Castration is a starkly gendered form of violence against men. Some men historically have suffered castration to serve their own interests in becoming high-ranking officials. These eunuch officials have been widely despised for being vicious and jealous. A few years after Jesus of Nazareth was crucified, Philip the Evangelist met on the road from Jerusalem to Gaza an Ethiopian eunuch. The biblical book Acts clearly characterizes this Ethiopian eunuch, a high-ranking official, as gracious and genteel.
The Ethiopian eunuch was both a royal African official and a pious, humble man. Acts records:
A man of Ethiopia, a eunuch of great power under Candace queen of the Ethiopians, the man who was in charge of all her treasure, had come to Jerusalem to worship.
{ ἀνὴρ Αἰθίοψ εὐνοῦχος δυνάστης Κανδάκης τῆς βασιλίσσης Αἰθιόπων ὃς ἦν ἐπὶ πάσης τῆς γάζης αὐτῆς ὃς ἐληλύθει προσκυνήσων εἰς Ἰερουσαλήμ }[1]
Returning from Jerusalem, the Ethiopian eunuch was sitting in his chariot, as befits a high official. He wasn’t checking for messages and sending texts to many different persons. A pious man, he was reading aloud and pondering the biblical book of Isaiah. That prophetic book concerns the destiny of Israel after the terrible suffering of its exile.
Philip the Evangelist ran up to the Ethiopian eunuch’s chariot. Royal bodyguards might have killed Philip as a possible assailant. Perhaps the Ethiopian eunuch restrained his bodyguards. In any case, Philip then impudently asked:
Do you even understand what you are reading?
{ ἆρά γε γινώσκεις ἃ ἀναγινώσκεις }[2]
The ancient Greek form of the question presumes that the Ethiopian eunuch, a royal official, didn’t understand what he was reading. A typical royal official might have responded angrily, e.g. she might have said, “What the hell are you doing, asking me such a question, you walking lunatic nobody?”
Despite Philip’s impudence, the Ethiopian eunuch responded graciously and humbly. He accepted Philip’s suggestion that he didn’t understand what he was reading. He sought Philip’s help with sophisticated, oblique rhetoric:
And how could I, unless someone guides me?
{ πῶς γὰρ ἂν δυναίμην ἐὰν μή τις ὁδηγήσει με }
This royal official then invited Philip to sit with him in his chariot. He asked Philip about Isaiah’s meaning in describing a man suffering under unjust treatment:
I ask you, please tell me, about whom does the prophet say this? About himself, or about someone else?
{ δέομαί σου περὶ τίνος ὁ προφήτης λέγει τοῦτο περὶ ἑαυτοῦ ἢ περὶ ἑτέρου τινός }
The Ethiopian eunuch thus imploringly petitioned Philip for an answer, as if Philip were a royal official. Philip then explained that Isaiah foretold Jesus’s coming.
While the Ethiopian eunuch acted humbly toward Philip, he retained the courtliness and authority of a royal official. When the chariot came to some water, the eunuch said:
Look, water. What prevents me from being baptized?
{ ἰδοὺ ὕδωρ τί κωλύει με βαπτισθῆναι }
The directness of “look, water {ἰδοὺ ὕδωρ}” contrasts sharply with the circumlocutory question, “what prevents me from being baptized {τί κωλύει με βαπτισθῆναι}?” That circumlocutory question is more elegant than the direct request, “baptize me,” or the direct question, “will you baptize me?” No obstacle existed to the eunuch being baptized. The eunuch thus “commanded {ἐκέλευσεν}” the chariot to stop, emphasizing his authority. Both the eunuch and Philip went down into the water. That explicit mutuality emphasizes their equal status as human beings. Philip then baptized the eunuch, and the eunuch went on his way “rejoicing {χαίρων}.”
Not all eunuch officials are vicious, jealous, self-loathing persons. The Ethiopian eunuch as described in the biblical book Acts is one of the most admirable persons in the New Testament.[3] Despite his high royal position and Philip the Evangelist’s effrontery, the Ethiopian eunuch treated Philip graciously. Moreover, the Ethiopian eunuch spoke with cultured sophistication. He also was open to new understandings and new ways of being. Despite having suffering the sexual violence of castration, he was neither angry nor bitter. Christianity understands God to have become incarnate as a person with masculine genitals, and Christianity fully recognizes men’s seminal blessing.[4] In turning the world upside down, Acts presents the Ethiopian eunuch as an exemplary Christian.
* * * * *
Read more:
- forgiveness for men who castrate themselves under false religion
- Earinus, Emperor Domitian, and laws against castration
- men dancing for war and pleasure in ancient Greek poetry
Notes:
[1] Acts 8:27, ancient Greek text (morphological GNT) via Blue Letter Bible, my English translation, drawing upon widely available biblical translations. Subsequent quotes above are similarly from Acts 8:26-39 (the story of the Ethiopian eunuch and Philip).
Since no later than the seventeenth century, the story of the Ethiopian eunuch was included in the Octave of Easter in the Roman Missal. The Episcopal Book of Common Prayer (1979 edition) celebrates on August 27 the “Feast of Simeon Bachos, the Ethiopian Eunuch.” Neither the Bible nor Patristic sources on the Ethiopian eunuch specify his name. “Simeon Bachos” apparently arose relatively late as a name for this important Christian person.
Candace was the Greco-Roman name for the queen of the Nile valley empire called Kush. Greco-Romans referred to Kush as Ethiopia. The capital of Kush was Meroë, which is in present-day Sudan.
Acts refers to this eminent Ethiopian Christian convert as a eunuch five times. Wilson preposterously claimed that the story “marks him solely in terms of his lack of physical manhood.” Wilson (2014) p. 405. To the contrary, Acts characterizes him as pious, gracious, open-minded, wealthy, politically powerful, and happy. Cf. “the Ethiopian eunuch defies categorization…. His lack of definition is extreme.” Carson (1999) p. 145, as quoted in Burke (2013) p. 1.
The word “man {ἀνὴρ}” in Acts 8:27 is distinctively gendered male in ancient Greek. Though a eunuch, the Ethiopian was nonetheless a man. Scholars recently have tended to deny his identity as a man and deny men’s suffering from castration. E.g. Kartzow & Moxnes (2010), Burke (2013), Wilson (2014). One present-day cleric insightfully commented:
What might be his back story? He may have been taken as a young boy to become a eunuch. He had no choice in the matter, and he probably didn’t know what was happening to him. To become a eunuch his testicles were crushed to stop him producing testosterone. Because he had no testosterone, this altered his growth and changed his appearance. His voice never broke, so as an adult he still had the voice of a boy. His body had little hair, and his body grew in disproportionate ways – reduced muscles, but increased body fat in his abdomen, and he developed breasts. His bones would be weaker and more likely to break. He would also be lethargic and depressed.
Smith (2021). The Ethiopian eunuch doesn’t appear in Acts to be lethargic and depressed. He rejoices in being baptized as a Christian.
Whether the Ethiopian eunuch suffered the crushing and removal of his testicles, the amputation of his penis, or both isn’t clear. Such sexual violence has little relation to the modern ideological construction “phallus.” The “phallus” ideologically continues the brutalization of penises by displacing a physical organ with a disparaging ideological construction. Consider the tortuous effect:
Eunuchs in the Greco-Roman world were considered the ultimate “nonmen” since they lacked one of the main features — if not the main feature — of masculinity, namely, a functioning phallus. Given the increased emphasis placed on not just the phallus but the large phallus during the Roman Empire, the eunuch’s so-called deficient phallus made him an object of even more scorn during this period. … Both Jesus and the eunuch do not generate descendants by means of sexual relations and thus relativize the procreative power of the phallus. We know that Jesus has a phallus since he is circumcised in Luke 2:21, yet the generative potential of his phallus does not figure into the growth of his newly formed family of God.
Wilson (2015) pp. Men don’t experience genital mutilation to the ideological, abstract phallus. Men with any sense of interpersonal relations also do not have sex with it.
[2] Philip {Φίλιππος} the Evangelist, who isn’t the same person as Philip the Apostle, was perhaps a relatively wealthy man. He was one of seven Christians chosen to provide for poor widows in Jerusalem. Acts 6:1-6.
[3] For theological interpretations of the story of the Ethiopian eunuch of Acts, see, e.g. Aymer (2021) and Martens (2015). For an interpretation of this story “From a queer perspective, … as a drag show with implications for inclusion in early Christian communities,” Burke (c. 2024). Ebed-Melech {עֶבֶד-מֶלֶךְ}, another Ethiopian eunuch, was also an admirable, godly person. Jeremiah 38:7-13, 39:15-18,
[4] Amid diffuse problematizing and ambiguating, academics have failed to appreciate the incarnate reality of Jesus’s masculinity and the seminal blessing that men offer women. Consider, for example, the paradoxical ambiguity of the scholarly conclusion, ‘Indeed, for {the gospel of} Luke, “real” men look manifestly unmanly.’ Wilson (2015), concluding sentence of the book abstract. In elaborating on boundary-crossing and ambiguity, Wilson (2014) and Wilson (2015) remain strictly confined within the rigid boundaries of contemporary academic orthodoxy. Further demonstrating the possibility of having the word made meaningless, Wilson (2016) claims to ‘problematize how we view Jesus as a “man.”’ But who is “we”?
[images] (1) The Ethiopian eunuch with Philip in a chariot stopping for baptism. From folio 107 of the Menologian of Basil II, made about 1000 GC and preserved as Ms. Vat. gr. 1613. Source image via Wikimedia Commons. For a narrow-minded, tendentious analysis of this image, Betancourt (2020) Chapter 5. Betancourt’s bullying manipulation of reality grotesquely characterizes a central feature of contemporary intellectual life. Consider his declaration:
Whether Empress Teodora actually carried out the sexual deeds and abortions that Procopius slut-shames her for does not matter, because there were other women in the past subjected to the same — and far worse — rhetorical and physical violence as that imputed against Procopius’s literary Teodora. … To deny these realities is to be complicit with violence — both physical and rhetorical — not just in the past but also in the present.
Betancourt (2020) p. 17. Similarly, id. p. 207. Betancourt provides little historical documentation about the realities of those “other women.” He shows no concern for the vastly gender-disproportionate violence against men obvious from the Iliad to present-day mortality statistics. He trivializes gender inequality in parental knowledge and sexual oppression of men. In general, his arch concern for marginalization and oppression extends only to what’s intellectually fashionable. That makes his bullying particularly disgusting. (2) Philip the Evangelist baptizing the Ethiopian eunuch. Painting by Rembrandt c. 1626. Preserved as accession # ABM s380 in the Museum Catharijneconvent (Utrecht, Netherlands). Image via Wikimedia Commons. For analysis of this painting, Kauffman (2015). Rembrandt’s painting much less faithful translates Acts 8:26-39 than does the painting in the Menologian of Basil. Uncannily echoing Rembrandt’s ideological painting of the story, Betancourt asserts that Philip was the one “commanding the {Ethiopian eunuch’s} chariot to stop.” Betancourt (2020) p. 161.
References:
Aymer, Margaret. 2021. “Commentary on Acts 8:26-39.” Working Preacher. Posted online Apr. 25, 2021.
Betancourt, Roland. 2020. Byzantine Intersectionality: Sexuality, Gender, and Race in the Middle Ages. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Introduction. Reviews by Meaghan Allen and by C. Libby.
Burke, Sean D. 2013. Queering the Ethiopian Eunuch: Strategies of Ambiguity in Acts. Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press. Introduction. Brief review.
Burke, Sean D. c. 2024. “Ethiopian Eunuch from a Queer Perspective.” Bible Odyssey. A public outreach of the Society of Biblical Literature. Online.
Carson, Cottrel R. 1999. ‘Do You Understand What You Are Reading?’ A Reading of the Ethiopian
Eunuch Story (Acts 8.26-40) from a Site of Cultural Marronage. Ph.D. Thesis, Union Theological
Seminary.
Kartzow, Marianne B., and Halvor Moxnes. 2010. “Complex Identities: Ethnicity, Gender and Religion in the Story of the Ethiopian Eunuch (Acts 8:26–40).” Religion & Theology. 17 (3-4): 184–204.
Kauffman, Ivan J. 2015. “Seeing the Light: The Ethiopian’s Baptism.” Published June 2,2105, on Academia.edu.
Martens, John W. 2015. “Is the Ethiopian eunuch the first Gentile convert in Acts?” America: The Jesuit Review. Posted online Sept. 23, 2015.
Smith, Andrew. 2021. “The backstory of the Ethiopian Eunuch.” Letters, Thoughts, News. Canberra Region Presbytery (Australia). Post online May 2, 2021.
Wilson, Brittany E. 2014. “‘Neither Male nor Female’: The Ethiopian Eunuch in Acts 8.26–40.” New Testament Studies. 60 (3): 403–22.
Wilson, Brittany E. 2015. Unmanly Men: Refigurations of Masculinity in Luke-Acts. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Review by Alexander Nachaj.
Wilson, Brittany E. 2016. “Gender Disrupted: Jesus as a ‘Man’ in the Fourfold Gospel.” Word and World. 36: 24-35.