or Levites

LEVITES, or sons of Levi (son of Jacob by Leah), a sacred caste in ancient Israel, the guardians of the temple service at Jerusalem.

Place in Ritual.—In the developed hierarchical system the ministers of the sanctuary are divided into distinct grades. All are "Levites" by descent, and are thus correlated in the genealog ical and other lists, but the true priesthood is confined to the sons of Aaron, while the mass of the Levites are subordinate servants who are not entitled to approach the altar or to perform any strictly priestly function. All access to the Deity is restricted to the one priesthood and to the one sanctuary at Jerusalem ; the wor shipping subject is the nation of Israel as a unity, and the function of worship is discharged on its behalf by divinely chosen priests. The ordinary individual may not intrude under penalty of death; only those of Levitical origin may perform service, and they are essentially the servants and hereditary serfs of the Aaronite priests (see Num. xviii.). But such a scheme finds no place in the mon archy; it presupposes a hierocracy under which the priesthood increased its rights by claiming the privileges which past kings had enjoyed; it is the outcome of a complicated development in Old Testament religion in the light of which it is to be followed (see HEBREW RELIGION).

We may distinguish three stages in this development.

(a) An early period in which there was no tribal restriction on the priest hood or on offices connected with the sanctuary. Thus we find Micah consecrating one of his own sons as priest (Jud. xvii. 5), and Samuel seems to have been an Ephraimite by birth. The more menial offices connected with Solomon's temple were performed by the royal body-guard or by slaves especially dedicated ("Nethi nim")—usually foreigners. At the same time there is evidence which suggests a distinct preference for Levites (cf. Jud. xvii. 13).

(b)

A period in which all Levites, and Levites only, were eli gible for the priesthood. This is represented in the literature of the Old Testament by Deuteronomy and Ezekiel. Both use the phrase "the priests, the Levites," though Ezekiel makes a distinction between those who had ministered at the local sanctuaries (to him, as a Jerusalem priest, an illicit cult), and the sons of Zadok who were the proper attendants of the sanctuary at Jerusalem. The former are condemned to menial offices, while the higher duties are reserved for the latter (Ezek. xliii. 19, xliv. I o, I 5). This is

the position which would naturally follow on the centralisation of sacrifice in Jerusalem. Though we have no direct evidence to prove that Ezekiel's attempt to limit the priesthood proper to the family of Zadok succeeded, it is quite possible that this condition persisted till the promulgation of P.

(c) The last stage, in which the priesthood was confined to the family of Aaron. This is usually traced back to the time of Ezra, and was certainly the rule for the whole of the Greek and Roman periods. The term "Levite" now includes (through some fictitious genealogy) the former menial attendants, and the whole body of non-Aaronic Levites is now placed on the same level.

Origin of the Levites.—Biblical tradition is practically unani mous in tracing back the Levites to the third son of Jacob and Leah. But the earliest reference to the tribe as a tribe is found in Gen. xlix. 5-7, where, along with Simeon (q.v.), it is condemned as bloodthirsty and cruel. To the same traditional element probably belongs the story of the slaughter of the Shechemites by these two brothers (Gen. xxxiv. 25-30), and the language of Gen. xlix. 7 suggests that the tribe disappeared in the same way as Simeon. Further, certain Minaean inscriptions have been found in north Arabia (at El-ola) in which the cognate word lawi'a (together with a feminine form) occurs in the simple sense of "priest." It has, then, been conjectured that the term originally implied occupation and not descent.

At the same time the tradition of a common descent is so per sistent that it is difficult to disregard it, and the Minaean parallel may be accidental. There seems no real reason to doubt the tra dition which makes Moses and Aaron members of this tribe, and its special devotion to Yahweh, the God introduced by Moses to Israel, is illustrated by the story of the vengeance they took on the calf-worshippers at Sinai (Ex. xxxii. 26 sqq.). Since Moses seems to have derived his knowledge of the cult of Yahweh, not in Israel, but among the tribes of the north of the Sinai peninsula (Midian ites, Kenites, etc.), it has been suggested that the Levites, as a tribe, belonged to a group which entered the country from the south, along with the Kenites and Danites, independently of the great invasion of the Israelites under Joshua. It accords with this theory that the first mention of a Levitical sanctuary in the north connects its establishment with the migration of the tribe of Dan.