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Dositheus, Priest and Levite DOSITHEUS, PRIEST AND LEVITE RALPH MARCUS UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO TN JBL 63 (1944) 339-62 E. Bickerman has discussed the text -*- and historical significance of the colophon to the Greek ver­ sion of the Book of Esther. With his usual thoroughness and acumen he has made a number of valuable contributions to our knowledge of Hellenistic Jewish literature as well as to the inter­ pretation of this particular passage. In respect of the latter, he has plausibly argued that the Ptolemy and Cleopatra in question are Ptolemy Auletos and Cleopatra Tryphaina, and that the fourth year of their reign is 78/7 B. C. The same date was recently suggested by J. Cohen in his Judaica et Aegyptiaca (Groningen, 1941, pp. 28-30), which Bickerman has apparently not seen because of its scarceness in this country. However, Bickerman has supported his argument for this date with greater detail than has Cohen. On another point Bickerman has adopted a radical suggestion of Saul Lieberman, the distinguished Talmudist, whose recent book Greek in Jewish Palestine has thrown much light on linguistic problems of early Jewish literature. The suggestion concerns the phrase Αωσίθβος Os βφη elvai iepevs καΐ Acueír^s, which is usually translated, "Dositheus, who claimed to be a priest and Lévite". Bickerman finds that "such a qualification of Dositheus would be unique and rather surprising. Every priest was a Lévite ipso facto because the priestly class ('the sons of Aaron') was a clan of the Levitical tribe. On the other hand, late Judaism in Egypt as well as in Palestine drew a sharp demarcation between the official character of the priest and of a non-Aaronic Lévite. We owe the solution of the riddle to Professor Saul Lieberman. The word Aeueirrçs is here not a noun but a personal name, borne also by a Palestinian rabbi of the second century A. D., 269 270 JOURNAL OF BIBLICAL LITERATURE Levitas of Jabne. To understand the clause, we have only to displace a comma of our printed text: Δωσί0€θ$, os βφη βίναι lepevs, και Aeueír^s. This interpretation is evidently the right one." In other words, Lieberman and Bickerman take the Greek to mean, "Dositheus, who said he was a priest, and Levitas etc." It seems to me that the traditional rendering, "Dositheus who said he was (i. e. claimed to be) a priest and Lévite" is more natural, though possibly the new rendering may find favor with some as a kind of syntactical lectio difficilior. In the first place, the Rabbi Levitas referred to by Bickerman flourished in the second century A. D., and one may well hesitate to assume that this name was borne by Jews in the first century B. C, especially since it is a Hebrew name with a Greek ending, whereas the other Jews mentioned in the passage, Dositheus, Ptolemaeus and Lysimachus, all have purely Greek names. In the second place, the expression "priest and Lévite" may be explained as emphasizing the legitimacy of Dositheus' official position. In the second century B. C. (and later) even some of the high priests were appointed to office by the Seleucids (and later by Herod) though they were not Aaronites. That was why the Asidaeans hoped for better treatment from Alcimus than from his predecessors; according to I Mace 7 14 they reflected that "this man has come as a priest from the seed of Aaron". Thus, while theoretically every priest was a Lévite ipso facto, as Bickerman reminds us, in practice there were at this time priests who did not belong to the Levitical tribe. In the third place, one is justified in attaching some importance to the phrase os βφη βίναι. If the writer of the colophon had wished merely to refer to Dositheus, a priest, and Levitas and the others, we should expect him to have written, Aa)ai6eos os ην lepevs και Aeve'i^s κ.τ.λ. But he tells us that Dositheus claimed to be a priest, and it is therefore quite natural to suppose that he is reporting the fact that Dositheus laid stress on his connection with the Levitical priesthood. The Levitical affiliation of the priests is stated in a similarly emphatic way, I believe, by Philo in De Mut. Nom. 2, ίστι δβ και Αβνιτικής φν\ής ιβρβνσιν άτταρχή διδομένη. Bickerman MARCUS: DOSITHEUS, PRIEST AND LEVITE 271 himself (in note 46) quotes another passage of Philo, Quod. Det. 132, which seems to me, though not to him, to support the traditional rendering of our passage. Philo in treating Aaron as the symbol of speech, explains that in Ex 4 u the words "the Lévite" are added to "Behold, Aaron, thy brother" to teach us that one should reveal the thoughts of a perfect mind only "to the Lévite and priest and virtuous speech." Of course, this is allegory, but it is based on the implicit assumption that while there is a distinction between priests and Lévites, Scripture has a deeper purpose in referring to Aaron as priest and Lévite. In conclusion, it seems better to retain the traditional render­ ing, "Dositheus, who claimed to be a priest and Lévite" (i. e. a priest of Levitical descent) than to adopt that of Lieberman and Bickerman, "Dositheus, who said that he was a priest, and Levitas" etc. Let us permit the Tanna, Rabbi Levitas, to retain the honor of being the first person of that name to be mentioned in our extant sources. ^s Copyright and Use: As an ATLAS user, you may print, download, or send articles for individual use according to fair use as defined by U.S. and international copyright law and as otherwise authorized under your respective ATLAS subscriber agreement. 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