An aura of superfluity pervades rabbinic polemic against the priesthood after the middle of the third century. Subsequent talmudic sources, whilst still insisting on the incorporation of the keter kehunah within a vastly superior keter torah, state their case almost nonchanantly, and without anything like the urgency or bitterness of earlier times. In retrospect, the modulation of invective is easily understood. As Trifon illustrates, even though priests were never to be entirely disregarded as symbols of national concern, their bid for communal re-instatement was lost. Reduced to hovering on the margins of even ritual Jewish life, the keter kehunah was thus a party on the run. It possessed no viable defences against the aggressive ethos of scholastic piety now being promulgated inside and outside the academies in the name of the keter torah.

Entirely different were rabbinic relations with contemporary agencies of the keter malkhut, now jointly represented by successive nesi'im (Patriarchs) in 'Ereṣ Yisra'el and rashei galuta' (Exilarchs) in Bavel. Together, holders of both positions – and it is significant that they occasionally shared the same title – self-consciously represented a franchise of government distinct from the torah as well as the kehunah. Ultimately, they considered themselves independent of both. Their occasional need to co-operate with the sister domains did not generate a sense of inferiority. On the contrary, Patriarchs and Exilarchs boasted pedigrees as distinguished as those of the priests and redemptive capacities as stirring as those claimed by the rabbis.