On Baptism

The Greek words bapto and baptizo mean "to immerse". It doesn't matter whether one is immersed by being lowered down into water (as in the case of John's river-baptisms), or immersed by being flooded-upon by a great volume of something from above (as in the case of the Holy Spirit being poured-out from heaven upon the believers in Acts 2). Both examples are immersive. There are a few cases where those baptismal words were used in the Septuagint's translation of the book of Hebrews for "sprinkle". But since those examples had to do with Moses and the bloody hyssop, they do not transfer to Christian baptism. The meaning of a word is determined by usage in a context, and you cannot transfer meanings from one context to another, or one passage to another, based on a word only. The words bapto, baptizein, and baptizo mean "immerse."