Le marqueur identitaire de la circoncision chez les rabbins de l’Antiquité

International audienceCircumcision is not necessarily an identity marker, even in rabbinic Judaism. However, two major turning points in the history of circumcision are attested in the literature of the rabbis and each one could be explained as an erection of identity boundaries. The period after Bar Kokhba’s War was the first mainly halakhic turning point: the tanna’im tried to prevent epispasm and to create a distinct rabbinic circumcision. The second turning point, essentially aggadic, is not so easy to date but it is later than the first. It emphasized the value of the blood of circumcision. The rabbis sought to protect circumcision from the threat of Pagans or Christians but dealed also with an inner-Jewish problem: the growth of uncircumcision in Palestinian Judaism. The circoncision was actually the object of a more or less open conflict, between the rabbis and another Judaism, which we propose to call “Hellenist”