Priesthood

Use in the book

The people’s faith is said to subject the priest’s mind, and another maxim makes priest and people mutually formative. These reversals complicate a picture of authority proceeding only from office downward. The priesthood’s meditation and leisure are also credited with the existence and excellence of Hebrew literature. A sharply polemical fragment calls the priest the philosopher par excellence and credits fables with teaching truth. The claims range from reciprocal formation to conditions of work and the authority of religious teaching; none by itself supplies a complete account of clerical power.

Places to read

1. I, p. 107, entry 11, ¶1The faith of the people constrains the priest’s mind.
2. I, p. 318, entry 4, ¶1Meditation and leisure make priesthood a literary condition.
3. II, p. 600, entry 1, ¶1A polemical exclamation links priestly teaching and philosophy.
4. II, p. 865, entry 11, ¶1Priest and people are said to form one another.

Translation in this edition

The English translation keeps the reciprocal repetition of makes without interpreting it as election or appointment. The priest-as-philosopher passage is an exclamation about unnamed fables. Beaunier’s separate-sheet note attached to that unit is apparatus, not part of its claim.