In several places in the Bible there is mention, sometimes in veiled terms, sometimes explicit, of castration and eunuchs. The Talmud is much clearer, for example about Daniel and his friends. In the Christian tradition Daniel is one of the great four: Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezechiel and Daniel. In the book of Daniel the story is told of how the king of Babylon (Nebuchadnezzar) conquers Jerusalem and deports the Jews. In Babel Nebuchadnezzar orders his steward to select a number of strong young men for a three-year period of training as counsellors. In the Bible the head of the household is also called the head of the eunuchs, and in the Talmud it is stated that Daniel and his friends themselves became eunuchs. There is a great divergence of opinion among rabbis on the how and why. There is a story that Daniel and his friends were accused of immoral conduct before Nebuchadnezzar and, in order to defend themselves against this charge, they mutilated ‘certain parts of their bodies’ (meaning their sex organs) in order to prove that the accusations were groundless, so becoming eunuchs at their own instigation. Another commentator tells how Daniel mutilated himself in order not to have to marry a non-Jewish princess.
The most current view is that Daniel and his friends were castrated by the king’s servants, so that they were no longer a danger to the women of the court. In addition, they were extremely useful to the king. Daniel was brilliant at explaining and interpreting dreams. No one could match him, and he was worth ten of any of the native diviners and exorcists.
By far the most famous eunuch in the Bible is Potiphar, who features in a classic story, with his wife. Joseph, the son of the patriarch Jacob and his wife Rachel, had been thrown into a well by his jealous brothers and subsequently sold to merchants. He was taken to Egypt,
where he was resold to a courtier of the pharaoh called Potiphar. Potiphar was head of the bodyguards of Pharaoh Apepi ii — in those days a most responsible and prominent position. There was an important precondition for those who came so close to the pharaoh: they must be castrated . . . Potiphar probably lived in the city of On, northeast of present-day Cairo, at the beginning of the Nile delta. At that time it was the scientific and religious heart of Egypt. Because it was the centre of sun-worship, and the Greeks later called it Heliopolis, the city of the sun.
Genesis tells us that God was with Joseph, so that he prospered. God’s blessing followed him to the house of the Egyptian and it was not long before Joseph had risen to become Potiphar’s closest assistant. He became overseer, administrator, butler and steward combined. Potiphar came to trust Joseph so implicitly that he put him in charge of all his possessions and henceforth concentrated solely on wining and dining.
One has to admit that Joseph had all the personal qualities imaginable. He was handsome and well built, intelligent and successful. Apart from that, in Ancient Egypt Syrian slaves were considered the best and Joseph was of Syrian (Aramaic) origin on both his father’s and his mother’s side. Syrians were preferred because the Egyptian ruling class belonged to the Hyksos, people who originated from Syria. There was also something mysterious about Joseph, so it was no wonder that he was noticed, especially by his master’s wife: Joseph’s presence brought excitement into her sexually dull life and his charms gradually became irresistible. Her invitation (‘Come lie with me’), was therefore not long in coming. Joseph, however, refused: ‘Behold, my master wotteth not what is with me in the house, and he hath committed all that he hath to my hand; there is none greater in this house than I; neither hath he kept back any thing from me but thee, because thou art his wife’ (Genesis 39). Potiphar’s wife was not impressed by this Salvation Army-style moral rectitude. Of course she persisted but her passion remained unrequited, since he was in the house day after day and continued to refuse.
One day she saw her chance: they were alone in the house. It was now or never. She went to him, clutched his robe and for the umpteenth time repeated her imperious question: ‘Come lie with me.’ Joseph tore himself free, leaving his garment in her hands. Her feelings turned to hate. She called her servants and said: ‘See, he hath brought in an Hebrew unto us to mock us; he came in unto me to lie with me, and I cried with a loud voice: and it came to pass, when he heard that I lifted up my voice and cried, that he left his garment with me, and fled, and got him out.’
In the Aramaic version the text has a more modern flavour: ‘She threw the white of an egg on the bed, called the domestic staff and said:
“Look at the semen stains that man left — the Hebrew whom your master has brought into the house to mock at us.”’
When Potiphar heard the news he was furious, had Joseph arrested and thrown into the pharaoh’s jail on a charge of attempted rape, without even giving him a chance to defend himself.
Actually all the attention in this story is focused on Joseph, the ideal man, yet also a man not averse to power. ‘Potiphar’s wife illuminates both sides of Joseph’s personality’, was an interpretation I once heard a clergyman give. Her passion shows how attractive he was and his response to questions how he revered God, but still. . .
Potiphar’s wife seems to be a marginal figure, also shown by the fact that the Bible gives her no name. At the beginning of the story she is called ‘Potiphar’s wife’, but disappears anonymously. But however little attention she is given in the modern Bible story, she is given all the more in the Jewish tradition, and even has a name: Zuleika. Jewish accounts describe her inviting her girlfriends over and having Joseph serve them in order to show him off. Her friends were so bowled over by Joseph’s appearance that their knives slipped and they cut their fingers. When she pretended to be surprised, her friends replied: ‘How are we supposed to look at our hands when you show us such a divine looking man?’ The theme of the spoiled, bored woman who conceives a burning passion for a younger servant, tries to seduce him and when she fails, falsely accuses him of rape, is a perennial one.
What makes Potiphar’s wife so different from other ‘bad’ women in biblical stories? Tamar, it’s true, seduced her father-in-law, which is certainly not very edifying, but Potiphar’s wife had completely different motives. She was used to the luxury of the high life, but was at the same time neglected, since Potiphar paid no attention to her. What she was looking for was distraction, or rather, simple sexual satisfaction. What she was hoping for was a fling, a one-night stand, that was all. ‘And what was wrong with that?’ I can still hear that country clergyman saying.
In the fourth century, in the sect of the Obelites, some men had themselves castrated on the basis of a text from the Bible (Matthew 19:12). Oddly enough they did not disapprove of marriage itself, but of sexual intercourse. Two centuries previously in the Near East a Gnostic sect, the Adamites, had emerged, whose aim was to invoke heaven by the suppression of all sensual desires: in imitation of Adam they went around naked in their religious observances. These strange excrescences undoubtedly spring from early Christian thinking on martyrdom and the accompanying physical abstinence, self-chastisement and privations as the only way to salvation. Castration was condemned as early as 323, at the Council of Nicaea, and the ordination of eunuchs was forbidden. In forbidding (self-)castration and excluding castrati from the priesthood Christianity became more Roman, since in the Eastern Church particularly castrated priests like Cybele and Attis were revered. Many castrated monks and bishops were active in the Byzantine Christian church. Until the late Middle Ages eunuchs were even appointed bishops in the Eastern Church, among them Theophylactus, an eleventh-century bishop of Bulgaria, whose seat was in Ochrida.
The French philosopher Pierre Abelard (1079-1142) believed that the mutilation of his own genitalia had been appointed by God and that castration would make him a better theologian.