Christ Circumcised
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In the first full-length study of the circumcision of Jesus, Andrew S. Jacobs turns to an unexpected symbol—the stereotypical mark of the Jewish covenant on the body of the Christian savior—to explore how and why we think about difference and identity in early Christianity. Jacobs explores the subject of Christ's circumcision in texts dating from the first through seventh centuries of the Common Era. Using a diverse toolkit of approaches, including the psychoanalytic, postcolonial, and poststructuralist, he posits that while seeming to desire fixed borders and a clear distinction between self (Christian) and other (Jew, pagan, and heretic), early Christians consistently blurred and destabilized their own religious boundaries. He further argues that in this doubled approach to others, Christians mimicked the imperial discourse of the Roman Empire, which exerted its power through the management, not the erasure, of difference. For Jacobs, the circumcision of Christ vividly illustrates a deep-seated Christian duality: the fear of and longing for an other, at once reviled and internalized. From his earliest appearance in the Gospel of Luke to the full-blown Feast of the Divine Circumcision in the medieval period, Christ circumcised represents a new way of imagining Christians and their creation of a new religious culture.
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Christ Circumcised
Series Editors: Daniel Boyarin, Virginia Burrus, Derek Krueger
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Nonetheless modern commentators have little to say specifically about Luke’s circumcised messiah,79 other than to note that this event combines with the rest of the “prologue” of the Gospel of Luke (Luke 1–2) to create a deeply Jewish point of departure for a messiah who will, ultimately, deliver salvation to gentiles.80 Indeed, for most modern scholars Jesus’ circumcision is absorbed into the larger question of Luke’s (seemingly) incongruous emphasis on the particularities of Law and Temple in his universalizing gospel.81 Of the four canonical gospels, Luke’s is typically considered the most gentile in its orientation;82 the author crafts a “gospel for the gentiles” both theologically (a “universal” salvation that supplants the old covenant [see Luke 16:16]) and stylistically (a more urbane, sophisticated literary presentation).83
Luke’s incongruously Jewish opening chapters have vexed New Testament scholars for centuries. Early source critics explained these early, more Jewish passages as the calcified remains of an older gospel source preserved—like an extinct theological fly in more precious amber—in the layers of Luke’s gospel.84 This early stratum may retain early traditions about Jesus the Jew, but those early traditions are effectively neutralized by being preserved in a more evolved text. Later redaction criticism focused on Luke’s authorial motives in combining stories of Jesus’ Jewishness with theological messages of universal salvation.85 François Bovon imagines the evangelist as a gentile who, once drawn to Judaism as a “god-fearer,” now sees the value in leaving Judaism behind. So the narrative of Jesus’ Jewish childhood becomes something like a fond memory that carries nostalgic value, but little theological significance.86 Raymond Brown likewise understands “a Lucan view of the Jewish Temple and its ritual more in terms of nostalgia for things past, rather than of hostility for an active and seductive enemy.”87 Such commentary frames the first chapters of Luke, including the passage on Jesus’ circumcision, as splashes of theological color: an acknowledgment of the resolutely past-tense significance of Israel, a kinder and gentler mode of theological supersessionism.88
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