NOTE.
The Jewish Passover not a proper Sacrifice.
In an essay on “the one great end of the life and death of Christ,” Dr. Priestley makes the following observations on the words (occurring in 1 Cor. v. 7,) “Christ, our passover, is sacrificed for us:” “This allusion to the paschal lamb makes it also probable, that the death of Christ is called a sacrifice only by way of figure, because these two (viz., sacrifice and the paschal lamb) are quite different and inconsistent ideas. The paschal lamb is never so much as termed a sacrifice in the Old Testament, except once, Exodus xii. 27, where it is called ‘the sacrifice of the Lord’s passover.’ However, it could only be called a sacrifice in this place, in some secondary and partial sense, and not in the proper and primary sense of the word; for there was no priest employed upon the occasion, no altar made use of, no burning, nor any part offered to the Lord; all which circumstances were essential to every proper sacrifice. The blood indeed was sprinkled upon the door-posts, but this was originally nothing more than a token to the destroying angel to pass by that house; for there is no propitiation or atonement said to be made by it: and the paschal lamb is very far from having been ever called a sin-offering, or said to be killed on account of sin.”[[626]]
Every reader, I apprehend, understands this description of the manner of celebrating the passover, to refer to the particular “occasion” spoken of “in this place” (Exod. xii. 27). ‘The writer of this verse,’ argues Dr. Priestley, ‘could not use the word sacrifice in its strictest sense; for his own narrative of the very celebration to which it is applied, describes it as destitute of all the essentials of a proper sacrifice.’ The allusion to the blood sprinkled upon the door-posts, as “a token to the destroying angel to pass by that house,” immediately connects Dr. Priestley’s assertions with the Egyptian passover. By cutting out this allusion, and otherwise breaking up the passage in quotation, Archbishop Magee has contrived to conceal its character as an historical description of a single occasion, and to give it the air of a general account of the Jewish paschal ceremony in all ages. Having accomplished this, and obtained for himself the liberty of travelling for a reply over the whole Hebrew history and traditions, he says; “Now in answer to these several assertions, I am obliged to state the direct contradiction of each; for, 1st, the passage in Exodus xii. 27, is not the only one, in which the paschal lamb is termed זבח, a sacrifice, it being expressly so called in no less than four passages in Deuteronomy (xvi. 2, 4, 5, 6), and also in Exodus xxxv. 25, and its parallel passage xxiii. 18.—2. A priest was employed.—3. An altar was made use of.—4. There was a burning, and a part offered to the Lord: the inwards being burnt upon the altar, and the blood poured out at the foot thereof.”[[627]] The last three of these “direct contradictions” establish nothing but this Prelate’s habit (not adopted, we may presume, without urgent necessity) of misrepresenting his opponents in order to confute them: for it is quite needless to observe that, in the Egyptian passover, of which alone Dr. Priestley speaks, there was neither priest, altar, nor burning: and though the Archbishop should be able to detect all these elements in a festival of King Josiah’s time, he will have proved no error against the passage which he criticises. In his first contradiction, he would have gained an advantage over his opponent, had not his eagerness induced him to strain his evidence too far. A more modest disputant would have thought it sufficient to reckon three successive verses (Deut. xvi. 4, 5, 6) in which the same phrase is simply repeated, as a single instead of a triple authority: the other citation from the same passage is not to the point, as will presently be shown: and in one of the verses quoted from Exodus (xxiii. 18) the word זבח does not occur at all in relation to the passover. So that Dr. Priestley having discovered two passages too few, the Prelate makes compensation by discovering two passages too many.
Having said thus much in reference to Archbishop Magee’s fairness to his opponent, I will add a few strictures on the reasonings by which he supports his general position, that the passover was a proper sacrifice. He adduces two arguments from words, and three from facts. 1. The word זבח, sacrifice, is applied to the passover.—2. The word קרבן, Corban, a sacred offering, is applied to it.—3. The slaying of the lamb took place at the tabernacle or temple.—4. The blood was offered at the foot of the altar.—5. The fat and entrails were burnt as an offering on the altar fire.
(1.) It has been already stated, that Archbishop Magee has improperly adduced two passages, as applying the word sacrifice to the passover. The first of these is Exod. xxiii. 18, where it is said: “Thou shalt not offer the blood of my sacrifice with leavened bread; neither shall the fat of my sacrifice remain till morning.” The second clause here undoubtedly refers to the paschal lamb: but the term “sacrifice” occurring in it is not the proper translation of the original; nor is the Hebrew word the same that is correctly so rendered in the first clause. The phrases being not the same, but discriminated, in the two parts of the verse, the less reason exists for supposing that both allude to the passover. More probably, the reference in the former is to the sacrifices appropriate to the feast of unleavened bread, which being contiguous to the passover in time, is naturally conjoined with it in the precepts of this verse.
The second irrelevant passage is Deut. xvi. 2: “Thou shalt therefore sacrifice the passover unto the Lord thy God, of the flock and of the herd.” Since the paschal lamb could not be taken “from the herd,” it is evident that the word “passover,” is used here in a wider sense,[[628]] to denote the joint eight days’ festival, including that of unleavened bread, when heifers were offered “from the herd.” This more comprehensive meaning of the term is frequent, not merely with Josephus and the later Jewish writers, but in the Hebrew Scriptures themselves; and renders inconclusive most of the arguments by which the passover is made to assume the appearance of a proper sacrifice. An example occurs in the very next verse: “Seven days thou shalt eat unleavened bread therewith,” that is, with the passover; and in 2 Chron. xxxv. 9: “Conaniah also (and other persons) gave unto the priests for the passover offerings, 2,600 small cattle, and 300 oxen.”
In the remaining places, however, this feast is undoubtedly called a sacrifice. But then it is clear that the Hebrew word זבח is used with a latitude, which renders it impossible to draw from it any inference as to the character of the ceremony to which it is applied. It denotes slaying of animals for food, without any necessary reference to a sacred use.[[629]] Thus, 1 Sam. xxviii. 24. “And the woman had a fat calf in the house; and she hasted and killed it,” (sacrificed it, תזבחהו); also 1 Kings, xix. 21. “And he took a yoke of oxen, and slew them (ויזבחהו), and boiled their flesh with the instruments of the oxen, and gave unto the people, and they did eat.” And the substantive occurs thus in Prov. xvii. 1. “Better is a dry morsel, and quietness therewith, than a house full of sacrifices (evidently meats,—the luxury of animal food) with strife.”
(2.) The passover is called קרבן, Corban, a sacred offering, in Numb. ix. 7, 13. Certain men who had been defiled by performing funeral rites, present themselves to Moses, and say, “Wherefore are we kept back, that we may not offer the offering of the Lord in his appointed season among the children of Israel?” And then follows the law which Moses takes occasion from this incident to announce; that persons disqualified by absence on a journey, or by uncleanness, from joining in the celebration at the appointed time, may observe it at the corresponding period of the next month. Such disqualifications, if existing at all, would have excluded from the whole eight days’ festival, including the feast of unleavened bread, and held the parties away till the following month; “the offering of the Lord,” therefore, which they were kept back from presenting, comprised all the sacrifices proper to the “season;” and the word “offering” is comprehensively applied to the whole set, from its particular propriety in reference to the most numerous portion of them, the sacrifices at the feast of unleavened bread. The paschal lamb, by itself, is never, I believe, designated by this term.
In treating of the actual details of the paschal ceremony, it is necessary to distinguish between those which were of legal obligation, and those which were merely consuetudinary or occasional. Nothing can justly be pronounced an essential of the celebration, which is not enjoined in the statutes appointing it; and should other customs present themselves in the historical instances of the commemoration which we possess, they cannot be received as authoritative illustrations of its intended character, but as accessaries appended by convenience, tradition, or sacerdotal influence.[[630]] With this remark I proceed to the next argument.
(3.) The slaying of the paschal lamb is said to have been restricted to the tabernacle or temple.
The only passage from the law, adduced to prove this, is Deut. xvi. 2, 5, 6, where it is said, “Thou mayest not sacrifice the passover within any of thy gates, which the Lord thy God giveth thee; but at the place which the Lord thy God shall choose to place his name in, there shalt thou sacrifice the passover at even.” The reader might naturally suppose that Jerusalem was here denoted by the phrase, “the place which the Lord thy God shall choose,” in contradistinction from the provincial cities described as “any of thy gates;” but Archbishop Magee sets aside this interpretation, by referring us to this very same expression in Deut. xii. 5, 6, 11, 14, where it evidently means the tabernacle or temple, not the city; for a multitude of rites are there enumerated, to be performed, “in the place that the Lord shall choose,” which could be celebrated only at the sanctuary. It so happens, however, that in this enumeration, the Passover is precisely the one thing which is not mentioned; from which we might fairly infer, that it was not among the ceremonies limited to the sanctuary; and further, that in addition to the vague description of place common to both passages, there occurs exclusively in the latter, the additional one, “there shall ye eat, before the Lord your God,” which is well known to be the usual mode of designating the tabernacle. And that in the passover-law, the locality intended was the city, and not the sanctuary, is evident from a verse which Archbishop Magee has not thought it necessary to quote, though it is the immediate sequel of his citation; “and thou shalt roast and eat it (the paschal lamb) in the place which the Lord thy God shall choose.” Whatever doubt may exist about the slaying, the roasting and eating could not take place at the tabernacle.
The law, then, nowhere prescribes the slaying of the paschal lamb at the sanctuary. But neither does it forbid this; and therefore we are not surprised that the act should take place there, on any particular occasion rendering such arrangement obviously convenient; or as a general practice, in concession to any strong interests tending to draw it thither. When, therefore, a long period of idolatry and political confusion had obliterated from the minds of the Israelites the very memory of their religious rites; when new modes of worship had become habitual, and the annual festival had grown strange; when, to induce them to come up to the passover at all, their monarch was obliged to provide for them the whole number of their victims, and the officiating Levites needed to study again the appointed ceremonies of the season; it is no wonder that king Josiah thought it expedient to collect “the whole congregation” at the temple, and there to let them witness the form of slaying, by well-trained hands, and receive instruction how to complete the celebration of their feast. Such was the solemn passover described in 2 Chron. xxxv. and that in the reign of Hezekiah, mentioned in the thirtieth chapter of the same book; the circumstances of both which were too peculiar to afford evidence of a general practice, much less of a legal essential.
That in later times it was the custom to slay the paschal lambs in the Temple courts, there can be no doubt. The system of ecclesiastical police, and the operation of sacerdotal interests created the practice. It was the business of the priests to see to the execution of the festival-law; to ascertain who incurred the penalty due to neglect of the prescribed rite: to register the numbers of those who observed it; and to take care that neither too many nor too few should partake at the same table. All this required that the heads of families should present themselves, and report their intended arrangements to the authorities at the temple. The priests moreover, being the judges of the qualifications of the animals for the paschal table, availed themselves of this power, to become graziers and provision-dealers. As the lambs must be presented for their inspection, and were liable to be turned back if pronounced imperfect, it became more convenient to buy the victim at once at the Temple courts: and on the spot where the purchase was made, the slaying would naturally follow. Lightfoot, speaking of the law which originally required the lamb to be chosen four days before it was killed, says, “It is not to be doubted but every one in after times took up their own lambs as they did in Egypt, but it is somewhat doubtful whether they did it in the same manner. It is exceedingly probable, that as the priests took up the lambs for the daily sacrifice four days before they were to be offered, as we have observed elsewhere; so also that they provided lambs for the people at the passover, taking them up in the market four days before, and picking and culling out those that were fit, and agreeable to the command. For whereas the law was so punctual that they should be without blemish, and their traditions had summed up so large a sum of blemishes, as that they reckon seventy-three, it could not be but the law and their traditions which they prized above the law should be endlessly broken, if every one took up his own lamb in the market at Jerusalem at adventure. The priests had brought a market of sheep and oxen against such times as these into the temple, (for if it had not been their doing, they must not have come there,) where they having before-hand picked out in the market such lambs and bullocks as were fit for sacrifice or passover, they sold them in the temple at a dearer rate, and so served the people’s turn and their own profit: for which, amongst other of their hucksteries, our Saviour saith, they had made the house of prayer a den of thieves.”[[631]]
(4.) The blood is said to have been poured out as an offering at the foot of the altar.
The only legal evidence adduced to prove this, will be found in the parallel passages, Exod. xxiii. 18, and xxxiv. 25. “Thou shalt not offer the blood of my sacrifice with leaven.” I have already shown that this command probably refers, not to the paschal lamb, but to the sacrifices at the feast of unleavened bread. There is therefore no evidence, throughout the law, in favour of the alleged regulation. Yet in cases of undoubted sacrifice, Moses is usually very explicit in his directions respecting the sprinkling of the blood upon the altar: as may be seen from Lev. i. 5, 11, 15; iii. 2, 8, 13; iv. 5-7, 16-18; vii. 2.
The only historical evidence adduced from Scripture on the point before us, is from the accounts of Hezekiah’s and Josiah’s solemn passovers before mentioned; 2 Chron. xxx. 15, 16; xxxv. 11. In both these instances, it is merely said, that the priests “sprinkled (or poured out) the blood,” receiving it from the hands of the Levites, who were employed, for reasons already assigned, to slay the lambs on these two occasions, instead of the heads of families, on whom that office properly devolved. The altar is not named: but as the blood must be disposed of somewhere, and as there was a drain for that purpose at the foot of the altar, no doubt it was there that the priests sprinkled or poured it away. The act was simply an act of cleanliness,—in plain speech, a resort to the sink,—from which theology can extract nothing profitable. The priests were the parties to perform the office because no other persons could approach the altar under penalty of death. In later times, when the sacerdotal influence had made the temple the scene of the paschal slaughter, each head of a family killed his own lamb in the court: the blood, received in a basin, was handed to the first of a row of priests reaching to the foot of the altar, where it was poured away at the usual place.[[632]] In this there is nothing of the nature of an offering or proper sacrifice.
(5.) But it is said that the fat and entrails were placed on the altar fire and burned.
Archbishop Magee says, that this “may be collected from the accounts given of the ceremony of the passover in the passages already referred to.”[[633]] It requires perhaps that able controversialist’s peculiar mode of “managing passages” (to use a favourite phrase of his own) to elicit this from the authorities named; at least, I am unable, after careful examination of them, to conjecture what he means. The passages however are before my readers, and I must leave the assertion to their judgment. Meanwhile, I must conclude, that there is absolutely no trace in Scripture of such a practice as is here pronounced to be one of the essentials of the passover.
I am aware that there is Talmudical authority for considering this “burning” as a part of the process connected, in later times, with the killing of the paschal lamb.[[634]] It was probably one of the modifications of the rite, introduced by the priests on its transference from the private homes of the people to the temple. The original law required, that the lamb should be roasted whole, not even the entrails being removed; it also enjoined, that whatever was left should be immediately burned with fire, and every trace of it destroyed before morning.[[635]] This private burning was clearly no religious and sacrificial act, though, perhaps, a provision against any superstitious use of the remnants: and it is easy to perceive, that the parts thus destroyed would be the same, which subsequently it was the custom of the priests to consume on the altar fire. When the killing became a collective act, and the temple the scene of it, doubtless both people and priests thought it more cleanly and agreeable to burn the parts which were sure to be left, before hand on the public fire, than afterwards on the hearths of their private dwellings: and it would require a very illiberal interpreter to pronounce this a violation of the original law, the spirit of which it certainly observed. This view, which treats the burning on the altar as simply a mode of consumption, substituted for the destruction of the same worthless parts at home, is less insulting to the Jewish religion than the opinion which discerns here an act of worship. The Jews were certainly a very coarse people, and offered many disagreeable things to God: but really, such a gift as this is without any parallel. They always,—in obedience to their law,—presented something valuable (sometimes the whole animal, sometimes the breast and right shoulder), either to Jehovah on the altar, or to his ministers the priests:[[636]] and the pious Jew would have indignantly resented the idea of quitting the temple courts with the whole value of his sacrifice on his shoulder, and only the refuse remaining in the sanctuary.
By law, then, there was nothing of the paschal lamb burned on the altar: and by custom there was no part offered to Jehovah or given to the priests: and without these characteristics, there is no proper sacrifice.
Archbishop Magee admits, that the ceremony of laying the hand on the head of the victim, which was observed in the undoubted sacrifices, did not take place in the rite under consideration: and he notices the statement of Philo, that the animal was slain, not by the priest, but by the individual presenting it.[[637]] He considers Philo to have been mistaken, however, in his assertion that this immolation by private hand was peculiar to the passover; and cites the language of Lev. i. 4, 5; iii. 2; iv. 24, to show that the burnt offering, the peace-offering, the sin-offering, might all be slain by the offerer. Certainly these passages appear to leave such permission open to the Israelitish worshipper: but it seems more likely that the sacrifices here enumerated were intended to be made by the hands of the priest: nor would it be easy to reconcile the liberty of private sacrifice with the sacerdotal duties and privileges defined in Num. xviii. 1-7. As to the actual practice, it cannot be reasonably doubted that Philo was correct: and his expressions seem to imply that, in the paschal rite, the priest might be altogether dispensed with, and his intervention required for no religious act. He says: “On the fourteenth day of this month, at the coming of the full moon, is celebrated the public festival of the passover, called in the Chaldee language the Pascha: when, instead of the private citizen presenting his victim at the altar to be slain by the priest, the whole nation officiates in sacred things, every one in turn bringing and immolating his own victim with his own hands. The whole people is festive and joyous, every one being entitled to the dignity of priesthood.”[[638]] He uses similar expressions in his treatise on the decalogue: The festival, “which the Hebrews in their language call the Pascha,” is a time “when each and all of them slay their victim, without waiting for the services of their priests: the law, on an appointed day of every year, conceding to the whole people the sacerdotal functions, to the extent of permitting them to officiate for themselves at a sacrifice.”[[639]] This language evidently implies, that every essential part of the passover rites, every act necessary to constitute and complete its character as a religious celebration, was performed by private hand: so that the auxiliary operations of the priests,—the pouring out of the blood and burning the inwards,—must be regarded as non-essentials and accessaries; menial contributions to the main act; and in the performance of which, therefore, the usual law, forbidding to the non-official Jew all approach to the altar, came into effect again. Had the paschal celebration required, as an indispensable ingredient in it, any transactions at the altar, the private Israelite, being temporarily invested with whatever sacerdotal privileges were needful for the rite, would have gone himself to make his offering. Philo indeed obviously conceived of the subsequent part of the ceremony, in which the temple and the priest had no share,—the domestic meal which took place in the several homes of the people,—as its peculiarly sacred element: “Each house,” he says, “at that time put on the form and sanctity of a temple, the victim that has been slain being made ready for a suitable meal.”[[640]] Fond as this writer is of types, it is impossible to express the retrospective and commemorative character of the passover more emphatically than in his words: ὑπομνητικὴ τῆς μεγίστης ἀποικίας ἐστὶν ἡ ἑορτὴ, καὶ χαριστήριος.[[641]]
In one passage of his note on the Passover, Archbishop Magee appears to admit that the paschal lamb was not a “sacrifice for sin,” and affirms that he “would not dispute with Dr. Priestley any conclusion he might draw from so productive a premiss.”[[642]] Yet, a few pages further on, he quotes with apparent approbation the arguments by which Cudworth sought to prove the rite to be an expiatory sacrifice.[[643]] I cannot pretend to reconcile these two portions of his Essay. But if the passover cannot be shown to be an expiatory sacrifice, I do not see what the advocates of the doctrine of atonement gain by proving it a sacrifice at all. If the paschal lamb was not a sin-offering, to what class did it belong? It must have been either of the eucharistic kind, or else unique and simply commemorative; and so far as the death of Christ was analogous to any such offering, it was destitute of expiatory efficacy: and either was an expression of thanksgiving, (which seems absurd) or, like the blood of the lamb sprinkled on the lintel, a mere sign of some deliverance which it was not instrumental in effecting, but which, simultaneously perhaps, yet independently occurred. Those, therefore, who are disposed to strain the resemblance between the passover and the cross, must either maintain the expiatory nature of the Jewish right, or admit the Lord’s Supper to be, not even the celebration of a real deliverance, but the mere commemoration of a sign.
Postscript.
In the notes to the Sixth Lecture of this series (p. 89-92,) I have adduced an example of Archbishop Magee’s misrepresentation of Mr. Belsham, and stated that the Prelate had quoted his opponent falsely. In comparing the two authors, I employed the latest editions of both their works; not being able to procure a copy of the first edition of the Calm Enquiry, which has been out of print for twenty-two years. At the same time, I thought it only just to insert the following note: “There is a possibility, which I think it right to suggest, of a difference between the two editions of Mr. B.’s work; as, however, the accusation is still found in the newest edition of the Archbishop’s book, I conclude that this is not the case. Indeed, even if the Prelate’s quotation had been verbally true, it would in spirit have been no less false; for, at all events, Mr. B. cites the Vulgate, to give evidence as to the text, not the translation; and had he used the word renders, it would only have been because the term naturally occurs when a VERSION is adduced to determine a READING.”
I have since obtained a copy of the first edition of the Calm Enquiry; and I hasten to acknowledge that the Archbishop’s quotation is “verbally true,” as far as it goes. But I regret to say that this makes only a formal difference in his favour; for by stopping short in his citation, he accomplished the very same object, of leaving an absolutely false impression, which I had supposed him to have effected, in this as in other instances, by direct falsification of his author. He wishes to make it appear, that Mr. Belsham (purposely mistranslating for the occasion,) appeals to a certain verse in the Vulgate in evidence, not of a READING, but of a RENDERING; and so he cites these words from the Calm Enquiry: “The Vulgate renders the text, the first man was of the earth, earthy; the second man was from heaven, heavenly;” but he leaves out the very next words, in which the point intended to be proved by this testimony of the Vulgate is cited, “This is not improbably the TRUE READING.” Doubtless it was one of Mr. Belsham’s incuriæ that he did not attend to his italics in his first edition: but the charge of intentional mistranslation is simply injurious; except indeed, that it is also absurd, seeing that Mr. Belsham has put the Latin of his mistranslated passage at the bottom of the page;—a policy which this heresiarch could scarcely have thought safe, unless he had taken his Unitarian readers to be either more “dishonest critics,” or more “defective scholars,” than even our learned opponents are prepared to think them.