Page:Catholic Encyclopedia, volume 12.djvu/479

 PRIESTHOOD

413

PRIESTHOOD

With the destruction of the Herodian Temple in A. D. 70 the doom of the Levites was sealed.

C. — The High - priest. — At Jahweh's command Moses consecrated his brother Aaron first high-priest, repeated the consecration on seven days, and on the eighth day solemnly introduced him into the taber- nacle of the covenant. The consecration of Aaron consisted in washings, investment with costly vest- ments, anointing with holy oil, and the offerings of various sacrifices (Ex., xxix). As a sign that Aaron was endowed with the fullness of the priesthood, Moses poured over his head the oil of anointing (Lev., viii, 12), while the other Aaronites, as simple priests, had only their hands anointed (Ex., xxix, 7, 29). The high-priest was for the Jews the highest embodiment of theocracy, the monarch of the whole priesthood, the special mediator between God and the People of the Covenant, and the spiritual head of the synagogue He was the priest par excellence, the "great priest" (Greek, apxifpei^s; Heb., b'l'i^n '~2~), the "prince among the priests", and, because of the anointing of his head, the "anointed priest". To this exalted office corresponded his special and costly vestments, worn in addition to those of the simple priests (Ex., xxviii). A (probably sleeveless) purple-blue upper garment {tunica.) fell to his knees, the lower seam being ornamented alternately with small golden bells and pomegranates of coloured thread. About the shoulders he also wore a garment called the ephod; this was made of costly material, and consisted of two portions about an ell long, which covered the back and breast, were held together above by two shoulder- bands or epaulets, and terminated below with a mag- nificent girdle. Attached to the ephod in front was the shield {rationale), a square bag bearing on the outside the names of the twelve tribes engraved on precious stones (Ex., xxviii, 6), and containing within the celebrated Urim and Thummim (q. v.) as the means of obtaining Divine oracles and prophecies. The vestments of the high-priest were completed by a precious turban (tiara), bearing on a golden frontal plate the inscription: "Sacred to Jahweh" (Heb.

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The high-priest had supreme supervision of the Ark of the Covenant (and of tlie Temple), of Divine service in general and of the whole personnel connected with public worship. He presided at the Sanhedrin. He alone could perform the liturgy on the Feast of Ex- piation, on which occasion he put on his costly vest- ments only after the sacrifices were completed. He alone might offer sacrifice for his own sins and those of the people (Lev., iv, 5), enter the holy of holies {sanctum sanctorum), and seek counsel of Jahweh on important occasions. The office of high-priest in the house of Aaron was at first hereditary in the line of his first-born son Eleazar, but in the period from Heli to Abiathar (1131 to 973 B. c.) it belonged, by right of primogeniture, to the line of Ithamar. Under the rule of the Seleucida; (from about 175 B. c.) the office was sold for money to the highest bidder. At a later period it became hereditary in the family of the Has- mon. With the destruction of the central sanctuary by the Romans, the high-priesthood disappeared.

Against the foregoing account of the Mosaic priest- hood, based on the Old Testament, the negative biblical critics of to-day make a determined stand. According to the hypothesis of Graf-Wellhausen, Moses (about 1250 b. c.) cannot be the author of the Pentateuch. He was not the Divinely appointed legislator, but simply the founder of Monolatry, for ethical Monotheism resulted from the efforts of much later Prophets. Deuteronomy D made its appearance in substance in 621 b. c, when the astute high-priest Helkias by a pious fraud palmed off on the god- fearing King Josias the recently composed "Book of the Laws" D as written by Moses (cf. IV Kings, xxii, 1 sqq.). When Esdras returned to Jerusalem from

the Babylonian Exile about 4.50 b. c, he brought back the "Book of the Ritual" or the priest's codex P, i. e., the middle portions between Genesis and Deu- teronomy, composed by himself and his school in Babylon, although it was only in 444 b. c. that he dared to make it public. A clever editor now intro- duced the portions relating to public worship into the old, pre-Exilic historical books, and the entirely new idea of an Aaronic priesthood and of the centraliza- tion of the cult was projected back to the time of Moses. The story of the tabernacle of the covenant is thus a mere fiction, devised to rejiresent the Temple at Jerusalem as established in fully developed form at the dawn of Israelitic history and to justify the unity of worship. Although this hypothesis does not contest the great antiquity of the Jewish priesthood, it maintains that the centralization of the cult, the essential difference between priests and Levites, the supreme authority of the priests of the Temple at Jerusalem as compared with the so-called hill-priests (cf. Ezech., xliv, 4 sqq.), must be referred to post- Exilic times.

Without entering upon a detailed criticism of these assertions of Wellhausen and the critical school (see Pentateuch), we may here remark in general that the conservative school also admits or can admit that only the original portion of the Pentateuch is to be accepted as Mosaic, that in the same text many repe- titions seem to have been brought together from different sources, and finally that additions, exten- sions, and adaptations to new conditions by an in- spired author of a later period are by no means ex- cluded. It must also be admitted that, though one place of worship was appointed, sacrifices were offered even in early times by laymen and simple Levites away from the vicinity of the Ark of the Covenant, and that in restless and politically disturbed epochs the ordi- nance of Mo.ses could not always be observed. In the gloomy periods marked by neglect of the Law, no attention was paid to the prohibition of hill-sacrifices, and the Prophets were often gratified to find that on the high places {bamoth) sacrifice was offered, not to pagan gods, but to Jahweh. However, the Penta- teuch problem is one of the most difficult and intricate questions in Biblical criticism. The Wellhausen hypothesis with its bold assumptions of pious deceits and artificial projections is open to as great, if not greater, difficulties and mysteries as the traditional view, even though some of its contributions to literary criticism may stand examination. It cannot be denied that the critical structure has suffered a severe shock since the discovery of the Tell-el-Amarna letters dat- ing from the fifteenth century b. c, and since the de- ciphering of the Hammurabi Code. The assumption that the oldest religion of Israel must have been iden- tical with that of the primitive Semites (Polyda^mon- ism, Animism, Fetishism, Ancestor-worship) has been proved false, since long before 2000 b. c. a kind of Henotheism,i. e.. Polytheism with a monarchical head, was the ruling religion in Babylon. The beginnings of the religions of all peoples are purer and more spirit- ual than many historians of religions have hitherto been willing to admit. One thing is certain: the final word has not yet been spoken as to the value of the Wellhausen hypothesis.

On the general question: — Lightfoot, Ministerium templi in 0pp., I (Rotterdam, 1699), 671 sqq.; Ugolini, Thesaur. antiquit. sacrarum, IX, XII-XIII (Rome, 1748-52); Bahr, Symbolik dea mosaischen Kultus (2 vols., Heidelberg, 1839; 2nd ed., 1 vol., 1874) : KuPER, Daa Priestertum des Alien Bundes (Leipzig, 1866) ; ScHOLZ, Die heiligen AUerlumer des Voltces Israel (2 vols., Ratis- bon, 1868); Idem, Gdtzendienst u. Zauberwesen bei den alien Hebraern (Ratisbon, 1877) ; SchXfer, Die religiosen AltertUmer dcT Bibel (2nd ed., 1891) ; Nowack, Lehrbuch dcr hebr. Archdologie (2 vols., Freiburg, 1894); Baudissin, Gesch. des alttest. Priester- lums (Berlin, 1892); Gigot, Outlines of Jewish Hist. (New York, 1897) : Van Hoonacker, Le sacerdoce Uvit. dans la Loi et dans I'hist. des Hebreux (Louvain, 1899); Schurer, Gesch. des jiid. Volkes im Zeitalter Christi, II (2nd ed., Leipzig, 1898), 224 sqq.; KHberle, Die Tempelsdnger im Allen Test. (1899).

For modern Biblical criticism: — Wellhausen, Prolegomena