In a fascinating three-way power struggle between the monarchy, the Jewish "priests" (as Hoffman terms them), and the prophets, circumcision emerged as a ritual of overriding importance. Hoffman pinpoints one particular ancient religious author, the creator of the so-called "P text," as the original promoter of the equation of Jewish identity and circumcision. This writer, palpably obsessed by the need to ensure successful reproduction, which he metaphorically associated with images of horticulture, associated the need for circumcision as "pruning" to promote fertility. Circumcision came to be conceptualized as a ritual form of castration in which the elders' power was publicly demonstrated, with the potentially rebellious son's loyalty made clear by his submission to the circumciser's knife.

...women are seen as dirty

"...horticulture..."

"Perhaps the strongest part of the argument linking circumcision to fertility is the Bible`s application of circumcision terminology to horticulture. The first three years of a tree's growth are known as its period of uncircumcision. the iınmature fruit being called uncircuıncised and consequently forbidden for use. Trees that reach rnaturity are said to have entered the time of their circumcision. Immediately thereafter they are expected to bear a maximum yield of fruit, just as Abraham and his male heirs were prornised they would. Analogous to pruning fruit trees. Their circumcision provides a prophylactic against barrenness. Both acts involve cutting away unwanted growth from a stem or trunk in order to insure fertility. So circumcision functioned in the Bible as a fertility rite."

Hoffman, so troubled by his findings that it took him eight years following his completion of his research to actually publish Covenant of Blood, proves a thesis so sweeping and yet so simple that it is shocking that no one has breached the issue before him: Circumcision symbolizes a covenant between the males being circumcised and God....