Christ Circumcised. Andrew S. Jacobs
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of death as an “angel” of the Lord, and he posits:
Now I think this angel had power against those who were not circumcised from the people and generally against all those who worshipped the Creator alone (
The rite of circumcision, according to Origen, affirms the superiority of the Jews: after all, the “hostile angel” has singled out the Jews because of their proper worship of the “Creator alone,” in affirmation of the uniquely correct nature of their monotheistic worship. Presumably, such angelic avengers already held sufficient sway over the idolatrous pagans.59 Yet the mark of the Jewish covenant is also revealed to be, at root, little more than a prophylactic talisman nullified by Jesus’ incarnation. Christ’s circumcision, therefore, reveals the hidden truth of Jewish covenant practice: even as it is superior to the polytheistic idolatry of the gentiles, it is but a stopgap measure long since eradicated by the new covenant of salvation.
This introduction of Jesus’ circumcision into Origen’s discussion of Jewish superiority over hellenistic “wisdom” in his defense of Christianity weaves together several disparate threads of early Christian apology. On the one hand, Judaism is plotted as superior to paganism because it constitutes the true revelation of divine philosophy, of which Plato’s later contribution is but a pale imitation.60 On the other hand, Judaism is portrayed as defunct, no longer the bearer of this divinely inspired wisdom: the narrative of Christian supersession (over Jews and pagans) is inscribed on Christ’s own body.61 By taking circumcision upon himself, Christ both affirms the significance of the Jewish ritual and yet renders it moot and past tense. This overlay of supersession directly onto Christ’s person is so complete that Origen can introduce here (without attribution) Paul’s later voice, from the Letter to the Galatians, the point of departure for most Christian argumentation against circumcision. The obsolescence of the Law is portrayed as synchronous with Christ’s observance of that Law.
Yet this polyphonous synchronicity renders supersession ultimately ambivalent, as well. As in Justin’s Dialogue, transcendence of the Law is accomplished at the moment of Christ’s submission to the Law. In the treatise Against Celsus, we are at least given a glimpse into the mechanics of such a potentially counterintuitive argument: a cosmic drama and angelic avenger are conjured “behind the scenes” in order to explain first the institution and then the eradication of this Jewish ritual. Yet the Jewishness of the ritual on Christ’s body, at the beginning of the incarnation, remains incontestable, indeed, absolutely requisite for the logic of Origen’s argument to make sense.62 Christianity must, therefore, be constantly reminded of the remainder of Jewishness at its origins even as it persists in pushing an increasingly supersessionist line. The artful heteroglossia of Origen’s apology affirms this doubled position of recuperation and repudiation of Christianity’s Jewish origins. The Jewish voice functions at once as critic and defender of the truth of Christianity: Celsus’s prosopopoeial Jew provides Origen with as many occasions for defending Christian novelty against Jewish critique as it does for defending Jewish custom against pagan disrespect.63 The invocation of Christ’s own circumcision at this nexus of identification and differentiation embodies the multivalence at work in the production of insistently porous Christian boundaries.
Simon and Theophilus
The Altercatio Simonis Iudaei et Theophili Christiani (the manuscript title of which already betrays something of a change in tone from Justin’s “dialogue” and Origen’s “reply”) reads much differently from older dialogues (although some of the content may be drawn from earlier texts).64 The Altercation in the form we possess it probably dates from the late fourth or early fifth century,65 and is ascribed by the late Latin bibliographer Gennadius to an otherwise unidentified Evagrius.66 The Jewish interlocutor, Simon, is flat and listless, providing little more than prompting for the much more fulsome and lively (and aggressive) replies of the Christian, Theophilus. “Proba mihi,” Simon repeats throughout the Altercation, “Prove it to me,” and Theophilus proceeds to prove most convincing.67 Simon’s compliant requests for more “proof” and “evidence” might read like the plaintive inquiries of a thick-headed catechumen, were it not for Simon’s occasional, and faltering, resistance and Theophilus’s sneering responses: “You speak like a Jew.”68 It comes as little surprise, then, that at the end of the Altercation, all of his questions answered, Simon the Jew converts: “Bearer of salvation, Theophilus, good doctor of the sick, I can say nothing more: command me to be catechized and consecrated by the sign of faith in Jesus Christ. Indeed I think that, through the imposition of hands, I shall receive cleansing from my transgressions.”69 That Simon’s conversion should be the “happy ending” of this later dialogue demonstrates already its distance from the dialogic imagination of Justin or Origen.
In a somewhat different register, then, this late Latin dialogue appropriates and integrates the Jewish voice into Christian truth. This Christian mastery of the Jewish voice—both repudiating and revaluing the Jewish origins of Christianity—is once more signaled by the intervention of Christ’s circumcision. The circumcision of Jesus is introduced in this instance by Theophilus the Christian, in the midst of his “proof” that Christ is the prophesied subject of Isaiah 7–8. Simon had suggested, through an intertextual reading of Isaiah 37:22 (“The virgin daughter of Zion has despised you and mocked you”) that the “virgin” of Isaiah 7:14 allegorically represented Zion. Theophilus counters that Simon’s allegory is nonsensical. Isaiah’s earlier prophecy had spoken of a literal child, “who ate butter and honey” (Isa 7:15), was born of “David’s lineage” (Isa 7:13), and who in his infancy received the “strength of Damascus and the spoils of Samaria” (Isa 8:4).
Theophilus proceeds to lay out the correct interpretation of the Isaiah passage, which subordinates any allegory to the literal interpretation: “First, it is explained that Christ ate butter and honey, in accordance with the birth of all infants. We believe this and so we maintain our faith; and certainly he was circumcised on the eighth day.”70 The author of the Altercation introduces here an argument that was used earlier against docetists and Marcionites: a literal reading of Isaiah 7 proves Christ’s fleshly infancy and consequently the reality of his human form.71 Like all children (according to this reading), Christ ate the food of infants: butter and honey. Furthermore, in proof of his real childhood, he was really circumcised. The logic seems to be that, since Christ was demonstrably a child (as his infant circumcision proves), he would certainly have eaten the foods of a child (butter and honey) and, therefore, so far fits the literal description of the child in Isaiah’s prophecy. The ritual of circumcision in this interpretation has little or no resonance with Judaism:72 its purpose is to reinforce Christ’s literal fulfillment of Isaiah’s prophecy. Only when the literal significance of the passage has been understood should allegory be introduced: the “butter and honey” of Christ’s infancy are additionally understood to be the “anointing of the spirit” and the “sweetness of his teaching, which we follow and so we attain faith.” The “spoils of Samaria” are likewise first read literally—as the gifts of the Magi—before being allegorized as the pagan abandonment of idolatry in the face of Christ’s truth.
This christological interpretation of Isaiah 7–8 might not seem particularly noteworthy but for the strange insertion of Christ’s circumcision. Of all the signs of Christ’s infancy that might be drawn from the gospels—swaddling, being carried, and so on—why single out such a Jewish proof in the service of refuting Jewish biblical exegesis? Partly (as we shall see) the author is laying some textual groundwork for the more robust reinterpretation of circumcision to come later in the dialogue. But I suggest he is also inverting