The Jews are sometimes accused of not understanding freedom as well as the Greeks, but the truth is that they understood it better, grasping the point that the only true freedom is a good conscience – a concept St Paul carried from Judaism into Christianity. The Jews thought sinfulness and virtue were collective as well as individual. The Bible showed repeatedly that a city, a community, a nation, earned both merit and retribution by its acts. The Torah bound the Jews together as one body and one soul.156 Just as the individual man benefited from the worth of his community, so he was obliged
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