על החוקים לפרטיהם, ספר א א׳On the Special Laws, Book I 1
א׳
1THE SPECIAL LAWS BOOK I
On The Special Laws Which Fall Under The Two Heads Of The Ten Commandments, One Of Which Is Directed Against The Acknowledgement Of Other Sovereign Gods Save The One, And The Other Against Giving Honours To The Works Of Men’s Hands
[1] The Ten Words, as they are called, the main heads under which are summarized the Special Laws, have been explained in detail in the preceding treatise. We have now, as the sequence of our dissertation requires, to examine the particular ordinances. I will begin with that which is an object of ridicule among many people.
On The Special Laws Which Fall Under The Two Heads Of The Ten Commandments, One Of Which Is Directed Against The Acknowledgement Of Other Sovereign Gods Save The One, And The Other Against Giving Honours To The Works Of Men’s Hands
[1] The Ten Words, as they are called, the main heads under which are summarized the Special Laws, have been explained in detail in the preceding treatise. We have now, as the sequence of our dissertation requires, to examine the particular ordinances. I will begin with that which is an object of ridicule among many people.
ב׳
2[2] Now the practice which is thus ridiculed, namely the circumcision of the genital organs, is very zealously observed by many other nations, particularly by the Egyptians, a race regarded as pre-eminent for its populousness, its antiquity and its attachment to philosophy.
ג׳
3[3] And therefore it would be well for the detractors to desist from childish mockery and to inquire in a wiser and more serious spirit into the causes to which the persistence of this custom is due, instead of dismissing the matter prematurely and impugning the good sense of great nations. Such persons might naturally reflect that all these thousands in every generation undergo the operation and suffer severe pains in mutilating the bodies of themselves and their nearest and dearest, and that there are many circumstances which urge the retention and performance of a custom introduced by the men of old. The principal reasons are four in number.
ד׳
4[4] One is that it secures exemption from the severe and almost incurable malady of the prepuce called anthrax or carbuncle, so named, I believe, from the slow fire which it sets up and to which those who retain the foreskin are more susceptible.
ה׳
5[5] Secondly, it promotes the cleanliness of the whole body as befits the consecrated order, and therefore the Egyptians carry the practice to a further extreme and have the bodies of their priests shaved. For some substances which need to be cleared away collect and secrete themselves both in the hair and the foreskin.
ו׳
6[6] Thirdly, it assimilates the circumcised member to the heart. For as both are framed to serve for generation, thought being generated by the spirit force in the heart, living creatures by the reproductive organ, the earliest men held that the unseen and superior element to which the concepts of the mind owe their existence should have assimilated to it the visible and apparent, the natural parent of the things perceived by sense.
ז׳
7[7] The fourth and most vital reason is its adaptation to give fertility of offspring, for we are told that it causes the semen to travel aright without being scattered or dropped into the folds of the foreskin, and therefore the circumcised nations appear to be the most prolific and populous.