4.0162 Foreskins (1/15)

Elaine Brennan & Allen Renear (EDITORS@BROWNVM.BITNET)
Sat, 2 Jun 90 14:51:07 EDT

Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 4, No. 0162. Saturday, 2 Jun 1990.

Date: Thu, 31 May 90 21:49 PDT
From: KESSLER <IME9JFK@UCLAMVS.BITNET>
Subject: Re: 4.0154 Foreskins

Dear Nissim, I may have misunderstood the whole discussion; but -- it
seems to me that the foreskins claimed (of the Sea Peoples, of the enemy
Philistines) were not the corpses of soldiers who were circumcised, but
the corpses of the fallen whose foreskins were cut off as trophies.
NOt so? YOu count the dea by the number of scalps (if you are an Indian
in the American plains, called by teh French word "coups") or the
number of phalluses cut off, or foreskins cut off, but the battlefield
spoliators, usually old women picking up armor and bracelets, and such,
a practice that has continued, one reads, up through the Wars of the
Roses and the 100 Years' War. Not so? Kessler at UCLA