Under the rule of the Greeks the high priest
became ethnarch and president of the synedrium; only through the
pontificate was it possible for the Hasmonaeans to attain to power,
but when they conjoined it with full-blown secular sovereignty,
they created a dilemma to the consequences of which they succumbed.
CHAPTER V. THE ENDOWMENT OF THE CLERGY.
The power and independence of the clergy run parallel with its
material endowment, which accordingly passes through the same
course of development. Its successive steps are reflected even in
the language that is employed, in the gradual loss of point
sustained by the phrase "to fill the hand," at all times used to
denote ordination. Originally it cannot have had any other
meaning than that of filling the hand with money or its
equivalent; we have seen that at one time the priest was
appointed by the owner of a sanctuary for a salary, and that,
without being thus dependent upon a particular employer, he could
not then live on the income derived from those who might employ
him sacrificially. But when the Levitical hereditary priesthood
arose in the later kingdom of Judah the hands of the priests were
no longer filled by another who had the right to appoint and to
dismiss, but they themselves at God's command "filled their own
hand," or rather they had done so in the days of Moses once for
all, as is said in Exodus xxxii.
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