PRIEST, one who performs the sacred rites of any religion, especially the sacrificial rites, and who is thus a mediator between the Deity and men.
In primitive times the function of priesthood was inherent in the head of a family, the pater familial; but as states were organized priest hood on behalf of the people was assumed by the chief or king, or was exercised, under him, by a special order of men; but still the rites of domestic religion would continue to be per formed by the head of the household. In early Greece and Rome when kings were banished and the power of the state came into the hands of elected magistrates the priestly office of the king, or his headship in religious affairs, was vested in the archon basileus as at Athens, or the rex sacrorum as at Rome; the term king (basileus, rex) being retained after kingship had been done away, doubtless because of some religious scruple, lest the gods should resent the lowering of the appellation of the head of the state religion. The priests of the state religion were now appointed by the public au thority, whether their functions were general or were restricted to the service of special gods in special temples.
In Rome there never was in pagan times any thing like a priestly order or priestly caste or class, as the order of knights (equites) or patricians (pairicii nobiles), nor was priesthood hereditary. In Greek states the priestly serv ice in certain temples and places was restricted to certain families; for the rest the priesthood was a function of the state. In Egypt the priesthood was a very close corporation, the members of which, with the king at their head, were the supreme arbiters of civil and even mili tary as well as of religious affairs; the priest hood alone possessed whatever science existed of the mysteries of religion or of the secrets of statecraft, or the laws of nature.
In primitive Israel, as in other primitive so cieties, priesthood was the attribute of the father of the family: the priest by vocation, as a man set apart to minister on behalf of the people in their relations to the Deity, does not come into view till the Mosaic epoch; and the fully devel oped priestly system of Israel did not come into existence till the time of Solomon or even, perhaps, till after the return of the people from Babylon and the building of the second temple at Jerusalem by Zerubbabel in 520 ac., nearly 500 years after Solomon's reign. Before the building of Solomon's Temple there were in Israel several temples or sanctuaries with ora cles that were consulted to ascertain the will and pleasure of Jehovah, and with priests as their interpreters; and the priests and the Le vites constituted a distinct order of society; but after the secession of northern Israel every de vout king of Judah earnestly sought to suppress religious worship or sacrifice everywhere save in the central national temple: this end was not achieved till after the return of the captives from Babylon. Henceforth the worship even
of the true God elsewhere than in the temple at Jerusalem was denounced as impious and little different from worship of false gods. The entire priestly order was massed in Jerusalem and its neighborhood; the priests were distrib uted into 24 classes, each presided over by a chief priest, and each class of priests ministering in the temple one week in rotation. Over the whole priesthood presided the high priest, be lieved to be always a lineal descendant of Aaron, the brother of Moses.
The ministers of the several religions men tioned, as well as those of Phoenicia, Babylon and other countries, are styled in English °priests° : in Hebrew, Greek and Latin, respec tively, the priest is Kohen, hiereus and sacerdos. But the English word priest, derived from the Greek presbyteros, an elder person, has not in itself any denotation of sacrifice or of priestly function but only of maturity of age.
In the Greek New Testament the priest of the Jewish law is always called hiereus and in the Latin Vulgate version sacerdos, never pres byteros, or sensor (elder). On the other hand, neither in the Greek original nor in the Vulgate Latin version of it is hiereus or sacerdos ever said of the minister of the religion of Jesus Christ, but always presbyteros and presbyter; and in the authorized English version pres byteros is invariably rendered elder never priest. Nevertheless, in the Book of Common Prayer of the Anglican Church and in that Church's Articles of Religion the word priest is everywhere employed instead of elder; but this °pnese of the Prayer Book is not hiereus, sacerdos, a sacrificing priest ; for in the Articles the sacrificial function of the priest of the Catholic Church is classed with °blasphemous fables and dangerous deceits.° Hence for the Anglican Church, as for all the other Protest ant churches, the priest, presbyter or elder is not the minister of a sacrifice. It is different in the Catholic Church and in the numerous Christian churches of the East. Those churches teach, with the Church of Rome, that in the Christian dispensation it is the chief of fice of the priest to offer sacrifice, namely, the eucharistic oblation, which is a perpetual rep resentation of the offering made on Calvary. In the belief of those churches the mass is the selfsame sacrifice which Christ offered — the victim the same, the priest the same: for the victim is Jesus Christ, his body and blood; and the priest is the incarnate Son of God in Heaven, the High Priest, who is represented in the mystic offering by the priest who ministers at the altar.
It is worthy of mention that till the middle of the 3d century no extant writing of any of the fathers employs the Greek or the Latin word for priest (hiereus, sacerdos) to designate the presbyteros. In the Roman pontifical the order of the priesthood is called both presby teratus and sacerdotium.