II. The /licoloffical view of the high-priesthood will be treated under the head of Puiest. It must suffice here to indicate the consideration of the office, dress, functions, and ministrations of the high-priest, as typical of the priesthood of our Lord Jesus Christ, and as set- ting forth under shadows the truths which are openly taught under the Gospel. This has been done to a great extent in the Epistle to the Hebrews, and is occa- sionally done in other parts of Scripture, as Kev. i, 13, where the 7ro(!//pj;c, and the girdle about the paps, are distinctly the robe, and the curious girdle of the ephod, characteristic of the high-priest. It also embraces all the moral and spiritual teaching supposed to be intended by such symbols. I'hilo (De vita Mosis), Origen (Ho- mil. in Levit.), Eusebius {Demonst. Evavf/. lib. iii), Epi- phanius (cant. MdchizeiJ. iv, etc.), Gregory Nazianzcu {Orat. i, Elim Cretens. and Comment, p. 105), Augustine (Qucest. in Exod.), may be cited among many others of the ancients who have more or less thus treated the subject. Of moderns, Bahr (Si/mboUk des Mosaischen Cultus), Fairbairn (Tyimlogy of Script^, Kalisch {Com- ment, on Exod.), have entered fully into this subject, both from the Jewish and the Christian point of view.
III. The history of the high-priests embraces a period of about 1727 years, according to the opinion of the best chronologers, and a succession of about 83 high-priests, beginning with Aaron, and ending with Phannias. " The number of all the high-priests (says Josephus, A nt. xx, 10) from Aaron . . . until Phanas . . . was 83," where he gives a comprehensive accoimt of them. They nat- urally arrange themselves into three groups — («.) those before David; (6.) those from David to the Captivity; (c.) those from the return from the Babylonian captiv- ity till the cessation of the office at the destruction of Jerusalem. The two former have come down to us in the canonical books of Scripture, and so have a few of the earliest and the latest of the latter; but for by far the larger portion of the latter group we have only the authority of Josephus, the Talmud, and occasioned no- tices in profane writers.
(a.) The high-priests of the first group who are dis- tinctly made known to us as such are, 1. Aaron ; 2. Ele- azar; 3. Phinehas; 4. Eli; 5. Ahitub (1 Chron. ix, 11; Neh. xi, 11; 1 Sam. xiv, 3); 6. Ahiah ; 7. Ahimelech. Phinehas, the son of Eli, and father of Ahitub, died be- fore his father, and so was not high-priest. Of the above the first three succeeded in regular order, Xadab and Abihu, Aaron's eldest sons, having died in the wil- derness (Lev. x). But Eli, the 4th, was of the line of Ithamar. What was the exact interval between the death of Phinehas and the accession of Eli, what led to the transference f)f the chief priesthood from the line of Eleazar to that of Ithamar, and whether any or which of the descendants of Eleazar between Phinehas and Zadok (seven in number, viz. Abishua, Bukki, L'zzi, Zer- ahiah, Meraioth, Amariah, Ahitub), were high-priests.
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•vve have no positive means of determining from Scrip- ture. Judg. XX, 28 leaves Phinehas, the son of Eleazar, priest at Shiloh, and 1 Sam. i, 3, 9 tinds Eli high-priest there, with two grown-up sons priests under him. The only clew is to be found in the genealogies, by which it appears that Phinehas was 6th in succession from Levi, while Eli, supposing him to be the same generation as Samuel's grandfather, would be 10th. Josephus asserts (Anf.vm, 1, 3) that the father of Bukki— whom he calls Joseph, and {Ant. v, 11, 5) Abiezer, i. e. Abishua— was the last high-priest of Phinehas's line before Zadok. Tliis is a doubtfiil tradition, since Josephus does not ad- here to it in the above passage of his 5th book, wliere he makes Bukki and Uzzi to have been both high- priests, and Eli to have succeeded Uzzi ; or in book xx, 10, where he reckons the high-priests before Zadok and Solomon to have been tliirteen (a reckoning which in- cludes apparently all Eleazar's descendants down to Ahi- tub), and adds Eli and his son Phinehas, and Abiathar, whom he calls Eli's grandson. If the last of Abishua's hne died leaving a son or grandson under age, Eli, as the head of the line of Ithamar, might have become high- priest as a matter of course, or he might have been ap- pointed by the elders. His having judged Israel 40 years (1 Sam. iv, 18) marks him as a man of ability. If Ahi- ah and Ahimelech are not variations of the name of the same person, they must have been brothers, since both were sons of Ahitub. Of the high-priests, then, before David's reign, seven are said in Scripture to have been high-priests, and one by Josephus alone. The bearing of this on the chronology of the times from the Exodus to David is too important to be passed over in silence. As in the parallel list of the ancestors of David (q. v.), we are compelled by the chronology to count as incum- bents of the office in regiUar order the four others who are only named in Scripture as lineal descendants of the pontifical family. The comparative oversight of these incumbents receives an explanation from the nature of the times. It must also be noted that the tabernacle of God, during the high-priesthood of Aaron's successors of this first group, was pitched at Shiloh in the tribe of Ephraim, a fact that marks the strong influence which the temporal power already had in ecclesiastical affairs, since Ephraim was Joshua's tribe, as Judah vras David's (Josh, xxiv, 80, 33; Judg. xx, 27, 28; xxi, 21 ; 1 Sam. i, 3, 9, 2-1 ; iv, 3, 4 ; xiv, 3, etc. ; Psa. Lxxviii, 60). This strong influence and interference of the secular power is manifest throughout the subsequent history. This first period was also marked by the calamity which be- fell tlie high-priests as the guardians of the ark, in its capture by the Philistines. This probably suspended all inquiries by Urim and Thumraim, which were made before the ark (1 Chron. xiii,3; comp. Judg. xx, 27; 1 Sam. vii, 2 ; xiv, 18), and must have greatly diminished the influence of the high-priests, on whom the largest share of the humiliation expressed in the name Ichabod would natiu-ally fall. The rise of Samuel as a prophet at this very time, and his paramount influence and im- portance in the state, to the entire eclipsing of Ahiah the priest, coincides remarkably with the absence of the ark, and the means of inquiring by Urim and Thummim. (6.) Passing to the second group, we begin with the unexplained circumstance of there being two priests in the reign of David, apparently of nearly equal author- ity, viz. Zadok and Abiathar (1 Chron. xv, 11 ; 2 Sam. viii, 17). Indeed it is onlj-- from the deposition of Abi- athar, and the placing of Zadok in his room by Solomon (1 Kings ii, 85), that we learn certainly that Abiathar was the high-priest, and Zadok the second. Zadok was son of Ahitub, of the line of Eleazar (1 Chron. vi, 8), and the first mention of him is in 1 Chron. xii, 28, as " a young man, mighty in valor," who joined David in Hebron af- ter Said's death, with 22 captains of his father's house. It is therefore not unlikely that after the death of Ahim- elech, and the secession of Abiathar to David, Said may have made Zadok priest, as far as it was possible for him to do so in the absence of the ark and the high-priest's