Yeshua the High Priest - Quick Facts
Yeshua son of Yehozadak was the High Priest when the Hebrews were freed from Babylonia and were allowed to return. He might have still been the High Priest when the temple was rebuilt in 516 BCE.
His texts are about the new covenant between the Hebrews and Yahweh and about the elevated social position of priests
When: after 538 BCE
Where: in Babylonia, on the way to, and then in Judea
Greatest Works: the first priestly rules of Passover (the Barley Chapati festival), parts of the Ark and Tabernacle details (Ex. 25-40), the first priestly Leviticus rules (Lev. 26-27), and parts of the book of Joshua
Traits: euphoric from salvation and liberation, keen on appeasing Yahweh, meticulous pro-priestly rules
Scholarly Name: parts of the Priestly "P" source in Exodus and Leviticus and the presumed-P in Joshua
Who was Yeshua the High Priest?
On the first day of spring, 538 BCE, Cyrus king of Persia decreed that all peoples taken captive by the Babylonians would be allowed to return to their ancestral homeland. Among the returnees was Yeshua son of Yehozadak, the highest-ranking priest within the Hebrew community in Babylonia. His father, Yehozadak, was the High Priest of the Jerusalem Temple when the Babylonians burned it in 587 BCE.
In the spring of 538 BCE, Yeshua was the second most prominent figure among the Hebrew reurnees, who were led by Zerubbabel, the last living heir to the defunct Judean throne. It was Zerubbabel who received from the Persians the holy temple artifacts the Babylonians had stolen from them, but later on, Zerubbabel disappeared from the scene and Yeshua rose in prominence. He led the Hebrews into Judea and added an H to his name, changing it from Yeshua to Yehoshua, or Joshua, in English.
In the ensuing decades, Yehoshua the High Priest became a symbol of purity and optimism, but eventually, his descendants would be ousted from the temple by Ezra the scribe-priest in 458 BCE for marrying women whose ancestry did not appear on his list of groups the priests were permitted to marry.
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