“The high priest was the presiding officer of the Sanhedrin. This view conflicts with the later Jewish tradition according to which the Pharisaic Tannaim at the head of the academies presided over the great Sanhedrin also (m. Hag. 2:2).”^[1]

Introduction: Finding Meaning in our Beginning

Human beings are rooted in history, and one of the first things we intuit as children is that there is a larger world beyond us that preceded our existence. Our connection to the past is what makes us who we are today. Thus, knowing the past, retelling the past, and understanding the past gives us a sense of meaning and purpose in life in the present.

The Jewish people know this well. The past is a sacred heritage that gives shape to Jewish life and expression, a past that has made the tradition what it is today. Tradition is the living remnant of the faithful Jews of the past, and it is the duty of each Jewish person to uphold, perpetuate, and venerate the value of tradition in everyday life.

Like any system of thought that seeks to answer the significant questions of life, Orthodox Judaism has an origin story. In this article, we will be investigating the historical claims, common in Orthodox Judaism since the Mishnah, that rabbinic sages of the Pharisee sect were the official religious leaders of Israel during the Second Temple period (that is, up until the temple fell in 70 CE).

This official leadership supposedly consisted of Pharisaic control of the Sanhedrin, which was the high court in Jerusalem originally set up in Devarim (Deuteronomy 17:8–13). As the leaders of the Sanhedrin, the Pharisees had final say over matters of halakhah, justice, and biblical interpretation. This halakhic authority, passed on from sage to sage, has been referred to in rabbinic texts as an unbroken chain of tradition as described in the well-known Mishnaic tractate Pirke Avot. All present-day Orthodox rabbis stand on the shoulders of the sages represented in the chain. They derive their authority from the belief that they continue the transmission of the Written and Oral Torahs that were divinely given at Sinai and passed from sage to sage from the Sanhedrin to today.

Two central questions of this article are the following: Can the chain of tradition be historically verified? What implications may this discussion have for the identity of Yeshua? I can imagine that my readers will have a variety of opinions as I ask these questions.

Perhaps a person is confident that 1) the sages were Israel’s top halakhic authorities before the temple’s destruction and that 2) the Tannaim of the Mishnah and the Amoraim of the Gemara have accurately preserved the historical and halakhic truth, and that 3) today’s rabbis derive their religious authority from an unbroken chain of tradition that spans back to Moshe. Consequently, a person may believe that 4) the identity of Yeshua does not matter since the sages have rejected him. If this is what you currently believe, this article may be surprising—even shocking—although I do not intend any offense.

This investigation will call into question a major foundation stone that has been used to justify the belief that the rabbinic sages have a God-given, Moses-delivered, historically accurate religious authority to determine halakhah, biblical interpretation, and theology. This narrative has been used to evade the claims of Yeshua and his disciples in the New Testament; namely, the claims that Yeshua is the high priest of Israel (Hebrews 4:14–16), with all the authority accorded to such a position.

If the sages are the divinely-appointed religious authorities for all Israel and they reject Yeshua as the Messiah, then the matter ought to be closed; Yeshua is not the Messiah, and whatever authority he claimed for himself is null. However, what if the sages are not the divinely-appointed top religious authorities for all Israel? What if the divinely-appointed highest religious authority has always been, and will always be, Israel’s high priest? What if—counterintuitively—Israel has such a high priest today? What if this high priest comes not from the Levitical line of priests but rather from a higher line of authority—that of Hashem himself?

Although these questions may sound preposterous at this point, I ask my readers to patiently follow the historical evidence. This investigation, focused as it is on the authority structure of Orthodox Judaism, is bound to prompt debate and disagreement. The historical evidence in this article is crucial for testing whether the early Tannaitic sages had the halakhic authority they claimed to have from Hashem. After surveying the evidence, I have concluded that the origin story of Orthodox Judaism, as classically given in Mishnaic tractates Pirke Avot and Hagigah, has no basis in historical truth.

Despite this position, I intend to enter this investigation with respect, and one way to do so is to clearly lay out what this article is not about.

What This Article is Not About

In line with the intent to present Yeshua as Messiah without any antisemitism or spiteful attitude, but rather with love and respect, I want to clarify what this article is not saying.

Antisemites have long targeted Israel’s revered religious leaders for personal ridicule, condescension, and rebuke. They have pointed the finger at the sages of their day and portrayed them as the root cause of all the Jewish people’s internal and external problems. Sometimes, regrettably, antisemites have cited passages in the New Testament—taken wildly out of historical context—as justification for criticizing contemporary rabbis.

We oppose such spiteful attitudes here at Chosen People Answers. We want no part in—nor to encourage—vitriolic and hateful rhetoric against the rabbi at your shul, or the sages or Pharisees you know and revere in Jewish history. They deserve our respect and admiration for their brilliance, leadership, and courage, among many other things.

My attitude toward the sages of Israel’s history may be warmer than you might expect. The sages of Israel, may their memory be a blessing, have been the servants used by Hashem to preserve the nation, to embolden the people’s physical and spiritual resilience, and to provide the people with religious, social, and communal cohesion. Moreover, the sages have provided Israel with a brilliant, multifaceted, intellectually satisfying, ethical, and profound religious experience and tradition. Without the sages of blessed memory, there would be no Judaism or Jewish people today. Thus, in a genuine sense, the sages have been the means by which Hashem has blessed and preserved his people.

My investigation here in no way invalidates the blessings that Hashem has poured out upon Israel through her rabbinic leaders. The question is not whether the sages of yesterday and today have brought blessing to Israel. I agree that they have, by the direction and providence of Hashem. The real question is whether or not Hashem intends Israel to follow an even higher authority—one with priestly—even divine—credentials. Thus, my investigation below is highly interested in the institution of the priesthood and its history, and I believe the evidence illustrates that the sages are not the top religious authorities over Israel.

Key Terms and Concepts

Here are some key terms and concepts that I will be referring to throughout this article:

Chain of tradition: The list of historical Torah teachers as found in Mishnaic tractates Pirke Avot and Hagigah. The later teachers in the chain are said to inherit their teaching from the teachers who came before them.

Contemporary sources: Historical accounts written during the period described in the accounts, often by eyewitnesses to the events in question.

Cultic authority: Official religious authority over the temple and its sacrificial procedures.

Hagigah 2:2: The key claim by the Mishnah that the Zugot were the leaders of the Sanhedrin.

Institutional authority: Official, widely recognized, national religious authority from within the Sanhedrin.

Mishnah: The written record of the Oral Law, compiled around 200 CE. The Mishnah includes the laws, traditions, and recollections of the Tannaim.

Pharisees: A sect of Judaism that arose during the Second Temple period that sought to teach accurate interpretations of Torah to the common people.

Popular authority: Non-official religious influence in the hearts and minds of the people of Israel.

Sanhedrin: The high court of Israel until the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 CE. The nature of this court, its membership, and its breadth of power are under dispute in this article.

Tannaim: The Hebrew name for the early generations of Torah scholars from roughly 10–220 CE. The word means, “repeaters,” as in those who repeat the Oral Law to keep it in memory.

Zugot: The Hebrew name for the “pairs” of Torah teachers mentioned in the tradition chain. Each pair of teachers lived during the same time frame, such as the famous Hillel and Shammai. All the Zugot lived during the time of the Second Temple, that is, before 70 CE.

The Orthodox Position: The Tannaim Had Religious Authority Derived from the Pre-70 CE Sanhedrin

As mentioned previously, the classic rabbinic position on religious authority is that the sages themselves derive their authority from Moses, who established a system of judges to govern Israel (Deut 16—17). The highest court in the Torah’s system came to be known as the Sanhedrin, located in Jerusalem. The Orthodox position is that the Pharisee sect controlled the Sanhedrin during the time of the Second Temple. This rabbinic claim to authority is most evident in the Mishnaic tractates Pirke Avot and Hagigah. In this section, I will summarize this classic tradition.

Pirke Avot: The Foundational Claim for an Unbroken Chain

The Mishnaic tractate Pirke Avot (The Ethics of the Fathers) contains timeless wisdom that encourages the pursuit of God and his Torah before all things. Pirke Avot is filled with wit, wisdom, and heart, and for these qualities it is beloved. At the opening of Pirke Avot is a section that has often been called the chain of tradition. This, more than any other section of the Tannaim’s writings, serves as the foundation stone for post-temple Judaism. From this section of text (m. Avot 1:1–2:8), we learn there is a divinely-intended historical chain of religious authorities spanning back to Moses. Here is the text of the chain, in summarized form:

The Chain of Tradition—Pirke Avot 1:1–2:8

1:1 Moses received Torah at Sinai and handed it on to Joshua, Joshua to elders, and elders to prophets. And prophets handed it on to the men of the great assembly.

1:2 Simeon the Righteous was one of the last survivors of the great assembly.

1:3 Antigonos of Sokho received [the Torah] from Simeon the Righteous.

1:4 Yose b. Yoezer of Seredah and Yose b. Yohanan of Jerusalem received [it] from them.

1:6 Joshua b. Perahiah and Nittai the Arbelite received [it] from them.

1:8 Judah b. Tabbai and Simeon b. Shatah received [it] from them.

1:10 Shemaiah and Abtalion received [it] from them.

1:12 Hillel and Shammai received [it] from them.

1:16–2:7 – [Other names associated with the Pharisees, but not actually in the chain]

2:8 Rabban Yohanan b. Zakkai received [it] from Hillel and Shammai.^[2]

In this passage, the reader sweeps through millennia of Jewish history. Starting with Moses, estimated at 1400 BCE, and ending with Yohanan ben Zakkai, who lived through the end of the first century CE, we have a vast summary of Israel’s religious authorities.

In this list, we find Torah as the subject being passed on. The men who are listed are only transmitters of this Torah from generation to generation. While listing each of the men in the chain, Pirke Avot cites some of their teachings. Some of their sayings include:

The Great Assembly: “Be prudent in judgment. Raise up many disciples. Make a fence for the Torah.”

Yose b. Yoezer: “Let your house be a gathering place for sages.”

Shemaiah: “Love work. Hate authority. Don’t get friendly with the government.”

Hillel: “If I am not for myself, who is for me? And when I am for myself, what am I? And if not now, when?”^[3]

Each of these quotations are unique sayings attributed to the sages in question. The quotations are not found within the Tanakh, but rather are the sages’ own summaries and applications of the Torah. As custodians of the Torah, its transmission, and its appropriate use, the sages of the chain serve as the teachers of an oral tradition that safeguards the written Torah. Pirke Avot establishes this oral tradition by tracing its origin, generation by generation, back to Moses. Thus, the purpose of the chain of tradition is to prove that the men mentioned in the chain are the authoritative recipients of the Oral Law and have the authority to interpret the Written Law.

It should be noted that the final name in the list, Rabban Yohanan b. Zakkai, was the one who—according to tradition—convened the Council of Yavneh after the destruction of Jerusalem (circa 80 CE).^[4] Through his leadership, the Jewish people received instruction on how to live and cope in the shadow of the temple’s destruction. As Orthodox author Shulamis Frieman explains,

The sages and students in Yavneh realized that the tremendous task of organizing Jewish life lay in their hands. Now that the temple was destroyed, many of the divine commandments were impossible to perform, and the national cohesiveness for the Jewish people was lost. The decisive leadership and center of Torah for the Jewish people was therefore created anew in Yavneh.”^[5]

Rabban Yohanan b. Zakkai succeeded in restoring national cohesiveness and laying the groundwork for the continued flourishing of the Jewish people, despite the loss of Jerusalem. According to rabbinic sources, Rabbi Yohanan had five disciples, and those rabbinic disciples had further rabbinic disciples. Today, the rabbis at yeshivas and shuls stand upon the shoulders and authority of this chain of scholars.

Mishnah Hagigah 2:2: An Important Claim of Sanhedrin Leadership

Pirke Avot is the most famous passage that lists the chain of tradition and is also the most complete. However, a parallel passage in the Mishnah (m. Hagigah 2:2) adds details to the chain. It lists many of the same names as Pirke Avot but also gives some important extra information. Here is the text:

Yose b. Yoezer says not to lay on hands.

Yose b. Yohanan says to lay on hands.

Joshua b. Perahyah says not to lay on hands.

Nittai the Arbelite says to lay on hands.

Judah b. Tabbai says not to lay on hands.

Simeon b. Shatah says to lay on hands.

Shemayah says to lay on hands.

Abtalyon says not to lay on hands.

Hillel and Menahem did not differ.

Menahem departed, Shammai entered.

Shammai says not to lay on hands. Hillel says to lay on hands.

The first-named were patriarchs, and the second to them were heads of the court.^[6]

^[7](הראשונים היו נשיאים, ושניים להם אבות בית דין)

In this list, we learn several new things that were not present in the Pirke Avot text. First, we learn that there was a controversy between the Zugot, the “pairs” who lived around the same time as each other. The first of each pair said that laying on hands was forbidden; the latter said it was permitted. Second, we learn that Shammai was not originally paired with Hillel; Menachem was at first, but then he left, and Shammai took his place. Third, we learn that the first name in each of the Zugot was the patriarch (Nasi) over the Sanhedrin, and the second name was the head of the Sanhedrin (Av Beit Din).^[8] The relationship between the two offices may be likened to president and vice-president, which is how they are often discussed in scholarship.^[9]

Consequently, we learn from Hagigah that the authority of the men on the list was official and national; they were the heads of the Sanhedrin, the legal religious body over Israel, established by Devarim. They passed on their official authority to their successors, culminating in Rabban Yohanan b. Zakkai, who passed on his authority to all subsequent rabbis after the destruction of Jerusalem.

This testimony about the leadership of the Sanhedrin is repeated in the Tosefta (t. Hagigah 2:8–9) and the Babylonian Talmud (b. Hagigah 16a–b). Thus, the narrative found in the Mishnah is repeated and is commented upon in later Jewish works. It has become the official narrative that explains who Jewish people ought to follow after the destruction of the temple.

A Brief Background of the Pharisees

According to the Mishnah, Rabban Yohanan b. Zakkai was a spokesman for the Pharisees (m. Yadayim 4:6).^[10] So too was Hillel, “whose name predominates the rabbinical traditions about the Pharisees.”^[11] Josephus says that Shemaiah was a Pharisee as well (Antiquities 15.3), and the Yerushalmi says that Hillel was Shemaiah’s disciple, confirming Hillel’s Pharisaic training (y. Pesachim 6:1). Finally, Rabban Gamaliel of the Yavneh council (ca. 80 CE, disputed) is not called a Pharisee explicitly, but multiple sources claim that his father and grandfather were (Acts 5:34; Acts 22:3; Josephus Life 191). The association of these four men with the Pharisees warrants an overview of this important Jewish sect.

The Pharisees were an influential sect within Second Temple Judaism who are described at length in the New Testament, in Josephus’s writings, and in rabbinic literature. The English name of the sect comes from the Greek Pharisaioi (Φαρισαῑοι), which is derived from the Aramaic root prsh (פרשׁ), which means “to separate.” In rabbinic literature, the Pharisees are called Perushim.^[12]

The origin of the Pharisees as a movement within Judaism is obscure. The Jewish historian Josephus—the most substantive source for the Pharisees’ history—first mentions them in relation to the reign of Jonathan (161–143 BCE), a Hasmonean leader of Israel.^[13] Josephus’s account often mentions Pharisees in relation to political and religious events in the years that followed.^[14]

The Pharisees were known for their teachings concerning ritual purity, fasting, tithing, and Sabbath observance, each of which were generally applicable to any Jewish person. According to Josephus, the Pharisees “are those who are esteemed most skillful in the exact explication of their laws”^[15] and “have the multitude on their side,”^[16] indicating their popularity with the people of Israel. As part of their teaching on these matters, they cited oral tradition as the source of their observance. Semitic studies scholar Menahem Mansoor summarizes Pharisaic adherence to the Oral Tradition:

For the Pharisees, the Torah God gave to Moses consisted of the Written and the Oral Law, and both were truth. The divine revelations in the first five books of Moses were supplemented and explained by the prophets and the unwritten tradition, and were intended to guide men in the right way of life. The Torah, they felt, was the center of their teachings and sufficient for all men and all times. Their view of the law was that its commandments were to be interpreted in conformity with the standard and interpretation of the rabbis of each generation.^[17]

According to the available historical records, the Pharisees were a popular and prominent group within first-century Judea, but they were just one of several. Others included the Sadducees, the Essenes, the Zealots, and The Way, which is what Jewish believers in Yeshua called themselves (Acts 24:14). Only two of these groups survived—the Pharisees and the Jewish believers in Yeshua—due to the destruction of the temple in 70 CE and the associated exile and murder of millions of Jewish people by Rome. After this catastrophe, the Jewish people had the overwhelming task of rebuilding their practice of Judaism without a temple and without Jerusalem as an active religious center.

Eventually, the rabbinic sages emerged as the rallying voices to preserve the Jewish people and their ancestral traditions, and they claimed to have continuity with the Pharisees who came before them. Because the chain of tradition claims continuity of teaching among all of the named men in the list, and several of the men were Pharisees, it is reasonable to conjecture that the Mishnah portrays all men of the chain as members of the Pharisaic school of thought. This has been the predominant view of scholarship to this day. This conjecture aligns with what is known of the commonalities between Pharisaic and rabbinic halakhah on matters of ritual purity, Sabbath observance, and other vital matters of Jewish observance. The later sages of the Babylonian Talmud made the equation between the Pharisees and the sages explicit.^[18] We also see the Tannaim specifically highlighting Pharisees as the ideal for their vision of Judaism, when they said, “The ‘fearing’ [Pharisee emulates] Job. The ‘loving’ [Pharisee emulates] Abraham. And none is more beloved of God than the ‘loving’ [Pharisee who emulates] Abraham” (y. Bereshit 9:5).^[19]

In sum, the Mishnah is saying that the men of the chain of tradition were of the Pharisaic sect, and they were also the leaders of the Sanhedrin. Thus, we should note that the Mishnaic chain of tradition is saying that Pharisees were the presidents and vice presidents of the Sanhedrin for generations before 70 CE. Their authority was official, institutional, national, and instituted by Moses himself.

A Summary of the Historical Timeline from the Mishnah

The Mishnaic passages reviewed above seek to establish the halakhic authority of the post-Temple Tannaim by tracing their predecessors back to the Second Temple Sanhedrin, and from the Sanhedrin back to Moses. This is an argument from history. It is as if the Tannaim are saying, “We have religious authority because history proves it.”

By coordinating rabbinic sources with other historical data, I have plotted a general chronology of the chain of tradition. I was able to corroborate with reasonable likelihood the names of several of the men of the chain in contemporary written sources, such as Josephus’s mention of Shemaiah (Sameas) and Menachem. By coordinating sources, we now have approximate ideas of when each of these men lived, enabling us to compare the chain of tradition with other historical writings of the period.

Orthodox Jewish people have generally accepted the unbroken chain of tradition throughout the ages. However, there is another version of this story, and it disagrees on a fundamental level.

Second Temple Sources Concerning the Sanhedrin’s Top Leadership

The chain of tradition is based upon one particular understanding of Jewish history, but there are other Jewish voices of the time period to be heard on the subject. For more than a millennium, religious Jewish people have rarely been exposed to the alternative voices, which paint quite a different picture.

This section investigates Second Temple sources concerning Israel’s religious leadership. I am primarily interested in what Jews living during the Second Temple period had to say about their own religious hierarchy, since that is the period that is emphasized in the Mishnah’s chain of tradition.

However, before I investigate Second Temple sources, first, I will summarize what the Tanakh says about the authorized religious leaders during the biblical era. By way of reminder, the Mishnah summarizes this period in its opening line: “Moses received Torah at Sinai and handed it on to Joshua, Joshua to elders, and elders to prophets. And prophets handed it on to the men of the great assembly.” Does the Tanakh say the same?

The Era of the Tanakh from Moses to Nehemiah: The Priests had Official Religious Authority

The question of religious authority in the Tanakh is complicated since Israel often went through tumultuous times. Pirke Avot refers to this complexity when it mentions elders and prophets in Pirke Avot 1:1. However, for some reason, the Mishnah’s chain of tradition leaves out an essential group: the Levitical priests.

When we investigate the Tanakh, we find that the Levitical priests were given the primary religious authority to teach the Torah and to decide legal matters. The absence of the priests from the Mishnah’s history is highly unexpected, given what the Tanakh says. Although non-priests could teach Torah and serve as judges in the Tanakh, the priests were the only group given these official roles by God. We read in Vayikra:

And the Lord spoke to Aaron, saying… “You are to distinguish between the holy and the common, and between the unclean and the clean, and you are to teach the people of Israel all the statutes that the Lord has spoken to them by Moses.” (Leviticus 10:8–11)

The ideal situation prescribed by Hashem in the Torah is that Aaron and his sons are to be to the religious, legal, and judicial authorities over all of Israel.

Similarly, Moses says, “They [Levites] shall teach Jacob your rules (מִשְׁפָּטֶיךָ, mishpateicha) and Israel your law (תֹורָתְךָ, toratecha)” (Deuteronomy 33:10). The prophets also accepted this expectation of priestly Torah leadership. Malachi says, “For the lips of a priest should guard knowledge, and people should seek instruction (תֹורָה, torah) from his mouth, for he is the messenger of the Lord of hosts” (Malachi 2:7). Elsewhere, God intends the priests and Levites to live on the tithes given to them by others, so they would be fully devoted to studying the Torah (2 Chronicles 31:4). Many more biblical passages associate the role of teaching and legal matters to the priesthood.^[25]

In his commentary on Pirke Avot, Rami Shapiro notices this discrepancy:

Look at the sentence [Avot 1:1] carefully. God transmits Torah to Moses, who then passes it on to … Joshua? Nowhere in the Bible does it say that Joshua inherits the Torah. On the contrary, the Bible is very clear that it is Aaron and his descendants who are the keepers of the revelation and the sacrificial system it supports. Joshua is the military and secular leader, but Torah belongs to the priests. Yet in Pirke Avot’s retelling of the history of revelation, the priests… are not even mentioned.^[26]

Of course, the priests were not the only ones who could teach the Torah or serve as judges. Moses established courts of thousands, hundreds, fifties, and tens (Exod 18; Deut 1:15), and being a priest or Levite was not a requirement to be part of the judiciary. However, Moses called for Israel to set up a high court at “the place which the Lord your God will choose” (Deut 17:8), which in the context of Deuteronomy, eventually came to mean Jerusalem.^[27] People would bring cases to the high court if “any case within your towns [is] too difficult for you” (Deut 17:8). The high court would serve as the final decision maker in the Israelite legal system. Who was a part of the Israelite high court? The Levitical priests and “the judge” (Deut 17:9). Who was this judge? As we will see below, ancient Jewish tradition identified this singular judge as the high priest. He was intended by Torah to be the highest legal authority in the land. The written Torah is silent about whether non-priests were allowed to be on the high court.

Interestingly, the Tanakh includes its own interpretation of the passage in Devarim just discussed. The Israelite king Jehoshaphat (reigned 873–849 BCE) interpreted Moses’s instructions (Deut 17:8–13) in the following way when he set up a high court in Jerusalem:

Moreover, in Jerusalem Jehoshaphat appointed certain Levites and priests and heads of families of Israel, to give judgment for the Lord and to decide disputed cases. They had their seat at Jerusalem. And he charged them: “Thus you shall do in the fear of the Lord, in faithfulness, and with your whole heart: whenever a case comes to you from your brothers who live in their cities, concerning bloodshed, law or commandment, statutes or rules, then you shall warn them, that they may not incur guilt before the Lord and wrath may not come upon you and your brothers. Thus you shall do, and you will not incur guilt. And behold, Amariah the chief priest is over you in all matters of the Lord; and Zebadiah the son of Ishmael, the governor of the house of Judah, in all the king’s matters, and the Levites will serve you as officers. Deal courageously, and may the Lord be with the upright!” (2 Chr 19:8–11)

In summary, the high court in Jehoshaphat’s era consisted of a group that met in Jerusalem, with Levites as officers, and had the high priest in charge of religious matters, and the king’s servant in charge of political matters. This is presented as a divinely authorized understanding of Moses’s instructions in Devarim. It was a high court like Jehosaphat’s that was established after the Babylonian exile and came to be known as the Sanhedrin. Was this later high court also headed by a priest in religious matters? Yes, it was.

From this point in the investigation forward, I will discuss sources that were written during the Second Temple period—the very period in question concerning the leadership of the Sanhedrin.

Nehemiah’s Era (ca. 400 BCE): The Priests had Religious Authority

According to Pirke Avot, after the last prophets died, the religious authority over Israel passed to the Men of the Great Assembly (Generation 5 in table 1). The membership of this Great Assembly has been subject to much debate, but the rabbinic sages often equate the Great Assembly with the returned exiles listed in Nehemiah 10:1–27.^[28] If so, we can analyze Nehemiah’s list to draw some conjectures about its hierarchy and structure. Nehemiah’s list includes the following groups as the leaders of the returned exiles, totaling eighty-four men:

In any case, this list provides significant evidence of the Levites’ stature in the post-exilic era. By having thirty-nine men in the list (forty-six percent),^[30] the Levitical priests and other Levites dominate the authority structure of the Great Assembly.

Besides the list in Nehemiah, in the books written after the return to the land, there are records of the Levitical priests’ authority to teach the people of Israel:

So Ezra the priest brought the Law before the assembly, both men and women and all who could understand what they heard, on the first day of the seventh month. And he read from it facing the square before the Water Gate from early morning until midday, in the presence of the men and the women and those who could understand. And the ears of all the people were attentive to the Book of the Law. (Neh 8:2–3)

And Nehemiah, who was the governor, and Ezra the priest and scribe, and the Levites who taught the people… (Neh 8:9)

Thus says the Lord of hosts: Ask the priests about the law. (Hag 2:11)

Outside of the Tanakh, but discussing this same period, scholars have discovered the record of an Aramaic letter that was addressed to the Persian governor of Judea in 408 or 407 BCE.^[31] In this letter, the leader of a Jewish community in Elephantine, Egypt, records that he sent a previous letter “… to your lordship [named earlier as Bigvai, the Persian governor] and to Johanan the high priest and his colleagues the priests who are in Jerusalem, and to Ostanes the brother of ʿAnani, and the nobles of the Jews.”^[32] Josephus’s histories confirm that Bigvai was governor and that Johanan was high priest during this time period.^[33] When this Jewish letter-writer wanted to get his voice heard by official people, he wrote to the high priest in Jerusalem. This is most likely because the high priest was the top religious leader of the Jewish people in the land in 407 BCE.

Hecataeus of Abdera (ca. 300 BCE): The Jews are Led by Priests

The Greek historian Hecataeus of Abdera lived around 300 BCE, during the time of Alexander the Great. Josephus says that Hecataeus wrote an entire book on the Jews,^[34] but this work has been lost. In fact, all extant sources of Hecataeus have been preserved in quotations by other writers. One of those writers was Diodorus Siculus, a first-century CE historian. He quotes a passage from Hecataeus that describes the origin of the Jewish people. This account makes several historical mistakes, but it may still retain some historical value regarding the makeup and honor of the priestly leadership:

The leader of this colony was one Moses, a very wise and valiant man, who, after he had possessed himself of the country, amongst other cities, built that now most famous city, Jerusalem,^[35] and the temple there, which is so greatly revered among them. He instituted the holy rites and ceremonies with which they worship God; and made laws for the methodical government of the state… He also picked out the most accomplished men, who were best fitted to rule and govern the whole nation, and he appointed them to be priests, whose duty was continually to attend in the temple, and employ themselves in the public worship and service of God. He also made them judges, for the decision of the most serious cases, and committed to their care the preservation of their laws and customs. Therefore they say that the Jews have never had any king;^[36] but that the leadership of the people has always been entrusted to a priest, who excels all the rest in prudence and virtue. They call him the chief priest, and they regard him as the messenger and interpreter of the mind and commands of God. And they say that he, in all their public assemblies and other meetings, discloses what has been commanded; and the Jews are so compliant in these matters, that forthwith they prostrate themselves upon the ground, and adore him as the high priest, who has interpreted to them the will of God.^[37]

This description of the Jewish people may shed light on Judaism in the fourth century BCE. It is the earliest known pagan document that mentions Moses.^[38] The Greek historian gets multiple historical details wrong, such as Moses founding Jerusalem and denying that Jews have ever had kings, but these were mistakes about the past that Hecataeus could not have verified personally. However, we should expect that Hecataeus’s reportage of contemporary fourth-century BCE Jewish religious and social life was more accurate, since he could verify it with those who had personally visited Israel. Thus, while Hecataeus should not be trusted for details about Israel’s history before the fourth century BCE, he is a valuable witness of fourth-century Jewish religious life that depicted priests at the pinnacle of Jewish religious hierarchy. Biblical scholar Craig Evans summarizes the report as saying, “The Jewish people were governed by priests, chosen by Moses, who served as judges, over whom a high priest presided.”^[39]

It is also interesting that Hecataeus also gives a commentary on Devarim 16 and 17, where Moses called for the appointment of judges. According to this ancient observer of Judaism, he had been told that it was the priests who had been appointed judges by Moses.

Historical Jewish Works from the Second Temple Period (ca. 200 BCE–70 CE): Priestly Religious Authority

Jewish people were incredibly prolific in their writings during the Second Temple stood. There are records of historical, theological, and exegetical works from that time period.

According to these sources, the priests and Levites had the supreme religious authority during the Second Temple period. They did not seem to have a narrow sphere of religious authority, such as being only confined to temple matters and sacrifices. Their range of authority included teaching the Torah, deciding legal cases, and serving on the high court, which the high priest headed.

This table of texts written during the time of the Second Temple omits other important sources from the period, including the Jewish historian Josephus, the writers of the New Testament, and the Dead Sea Scrolls, so that they can be more fully discussed below. These remaining sources portray a very similar perspective regarding the role of the priests as Israel’s religious authorities.

The Jewish Historian Josephus (First Century CE): Confirmation That the Priests Have Religious Authority

The first century CE historian Flavius Josephus is a strong primary source for the history of the Jewish people during the period of the Second Temple. He was not the only Jewish man to write a history of the period, but he is the only one whose works still survive.^[48] Thankfully, Josephus’s history is comprehensive and detailed. Unfortunately, Josephus is most often remembered within Orthodox Judaism—if he is recognized at all^[49]—for his betrayal of his people by agreeing to live under Roman patronage as the temple’s ashes still smoldered. Despite his checkered reputation, Josephus claimed to be a Pharisee himself (Life 10–12), and thus his positions sometimes agree with later rabbinic Judaism.

Josephus scholar Clemens Thoma writes,

The high priesthood, according to Josephus Flavius’ judgment, was the most important institution of Early Judaism with regard to cult, prophecy, salvation, and worldly policy. In his opinion, the weal and woe of the Jewish people, and partially also of the non-Jewish powers and nations, depended on the sacral and political activities of these prominent office holders.^[50]

Before I give Josephus’s accounts of the religious rulers near his time, let us first look at his understanding of the way Moses set up religious authority in the Torah. In Josephus’s paraphrased account of the Torah’s instructions (Deuteronomy 16—17), Moses says,

Let there be seven men to judge in every city, and these such as have been before most zealous in the exercise of virtue and righteousness. Let every judge have two officers, allotted him out of the tribe of Levi… But if these judges be unable to give a just sentence about the causes that come before them (which case is not unfrequent in human affairs), let them send the cause undetermined to the holy city, and there let the high priest, the prophet, and the sanhedrin, determine as it shall seem good to them. ^[51]

Josephus interprets Moses’s instruction as: The judges of each city have two Levite officers each, but when they are unable to agree on a matter, the “high priest, the prophet, and the Sanhedrin” judge the issue. They are the religious and legal authorities.

Josephus confirmed this understanding when he wrote that the priests “had the main care of the law and of the other parts of the people’s conduct committed to them; for they were the priests who were ordained to be the inspectors of all, and the judges in doubtful cases, and the punishers of those that were condemned to suffer punishment.”^[52] Not only were the priests teachers of the Torah, but they were judges over infractions of the Torah itself. Sometimes, their very words were the words of prophecy.^[53]

Concerning the high priest, Josephus made a connection between the one temple and the one high priest who serves Israel by teaching and judging:

There ought also to be but one temple for one God; for likeness is the constant foundation of agreement. This temple ought to be common to all men, because he is the common God of all men. His priests are to be continually about his worship, over whom he that is the first by his birth is to be their ruler perpetually. His business must be to offer sacrifices to God, together with those priests that are joined with him, to see that the laws be observed, to determine controversies, and to punish those that are convicted of injustice; while he that does not submit to him shall be subject to the same punishment, as if he had been guilty of impiety towards God himself.^[54]

The above accounts were Josephus’s commentaries on the ideal Jewish leadership structure, as he understood the Torah. But was his idealized portrayal of the priests as the heads of the nation actually accurate in his day?

To answer this question, the most important evidence that Josephus handed down to us was a chapter listing many names of the high priests from the time of the Babylonian exile until the destruction of Jerusalem by Rome (Antiquities XX.10). Josephus claimed that there were eighty-three high priests from Aaron until Phannias, the final high priest who was elevated to the post during the Roman siege in 70 CE.

Early Judaism scholar James C. VanderKam has analyzed Josephus’s mentions of high priests and has given their approximate dates and the names of other historical sources that mention them. Essentially, VanderKam has done for Josephus what I have done above in trying to date the authoritative figures in the unbroken chain of tradition.^[55]

Josephus claimed that these priests were the highest religious leaders over Israel, chronicled by a Jewish man who was an eyewitness to some of the period he described. Josephus’s names of priests have multiple connections to outside Jewish sources, such as 1 and 2 Maccabees, Sirach, and the New Testament. For example, Josephus named three high priests that appear in the New Testament: Ananus, Joseph Caiaphas,^[57] and Ananias. There may also be a rabbinic confirmation of Caiaphas as a high priest in t. Yebamot 1:10.^[58] The confirmation of Josephus’s claims among other sources is called “multiple attestation” by historians, and it is an indicator of trustworthiness and therefore confirms that the priests were the highest religious authorities of this time period.

Josephus’s names of the high priests, and their overlap with the high priests in the New Testament, leads us to consider what the documents written by the Jewish writers of the New Testament say regarding the nature of the high priesthood.

Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, and Acts; First Century CE: Confirmation That the Priests Have Religious Authority

As historical documents, the Gospels and book of Acts in the New Testament record the political, legal, and religious situation in first-century Judea. Alongside Josephus, the New Testament is the best source of historical information for the first-century CE period in Judea. In line with other Second Temple Jewish documents, the accounts in the New Testament agree that the high priest was the utmost religious and legal decision-maker, with the texts sometimes equating the authority of the Sanhedrin with the high priest himself (John 18:24; cf. Matthew 26:57).

In the Gospels, the “chief priests” are the religious leaders who are called upon to settle matters of biblical interpretation (Matt 2:4), authority challenges (Matt 21:23; 26:57; Mark 11:18; John 18:22), judicial disputes (Matt 26:59; 27:1; Mark 15:1), and Jewish teaching (Matt 26:65; Mark 14:61–63).

During the time of Yeshua’s trial, two men shared the chief priest role: Caiaphas (Matt 26:3; Luke 3:2; John 11:49) and Annas (Luke 3:2; John 18:13; Acts 4:6). The chief priests are portrayed as the leaders of the Sanhedrin (sometimes called the Council), the supreme court of the people of Israel (Matt 26:59; Luke 15:1; John 11:47). According to John, the Sanhedrin includes both the chief priests and Pharisees (John 11:47). Biblical scholar Crispin Fletcher-Louis summarizes the chief priests’ roles in the Sanhedrin:

Both the NT (Mt 2:4; Mk 8:31; Lk 9:22) and other sources (e.g., Josephus, J.W. 2.243; Ant. 20.205; Life 193) refer to a body of chief priests ruling alongside the high priest. This seems to have comprised priests of the high priestly families permanently resident in the capital, with positions of national and cultic responsibility and membership of the Sanhedrin. It included some who had once been the high priest (e.g., Lk 3:2; Jn 18:13, 19–24; Josephus, J.W. 2:243; Ant. 20:205; Life 193). Almost certainly, all of the high priests in the first century a.d. were Sadducees (Josephus, Ant. 20.199; Acts 5:17; cf. Josephus, Ant. 13.293–298).^[59]

Beyond the Gospel accounts, the book of Acts gives detailed accounts about the Sanhedrin. Acts claims that the Sanhedrin had both Sadducees and Pharisees within its ranks (Acts 5:17, 5:34; 23:6), and Paul deferred to the high priest’s authority when it did not conflict with his belief in Yeshua (Acts 23:5).

Many of the descriptions of the Sanhedrin in the book of Acts took place in a contentious atmosphere. Jewish followers of Yeshua were repeatedly summoned before the Sanhedrin because of their message that Yeshua had risen from the dead. This occurred multiple times in Acts (Acts 4:1–22; Acts 5:17–42; Acts 6:8–7:60). The Sanhedrin’s central concern appeared to be the teaching that Yeshua had an authority that outranked the chief priests and the Sanhedrin (Acts 5:27–29). Thus, the apostles of the New Testament represent a group of Jews who accepted the authority of the Sanhedrin on principle but insisted upon following Yeshua whenever the Sanhedrin disagreed with him.

In Acts 4:5–6, the convocation of the Sanhedrin is described as acknowledging the importance of the high priests: “On the next day their rulers and elders and scribes gathered together in Jerusalem, with Annas the high priest and Caiaphas and John and Alexander, and all who were of the high-priestly family.” Although the entire Sanhedrin was present, the high priest Annas [known as Ananus in Josephus] and other high priests were singled out because of their authority.

The followers of Yeshua got in trouble again in Acts 5:17–18, and the story depicts the important role of the high priest: “But the high priest rose up, and all who were with him (that is, the party of the Sadducees), and filled with jealousy they arrested the apostles and put them in the public prison.” In this passage, we learn not only that the high priest had religious authority, but that there were many Sadducees, who were priests involved in the temple, in the Sanhedrin along with him.^[60] The Sadducees, who rejected the resurrection and angels (Acts 23:8), were opposed to the Pharisees, who accepted those teachings. It was likely a source of frustration for the Pharisees to have the priestly Sadducees as powerful members in the Sanhedrin—especially as high priests who had authority and were supposed to be the ones to teach the people accurately.

In the book of Acts 5:24, we learn about “the captain of the temple” who is associated with leadership of the chief priests (cf. Acts 4:1). Josephus uses the same title (strategos, στρατηγὸς) to describe the second in command under the high priest (Antiquities 20.131). Thus, according to the New Testament and Josephus, the Sanhedrin had a first and second rank in command, just as the Mishnah claimed. However, in the first-century sources, those offices are 1) the high priest and 2) the captain of the temple.

Many other passages in the New Testament’s book of Acts tell the same story about the priesthood’s leadership over Israel in all matters religious and judicial.^[61] According to the New Testament, the institutional religious authorities over the Jewish people in the first century were members of the Sanhedrin, many of whom were Sadducean priests. On a popular level, the Pharisees had won the hearts and minds of many of the people of Israel. Some of the Sanhedrin’s members were Pharisees, carrying some of the weight of that institution. However, according to the New Testament, the high priest outranked all other religious authorities as the leader of the Sanhedrin.

The Dead Sea Scrolls: Priestly Leadership from A Separatist Angle

For the final group of Second Temple sources about the priestly leadership of Israel, I will turn to the Qumran community that produced the Dead Sea Scrolls. The scrolls produced by this community date between the third century BCE to the first century CE—that is, during the Second Temple period, before the destruction of the temple. The extensive surviving sources reveal that this community deeply valued the role of the priesthood.

The Qumran sect, often identified with the Essenes, lived near the Dead Sea as a separatist community of religious Jews. In several cryptic passages, they tell the story of how they came to be. In a key passage in a scroll called Pesher Habakkuk (1QpHab Col. viii:10-13), they explain their opposition to a “Wicked Priest:”

…the Wicked Priest… was called loyal at the start of his office. However, when he ruled over Israel his heart became proud, he deserted God and betrayed the laws for the sake of riches. And he robbed and hoarded wealth from the violent men who had rebelled against God. And he seized public money, incurring additional serious sin. And he performed repulsive acts by every type of defiling impurity.^[62]

Many scholars identify this “Wicked Priest” as the Hasmonean high priest Jonathan Maccabeus (died 142 BCE) or perhaps Jonathan’s brother Simon. In any case, this high priest “ruled over Israel” and acted in ways that brought scandal and disrepute to his office. In response, the Qumran community separated themselves from the Hasmonean high priests in Jerusalem and built their own separatist society in the Judean desert.^[63]

Although the Qumran community opposed the high priest’s actions, they indirectly affirmed that the high priest was the religious head over Israel; the Qumran sect’s opposition to the high priest was not based on rejecting his office. Scholars VanderKam and Schofield underscore this point:

While the community opposed Hasmonean ruler-priests, there is no surviving indication that they considered them genealogically unfit for the high priesthood. And since we know that the community was concerned about legitimacy, they probably would have mentioned the matter if they thought the Hasmoneans were genealogically illegitimate for the high priesthood. The fault of the Wicked Priest at least was his violation of God’s law and thus his hostility to the [community’s] Teacher.^[64]

Because of their opposition to the corrupt high priest, the Qumran community reconstituted their own society and structured it according to their vision of the Torah. According to one of their writings, the Damascus Document, the community operated under a hierarchy as follows: “The priests first, the Levites second, the children of Israel third, and the proselyte fourth.”^[65] The following passage illustrates the community’s understanding of a holy hierarchy—with the priesthood at the top—that was instituted by God:

[Community members] shall act in this way year after year, all the days of Belial’s dominion. The priests shall enter in order foremost, one behind the other, according to their spirits. And the levites shall enter after them. In third place all the people shall enter in order, one after another, in thousands, hundreds, fifties and tens, so that each Israelite may know his standing in God’s Community in conformity with an eternal plan. And no-one shall move down from his rank nor move up from the place of his lot.^[66]

Other passages in the Damascus Document and other Dead Sea writings illustrate a similar social and religious hierarchy.^[67]

In another Dead Sea Community writing, the Rule of the Community, it was not merely honorific to have the priests at the head of the hierarchy, but rather was reflective of their jurisdiction as the leaders of the community. For example, in the following section we learn that the priestly sons of Aaron had authority in judgment and community supplies:

The men of the Community shall set apart a holy house for Aaron, in order to form a most holy community, and a house of the Community for Israel, those who walk in perfection. Only the sons of Aaron will have authority in the matter of judgment and of goods, and their word will settle the lot of all provision for the men of the Community and the goods of the men of holiness who walk in perfection.^[68]

For the Dead Sea Community, it was critical to always have a priest or Levite present to head communities. For example, in the Damascus Document, if a group of ten men happen to live outside the community in a camp, the ten men must make sure that a priest or a Levite is among them to exercise authority according to the community’s standards.^[69]

In another important Dead Sea Community writing, the Temple Scroll, the priests’ jurisdiction extended to matters of legal judgment in court:

If a false witness should stand up against a man to accuse him of wrongdoing, the two men between whom there is the litigation shall stand before me, and before the priests and the levites, and before the judges who will be there on those days; and the judges shall investigate.^[70]

The Temple Scroll also confirms the priests’ role in the high court when a new Israelite king ascends the throne:

[T]welve princes of his people shall be with him [the king], and twelve priests and twelve levites, who shall sit together with him for judgment and for the law. And he shall not rise his heart above them nor shall he do anything in all his councils outside of them.^[71]

This passage makes clear that the king’s authority is subject to the authority of his high council, a court that is comprised of twelve princes, twelve priests, and twelve Levites.

Each of these passages from the Dead Sea Scrolls illustrate how the Qumran community saw the Levitical priesthood as the pinnacle of their society. Their priests were the religious, judicial, and cultic heads of their community, and the community subjected even the secular authority of the king to the priests’ and Levites’ authority. As religious separatists who were rebelling against the priestly establishment in Jerusalem, the Qumran community did not replace the priesthood with another class of leaders. They were purists who sought to observe Torah better than the Wicked Priest, reconstituting an ideal Israelite society, with priests and Levites at the head. These Qumran texts provide evidence of the importance of the Levitical priesthood in the first century, as well as the priests’ range of religious and legal jurisdiction.

Two Competing Narratives: The Tannaim Versus All Other Sources

I have surveyed many Jewish accounts about who had the highest legal, judicial, halakhic, and teaching authority during the era before the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 CE. I have noted two incompatible narratives in these accounts:

Table 4 — Incompatible Narratives About Israel’s Religious Leadership

On the left side of the table are accounts written by people who lived during the time of the Second Temple. They claimed to be reporting what was normal for Jewish life and religious authority during the time of the temple. Each contemporary and eyewitness report says that the high priest was the supreme religious and legal leader over Israel, and other priests had roles in leading the people. These priests are often described as being members of the high court known as the Sanhedrin. This is the first historical narrative.

However, there is a second historical narrative that appears for the first time in the written record in the Mishnah, after the destruction of the temple, ca. 200 CE. According to the Mishnah’s recollection as mentioned in Avot, the priests are not mentioned as leaders in the temple era. Instead, we are told that the Pharisees in the unbroken chain of tradition were the religious and legal authorities over Israel—even the leaders of the Sanhedrin—before 70 CE.

There is a serious historical discrepancy between the two sides of the table. Who has the history right? Who had ultimate Jewish religious authority before 70 CE: the high priests or the sages’ Pharisaic predecessors? Or both?

Before I can provide a convincing answer to that question, I first need to review the accounts that discuss the priesthood’s corruption in the Second Temple period.

The Corruption of the Priesthood, and Israel’s Options in Response

So far, this article has discussed the priesthood from two primary angles: 1) Does the Torah prescribe that Israel have a high priest at the head of the nation?, and 2) Did Israel actually have a high priest at the head of the nation during the Second Temple period? However, a third question that has remained mostly unaddressed is 3) Were there credible reasons for challenging the authority of the high priest, irrespective of the Torah and history? The answer to this third question, as with the others, appears to be yes.

Many Jewish people in the first century—including Pharisees, Jewish believers in Jesus, and the Qumran community—had reason to believe that the priesthood had become corrupt. Each party agreed upon the problem, but their solution to the priesthood’s corruption differed.

Israeli historian Gedalyahu Alon writes about the corruption of the high priesthood during the first century.^[72] He uncovers the multiple Jewish and Christian sources that claim the high priesthood degenerated into an office that was bought and sold for money. The biblical succession of priesthood from father to son was abolished, the high priesthood changed hands as often as yearly, and people without high priestly stock unjustifiably gained the office.

Moreover, there were doctrinal, philosophical, and political differences between the high priests and the other groups in question. The Sadducees were often accused of being too Hellenized and politically subservient to Rome. They also denied the existence of angels and the resurrection from the dead (Acts 23:8).

Second Temple scholar Gottlob Schrenk writes,

By the time of Jesus this confusion had broken the influence of the high-priest beyond repair, and political caprice, assisted by simony and competition, and the growing power of the scribes and Pharisees in the cultus and the Sanhedrin, had further undermined it. Nevertheless, the high-priest was still the supreme religious representative of the Jewish people.^[73]

The final years of the high priesthood before the Romans captured Jerusalem (67–70 CE) are an example of how dishonorable the office had become. According to Josephus, while the Romans besieged Jerusalem, the high priesthood became a political pawn during a Jewish civil war. The succession of high priests was annulled, and whoever had the most power appointed “unknown and ignoble persons” for the high priesthood so “they might have their assistance in their wicked undertakings” (Wars 4.147–48). Josephus lamented that the final high priest, Phannias, was elevated to his post by the randomness of lot, and that he did not even know what the high priesthood was. This weak man took the orders of whoever pushed him the most. Josephus writes, “This horrid piece of wickedness was sport and pastime with them, but occasioned the other priests, who at a distance saw their law made a jest of, to shed tears, and sorely lament the dissolution of such a sacred dignity” (Wars, 4.157).

Given the Priesthood’s Corruption, What Were Israel’s Options?

It appears undeniable that the priesthood fell into disrepute during the first century CE. If the priesthood was supposed to be Israel’s central religious institution, and it had become corrupt, what were Torah-driven Jewish people to do about the situation? In this section, I consider several options, including reformation, reconstitution, subversion, transcendence, and replacement.

Reformation of the Priesthood Through the Priests’ Repentance

Perhaps one might think that the solution for fixing the priesthood would be the priesthood’s repentance. If the priesthood was corrupt, then it needed to be purified. It could then be reformed as a purified body for Israel’s leadership. Perhaps a new Ezra or Josiah could arise and call the priesthood to repent for their sins of commission and omission. The priesthood’s repentance could then bring about a period of religious reformation. In the New Testament, John the Baptist represents this approach (Matt 3:7–12).

This is a beautiful and biblical ideal, but one that does not always work. Corruption is not easily rooted out from those who are corrupt, especially when doctrine, politics, and money are on the line. The human heart is stubborn, and often refuses to change. When one makes a call for someone to repent and it is unheeded, it is easy to lose hope that reformation will ever occur.

Reconstitution of the Ideal Society in Exile

If a Jewish person lost hope that the priesthood would repent of their corrupt ways, but still believed in the institution, then reconstitution may have been an attractive option. By separating from the Jerusalem establishment and reconstituting a priesthood in exile, so to speak, one could rebuild a just Jewish society that could one day be transferred to Jerusalem itself.

This was the option taken by the Qumran community. They accepted the institution of the priesthood, but not the current Jerusalem-based priests, so they moved into the desert to prepare an ideal Jewish society. Because of their death or exile by the hands of the Romans, they never had the chance to fulfill their vision.

Transcending the Priesthood’s Authority with a Greater Priesthood

If the priesthood was corrupt and had fallen short of God’s standards, then perhaps a Jewish person could find a religious authority whose power exceeded that of the priesthood. While understandable in principle, this option has inherent problems, since the priesthood was established as the head of the nation by God himself in the Torah (Deut 16—17). Who has more religious authority than the priesthood? Two answers come to mind: Moses and God himself. These are unsatisfying solutions, however, because all parties involved—priests, Sadducees, Pharisees and the rest—all claimed to follow both Moses and God. Moses, or a prophet—or perhaps God himself—would need to come and assert authority over the priesthood.

Despite these obstacles, the early Jewish followers of Jesus proclaimed that they had found a religious authority whose power exceeded that of the priesthood: Yeshua of Nazareth, the Son of God. Although Yeshua did not have Levitical heritage (Heb 7:14), the early Messianic Jews compared Yeshua to a different kind of priest: Melchizedek, the priest of God who ministered to Abraham (Gen 14:18). Like the Levitical priests, Yeshua offered up a sacrifice to God for the atonement of the sins of Israel, but unlike the Levites he offered up his own life. By virtue of his resurrection from the dead, he proved his divine authority and his power over sin and death.

One of these early Messianic Jews wrote,

For it was indeed fitting that we should have such a high priest, holy, innocent, unstained, separated from sinners, and exalted above the heavens. [Yeshua] has no need, like those high priests, to offer sacrifices daily, first for his own sins and then for those of the people, since he did this once for all when he offered up himself. For the law appoints men in their weakness as high priests, but the word of the oath, which came later than the law, appoints a Son who has been made perfect forever (Hebrews 7:26–28).

If Yeshua’s priestly authority was ratified by God through resurrection, then Israel could follow Yeshua as high priest, even as God himself. This option did not erase or delegitimize the Levitical priesthood, but made the Levitical priesthood secondary to the greater authority of Yeshua. When the destruction of 70 CE came, these Messianic Jews claimed they continued to have a living high priest.

Subversion Through Popular Appeal

If the priesthood would not repent of their corrupt ways, then one might seek after ways to undermine the priesthood’s power by making priests unnecessary for Jewish life. This appears to be the strategy taken by the Pharisees in the years preceding the destruction of 70 CE. By teaching the people the Torah directly, the Pharisees found popular support and drove a wedge between themselves and the priestly establishment.

According to Josephus, the Pharisees “are those who are esteemed most skillful in the exact explication of their laws”^[74] and “have the multitude on their side”^[75]—both of which would come at the expense of popular support for the priesthood. Josephus also speaks of personally mingling with “the high priests and the chief of the Pharisees,”^[76] thereby referring to the heads of two power structures. In another account, he highlights the religious politics of having both priests and Pharisees in resolving disputes.^[77] Given enough time, the Pharisees could have so subverted the priesthood’s reputation and authority that they could have installed their own Pharisaic priests, or usurped their institution completely.

Replacement of the Priesthood’s Authority and Functions

The more one succeeded in undermining the authority of the priesthood, the more one might consider doing away with the institution in total. This would create a power vacuum in which a new religious authority could build a new institution for Jewish life.

There is no evidence that anyone attempted to replace the institution of the priesthood before 70 CE. Jews who were frustrated by the priesthood attempted the previous solutions rather than overt abolishment of the priesthood. However, the historical events of 70 CE appeared to be God’s opinion on the matter; while no Jews had previously sought to abolish the priesthood, God himself appeared to do so through the Romans in 70 CE.

Given the Jerusalem priesthood’s destruction in 70 CE, the survivors could have revisited one of the other options. They could have appealed to righteous Levites and priests in the Diaspora to lead the nation. Or, they could have found any surviving Levitical Essenes to reconstitute the priesthood according to their purified vision. Or, they could have recognized Yeshua’s transcending authority and followed him as high priest. These are options Israel could have taken, and some did. However, the majority of the Jewish people opted to replace the priesthood as a whole with a new institution: the rabbinic sages.

Evidence of the Struggles Against the Priesthood’s Authority

Sometimes it is said that the priesthood disappeared with the destruction of the temple in 70 CE, and because of their disappearance, there was a smooth—even inevitable—transition to a rabbinic form of leadership in the years that followed.^[78] This narrative is questionable for two reasons. First, the Levitical priests did not disappear after the destruction of the Second Temple any more than they disappeared after the First Temple. The continued presence of Jewish people alive today with priestly heritage (with last names Cohen, Kahan, Cohn, and the like) illustrates how the priestly class survived into the Roman exile. Second, there are historical records of controversy between the priests and the rabbis in the centuries after 70 CE, as I will show below. This was no simple or inevitable transition.

Before citing rabbinic and archaeological material that illustrates the controversy, let us first consider Josephus’s opinions after the temple was destroyed. The Jewish historian was a supporter of the priesthood after the destruction of the temple and after Rome had extinguished the priests’ institutional power. In Against Apion, which he wrote at least twenty-five years after the Sanhedrin had been dismantled (ca. 95 CE), Josephus still wanted the priesthood to reign as Israel’s spiritual authority. Despite the catastrophe, Josephus still believed that there was no better government than the priesthood established by God.^[79] He claimed that the priests had preserved the Scriptures with “utmost accuracy,” and that the priests would continue in that role despite the changed circumstances.^[80] In Josephus’s mind, the destruction of the temple in 70 CE did not justify changing the priests’ religious authority over an exiled Israel.

Turning to the rabbinic traditions of the post-temple era, I find that the priesthood became something for the Tannaim to separate themselves from and cast scorn on. In several Tannaitic passages (m. Middoth 5:4; t. Hagigah 2:9), the Pharisaic-led Sanhedrin judged the priesthood during the time of the temple. Rabbinics scholar David Instone-Brewer comments,

The later Sages liked to believe that the priests respected their predecessors’ superior knowledge and obeyed them… E.g in t.Kipp.1.8: “they forced [the High Priest] to swear [to obey the Sages]”; b.Yom.19b: “the father [of a priest who disobeyed the Sages] met him [and] said to him: My son, although we follow the Sadducees we fear the Pharisees”; m.Yom.1.6: “If [the High Priest] was a sage, he expounds [the Scriptures], and if not, disciples of sages expound for him; if he was used to reading [Scriptures], he read, and if not, they read for him.”^[81]

Furthermore, in Yerushalmi tractate Sanhedrin, it is claimed that a priest who denies the authority of scribes and rabbis is compared to atheist Epicureans (y. Sanhedrin 10:1). The Tannaim comment that the priest’s negative attitude against the rabbis is comparable to taking a stone out from the bottom of a pile: Presumably, such unbelief about the rabbis’ authority leads to the collapse of Judaism’s structure.

The purpose of these passages is to assert the superiority of the rabbinic sages in the face of a Levitical priesthood that is still claiming the right to lead. The Mishnah records that the priests continued in their service after the destruction of the temple,^[82] but before long, the rabbis were teaching that Torah scholarship exceeds any priestly and royal authority.^[83] The sages claimed that even if a mamzer^[84] or idolater^[85] studies the Torah, he is equivalent to the high priest. This teaching exalts the student of low estate but makes the high priest superfluous. As the self-appointed Torah experts, the Tannaim sought to make the priests unnecessary.

The Tannaim eventually won this controversy and shut down the active priesthood, possibly by dismissing the Torah’s requirements to support Levites with tithes.^[86] Messianic Jewish scholar Stuart Dauermann comments on the rabbis supplanting of the priests in matters of tithing,

The rabbis supplanted the priests in financial matters as well. Especially in Babylon, they proposed that they and their colleagues should henceforth be regarded as the rightful recipients of the financial benefits formerly accorded genetic priests. [Stuart] Cohen points out how in Babylon, the rabbis sought and attained immunity from taxation formerly reserved for priests. They felt entitled to this exemption, because they held that their studies provided divine protection against communal calamity.^[87]

Although the rabbinic sages eventually defeated the Levitical priesthood for religious authority after the destruction of the temple, scholars have discovered that the sages’ victory may have taken much longer than previously understood. One of the chief evidences of this long process is the institution of the synagogue in the centuries after 70 CE. Lee Levine of Hebrew University investigates the interaction between the rabbis and the synagogue through the sixth century CE and states, “It has become clear that the rabbis did not control this institution.”^[88] The evidence he cites includes:

Instead of the rabbis having authority over synagogues during the centuries after 70 CE, Levine concludes that the rabbis were friendly with the institution but did not come to rule over the synagogues until the period of Muslim rule in the Middle Ages.^[92] Dauermann concurs with this timeline: “By the seventh century, in both Israel and Babylon, rabbinic patterns of thought and rabbinic institutions of scholarship and justice had influenced every aspect of Jewish life.”^[93] Thus, not only did the rabbis need to contend for their authority over the priests in this period, but they also had to contend for their control of the synagogues.

In this survey of the battle for religious authority before and after the destruction of Jerusalem, I have found much evidence that the office of the priesthood was under direct attack by the tannaitic sages. Eventually, the Tannaim would win the battle, and the priests and Levites would no longer retain popular legitimacy as Israel’s Torah teachers and judges—most likely because the center and symbol of their life—the temple—had been destroyed and because the priest’s reputation had been declining for centuries. These struggles illustrate how the Tannaim were not impartial observers of the priests’ loss of religious authority. Instead, they were actively in favor of demoting the priests’ stature in Jewish religious life. Their motive for demoting the priests was not reformation, reconstitution, or transcendence, but rather to replace the priests with themselves.

Attempted Solutions to the Conflicting Histories of the Sanhedrin’s Leadership

The discrepancy between the two sides of the table was unknown to outsiders for centuries, mainly because it required crossing a divide between Jewish and Christian libraries, languages, and traditions that were unknown to the other side. For many centuries, Jewish scholars studied only rabbinic sources, and Gentile Christians lacked knowledge of rabbinic works—not even knowing much of anything about Jewish oral law.^[94]

On top of this, there has been a historical language divide. Most of the sources that narrated the priests’ power were written in Greek, whereas the rabbinic sources that elevated the Pharisees were written in Hebrew and Aramaic. After roughly the third century CE, with a few exceptions,^[95] it was rare for a Gentile to read Hebrew and rare for a Jewish person to read Greek. Once this language divide was in place, the Mishnah was not compared to other sources because doing so required cross-disciplinary, cross-lingual, and cross-religious skills that few scholars had.

Today, the situation is different. Each of the relevant sources about the Sanhedrin has been translated into other languages, including English. They are available in digital form in software and on the internet. Now, anyone can compare these sources that come from seemingly opposite worlds.

Today, cross-disciplinary scholars abound in Second Temple Judaism studies, so modern scholars have noted the discrepancy about the Sanhedrin between the Mishnah and other Jewish works.^[96] However, the predicament has mostly remained within the walls of academia. Few Orthodox Jews know that there is a different historical narrative than what they have been taught, and few Christians would think it conceivable that someone other than the high priest could be the leader of the Sanhedrin.

Some Jewish scholars, however, have noticed the problem. As mentioned at the opening of this article, Emil Hirsch, in the Jewish Encyclopedia, noted a century ago, “The high priest was the presiding officer of the Sanhedrin. This view conflicts with the later Jewish tradition according to which the Pharisaic Tannaim at the head of the academies presided over the great Sanhedrin also (Hag. 2:2).”^[97] Hugo Mantel, in the Encyclopedia Judaica, wrote, “Another aspect of the conflict between the sources is that, whereas the tannaitic documents represent the Sanhedrin as being composed of Pharisaic scholars, headed by the foremost men of the sect – the nasi and av bet din – the Hellenistic accounts usually make the high priest, or the king, the president of the body.”^[98]

In Orthodox Judaism, Option 1 is preferred: The Zugot had religious authority. But is this the most plausible solution that explains the available evidence? Is there any plausibility to the two synthesizing solutions (Options 2 and 3)? Or, perhaps, should one trust the claims of those Jewish documents that were penned while the temple still stood (Option 4)?

Evaluating the Solutions of the Conflicting Sources

In this section, I will consider each of the four options presented above. Which solution has the most historical, textual, biblical, and rational support?

Option 1: The Pharisees of the Unbroken Chain of Tradition as Leaders of the Sanhedrin

The traditional Jewish position is Option 1: The Zugot in the chain of tradition were the leaders of the Sanhedrin before 70 CE. This is the natural position to hold if one takes the Mishnah (Pirke Avot 1–2, Hagigah 2:2) at its word. A belief in a Pharisaic or rabbinic-controlled Sanhedrin makes sense only when one limits oneself to reading the Mishnah and Gemara and not the Second Temple sources.

A major downside to this position is its inability to explain why all the other Jewish sources of the period say something different. Why do Jewish and Gentile sources outside of the Mishnah say that the high priest was the leader of the Sanhedrin during the Second Temple period? A position that depicts Hillel and Shammai as controlling the Sanhedrin (m. Hagigah 2:2) must explain why others claimed the high priest had that role during the same time in question.

If one accepts the Mishnah and ignores all other evidence at one’s disposal, then this is a biased and selective approach to discovering what happened during the Second Temple period. The reports outside the Mishnah and Gemara are credible Jewish reports of the Sanhedrin’s leadership structure, and they are often just as religious in character as the sages themselves.

An exposure to the wide realm of Jewish life and experience in the Second Temple period should lead to the end of Option 1 as being intellectually credible. In order to sustain the ultimate authority of the Zugot over the authority of the priests, one would have to postulate a vast conspiracy theory—across many centuries—whereby Jews in the land and diaspora colluded to invent that the priesthood was Israel’s top religious authority. For what purpose would Philo, Matthew, Josephus, Luke, and the authors of the books of the Maccabees all invent the authority of the priesthood? Such a fabrication would gain them nothing.

I can believe Option 1 only if I ignore Second Temple evidence. This only works for people who have been exposed to a limited number of firsthand Jewish historical accounts from the period.

Options 2 and 3: Attempts to Synthesize Priestly and Rabbinic Control

Some Jewish scholars have attempted to synthesize all the sources, thereby concluding that each is correct in its own way. If one set of sources said the Pharisees controlled the Sanhedrin, and another set said that priests controlled the Sanhedrin, there is no problem. Options 2 and 3 solve the discrepancy by saying that both the Pharisees and the high priests controlled the Sanhedrin, but in different realms, at different levels, or at different times.

Some have sought to find solutions by proposing a difference between gerousia, boule, and synedrion, all Greek terms for a Jewish ruling council, but this has been unsuccessful.^[102] Others have sought to segment cultic authority (that is, matters pertaining to sacrifice and the temple) from halakhic or religious authority.^[103] The reasoning is that the priests were the administrators of the temple who performed the divine worship and the sacrifices, and they were the authorities over that realm; but outside of the temple, the Pharisees, such as Hillel and Shammai, held legal authority in the Sanhedrin.

Unfortunately, the distinction between “halakhic” and “cultic” realms is not present in the Second Temple Jewish sources. The sources indeed say that the high priest was the top legal judge in the Judean legal system, which encompassed all of Jewish life, not just cultic procedures in the temple.^[104] For example, the following non-cultic roles are assigned to the high priest (or the priesthood in general) by the contemporary sources:

Thus, solutions which define the priesthood’s realm narrowly—as if they were only authorities over the temple and its sacrifices—are not supported by the Second Temple evidence. The priesthood in general, and the high priest in particular, had authority in categories often assigned in later centuries to rabbis: teaching Torah, judging on halakhic matters in court, and acting as custodians of the written Torah text.

Likewise, some have tried to segment the Sanhedrin into two bodies: a secular Sanhedrin (run by the priests) and a religious Sanhedrin (run by the Pharisees). Unfortunately, any synthesizing solutions which attempt to restrict the high priesthood’s realm of authority lack Second Temple evidence in their favor. Scholars Douglas Mangum and Vasile Babota comment on the artificiality of dividing up the Sanhedrin:

Scholars have attempted to explain the variety in the evidence by postulating two or more official councils. The most common division is the theory of two Sanhedrins: a political one concerned with secular issues and a religious one concerned with issues of religious law. This division, however, is artificial and unlikely, based on a modern distinction between secular and religious facets of life. In ancient Jewish society, religion and politics were thoroughly woven into the fabric of Jewmish daily life. There was no distinction between civil, criminal, and religious matters, and the same high council likely dealt with all of them.^[105]

Biblical scholar Craig Evans concurs:

Scholars have debated the origin, function, and even number of Sanhedrin bodies that existed in the Second Temple period (for a survey, see Mantel 1961). S. B. Hoenig (1953), for example, argues for three Sanhedrins consisting of political, priestly, and scribal councils, the last constituting the so-called Great Sanhedrin. But this complicated hypothesis relies too heavily on rabbinic traditions that in all probability have indulged in midrashic hagiography and tend to read rabbinic ideals back into earlier periods.^[106]

In general, the problem with the synthesizing solutions is that they have no positive evidence in their favor. For example, the Second Temple accounts never once mention Hillel and Shammai and describe no national office—besides the high priesthood—whereby the Zugot could have had institutional religious leadership. Hillel and Shammai may have been religious leaders within the Pharisaic sect (according to the Mishnah), but there is no Second Temple era, non-Mishnaic evidence that they had institutional leadership over Israel’s Sanhedrin—or any lesser governing body with national influence. Likewise, according to the New Testament, the Pharisees were popular Torah teachers, some of whom sat on the Sanhedrin. But none of the Pharisees retained national religious authority that approaches the Mishnah’s claims.

The opposite problem occurs in the Mishnah. The tannaitic traditions give no national authority to the high priest in any realm. According to the Mishnah (m. Kippurim 1:1, 1:3), the sages even instruct the high priest on how to perform sacrificial duties! It would appear that the Tannaim claimed authority over the priesthood even in matters relating to the temple.

Thus, Options 2 and 3 are creative solutions that appear to solve the discrepancy, but the solutions are only theoretical, mere conjectures in the minds of individual scholars. Artificial solutions that disagree with both narratives ought not be considered credible.

Unfortunately, while the synthesizing positions try to make all the sources fit, they do not rest on good historical foundations. While Options 2 and 3 may be possible, they are unlikely to have been the reality on the ground.

Option 4: The High Priest was the Leader of the Sanhedrin

Consider the possibility that the following scenarios are true:

If these scenarios are true, then we satisfy the claims of the sources we have from the Second Temple period and we have explained why the Mishnah disagrees with all the other sources. Of course, this position runs into direct conflict with the claims of the Mishnah.

Below, I will explain why a rejection of the Mishnah’s origin narrative of rabbinic authority over priestly authority is the best solution that honors the historical evidence.

Five Reasons to Reject the Mishnah’s Origin Narrative of Rabbinic Authority

When assessing the evidence from a historian’s perspective, there are at least five reasons why we ought to reject the historical narrative presented in Pirke Avot and Hagigah concerning Israel’s religious leadership.

A key principle of historical research is to place the highest value upon contemporary written reports of historical events, often called “primary sources.” These types of sources are often written by eyewitnesses or those who are in direct contact with eyewitnesses. One example of a primary source would be an autobiography by a Holocaust survivor.

By contrast, “secondary” and “tertiary” sources are not written by eyewitnesses and are often written much later than the event in question. Later written reports, especially by those who were not eyewitnesses, are of lesser historical value. In contrast to the example above, a secondary source about the Holocaust would be a book written about the Holocaust in 1990 by a researcher who did not live through the catastrophe. The quality of the researcher’s book would be dependent upon how many primary sources he or she employed in the book’s narrative.

Lesser-value reports would also include those that are based on oral tradition that supposedly reaches much further into the past. This judgment is not an indictment of oral tradition in general, but rather a reflection about how oral tradition can morph and change into false reporting over the generations, whereas a written report remains fixed. For example, if a historian is given an oral report about an event that happened in 50 CE, but it was not written down for centuries later, and was also given a written report about that same event that was written in 60 CE, then the historian will place more emphasis on the latter, especially where the two accounts conflict.

The Mishnaic accounts were not written down until roughly 200 CE, that is, a century after the destruction of the Sanhedrin, and hundreds of years after the time of the Zugot. This is not necessarily a problem, since they could have employed now-lost primary written sources, and accurate historical information may be passed orally for generations. The Mishnah likely does include many accurate recollections of pre-70 Jewish life and halakhah. However, a historian will emphasize a contemporary Second Temple source over the Mishnah’s accounts wherever the two sources conflict. This principle places the Mishnah in a secondary position by default, and leaves it open to a higher degree of suspicion.

When scholars go searching for Second Temple evidence of Pharisaic Zugot like Hillel and Shammai as leaders of Israel through a national Sanhedrin in charge of halakhah, they find nothing. Astonishingly, they do not find any mentions of persons named Hillel and Shammai anywhere in contemporary accounts—not even the comprehensive Josephus—only in the writings of the later second-century sages.^[107] There are some minor references to other Zugot, like Menachem and Shemaiah, but they are indeed minor references, and these men do not seem to have had a widespread influence on Jewish life, halakhah, or the judiciary during their lifetimes.

If, however, the men in the chain were not actually the leaders of the Sanhedrin, then it would explain why they were not mentioned in Second Temple accounts. Their religious influence, their schools of thought, and their personal gravitas were not widespread enough to catch the attention of the Jewish chroniclers of the era. Hillel and Shammai, for example, could have been influential Pharisaic leaders, but they did not hold any institutional or national authority. Their lack of this influence is reflected in their absence from the contemporary records.

By contrast, Second Temple reports describe the high priests as the leaders of the Sanhedrin. Their range of jurisdiction included categories that are assigned to the rabbis in the Mishnah: The high priests sat on courts, judged the people, and taught the Torah, in addition to their well-known cultic duties in the Temple. The Mishnah was already in a less-privileged position based on its 200 CE writing date, and now the historical principle explained above leads to the invalidation of the Mishnah’s historical recollection.

Israeli historian Gedalyahu Alon investigates the controversy between the priests and the rabbis and writes the following comment:

We have examined a number of sources in the Tannaitic and Amoraic tradition relative to the High Priests at the close of the Second Temple period, and we have seen that they all adopt a censorious attitude towards the High Priesthood, which they regard as essentially Hellenized…[W]e cannot in all instances treat them as historic testimony, nevertheless many of the statements are undoubtedly historically correct. And as for the others, where the sources are divergent, we must bear in mind that even they reflect socio-political conditions of substance, even though in their form and expression they cannot be substantiated.^[108]

In this quote, Abrahams gives some credit to a few of the sages’ historical claims but concludes that most of them cannot be trusted as accurate historical recollections. He distances himself from the historical claims of the Mishnah in this case since they cannot be historically validated. There may be a generalized sense in which they are true, but in “form and expression” they are historically false.

The Mishnah includes an accurate historical recollection that the Pharisees were an influential school of Judaism in the first century. The Mishnah’s claims in this generalized, abstract regard may be verified by the contemporary accounts. Yes, the Pharisees were well-respected teachers of Torah for centuries before the destruction of Jerusalem. The New Testament and Josephus are especially agreed on the Pharisees’ presence and popularity.

However, the influence of the Pharisees over all matters of Jewish life pre-70 CE, including matters related to the temple and priesthood, have been greatly exaggerated, according to Second Temple Judaism scholar E.P. Sanders.^[109] The Pharisees were a populist group of observant Jews with an oral tradition that they taught to others, but they were only one popular sect among several vying for influence over Jewish people’s hearts and minds.

Second-century Jewish society could have chosen to rehabilitate the surviving Levitical priesthood and return it to a place of honor, but they chose not to do so. Even without the temple and the sacrifices, the surviving priests and Levites (whether in the Diaspora or surviving from Judea) could have emphasized their role as the Torah-appointed teachers of Torah and the judges of Israel, just as they had done after the First Temple’s destruction. This, however, did not happen after 70 CE. Instead, the Tannaitic sages—who were not required to be cohanim or Levites—arose to function in those roles.

The rise of the Tannaim into the role of Israel’s Torah experts and judges came at the expense of Levitical power, and we have every reason to believe that the Tannaim wanted this result.

As described above, the sages of the Mishnah were in a centuries-long power struggle with the Levitical priesthood, with the future of Israel’s religious leadership at stake. The Mishnah’s recollection of history without priestly authority was one of the ideological weapons used to delegitimize the priests’ claims to power in the second century.

Rabbinic scholar Gary Porton writes, “Yohanan’s [ben Zakkai] ritual innovations and his disagreements with the priesthood place the rabbinic usurpation of priestly prerogatives at the very inception of the rabbinic movement.”^[110] Philip Alexander, a British professor of post-biblical Jewish literature, writes that after 70 CE, “the priests were in direct competition with the rabbis, whose authority rested solely on their expertise in the law.”^[111] He continues,

The key difference between the rabbis and the priests, then, was not about the centrality of the [T]orah, but about who had the authority to interpret it. The priests were on very strong ground, because the [T]orah clearly assigned the task to them, not to the scribes. It may have been to try to counter this that the rabbinate developed the fiction of the Oral Torah, which tried to trace rabbinic tradition back to Sinai, and give it the same status as the Written Torah.^[112]

As seen in these quotations, the sages sought to delegitimize the priesthood, and one of their favored methods for doing so was to transfer the priestly functions to themselves. Such a transfer may have made sense in a post-temple era when the priesthood was in disrepute, but it did not have any basis in the Torah or Jewish tradition up to that point.

The corruption of the priesthood during the first century, and the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 CE as the perceived judgment upon their corruption, could plausibly explain the motive of a second-century sage to distance himself from the priests’ authority in his everyday life. However, the motive to distance oneself from the priesthood in the present does not adequately explain why one would replace the priesthood’s authority in the past.

The situation could be likened to the following. If one believes that the office of the United States presidency has become horribly corrupt, then one might seek to delegitimize the office by promoting a new form of government, such as a British-style parliamentary system. However, this kind of advocacy would be different than seeking the delegitimization of the presidency itself by publishing textbooks saying that the top executive leader of the United States has always been a British-style prime minister. In that case, the memory of President George Washington could then be set aside, enabling a new narrative about the nation’s leadership to take root.

Pirke Avot and Hagigah did just that by claiming that the rabbis’ ideological ancestors, the Pharisees, were always Israel’s top leaders in the Sanhedrin, even though the high priest had been.

The rabbis of the Mishnah were the ideological heirs of the Pharisees and the Zugot mentioned in the chain of tradition. The rabbis saw the Zugot as their fathers. Consequently, the Tannaitic rabbis benefited by portraying the Zugot in a positive and important light, because it justified their own position as Israel’s religious authorities—in contradistinction to the priests.

This plausible motive leads modern scholars to disqualify the Mishnah’s historical claims about the Sanhedrin. In the Journal for the Study of Judaism, Lester Grabbe writes, “However, in the light of recent study there is no need to assume that the rabbinic picture is anything more than a later invention of rabbinic ideology, even if some of elements of a pre-70 body have been correctly remembered and incorporated into it.”^[113]

A century ago, biblical scholar and Reform rabbi Kaufmann Kohler summarized,

Henceforth [after 70 CE] Jewish life was regulated by the teachings of the Pharisees; the whole history of Judaism was reconstructed from the Pharisaic point of view, and a new aspect was given to the Sanhedrin of the past. A new chain of tradition supplanted the older, priestly tradition (Abot 1:1). Pharisaism shaped the character of Judaism and the life and thought of the Jew for all the future.^[114]

In his book on Pirke Avot, Reform rabbi Rami Shapiro considers the absence of the priests in Pirke Avot’s retelling of the history of Jewish authority. Why did the rabbis leave the priests out of the history? Shapiro comments,

The thousand-year reign of the central authority in Jewish life isn’t even given a passing nod. Why? Because the authors of Pirke Avot, the Pharisees, rooted in the lower and middle classes of Israel, are competing with the Sadducees, the priestly aristocracy, for the loyalty of the people, and the legitimacy of their teaching depends on the authenticity of their claim to be in the direct line of Torah transmission.^[115]

Likewise, Bible scholar David Maas considers the claims of the unbroken chain of tradition and suggests, “The fabrication of the Great Assembly may unveil a conscious justification for the rabbinic usurpation of the priesthood following the destruction of the temple in ad 70.”^[116]

As may be seen in these quotations, the claim of the unbroken chain of tradition does not carry much weight in contemporary scholarship, including Jewish scholars who have investigated the sources. The origin story of the Mishnah’s authority rests upon exaggerated or unhistorical foundations.

Conclusion: The Priesthood’s Missing Role in Judaism

In light of the historical evidence about the religious leadership of Israel pre-70 CE, and especially the claims about who was the top authority of the Sanhedrin, it is my conclusion that it is highly unlikely that the Mishnah’s chain of tradition is historically accurate. Instead, the Mishnah’s accounts are likely an attempt by second-century rabbis to establish religious legitimacy over a discredited priesthood in order to preserve temple traditions. The sages of the Mishnah knew that they had no continuous connection with Israel’s biblical authority structure—namely, the Aaronic priesthood or Levitical lineage—but they needed a pathway to justify their second-century position as the Torah teachers of an exiled nation that was yearning for answers and stability in an unstable age. A story that venerated the sages’ Pharisaic predecessors, and ignored the office of the priesthood, was a useful justification of their authority.

In accepting the authority that had previously been the prerogative of the Levitical priests, the Tannaim succeeded in transforming the power structure of Judaism and separated themselves from any who came before. Before their ascendancy, it was assumed within Judaism that Israel required a high priest as her religious head. This was only natural, as the Torah (Lev 10:8–11, Deut 33:10) and the Ketuvim (Mal 2:7, 2 Chr 19:8–11) and centuries of Jewish experience supported the role of priests as the teachers of Israel’s law and the judges in their courts. After the Mishnah and subsequent rabbinic works came to be widely accepted by Jews across the world, the venerable role of the priesthood in general, and the high priesthood in particular, fell into obscurity.

Today, the notion of a Jewish priest strikes many Jewish people as odd. However, a recovery of the concept of a Jewish priesthood may be helpful in one’s investigation into the person of Yeshua of Nazareth.^[117]

Yeshua of Nazareth, Israel’s Living High Priest

When did Hashem tell Israel that she was to cease having priests at the head of the nation? One could search the written Torah and the remainder of the Tanakh for an answer, and it will not be found. Moses established the priests, and no prophet or messenger from Hashem rescinded Moses’s instructions. Instead, the priests lost their role due to historical circumstance and the will of man.

That is not to deny that Hashem used the usurpation of the Tannaim for good purposes. In Hashem’s providence, the sages have been instruments for the preservation of the nation, as I discussed at the opening of this essay. However, the sages’ victory after 70 CE did not automatically make them Israel’s divinely-authorized leaders. Elevating the sages to the role of the priests subverted the authority of the Torah itself.

As we previously discussed, Israel had several options to deal with the corrupt and decimated priesthood in the years before and after 70 CE. Instead of replacing the Levites with themselves, the surviving Pharisees and their rabbinic successors could have called for a purification or reformation of the priesthood. They could have used their considerable influence to call the Levites back into holiness, and to elevate righteous Levites to places of Torah leadership and judicial righteousness within the nation. This would have honored the Torah and its instructions for Jewish religious institutional life.

However, an even better option presented itself forty years before the destruction of the Second Temple. Yeshua presented himself as Israel’s highest religious authority—Hashem in the flesh—and provided himself as a sacrifice for the nation, a role akin to Israel’s high priest. He bore a priesthood that was higher than the Levitical priesthood—one patterned off the priest Melchizedek (Gen 14; Heb 7). Through his resurrection, he proved his authority and identity and his exceeding power over all other human institutions, including the Sanhedrin and priesthood. By the 60s CE, tens of thousands of Jews in Jerusalem alone heeded his call to make him their king and high priest (Acts 21:20). This was the better solution to Israel’s corrupt leadership: following Yeshua, the righteous high priest of Israel.

This, however, the sages chose not to do. They transferred the priests’ roles to themselves—men who were not priests, and not Hashem in the flesh.

If the Torah is eternal in its application and a binding force, as is commonly accepted in Judaism, then the following description of the Levitical priests still holds true today: “They shall teach Jacob your rules and Israel your law” (Deut 33:10). The Mishnah denies both the letter and the spirit of this mitzvah.

By delegitimizing the Levitical priesthood, Jewish people often have a common attitude that is sometimes stated as, “Jews need no mediator to God.” The Torah begs to differ: All Israel needs a priest as her mediator to God.

A high priest as Israel’s religious head should remain foreign no longer. The priesthood’s role as Israel’s teacher of the Torah was never rescinded by Hashem; it still remains the command of the Torah. Although there are no cohanim today who are operating in the form and function as required by the Torah, Israel does have a high priest available to her today. As the author of Hebrews wrote two millennia ago about this high priest,

The former priests were many in number, because they were prevented by death from continuing in office, but [Yeshua] holds his priesthood permanently, because he continues forever. Consequently, he is able to save to the uttermost those who draw near to God through him, since he always lives to make intercession for them. For it was indeed fitting that we should have such a high priest, holy, innocent, unstained, separated from sinners, and exalted above the heavens. He has no need, like those high priests, to offer sacrifices daily, first for his own sins and then for those of the people, since he did this once for all when he offered up himself. (Heb 7:23–27)

By delegitimizing the authority of the priesthood, rabbinic Judaism has also delegitimized an essential category that Yeshua came to fulfill. He is Israel’s high priest today—the most righteous, holy, and honorable high priest Israel has ever had. We believe that Hashem removed the Levitical priesthood from its prominence in Israel in 70 CE to turn Israel’s attention to the greater high priest who performed a sacrifice for the benefit of the entire nation. However, unlike the Yom Kippurs of the Levitical priesthood, the greater high priest offered up his own life, out of love. As the death of the high priest atones for sin in the Torah (Numbers 35:25–29), so too the death of Yeshua, the heavenly high priest, atones for the whole world.

Bibliography

Alexander, Philip S. “What Happened To The Jewish Priesthood After 70?” In A Wandering Galilean: Essays in Honour of Seán Freyne, edited by Zuleika Rodgers, Margaret Daly-Denton, and Anne Fitzpatrick-McKinley, 3–33. Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill, 2009.

Alfonsi, Petrus. Dialogue Against the Jews. Translated by Irven M. Resnick. Fathers of the Church, Medieval Continuation 8. Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 2006.

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———. “Sanhedrin.” In The Eerdmans Dictionary of Early Judaism, edited by John J. Collins and Daniel C. Harlow, 1193–94. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2010.

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Zissu, Boaz, and Yuval Goren. “The Ossuary of ‘Miriam Daughter of Yeshua Son of Caiaphas, Priests [of] Maʻaziah from Beth ҆Imri.’” Israel Exploration Journal, no. 61 (2011): 74–95.

1. Emil G. Hirsch, “High Priest,” in The Jewish Encyclopedia, ed. Isidore Singer (New York, NY: Funk & Wagnalls, 1906), 6:393. ↑
2. m. Avot 1:1–2:8. Jacob Neusner, The Mishnah: A New Translation (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1988), 672–76. ↑
3. Neusner, 672–76. ↑
4. The historicity of this council is a topic of considerable dispute in academic literature, but the debate is not my concern for this article. ↑
5. Shulamis Frieman, Who’s Who in the Talmud (Northvale, NJ: Jason Aronson, 1995), xxix. ↑
6. Neusner, The Mishnah, 330. ↑
7. David Kantrowitz, ed., Mishnah, Judaic Classics DVD-ROM (Brooklyn, NY: Judaica Press, 2009). ↑
8. For confirmation of this from an Orthodox perspective, see entries for each man listed in Frieman, Who’s Who in the Talmud. From a Reform (liberal) perspective, see the entries for each man under The Jewish Encyclopedia. Also see Jewish Encyclopedia for “Nasi” and “Sanhedrin.” Also see Menachem Elon, Jewish Law: History, Sources, Principles = Ha-Mishpat Ha-Ivri, A Philip and Muriel Berman ed. (Philadelphia, PA: Jewish Publication Society, 1994), 41. ↑
9. Gerald Y. Blidstein and Isaac Levitats, “Nasi,” in Encyclopaedia Judaica, ed. Fred Skolnik and Michael Berenbaum (Detroit, MI: Macmillan Reference and Keter, 2007); Joseph Jacobs and Kaufmann Kohler, “Nasi,” in The Jewish Encyclopedia, ed. Isidore Singer (New York, NY: Funk & Wagnalls, 1906); Kaufmann Kohler, “Ab Bet Din,” in The Jewish Encyclopedia, ed. Isidore Singer (New York, NY: Funk & Wagnalls, 1906); Hugo Mantel, “Sanhedrin,” in Encyclopaedia Judaica, ed. Fred Skolnik and Michael Berenbaum (Detroit, MI: Macmillan Reference and Keter, 2007). ↑
10. Also see Jacob Neusner, First-Century Judaism in Crisis: Yoḥanan Ben Zakkai and the Renaissance of Torah, Augmented Edition (Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock Publishers, 2006), 82–88. ↑
11. Jacob Neusner, From Politics to Piety: The Emergence of Pharisaic Judaism, Second Edition (Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock Publishers, 2003), 13. ↑
12. For a recent study of the Pharisees from multiple scholars, see Joseph Sievers and Amy-Jill Levine, eds., The Pharisees (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2021). ↑
13. Antiquities 13.171–73. Roland Deines, “Pharisees,” in The Eerdmans Dictionary of Early Judaism, ed. John J. Collins and Daniel C. Harlow (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2010), 1062. ↑
14. Antiquities 13.288–98; 13.405–15; 15.3; 15.370; 17.41–45; 18.4; 18.11–15. ↑
15. Wars 2.162. ↑
16. Antiquities 13.298. ↑
17. Menahem Mansoor, “Pharisees,” in Encyclopaedia Judaica, ed. Fred Skolnik and Michael Berenbaum (Detroit, MI: Macmillan Reference and Keter, 2007), 16:31. ↑
18. Stemberger, although he casts doubt upon the equation between Pharisees and sages, accepts that the sages of the Bavli accepted the Pharisees as their forerunners. He notes, “Another example is b. Nid. 33b. In the Tosefta (Nid. 5:3) a Sadducean woman says: ‘Even though we are Sadducean women, we all bring our inquiries [regarding menstrual impurity] to a sage.’ The Bavli transforms this saying: ‘My lord, high priest, even though we are Sadducean women, we fear the Pharisees and we bring all of our inquiries to a sage.’” Günter Stemberger, “The Pharisees and the Rabbis,” in The Pharisees, ed. Joseph Sievers and Amy-Jill Levine (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2021), 247. ↑
19. Although this stops short of the sages calling themselves “good Pharisees,” it undoubtedly holds up certain Pharisees as the Jewish ideal. Jacob Neusner, The Jerusalem Talmud: A Translation and Commentary (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 2008). ↑
20. Schulim Ochser, “Simeon the Just,” in The Jewish Encyclopedia, ed. Isidore Singer (New York, NY: Funk & Wagnalls, 1901–1906). Flesher writes, “Scholars have attempted to identify him with Simeon I (310–291 b.c.e.), Simeon II (219–199 b.c.e.) and Simeon the Maccabee. While the case for Simeon II appears strongest, none of the identifications is by any means certain.” Paul V. M. Flesher, “Great Assembly,” in The Anchor Yale Bible Dictionary, ed. David Noel Freedman (New York, NY: Doubleday, 1992), 1089. ↑
21. b. Sanhedrin 107b. This account anachronistically places Jesus of Nazareth in this time period as well. ↑
22. b. Sanhedrin 19a; b. Berakhot 48a. ↑
23. Josephus, Antiquities 15.3. Scholars sometimes identity Pollio in this passage as another name for Abtalion. ↑
24. Hillel and Menachem were originally paired together, but m. Hagigah 2:2 and y. Hagigah 77D say that Menachem “departed” from his post. Josephus in Antiquities 15.373, places Menachem during the time of Herod and says that he was an Essene. It is possible that Menachem was once a Pharisee and was paired with Hillel, and then left to join the Essenes. Shammai took his place. ↑
25. Ezekiel 7:26; Jeremiah 18:18; 1 Chronicles 23:2–6 (as judges); 2 Chronicles 15:3; 19:8–11; 23:8; 24:20; 31:4; Nehemiah 8:6–13. ↑
26. Rami Shapiro, ed., Ethics of the Sages: Pirke Avot—Annotated & Explained (Woodstock, VT: Jewish Lights Publishing; SkyLight Paths Publishing, 2014), xii. ↑
27. See Deut 12:5–7; 16:16; 31:9 for things that could only be done at the central sanctuary, which eventually came to be placed in Jerusalem. God explicitly states his choice of Jerusalem in passages such as 1 Ki 11:32, 2 Ki 23:37, 2 Ki 21:4, Ps 132:13, etc. ↑
28. For this identification with the returned exiles of Nehemiah 8–10, see y. Bereshit 1:5, y. Bereshit 7:3, and y. Megillah 3:7. In his treatment of the Great Assembly, Menachem Elon writes, “Clear information is lacking concerning the specific functions of the Great Assembly (which during its existence was the supreme institution of the Jewish people), nor is it known precisely how its membership was selected. Even the number of its members is disputed. According to one tradition, the Great Assembly had 120 members, whereas according to another tradition, its membership was only eighty-five.” Elon, Jewish Law, 555. ↑
29. It is not known how many tribes are represented in this number. They could be all Judahites, or they could include other tribes. The Tanakh and New Testament do not allow for the notion that the ten tribes of the Northern Kingdom were completely lost, since there is record of post-exile families from the tribes of Ephraim and Manasseh (1 Chr 9:3), and Anna, of the tribe of Asher (Luke 2:36). Even if only a few of the ten tribes are represented in Nehemiah’s counting, there is still a heavy representation of Levites in comparison. Also note that the same order of priest, Levite, and people is given a few verses later in Neh. 10:34. ↑
30. The priests were Levites. Thus, the percentage is (22 + 17) / 84 = 46%. ↑
31. Aramaic Papyri of the Fifth Century (APFC) No. 30. A. Cowley, ed., Aramaic Papyri of the Fifth Century B.C. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1923), 108–18. ↑
32. APFC 30.18. Cowley, 114. ↑
33. Antiquities xi.7; cf. Cowley p. 108. ↑
34. Josephus, Against Apion 1.22 §§183; 1.23 §214; §205. ↑
35. Of course, Moses did not build Jerusalem or the Temple. It would be easy for a Gentile observer to conclude that Moses had done so, given his stature and importance in Jewish life. ↑
36. This had been true of the Jewish people for several centuries (since 586 BCE) but was an inaccurate statement about Israel lacking kings before the Exile. ↑
37. Diodorus Siculus, “Historical Library,” trans. Attalus.org, vol. 40, 40 vols., n.d., http://attalus.org/translate/diodorus40.html. Emphasis added. ↑
38. Carl R. Holladay, “Hecataeus, Pseudo-,” in The Anchor Yale Bible Dictionary, ed. David Noel Freedman (New York, NY: Doubleday, 1992). ↑
39. Craig A. Evans, “Sanhedrin,” in The Eerdmans Dictionary of Early Judaism, ed. John J. Collins and Daniel C. Harlow (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2010), 1193. ↑
40. James Hamilton Charlesworth, ed., The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha (New York, NY: Doubleday, 1983–1985), 1:784–85. ↑
41. Sir 45:15–17. Rick Brannan et al., eds., The Lexham English Septuagint (Bellingham, WA: Lexham, 2012). ↑
42. Charlesworth, The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha, 2:115. ↑
43. Charlesworth, 2:137. ↑
44. Brannan et al., The Lexham English Septuagint. ↑
45. Brannan et al. ↑
46. Philo, Philo, trans. F. H. Colson and G. H. Whitaker, Loeb Classical Library (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1929), 7:559. ↑
47. Brannan et al., The Lexham English Septuagint. ↑
48. Other Jewish historians of the period were Justus of Tiberias and Nicolaus of Damascus. Steven Bowman, “Josephus in Byzantium,” in Josephus, Judaism, and Christianity, ed. Louis H. Feldman and Gohei Hata (Detroit, MI: Wayne State University Press, 1987), 366–68. ↑
49. A medieval version of Josephus’s writings, attributed to Yosippon or Joseph Ben Gorion, was commonly used by Jewish people in the Middle Ages. David Flusser, “Josippon,” in Encyclopaedia Judaica, ed. Fred Skolnik and Michael Berenbaum (Detroit, MI: Macmillan Reference and Keter, 2007). ↑
50. Louis H. Feldman and Gohei Hata, eds., Josephus, the Bible, and History (Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill, 1989), 196. ↑
51. Antiquities 4.214; 4.218. Flavius Josephus, The Works of Josephus: Complete and Unabridged, trans. William Whiston (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 1987), 117. Emphasis added. ↑
52. Against Apion 2.185–87. ↑
53. Feldman writes, “From time to time, the voice of God happens to be revealed in the high priest’s words (A XIII, 282, where it happened to the high priest John Hyrcanus I). In other words, the gift of prophecy will be bestowed upon him.” Feldman and Hata, Josephus, the Bible, and History, 198. See also John 11:49–52, which refers to the High Priest Caiaphas prophesying. ↑
54. Against Apion 2.193–194. ↑
55. Josephus wrote in Greek, which is why some of the names in the list below are not in their Hebrew form, such as “Jesus son of Phiabi.” ↑
56. James C. VanderKam, “High Priests,” in The Eerdmans Dictionary of Early Judaism, ed. John J. Collins and Daniel C. Harlow (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2010), 740. Emphasis added. ↑
57. There is archaeological evidence for Caiaphas being an important priest in this era. In 1990, Israeli archaeologists discovered a first-century ossuary (bone box) with “Joseph son of Caiaphas” on carved on the outside, and the bones of a 60-year-old man inside. The scholarly consensus is that this is the same Joseph Caiaphas as mentioned in the New Testament and Josephus. Additionally, in 2011, archaeologists from Bar-Ilan and Tel Aviv University discovered another ossuary, called the Miriam ossuary, which has an inscription that names Miriam as “daughter of Yeshua son of Caiaphas, priests of Ma’aziah from Beth Imri.” This is further evidence that Caiaphas was a priest. Boaz Zissu and Yuval Goren, “The Ossuary of ‘Miriam Daughter of Yeshua Son of Caiaphas, Priests [of] Maʻaziah from Beth ҆Imri,’” Israel Exploration Journal, no. 61 (2011): 74–95. For further discussion, see Eckhard J. Schnabel, Acts, Expanded Digital Edition (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2012), 236–37; Craig A. Evans, “Caiaphas Ossuary,” in Dictionary of New Testament Background, ed. Craig A. Evans and Stanley E. Porter (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2000). ↑
58. “But, I hereby give testimony concerning the family of the House of ‘Aluba’i of Bet Ṣeba’im and concerning the family of the house of Qipa’i [קיפא, Caiaphas?] of Bet Meqoshesh, that they are children of co-wives, and from them have been chosen high priests, and they did offer up sacrifices on the Temple altar.” Jacob Neusner, The Tosefta: Translated from the Hebrew with a New Introduction (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 2002), 1:687. ↑
59. Crispin Fletcher-Louis, “Priests and Priesthood,” in Dictionary of Jesus and the Gospels, ed. Joel B. Green, Jeannine K. Brown, and Nicholas Perrin (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2013), 700–701. ↑
60. Similar conclusions can be reached from Acts 5:21. ↑
61. Acts 9:14; 22:5; 24:1; 25:2, 25:15; 26:10, 26:12. ↑
62. 1QpHab Col. viii:10–13. Florentino Garcı́a Martı́nez and Eibert J. C. Tigchelaar, eds., The Dead Sea Scrolls Study Edition (Translations) (New York, NY: Brill, 1997–1998), 17. ↑
63. Eric W. Covington, “Jonathan Maccabeus,” in The Lexham Bible Dictionary, ed. John D. Barry et al. (Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press, 2016). ↑
64. Alison Schofield and James C. VanderKam, “Were the Hasmoneans Zadokites?,” Journal of Biblical Literature, no. 124 (2005): 83. ↑
65. CD–A Col. xiv:3–4. Garcı́a Martı́nez and Tigchelaar, The Dead Sea Scrolls Study Edition (Translations), 1:573. ↑
66. 1QS Col. ii:19–23. Garcı́a Martı́nez and Tigchelaar, 1:73. ↑
67. CD–A Col. xiv:3–8; 4Q267 Frag. 9 v:7–10; 1Q33 Col. xviii:5–6; 4Q491 Frags. 1–3:9–10; 11Q19 Col. xxi:4–6. ↑
68. 1QS Col. ix:5–8. Garcı́a Martı́nez and Tigchelaar, The Dead Sea Scrolls Study Edition (Translations), 1:91. ↑
69. CD–A Col. xiii:2–4. ↑
70. 11Q19 Col. lxi:7–9. Garcı́a Martı́nez and Tigchelaar, The Dead Sea Scrolls Study Edition (Translations), 2:1283. ↑
71. 11Q19 Col. lvii:11–19. Garcı́a Martı́nez and Tigchelaar, 2:1279. ↑
72. Gedalyahu Alon, Jews, Judaism, and the Classical World: Studies in Jewish History in the Times of the Second Temple and Talmud, trans. Israel Abrahams (Jerusalem, Israel: The Magnes Press, 1977), 48–88. ↑
73. Gottlob Schrenk, “Ἀρχιερεύς,” in Theological Dictionary of the New Testament, ed. Gerhard Kittel, Gerhard Friedrich, and Geoffrey William Bromiley, trans. Geoffrey William Bromiley (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1964), 268–69. ↑
74. Wars 2.162. ↑
75. Antiquities 13.298. ↑
76. Life 21; see also Wars 2.411. ↑
77. Life 189–198. ↑
78. For example, see the opinions of Werner Keller and Stuart Cohen in Stuart Dauermann, The Rabbi as a Surrogate Priest, Kindle (Eugene, OR: Pickwick Publications, 2016), chap. 4. Dauermann summarizes Cohen’s view as follows: “The Pharisees declared this shift in the balance of powers to be theologically obvious, divinely foreordained, and inevitable, in view of the termination of sovereign rulership in Israel (the keter malkhut) and, with the destruction of the Temple, the obliteration of the priesthood’s base of power and operations. Good salesmen that they were, they reasoned that no other rational choice remained for the Jewish community beyond a reorganization of community life and power under their own benign, capable, and divinely mandated stewardship.” (Kindle Locations 3001–3005) ↑
79. Against Apion 2.185–87. “And where shall we find a better or more righteous constitution than ours, while this makes us esteem God to be the governor of the universe, and permits the priests in general to be the administrators of the principal affairs, and withal intrusts the government over the other priests to the chief high priest himself! which priests our legislator, at their first appointment, did not advance to that dignity for their riches, or any abundance of other possessions, or any plenty they had as the gifts of fortune; but he intrusted the principal management of divine worship to those that exceeded others in an ability to persuade men, and in prudence of conduct. These men had the main care of the law and of the other parts of the people’s conduct committed to them; for they were the priests who were ordained to be the inspectors of all, and the judges in doubtful cases, and the punishers of those that were condemned to suffer punishment.” ↑
80. Against Apion 1.28–29. “As to the care of writing down the records from the earliest antiquity among the Egyptians and Babylonians; that the priests were intrusted therewith, and employed a philosophical concern about it; that these were the Chaldean priests that did so among the Babylonians; and that the Phoenicians, who were mingled among the Greeks, did especially make use of their letters, both for the common affairs of life, and for the delivering down the history of common transactions, I think I may omit any proof, because all men allow it so to be: but now, as to our forefathers, that they took no less care about writing such records (for I will not say they took greater care than the others I spoke of), and that they committed that matter to their high priests and to the prophets, and that these records have been written all along down to our own times with the utmost accuracy; nay, if it be not too bold for me to say it, our history will be so written hereafter;—I shall endeavor briefly to inform you.” ↑
81. David Instone-Brewer, Feasts and Sabbaths: Passover and Atonement, vol. 2A, Traditions of the Rabbis from the Era of the New Testament (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2011), 145. ↑
82. m. Horayoth 3:4, m. Megilla 1:9. For evidence of the survival of the priesthood during their battles for legitimacy against the rabbis, see Jewish Priesthood after the Destruction of the Jerusalem Temple in A.D. 70, 2012, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v5lzPpUQBxM. ↑
83. m. Avot 6:6 (in Kinyan Torah, cf. m. Avot 4:14): “Torah is greater than priesthood and kingship, for kingship is acquired through thirty achievements, and priesthood through twenty-four, but the Torah is acquired through forty-eight things.” William Berkson and Menachem Fisch, Pirke Avot: Timeless Wisdom for Modern Life: Translation, First edition. (Philadelphia, PA: The Jewish Publication Society, 2010), 215. ↑
84. A bastard who would be otherwise invalidated. m. Horayoth 2:1. ↑
85. B. Sanhedrin 59a. ↑
86. Daniel Gruber writes that Akiba was instrumental in adding loopholes to the requirements of tithing, thereby abolishing the Levites’ ability to survive on the tithes of the people. Daniel Gruber, Rabbi Akiba’s Messiah: The Origins of Rabbinic Authority, Revised 2013 Edition (Hanover, NH: Elijah Publishing, 1999), 150–51. An online discussion on maaser rishon shows how tithing to Levites today is a rarity, forcing Levites into secular occupation or the rabbinate: Isaac Moses, “Why Don’t We Distribute Ma’aser Rishon or Ma’aser ’Ani Nowadays?,” Forum post, Mi Yodeya, August 4, 2014, https://judaism.stackexchange.com/q/25891. ↑
87. Dauermann, The Rabbi as a Surrogate Priest, locs. 3292–95. ↑
88. Lee I. Levine, The Ancient Synagogue : The First Thousand Years, 2nd ed. (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2005), 496. ↑
89. Levine, 473. ↑
90. Levine, 473. ↑
91. Levine, 474. ↑
92. Levine, 498. ↑
93. Dauermann, The Rabbi as a Surrogate Priest, locs. 3188–89. ↑
94. There is very little evidence of Gentile Christian knowledge of the Mishnah or Talmud until the Middle Ages, but some of the few Christians who interacted with Jews knew that it existed. Eusebius (fourth century) knew about “unwritten tradition” (deuterosis, δευτέρωσις=Mishnah) within Judaism (Ecclesiastical History 4.22.7; Preparation for the Gospel 11.5; 12.4), as well as, perhaps, the Didascalia’s (third century) references to deuterosis. One of the first Christian works to explicitly quote and interact with the Talmud was Peter Alfonsi’s Dialogue Against the Jews, written in 1109. About Alfonsi’s Dialogue, Resnick writes, “It employed arguments based on philosophical reason, the conclusions of medieval science, and a long tradition of Christian biblical exegesis. But more important still, it was the first polemical work written in Spain, or anywhere in Europe for that matter, that turned systematically to Jewish post-biblical literature in general, and the Talmud in particular, in order to demonstrate the inferiority of Judaism and the truth of Christian teaching. In so doing, Alfonsi would transform Christian polemical tradition, marking his treatise as the most important such work to be written in a thousand years.” Petrus Alfonsi, Dialogue Against the Jews, trans. Irven M. Resnick, Fathers of the Church, Medieval Continuation 8 (Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 2006), 29. ↑
95. Many Jews continued to use Greek for centuries after 70 CE, and Byzantine Jews kept it even longer. However, by the time of the Muslim conquests, Jewish knowledge of Greek was a rarity. Both Origen and Jerome could read Hebrew, but it was not until the Renaissance that Christians started regaining knowledge of Hebrew. ↑
96. Saldarini claims that the controversy has been known since at least Geiger in 1857. Anthony J. Saldarini, “Sanhedrin,” in The Anchor Yale Bible Dictionary, ed. David Noel Freedman (New York, NY: Doubleday, 1992), 5:978; Paul P. Levertoff, “Sanhedrin,” in The International Standard Bible Encyclopedia, ed. James Orr et al. (Chicago, IL: Howard-Severance, 1915), 4:2690; G. H. Twelftree, “Sanhedrin,” in Dictionary of Jesus and the Gospels, ed. Joel B. Green, Jeannine K. Brown, and Nicholas Perrin (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2013), 837. ↑
97. Hirsch, “High Priest,” 6:393. ↑
98. Mantel, “Sanhedrin,” 18:22. ↑
99. For discussion of Options 2–4, see Saldarini, “Sanhedrin,” 5:978. Saldarini does not even consider Option 1. Also see Mantel, “Sanhedrin,” 18:22–23. Rabbinic scholar E.P Sanders does not consider the rabbinic claims because the evidence saying otherwise is so strong: E. P. Sanders, “Law in Judaism of the NT Period,” in The Anchor Yale Bible Dictionary, ed. David Noel Freedman (New York, NY: Doubleday, 1992), 4:261–62; Everett Ferguson, Backgrounds of Early Christianity, Third Edition (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2003), 567–68. ↑
100. Proposed by Sidney B. Hoenig, The Great Sanhedrin; a Study of the Origin, Development, Composition, and Functions of the Bet Din Ha-Gadol during the Second Jewish Commonwealth (Philadelphia, PA: Dropsie College for Hebrew and Cognate Learning, 1953). ↑
101. First proposed by Büchler in 1902, and defended by Zeitlin and Mantel. See Saldarini, “Sanhedrin,” 5:978. Mantel’s defense is contained in Hugo Mantel, Studies in the History of the Sanhedrin (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1961). ↑
102. Lester L Grabbe, “Sanhedrin, Sanhedriyyot, or Mere Invention?,” Journal for the Study of Judaism 39, no. 1 (2008): 7–13. ↑
103. Rabbi Moshe Shulman conveyed this explanation to me in private discussion. ↑
104. Philo, Special Laws IV.188–192; Josephus, Against Apion 2.185–87; 2.193–194; the New Testament. ↑
105. Douglas Mangum and Vasile Babota, “Sanhedrin,” in The Lexham Bible Dictionary, ed. John D. Barry et al. (Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press, 2016). ↑
106. Evans, “Sanhedrin,” 1193. ↑
107. “Despite the rich and impressive Hillel tradition, however, we can hardly conclude that with Hillel the rabbinic traditions about pre-70 Pharisees enter the pages of history. The traditions concerning Hillel do not lay a considerable claim to historical plausibility. They provide an accurate account only of what later generations thought important to say about, or in the name of, Hillel.” Neusner, From Politics to Piety: The Emergence of Pharisaic Judaism, 42. “Stories and sayings attributed to sages of the 2d and 1st centuries, b.c.e. are very few in number and almost impossible to evaluate historically.” Anthony J. Saldarini, “Pharisees,” in The Anchor Yale Bible Dictionary, ed. David Noel Freedman (New York, NY: Doubleday, 1992), 5:298. ↑
108. Alon, Jews, Judaism, and the Classical World, 75. ↑
109. E.P. Sanders contrasts Josephus’s summaries of Pharisaic power pre-70 (Antiquities 13.288; 13.298; 18.15–17) with the actual historical narratives that Josephus and the New Testament supply. He treats each narrative as a “case study” to test whether the Pharisees really had the comprehensive control which these texts and the Mishnah claim. In each case, Sanders concludes that the Pharisees were popular, but had no influence over the State or the Temple (king and priesthood), and sometimes did not have control of the populace either. He notes that Josephus is silent about the Pharisees (and their influence) for 60 years of first-century narratives, only reappearing near the revolt in 66 CE. Sanders attributes the pro-Pharisaic summary statements to Josephus’s earlier source, Nicolaus of Damascus, who was describing the Pharisees’ power during the time of Hyrcanus and Salome, the only time period in which Pharisaic influence over State and Temple is supported by historical narrative. Josephus included Nicolaus’s statements and made them appear broadly applicable because it may have been apparent to Josephus post-70 that the Pharisees were rising in prominence, and the exaggerated summary statements of Pharisaic influence would enhance both his, and the Pharisees’ authority. E. P. Sanders, Judaism: Practice and Belief, 63 BCE–66 CE (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2016), 597–648. ↑
110. Gary G. Porton, “Yohanan Ben Zakkai,” in The Anchor Yale Bible Dictionary, ed. David Noel Freedman (New York, NY: Doubleday, 1992), 6:1025. ↑
111. Philip S. Alexander, “What Happened To The Jewish Priesthood After 70?,” in A Wandering Galilean: Essays in Honour of Seán Freyne, ed. Zuleika Rodgers, Margaret Daly-Denton, and Anne Fitzpatrick-McKinley (Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill, 2009), 26. ↑
112. Alexander, 26–27. ↑
113. Grabbe, “Sanhedrin, Sanhedriyyot, or Mere Invention?,” 19. ↑
114. Kaufmann Kohler, “Pharisees,” in The Jewish Encyclopedia, ed. Cyrus Adler and Isidore Singer (New York, NY: Funk & Wagnalls Co., 1906), 9:666. ↑
115. Shapiro, Ethics of the Sages: Pirke Avot—Annotated & Explained, xii. ↑
116. David M. Maas, “Great Assembly,” in The Lexham Bible Dictionary, ed. John D. Barry et al. (Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press, 2016). ↑
117. Besides the high priesthood angle that will be pursued in the following section, another important pathway ought to be considered. It is sometimes said that Yeshua’s Messianic identity was definitively rejected by the Sanhedrin during his trial, and because the Sanhedrin has official Torah-sanctioned weight, the determination of the Sanhedrin ought to stand. However, this logic is often pursued by those who assume that it was the Pharisaic leaders of Pirke Avot who constituted the ruling body in the Sanhedrin. I have established in this article that this was not the case. The leadership of the Sanhedrin during Yeshua’s lifetime was Sadduceean-dominated and high-priest-led. This piece of historical knowledge invalidates the argument given above, since Orthodox Jews today reject the halakhic and judicial authority of the Sadducees and have also delegitimized the priests from their role as the leaders of Israel’s courts. If the decision of the Sanhedrin should stand—always—then Orthodox Jews today should not oppose Sadduceean halakhah and theology. On the contrary, it would be better to question whether the Sanhedrin’s decisions are infallible. I believe the Sanhedrin’s decision about Yeshua was badly mistaken and ought not be heeded. ↑