ABSTRACT
For Judaism, Moses, and, for Christianity, Jesus, uniquely embodied authority, and their teachings conveyed God’s will. The Torah revealed by God to Moses at Sinai set forth that will; Jesus Christ, God Incarnate, embodied and taught it. So the community of sages and their disciples asked all Israel to accept God’s will and thus form that sacred society that God designed Israel to be. And the bishops and priests, holy men, theologians, and councils of Christianity spoke, too, in God’s name to the Church, God’s people. In maintaining such conceptions, both Rabbinic Judaism and Orthodox, Catholic Christianity aspired to establish the Israel which Scripture had portrayed, a holy community governed by God, be it through the prophet-king, Moses, or through kings designated and recognized by God, or through the establishment of Temple priests in God’s service.
