Baptisms, Mikvahs and You: Origins of Baptism in Ancient Judaism

I guess I always thought John the Baptist invented baptism. Some crazy guy, out in the wilderness eating locust and honey, wearing camel hair clothes...

Photo Source (w/o comment on John's sanity)

Well, being the first guy who came up with the idea of dunking people in the river as a form of repentance is pretty weird if no one's ever done it before, so it just sort of matched the rest of him for me. (Like the first guy who ate crawfish. Who was that guy and how hungry must he have been?!)
If I...