Cuttings in the flesh (Hastings' Dictionary)

i. In the legisla- tion of Dt (IJ) and in the corpus known as the 'Law of Holiness' (H), the Hebrews are for- bidden to 'cut themselves' (n-iinn tiV Dt 14') or to ' make any cutting' (lit. an incision o-jy Lv 19", noi? Lv 21°, LXX iirroidt) in their flesh 'for the dead.' The prohibition in question is aimed at one of the most widely-spread tokens of grief at the loss of relatives or friends.

To scratch and beat one's self to the eflusion of blood, nay, to gash and hack one's self of set purpose, may be said to be an all but universal custom among un- civilized and semi-civilized races at the present day. It must suffice to refer to such well-known works as Waltz's Anthropologie der Naturvolker [passim), and H. Spencer's Principles of Sociology, 3rd ed. vol. i. pp. 16311., 277, 292, etc. (see also authorities named at the close of this art.)

The prevalence of the custom is equally attested for nearly all the nations of antiquity, the Egyptians being the most notable exception (Herod, ok. ii. 61, 85 ; Wilkinson, Anc. Egyp. [1854] vol. ii. p. 374). Thus Herodotus tells us that the Scythians of his time on the death of their king ' cut oil" their ears, shear their hair, and make incisions all over(irfpird/t- coiTai) their arms' (iv. 71). Xenophon gives a similar account of the Armenians and Assyrians {Cyrop. iii. 1. 13).

The legislation of Solon, aco. to Plutarch, forbade the women of Athens to beat themselves to the elliision of blood (d/iwx4» norro- tUvuv . . i<t>e!\fy, Sol. 21), and the same is affirmed of the laws of the Twelve Tables (' mulieres genas ne radunto' — quoted by Cicero, de Leg. ii. 23). Among the ancient Arabs, further, the practice forbidden at Athens and Rome was associated, as it was among the Heb. (see below), with the cuttinjj otr of Wie htdx (Kitdb ol-AghAni, xiv.

101, 28 — this and other reU'. in Wellh. Skizzen, iii. 160 f.) Thus the poet Lebid 'says to his daughters, When I die, do not scratch your faces or shave oft your hair,' xxi. 4 [ed. Huber and Brockelmann].* The earliest reference to this custom of making cuttings in the flesh among the Hebrews is in what appears to be the orig. reading in Hos 7" (see RVm), where several MSS (see De Rossi, Var. Leett. Vet. Test, in lor.)

have n"n:n', which was also the reading of the (Jreek translators (itamWM- vorrai). It was widely prevalent in tlie time of Jeremiah, not only among his countni'men of the South (16) and those of tlie central highlands Quoted by Driver, Comm. on Deut. 14^, p. 166, from a MS note of the lat« Professor W. R. Smith. 588 CUTXmGS IN THE FLESH CUTTINGS IN THE FLESH (41'), but also among the neighbouring Philistines (47'), and Moabites ' upon all the hands shall be cuttings' n'n-jj 48".

The passages cited, taken along with the abundant evidence for the usually associ- ated practice of shaving the head (Am 8'", Is 3" 15^22", Mic 1", Jer 48", Ezk 7"), clearly prove that the customs in question were universally practised by the Hebrews in pre-exilic times. And further, the remarkable phraseology of Is 22" ' J" called to weeping and to mourning and to baldness' (with which cf. Mic 1"), seems to show that the prohibi- tion of D was unknown in the age of Hezekiah.

The attitude of this code to both the above-men- tioned practices is very decide ' Ye shall not cut yourselves, nor make any baniness between your eyes for the dead ' (Dt 14'). H, incorporated in the priestly legislation of P, re-states the pro- hibition in more technical language, both for the people generally (Lv 19^) and d fortiori for the priests in particular (21'). ii. When we inquire as to the raison d'Hre of these prohibitions we find considerable difference of opinion.

We may, however, at once set aside as entirely inadequate the view that their purpose was to restrain that exuberance of emotion which the Hebrews shared with other Oriental peoples ; in other words, to prohibit certain extravagant mani- festations of grief as such. To say, for example, that ' the practices here (Dt 14') named seem to be forbidden . .

because such excessee of grief would be inconsistent in those who as children of a heavenly Father had prospects beyond this world ' {Speaker's Comm. on Dt 14'), is quite unscientific, inasmuch as considerations are here introduced altogether foreign to this stage of revelation.

Nor yet ia it sufficient to regard these prohibitions — for we must remember that artificial baldness and tattooing the skin (see below) stand in the same category with the more drastic cuttings in the flesh — as primarily directed against the disfigure- ment of the human body which is God's handi- work. It cannot be denied that both the explana- tions just adduced have a certain amount of force and truth, but they do not seem to reach the original significance of the prohibitions in question.

In our search for the real origin of the latter, two points have to be kept in mind : both the cuttings and the baldness are expressly stated to lie ' for the dead,' and, not less explicitly, to be incom- patible with Israel's unique relation to J", a relation at once of sonship (Dt 41') and of con- secration ("S tnji 14'). Now it is admitted on all hands ( 1 ) that such mutilations of the body as are here condemned have in almost all countries formed part of the religious rites of heathenism.

And, in particular, they must have been familiar enough in the Pal. of tnose days where such self- inflicted bloodshed formed part of the everyday ritual of the Canaanite Baal (see 1 K IS**, the only passage not already cited where the Heb. word has this signification, and note 'after their manner ').

(2) Both the shedding of the blood and the dedica- tion of the hair are found, as we have seen, in the most intimate connexion with the ritual of heathen bui ial and the belief in the necessity of propitiat- ing the spirit of the deceased.

Thus (to give but a single example) we are told that 'a Samoan ceremony, on the occasion of a decease, was " beat- ing the head with stones till the blood runs " ; and this they called "an offering of blood" for the dead ' (quoted from Turner's Samoa by Spencer, Princip. of Social, p. 166). In view of the facts now stated, we are led to the conclusion that both the tokens of grief pro- hibited by the Heb.

legislation were so prohibited because they carried with them associations of a character incompatible with the pure religion of J".

Whether we hold with Stade and others that a developed ancestor-worship was practised by the primitive Hebrews or not, there can be little doubt that the gashing of the body and the shaving of the head as practised by the Semitic peoples gener- ally must, in the last resort, be traced to the desire to propitiate the manes of the departed, and ' to make an enduring covenant with the dead ' ( W. R. Smith, iJ6'' p. 305).

But while we are forced by the evidence to this conclusion as to the ultimate origin of the practices in question, we would not have it supposed that any such animistic concep- tion was present to the minds of the contempor- aries of Isaiah and Jeremiah. In nothing is man- kind so conservative as in all that concerns the respect due to the dead, and so, to the spiritually- minded at least, the practices prohibited were but the wonted outward signs of excessive grief.

All excesses, then — so we conclude — such as making incisions in the hand (Jer 48") or other part of the body to the effusion of blood, and sfiaving the head in whole or in part, were strictly forbidden by the legislation of D and of H, not merely or even chiefly qiiA excesses, but as being alike in origin and association unworthy of those who had attained to the dignity of the sons of J". iii.

Under the head of ' cuttings in the flesh ' falls to be considered also the particular practice for- bidden in Lv ISP'' [Ye shall not] ' print any marks (VtUfi "Jnj, LXX yp&iifiaTa (micri, Vulg. stigmata) upon you.' The expression does not occur elsewhere, but we may be sure that the reference is to the ancient and widely -spread cu.stom of tattooing or branding.

Which of these two modes of marking is to be understood here it is impossible to say with absolute certainty, the verbal stem, SPi'P, having both meanings in post-biblical Heb., while the same ambiguity attaches to orifu and its derivatives, arlyiw., etc. In favour of tattooing, however, the following may be urged : (1) the exegetical tradi- tion ; Rashi, for example, explains the marks in question as made ■\rith a needle ( Comm. in loc.

) ; (2) the probable origin of the custom, as advocated by the acute author of ES. 'In Lv 19**, where tattooing is condemned as a heathenish practice, it is immediately associated with incisions in the flesh made in mourning or in honour of the dead, and this suggests that in their ultimate origin the stigmata are nothing more than the permanent scars of punctures made to draw blood for a cere- mony of self-dedication to the deity ' (p. 316, note 1 ).

The best-known illustration of the prevalence of the practice of tattooing or making stigmata in Syria is supplied by the priests of ' the Syrian goddess' in Lucian's treatise of that name, who were tattooed on wrist and neck (ch. 59 — on which cf. the classical work of John Spencer, below). Philo (De Monarch, i.) refers to the allied practice of branding, familiar to us in the case of slaves and criminals, as practised by certain misguided idol- worshippers in his own time.

In 3 Mac, also, Ptolemy IV. (Philopator) is represented as having the contumacious Jews branded with the i^-y-leaf, the symbol of Dionysus (2^). These passages, then, show that it was not an unusual practice to have tattooed or branded in one's flesh the name or symbol of the deity to whom one was specially devoted — a practice which at once gives us the true explanation of the interesting passage. Is 44' (another shall mark on his hand ' Yahweh's,' cf. KVni, also Gal 6" <nlyixa.Ta 'IijcroC).

Jewish tradi- tion, we may add, has it that the obscure phrase of the Chronicler with regard to Jehoiakim, ' that which was found in him ' (2 Ch 36'), refers to his breach of the command in Lv ig-^*", letters having been discovered tattooed on his flesh, pre.suiiiably the name of some heathen deity (Micirash Lcvit. Babbn 19 — quoted by Strack, Comm. in loc.; Jerome, Queest. Heb. in Paraiipom. I.e.)

CYAMON CYPKU8 539 Here, then, we have another heathen cnstom forbidden to the worahippers of J" ; and the un- mistakable evidence of its unworthy associations being tlie cause of its prohibition — although in itself a thing indifferent (Dillm. Theol. d. A.T. p. 428) — strengthens the view above advanced oa to the historical raison d'etre of the ancient custom, here (Lv 9^**) forbidden along with it, as alike incompatible with whole -heuted loyalty to J'. LrTBRATTRK.

— Martin Geier, De Ebraorum Luctu (ed. 3, 1CS3), and (esp. for the ftiginata) John Spencer, Da Leg. Hebr. (ed. 2. 1680) hb. ii- cap. xiii. L^x contra carnit incisuram lata and cap. xiv. Lexsti'jmalaj/rohit/eru; Enohel-I'illmann, Exodus- LfciiicuM on Lv Iv'^ ■ Driver, Detit. on 14' ; Li^litfoot, Gal. on 6" ; W. R. Smith, U.S. I,cct. ix. ; Schw,-illj-, Oii.i L.hrn nach d. Tadt, mn, Kap. i. S8 :i. 6 ; Benzinger. Uth A rch. § 23 ; Nowack, lieb. A rch. i. 4 33. See also the works of Wait/, and H.

Spencer (mentioued abuveXaudTylur'A Fritnitiw CuJture lur the cuatoma of lavage tribes. A. R. S. KkNNKDY. CTAHON (Kvaiiiiy), Jth 7*.— The same as JoE- NBAM, which see.