Adventures of The Foreskin

It started with the discovery of the above mentioned foreskin in 1557, according to this.

No, that was totally wrong. It started about 2012 years ago, in year 6 BC, according to this.

But this is also not strictly true. It started with the first act of ritual circumcision - Brit Mila, which for Abraham, then 99 years old, has been a fairly painful deal. Or, maybe, not at all, so... so what? Any road, this first act of circumcision brought with it a long chain of babies being introduced into the Covenant in a cruel and unusual way.

As you already know (or are going to), these days the Elders have succeeded in enforcing the Covenant even on unwilling males of many different tribes, but this is not the subject of this piece. The subject is rather that single Brit Mila performed 2012 years ago on baby Jesus and the sole remaining artefact of this circumcision*. Or so the story goes.

The holy foreskin's adventures after its separation from the holy... er... body are partly described here. Suffice to say that only the first act in this long story looks reliably documented:

According to the apocryphal Infancy Gospels, after Jesus' circumcision in a cave, Mary's midwife placed the foreskin in an alabaster jar filled with spikenard, a preservative, which she gave to her son, admonishing him "Guard well this jar of aromatic nard and do not sell it, even when they offer you 300 denarii".

Which quote, knowing the roundabout way all these biblical characters used for their discourse, puts the eventual sale price of the said artifact squarely at 301 dinarii (what it amounts to in nowadays dollars, shekels or Euro is not clear). Other than that, the next 1563 years of the foreskin travails are obscured by a thick veil of time. But eventually it found its way to Calcata, a small town 30 miles north of Rome, in the above mentioned year 1557, where it was cherished and pampered for many, many years. Not that it is clear how does one pamper a foreskin, especially unattached one.

What is clear, though, is that the Holy Prepuce caused a lot of troubles to the small and peaceful town. Freak storms, perfumed mists (why this one is listed as a trouble is not clear), earthquakes and, to top it all, a plague of hippies. All this could not have ended other than in tears, and it ended it tears indeed. The town itself was moved to another location in the late 1960s and the frolicking foreskin has decided to leave this troubled community and disappeared in 1983.

And that is when the various conspiracy theories regarding the fate of the amazing foreskin started. The Slate article linked in the beginning is painting, with a broad brush, a few conspiracy possibilities:

1. The foreskin was spirited away (no pun intended, of course) by Vatican to avoid the endless debate on its authenticity.
2. The foreskin was stolen and resold (probably to a collector, although who heard about a collector of foreskins?)
3. The Holy Prepuce was passed to a group of Messianic scientists who are going to clone us a new Messiah to put an end to endless theological discussions and bring the Armageddon as a result of having millions of theologists of all faiths with nothing to do on their hands.

The list above, however, is limited by the nature of the mass media that somehow restricts both the flight of imagination and dissemination of essential information. So the Elders, always true to the goals of "Sanity (in moderation), love, poetry of being, peaceful coexistence of all life forms and extermination of serious people", as it says in our Charter, decided to put the matter straight. Which means, of course, adding a few new versions of the possible conspiracies.

1. The foreskin is on loan to an anthropologist who is trying to recover the image of its owner, using new, hitherto untested technique, inspired by all the restorations done by his colleagues from the skull or other bones. Of course, it is clear that there is no bone involved in this case, which makes the attempt even more exciting...
   
2. The foreskin was stolen by some criminally-minded scientists, not for the purpose of cloning a whole another person, rather the part of it that was, how to say it, directly attached to the said foreskin. Having their goal - to get filthily, impossibly rich from the proceeds of sales via the usual channels of erotic wares.
3. Zionists filched the Holy Prepuce to use it for mayhem (specifically earthquakes and freak storms) in various regions of the world. Several humongous earthquakes were registered since 1983, and it is only an issue of some time for a trained investigator to locate the seemingly innocuous traveler with a small pillbox. I shudder to think about the possible uses of perfumed mist...
4. Of course, we should not discount the insidious CIA which could have done it on general principle of being ornery and having its finger in every pie in the world. In which case, we'll never know where the Prepuce ended up. It may as well be in the area 51 now, cooped in with all these various aliens and just any matter of strange humans that got spirited away only because or their look and inability to talk the Queen's English.

And, saying all the above on behalf of the Elders, I would like to add that I hope for something else. I hope that the Holy Prepuce, being of a free and roaming spirit, just got tired of the endless and boring worshippers and their incessant begging for this or other miracle for personal profit. I hope it has decided to use the endless magic powers its owner doubtlessly left in its disposal. And it roams the world, checking the damage done to our planet by the greedy and stupid humans in which hands the world was deposited. It roams everywhere, sometimes as a wheel, sometimes as a chain link, sometimes as a calamari ring in the sumptuous dish depicted below...



Bon appetit!

(*) That "sole product" statement is not strictly true. After all, the remaining baby is also a product of the circumcision, in a way. But, as some Jews say, the most important thing after a successful cut is to throw away the right piece.

Dedicated to Scribbles.




to Rachel of Tinkerty Tonk.

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