When the form that evil took was very concrete—when evil marched through Palestine in army boots, exacted heavy taxes, and crucified young hotheads who tried to resist—then the evil angels who corrupted the good world were very easily identified as the angels who controlled the pagan nations, and the pagans themselves could be safely labelled as children of darkness. If, instead, one was sitting in Rome on a comfortable pension, with leisure and assistance to study and write, it was easy to underemphasize the covenant, and treat it as one more interesting set of local customs such as any
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