On the Body as a Temple for God

Verses from Scripture

Leviticus 19:28 (NRSV)

You shall not make any gashes in your flesh for the dead or tattoo any marks upon you: I am the Lord.

Leviticus 21:5–6 NRSV

They shall not make bald spots upon their heads, or shave off the edges of their beards, or make any gashes in their flesh. They shall be holy to their God, and not profane the name of their God; for they offer the Lord’s offerings by fire, the food of their God; therefore they shall be holy.

Deuteronomy 14:1–2 NRSV

You are children of the Lord your God. You must not lacerate yourselves or shave your forelocks for the dead. For you are a people holy to the Lord your God; it is you the Lord has chosen out of all the peoples on earth to be his people, his treasured possession.

The Jewish Encyclopedia: A Descriptive Record of the History, Religion, Literature, and Customs of the Jewish People from the Earliest Times to the Present Day, 12 Volumes (Absence of Historic Connection)

A totem is tattooed on the skin of the totem worshiper; and there is evidence in Lev. 19:28 that the Israelites were forbidden to make tattoo-marks.

Eerdmans Dictionary of the Bible Thrace

THRACE (Gk. Thrakē)

The mountainous northernmost region of Greece, lying between the Danube River on the north and the Strymon River and Illyria on the west, and N of Macedonia. Thracians were considered primitive (dyeing their hair and tattooing their skin) and warlike (often hiring out as mercenaries; 2 Macc. 12:35), living by plunder rather than by agriculture, but skilled at making tools and weapons. In Greek poetry Thrace symbolizes isolation, desolation, and inhospitable frigidity. Urbanization of their villages came only with the conquest of Thrace by the Romans. Claudius made it a province in 46 C.E., dividing it in two, with the region N of Mt. Haemus becoming Moesia and that to the south becoming Thrace proper. The Thracians influenced Greek religion greatly, particularly in the worship of the god of war Ares and the god of wine Dionysus (whose wild, orgiastic nighttime worship was outlawed by the Roman Senate in 186 B.C.E.).

Bibliography. J. J. Wilkes, “Thrace,” in The Oxford Classical Dictionary, ed. S. Hornblower and A. Spawforth, 3rd ed. (Oxford, 1996), 1514–15.

Rings are associated with the manufacture of an idol or cult object (Exod. 32:2–3; Judg. 8:27; Gen. 35:4)

Joseph E. Jensen, “Earring,” ed. David Noel Freedman, Allen C. Myers, and Astrid B. Beck, Eerdmans Dictionary of the Bible (Grand Rapids, MI: W.B. Eerdmans, 2000), 361.

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