A Kingdom of Priests: Ancestry and Merit in Ancient Judaism

by Martha Himmelfarb

Overview

According to the account in the Book of Exodus, God addresses the children of Israel as they stand before Mt. Sinai with the words, "You shall be to me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation" (19:6). The sentence, Martha Himmelfarb observes, is paradoxical, for priests are by definition a minority, yet the meaning in context is clear: the entire people is holy. The words also point to some significant tensions in the biblical understanding of the people of Israel. If the entire people is holy, why does it need priests? If membership in both people and priesthood is a matter not of merit but of birth, how can either the people or its priests hope to be holy? How can one reconcile the distance between the honor due the priest and the actual behavior of some who filled the role? What can the people do to make itself truly a kingdom of priests?

Himmelfarb argues that these questions become central in Second Temple Judaism. She considers a range of texts from this period, including the Book of Watchers, the Book of Jubilees, legal documents from the Dead Sea Scrolls, the writings of Philo of Alexandria, and the Book of Revelation of the New Testament, and goes on to explore rabbinic Judaism's emphasis on descent as the primary criterion for inclusion among the chosen people of Israel—a position, she contends, that took on new force in reaction to early Christian disparagement of the idea that mere descent from Abraham was sufficient for salvation.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780812239508
Publisher:	University of Pennsylvania Press, Inc.
Publication date:	10/10/2006
Series:	Jewish Culture and Contexts
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	280
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 1.10(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Martha Himmelfarb is Professor of Religion at Princeton University. She is the author of Ascent to Heaven in Jewish and Christian Apocalypses and Tours of Hell: An Apocalyptic Form in Jewish and Christian Literature, the latter also published by the University of Pennsylvania Press.

Table of Contents

Introduction

1. Priest and Scribe: Ancestry and Professional Skill in the Book of the Watchers, the Wisdom of Ben Sira, and Aramaic Levi
2. Jubilees' Kingdom of Priests
3. Priesthood and Purity Laws: The Temple Scroll and the Damascus Document
4. Priesthood and Sectarianism: The Rule of the Community, the Damascus Document, and the Book of Revelation
5. Priesthood and Allegory: Philo and Alexandrian Judaism
6. "The Children of Abraham Your Friend": The End of Priesthood, the Rise of Christianity, and the Neutralization of Jewish Sectarianism

Acknowledgments
Bibliography
Index