Page:EB1911 - Volume 20.djvu/950

 PASSOVER, a Hebrew spring festival, celebrated by the Jews in commemoration of the exodus from Egypt by a family feast in the home on the first evening, and by abstaining from leaven during the seven days of the feast. According to tradition, the first Passover (“The Passover of Egypt”), was preordained by Moses at the command of God. The Israelites were commanded to select on the tenth of Abib (Nisan) a he-lamb of the first year, without blemish, to kill it on the eve of the fourteenth and to sprinkle with its blood the lintel and sidepost of the doors of their dwellings so that the Lord should “pass over” them when he went forth to slay the first-born of the Egyptians. The lamb thus drained of blood was to be roasted and entirely consumed by the Israelites, who should be ready with loins girded, shoes on feet and staff in hand so as to be prepared for the exodus. In memory of this the Israelites were for all time to eat unleavened bread (maẓẓoth) for seven days, as well as keep the sacrifice of the Passover on the eve between the fourteenth and the fifteenth of Nisan. This evening meal was not to be attended by any stranger or uncircumcised person. “On the morrow of the Sabbath” a wave offering of a sheaf of barley was to be made. Those who were unable to perform the sacrifice of the Passover owing to impurity at the appointed time, were permitted to do so a month later.

Various theories have been from time to time proposed to account for this complex of enactments. J. Spencer in his De legibus Hebraeorum saw in the Passover a practical protest against the Egyptian worship of Apis. Vatke considered it a celebration of the spring solstice, Baur a means of removing the impurity of the old year. Lengerke recognized a double motive: the lamb for atonement, the unleavened bread as a trace of the haste of the early harvest. Ewald regarded the Passover as an original pre-Mosaic spring festival made to serve the interest of purity and atonement.

All these views have, however, been cast in the shade by more recent investigations based on minute literary analysis of the Pentateuch, begun by Graf, continued by Kuenen, and culminating in the work of Wellhausen and Robertson Smith. This view claims to determine the respective ages and relative chronological position of the various passages in which the Passover is referred to in the Pentateuch, and assumes that each successive stratum represents the practice in ancient Israel at the time of composition, laying great stress upon omissions as implying non-existence. The main passages and their contents are arranged chronologically in the following way:—

Many discrepancies have been observed among critics in the different portions of this series of enactments. Thus in the Elohist and in Deuteronomy the date of the festival is only vaguely stated to be in the month of Abib, while in the Holiness Code and in the Priestly History the exact date is given. In the Yahwist and Deuteronomist a solemn assembly is to be held on the seventh day, but in the Holiness Code and in the secondary sources of the Priestly Code both the first and the seventh day of the Feast of Unleavened Bread are to be solemn assemblies. In the Deuteronomist the Passover sacrifice can be from either flock or herd, whereas in the Holiness Code only lamb is mentioned, and in the Priestly Code either kid or lamb. In the Deuteronomist the lamb is to be sodden or boiled, whereas in the Priestly Code this is expressly forbidden. A still more vital contrast occurs concerning the place of sacrificing the Passover; as enjoined in Deuteronomy this is to be by the males of the family at Jerusalem, whereas both in the presumably earlier Yahwist and in the later Priestly Code the whole household joins in the festival which can be celebrated wherever the Israelites are settled. These discrepancies however are chiefly of interest in their bearing upon the problem of the Pentateuch, and really throw little light upon the origin of the two feasts connected together under the name of the Passover, to which the present remarks must be mainly confined. It may be observed however that the absence of a definite date in Deuteronomy must be accidental, since a common pilgrimage feast must be on a fixed day, and the reference to the seven weeks elapsing between Passover and Pentecost also implies the fixing of the date. So too even in the Elohist the time is appointed.

Reverting to the origin and the meaning of the feast, modern criticism draws attention to the different nature of the two observances combined with the name Passover, the pastoral sacrifice of the paschal lamb and the agricultural observance of a seven days’ abstention from unleavened bread. It is assumed that the former arose during the pastoral period of Israelite history before or during the stay in Egypt, while the latter was adopted from the Canaanites after the settlement in Palestine. Against this may be urged that, according to the latest inquiries into the pastoral life, there is always connected with it some form of agriculture and a use of cereals, while, historically speaking, the Israelites while in Egypt were dependent on its corn. There is, further, the objection that no distinctive crisis in the agricultural era can be associated with the date of the Passover. The