Sacred Mysteries: Why did Christians, Jews and Muslims ban tattoos? | CPT PPP Coverage

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The Vatican has prohibited the 170 lay workers at St Peter’s from having visible tattoos or body piercings. Motives of “decorum” are mentioned.

This is not at all the same as the Pope saying that Catholics mustn’t be tattooed. It’s more like the authorities at St Paul’s Cathedral in London saying that a Virger there must be able to work at heights, as I see a recent job advertisement stipulated.

Even so, there seems to be a verse in the book of Leviticus forbidding tattooing. In the Authorised Version it says: “Ye shall not make any cuttings in your flesh for the dead, nor print any marks upon you: I am the Lord.” Does that prohibition still oblige Christians?

The previous verse says: “Ye shall not round the corners of your heads, neither shalt thou mar the corners of thy beard.” I had no intention of doing so, as far as I understand what it means. 

The verse after the prohibition of marks or tattoos says: “Do not prostitute thy daughter, to cause her to be a whore; lest the land fall to whoredom.” Again I had no intention of doing so. It might seem this is a moral commandment, like one of the Ten Commandments, but I suspect it had something to do with ritual behaviour in Canaan. Israel was to keep itself distinct from the terrible idolatries around it.

So if one is to distinguish moral laws from ritual laws, then tattooing in Leviticus belongs to the ritual side of things, like beard-cutting. I think tattooing is today still regarded as impermissible among conservative Jews. Moses Maimonides, quite a rationalising rabbi of the 12th century AD, wrote of it: “This was a custom among the pagans who marked themselves for idolatry.”

I have seen a Jewish opinion that refers to mankind being made in the image of God as a reason for prohibiting tattoos. But the force of the command comes from the declaration “I am the Lord”, as with other commands in the chapter, such as: “The stranger that dwelleth with you shall be unto you as one born among you, and thou shalt love him as thyself; for ye were strangers in the land of Egypt: I am the Lord your God.”

I must mention something present in any Jewish mind: the tattooing of numbers on arms during the Shoah. That crime of course was not the fault at all of the victims. 

The Islamic world is devoted to making moral rulings, and it is easy to find online strict prohibitions of tattoos: “Tattooing involves changing the creation of Allah. Prophet Muhammad cursed the one who does tattoos and the one for whom that is done.” That last statement is based not on what the Koran says but on a hadith, a tradition. 

I’d be surprised if the Pope took up the question of tattoos. He has got enough to worry about. But many Ethiopian Christians, some in communion with the Pope, bear a tattoo of the cross on their foreheads. It may be a high-risk declaration of their adherence to Christianity. Historically, Mediterranean and African Muslims have regarded Christians as worshippers of the Cross.

To complicate things, some Ethiopian Jewish have been tattooed, even with a cross on the forehead. This has made the life of those who migrated to Israel even more difficult.

A weighty objection to tattoos is the risk of adverse bodily effects when ink moves about. But even when health hazards are cited as a religious reason for eschewing them, I don’t think this, any more than with the declaration of some food as unclean, was the origin of their prohibition.