The Line of the High Priests

I think it necessary, and fitting for this history, to give an account of our high priests: how they began, who may share in this honor, and how many of them there were down to the end of the war. First of all, then, we are told that Aaron, the brother of Moses, served God as high priest, and that at his death his sons succeeded him at once, and from them the honor has continued to all their descendants. That is why it is a custom of our country that no one may take the high priesthood of God except one of the blood of Aaron; a man of another family could never obtain it, even if he happened to be a king. [a]

The number of all the high priests, then, from Aaron, the first of them, as we have said, down to Phanas, who was made high priest during the war by the rebels, was eighty-three. Of these, thirteen served as high priests in the wilderness, from the times of Moses, while the tabernacle stood that Moses made for God, until the people came into Judea, where King Solomon built the temple to God. At first they held the high priesthood until the end of their lives, though later others succeeded them while they were still alive. These thirteen were descendants of Aaron’s two sons and received the honor one after another by succession. Their form of government was at first an aristocracy, then a monarchy, and third, a rule of kings. The number of years during which these thirteen held office, from the day our fathers left Egypt under Moses’ leadership until the building of the temple that King Solomon raised in Jerusalem, was six hundred and twelve.

After those thirteen high priests, eighteen held the high priesthood in Jerusalem in succession, from the time of King Solomon until Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, marched against the city, burned the temple, carried our nation away to Babylon, and took Jozadak the high priest captive. The time of their priesthood was four hundred and sixty-six years, six months and ten days, while the Jews were by then ruled by kings. After the seventy years of captivity under the Babylonians, Cyrus, king of Persia, sent the Jews from Babylon back to their own land and gave them leave to rebuild the temple. Then Jeshua the son of Jozadak, one of the returning captives, took the high priesthood. He and his descendants, fifteen in all, held it until King Antiochus Eupator, and they lived under a democratic constitution for four hundred and fourteen years.

It was this Antiochus, with Lysias his general, who first removed a high priest from office: they deposed Onias, who was also called Menelaus, and put him to death at Beroea, and they made Alcimus high priest, a man of Aaron’s line but not of that house. Because of this, Onias, the nephew of the Onias who had died, who bore the same name as his father, went to Egypt. He won the friendship of Ptolemy Philometor and his wife Cleopatra, and persuaded them to build a temple to God in the district of Heliopolis like the one in Jerusalem, and to make him its high priest. But we have often spoken already about the temple built in Egypt. Alcimus held the high priesthood three years and died. No one succeeded him, and the city went seven years without a high priest.

Then the descendants of the sons of Asamoneus, who had been entrusted with the leadership of the nation and had made war on the Macedonians, appointed Jonathan high priest, and he ruled seven years. When he died through the plot and ambush that Trypho contrived against him, as we have related somewhere above, his brother Simon took the high priesthood. When Simon too was treacherously killed at a banquet by his son-in-law, his son, named Hyrcanus, succeeded him; Simon had held the priesthood one year longer than his brother. Hyrcanus enjoyed that honor thirty-one years and died an old man, leaving the succession to Judas, who was also called Aristobulus. His brother Alexander in turn became his heir when Judas died of an illness, having held the priesthood together with the kingship for one year (Judas was the first to put a diadem on his head).

Alexander was king and high priest twenty-seven years, and when he died he left it to his wife Alexandra to appoint the high priest. She gave the high priesthood to Hyrcanus, but kept the kingdom herself for nine years and then died. For the same length of time her son Hyrcanus held the high priesthood; for after her death his brother Aristobulus made war on him, defeated him, took his rule away, and was himself both king and high priest of the nation. But in the third year of his reign, and as many months besides, Pompey came, took the city of Jerusalem by force, and sent Aristobulus in chains to Rome with his children. He gave the high priesthood back to Hyrcanus and entrusted him with the leadership of the nation, but forbade him to wear a diadem. Hyrcanus ruled twenty-four years besides his first nine. Then Barzapharnes and Pacorus, the Parthian princes, crossed the Euphrates, made war on Hyrcanus, took him alive, and made Antigonus, the son of Aristobulus, king. When Antigonus had reigned three years and three months, Sosius and Herod besieged and took him, and Antony had him brought to Antioch and put to death there.

Herod, given the kingdom by the Romans, no longer appointed high priests from the family of Asamoneus. Instead he gave the honor to obscure men who were merely of priestly descent, with one exception, Aristobulus. He made this Aristobulus, the grandson of the Hyrcanus whom the Parthians had captured, high priest, and married his sister Mariamne, seeking to win the goodwill of the people through their memory of Hyrcanus. Then, afraid that everyone would turn toward Aristobulus, he put him to death, contriving to have him drowned while he was swimming at Jericho, as we have already related. After him Herod never again entrusted the high priesthood to the descendants of the sons of Asamoneus. Archelaus, Herod’s son, did the same as his father in appointing the priests, and so did the Romans after him, when they took over the government of the Jews.

So the high priests from the days of Herod to the day when Titus took the temple and the city and burned them were twenty-eight in all, and their time was a hundred and seven years. Some of them held office under the reign of Herod and of Archelaus his son; after their deaths the government became an aristocracy, and the high priests were entrusted with the leadership of the nation. That is enough to say about our high priests.