They had political and social as well as ecclesiastical duties, so sacrifices and sacraments were all in a day's work. Though they were kept alive in the Orient, ideas concerning reincarnation were suppressed in the West until they were reborn in the Middle Ages and again during the Renaissance. We are again seeing their rebirth in the popular Western consciousness. They pulsed to the seasons, not to clocks. We can appreciate a more holistic perception of time as eternally renewing cycles rather than as signals which progressively degrade the further they get from their source.
Events are no less true or powerful, have no less integrity, for being yesterday's events.
Christian scriptures seem to reflect this shift in consciousness from the cyclical to the linear, from an interconnected, dynamic yet sacred universe to solitary, disconnected, disenfranchised Man who is only an image of deity. As late as the 2nd or 3rd century AD people in the fertile crescent literally expected the violent finish of the planet. Perhaps the horror of the anticipated apocalypse mirrored or in some way influenced the shift in perception from a symbolical one to a more exoteric or literal one. The possibility of universal conflagration was not absurd, just untimely. The Church might say that by coming, Jesus inaugurated the Piscean Age.