Selection of the Custodians. Scrutiny of Priestly Marriages and Genealogies
170-168 B.C.
63 B.C.
4 B.C.
A.D. 66-70.
Not only did our ancestors in the first instance set
over this business men of the highest character, devoted
to the service of God, but they took precautions to
ensure that the priests' lineage should be kept unadulterated
and pure. A member of the priestly order must
marry a woman of his own race, without regard to her
wealth or other distinctions; but he must investigate her
pedigree, obtaining the genealogy from the archives[1] and
producing a number of witnesses. And this practice of
ours is not confined to the home country of Judæa, but
wherever there is a Jewish colony,[2] there too a strict
account is kept by the priests of their marriages; I
allude to the Jews in Egypt and Babylon and other parts
of the world in which any of the priestly order are living
in dispersion. A statement is drawn up by them and
sent to Jerusalem, showing the names of the bride and
her father and more remote ancestors together with the
names of the witnesses. In the not infrequent event of
war, for instance when our country was invaded by
Antiochus Epiphanes, by Pompey the Great, by Quintilius
Varus, and above all in our own times, the surviving
priests compile fresh records from the older documents;[3]
they also pass scrutiny upon the remaining women and
disallow marriage with any who have been taken captive,
suspecting them of having had frequent intercourse with
foreigners. But the most convincing proof of our accuracy
in this matter is that our records contain the names
of our high priests with the succession from father to son
for the last two thousand years. And whoever violates. MSS "from the ancients" ([Greek: archaiôn]).]).]
