Jesus and Eunuchs

One of the most fascinating quotes attributed to Jesus Christ is Matthew 19:12 rendered thus in the original Koine Greek:

εἰσὶν γὰρ εὐνοῦχοι οἵτινες ἐκ κοιλίας μητρὸς ἐγεννήθησαν οὕτως, καὶ εἰσὶν
εὐνοῦχοι οἵτινες εὐνουχίσθησαν ὑπὸ τῶν ἀνθρώπων, καὶ εἰσὶν εὐνοῦχοι οἵτινες εὐνούχισαν ἑαυτοὺς διὰ τὴν βασιλείαν τῶν οὐρανῶν.  ὁ δυνάμενος χωρεῖν, χωρείτω. 

The direct English translation is:

There are indeed eunuchs [who] from the womb of their mother were born thus, and there are eunuchs who were made eunuchs by men, and there are eunuchs who made eunuchs of themselves the sake of the Kingdom of the Heavens.  The [one] being able to receive [it], let him receive [it]. 

 One of Christianity's great mysteries is: who exactly were the eunuchs who had made eunuchs of themselves for the sake of the Kingdom of the Heavens?  Some English translations have gone so far as to change the meaning of "eunuchs who have made themselves eunuchs" to people who have chosen not to marry, or who have elected to practice celibacy, for the "Kingdom of Heaven's sake" (also changing the plural "Heavens" to the singular "Heaven").  Roman Catholics are especially big on celibacy, and, the Revised Standard Version Catholic Edition states, in a footnote to the above passage:

Jesus means that a life of continence is to be chosen only by those who are called to it for the sake of the kingdom of God.

 For Roman Catholics, it is very important for priests, nuns, etc. to abstain from sexual acts and never to marry, in spite of 1 Timothy 3:

A bishop then must be blameless, the husband of one wife...One that ruleth well his own house, having his children in subjection with all gravity;(For if a man know not how to rule his own house, how shall he take care of the church of God?).

Some people may argue that, in light of the context of the conversation that preceded Jesus' declaration about eunuchs,

"And I say unto you, Whosoever shall put away his wife, except it be for fornication, and shall marry another, committeth adultery: and whoso marrieth her which is put away doth commit adultery."
His disciples say unto him, "If the case of the man be so with his wife, it is not good to marry."

that Jesus was using the word "eunuch" as an euphemism for "choosing not to marry", or for "living a life of celibacy", rather than cutting off one's balls, for the sake of the Kingdom of God.  If in saying "eunuchs who made eunuchs of themselves" Jesus had really meant people who chose not to marry, or who chose a "life of continence", then Jesus probably would not have used the word "eunuch", which not only has a wholly different meaning, but which also may induce castration anxiety among men who hear about it.  Moreover, the sentiment "if the case of the man be so with his wife, it is good not to marry"  seems consistent with modern MGTOW. The disciples aren't saying that "it is not good to marry" for "the sake of the Kingdom of the Heavens", but rather to avoid the risks associated with marriage.

In rabbinical literature,

The Rabbis distinguished two kinds of eunuchs: (1) "seris adam," a eunuch made by man; (2) "seris ḥamma," a eunuch made by the sun; that is to say, one born incapable of reproduction, so that the sun never shone on him as on a man. According to the Shulḥan 'Aruk, "seris ḥamma" means "castrated in consequence of fever."...A seris adam is not allowed to enter into the assembly of the Lord (Yeb. 70a), as it is written (Deut. xxiii. 2 [A.V. 1]): "He who is wounded in the stones . . . shall not enter into the congregation of the Lord"; that is to say, shall not marry an Israelitish wife. Removal of or defect in either or both of the testicles disqualifies for admission to the assembly of the Lord.
A eunuch of either kind is not to be judged as a rebellious son (see Deut. xxi. 18) because he is not considered as a man (Yeb. 80b). As every Israelite is commanded to perpetuate his race, it is a sin liable to severe punishment to cause one to become a eunuch (Shab. 111a)...

The seris hamma and seris adam match the first two types of eunuchs described by Jesus.  Clearly neither celibacy, nor making oneself a eunuch "for the sake of the Kingdom of the Heavens", derived from Judaism. Per Deuteronomy 23:

He that is wounded in the stones, or hath his privy member cut off, shall not enter into the congregation of the Lord.

By the time of Isaiah, Jewish attitudes towards eunuchs seem to have softened:

...neither let the eunuch say, Behold, I am a dry tree.For thus saith the Lord unto the eunuchs that keep my sabbaths, and choose the things that please me, and take hold of my covenant; Even unto them will I give in mine house and within my walls a place and a name better than of sons and of daughters: I will give them an everlasting name, that shall not be cut off.

Christian churches did come to welcome both castrated and uncircumcised men.  Eunuchs, the castrati, performed in Christian choirs from ancient times until the beginning of the 20th century.

In the ancient Middle East, in ancient Greece, and in the ancient Roman Empire, eunuchs were fairly common, and, in some jurisdictions, held influential government positions (for example, Pothinus, a eunuch who served as regent for Pharoah Ptolemy XII of Egypt).  In Antiquities of the Jews, Josephus reports that Herod the Great had

...certain eunuchs...and on account of their beauty was very fond of them; and the care of bringing him drink was entrusted to one of them; of bringing him his supper, to another; and of putting him to bed, to the third, who also managed the principal affairs of the government;

Regarding the use of the word "eunuch" as a euphemism for a man who "chooses a life of continence" or who chooses not to marry: many eunuchs were not celibate at all, as illustrated in some of Martial's famous epigrams:

Pannychus, you wonder why your Caelia has so many eunuchs? Caelia wants to be fucked, not to give birth.

The Roman historian Suetonius tells us that the emperor Nero

tried to turn the boy Sporus into a woman by castration, wed him in the usual manner, including bridal veil and dowry, took him off to the Palace attended by a vast crowd, and proceeded to treat him as his wife.

The lack of chastity among some eunuchs suggests that Jesus was not using the word "eunuch" as an euphemism for men who chose a "life of continence" for the sake of the Kingdom of the Heavens.  Rather, Jesus must have been talking about actual eunuchs, who had made eunuchs of themselves for the sake of the Kingdom of the Heavens, the Galli:

priests, often temple attendants or wandering mendicants, of the ancient Asiatic deity, the Great Mother of the Gods, known as Cybele, or Agdistis, in Greek and Latin literature. The Galli were eunuchs attired in female garb, with long hair fragrant with ointment. Together with priestesses, they celebrated the Great Mother’s rites with wild music and dancing until their frenzied excitement found its culmination in self-scourging, self-laceration, or exhaustion. Self-emasculation by candidates for the priesthood sometimes accompanied this delirium of worship.

Indeed,

The first Galli arrived in Rome when the Senate officially adopted Cybele as a state goddess in 204 BC. ...The Galli castrated themselves during an ecstatic celebration called the Dies sanguinis, or "Day of Blood", which took place on March 24. At the same time they put on women's costume, mostly yellow in color, and a sort of turban, together with pendants and ear-rings. They also wore their hair long, and bleached, and wore heavy make-up. They wandered around with followers, begging for charity, in return for which they were prepared to tell fortunes. On the day of mourning for Attis they ran around wildly and disheveled. They performed dances to the music of pipes and tambourines, and, in an ecstasy, flogged themselves until they bled.

In the Philippines, some Christians continue the ancient tradition of self-flagellation during Holy Week.

From the Hellenistic period, some Jews acquired an enthusiasm for things Gentile, as described in 1 Maccabees:

At that time there appeared in the land of Israel a group of traitorous Jews who had no regard for the Law and who had a bad influence on many of our people. They said, "Let's come to terms with the Gentiles, for our refusal to associate with them has brought us nothing but trouble." This proposal appealed to many people, and some of them became so enthusiastic about it that they went to the king and received from him permission to follow Gentile customs. They built in Jerusalem a stadium like those in the Greek cities. They had surgery performed to hide their circumcision, abandoned the holy covenant, started associating with Gentiles, and did all sorts of other evil things.

The author of 1 Maccabees obviously disapproves, but there was increasing mixture and blending of cultures as empires expanded.  The Decapolis was a group of ten cities (including Beth-Shean in Judea), largely founded by Greeks during the Hellenistic period, and which flourished during the Roman empire.  Some of Jesus' followers came from the Decapolis.

Galilee, at the time of Jesus, was a heavily populated province with a great deal of diversity.  Jews of Judea tended to look down upon the Galileans, their language being an unpolished dialect of Syriac, with a mixture of other languages.  Predominantly Gentile cities in Galilee included Hippos-Sussita, Sepphoris and Tiberias. Archaeologists have discovered Greek and Roman temples and ancient Aphrodite figures in Hippos-Sussita.

Herod the Great, in addition to greatly expanding the Jewish Temple in Jerusalem, had Pagan temples built throughout the region.  Given that the Romans had adopted Cybele as an official goddess, it is likely that some Galli worshipped in Cybele's temples in Judea or surrounding provinces. In light of their flamboyance, the Galli would have been very hard to miss.

Granted, ordinary celibacy was a feature of some ancient religions:

Celibacy was especially characteristic of priest-devotees of the Great Mother cults. The well-organized priesthood of the religion of Isis, for example, represented a serene sacerdotalism; sexual abstinence was an absolute requirement of those who celebrated her holy mysteries. In many other cults—e.g., Manichaeism, Gnosticism, and Hermeticism—an inner circle of worshipers was required to observe strict continence. The philosophical and religious ideals of celibacy in the Classical world strongly influenced subsequent practices of celibacy and monasticism in Christianity.

And, of course, among the Jews there were the Essenes, the majority of whom lived on the western shore of the Dead Sea (removed from where Jesus conducted most of his ministry, although small groups did live in Galilee and Judea), and about whom Josephus tells us

Whereas these men shun the pleasures as vice, they consider self-control and not succumbing to the passions virtue. And although there is among them a disdain for marriage, adopting the children of outsiders while they are still malleable enough for the lessons they regard them as family and instill in them their principles of character: without doing away with marriage or the succession resulting from it, they nevertheless protect themselves from the wanton ways of women, having been persuaded that none of them preserves her faithfulness to one man.

Regarding one of the orders of Essenes, Josephus writes

Though agreeing with the others about regimen and customs and legal matters, it has separated in its opinion about marriage. For they hold that those who do not marry cut off the greatest part of life, the succession, and more: if all were to think the same way, the line would very quickly die out. To be sure, testing the brides in a three-year interval, once they have been purified three times as a test of their being able to bear children, they take them in this manner; but they do not continue having intercourse with those who are pregnant, demonstrating that the need for marrying is not because of pleasure, but for children. Baths are taken by the women wrapping clothes around themselves, just as by the men in a waist-covering. Such are the customs of this order.

The Essenes seem generally to have eschewed the pleasures of coitus, but at least one order allowed for marriage for the sake of reproduction.  One hypothesis, put forward by advocates of chastity, is that Jesus meant Essenes as the "eunuchs who made eunuchs of themselves the sake of the Kingdom of the Heavens."  Some have suggested that Jesus may have been an Essene himself.  However, the New Testament makes frequent reference to Jewish Pharisees and Sadducees, but makes no mention of the Essenes.

Regarding Jesus' words, we have two competing interpretations:

There are eunuchs who were born that way, eunuchs who were made eunuchs by other men, and men who cut off their balls for the sake of the Kingdom of the Heavens,

versus

There are eunuchs who were born that way, eunuchs who were made eunuchs by other men, and men who choose a life of continence for the sake of the Kingdom of the Heavens.

Jesus indisputably begins by describing two ordinary types of eunuchs (starting with born eunuchs, and then proceeding to eunuchs who were made eunuchs by other men).  Such eunuchs might or might not have been religious.  Controversy ensues over the rhetorical climax towards which Jesus was building.  Was he talking about actual eunuchs who had emasculated themselves?  Or was he suddenly shifting gears and using the word "eunuchs" metaphorically for celibates?  It may suit the theological preferences of some Christians to interpret the words of Jesus Christ, "eunuchs who made eunuchs of themselves the sake of the Kingdom of the Heavens", to mean not what he said, but rather to serve as a euphemism for celibates.  This interpretation fits the context poorly, and it is more likely that Jesus was referring to actual eunuchs--most likely the Galli of the official cult of Cybele. Eunuchs enjoyed a relatively high social status in the ancient world. There were eunuchs who served Herod the Great and other rulers. There were eunuch priests. Eunuch slaves were more expensive than ordinary slaves. Even angels were depicted as eunuchs. Simply practicing sexual abstinence would not have given one the same status as an eunuch.

There have been great men, such as Nikola Tesla and Isaac Newton, who did remain lifelong celibates.  They were very focused on their research, and did not have time to entangle themselves with women.  A quote attributed to Isaac Newton:

I consider my greatest accomplishment to be lifelong celibacy.

Even greater than inventing calculus?

Most Catholic priests probably aren't as intense as Nicola Tesla or Isaac Newton, and do take time to relax. Moreover, Tesla and Newton were scientists, and priests have a much more social role. The social role may render them vulnerable to temptations, as they interact with a wide variety of people, of whom some might tend to excite certain desires. Self-castration might help to ease some of the temptations.

He that is able to receive it, let him receive it.