Tool Beta
The Ancient World Behind the Text: Ideas
The customs, offices and ideas a first reader knew without being told, what each meant then, and the nearest thing you already know.
The high priest
The head of Israel's priests, from Aaron's line, who offered for his own sins and then the people's and alone went into the holy of holies, once a year. By the first century Herod and Rome named and removed him at will.
Only one person in the country could open that door, and only on one day of the year. Israel's law set one man over all the priests: the high priest, a descendant of Aaron. He offered gifts and sacrifices for the people, and first for his own sins, because he was a man like them. On the Day of Atonement he alone went behind the last curtain into the holy of holies. By the time of Jesus the office was held by a few powerful families, and Herod and then the Romans named and removed high priests as they pleased.
Josephus writes that it was the custom of his country "that no one should take the high priesthood of God but he who is of the blood of Aaron." No one of another stock could ever hold it, "though he were a king" (Antiquities 20.10). He counts eighty-three high priests from Aaron to the war with Rome, and says that at first they held office for life. The ESV Study Bible draws three marks of the office from Hebrews 5:1-4. A high priest was human and could deal gently with the weak. He offered sacrifices for sins, his own first (Leviticus 9:7; 16:6). And he was appointed by God, as Aaron was. Josephus says he wore the full robes only when he went into the holy of holies, "which he did but once in a year," on the day all kept a fast (War 5.5.7). Before that day he was guarded from defilement. Later rabbis say he was kept apart for a week, with precautions against a night emission. Josephus records that when the high priest Matthias was defiled by a dream the night before, a kinsman served in his place for that one day (Antiquities 17.6.4). High priests did not offer the daily sacrifices themselves but answered for the priests who did. In the Gospels and Acts the high priest presided over the Sanhedrin, and the chief priests were the aristocracy he came from. Philo made the divine Word God's high priest and played down the human high priest's full humanity. Rome had a powerful high priest of its own, the pontifex maximus, but Keener holds that Hebrews takes its model from the Old Testament and Jewish tradition.
An analogy: the keeper of a nation's most sacred archive, the only person allowed into the vault, and only on one day a year. Before he goes in on everyone's behalf, he has to clear his own record.
Because one man stood between the people and the holy of holies, a high priest who shares human weakness and enters once for all, as in Hebrews 4:15, is the center of that letter's argument. The same office, filled by Rome's appointees, questions Jesus in Mark 14:61, and in Acts 23:2 the high priest Ananias has Paul struck on the mouth.
Not a custodian. An archivist guards what is stored. The high priest went into the holy of holies to offer blood for the nation's sins, and in Jesus' day Herod and then Rome named and removed him at will.
- {"u":"https:\/\/jayms.com\/bible-study-tools-2\/ancient-world-passages\/hebrews-2-5-18\/","n":"Hebrews 2:5-18, The world to come is not for angels","s":"God did not put the world to come under angels. Psalm 8 promised rule to human beings; it is not yet seen, but Jesus, made a little lower than the angels for a while, is crowned with glory, and he shared flesh and blood to break the devil's power and become a merciful and faithful high priest.","r":"Hebrews 2:5-18"}
- {"u":"https:\/\/jayms.com\/bible-study-tools-2\/ancient-world-passages\/hebrews-4-14-5-10\/","n":"Hebrews 4:14-5:10, A high priest who can sympathize","s":"Jesus is a great high priest who has passed through the heavens and was tested in every way, yet without sin, so his people can approach the throne of grace with confidence. Like every high priest he was appointed by God, not self-chosen, and God named him a priest for ever in the order of Melchizedek.","r":"Hebrews 4:14-5:10"}
- {"u":"https:\/\/jayms.com\/bible-study-tools-2\/ancient-world-passages\/hebrews-6-13-20\/","n":"Hebrews 6:13-20, God's oath and the anchor behind the curtain","s":"When God promised Abraham, he swore by himself, since there was no one greater. Promise and oath, two things in which God cannot lie, give a hope that holds like an anchor and reaches behind the curtain, where Jesus has gone ahead as high priest for ever.","r":"Hebrews 6:13-20"}
- {"u":"https:\/\/jayms.com\/bible-study-tools-2\/ancient-world-passages\/hebrews-7-1-10\/","n":"Hebrews 7:1-10, Melchizedek, priest-king of Salem","s":"Melchizedek, king of Salem and priest of God Most High, met Abraham, blessed him and received a tenth of the spoil. With no father, mother or genealogy recorded, he resembles the Son of God, and because Levi was still in Abraham's body when Abraham paid him, his priesthood ranks above Levi's.","r":"Hebrews 7:1-10"}
- {"u":"https:\/\/jayms.com\/bible-study-tools-2\/ancient-world-passages\/hebrews-7-11-28\/","n":"Hebrews 7:11-28, A priest from Judah, by oath, for ever","s":"If the Levitical priesthood had brought perfection, no other priest would have been promised. Jesus comes from Judah, a priest by the power of an indestructible life and by God's oath, the guarantee of a better covenant; Levitical priests died and offered daily for their own sins, but he lives for ever and offered himself once for all.","r":"Hebrews 7:11-28"}
- {"u":"https:\/\/jayms.com\/bible-study-tools-2\/ancient-world-passages\/hebrews-8-1-13\/","n":"Hebrews 8:1-13, Copy and shadow, and a new covenant","s":"The high priest believers have is seated in heaven and serves in the true tabernacle set up by the Lord. The earthly sanctuary was a copy and shadow built to the pattern shown to Moses, and Jeremiah's promise of a new covenant shows that the first was growing old and ready to disappear.","r":"Hebrews 8:1-13"}
- {"u":"https:\/\/jayms.com\/bible-study-tools-2\/ancient-world-passages\/hebrews-9-1-10\/","n":"Hebrews 9:1-10, The two rooms and their furniture","s":"The first covenant had a sanctuary on earth: an outer room with the lampstand, the table and the bread, and behind the second curtain the most holy place with the golden altar of incense, the ark and the cherubim. Priests entered the first room daily and the high priest the second once a year with blood, a sign that access to the holy place had not yet been opened.","r":"Hebrews 9:1-10"}
- {"u":"https:\/\/jayms.com\/bible-study-tools-2\/ancient-world-passages\/revelation-21-9-27\/","n":"Revelation 21:9-27, the city of gold and twelve stones","s":"An angel carries John to a high mountain to show him the bride, the holy city Jerusalem, shining with God's glory, with twelve gates named for Israel's tribes and twelve foundations named for the Lamb's apostles. The city is a cube of pure gold, its foundations set with twelve precious stones and its gates each a single pearl; it has no temple, since God and the Lamb are its temple, and its gates never shut as the nations bring their glory into it.","r":"Revelation 21:9-27"}
- Josephus, Antiquities of the Jews 17.6.4 and 20.10, trans. William Whiston
- Josephus, The Wars of the Jews 5.5.7, trans. William Whiston
- Craig S. Keener, The IVP Bible Background Commentary: New Testament, introduction to Hebrews 4:14-5:10, and on Hebrews 5:4, 5:6, 7:26 and 7:27
- NIV Cultural Backgrounds Study Bible, notes on Hebrews 5:4 and 7:26
- ESV Study Bible, study note on Hebrews 5:1-4
- CSB Study Bible, word study box archiereus (Hebrews 5:10)
