to speculate that the author of the Gospel of Luke might have assumed the circumcision to be historical fact, or might have been relating it as recalled by someone else.

In addition to the canonical account in the Gospel of Luke, the Arabic Infancy Gospel (a work of apocrypha) contains the first reference to the survival of Christ's severed foreskin. The second chapter has the following story: "And when the time of his circumcision was come,