1seq., xvi. 1 seq., xx. 6). Now the smaller sacred
fellowships get lost, the varied groups of social life disappear in
the neutral shadow of the universal congregation or church [(DH,
QHL]. The notion of this last is foreign to Hebrew antiquity, but
runs through the Priestly Code from beginning to end. Like the
worship itself, its subject also became abstract, a spiritual
entity which could be kept together by no other means except
worship. As now the participation of the "congregation of the
children of Israel" in the sacrifice was of necessity always
mainly ideal, the consequence was that the sacred action came to
be regarded as essentially perfect by virtue of its own efficacy
in being performed by the priest, even though no one was present.
Hence later the necessity for a special sacrificial deputation,
the _anshe ma'amad_. The connection of all this with the Judaising
tendency to remove God to a distance from man, it may be added,
is clear. /1/
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1. It is not asserted that the cultus before the Iaw (of which
the darker sides are known from Amos and Hosea) was better
than the legal, but merely that it was more original; the standard
of judgment being, not the moral element, but merely the idea,
the primary meaning of worship.
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