Circumcision: An ancient Egyptian custom.

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M*W: As seen in surviving mummies, the ancient practice of circumcision didn't start with the Hebrews as previously thought. (Ahmed Osman in Christianity: An Ancient Egyptian Religion)

In the book Jesus in the House of the Pharaohs: The Essene Revelations on the Historical Jesus, by Ahmed Osman, he states:

"Before the account of the change in Sarai's name, we are told that part of the Lord's covenant with Abraham involved the stipulation that, before the birth of the child to be born to Sarai, all male children should be circumcised when eight days old, a practice that had been confined until then solely to the Egyptians among ancient nations."

It was historically much later that the Jews began to observe the ancient Egyptian custom of circumcision. Even though it brought no promise of eternal life, the Jews turned the practice into Mosaic Law.

Long before the building of the pyramids, circumcision was practiced in Egypt. Egyptian custom of the dedication of the sexual organs to the gods of fertility was considered a sacred rite. The higher eschalons of Egyptian society considered this rite compulsory. Only later did this practice trickle down to the ancient Hebrews. Abraham was not the first.

"Circumcision prevailed among the early Ethiopians, Phoenicians, Syrians, Idumeans, Moabites and Ishmaelites."

Taken from Symbols, Sex, and the Stars, by Ernest Busenbark, he goes on to state:

"The words sacrifice and sacrament are from the Latin word sacer, meaning sacred. Sacer appears to be cognate with the Hebrew word zakar, meaning phallus. The words test, testify,and testimony are derived from the ancient practice of swearing by the testes and the custom has prevailed among Arabs until modern times.

It's been my long-held observation that most art and artifacts depict phallic symbols as being circumcised, but then, that's just me. What do you think about it?

 

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M*W: I thought this was an interesting topic, but I guess no one else did. I would like to hear some honest reasons why no one wanted to reply to this post. Is it boring? Stupid? Not enough information to comment? I at least expected the christians to criticize it. What gives?

 

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i find it fascinating....

perhaps ancient cultures became aware of the infection possibility for un-circumsized men....


I just wonder... what man was brave enough to BE THER FIRST TO cut the end of his penis off.

he must of had big balls..

or..

it was forced on populations by their rulers.


-MT

 

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How about embalming? Who started it?

Anyway, did you happen to see anyone circumcising anyone's heart?

 

Interesting M*W, but according to Wikipedia, "Circumcision predates recorded human history, with depictions found in stone-age cave drawings and Ancient Egyptian tombs. The origins of the practice are lost in antiquity."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circumcision

This thing dates back to the stone-age, not only the Egyptians did it, and the origin is lost in antiquity...

I agree with "Mosheh Thezion", who was the first dude who cut it off? Maybe because of stone-age STDs??

Peace my friend

 

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M*W: I'm not surprised that circumcision occurred earlier than the ancient Egyptians. My point was that the Jews cannot lay claim to circumcision.

That's interesting that it was around much earlier. Somehow, I don't think it was done for tribal reasons. Maybe a few dicks rotted off from infection because of uncleanliness. I don't think STDs were a problem back then. Wasn't it Columbus who brought syphillis over from Europe in 1492?

Medically speaking, foreskin can sometimes be so narrow that an erection can be quite painful. Maybe that was the motivating factor.

 

that makes sense...

if i had to do self surgery so i could have sex... i might do it.

either way...


the jews adopted it as a covenant with god, because clearly it is in our long term benefit to do so.

God would reasonably want us to do so.
to use our minds, to move above the limits of our fragile biology.

whether the jews stole it or not..

does not un-justify the giving of credit to god, in some form or another.

-MT

 

Thanks for giving man foreskin for the sole purpose of cutting it off? Seems a tad.. stupid.

 

Hmmmm....if God created us, then 'with a foreskin' is how He did it. Yet, He wants us to cut the end of it off?

God: Even though I created you with a foreskin, I want you to cut it off just so I can see if you will do what I tell you.

...what a crock.
I'm just not buying it.

 

Hehe, you are right, maybe the first people who did it, was because of hygiene. But now we have soap (=.

The foreskin is to protect the penis, and it serves a purpose during intercourse. In penetration, less lubricant is needed, and there is less friction for the ladies.

 

I don´t think God is to be given credit for the mutilation of a part of our body.

 

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M*W: I've been doing more research on circumcision. Even though I've worked in a field where circumcision is a common practice, I've always detested it, knowing full well the hygienic reasons for doing so.

As Wisdom Seeker stated, circumcision does, indeed, go back as far as the Stone Age as shown by cave drawings. Still, the reason they circumcised raises more questions than answers, so I began to read-up on it.

As Bruno Bettelheim writes in Symbolic Wounds, "...it is probably that all men's initiation rites were originally based on the men's desire to imitate, to participate in, women's menstruation and childbirth, which were overwhelming magic events (magic because of their periodicity as well as their blood-power). Australian aboriginal males cut wounds in their penises, inserting stones to keep the wound permenantly open. This rite imitates female bleeding, and the wound is called, in their language, a "vagina."

In The Great Cosmic Mother: Rediscovering the Religion of the Earth, by Monica Sjoo and Barbara Mor, they write:

"All blood rituals derive from the female blood of menstruation and childbirth."

They go on to say:

"This is why, in the Bible, Jehova's covenant with Abraham was ritually sealed with the lifeblood of Abraham, and this covenant is kept by circumcising the foreskin of every Hebraic male infant. The Hebrews, like everyone else, were originally Goddess-worshipers, and it was her magic blood that symbolically sealed covenants."

"As the patriarchy solidified its power, however, many of the blood ritual imitations of women's functions were turned into taboos against women's functions -- taboos of avoidance and "hygiene."

Sjoo and Mor go on to state:

"The source of life (female) is redefined and not hated as the enemy of male life. What was once woman's power is now to be woman's curse, woman's shame. Woman's estrangement from God. In the Bible we can see the original Orwellian Newspeak occurring, in which false male imitations of menstruation and childbirth (the circumcised foreskin, the wounds of Christ) are made sacred and holy, while the real thing done by women is made filthy, sinful, and bestial."

"The New Covenant of Abraham "is made with male blood: blood from the foreskins of circumcised male infants. This new tribal bond was elitist as well as sexist. The tribal god Yahweh was elevated to a one and only universal God; but still Yahweh was believed to recognize only the blood of Hebrew males in this special bonding; i.e., only Hebrew males can achieve this special relationship with God."

Menstruation and childbirth were now condemned as filthy and vile and no longer carrying the blood-power they once held. The power now came from the bloody penis from circular castration to resemble the female womb.

Once sex was sacred and powerful. With the New Covenant of Abraham, sex became filthy and evil, thanks to the puritanical morality of the Old Testament where abstinence became sacred. Blood, once sacred, had become vile requiring the banishment to menstrual huts for ritual purification. The New Covenant of Abraham with his Yahweh required no such male cleansing or purification rituals.
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If anyone wants a bibliography of this topic, let me know.
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Bettelheim, Bruno, Symbolic Wounds: Puberty Rites and the Envious Male. New York: Collier Books, 1962.

M. Sjoo and B. Mor, The Great Cosmic Mother: Rediscovering the Religion of the Earth, 1987.

 

The real reason is to supress sexual drive.

 

Nice research M*W, I agree with that, most ancient beliefs radicate in this mysterious female quality:

" The Valley Spirit never dies
It is named the Mysterious Female.
And the doorway of the Mysterious Female
Is the base from which Heaven and Earth sprang.
It is there within us all the while;
Draw upon it as you will, it never runs dry.
Lao Tzu (600 BCE) - Tao Te Ching"

"The likeness of what is below is that which is above; for everything is above: what is below is nothing but the imagination of those that are without knowledge.
Odes of Salomon (100-200 AC)"

"‘Beloved Pan, and whatever other gods be present, grant me to be handsome in inward soul, and that the outside and the inside be one‘
Socrates in Plato´s Phaedo (428/427 BC – 348/347 BC)"

"Yeshua says to them: When you make the two one, and you make the inside as the outside and the outside as the inside and the above as the below, and if you establish the male with the female as a single unity so that the man will not be masculine and the woman not be feminine, then shall you enter the [Kingdom of God]
Jesus - Gospel of Thomas (50-140 AC)"

" 1. Tis true without lying, certain & most true.
2. That which is below is like that which is above & that which is above is like that which is below to do the miracles of one only thing.
Emerald Tablet of Hermes Trismegistus (Thot the Egyptian) 800 AD"

“It is significant that in Sanskrit the word Brahman or the supreme energy of God, is categorized as neuter gender. Is Brahman male or female? No, it is neutral. …How can the supreme be male or female? That would make Brahman partial. No, the ultimate being is impartial [ie. synonymous, and also not, with indifference, detachment, and dispassion](my brackets). This impartiality is possible only if the proportion of male and female is fifty-fifty.

The concept of ardhanarisvara is the symbol of Brahman, the supreme, because the proportion of male and female in Brahman is fifty-fifty. Brahman is both man and woman, or it is neither.

…ardhanarisvara depicts a great psychological truth… …this ancient symbol is a blend of male and female energies… One of its sides is feminine and the other is masculine, or you can say it is a blending or the combination of the two. It can also be said to be beyond the two…

Jesus has used a weird phrase, “eunuchs of God” to point to the same phenomenon. He says those who want to find God should become eunuchs of God, which really sounds outlandish. But Jesus is right; those who want to find God should become like God: neither male nor female.*(my footnote) And if you look attentively at men like Buddha and Krishna, who reflect godliness on this earth at its highest, you will find that they too are neither male nor female. Seen in their full glory and grandeur they are both or neither, or a blending of the two. In a way they reflect transcendental sex, they have gone beyond the duality of the sexes…

The concept of God as Ardhanarisvara says that the primeval source of creation is neither male nor female or it is both…

…God is the presence, the affirmation of yin and yang…

Jesus does not say that we should become eunuchs to attain to God, all he means to say is that we should neither remain men nor women, and then we will be both together.” Osho (from the book, Krishna)

 

I had a post on this thread, who deleted it?

 

Maybe, but if that is the case,then is not working; sexuality is the same in circumsized and uncircumsized males. I don´t think the ancients carried a ritual for supressing sexual drive so far, when it doesn´t seem to work at all.
I incline myself more to the man-female attribute of God wanted by ancient theists. Maybe to seek inmortality, like God (man-female).

 

Of course it doesn't work. But it's the same basic reason as female circumcision. Reducing pleasure is an attempt to control reproductive behavior.

 

Well, we can end this discussion by asking the cave men...

 

Hygiene

It was and still is done for hygiene. If it get's infected when men are older it needs to be cut anyway and there are more problems.

 

Nonsense. It's a barbaric tradition that makes as much sense as prohibiting pork.