Source: Margaret Barker, The Hidden Tradition of the Kingdom of God (London: Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, 2007), 54–76.
Melchizedek - The Hidden Priesthood Restoration.pdf
This text explores the ancient and contested concept of the High Priesthood, contrasting the hereditary Aaronic line of priests with the enigmatic figure of Melchizedek. The source highlights that the role of the high priest in ancient Israel was highly significant, linking heaven and earth, with the office itself often being challenged and subject to power struggles, particularly during the Second Temple period. Crucially, the text details the significance of the Melchizedek Priesthood—which was not based on physical descent but on divine appointment and "resurrection"—as an older, royal priesthood that early Christians believed Jesus fulfilled. This tradition, further illuminated by texts from the Dead Sea Scrolls, establishes Melchizedek as an angelic figure who was eventually identified with the LORD (Yahweh), serving as a crucial foundation for the Christian understanding of Jesus as the "great high priest" who ushers in the Kingdom of God and a "royal priesthood" for all believers.
In the popular imagination, the biblical priest is a figure of ritual drudgery—a man in heavy robes performing the rote animal sacrifices of a desert tribe. But a closer reading of the ancient strata reveals something far more startling: the High Priest of the First Temple was not merely an officiant; he was a "link between heaven and earth," an almost supernatural being frequently described in the texts as an angel. Clad in garments of "hoseb work"—intricate fabrics of blue and purple representing the material world—he functioned as a living icon. He was the "veiled divine presence," bearing the four letters of the Divine Name upon his forehead, an earthly incarnation of a heavenly reality.
Yet, a profound mystery haunts our understanding of Jerusalem’s sanctuary: why is it that these figures, the undisputed center of Temple worship for a thousand years, remain almost entirely unknown to the history we inherited? While the Hebrew Scriptures offer meticulous genealogies, the narrative gaps are cavernous. The "official" history of the post-exilic period appears to be a sophisticated rewrite—a deliberate suppression of an older, more mystical tradition that predated the rigid legalism of the Second Temple.
The books of Ezra and Nehemiah are typically read as triumphant chronicles of the return from Babylon. However, they contain discrepancies that hint at a profound power struggle over who held the right to stand in the Holy of Holies. Ben Sira’s famous "Hymn to the Fathers," composed two centuries before Jesus, praises the builders of the second temple—Zerubbabel, Joshua the High Priest, and Nehemiah—yet Ezra is conspicuously absent from the roll of heroes.
This omission is not accidental. In the book of Ezra, the priestly genealogy appears to have been retroactively altered to provide Ezra with a lineage he likely never possessed, positioning him as the successor to Seraiah. The actual heirs, Jehozadak and Joshua, are sidelined in the text to make room for this new "scribe of the Law." Even Flavius Josephus, writing from a high-priestly lineage himself, maintained a crucial distinction: he described Ezra not as the archiereus (High Priest), but as the protos hiereus—the "first priest." It was a title that sounded authoritative but signaled a shift away from the ancient, anointed high-priestly office. This suggests a coup where the "Law" brought from Babylon was used to redefine the "Covenant," replacing the mystical heirs of the First Temple with a new order of bureaucratic scribes.