The Significance of the Priest in the Healing of the Ten Lepers: A Contextual Interpretation of Luke 17:12-14

Abstract

The significant place of Priest in the development of human society in the biblical era highlights the fact that it is an important issue in our modern church today. If the office of Priest had a place in the Bible, does it still have a in the contemporary religious institutions? How relevant is the office of Priest today? These and other relevant questions regarding the significance of the office of the Priest are what this paper tried to investigate. To achieve this objective, the study examined the role of the Priest in the story of the healing of Ten Lepers in Luke 17:12 – 14. The study adopted the historical-critical and hermeneutical methods in contextualizing the story of the healing of the Ten Lepers. The study discovered that it was the responsibility of the Priest to make the final pronouncement as to the cleansing of any Leper in Israel. In other words, the Priest played an active role in the cleansing of Leper in Luke 17 in the sense that even though they had been healed by Jesus, the pronouncement of the healing had to be made by the Priest. The study thus concludes that if attention is given to the significance of the Priest in modern day Christianity, it will enhance the ministry of the church as she seeks to fulfil her mission to the world as God intended and also serves as agents of socialization to better the society. The paper therefore recommended that biblical teachings on the significance of Priest in healing ministry of the church should be emphasized. The contemporary churches should be made to understand that the Priests function as mediator of equilibrium between holy and profane in human society.

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