for example not an offspring of a forbidden marriage such as if a kohen were to marry a divorcee where the child would be disqualified from the priesthood. This necessity created an investigation ordered by Nehemiah that produced the first recorded investigation questioning the authenticity of apparently legitimate kohanim: By first glance at the above verse it is understood that the mentioned families were rejected entirely from all duties and privileges exclusive to the kohanim. However, the Tanna Rabbi Yossi adopted a more analytical approach based on the following verse: Based on the latter verse making explicit what these persons may not eat from the most holy things it is apparent that consumption of simply holy things was allowed. Yossi gives the opinion that since the investigated families had prior to the investigation consumed only offerings from outside the Holy Land, from the point of investigative results and onward they were permitted to eat from offerings of the Land of Israel (Ketubot 24b). He further explains that offerings from outside the Holy Land are prohibited to a non-kohen based on rabbinic command whereas offerings from the Holy Land are prohibited to a non-kohen by a direct Biblical directive. From the apparent unpleasant narrated event of the Beit Din of Nehemiah questioning the legitimacy of the mentioned Kohanic family, Yossi extracted the positive factor of the strength of the Chazakah form of ownership. Yossi understood this from the fact that not only did Nehemiah allow the said kohanic family to consume the Terumah from outside of the Land of Israel but also allowed them to consume Terumah from Israel itself—an act punishable by death if performed by a non-kohen. As to why the investigators of Nehemiah were suspicious that the priestly family of the children of Chavaya were not qualified to function as kohanim is a matter of Talmudic and rabbinic debate. The author of Avodah Tamma points out that this family was known to be descendants of Aaron for certain, the suspicion was that these male children were offspring of a woman forbidden to a kohen for marriage. The Talmud Yerushalmi explains that Barzilai himself was a Jew, but his daughters were not born Jewish but converted before being three years of age, posing a (rabbinic) problem to a kohen marrying those daughters. In discussing the reason as to why the verse chooses to penn the known lineage of the