Original Paper
Urologia
Urol Int 440 DOI: 10.1159/000XXXXXX
Internationalis
Received: December 11, 2007 Accepted after revision: March 11, 2008
Is Circumcision a Modified Ritual of Castration? Cengiz Mordeniz a Ayhan Verit b Departments of a Anesthesiology and b Urology, School of Medicine, Harran University, Sanliurfa, Turkey
Key Words History of urology ⴢ Circumcision ⴢ Castration
Abstract Aim: In the earliest records of human religion, castration was regarded as an act of devotion. Moreover, the ritual of circumcision is still followed by many modern religions. In this article, we have exposed the archeological, historical, cultural and religious evidence between the ancient ritual of castration and circumcision. Materials and Methods: We reviewed the reports about circumcision and castration in the English, French, and Turkish literature. Result: Both the rituals of circumcision and castration had similar aims in human religions. Conclusion: The ritual of castration evolved into circumcision as a less-invasive and bloody procedure than castration. Copyright © 2009 S. Karger AG, Basel
Castration is any action by which a biological male loses the use of the testes, it causes sterilization and greatly reduces the production of testosterone. If an investigation of paleoandrology is made through time, interestingly an initial example of an ithyphallic (archeological term for erect penis) stone man was found in the earliest known temple in Göbekli Tepe (Harran, the birthplace of Abraham, 9500–8500 BC) and was depicted without testes [1] (fig. 1). This loss of the testes is the result of castration of the stone figure. Among the earliest records of human religion are accounts of castration as an act of de© 2009 S. Karger AG, Basel 0042–1138/09/0000–0000$26.00/0 Fax +41 61 306 12 34 E-Mail
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votion. Archaeological findings at Çatalhöyük, a large Neolithic town in Asia Minor (geographically near the above-mentioned area) suggest that such practices were common in the worship of The Goddess Cybele around 7500 BC. Later in Rome, Cybele would come to be known as Magna Mater, the magical goddess raised by panthers and lions. The leader of the Magna Mater cult was a priestess surrounded by a group of castrated priests for whom their castration meant the divine adoration. The essence of the Magna Mater cult rituals was a baptism in the blood of a castrated bull. The Galli, later Roman followers of Cybele, also practiced the ritual of self-castration, known as sanguinaria. The ‘day of blood’ was the term used by ancient galli for their self-performed rite of castration. The ancient Galli castrated themselves in the hope of throwing out their animal-like physical nature to bring out the spiritual one instead [2, 3]. A mythological reference in chapter 17 of the Egyptian Book of the Dead states that the sun-god Ra circumcised himself. The bas relief from the Sixth Dynasty tomb on Ankh-ma-Hor at Saqquara in Egypt portrays the circumcision of two puberty-aged youths. A mortuary priest squats on his haunches before one standing youth whose hands are held firmly by an assistant. In the left hand, the priest holds the boy’s penis and in the right is what appears to be a circular flint with which he is removing the This study was presented at the European Association of Urology (EAU) 1st Eastern Mediterranean Meeting, 19–20 October 2007, Antalya, Turkey.
Dr. Ayhan Verit Faculty of Medicine, Harran University, Tip Fakultesi Hastanesi TR–63100 Sanliurfa (Turkey) Tel. +90 414 314 1170, Fax +90 414 315 1181 E-Mail
[email protected] or
[email protected]
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Fig. 1. An ithyphallic (archeological term for erect penis) stone
man found in the earliest known temple in Göbekli Tepe (Upper Mesopotamia, Harran-Urfa, Turkey, 9500–8500 BC). Notice that the figure was depicted without testes.
prepuce. The priest says to his assistant: ‘Hold him and don’t let him faint’ [4]. The reference to circumcision in the Old Testament associated with Moses suggests that circumcision became the Hebrew custom through contact with the Midianites: Then it happened at a stopping place along the way that Yahweh met him (Moses) and tried to kill him. Then Zipporah (Moses’ Midianite wife) took a piece of flint and cut off her son’s foreskin and touched his feet (genitals) with it, saying: ‘You are my blood-bridegroom.’ So he let 2
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him alone. At that time she said ‘blood-bridegroom’ in reference to circumcision [Exod. 4:24–26]. The reference to ‘blood-bridegroom’ may reflect the custom of circumcision before marriage just as the virgin bride would lose her hymen [Deut. 22:13–19] as the removal of the prepuce would be the groom’s parallel loss. The Hebrew word for father-in-law means, literally, ‘the circumciser’. The reference to the use of a flint blade suggests the antiquity of the ritual and may indicate a link to the Egyptian custom of using flint tools for circumcision. Yahweh said to Joshua: ‘Make yourself flint knives and squat down and circumcise the people of Israel for a second time.’ So Joshua made flint knives and circumcised the people of Israel on the hill of foreskins [Josh. 5:2–3]. Circumcision is the first command given by God to Abraham. The religious-legal covenant with Abraham (the father of the Jewish people) by which Yahweh would be the unique god of the Jews and they would worship him alone. In ancient times, covenants were sealed with marks and symbols; the seal of this covenant was the mark of circumcision: ‘... for your part you must keep my covenant, you and your descendants ... every male among you must be circumcised. You must be circumcised. You shall cut off the flesh of your foreskin, and that will be the symbol of the covenant between us. Throughout all your generations every male shall be circumcised at the age of eight days ...’ [Gen. 17:10–12]. The 99-year-old Abraham circumcised himself, his son Ishmael (who was 13 years old) and all male members of his extended household. A year later, when 90 year old Sarah bore Isaac, Abraham had the boy circumcised on the eighth day [Gen. 21:4]. Only after he had circumcised himself by God’s command at the age of 99 years was Abraham able to reach the ultimate level of perfection. ‘And you shall be perfect’ [Gen. 17:1]. Orthodox Jews follow these ancient practices. On the eighth day, the infant son is taken to the Mohel (the circumciser) for a rite performed according to an ancient ritual. The blood flow is stopped by wine, which was held in the Mohel’s mouth, fulfilling the requirements of The Torah. Female circumcision takes place at the age of 13, the number of months in a year according to the ancient menstrual calendar, and the traditional age of menarche. After copying circumcision from the Egyptians, Jews transferred it to the period of infancy, leaving the pubertal ceremony, now called the bar mitzvah awkwardly placed at a point in a boy’s life when nothing really happens, in contrast to the sudden onset of menarche in a girl [5]. Mordeniz /Verit
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‘Neither let the eunuch say, Behold, I am a dry tree. For thus saith the LORD unto the eunuchs that keep my Sabbaths, and choose the things that please me, and take hold of my covenant; Even unto them will I give in mine house and within my walls a place and a name better than of sons and of daughters: I will give them an everlasting name that shall not be cut off ’ [Isaiah 56:3b-5]. Peter, James and John (called (together) the Jerusalem Triumvirate) were opposed to Paul’s version of Christianity because of circumcision. Paul had eased the Gentiles into accepting Christianity, by requiring of them only a ‘circumcision of the heart’, not actual foreskin (hacking) cutting. The leaders of the Christian Church at the Council of Jerusalem rejected circumcision as a requirement for Gentile converts. Paul argued that circumcision no longer meant the physical, but a spiritual practice [Romans 2:25–29]. And in that sense, he wrote [Cor. 7:18]: ‘Is any man called being circumcised? Let him not become uncircumcised.’ Paul was circumcised when he was ‘called’. He added: ‘Is any called in uncircumcision? Let him not be circumcised,’ and went on to argue that circumcision did not matter [Cor. 7: 19]: ‘Circumcision is nothing and uncircumcision is nothing. Keeping God’s commands is what counts.’ Simon Peter (the first Pope) condemned circumcision for converts according to Acts 15: 7–10. Paul, the Apostle to the Gentiles, warned that the advocates of circumcision were ‘ false brothers’ [Gal. 2:4]. One of the best kept secrets of early Christianity was its preaching of castration for the special inner circle of initiates. In a literal reading of Matthew, Jesus himself advocated castration: ‘Not everyone can accept this word, but only those to whom it has been given. For some are eunuchs because they were born that way; others were made that way by men; and others have renounced marriage because of the kingdom of heaven. The one who can accept this should accept it. There be eunuchs, which have made themselves eunuchs for the kingdom of heaven’s sake. He that is able to receive it, let him receive it’ [Matthew 19: 12]. Circumcision was also severely punished because it was considered to be a kind of castration. ‘The Roman Emperor Hadrian was the first, not apparently for religious reasons but because of the superficial similarity of the operations, to equate circumcision and castration, which was one of the reasons that led to a serious Jewish insurrection at that time. However, circumcision was considered equal to castration and equally punished’ [6]. Despite this, the practice continued throughout Christian times, with many of the early church fathers castrat-
ing themselves as an act of devotion [7]. A famous example is the early theologian Origen, who was highly praised for having castrated himself [8]. Tertullian, a 2nd century Church Father, described Jesus, himself, and Paul of Tarsus as spadones, which translates as ‘eunuchs’ in some contexts. Tertullian declared: ‘The kingdom of heaven is thrown open to eunuchs.’ Tertullian, On Monogamy, 3: ‘... He stands before you, if you are willing to copy him, as a voluntary spado (eunuch) in the flesh.’ And elsewhere: ‘The Lord Himself opened the kingdom of heaven to eunuchs and He Himself lived as a eunuch. The apostle (Paul) also, following His example, made himself a eunuch ...’ [9, 10]. By Late Antiquity, the term ‘eunuch’ had come to be applied not only to castrated men, but also to a wide range of men with comparable behavior, who had ‘chosen to withdraw from worldly activities and thus refused to procreate’. The broad sense of the term ‘eunuch’ is reflected in the compendium of Roman law created in the 6th century known as the Digest or Pandects [11, 12]. The Roman Catholic Church condemned circumcision for its members at the Council of Florence of 1442. This was in response to Coptic Christians, who practice circumcision [13]. As an Ottoman Muslim physician with ethical concerns, Serefeddin Sabuncuoglu (AD 1385–1470) was strongly opposed to the castration of men; however, it was included in his surgical textbook Cerrahiyyet’ül-Haniyye ‘ just for the completion of the book, not to leave it incomplete’ in his own words. In his technique he offered unilateral orchiectomy followed by penectomy in three-stages to allow safe recovery [14]. For the Ottoman ruling class (16th–19th century) circumcision was far more than a simple surgical procedure and was celebrated during many days and nights with a huge festival that features the contribution of almost all of the councils of known states at the time [15]. Today, while the preferred circumcision age is about 6–8 in Islamic countries in accordance with Islamic tradition [16], it is 18–24 in HIV (human immunodeficiency virus) endemic African ones for the prevention of infection [17]. The body dysmorphic disorder or dysmorphophobia characterized by the desire to be a eunuch is called skoptic syndrome, named after the Skoptzy sect. A sect advocating castration existed in Russia too. The castration of Russian eunuchs was performed in several stages. The scrotum would be removed either with a red-hot iron rod or a knife. The penis would be removed afterwards. Female cult members were also castrated: they would be deprived of nipples, breasts, clitoris, and the lower lips of the pu-
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dendum. There was also a third stage, at which men would cut out certain muscles from their chests. The Skoptzy (or Skoptsy, meaning the castrated) subjected themselves to castration to attain their ideal of sanctity. They believed that the second coming of Christ would occur only when the number of Skoptzys reached the apocalyptic number of 144,000. Male members of the sect were encouraged to take either the ‘great seal’ (removal of the penis, the scrotum, and the testes) or the ‘lesser seal’ (removal of the scrotum and testes, leaving the penis intact). In the early years of the sect the surgical instrument was a red-hot iron rod or poker, but instruments of castration included pieces of glass, razors, and knives [18, 19].
Conclusion
Circumcision is one of the world’s oldest and most frequently performed surgical procedures with a high rate in the USA and worldwide (70 and 33%, respectively) [20, 21]. Thus, it is not so surprising that the medical literature is still widely interested in this topic. However, it is time to rediscover how the Egyptian circumcision was converted into a mandatory religious ritual by the Hebrews. Freud suggested in his discussion of anxiety and instinctual life that there could be a connection between castration fears, neuroses, and circumcision [22]. It is common knowledge in psychoanalytic circles that an operational procedure on the child’s sexual organs at the phallic stage will augment his anxieties about castration. Certain psychoanalytically oriented writers have formulated that the circumcision being perceived by the child as an attack would have detrimental effects on his ego, establishing in him the feeling of ‘I am now castrated’. The sacrifice and the castration complex (or the Oedipus complex) is still widely believed to be the origin of
routine circumcision and is used as arguments for discontinuing this practice in the modern world. Another aspect of sacrifice is that the object which is forfeited should be valuable. The greater the value of the object sacrificed, the more worthy is the sacrifice. This should make us wonder what the value and the function of the prepuce are. If it were just a useless flap of skin, it would not be much of a sacrifice. Thus it makes an ideal sacrificial object, as the circumcised male is able to function normally in society and to procreate, but suffers permanent impairment of sexual enjoyment and bears a visible, life-long reminder of his sacrifice [23, 24]. Contemporary evidence suggests that a penis without its foreskin lacks the capacity for the subtle neurological ‘cross-communication’ that occurs only during contact between mucous membranes and contributes to the experience of sexual pleasure. Amputating an infant boy’s multi-functional foreskin is a ‘low-grade neurological castration’ which diminishes the intensity of the entire sexual experience for both the circumcised male and his partner [25–28]. The prepuce provides slack skin on the shaft of the erect penis allowing it to glide within its own sheath of skin during intercourse resulting in a more enjoyable sexual experience for both partners and avoids problems of vaginal dryness [29]. In this review, we claim that circumcision is a modified ritual of the ancient sacrifice of castration. We have tried to expose the religious, archeological and scientific evidence showing the correlation of the two acts. Acknowledgement We would like to give special thanks to Prof. Dr. Andrew Binder from The College of Education, Atlantic University, Fla., USA for the English correction of the text.
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