ix. 1 seq.; Amos
v. 23, viii. 3; Isa xxx. 3). No greater contrast could be conceived
than the monotonous seriousness of the so-called Mosaic worship.
NOMOS
PAREISHLQEN (INA PLEONASH| TO PARAPTWMA
["But law came in, with the result that the trespass multiplied".
Romans 5:20 NRSV)]
In this way the spiritualisation of the worship is seen in the
Priestly Code as advancing _pari passu_ with its centralisation.
It receives, so to speak, an abstract religious character; it
separates itself in the first instance from daily life, and then
absorbs the latter by becoming, strictly speaking, its proper
business. The consequences for the future were momentous. The
Mosaic "congregation" is the mother of the Christian church; the
Jews were the creators of that idea.
We may compare the cultus in the olden time to the green tree
which grows up out of the soil as it will and can; later it
becomes the regularly shapen timber, ever more artificially
shaped with square and compass. Obviously there is a close
connection between the qualitative antithesis we have just been
expounding and the formal one of law and custom from which we set
out.
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