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Beginning with a startling endorsement of the patristic view of Judaismthat it was a "carnal" religion, in contrast to the spiritual vision of the ChurchDaniel Boyarin argues that rabbinic Judaism was based on a set of assumptions about the human body that were profoundly different from those of Christianity. The bodyspecifically, the sexualized bodycould not be renounced, for the Rabbis believed as a religious principle in the generation of offspring and hence in intercourse sanctioned by marriage.