparison to Jews because of their "racial purity." Whenever the Nazis occupied a new territory, members of communist, socialist, or anarchist groups were thus normally among the first to be repressed, including summary executions. An example of this is Hitler's infamous Commissar Order in which he demanded the summary execution of all political commissars captured among Soviet soldiers.

Freemasons

The Nazis claimed that high degree Masons were willing members of "the Jewish conspiracy" and that Freemasonry was one of the causes of Germany's defeat in WWI. The preserved records of the RSHA (''Reichssicherheitshauptamt'' - Office of the High Command of Security Service pursuing the racial objectives of the SS through Race and Resettlement Office), show the persecution of the Freemasons. The number of Freemasons from Nazi occupied countries who were killed is not accurately known, but it is estimated that between 80,000 and 200,000 were murdered.

Enemy nationals

Thousands of people (mostly diplomats) belonging to certain nationalities associated with the Allies (e.g. Formosa [now Taiwan] and Mexico), as well as Spanish Civil War refugees in occupied France, were also interned or executed. After Italy capitulated in 1943, many Italian nationals, including partisans and Italian soldiers disarmed by the Germans, were sent to concentration camps.

Religious persecution

The Nazis also targeted some religious groups, (about 2,000 Jehovah's Witnesses perished in the concentration camps), they were held for political and ideological reasons. Thousands of Christian clergy were killed by the Nazis either because of a Jewish background (as in the case of Edith Stein), or as part of the Nazi's campaign against the Polish intelligentsia; others were killed in a general campaign against the Catholic Church in Poland. In the countries in which Roman Catholic bishops and even Catholics themselves had openly protested and attacked Nazi policies. For instance, in the Netherlands and Poland, where bishops and priests had protested the deportation of Jews, the clergy was either threatened with deportation themselves and kept in custody (as in the case of German bishop Clemens von Galen), or directly deported to concentration camps (as in the cases of the Dutch Carmelite priest Titus Brandsma and Polish Fr. Maximilian Kolbe, who was later canonized). The Catholic Church was particularly suppressed in Poland: between 1939 and 1945, an estimated 3,000 members (18%) of the Polish clergy, were murdered; of these, 1,992 died in concentration camps. In the annexed territory of ''Reichsgau Wartheland'' it was even more harsh: churches were systematically closed and most priests were either killed, imprisoned, or deported to the General Government. Eighty per cent of the Catholic clergy and five bishops of Warthegau were sent to concentration camps in 1939; 108 of them are regarded as blessed martyrs. Religious persecution was not confined to Poland: in Dachau concentration camp alone, 2,600 Catholic priests from 24 different countries were killed. Some dissenting German Protestant clergy, such as those who founded the anti-Nazi Confessing Church, were also persecuted.

Others

In Eastern and Southern (and later Western) Europe, the SS and police troops often unleashed mass actions against civilians with alleged links to resistance movements. In numerous cases resulting in wholesale slaughter of entire villages, such as in the infamous cases of Lidice, Khatyn, Sant'Anna and Oradour-sur-Glane (in Poland, one whole district of Warsaw was massacred). In Poland, Nazi Germany formally imposed the death penalty on anybody found sheltering or helping Jews. "Social deviants" - prostitutes, vagrants, alcoholics, drug addicts, open dissidents, pacifists, draft resisters and common criminals - were also often imprisoned in concentration camps. The common criminals frequently became Kapos, the inmate-guards policing other prisoners.

In the late 1930s, the Nazi program to punish many rich German persons as "enemies of the state" confiscated properties and placed thousands of them in concentration camps. According to Nazi policies formulated in part by Joseph Goebbels, the rich elite manipulated the German economy and held seditious liberal views. The Nazis had targeted other groups to be imprisoned for their political views deemed threatening by Hitler or the party; such as the members of women's rights groups (now referred to as feminists), who were accused of spouting "communist-socialist" dogmas of gender equality. Some of the Germans and Austrians who had lived abroad for a significant proportion of their lives were also deemed to have too much exposure to foreign ideas, many were put into concentration camps. These prisoners were called "Emigrants" and marked with a blue triangle.

See also

List of victims of Nazism

References

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