Bearing a 'Jewish Weight': A New Interpretation of a Greek Comedic Papyrus About Athletics (CPJ 3.519)

This article offers a new interpretation of the phrase “Jewish weight,” especially as it is used in the Greek papyrus known as CPJ 3.519. The Roman-era papyrus preserves part of a work of otherwise unknown fiction, probably a script of a comedic mime about an athletic contest in a gymnasium. Contrary to previous interpreters, a new reading of the “Jewish weight” proposes that the fictional athlete is neither Jewish nor circumcised, but rather a non-Jew who is described as looking Jewish based on the appearance of his genitalia in the nude. “Jewish weight” thus means “an exposed glans, such as Jews have.” This meaning could also work for the only other extant usage of the phrase, in a bawdy Latin epigram of Martial about which classical scholars have disagreed. The argument is bolstered by ancient medical literature that attests to non-circumcised, non-Jewish men who had congenitally short foreskins. These “lipodermic” men could be liable to mockery in settings of nudity, since they bore a sign of imperfect masculinity according to a dominant Hellenistic and Roman cultural ideology of manhood. The article concludes with supporting examples from the Graeco-Roman social context and analogies to other forms of attempted humour that combine sexuality and ethnicity.