circumcision

93:6.6Most of the Salem be­liev­ers had prac­ticed cir­cum­ci­sion, though it had never been made oblig­a­tory by Mel­chiz­e­dek. Now Abra­ham had al­ways so op­posed cir­cum­ci­sion that on this oc­ca­sion he de­cided to sol­em­nize the event by for­mally ac­cept­ing this rite in to­ken of the rat­i­fi­ca­tion of the Salem covenant.

89:8.2Men even­tu­ally con­ceived the idea that the of­fer­ing of some part of the body could take the place of the older and com­plete hu­man sac­ri­fice. Phys­i­cal mu­ti­la­tion was also con­sid­ered to be an ac­cept­able sub­sti­tute. Hair, nails, blood, and even fin­gers and toes were sac­ri­ficed. The later and well-nigh uni­ver­sal an­cient rite of cir­cum­ci­sion was an out­growth of the cult of par­tial sac­ri­fice; it was purely sac­ri­fi­cial, no thought of hy­giene be­ing at­tached thereto. Men were cir­cum­cised; women had their ears pierced.

92:1.1The evo­lu­tion of re­li­gion has been traced from early fear and ghosts down through many suc­ces­sive stages of de­vel­op­ment, in­clud­ing those ef­forts first to co­erce and then to ca­jole the spir­its. Tribal fe­tishes grew into totems and tribal gods; magic for­mu­las be­came mod­ern prayers. Cir­cum­ci­sion, at first a sac­ri­fice, be­came a hy­gienic pro­ce­dure.

70:7.10The pu­berty ini­ti­a­tion cer­e­mony usu­ally ex­tended over a pe­riod of five years. Much self-tor­ture and painful cut­ting en­tered into these cer­e­monies. Cir­cum­ci­sion was first prac­ticed as a rite of ini­ti­a­tion into one of these se­cret fra­ter­ni­ties. The tribal marks were cut on the body as a part of the pu­berty ini­ti­a­tion; the tat­too orig­i­nated as such a badge of mem­ber­ship. Such tor­ture, to­gether with much pri­va­tion, was de­signed to harden these youths, to im­press them with the re­al­ity of life and its in­ev­i­ta­ble hard­ships. This pur­pose is bet­ter ac­com­plished by the later ap­pear­ing ath­letic games and phys­i­cal con­tests.

122:8.2In just the same man­ner as all ba­bies be­fore that day and since have come into the world, the prom­ised child was born; and on the eighth day, ac­cord­ing to the Jew­ish prac­tice, he was cir­cum­cised and for­mally named Joshua (Je­sus).

122:2.7John was born in the City of Ju­dah, March 25, 7 B.C. Zach­a­rias and Eliz­a­beth re­joiced greatly in the re­al­iza­tion that a son had come to them as Ga­briel had prom­ised, and when on the eighth day they pre­sented the child for cir­cum­ci­sion, they for­mally chris­tened him John, as they had been di­rected afore­time. Al­ready had a nephew of Zach­a­rias de­parted for Naz­a­reth, car­ry­ing the mes­sage of Eliz­a­beth to Mary pro­claim­ing that a son had been born to her and that his name was to be John.

90:2.10In many ways and by de­vi­ous meth­ods the olden shamans es­tab­lished their rep­u­ta­tions as voices of God and cus­to­di­ans of prov­i­dence. They sprin­kled the new­born with wa­ter and con­ferred names upon them; they cir­cum­cised the males. They pre­sided over all burial cer­e­monies and made due an­nounce­ment of the safe ar­rival of the dead in spir­it­land.