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Historical SummaryThe unique concentration of the Jews on circumcision as a political symbol is explicable as a feature of the struggle of a desert group, with a Canaan complex, seeking a place in the fertile crescent of Mesopotamia and at war with Egyptians, Hittites, Babylonians on their borders and with the Philistines and other groups within the borders. The early books of the Old Testament have numerous passages which may be viewed as propaganda of the rite, always associated with the promotion of the worship of Yahweh. In the covenant between Yahweh and Abraham (Genesis 17) circumcision is made the condition of tribal fertility, increase, and conquest. In Joshua 5: 2–9 a whole army is circumcised. The tavern brawl in Genesis 4: 24–26, where Yahweh is bent on killing Moses, is evidently a mutilated and not completely intelligible fragment of a longer narrative having the same propaganda value:
And it came to pass by the way in the inn that the Lord met him and sought to kill him. Then Zipporah took a sharp stone and cut off the foreskin of her son and cast it at his feet, and said: "Surely a bloody husband art thou to me." Then he let them go.
It is known that "feet" in this connection, like "thigh" in Genesis 24: 2 and 32: 25, is a euphemism of the translators for "sexual parts," but it is not plain toward whose sexual organs the foreskin was cast. "His" is usually interpreted as referring to Moses, who was uncircumcised, having been born in Egypt and having spent his time in the wilderness, but the historian Meyer1 has plausibly contended that the bloody foreskin was cast toward Yahweh himself, and that "you are now my bloodly husband" was a symbolism, a compulsive magical formula placating him.
1Meyer, E.n/an/an/an/an/a, , 59.
Chicago: Die Israeliten in Primitive Behavior: An Introduction to the Social Sciences, ed. Thomas, William I. (New York: McGraw-Hill Book Company, Inc., 1937), Original Sources, accessed April 19, 2024, http://www.originalsources.com/Document.aspx?DocID=N4BC866A964C94C.
MLA: . Die Israeliten, in Primitive Behavior: An Introduction to the Social Sciences, edited by Thomas, William I., New York, McGraw-Hill Book Company, Inc., 1937, Original Sources. 19 Apr. 2024. http://www.originalsources.com/Document.aspx?DocID=N4BC866A964C94C.
Harvard: , Die Israeliten. cited in 1937, Primitive Behavior: An Introduction to the Social Sciences, ed. , McGraw-Hill Book Company, Inc., New York. Original Sources, retrieved 19 April 2024, from http://www.originalsources.com/Document.aspx?DocID=N4BC866A964C94C.
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