Israel and Humanity - The question of circumcision
§ 5.
THE QUESTION OF THE ClRCONCISION.
We just mention circumcision among the commandments of the Mosaic law which is frequently subjected the proselytes of the gate. There were doctors who made it their duty, but in reality this requirement is more doubtful. Some authors such as Claire V. [1] are instead in the dispensation of circumcision a measure taken to attract more easily the Gentiles. "Indeed, he says, Josephus tells of a merchant named Hananiah who converted Izat, king of Adiabene did not compelled to be circumcised, saying it was not necessary to observe the laws of Moses." Despite the falsehood of that last sentence that makes one believe that no other form of conversion that the submission of all the Mosaic laws, the true meaning of words recalled is nevertheless quite apparent. We guess that there was a way to belong to the true religion without accepting all the Mosaic which circumcision was the symbol and the necessary initiation. If Josephus seems to argue otherwise is an exaggeration on his part as it just proves that without circumcision, it is not Judaism itself it is, but this form of true religion, both superior and subordinate to the laws of Moses, which is Noachism. Lack of circumcision, we were introduced [2] as a special dispensation of the Mosaic propaganda purposes, was precisely the specific character of an entire class of converts in perfect order also with the religion of Israel.
Maimonides is very explicit on this issue. It says in plain terms that the Noachide or proselyte of the gate was not subjected to circumcision. "If the teacher said he agreed with the slave not to circumcise him, he can keep it as he pleases, though uncircumcised, provided however, that the slave accepts the seven precepts of Noah and that it then becomes gher thoschab? (proselyte of the gate). And later he wrote: "What is this gher thoschab ? This is the kind that has accepted the seven commandments of Noah, which is neither circumcised nor baptized [3] ".
These words by which Maimonides summarizes this ancient Jewish tradition, which he thus echoes are of paramount importance for the history and criticism of the origins of Christianity. They prove that the Jewish doctrine than in width and condescension the Christian form of religious Noachism since it does not, like this one baptism.
It is not only the Jewish tradition by its most authoritative bodies, the story itself that shows that circumcision was not imposed on the proselyte of the gate. The state of Jewish society before the Graeco-Roman is known to us, for the most part at least, by what we learn from Jewish books already contributed, but since then other sources information abound. But these we show that during this period, in the East or West, a crowd of pagans had since time immemorial formed groups constantly growing, accepting this universal law preached by Judaism, but without however circumcised or perform the Mosaic. We believe we have set all this in a way undeniable about the destination of the divine revelation. But one is so universal and so constant that can be the consequence of a fundamental principle of Judaism. If this principle had not existed, the Israelites never would have allowed, for the Gentiles, such an exemption to the precepts of the Torah, they certainly would not violate a law they [4] believed God, to put it within reach of strangers who often did not deserve their distrust or hostility. Thus we see for instance what difficulties the spread of liberal Christianity of Paul has been interviewed regarding the admission of the Gentiles in religious belief and national prejudices of Judaizing Christians. This attitude was, we repeat, that the result of a misunderstanding and Renan proves the existence of the true Jewish principle when he writes: "The law imposed by the primitive Church to the new converts from paganism was to that almost all of Noachian precepts ... which were imposed on all converts. A man who, about the same time, wrote under the assumed name of the famous Greek moralist Phocylides a small corner of natural moral Jewish simplified for use by non-Jews, to stop similar solutions [5] "
