Joshua began to address the people, and as he was speaking they said to him: Should this person, who has a severed penis (ראש קטיעה= lit. cut off head), as he has no children, speak to the people about entering the land of Israel? [Sotah 35a]
Ephrem speaks of Joshua as a perpetual virgin like Jesus but never explicitly references him as a eunuch. To explain why no mention of sons of Joshua are mentioned anywhere Jewish legend claims the lack of reference to any children was because they were girls Megillah 14b (and thus presumably not worth mentioning) https://www.biblicalarchaeology.org/dai ... the-bible/
Beside Ephrem, the Armenian (neo-Marcionite) tradition extols the 'virginity' of a number of prophets including Joshua:
On the altar he bound his only begotten son and put a knife to his throat.22
It is he who saw the day of Christ, in the deliverance of his beloved [son].23
I gave birth to that Jacob who begat the twelve tribes.24 I gave birth to Moses, whose face became glorious.25
I gave birth to the virgin Joshua, who arrested the sun and the moon.26
I gave birth also to Samuel to whom God hearkened concerning the thunder.27
I gave birth to the virgin Elijah, who brought back to life that dead [child] in ...
“Finally, from so little sleeping and so much reading, his brain dried up and he went completely out of his mind.”
― Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, Don Quixote
As you know (or perhaps not) I think the strong interest in castration in early Christianity goes back to something Jewish. It might not be specifically 'Jewish' in a religious sense. More likely than not it was 'Jewish' in the sense that at the time the earliest gospel was written (post-70 CE) a great number of Jews were castrated in the aftermath of the reconquest of Judea. To this end - perhaps - having a cosmic 'Joshua' figure might have something to do with the contemporary mass castration of male Jewish survivors of the capture of Jerusalem and other places. Certainly captured enemy combatants on the other side (i.e. Justus of Tiberias) were forcibly 'cut.' The usual explanation to this statement and others in Josephus is that they were only 'circumcised' (Life 112, 149). But can you imagine what this must have looked like? A grown man or youth held down as other men take his naked body and mutilate his penis. I can't believe this was done with a lot of delicese. Given that the same word describes both states (i.e. variations of 'cut' or 'cutting') the borderline here between the two states is extremely plastic. For all intents and purposes it would have been castration albeit perhaps only of the corona or the top of the penis. It would certainly have been the most brutal of 'circumcisions.' In short then 'on the ground' at least the Jewish War was very much about cock ...
And so you are left with a cockless or a corona-less Joshua-redivivus potentially as part of a mythical or near-mythical story set at least 49 years earlier. demanding that his followers 'become like him.' Very strange.
“Finally, from so little sleeping and so much reading, his brain dried up and he went completely out of his mind.”
― Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, Don Quixote
Eisenman has develop a similar interest in the connection (albeit arriving at different conclusions):
Curiously, the Àrst clue one comes upon relating to the “circumcision” aspect of the terminology is the denotation by Origen of “Sicarii” as those who have either circumcised themselves or forcibly circumcised others in violation of the Roman “Lex Cornelia de Sicarius et VeneÀcis” already alluded to above, that is, the Roman Law against circumcision and mutilation of the Áesh and/or castration. In Against Celsus 2.13 Origen speciacally describes “the Sicarii” as being called this “on account of the practice of circumcision,” which in their case he deÀnes as “mutilating themselves contrary to the established laws and customs” and as being, therefore, inevitably “put to death” on this account. Of course, this is in Origen's time in the third century. It does not necessarily mean that such a total ban would have been in effect prior to the First Jewish Revolt against Rome, when the problem would probably not have been deemed sufÀciently serious to merit it—not probably until the aftermath of the Second Jewish Revolt when it is clear things were becoming more and more repressive on this score.
Nor, as he stressed, does one ever hear—that is, in his own time—of a “Sicarius” reprieved from such a “punishment (even) if he recants, the evidence of circumcision being sufÀcient to ensure the death of him who has undergone it.” This text is doubly ironic for we know that Origen himself was just such a person, that is, “a Sicarius” and had reportedly castrated himself presumably not because of his “zeal” for the Law or circumcision but because of his “zeal” for celibacy. Nevertheless where non-Jews anyhow were concerned, castration of this kind was clearly being seen as the equivalent of circumcision—or rather vice versa, the Romans viewed circumcision as just such a bodily mutilation of the Áesh and a variety of castration. Jerome conÀrms this in Letter 84 to Pammachus and Oceanus when in claiming that Origen “castrated himself with a knife” (this clarifying the “sica” part of the “Sicarius” formulation) and ridiculing him by quoting Paul's own critique of “zealotry” and “Zealots” in Rom 10:2, saying he did this out of “zeal for God but not according to Knowledge,” both showing their awareness of “Zealots” and, in particular, that such an act would have been characteristic of them. In fact, Paul goes on in Rom In fact, Paul goes on in Rom 10:3–4, much like he does in 1 Cor 8:1–4, when speaking about “things sacriÀced to idols,” to ridicule the reputed “Righteousness”—which we all recognize as a basic concept at Qumran—of such persons saying, For being ignorant of God's Righteousness (in 1 Cor 8:1–3 it is their alleged...
“Finally, from so little sleeping and so much reading, his brain dried up and he went completely out of his mind.”
― Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, Don Quixote
Joshua began to address the people, and as he was speaking they said to him: Should this person, who has a severed penis (ראש קטיעה= lit. cut off head), as he has no children, speak to the people about entering the land of Israel? [Sotah 35a]
Can you tell us more about Sotah, its history, corroborating sources for same, etc.? Your point has an interest but rabbinic lit is not the speciality of most readers here, I suspect.
vridar.orgMusings on biblical studies, politics, religion, ethics, human nature, tidbits from science
