passover in biblical narratives

[JSOT 82 (1999) 45-55]

PASSOVER IN BIBLICAL NARRATIVES

Tamara Prosic

3/38 Grandview Road, Preston, Victoria 3072, Australia

Passover appears in a variety of texts in the Old Testament. It is a concern of some narratives, instructions, lists and laws. In narratives thereare the Passover in Egypt before the exodus, I the Passover on Sinai.? thePassover immediately after entering Canaan," the mentioning of Passover within the context of the account of Solomon's reign," Hezekiah' sPassover.! Josiah's Passover," and the Passover after the return fromexile." The legislative texts all come from the Pentateuch with theexception of the one in Ezekie1.8

Until recently, it was believed that the investigation of the four generally recognized biblical sources/ is the most reliable method to gathersome knowledge about the original character of Passover. Scholarsinvested an incredible effort on comparing descriptions of Passoverfrom various sources and analysing particular words used in thosedescriptions. The result was a number of explanations the versatility ofwhich already speaks against the employment of method of literarycriticism in establishing the true character of Passover. Passover

1. Exod. 12.2. Num. 9.4-6.3. Josh. 5.10-12.4. 1 Kgs 9.25; 2 Chron. 8.12-13.5. 2 Chron. 30.6. 2 Kgs 21-23; 2 Chron. 35.1-19.7. Ezra 6.19-22.8. Ezek.45.21-24.9. The Yahwistic (1), the Elohistic (E), the Deuteronomic (D) and the Priestly

(P) traditions.

at Monash University on October 29, 2016jot.sagepub.comDownloaded from

http://jot.sagepub.com/

46 Journal/or the Study of the Old Testament 82 (1999)

appeared both as pastoral and agricultural ritual, apothropaic rite,!"thanksgiving festival, I I harvest festival,'? sanctification ritual':' and ritual drama. 14

Segal's objection to the literary criticism that words and phrases arealways employed as the context requires and that they are not 'stock-intrade' of individual sources 15 strikes at the core of the source hypothesisand certainly provides us with a good argument for its rejection. Thiswarning by Segal from the early sixties today has been furthersubstantiated by theories which dispute the traditional notion that J isthe oldest stratum in the Old Testament." In relation to Passover, thesetheories raise doubts as to whether J's description of Passover can beheld to be the oldest version of the festival and accordingly whether theJ version can be taken as a firm starting point in a quest for its pagan,pre-Yahwistic prototype.

Thus the question of discovering the original character of Passoverposes itself in the first instance as a question of finding the appropriatemethod to read and interpret the biblical text. Until recently, the majority of biblical scholars tended to regard the Bible as a truthful source ofinformation, in particular the so-called historical narratives which dealwith the early history of the Israelites. However, today there is a growing number of theories which maintain that the material in the OldTestament constitutes a sacred history which does not have much incommon with the real history of Israelites. 17The main narratives in theBible which are concerned with the early history of the Israelites areseen and interpreted as retrojective ideological constructions. 18

Regardless of whether the legends of the sacred history have any realvalue for an historian or not, what is beyond any doubt is that stories insacred books are always told in symbolic language.'? Origen and Maimonides, whose times did not know the rigid scientism that has been

10. De Vaux 1965: 484-93; Kraus 1966: 46-49.II. Wellhausen 1895: 83-94.12. Beer 1912: 9.13. Pedersen 1959: 398.14. Mowinckel 1922: 37-40.15. Segal 1963:91.16. Thompson 1975; Van Seters 1975; Schmid 1976.17. Leach 1983: 8-29.18. Garbini 1988.19. Eilberg-Schwartz 1990: 115-41.



PROSIC Passover in Biblical Narratives 47

dominating the studies of Old Testament since the nineteenth century,were both aware of this way of reading the Bible, claiming that some ofthe biblical stories pose unbridgeable obstacles when one follows onlytheir narrative meaning." In Philo's interpretation of the Old Testamentthere is always the 'literal' and the 'deeper meaning' of the biblicaltext;" even the prophets speak of riddles, allegories and parables as ameans of wisdom." Exactly because the biblical text is also a symbolictext I believe that instead of accounting and classifying differences inthe Passover ritual as they appear in various sources, it is more fruitfulto start the investigation of its original character with an analysis of itssymbolic connotation within the context of certain narratives where itscelebration is mentioned.

The second reason for choosing to investigate the symbolism of thebiblical Passover stems from the fact that important religious traditionsare never easily abandoned and that new religions usually inherit theoutstanding moments of their immediate predecessors. That heritagevery often assumes a symbolic form and we might add that its incorporation into the new theology in such a form is one of the links that surmounts the gap between the new and the old, since as a thing which canbe recognized and understood, it alleviates the process of accepting thenew theology. We can take Christianity as an example, which incorporated many of the pagan religious traditions, but with new explanationswhich were moulded according to its own theology. The pagan festivaldedicated to the re-birth of the Sun and usually held at the winter solstice, Christianity translated into the birth of Jesus Christ. Anotherprominent example is the Virgin Mary, which was the Christian rendition of the Great Mother. To paraphrase Goodenough: theology is forthe few: symbols are for all, intellectuals and childish alike." In thisrespect Yahwism was not an exception. Following Leach's suggestionthat religious texts contain mystery which is still decodable from thetext itself," we might as well conclude that in the case of Passover ourtask is to establish whether its mentioning as part ofcertain historical

20. Origen, On First Principles. especially Book IV, Chapters 2 and 3. Maimonides, The Guide to the Perplexed, especially the Introduction and Part I, Chapters 2 and 5.

21. Philo. Works.22. Prov. 1.6; Ezek. 17.2; 24.3; Hos. 12.1I (ET v. 10); Dan. 5.12; 8.23.23. Goodenough 1988: 49-51.24. Leach 1983: 3.



48 Journal for the Study of the Old Testament 82 (1999)

narratives has any symbolic function and whether that particular function can be seen as a projection of the original purpose and meaning ofPassover.

As Fohr notes, there is always a possibility to object to this approachon the ground that we are actually equating the stories with what wethink is their symbolic meaning. However, as he suggests, one shouldnever forget that what a symbol was to the people of Israel a couple ofthousands years ago does not have to be a symbol for US. 25 Among thethree monotheistic religions that developed and managed to survive inthe Near East, Yahwism paved the way for the others. It appeared in aworld where other religious formulae other than polytheistic weresimply non-existent. As in the case of its predecessor, Akhenaten'smonotheistic cult of the Sun disc, as a spiritual and religious phenomenon, Yahwism was a divergence from the contemporary spirit ofthe age and contemporary Weltanschauung. And that Weltanschauungwas marked by particularized polytheistic comprehension of the world,where every significant human activity and every natural phenomenonhad their divine patron, while the vivid and dynamic mythologicalconstructions projected the ideas about the world and the cosmos. Thatwas the native soil from which Yahwistic monotheistic principleemerged and consequently, everything that was as a symbol included inits theology had to mean something for the people of that time; in short,it had to mean something within the pagan framework of reasoning.

So what then are the occasions in which Passover is mentioned? Inthe book of Exodus it is mentioned in connection with the tenthplague." The Passover on Sinai happens after all the laws of Yahwehare declared and the Tabernacle finished." One can argue that the Sinaicelebration does not constitute an event since it is a part of the regulations on second Passover. However, although the rules on the secondPassover are dominant, they are nevertheless presented within the context of a certain story. The preparations for the Passover actually starton the first day after Moses finished setting up the Tabernacle. Everyfollowing day is separately accounted for, with elaborate descriptionsof offerings for the altar, brought by twelve tribal leaders. On the thirteenth day, Levites are consecrated as a substitution for sparing theIsraelite first-born in Egypt. Just after that, on the fourteenth day, comes

25. Fohr 1986: 11.26. Exod. 12.27. Num.9.4-6.




the celebration of Passover, as the event that crowns the whole of thepreceding ceremonial presentation of offerings. It is evident from thegeneral framework of the narrative that the celebration of Passover is itsintegral part and that it certainly has a definite purpose. That purpose,on the other hand, does not serve as an introduction to the regulationson second Passover. In fact, within the context, the regulations seem tobe secondary, since they are very awkwardly interpolated with an apparent discrepancy between the question asked by the people and theanswer Moses gives them."

After the Passover in Sinai comes the first Passover in Canaan," following the miraculous crossing of the Jordan and the arrival of theIsraelites in the 'promised land'. In the accounts about the constructionof the temple, Passover is mentioned along with other cultic ceremoniesas a conclusion to the works on the temple.30

Hezekiah's Passover comes after re-sanctification of the Temple andthe long period of kings who worshipped other gods." Josiah's Passover follows the religious purge which eradicated pagan idols, sacredplaces and priests." Finally, there is the Passover celebration held afterthe people returned from the exile and the Temple was rebuilt. 33

In all these situations, the Passover celebration is differentlydescribed. In the book of Exodus it is presented as a rite with the mainfunction of enabling Yahweh to recognize the homes of Israelites andpass over them in his deadly mission. The focus is on the handling ofblood which is poured in the basin and sprinkled onto the houses with abunch of hyssop. The inhabitants of the house are to remain for the restof the night in the house. There is no mentioning of the unleavened bread.

The Passover held immediately after entering Canaan presents a completely different picture. People must be circumcised before they areallowed to observe the festival. The celebration is kept on the eveningof the fourteenth day of the month, and in a sacred place. The nextmorning they eat unleavened cakes and parched grain. Manna ceases.

The Bible does not give any details about the Passover kept in Sinaiexcept that it is kept on the fourteenth day of the first month in the

28. Num.9.6-11.29. Josh. 5.10-12.30. 1 Kgs 9.25; 2 Chron. 8.12-13.31. 2 Cbron. 30.32. 2 Kgs 21-23; 2 Cbron. 35.1-19.33. Ezra 6.19-22.



50 Journalfor the Study of the Old Testament 82 (1999)

evening. People who at the time of its observance are in touch withdead bodies are banned from the festival.

As in the book of Joshua, Solomon's PassoverlUnleavened Bread iskept in a sacred place, the Temple. In the account of Chronicles, its celebration is mentioned in conjunction with the sabbaths, new moons andthe other two big annual feasts, Weeks and Tabernacles. The threeoccasions on which Solomon burnt offerings, mentioned in 1 Kings, aregenerally regarded as an allusion to the three annual feasts. However, itshould be noted that in Solomon's Passover the king has a notable rolein burning the offerings and that the offerings are burned on the altar.

Hezekiah's and Josiah's Passovers are elaborately described, withmany details about the Temple practice which include holy assembly,royal contribution of Passover lambs, killing of the sacrificial victims,sprinkling of blood, eating of unleavened bread, singing and ritualsanctification. In both accounts, the accent is on cleanliness and theLevites are assigned the job of killing the sacrificial animals. In theaccount of Josiah's Passover, observance of the feast of UnleavenedBread is separately mentioned, while Hezekiah' s Passover takes placein the second month and instead of seven it is kept for fourteen days.

In the Passover of the returned exiles, the accent is also on cleanliness and, again, the Levites are the ones who kill the Passover lamb onbehalf of the rest of the community. The feast of Unleavened Bread iskept for seven days.

The first impression is that among all the recounted events andPassover descriptions, apart from the Yahwistic ideological message,there is not a single element that can be identified as common to all ofthem. Some of the events seem to be related to the history of the cult,like the law declaration on Sinai, building of the Temple and Josiah'sand Hezekiah's religious reforms. Others, such as the exodus, enteringinto Canaan and the return from exile, seem to be related more to themundane history of Israelites. Also, the descriptions of Passover significantly vary from occasion to occasion and it is evident that in somecases the final compilers either overemphasized some of its features oreven designed new ones in an effort to achieve congruity with thenature of the circumstances that precede the actual celebration.

However, all these differences are differences of detail, and as thecritics of the positivistic method would remark, as long as we are interested in trees we will not be able to see the forest. Precisely at the levelof general structure 0 f these events a constant repetition of the same




structural elements appears. In short, they all follow the same structuralpattern.

First of the structural elements that is constantly repeated is certainlythe mentioning of Passover as part of the narratives. Its inclusion isundoubtedly not accidental since it serves as a common designatorwhich in some sense separates those particular legends from other eventsin the sacred history of the Israelites. That, on the other hand, makes itpossible to assume that the meaning of Passover goes beyond the planeof the clearly perceptible and that it is not limited just to the theologically declared meaning, the meaning of commemoration festival.

In all of the occasions, the Passover celebration appears as an intermediary element between the two stages in the history of the Israelites.After the exodus, it concludes the period in which they were slaves andintroduces the period of freedom. On Sinai, it comes after all the lawsof Yahweh are declared and the Tabernacle is erected, thus inaugurating the new life governed by the ordinances of the covenant with Yahweh. The Passover in Canaan closes the period of destitution during thewandering in the wilderness and inaugurates the abundance of the newhomeland. Solomon's Passover finishes the period of the Tabernacle asYahweh's dwelling place and begins the era of the Temple. Both Hezekiah's and Josiah's Passovers end the epochs of faithlessness and comeas a sign that the covenant with Yahweh and his rule is re-established.Passover in Ezra closes the period of exile and introduces the new lifein Israel. It is more than clear that the conditions mediated by Passoverare fundamentally different, and that they stand in an antithetical correlation. Thus we have the opposites between 'deathllife' and its derivative 'slavery/freedom' (exodus), 'wanting/abundance' (Canaan), 'nonexistence of law/establishment of law' (Sinai), 'temporary sanctuary/permanent sanctuary', 'worship of many/worship of one' (Hezekiah,Josiah) and 'exile/homeland' (return from exile).

Such a structure which consists of binary oppositions is, on the otherhand, usually ascribed to myths by structural anthropologists. 34 Genesis,which is generally believed to contain the majority of mythologicalmaterial preserved in the Bible, abounds in explicit examples. God creates heavens and earth, day and night, dry land and seas. Cain and Abelare respectively farmer and shepherd. When the flood is over, making avow that he will never again send another flood, God says that while

34. Levi-Strauss 1955.




the earth remains, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer andwinter, day and night, shall not cease."

Biblical stories with Passover as their integral part follow the samepattern, though not in an explicit form and not as suggested earlier, withrespect to their details and fractions, but more on the plane of their connotative meaning and in view of their general outline. That howeverdoes not necessarily mean that they are myths and that, as myths, theydo not have anything to do with historical truth. One may argue thatsome of the stories are certainly neither myths nor ideological projections, but undeniable historical facts, like the return from the exile.However, such an argument would be relevant if the biblical text washistoriography in the sense that we usually ascribe to it: as a disciplinethat conforms to the contemporary way of rationalizing events in history and to the requests of scientific research. The point is that what weare dealing with in the biblical text is some kind of national historiography, but that historiography is of the kind which still does not make aclear cut between mythical and real." It both transforms mythologicalfigures and events into historical ones and assigns mythological qualities to historical figures and events." Such national history where themythical and the real are so closely intertwined clearly demonstratesthat in matters of rationalizing events Bible as historiography still pertains to the mythological pattern of thinking. The events described inour stories, regardless of their historicity, were also moulded accordingto that pattern and show a structure proper to myths, because they wereperceived and felt to be of mythological proportions for the history ofIsraelites and the associated, inseparable history of Yahweh.

In the structuralist analysis of myths, beside the binary oppositionsthere is another, third category with a function which parallels that ofPassover in our stories: it mediates between the opposed conditions.According to Leach, exactly this 'middle ground' between the twooppositions is 'typically the focus of all taboo and ritual observance'. 38

In myths, this third category is usually represented by contradictorybeings who possess qualities of both antipodes, such as virgin mothersor dying gods. In biblical stories where Passover is mentioned, there is

35. Gen. 8.22.36. Johnstone 1990: 31-36.37. Goldziher 1967: 250-58; Fishbane 1985: 356-57.38. Leach 1969: 11.




not a single reference to any such being, unless we take 'the destroyer'from Exodus as being contradictory, since its involvement means bothdeath and life, death for the Egyptians, and indirectly, by passing overmarked houses, life and freedom for the Israelites. However, regardlessof the fact whether 'the destroyer' can be taken as a relic from theoriginal myth or not, it is evident from the general structural pattern ofbiblical stories, in which its observance is mentioned, that Passover as aritual covers some kind of a 'middle ground' and that in that role it wasincluded in the mythologized events of the history of the Israelites andthe cult of Yahweh.

In the context of narratives, that role of mediation entails severalfunctions. It serves to differentiate and separate the conditions, thusstressing their contrasting qualities, then to ease the transition from oneto another stage and, finally, to advance the new condition. However,the distribution among these functions is not even, and sometimes thereis more stress on separation, sometimes on the transition and sometimeson the new conditions. In the Passover in Egypt the accent is obviouslyon separation (marking of the houses). In Hezekiah's and Josiah'sPassovers, the more prominent part is allocated to its transitional function (both stress the length of the festival, with Hezekiah's Passovereven celebrated for two weeks, which is divergent from the usual practice), and advancement of the new condition (both were specially joyfulcelebrations), while the focus in the first Passover in Canaan is on theadvancement of the new conditions (eating of the produce of the newland). Usually such manifold yet still dialectically interrelated functionsare associated with various types of rites of passages." Their main purpose, according to Van Gennep, is to enable the passage from onedefined condition to another, which is equally defined." As we haveseen, the same purpose is allocated to Passover in our stories, althoughnever in an explicit form. It appears as an implicit sign, a symbol,which in the mythological pattern of understanding the world andevents signifies a change of conditions. The reasons as to why preciselyPassover was chosen to symbolize the crucial changes in the history ofIsraelites probably stem from the great relevance which as a rite of passage Passover had had among the Israelites in the pagan context; itcould have been the rite of passage par excellence, the ultimate rite of

39. Van Gennep 1960: II.40. Van Gennep 1960: 3.




passage, parallel to the Babylonian New Year festival, as Segal suggests, or other important seasonal rites of passages such as the EgyptianOsirian festivals or the Greek Eleusinian mysteries.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Anderson, Bernhard w.1978 The Living World of the Old Testament (London: Longman, Green & Co.,

3rd edn) (published in America as Understanding the Old Testament[Philadelphia: Westminster Press]).

Beer, G.1912 Pesachim (Ostern): Text. Ubersetzung und Erkldrung (Giessen: Alfred

Topelmann).De Vaux, Roland

1965 Ancient Israel (trans. John McHugh; New York: McGraw-Hili), II.Eilberg-Schwartz, Howard

1990 The Savage in Judaism: An Anthropology of Israelite Religion andAncient Judaism (Bloomington: Indiana University Press).

Fishbane, Michael1985 Biblical Interpretation in Ancient Israel (Oxford: Oxford University

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1986 Adam and Eve: The Spiritual Symbolism of Genesis and Exodus(Lanham, MD: University Press of America).

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1967 Mythology among the Hebrews and Its Historical Development (trans.Russell Martineau; New York: Cooper Square Books [1877]).

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1983 Structuralist Interpretation of Biblical Myth (Cambridge: CambridgeUniversity Press).




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Der sogenannte Jahwist (ZUrich:Theologischer Verlag).

Pedersen, Johs1959

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Segal, J.B.1963 The Hebrew Passover: From the Earliest Times to AD 70 (London:

Oxford University Press).Van Gennep, Arnold

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Van Seters, J.

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ABSTRACT

This article attempts to reveal the function of the pre-Yahwistic Passover. Ratherthen applying the usual methods of analysing the biblical text, the author applies themethod of structural anthropology in an attempt to penetrate beyond the conspicuous plane of the stories. The aim of this study is to establish the symbolic functionof mentioning Passover observances in the retellings of biblical events.



passover in biblical narratives

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