Thomas R. Blanton IV

The chapter discusses the origins, dissemination, and contemporary global distribution of cultural, heritage-based genital modification practices of females and males. These are performed as rites of passage; religious obligations; safeguards to virginity, chastity, and marriageability of girls; or group and gender identity. Male genital modification practices are unevenly distributed globally and originated multiple times in parts of Africa, Asia, Australia, and the Pacific. Detailed accounts of the history of male circumcision in ancient Egypt and the Levant are provided as examples of the variations in practices and multiple origins, and male circumcision among Muslims in Africa, Asia, and elsewhere is covered. Female genital modifications were also known in antiquity and similarly originated multiple times in Africa, Asia, and possibly elsewhere, probably along with or following the establishment of male modifications. Female genital cutting is practiced by followers of several religions, and some Muslims believe it to be required or at least desirable in their faith. In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the spread of male circumcision was further accelerated by medical promotion, in the belief that it contributed to disease prevention and morality. The World Health Organization’s current support for male infant circumcisions while at the same time promoting abolition of female genital cutting (with some exceptions) is discussed. The contentious ethical issue of whether it violates human rights to surgically alter the genitalia of infants or children, who are unable to provide informed consent, is also discussed.

Two diametrically opposed assumptions have influenced interpretations of circumcision rituals in ancient Judaism: either women performed the operation on their infant sons because children at birth and during infancy remained under the purview of the mother; or, conversely, men—specifically a ritual agent known as the mohel—performed circumcisions, because only they were typically granted authority to carry out the ritual. This study reassesses the pertinent texts, including Exodus 4 and passages from the books of Maccabees and the Babylonian Talmud (b. Šabb. 134a; b. Yebam. 64b; b. ʿAbod. Zar. 27a), to determine whether women in ancient Judaism may have circumcised their infant sons; and shows that an older, family-based ritual practice in which either mothers or fathers performed the operation was being replaced by late antiquity by a specialist-based ritual performed by mohels from outside the household.

Addressing studies of the concepts of structure and agency, in 2008 sociologist François Dépelteau called for a ‘relational approach’ that compared the ‘trans-actions’ of actors, but notably left open the question of how such a study should be conducted. The present article attempts to operationalise Dépelteau’s call, albeit in a manner tailored specifically to meet the needs of researchers in the area of ‘lived ancient religion’. The study of ‘trans-action’ is operationalised here by employing key terms drawn from Staf Hellemans’s ‘processing approach’ to the study of religion, in which agents ‘process’ their environments through selection, modification, assembly, performance, integration, and resonance. In the study of the religions of Mediterranean antiquity, questions of structure and agency can be addressed relationally by comparing the performances of specific actors, to the extent that such performances are accessible in the material evidence; for example, in the form of texts, statuary, art, and architecture. In an attempt to demonstrate the utility of this approach, a case study of the ritual of circumcision in ancient Judaism is offered.