The father of the child says the following grace: ** Blessed art thou, O Lord our God, King of the Uni- verse! who hath sanctified us with his comrnandmenta, and commanded us to enter into the covenant of our father Abraham.'* The congregation answer, '* As he hath entered into the law, the canopy, and the good and virtuous deeds.'* (See Buxtorf, Synoffoga Jwdai- CO, ch. ii.)
IIL Design of the InsiUuUon. — ^Herodotus long ago declared that it was adopted by the Egyptians for cleanliness (icaOapiorriroc fivtKa); and a slight ac- quaintance with the ideas of the Turks concerning personal defilement will make it easy to believe tiiat an idea of cleanliness continued the practice among nations which had once become habituated to it. In the ancient Egyptians this Turkish spirit was carried to a great height ; nor is it wonderful that in hot di- mates detailed precepts of cleanliness form a very lai^ part of primitive religion. But we can hardly rest hi this as a sufiident account of the origin of the rite (see
CIRCUMCISION
851
CIRCUMCISION
Dealing, ObmrvatL ii, 38 sq. [also in Ugolini Theaaar. Kxii] ; Boddei Hist, EccL V, 1, 1 176 sq. ; Meyer, De tempp, et/etL Hebr, ii, 7, p. 612 [Ugolini Tketaur, i]; Grappii DtMs, an circumcUh ab j£ff. /uerit deriocUa [Jen. 1722] ; Witsii .tEeg. iii, 6, p. 283 sq. ; Bynans, De dratmets. Ckritd [Amst. 1689], p. 27 sq..; Oarpzov, Afpar. p. 602 sq. ; Sturz, Circumcisio a barbaris gen- tUma tramaUxta [Ger. 1790]). It is more important to state Uiat an adequate physical reason for performing the operation on females of several African races has been ftilly sabstantiated. The carious reader will find in lAurence's Leeturts (chap, v) the decisive testimony of Mr. Barrow and Dr. Somerville on this point, with an allusion to the efforts of the Romish missionaries to forbid the practice in Abyssinia, and the unexpected consequences which thwarted them. No positive evi- dence has yet been obtained that the operation is eqoaDy expedient for the males in any of the same races; yet the analogy of the two cases forces us to believe that in both the custom has a physical or med- ical ground, especially when it is remarlsed to predom- inate so much in AiHca, where alone (as far as yet ap- pears) such physical peculiarities of structure exist. It was practised, moreover, by the nudes of AfHcan tribes so savage, and so little addicted to religious cere- monialism, that a broader ground must be sought for it than simple cleanliness. We have already named the Troglodytes. Strabo mentions two other tribes of Africa, whom he calls Kreophagi and Eolobi (xvi, 4, p. 387-390, 392, ed. Tauch.), who practised on them- selves a yet more shocking mutilation (jcoXo/3ot toq fiaXdvovo), ascribed to the Kolobi by Diodorus also. The fact, also, that most of these nations performed whatever operation it was, not on infants, but on those who were advancing towards marriageable age, con- spires to indicate that some physical inconvenience ^^oally showed itself (as witli the Bushmen fe- males), of which they desired to get rid. Jost looks upon mfaiU circumcisbn as the distinguishing mark of Judaism ; and this may be nearly correct, though we have seen that, according to Abulfeda, some Arabs delayed it only till after teething. In &ct, Diodorus (Hi, 31X when speaking of that branch of the Troglo- dyte nations which was called Kolobi, declares that tbey were subjected to the operation in in&ncy (^jc vtjTriov). Their unnatural and cruel custom is possi- bly to be referred to superstition. Some, indeed, have looked on circumcision itself as a softened form of the barliarons rite by which the Galli, or priests of Cybele, were qualified for their ofiice. The Kolobite custom might, on the contrary, be a carrying out of that bar- barity to the extremest point possible, short of exter- minating the population of a tribe. Traditionary or nperstttioufl reasons certainly can alone explain the presence of the custom among the Sandwich Islanders (Michaelia, OrimU. Biblioth. xiv, 60 sq.), and aboriginal Americans (Gumilla, Histoire de VOroque^ Avign. 1708, i, 183 sq.), for physiological considerations, seem to £ul (see Burdach, Phydol, iii, 386). If an independent and human origin has been discovered for Egyptian circum- askm, the thought of necessity arises that the Israelites mast have had it from the same sources as the nations anmnd them, and it has been discussed (Speneer, De Ug. Heb. I, iv, 4, p. 70 sq.) whether they even borrowed it from the Egyptians. (Movers thinks [Phdnic. i, 3^] that the latter borrowed it from the Phoenicians, Ksting on the myth of Saturn, in Sanchoniatho, fragm, p. 36.) The idea has naturally given much ofleuce ; but, in truth, the question involves no pecnl- isT difficulty ; it is only a part of another &r wider in- qoiiy. It i notorious that many other ancient nations i>sd various ceremonies and institutions in common vith the Jews, and that the Hebrew law is by no ineaas in all points original. That sacrifice pre-exist- ed is on the snrfiice of the Bible history, llie same, however, is tme of temples, tabernacles, priests, ever- burning fire, oracles, etc. The fiict has been often de-
noted by saying that the Jewish institutions aro a se- lection, revision, and re-enactment of an older patri- archal religion. Other treatises on the Gentile origin of circumcision are by Hofrnann (Altorf, 1771), Bus (Jen. 1707), Zeibich (Ger. 1770), Anton (Lips. 1682).