One theory on the formation of the Essenes suggested the movement was founded by a Jewish high priest, dubbed by the Essenes the Teacher of Righteousness, whose office had been usurped by Jonathan ( of priestly but not Zadokite lineage ), labeled the " man of lies " or " false priest ".

In fact, “ Luke perceives himself to be a Jew .” Finally, Rebecca Denova concludes her book with these words: “ Luke-Acts, we may conclude on the basis of a narrative-critical reading, was written by a Jew to persuade other Jews that Jesus of Nazareth was the messiah of Scripture and that the words of the prophets concerning ‘ restoration ’ have been ‘ fulfilled .’” Finally it should be noted that Strelan in 2008 not only concluded that Theophilus was Jewish but also that Luke was a priest.

In Christian use, pontifex appears in the Vulgate translation of the New Testament to indicate the Jewish high priest ( in the original, ἀρχιερεύς ).

The word " priest " is ultimately from Greek, via Latin presbyter, the term for " elder ", especially elders of Jewish or Christian communities in Late Antiquity.

In a Jewish tradition, still continuing today, on the first birth-day of a first-born son, the parents pay the price of five pure-silver coins to a Kohen ( priest ).

** Mattathias, father of Judas Maccabaeus, Jewish priest from Modi ' in, near Jerusalem, who has started and briefly led a rebellion by the Jews in Judea against the Seleucid kingdom of Syria

** Judas Maccabeus, third son of the Jewish priest Mattathias, who has led the Maccabean revolt against the Seleucid Empire until his death

Eusebius is also said to have referred to Hefa as Caiaphas civitas, and Benjamin of Tudela, the 12th century Jewish traveller and chronicler, is said to have attributed the city's founding to Caiaphas, the Jewish high priest at the time of Jesus.

* With the Seleucid victory in Judea over the Maccabees, Alcimus is re-established as the Jewish high priest and a strong force is left in Jerusalem to support him.

* In response to the Jewish high priest, Alcimus ', request for assistance, the Seleucid general Bacchides leads an army into Judea with the intent of reconquering this now independent kingdom.

* Judas Maccabeus, third son of the Jewish priest Mattathias, who has led the Maccabean revolt against the Seleucid Empire until his death

* Mattathias, father of Judas Maccabaeus, Jewish priest from Modi ' in, near Jerusalem, who has started and briefly led a rebellion by the Jews in Judea against the Seleucid kingdom of Syria

* The Jewish priest Mattathias of Modi ' in defies the king Antiochus IV's decrees aimed at hellenizing the Jews and specifically defies the order that Jews should sacrifice to Zeus.

* Since the reign of the Seleucid king, Antiochus III, the Jewish inhabitants of Judea enjoy extensive autonomy under their high priest.

Artaxerxes (, ) commissioned Ezra, a Jewish priest ( kohen ) and scribe, by means of a letter of decree ( see Cyrus's edict ), to take charge of the ecclesiastical and civil affairs of the Jewish nation.

The Hebrew noun kohen is most often translated as " priest ", whether Jewish or pagan, such as the priests of Baal or Dagon, though Christian priests are referred to in Hebrew by the term komer ( Hebrew כומר ).

The status of priest kohen was conferred on Aaron, the brother of Moses, and his sons as an everlasting covenant During the 40 years of wandering in the wilderness and until the Holy Temple was built in Jerusalem, the priests performed their priestly service in the portable Tabernacle (,,,) Their duties involved offering the daily and Jewish holiday sacrifices, and blessing the people in a Priestly Blessing, later also known as Nesiat Kapayim (" Raising of the hands ").

Jeremiah was a kohen ( Jewish priest ) from a landowning family.

It is not clear if the word Pontifex, the word used in Latin for the Jewish high priest, as in and, was commonly used by early 3rd-century Christianity, as it was later, to denote a bishop.

Examples include the social climber in George Stevens's A Place in the Sun, the anguished Catholic priest in Hitchcock's I Confess, the doomed regular soldier Robert E. Lee Prewitt in Fred Zinnemann's From Here to Eternity, and the Jewish GI bullied by antisemites in Edward Dmytryk's The Young Lions.

The unexpected appearance of the Samaritan led Joseph Halévy to suggest that the parable originally involved " a priest, a Levite, and an Israelite ," in line with contemporary Jewish stories, and that Luke changed the parable to be more familiar to a gentile audience.

Ezra is written to fit a schematic pattern in which the God of Israel inspires a king of Persia to commission a leader from the Jewish community to carry out a mission ; three successive leaders carry out three such missions, the first rebuilding the Temple, the second purifying the Jewish community, and the third sealing of the holy city itself behind a wall.

The combined book Ezra-Nehemiah of the earliest Christian and Jewish period was known as Ezra and was probably attributed to him ; according to a rabbinic tradition, however, Nehemiah was the real author but was forbidden to claim authorship because of his bad habit of disparaging others.

Ezra led a large body of exiles back to Jerusalem, where he discovered that Jewish men had been marrying non-Jewish women.

The first century Jewish historian, Josephus, deals with Ezra in his Antiquities of the Jews.

Gosta W. Ahlstrom argues the inconsistencies of the biblical tradition are insufficient to say that Ezra, with his central position as the ' father of Judaism ' in the Jewish tradition, has been a later literary invention.

The early 2nd century BCE Jewish author Ben Sira praises Nehemiah, but makes no mention of Ezra.

* Jewish Encyclopedia: Ezra the Scribe

11th to 12th century grammarians of the Golden age of Jewish culture in Spain included Judah ben David Hayyuj, Jonah ibn Janah, Abraham ibn Ezra, Joseph Kimhi, Moses Kimhi and David Kimhi.

The careers of Ezra and Nehemiah in the 5th century BCE were thus a kind of religious colonisation in reverse, an attempt by one of the many Jewish factions in Babylon to create a self-segregated, ritually pure society inspired by the prophesies of Ezekiel and his followers.

Elaborating on this theme are numerous early and late Jewish scholars, including the Ramban, Isaac Abrabanel, Abraham Ibn Ezra, Rabbeinu Bachya, the Vilna Gaon, the Lubavitcher Rebbe, the Ramchal, Aryeh Kaplan, and Rebbetzin Esther Jungreis.

Regular public reading of the Torah was introduced by Ezra the Scribe after the return of the Jewish people from the Babylonian captivity ( c. 537 BCE ), as described in the Book of Nehemiah.

* Moses ibn Ezra, Jewish philosopher, poet, and linguist from Spain

Together, these two men led the first wave of Jewish returnees from exile and began to rebuild the Temple ( Ezra ).

According to the Bible, when the Jewish exiles returned to Jerusalem following a decree from Cyrus the Great ( Ezra 1: 1-4, 2 Chron 36: 22-23 ), construction started at the original site of Solomon's Temple, which had remained a devastated heap during the approximately 70 years of captivity ( Dan.

After a relatively brief halt due to opposition from peoples who had filled the vacuum during the Jewish captivity ( Ezra 4 ), work resumed c. 521 BCE under the Persian King Darius ( Ezra 5 ) and was completed during the sixth year of his reign ( c. 518 / 517 BCE ), with the temple dedication taking place the following year.

After the building of the Second Temple in the time of Ezra the Scribe, the houses of study and worship remained important secondary institutions in Jewish life.

The problem in Ezra and Nehemiah occurred because Jewish men married women from the various nations without their first converting to Judaism.

Some more unorthodox interpretations of the ark narrative also surfaced: the 12th-century Jewish commentator Abraham ibn Ezra interpreted the ark as being a vessel that remained underwater for 40 days, after which it floated to the surface.

Opened in 1931, the hotel was built with locally quarried pink limestone and was founded by Ezra Mosseri, a wealthy Egyptian Jewish banker.

Half the construction costs were paid by Ezra Mosseri, an affluent Egyptian Jewish banker and director of the National Bank of Egypt, and another 46 % by other wealthy Cairo Jews.