THE EVOLUTION OF PASSOVER, PART 1: FROM 2000 BCE TO 970 BCE

Introduction:

“The Global Haggadah” includes a number of supplementary background essays that explore some of the themes touched on in the Haggadah, to deepen and enrich both the Seder Leader’s and the participants’ understanding of the Seder. These essays, drawn from numerous scholarly sources, both classical religious texts and more recent historical research, offer overviews of different viewpoints on the Seder material–historical, theological, feminist, inspirational, and sociological. Seder Leaders can read them while preparing before the Seder, and can also circulate an essay that they think their Seder participants might also appreciate–perhaps asking them to read and think about the essay before the Seder, and perhaps using it as the basis for discussion during the Seder. This is an abbreviated version of the first of the supplementary essays.

* * *

     Passover, the Seder, and the Haggadah all evolved by accretions, slowly over many centuries. In this evolution we see a microcosm of how Judaism develops and is transformed over time: from early Hebrew and Israelite rituals that drew on familiar ancient Near Eastern cultures reflected in biblical injunctions to a response to subsequent historical situations, especially the destruction of the Second Temple and the consequent rise of rabbinic Judaism, and to the influence of wider world culture in which Jews participated, especially Hellenistic culture and philosophy. In fact, we can see in the Seder’s enduring vitality Judaism’s phenomenal success in responding and adapting to successive historical challenges to maintain a vibrant living tradition.

     One school of thought holds that Passover as we know it today evolved from the fusion of two or more ancient festivals. For a long time Israelites originally celebrated the Sinai covenant and the Exodus separately. The Torah itself shows us that Passover was originally two separate holidays: Pesach (Passover) and the Feast of Unleavened Bread (Matzot). (See Lev. 23:5-6 and Num. 28:16-17.) Some scholars argue that the two holidays arose at different periods and were later fused into a single holiday that was reinterpreted to center around the story of the Exodus.

     Even before Moses (starting ca. 1500 BCE), Israelite shepherds celebrated a cult feast of Pesach (Passover), a springtime cosmic renewal rite familiar throughout the Near East. This may be the source of a midrash telling us that Abraham celebrated Passover long before the Exodus. Observed at the first full moon of spring, just before setting out for summer pastures amid arable land in lambing season (when baby lambs and kids were being born and evil spirits were especially active), the celebration secured the well-being and fertility of the flocks, warded off evil spirits, and dramatized the victory of the divine forces of fertility over the dark forces of death and disorder.

     A lamb or kid was sacrificed and its meat eaten with unleavened desert bread or cakes (which were not susceptible to rot and, therefore, wouldn’t contaminate the purity of the sacrifice) and with bitter herbs during a nocturnal family festival. The sacrifice’s blood was smeared on the entrance to the tents to stave off disease or misfortune by warding off the demonic Destroyer (actually mentioned in Exodus 12:23 and taken by later rabbis to mean the Angel of Death) who lurked about attacking the fertility of men and animals, and primarily the firstborn of those groups, since they were believed especially vulnerable to attack by malevolent and jealous demons.

     The post-Exodus Israelites reoccupying Canaan much later encountered three newer Canaanite agrarian festivals, which they eventually absorbed and Judaized: the pilgrimage feasts of Matzot (unleavened bread), celebrating the barley harvest; Tabernacles (Sukkot); and Weeks (Shavuot). There were two major features of the Feast of Matzot: removal of any leaven (thought to contain impurities where evil spirits lurked) from one’s premises at the beginning of the barley-cutting period, and avoidance of eating any leaven during the first week that followed. The returning Israelites adapted their old rituals and these Canaanite farmers’ festivals to new Israelite convictions. Both the older festival of Pesach, with its animal sacrifice and feast, and the springtime Feast of Matzot occurred around the same time of year. They were eventually merged and became reoriented to and associated with the Exodus story. Details of the ceremonies were reinterpreted according to the Exodus: the sacrifice; the smearing of its blood on the doorposts; the eating of a meal consisting of the sacrifice, unleavened bread and bitter herbs, all eaten in haste; departure for fertile land; and even the name “pesach” for God “passing over” the homes of the Hebrew slaves. Some scholars maintain that until the reign of King Josiah, the oldest Passover element of a springtime sacrifice of firstlings at the new moon was observed only by the people of the Kingdom of Judah in the south, who were primarily herdspeople and the ones really concerned with the Exodus, while the separate Festival of Unleavened Bread was observed by the more agricultural peoples of the Kingdom of Israel in the north at the full moon before the spring harvest.

     As the shepherds’ one-day feast of Pesach and the farmers’ seven-day Feast of Matzot were merged, the unleavened bread, the sacrificed animal, and the sprinkling of its blood were transformed into images of the Exodus story and the killing of the firstborn in Egypt. The Book of Deuteronomy ordains a national festival that combines the earlier traditions of the Northern and Southern Kingdoms in a single Passover ritual that included both the Southern shepherds’ Festival of Matzot and the Northern farmers’ paschal offering.

     (Part 2 will appear next week)