The great majority of the priests were not aristocrats, or particularly wealthy. They, and the Levites who served as their assistants, were dependent on the tithing practised by the rest of the population. Most of them lived away from Jerusalem, going there in groups, by turn, for the performance of the regular rituals. For the rest of the time, they functioned in a way which has, again, often been ignored: they were the main teachers of the law, and the group to whom ordinary Jews turned for judgment and arbitration in disputes or legal problems.
