What the Bible says about tattoos, and Leviticus 19:28

Direct answer: the Bible addresses marking the body in exactly one verse, Leviticus 19:28, and that verse appears inside a list of practices associated with mourning for the dead and with the religious customs of Israel's neighbors. The New Testament does not mention tattooing anywhere. The Christian argument about tattoos is therefore not really an argument about what the text says — that part is short and checkable — but about whether, and how, a law from Israel's holiness code applies to Christians today. On that question the traditions genuinely differ.

What does Leviticus 19:28 say literally?

Here it is, together with the verse immediately before it:

“‘You shall not cut the hair on the sides of your head or clip off the edge of your beard. “‘You shall not make any cuttings in your flesh for the dead, nor tattoo any marks on you. I am Yahweh. (Leviticus 19:27-28)

Reading the two together is the point. Anyone quoting verse 28 is quoting the second half of a pair, and the first half — with identical grammatical force — is about haircuts and beards. The full chapter is Leviticus 19.

What is the context of Leviticus 19?

The chapter belongs to what scholars call the holiness code, and it mixes very different kinds of material without dividing them into sections:

• Honoring father and mother, and keeping the Sabbath.
• Leaving part of the harvest for the poor and the foreigner.
• Not stealing, not lying, not swearing falsely.
• Paying a hired worker's wages the same day.
• Not cursing the deaf or putting a stumbling block before the blind.
• Not sowing a field with two kinds of seed, and not wearing a garment made of two kinds of material.
• Loving your neighbor as yourself, at verse 18.

So the same chapter that contains the sentence about marks on the skin also contains the command to love your neighbor and the rule about mixed fabrics. Any honest reading of verse 28 has to say what it does with the verses around it.

Is the verse talking about tattoos as we mean them?

The immediate context is mourning: cuttings in the flesh for the dead. Ritual self-laceration and marking as a sign of belonging to a deity were current among Israel's neighbors, and the holiness code repeatedly marks distance from those practices.

That observation does not settle the application on its own — someone who reads the law as permanently binding can argue that the prohibition covers any mark — but it describes accurately what the verse was addressing when it was written.

Does the law of Leviticus apply to Christians today?

This is the real question, and it is prior to tattoos. Three classic positions run across denominational lines:

1. The threefold division of the law into moral, ceremonial and civil. On this reading, common in the Reformed tradition and much of Catholic theology, the moral precepts continue while ceremonial and civil ones belonged to Israel's setting. Leviticus 19:28 is usually classified as ceremonial.
2. Fulfilment in Christ. The whole law is read in the light of the New Testament, and what is not taken up there does not directly bind.
3. Broad continuity. Groups that hold to a more extensive continuation of the law maintain the prohibition as still in force.

None of these three is marginal, and this site does not choose between them.

What do the New Testament verses in the debate actually say?

None of them is about tattoos. It is worth knowing what each one does say.

Or don’t you know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have from God? You are not your own, for you were bought with a price. Therefore glorify God in your body and in your spirit, which are God’s. (1 Corinthians 6:19-20)

Paul's argument in 1 Corinthians 6 is about sexual conduct, and the temple image belongs to that argument. Applying it to tattoos is an extension of a principle by the person arguing, not a citation.

From now on, let no one cause me any trouble, for I bear the marks of the Lord Jesus branded on my body. (Galatians 6:17)

In Galatians 6, Paul is speaking of scars left by beatings and hardship suffered for his preaching, not of a voluntary mark.

And Revelation 19:16 describes the victorious Christ with a name written "on his garment and on his thigh" — an image sometimes cited in defense of tattoos, but apocalyptic imagery rather than a recommendation.

Does the Bible say anything about appearance more generally?

It does, in two short passages about adornment, and they are worth reading because they are often the unspoken background to the tattoo conversation:

Let your beauty come not from the outward adorning of braiding your hair, and of wearing gold ornaments or of putting on fine clothing, but from the hidden person of the heart, in the incorruptible adornment of a gentle and quiet spirit, which is very precious in God’s sight. (1 Peter 3:3-4)

1 Timothy 2:9 makes a similar point about costly dress. Two observations. First, these texts are about display — braided hair and gold in the first century were markers of wealth and status, and the argument is about where a person's worth is located, not about a list of forbidden items. Second, almost no church today applies them as a prohibition on jewelry or hairstyles, which is a useful reminder of how much interpretive work is already being done, uncontroversially, on texts of this kind.

Whatever conclusion a reader reaches about Leviticus 19:28, consistency is the demand these neighboring texts make.

What does each Christian tradition teach today?

The Coptic practice is a useful data point in the conversation. Pilgrims and believers have marked a small cross, often on the wrist, for centuries, precisely as a sign of faith and at times at real risk. Whatever one concludes, the prohibitive reading of Leviticus 19:28 has never been universal in Christianity.

What the question presupposes

Someone searching "is getting a tattoo a sin" has usually already heard an answer and wants to check it. Three things the biblical text does not do are worth recording.

• It does not list tattooing among the sins named in the New Testament. The lists in Galatians 5 and 1 Corinthians 6 do not mention it.
• It does not make appearance a criterion of judgment. 1 Samuel 16:7 says that Yahweh "looks at the heart" rather than at the outward appearance.
• It does not promise anything either way. Nothing in the Bible attaches approval, healing or acceptance in a community to a decision about body art.

The nearest thing to direct guidance on disagreements of this kind is Paul's principle in Romans 14: "One man esteems one day as more important. Another esteems every day alike. Let each man be fully assured in his own mind" (14:5). The chapter is about not judging one another over matters of conscience.

In practice, for anyone who belongs to a congregation, the answer that will matter is that congregation's, and it varies. Asking there is faster than adding up verses.

Bible text: World English Bible (public domain). This article describes what the text says and what different Christian traditions teach; it does not recommend one of them.