sotto voce

That's the title of the essay done, anyway.

Iskander

Google, circumcision christ child anonymous painting portuguese master Lisbon, and it should take you here:

A History of Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years
By Diarmaid MacCulloch

http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=u...lisbon&f=false

Some paintings here
http://www.circumstitions.com/Mantegna.html




http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circumcision_of_Jesus

sotto voce

But, by Bible teaching, he was the deity who justified, accepted Abram as his friend before he was circumcised. Circumcised people knew that, too. It showed that Abraham's God was not a soft touch, did not actually have his head up his fundament with an arbitrary bit of weird fussiness, accepting people as righteous just because they had had a little operation. Circumcision was just a reminder, a personal reminder to curb one's pride, pending the messiah, who would 'circumcise hearts', or change minds and motives, not bodies.

Though the idea of God accepting people as righteous just because they had had a little operation is what some people like others to think is true. This is presumably because the idea of justification by faith is both much too easy, requiring no officious officials; and much too difficult, because the only evidence of faith is in one's moment by moment behaviour; and of course it entails accepting the offence of the cross to one's pride. Just as some like others to think that dipping babies in water, along with a magic incantation, somehow makes them acceptable. These rituals are what some people want to believe are efficacious. You can sell some people any poison in a pretty bottle, if it makes life apparently easy.

He certainly did. Those children of Jews who had become Christians were not to be circumcised (or baptised). They had the free choice of accepting or refusing the gospel, like everyone else, and if they got circumcised (or baptised) it was entirely their own, independent decision for which they as individuals took all responsibility. Circumcision had made good sense when Joshua settled Canaan. But, despite the contemporary success of Jewish proselytism in Paul's time, the days of the nation state of Yahweh shining as a beacon of his perfect laws were well and truly over, and had been for a long time, of course.

If the Bible be true, circumcision, Passover, 612 Laws of Moses, Temple, Temple ritual and everything else 'religious', Jewish or otherwise, became history at the crucifixion. Either the only true Judaism is 'atheist' Christianity; or what few scraps remain of the Judaism of the Tanakh is Judaism, and Christianity is damnable heresy. There is no messing about with grey areas.