AARON

In the Biblical account, elder brother of Moses, and progenitor of Israel's priest. The name is Egyptian and there is no reason to doubt that Aaron was a historical figure, the ancestor of a priestly family serving in the Israelite sanctuary of Bethel, where God was worshipped as riding on a bull. Later Old Testament writers regarded this worship with disapproval and considered it a sin (Exod. 32). Aaron himself may never have been in Bethel, living rather in the south of Palestine, where tradition recorded his tomb on Mount Hor in Edom (Num. 20:22-29). In the growth of israelite tradition, Aaron was linked with Moses and Miriam as their brother, and after the exile of 586 B.C., when Bethel ceased to be an accepted sanctuary, Aaron's descendants were the sole legitimate priest of Jerusalem.