worship 55
of seeking forgiveness for the people as a whole. The ritual, laid out in
essence in Leviticus but much elaborated in the Mishnah, involved
extensive purification, and confession by the High Priest of the sins
committed by him, the priests and all Israel over the preceding year.
Dressed in white linen, the High Priest entered the Holy of Holies to
sprinkle there the blood of a sacrificed bull and goat while offering
incense. He then confessed the whole community’s sins over another
goat, chosen by lot, which would be driven out of the Temple and away
from the city, originally to die in the wilderness, although as time went
on the practice developed of ensuring the goat’s destruction by taking it
to the top of a precipice and hurling it down. How much this ritual
evolved only after the destruction of the Temple of Solomon in 586 bce
is unknown, but by the late Second Temple era selection for this role
was a matter of great significance. It was bolstered in Second Temple
times by the wider role often played by High Priests in the secular pol-
itics of Judaea.
It is all the more striking that for many centuries a tradition grew up
that only those priests descended from Zadok, an Aaronide priest
believed to have served as High Priest in the time of David and Solo-
mon, were eligible for the high priesthood. It was only after the revolt
of the Maccabees in the 160s bce that priests from other families were
appointed to these positions – in the first instance, from the family of
the Maccabees themselves, and then, from the beginning of Herod’s rule
in 37 bce, from priestly families who had migrated either to Babylonia
or to Alexandria, who therefore could pose no political threat to Herod
as ruler. It is not accidental that when the prophet Ezekiel in the sixth
century bce in Babylonia imagined an idealized Temple, he postulated
that all the priests would be Zadokites, nor that the role of ‘the sons of
Zadok’ looms large in some versions of the Community Rule found
among the Dead Sea scrolls (see Chapter 6). Even though in practice the
High Priests in the Temple came from other priestly families for the last
two centuries before 70 ce, it is clear that Zadokites continued to be
considered by many Jews more appropriate for the role than other
priestly families.^25
How much did this public service in the Temple on behalf of the
people matter for non- priestly Jews? Local Jerusalemites may have
dropped in to the Temple on ordinary weekdays to pray or bring offer-
ings for thanks or repentance. The Temple courtyard will often in any
case have been busy as the only public meeting place in the city – so for
instance, according to Acts, Jewish Christians in the days after the