Steve Cook kindly responded to the points I raised in “An Ithamarite Priesthood.” I think we are mostly in agreement, but I want to address a couple of things he said.
Steve correctly points out that Ezekiel 40:45 still calls the Ithamarites “priests.” The question, then, is how do we define priests. Obviously, the Ithamarites did not have access to the altar, but having altar access is not a sine qua non for priests. So, would Ithamarites have been considered priests in the postexilic period and, if so, how do we define priests in this period? Would a former priestly line that had been reduced to overseers still have been a cohesive enough group to produce parts of the OT?
By the way, my books just arrived from Lithuania, and Blenkinsopp’s Sage, Priest, and Prophet is one of the first ones I want to read. I am sure it has something to say on the definition of priests.
I agree with Steve that the Ithamarites might have felt differently about the matter than Zadokites. But if so, why don’t we have any literature in the OT that offers competing claims to those of the Zadokites? If the Ithamarites did produce parts of the OT, then why no “pro-Ithamarite” passages? In the absence of these, I would be more inclined to think that they accepted the fact that they no longer had claim to function as priests. This could have happened if the Ithamarites were a minor line in the preexilic period and had only a few representatives in the exile.
I am interested in Steve’s reading of Isaiah 66:5 as a Ithamarite complaint. While it is a complaint, I would be interested in hearing why he thinks this is Ithamarite literature. Of course, Steve has more important things to be doing in the next two weeks (and the ones after that), so I hope he doesn’t feel any pressure to respond.