I. There are three distinct narratives in the sacred literature of the Jews which claim to be considered. It is related in Gen. xvii. that when Abram the Hebrew was ninety-nine years of age, he became a party on behalf of himself and his descendants to a covenant with his God. Of this covenant the sign and condition was circumcision, which was directed to be performed (a peculiarity of Judaism) cn the eighth day after the child’s birth. Is this account, we may ask, based on a historical tradition 1 If so, the circumcision of the Israelites is entirely unconnected with that of other nations unless indeed other nations have borrowed theirs from the Israelites. This has actually been maintained in the case of the Egyptians by Archdeacon Hardwicke, but the theory is not only improbable in itself, considering the imitative character of the Israelites, and their low reputation in Egypt (Gen. xlvi. 34), but contrary to the evidence of the Egyptian monuments (see below). If, as has been supposed by some, the document to which Gen. xvii. belongs is of post-captivity origin, this would put it out of court as a witness to the popular tradition of the Hebrews. But there is another narrative, apparently of ∙ a more archaic complexion, which leads to a directly opposite historical result. We read in Exod. iv. 25, 26, that when Moses was returning from Midian to Egypt, he was in danger of his life, owing to the neglect of the rite of circumcision in his family. “And Zipporah,” his Midianitish wife, “took a sharp stone, and cut off the foreskin of her son, and cast it at his feet, and said, Surely a khathan (Auth. Vers., ‘ husband ’) of blood art thou to me; so he (sc., the offended deity) desisted from him. At that time she said, A khathan of blood, with reference to the circumcision.” The meaning of this story can still be discerned. Khathan, or khatan, meant originally not “husband” (as Auth. Vers, of Exodus), nor “son-in-law” (as in ordinary Arabic), but “a newly-admitted member of the family.” This appears from the sense of Arab, khatana, “to provide a wedding-feast,” and khatana, “to give or receive a daughter in marriage.” So that in the sense of the old Hebrew tradition, “a khathan of blood” meant “one who has become a khathan, not by marriage, but by circumcision,” a meaning which is still further confirmed by the derived sense of Arab, khatana “to circumcise,” circumcision being performed in Arabia at the age of puberty. To sum up :—an Arabian woman plays the chief part in the story, and her words are only explicable from the Arabic; it is also far from improbable that Yahweh (or Jehovah) was himself first made known to the Jews in Arabia (comp. Judg. v. 4, Hab. iii. 3); putting all which together, we obtain a strong case for the hypothesis of the Arabian origin of Jewish circumcision.

The-third narrative is Josh. v. 2-9, where Joshua is said to have circumcised the children of Israel a second time with “knives of stone,” and to have thus “rolled away the reproach of Egypt from off them.” It is not unnatural that this should have been used by some to confirm the view of an Egyptian origin of circumcision, among others by Dr Ebers, who refers to the additional words in the Septuagint, Josh, xxiv. 31, “There they buried with him the stone knives with which he had circumcised the children of Israel in Gilgal.” But, first, with regard to this singular statement of the Alexandrine version, it must henceforth be abandoned by all scholars. It is simply an unscientific attempt to account for the existence near Joshua’s supposed tomb of flint instruments, such as those discovered by Μ. Guérin on this very site. It need hardly be added that the flint instruments discovered by the French savant were really pre-historic; they consist not only of knives, but of saws, which would hardly have been available for the purpose ascribed to Joshua (see Burton and Drake’s Unexplored Syria, ii. 295-300). And, secondly, Bishop Colenso has shown some reason for the suspicion that verses 2 to 8 (not verse 9) are later additions to the narrative, in which case the “reproach of Egypt” means, not the state of uncircumcision, but the contempt of the Egyptians so forcibly expressed in Exod. xxxii. 12, Num. xiv. 13-16. As for the “knives of stone” (comp. Josh, xxiv. 31, Sent.), on which Ebers has laid some stress, such implements are not distinctively Egyptian, if they were even employed at all by the Egyptians for the purpose of circumcision. It is true that Herodotus (ii. 104, comp. Diod. Sic., i. 28) asserts the Egyptian origin of circumcision to have been admitted in Palestine, but he is probably only right so far as the Phoenicians or Canaanites are concerned.

II. We may now proceed to consider circumcision from an ethnographical point of view. It was not a specially Semitic rite, being only known to the southern and western Semites, who probably derived it directly or indirectly from the Egyptians, if not from some entirely non-Semitic source. Though not referred to in the Koran, it was a primitive Arabian custom to circumcise youths at their entrance on puberty (t.e., between their tenth and fifteenth year), as appears not only from Gen. xvii. 25, Jos. Antiq., i. 12, 2, but from the express statement of Ibn-al-Athír (quoted by Pococke, Specimen Hist. Arabum, p. 319), which is confirmed by a remarkable passage in the life of the old Arabian poet Dhû l-isba (Zeitschr. f. d. Kunde des Morgenlandes, iii. 230). From Arabia it was carried by the preachers of Islam to Persia, India, and Turkey; from Arabia, too, as we have seen, it probably came in remote times to the Israelites. The circumcision of the Phoenicians or Canaanites has been disputed, but is attested by Herodotus (ii. 104), and is confirmed by the story in Gen. xxxiv., as also by the fact that the term of contempt, “the uncircumcised,” is reserved in the Old Testament for the Philistines. The rite seems, however, to have fallen into disuse in later times in Phoenicia as well as in Egypt (Dr Ebers refers to the uncircumcised figures on the stele of Pianchi, comp, also Herod, l.c., Jos. Antiq., viii. 10, 3, Contr. Ap. i. 22, and perhaps Ezek. xxxii. 24, 30), which may partly account for its being afterwards regarded as distinctive of the Jews. The Egyptians, too, were circumcised, and that prior to the immigration of the Hebrews (Wilkinson), as appears from the representations on the very earliest monuments. The most striking of these is the scene on a bas-relief discovered in the temple of Chunsu at Karnak, a drawing of which is given by Μ. Chabas and Dr Ebers. The subjects of the operation are apparently the two children of Rameses IL, the founder of the temple. Their age, says Dr Ebers, must be between six and ten, which agrees with the present custom in Egypt, where, as Mr Lane tells us, circumcision is generally performed in the fifth or sixth year, though often postponed by peasants to the twelfth, thirteenth, or even fourteenth year (Modern Egyptians, i. 71). It has often been asserted that only the priests underwent the operation, but there is no earlier evidence for this than that of Origen (ed. Lommatzsch, iv. 138), in whose time it is quite possible that the Egyptians, like the later Jews, sought to evade a peculiarity which exposed them to ridicule and contempt.

But the rite of circumcision is known among nations which cannot be suspected of communication with Egypt. Similar causes produce similar effects all the world over. It was in use in some form among the ancient civilized peoples of Central America, though this is better attested of the Nahua branch (including the Aztecs) than of the Maya (Bancroft, Native Races, vol. iii.). It is still kept up among the Teamas and Manaos on the Amazon; also among three distinct races in the South Seas, among most of the tribes of Australia, among the Papuans, the New Caledonians, and the inhabitants of the New Hebrides. It is widely spread in Africa, especially among the Kaffir tribes. Among the Bechuanas the boys who are circumcised together form a sort of society, for which among other reasons, Waitz conjectures that the Bechuanas communicated the rite to the other Kaffirs. Prichard (Physical History of Mankind, ii. 287) rightly dismisses the idea that the Kaffirs borrowed the rite from Mahometan nations, though the progress of Islam will help to account for its prevalence in other parts of Africa.

III. Very different views were held in antiquity as to the meaning of the rite of circumcision. There was a myth common to Egypt and Phoenicia, though not of very ancient <late in its extant Egyptian form, which seems to bring circumcision into connection with the Sun-god. In the Book of ths Dead, chap, xvii., we read of “the blood which proceeded from the limb of the god Ra, when he wished to cut himself,” which the late Vicomte de Rougé interpreted, with much plausibility, of circumcision (Revue archéologique, nouv. série, i. 244:). And in a fragment of the Philonian Sanchoniathon (Fragmenta Historicorum Groecorum, ed. Müller, iii. 568, 569), we find a similar tale of El circumcising his father Uranos, or, according to another version, himself, and the blood flowing into the springs and rivers. Space forbids us to discuss the bearings of this myth. Herodotus (it 37) ascribes the Egyptian custom to the motive of cleanliness (καθαριότητας eινeκa). This is also one of the four causes reported on the authority of tradition by Philo the Jew (Opera, ed. Mangey, ii. 210), the three others being the avoidance of carbuncle, the symbolizing of purity of heart, and the attainment of a numerous offspring. Mere cleanliness, however, seems hardly an adequate motive for the practice. Sanitary reasons seem much more probable, judging from the well-ascertained physical advantages of circumcision to the Jewish race. But even this is not a complete explanation. Why was the practice adopted by some nations and not by others ì The most scientific theory is that which refers it to a religious instinct common to all nations, though not always expressing itself in the same way, and this seems even to be at least obscurely indicated by the tradition of the Israelities. The prophet Jeremiah (ix. 25, 26), too, puts it in the same class with cutting off the hair (comp. Herod, iii. 8), which, like other bodily mutilations, has been shown to be of the nature of a representative sacrifice (Tylor ’ s Primitive Culture, ii. 363, 364). The principle of substitution was familiar to all ancient nations, and not least to the Israelites. Witness the story of Gen.xxii.,tbe paschal lamb, and the redemption of the first-born by an offering (Exod. xiii. 11-16), and compare the singular phrase ascribed to Saul in 1 Sam. xviii. 25. On this principle circumcision was an economical recognition of the divine ownership of human life, a part of the body being sacrificed to preserve the remainder. But it was more than this; otherwise it would scarcely have asserted its claim to existence among the Jews, when all other mutilations were strictly forbidden as heathenish (Lev. xix. 27, xxi. 5). It can scarcely be doubted that it was a sacrifice to the awful power upon whom the fruit of the womb depended, and having once fixed itself in the minds of the people, neither priest nor prophet could eradicate it. All that these could do was to spiritualize it into a symbol of devotion to a high religious ideal (comp. Jer. iv. 4; Deut. x. 16; Jer. ix. 25).

In conclusion, we must briefly refer to an analogous rite, of which women are in many countries the subjects. It is said to consist in mutilation of the clitoris, which is sometimes connected with the degrading practice of infibulation. It was prevalent in the time of Strabo (pp. 771, 824) in Arabia and in Egypt, and, as Mr Lane attests, is still native to those regions (Modem Egyptians, í 73, Arabis Lexicon, s. v. “hafada”). Carsten Niebuhr heard that it was practised on both shores of the Persian Gulf, and at Baghdad (Description de l ’ Arabis, p. 70). It appears in some parts of West Africa, e.g., Dahomey, but is said to be still more common in the eastern part of that continent.

See F. C. Baur, Tübinger Zeitschrift, 1832, Heft 1; Ewald, Antiquities of Israel, Eng. Trans., pp. 89-97; Büdinger, “Egyρt-ische Einwirkungen auf Hebräische Culte,” in Berichts of Vienna Academy; Sir Gardner Wilkinson, Ancient Egypt, vol. v. p. 318; Chabas, Revue archéologique, n. s., vol. iii. pp. 298-300; Ebers, Egypten und dis Bücher Μosis, vol. i. pp. 278-284; G. Grey, Travels in Australia, vol. ii. p. 343; Waitz, Anthropologie der Naturvölker, vol. ii. pp. Ill, 390; Peschei, Völkerkunde ; Burton, “Notes connected with the Dahomans,” in Memoirs of the Anthropological Society, ” 1863-64. (T. K. C.j

_Covenant of_. That the covenant with Abraham, of which circumcision was made the sign and seal, Genesis xvii, 7–14, was the general covenant of grace, and not wholly, or even chiefly, a political and national covenant, may be satisfactorily established. The first engagement in it was, that God would “greatly bless” Abraham; which promise, although it comprehended temporal blessings, referred, as we learn from St. Paul, more fully to the blessing of his justification by the imputation of his faith for righteousness, with all the spiritual advantages consequent upon the relation which was thus established between him and God, in time and eternity. The second promise in the covenant was, that he should be “the father of many nations;” which we are also taught by St. Paul to interpret more with reference to his spiritual seed, the followers of that faith whereof cometh justification, than to his natural descendants. “That the promise might be sure to all the seed, not only to that which is by the law, but to that also which is by _the faith_ of Abraham, who is the father of _us all_,”--of all believing Gentiles as well as Jews. The third stipulation in God’s covenant with the patriarch, was the gift to Abraham and to his seed of “the land of Canaan,” in which the temporal promise was manifestly but the type of the higher promise of a heavenly inheritance. Hence St. Paul says, “By _faith_ he sojourned in the land of promise, dwelling in tabernacles with Isaac and Jacob, the heirs with him of the same promise;” but this “faith” did not respect the fulfilment of the temporal promise; for St. Paul adds, “they looked for a city which had foundations, whose builder and maker is God,” Heb. xi, 19. The next promise was, that God would always be “a God to Abraham and to his seed after him,” a promise which is connected with the highest spiritual blessings, such as the remission of sins, and the sanctification of our nature, as well as with a visible church state. It is even used to express the felicitous state of the church in heaven, Rev. xxi, 3. The final engagement in the Abrahamic covenant was, that in Abraham’s “seed, all nations of the earth should be blessed;” and this blessing, we are expressly taught by St. Paul, was nothing less than the justification of all nations, that is, of all believers in all nations, by faith in Christ: “And the Scripture, foreseeing that God would justify the Heathen by faith, preached before the Gospel to Abraham, saying, In thee shall all nations be blessed. So then they who are of faith are blessed with believing Abraham;” they receive the same blessing, justification, by the same means, faith, Gal. iii, 8, 9. This covenant with Abraham, therefore, although it respected a natural seed, Isaac, from whom a numerous progeny was to spring; and an earthly inheritance provided for this issue, the land of Canaan; and a special covenant relation with the descendants of Isaac, through the line of Jacob, to whom Jehovah was to be “a God,” visibly and specially, and they a visible and “peculiar people;” yet was, under all these temporal, earthly, and external advantages, but a higher and spiritual grace embodying itself under these circumstances, as types of a dispensation of salvation and eternal life, to all who should follow the faith of Abraham, whose justification before God was the pattern of the justification of every man, whether Jew or Gentile, in all ages. Now, of this covenant, in its spiritual as well as in its temporal provisions, circumcision was most certainly the sacrament, that is the “sign” and the “seal;” for St. Paul thus explains the case: “And he received the SIGN of circumcision, a SEAL of the righteousness of the faith which he had yet being uncircumcised.” And as this rite was enjoined upon Abraham’s posterity, so that every “uncircumcised man-child whose flesh of his foreskin was not circumcised on the eighth day,” was to be “cut off from his people,” by the special judgment of God, and that because “he had broken God’s _covenant_,” Gen. xvii, 14; it therefore follows that this rite was a constant publication of God’s covenant of grace among the descendants of Abraham, and its repetition a continual confirmation of that covenant, on the part of God, to all practising it in that faith of which it was the ostensible expression.

As the covenant of grace made with Abraham was bound up with temporal promises and privileges, so circumcision was a sign and seal of the covenant in both its parts,--its spiritual and its temporal, its superior and inferior provisions. The spiritual promises of the covenant continued unrestricted to all the descendants of Abraham, whether by Isaac or by Ishmael; and still lower down, to the descendants of Esau as well as to those of Jacob. Circumcision was practised among them all by virtue of its divine institution at first; and was extended to their foreign servants, and to proselytes, as well as to their children; and where-ever the sign of the covenant of grace was by divine appointment, there it was as a _seal_ of that covenant, to all who believingly used it; for we read of no restriction of its spiritual blessings, that is, its saving engagements, to one line of descent from Abraham only. But over the _temporal_ branch of the covenant, and the _external_ religious privileges arising out of it, God exercised a rightful sovereignty, and expressly restricted them first to the line of Isaac, and then to that of Jacob, with whose descendants he entered into special covenant by the ministry of Moses. The temporal blessings and external privileges comprised under general expressions in the covenant with Abraham, were explained and enlarged under that of Moses, while the spiritual blessings remained unrestricted as before. This was probably the reason why circumcision was reënacted under the law of Moses. It was a confirmation of the temporal blessings of the Abrahamic covenant, now, by a covenant of peculiarity, made over to them, while it was still recognized as a consuetudinary rite which had descended to them from their fathers, and as the sign and seal of the covenant of grace, made with Abraham and with all his descendants without exception. This double reference of circumcision, both to the authority of Moses and to that of the patriarchs, is found in the words of our Lord, John vii, 22: “Moses therefore gave unto you circumcision, not because it is of Moses, but of the fathers;” or, as it is better translated by Campbell, “Moses instituted circumcision among you, (not that it is from Moses, but from the patriarchs,) and ye circumcise on the Sabbath. If on the Sabbath a child receive circumcision, that the _law of Moses_ may not be violated,” &c.

From these observations, the controversy in the Apostolic churches respecting circumcision will derive much elucidation. The covenant with Abraham prescribed circumcision as an act of faith in its promises, and as a pledge to perform its conditions on the part of his descendants. But the object on which this faith rested, was “the Seed of Abraham,” in whom the nations of the earth were to be blessed: which Seed, says St. Paul, “is Christ,”--Christ as promised, not yet come. When the Christ had come, so as fully to enter upon his redeeming offices, he could no longer be the object of faith, as still to come; and this leading promise of the covenant being accomplished, the sign and seal of it vanished away. Nor could circumcision be continued in _this view_ by any, without an implied denial that Jesus was the Christ, the expected Seed of Abraham. Circumcision also as an institution of Moses, who continued it as the sign and seal of the Abrahamic covenant both in its spiritual and temporal provisions, but with respect to the latter made it also a sign and seal of the restriction of its temporal blessings and peculiar religious privileges to the descendants of Israel, was terminated by the entrance of our Lord upon his office of Mediator, in which office all nations were to be blessed in him. The Mosaic edition of the covenant not only guaranteed the land of Canaan, but the peculiarity of the Israelites, as the people and visible church of God to the exclusion of others, except by proselytism. But when our Lord commanded the Gospel to be preached to “all nations,” and opened the gates of the “common salvation” to all, whether Gentiles or Jews, circumcision, as the sign of a covenant of peculiarity and religious distinction, was also done away. It had not only no reason remaining, but the continuance of the rite involved the recognition of exclusive privileges which had been terminated by Christ. This will explain the views of the Apostle Paul on this great question. He declares that in Christ there is neither circumcision nor uncircumcision; that neither circumcision availeth any thing, nor uncircumcision, but “faith that worketh by love;” faith in the Seed of Abraham already come and already engaged in his mediatorial and redeeming work; faith, by virtue of which the Gentiles came into the church of Christ on the same terms as the Jews themselves, and were justified and saved. The doctrine of the non-necessity of circumcision, he applies to the Jews as well as to the Gentiles, although he specially resists the attempts of the Judaizers to impose this rite upon the Gentile converts; in which he was supported by the decision of the Holy Spirit when the appeal upon this question was made to “the Apostles and elders at Jerusalem,” from the church at Antioch. At the same time it is clear that he takes two different views of the practice of circumcision, as it was continued among many of the first Christians. The first is that strong one which is expressed in Gal. v, 2–4, “Behold, I Paul say unto you, that if ye be circumcised, Christ shall profit you nothing; for I testify again to every man that is circumcised, that he is a debtor to do the whole law. Christ is made of no effect unto you, whosoever of you are justified by the law, ye are fallen from grace.” The second is that milder view which he himself must have had when he circumcised Timothy to render him more acceptable to the Jews; and which also appears to have led him to abstain from all allusion to this practice when writing his epistle to the believing Hebrews, although many, perhaps most of them, continue to circumcise their children, as did the Jewish Christians for a long time afterward. These different views of circumcision, held by the same person, may be explained by considering the different principles on which circumcision might be practised after it had become an obsolete ordinance. (1.) It might be taken in the simple view of its first institution, as the sign and seal of the Abrahamic covenant; and then it was to be condemned as involving a denial that Abraham’s Seed, the Christ, had already come, since, upon his coming, every old covenant gave place to the new covenant introduced by him. (2.) It might be practised and enjoined as the sign and seal of the Mosaic covenant, which was still the Abrahamic covenant with its spiritual blessings, but with restriction of its temporal promises and special ecclesiastical privileges to the line of Jacob, with a law of observances which was obligatory upon all entering that covenant by circumcision. In that case it involved, in like manner, the notion of the continuance of an old covenant, after the establishment of the new; for thus St. Paul states the case in Galatians iii, 19: “Wherefore then serveth the law? It was added because of transgressions until the Seed should come.” After that therefore it had no effect:--it had waxed old, and had vanished away. (3.) Again: circumcision might imply an obligation to observe all the ceremonial usages and the moral precepts of the Mosaic law, along with a general belief in the mission of Christ, as necessary to justification before God. This appears to have been the view of those among the Galatian Christians who submitted to circumcision, and of the Jewish teachers who enjoined it upon them; for St. Paul in that epistle constantly joins circumcision with legal observances, and as involving an obligation to do “the whole law,” in order to justification.--“I testify again to every man that is circumcised, that he is a debtor to do the whole law; whosoever of you are justified by the law, ye are fallen from grace.” “Knowing that a man is not justified by the works of the law, but by the faith of our Lord Jesus Christ,” Gal. ii, 16. To all persons therefore practising circumcision in this view it was obvious, that “Christ was become of none effect,” the very principle of justification by faith alone in him was renounced even while his divine mission was still admitted. (4.) But there are two grounds on which circumcision maybe conceived to have been innocently, though not wisely, practised, among the Christian Jews. The first was that of preserving an ancient national distinction on which they valued themselves; and were a converted Jew in the present day disposed to perform that rite upon his children for this purpose only, renouncing in the act all consideration of it as a sign and seal of the old covenants, or as obliging to ceremonial acts in order to justification, no one would censure him with severity. It appears clear that it was under some such view that St. Paul circumcised Timothy, whose mother was a Jewess; he did it because of “the Jews which were in those quarters,” that is, because of their national prejudices, “for they knew that his father was a Greek.” The second was a lingering notion, that, even in the Christian church, the Jews who believed would still retain some degree of eminence, some superior relation to God; a notion which, however unfounded, was not one which demanded direct rebuke, when it did not proudly refuse spiritual communion with the converted Gentiles, but was held by men who “rejoiced that God had granted to the Gentiles repentance unto life.” These considerations may account for the silence of St. Paul on the subject of circumcision in his Epistle to the Hebrews. Some of them continued to practise that rite, but they were probably believers of the class just mentioned; for had he thought that the rite was continued among them on any principle which affected the fundamental doctrines of Christianity, he would no doubt have been equally prompt and fearless in pointing out that apostasy from Christ which was implied in it, as when he wrote to the Galatians. Not only might circumcision be practised with views so opposite that one might be wholly innocent, although an infirmity of prejudice; the other such as would involve a rejection of the doctrine of justification by faith in Christ; but some other Jewish observances also stood in the same circumstances. St. Paul in his Epistle to the Galatians, a part of his writings from which we obtain the most information on these questions, grounds his “doubts” whether the members of that church were not seeking to be “justified by the law” upon their observing “days, and months, and times, and years.” Had he done more than “doubt,” he would have expressed himself more positively. He saw their danger on this point; he saw that they were taking steps to this fatal result, by such an observance of these “days,” &c, as had a strong leaning and dangerous approach to that dependence upon them for justification, which would destroy their faith in Christ’s solely sufficient sacrifice; but his very doubting, not of the fact of their being addicted to these observances, but of the _animus_ with which they regarded them, supposes it possible, however dangerous this Jewish conformity might be, that they might be observed for reasons which would still consist with their entire reliance upon the merits of Christ for salvation. Even he himself, strongly as he resisted the imposition of this conformity to Jewish customs upon the converts to Christianity as a matter of necessity, yet in practice must have conformed to many of them, when no sacrifice of principle was understood; for, in order to gain the Jews, he became “as a Jew.” See ABRAHAM, and BAPTISM.