Circumcision

Most everybody knows what circumcision is, what its origin was, and what its significance is – or do they?  As far as the English term itself goes, circumcision means 'cut around' and is a direct derivative from the Latin circumcisio, and this is also true of the corresponding Greek term περιτομη.  Medically, it refers to the excision of the prepuce.  For males, this refers to a cylinder of skin covering the glans penis and is more commonly called the foreskin.  For females, the prepuce is the hood covering the exterior portion of the clitoris.  In the early 20^th century male circumcision became quite common for infants in both the United States and Briton, because it was considered more hygienic to have the foreskin removed.  At one time up to 90% of male babies in the US were routinely circumcised immediately after birth; but more recently the hygienic benefit has been questioned, and there is a growing movement to keep infants and men intact unless a medical reason for the procedure is present.  In contrast, circumcision has never been widely practiced in Europe except among the Jews and now Muslims.

The peculiar thing is that the Hebrew root for the act of circumcision – מול – and the term for the male prepuce – ערלה – are semantically unrelated to the corresponding terms in Greek, Latin, or English.  The practice of circumcision among the Hebrews originated at the time YHWH made the covenant with Abram as described in Gen 17.  This particular covenant had stipulations for both God and men, starting with Abram.

·       God's part – YHWH would give all the land of the Canaanites (and all the other 'ites')  to Abram and his descendants.  As a sign of this of this promise, YHWH changed Abram's name (Exalted Father) to Abraham (Father of a Multitude), and he changed Sarai's name (Splendor) to Sarah (Princess).  Sarah, who had been barren up to this point would have a son by the following year; Ishmael would be blessed by God, but Sarah's son would be Abraham's heir.

·      Abraham's part – All the men presently connected with Abraham were to be circumcised, and every new male infant was to be circumcised on the 8^th day following birth.  Abraham was 99 at this time, and Ishmael was 13.  Any male not circumcised would be excluded from this covenant.

 As mentioned above, the Hebrew terms involved – מול and ערלה – have no semantic connection with the words used in later translations.  Even though the physical procedure of removing a cylindrical piece of skin from the end of the penis was the same, what might Abraham have understood from the semantic connotations of these terms?  Neither root is widely attested in the cognate languages, except in Syriac ערלא and its various derivatives these roots came to be used for both circumcise and foreskin, respectively.  As a result we will generally be limited to usage within the Hebrew bible. 

ערלה

The root ערל occurs 51 times in the Hebrew text in nominal, verbal, and adjectival forms.  Translation uniformly render these occurrences as foreskin (noun), be uncircumcised (verb), and uncircumcised (adjective).  When the context refers to the physical rite of circumcision or the effects of circumcision, these translations make perfect literal sense.  However, other contexts cannot be understood with these terms in any literal sense:

·     Fruit trees – Lev 19:23:  When an Israelite plants any tree that bears eatable fruit, he is to regard its fruit as uncircumcised for three years.  The fourth year the fruit is reserved for YHWH, and from the fifth year on he may eat the fruit.

·      The heart – Dt 10:12-16:  So now, Israel, what does YHWH, your God, ask from you except to fear YHWH, your God, to walk in all his ways, to love him, to serve YHWH, your God, with all your heart and soul, and to keep the commandments of YHWH and his statutes that I am commanding you today for your own good.  Behold, the sky and the highest heaven and everything in them belong to YHWH.  Yet YHWH set his affection on your fathers to love them, and he chose their seed after them, you, from all the peoples as it is this day.  So circumcise the foreskin of your heart, and stiffen your neck no more.

·       The heart – Je 4:4:  Circumcise yourselves for YHWH, and remove the foreskin of your heart, O men of Judah and inhabitants of Jerusalem, that my wrath not go out like fire and burn unquenchably because of your evil deeds.

·        The heart – Lv 26:41, 42: … or if their uncircumcised heart becomes humbled

·     The ear – Je 6:10:  To whom shall I speak and bear witness that they hear?  Behold their ear is uncircumcised, and they are unable to give attention.

·        Strangers – Ez 44:7, 9:  … strangers with uncircumcised heart and uncircumcised flesh …

·      The lips –  Ex 6:12, 30:  … Behold the sons of Israel will not listen to me, so how will Pharaoh listen to me – my lips are uncircumcised.

·       Character – Je 9:24, 25:  Behold, days are coming, says YHWH, when I execute judgement on all circumcised in foreskin – on Egypt, Judah, Edom, the sons of Amon, Moab, all inhabitants of the desert that clip the side of their head – for all the nations are (physically) uncircumcised, and the entire house of Israel is uncircumcised of heart.

All of the above passages are typically interpreted figuratively.  Based on the wording of the Abrahamic covenant in Genesis 17, anything described as having a foreskin is outside the covenant and subject to exclusion.  This understanding fits the context and usage reasonable well; however, there is another possibility.  Extra biblical sources preserve the meaning of sheath or cover for the root ערל, and this is what the prepuce actually is – a sheath that covers the glans penis in the flaccid state but not during an erection.  Using this meaning as a common base, then circumcision constitutes removal of the sheath or covering, rendering what remains directly sensitive to stimulus.  When this term is applied to things other than the foreskin, it refers to a barrier or a covering that renders the ear, lips, heart insensitive.

מול

This root occurs a total of 33 times in the Hebrew bible as a verb and just once as a noun.  Every occurrence of the verbal form is translated as some variation of circumcise, and the noun form is translated as circumcision.  Everywhere the term is used in connection with the physical rite, this translation conveys the appropriate meaning, but the text of Ps 118:10, 11 and 12 presents some interpretive difficulty.  The text as preserved in the MT is shown below.

כל גוים סבבוני     בשם יהוה אמילם

סבבוני גם סבבוני בשם יהוה אמילם

סבוני כדבורים     דועכו כאש קוצים   בשם יהוה אמילם

All nations have surrounded me                          In the name of YHWH אמילם

They have surrounded me, yes surrounded me   In the name of YHWH אמילם

The have surrounded me like bees                They have been extinguished like a fire of thorns   In the name of YHWH אמילם

The form אמילם is the causative first person singular imperfect of מול.  The interpretive difficulty is that the causative form of this root is attested nowhere else in Hebrew or any of its cognate languages.  It could mean I will cause them to become circumcised; but many English translations emend the text to read a form ofמלל  and render the text as In the name of YHWH I will cut them to pieces.  The problem with this latter approach is that the causative verb form is not attested for the root מלל either.  There is, however, another possibility that I have never found discussed in any source.  The meaning make a border, make an edge, make a hem is preserved from Assyrian as well as Midrashic Hebrew.  This is exactly what happens during the physical rite of circumcision: when the covering cylinder of the foreskin is removed, a border remains at the end of the penis.  If this significance is correct, then the above translation becomes In the name of YHWH I will make them a boundary.  This approach also works admirably well for the symbolic uses – the act of spiritual circumcision leaves a boundary not to be transgressed.

Why Circumcision, Anyway?

It seems to me that this is question is seldom, if ever, asked.  The Greeks of 200 BCE considered the human form to be the supreme manifestation of perfection.  The Greek games were conducted with all contestants naked – the noun γυμνος literally means naked.  They considered the practice of circumcision to be an abomination, and they made the Jewish practice of infant circumcision punishable by death.  There is a common denominator.  Circumcision, the dietary restrictions, the torah, statutes, and the biblical judgments set the Israelites apart from the peoples among whom they lived.  (Note that the Israelites were not the only people of antiquity that practiced circumcision, but the practice was rare even among the few peoples among whom it was practiced.)  Compare the ten words and the judgments of Exodus 21-23 with the Code of Hammurabi, Roman private law, or any of the other ancient law codes.  They are significantly different in content and consistency.  In the Balaam oracles it is stated Behold a people who lives apart And shall not be reckoned among the nations; in the song of Moses (Deut 31:8,9) Israel was designated as separate from the nations in their origin and destiny; in Esther 3:8 Haman describes the Jews as a people whose laws are different from those of all other peoples.  In short Israel was to be an example nation among the nations.  Their great failure in antiquity was their desire to make themselves like all other nations, and in part this tendency persists to this day both among Jews in the diaspora as well as the Jews in Israel.

Back References from the NT to the Hebrew Scriptures

About two years ago a friend sent me a question about the narrative in Luke 24:13 – 49.  In the narrative two followers of Yeshua were walking back to Emmaus on the first day following Shabbat, and they encountered the risen Messiah without recognizing him.  This hike took the better part of the day, and all the way their chance companion told them all the things concerning Messiah in the Law (i.e., the Torah) and the prophets.  Nowhere in the NT is this content explicitly set out, so the question posed to me was, 'What are all these things?'  My knee-jerk response was, 'Read the New Testament text, and it will tell you what all these thing are.'  This proved more difficult than I expected.  After two years I have accumulated more than 34 single-spaced pages of backward reference on a verse-by-verse basis of the Greek text to the Hebrew MT, and this just scratches the surface.   The specific contents of the backward reference list is far too great to present in a format like this blog, so I will merely insert a numerical summary.

Summary of References to the תנ''כ in the Greek Text

All authors of the NT except possibly Luke were Jews, so their use of the Hebrew text in their writings provides a clear indication of what they considered to be normative for faith and practice.  (The traditional view of Luke is that he was a gentile – probably a Greek physician; a more recent minority view is that he was a Jewish priest who had adopted a Greek name much like Shaul used the Greek name Paul.)  The following table provides a numerical list of total references from the Greek text back to the Hebrew text of the תנ''כ.  Sources for accumulation of these data were the following:

·         The Greek New Testament published by the United Bible Society.  This source was used for both the verse count and direct citations from the Hebrew bible (תנ''כ). 

·    The Return of the Kosher Pig by Rabbi Itzhak Shapira.  This source provided Jewish interpretations that predated the rise of Talmudic Judaism.

·         Concordances and lexicons for the Hebrew and Greek texts.  These sources have enabled me to make back references based on thematic content rather than just verbal identity.

The second column on the right lists the total number of verses per book in the Greek text of the UBS New Testament.  The next column lists the number of verses for which I have identified a specific back reference from the UBS text or some other source.  The last column on the left lists the total number of verses in the Hebrew text included in those back references.  The numbers in this column are significantly greater that of the NT verses with direct references for several reasons:

·         Identical or very similar verbiage occurs in more than one location of the Hebrew text, so any one NT citation may have five or more back references.

·         The authors of the NT text tended to join the content of two or more passages from the Hebrew text to express the message they were trying to convey.

·         The authors might cite a single verse or part of a verse expecting their hearers to be familiar with the entire context of the passage.  For example, in John 10:34 Yeshua quoted part of a verse from Ps 82:6, but he expected his hearers to remember the entire psalm in order to grasp his point.  (See one of my previous posts.)

·         I have only just begun to assemble a list of passages from the Hebrew bible that are duplicated in substance without any direct verbal citation.  For example, Exodus chapters 21 – 23 (torah portion משפאים – judgments) contain objective examples on how to live out the Ten Words (the ten commandments) in the context of the Israelite culture c. 1300 BCE.  There are 14 specific citations from these chapters in the Gospels, but their substance is present throughout the NT text.  As a specific example, Ex 23:4-9 deals with the case that a man finds the animal of an enemy wondering loose.  The command is that the man must care for the animal and return it to the enemy at the first opportunity.  This is explication for You shall not bear false witness, You shall not covet, and You shall love your neighbor as yourself.   If all such parallels to NT content were included in my tabulation, the numbers in the left hand column might be doubled or trebled.  

  

No. of תנ''כ Verses Included by Reference	No. of NT Verses with Direct References	Total Verses	Book
886	244	1066	Matthew
213	85	677	Mark
647	213	1146	Luke
279	105	878	John
516	153	1006	Acts
217	124	433	Romans
188	72	436	1 Corinthians
56	32	256	2 Corinthians
28	19	149	Galatians
50	28	155	Ephesians
16	10	103	Philippians
12	7	95	Colossians
18	11	89	1 Thessalonians
17	9	47	2 Thessalonians
22	15	113	1 Timothy
10	6	83	2 Timothy
7	2	46	Titus
0	0	23	Philemon
530	152	303	Hebrews
202	68	108	James
167	37	105	1 Peter
42	12	61	2 Peter
15	10	105	1 John
1	1	13	2 John
1	1	15	3 John
54	8	24	Jude
807	269	405	Revelation
5001	1693	7940	Totals

Items Not Included

·      As previously mentioned, there is a vast body of material in the תנ''כ that is thematically connected to specific passages in the NT without being specifically quoted.  At this point I have recorded perhaps 20 or 30 of such links, but I am sure that there exist many hundreds more to be found.

·         O Υιος του ανςθρωπου – Yeshua uses various forms of this expression as his title for himself 35 times in Matthew, 19 times in Mark, 20 times in Luke, and 11 times in John.  Various indefinite forms of this expression occur in the תנ''כ (בר אנש ref Dan 7:13,14; בן אדם Ps 80:17; and numerous others).  These all have the meaning human (singular or plural forms), and many modern English translations renter the expression in that way. The definite form (בן האדם) does occur in Enoch 48:2 but never in the תנ''כ.  Yeshua calls himself ‘the son of man’ = the human as opposed to a human.  The implication of this reference is that Yeshua is exemplification of what human was supposed to be.

·         Ecc 1:9 מה שהיה הוא שיהיה ומה שנעשה הוא שיעשה  - What was is what will be, and what has been done is what will be done – Rabbinic thought:  What Moses did is what Messiah will do in but a greater way.  This is the conceptual basis for all typology.  I have not included any types in my back reference list, but this alone constitutes a huge body of linkages between the תנ''כ and the NT.

Comments

At this point I have not attempted to distinguish between narrative/descriptive and didactic portions of the NT text.  However, based on the above simple summary 21% of the verses in the NT are directly linked to one or more passages in the Hebrew bible, and the back reference context corresponds to 63% of the NT content.  If narrative and descriptive texts were excluded from consideration, the percentage of coverage could easily increase to 80% to 90% of the total NT didactic material.  The obvious implication is that the writers of the NT considered the Hebrew scriptures not only valid and binding but obligatory for those who professed faith in Yeshua. 

One of the most common attitudes among Christian today is that the Law has been superseded by the Gospel, and second to this is the idea that the Church has replaced Israel as the people of God.  Christians in general are not too clear on what they mean by Law, but the term νομος as it occurs in the Greek NT is a reference to either the Torah alone or to the entire body of Hebrew scriptures, depending on context.  It does not refer to the Talmud or the rabbinic halacha.  A body of traditional interpretations did already exist in the first century, but the written corpus as it now exists developed over a period of around 600 years following the destruction of the temple.  The term η γραφη in the NT is a reference to the Hebrew sacred writings, not to the NT text, which never existed in any collected form during the apostles' lives.  Based on the example of the apostles as tabulated above, some Christians should rethink their biases relative to the Hebrew Scriptures, Jews, and Israel.

In part the Christian position is derived from Hebrews chapters 8 - 10.  Here the author argues that the death of Yeshua has inaugurated a new and better Testament, and the old Testament is near to passing away.  (See a previous post concerning the use of Testament versus Covenant in Hebrews and the NT writings generally.)  The argument in this portion of Hebrews is based on Jeremiah 31:31 - 34, and this passage identifies the content of the New Covenant.

Behold, days are coming, declares YHWH, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah, not like the covenant which I made with their fathers in the day I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt, my covenant which they broke, although I was a husband to them, declares YHWH.  But this is the covenant which I will make with the house of Israel after those days, declares YHWH.  I will put my Torah (תורתי) within them, and on their heart I will write it; then I will be their God and they will be my people.  Then each man will no longer teach his neighbor or his brother saying, 'Know YHWH,' for all of them will know me from the least to the greatest, declares YHWH, because I will forgive their iniquity, and their sin I will no longer remember.

There are numerous points that could be discussed from this oracle, but the following are key:

·     YHWH initiates the covenant unilaterally, not humans.  Additionally, there is no conditional stipulation imposed on the people of Israel.  YHWH will do it because he has chosen to do it, period.

·         The covenant is made with Judah and Israel, not the nations.

·     The covenant consists of writing the Torah on the hearts of the people.  This is the source reference for 2 Cor 3:3.

·         The result of this covenant is that everybody will know YHWH (not just one person like Moses), and their sin will be forgiven eternally.

Now, if the substance of the New Covenant consists of the Torah being written on human hearts, then the Torah has not been superseded.  Subsequent verses in Jeremiah (e.g., 31:35-37, 32:36-44, etc.) indicate that his covenant promises to Abraham are without repentance, so Israel will remain the nation apart through which all the nations of the earth will be blessed despite themselves.  And the words despite themselves applies to both the Jews and the nations.