Zealot Levite Clerics - Quick Facts

Patient zero of the emerging Hebrew zealotry was a rural cleric named Matityahu. His attack in 167 BCE on a Hellenistic Seleucid official and a Hebrew priest in the town of Modi'in spark what would become the Maccabean revolt. Matityahu then organized a mob to lynch and sack nearby Hebrew priestly towns.

The next famous zealot cleric to rise to prominence in the 140s BCE was a Levite cleric named Yosi son of Yochanan, who rose to prominence as a particularly zealous and hateful Levite cleric. Today, he would be viewed as a religious fascist.

He was a populist who had the first recorded unsolved theological disagreement within the Hebrew establishment, and one of the few quotes of his to have come down is "Do not engage in excessive conversation with women. This applies even to one’s own wife. All the more so to another man's wife." 

Swell guy.

Yosi wrote the new Maccabean rules of Passover in such a way that they would target his political enemies - the priests. Every law and rule he wrote there and in other parts of Exodus and Leviticus was meticulously crafted to make a priestly practice highly illegal. And his laws also stated that on Passover, no one was allowed to make the traditional pilgrimage to the Jerusalem temple, and instead everyone was forced to celebrate it at home, and prove they did so by smearing sacrificial lamb blood on the top and sides of the home's doorframe. The priests smeared this sacrificial blood on the doorframes of the temple, but as a populist, Yosi wanted everyone to do this in their homes. And if they were not, vigilante patrols called The Destroyer were patrolling Hebrew towns looking for people who had not smeared blood on their doorframes.

Since his rules single out the priests and elevate the Levites, it is safe to assume he was part of the Levite clan, who was backdated to ancient history to seem older than it actually was.

To his credit, Yosi's populism was real, and another quote of his is generally positive, such as “Let your house be open wide, and let the poor be members of your household.” This is a nice quote, but in context, it should also be read as part of Yosi's crusade against the temple establishment. He wanted to move the balance of power from the capital of Jerusalem to the rural towns of Judea. But since he was an evil fascist, I don't want to give him credit for anything, not even that.