Circumcision, (מוּלָה, mulah’; Sept. and N.T. technically περιτομή, which is translated by the Latin circumcisio, i.e. a cutting around), a custom among many Eastern nations of cutting off part of the prepuce, as a religious ceremony. The Jews, through Abraham, received the rite from Jehovah; Moses established it as a national ordinance; and Joshua carried it into effect before the Israelites entered the land of Canaan (see generally Michaelis, Laws of Moses, 4:30 sq.). Males only were subjected to the operation, and it was to be performed on the eighth day of the child’s life; foreign slaves also were forced to submit to it on entering an Israelite’s family. Those who are unacquainted with other sources of information on the subject besides the Scriptures might easily suppose that the rite was original with Abraham, characteristic of his seed, and practiced among those nations only who had learned it from them. This, however, appears not to have been the case (Celsus, ap. Orig. contra Celsum, 1:17, 250; Julian, ap. Cyril, contra Julian. 10:354; compare Marsham, Canon Chron. p. 73 sq.; Bauer, Gottesdienstl. Verfass. 1, 37 sq.; Jahn, I, 2, 277 sq.; see Borheck, Ist die Beschneidung urspriinglich hebraisch? [Duisb. and Lemgo, 1793]).
I. Pagan Circumcision. — First of all, the Egyptians were a circumcised people. Vonck (Observ. miscell. c. 1, p. 66), followed by Wesseling (ad Herod. 2, 37) and by numerous able writers, alleged that this was not true of the whole nation, but of the priests only; that at least the priests were circumcised is beyond controversy. No one can for a moment imagine that they adopted the rite from the despised shepherds of Goshen; and we are immediately forced to believe that Egyptian circumcision had an independent origin. A great preponderance of argument, however, appears to us to prove that the rite was universal among the old Egyptians, as long as their native institutions flourished, although there is no question that, under Persian and Greek rule, it gradually fell into disuse, and was retained chiefly by the priests, and by those who desired to cultivate ancient wisdom (see Origen, ad Jeremiah 4:19; Ezechiel 31:18; 32:19; and ad. Romans 2:13; Jerome ad Galatians 4, p. 477; Horapoll. Hierogl. .Eg. 1, 14, p. 13, ed. Paun; Clem. Alex. Strom. 1, 130). Herodotus distinctly declares that the Egyptians practiced circumcision; and that he meant to state this of the whole nation is manifest, not only since he always omits to add any restriction, but because, immediately following his first statement of the fact, he annexes this remark: “The priests, moreover, shave their whole body every other day,” etc. (Herod. 2:37). It is difficult to suppose that the historian could have been mistaken on this point, considering his personal acquaintance with Egypt. (Artapanus, however, makes a distinction between Jewish and Egyptian circumcision, ap. Eusebius Proep. Ev. 4, 27.) Further, he informs us that the Colchians were a colony from Egypt, consisting of soldiers from the army of Sesostris. With these he had conversed (2, 104), and he positively declares that they practiced circumcision. Yet if the rite had been confined to the priestly caste of Egypt, it could hardly have been found among the Colchians at all. The same remark will apply to the savage Troglodytes of Africa, every branch of whom except one (the Kolobi), as Diodorus informs us (3, 31), was circumcised, having learned the practice from the Egyptians. The Troglodytes appear to have been widely diffused through Libya, which argues a corresponding diffusion of the rite; yet, from the silence of Diodorus concerning the other savage nations whom he recounts as African Ethiopians, we may infer that it was not practiced by them. The direct testimony of Diodorus (1, 28), Philo (Opp. 2, 310), and Strabo (12, 824; comp. Agatharch. ed. Hudson, 1, 46) is to the same effect as that of Herodotus respecting Egypt; yet this can hardly be called confirmatory, since in their days the rite was no longer universal. Josephus (contra Ap. 2, 13) speaks of it as practiced by the priests only; he, however, reproaches Apion for neglecting the institutions of his country in remaining uncircumcised. Origen, in the passage above referred to, confirms the statement of Josephus. In Kenrick’s Herodotus (2, 37), the French commissioners who examined some Egyptian mummies are quoted as establishing from them the fact of Egyptian circumcision. Herodotus, moreover, tells us (2, 104) that the Ethiopians were also circumcised; and he was in doubt whether they had learned the rite from the Egyptians, or the Egyptians from them. By the Ethiopians we must understand him to mean the inhabitants of Meroe or Sennaar. In the present day the Coptic Church continues to practice it, according to C. Niebuhr (quoted by Michaelis); the Abys. sinian Christians do the same (Ludolf. Hist. Ethiop. 1, 19, and Comment. p. 268 sq.); and that it was not introduced among the latter with a Judaical Christianity appears from their performing it upon both sexes. (It is scarcely worth while to invent a new name, recision, or resection, for accuracy’s sake.) Oldendorp describes the rite as widely spread through Western Africa — 16° on each side of the line — even among natives that are not Mohammedan. In later times it has been ascertained that it is practiced by the Kafir nations in South Africa, more properly called Kosa or Amakesa, whom Prichard supposes to form “a great part of the native population of Africa to the southward of the equator.” He remarks upon this: “It is scarcely within probability that they borrowed the custom from nations who profess Islam, or we should find among them other proofs of intercourse with people of that class. It is more probable that this practice is a relic of ancient African customs, of which the Egyptians, as it is well known, partook in the remote ages” (Prichard, Physical Hist. of Man, 3d ed. 2, 287). Traces of the custom have even been observed among the natives of some of the South Sea Islands (Pickering, Races of Men, p. 153, 199, 200, etc.).
How far the rite was extended through the Syro-Arabian races is uncertain (but see Strabo, 16:776; Epiphan. Hoer. 9, 30; Origen ad Genesis 1, 10). In the 9th section of the Epistle of Barnabas (which, whether genuine or not, is very old), the writer comments as follows: “But you will say the Jews were circumcised for a sign. And so are all the Syrians, and the Arabians, and the idolatrous priests; ... and even the Egyptians themselves are circumcised.” This language is vague and popular; yet it shows how notorious was the wide diffusion of the custom (see Hug, in the Freib. Zeitschrift. 3. 213). The Philistines, in the days of Saul, were, however, uncircumcised; so also, says Herodotus (2, 104), were all the Phoenicians who had intercourse with the Greeks. That the Canaanites, in the days of Jacob, were not all circumcised, is plain from the affair of Dinah and Shechem. The story of Zipporah (Exodus 4:25), who did not circumcise her son until fear came over her that Jehovah would slay her husband Moses, proves that the family of Jethro, the Midianite, had no fixed rule about it, although the Midianites are generally regarded as children of Abraham by Keturah. On the other hand, we have the distinct testimony of Josephus (Ant. 1, 12, 2) that the Ishmaelite Arabs, inhabiting the district of Nabathaea, were circumcised after their 13th year: this must be connected with the tradition, which no doubt existed among them, of the age at which their forefather Ishmael underwent the rite (Genesis 17:25). St. Jerome also (quoted by Michaelis) informs us that, to his day, “usque hodie,” the tribes dwelling round Judaea and Palestine were circumcised, “especially all the Saracens who dwell in the desert.” Elsewhere he says that, “except the Egyptians, Idumaeans, Ammonites, Moabites, and Ishmaelites of the desert, of whom the greater part are circumcised, all other nations in the world are uncircumcised.” A negative argument is more or less dangerous; yet there is something striking in the fact that the books of Moses, of Joshua, and of Judges never bestow the epithet uncircumcised as a reproach on any of the seven nations of Canaan, any more than on the Moabites or Ammonites, the Amalekites, the Midianites, or other inland tribes with whom they came into conflict. On the contrary, as soon as the Philistines become prominent in the narrative, after the birth of Samson, this epithet is of rather common occurrence. The fact also of bringing back as a trophy the foreskins of slain enemies never occurs except against the Philistines (1 Samuel 18). We may perhaps infer, at least until other proof or disproof is attained, that while the Philistines, like the Sidonians and the other maritime Syrian nations known to the Greeks, were wholly strangers to the practice, yet among the Canaanites, and all the more inland tribes, it was at least so far common that no general description could be given them from the omission; It appears from Josephus (Ant. 13, 9) that when Hyrcanus subdued the Idumaeans, he forced them to be circumcised on pain of expatriation. This shows that they had at least disused the rite. But that is not wonderful, if it was only a custom, and not a national religious ordinance; for, as Michaelis observes, the disuse of it may have dated from the edict of Antiochus Epiphanes, of which it is said (1 Maccabees 1:41, 42), “The king Antiochus wrote to all his kingdom that all should be one people; and that all should keep the ordinances of his country; and all the nations acquiesced according to the word of the king.” The rather obscure notices which are found in Jeremiah and Ezekiel of the circumcision of the nations who were in immediate contact with Israel admit of a natural interpretation in conformity with what has been already adduced (Jeremiah 9:25; Ezekiel 31:18; also 32:19, et passim). The difficulty turns on the new moral use made of the term “uncircumcised,” to mean simply impure. The passage in Jeremiah is thus translated by Ewald: “Behold, the days come that I visit all the uncircumcised circumcised ones; Egypt and Judah, Edom, and the children of Ammon and Moab; and all the dwellers in the wilderness that are shaven on the temples: for all the heathen are uncircumcised, and so is all the house of Israel uncircumcised in heart.” The shaving of the temples appears to be a religious custom of the same kind: Herodotus (3, 8) ascribes it to the Arabs generally, and Josephus rather strangely regards the epithet τροχοκούριδες, in the ancient Greek poet Choerilus (c. Ap. 1, 22), as a description of his own countrymen. Knowing that the Egyptians were circumcised, it no longer remains doubtful how the reproach of Egypt (Joshua 5:9) should be interpreted.
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Author: McClintock and Strong Cyclopedia
Keywords: Circumcision
Bible reference(s): 1 Maccabees 1:41, 1 Corinthians 7:18, 1 Samuel 14:6, 1 Samuel 17:26, 2 Samuel 1:20, Acts 15:1, Acts 16:3, Acts 7:8, Colossians 2:11, Colossians 3:11, Deuteronomy 10:16, Deuteronomy 30:6, Deuteronomy 9:28, Ephesians 2:11, Esther 8:17, Exodus 12:48, Exodus 32:12, Exodus 4:25, Exodus 6:12, Ezekiel 31:18, Galatians 2:3, Galatians 5:3, Galatians 6:15, Genesis 17:25, Genesis 21:4, Genesis 34:14, Isaiah 52:1, Jeremiah 4:4, Jeremiah 6:10, Jeremiah 9:25, John 3:5, John 7:23, Joshua 5:9, Judges 14:10, Judges 15:18, Judith 14:10, Leviticus 12:3, Leviticus 19:25, Leviticus 26:41, Luke 1:59, Luke 2:21, Numbers 14:13, Philippians 3:5, Romans 15:8, Romans 2:28, Romans 3:1, Romans 4:11, Romans 9:6
Source: John McClintock and James Strong, Cyclopedia of Biblical, Theological, and Ecclesiastical Literature.
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