Friday, May 18, 2018

Andrew S. Malone on Foreign Priests in the Old Testament

  
Foreign priests

As the story unfolds, we discover that the Israelites had no monopoly on priests. Joseph marries the daughter of Potiphera, almost universally seen as a priest of Ra serving at On (Heliopolis). Potiphera’s role or lineage is significant enough to record thrice (Gen. 41:45, 50; 46:20) and we read elsewhere of Egyptian priests (47:22, 26). The commonality of such priests throughout surrounding nations is illustrated here by the fact that Genesis simply uses the regular Hebrew term for ‘priest(s)’. While the narrative records special remuneration habits applicable in Egypt, it needs to add nothing about priestly roles in society.

Harder to assess is Moses’ father-in-law, ‘the priest of Midian’ (Exod. 2:16; 3:1; 18:1). We first meet him with the name Reuel (2:18). That name contains a theophoric element (‘ēl, ‘god’) and the narrative here and in Exodus 18 casts him as an ally of Moses (Paul Hughes, “Jethro,” Dictionary of the Old Testament: Pentateuch [Inter-Varsity Press, 2003]). He is common seen as coming to follow Israel’s God (18:8-12); he certainly behaves like an Israelite priest, offering a range of sacrifices and eating ‘in the presence of God’ with the Aaronide elders, and perhaps evocatively dong so ‘in the tent’ (T.E. Fretheim, Exodus [Westminster John Knox Press, 1991], 196). He also offers Moses some sage advice (18:13-27), though there is no indication that there is anything priestly about this additional content or process. Of greater relevance is the fact that we find here that Moses is ‘to be [an advocate] for the people before God’, especially in terms of teaching and judicial decisions (18:19-20). (Andrew S. Malone, God’s Mediators: A biblical theology of priesthood [New Studies in Biblical Theology 43; London: Apollos, 2017], 61, emphasis added)


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