When and why did Christianity abandon circumcision and Judaism not? – 04/08/2023 – Balance

On the eighth day of his birth, like all Jewish men, Jesus was circumcised.

But this practice was abandoned by its followers, unlike other rituals that Judaism and Christianity still maintain and share, such as joint prayer in temples or celebrating Christmas and Hanukkah or Easter and Pesach on similar dates.

And the answer to why Christians don’t remove the foreskin (the layer of skin that covers the head of the penis) from babies is in the Bible.

According to the New Testament, the rupture between Judaism and Christianity with regard to circumcision occurred around the year 50 and had as protagonists São Paulo and São Pedro, who had an intense discussion on the subject.

“It was the first institutional conflict of the Church”, explains Miguel Pastorino, professor of philosophy of religion and philosophical anthropology at the Catholic University of Uruguay, bachelor of theology, doctor of philosophy and former priest, to BBC News Mundo, a news service in Spanish from the BBC.

São Paulo — who at that time was not a saint, but just Paul of Tarsus — went from being a Pharisee, that is, a fervent defender of the Law of Moses who persecuted disciples of Jesus, to being one of the most enthusiastic propagators of the word of the messiah throughout the world , says the Bible.

Paul of Tarsus was, like Jesus of Nazareth, Peter of Galilee, and the other apostles, a Jew. As such, they were circumcised.

The Jewish religion was the only monotheistic one until then. The Greeks, Romans and Egyptians believed in various deities.

For the Jewish people, Elokim (God) had said to Abraham: “This is my covenant which you must keep, between you and me and your posterity: every male among you must be circumcised”.

In addition to Jews, Muslims — who believe in the prophet Abraham — have continued this practice to this day.

Although not mentioned in the Qur’an, circumcision appears in the hadiths (written records of the Prophet Muhammad’s oral communications).

circumcision in history

Removing the foreskin, which involves removing the skin from the penis that covers the glans, is a practice that didn’t start with religion, but long before.

It is the oldest surgical procedure in the world; believed to have originated in Egypt about 15,000 years ago, according to the book An Illustrated Guide to Pediatric Urology (“An Illustrated Guide to Pediatric Urology,” by pediatric surgeon and academic Ahmed al Salem.

Al Salem explains that many cultures have incorporated circumcision for reasons ranging from hygiene to coming-of-age rituals, offering ceremonies to the gods or as marks of cultural identity.

“Religion ruled everything, from hygienic practices to food, sex, politics. Religious systems are born together as everything is born in culture, and in the past they were difficult to separate. When they had to legislate on some hygiene practices at the time , religion played a key role in that. Because the law was God’s law, there was no other”, explains Pastorino.

This view contains nuances in Judaism.

“There are those who say that, in addition to the religious concept, its sanitary and hygienic utility generated greater adherence to this practice. But it is not possible to determine whether the origin was hygienic and sanitary and later there was an agreement on the deification or religiosity of the event, or if it was the opposite. But there is an undeniable conjunction between the practice of circumcision and health and hygiene”, says Rabbi Daniel Dolinsky.

In ancient times, the Sumerians and Semites also circumcised men.

Mayans and Aztecs also adopted the practice, according to a report published in 2007 by the United Nations Unaids program.

Although widespread, circumcision was not universally accepted.

For the ancient Greeks, who exercised their bodies and admired male nudity, the foreskin was a symbol of beauty, and circumcision was frowned upon.

“The aesthetic preference for the longer, more conical foreskin is a reflection of a ethos deeper involving cultural identity, morality, propriety, virtue, beauty, and health,” wrote historian Frederick M. Hodges, who specializes in the history of medicine, in a 2001 article.

An uncircumcised but short foreskin that did not cover the entire glans of the penis was considered defective.

“Among the Jewish population, the difficulty in maintaining the practice of circumcision became a particular problem during the Hellenistic Period (between the death of Alexander the Great and the annexation of the Greek peninsula by Rome), due to the influence of the Hellenistic culture on the Jews. Jews who wanted to assimilate into the dominant culture,” says Cynthia Long Westfall, professor of New Testament at McMaster Divinity College in Canada, in her book Paul and Gender (“Paulo and Gender”, in free translation).

“In addition, there was a period when circumcision was illegal: Antiochus Epiphanes had ordered the inhabitants of Judea not to circumcise their boys anymore. Consequently, some Jews tried to hide their circumcision”, he adds.

The match between São Paulo and São Pedro

Unlike how Judaism worked, which did not seek to convert anyone to its religion, Jesus asked his disciples to spread his teachings wherever they could.

Paul of Tarsus, who probably arrived in Jerusalem in his teens or early adulthood and spent his childhood surrounded by Greeks, was the main promoter of evangelism after Jesus’ crucifixion.

He traveled through what is now Israel, Lebanon, Syria, Turkey, Greece and Egypt, territories that were part of the empire of Alexander the Great, spreading the message of Jesus mainly among those he called “gentiles”, a term that designated non- Jews.

Non-Jews viewed circumcision as genital mutilation comparable to castration, says Long Westfall.

“So circumcision had a stigma in the Greco-Roman world, and it was a very painful process for an adult male.”

In his preaching, Paul said that the only thing necessary for God’s salvation was faith – and he did not demand circumcision.

“This is the norm that I establish in all the churches. Was anyone called while already circumcised? Do not hide your condition. Was anyone called without being circumcised? Do not be circumcised. It does not matter whether you are circumcised or not; what matters is keeping the commandments of God,” he wrote in his first letter to the Corinthians.

“Paulo was a Jew from Tarsus, he was a Roman citizen, he had Greek culture, he was a very cultured guy and he mastered the three cultures — Hebrew, Greek and Roman — and he knew how to translate them”, says Pastorino.

“Christ redeemed us from the curse of the Law,” Paul said in his letter to the Galatians, referring to the Law of Moses, which included circumcision.

But his position was not accepted by the other apostles.

In the letter to Titus included in the Christian Bible, Paul recounts this confrontation. “There are many rebels, charlatans and deceivers, especially those who support circumcision. Their mouths must be shut,” he wrote.

In his preaching, Paul said that the only thing necessary for God’s salvation was faith – and he did not demand circumcision.

“This is the norm that I establish in all the churches. Was anyone called while already circumcised? Do not hide your condition. Was anyone called without being circumcised? Do not be circumcised. It does not matter whether you are circumcised or not; what matters is keeping the commandments of God,” he wrote in his first letter to the Corinthians.

“Paulo was a Jew from Tarsus, he was a Roman citizen, he had Greek culture, he was a very cultured guy and he mastered the three cultures — Hebrew, Greek and Roman — and he knew how to translate them”, says Pastorino.

“Christ redeemed us from the curse of the Law,” Paul said in his letter to the Galatians, referring to the Law of Moses, which included circumcision.

But his position was not accepted by the other apostles.

In the letter to Titus included in the Christian Bible, Paul recounts this confrontation. “There are many rebels, charlatans and deceivers, especially those who support circumcision. Their mouths must be shut,” he wrote.

Circumcision in numbers

– 33% of the world’s male population over 15 years old is circumcised;

– 6.3 out of 10 circumcised men are Muslim;

– 0.7 out of 10 circumcised men are Jewish;

– 1.2 out of 10 circumcised men are Americans who are neither Jewish nor Muslim.

Source: UNAIDS

At Epistle to the GalatiansPaulo told about the disagreement he had with Peter one day in Antioch, a city in present-day Turkey where a large community of followers of Jesus was formed.

According to his version, Peter used to dine with the Gentiles, but when a group of envoys from St. James arrived in the city, he began to separate himself from them “for fear of the circumcisionists”.

“I told him to his face that this behavior was reprehensible,” he told the Galatians.

“I said to Peter in front of everyone: ‘If you, who are Jewish, live as if you are not, why do you force Gentiles to practice Judaism?'”

The moment of reconciliation

According to the New Testament account, some of the Jewish Christians most attached to tradition and the Law of Moses traveled to Antioch and told the Gentiles who were approaching that early Christianity that if they were not circumcised, they would not obtain salvation.

That’s why Paul returned to Jerusalem – and why a meeting of the apostles was called to settle the matter. It was called the Council of Jerusalem.

There, Paul spoke of the large number of believers he had won outside of Judea and his view prevailed.

James, who was originally against the uncircumcised joining, changed his mind and said, “We must stop keeping the Gentiles from turning to God.”

And Peter also gave in. And he said: “Why are they now trying to provoke God by putting a yoke on the neck of the disciples, which neither we nor our ancestors could bear? It cannot be!”

The conflict also ends with a pact between the apostles: Paul took up the preaching among the pagans, and Peter and James with the Jews, explains Pastorino.

The apostles, according to the biblical account, then sent a letter to the non-Jews of Antioch, Syria and Cilicia in which they told them that they had taken the decision not to impose “any burden upon them, except the following requirements: to abstain from that is sacrificed to idols, blood, the flesh of strangled animals and sexual immorality”.

When the letter reached Antioch, the believers read and celebrated it; they would not need to be circumcised.

“Paul was a true defender of the Gentile man and removed a serious obstacle to the spread of the gospel,” observes Long Westfall.

Over the years, the hard line that was limited to those who were already Jews ceased to exist.

Circumcised Christians

Despite the abolition of this practice by Christianity, there are divisions in Africa that have circumcision as a rite: Coptic Christianity in Egypt, Orthodox Christianity in Ethiopia and the Nomiya Church in Kenya are some examples.

And although not for religious reasons, five countries in the world with a Christian culture had or have the majority of their male population circumcised.

One of them is the United States. In 1870, physician Lewis Sayre, one of the founders of the American Medical Association, began to practice it to prevent and cure certain diseases.

His scientific publications, in addition to his promotion of circumcision, have made the practice universal for nearly all newborns, says Al Salem.

And from the United States it jumped to Canada and the United Kingdom, where the same thing happened, and then to Australia and New Zealand.

Scientific divergences about the risks and benefits of removing the foreskin meant that circumcision was no longer practiced as a form of prevention in newborns, except in the United States, where most men still have their glans uncovered.

This text was originally published here.