page_title: Wicked Priest
section_title: Proposed identifications
hierarchical_section_title: Wicked Priest / Proposed identifications
caption_attribution_description: English: Traditional list of the Israelite and Jewish High Priests, from Aaron to the destruction of the Second Temple, comparing Biblical, Apocryphal, and extra-biblical sources. From the 1905-6 Jewish Encyclopedia.
context_page_description: Wicked Priest is a sobriquet used in the Dead Sea Scrolls pesharim, four times in the Habakkuk Commentary and once in the Commentary on Psalm 37, to refer to an opponent of the "Teacher of Righteousness." It has been suggested that the phrase is a pun on "ha-kōhēn hā-rōš", as meaning "the High Priest", but this is not the proper term for the High Priest. He is generally identified with a Hasmonean High Priest or Priests. However, his exact identification remains controversial, and has been called "one of the knottiest problems connected with the Dead Sea Scrolls."
  The most commonly argued-for single candidate is Jonathan Apphus, followed by his brother Simon Thassi; the widespread acceptance of this view, despite its acknowledged weaknesses, has been dubbed the "Jonathan consensus." More recently, some scholars have argued that the sobriquet does not refer to only one individual. Most notably the "Groningen Hypothesis" advanced by García Martinez and van der Woude, argues for a series of six Wicked Priests.
context_section_description: Since the time of de Vaux, the default assumption has been that the Wicked Priest is a single individual, if only because of the appealing parallelism to the Teacher of Righteousness. The consensus time period for the founding of Qumran (150–140 BCE) includes five High Priests: three Hellenized and two Maccabean: Jason, Menelaus, Alcimus, Jonathan, and Simon, and also the various figures potentially associated with the intersacerdotium.
  Various early theories situated the Wicked Priest within time periods running the full gamut from the pre-Hasmonaean period, to that of early Christianity, to that of the Crusades. However, that the Wicked Priest "ruled over Israel" (1QpHab 8.10) and was able to partake in "plundering" (9.7) has persuaded most scholars to exclude from consideration the predecessors of the Hasmonean High Priests, who did not share their ability to attack other nations militarily, having been militarily subjugated to Egypt or Syria, and their successors, who were dominated by the Romans. To a lesser extent, that the Wicked Priest was once called "by the name of the truth" (8.8–9) is used to disqualify the pre-Maccabean, Hellenized High Priests, who were not held in high regard by their coreligionists.
  Similarly, post-Hasmonean High Priests have not received much serious attention because the "Kittim" (identifiable as the Romans due to the distinct practice of "sacrifice to their standards" attested to in 1QpHab 6.6) are referred to in the imperfect and none of the characters associated with the beginning of the Qumran community would have come into contact with the Romans
  The "Maccabean theory"—as advanced by Cross, Milik, and Vermes—traditionally identifies the Wicked Priest as either Jonathan or Simon.
caption: The Wicked Priest has been identified with many High Priests of Israel.
exif: {}