Are tattoos OK for Jews and Christians?

Are tattoos OK for Jews and Christians? April 17, 2015

JACOB’S QUESTION:

Christians and Jews — Is it OK for them to get tattoos?

THE RELIGION GUY’S ANSWER:

Quick summary: Many if not most Jews say no (as do Muslims). With Christians, it’s complicated.

There are obvious pros and cons with getting a tattoo because it’s a social signifier and permanently so, unlike hair styles, attire, and other expressions of individuality. But as a religious matter the issue is whether to observe the Bible’s commandment in Leviticus 19:28: “You shall not make any gashes in your flesh for the dead, or tattoo any marks upon you. I am the LORD” (New Revised Standard Version).

The Hebrew verb here is ambiguous but New York University’s Baruch Levine says it’s “clear in context” that it means tattooing. Indeed, as Charles Erdman of Princeton Theological Seminary observed, tattooing was common “among all the nations of antiquity” so the ban clearly set apart worshippers of the Bible’s one God against surrounding “pagans.” Note the adjacent biblical laws against flesh-gashing rituals, witchcraft, wizards, and mediums seeking contact with the dead.

Such practices rarely  tempt modern Jews, yet the ban remains a sign of religious or ethnic solidarity, as with avoidance of pork even among many non-observant or secularized Jews. However, present-day rabbis reject contentions that a tattooed person cannot be buried in a Jewish cemetery.

Experts Wilfrid Hambly and Victor Turner depicted the history of tattooing and similar designs cut into flesh (“scarification”) among darker-skinned peoples. There are deep roots in the polytheistic cultures of pre-literate South America, Africa, Asia, and the Pacific islands, as well as biblical Canaan, with use  for fertility rites, rites of passage, or magical benefits. Tattoos have marked a person’s social status or vocation as with clans, slaves, India’s “untouchable” caste, or prostitutes. Such identifications continue in the 21st Century West, e.g. with seamen or criminal and prison gangs.

These historians said tattooing was widely abandoned as western civilization spread, due to the opposition by Judaism and Christianity, though “nominal adherents” of those faiths still got tattoos. But tattooing was fashionable in the 1970s among some celebrities and “counterculture” denizens, especially in locales like California, and became more widespread than formerly around North America.

Which Old Testament commandments should Christians continue to observe in the 21st Century? Consider the varied divine laws in that Leviticus chapter. We find several tenets of the Ten Commandments that Christians uphold as valid for all time, and an important teaching later embraced by Jesus: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” The chapter presents important moral principles about honest business dealings, impartial justice, and special concern for the poor and exiles. But there’s also a kosher food law that the New Testament sets aside for Gentiles, and rules against mixing species, seeds, and textiles that are head-scratchers for contemporary Christians. Where does that leave the tattooing commandment?

Catholicism has no defined teaching, but Father Stephen Sommerville blogs that the “mind of the church” is that “tattooing is at least unseemly for a Catholic.” On the opposite side, Jimmy Akin, a convert from Protestantism who hosts the “Catholic Answers” radio program, says “many of the precepts of the Mosaic Law are ceremonial and do not belong to the moral law. Their purpose, in many cases, is simply to make the Israelites culturally distinct from the Canaanites who surrounded them. This is one such command.” That’s precisely the argument from those Protestants who allow tattoos. This policy suggests that believers should continue to shun tattoos in situations where they can be associated with non-Christian belief or believers.

The evangelical Protestant “New Illustrated Bible Commentary” typifies the conservative argument against: In addition to those questionable associations with non-biblical religions, “the human body was designed by God who intended it to be whole and beautiful,” so someone who permanently disfigures his/her body dishonors “God, in whose image the person was created.” That agrees with the great medieval Jewish sage Maimonides, who believed any disfigurement violates the “integrity of the human body made in the express image and likeness of God.” The Protestant commentary also regards tattoos as “signs of rebellion against God,” even in modern times, and other conservatives say tattoos express  a spirit of rebellion that violates Scripture.

Side note: The Bible depicts bodily markings on God the Father (Isaiah 49:16) and on Jesus the Son (Revelation 19:16), but exegetes say it would stretch such poetic imagery beyond all reason to take this literally.

Though Jacob addresses only Judaism and Christianity, note that Islam opposes tattooing and strongly so, due to teachings of the Prophet Muhammad in a highly authoritative Hadith collection (Sahih Bukhari volume 3 book 34 #299, volume 7 book 72 #825 and #830). Like tradition-minded Jews and Christians, Muslim interpreters explain that a believer should never imitate past or present idolatry or alter the human body as God created it. However, jurists say a person who gets a tattoo and later converts to Islam is not required to attempt painful surgical removal.

 

 


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