priest. For the rest, in the first century A.D. at least, the high priest was accustomed to perform the ordinary priestly ritual at the three great annual festivals: he could do so also at other times at his pleasure; but in practice seems rarely to have exercised the option. So much for the high priest himself: but Dr. Bücheler has argued with considerable force that other priests of high position-the high priests in the larger sense of that term, e. g. the high priests who were present at the Crucifixion (Mt. 2711, Mk. 1581) at the time when the ordinary priests were busy with the Paschal offerings-took no part in the sacrificial ritual. And even at the great festivals, when the high priest did perform the sacrificial ritual, it is not this that seems to have created so great an impression as his appearance in all the pomp of his official dress. The priests, and with them the high priest, lived by the cultus, but the higher priests appear to have taken no unnecessary part in the actual discharge and labour of the cultus, nor to have been pre-eminently attached to it. With the fall of the Temple, the cultus ceased: and with this in large part the revenues of the priesthood. The priesthood survived and survives, for long such revenue as tithe was payable and paid: certain taboos were still observed. And some of these conditions still exist. But the high priesthood ceases with the cessation of the cultus; such even titular supremacy as was known subsequently passed to the Rabbanate and was thus associated with learning.

Whether the high priesthood is ever destined to be renewed is a question essentially bound up with the resumption of the cultus. If with free access to the sacred site in Jerusalem the cultus were restored, the ritual of the Day of Atonement would call for a high priesthood. But the probability of this is doubtful. The Hebrew monarchy passed away, but left its mark in the idea of constantly recurring power and the Messianic belief: the Hebrew high priesthood passed away as completely as the monarchy, but left no corresponding mark on the world of Jewish thought; for, curiously enough, if we seek for this kind of survival we find it rather in Christian theology, with its conception of the high priesthood of Christ, than in any Jewish institution or Jewish thought that survived the fall of the Temple, the cessation and the break-up of its personnel.

XVIII

THE FESTIVALS

THE Old Testament contains at least one festal calendar or list of recurring sacred days, for such alike in form and substance is Lev. 23. This chapter opens with a paragraph defining the divine origin of the festal cycle: And Yahweh said to Moses Speak to the Israelites, and say to them: These are the appointed seasons of Yahweh, which you shall proclaim to be holy religious meetings, my appointed seasons.' The term To which (following Driver and White in the Polychrome Bible) I have rendered 'appointed season 'is wider than our term 'feast' as commonly used; and it is therefore more accurately rendered appointed season' than, as in the R.V., 'set feast'; but for convenience's sake I shall continue to use the term 'festal calendar' rather than calendar of appointed seasons'.

The second paragraph of Lev. 23 (v.) defines the seventh day of every week, the Sabbath, as holy. The fourth verse consists of what appears to be a second superscription: 'These are the appointed seasons of Yahweh, holy religious meetings which you shall proclaim in their appointed seasons.' It is a reasonable and commonly accepted theory that the first three verses of the chapter, which precede this second superscription, are a later addition and that the calendar in its present form began at v.‘. Be that as it may, it is with v., i. e. the verse that follows the second superscription, that the list of days according to the order of the months in which they occur is given. With one exception, all the appointed seasons are defined by the number of the day and of the month in which they severally occur: the one exception is the day that is described as falling fifty days after a particular Sabbath.

The days included in this festal calendar are as follows: 14. i (approximately April).

Passover.

Massoth.

50 days after x in 15-21. i, ie. x. iii. (June). Firstfruits. 1. vii.

(Oct.)

Day of Remembrance, made by the

These days number nineteen in all, and they are confined to three out of the twelve months-to the first, the third, and the seventh.

For the first of these days-Passover-no special form of observation is mentioned in the calendar. For the seven following days three regulations are recorded: (1) on all seven days maşşoth, unleavened cakes, which gave their name to the feast, were to be eaten; (2) on all seven days an offering made by fire was to be offered to Yahweh; (3) on the first and last day no

. כל מלאכה was to be done (contrast (מלאכת עבדה) servile work

3 and 28 of the Sabbath and Day of Atonement).

In a separate paragraph introduced by a special introductory clause it is further provided that on the day following the sabbath' a sheaf of the first-fruits of the harvest (DYP 'NT ¬DV, Lev. 2310) shall be waved before Yahweh, and that a male lamb shall be offered as a burnt-offering. From the position which this paragraph occupies it appears that the sabbath mentioned is a day falling between the 15th and 21st days of the first month; and in any case this interpretation has governed the practice of the Jews, who identify the day with the 16th of Nisan in particular (Abrahams, Prayer Book, cciii). Fifty days after the sabbath just referred to, and according to Jewish practice fifty days after the 15th of Nisan in particular (Abrahams, loc. cit.), i.e. in the first week of the third month, Sivan (approximately June), two loaves made of flour prepared from the newly-reaped corn were solemnly presented, together with certain animal offerings, to Yahweh. This single-day feast is called in a closelyrelated passage the Day of Firstfruits (Dan Dr, Num. 2826), and the familiar Greek title of the festival, Pentecost, occurs already in Tob. 21, i.e. it is considerably earlier than the Christian era.

The remaining sacred days fell in the seventh month as follows: On the first day the Day of Remembrance made by the

blowing of horns, on the tenth day the Day of Atonement, on the fifteenth to the twenty-second the Feast of Booths: on all these days fire-offerings were presented to Yahweh, on the first, fifteenth, and twenty-second of the month all servile work was forbidden; on the tenth work of all kinds was forbidden.

The calendar closes with a colophon (vv. 37, 38): These are the appointed seasons of Yahweh, which you shall proclaim to be holy religious meetings, that you may bring offerings made by fire to Yahweh, burnt-offerings and cereal-offerings, slainofferings and drink-offerings, each on its own day besides the Sabbaths of Yahweh, and in addition to your gifts, and all the vows and free-will offerings which you give to Yahweh'.

After this colophon occurs a paragraph which by its very position shows itself to be no original part of the calendar, in which further directions for the festival of the seventh month are given.

Though in Lev. 23 the form of a calendar with a superscription and a colophon is well maintained, it is probable, not to say certain, that the chapter contains different literary elements, and that with a calendar defining the season of the feasts by the number of the month and the day have been combined passages from a different source which defined the festivals by reference to the agricultural processes of the year-the commencement and completion of the corn-harvest and the conclusion of all agricultural operations with the ingathering in autumn. These passages (vv. 9-12, 15-20, 22 and, after the colophon, vv. 39-43) are generally assigned to the Law of Holiness, the calendar to P.

The same calendar that, combined with the additions just referred to, survives in Lev. 23, also underlies another section of what belongs in the widest sense of that term to the Priestly Source of the Hexateuch. This section (Num. 28, 29) is in form not a calendar of feasts, but a table of the special offerings which were required on certain days of the year in addition to the offering presented regularly every morning and evening. Since the feasts, as Lev. 23 points out without (except in the parts derived from H) specifying quantities, were marked by special offerings, this table of quantities in Num. 28, 29 of necessity is, though not in form yet in substance, a festal calendar; or at least in substance it includes such a calendar. The days specified in Num. 28, 29 are the same as in Lev. 234ff. with the addition of

the Sabbaths and of the eleven other new moons as well as that of the seventh month. It gives, therefore, apart from the Sabbaths, twenty-nine days in the year marked by special offerings; it mentions in all thirty days, but one of these is the fourteenth of Nisan, Passover, for which no special public offering is enjoined. The mention1 of the Passover in Num. 28, 29 may indeed be due to amplification from Lev. 23, and perhaps in one or two other details these largely parallel sections have been glossed from one another.

Elsewhere in the O. T., i.e. outside the Priestly Code, we have nothing that is like Lev. 23, both in form and substance a festal calendar; but there are several passages that imply the existence of a yearly cycle of festivals. Most nearly akin in one respect at least to the festival calendar of the priestly calendar is a section of the Book of Ezekiel 4518-25 (+ 461-15): for here as in P the times of the festivals are determined by the number of the month and of the day. But in Ezekiel as in Num. 28 and 29 the proper quantities of offerings for various occasions (with some other ritual details) rather than the presentation of recurring yearly sacred seasons in the order of their sequence is the main subject determining the disposition of the sections; in Ezekiel as in Num. 28 and 29 the quantities of the daily offering, the Sabbath offerings, and the new moon offerings are included as well as the offerings for the less frequently recurring festivals.

In the festal calendar of Lev. 23 there are two months, the first and the seventh, that are pre-eminently festal months: in them, apart from Sabbaths and new moons, all the festal days but one of the year occur; i. e. eight such days occur in the first month, one in the third, and ten in the seventh. This festal balance of the year, as we may term it, is even more marked and absolutely even in Ezekiel: eight festal days occur in the first month, eight festal days in the seventh month, and none in any other. Moreover, it is obvious from the disposition of the matter that Ezekiel lays stress on this balance: he abandons or fails to use the calendral sequence in order twice over to draw attention to the symmetry of the first and seventh months: the corresponding single days in each of these two months is dealt with first, and then the corresponding seven day feasts: 'In the 1 Ct. Ez. 4522.