Does a Man Who Is Already Circumcised Converting to Judaism Have to Get Circumcised Again
A diverse crowd of Israelis at a operation in Tel Aviv
If y'all take a look at the Jewish population living in State of israel today, you will probably be struck past the huge variety of physical traits. Millions of people all calling themselves "Jews" accept gathered together subsequently over 2000 years of existence scattered throughout the world: Northern Europe, the Mediterranean Basin, Due north Africa, Federal democratic republic of ethiopia, Persia, the former Soviet Union, the Americas and the list goes on. All these Jews look rather different from each other. And yet, all merits to be descended from a single ancestor: "Abram the Hebrew" (Genesis 14:13). Is this really the instance? Is it even possible to know what the aboriginal Israelites actually looked like?
No, unfortunately it is probably not possible to verify with any real certainty what Abraham looked similar. Presumably, if he was built-in in Ur of the Chaldeans, located in mod-day southern Iraq, he would have had nighttime wavy pilus, an olive complexion; an appearance characteristic of the populations that have lived in this region for millennia: Kurds, Turkmen, Jews, Armenians, etc. We can look to the Song of Songs for an clarification of what the Israelite ideal of beauty was (Song five:x-16). However, across this very vague image, it is nearly incommunicable to know about the concrete appearance of Abraham or of whatever of his Israelite descendants. If we cannot obtain concrete data about the genealogy of the ancient Israelites (nature), what most cultural features (nurture) of their appearance: clothing, hairstyle, facial hair, etc.?
Old Jew from Babylonia. Created past Bayard after photo of unknown author, published on Le Tour du Monde, Paris, 1867
In popular imagination, i of the most "obvious" features of an ancient Israelite homo'south advent is a full beard. Any modernistic illustration depicting the biblical period contains lots of dusty, turban-wearing Israelite men with unkempt beards. You volition never see a clean shaven Israelite in a biblical picture show or drawing. Why is this? Is this just meant to make the actors look authentically "old-fashioned" or practise we have evidence for the absenteeism of shaved faces among Israelite men?
Joshua and Caleb; as in Joshua 14:6-fifteen; analogy from a Bible bill of fare published past the Providence Lithograph Visitor, 1901
Opposite to the the ancient Egyptians (who were clean shaven) and Mesopotamians (who wore long groomed beards) who depicted themselves extensively in their art, the Israelites inappreciably left u.s. images of themselves. The biblical prohibition against making graven images (Exodus xx:4) prevented the Israelites from producing art depicting themselves. So scholars more often than not need to use textual descriptions institute in the Bible to reconstruct the Israelites' physical appearance.
Detail of Assyrian warriors with long curly groomed beards
The Hebrew Bible contains many passages which make it clear that beards are vital role of Israelite mode. The Volume of Psalms compares dwelling in peace with one's brothers to "fine oil on the head running down onto the bristles, the beard of Aaron, that comes down over the collar to his robe" (Psalm 133:2). Listen to two different musical versions of these words here and here. This metaphor is hard to understand. Why is a well-oiled beard similar to brotherly harmony? Is it because dwelling in peace creates a feeling of flood bounty similar to the oil on Aaron'due south beard? Is it considering in the ancient Near East guests were welcomed by being all-powerful with fine oil? Perhaps. The principal bespeak for our purposes is that the high priest, Aaron, had a very long beard.
A statue of Aaron wearing the priestly garments and a long beard, in Cistercian Abbey of Rudy (Poland).
Only lest one conclude that beards were only worn past the priestly form, nosotros can detect many biblical passages that indicate otherwise. Every Israelite man is commanded "you lot shall non circular off the hair on your temples or mar the edges of your beard." (Leviticus xix:27). This is the biblical basis for the sidelocks of hair(Hebrew: pe'ot) that Ultra-Orthodox men vesture to this day, as seen in the paradigm below. Ane might fifty-fifty get as far as to say that long sidelocks were the most distinctive characteristic of the Israelites' appearance (circumcision was also very distinctive, merely not outwardly visible). Jeremiah refers to the foreign nations that environment State of israel collectively as "all those with shaven temples who live in the desert" (Jer. 9:25).
A Hasidic human being with long sidelocks (pe'ot) prays at the Western Wall, Jerusalem
Amidst aboriginal Israelite men information technology was apparently considered humiliating to have one'southward face shaven. When King Hanun of Ammon clips off one-half of the beards of David's courtiers, he instructs them to "remain in Jericho until your beards grow dorsum" (2 Samuel x:5). Waiting several weeks for the hair to grow back in the ghost town of Jericho (abandoned since Joshua's devastation of the city) was plainly preferable to the easier solution of merely shaving the other side off. A common form of greeting a fellow Israelite was to "grab his beard with the correct hand to osculation him" (2 Samuel 20:nine). Prior to visiting king David, it was imperative for Saul's son Mephibosheth to prepare himself past doing the following: taking intendance of his anxiety, trimming his mustache, washing his clothes (two Samuel 19:24). The mustache (Hebrew safam) was trimmed, but non the beard (zakan). Maybe the reason why shaving one's bristles was humiliating was that it was a heathen rite (Leviticus 21:5), a mourning practice (Job 1:20), or alternatively, a symbolic human activity performed past a holy man. The prophet Ezekiel, for example, is instructed as follows:
Now, son of human being, take a sharp sword and use it as a barber's razor to shave your head and your beard. So take a ready of scales and divide upwards the pilus. (Ezekiel 5:one).
In fact, there are works of art from the period of the Bible that do depict Israelites. For example, this frieze found in the throne room of Sennacherib in Nineveh depicts the famous battle of Lachish. This was one of the nigh important battles fought by the Assyrians as they conquered most of the southern kingdom of Judah in 701 BC. In the image beneath nosotros run into Israelite prisoners being led off into captivity. Notation the brusk curly beards on the faces of the men. These are closely cropped as opposed to the long beard of the Assyrian soldiers.
Three Israelite men playing lyres equally they are led off into captivity following the Assyrian victory at Lachish. This recalls the Bible'southward description of the Babylonians forcing the exiled Judahites to play songs of Zion on their harps (Ps. 137). The Israelites' beards are shorter than that of the Assyrian soldier on the left.
Here is a depiction of Male monarch Jehu of Israel bowing downwardly to the Assyrian king Shalmaneser Three. Note the bristles.
Detail from the Black Obelisk of Shalmaneser 3 (reigned 858-824 BC). The figure bowing down is the Israelite king Jehu. This is the earliest artistic delineation of a specific figure mentioned in the Hebrew Bible.
Another rare creative depiction which might be depicting Israelites is this tomb painting from Arab republic of egypt. A detail from the tomb of Khnumhotep II, an blueblood buried in the Beni Hasan cemetery in Eye Egypt. This painting depicts a family of nomadic traders entering Egypt from Canaan in the 19th cent. BCE. This is a very rare delineation of ancient Semites, dressed in colorful tunics, as opposed to the Egyptians wearing only white waistcloths. Perchance they have come up to buy grain. The homo bending over the ibex is named "Abisha the Hyksos" according to the inscription. This is a very nice visual counterpart to the story of Jacob'due south sons migrating to Arab republic of egypt.
The man on the upper register holding a night chocolate-brown ibex is labeled Abischa (sounds like the Hebrew proper noun "Avishai") and bears the championship Hyksos ("shepherd male monarch").
The Hebrew word for beard is zakan (זקן) and appears 19 times in the Hebrew Bible. Interestingly the Greek equivalent pogon (πώγων) does non appear even one time in the New Testament. What should we make of this? Were Jews clean shaven during the Roman menses? No. Certainly the majority of Jewish men still had beards, every bit they did during the period of the Hebrew Bible. There was a small population of highly Hellenized Jews that might have shaved their beards, as was the custom among Romans. But it would have been very odd to see a Jewish human being in the Land of State of israel without a beard until the 20th century. The Babylonian Talmud states that Rabbi Yohanan was very handsome just did not possess perfect beauty because he lacked a beard. Interestingly, the beard is referred to by the alias "the adornment of the confront" (Baba Metzia 84b). Let's conclude by quoting 1 of the rare examples of a description of an aboriginal Jew. The post-obit description of the physical appearance of the apostle Paul is plant in the the 2nd century apocryphal book, the Acts of Paul and Thecla:
He was a man of middling size, and his pilus was scanty, and his legs were a footling crooked, and his knees were projecting, and he had big eyes and his eyebrows met, and his nose was somewhat long, and he was total of grace and mercy; at one time he seemed like a man, and at another time he seemed like an angel.
Non a very flattering description! Manifestly, Paul's beard was so obvious that the author did not even meet the demand to mention it.
Source: https://blog.israelbiblicalstudies.com/holy-land-studies/ancient-israelites-look-like/
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