udaism. As Campbell (377) puts it, the orthodox textual canon that the Church fathers of the first Christian centuries adopted reflected the view that the New Law fulfilled the Old. Paul's conversion from a Pharisaic persecutor of early Christians to the Church's first great institutionalizer or "organization man" is decisive in this regard:
[I]n turning from Pharisee to Christian, Paul simply transferred his temperament to the other side of the line and . . . the Christian Church that he founded thus inherited and carried into Europe the stamp of his Levantine regard for the monolithic consensus. The first principle of his doctrine was that in Christ the Law had been abrogated (Campbell 379).
Campbell quotes the doctrine, enshrined in the New Testament: "The law was our [the Jews'] custodian until Christ came, that we might be justified by faith. But now . . . there is neither Jew nor Greek . . . for you are all one in Christ Jesus" (Gal. 3:24-29). As Christianity achieved hegemony in Europe, its Messianic doctrine, diffused by intellectual imprecision
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