At the time of the usurper Herod, John the Baptist was the son of Zacharias who was the High Priest of the Temple of Jerusalem at that time. He inherited the High Priesthood from his father, as had been the tradition from the time of Moses in Egypt, when Aaron passed his High Priest’s Mantle to Eleazar.  The beginning of the High Priesthood comes to us with Aaron from Egypt.  Aaron was of the house of Tsdq, translated as Zadok or Zecharia, was to have exclusive control of the High Priesthood, but John’s mother and father were old and had no children at the time. This was the disgrace that Elizabeth endured, that the High Priesthood would end with her barrenness, just when Herod’s threat was at it’s height. John’s birth saved her from disgrace, and saved the true High Priesthood in that John could baptize, not in the Temple but in the nature, and as true High Priest, announce his successor, Jesus, and Jesus could pass to us a ritual and priesthood that would now not be limited to the House of Zecharia.

Meanwhile Herod appointed his own High Priest which was Ananias, at the time of Jesus’ crucifixion. Thus it becomes clear that the true Israelites are those who have continued the rites that were passed to us by Jesus and his Apostles, and no one has the power to tamper with those rites. The beauty of these ancient sacrificial rites can still be experienced in Russian and Greek Orthodox Christian Masses, especially the Misa Cantata. Absolutely beautiful to experience the incense, the sacred music, the ancient prayers sung by choir and priest surrounded by beautiful reminders of the glory of the true risen Christened King.

Mary was also a sister of Aaron, as revealed in the Quran, and as can be plainly evidenced by her position within the temple. The Virgin Mary was the exalted sister of the high priest, sister of Zechariah, Aunt of John the Baptist, a position passed down from Miriam, Aaron’s sister, from the Egyptian tradition of brother and sister ruling side by side, but not married as is the common misconception. The Virgin Mary was not a descendant of David as claimed in pro-Judaic gloss. So upon John’s death, Jesus became the legitimate successor and this would have been commonly known, despite Herod’s take-over.  Zecharias was murdered between the altar and tabernacle, and his body disappeared, only his congealed blood was found on the floor, according to Apocryphal texts. From Herod’s point of view, it would have been necessary to murder the true high priest and his family in order to appoint his own people.

Since Judah’s descendants were all Canaanites, which included Herod and the present powers which had had control since the expulsion of the family of Saul, they were not even technically Israelite any longer, and therefore if Jesus had been the descendant of David, he would not have been able to claim the position of High Priest of the Israelites due to tainted blood. The book of Revelation refers to these phonies and gives them warnings about this deception. In Matthew, Jesus is heard denying that he is the son of David. He quotes Isaiah to demonstrate that the Messiah cannot be of the tribe of David because Isaiah records David calling the Messiah ‘My Lord’, and a father would never call his son ‘My Lord’. This shut down his enemies, having proved through scripture, that the Messiah could not possibly come from the House of David, and it was this issue alone which explains the tampering with the bible by the Jews from Old Testament to New. They still eagerly await their Messiah from the seed of David.

Saul was the first and last King annointed by God, only the successors of Saul would be legitimate, and even then, God only appointed a king in order to teach his children a lesson as to why they shouldn’t wish to have a King. God was to be the only King, and we’d come to realize that one day. From the time of the Christening of Saul as King to replace Samuel as High Priest, and his overthrow by David and his band of extortionists, the groundwork was laid for the records to be written or over-written rather, by the tribe of David, the victors of that particular struggle for Jerusalem. For this reason the scholars of the Oxford Study Bible admit that the gloss and overlay is propaganda to enhance the role of the tribe of Judah from the time of Samuel onwards. Old Testament overlays and purposeful mistranslations have given credit to Judah for Rueben’s willingness to be imprisoned in place of Benjamin. It was also Rueben who saved Joseph’s life by suggesting he be put into the well and sold to merchants, rather than just killing him as Judah had wanted to do in the this disputed text. The very description of the tribe of Judah as the Lion is a clear mistranslation. The Lion description was given to the tribe of Benjamin and still is, but it is mistranslated as ‘ravening wolf’. So whereas the tribe of Benjamin is the Lion, Judah is described as a Lion’s whelp, or the sucking of a lion, a little puppy dependent on it’s mommy for milk.

There is evidence that Aaron was not of the tribe of Levi at all. He may have been in the tribe of Benjamin, with Levites as his assistants. Since the Temple was to be in the land of Benjamin, it is logical that the House of Zadok, the Order of Melchizedek, the family of the High Priests, of Zechariah and John the Baptist and Mary the Virgin were all Benjamites. Even the Jewish encyclopedia has hints of this, and of how Joseph was killed by poison of the serpent, and how the fact of the Benjamite high priesthood would be concealed by falsifying scripture. This is conjecture for now, though I haven’t found any conflict in the Bible with this view.

The followers of Saul went elsewhere, and archeology records a mass abandonment of the towns around Jerusalem around this time long before the exile. One Benjamite family had to remain in Jerusalem, the family of Zechariah. The name has the three sounds: TS, D, K. This can be written Tsadoquites, the Order of Maleki Tsadek, (Melchizadek or King Zadek, King Zacharias or Zecharia, etc) The family of the High Priesthood to do their duties, stayed in Jerusalem while the family of Saul, the Benjamites and other tribes fled Jerusalem and in nearby Samaria continued non-centralized worship as it had been prescribed by Isaiah.

In the modern translations, the tribe of Judah claims affiliation with Benjamin as a way of justifying their occupation of Jerusalem which is within the inheritance of Benjamin, not Judah. There is little evidence of this other than one poor lame captive son of Jonathan who refers to himself as a dead dog in David’s house. I suppose he may have had a number of descendants by the time of the exile, since they are numbered by Esdras upon the return. They might certainly have been among those who escaped Babylon early on. Other than this, Benjamin has always been an ally, not of Judah, but of the two tribes of Joseph on whose inheritance the land of Samaria lay, since these were all children of the same mother, Rachel.

It’s odd that God’s first annointed, King Saul, would be a Benjamite unless the anointing was as High Priest and there was no King. Otherwise an Ephraimite should be chosen, since he is the eldest son of Joseph, and because the first born son should be King, should he not? Yes Joseph, first born legitimately to Jacob, married an Egyptian, and the Benjamites married the Sabian women but this certainly added to the stature of those united tribes over time as the Egyptian and Sabian cultures were the two highest and most advanced of the day. That their geneaologies became entwined with that of the Pharaohs would be no surprise and could explain the uniting of the two kingdoms of the Upper and Lower Nile. The names are all very similar and Saul’s descendants could be the Pharaohs known as Senue, which I understand to be the Egyptian version of Zion.

I only know that this combined group began a civilization that led to Byzantium, the thousand year empire that was founded by Jesus Christ on the foundations of the Roman Empire and is a union of the Greek and Roman and Egyptian and Hittite cultures. They spoke the Greek language within a Roman governmental structure, created fabulous artwork and literature, and provided comforts and conveniences to the entire population. The Byzantine culture is, in most aspects, indistinguishable from our modern day culture. The biggest difference is that The Mantle of the High Priesthood was worn in Constantinople for a thousand years before it moved itself to Moscow. Constantinople was the New Capitol of Rome. The Roman Empire, far from having fallen, became more glorious than ever as a Christian Empire where High Priest and Emperor ruled side by side.

But when it was attacked by the Turks, when it moved to Moscow, and split from provincial Rome as a separate church, and the faithful had to hide in the wilderness, on wings of eagles and remain there to this day, it became necessary to bring the Temple and the High Priesthood home inside of the temple that is our minds.

During this, our time in the wilderness, the Mantle of the High Priesthood can be worn by whoever believes in it in the form of the Brown Scapular of the Carmelite order. In fact, in every apparition of the Virgin Mary she has advised its use as protection and strength. It should be worn with respect.

The Mantle of the High Priesthood was taken up by the Carmelite Order from the Prophet Eliseus who challenged the prophets of Baal on Mount Carmel overlooking the Mediterranean Sea. When Eliseus was taken up into heaven on the fiery chariot, he left his Prophet’s Mantle, which is to say, the Mantle of the High Priest. It was taken up by Eli and now the Carmelite nuns wear the mantle and provide us all with the abbreviated version of the Mantle of the High Priesthood in the form of the Brown Scapular. The seal on this small piece of woolen cloth which should hang between our shoulders like the Ephod, reads: “With Great Zeal I am Zealous for The Lord God of Hosts” . ‘Hosts’ are armies.

References for this article can be found in the Catholic Encyclopedia: High Priest

http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/12407b.htm