NOMOS <de> PAREISHLQEN (INA PLEONASH| TO PARAPTWMA
["But law came in, with the result that the trespass multiplied".
Romans 5:20 NRSV)]
In this way the spiritualisation of the worship is seen in the Priestly Code as advancing pari passu with its centralisation. It receives, so to speak, an abstract religious character; it separates itself in the first instance from daily life, and then absorbs the latter by becoming, strictly speaking, its proper business. The consequences for the future were momentous. The Mosaic "congregation" is the mother of the Christian church; the Jews were the creators of that idea.
We may compare the cultus in the olden time to the green tree which grows up out of the soil as it will and can; later it becomes the regularly shapen timber, ever more artificially shaped with square and compass. Obviously there is a close connection between the qualitative antithesis we have just been expounding and the formal one of law and custom from which we set out. Between "naturaliter ea quae legis sunt facere" ["do instinctively what the law requires" Romans 2:14 NRSV] and "secundum legem agere" there is indeed a more than external difference. If at the end of our first section we found improbable precisely in this region the independent co-existence of ancient praxis and Mosaic law, the improbability becomes still greater from the fact that the latter is filled with a quite different spirit, which can be apprehended only as Spirit of the age (Zeitgeist). It is not from the atmosphere of the old kingdom, but from that of the church of the second temple, that the Priestly Code draws its breath. It is in accordance with this that the sacrificial ordinances as regards their positive contents are no less completely ignored by antiquity than they are scrupulously followed by the post-exilian time.
CHAPTER III. THE SACRED FEASTS.
The feasts, strictly speaking, belong to the preceding chapter, for originally they were simply regularly recurring occasions for sacrifice. The results of the investigation there made accordingly repeat themselves here, but with such clearness and precision as make it worth while to give the subject a separate consideration. In the first place and chiefly, the history of the solar festivals, that of those festivals which follow the seasons of the year, claims our attention.
III.I.1 In the Jehovistic and Deuteronomistic parts of the Pentateuch there predominates a rotation of three great festivals, which alone receive the proper designation of hag: "Three times in the year shalt thou keep festival unto me, three times in the year shall all thy men appear before the Lord Jehovah, the God of Israel" (Exodus xxiii. 14, 17, xxxiv. 23; Deuteronomy xvi. 16). "The feast of unleavened bread (maccoth) shalt thou keep; seven days shalt thou eat maccoth as I commanded thee, in the time appointed of the month Abib, for in it thou camest out from Egypt; and none shall appear before me empty; and the feast of harvest (qasir), the first-fruits of thy labours, which thou hast sown in the field; and the feast of ingathering (asiph), in the end of the year, when thou gatherest in thy labours out of the field." So runs the command in the Book of the Covenant (Exodus xxiii. 15, 16). The Law of the Two Tables (Exodus xxxiv. 18 seq.) is similar: "The feast of unleavened bread shalt thou keep. Seven days shalt thou eat unleavened bread, as I commanded thee, in the time of the month Abib: for in the month Abib thou camest out of Egypt. All that openeth the womb is mine; every firstling among thy cattle, whether ox or sheep, that is male. The firstling of an ass thou shalt redeem with a lamb: and if thou redeem him not, then shalt thou break his neck. All the firstborn of thy sons shalt thou redeem. And none shall appear before me empty. Six days shalt thou work; but on the seventh day shalt thou rest: even in ploughing time and in harvest shalt thou rest. And the feast of weeks (shabuoth) shalt thou observe, the feasts of the first-fruits of wheat harvest, and the feast of ingathering (asiph) at the change of the year." Minuter, on the other hand, and of a somewhat different character, are the precepts laid down in Deuteronomy xvi.:
"Take heed to the month Abib, and keep the passover unto Jehovah thy God, for in the month Abib did Jehovah thy God bring thee forth out of Egypt by night. Thou shalt therefore sacrifice the passover unto Jehovah thy God, of the flock or of the herd, in the place which Jehovah shall choose for the habitation of His name. Thou shalt eat no leavened bread with it; seven days shalt thou eat unleavened bread (maccoth) therewith, the bread of affliction, for thou camest forth out of the land of Egypt in anxious haste, that all the days of thy life thou mayest remember the day when thou camest forth out of the land of Egypt. There shall no leavened bread be seen with thee in all thy border seven days, and of the flesh which thou didst sacrifice on the first day, in the evening, nothing shall remain all night until the morning. Thou mayest not sacrifice the passover within any of thy gates which the Lord thy God giveth thee, but at the place which Jehovah thy God shall choose for the habitation of His name, there shalt thou sacrifice the passover, in the evening, at the going down of the sun, at the time of thy coming forth out of Egypt. And thou shalt boil and eat it in the place which the Lord thy God shall choose, and in the morning shalt thou return to thy home. Six days shalt thou eat maccoth, and on the seventh day shall be the closing feast to Jehovah thy God; thou shalt do no work therein" (ver. 1-8).
"Seven weeks thenceforward shalt thou number unto thee; from such time as thou beginnest to put the sickle to the corn shalt thou begin to number seven weeks, and then thou shalt keep the feast of weeks (shabuoth) to Jehovah thy God, with a tribute of freewill offerings in thy hand, which thou shalt give, according as the Lord thy God hath blessed thee. And thou shalt rejoice before Jehovah thy God, thou, and thy son, and thy daughter, and thy man-servant, and thy maid-senant, and the Levite that is within thy gates, and the stranger, and the fatherless, and the widow that are among you in the place which Jehovah thy God shall choose for the habitation of His name. And thou shalt remember that thou wast a bondman in Egypt, and thou shalt observe and do these statutes" (ver. 9-12).
"The feast of tabernacles (sukkoth) thou shalt observe seven days after thou hast gathered in thy corn and thy wine; and thou shalt rejoice in thy feast,—thou, and thy son, and thy daughter, and thy man-servant, and thy maid-servant, and the Levite, and the stranger, and the fatherless, and the widow that are within thy gates. Seven days shalt thou keep a solemn feast unto Jehovah thy God in the place which Jehovah shall choose, because Jehovah thy God cloth bless thee in all thine increase, and in all the works of thy hands, therefore thou shalt surely rejoice. Three times in a year shall all thy men appear before Jehovah thy God in the place which He shall choose: in the feast of unleavened bread, of weeks, and of tabernacles (hag ha-maccoth,— shabuoth,—sukkoth), and they shall not appear before me empty; every man shall give as he is able, according to the blessing of Jehovah thy God, which He hath given thee" (ver. 13-17). As regards the essential nature of the two last-named feasts, these passages are at one. The sukkoth of Deuteronomy and the asiph of the Jehovistic legislation do not coincide in time merely, but are in fact one and the same feast, the autumnal ingathering of the wine and of the oil from the vat and press, and of the corn from the threshing-floor. The name asiph refers immediately to the vintage and olive-gathering, to which the word sukkoth seems also to relate, being most easily explained from the custom of the whole household, old and young, going out to the vineyard in time of harvest, and there camping out in the open air under the improvised shelter of booths made with branches (Isaiah i. 8). Qacir and shabuoth in like manner are only different names for the same reality, namely, for the feast of the corn-reaping, or, more strictly, the wheat-reaping, which takes place in the beginning of summer. Thus both festivals have a purely natural occasion. On the other hand, the spring festival, which always opens the series, has a historical motive assigned to it, the exodus—most expressly in Deuteronomy—being given as the event on which it rests. The cycle nevertheless seems to presuppose and to require the original homogeneity of all its members. Now the twofold ritual of the pesah and the maccoth points to a twofold character of the feast. The hag, properly so named, is called not hag ha-pesah, /1/ but hag ha-maccoth,
— Footnote 1. The original form of the expression of Exodus xxxiv. 25 has been preserved in Exodus xxiii. 18 (XGGY not XG HPSX). In Deuteronomy, although PSX is more prominent, it is called XG HMCWT in xvi. 16. — Footnote