Leviticus 19:28, “Ye shall not make any cuttings in your flesh for the dead, nor print any marks upon you: I am the LORD.”

This passage actually originally refers to pagan funerary practices and has been altered and misused over the years to refer to tattooin which has alternately been encouraged by, or banned by the church according to it’s usefullness at the time
The intent of the message was to discourage non-christian methods of disposing of the dead which may have included destruction of the body which would have been necessary to preserve for the afterlife. dismemberment and feeding the corpse to vultures would leave the soul with no body to return to.

When people remark to me about tattoos being “un-christian” citing the coptic tradition of tattooing pilgrims is a good rebuttal. Many early European pilgrims had a rooster or jerusalem cross tattooed on them by the coptic Christians to prove that they had truly been to the holy land.

thanks, I think it’s pretty interesting too. I helped a student with a research paper and learned some pretty neat stuff about tattooing throughout history.

Cool! Did you read much stuff on the Picts?

I have read different accounts where some say they tattooed themselves and other say they only used war paint