Religious male circumcision
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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Male circumcision, when practiced as a religious rite, is found in the Hebrew Bible, in the Abrahamic covenant, such as Template:Bibleverse, and is therefore practiced by Jews and Muslims and some Christians, those who constitute the Abrahamic religions.
Cultures circumcising males generally do it shortly after birth, during childhood or around puberty as part of a rite of passage. Circumcision is most prevalent in Muslim countries and Israel, and is most prevalent in the Jewish and Muslim faiths, though also common in the United States, the Philippines, South Korea, and Ethiopia, which are predominantly Christian. It is less common in Europe, Latin America, China and India. Hodges argues that in Ancient Greece the foreskin was valued and that Greek and Roman attempts to abolish ritual circumcision were prompted by humanitarian concerns.
Circumcision has a long history, and is mentioned frequently in the Bible. However, the Bible means different things to different religious groups.
- For Jews, the Bible consists of the 24 books in Biblical Hebrew (and some Biblical Aramaic) that are known as the Tanakh, specifically the Masoretic Text.
- For Protestant Christians, the Bible consists of the 39 books of the Old Testament (following Jerome's Veritas Hebraica) plus the 27 books of the New Testament.
- For Catholic and most Orthodox Christians, the Bible includes several other books known as the Deuterocanonical books, the list being slightly different for each group. In addition, some Orthodox Christians have additional New Testament books, such as the Ethiopian Orthodox and Armenian Orthodox, or fewer, such as the Syriac Orthodox Church, see Development of the Christian Biblical canon.
