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Rh and blood drunk is already counted among the dead. The three days and three nights are to be reckoned from the time of the Supper, and, as Aphraates puts the three hours' darkness as one whole night and the ensuing time of light on Good Friday afternoon as one whole day, he has no difficulty in making up the required number. Moreover, he adds, this is why Christ kept silence before Pilate and the Jews, for it was impossible that one who is counted among the dead should speak.

These things, however, belong to the curiosities of exegesis: they do not have much bearing upon the general history of Christian Doctrine. It is otherwise with the theory of Baptism as presented to us in Discourse VII.

The majority of the references to Baptism in Aphraates contain little that is especially startling. Christian baptism is the true circumcision ; it is administered, as we have already seen, in the Names of the Three Persons of the Trinity ; by baptism