BIBLICAL TRADITIONS OF CASTRATION

Christians who condemned the eunuch priests had yet another basis for their denunciation of the cult in Biblical tradition. Christians of late antiquity could see the hostility toward the Mother of the Gods and her associates in their sacred texts, or so they thought. Yet Christians were also obliged to come to terms with ambiguities in these sacred texts that offered a positive image of eunuchs in religions. Patristic discussions of these Biblical traditions on castration reveal the anxieties surrounding the relationship between the new religion and the new masculinity.

Like most other areas of the Mediterranean world, ancient Israel had its own traditions of the worship of a divine mother and her beloved consort. By the time the Hebrew Bible was taking written shape, the Hebrew goddess was probably worshipped under the name Asherah, and her consort under the name Tammuz. According to the interpretation of many modern scholars, the worship of the female deity was not a Canaanite corruption of an original monotheism, as it is presented in the Biblical sources, but an ancient form of the Hebrew religion abandoned by reformers of the Deuteronomic period, who forbid the worship of all gods but Yahweh.

The hostility of the Biblical texts tot he worship of the Hebrew goddess extended to a group of her priests, known in Hebrew as "holy ones" ('qedeshim', singular 'qadesh') or as "dogs" ('kelebhim,' singular 'keleh'), depending perhaps on one's perspective. Their name is the masculine equivalent of the feminine "holy ones" ('qedeshoth,' singular 'qedeshah'). It seems clear that the women who were 'qedeshoth' were sacred prostitutes; they were compared with secular prostitutes ('zonoth;' singular 'zonah'). It is less clear whether the men who were 'qedeshim' were also sacred prostitutes, although it must be said that this interpretation is resisted only because of lack of evidence and not because of any contrary evidence. Leaders of the Deuteronomic reforms perpetually attempted to rid the Hebrew religion of aspects of religious worship that fit the patterns of worship of the fertility goddess elsewhere, including annual rituals of mourning for the death of Tammuz, but also much more. In fact, the same sorts of activities are condemned as we have seen condemned elsewhere: castration of priests, sexual penetration of adult males, and transvestism. Some scholars reject a link between these activities and the priests of the Hebrew goddess, but the prohibition against castration is linked specifically to the performance of public ritual and the priesthood, and both the sexual penetration of males and cross-dressing are called "abominations" ('to'abhoth', singular 'to'abhah'), an uncertain term probably implying a ritual violation also used to describe what the 'qedeshim' did and the mourning ritual for Tammuz.

It is not necessary here to discuss in further detail these ancient condemnations or their precise meanings. Instead, we need only point to the fact that Latin Christians, in translating and reading these texts, extrapolated from them about the worship of the Mother of the Gods in their own day. Key to this understanding was Jerome's translation of the passages in question above. To begin, he translated the Hebrew proper name Tammuz as Adonis, in an obvious belief that both were merely localized names for the same god. More important, he consistently translated the Hebrew term 'qedeshim' with the Latin 'effeminati,' hardly a literal translation but one again that tied the Biblical descriptions to the eunuch priests of his day. Indeed, in one of his Biblical commentaries, he justified his translation: "These men are the ones who are nowadays at Rome the servants of the Mother - not of the gods, but of the demons, the ones they call 'galli'." The term 'to'abhah' he translated as 'abominatio' (abomination; literally, something "ill-omened"), which implied a ritual or religious violation. Perhaps he did not understand the historical setting of these terms (or perhaps he understood them better than some modern scholars), but in either case, his use of these terms provided an authoritative precedent for the Christian denunciation of the eunuch priests and their religion.

Christians, however, had an even more authoritative precedent for the condemnation of the eunuch priests in certain passages from the Biblical writings of Paul. Foremost among these passages was one in Paul's Letter to the Romans. It has generally been seen as a condemnation of homosexuality, but if situated in its proper historical context, it seems likelier that the passage was tied to the specifics of the eunuch cult. Paul wrote of the pagans:

"they exchanged the glory of the immortal God for a worthless imitation, for the image of the mortal man, of birds, of quadrupeds and reptiles. That is why God left them tot heir filthy enjoyments and the practices with which they dishonor their own bodies.... That is why God has abandoned them to degrading passions: why their women have turned from natural intercourse to unnatural practices and why their menfolk have given up natural intercourse to be consumed with passion for each other, men doing shameless things with men and getting an appropriate reward for their perversion.... And so they are steeped in all sorts of depravity, rottenness, greed and malice, and addicted to envy, murder, wrangling, treachery and spite."

Here were all the elements of the standard Christian invective against the eunuchs and their cult: a repudiation of paganism in general, followed by a condemnation of the gender violations of the cult of the fertility goddess (the "practices with which they dishonor their own bodies"), followed in turn by an attack against sacred prostitution (the "unnatural practices" of the women and the men "consumed with passion for each other") and against castration (the "appropriate reward for their perversion"), and ending with all the usual vices attributed to eunuchs. In other words, since the priests of the goddess acted like women they deserved the castration that turned them into women.

This context for Paul's statements is virtually unrecognized by modern Biblical and historical scholars, but it fits the details of his denunciation better than the explanations usually given. The gender violations of the cult - especially the men acting as women - were the primary focus of the critique. Seen in its proper context, it also functions as a Pauline reiteration of the Biblical book of Wisdom, with which it shares many similarities. Jerome noted the connection between this passage and cultic prostitution and with the 'qedeshim,' however, and asked: "What is more shameful than for men to be coupled with a cult of prostitutes, and to immolate the sacrifices of their lust with effeminates?" (It should also be noted that Paul did not condemn sexual activity between women in this passage, as is usually understood, but rather cultic prostitution by women."

The gender ambiguity of the eunuch priests provided a powerful symbol for the perversion of religious beliefs, and Paul and other writers included in the Christian Bible exploited this symbol for other purposes. Because of the animosity toward eunuchs and the unmanliness that eunuchs represented, Paul linked castration to circumcision - another genital mutilation that he rejected - in various passages. In a debate over the necessity of circumcision for Christian men, a practice that he opposed, Paul wrote to his supporters: "Tell those who are disturbing you I would like to see the knife slip [when they circumcise each other]." Elsewhere he warned his readers to "Beware of dogs!" and to "Watch out for the cutters!" adding that "We are the real people of the circumcision," "without having to rely on a physical operation." It is even possible that Paul meant "eunuch priests" and "the men who frequent them" when he added 'malakoi' and 'arsenokoitai' to his lists of sinners. The author of the Biblical book of Revelation included "dogs" among those who would be denied entrance to Heaven, alongside the impure and the worshippers of idols. Jerome dutifully translated the term "dogs" with the Latin 'canes,' which is how he also translated the Hebrew 'kelibhim,' and he must have appreciated the connection of "dogs" and "sacred male prostitutes" or it would have been a meaningless punishment.

There was an equally strong alternative Biblical tradition, however, that viewed the eunuch not as a despised symbol of apostasy but as a laudatory symbol of self-sacrifice and familial and sexual renunciation. This counter image was attributed to the earliest Christian message and to Jesus himself. The Gospel of Matthew, for example, had Jesus respond to a question on the advisability of marriage by saying: "There are eunuchs born that way from their mother's womb, there are eunuchs made so by men and there are eunuchs who have made themselves that way for the sake of the kingdom of Heaven. Let anyone accept this who can." This tripartite categorization of eunuchs was not unique to Jesus. We might recall the Roman jurist Ulpian's division of eunuchs into three categories. The Mishnah, which shared with Jesus a Hellenized Jewish perspective, also divided eunuchs into three categories: congenital eunuchs, eunuchs made so by men, and persons of indeterminate anatomical sex, possibly hermaphrodites. Jesus' mention of "eunuchs born that way" is likeliest to have been a reference to men with congenitally underdeveloped sex organs. The nature of such men and especially their rights in marriage were the subject of some discussion in the Mishnah. The "eunuchs made so by men" likely identified those men castrated for administrative positions in royal or imperial courts, who were certainly commonplace in the eastern half of the Roman Empire in Jesus' day. The presence of such eunuchs in Hebrew history is a fact for which there are many Biblical attestations. The mention of either of these groups of men in a discussion of marriage is relatively unproblematic from the standpoint of interpretation.

The final category, the "eunuchs who have made themselves that way for the kingdom of heaven," is much more difficult to interpret. At the very least, it represented a radical call for a departure from marital obligations, which would have been in keeping with other sayings of Jesus on the family, including ones found in the Gospel of Matthew. It may also form part of a general Matthean rhetoric of Jesus as the Messiah, because it echoes a passage from the Biblical book of Isaiah in which the requirements of marriage would no longer be paramount in the future kingdom of Israel. According to Isaiah:

"Let no eunuch say, "And I, I am a dried-up tree." For Yahweh says this: To the eunuchs who observe my Sabbaths, and resolve to do what pleases me and cling to my covenant, I will give, in my house and within my walls, a monument and a name better than sons and daughters; I will give them an everlasting name that shall never be effaced."

We know that other early Christians considered this future that Isaiah imagined to have arrived with Jesus. The baptism of the Ethiopian eunuch by the apostle Philip recorded in the Biblical Acts of the Apostles was said to have begun with the eunuch's reading from the book of Isaiah. Rather than the record of a historical incident, the baptism was probably meant to symbolize the new inclusiveness of the Christian community, a sign of the arrival of the Messianic era as anticipated by interpreters of Isaiah, when eunuchs and foreigners would be welcomed (the Ethiopian eunuch was of course both).

But Jesus' statement encouraging his followers to "make themselves eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom of Heaven" might well have meant more than the renunciation of family or fulfillment of a Messianic prophecy. It has already been suggested that Jesus' statement was his ironic response to critics who insulted his followers by accusing them of being like the 'galli' because of the celibacy (or perhaps because of their fondness for itinerant begging). But if Jesus was familiar with the 'galli' and their self-castration as a religious practice, then it is at least possible that his word were intended literally and that he was recommending to his male followers that they physically castrate themselves. Even if these are not the authentic words of Jesus, the same interpretive possibility remains in that the author of the Gospel of Matthew was recommending that male Christians castrate themselves by attributing the sentiment to Jesus. In fact, it is yet another extravagant gesture of renunciation found in the Gospel of Matthew, much like Jesus' call to abandon all wealth and to rid oneself of concern for food and clothing, and just as unclear as to whether it was meant literally or figuratively. Finally, it fits well if just as ambiguously with another admonition of Jesus, also found in the Gospel of Matthew and also in a discussion of lust:

"If your right eye should cause you to sin, tear it out and throw it away; for it will do you less harm to lose one part of you than to have your whole body thrown into hell. And if you right hand should cause you to sin, cut it off and throw it away; for it will do you less harm to lose one part of you than to have your whole body go to hell."

In the end, we cannot know how these statements were intended. But even if they were intended as hyperbole and even if they were wrongfully attributed to Jesus by his followers, they circulated in an authoritative manner as the words of Jesus and in a social environment in which actual self-castration took place in public in the guise of religious devotion.

Readers of Biblical texts in late antiquity who believed in the authority of those Biblical texts could turn to any number of passages that condemned eunuchs and castration as religious unorthodoxy and sin. But the same readers could turn to other passages that depicted eunuchs and castration as symbols of orthodoxy and devotion. It remained to individual Christians, with the help of their spiritual advisors who claimed to be able to interpret Biblical texts correctly, to decide how to interpret these conflicting passages.

Thanks, Jesus A, for these words about the time of Jesus H.