<P> "Baptism in the Early Church" by George Rice (1981), in "Bible and Spade", cited Cote with favour and claimed that archaeology "overwhelmingly testifies to immersion as the normal mode of baptism in the Christian church during the first ten to fourteen centuries". Rice cites in particular imagery in the Catacomb of San Ponziano and a crypt in the catacomb of Santa Lucina, as well as a 9th - or 10th - century fresco in the basilica of San Clemente he also states that "pictures of Jesus standing in water while John pours water over His head are of a much later date than those depicting immersion and they demonstrate the change in the mode of baptism that came into the church". He mentions a 4th - century baptistery sufficiently large for immersion, Rice says that archaeological evidence demonstrates some early baptismal fonts large enough for adult immersion were later made smaller or replaced, to accommodate affusion baptism of infants, leading to mistakes in the dating of art works by 20th - century studies . </P> <P> In his contribution to the 1986 11th International Archaeology Congress on "What do the texts teach us on the equipment and furnishings needed for baptism in southern Gaul and northern Italy?" Jean - Charles Picard concluded that the texts speak only of immersion and that the area has no archaeological images of baptism by pouring water on the head . </P> <P> In 1987, on the basis of archaeology and parallels with Jewish practice, Sanford La Sor considered it likely that total immersion was also Christian practice . </P> <P> In the same year, Lothar Heiser, in his study of baptism in the Orthodox Church, concluded on the basis of the literary and pictorial evidence in that field that "the water customarily reached the hips of the baptizand; after calling on the triune God, the priest bent the baptizand under so as to dip him in water over the head; in the cases of pouring in the Didache and in sickbed baptism the baptized did not stand in the font"; but acknowledges that in present Greek practice the priest places the infant being baptized as far down in the water as possible and scoops water over the head so as to cover the child fully with water . </P>

Who was the first person to be baptised