Genesis Vol 3.pdf - College Press

‘17: 1-27 GENESIS 4- ‘
self) is to lay up a stock of vital*e , and thus secure
reincarnation for the disembodied,. spirit, is putting ah
afterthought for origin. The existence of the practice ‘in
question is doubtful, and it must have arisen, if it existed,
after circumcision had become an established custom.
Savages and other peoples, when they feel the need of
providing for reincarnation, commonly preserve the bones
or the whole body of the deceased.”
Lange (CDHCG, 423, 424) : .‘‘The Epistle of Barnabas,
in a passage which has not been sufficiently regarded
(ch. 9) brings into prominence the idea, that we must
distinguish circumcision, as an original custom of different
nations, from that which receives the patriarchal and theocratic
sanction. ‘The heathen circumcision,’ as Delitzsch
remarks, ‘leaving out of view the Ishmaelites, Arabians,
and the tribes connected with them both by blood and in
history, is thus very analogous to the heathen sacrifice.
As the sacrifice sprang from the feeling of the necessity
for an atonement, so circumcision from the consciousness
of the impurity of human nature.’ But that the spread of
circumcision among the ancient nations is analogous to
the general prevalence of sacrifice, has not yet been proved.
It remains to be investigated, whether the national origin
of circumcision stands rather in some relation to religious
sacrifice; whether it may possibly form an opposition to
the custom of human sacrifice (for it is just as absurd to
view it with some, as a remnant of human sacrifice, as to
regard it with others, as a modification of eunuchism);
whether it may have prevailed from sanitary motives, or
whether is has not rather from the first had its ground
and source in the idea of the consecration of the generative
nature, and of the propagation of the race. At all events,
circumcision did not come to Abraham us u custom of his
ancestors; he wus circumcised when ninety-nine yeurs of
age: This bears with decisive weight against the generalizing
of the custom by Delitzsch. As to the destination of
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