“Presbyter” is a technical term in Judaism, which early Christianity took over.[179] The Jewish conceptions at the beginning of the Christian era are best seen in the Mishnah tractate _Sanhedrin_:[180] the presbyters, in virtue of their divinely instituted office (Exodus 24. 9), preserved, interpreted and applied the received tradition of God’s revelation, and so were the divinely appointed rulers of Israel. In consequence, every Jewish community, even the smallest, had its presbytery,[181] which exercised all local governmental functions. When a vacancy occurred, the presbytery elected a new member; if he had served as a presbyter elsewhere, he was simply caused to “take his seat”; if not, the presbytery ordained him by the imposition of hands. Individual presbyters had no authority, which was possessed solely by the body as a whole; this principle was maintained so rigorously that there were not even regular presiding officers.[182] If a priest was elected as a presbyter, he was ordained like anyone else.[183] The same seems to have been true of the Rabbis[184] before A.D. 70; after that year they took over what was left of the presbyters’ duties and were always ordained. It must be borne in mind that the Jewish presbyters were community officers, not cult officials. They could determine how worship should be conducted, but as presbyters they had no special share in conducting it: this was the equal privilege of all male Israelites.[185] In particular, while the presbyters, among their other duties, administered the affairs of the local synagogue, to define them as “elders of the synagogue” is totally to misunderstand them. The introduction of the presbyterial system into Christianity offers a complicated problem, into which it is unnecessary to enter here. It is enough to note that in the New Testament when the office is fully developed—as in Acts and the Pastoral Epistles—the Jewish analogies are evident. In Hippolytus’s ordination prayer the Jewish origin is explicitly recognized; so much so that the institution of the office is attributed to Moses, whose seventy elders possessed the same gifts and functions as their Christian namesakes. Accordingly the essential duties of a presbyter are simply to “sustain and govern”,[186] and no other specific gifts are prayed for. So it is really conceivable that Hippolytus’s formula reproduces the substance of a Jewish ordination prayer.