Robert Greenblatt: Eunuchs in 'Search the Scriptures'

Robert B. Greenblatt was a mid-twentieth-century endocrinologist who contributed to the development of oral contraceptives.

His book Search the Scriptures places a modern endocrinological interpretation on certain Biblical references. His first case examines the likelihood that Esau, who transferred his anticipated inheritance to his younger brother in exchange for lentils when he suddenly felt he was about to die of hunger, was probably hypoglycemic. This book has a chapter on eunuchs titled "And They Sang Like Cherubs." The epigraph is Matthew 19:12 and the leading questions are "Why emasculation? What is the role of the endocrine glands in the development of character and personality?

Apart from some advice about how sex glands operate (noting Brown-Sequard's folly), most of Greenblatt's comments are of a historical nature. He acknowledges that servants were castrated "in the Orient, in the Middle East, and later in Greece and in the Roman Empire" since ancient times (though not by the Hebrews, according to Josephus and likely in obedience to the law in Deut 23:1) and more recently "for Moslem harems," and he reveals that an Assyrian bas-relief produced in some century BCE "depicts a vizier and a eunuch, in which the contrast between a normal and a mutilated male is vividly portrayed." He contradicts himself about the general awareness in ancient times of the differing impact of pre-pubertal and post-pubertal castration: "Eunuchs castrated in boyhood are known," he says, "for their fidelity; those castrated later in life have been often suspect, correctly," (p. 54) yet he also says that pre-Christians did not know that "this form of mutilation, for the best results, must be performed before maturity in both man and beast." (p. 56) It is unclear how to reconcile those two statements.

He mentions Christian sects that encouraged castration: the Valesii in the 3rd century and the Skoptsi in the 18th century. He also mentions that Pope Leo XIII banned the castration of singers, then a popular practice in Italy, in 1878. He says that the KJV Bible contains 26 instances of the word "eunuch," but that readers should be aware that the term, "especially in Egypt, was even applied to non-castrated, but loyal, servants and administrators of the king."

He says that inmates of the Nazi concentration camps Belzen and Auschwitz were castrated by "x-ray irradiation," though he implies conflicting descriptions of whether this injury was "punitive" or experimental pseudoscience "to study the tissue changes induced by X-rays." (He was aware of two survivors of these Nazi experiments living in the U.S. who had consulted doctors about their hormone deprivation.)

This history notwithstanding, he says his main interest lies in the Biblical recognition in Matthew 19:12 that "some eunuchs...were so born from their mother's womb," something that he sees, as an endocrinologist, as a "diagnosis of congenital eunuchoidism or primary testicular failure." However, he does not explore this further. He does not give any examples of congenital eunuchs.

As a bonus, he quotes the description of the "beardless and goat-voiced Pardoner" from the Prologue of the Canterbury Tales in the Middle English.

Source

Robert B. Greenblatt. Search The Scriptures: A Physician Examines Medicine in the Bible. Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott, 1963.

Richard Bird’s ‘The Eunuch’: A comically dark novel of misfortune in Texas

In The Eunuch: A Dark Tale, Nathan is a man who loses a fight with a badass terrier. This review was originally posted to Helium Network on April 24, 2012.

There is never a dull moment in The Eunuch: A Dark Tale. Published in 1995 under the pen name Richard Bird and re-released as an e-book in 2013 with a 2014 reprint, this hilariously inappropriate novel follows a straight-but-not-narrow male who is castrated under compromising circumstances and subsequently seeks the company of other fascinating, twisted people.

Initially, lacking a full reckoning with his own past and absent any particular ambition for the future, the new eunuch Nathan drifts passively through a moment in his "middle age" that becomes increasingly bizarre. Sometimes the story's action needs no further explanation, as in the various sexually explicit passages. At other times, the action is confounding, including the behavior of an avant garde artist who paints entirely in orange and a con artist preacher who speaks in tongues. It's satirical, but not necessarily unrealistic. Life is that ridiculous, sometimes – depending on what one stops to laugh at.

Nathan's path to happiness lies in asserting himself by choosing his friends more wisely and with greater authenticity. Because his affinity with his new friends is driven by his physical condition, he simultaneously comes to accept himself as a eunuch. It's as if, when he is first sighted by his lover-to-be between the legs of a nude statue in the book's opening sentences, he is dragged through a magic portal into a new life.

Curiously, Nathan is not the lone eunuch in Texas. There is a man of Apache descent, once called "Tonto" by his platoon leader in Vietnam, who returned with a significant war injury. Now living on the margins of society, his manhood called into question, this man, Geronimo, self-Tontifies his presentation to an outrageous degree as a coping mechanism in a world he finds hostile and overwhelming, until finally, in a paroxysm of ineffectual carnage in which he attacks a parking meter and a pre-deceased large ruminant, he self-destructs.

While Nathan empathizes with him, Geronimo comes across as more of a buffoonish poltergeist than a real person. He is Nathan's shadow in the Jungian sense. Both men were physically castrated by accident while being taken advantage of by another person; both are possessed by the urge to vengefully mutilate the perceived responsible party in kind. But Nathan is more grounded in the world. The reader votes him "more likely to succeed."

"Nathan" is a good name for a eunuch, possibly hearkening back to the Biblical Nathan-melech who oversaw the stables of a pagan king. The modern Nathan shares something in common with domesticated horses, too, in the particular way he is drafted into a splutteringly disgusting biotechnology project.

Nathan's dark tale wrestles with some essential human questions without ever getting preachy. He may be of special interest to virility-challenged men looking for a good antihero to cheer them up.