Page:Selections. Translated by H. St. J. Thackeray (1919).djvu/181

 ''Selection of the Custodians. Scrutiny of Priestly Marriages and Genealogies''

Not only did our ancestors in the first instance set over this business men of the highest character, devoted to the service of God, but they took precautions to ensure that the priests' lineage should be kept unadulterated and pure. A member of the priestly order must marry a woman of his own race, without regard to her wealth or other distinctions; but he must investigate her pedigree, obtaining the genealogy from the archives and producing a number of witnesses. And this practice of ours is not confined to the home country of Judæa, but wherever there is a Jewish colony, there too a strict account is kept by the priests of their marriages; I allude to the Jews in Egypt and Babylon and other parts of the world in which any of the priestly order are living in dispersion. A statement is drawn up by them and sent to Jerusalem, showing the names of the bride and her father and more remote ancestors together with the names of the witnesses. In the not infrequent event of war, for instance when our country was invaded by Antiochus Epiphanes, by Pompey the Great, by Quintilius Varus, and above all in our own times, the surviving priests compile fresh records from the older documents; they also pass scrutiny upon the remaining women and disallow marriage with any who have been taken captive, suspecting them of having had frequent intercourse with foreigners. But the most convincing proof of our accuracy in this matter is that our records contain the names of our high priests with the succession from father to son for the last two thousand years. And whoever violates. MSS "from the ancients" ([Greek: archaiôn]).]).]