Tattooing

Abstract

This article investigates the relationship between tattooing, corporeality, and religious identity in the contemporary Judeo-Christian tradition. Starting from a global historical analysis of tattooing—from the earliest records on Ötzi (c. 3300 BCE) to its massification in the 21st century—the study examines how Jewish and Christian traditions have interpreted and reinterpreted body marking throughout history. The research articulates three complementary axes: (1) the exegesis of fundamental normative texts, especially Leviticus 19:28 and 1 Corinthians 6:19; (2) the patristic and rabbinic reception of the biblical prohibition; and (3) contemporary resignifications of tattooing as an expression of faith, community identity, and personal devotion. It argues that tattooing constitutes an ambivalent symbolic device whose historicity reveals oscillations between sacralization, stigmatization, and political instrumentalization. In late modernity, the practice exposes a fundamental tension between the subject's autonomy—who claims the body as a territory of self-inscription—and the theological notion of divine ownership of the body as a "temple of the Holy Spirit." It concludes that, far from being merely an aesthetic phenomenon, contemporary tattooing within the Judeo-Christian sphere constitutes a privileged field for observing negotiations between religious tradition, individuality, and body culture in postmodernity.