ABSTRACT
This chapter considers how interpretations of circumcision changed as Christianity became the established religion of the Roman world, how circumcision was appropriated for the uncircumcised, and what Christian exegesis may reveal about late antique representation of the male body. Christian tradition had an ascetic strand, and in the fourth and fifth centuries, after Christianity became the religion professed and supported by Roman emperors, some Christians manifested intense concern for the condition of the body. There was no ready-made imagery for the virgin or celibate male in Graeco-Roman culture or in Christian tradition. He did not become Christ’s bridegroom. Circumcision is not an uncontrolled physical response, but a deliberate modification of the male body. But for Greeks and Romans, circumcision was an alien cultural practice. From the perspective of ‘the circumcision’, men who were not circumcised became the odd ones out, physically identifiable and excluded from the Jewish community, and Paul referred to them too with a metonymy.
