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174

györgy spiró

wondered? Uri raked through

his childhood but could not

identify a single transgression

so massive that he would have

to be inexorably blinded on

its account; when he looked

back, even with the best will

in the world toward the Lord,

he could find nothing in his

actions.

The most obvious explanation

was also the boldest: the

Lord did not concern himself

with anyone, even his Chosen

People; all that had been

entrusted to him was the task

of the Creation and getting

the stone tablets delivered

by Moses to his people.

That explanation was not

something that came from any

original thinking on Uri’s part;

the Lord Almighty was cast in

the same terms collectively

by the Zadokite sect of

Roman Jews, also called the

Sadducees, who accepted only

the five books of Moses and

nothing else, nothing handed

down in the oral tradition,

and that was also the official

position of the high priests

in Jerusalem: the Creator

had generously created the

world, and mankind as part of

it, that it should exist, but he

had no further say thereafter;

everyone was free to do with

his life as he wished, within

the bounds of the Law, though

naturally anyone who broke

the Law would be smitten

down.

Man lived as best he could,

then died, and there was no

hell, no heaven, the way the

primitive Jews imagined over

there in Palestine; there was

no transmigration of souls, as

the primitive Pharisees also

believed, as no one rises up

from the dead, or only after

the coming of theMessiah, but

that was still a long way off.

“We have not suffered enough

yet to be forcibly washed,”