Are You a Priest or a Prophet?
On Two Archetypes of Leadership
Priests know what they have to do. The purity laws are clear. The sacrifices are mechanical. There is little room for subjective judgment.
Prophets have a much more challenging role—they have to lead the people to a destiny the people may not want, recognize, or understand.
There is no such thing as a false priest. There is only a priest who is disqualified from service. Likewise, there is no false sacrifice. Sacrifices can be defective, but not false.
But prophets can be false, and one way they can be false is not by lying or deceiving, but by being correct!
If the task of the prophet is to challenge the status-quo, to move a people to repent, to turn back fate, to avert judgment, then prophets are false when their predictions of doom come true, and true when their predictions of doom prove to be overblown (see, for example, Jonah).
In the language of startups, this is how I understand the difference between priest and prophet:
Priests are highly competent, but not visionary. A bad priest can be replaced; an incompetent priest can be trained or retired. Prophets are singularities. And for every genuine hero there are many wannabes. And even when the prophet’s motives are good, it’s often not enough. Most prophets don’t succeed, at least while they are alive—their message is rejected.
I’ve written about the tension between priests and prophets as an allegory for the ancient conflict between rhetoric and philosophy.
What do you think are the respective strengths and weaknesses of each? Can they be brought into harmony? In what contexts do you prefer a priestly model of leadership? In what contexts do you find the prophet mode necessary?
What topic in your own life do you think priest and prophet archetypes represent?
What is Called Thinking? is a practice of asking a daily question on the belief that self-reflection brings awe, joy, and enrichment to one’s life. Consider becoming a subscriber to support this project and access subscriber-only content.
You can read my weekly Torah commentary here.
I often wonder why the message of prophets is routinely rejected. I would be curious to hear your thoughts.