Why do Jews circumcise on the 8th day?

Why do Jews circumcise on the 8th day?

This article is not about the do’s and don’ts of circumcision, it is about getting to the bottom of the claim the Torah makes concerning Jewish male infants being circumcised on the 8th day being a divine requirement!

Does it not seem strange that the entire covenant of the Israelites depends on being circumcised – particularly on the 8th day?  The Torah gives the impression that this is a ‘new ‘ concept – when in fact circumcision has been practised for centuries before the ‘Hebrews’ were a twinkle in their Gods eye?

Gen 17:11-12 “You shall be circumcised in the flesh of your foreskins and it shall be a sign of the covenant between me and you. He that is eight days old among you shall be circumcised; every male throughout your generations, whether born in your house or bought with your money from any foreigner who is not of your offspring…”

The Sumerians, Egyptians and others circumcised – and well before them it was practised – Judaism copied the ritual as this blog will show – they copied many of their ‘divine  Torah’ – and none of it is original! 

Why on earth would god use an established method for centuries to make a covenant with the Hebrews, when it was not original!

1) Does that mean that all ‘circumcised’ males the world over belong to this covenant?

2) Why choose something so unoriginal – to cut such a powerful covenant – with dire threats if not obeyed?

3) Or is the whole Hebrew circumcision covenant a myth?

Having researched why the 8th day – and finding a Christian blog where they ecstatically claim how clever God is, as only he could have known about vitamin K / prothrombin – which of course appears to makes their God very wise!

The writers of the Torah would not have much medical knowledge of the human body! So if the Torah claim is true – or the scribe who wrote Genesis, it would probably have been a shot in the dark, or added centuries later. However, continuing my research I came across a Jewish page and bingo there is nothing mysterious about the 8td day, apart from the fact God commanded it! 

As anyone who researches will find – there are a plethora of opinions – it was interesting to read this article by a Jew…

I’ve been looking for years, but I’ve never been able to find a reputable source for either vitamin K or prothrombin levels peaking on the 8th day. Both seem to peak much later, with nothing special about the 8th day, and no other surgery would be scheduled for then. The source cited by an earlier answer seems to be a religious fundamentalist site, and the graphs don’t even spell “prothrombin” correctly.

Also in the same article is this quote:

“For it is a barbarous thing to meet a newly born infant with the knife, with a deliberate mutilation. And the part that is removed is not negligible; it has clear and valuable functions to perform. Not circumcising a boy will not only spare him a brutal violence as he enters life; it will promise him a richer existence. And that not only because the possession of a foreskin will increase his genital sensitivity and make possible more satisfactory and pleasurable sexual activity, but also because of the consideration with which this essay began: that the foreskin is the female element in the male.” George Wald (1906-1997), 1962 Nobel Prize

George Wald (1906-1997

It seems like the theist God is highly unimaginative and is content to copy previous cultures and other pagan gods customs and laws!