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• The book of Genesis tells us that God made a covenant with Abraham, promising him a glorious posterity on the condition that he and all his male descendents must be circumcised.
• For thousands of years thereafter, the distinctive practice of circumcision served to set the Jews apart from their neighbors.
• The apostle Paul rejected it as a worthless practice, emblematic of Judaism's fixation on physical matters.
• Christian theologians followed his lead, arguing that whereas Christians sought spiritual fulfillment, Jews remained mired in such pointless concerns as diet and circumcision.
• As time went on, Europeans developed folklore about malicious Jews who performed sacrificial murders of Christian children and delighted in genital mutilation.