The history of the brit milah ceremony

Ancient examples

Circumcision is an extremely old custom.  Archaeological evidence of the practice of circumcision is abundant and has been found at sites of civilizations going back several millennia.  Examples include:                  

— A stele from Egypt in the 23^rd century BCE that records a King of Lower Egypt stating  “when I was circumcised, together with 120 men …”  

— A bas relief from the sixth Egyptian Dynasty (2350 – 2000 BCE) bearing the legend “circumcision,” which shows a youth being circumcised and having the wound treated.

— A carving from the Temple of Mut from the reign of Thutmose III (reigned 1479-1425 BCE) picturing two boys being circumcised.

— A carved ivory from Megiddo (1350-1150 BCE) illustrating 2 nude military prisoners both of whom are circumcised.

— The passage from Jeremiah 9:25 in which it is noted that the Egyptians, Edomites, Ammonites, and Moabites all practiced circumcision.

— The statement by the Fifth century B.C.E. Greek historian Herodotus noting that Egyptians “practice circumcision for the sake of cleanliness, considering it better to be clean then comely”.

Biblical sources reveal that circumcision was originally performed using knives made of stone:

Exodus 4:25:  “Zipporah took a flint knife and circumcised her son”

Joshua 5:2:  “At that time the Lord said unto Joshua: “ Make flint knives and circumcise the children of Israel once again.” 

Greek and Roman worlds

During ancient times there were also cultures that opposed the practice of circumcision and in fact tried to prevent groups within their society from performing it.  The Greeks thought that circumcision was a desecration of the human body.  Written records from those times reveal two prominent Greeks, Marshall and Petronius, mocking the Jewish practice of circumcision.   The Hellenistic king of the Seleucid Empire, Antiochus, is described in the book of Maccabees as commanding that:

“They [the Jews] should not circumcise.  Every male who disobeys this decree and has his son circumcised will be executed. Women who circumcise their sons will also be executed according to the decree of the Emperor.”

Circumcision became so stigmatized, in fact, that large segments of the Jewish population—in their ardor to adopt Greek habits and practices–stopped circumcising their sons.  One reason was that since athletic events among the Greeks were performed in the nude, circumcised Jewish men who participated in such events stood out as being “different”.  Some Jews even went so far as to undergo procedures on their penises to make it look as if they had not been circumcised.  Rabbis struggling to maintain the practice of circumcision wrote documents such as the Bereshit Rabba to try to rationalize the practice of circumcision to the surrounding Greco-Roman and, subsequently, Christian world.   

The Romans also shunned the practice of circumcision and tried to prevent their subject peoples from practicing it.  Turnus Rufus, a Roman governor who ruled Israel for 60 years after the destruction of the second Temple, forbade both Jewish ritual circumcision and Torah study in an attempt to destroy the Jewish community in Palestine.  As conceited as he was dictatorial, Turnus Rufus attempted to debate Rabbi Akiva about these and other Jewish practices. One story tells of Turnus Rufus asking Rabbi Akiva why Jews thought that performing circumcision—“man’s handiwork”— improved upon God’s creation of man.  Rabbi Akiva’s answer was to show the Roman leader a freshly baked loaf of bread as an example of how mankind takes items as they come from nature—grain, also God’s handiwork—and “improves upon them” by turning them into bread.   Akiva is recorded as saying: 

“Man’s mission is not only to perfect the universe but to transform himself from a human animal into a human being……Jews are here to complete God’s work on earth”

The implication here is that a male child is not “complete” until he is circumcised.  Circumcision is an example, Rabbi Akiva says, of man being given the opportunity to improve upon nature.

Other Roman leaders also opposed circumcision. Emperor Hadrian (reign 117-138 CE), who suppressed the Bar Kokhba revolt in Palestine, issued decrees forbidding the practice.  

The early Christians period

The issue of circumcision was extremely important in the debates that took place at the time of the founding of Christianity. Most of the original church leaders felt that all Christians should also be religious Jews and therefore continue to undergo the ritual of circumcision. They quoted Jesus—himself circumcised—who had said that despite his ministry, there should be no change in the (Jewish) law. 

      Paul

Paul, however, disagreed. He argued in Galatians that salvation no longer had to come via Jewish law but rather that it was obtained by a new means:  Faith in Jesus.  Hence the practice of circumcision was no longer necessary for participation in the new Christian Covenant with God.  Paul’s motive for saying this was not only spiritual; he knew that recruitment of non-Jews into the new faith he was helping create would be much more difficult if all adult men had to undergo the painful procedure of circumcision.  Peter and James also spoke out against continuing the requirement for circumcision for conversion to Christianity, saying that it posed too much of a burden for pagans wanting to enter the church (Acts 15:8 – 20). 

19^th Century

Following the French Revolution in the late 18^th century the harsh conditions of life for Jews in Europe partially relaxed.  As Jews slowly attempted to enter the mainstream of civic and commercial life, they for the first time attended secular institutions of higher learning and became experts in fields other than religious studies.  Thus began the movement called “Haskalah” which represented a breaking away from total immersion in the study of Jewish laws and literature and emergence and success in the wider world.

One of the earliest manifestations of this trend was the movement in Germany to “reform” the practices of Judaism to make them more similar to those of the religious customs of the surrounding community.  To this end prayer books were rewritten, men and women for the first time were seated together in synagogue, and adherence to many Jewish traditions waned.

Some rabbis even argued that the practice of circumcision, “a cruel and bloody rite”, should be abandoned.  Jewish leaders such as Gabriel Riesser and Abraham Geiger discouraged their congregants from having their sons circumcised, urging instead that Jews celebrate the birth of their children, boys and girls equally, with a ceremony called “sanctification of the eighth day.” It must be remembered that all of this occurred at a time when many Jews were optimistic about their ability to integrate into their surrounding societies.  They were thus willing to make the devil’s bargain of dropping part of their religious identity in order to foster social integration. It was part of the same phenomenon that occurred throughout the 19^th century by which Jews “converted” to Christian denominations in an attempt to dispel obstructions existing for them in society at large.

20^th Century

In Europe circumcision remained a procedure practiced almost exclusively by Jews.  In fact, being circumcised was often the way oppressors identified Jews in order to single them out for discrimination, punishment, or even—by World War II—death.

By the mid-20^th century in America—largely for hygienic reasons—circumcision had become a generally adopted practice.  Because of this, being circumcised was no longer a “Jewish stigma”. The American Reform Movement, which had initially opposed circumcision, dropped its opposition early in the 20^th Century and by the 1970s had become a strong advocate of the brit milah ceremony as an important lifecycle event.  Currently the majority of all American newborn males are circumcised although this varies from region to region and from ethnic group to ethnic group.