However, priesthood goes back much farther, way before Exodus 32 and the ordination of the Levites to the service of Yahweh, and Aaron’s ordination as high priest. How much farther back?

The Haggadah says that we celebrate Passover as if we, today, were there. And yet after biblical times, early in the Talmudic era, the rabbis imagined a human hero at the Red Sea: Nachshon ben ...