Circumcision controversy in early Christianity

The Council of Jerusalem during the Apostolic Age of the history of Christianity did not include religious male circumcision as a requirement for new gentile converts. This became known as the "Apostolic Decree" and may be one of the first acts differentiating early Christianity from Judaism. Circumcision was enjoined upon the biblical patriarch Abraham, his descendants and their slaves as "a token of the covenant" concluded with him by God for all generations, as an "everlasting covenant". ()

There are numerous references in the Hebrew Bible to the obligation for circumcision. For example, Leviticus 12:3 says:

And the uncircumcised are to be cut off from the covenant in Genesis 17:14:

During the 1st century BC there was a controversy in Judaism relating to whether or not a proselyte who was already circumcised needed to be ritually re-circumcised. This is done via a pinprick creating a drop of blood and is still practiced to this day.

A similar controversy between the Shammaites and the Hillelites is given (Shab. 137a) regarding a proselyte born circumcised: the former demanding the spilling of a drop of blood of the covenant; the latter declaring it to be unnecessary. The rigorous Shammaite view, voiced in the Book of Jubilees (l.c.["in the place cited"]), prevailed in the time of King John Hyrcanus, who forced the Abrahamic rite upon the Idumeans, and in that of King Aristobulus, who made the Itureans undergo circumcision (Josephus, Antiquities of the Jews, xiii. 9, § 1; 11, § 3). According to Esther 8:17, Septuagint, the Persians who, from fear of the Jews after Haman's defeat, "became Jews," were circumcised.

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