Dear D.S.: According to Jewish
law, all that was necessary was a
witness. In Judaism, there was, of
course, no such thing as what we
know today in Christianity as the
pastor. It very soon developed in
Christianity, however, as the Church
moved to the West, as an official
designation between clergy and laity,
and soon became a teaching of the
Church that only the priests had the
authority to baptize.
Again, this is a late development in
the history of the western Church.
By the time of TertuIllan, circa 220 C.E.,
and his contemporaries, it
represented the general consensus
of opinion among the Church fathers.
The practice in Judaism, however,
remains basically unchanged for two
thousand years.
