Consistent with the ideas being discussed, Professor Wolfson implies something very important here, which comes into full bloom only in his more contemporary writings concerning circumcision. Professor Wolfson explicitly, or implicitly, consciously, or subconsciously, implies what is the case, and case in point, that the writing on the flesh of the male Jew on the eighth day represents the original act of writing such that the seminal question arises whether this writing on the flesh of the male Jew is hieroglyphic or demotic? If demotic, then the writing of brit milah severs the unity of tangible thing and idea from the sacred-glyph producing the first demotic letter or word. . . If hieroglyphic, the writing of brit milah creates a sacred-glyph that's a picture, or pictogram, of some tangible thing (from the natural world) that the glyph, or image, uses to produce the thought, or idea, born of the act of writing. . . . Is brit milah, as the seminal act of writing, the act of a priest producing a sacred-glyph (as we would expect) or the act of a writer/amanuensis producing the demotic separation that severs the written word from it's source in the sacred-glyph? Does the mohel connect the word or letter written in the flesh with a tangible image from the natural world, or is his act the severing of a thought, or idea, from the tangible thing first associated with ideas and thoughts. Is the mohel's act evolution or priestly evocation? Ontological, or meontololgical?
John
