high priest 
noun
1The chief priest of the historic Jewish religion.It was the only day in the Jewish calendar when the high priest could enter the innermost room of the temple - the most holy place....
- The two main characters involved in Jesus's death are Pontius Pilate, the Roman governor, and Caiaphas, the Jewish high priest.
- Jerusalem itself was governed by the Jewish high priest, who was responsible to a Roman prefect.
1.1The head of a religious cult or similar group.The Druids, the high priests of the Celts, spent twenty years learning the traditions and oral lessons....
- For support, Alonso relied on his family and, increasingly, on his babalawo, or Santerian high priest.
- According to Chief Obadio, the high priest of Oduduwa in Ife, human sacrifice was offered to the deity in the past.
1.2The chief advocate or proponent of a particular belief or practice: the high priest of surrealism...
- But who could have foreseen that the man once known as the high priest of UK drugs culture would team up with the singer from the ultimate Scottish teenybop band?
- As Pierre Boulez turns 80, some of the world's greatest composers give their verdict on the high priest of modernism
- Kerr, the former 20-a-day man, is the high priest of this new ideology.