I am on vacation now on an island in Maine. What do I do when I am on vacation? The same thing I do while at work, except I do it on a beach. Admittedly, I was the only guy on the beach reading a symposium book with a highlighter in hand, but I never claimed I wasn’t a geek. But now I am a geek with a decent sun tan.
I have been reading Ezekiel’s Hierarchical World, an SBL symposium book.1 It has several good article’s on the history of the priesthood, so I thought I would comment on them here. The first is by Iain M. Duguid. 2
Duguid reconstructs the priesthood in the pre-exilic, the exilic, and the post-exilic period. This post will deal with his treatment of the pre-exilic priesthood. He reconstructs the priesthood primarily on the basis of Deut.33:8-10, although he also tosses in some other passages as well. He gives the following job description for priests in this period:
- Using the Urim and Thummim for determination of God’s will.
- Teaching God’s laws.
- Drawing the boundary between holy and common.
- Officiating at the offerings and sacrifices at the sanctuaries.
- Overseeing the sanctuaries.
- Providing for the supply, storage, cleaning, repair, and security of the sanctuaries, a task he sees as falling on the Levites.
- Advising the king.
Several of these are tasks that are clearly assigned to the priesthood in the pre-exilic period. The use of the Urim and Thummim is attested in a number of sources, as is officiating over sacrifices. And they certainly served as the overseers of the sanctuaries and as advisors to the king.
I have a problem with his reconstruction of other responsibilities. While drawing the boundaries between holy and common was probably a part of their job, it was a part that became much more important in the post-exilic period with the work of the Holiness school. Duguid does not distinguish between P and H, and he dates all of P to the pre-exilic period. As I have indicated elsewhere, I think H is post-exilic. Since much of the stress on the differentiation between holy and common begins with Ezekiel (Ezek.22:26, 42:20, 44:23) and continues with the Holiness school (Lev.10:10-11, almost identical wording as Ezekiel), this is something for which there is scant evidence in the pre-exilic period. The priests surely taught the people the difference between clean and unclean (see the P material in Lev.11), but it became much more important after the fall of Jerusalem in 586 BCE.
I also question his assigning the labor of the temple to the Levites. As I have argued before, the demotion of Levites to second class status was done by Ezekiel (Ezek.44:9-14) and codified by H (Num.16-18). This distinction is not found in P, and other pre-exilic texts show Levites working as full priests (Judg.17-18). Deuteronomy also seems to view them this way, although the question of their status in Deuteronomy is difficult.
This brings me to my final point. Duguid takes Deuteronomy as his starting point for the priesthood in the pre-exilic period. This seems a highly questionable method. Deuteronomy, after all, is a reform document. It sought to change the way the priesthood operated, including the centralization of all worship in Jerusalem. It does not seem to reflect the way things actually were in the pre-exilic era except for a few short periods such as the rule Josiah and possibly that of Hezekiah. Otherwise, it was a minority opinion. It seems better to me to base the view of the priesthood in the pre-exilic period on priestly text, although even these sometimes reflect the way things should be instead of the way things actually were.
- Stephen L. Cook and Corrine L. Patton, eds., Ezekiel’s Hierarchical World: Wrestling with a Tiered Reality, SBL Symposium Series 31 (Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2004.) [back]
- Iain M. Duguid, “Putting Priests in their Place: Ezekiel’s Contribution to the History of the Old Testament Priesthood,” Ezekiel’s Hierarchical World, 43-59. [back]