--- title: Times and Seasons description: Issues of 1845 to 1846. authors: - Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints editors: - Ebenezer Robinson - Don Carlos Smith - Smith, Joseph, Jr. - Taylor, John collections: - periodicals tags: - newspaper - times-and-seasons - nauvoo - nineteenth-century periodical: Times and Seasons volume: 6 number: 20 published: 1846-01-01 publisher: E. Robinson and D. C. Smith; later John Taylor publisher_place: Commerce and Nauvoo, Illinois language: en type: article reference: "“Jewish Rites-Baptism,” *Times and Seasons* 6, no. 20 (January 1, 1846): 1083." printed_title: JEWISH RITES-BAPTISM. source: url: https://archive.org/details/per_utah-and-the-mormons_times-and-seasons_1846-01-01_6_20 transcription: Text from the Centerplace.org transcription (https://www.centerplace.org/history/ts/v6n20.htm), with its page breaks; this Internet Archive scan is the reference copy (its OCR was used only as a witness for OCR repair) identifier: per_utah-and-the-mormons_times-and-seasons_1846-01-01_6_20 start_page: 1083 end_page: 1083 curator_note: A Mormon newspaper published by the church in Nauvoo; included for historical study. Inclusion does not imply endorsement. rights: status: public-domain basis: US publication 1846 (Nauvoo, Illinois); published before 1931, so public domain in the United States source: https://archive.org/details/per_utah-and-the-mormons_times-and-seasons_1846-01-01_6_20 publication_year: 1846 --- # Jewish Rites-Baptism New York, Nov. 20, 1845 M. M. Noah, Esq., Dear Sir: While reading your very interesting illustrations of Hebrew laws and usages, published in The Tribune, I was rather surprised to meet the declaration that baptism was a Hebrew rite; and I beg leave to say that I shall be gratified by being enabled to see the evidences of the fact, and to have your opinion of the origin of the rite. My attention having been directed to the investigation of the Ancient Mysteries, have become satisfied that a species of Baptism was practised [practiced] therein, before the foundations of the Hebrew Commonwealth, in India, Egypt, Greece and Britain; and as those Mysteries, in the remote antiquity of their institution, were intended to preserve a pure worship of the Deity, and the transmission of the traditions of the early ages of the human family, the ritual must have had one common origin, but I was not aware that baptism had been incorporated into the Jewish rites. There is also another point which I wish to understand better. It is this: "If she still refused to change her faith, or become a proselyte of the gate, or to observe the seven precepts of the sons of Noah;" &c. What are the seven precepts referred to, and whence were they derived? The old Constitutions of the Freemasons speak of the "three principles of Noah," and it seems probable that the three and the seven descend from the same source. Undoubtedly many of your sources of information are contained in what to me are sealed books, or I would only trouble you for the references, and hope you will pardon me for thus attempting to give you additional labor. I am, dear sir, respectfully yours, JAMES HERRING, Grand Sec'y Grand Lodge S. N. Y. Howard House, N. Y.