Priest/Priesthood

The topic of priests and priesthood in ancient Israel and early Judaism focuses the concentration of biblical scholars like few others, for to say anything sensible about the matter requires taking a stand on the related, contested issues of what can be known of ancient Israel’s and early Judaism’s history and the date and purpose of key literary traditions in the Hebrew Bible. Thus there are few points of consensus among those studying Israel’s priesthood, and virtually every general treatment of it showcases the author’s broader views on Israel’s and early Judaism’s history and literature. Yet there is one point of broad agreement (with some significant exceptions). Dating the so-called Priestly Work (parts of Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, and Numbers concerned especially with priestly, purity, and cultic matters) to the Persian period, many scholars take its portrait of the hierarchy of the priesthood in the days of wandering between Egypt and the land of Canaan as a reflection of the actual order under Achaemenid (Persian) rule. The Aaronites, descendants of Levi, were at the pinnacle of priestly power, providing the ruling high priest and altar priests, while their Levite brethren who could not trace their lineage back to Levi through Aaron only assisted the Aaronites in temple service in subservient and largely menial roles. Most scholars also credit Levites in this period with performing as judges and scribes. Beyond this narrow consensus, however, there are few agreements, leaving the history of the priesthood prior to and after the early Persian period a matter of debate. This is especially the case with respect to the centuries leading up to Persian rule. Making any attempt to reconstruct this period in the priesthood’s history is difficult because of the concomitant uncertainty among scholars regarding the historical reliability of the biblical text, which is the main evidence for Israel’s history before the Persian period. The lack of consensus for the following periods, the Hellenistic and Roman eras, has mostly to do with the fact that the office was so contested by vying claimants to it; indeed, the literature addressing it is tendentious in the extreme. To give readers bibliographic access to these debates, this article covers general surveys, the priesthood in cross-cultural perspective in Antiquity, and general histories of the priesthood. It continues with period-specific bibliographies of works addressing the history of the office with a focus on the texts that provide the most substantial evidence for the priesthood in each period.