In comparing the very vivid sense the Israelites of the Old Testament had of themselves as the chosen people to the shght feeling modern-day Christians have for themselves as the new people of God, it is interesting to notice that a powerful symbol (that of the scapegoat), integral to the Jewish law of holiness, has been reproduced in the Christian way of life with a much less valid one (that of the underdog).

In the book of Leviticus (16. 2-28) one can read how, before the high priest entered the Holy of Holies each year, two buck goats were presented to him, one of which was not killed but symbolically through a laying-on of hands, invested with the sins of the people; then led away by a man appointed for the purpose to an uninhabited place in the wilderness, there to be let loose or pushed over the rocks from the top of a mountain.