the only salvation was through religious purity. States and empires and thrones did not matter in the long run. They would perish through God’s power. What mattered was the creature God had created in his image: man. Ezekiel describes how God took him to a valley which was full of bones, and asked him: ‘Son of Man, can these bones live?’ Then, before his terrified gaze, the bones begin to rattle and shake and come together: God puts on them sinews, flesh and skin, and finally he breathes into them, ‘and they lived, and stood upon their feet, an exceeding great army’.3 The Christians were later
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