Page:The New International Encyclopædia 1st ed. v. 07.djvu/619

* FESTIVALS. 5G3 fourth centuries B.C. is evident from Isaiah lvi.- l.wi. Having no temples, the exiles naturally put the more emphasis upon the keeping of the Sab bath, which was possible even in a foreign land; and it is significant that the insistence upon reform in the observance of the Sabbath was first made in Jerusalem by men born in Persia, such as Nehemiah and Ezra. All festivals are in this period given a historic significance. The ecclesiastical legislation did not recognize them as nature feasts, but as celebrations of Israel's deliverance from Egypt. New feasts appeared in the Iiosh hash-shanah, or New Year's Day, and the Yom Kippur, or the day of Atonement, on the 1st and Kith of the seventh month respec- tively. In the Maccaba?an period, the Dedication Feast was introduced to celebrate the reconse- eration of the temple of Jehovah, on the 25th of Chislev, B.C. 1G5. after it had been for three years a Jupiter sanctuary ( I. Mace. iv. oil ). It is not likely to be an accident, however, that this event was celebrated at the time of the winter solstice. The recovery of the temple about that time of the year rendered it possible to dedicate to Jehovah a festival widely celebrated by pagan neighbors and probably also by emancipated Jews. Simi- larly the feast of Nicanor on the 13th of Adar, in celebration of the victory of Judas Maecaboeus at Beth-horon in B.C. 101, was apparently an adaptation of an earlier festival in honor of the dead (I. Mace. vii. 49; II. Mace. xv. 36). Sub- sequently the Purim feast absorbed this Nicanor festival. The former seems to have been origi- nally an Ishtar feast, celebrating the victory of this goddess and Marduk over the Elamitish di- vinity, Humba, conceived as a demon represent- ing the nether world. In the Hebrew story told to commend the festival the names of the combat- ants in the Babylonian myth have been thinly disguised as Esther, Mordecai, and Haman, while in the actual celebration the ornamenting of the graves is most unimpeachable testimony to the worship of the dead once connected with it. As the Greek translation, according to the colo- phon, appears to have been made and brought to Egypt to introduce the Purim feast for the first time among the Jews living there in the year B.C. 45, the book of Esther and the institution of t he festival among orthodox Jews in Palestine cannot have been much older. Whether the feast of the capture of the Akra (I. Mace. xiii. 50-52 ). no longer celebrated in the time of Josephus, likewise grew out of a nature festival cannot be determined. Equally unknown is the origin of the Feast of Wood-bringing (Josephus. Bel. Jud. ii. 17, 6) and of the Feast of the Rejoicing of the Law. The attitude of Jesus to the feasts of His peo- ple seems to have resembled that of the earlier prophets. Concerning one of them only, the Sab- bath, has His opinion been recorded. But His defense of His disciples when charged with break- ing the Sabbath clearly reveals His position. "Man was not made for the sake of the Sabbath, but the Sabbath for the sake of man ; therefore man has also authority over the Sabbath," is an assertion utterly at variance with the prevailing estimate of the day. Whether His last meal with His disciples was the paschal meal cannot be de- termined with certainty. These disciples no doubt continued to keep the Jewish festivals. Only as Christianity began to make converts outside of Judaism did the question of their observance FESTIVALS. become an important one. In the Epistle to the Galatians, Sabbaths, new moons, and oilier sa- cred days are regarded as shallows of the coming reality, ami done away with in Christ, and the insistence upon Sabhaih -keeping is looked upon as a sign of apostasy from the libertj of the Gos- pel. In Hie profound philosophy of the Fourth dispel (lie festivals of the .lews find a symbolic interpretation. In Jewish Christian circles, how- ever, the Sabbath continued In lie observed, as the Apostolical Constitutions and the canons of the Council of Laodicea show. A second-century gospel fragment in Coptic indicates that even the Jewish Passover was kept by Christians in Egypt. But gradually a number of Christian festi came into vogue. It is not known how early the first day of the week began to be celebrated in honor of the resurrection. There is no trace of such an observance in the New Testament. For neither I. Cor. xvi. 2, where each person is bid- den to lay by him, i.e. in his own house, as he is prospered, on the first day of the week; nor Acts xx. 7, where there is a breaking of bread on the last day of Paul's stay in Troas, as probably on the preceding ones; nor Rev. i. 10, where the Lord's Day seems to refer to the great, judgment day, can be quoted as showing that the firsl day was distinguished from other days as having a sacred character. What day Pliny refers to in his letter to Trajan is uncertain. The first evi- dence of religious services upon the first day, be- cause on it "God made the world and Jesus Christ rose from the dead," is found in Justin Martyr's Apology, written in a.d. 150. Whether the "venerable day of the sun" was first asso- ciated with the resurrection through the Mithra cult cannot yet be determined ; but Constantine's decree, by which it was made a holiday for the Roman Empire, is couched in language that pre- supposes its general recognition as a sacred day. ( See Sabbath ; Sunday. ) Through the Quarto- deciman struggle a separate Christian festival distinct from the Passover developed in the sec- ond century, even though the Easter ritual pre- served many features of the Jewish festival. (See Easter.) While Origen still speaks of Pentecost as the whole season of seven weeks following Easter, the celebration of the outpouring of the spirit was in course of time placed at the end of this period. Clement of Alexandria is the first to mention the festival of the Epiphany. That of the Nativity was later. Both Jews and other nations were accustomed to celebrate the winter solstice. Christmas may therefore go back either to the Dedication Feast, to the Roman Saturnalia, or to the great winter festival of the Mithra cult. Subsequently it united with the < lermanic Yule. The feast of the Ascension is not older than the fourth century. The great number of pagans entering the Church at that time, and the new character of Christianity as a State religion, caused many combinations of old festivals with the new ones. In the beginning of the sixth century attendance at church was made obligatory at Easter, Christmas. Epiph- any, Ascension, Pentecost. Nativity, and Saint John, and later Annunciation. Purification, As- sumption of the Virgin. Circumcision. Michael, and All Saints were added. Soon after, the ecclesiastical year was arranged in three cycles: Advent. Easter, and Pentecost. The process of assimilating pagan festivals still continued. Ac- cording to the direction of Gregory the Great.