Levi/Levy (/ˈlv/, Hebrew: לֵּוִי‎; Standard Levy Tiberian Lēwî; literally joining) was, according to the Book of Genesis, the third son of Jacob and Leah, and the founder of the Israelite Tribe of Levi (the Levites). Certain religious and political functions were reserved for the Levites, and in the documentary hypothesis, the early sources of the Torah—the Jahwist and Elohist—appear to treat the term Levi as just being a word meaning priest; some scholars therefore suspect that "levi" was originally a general term for a priest, and had no connection to ancestry, and that it was only later, for example in the priestly source and Blessing of Moses, that the existence of a tribe named Levi became assumed, in order to explain the origin of the priestly caste.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Levi

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Carl Sagan
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