Jesus of Nazareth
Wherever Jesus, in his humanity, ‘got it from’, it was certainly not the Temple priests in Jerusalem with whom he had virtually no contact.
The Year of the Priest
The distant temple
The priesthood in ancient Israel was exercised in the Temple in Jerusalem. For many people, this was distant and inconvenient. There was also the growing feeling that the priesthood was elitist.
Priests and prophets
The priesthood in ancient Israel was not a perfect institution (as in other ages) and the Bible is often as critical of it as it is of the monarchy in Israel.
The sacrificial priesthood
If the priests were expected to teach and to exhort the people, then, as the sacrificial system grew, they had precious little time for these things.
Aaron and the Levites
The Old Testament suggests that the priesthood in Israel sprang to life in the form of Aaron. It probably developed much more slowly as the system of simple sacrifices, offered by the people, turned into something much more complex, which required ‘professionals’ to service it.
Segregation of holiness
When Moses ascends Mount Sinai, God calls all the people of Israel “a priestly kingdom”. But already a kind of ‘segregation of holiness’ is being written into the text, in the form of a separate priesthood.
The Passover
The Passover and Feast of Unleavened Bread were originally agricultural festivals denoting the arrival of spring.
Moses and Aaron in Egypt
Moses’ older brother Aaron is later described as the ideal high priest of his people. However, in the earliest stories Aaron does not do what priests do: rather, he acts as a spokesman for Moses and performs a number of wonders.
