For they kept (keep) thy word, And guarded (guard) thy covenant. Is the indifference to kin here asserted of Levi an allusion to a definite past event-the indiscriminate slaughter of offending Israelites in the wilderness, or rather perhaps at Meribah, i.e. Kadesh-or to a present characteristic of Levi: and in the latter case, does it mean that the Levites in the administration of justice show no partiality, or that in order to be Levites they cut themselves adrift from their kin-from parents, brothers, children? In the last but only in the last case does the Blessing show that as late as 500 B. C. the Levitical caste was recruited not by descent, but from beyond the kin of existing Levites. But for this to be probable the wording seems too strong: what is asserted is asserted of the whole caste: it would not naturally correspond to a state of things which admitted occasionally of a solemn adoption into the caste from beyond the kin. Again, the words assert equal indifference to father and children: and should, therefore, mean that as Levites were recruited from without, so also they did not normally after admission to the caste transmit their position to their children. But this seems at variance with the considerable evidence that exists of hereditary priesthoods alike in the Northern (Dan, Shiloh) and in the Southern Kingdom (Jerusalem) before c. 800 B. C. But though the priestly tribe or caste of Levi sat by no means so loose to kin as the interpretation of Dt. 33 just discussed would indicate, it is possible, in spite of the protest against Jeroboam, that some means existed of duly and solemnly adopting from without individuals or even classes into the Levitical order; and certainly this possibility cannot be lightly disregarded if, even after the more stringently expressed limitation to descent which we find in P, certain classes such as the singers, porters, if not the Nethinim, also were adopted into Levi. But this carries us beyond the limits of the present lecture. XVII THE HIGH PRIEST BEFORE the Exile kings, after the Exile high priests-so according to a particular reading of Jewish history may the difference, so far as government and the influence of the priesthood are concerned, between the two periods be briefly yet with substantial truth summed up; the direct assertion indeed cannot be and is not challenged, but the implicit negations—before the Exile no high priests, after the Exile no kings—also are substantially true; for the second of these negations is scarcely qualified by the fact that for a period from 104 B. C. there were again Jewish kings, since these were high priests who had added the regal to their priestly title, thereby enhancing and not by a division of authority diminishing the prestige of the priesthood. But can the first1 negation: before the Exile no high priests, be equally defended? Is it the fact that there were no high priests before the Exile? And if not, were such high priests as there were essentially different from those who constituted the high priestly line after the Exile? I will, to begin with, briefly consider this question, partly because what had come to be the prevailing critical opinion has been recently questioned by Eerdmans, and partly because such a consideration helps to define certain important features in the later priesthood—of the priesthood I say advisedly, for, unique though and where the high priest was, he was always priest, and the enhanced dignity of the high priest accordingly means the enhanced prestige of the priesthood. Eerdmans thus describes the position which he seeks to overthrow: The Kohen haggadol passes for a creation of the post-exilic period. He is termed by Wellhausen the keystone of ['Dr. Gray's MS. has 'second'-clearly a slip.-Ed.] the holy building set up by the Jews of P. A figure of such incomparable importance is foreign to the rest of the O.T.; even Ezekiel knows nothing of a high priest of supreme holiness. In the law Aaron occupies a unique position like the Roman pontifex over against the bishops. He only is the one fully authenticated Priest. He alone wears (trägt) the Urim and Thummim and the ephod. He alone may enter the Holy of Holies and offer there the offering of incense. At his investiture he is anointed like a king, and is called accordingly the anointed priest: like a king he is adorned with diadem and tiara, and like a king he wears the purple. Wellhausen explains this royal array of the priest as indicating that the nation now lives a merely spiritual and ecclesiastical existence, and therefore dresses up (arrays) its priest like a king.' Except in the first and last of these sentences, Eerdmans fairly reproduces Wellhausen's description: but the exceptions are important. So far from questioning that there existed before the Exile priests who might have been called high or great priest-whether they actually were so described or not is a matter of quite secondary importance-Wellhausen himself points out that before the Exile differences of rank and office existed in the priesthood at Jerusalem, that we hear of a chief priest there, of a second priest, and of elders of the priests, and that we see that the chief priest had considerable influence in securing positions for his colleagues of lower rank. It is a mere show of counter-argument, therefore, when Eerdmans appeals on the one hand to the same passages and in addition to the particular instances of (chief) priests in Jerusalem, such as Abiathar, Zadok, Jehoida, Uriah, Hilkiah, and on the other, perhaps rightly, argues that some of the passages in which An occurs are pre-exilic, to prove that high priests existed before the Exile. For the question at issue is not whether persons were called high or great priests before the Exile, but what was the actual place of the most important priest before the Exile in the national life of the entire kingdom? Did he occupy a unique position in the community, supreme not only among the priests, but all the people? Was 1 2 Ki. 1118, 127, 10, 192, 23′, 2518; Jer. 191, 201, 2925f. he 'great' among the priests of a particular place? Or was he great among all the priests? Wellhausen's actual contention is that such a high priest as is depicted in P, a priest not only chief but supreme, did not exist before the Exile, whereas the actual high priest of the post-exilic period does correspond to the high priest described in P. This contention Eerdmans fails to meet though it is interesting and significant to observe that he tacitly admits the correctness of Wellhausen's description of the high priest as presented by P; what he attempts to do is to show that such a high priest also existed before the Exile. Van Hoonacker adopts the alternative view of criticism, for which there is, perhaps, more to be said, that the actual high priest even after the Exile does not correspond to the description of P. One important and significant feature of the high priest in P, Eerdmans makes no attempt to explain, viz. that his death marks an epoch; it is not in P, as it was before the Exile, the death year of the king that marks an epoch (Is. 61), but the death year of the high priest: when a high priest dies, the manslayer is released from the city of refuge (Num. 3528). Other features which together account for the unique position and pomp of the high priest in P, Eerdmans attempts to prove to have existed before the Exile, and this by what he terms 'die religionsgeschichtliche Interpretation des A.T.', i. e. the interpretation of the O.T. based on comparative religion. But Eerdmans, in common with some other distinguished scholars, is inclined to use the 'religionsgeschichtliche' method in an illegitimate way: comparative religion may and does illuminate history, but it cannot override, nor can it become a substitute for, history; it may explain a rite historically proved to have been practised in a given place and at a given time: it cannot by itself prove that a rite recorded to have been practised in certain places and at certain times was also practised at other times and in places not recorded. In P the high priest at his investiture is anointed like a king' (Wellhausen). Is this a legitimate statement, and, if so, is the fact involved significant? Eerdmans attempts to rob it of significance by arguing that priests were anointed before the Exile: of this there is no direct evidence; and the fact that the study of religions has brought to light many rites of anointing both of persons and things does not prove that the rite applied to priests under the Hebrew monarchy. But even it it did, or even if there were other satisfactory proof that priests were anointed under the monarchy, it does not really affect the point that Wellhausen rightly makes. Under the monarchy, whatever be the fact about priests, the king was not the only person anointed, for we hear of the anointing of a prophet (1 Ki. 1916); nevertheless, the king was the outstanding example of anointed persons, and was, par excellence, 'the anointed of Yahweh': similarly in P the really significant thing is not that the high priest is anointed, but that he is, what before the Exile the king was, the outstanding, even if not the only, anointed person: he is not actually, like the king, termed 'the anointed of Yahweh', but the terms employed are equally expressive: he is 'the anointed priest' (Lev. 43, 5, 16, 615 [E.V. 22]), the high priest who was anointed with holy oil' (Num. 3525); and the act of anointing so applied to him is described in Ex. 297, Lev. 812 in terms recalling the anointing of a king in 1 Sam. 101, 1613. In later strata of P anointing is extended to the ordinary priests (Ex. 3030): and yet the high priest remains distinguished as the anointed. It is not impossible that in this we have traces of some form of priestly anointing that extended to all priests (cp. Ex. 2921, different from v.7). 2 Another feature which, alike in P and in the actual life of the post-exilic period (cp. Ecclus. 50"), contributed to the almost regal pomp of the high priest is his dress. Of such distinction, even though there may have been some distinction, we have no pre-exilic evidence. Eerdmans is here peculiarly weak. He claims that in distinguishing the high priest from the ordinary priest P agrees with pre-exilic practice as described in Samuel. 'Of this' (i. e. Eerdmans's pre-exilic high priest) 'it is said that he wears (trägt) the ephod (1 Sam. 228, 143, 236, 307), whereas the usual official dress of the priests was, according to 1 Sam. 218, 2218, the linen ephod. There must have been a distinction between the ephod and the linen ephod. This agrees with the representation of P that the official garments of the high priest could 1 Cp. further Lev. 1632, and P (questioned by Eerdmans, op. cit. p. 103) on the context of H, 2110, 12. 2 Cp. 2 Macc. 110, ̓Αριστοβούλῳ . . . ὄντι δὲ ἀπὸ τοῦ τῶν χριστῶν ἱερέων γένους. |