1 Chronicles 24:7–18
The courses of the priests, in stone
The order of the twenty-four priestly courses is stable in the witnesses. Fragments of synagogue inscriptions from late antiquity list the same courses with the Galilean towns where they lived after AD 70.
Stable text: no manuscript differences in meaning
The family tree
Each row is a language or text tradition. Witnesses in the same row may share ancestry, revise one another, or have an uncertain relationship; the line under each box says which. A solid arrow appears only where direct copying or a documented revised edition is established. Order by date never implies copying. Scroll sideways on a phone.
✓ contains this verse · ▢ pages lost · – no copy survives
- Same line, through lost copies
- Translation
- Related (shared ancestry)
Every witness, in order
Composed c. 4th century BC (debated)
Original Chronicles
No original survives; no certain Qumran copy of 1 Chronicles.
Translated c. 2nd century BC
Septuagint, 1 Paraleipomena (library text: Giguet's French)
How the site knows this: Known here only through a translation.
One Greek text (Vaticanus type) via Giguet's French; not checked against a critical Greek edition.
1st century AD
Luke 1:5 (KJV)
How the site knows this: Reported in scholarship; not checked by the site.
a certain priest named Zacharias, of the course of Abia
3rd–4th century AD
Caesarea priestly-courses inscription
How the site knows this: Reported in scholarship; not checked by the site.
Fragments name courses and towns, e.g. "the eighteenth course, Happizzez, Nazareth."
Source: G. A. Rendsburg, Sacred Space in Judaism after the Temple (priestly-course inscriptions) ↗
AD 1008
Masoretic Text (Leningrad Codex)
How the site knows this: Read in the site's library text: Westminster Leningrad Codex, a digital transcription of the Leningrad Codex.
לְאַבִיָּה הַשְּׁמִינִי (24:10)
to Abijah the eighth
1611
King James Bible
How the site knows this: Read in the site's library text: King James Version (1769 text).
The seventh to Hakkoz, the eighth to Abijah
What changed, and why
The inscriptions do not confirm that David created the courses; they show the institution's long life.
What the evidence shows
- Late antique inscriptions list the courses.
Source: G. A. Rendsburg, Sacred Space in Judaism after the Temple (priestly-course inscriptions) ↗
Sources
Related lessons
- The Twenty-Four Priestly Divisions →The descendants of Aaron through Eleazar and Ithamar are divided by lot into twenty-four courses, "governors of the sanctuary," each serving in turn. The lots fall to Jehoiarib, Jedaiah, Harim… the eighth to Abijah… the twenty-fourth to Maaziah. Other Levite family heads also cast lots.
- Investigation: Priestly Courses, Singers and Their Afterlife →The twenty-four priestly courses of 1 Chronicles 24 organized temple service in the Second Temple period. They appear in Qumran calendars, in Luke's story of Zechariah, in Josephus, and, after the temple's destruction, in synagogue inscriptions and liturgical poems that kept their memory alive for centuries.