Dignas, Beate, and Kai Trampedach, eds. 2008. Practitioners of the Divine: Greek Priests and Religious Figures from Homer to Heliodorus. Hellenic Studies Series 30. Washington, DC: Center for Hellenic Studies. http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:hul.ebook:CHS_DignasB_and_TrampedachK_eds.Practitioners_of_the_Divine.2008.
Introduction. What Is a Greek Priest?*
North has put his finger on what is arguably the most conspicuous shortcoming of the term priest as applied to Greek cult. Derived from a monotheistic religion with an exclusively male and hierarchical clergy, the very concept of priest suggests a uniformity of identity and function that contrasts sharply with the inherent diversity of Greek religion.
It would seem absurd to characterize Greek religion with its omnipresence of priests as “a religion without priests,” and of course, Burkert qualifies his deliberately paradoxical statement with the telling caveat “almost.” He does not need to be reminded that the definitional standard that he applies to Greek religion—the notion of a “fixed tradition,” of a “hierarchy,” and of a consistent and invariable “disciplina” in doctrine and worship—imposes Christian categories on Greek religion and amounts to an interpretatio Christiana that is not essentially different from Herodotus’ Greek reading of non-Greek religions. We ought to do better than that, and we can, as Burkert and others have shown, and as this volume confirms. 
Appendix. What Is a Greek Priest? Some Representative Answers, 1825–2000