Innovating Ordination

In this article I study the ordination rituals for Priests and Levites contained in the Hebrew Bible acknowledging the different purposes which the rituals themselves present (sanctification for priests, purification for Levites). Noting the absence of a priestly purification ritual where procedures at the temple suggest that they some such ritual must have existed, it is suggested here, that the Levitical ordination ritual has its origin as a priestly purification ritual, but has now been reused in its current function to indicate the new lower status of the Levites when compared to the priests.