AboutRabbi Barry Dov Lerner Expertise Write to me with questions about Jewish customs and law, history,
philosophy and tradition for answers from a Conservative perspective or conversion. I am a graduate of The Jewish Theological Seminary and a member of the Conservative Rabbinical Assembly. Having served in congregational pulpits since 1970, I now am President of the Foundation For Family Education, Inc. a non-profit educational endeavor. I established it to create new formats of hands-on programs and provide free educational downloads at www.jewishfreeware.org. In addition to general informational questions I welcome your questions about programs for social action, outreach to dual-faith families, inter-faith clergy projects, healing services, education for conversion, adult education for the congregation and the community. If you have questions about Informal and Formal Education I am ready to share my extensive experience with Youth Activities, Camping and Religious School/Hebrew High School on a congregational, community and national/international level.
Experience I have served on the National Youth Commission for more than 25 years and serve on the Boards of the Conservative Zionist movement MERCAZ and the World Council of Synagogues. I have always dual-families and taught candidates for conversion with a great sense of fulfillment. I am very proud of 25 years on the Jewish camping staff of Camps Ramah. My greatest source of pride is my family! Ask me about them, please!:-)
Question Hi
I am 48 years old and a Baptist. I was reading in 2 Chronicles about King Uzziah burning incense in the Temple and Azariah the high priest with 80 other courageous priests confronting Uzziah in the Holy Place. I was wondering about how many priests would have been on duty in the Temple that day?
Answer Dear Mitch,
Great question and thanks for asking.
I'm researching and will get back to you. Perhaps you can remind me in about a week, please, if you don't hear from me.
Rabbi Dov
Dear Mitch,
I'm back again. To be honest, I reached out to colleagues and specialists and don't have an answer that represents authoritative and reliable academics.
However, I did a little research on my own. The problem is whether we can rely on the text of the Bible, which purports to represent the First Temple text. That is, how historically reliable and accurate is the Biblical text - from which we might compute numbers.
If we assume that the numbers are somewhat reliable, 1 Chronicles 23:2-6 there were 38,000 Priests and assistants = Levites, with 24,000 actually serving in the Temple as officiants and apparently 6000 in some capacity of administration. Note I am assuming that this figure includes Levites and Priests - as the articles in the Anchor Bible Dictionary place together as a single entry. There were additional roles and tasks, including guards, gatekeepers, and musicians
Essentially, there were 24 "courses" or duty rosters of Priests and Levites who served twice in one year plus apparently three additional weeks when more than the one course would serve. In actuality we don't know how many of those on duty each week would indeed be put to "work" but they would have been ready if needed - or so it seems to me. Mathematically then there would be approximately 1300 in the Temple or ready to serve if needed.
After the Second Temple was rebuilt and at various times in its period from 516 BCE to 70 CE it is difficult to find texts which provide the numbers from which to develop probable conclusions. For that I can only apologize for history's failure to offer us records, reliable or not.
Rabbinic sources have described the Second Temple allowing in huge numbers of worshipers for the Festivals, using such sums as "hundreds of thousands." If that were so, then the numbers of Priests and Levites would have had to be at First Temple numbers or more, since the Second Temple by the time of Herod was certainly mch larger than Solomon's Temple.
