Samaritan High Priest

Family of the Samaritan High Priests, 1876. To the left is a scribe named Shalabi, to the right are Isaac, the son of the High Priest Amram ben Shalma, then Abisha, the son of Amram's brother Fīnās, and finally ʿUzzi, son of the High Priest Yaʿqob ben Aharon ben Shalma, the son of Amram's brother Aharon.

The Samaritan High Priest (Samaritan Hebrew: haka’en hagadol; Arabic: الكاهن الأكبر, romanized: al-Kāhin al-Akbar) is the High Priest of Israel for the Samaritans.

According to Samaritan tradition, the office has existed continuously since the time of Aaron, the brother of Moses, and has been held by 133 priests over the last 3400 years. However, the historicity of this claim is disputed. One account by Josephus suggests that its office holders are an offshoot of the Zadokite High Priests of the Second Temple from around the time of Alexander the Great. As of 2025, the incumbent High Priest is Aabed-El ben Asher ben Matzliach.

This page is issued from Wikipedia. The text is available under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 unless otherwise noted. Additional terms may apply for the media files.