(7-minute read)

Through one lens, the Bible essentially amounts to an anthology of foreskin stories and penis parables.

The mythical pre-history of Israel begins in the book of Genesis with Abraham, the legendary patriarch of patriarchs, born in a city on the Persian Gulf in what is now Iraq. While living in what is now northern Syria, he agrees to practice circumcision in exchange for a divine land grant of several thousand square miles in Canaan [Genesis 17]. So, Abraham cuts off his own 99-year-old foreskin, that of his 13-year-old son Ishmael, and later the tiny foreskin of 8-day-old Isaac. According to this “Abrahamic Covenant”, the punishment henceforth for a Hebrew man failing to have his foreskin removed will be excommunication.

From the Hebrew Tanak through the Christian New Testament, the Bible’s entire narrative arc hinges on foreskin removal policy. Consider that, if Abraham had not gone under the knife to secure the divinely-promised land . . . then Moses could not later lead Hebrew-speakers from Egypt back to that land . . . and thus Judaism would not have become a thing in Canaan . . . and therefore a dissident Jew from the Roman-controlled province of Galilee would not one day be posthumously deemed a salvific demi-god.

Ritual male circumcision was common to many of the Bronze and Iron Age cultures surrounding Canaan. The practice is now thought to have originated as a substitute for child sacrifice. For Hebrew-speaking Canaanites, removing the foreskin symbolized submission to and bond with God. Accordingly, their scriptures exhort men to also remove the “foreskin of their hearts” [Jeremiah 4, Deuteronomy 10].

The Hebrew Bible consistently portrays male genitalia as highly potent. For example, damaged testicles are enough to disqualify a man from Yahweh worship [Deuteronomy 23]. Divine law says that, even if a woman grabs a man’s junk for the just purpose of stopping him from beating up her husband, her hand can still be amputated as punishment [Deuteronomy 25]. Back in the opening scene of Genesis, women and men are created concurrently and equally; but, in the second version of creation that follows, God fashions the first woman out of a man’s “lateral limb” (tsela) [Genesis 2]. Hebrew scholars lack certainty about the word’s meaning, and although it has often been interpreted as a rib, some have suggested it could have referred to the penis.

In the Biblical world, wielding a penis could get you a bride. For example, men could rape their way into marriage, given a modest 50-shekel fee to the victim’s father [Deuteronomy 22]. Penis-entitlement also shows up as Sodomites demanding to gang rape male visitors [Genesis 19] and Benjaminites demanding to gang rape a fellow male Israelite traveler [Judges 19]. In both cases, a lower-value target—i.e., a woman—is offered up to the mob. (Regarding male homosexual sex, the Bible saw need to regulate it only because it was, evidently, prevalent. It is described as an “abomination” (toevah) . . . but only one as horrifying as the “abominations” of uneven weight scales [Proverbs 20], incense [Isaiah 1], and Egyptians dining with Hebrews [Genesis 43].)

Meanwhile, in contrast to the Bible’s pervasive penis focus, knowledge of female genitalia is entirely absent from the text. For example, if a bride’s hymen was already broken (as we now know most naturally are without outside force) or she didn’t bleed on the wedding night (which we now know is usually caused by unlubricated intercourse, rather than being indicative a physiological condition), she could be executed by stoning [Deuteronomy 22].

The Hebrew Bible writers apparently considered penis power dynamics too self-evident to warrant a full explanation. For example, the story of Moses violating the Abrahamic Covenant remains one of the Torah’s most perplexing passages. God is about to kill off Moses for neglecting to circumcise his infant son; but, the resourceful Zipporah snips off the baby’s foreskin just in time [Exodus 4]. That one bloody, tiny foreskin then changes world history: Moses survives to later liberate some 1.5 million Israelites out of Egypt and receive divine legislation that shapes the course of Western civilization. As for Zipporah, she doesn’t get her hand cut off, thankfully . . . but she doesn’t get acknowledged as a heroine either.

The ponderous “Law of Moses” emphasizes the importance of foreskin removal. In fact, the “rest-on-the-Sabbath-or-die” commandment [Exodus 31] is interpreted to exempt the work of performing eighth-day circumcision, given that such work is theologically more important than Sabbath observance [Mishnah; Gospel of John 7]. Even so, the Israelites fall off the circumcision wagon during their legendary time in Sinai. After wandering in the desert for 40 years, the Israelites launch a genocidal (and now known to be non-historical) invasion of the territory that had been divinely promised to Abraham six centuries prior. D-Day for Canaan begins with a pit stop at the “Hill of Foreskins” (gibʿat hā-ʿarālōwt) to circumcise 40,000 Israelite troops [Joshua 5]. 

Once living in the Promised Land, the Israelites spend centuries skirmishing with the uncircumcised Philistine “Other”. Archaeology identifies the Philistines as an amalgam of Aegean and European peoples who maintained a culturally-distinct civilization on the Canaanite coast from about 1200 to 604 BCE, when we know from archaeological evidence that they were permanently wiped out by Babylonian conquest (a handful of years before the Jews were also conquered by the Babylonians, but temporarily exiled rather than wiped out). In the Hebrew Bible, when Philistines steal the Ark of the Covenant, Yahweh punishes them with an unspecified genital affliction [1 Samuel 5]. Contemporary archaeologists suggest that unearthed Philistine gold phallus totems may relate to this tale.

Continuing forward in narrative time, we read that an ambitious young Bethlehemite named David trades 200 dead Philistines’ foreskins for permission to marry Princess Michal [1 Samuel 18]. David’s circumcision-murders pave his way to kingship . . . and to a thousand-year lineage that will be credited with producing a Messiah named Jesus. Today, Jesus is considered a god or important prophet by some 55% of the world population—a massive “butterfly effect” dependent on butterflying enemy foreskins.

In the 8th century BCE, the Bible’s literary narrative begins to align with factual history. Assyria subsumes Israel, whose refugees flood into Judah and trigger an economic boom and cultural renaissance. The Hebrew cultic ritual policy triad of foreskins-bacon-idols oscillates between liberalism and conservatism for a few generations, until the caesura of Babylonian conquest. Exile of the elites—a trauma so definitive that all subsequent Jewish scripture can be simply classified as “post-exilic”—is also explained within the familiar penis-power framework: donkey-sized penises producing voluminous ejaculate tempted the body of Israel away from her husband-god Yahweh [Ezekiel 23].

When Hellenist darkness descends upon late 4th century BCE Palestine, circumcision suddenly constitutes a capital offense. Foreskin restoration also becomes a thing, so that Jewish men can participate in naked sports without offending the Greeks [1 Maccabees 1]. But the foreskin policy pendulum soon enough swings to the opposite extreme, when the Levitical Jewish Hasmoneans assume power in the mid-2nd century BCE. Jews forcibly circumcise lapsed brethren at home and also conquer Gentiles in the regions of present-day Lebanon, western Jordan, and southern Israel [1 Maccabees 2, Josephus]. 

The turn of the millennium era in Jerusalem produces the secular erotic poetry text we call “The Song of Solomon”. In stark contrast to the exploitative, non-consensual sex elsewhere in the Bible, this text celebrates mutual devotion and sexuality between an earnest, tender man and an empowered, eager woman. Penises make an appearance (as sweet fruit), but so do vaginas (as a pomegranate orchard). Foreskins are, for once, not mentioned—and presumably absent.

Around the same timeframe, a certain Torah-abiding couple in Bethlehem has their infant son Jesus circumcised on the traditional eighth day of his life. Over subsequent centuries, multiple alleged foreskins of Jesus will surface in the sacred relics circuit.

The New Testament does not ascribe any penis talk to Jesus at all. He is portrayed as entirely silent on the topics of sex and foreskins. For once in the long history of Israel as told in the Bible, penises and penis sheaths are not the focus. Still, one 2nd- or 3rd-century CE lost scripture explicitly describes Jesus as presenting a handful of his own semen to Mary Magdalene after pulling out of another woman [The Greater Questions of Mary].  

After Jesus’ untimely death, foreskin policy controversy erupts again. Many of his early followers assert that spiritual salvation requires foreskin removal—even for adult Greek men eager to join the new movement. Another faction notes that pre-Abrahamic Hebrews like Noah and Enoch had fared just fine in life with foreskin-covered penises. Some aver that foreskin removal is not just unnecessary, but spiritually harmful. Symptomatic of this rancorous debate, the New Testament mentions circumcision almost as often as it mentions crucifixion.

The Apostle Paul (himself a circumcised Jew) has the game-changing epiphany that, as a practical matter, adult male circumcision requirements inhibit conversion rates. His radical advocacy of foreskin preservation enables Christianity’s rapid spread across Europe and the Middle East. “We are the circumcision!” goes one placard-worthy argument [Philippians 3].

Paul treks 400 miles south from Antioch to Jerusalem to seek approval from church authorities for his policy of foreskin retention [Acts of the Apostles 15]. Because Paul wins his case, Christian men will be identifiable by their intact foreskins for the next couple millennia (an identifying feature exploited to unspeakable horror in the Holocaust). As one exception, circumcision has been common among British Christian aristocrats, because the royal house of Windsor conceptualizes its lineage back to the Jewish House of David. 

Some six hundred years later, the Quran references and adapts many Jewish and Christian traditions . . . but, curiously, not the theological centrality of foreskins, which are not even mentioned. It is unclear whether the writers of the Quran would have had intact foreskins. Circumcision was practiced among some pre-Islamic Arabian pagans in the Hijaz, but not in the Christian Roman province of Arabia Petraea (the best candidate for the Quran’s place of origin). Regardless, in post-Quranic commentary, Islam adopted the custom of male circumcision. (And also sanctioned the inhumane practice of female genital mutilation, which is often defended by erronesously labelling it “circumcision”.)

In the early 20th century, non-religious circumcision suddenly became popular in the (predominantly Christian) West, fueled by pseudo-scientific health claims. By the 1950s, circumcision rates peaked at 90% in the United States (20% in Britain). Today, the rate has declined to 60% (5% in Britain). Increasingly, even Biblical literalists typically decide the issue for their newborn boys on medical or aesthetic grounds rather on than scriptural grounds. Thus, in the West, Abrahamic religion’s 3000-year-long foreskin epic has come to a close.

— December 2017