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Does circumcision promote sexual purity?

Subduction Zone

Veteran Member
You might want to consider that the Egyptians were circumcising before the Jews. And in Oceania, circumcision is practiced by the Australian Aboriganls and Polynesians (since long before contact with the Abrahamic religions). There is also evidence that circumcision was practiced among the Aztecs and Mayans in the Americas, also before contact with Abrahamic religions. (This is less well attested, though.)

And if you think it promotes sexual purity -- well, sorry, you're quite wrong. Circumcised men are having just as much fun as the other sort.
If you have it done as an adult it can lead to sexual purity. For maybe as long as a month.
 

Glaurung

Denizen of Niflheim
The obvious answer is that the Hebrew Bible prescribes circumcision because circumcision was a long established practice of Afroasiatic speaking cultures. The Biblical narrative serves to provide the practice with a mythic/religious justification; which has nothing to do with sexual morality, so much as it does with tribal affiliation. Genesis is explicit about that.
 

John D. Brey

Well-Known Member
I think the purpose of circumcision is to promote sexual purity. I think the process of being circumcised is similar to neutering ones dog. When you neuter a dog, you take care of some behavioral issues that a tame animal shouldn’t have, right? Perhaps not the best comparison :D but that’s what I’m getting at. Circumcising a guy is in a way neutering him. Perhaps it makes it easier to control sexual urges and be pure. Israel was supposed to remain pure as they were the catalyst for the Messiah.

Very insightful. Brit milah, ritual circumcision, is ritualized emasculation. But the Talmud, with most other meaningful Jewish midrashim, makes it clear that brit milah, ritual circumcision, is also a sign, a signifier, an emblem. Which segues into your statement about messiah.

If brit milah, ritual circumcision, is a sign, an emblem, related to messiah, then we have a strangely kerygmatic nuance to brit milah since it's hidden unless the person who is circumcised is naked.

So if brit milah, ritual circumcision, is an emblem related to messiah, then only a naked messiah can reveal, and fulfill, the meaning, the symbolic import, of brit milah.

Which gives me an idea. Combine your question with the last three or four threads I've fed to start a new thread of my own: What did Jesus Look Like Naked.

Hopefully you won't mind me freeloading off your question.



John
 
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