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Just a little off the top.


An odd question, but I gotta ask: where did the removal of the foreskin originate, and why the foreskin instead of, say, the earlobe?

Are there any other groups of humans that had gods that were interested in penis skin? (othere than the Muslims, who copied the Jewish tradition)

---
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Morwen Oronor Profile
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Re: Just a little off the top.


Hi, I'm Morwen from Anything Goes
I found your board while reading through the Runboard political sites.
I can answer this question for you.
According to Jewish tradition, it was the only sacrament given to Abraham by God when he left the fertile plain of Ur with his family to wander in the desert towards what we now know of as 'Palestine'. Until the 10 commandments Moses gave to the Jews on Mount Ararat, it was the only law the Jews had to obey, despite all the stories to the contrary.
The reason for it is logical. If you can imagine people walking in the desert in long robes with the sand storms and the sand generally being carried up to their nether regions by the dust stirred up by their feet and the fact that they didn't cover the bits and pieces with undergarments, they must've developed some horrible infections, not to say infestations of sandflies as a result. They figured out that the only way to stop it was to cut off the piece of skin.
But you can only imagine the conversation with a bunch of ignorant people in the desert:
"You suggest I do what? with a stone tool, are you insane?"
"And you suggest I do it to my son before he is 5 days old? Are you out of your mind?"
"No," says Abraham, thinking fast on his feet, and saying to himself "these people believe in the gods of Ur and if I say they say so, they'll ask me to show them the gods, so now how do I get around this". Then he has the 'light bulb' idea that will change the way people practice religion for all eternity and says "well I was walking along and I heard this voice that said: 'I am the God of creation, I made heaven and earth and I will lead to you a land flowing with milk and honey if you obey my law. Take your sons before the 5th day and cut off their foreskins, do this and I will keep my covenant with you', I'm not telling you to do this, God is?"
"Really?" the awestruck, hungry, tired and thirsty men say, "our wives aren't going to like it, but they'll do it if you will tell them of this God".
And thus circumcision was invented.

I hope you enjoyed my story.
I'll be back to visit your board again.
If you want a lot of mythology already in place on Runboard, click here.

I'm really very interested in your subject matter. I'll be back to chat some more.
2/13/2009, 12:52 am Link to this post Send PM to Morwen Oronor Blog
 
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Thanks Morwen.


Interesting story, though I'm not buying the "practical" aspect of it. Mutilation is common among many cultures, be it foot binding, neck elongating, or head-flattening. Tattoos, scarring, and human sacrifices, to name but a few, were methods to gain attention and favor with the local deities. Rites of passage for males in Australia and in Polynesia included making a single cut length-wise in the foreskin. How religious the act was, as opposed to simply a rite of passage from boy to manhood, I'm not sure.

But cute story, nevertheless. I have a feeling the practice goes back a little farther, otherwise the Moses character woulda found himself alone in the desert pretty quick. I'm betting that, like many of the customs and rituals of the Israelites, it's borrowed. I was suggesting the Canaanites, but that's just a guess.

---
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Now stop worrying and enjoy your life.
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Tim Callahan Profile
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Re: Just a little off the top.


So, how is it that the Israelites, Moabites, Ammonites, Edomites, Amalekites, Ishmaelites (Arabs), Midianites, and even the Egyptians (not a desert people) all practiced circumciision, while the Hivites (possibly Hurrians) of Shechem didn't? Only they and the Philistines are referred to by the term of opprobrium, "uncrcumcised."

Tim
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Re: Just a little off the top.


I'm quoting Jewish tradition, not historical fact.
As there are no written records predating the Jewish ones, or rather no reliable written records, we tend to rely on the Bible for the history of the people in the Near East. Of course this doesn't imply that what is written in the Bible is true, it merely means that in the absence of any other records, we go along with what the Bible says.
We're not talking about other forms of mutilation here, the question was specific regarding circumcision. It is a practice among the people of Africa when boys reached 'manhood' which I suspect stems from an observation of infection in that particular organ with the starting of sexual activity.
Practicality is usually behind this sort of mutilation, whereas the others of which you speak are decorative and serve no purpose.
Remember, although it is generally believed that Moses lived only a few generations after Abraham, in historical opinion, it is a long further back than that.
Also if you look at the cultures that traditionally practice circumcision, they all live in desert or very dry areas, which says a lot about the sort of horrible things that probably found their way into a nice warm breeding space.
Another myth that has been disproved but which disproof could be because of greater cleanliness in the general population in the last 3 or 4 decades, is that the wives of circumcised men do not get cervical cancer. This was a long-held excuse for general circumcision.
As i said the reason for it not being an issue anymore could be that we no longer believe that bathing is dangerous, rather the opposite and especially for women who, until the 1970s were told not to bathe during their menstrual cycle.
Another myth is that Moses was Jewish and that he was rescued by an Egyptian princess and that Ramses II was the king of Moses Egypt. Historians are more and more convinced that Moses was an Egyptian prince who abandoned Egypt and hooked up with the Jews because he could be a 'king' to them whereas the best he could hope for was to be a nomarch under his older brothers. the Egyptians had a highly developed civil system in place and because of this, there was no way they would have accepted the son of the 'unclean' refugees as one of their own.
Also the Jews weren't the 'slaves' who built the pyramids. THe great pyramid was built long before Ramses' time and they were built by paid labourers and not slaves.
Modern history is doing a lot to dispel all the nonsense mythology of the Old Testament.
Very soon it will be relegated to the position of a reference point for the laws and mythology of the Jews and very little else.
2/13/2009, 2:55 am Link to this post Send PM to Morwen Oronor Blog
 
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indeed...


quote:

Morwen Oronor wrote:

I'm quoting Jewish tradition, not historical fact.
As there are no written records predating the Jewish ones, or rather no reliable written records, we tend to rely on the Bible for the history of the people in the Near East. Of course this doesn't imply that what is written in the Bible is true, it merely means that in the absence of any other records, we go along with what the Bible says.
We're not talking about other forms of mutilation here, the question was specific regarding circumcision. It is a practice among the people of Africa when boys reached 'manhood' which I suspect stems from an observation of infection in that particular organ with the starting of sexual activity.
Practicality is usually behind this sort of mutilation, whereas the others of which you speak are decorative and serve no purpose.
Remember, although it is generally believed that Moses lived only a few generations after Abraham, in historical opinion, it is a long further back than that.
Also if you look at the cultures that traditionally practice circumcision, they all live in desert or very dry areas, which says a lot about the sort of horrible things that probably found their way into a nice warm breeding space.
Another myth that has been disproved but which disproof could be because of greater cleanliness in the general population in the last 3 or 4 decades, is that the wives of circumcised men do not get cervical cancer. This was a long-held excuse for general circumcision.
As i said the reason for it not being an issue anymore could be that we no longer believe that bathing is dangerous, rather the opposite and especially for women who, until the 1970s were told not to bathe during their menstrual cycle.
Another myth is that Moses was Jewish and that he was rescued by an Egyptian princess and that Ramses II was the king of Moses Egypt. Historians are more and more convinced that Moses was an Egyptian prince who abandoned Egypt and hooked up with the Jews because he could be a 'king' to them whereas the best he could hope for was to be a nomarch under his older brothers. the Egyptians had a highly developed civil system in place and because of this, there was no way they would have accepted the son of the 'unclean' refugees as one of their own.
Also the Jews weren't the 'slaves' who built the pyramids. THe great pyramid was built long before Ramses' time and they were built by paid labourers and not slaves.
Modern history is doing a lot to dispel all the nonsense mythology of the Old Testament.
Very soon it will be relegated to the position of a reference point for the laws and mythology of the Jews and very little else.



I'd go further, claiming that neither Abraham or Moses were historical figures. Claims about Moses' background would be purely speculative, as a literary exercise.

However, examples of mutilation for cultural/religious reasons are quite numerous. We can rule out circumcision as a rite of passage to adulthood, given the age of the victim. As for a hygienic measure of practicality, I'd guess that simply telling people of the practicality would suffice. Speaking of being practical, I'm also assuming that a deity that was both real and all-knowing would simply have said "hey, wash your dink!".

But you are certainly right. Archaeology is rewriting the stories we were fed in Sunday School. (There was no mass Exodus, there were no walls of Jerico, David and Solomon's "vast empire" was little more than a hillside tribe, etc...)

---
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Now stop worrying and enjoy your life.
2/13/2009, 8:38 am Link to this post Send Email to Stormdog   Send PM to Stormdog
 
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Re: Just a little off the top.


I agree with you that they were probably mythological figures in very much the same way that there were other mythological figures in other societies around the same time. The only difference here was that the writing down of the mythological took on the mantle of 'history', I suppose in the same way that the dancing fish in Herodotus was seen as a real event by the people who heard the story at the time he told it, the people of Palestine believed the stories they were told.
For me the real untruth of the Bible lies in the fact that Herodotus does not mention a people living in the Levant who had a history written down. He has a lot to say about the Egyptians and about the way they lived, even to their practice of circumcision which was strange to the Greeks, but he makes no mention of a civilization living in a city named Jerusalem who were taken into slavery by the Babylonians and then allowed to go back to rebuild their city. All of this would have been known in the 'known world' if it really had happened the way the Bible tells it, yet modern religions are based on the truth of this collection of writings simply because it has the thread of an omnipotent God who punishes the people he created but doesn't reward them and the people who he supposedly chose as his own, he allows all the worst things to happen to them.
Anyway, this isn't a discussion about the truth or otherwise of the bible or about whether or not anyone believes in it, I should stick to the thread which was why circumcision and to answer your question, I have no idea why the priests didn't tell them to simply wash themselves, the only thing I can think of is that maybe when they made the decision to cut with a sharpened stone, the infection was so bad that it was either that or lose the appendage and to help with the pain, God was invented.
Is it still valid today? Do people still insist on circumcision?
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Not a physical requirement.


Ever since Paul of Tarsus weighed in on the subject, Christians have been given the ok to merely be circumcised "in the spirit". Interesting to note that here in Canada, performing circumcision on newborns is technically illegal, but gets a free pass because it's for "religious reasons", even though it usually is not.

---
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Now stop worrying and enjoy your life.
2/13/2009, 9:27 am Link to this post Send Email to Stormdog   Send PM to Stormdog
 
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Re: Just a little off the top.


Yes modern thinking is that it is unnecessary trauma and I guess if you're not living in the desert and you're bathing every day (more than once) and wearing underwear, you don't need protection of that sort. I don't know what I would do with a son now. Thank goodness I don't have to make decisions like that anymore.
2/13/2009, 10:11 am Link to this post Send PM to Morwen Oronor Blog
 


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