I am watching a video of one of the Apostles of the Mormon Church, Elder Holland, which is entitled:
"An High Priest of Good Things to Come"
The video contains this line:
"Speaking of Jesus’ “more excellent ministry” and why He is “the mediator of a better covenant” filled with “better promises,” this author—presumably the Apostle Paul—tells us that through His mediation and Atonement, Christ became “an high priest of good things to come.”"
Can anyone tell me why he is using the phrase "an high priest" instead of the more conventional "a high priest"? Although the text is a translation from the original language, the address was a mass address intended for members of the general laity, rather than purely biblical scholars. Thus it seems that the a is likely to have been deliberately left in, in order to evoke some sense of the word an to an English speaking audience which is not present in the word a, and therefore retain more of the intentionality of the original text...
Could anyone offer an explanation as to what an is doing in this text, in an English Language sense, which a would not have been appropriate for, or would in some way have been detrimental to the message of (or could be considered to be detrimental to the message of)?
Statement of Non-Duplicate Status
I'm after a specific answer for this passage, not just general rules for an and a. I would also like something a little more than "it sounds nicer", which isn't really an answer; preferably something which broaches any subtle differences in meaning between the two words, and the manner in which the sense of passage would be different if it were to utilise a instead of an.
(Link to video for reference: https://www.lds.org/general-conference/1999/10/an-high-priest-of-good-things-to-come?lang=eng)