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THE SABBATH AND FESTIVALS
IN PEE-EXILIC AND EXILIC TIMES
K. KOHLEB
Hebrew Union College, Cincinnati, Ohio
In order to trace the origin of the Sabbath and the festivals
and follow up the stages of their development, we must not con-
sult the codes of law and the meaning attached to the words of
the same in later times, but examine certain historical facts in
the other narratives and in occasional allusions and draw our
conclusions therefrom. By this method of historical-critical
research we arrive at an altogether different calendar system in
ancient Israel than that with which we are familiar. The Sab-
bath and the festivals have gone through a process of evolution
which we must try to unravel and which few of our historians
have made clear. Nor have our Assyriologists succeeded in
elucidating this process, especially in regard to the Sabbath, as
the recent work of Morris Jastrow, Hebrew and Babylonian
Traditions, and an article of his on 'The Day after the Sabbath'
(AJSL 30. 94 ff.) seem to show.
THE SABBATH
To begin with the Sabbath, let me state that we know as yet
too little of the Assyrian Sabbath to build important theories
concerning the origin of the Jewish Sabbath upon it. The name
Shabbatum in the Babylonian calendar has been found by
Pinches in a glossary to designate the full moon; hence the
Hebrew Sabbath must have had the same meaning, according
to Jastrow, Meinhart, and others. On the other hand there was
brought to light long ago a Babylonian Elul calendar according
to which the 7th, 14th, 19th, 21st, and 28th days were regarded
as unlucky days, on which the priest-king was not allowed to
officiate as judge, use fire, eat cooked meat, etc. ; but the term
Sabbath is not applied to these dies nefasti. Now, while the
older Assyriologists were inclined to identify these days of
the Elul calendar with the Hebrew Sabbath (suggesting that the
nineteenth day was really the forty-ninth — that is, seven times
210 E. Kohler
seven, counted from the beginning of the previous month),
modern Assyriologists no longer lay stress upon this fact, and
insist instead upon the other fact that Shabbatum designates
exclusively the full moon. Combining with it the etymology of
Shabat, which is elsewhere explained by gamar 'to complete,'
they explain the term Shabbatum to be the time of the comple-
tion of the moon's light, 'when the sun on the other side of the
sky casts its full light upon it.' Prof. Jastrow goes even so far
as to explain the /"OSf H PDtlDD to have meant originally the
morrow of the full moon, because the Passover feast begins on
the 15th of Nisan, assuming the verse in question to belong to
two or three different sources. As we shall later see, the whole
argument regarding the Passover feast rests on a fundamental
error. But aside from that, I do not think that there is any
basis or justification whatsoever for identifying the Hebrew
Sabbath at any time with the full moon. It seems to me that we
are not in a position as yet to assume with any kind of certainty
that the Hebrew Sabbath was simply taken over from the Baby-
lonians, at least in historical times. Like all the things
Babylonians and Hebrews had in common, the Sabbath seems to
me to belong to an older epoch when the Babylonian lore was
not as yet developed, and the Hebrew Sabbath may just as well
throw light on the Babylonian Shabbatum as vice versa. Each
had its own process of growth.
This much, however, is certain, that the Hebrew Sabbath is not
only older than the Decalogue of the Exodus, which connects it
with the Creation week, as does the Elohist in the first chapter
of Genesis, but also older than the original form of the Deca-
logue: )Qnp7 rOtSTT DV Da TON which refers to the Sabbath
as an established and known institution, and is by no means a
new commandment. It is, however, quite noteworthy that the
older Decalogue of Ex. 34 simply says, DV3) TO^H D'O* DB^
fiSBTt *JP3BT1» while the same Sabbath is implied but not
mentioned. The chapter on the Manna, Ex. 16, offers indubi-
tably an explanation for the Decalogue expression J"IN "TDf
rDCd DV by the narrative's placing the commandment of the
Sabbath before the Sinai Eevelation — a point of view which the
rabbis present in connection with the words pfl V? OW DtP
DflSPOl in Ex. 15. 25 (see Mekilta, ad loc.).
The Sabbath and Festivals 211
For us, however, the question is whether the Hebrew Sabbath
was from the beginning based upon the fixed institution of the
week, which certainly rests on Babylonian astrology, or whether
it originally corresponded with the four lunar phases, so that
the seventh, fourteenth, twenty-first and twenty-eighth of each
month were the days of the moon's 'stand-still,' that is, Sabbath
days. The latter view is expressed by Nowack, Hebr. Arch. 2
144, who refers also to Wellhausen, Prolegomena 2 , p. 107. It
seems to me that too little stress has been laid on the important
fact that, throughout the entire pre-exilic literature, the Sabbath
occupies only the second place alongside of the new moon, which
is always mentioned first and foremost as a day of rest and of
feasting, of sacrifice and of seeking the word or oracle of the
Deity as given through the sacred seer. I refer to the well-
known passages, 2 Ki. 4. 23 ; Am. 8. 5 ; Hos. 2. 13 ; Is. 1. 13 ;
66. 23, where tJHIl always precedes the Sabbath. Down to the
Exile — Ezekiel forms the interesting turning-point, as we shall
see later on — the New Moon played a far greater role in ancient
Israel than may be inferred from the Mosaic Code, where it is
no longer made a day of rest, but has only the character of a
survival in the Temple Cult. Note, however, Amos 8. 5, where
the people are represented as saying: t5Hnf7 "D#* TIO -
"13 finnSJl rOBTTl *"l3E> fTVaM: i. e., they could not sell
corn on the New Moon, just as they could not on the Sab-
bath. Very characteristically we find the day previous to the
New Moon, and in distinction from the same, called by Jonathan
(1 Sam. 20. 19) nVJKSTl DV 'Work Day,' which plainly shows
the New Moon to have been celebrated by the people as a holy
day. The presumption, then, is that the New Moon was the
more solemn holy day, given over to feasting and sacrifices of a
higher order among the families, such as we find it celebrated
in the royal house of Saul and occasionally among certain
classes in Israel (finSBW? tt OB> ffOTl POT. 1 Sam. 20. 6),
over against which the Sabbath days of the month were but,
so to say, diminutive moon seasons, four holy days of lesser
solemnity and importance. But this very chapter reveals a fact
the importance of which has not been recognized by historians.
It is the agreement of David and Jonathan to meet again in the
field on the third day, that is on the day following the two New
212 K. Kohler
Moon days (20. 5, 12, 19). That they could thus speak before-
hand of the two New Moon days as a self-evident matter shows
that the New Moon was not celebrated only on the first day of
the month, when the reappearance of the moon had been observed
by the respective functionaries, but on two days ; that is, on the
twenty-ninth and thirtieth days of the month, the latter day
leading over to the next month, which was counted from the day
following as the first day of the first lunar week. "We get in
this way the following division of the month : four lunar weeks,
each ending with the Sabbath, and these twenty-eight days to be
followed by the two New Moon days — thirty days altogether.
But they occasionally divided the month into decades as did the
Egyptians, and as we learn from the term "IIJJ'J? and lltJ^
{JHrf?. As a rule, however, the heptad prevailed. The holy
number seven belongs to very ancient Semitic traditions, as all
the oaths are made among the various Semitic tribes by the
number seven. Hence we have the word JDBO ' to swear, ' which
means 'to be bound by the holy seven.' (Whether the seven
planets or Pleiades or some other seven was the object is not
as yet ascertained.) The name rtffQE' for week, also yXZW.
(in Jacob's story: fiitf JTOt? 10 Vfrft> Gen. 29. 27) is certainly
old. All the festivities in private and public life filled up a
full week, and, strange to say, the Sabbath is never mentioned
in this connection. Not even in the story of the siege of Jericho
is there any mention of the Sabbath. This can be accounted for
only by the assumption that the Sabbath as a separate institution
is of a later date.
The new and full moon, however, were celebrated by all Semitic,
nay by all primitive, tribes. The Moon was the real Measurer
of time, as the Greek or Aryan (Jqv expresses it. Especially for
the wandering tribes of the desert the Moon is the guide on the
night march. Consequently the Bedouin still hails the appear-
ance of the new moon with shouting, dancing, and clapping of
hands, as Doughty describes it in his Arabia Deserta. And we
learn from Job 31. 27 that the idolatrous practice of throwing
kisses at the moon was still practised when that book was written.
How much of a recrudescence of this was allowed to come in by
the cabbalistic writers in the solemn greetings of the Kiddush-
Lebanah rite, is not necessary to point out here. At any rate
the New Moon celebrations, which were undoubtedly connected
The Sabbath and Festivals 213
with the Canaanite or Semitic worship of the queen of Heaven,
and the round cakes, D'J13 • offered her on the roof-tops of the
houses, as we learn from Jer. 44. 17 — 25, could not but meet
with disfavor on the part of the Hebrew legislators. Here we
have the reason for the abrogation of the New Moon as a day of
rest. Only the priestly tradition retained the New Moon in the
cult (Ezek. 45. 17 ; 46 ; and Num. 28. 10 f.) . The Cabbalists, or
Mystics, during the late Middle Ages gave dignity to the New
Moon, and by a strange atavism, the Jewish women — compare
the women in Egypt mentioned by Jeremiah — desisted on that
day from doing work. The priest-prophet Ezekiel in his legis-
lative system accords to the New Moon only the second place
alongside of the Sabbath (cf. Ezek. 46. 1 — 3). A still more
interesting change which the New Moon has undergone in the
writing of Ezekiel, and which henceforth influenced the litera-
ture of the Jewish people (Num. 28. 10 and elsewhere) is that
the name is changed from tJHH 'renewal' into JJHH CfcO
'beginning of the month,' and £JHn henceforth stands for
month. We shall soon see what this implied for the regulation
of the festivals in the Mosaic Code. But we have to turn our
attention first to the new concept of the Sabbath.
The Sabbath is transformed in the Decalogue from a lunar
holy day into a day of the Lord, and made an institution inde-
pendent of the phases of the moon, a weekly institution, whether
for the rest of man, as the Deuteronomic decalogue has it, or as
a testimony to God's creation of the world in a seven-day week,
as the decalogue in Exodus has it. The latter idea is, of course,
a transformation of the Babylonian myth in the monotheistic
spirit. With Ezekiel (20. 20) begins the special accentuation
of the Sabbath as a sign between Israel and his God, and hence
also the Holiness Code, which emanated from the Ezekiel school,
renders it a special sign of the covenant between Israel and the
Lord (Ex. 31. 13, 17). In the Priest Code the ancient concepts
of the Sabbath as a day of austerity and of the prohibition of
labor, of the use of fire, of cooking, etc., made themselves felt
again, and this led to ever greater rigidity in the Sadducean and
Karaite and then in the Shammaite circles, whereas the Exilic
seer in Is. 58. 13 voices a different view regarding the joy and
cheer on Sabbath, though wishing to have the day devoted to
divine things exclusively. The passage in Jeremiah ( 17. 19—27 )
214 K. Kohler
threatening those that trade on the Sabbath with the conflagra-
tion of the city belongs to the time of Nehemiah and ought never
to have been assigned to the great prophet.
Before concluding my views on the Sabbath, I wish to call
attention to the one fact which the Assyriologists have failed to
consider. Had the Sabbath been really known in Babylonia as
a holy day outside of the priestly cult, the Biblical Sabbath could
never have been made the sign of the covenant, or a mark dis-
tinguishing the Jewish people from the rest, as is already done
by Deutero-Isaiah and by Ezekiel. The idea of the distinction
of Israel from the surrounding nations became the guiding
motive in the Mosaic Code also for the festivals, as we shall
now see.
PESAH
There can hardly be any dispute as to the meaning of tJHFT
'New Moon,' wherever it occurs in ancient literature. Let me
ask, then, when is Passover to take place, according to Deuter-
onomy 1. There can be but one translation of 16. 1, tJHn fitf "UDt^
■'♦ Ttwnrr mnh bhpo *a yrt>tt mr*? nos rwyi Man
■Th'h DHXDO 'N = 'Observe the New Moon of the Ripening Crops
and offer the Paschal sacrifice, for on the New Moon of the
Ripening Crops hath the Lord brought thee out of Egypt at
night.' To translate CHIl by 'month' is simply impossible in
view of the word J"? 1 ?' 1 ? at the end of the verse. In other words,
the Passover at the time of King Josiah was celebrated, not on
the eve of the 15th, but on the eve of the New Moon. Nor was
it, as described in Exodus 12, the sacrificial day of a lamb, but,
as we read in the following verse, of all kinds of animals taken
from the flock and the cattle. This Deuteronomic precept
receives its light from Ex. 13. 1 — 10, 11 — 16, where we have the
duplicate of the law prescribing consecration of the first-born
of man and beast and the sacrifice of the first-born of the beast
on the memorial day of the Exodus. There we read also:
30XH BHPO D»KXV DDK DVH ' This day have you been going
out of Egypt on the New Moon of the Ripening Crops. ' So also
in Ex. 34. 18 and 23. 15 (where the same law is given concerning
the Feast of Mazzoth with especial reference to the redemption,
or sacrifice of the first-born). There we find also the express
statement MKTI BHI*D *3 3»3Kfl BHH l^d? ffVW "KMO
The Sabbath and Festivals 215
0*1X00 fiK¥* : 'On the New Moon of the ripening of the Crops
didst thou go out of Egypt.' By the way, let me say here that
that little fragment in Ex. 4. 22—26, "p fiN m '3JK JlJH
*"j"D2 ending with 'WW* HM *,33 belongs to the oldest stratum
of the Exodus story in connection with the Pesah, connecting
the Shepherd Spring feast with the death of the first-born.
Originally then the Pesah as a festival of Spring was cele-
brated on the New Moon of the Spring Month, when the
blood of the first-born of the flock or cattle was put on the
forehead and hand of the people, and also sprinkled on the door-
post and door-sill, a practice that is still in vogue among
fellahin natives of Palestine, Syria, and the Arabian peninsula
(see Curtiss, Ursemitische Religion, p. 206 ff. and Dillmann, ad
loc). The change from the New Moon to the Pull Moon is first
recorded by the prophet Ezekiel, 45. 21, and then in the priest
«ode, Ex. 12 and Lev. 23, which latter chapter is of composite
nature and not a pure product of the Holiness Code. As a
matter of fact the Passover feast was only, in consequence of the
Deuteronomie Code, transformed from a Shepherd household
feast into a national festival under King Josiah (2 Ki. 23. 22),
and then connected with the Mazzoth feast.
THE FEAST OP WEEKS
Coming to the Feast of Weeks, we observe that it nowhere has
a special date as to the month, or day, like the other festivals.
It was and remained even during the period of the second temple
an agricultural festival, the time of which was determined by
the end of the harvest of the barley and wheat crops, which
lasted seven weeks. The Deuteronomie Law simply says : ' Thou
shalt count seven weeks' — that is seven times seven days, without
a mention of the Sabbath anywhere — 'and then thou shalt cele-
brate the Feast of Weeks.' The older code of the Covenant
calls it ~\i)£pn Jn adding y&pn »*TD3 (1*Xp). Ezekiel does
uot mention it at all ; for nty'DE' for nj*3tP in 45. 21 is a
scribal error. But the law in Lev. 23. 9 ff. devotes to it a long
paragraph, which has become a matter of dispute not only
among priest and sage, Sadducee and Pharisee of olden times,
but also among the scholars, Jewish and non-Jewish, to this very
day. I refer to the well-known passage in verses 15 — 17. I
hold that no unbiased reader can translate this otherwise than
216 K. Kohler
the Sadducees originally did: 'Ye shall count from the day
following the Sabbath, on which day you bring the Omer of the
first barley harvest [of which it expressly says, v. 11, milDD
p"DfT Ufl*J* rOBTf], seven weeks, and then on the following
day, the morrow of the seventh Sabbath, which is the fiftieth
day (Pentecost), ye shall celebrate the Feast of Weeks.' In
other words, then, on the day following the Sabbath when they
swung the sickle at the standing corn (which, of course, could
not be done on the Sabbath Day), they offered the Omer of the
first barley, and on the day following the seventh Sabbath, which
is the fiftieth day, they brought the two loaves of bread made
from the new wheat as a sacrifice for the Feast of "Weeks. What
has been lacking in this Biblical Law is a specific date, which
was not necessary, as it depended each year on the time of the
ripening of the crops. This was good enough for the priests
of the Temple, but what about the Jew living far away from the
holy land? Should he forego celebrating the Feast of Weeks?
It is remarkable that the Book of Jubilees (6. 17 f. ; 14. 20—21)
takes the name JTl,Jfl3tS77 Jf7 to be the feast of the covenant
oaths, telling us that the covenant made with Noah, with
Abraham, and with Israel on Sinai were all made on the fifteenth
of Sivan.
The rabbis, with reference to Ex. 19. 1, point to the giving of
the decalogue as the historical event which took place on the
sixth, or as E. Jose says in Shabbath 86 b, the seventh, of Sivan,
the ^-itr* 1 ? mm roru up dv nypn yn-rtDn jno ov
(Shemoth B. 31. 17), taking the term Kazir as the spiritual
harvest, the day when the Law was given to Israel. Of course,
the *&*?&Tt Bnn here also can refer only to the first day,
since it says fTtfT DV3- But the rabbis, or rather the Pharisees,
wanted to have a close connection made between Pesah and
Shabuoth in order to fix the date of the latter, and at the
same time give it a historical character, and so they inter-
preted the words rOBTJ milDO to mean 'on the day follow-
ing the first day of Pesah.' So already the LXX has it.
The first step to this connection between Pesah and the
Omer sacrifice was taken at the time when the story of
Israel's entrance into Canaan was told by the people, about
which the Book of Joshua tells us that flDfln mHOD- on the
morrow of the Pesah, that is on the fifteenth day of Nisan, the
The Sabbath and Festivals 217
people ate Mazzoth of the produce of the land, while the Manna
ceased. This nDflPt mfTOO in Joshua could serve as some kind
of support to the Pharisees to refer the expression fllHOO
fDtSM of the Omer to the day after the first day of Pesah,
while the Karaites and their predecessors, the Boethusians, and
the Falashas refer it to the day after the last day of Pesah, so
as to bring the Shabuoth festival close to the fifteenth of Sivan
(see Jubilees, I. c).
THE SUKKOTH FEAST
As to the Sukkoth festival I have long ago come to the convic-
tion, and I now find also Dr. Ehrlich's commentary and Carpen-
ter, quoted by Berthelot, Leviticus, p. 79, on my side, that the
name has nothing to do with the harvest tents, as most modern
exegetes think. There is nowhere such an allusion to harvest
tents in the Bible, neither in Deuteronomy, where we might
expect it, nor in Exodus 23. 16 or 34. 22, where it is simply called
rutrn nsipn or rnvn nwo t)»DKn Ji*r . As a matter of
fact, it was the Hag, 'Pilgrimage Feast' par excellence (see
1 Ki. 13. 2 ; 12. 32 ; Lev. 23. 39—41 ; Ezek. 45. 23 ; Neh. 8. 14,
and Mishna B. H. 1. 2; cf. Nowack, I. c. 150). But it is an
error to ascribe to the Sukkoth feast, as Nowack does on p. 155,
the Deuteronomic law concerning the offering of the first fruits
(Deut. 16. 1), as both the Mishnah Bikkurim 3. 2 and Philo
(Mangey, 2. 298), who calls it 'the feast of the basket,' show
that there was no connection between the two. Naturally the
pilgrimage feast of the people took place after the summer's work
was over, when they could come in large numbers to the temple
of Shilo, or Jerusalem, as the Muhammadans come to Mecca for
their Hajj. And where would they find a shelter, unless, as is
done in Mecca, they would erect tents for all the strangers?
This gave the pilgrimage feast the specific name of Feast of
Tents. But the priestly legislator was not satisfied with this
idea of a simple harvest festival. He was anxious to invest it
with historical meaning, and so he connected it also with the
story of the Exodus. But how? The usual interpretation is
that the words 'I placed you in tents when I brought you out
of Egypt' refer to the fact that the people, on their journey
from Egypt in the "Wilderness, dwelt in tents. But in this case
the verse ought to read, 13103 D/TIN ^lPD, not WmrD
15 JAOS 37
218 K. Kohler
DHlfD j-*"lND ODIN . A glance at the history of the Exodus and
the list of journeys shows that Sukkoth was the gathering-place
of the Hebrews, or the first station of their wanderings (Ex. 12.
37; 13. 20; Num. 33. 5). It matters not whether the name is
derived from the tents built there, or whether the name happened
to be Sukkoth, just as we learn of Jacob that he gave the name
Sukkoth to a place where he built his tents (Gen. 33. 17). The
idea is that God provided a place of tents as a gathering-point
for the fugitive slaves at their exodus from Egypt. Hence also
the controversy between R. Eliezer, R. Akiba, and other Tannaim
as to the meaning of Sukkoth, whether it denotes the place of
Israel's starting-point at the Exodus, or whether God built for
them these tents, or whether He wrapped them in clouds like
tents to protect them when He brought them out of Egypt (see
Mekilta to Ex. 12. 37; 13. 20; Sifra to Lev. 23. 43). That the
tents in which the wine harvest is celebrated by the people should
have given rise to the festival, as is the opinion of the various
exegetes (see Dillmann, Berthelot and Driver on Deut. 16. 13,
following Robinson, Bibl. Researches, 2. 81 f.), has no foundation
in the Scripture, as there is nowhere any allusion made to the
Sukkoth feasts being celebrated as a wine festival, whereas the
pilgrimage tents correspond to the name Hag.
As regards the striking difference which exists between
Nehemiah 8. 15, where the law regarding the Sukkoth tents is
quoted, and the passage in Lev. 23. 40, I am quite sure that our
Code text has undergone a transformation, and that the text
in Nehemiah is more authentic. According to the latter the
plants mentioned were all used for the cover of the tents and
instead of HQ the reading was "HPT fl? ^P ( not 01H 'myrtle,'
as Ehrlich thinks, nor can I accept his HNfl 'branches,' instead
of Hfl)- The Talmudic authorities have no longer any compre-
hension of Tin Y$ HS and do all sorts of guessing. Our
Ethrog is really the Persian Othrang, which is our orange ; while
Josephus {Ant. 3. 10. 4) and LXX seem to think of a peach
instead of a citron. The prophet Zechariah, or rather the author
of the fourteenth chapter, which belongs to a very late date, gives
us an insight into an altogether different and yet archaic char-
acter of the harvest feast of Sukkoth, when he describes it as a
feast of rain which is to bring its fertility to those nations who
come to Jerusalem for the celebration of the feast, and the
The Sabbath and Festivals 219
blessing of which is to be withheld from the nations who do not
come to bow down before the One and Only God of Israel in
Jerusalem. Obviously we have here an ancient water festival,
traces of which are found also in Is. 12. 3 and 30. 29. It is
called in the Mishnah Sukkah (5. 1) Simhath beth ha-shoebah,
'Festivity of the House of the Water-drawing.' It consisted of
a procession from the Shiloah Spring to the temple made by
large crowds following the priest with his chalice of water for
the water libation at the altar, and was preceded by dances
during the whole night of each day of the Sukkoth festival,
amidst the play of instruments and the carrying of torches, in
which especially 'the Hasidim and the Wonderworkers' (anshe
maaseh, probably the Essene 'rain-makers') took a prominent
part. It closed with the beating of the willows — hibbut arabah —
at the close of the feast (Sukkah 4. 1—6, cf. Ps. 118. 27). The
Sadducean priesthood, however, opposed it (Sukkah 4. 9 ;
Tosefta Sukkah 3. 1, 16) . The ceremony was connected with the
belief in the water foundation in the depth of the world's center
as placed beneath the Temple mountain of Jerusalem (see Suk-
kah 53 a, b), a belief still shared by the people, Jew and Chris-
tian, and it reaches far back in ancient Semitic life, as has been
shown by Peuchtwang, Das Wasseropfer u. d. verb. Ceremonien,
1911 (cf. Sepp, Jerusalem, Index, s. v. Siloa).
The name Azereth in Lev. 23. 36 and Num. 29. 35 for the last
day of the festival gathering seems rather to denote ' Conclusion
Feast,' as is shown in Deut. 16. 8, and as Tradition has it, which
gave to the Feast of Weeks as the ending of the seven harvest
weeks also the name Azereth, Aram. Azarta (Bosh ha-Shanah 1.
2 ; Hagiga 2. 4 ; Josephus, Ant. 3. 10 b) .
These three festivals were adopted from the Canaanites as
agricultural feasts, and, no doubt, celebrated originally in the
various sacred localities according to the ancient custom, while
the annual pilgrimage feast at the end of the agricultural year
(Ex. 23. 16; 34. 22) was at an early date made an especial
season of gathering at the main Sanctuary of Shiloh ( Ju. 21. 19 ;
ISa. 1. 3).
THE NEW YEAR'S DAT
The other two festivals ordained in the Priest Code (Lev. 23.
23 — 32; Num. 29. 1 — 11) have in my opinion not been satisfac-
220 K. Kohler
torily explained as to their origin and -meaning. The priest-
prophet Ezekiel seems to have taken cognizance in his festal
system (45. 18 — 25) of the double calendar existing already in
ancient Palestine as well as in Babylonia, the agricultural one
beginning in the fall (see Ezek. 40. 1) and the sacred or official
one beginning in the spring (2 Sam. 11. 1; 1 Ki. 20. 22; Jer.
36. 9, 22). Accordingly he proposed an Expiation for the
Temple on the first of the first month of the sacred calendar and
another on the first of the seventh month {Qnii? "JTOO U^KO)-
This is the reading restored after LXX by Cornill, Smend, and
Wellhausen. As was seen already by Ewald, the Priest Code
has, in accepting the agricultural calendar beginning the year in
the spring, made it its object to build the whole system of Jewish
life on the holiness of the number Seven, according to which the
seventh day of the week, the seventh month of the year, and
again the year following the seventh time seventh year as the
Jubilee year should be holy unto the Lord. Accordingly the
New Moon of the seventh month, being the Sabbatical month
following the six months of agricultural labor, was, in distinction
from the New Moon of any other month, which was always
ushered in by the blowing of trumpets (Num. 10. 10), to have a
more sonorous blast by the Shofar, and therefore it is called a
day of memorial by blowing the horns (Lev. 23. 24; Num. 29. 1),
whereas the first day of the first month of the year has nothing
specific as the year's beginning. The rite of expiation of the
Temple, however, is transferred from the first (on which day
Ezekiel has it, 45. 20) to the tenth of the seventh month. The
reason for this must be sought in the fact that this was the
ancient solar New Year's day, as Ezekiel has it in 10. 1, and
because the Jubilee year was according to the later legislation
to begin on this day (Lev. 25. 9 — 10). It was only with the
introduction of the Babylonian system of the months that the
first of Tishri, which denotes 'the month beginning the year,'
Tasritu (see now Jastrow's highly interesting article 'Sumerian
and Akkadian Views of Beginnings,' JAOS 36. 274—299, esp.
p. 298, n. 62), became in the Jewish liturgy the New Year's
Day, while it was a subject of the controversy between R. Eliezer
and R. Joshua of the second century whether on the first of Nisan
or of Tishri the creation of the world or of man took place (Bosh
ha-Shanah 10 b-11 a) . Possibly the important event recorded in
The Sabbath and Festivals 221
Neh. 8. 2 ff. of the introduction of the book of the Law by Ezra
at the festal gathering on the first day of the seventh month,
marked as especially 'holy,' had some influence on rendering
this day a great memorial day for the future. Still the day is
characterized there as one of joy and social festivity, not of a
serious nature such as the New Year's day became afterwards.
Unquestionably, however, it was the old Babylonian New Year's
day, celebrated originally in the fall at the beginning of the
seventh month Tishri (corresponding also with the seventh month
of the Persian calendar named after Mithras), on which Bel
Marduk or his predecessor, as the supreme deity of Babylon, sat
in the mystic chamber of the fates to determine from the book
of life the destiny of mankind for the coming year, 1 which gave
the Jewish New Year's day its serious character as the day of
divine Judgment on which the Creator and Judge of the world
assigns to all men their destiny according to their merits or
demerits each year, inscribing the same in His book or books
of life, finally to seal it on the Day of Atonement.
THE DAY OP ATONEMENT
The great Day of Atonement, celebrated on the tenth day of
the seventh month, which forms the culminating point of the
Temple worship of the year, called like the Sabbath, 'a Sabbath
of complete rest,' Lev. 16. 31, has a unique character among the
Jewish festivals. While obviously unknown as yet in Ezra's
time (Neh. 8), not to speak of the Solomonic time (1 Ki. 8. 65),
it soon became during the second Temple 'the great Day' of the
year and afterwards the most solemn holy day of the Synagogue.
To account for its origin and meaning it is not sufficient to point
to Ezekiel's proposed system, according to which the first day
of the seventh month was like that of the first month to be a
day of expiation of man's sin and of atonement for the temple
(Ezek. 45. 20), and simply to assume that the author of the
Priest Code transferred it to the tenth day in order to have the
New Moon of the Sabbatical month stand out as distinguished
from the other New Moons of the year. We have also to consider
1 See Jastrow, Religion of Babylonia and Assyria, p. 67 — 69, especially
p. 68; Schrader-Zimmern, KAT. p. 402 f., 514 f.; Alfred Jeremias, Bos
Alte Testament im Lichte des alien Orients, p. 43, 357, note 3.
222 E. Kohler
the fact that the tenth of Tishri is called by Bzekiel (40. 1) 'the
beginning of the year,' and that the Jubilee year was actually
to be proclaimed by the blowing of the horn as holy on the
Atonement day, the tenth of the seventh month, which implies
that the year began on that very day (Lev. 25. 9 — 10). It is
obviously the solar year, in contradistinction to the lunar year,
the beginning of which was to be marked according to the
system recognized also in the story of the Flood (see Gen. 8 — 9,
cf. 7. 11), where the difference is also one of ten days.
Here, then, the question arises whether it is likely that the
strange rites prescribed in Lev. 16, which placed the Azazel, the
demon of the wilderness, in some sort of opposition to Yahweh,
the Only One God of Israel, were introduced as an innovation
during the second temple at a time when the religious spirit of
the people and the priesthood was scarcely susceptible any more
to the worship of the goat-like deities, the Seirim (= satyrs)
against which ch. 17. 7 warns. It was Ibn Ezra in his com-
mentary to Lev. 16. 8 who saw the relation of the Azazel to these
demons 'of the field.' But we know from the book of Enoch,
written in the second pre-Christian century, what an important
role among the demons Azazel played. The Masoretic writing
"7fi<tt# was introduced to give the name *?Hfty as found in
Mandaean, Sabaean, and Arabian mythology (Norberg, Onomas-
ticon, p. 31, Brand, Mandaeische Theologie, p. 197 f.) the mean-
ing of a 'rugged place,' (Sifra ad loc. ; Yoma 67 b) instead of
a 'wilderness deity.' The very spot in the neighborhood of
Jerusalem, the sharp rocks (Beth Hadude) where the scapegoat
was to be cast down to Azazel according to the Mosaic Code
{Yoma 6. 8), was regarded as the place where the demon was
cast down by the angel Eaphael there to remain shackled in the
darkness until Judgment Day {Enoch 10. 4 — 5; see Charles,
ad loc.). In other words, Azazel was in the popular belief the
head of the demons whose dwelling was in the wilderness around
Jerusalem. The sending out of the scapegoat to him laden with
the sins of the people was originally, then, the cleansing of the
people of all impurity in order to secure their welfare for the
year just begun. It was an ancient rite dating from primitive
time, to be compared with the rite concerning leprosy (Lev.
14. 7), which has its analogies also in Babylonian rites (see
Sayce, Hibbert Lectures, 1887, p. 461), and in all likelihood the
The Sabbath and Festivals 223
festal dance of the maidens on the hills of Jerusalem assigned in
the Mishnah Tmnit 4. 8 to the Atonement day and the fifteenth
of Ab (August), reminding one very much of the dance of the
maidens at the sanctuary of Shilo (Ju. 21. 21), was connected
with the celebration of the solar New Year's day (cf. Morgen-
stern JAOS 36. 324 f.). The signals informing the people of the
arrival of the scapegoat at its destination, the Azazel rock {Yoma
6. 8), seem to have been the inducement to open the dance on
the hills.
Now it is rather strange that the date for the Atonement Day
is not given at the beginning of the chapter, but in v. 29, which
together with v. 30 — 31 did not belong to the original text.
Possibly the whole law underwent changes as to date and con-
tents. As a matter of fact the chapter is composed of many
sources, as was shown by Benzinger and others (see Berthelot
and Driver ad loc). From a popular New Year festival it was
transformed by the author of the Priest Code into a day of great
pontifical function, and the final redactor of Leviticus in insert-
ing v. 29 — 31 rendered it a Day of Atonement for the people.
Later on the Pharisees invested it with a still higher or holier
character in rendering it a day of prayers for repentance as well
as fasting, a day of divine mercy on which the thirteen attributes
of God (Ex. 34. 6 — 7) revealed to Moses were brought home to
the people as assurance of the divine forgiveness. They went
even so far as to refer the words: Ki bayom hazeh yekapper,
'on this day he shall atone,' not to the priest but to God, who
shall, through the day, have atonement for the people (Sifra to
v. 30) . Thus the whole idea of sacrificial worship on the Atone-
ment Day, on which the Epistle to the Hebrews (c. 9) and
Barnabas (c. 7) base their doctrine of Christ as the world's
Atoning High Priest, was replaced by the prayers and litanies of
the 'great day.'
