new JJM in Jewish Setting, on circumcision

Discussion about the Hebrew Bible, Septuagint, pseudepigrapha, Philo, Josephus, Talmud, Dead Sea Scrolls, archaeology, etc.
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StephenGoranson
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new JJM in Jewish Setting, on circumcision

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A new issue of JJMJS, 8 (2021) has appeared; peer reviewed; open source; on circumcision. Journal of the Jesus Movement in its Jewish Setting...

http://www.jjmjs.org/

​Special Issue on Circumcision
In the spring of 2019, an international group of scholars came together at the University of Oslo to discuss male circumcision, under the heading “Ancient Attitudes in Light of Contemporary Questions.” The current issue of JJMJS is the result of this productive meeting. Its contributions discuss circumcision across a range of sources, from the Hebrew Bible, the Septuagint, and other early Jewish and early Christian writings, to Greco-Roman art and imagery. The writings of Paul are the central focus in most of the articles, which is perhaps unsurprising given the importance of circumcision as a topic in several of his letters.

The “contemporary questions” in the title of the meeting relate in part to discussions surrounding male circumcision today. While these debates often center on arguments related to bodily integrity, religious freedom, and the rights of parents and children, understandings of the past and the historiography of circumcision also play a role in them. Increasing our understanding of historical attitudes and practices related to circumcision, particularly for the ideologically significant time period that is the focus of this journal, is therefore of value for informed discussion.

The second aspect of the “contemporary questions” relates more directly to the focus of this journal, which makes it such a fitting platform for the work that resulted from the meeting. The shift in scholarship that has led to understanding the Jesus movement consistently in relation to other forms of early Judaism has significant implication for how attitudes towards circumcision are studied. Previously, scholars predominantly reconstructed a specifically “Christian” understanding of circumcision and identified it as one of the breaking points between “Judaism” and “Christianity.” When sources such as Paul’s letters are read as part of the spectrum of attitudes towards circumcision that we find in early Jewish sources, particularly with an awareness of possible distinctions between eighth-day and proselyte circumcision, a different picture emerges. M Adryael Tong’s article shows the tensions in scholarship between looking for uniformity while also acknowledging diversity on the ground. She argues instead for keeping the fundamental fluidity of circumcision discourse in the Hebrew Bible and later sources consistently in view. Ryan Collman focuses on Paul’s negations of circumcision and foreskin in 1 Corinthians and Galatians. He challenges the conventional interpretation that these verses indicate Paul’s indifference to circumcision and shows how circumcision and foreskin are rather categories that are useful as points of comparison. Karin Neutel's contribution highlights the relevance of the term “foreskin” in Romans 4, which is often misunderstood as “uncircumcision,” rather than as a physical term that is a marker of religious and ethnic difference. In describing Abraham as being “in foreskin,” Paul therefore makes an entirely different argument about his faithfulness than Pauline scholarship overwhelmingly supposes. Mark Nanos argues that the phrase ἔργα νόμου in Paul denotes “rites of a custom,” specifically proselyte initiation. According to Nanos, the phrase does not indicate criticism of Torah, as has often been assumed, but is in fact based on Torah. Isaac Soon uses ancient visual culture to reconstruct possible attitudes towards circumcision among Paul’s gentile audiences, particularly in Galatians. This material suggests that circumcision was associated with sexual dysfunction and aesthetic deformity and that non-Jews would therefore have been highly unlikely to be willing to undergo circumcision. In the final contribution, Thomas R. Blanton IV discusses the French monograph on circumcision by Simon Claude Mimouni, which is often overlooked in English-language scholarship. He connects Mimouni’s work to the developments of “Paul within Judaism” and “Lived Ancient Religion” in recent scholarship. In doing so, he draws attention to the tension between “inherited” structures and the continual processing of diverse actors in relation to circumcision. By challenging existing scholarly views on circumcision and highlighting the fluid and constructed nature of circumcision discourse, this issue therefore hopes to make an important contribution to the re-evaluation of New Testament and other early Christian sources as part of early Jewish diversity, rather than as distinct from it....

http://www.jjmjs.org/ scroll down for links to articles
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