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who were appointed to occupy the office of the high-priest. This confusion concerning the appoint-
ment of the high-priest is echoed in Antiquities of the Jews (by Josephus) as follows:

"And now I think it proper and agreeable to this history to give an account of our high
priests; how they began, who those are which are capable of that dignity, and how many
of them there had been...history informs us that Aaron, the brother of Moses, offici-
ated to God as a high priest, and that, after his death, his sons succeeded him imme-
diately; and that this dignity hath been continued down from them all to their posterity.
Whence it is a custom of our country, that no one should take the high priesthood of God
but he who is of the blood of Aaron, while every one that is of another stock, though he
were a king, can never obtain that high priesthood. Accordingly, the number of all the
high priests from Aaron [the first high-priest] ...until Phanas [the last high-priest] ... was
eighty-three; of whom thirteen officiated as high priests in the wilderness, from the days
of Moses, while the tabernacle was standing, until the people came into Judea, when king
Solomon erected the temple to God; for at the first they held the high priesthood till the
end of their life, although afterward they had successors while they were alive. Now
these thirteen...received this dignity by succession, one after another; for their form of
government was an aristocracy, and after that a monarchy, and in the third place the
government was regal.

Continues Josephus --

Now the number of years during the rule of these thirteen, from the day when our fa-
thers departed out of Egypt, under Moses their leader, until the building of that temple
which king Solomon erected at Jerusalem, were six hundred and twelve. After those
thirteen high priests, eighteen took the high priesthood at Jerusalem, one in succession to
another, from the days of king Solomon, until Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, made
an expedition against that city, and burnt the temple, and removed our nation into Baby-
lon, and then took Josadek, the high priest, captive; the times of these high priests were
four hundred and sixty-six years, six months, and ten days, while the Jews were still un-
der the regal government. But after the term of seventy years' captivity under the Babylo-
nians, Cyrus, king of Persia, sent the Jews from Babylon to their own land again, and
gave them leave to rebuild their temple; at which time Jesus, the son of Josadek, took the
high priesthood over the captives when they were returned home. Now he and his poster-
ity, who were in all fifteen, until king Antiochus Eupator, were under a democratical gov-
ernment for four hundred and fourteen years; and then the aforementioned Antiochus, and
Lysias the general of his army, deprived Onias, who was also called Menelaus, of the
high priesthood, and slew him at Berea; and driving away the son [of Onias the third], put
Jaeimus into the place of the high priest, one that was indeed of the stock of Aaron, but
not of that family of Onias. On which account Onias, who was the nephew of Onias that
was dead, and bore the same name with his father, came into Egypt, and got into the
friendship of Ptolemy Philometor, and Cleopatra his wife, and persuaded them to make
him the high priest of that temple which he built to God in the prefecture of Heliopolis,
and this in imitation of that at Jerusalem; but as for that temple which was built in Egypt,
we have spoken of it frequently already.

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