WHY THE EUNUCH?

“…𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘳𝘦 𝘢𝘳𝘦 𝘦𝘶𝘯𝘶𝘤𝘩𝘴 𝘸𝘩𝘰 𝘩𝘢𝘷𝘦 𝘮𝘢𝘥𝘦 𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘮𝘴𝘦𝘭𝘷𝘦𝘴 𝘦𝘶𝘯𝘶𝘤𝘩𝘴 𝘧𝘰𝘳 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘬𝘪𝘯𝘨𝘥𝘰𝘮 𝘰𝘧 𝘩𝘦𝘢𝘷𝘦𝘯’𝘴 𝘴𝘢𝘬𝘦. 𝘏𝘦 𝘸𝘩𝘰 𝘪𝘴 𝘢𝘣𝘭𝘦 𝘵𝘰 𝘢𝘤𝘤𝘦𝘱𝘵 𝘪𝘵, 𝘭𝘦𝘵 𝘩𝘪𝘮 𝘢𝘤𝘤𝘦𝘱𝘵 𝘪𝘵”. Matthew 19:12

In the ancient world, a eunuch was usually a man who had been castrated (sometimes forcibly) so he could serve in a royal court, harem, or temple without being seen as a sexual threat. Over time, “eunuch” could also be used more broadly for men who were celibate, infertile, or did not fit standard masculine roles. In my last post I used the eunuch as an example of how the position of the eunuch in Israel changed over time. It culminated with Philip baptizing the Ethiopian eunuch, one of the earliest non-jewish converts, symbolizing inclusion at the margins. Why is the role or position of the eunuch such a loaded topic in Jesus’ day?

Let’s step back a bit. In early Mesopotamian city-states, classification was not abstract—it was the very basis of civilization. The scribes of Uruk and Babylon invented cuneiform lists long before they wrote stories: lists of animals, plants, gods, metals, professions. These lists were attempts to sort and stabilize the messy abundance of life. As Seth Richardson emphasizes, this was “𝗶𝗻𝗳𝗿𝗮𝘀𝘁𝗿𝘂𝗰𝘁𝘂𝗿𝗮𝗹 𝗽𝗼𝘄𝗲𝗿” at work: the ability of institutions to order bodies, land, and resources by making them visible, enumerable, and thus governable. To call someone a “dependent,” a “priest,” a “slave” or a “eunuch” was to inscribe them into a slot within or outside of the cosmic and political order.

This wasn’t just practical bookkeeping. In Mesopotamian myth, as in the Hebrew Bible, the cosmos itself was conceived as an act of classification—Marduk slays Tiamat and divides the chaotic waters, giving names, functions, and places to gods and things. Yahweh does the same thing to the earth that was “without form and void”. Creation is sorting. Disorder, in turn, was always a breakdown of boundaries—floods that blurred land and water, or enemies that blurred the line between civilization and wilderness.

The anthropologist Mary Douglas helps us see that these early taxonomies were not neutral. Her insight that “𝗱𝗶𝗿𝘁 𝗶𝘀 𝗺𝗮𝘁𝘁𝗲𝗿 𝗼𝘂𝘁 𝗼𝗳 𝗽𝗹𝗮𝗰𝗲”reveals that ancient purity systems were less about hygiene and more about protecting symbolic order. A pig was unclean in Israel not because it was dirty but because it straddled categories (it had cloven hooves but did not chew cud). Likewise, eunuchs troubled Levitical law because they stood in a liminal place. The eunuch, then, was a walking reminder of ambiguity, a body that could not be placed in the tidy binaries of male/female, fertile/infertile, inside/outside. To blur or resist classification was to stand outside the dominant structures of power, purity, and visibility.

Jesus’ recognition that some are “born eunuchs” (Matt 19:12) is a recognition of the natural diversity in human embodiment and gender/sexual expression. Some theologians see this as an opening for understanding intersex and transgender experiences. Eunuchs were 𝗴𝗲𝗻𝗱𝗲𝗿-𝗻𝗼𝗻𝗰𝗼𝗻𝗳𝗼𝗿𝗺𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗳𝗶𝗴𝘂𝗿𝗲𝘀 𝗶𝗻 𝗮𝗻𝘁𝗶𝗾𝘂𝗶𝘁𝘆, and the way Scripture treats them—especially moving from exclusion to embrace—provides a powerful precedent for how faith communities might think about inclusion of transgender people today. “𝗛𝗲 𝘄𝗵𝗼 𝗶𝘀 𝗮𝗯𝗹𝗲 𝘁𝗼 𝗮𝗰𝗰𝗲𝗽𝘁 𝗶𝘁, 𝗹𝗲𝘁 𝗵𝗶𝗺 𝗮𝗰𝗰𝗲𝗽𝘁 𝗶𝘁”.