Page:A critical and exegetical commentary on Genesis (1910).djvu/399

 pological evidence shows that it was originally performed at puberty, as a preliminary to marriage, or, more generally, as a ceremony of initiation into the full religious and civil status of manhood. This primary idea was dissipated when it came to be performed in infancy; and its perpetuation in this form can only be explained by the inherited belief that it was an indispensable condition of participation in the common cultus of the clan or nation. Passsages like Dt. 10$16$ 30$6$, Ezk. 44$7. 9$, show that in Israel it came to be regarded as a token of allegiance to Yahwe; and in this fact we have the germ of the remarkable development which the rite underwent in post-Exilic Judaism. The new importance it then acquired was due to the experience of the Exile (partly continued in the Dispersion), when the suspension of public worship gave fresh emphasis to those rites which (like the Sabbath and circumcision) could be observed by the individual, and served to distinguish him from his heathen neighbours. In this way we can understand how, while the earlier legal codes have no law of circumcision, in P it becomes a prescription of the first magnitude, being placed above the Mosaic ritual, and second in dignity only to the Sabbath. The explicit formulating of the idea that circumcision is the sign of the national covenant with Yahwe was the work of the Priestly school of jurists; and very few legislative acts have exercised so tremendous an influence on the genius of a religion, or the character of a race, as this apparently trivial adjustment of a detail of ritual observance. For information on various aspects of the subject, see Ploss, Das Kind in Brauch und Sitte der Völker$2$ (1894), i. 342-372; We. Heid.$2$ 174f., Prol.$6$ 338 ff.; Sta. ZATW, vi. 132-143; the arts, in DB (Macalister) and EB (Benzinger); and the notes in Di. 258; Ho. 129; Gu. 237; Dri. 189 ff.; Strack$2$, 67; Matthes, ZATW, xxix. 70 ff.

The Covenant-idea in P (see also p. 290 f. above). In P's scheme of four world-ages, the word is used only of the revelations associated with Noah and Abraham. In the Creation-narrative the term is avoided because the constitution of nature then appointed was afterwards annulled, whereas the Bĕrîth is a permanent and irreversible determination of the divine will. The conception of the Mosaic revelation as a covenant is Jehovistic (Ex. 24$3-8$ 34$10ff.$ etc.) and Deuteronomic (Dt. 4$10ff.$ 5$2ff.$ 9$9ff.$ etc.); and there are traces of it in secondary strata of P (Lv. 26$45$ [P$h$], Ex. 31$16f.$ [P$s$]); but it is not found in the historical work which is the kernel of the Code (P$g$). Hence in trying to understand the religious significance of the Bĕrîth in P$g$, we have but two examples to guide us. And with regard to both, the question is keenly discussed whether it denotes a self-imposed obligation on the part of God, irrespective of any condition on the part of man (so Valeton, ZATW, xii. 1 ff.), or a bilateral engagement involving reciprocal obligations between God and men (so in the main Kraetzschmar, Bundesvorst. 183 ff.). The answer depends on the view taken of circumcision in this chapter. According to Valeton, it is merely a sign and nothing