Bible Review

While speculative, this makes more intuitive sense to me than the common theory that circumcision makes the bleeding penis into a symbolic vagina, reflecting Man’s envy of Woman’s procreative power (e.g., Bruno Bettelheim, Symbolic Wounds [London: Thames and Hudson, 1955]).

A few bad experiences would have shown the inadvisability of circumcising newborns, since their blood congeals slowly. After the first week, the clotting factor is more efficient, making circumcision fairly safe for all but hemophiliacs—whom later Judaism exempts from the rite. In modern hospital conditions, however, the circumcision of newborns is not dangerous.

Some would dispute the totality of amnesia, but certainly there is no conscious memory.

Many have suggested that the use of stone tools here and in Exodus 4:24–26 implies the perpetuation of a Stone Age custom. But cheap and effective stone tools continued in use throughout the Iron Age; see Steven Rosen Lithics After the Stone Age (Walnut Creek, CA: Alta Mira Press, 1997).

On modern theories of the Torah’s composition, see Richard E. Friedman, Who Wrote the Bible? (New York: Summit, 1987).

The classic treatment is Arnold van Gennep, The Rites of Passage, French original 1909, trans. M. Vizedom and G. Cafee (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1966), pp. 71–73. On rites of passage in the Bible, see Propp, “Symbolic Wounds: Applying Anthropology to the Bible,” Le-David Maskil: A Birthday Tribute for David Noel Freedman, eds. Richjard Elliott Friedman and William H.C. Propp (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2004), pp. 17–24.

Apropos of the tassel: Many commentators emend the tautological “And it will be as a tassel for you” (wĕhāyâ lākem lĕṣîṣı̄t) (Numbers 15:38) to “And it will be as a sign for you” (wĕhāyâ lākem lĕ’ôt). This is as compelling as a conjectural emendation can be.

See Propp, “The Origins of Infant Circumcision in Israel,” Hebrew Annual Review 11 (1988), pp. 355–370, esp. p. 355 n. 1.

The most recent, comprehensive study (ultimately coming down on the contra side) is David L. Gollaher, Circumcision: A History of the World’s Most Controversial Surgery (New York: Basic Books, 2000).