Towards the end of the eighteenth century, a self-taught peasant leader, Kondratii Selivanov, founded a sect devoted to eliminating sexual lust from the human race. He based his teachings on a creative misunderstanding of particular proof texts in his Russian Bible, reading Oskopitel’ (castrator) for Iskupitel’ (Redeemer) when the New Testament speaks of Jesus, and reading God’s command to the Israelites as plotites’ (castrate yourselves) rather than plodites’ (be fruitful). As a result, his followers, the Skoptsy (‘castrated ones’), cut off their genitals or women their breasts to achieve
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