Hadrian's late biographer, Aelius Spartianus, as well as modern scholars, have argued convincingly that,
around 132 C.
E.,
Hadrian issued a universal decree [p. 390] outlawing circumcision, under penalty of death.
6060 Scriptores historiae Augustae: Hadrian 14.2, in The Scriptores Historiae Augustae, trans. David Magie, 3 vols. (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1979), 1:42–45; Alfredo Mordechai Rabello, 'The Ban on Circumcision as a Cause of Bar Kokhba's Rebellion', Israel Law Rev., 1995, 29: 176–214.
The
Digest of Justinian (a legal compilation collected by learned jurists at the behest of Justinian in 533) documents that,
around 140,
[p. 391] Emperor Antoninus Pius at least modified the ruling of Hadrian to allow only the Hebrews to circumcise their children, while upholding the legal protections from circumcision for all other peoples:
Jews are permitted to circumcise only their sons on the authority of a rescript of the Divine Pius; if anyone shall commit it on one who is not of the same religion, he shall suffer the punishment of a castrator.64
While Pius limited the exemption to Hebrews, papyrological documents in Greek, dating from 155 to 189 C.E., indicate that complex bureaucratic mechanisms were provisionally established to grant individual exemptions to this edict for certain members of the Egyptian priestly caste.
65 Few such exemptions, however, appear to have been granted. The widespread approval for the abolition of circumcision was limited by neither space nor time, for by the end of the third century, Pius's interdiction against circumcision was enhanced by the enactment of an additional legal prohibition:
Roman citizens, who suffer that they themselves or their slaves be circumcised in accordance with the Jewish custom, are exiled perpetually to an island and their property confiscated; the doctors suffer capital punishment. If Jews shall circumcise purchased slaves of another nation, they shall be banished or suffer capital punishment.66
The incorporation into the
Digest of Pius's more recent revisions of the law banning circumcision would explain why the sixth-century compilers of the Digest did not include the obsolete original decree of Hadrian. ...
... fortuitously preserved in a unique Syriac text,
The Book of the Laws of Countries, a dialogue concerning Bardaisan of Edessa (154–223 C.E.), written down by his pupil Philippus. Bardaisan states:
Recently the Romans have conquered Arabia and done away with all the laws there used to be, particularly circumcision, which was a custom they used. For a man of his sovereign free-will submits himself to the law laid upon him by another, who also possesses sovereign free-will. But I shall tell you another [p 404] thing too, more convincing than all the rest to fools and unbelievers: all the Jews that have received the law of Moses, circumcise their male children on the eighth day, without waiting for the coming of stars and without regard for the local law.108
Evidently, even by the beginning of the third century, the news that the Roman authorities had 'exempted' Hebrews from 'the abolition' had not yet reached this corner of the world.
Frederick M. Hodges (2001) 'The Ideal Prepuce in Ancient Greece and Rome: Male Genital Aesthetics and Their Relation to
Lipodermos, Circumcision, Foreskin Restoration, and the
Kynodesme',
The Bulletin of the History of Medicine, Vol. 75 [Fall]: pp. 375–405,
http://www.cirp.org/library/history/hodges2/64 Digesta 48:8:11 (Mommsen, Krueger, Watson [n. 61], 4: 853); translation from Amnon Linder, ed., The Jews in Roman Imperial Legislation (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1987), p. 100.
65 Ulrich Wilcken, 'Zur Geschichte der Beschneidung. I. Die ägyptischen Beschneid-ungsurkunden', Archiv für Papyrusforschung, 1902, 2: 4–13; Paul Foucart, 'Rescrit d'Antonin relatif à la circoncision et son application en Égypte', Journal des Savants, 1911, 9: 5–14.
66 Paulus, Sententiae 5:22:3–4, in Linder, Jews in Roman Imperial Legislation (n. 64), pp. 117–20.