this is still the case. for example, the priest class
in present-day America is the lawyers. the Bible has
been replaced by the Constitution as the offical
Sacred Text. just as the Catholic Church once
discouraged the private ownership and reading of the
Bible (lest it should lead to a multiplicity of unqualified
and conflicting interpretatons) and regarded its priests
as the only ones with the authority to render an opinion
about its meaning, so too does the American priest class
hold itself up as the sole arbiter of the Constitution.
this is how the "no law" of the First Amendment actually
came to mean "some laws" (among a number of other stunning
hypocrisies).
the power and magic of deciding the meanings of words has
always been claimed by the priest class of any society.
---corey