Possible memories of vivification rituals also figure prominently in the sacerdotal profile of one of the most famous divine mediators of Jewish tradition – the high priest, who is often understood in later Jewish interpretations as an eschatological imago Dei. We have seen how several pseudepigraphical imagines Dei were endowed with attributes and functions of the high priest. The roots of this understanding in which a priestly figure is construed as the image of God is already present in the ancient Near Eastern cultic environment where the āšipu priest was seen as the image of Marduk (Herring, Divine Substitution, 44ff). Christine Palmer contends that “in biblical Israel, the stark prohibition of crafting any image to represent Yahweh precludes that a cult statue serves as a body for divine indwelling (Exodus 32; Deuteronomy 5:8–10). Instead, it is the consecrated body of the high priest that serves as an access point to the divine. The priest’s sacral apparel may be viewed as a ‘mode of presencing’ (Bahrani 2003), putting on display a sartorial ‘image of God’ where the multisensory experience of worship may be engaged. As with the Mesopotamian cult statue, something greater than merely a reflection of sacred space is intended. The entire worship experience of the tent shrine – the sights, sounds, and smells of a fully sensorial encounter with the divine – is embodied by Israel’s high priest.” Palmer “Israelite High Priestly Apparel,” 125. The characteristics that indicate the high priest’s role as the divine representation are most clearly manifested in the details of his sacerdotal attire.
- On the cultic elements of the high priest’s attire, see: M. Haran, Temples and Temple-Service in Ancient Israel: An Inquiry into Biblical Cult Phenomena and the Historical Setting of the Priestly School (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 1985); C. J. Imes, “Between Two Worlds: The Functional and Symbolic Significance of the High Priestly Regalia,” in: Dress and Clothing in the Hebrew Bible: “For All Her Household Are Clothed in Crimson” (ed. A. Finitsis; LHBOTS, 679; London: T&T Clark, 2019) 29-62; C. Palmer, “Israelite High Priestly Apparel: Embodying an Identity between Human and Divine,” in: Fashioned Selves: Dress and Identity in Antiquity (ed. M. Cifarelli; Oxford: Oxbow Books, 2019) 117-127. McDowell remarks that “the garments and regalia of the high priest are strikingly similar to the elaborate clothing and crowns made for cult statues.
- She further ascertains that “the high priest, when dressed in his full regalia, seems to have been a living representation of Yahweh to Israel (Fletcher-Louis, All the Glory of Adam, 59), but he may have also functioned as a living ‘cult statue’ of corporate Israel designed to dwell in the presence of Yahweh, dressed, adorned, and coded in such a way as to rank him with kings and gods” (McDowell, The Image of God in the Garden of Eden, 211). Fletcher-Louis also reminds us that the sartorialism of the high priest, particularly his ephod and breastplate, its precious stones with their engravings, his robe with its pomegranates, and, finally, the rosette on his turban, resemble the garments that clothe cult statues in the wider ancient Near East and Greco-Roman antiquity (6 C. H. T. Fletcher-Louis, “Priests and Priesthood,” in: Dictionary of Jesus and the Gospels (eds. J. B. Green et al.; Downers Grove, Il: InterVarsity Press, 2013) 698-699). While some scholars see in the high priest a Jewish version of a cultic statue, others disagree with this assessment. Carmen Imes identifies at least two factors that work against the possibility that the high priest can be envisaged as a cultic statue. First, he did not wear his elaborate regalia on the annual occasion on which he entered the most holy place. Imes surmises that, if the high priest was indeed the living image of YHWH, then he naturally would have worn his elaborate accouterment when entering the space in which YHWH was thought to be “present” (Imes, “Between Two Worlds,” 50). The second objection, according to Imes, is that the Mesopotamian mīs pî ritual has little to no resemblance to the high priestly ordination ritual. In her opinion, “the mīs pî is far more complex than the Israelite ceremony, including a multiplicity of symbols, including a throne, that do not seem to correspond.” To evaluate these various scholarly verdicts, we should look closer at some details of the high priest’s accouterment.
Veneration of the High Priest
We have witnessed how various Jewish accounts of the mediators’ inductions into the eschatological imago Dei include a ritual of obeisance, which activated the statue and demonstrated its power in the eyes of iconodules. Some Jewish materials that convey the stories of high priestly figures may also contain this motif. Fletcher-Louis surmises that Sirach can be one such account. Sirach contains a eulogy that praises the high priest Simon ben Onias as a part of a hymn honoring Israel’s ancestors, the hymn which begins in Sir 44:1. Fletcher-Louis glimpses the first instance of the veneration imagery in Sir 44:15 where one can find the following statement “The assembly declares their wisdom, and the congregation proclaims their praise.” Fletcher-Louis maintains that the prostration is offered to Simon. The second instance of similar obeisance is attested in Sir 50:20-21 where the following phrase is found: “Then Simon came down and raised his hands over the whole congregation of Israelites, to pronounce the blessing of the Lord with his lips, and to glory in his name; and they bowed down in worship a second time, to receive the blessing from the Most High.” In analyzing this passage, Fletcher Louis observes that Simon pronounces the priestly blessing (Num 6:24-26), which includes the utterance of the divine Name. At this point, the people prostrate themselves a second time.24 Besides Sirach, Fletcher-Louis also finds examples of the tradition of the high priest’s veneration in Josephus’ Jewish Antiquities 11.326-338,25 where, in his opinion, the high priest Jaddua was venerated by Alexander the Great.26 If Fletcher-Louis’ intuitions are correct, the instances of the high priest’s veneration in Sirach and Josephus serve as important affirmations of the high priest’s role as the eschatological Adam, as they can be seen as another specimen of the Jewish trend for the veneration of the eschatological imago Dei.