3
the hostile,
the faithless;
in one night he struck and made her childless. (PP 16)
Such was the calamity that encompassed Egypt,
and suddenly made her childless.
But Israel was guarded by the slaughter of the sheep,
and was even illuminated together by the shed blood,
and the death of the sheep became a wall for the people. (PP 30)
Melitos Passover
-baptism typology is not obvious, since he never mentions
"baptism," "water," "washing," or the like.
7
Rather, the typology it is carried more
subtly by four baptismal allusions as marked above in boldfaced print. They are
as follows:
(1) In PP 14 Melito rewords material from Exod 12:7,13 (LXX). The LXX
reads "they shall take of the blood" (
lempsontai,
v. 7); "they shall put it on the two
doorposts" (
thesousin,
v. 7); "the blood shall be for a sign for you" (
semeio, v.
13). Melito combines these ideas in one line and has "smear" or "anoint
(chrisate
) the front door," "placing on the posts . . . the sign (
semeion) of the
blood" (PP 14).
So, for Melito, the blood-
smearing was an "anointing." One could argue that
Melitos word
chrio
meant nothing more than to "daub liquid." B
ut in light of the
fact that by the second century, anointing with oil had become a regular part of
the baptismal liturgy, it is reasonable that Melito chose chrisate to invoke
specifically the image of this rite.
8
No doubt contributing to this typological
identification was the thought that Moses arm motion, beginning at the lintel and
then "crossing" from the left post to the right, resembled the shape of a cross, the
"sign" (
semeion)
made whenever a bishop anointed a baptismal candidates
forehead.
9
7
At PP 103, a lacuna in the Chester Beatty papyrus (ego to l . . . ) forced Bonner to
reconstruct the text as ego to l[ytron humon]
("I am your ransom"), based on the word
redemptio
in the Latin version and of a similar word in the Georgian version. In 1960, Michael Testuz
published the Bodmer manuscript which read ego to loutron humon
("I am your washing"), which
is supported by the Coptic version. A loutron reading would be an unambiguous reference to
baptism. Again, until more evidence emerges for this reading, we will follow Halls translation,
"ransom."
8
See Tertullian On Baptism 7 (198-200 AD); Hippolytus Apostolic Tradition mentions
three anointings: the pre-
baptismal "oil of exorcism" (21.7,9
-10), the post-
baptismal "oil of
thanksgiving" (21.6,19) and imposition of hands, which was accompanied by a final anointing and
sealing (22.1-3). On the link between baptism and anointing; see Acts of Thomas 121, 131, 157;
Didascalia Apostolorum 16.
9
This visual picture goes back as far as In Sanctum Pascha 15.2 (2
nd
cent AD), which
interprets the "sign of the blood" in Exod 12:13 as a prefiguration of the "outstretched arms of
Jesus," a common phrase for the cross (John 21:18;
Barn 12.2; Justin Dialogue 90, 91, 111, 112;