Table of Contents
Circumcision comes up on this site in three very different settings: as a covenant sign in the Hebrew Bible, as an old custom that Ignatius Donnelly traced back to Atlantis, and as a law that the Oahspe first gives and later withdraws. I gathered those passages here so they can be read side by side.
A covenant sign
The rite starts with Abraham. On Yahweh first emerges as a personal, covenantal deity in the story of Abraham I read the introduction of circumcision, together with the land promises, as a sign that Yahweh was guiding one chosen lineage.
The Gerim looks at what the sign actually did. In Exodus 12:48 a stranger who wants to eat the Passover must have every male in his house circumcised, and Genesis 17:12-13 gives the same mark to slaves bought from foreigners. My conclusion there is that circumcision let a man in the door, but it did not make him part of the family line. It marks the covenant, not birth. On the same page I note that Mauro Biglino compares the rite to the brand that marks one owner’s cattle from another’s.
The rite has a darker side in folklore. On Lilith, male children are said to be at risk of Lilith’s wrath for eight days after birth, until circumcision.
An Atlantean custom?
Ignatius Donnelly saw the rite as a survival from Atlantis. On Atlantis Reconstructed he lists the peoples who kept it and gives a medical reason for it:
Circumcision stamped out the disease in Atlantis; we read of one Atlantean king, the Greek god Ouranos, who, in a time of plague, compelled his whole army and the armies of his allies to undergo the rite.
Ignatius Donnelly, Atlantis: The Antediluvian World
On Genesis contains a history of Atlantis he dates the custom even further back, to the Stone Age:
Tens of thousands of years have passed since the Stone Age; the ages of copper, bronze, and iron bare intervened; and yet to this day the Hebrew rabbi performs the ceremony of circumcision with a stone knife.
Ignatius Donnelly, Atlantis: The Antediluvian World
He also finds the rite on the other side of the ocean. On The Indentity of the Civilizations of the Old World and the New he cites Palacio, who reports that the natives of Azori in Honduras circumcised boys before an idol called Icelca, and McKenzie, who saw the ceremony among the Chippeways. On Artificial Deformation of the Skull circumcision is one of the shared customs he counts as proof of a common prehistoric race.
Given and withdrawn in the Oahspe
In the Oahspe the Lord gives circumcision as a boundary around his chosen. The Lords’ Second Book asks:
Gave I not unto you the mark of circumcision as a limit to the line of my chosen?
Oahspe, The Lords' Second Book
The Lords’ Fourth Book blames those who did not preserve their seed through the circumcision. Then, in The Book of Judgment, the law is set aside:
There was a law of circumcision; but I render judgment against that law also, for it hath fulfilled its time.
Oahspe, The Book of Judgment
The same book adds that in this day no mark of circumcision is required, and leaves it to each adult to decide.
The early church
The dispute did not end with the Hebrew Bible. On The Churches I describe how Marcion drew on Paul’s letter to the Galatians, where Paul criticizes Peter and certain false apostles for promoting circumcision and other Jewish customs.
Related pages
- Yahweh first emerges as a personal, covenantal deity in the story of Abraham
- The Gerim: Welcome, but Not Mixed
- Atlantis Reconstructed
- Genesis contains a history of Atlantis
- The Indentity of the Civilizations of the Old World and the New
- The Lords’ Second Book
- The Book of Judgment
- The Churches: control religion and spiritual development
- Lilith
For every page I tagged with Circumcision, see the Circumcision tag archive.
