When at present, it was announced on the news today that Israel is close to a Civil War, but the president, Hertzog, said he would not allow that to happen. People have been rioting for the past 11 weeks and it looks like it will continue until Passover over the new governmental policies in the judicial area.
Israel and the kingdom of Judah allowed things to get out of hand and had their First and Only Civil War with dire consequences. King Solomon died in 920 BCE, and that was the start of it. A divided kingdom falls, and in this case, Assyria was just waiting for this to happen as they stepped in and took the land AND the people.
Solomon, born in 961 BCE, had taken on the task of building the Temple that Moses had planned for. He got rid of his brother, Adonijah, and other potentially dangerous individuals and put his money and his laborers with architects and builders sent to him by King Hiram of Tyre. The work was completed in the 11th year of Solomon's reign and ensured the central position of Jerusalem in the kingdom.
Abiathar, son of Ahimelech, chief priest at Nob, a priestly city probably situated near Jerusalem on Mt. Scopus. After the destruction of the tabernacle or temporary Temple (According to the Hebrew Bible, the tabernacle, also known as the Tent of the Congregation, was the portable earthly dwelling place of Yahweh used by the Israelites from the Exodus until the conquest of Canaan.) at Shiloh, the priests of the sons of Eli built a high-place in Nob where they officiated. As a punishment for the assistance given to the fugitive David, Saul slew all the priests of the place because they were like false priests.
Eli with Samuel
Eli became the high priest at age 58 at the shrine of Shiloh and one of the last Judges in the 11th century BCE. He was the mentor of Samuel. He had died 40 years after becoming high priest by falling from his chair on hearing of the Philistine capture of the Ark.
Zadok was a Cohen, a priest, not a high one, though. He may have officiated at the altar in Gibeon but after Saul's death, went to David at Hebron and--together with Abiathar---was David's chief priest. He remained loyal during Absalom's rebellion and on David's command, anointed Solomon as king. Solomon appointed Zadok's son a high priest in the Temple and from that time the high priesthood remained in the Zadokite family until the period of the Hasmonean rising.
Adonijah buttering up David as he lay dying. Adonijah was the 4th son of David. After his brother, Absalom's death, who was the 3rd son, he claimed the succession to the throne, with the support of Joab and Abiathar, but was unsuccessful. Adonijah later sought to marry Abishag, David's young concubine, but Solomon regarded this as an adct of rebellion and had him killed. (Kings 1-2).
Supporting Adonijah were the "old guard"--General Joab and the priest, Abiathar; and supporting Solomon were the priest Zadok, the prophet Nathan, and the captain of David's bodyguard, Benaiah.
Solomon ruled his country. The Sanhedrin wasn't born until much later. The earliest record of a Sanhedrin of the 71 male rabbinical judges is by Josephus who wrote of a olitical Sanhedrin convened by the Romans in 57 BCE. Hellenistic sources generally depict the Sanhedrin as a political and judicial council headed by the country's ruler.
The biggest problem with Solomon's unwise governmental decisions were taxing the people too much to complete the Temple and not paying his laborers. Solomon must have paid his superintendant, though, Jeroboam I, of the tribe of Ephraim, who supervised forced laborers' work. It was he who later led the revolt after Solomon had died because his son, Rehoboam, did not revise these problematic areas that the people were rebelling against. He kept taxes that high, and kept forcing the laborers to work which was too much like slave standards.
Jeroboam's revolutionary movement was at first suppressed, and he had to take refuge in Egypt. Later, he led a delegation to speak with King Rehoboam representing the fated northern Israelite tribes which met him at Shechem, demanding changes in the system of taxation and forced labor.
When that request was refused, the northern tribes declared their independence and anointed Jeroboam as their king. Jeroboam's capital was first at Shechem, but was later removed to Penuiel in Transjordan and finally to Tirzah.
Five years after his accession, 60 towns of his territory were ravaged by an Egyptian invasion.
To combat the influence of the Jerusalem Temple (for he's now going against Moses's plan and making this more of an economical competition of businesses, he had the audacity to set up new shrines at Bethel and Dan with a similar cult but centering around the symbols of golden calves--a horrid idea since Moses had gone up the mountain to receive the 10 Commandments and when he was out of sight, the Israelites threw a Rave; a party of dancing and drinking around a golden calf they had made.
Golden Calf: (Exodus 32:4, Exodus 32:8; Deuteronomy 9:16; Nehemiah 9:18). This was a molten image of a calf which the idolatrous Israelites formed at Sinai. This symbol was borrowed from the custom of the Egyptians. It was destroyed at the command of Moses (Exodus 32:20).
The Bible and talmudic sources are violently hostile to Jeroboam I who "sinned and caused Israel to sin." Jeroboam was not a student of Moses' writings but a great worker and leader of men. He had missed the whole idea of what Solomon had in mind with the Temple and where Judaism was going to be. That was the beginning of their end.
By being divided, they were like chickens out of the coop about to be plucked by the lion nearby. The Assyrians saw their weakness and attacked, taking most of the best of the people away with them to be used in another land in 721 BCE. Shalmaneser V's had laid siege of Samaria and its capture by Sargon, his successor who annexed the country and then deported 27,290 of the Israelites to Assyria and Media, and then replaced them with people they wanted to rid themselves of, Syrian and Babylonian prisoners. Judah itself was taken by them by 700 BCE.
The only thing that stopped Sennacherib was a plague in his army and they returned home. King Manasseh of Judah was exiled to Assyria in 652 BCE as a result of complicity in a plot against Ashurbanipal (669-626 BCE). He was the king of the Neo-Assyrian Empire from 669 BCE to his death in 631. He is generally remembered as the last great king of Assyria.
After this time, Assyria declined rapidly and was succeeded by Babylon.
Aaron and Moses with the Pharaoh of Egypt, talking him into freeing the slaves
Aaron, brother of Moses, was the father of the most respected and intelligent of the Jewish people, yet they were not given land or home to call their own. Aaron and Moses belonged to the tribe of Levi, who was the 3rd son of of Jacob and Leah. Levi was not the best son out of the 6 boys and 1 girl that they had, but a caused trouble when over-reacting to his sister's rapist.
Levi and his older brother, Simeon, the 2nd son, avenged the dishonoring of his sister, Dinah. She had been raped by Shechem, the prince of the region.Her 2 brothers annihilated the men of the town of Shechem(today's Nablus, an Arab town) (Gen.34). Dinah was abducted and raped near the city of Shechem, by Shechem, son of Hamor the Hivite (the Hivites were a Canaanitish people). Some of the Hivites lived in Northern Canaan, near Mt. Hermon (Josh.11:3). Hamor offered that Shechem and Dinah marry, but they could not accept that offer.
Some scholars believe that this indicated the beginning of the conquest of Canaan by the Israelite tribes. When Jacob found out what his sons had done, an act that occurred shortly after they had arrived in Shechem and were actually new immigrants there, he realized what a terrible position they were now in. Jacob had believed that at last he would find tranquility in Canaan, but his family had to experience this moral outrage on his own daughter from its beginning. They could not tolerate what others might consider commonplace such as a rape. On Jacob's deathbed, he forecast that Levi's descendants would be scattered throughout Israel.
Levi married Milkah, whose father was Aram, the Syrian, and they had Jochabed, a female, and Gershon, Kohath, and Merari,
Jochabed married Amram (son of Kohath), her nephew , and they were the parents of Mirium, Aaron and Moses.
Aaron married Elisheba, and their children were Nadab and Abihu, who when were young Cohens, ascended Mt. Sinai to behold the Divine revelation (Exod.24:1-11) but later sacrificed strange fire on the altar, and, in punishment, were mortally struck by fire from before the Lord. (Lev. 10:1-3). Other children of Aaron were Eleazar who followed his father in being the Cohen Gadol, and Ithamar.
Aaron's line would provide the people following Moses a High Priest, a Kohen gadol. The principle function of the High Priest was the performance of the service in the Temple. The process, described in the book of Leviticus, requires the High Priest to bathe himself and dress in special linen garments to attain atonement for the people of Israel. Yom Kippur was also the one day of the year when the High Priest was permitted to enter the Holy of Holies, the Temple’s innermost sanctum, where he sprinkled the blood of sacrificial animals.
Eleazar was the 3rd son and successor of Aaron. the high priests of the house of Zadok were descended from Eleazar. The age a Levite entered the priesthood was 30 years of age. The high priest was the presiding officer of the Sanhedrin. In the post-Maccabean period the high priest was looked upon as exercising in all things, political, legal, and sacerdotal, the supreme authority, shows it to be almost certain that the presidency of the Sanhedrin was vested in the high priest.
Ithamar was a priest or Cohen. together with his brother, Eleazar, he succeeded his father, Aaron in the priestly office.
A Cohen with a Levite
Abiathar was the son of Abimelech, the high priest at Nob. Abimelech descended from Aaron's son, Ithamar and the High Priest of Israel who was Eli.
There was also an Abimelech who was the illegitimate son of Gideon,of the tribe of Manasseh, and a judge of Israel for 40 years. Gideon had defeated the Midianites near Ein Harod using a group of picked volunteers, and then was offered the kingship, but refused out of loyalty to the principle that G-d is king of Israel.
In an attempt to establish a monarchy in Israel in the 12th century BCE, Abimelech killed all of his 70 brothers except Jotham, his youngest brother. He ruled for 3 years in Shechem, largely with the support of the chiefs of that city, and was killed in the ensuing revolt. Jotham uttered a parable from Mt. Gerizim, rebuking the people of Shechem for electing Abimelech as king. He must have been named for the high priest but could not have been the high priest at Nob.
Eli was the High priest at the shrine of Shiloh and one of the last Judges in the 11th century BCE. He was mentor of Samuel, the prophet. He succeeded to the high priesthood at the age of 58 and died 40 years later as a result of falling from his chair on hearing of the Philistine capture of the Ark. His family was subsequently deprived of the high priesthood, the Bible ascribing this to the immoral conduct of his sons, Hophni and Phinehas, who were priests at Shiloh. Their evil behavior and deaths came in battle at the hands of the Philistines (I Sam. 1-4).
Nob was a priestly city, probably situated near Jerusalem on Mt. Scopus. After the destruction of the tabernacle at Shiloh, the priests of the sons of Eli built a high-place in Northern Israel where they officiated. As a punishment for the assistance given to the fugitive David, Saul slew all the priests of the place.
Zadok son of Ahitub was a Levite priest during the time of King David. For a long time, he was co-high priest with Abiathar. Zadok was a descendant of Aaron and a leader over his family of Levites (1 Chronicles 27:17). After Saul's death, Zadok went to David at Hebron and together with Abiathar, was David's chief priest.
Abiathar was the only one of the priests to escape from Saul (reigned c. 1020–1000 BCE)'s massacre in Nob, when his father and the priests of Nob were slain on the command of Saul. He fled to David (reigned c. 1003–970 BCE) at Keilah, taking with him the ephod and other priestly regalia. Rabbinical literature that linked the later extermination of the male descendants of David with the priests of Nob, also link the survival of David's descendant, Joash with that of Abiathar.On David'scommand, Abiathar anointed Solomon as king.
Solomon appointed Zadok's son a high priest in the Temple and from that time the high priesthood remained in the Zadokite family until the period of the Hasmonean rising. Even after their deposition from their high office, many aristocratic priestly families claimed kinship with this family. it is not known whether the sons of Zadok mentioned in the Dead Sea Scrolls have any connection with this family. Zadok was also the name of one of the Pharisees who with Judah the Galilean founded the Sect of Zealots in 6 CE.
After the conquest of Canaan, the Levites were expected to teach the Torah to the people, being therefore excluded from any territorial inheritance but receiving 48 towns and surrounding lands throughout the country, as well as the tithe of the agricultural produce. This arrangement worked somewhat differently in practice. Certain towns assigned to the Levites were only captured a long time after the conquest, or not at all, and there is no evidence to show how effective was the collection of tithes. As a result, some of the Levites served at High Places, especially in the Northern Kingdom after King Jeroboam (930-910 BCE) had instituted independent worship. Jeroboam's capital of the north was Shechem, and this was after Solomon had died and Israel broke apart into Israel and Judah. To combat the influence of the Jerusalem Temple, he set up new shrines at Bethel and Dan with a similar cult but centering around the symbols of golden calves. The bible and Talmudic sources are violently hostile to Jeroboam I who "sinned and caused Israel to sin."
High Priest -Kohen Gadol
As it came to be, Aaron's direct descendants were to be the Cohens or Priests of the 12 tribes. The Cohen was the chosen holy instrument to mediate between man and G-d. Originally every Israelite family head was consecrated to serve as the priest with the 1st-born son who was regarded as the inheritor of his father's house and was in a position of considerable power.
This arrangement was maintained until after the Exodus when the 1st-born became suspect as a result of the Golden Calf incident, and then with such a disappointment, including Aaron's situation of not being able to stop the people from such a deviation of what Moses was working hard to bring to an end, Moses changed the rules. The tribe of Levi was selected in their stead. They were chosen because of their loyalty of Aaron in trying to stop the Golden Calf incident.
Each family of Levi was assigned specific duties connected with the transport and assembly of the parts of the Tabernacle in the wilderness. The family of Aaron was singled out for service within the Tabernacle and later the Temple after it was built as priests.
Most of the Levites were thereafter employed in work connected with the Tabernacle, but the family of Aaron became the actual Cohen responsible for special duties; the sacrifices, the supervision of hygienic purity (kashrut) and instructing the people in the Mosaic Law. One priest out of all was chosen as the High Priest-Kohen Gadol, who was also charged with Divination through the Urim and Thummim.
Divination came in many forms throughout the Middle East. The Urim and Thummim were sacred means of divination used by the early Hebrews. Their nature has not been exactly determined, but they were attached to the breastplate of the high priest. The divination apparently involved the use of 2 stones or tablets which, according to ancient Hebrew belief, could answer questions, on occasions fateful for the nation or its rulers. After the time of David, with the growth of prophetic influence, their usage is not mentioned.
To prevent the Cohen acquiring political domination (a normal phenomenon among neighboring peoples like Egypt, for instance), the tribe of Levi was excluded from acquiring its own tract of territory,, and its livelihood came from the contribution of Tithes, while the Cohen received a tenth of the Levites' tithe and also a portion of the sacrifices offered.
The priesthood was hereditary and the Cohens were subject to strict laws regarding contamination by corpses and the choice of a wife. While worshiping, they wore a distinctive dress. Special cities were assigned to them in the territories of the various tribes. The Cohens lived in every tribe's territory with different people, living in their homes. These laws, laid down prior to the conquest of Canaan, evolved differently when the Israelites settled in their land. Moses died outside of Canaan, so Joshua had to take over his plans for the people.
The descendants of Aaron concentrated living around the Tabernacle, but local shrines were also established; either following a local revelation or to meet needs, and these were serviced by other Cohens, often Levites. David (I chron. 24) reorganized the priesthood and Levites about the future Temple in Jerusalem, arranging 24 watches of Cohens and corresponding watches of Levites, singers, and gatekeepers.
In his utopian Temple plan, Ezekiel replaced the non-Jewish Nethinim (Temple servants, originally conquered Canaanites who were said to have been allotted by David to the Levites for menial service in the Temple)with the Levites, but this scheme was never executed. When the Jews were exiled to Babylon in 597 BCE and 586 BCE, the Nethinim were included and also returned with them under Zerubbabel and Ezra, being given a special quarter of Jerusalem.
The Nethinim maintained their identity down to amoraic times. Traditionally, the Amoraic period is reckoned as seven or eight generations (depending on where one begins and ends). The last Amoraim are generally considered to be Ravina I and Rav Ashi, and Ravina II, nephew of Ravina I, who codified the Babylonian Talmud around 500 CE. In other words, the great sages of the Mishnah and Talmud.
In 2nd Temple times, the Cohens outnumbered the Levites, and apparently shared their tithe. In halakhah, the Levite is regarded as 2nd to the Cohen, as at the Reading of the Law, and has the privilege of having the Cohen's hands before the latter blesses the people.
Today the Cohens or priestly line still exist, with many of the responsibilities. Their position is told to their sons, and their DNA show up as J1 and J2. They were also in the Sanhedrin. There are families who can trace their lines back to RASHI (1040-1105) who had a tree going back to King David. Rashi was an only child born at Troyes, Champagne, in northern France. His mother's brother was Simeon bar Isaac, rabbi of Mainz. Simon was a disciple of Gershom ben Judah, who died that same year. On his father's side, Rashi has been claimed to be a 33rd-generation descendant of Johanan HaSandlar, who was a fourth-generation descendant of Gamaliel, who was reputedly descended from the Davidic line.
Gamaliel was the name of 6 rabbis, one a descendant of Hillel of 1st century BCE who wrote the Golden rule, with the Elder who was president of the Sanhedrin at Jerusalem, grandson of Hillel, president of Sanhedrin after the death of Jonathan ben Zakkai.
The amazing thing is that Cohens in the synagogue, men who were told by their fathers that they were Cohens, have taken DNA tests and have found the J1 DNA, proving that they are Cohens.
I personally have 477 Cohens with this spelling at FTDNA directly connected to my father's line with DNA connections, and have a total of 928 Cohens matching me. One Cohen I know is a Hochfeld. There are Jews who chose other surnames but were Cohens like his family. My friend and distant cousin, Victor, has 1,309 Cohens matching his DNA. Cohens may be the line that has survived the best through the years.
The Cohen line is patrilineal -- passed from father to son without interruption for 3,300 years.
Cohens kept a practice up of headstones in cemeteries with the information of being a Cohen on it picturing hands. KOHANIM (COHANIM) HANDS - Hands with thumbs (and sometimes forefingers) joined. On Jewish tombstones you will sometimes see a symbol showing two hands arranged for the Priestly Blessing like the example here. This is a symbol of the Kohen or Cohen (Hebrew for priest). The plural form is Kohanim or Cohanim.
The Western Wall (Kotel in Hebrew) is under the supervision of the Chief Rabbinate of Israel. The wall is the only ancient place allowed to Jews for praying.
Some Jewish surnames frequently associated with this symbol are Conn or Cohn (Kohn), Cahn (Kahn), and Cohen (Kohen), but you will find the symbol on the grave markers of people with other surnames. Today families can sometimes verify a priestly lineage from the tombstones of ancestors that have this symbol.
Israel has had 2 head rabbis, one for the Ashkenazim and one for the Sephardim. The present Sephardi Chief Rabbi is Yitzhak Yosef, and the Ashkenazi Chief Rabbi is David Lau, both of whom began their terms in 2013. The Rabbinate has jurisdiction over many aspects of Jewish life in Israel. Its jurisdiction includes personal status issues, such as Jewish marriages and Jewish divorce, as well as Jewish burials, conversion to Judaism, kosher laws and kosher certification, Jewish immigrants to Israel (olim), supervision of Jewish holy sites, working with various ritual baths (mikvaot) and yeshivas, and overseeing Rabbinical courts in Israel.
Priests of the Temple, the Cohens from Aaron Do you see how the back row holds their hands? That is the sign one sees in a cemetery that the deceased is a Cohen.
Moses was born c1391 BCE and died 120 years later in c1271 BCE. His brother, Aaron, was older than he, and lived until the age of 124. About 50% of Jewish men today bear the Y haplogroup or branch on the genealogy tree that belongs to the Jewish men who were descended from Aaron and were the Cohens, a position of serving in the Temple. Moses had used the tribe of Levi that they were part of and had Aaron as the 1st Cohen to serve. It was a inherited position with all the men of Aaron's descendants to serve in the Temple and were Cohens. Today we see that we all bear tags in our DNA that can be read, and as it turns out, both many Jews and many Arabs are Cohens. The ancestor of Moses and Aaron was Abraham, and he of course had sons by Hagar, an Egyptian and Sarah, his niece. He created this fact, so that one of my Arab friends deeply into DNA turned out to be a J1c3d, which is also a tag for many Jews. It's the J1 and J2 who are found to be Cohens.
One exciting fact is that my 1st cousin, son of my father's brother, had a mother who said her family was a family of Cohens. Up until today, this knowledge has had to be passed down orally from father to son, and her line was said to be a line of Cohens. I met up with her 2nd cousin by her same surname of Hochfeld- not Cohen, and there just happens to be more surnames of Cohen running through the Jewish family than any other surname. He was not a Cohen by name but served today in the synagogue as a Cohen because of the oral history. He tested with a minimal of testing, the 12 alleles, and was found to be a J1. The tag read as a J-M267. Indeed, science proved the oral history to be correct. He was a descendant of Aaron. Cohen is a common spelling for this surname but they have also used Cahan, Cohan, Kagan, Kahn, Kogen, Kohn, Kohen, Katz. Jews didn't use surnames until a government forced them to do so. They had to buy names. They had been calling themselves names like David, son of Moses. The Scandinavians do this to this day. Certain names might have been posted in their town to buy. A new fact has just been discovered in that DNA testing reveals a group who bear J2a1 and this is a direct line to ZADOK who was a major priest in the Temple and descendant of Aaron. J2a1i is a subset of this and is just a more recent form with newer descendants. It's also from Zadok. A group of people descending from Pinchas Ben El Azar are J2a1, and this Pinchas is found to be an important connection. It was "3,300 years ago, the precisely time of birth of Pinchas Ben El' Azar, the grandson of Aaron HaKohen" that has been found to be the origins of people with J2a1.
High Priest: Zadok
"And HaShem spoke to Moses saying, "Pinchas, son of El a zar (Elazar), son of Aharon (Aaron) the priest, has turned back my wrath from the children of Israel because he was ardent with my ardent in their midst....Numbers 25:10-29:40. " "Phinehas son of Elazar son of Aaron the Kohen saw, and he stood up from amid the assembly and took a spear in his hand."He followed the Israelite man into the tent and pierced them both, the Israelite man and the woman into her stomach---and the plague was halted from upon the Children of Israel." Those who died in the plague were twenty-four thousand. " The scientists discovered not one but two Cohen Modal Haplotypes. They were J1 and J2. ""Pinchas, the zealot mentioned in the Bible, may be the origin of J2" he suggested. J2 Cohanim serves as the deep background of the priestly Jewish caste. “The finding of J2 among contemporary Cohanim can lend credence that today’s Cohanim (J1,J2) may be descendants of two different founding dynasties – including coalescence to Pinchas as the founder of J2 Cohanim” concluded Dr. Karl Skorecki. "
Aaron, brother of Moses, 1st high priest-Cohen ha gadol.
Zadok the high priest's first duty was probably officiating at the altar in Gibeon but after King Saul's death, went to David at Hebron and together with another priest, ABIATHAR, was David's chief priest. David later became King David, of course, Israel's 2nd king, ruling from 1010 BCE to 970 BCE. Zadok remained loyal during Absalom's rebellion. Absalom was King David's 3rd son. He had killed his half-brother, Amnon to avenge the rape of his sister, Tamar. Those that think the Tanakh (OLD TESTAMENT) is boring should read it. It reads better than any soap on TV with situations one could not dream up. It's a thriller, and true at that!
Abiathar, another high priest, son of Ahimelech, chief priest at Nob, was able to escape the masssacre of his family by King Saul and took refuge with David who later appointed him HIGH PRIEST. He also remained loyal during Absalom's rebellion. He was not for Solomon but for his brother, Adonijah's claim to be king. Solomon then transferred his priestly rights to Zadok and banished Abiathar from Jerusalem.
On David's command, Zadok annointed David's son, SOLOMON, as king. He ruled from 961 BCE to 920 BCE. Solomon in turn appointed Zadok's son a high priest in the Temple and from that time the high priesthood remained in the Zadokite family until the period of the Hasmonean rising. " Between c. 140 and c. 116 BCE the dynasty ruled Judea semi-autonomously from the Seleucids. From 110 BCE, with the Seleucid Empire disintegrating, the dynasty became fully independent, expanded into the neighbouring regions of Samaria, Galilee, Iturea, Perea, and Idumea, and took the title "basileus". Some modern scholars refer to this period as an independent kingdom of Israel.
I think of it as the time of the Chanukah history when Judaism was almost wiped out by the Roman invaders from Syria, then the Syrian Greeks , led by Antiochus Epiphanes, who took control of the Temple and placed their idol in there. One Jewish family with many sons took control of the situation and formed a fighting force against them. We remember Judah the Maccabee. Judah was the son of Mattathias, military leader of the revolt against Syria in 168 BCE. In Sunday School, children learn to call Judah THE HAMMERER. He invented or used the warfare of a different nature, guerrilla warfare. "Even after their deposition from their high office, many aristocratic priestly families claimed kingship with this family. It is not known whether the sons of Zadok mentioned in the DEAD SEA SCROLLS have any connection with this family or not.
The Jewish population was either too afraid to defend themselves from the pagan Greeks or to used to their ways and were themselves changing into Greeks, but Mattathias broke the pattern and fought for their rights to their own religion. A growing fear is that this delusional event is creeping up and taking over many populations today. The Hasmonean family ruled until the time of John Hyrcanus or Alexander Yannai in c 31 BCE. Hyrcanus II was the oldest son of Alexander Yannai and his mother was Salome Alexandra. When the Parthians invaded Judah in 40, Hyrcanus II was taken prisoner and maimed so as to disualify him fo the priesthood and was sent to Parthia where he was honored by the Babylonian Jewish communities. Parthia was an empire of Iranic people. It ruled over the vast mass of the Jewish population in Mesopotamia, Babylonia and Media. They had restored Antigonus Mattathias to the throne of Judah in 40 BCE. Under their rulings, the famous rabbinic schools in Mesopotamia began to flourish.
Zadok was also the name of one of the Pharisees who with JUDAH THE GALILEAN founded the SECT OF ZEALOTS in 6CE. Zadok, son of Ahitub, Kohen under David II Sam 8:17, 15:29 I Kin 1:8, 34-40, 2:35,4:4, 1 Chr 18:16 Zadok son of Ahitub and Ahimelech son of Ebiathar were Kohanim: They were Cohens, direct descendants of Aaron, brother of Moses. (from Samuel) this was in the time of King David. (Melech is a Hebrew word meaning "King.") There is a song I learned in Israel: (David, melech Israel, chai, chai, ....). I learned this in 1980. Chai is "life" or "living." He lives on in our hearts.
The Cairo Genizah, alternatively spelled Geniza, is a collection of some 300,000 Jewish manuscript fragments that were found in the genizah or storeroom of the Ben Ezra Synagogue in Fustat or Old Cairo, Egypt. From this, the fragments below were found.
In 1952 fragments or scraps of some sort of material were found in a cave near Khirbet Kumran. They are now called the ZADOKITE FRAGMENTS or the DAMASCUS DOCUMENT and the CAIRO DAMASCUS COVENANT. From this, it is certain that the Zadokite fragments form part of the literature to which the DEAD SEA SCROLLS belong. It is unknown how they came to be copied in about 1,000 CE. The Zadokite Fragments preserve parts of 2 works. One is a sermon on the history of mankind and of the sect that created them. The other is a collection of sectarian laws and rules. The sermon alludes to an emigration of the sect to the LAND OF DAMASCUS. " " Wouldn't this be saying something about an emigration to what is now Syria? Damascus is a name that is very ancient and is the capital of Syria. Perhaps this was the sect's name for an entirely different place and was a NEW COVENANT there.
What had happened was that 2 GENIZAH MANUSCRIPTS, 1st published in 1910 by S.Schechter had been found. What had been found in the cave were fragment of other copies that the manuscripts. ZADOK had been mentioned.
Going through the Bible; beginnings of creating Aaron's family tree.
Descendants of son of Amram Aaron 1 son of Amram Aaronb: in Egypt c1395 BCEd: in Mt. Hor, (Hor Hahar) border of Edom
..+Elisheba
.2 Nadab
.2 Abihu .2 Eleazar ben Kohen
.....+Daughter of Putiel
.....3 Jehoiarib
.....3 Harim
.....3 Malchijah
.....3 Hakkoz
.....3 Jeshua
.....3 Eliashib
.....3 Huppah
.....3 Bilgah
.....3 Hezir
.....3 Hapizzez
.....3 Pethahiah
.....3 Jehezkel
.....3 Jachin
.....3 Gamul
.....3 Delaiah
.....3 Maaziah
..... 3 Phineas
.2 Ithamar Issamar ben Kohen
.....3 Jedaiah
.....3 Seorim
.....3 Mijamin
.....3 Abijah
.....3 Shecaniah
.....3 Jakim
.....3 Jeshabeab
.....3 Immer
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