72 



PRIEST. 



PRIME, ' 



130 



Priest is used to express the Greek hiereus (iVpeiis) and the Latin 

 sacerdos, which signify in general a sacrificer. Whatever may be the 

 primitive meaning of the Hebrew word cohen, it is rendered in the ; 

 Septuagint by Jepeiis, and its usage plainly shows that it denotes a j 

 sacrificer. An elder, zaAen, has irpe<rj3urej>os as its corresponding word. ' 

 In Wycliffe's New Testament, which is a translation from the Vulgate, 

 priest, answering to the Latin presbyter, several times occurs, where 

 the authorised version has elder. 



Priest in the formularies of the Church of England is used in its 

 original sense of presbyter, and points out the second degree of the 

 ministers, to be admitted to which a man must be, according to the 

 34th canon, of the age of " four and twenty years complete." 



The existence of an official person to act in some way between the 

 Deity and man appears among the earliest notices of history, whether 

 sacred or profane. In the Book of Genesis, Melchisedec is named 

 " Priest of the most high God." Among the Jews an order of men 

 existed who were especially appointed by God to minister in holy 

 things, and whose qualifications and functions are set forth at large in 

 the writings of Moses. The Egyptians had great numbers of priests, 

 who had lands in the time of Joseph. (Gen. xlvii. 22.) In the 4 first 

 ages of the Greeks, the same person was mostly their priest and 

 king. In the course of time the office of priest became distinct, and 



sometimes women, as well as men, were appointed to this office. It is 

 probable, however, that the most ancient priesthood among all nations 

 was that which fathers or heads of families exercised over then- own 

 dependents; and thus it will appear that kingly government and 

 sacerdotal authority of some kind or other would naturally spring 

 from the paternal relation. (Shuckford's ' Connection of Sacred and 

 Profane History.') 



PRIMATE. [ARCHBISHOP.] 



PRIME. A number is said to bo prime when it is not divisible 

 without remainder by any less number than itself, except unity. Thus 

 1, 2, 3, are of necessity prime ; 4 is not, being divisible by 2 ; 5 is 

 prime, and so are 7, 11, 13, 17, 19, 23, 29, 31, &c. 



Large lists of prime numbers have been published [TABLES], but 

 they are seldom possessed by the elementary student. As it is, how- 

 ever, frequently desirable to know whether a number not exceeding 

 10,000 is prime or not, we shall give a table to that extent, the manner 

 of using which is as follows : If we wish to know whether 2897 

 be a prime number, under the heading 2 and in the column 8 we 

 look for 97, which we find there : whence the table shows that 

 2897 is a prime number. Again, by the same means we find that 

 1457 is not a prime number, the adjacent prime numbers being 

 1453 and 1459. 



The distribution of the prime numbers does not follow any discover- 

 able law, but it begins to be evident from the preceding table, that in 

 a given interval the number of primes in generally less, the higher the 

 beginning of the interval is taken. The following table will set this 

 in a clearer light : the numbers in the first column mean thousands, 

 and in the second column are found the numbers of primes whicli lie 

 in the interval specified in the first column. Thus, between 10,000 

 and 20,000 lie 1833 primes. 



In the first 10,000 numbers, upwards of 12 per cent, are primes; 

 but between 900 thousand and a million, only 7J per cent, are primes. 

 The annexed enumerations are taken from Legendre's Theory of 

 Numbers, and were made from the large tables of primes given by 

 Vega, C'hernac, and Eurkhardt. The only thing known relative to the 

 proportions of prime numbers to others is that if j; be a very large 

 number, the number of primes contained between and x is nearly 

 fj. (log x 1-08366), log x being the Naperean logarithm. This very 



curious theorem was discovered empirically, that is, by looking for a 

 formula which should nearly represent the results of tables. Legendre, 

 in the work cited, gave proof that such a formula must have the form 



Between 



and 

 10 

 20 

 SO 

 40 

 (0 

 CO 

 70 

 80 

 90 

 100 



No. of 

 Primes. 

 4135 

 4061 

 3943 

 3989 

 3884 

 7677 

 755S 

 7442 

 7402 

 7331 

 7229 



