Just the Tip?

You never know when God’s gonna pop up and decide to kill you.

That reframes a little bit the popular Latter-day Saint painting of Jesus in the middle of the night, knocking on the door.

Hey, are all of your children’s penises intact? Because I’m not down with that.

Hey everybody, I’m Dan McClellan.

And I’m Dan Beecher.

And you’re listening to the Data Over Dogma podcast, where we increase public access to the academic study of the Bible and religion and we combat the spread of misinformation about the same. How are things today, Dan?

Things are great. Things are great as in, in our timeline. You and I just got back from our, our the first leg of our tour.

Yes, our multiverse.

That’s right. For our listeners, that’s still a week or two ago. I, I don’t know. I, I don’t know when this thing comes out, but it was a, it was an amazing time. We had such a good time. We met so many of our listeners and viewers, and that was fantastic. So, yeah, I’m still riding the high, baby.

Yeah. And we’re about to head out again and on the 17th, which will be. Will this be out by the 17th?

Probably. I don’t know.

I don’t know. Who knows?

Who knows?

I don’t know when this stuff happens.

Maybe when you’re listening to this, we’re in Dallas or we’re in Atlanta or something. Who knows? Yeah.

Who knows?

But, yeah, that was a lot of fun. And, and I’m excited about today’s show. I think it’s gonna be fun. Yeah, we are. We are tackling two spiky issues.

Sensitive issues. Yeah. Yeah.

Interesting stuff. So the first thing we’re going to do, it’s going to be our Who Dat. And we’re going to talk about Jephthah. Which is fun. As fun to say as it is to talk about. And, and, and an interesting decision that he made and what. What followed thereafter. And then we are going to talk about something that keeps coming up in the Bible and, and keeps confusing me and making me feel weird. So that’s going to be circumcision, and that. That’ll be in the second half of the show. If you’re squeamish, you can listen to that one on double speed or something like that. Yeah. Get through quicker, whatever you need to do. But let’s dive in with Who Dat. And this Who Dat comes to us from Judges chapter 11, where we’re gonna start, which is where we begin our journey.

And, and I don’t, I don’t have any background for this. The judge. The whole thing of Judges as a book is just that it’s kind of like a series of leaders of the Israelites.

A good way to think about it is if you imagine like film, how you have frames and then there’s a. There’s a. You’ve got a framework around the frames which is used to feed the film and everything like that. It’s kind of like that. We have these little narratives about these judges who are ruling or judging within certain parts of ancient Israel and Judah and in certain time periods. And there’s kind of this narrative superstructure that is connecting them all together. That is a later editorial product. But somebody basically was like, we’re going to tell all these stories about the judges, and, and the idea is there was no king in the land. Everybody just kind of did their own thing. And then God would occasionally inspire or guide or possess one of these judges and they would then go on basically a killing spree.

Sure. Like you do.

In. In some way they are serving the interests of, of the tribes and they’re usually. There’s a lot of conflict between the tribes as well in this period. And the judges are not phenomenal models of good behavior. Some of them are, are kind of held up as here’s what not to do. But they end up serving their. Their purpose. They end up helping Israel in some way. Samson is a good example of that. He’s a train wreck of a man and his, his jawbone of an ass.

Who ends up taking out himself along with all the Philistines.

So he’s kind, he’s kind of a disaster. Samson is.

Yeah, yeah. And. And Jephthah is going to turn out to be disastrous in an kinda, I guess, who knows?

He. I mean, he. I’ll say this for the guy. He. He does what? He’s a man of his word.

Yeah. And as we’re gonna see, whoever’s telling this story, they’re not really passing judgment on Jephthah. We don’t get a sense one way or another that the author is good, bad, or indifferent in terms of what’s going on here.

It’s just like it feels like in the Bible, if no judgment is passed, it feels like it’s kind of the thumbs up. It kind of gets the okay. Because usually if it’s a. If it’s a really bad person, you’re gonna hear phrases like and they were wicked, and they were bad unto the Lord or whatever.

Well, and we’re going to talk about one reason that God doesn’t seem to be passing judgment on what’s going on.

Here as well.

So, but, so let’s get to the story. I, I love that it starts that the very first thing we learn about him was that he was the son of a prostitute.

Yes. So he was a Gileadite and Gilead was his father. And Jephthah, by the way, this comes from, in Hebrew, it’s Yiptach, which comes from the verbal root patach, which is also the name of a vowel in Hebrew, but it means to open. And so it’s probably a jussive. May he open, probably God. And the idea is probably the womb. So this is making childbirth possible. So it’s probably a name that was given to somebody where they’re like, hey, my son, let’s name him. You know, God has opened or may God open or something like that.

That is a crazy thing to name a child. I, I mean, yeah, he, I don’t understand. I mean, I understood the words that you just said. I don’t understand why that would be a thing that you would then go, okay, let’s name a child that. Well, but. Okay, let’s not get hung up.

Names are weird. Names are weird.

Absolutely.

So, yeah, he’s the illegitimate son of Gilead and Gilead’s wife has other sons. And so, you know, it’s like the, he’s the, the black sheep of the family because he was from, you know, that lady that dad used to bring over every night.

He’s the Jon Snow, he’s the Ramsay Bolton of the family.

So, so he runs off and lives in the land of Tob, which means good in Hebrew.

But it’s transliterated Tob in the NET.

Yeah, well, because tov is spelled tet, vav, bet.

And a bet can be pronounced as a b or a v. Okay. And so here it’s, it’s tov. And I, I, I have a friend named Emanuel Tov. Okay. It’s a, it’s not an uncommon last name, but he, he amasses friends who are outcasts. And so basically he forms a gang.

And they go, they go about raiding. You know, this is their, their Friday night activity is.

Which is, which is, which is the part of the story that you really want to hear, but we don’t focus much on that.

Yeah. And you know, this is very little different from the story of David. Same kind of thing. When Dave’s off, Dave, he’s, he’s, he gets all these mercenaries around him and, and they, they go about a raiding as well. Yeah.

And then the Ammonites come and they, uh, make war against Israel, as one does.

Yeah, sure.

Uh, by the way, I, I had a comment. You know how I, I talk about things being my wont. Uh, I was told in no uncertain terms that I’m pronouncing that incorrectly and that it is actually pronounced want, so.

Not when you pronounce it.

I know. I mean, I, I perfectly standard pronunciation.

Yeah. And also a good way to differentiate it from want, which is from W A N T, which is a totally different word, so why not pronounce them differently?

Yeah. But anyway, the elders of Gilead are like, hey, these guys are sticking it to us, Jephthah. You and your, your little ragtag group of undesirables, you can fight. Why don’t you come and you lead us against the Ammonites so we can. You know, whenever I hear Ammonites, I, I think of the, the fossil. And so, and he’s, and he’s basically like, you guys kind of, you know, ran me away from home and what.

Are you gonna give me. Let me, let me ask you something. You want me to lead you here when we come back? Do I lead you then?

And he, he says, look, I’ll come back. I’ll fight with the Ammonites if God delivers them into my hands. Yeah. I’ll lead you guys.

I’m. I’m the boss then.

Yeah, yeah. If this, if we do this, then I’m in charge.

And the elders of Gilead say, yes, sure. Yes, sir. Yes, sir. Absolutely. Because they are desperate.

Yeah. And so he becomes the commander. He goes to, sends messengers to the king of the Ammonites and, you know, is basically like, come and get it.

And they—there is some back and forth about who’s, who has the right to the property in dispute.

And that’s not interesting?

Actually, it is interesting. Oh, okay. I will tell you exactly why.

Because in verse, verse 17, there’s, there’s a little back and forth, and Jephthah’s messengers go to the King of Edom and say, let us pass through your land. But the King of Edom’s like, I don’t think so. So they go to the King of Moab, but he wouldn’t. So they… blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Where is the part I want to talk about? Oh, there’s a lot of messengers going back and forth.

Yeah. Yeah.

Okay. There it is in verse 24 or verse 23: Adonai the God of Israel has conquered the Amorites for the benefit of his people, Israel. Do you intend to take their place? Basically saying you want to get conquered too? And then they are talking to these other messengers and they say, should you not possess what your God Chemosh gives you to possess?

Right.

And should we not be the ones to possess everything that Adonai, our God, has conquered for our benefit? And this is interesting because it is the messengers who are like Israelites. They’re part of the house of Israel. And they’re basically saying Chemosh is the patron deity of your land and Chemosh has conquered that land for you. And you guys should be happy with your land that Chemosh has given you. We’re going to be happy with the land that our God has given to us.

Right.

Basically is recognizing Adonai is only the God of Israel.

Right.

And our next door neighbors have their own God.

Right.

And that God is sovereign within their territory.

And also… and yeah, it basically does seem to imply that like, look, we stay on our side of the fence so that our God helps us and you stay on your side of the fence and like, if we’re not coming over to your side because obviously our God wouldn’t be there for us there.

And, and, and they’re getting a little mouthy. But yeah, that, that’s basically the idea. And then we have in verse 29, this is where the story starts to turn.

This is the part, this is the part that I, you know, when I dove into this thing on the web. Oh, the Internet wrings its hands about this story. The Internet is not clear on what they’re supposed to make of this story.

Yes, the Internet is very squeamish about this because they don’t like sometimes what the Bible has to say and so they have to change it.

Well, and this is a very concerning story.

Yes, true. So in verse 29, the spirit of Adonai came upon Jephthah and he passed through Gilead and Manasseh, he passed on to Mizpah of Gilead. And from Mizpah of Gilead he passed on to the Ammonites. And Jephthah made a vow to Adonai. So he is possessed by the spirit of Adonai, and he makes a vow: If you will give the Ammonites into my hand, then whatever comes out of the doors of my house to meet me when I return victorious from the Ammonites shall be Adonai’s, to be offered up by me as a burnt offering. That’s unambiguous.

The verb there is alah, which means to sacrifice as a burnt offering. And it is, I’m gonna alah an olah, which means I’m gonna offer as a burnt offering a burnt offering. So there’s no ambiguity at all there. The vow is to sacrifice whatever comes through the door.

Talk me through this because one of the things I read made a very interesting point which is you’ve… and it aligns with something that you talked about, but it’s from a different time. So, okay, when we talked about the nativity story and we were talking about the manger idea, you were saying that in those times animals were kept on the main floor of the house and the people lived in the second story sort of thing.

That’s where they slept and things like that.

Right? So yeah. So like one of the things that I read was like he was probably expecting an animal to emerge from. From the house. Is, does, does that seem like a reasonable thing?

Yeah, that’s what the author is having the audience imagine.

That he.

Cuz I had never imagined that other times that I had thought about this, this story. Cuz like, you know, in our time, you don’t like what’s going to emerge from a house. It’s not, you know, whatever answers the.

Door when I knock.

It’s one of my books. Thank God it came out. But no, it was, he was. So we’re, we’re meant to imagine that he’s saying whatever animal first comes out of my house.

Or that’s what the expectation is. Right, but.

So it’s a much more reasonable vow than when I first read it.

Yeah. And the Hebrew is vahaya hayotze asher yetze midaltei. Yeah, midaltei beiti. So, so that is. And it will be that the, the one coming out which leaves from the door of my house. So it’s a, it doesn’t say man, woman, child, animal, whatever. It’s just the agent, the entity that, that comes out from the door.

It is written specifically to trap him into this. Like the writing is, is. Is purposefully ambiguous enough to. To trap him into. Into what happens next.

Yeah. And. And so Jephthah crosses over to the Ammonites to fight against them. And the end of verse 32 says Adonai gave them into his hand. He inflicted a massive defeat on them. Yeah. So the Ammonites were subdued before the Israelites. So total victory. And, and here’s where we’ve got a question about God’s foreknowledge. If God is all knowing and all powerful and all those other. All things, all those Omnis, If God is. Is the original Omni man, then God should know what was going to happen.

And God, knowing what happened, went through with it anyway, so.

And what he went through with was the first thing that came through Jephthah’s door was his daughter, his only daughter coming out to.

Only child.

His only child. That’s right.

Coming out to meet him with timbrels and with dancing, which is so cute. And just twist the knife a little bit there, author. Sure, I get it.

Yeah. And the verse is actually quite emphatic about this. His daughter coming out to meet him. She was his only child and he had no son or daughter except her. Yeah, like it’s the, the narrator is like, I want to be clear about this point. You guys got that, right?

Let the reader understand.

Yeah. And so, so, yeah, he has. So, so now he’s in a pickle because he said he was gonna, he was gonna sacrifice as a burnt offering whatever came through the door. Boom, she came through. And he, he goes, he basically says, I’m going to do it. I got no choice.

He’s, he’s upset. He’s like, ah, crap. And says, I have maybe a little.

Stronger than crap, but sure.

Yes. He said, alas, my daughter, you have brought me very low. You. I have opened my mouth to Adonai and I cannot take back my vow. So yeah, he’s. He’s saying, this is not what I wanted, but, you know, gotta do it.

And I love, I love that. I love that. He basically blames the daughter. You have. You have brought me very low. You have become the cause of great trouble for me.

Like on this, the day of my daughter’s coming out to meet me. And in verse 36. So he hasn’t told her what his vow was, but she’s like, oh yeah, do. And she says do to me according to what has gone out of your mouth now that Adonai has given you vengeance against your enemies, the Ammonites.

And she said to her father, let this thing be done for me. Oh, no, actually it appears that she does know. She does know. Let me see if. Yeah, I have opened my mouth to the Lord and I am not able to turn. To turn away. To turn. Yeah. So she knows what, what’s going on here.

It feels, and it feels like she is. She’s not a young. She’s not. This is not a 7 year old to say what she says. She’s because yeah, what she says is very mature. And she basically just says, well, you got to do what you got to do. But she also says, give me a, Give me two months to wander in the woods in the mountains. And, and this is interesting. And bewail my virginity.

With, with, with my friends. Tell me about that. Why, why is it the virginity that she’s bewailing and not the fact that she’s about to get burned?

Because she dying as a, as a virgin, she has no children. She has not fulfilled that kind of expectation as a woman in Israel. She’s gonna die before she’s able to do that. And so I, I think the idea is, you know, if she, if she died in childbirth or if she died after having children or something like that, you know, at least she fulfilled that expectation of, of proper Israelite society that you get married.

And so it’s, it’s, it’s that she has died before she was able to get married. It’s. Yeah, yeah. She’s the original incel.

And then. So, so she takes her, her two month mountain vacation.

And then gonna be.

Go and live in the woods like a hippie for.

And then foolishly comes back which. That, that’s just bad planning on her part. That’s just silliness.

I mean, I read My Side of the Mountain when I was a kid and I, I fantasized about running off and living on my own in the woods day and night. That was going to be my, my Bible, My Side of the Mountain.

But you felt the call of the.

Wild, so to speak. Yeah, I thought the, the idea of hollowing out a huge tree and living in it was just sounded so cozy to me.

Absolutely.

Yeah. So at the end of two months here we have verse 39. She returned to her father again. That’s. There’s your problem right there.

Who. And then it says who did with her according to the vow he had made. Yeah. Which is quite explicit. This very clearly says. It’s actually quite sad. Well, the, the vow was quite explicit.

And it doesn’t say. And he did a thing. Yeah, it says he did to her according to the vow he had made. Vayaas lah. He did to her. His vow, asher nadar, which he vowed. So it quite clearly is saying he offered her as a burnt offering. And there’s an argument that, that what really happened is, is he was like, oh well, I’m obviously not going to just sacrifice you. So the story doesn’t say it, but what I’m going to do is just have you go, you know, become a nun, basically go join a convent or something.

You have to walk on these hot coals with Tony Robbins and then you get. And that will count as the burnt offering. And then.

Yeah, and then you gotta, you gotta eat nothing but, but organ meat. But. And that’s an argument that is based on nothing other than a refusal to accept what the text very clearly states.

Yeah, I. It’s funny because as I read through, like I said, I was reading sort of the Internet’s reaction, various reactions to this story, and they ranged everywhere from, well, Jephthah that was obviously an evil guy, or he was a flawed guy or whatever, to, you know, it’s, it’s, it’s all very interesting to me. I mean, I think they all want it, want to make it. This can’t, this can’t be about, you know, God allowing something evil or accepting a, you know, more importantly, or accepting the. A sacrifice that is horrific to us.

So it has to be about something else. So, so. But, you know, one of the articles that I read was a really interesting comparison. It did. The article didn’t really address the comparison the way it needed to, but made the comparison between this story and the story of Abraham and Isaac and the fact that God, you know, commanded. And in this case, it was a commandment of God to go and sacrifice his son, but at the very last minute, God stops it.

And why, in the version that has come down to us. Yes. Oh, there are. Yes. We’ve talked about this, haven’t we? If.

Spoiler alert if we haven’t.

So I. Let me. I’ll just pull this up really quick here. So in the story of, of this, you have the command to sacrifice Isaac and take your son, your only son Isaac, whom you love, and go to the land of Moriah and offer him. There. Abraham arose, saddled his donkey, took two of his young men with him and his son Isaac. And on the third day, he looked up, saw the place far away. Then he said, stay here with the donkey. The boy and I will go over there. Abraham took the wood, he carried the knife, blah, blah, blah. The two of them walked on together.

Isaac says, “Father?” “Here am I, my son.” He said, “The fire and the wood are here, but where’s the lamb for a burnt offering?” Abraham says, “Don’t want to talk about it.” And the two of them walked on together, huh? When they came to the place that God had shown him, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And then… so whatever happens, happens. And then verse 19. So Abraham returns to his young men. Two go up, one comes down.

Now it’s, it’s the Thunderdome.

And there are, there’s the Raggedy Man, which is Abraham. But there’s, there are ancient interpretive traditions within Judaism—ancient, medieval—that he actually went through with the sacrifice, that he sacrificed Isaac. And they, they account for it because Isaac is gone from the narrative for a while. He comes back later, but he’s, he’s absent after this. And so one I… one of the accounts is that he was sacrificed. He spent two years in heaven and then God brought him back to life. The, the ashes, the, the ashes of, of his burnt corpse, or the dews on the, on the grasses of Mount Moriah were used to reconstitute Isaac and he came back to life. So there, there are a few different traditions that actually interpret this story as Abraham carrying through with the sacrifice. Now, if that is how the story originally read—

And there are scholars who who have made pretty good cases that this is what it originally read. It has been changed somewhere along the way. So… but that’s a, that’s beside the point and potentially just ruined an opportunity for a whole other segment.

That’s okay, but we did talk anyway. Who remembers all of our shows can write into us and let us know if we talked about it or not. But here’s the other thing at very least. Like what the main story that we get, that we get is of Abraham, Abraham’s hand being stayed by God. God saying, “Stop, I was kidding. Can’t take a joke?” But… and unlike what one of what this blog post, what this blog writer had to say because she’s trying to make that comparison and, and trying to figure out what’s going on. But she says that for the Israelites human sacrifice was wrong. And you and I have talked about how there are several moments in Israelite history where human sacrifice is demanded.

Yes. And it, it seems to have sat pretty close to the surface within Israelite history. Like as much as they’re like, “Ooh, it was abhorrent.” It’s like they talked about it an awful lot.

And it always seemed to be right there. It always seemed to be like “You’re gonna ha—oh, now this time you’re gonna do—oh, just kidding.” And so it’s, it seems like it’s, it’s the weird uncle that no one wants to acknowledge is there.

What is it doing there? And we’ve, we’ve talked about this before as well. It probably was… there probably was an archaic commandment to sacrifice firstborn children that they just had to find a way to kind of dance around without directly acknowledging.

I’m not going to do that.

Yeah. I mean, it just seems like so many of the people, you know, Jephthah… was Jephthah bad, or Jephthah’s sin was… was something along the lines of… of making hasty vows or something like… it just seems… it just seems so interesting that… I mean, I guess I understand why it’s hard to just say this is a tragic story. But there was no out for Jephthah. It is… it is tricky when… when there is an example of God intervening and saying, “Hey, don’t do that.” Why didn’t God intervene in this, in this story?

Well, in… there’s an argument to make, and this is not an argument that the story is good or right, but there’s an argument to make that what Jephthah demonstrated was the inviolability of his vow. His commitment to Adonai is so utterly comprehensive and total that he will sacrifice his own child… yeah… so as not to break the vow. And that is an ideal that, like, a lot of people don’t want to acknowledge it, but there are a lot of ways that, that people will champion those who will sacrifice human life, their own or others for an ideal as costly signaling as a way to show, “Look how much this means to me.” And you know, within the Jehovah’s Witnesses, for instance… for instance, we’ve… we’ve all heard stories about children who have passed away because they were denied blood transfusions, because that’s a very big costly signal for Jehovah’s Witnesses and within the community for which that is an…

An ideal, they are held up as, as, as examples.

Of how they were willing to give up their child’s life in order to follow that commandment. And you know, there. There are a lot of traditions that talk about. About how women should protect their. Their virginity up to and including at the cost of their own life.

Right.

You know, women who have been sexually assaulted, who have been raped, have been. You know, sometimes they are told things, whether intentionally or. Or otherwise, they are given the impression that they should have fought to the death rather than allow their. Their quote, unquote, virginity to be taken from them, which would be an example of allowing one’s own life to be sacrificed to hold up that ideal as another piece of costly signaling. So.

But that is.

While that ideal doesn’t.

That’s just. That is an example of abusing someone who’s just been abused. But that’s.

Yes, yes, absolutely.

But you’re right that it. It’s. It’s the idea of the costly signaling. And, and, yeah, to me, if I were to guess, I would. I. I think I would guess that the. What the Author of Judges 11 wanted me to take away from this was the great faith of Jephthah.

Yeah. And. And one of the things you get in. In the next chapter is Jephthah continues to have military success.

So he. In other words, so he’s blessed by the Lord.

Yeah, yeah. Like, if. If. If the message was, ooh, God didn’t want that, we would see some kind of reaction on the part of God. But Jephthah continues to have military success, which means that at best, God’s like, I’m just leaving this alone. But more likely, God is supportive of this. God is like, hey, hey. Yeah, you did it.

Way to go, dude.

That’s the test. Yeah.

Yeah. The Bible is not shy about telling us when God is displeased. So it does seem like there’s at very least God is not mad about this.

Yeah. And interestingly, there are folks who will be like, yeah, but it says everybody did what was right in their own eyes and blah, blah, blah. That actually comes and goes. It’s in waves. And it happens before Jephthah arises. But, but, but God is the one who inspires Jephthah. There’s no part of Jephthah’s career that is at all tainted by any reference to people behaving inappropriately. In fact, it’s not until after Jephthah dies. So in chapter 12, you have verse seven, Jephthah judged Israel, six years. Then Jephthah the Gileadite died and was buried in his town in Gilead. And it’s after that that it says, and then it’s after the next judge, I think Elon, who was not a great judge at all, But. And then Samson.

And like, it’s after Jephthah’s death that the narrative says, and then Israel returned to its sin, or something like that. So, like Jephthah’s tenure seems to be a period of. Of relative prosperity, peace, righteousness, obedience, whatever. It is not marked by the condemnation that we find in other parts of the Book of Judges . So, like, all indications point to the narrator’s accepting this and presenting it not as a tragic tale of moral failure, but as a display of integrity and of faith, rectitude. Yes. And that’s problematic.

Yeah. Yep. All right, well, there you go. Fun. That’s a lot of fun. Let’s move on to our next thing, which is taking issue and the issue that we are going to Take today. And I do take issue with this is, is with the practice of circumcision. And so I, I wanted to chat about it because it is mentioned many, many times in the Bible starting in Genesis 17 . But I’m going to, I’m going to start with something that blew my mind when I was first reading it. And this was when I was reading in Exodus. It’s the story, you know, Moses has at this moment. This is Exodus 4 . And at this moment, Moses has left Egypt. He’s taken his wife, he’s, you know, he’s become a shepherd or whatever and blah, blah, blah, he’s happy. And then the Lord tells him he’s got to go back and he’s not pleased about it.

Whatever you’ll recall, the Lord is like, you’re going to go back, do all this dangerous, scary stuff.

Right.

But I’m going to make sure it doesn’t work.

Right, exactly.

And Moses is like, wow, thanks a lot, God. I’m very excited, excited about this.

And Moses is like, wow, thanks a lot, God. I’m very excited, excited about this. See our show a couple weeks ago about, about the Lord hardening Pharaoh’s heart for that. But there’s this weird moment. So in verse 24, we start, basically they stop at an inn or whatever. You know, they’re on their way to, to, to Egypt, but you got to stop at an inn along the way. You know, probably a Motel 6. You never know, maybe a Marriott property.

And the Hebrew is malon, which just means spend in the night place.

Okay. They stop at a spending the night place. And on the way. This is verse 24. On the way at a place where they spend the night. The Lord met him and tried to kill him. And that had me, that had me. That I had to read like 52 times before I was like, did I actually catch this? Is that Moses? What are we talking? Is it the innkeeper? What’s happening here? But the remedy blew my mind even further, which is that his wife Zipporah took a flint. This is some quick thinking. I’m not sure who thinks of this, but Zipporah took a flint and cut off her son’s foreskin, touched it to his feet with it, or touched his feet with it. I assume his is the Lord. There’s many His. There’s many males in this. It could be the, the child, it could be Moses, it could be the Lord.

I’m not sure who, whose foot gets touched with the foreskin.

Yeah, it, it just says his feet. The immediate antecedent would be her son. Yeah, but, but it’s not explicit that that’s the foot that is being touched.

Okay, so we don’t know who. And then she says, truly, you are a bridegroom of blood to me. And then it says, so he let him alone. It was then that she said, a bridegroom of blood because of the circumcision. I was mystified when I read this. Like, she literally, like, she. God’s going to kill her husband. So she cut, cuts off her child’s foreskin. Help. I don’t, I don’t know what I’m dealing with here.

Yeah, I don’t either. Like, this. The. We don’t have any clear answers to this. Seems to be emphasizing the importance of circumcision. Yeah, the. But, yeah, the. This, the narrative is just bizarre. And, you know, the, the fact that, that Adonai meets him in the middle of the night makes people think this, this sounds kind of like night demon kind of territory. What’s going on here? There’s a, there’s a commentary that, that I was looking at a recent one in the International Critical Commentary series, one of my four favorite commentary series, where there are three main approaches that scholars have. Have kind of shaken out into that I think are fascinating. So one of them is Wellhausen and others.

Wellhausen was a 19th century, very, very influential biblical scholar. Have seen it against a backdrop in which circumcision was normally practiced on young men in preparation for marriage. On this view, the story was originally an etiological explanation for the Israelite adoption of circumcision in infancy and provides an alternative explanation to that given by the Priestly source in Genesis 17 . So Genesis 17 , it’s like covenant of Abraham. Abraham, do your thing.

Yeah, we’ll get to Abraham.

We’ll get to that.

That’s its own. That’s its own. I, I am further mystified.

But. And so the, the idea might be this is another. This is a different explanation of how circumcision came to be a thing for the early Hebrews. A second view we’ve got. Meyer, Gressmann, and others reconstructed a purported original version of a story known as the saga, in which a night demon, perhaps already identified with Adonai, attacked Moses, question mark, in his quest for the jus primae noctis, but was deceived by Zipporah’s circumcision of her husband and her daubing of the blood on the demon’s penis. This was an etiology of circumcision as a marriage ritual. So that’s, that’s another, that’s another take.

And then the third one, Morgenstern and Kosmala argued that originally Zipporah’s child, not Moses, was endangered because he had not been circumcised. In other words, God was coming for the kid. And because the kid was not circumcised, Zipporah was like, ha, slice got you in time. So, yeah, you don’t get the kid. Wow. None of them make sense to modern sensibilities.

No, I. I have not been aided at all in understanding by any of those explanations.

Well, yeah, and. And Davies, the author of this commentary, says all of these theories involve bold and unfounded speculations.

So then why did you tell us about them?

Well, he’s recounting what what recent scholars have. Have said, but yeah, seems to be some. Some way to emphasize the importance of. Of circumcision. And, and perhaps it’s kind of a scary stories to tell in the dark situation.

Like, hey, make sure to circumcise your kid. You don’t want God.

You never know. You never know when God’s gonna pop up and decide to kill you.

Yeah, this. That reframes a little bit the, the popular Latter Day Saint painting of Jesus in the middle of the night, knocking on the door.

Hey, are all of your children’s penises intact? Because I’m not down with that. All right, well, let’s get to, let’s get to Abraham, because this is. Yeah, in, in. In Genesis chapter 17 is where we first get this idea. God said to Abraham, this is verse nine. As for you, you shall keep my covenant, you and your offspring after you, throughout their generations. This is my covenant, which you shall keep between me and you and your offspring ever after. Every male among you shall be circumcised. You shall circumcise the flesh of your foreskins. And it shall be a sign of the covenant between you and me. Now that is some costly signaling right there.

Yes. And then every male among you shall be circumcised when he is eight days old, including the slave born in your house and the one bought with your money from any foreigner who is not of your offspring.

Oh, wow.

So if you. Yeah. If you happen to be captured in battle and sold into an Israelite household, like your day’s not getting any better.

Yeah, that’s. That’s it already sucks for you. But we got even worse news.

Yes. And you can. You can—I mean, we talked about this when we were talking about this recording this segment. You can imagine Abraham getting a look in his eye and being like, family meeting and.

Yeah, because literally he, first of all, he does it to himself.

Which. That is intense. That is, that, that’s a level of faith that I have never had about anything.

There are, there are, there are some illustrations of that.

Oh my gosh.

In illuminated manuscripts of the Bible where he’s just kind of sitting there, you know, man spreading with, with what looks like a butter knife, just kind of like do, do.

And literally when, when they were thinking about like hey, which stories should we do a picture of somebody was like, hey, I got an idea. That, that to me is bizarre. To, yeah. To make, to, to make that choice. But okay, so there you go. He cuts off his own foreskin.

Uh huh.

Then he goes to his family, says boys, let’s, let’s do this thing. Then he goes to like everybody and he just says, hey, the Lord has told me that we have to do this. And frankly, this is where I believe we learn that Abraham is the best salesman of the universe because it would take a lot to convince most men that this was an acceptable thing to be required to do. And somehow he manages to do it.

Yeah. And the story is almost certainly an etiology and origin story for this practice, which is causally and historically opaque. Meaning by the time this is something that you just did, it was not clear what purpose it served and it was not clear why the people who started it came up with it. And we see, and oddly enough you see circumcision in ancient societies all around the world.

Oh really?

Like the, yeah. Pre Columbian American nations seem to have practiced circumcision. And, and they, one of the things they seem to have done is some kind of blood ritual where they thread something through the foreskin and like it’s, it’s a, it’s a whole process. But I think in the area of West Asia and Africa, you do see it in some early Egyptian art where it seems to be associated with some kind of rite of passage because it’s young men who are having it done too.

Oh, interesting.

And some scholars speculate this, this might have been done because of some kind of perception of, of purity. Maybe this is, this is something that is perceived to, to result in a more pure whatever they’re, you know, medically there are people who argue that, that there are benefits to it, but the, that is fiercely debated by, by an awful lot of people.

And the benefit, what benefits are touted are, are vanishingly minimal. Yeah, yeah, they exist. But, but it’s, it’s a lot. It’s not, it’s not much to justify a procedure that is not particularly dangerous, though.

I have not read up on why. John Harvey Kellogg? Oh, that. That makes sense. I think I have heard that the—

Lunatic who, who gave us cornflakes, but then also was this weird health nut who was—

Well, weren’t the cornflakes supposed to, like, keep down the urges or something like that?

Yes, everything he did was about making—was about tamping down sexual urges. And like, his whole idea was, if we start back up circumcising the boys again, it will keep them from masturbating, which I can attest—

No, didn’t work.

No, that. That’s not true at all. But it is sad because that’s—the foreskin is—actually has a lot of nerve endings. And so, like, it will—it does diminish sensitivity to do this thing. So I, I am personally, like, you know, this is a very personal decision. And, you know, I’m—I’m not telling anyone what to do, but I am personally wildly against this practice. I think it is—I think it is horrific myself. I don’t, you know, if you want to do it as an adult, knock yourself out, but to do it to a baby is weird anyway. But, but I think what I heard you say, and I want you to confirm this is, is the idea that we just have no idea why this has—why this practice started or why it was done in the, like, where it came from.

Yeah, we don’t have a clear idea, but it is something that seems to pop up in different parts of the world that very clearly were not influenced by the practice in other parts of the world. So for whatever reason people were noticing, “Hey, that’s kind of extra. So we’ll just lop it off.” And, yeah, it could have to do with purity. It could have to do with some perception of some kind of medical benefit. Maybe there were—were diseases that people thought were a product of, of leaving it on. But it is, it is a surgical alteration that we cannot directly account for. However, and I’ve talked about many things becoming identity markers—once it becomes an identity marker, it takes on a life of its own, right? And, and the origins are utterly irrelevant. And, and that’s when it is, it exists for its own sake. It exists to mark who’s in and out.

And when we get down into the Greco-Roman period and you had a lot of social interactions and, you know, sporting competitions and things like that that happened in the nude, suddenly you were pretty conspicuously Jewish. And if, if you were circumcised—and there were some other ethnic groups that practiced it around that time, but, but the Jewish folks were the, the most well known. It becomes a more stark, more conspicuous identity marker, which means it is going to become even more deeply entrenched precisely as an identity marker.

So it’s a bizarre way that that happens. But yeah, we, we don’t know exactly why it first popped up. And for those who suggest it first popped up because God told Abraham to do it, I mean, go ahead, knock yourself out. But sure, I—that is, that is an etiology. The, the account in, in Exodus 4:24 may be a separate distinct etiology. Either way, they don’t seem to, I think, shine a very good light on, on the originator of, of this requirement.

I, I did want to get to one other interesting idea about circumcision and that is the idea that within the early Christian church it became a really big thing to have relics of saints of holy people.

After they die. You know, a finger would be a thing or hair would be a thing or some, a vial of blood of Saint So-and-so would be a thing. And obviously, like, the most treasured relic would be something from Jesus. But alas, he didn’t—he stopped being dead, so they couldn’t have any of his body parts. Except there’s one piece that was missing and that is what is known as the Holy Prepuce, which is a fascinating thing. Have you done any research at all? Have you looked into the, any of that stuff? The history of, of claims of the foreskin of Jesus as a relic?

I have actually seen foreskin relics. Okay. But not, not Jesus’s.

There are reliquaries, there are places around Europe where they have collections of, of what are supposed to be the foreskins of, of saints and ancient early Christians. So I, I have not seen one that, that, that was labeled Jesus. But I’m sure there are, there are more than a few of them out there.

Well, yeah, there were many claims made and at one point even like Charlemagne was meant to have given a relic that was considered that was believed to be the Holy Prepuce to Pope Leo III. I think that that’s very interesting, but the most interesting claim, I think that has been made about Jesus’s foreskin is that when they first got telescopes good enough that they could see into space and they could see Saturn, they saw that it was encircled by something. And the theory became, one of the theories presented was that that was Jesus’s foreskin. I’m not making that up.

I didn’t, I don’t know what, I don’t know what journal published that or it exists, how that got through peer review. But yeah, that’s interesting. I suppose that’s, that makes just as much sense as any other theory about Jesus’s foreskin.

But yeah, I, I’ll, I’ll let you guys do your own, do your own research on that one. But that, that’s a, that’s a pretty fun one. Anyway. I, I, yeah, I don’t know what to conclude from any of this. I think that we’re, we’ve just backed ourselves into one of those weird corners and we can just leave it at that.

It is, yeah, it’s definitely a firmly implanted tradition in, in the scriptures. It’s something that was very important to ancient Jewish folks as, as it became a way to distinguish themselves and also to put on display their fidelity to the expectations of, of that identity. And.

Oh, geez, we didn’t even mention David and Saul.

No, we did not mention David’s 200 foreskins. Saul was like, get me a hundred Philistine foreskins. That’ll, he, he’ll, he’ll die doing that. And David comes back with, I got you 100 extra on the house.

Who couldn’t use that?

The, the very first cartoon I drew for Biblical Archaeology Review’s cartoon caption contest was a drawing of David holding up a sack, a bloody sack, and Saul just kind of being like, oh, if.

King David offers you calamari, do not accept. I’m. That’s all I’m going to say. All right. That it’s getting gross in here. Well, I’ll, we’ll leave it at that. If you have, have not turned off the show because things got very weird just now. Thank you so much. If you would like to become a part of what makes this show go, you can become a patron over on patreon.com. These are the best people that we know. And as a reward for being our patron, you’ll get early and ad free access to every episode of the show. You can get access to our after party, which is bonus content every for, for our, our beloved patrons that we do every week. If you would like to reach us, it’s contact@dataoverdogma.com and we’ll see you next week.

Bye, everybody.

Just the Tip?

Segments

The Transcript

Scripture Index

Terminology