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Home > Magazines > Bible Review > August 1992

Epispasm—Circumcision in Reverse

For nearly 600 years, some Jews tried to remove the mark of the covenant

By Robert G. Hall

“Any uncircumcised male who is not circumcised on the flesh of his foreskin shall be cut off from his people; he has broken my covenant.” So said God to Abraham, establishing the covenant of circumcision, a covenant “between me and you and your descendants after you” (Genesis 17:10, 14). For centuries, Jewish boys have regularly been circumcised when they are eight days old (Genesis 17:12). An unusual challenge to circumcision developed, however, in the Hellenistic period (after about 133 B.C.E.a). Hellenistic and Roman societies widely practiced public nakedness. But they abhorred baring the tip of the penis, called […]

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Footnotes

1.

B.C.E. (Before the Common Era) and C.E. (Common Era), used by this author, are the alternate designations corresponding to B.C. and A.D. often used in scholarly literature.

2.

The Mishnah is a compilation of rabbinic teaching gathered about 200 C.E.

3.

Pirkei Avot is a treatise of the Mishnah. The English title is “Sayings of the Fathers.”

4.

The Babylonian Talmud is a sixth-century commentary on the Mishnah.

5.

Midrashim (singular, midrash) are interpretive Aramaic paraphrases of Hebrew scriptures.

6.

See Jack T. Sanders, “Circumcision of Gentile Converts—The Root of Hostility,” BR 07:01.

Endnotes

1.

See E. Mary Smallwood, The Jews under Roman Rule from Pompey to Diocletian (Leiden: Brill, 1976), p. 429.

2.

Dioscorides, De Materia Medica 4.153.

3.

Gynecology 2.34, in Soranus, Gynecology, transl. by O. Temkin (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins Univ. Press, 1956), p. 107.

4.

Celsus, De Medicina 7.25.2.

5.

Martial, Epigrams 7.35.

6.

Martial, Epigrams 7.82.

7.

Celsus, De Medicina 7.25.1, W.G. Spenser’s translation, Loeb Classical Library (Cambridge, MA: Harvard Univ. Press/London: Heinemann, 1938).

8.

Celsus, De Medicina 7.25.1, W.G. Spenser’s translation, Loeb Classical Library (Cambridge, MA: Harvard Univ. Press/London: Heinemann, 1938), p. 421.

9.

Epiphanius, De Mensuris et Ponderibus 16, author’s translation.

10.

Suetonius, Domitian 12.2, in Lives of the Twelve Caesars.

11.

See Maccabees 2:30–31, 3:21, 7:10–15. See also Victor A. Tcherikover, Hellenistic Civilization and the Jews (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1959), pp. 311, 313.

12.

Claudius, “Letter to Alexandria,” in Corpus Papyrorum Judaicarum, ed. Tcherikover and A. Fuks (1957–1964), p. 153.

13.

Jubilees 15:25–34. Similar ideas underlie the metaphorical use of circumcision at Qumran (CD 16.4–6; 1QS 5.5) and perhaps a traditional Jewish blessing used at circumcision (Shabbat 137b and parallels). So David Flusser and Shmuel Safrai, “Who Sanctified the Beloved in the Womb?” Immanuel 11 (1980), pp. 46–55.

14.

Eusebius, Praeparatio Evangelica 9.27.4, 10; J.J. Collins, “Artapanus,” The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha, ed. by J.H. Charlesworth (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1985), vol. 2, pp. 896–899.

15.

Philo, Special Laws 2–11.

16.

Josephus, Antiquities of the Jews 20.38–40.

17.

Talmud, Yevamot 46a.

18.

Philo, Questions on Exodus 2.2.

19.

Philo, Migration of Abraham 89–93; see similar lists in Pirkei Avot 3.16 and Talmud, Yoma 85b.

20.

Talmud, Menahot 53b.

21.

Mishnah Shabbat 30.6.

22.

Talmud, Yoma 85b.

23.

Leviticus Rabbah 191.6.

24.

Midrash on Sanhedrin 38b.

25.

Midrash on Sanhedrin 44a.

26.

Moses Maimonides, Mishneh Torah, Hilchot Teshuvah 3.6.

27.

Tosefta Shabbat 15.9, transl. by Jacob Neusner, in The Tosefta: Moed (New York: Ktav, 1981), p. 59; see also Yevamot 72a.

28.

I have drawn freely from research for two earlier articles: “Epispasm and the Dating of Ancient Jewish Writings,” Journal for the Study of Pseudepigrapha 2 (1988) 71–86; and “Circumcision,” an entry soon to appear in the Anchor Bible Dictionary.