The Hebrew Bible's description of circumcision are pretty clearly about
removal, not just incision, of foreskins.  The hebrew word < 'arel> means
"covered and obscured by the foreskin" and is used, both in the bible and
later, metaphorically (an uncircumcised heart, uncircumcised speech, etc) as
well as literally.  See, if you're interested, the incident in Exodus, end of
chapter four, where Moses wife Zipporah circumsizes their son with a flint and
physically throws the foreskin on the ground in front of Moses -- sure sounds
like complete removal to me.

That's internal philological evidence that goes back to the time those bible
passages were written, apparently about 1200 before the common era, or about
3200 years back from the present.

As far as the suggestion from the Ritter/Deniston book that "milah," by which
they refer to removing just the end of the foreskin, is much earlier and
"periah," or total removal, is later, that sounds possible to me, but
certainly even in this presently-used form circumcision is described in detail
in the talmud (tractate shabbat), in passages written within a couple hundred
years, one way or another, of the year zero.

So even if the ritual evolved -- as presumably it did; all rituals do -- it
reached its present form a very, very long time ago.

So I'm guessing that Alicia's original source was speculative rather than
authoritative.  There may be people who would like to think ritual
circumcision is all just a misunderstanding but, love it or hate it, I don't
think there's any good evidence to support this particular view of it.

Elisheva S. Urbas
NYC

Elisheva

Elisheva S. Urbas
NYC