פסחא

PEER-REVIEWED ARTICLE



Prophetic Matrix and Theological Paradox:

Jews and Judaism in the Holy Week and

Pascha Observances of the Greek Orthodox Church1

1 An earlier version of this paper was presented in the Bible in the Eastern and Oriental Orthodox Traditions section at the International Meeting of the Society of Biblical Literature in Vienna, July 2014.

2 The diversity of Passover practices in the communities of the Diaspora and the land of Israel before 70 CE was undoubtedly influenced (or is evi-denced) by the diverging emphases of the feast in the Torah itself. Exodus 12, which stipulates that the ritual is to be performed by every family, with the slaughter of a small animal, reflects a nomadic environment. Its em-phasis is on the Lord’s “passing over” the houses of the Israelites on the night of the slaughter in Egypt (see esp. Exod 12:26–27). Deuteronomy 16, with a single sacrifice in the temple in Jerusalem on behalf of all Israel that includes bullocks as well as sheep, reflects a sedentary, agricultural envi-ronment. The emphasis is not as much on the Lord’s “passing over” as on the totality of exodus from Egypt, the people’s “passing” out of slavery.



Michael G. Azar, University of Scranton









A sacred Pascha has been shown to us today; a new and holy Pascha; a mystic Pascha; an all-venerable Pascha; a Pascha, which is Christ the Redeemer; a spotless Pascha; a great Pascha; a Pascha of the faithful; a Pascha, which has opened to us the gates of Paradise; a Pascha sanctifying all the faithful.

- First Sticheron, Aposticha, Vespers of Pascha



Pascha: The Novel Continuity



The origins of the Christian Feast of Pascha are well known yet shrouded in uncertainty. On the one hand, it is clear that the feast developed after Jesus as an unremarkable continuation of the Passover practices of Jewish communities in the Diaspora and the land of Israel before the Common Era.2 How this feast became an annual and, later, weeklong

observance of Jewish and Gentile followers of Jesus, however, is less straightforward. Among the more ambiguous aspects of these uncertain origins is the gradual refashioning of the sub-ject of commemoration in the feast. After his death, many of Jesus’s followers continued celebrating the annual Passover—pascha, in Greek—but as the movement continued to grow, the focus of commemoration eventually expanded beyond the de-liverance surrounding the events of the exodus from Egypt toward the deliverance enacted in first-century Jerusalem. As time went on, the Mosaic focus remained in the commemora-tions, but the deliverance brought through Christ, “our Pascha” (1 Cor 5:7), gradually took center stage. Yet amid that innovation, certain elements persisted, most notably, for our purposes, the rhetorical recognition that God had somehow chosen “us” rather than “them.” As Christianity grew into and beyond the fourth century, and the feast of Pascha became in-creasingly historicized, the actual subjects of the “us versus them” continued to change, even while aspects of the rhetoric identifying “us” with “Israel” or “Zion” did not.



With these elements of novelty and antiquity, innova-tion and continuity, the Orthodox Christian celebration of Holy Week and Pascha—easily the liturgical highpoint of the year—comprises a variety of apparent theological, liturgical, and ethical incongruities. Among the foremost of the latter is the texts’ presentation of Jews and Judaism. As Amy-Jill Lev-ine has poignantly asked of Christian Holy Week in general, “[How] can a gospel of love be proclaimed, if that same gospel is heard to promote hatred of Jesus’s own people?”3 Such an apparent contradiction in the Holy Week services has led to official amendments in the Western counterparts to these texts, but not in the East, though there have been varied calls to enact such changes from clergy and laypeople, not the least

3 Amy-Jill Levine, “Holy Week and the Hatred of the Jews,” ABC Religion and Ethics, April 4, 2012, http://www.abc.net.au/religion/articles/2012/04/04/3470618.htm (accessed October 2014).

of whom was, it appears, Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew, nearly twenty years ago.4 

4 See Bert Groen, “Anti-Judaism in the Present-Day Byzantine Liturgy,” Journal of Eastern Christian Studies 60 (2008): 369–87, here 382.



What follows below is a textual examination of the many references to Jews and Judaism in the Holy Week and Pascha services of the Orthodox Church, in light of two par-ticular background elements: 1) the distinctive characteristics of Orthodox Christian theology more broadly and 2) the scrip-tural texts, namely the Prophets and Psalms, from which the liturgical texts draw. Though the present-day worshiper’s actu-al experience of Holy Week and Pascha is born from a blend of hymns, biblical and liturgical readings, as well as the sight, sounds, and smells of Orthodox liturgical practice (a point that cannot be overstated), the present study admittedly extracts the hymnography of these services in order to analyze the varied images of Jews and Judaism provided therein. The purpose here is to establish some reasons for and characteristics of the presentation of Jews and Judaism in order to highlight what ef-fects the emendation of the antagonistic references might have.



Caveats



Before proceeding too far, however, three caveats are necessary. First, the feast in Orthodox parlance is typically re-ferred to not as “Easter” but “Pascha” (the Greek term for “Passover”). Herein lies a point that goes well beyond a mere semantic note. Orthodox Christians still call this feast by the same word used by the Greek Scriptures and Greek-speaking Jews (and Christians) before and after Jesus to refer to the cel-ebration of Israel’s deliverance from Egypt. This feast, in other words, while undergoing tremendous change after Jesus, is not a creation of the Christian era, but a distinct inheritance of the Passover that was well in place before Jesus. To speak of the Christian festival as “Easter” but the Jewish as “Passover,” or to use scare quotes when referring to the Christian celebration of Passover but none when referring to the Jewish, is to skew

the origins and development of this feast, especially with re-gard to, or in favor of, the rabbinic Jewish practices that continued to develop alongside of it.5 The Orthodox celebra-tion of this feast bears with it the celebration of what God has done for his people, from creation, through the exodus, the prophets, Jesus’s death and resurrection, toward the expansion of God’s people. Intending to encapsulate all of these events, one cannot overlook that what the Orthodox liturgical texts commemorate is not “Easter” but “Pascha”—namely, “the Lord’s Pascha” (Kuriak. tou Pascha; cf. Ex 12:11).6

5 The use of scare quotes with respect to Christian “Passover” is a common scholarly practice. See, for example, David Brakke, “Jewish Flesh and Christian Spirit in Athanasius of Alexandria,” Journal of Early Christian Studies 9 (2001): 453-81, here 466 (with reference to Jean Juster, Les Juifs dans l’Empire romain: leur condition juridique, .conomique et sociale [2 vols.; Paris: P. Geuthner, 1914]).

6 Relatedly, but less significantly, “Holy Week” in Greek Orthodox texts is more commonly called “Holy and Great Week” (Hagia kai Megal. Heb-domas) or sometimes simply “Great Week.”

7 On the early origins of the feast more broadly, see especially S.G. Hall, “The Origins of Easter,” Studia Patristica 15 (1984): 554-67; Paul F. Brad-shaw, “The Origins of Easter,” in Passover and Easter: Origin and History to Modern Times, ed. Paul F. Bradshaw and Lawrence A. Hoffman (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1999), 81–97; Thom-as J. Talley, The Origins of the Liturgical Year (New York: Pueblo, 1986), esp. 1–78, and Clemens Leonhard, The Jewish Pesach and the Origins of the Christian Easter (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2006).



Second, the liturgical history of the Orthodox Holy Week and Pascha texts is an infamous mess wrapped in dis-order, sprinkled with copious amounts of inconsistency. When discussing the development of the Orthodox obser-vances specifically, one must consider both the origins of the Christian annual Pascha per se as well as the historical shaping of the specifically Byzantine practices.7 As the feast was initially an inheritance of pre-Christian Passover, liturgically, at first, the feast was more or less one celebration, one unitive com-memoration of God’s delivering his people (both in the exodus and through Christ). By the fourth century, probably in Jerusalem in connection with the holy sites, the feast was

more or less “historicized.” Rather than commemorate the de-liverance of God’s people as a holistic event, the observances were partitioned into the observance of Christ’s death on one day and his resurrection on the other. From there, the rest of the Holy Week observances grew. These observances, fur-thermore, underwent a complex evolution in the Byzantine era, which essentially involved, as Robert F. Taft describes, “a three-step process of mutual borrowing”: 1) the Great Church of Constantinople’s fusing of the liturgical practices of the monks in Palestine with its own (as a result of the Studite re-forms especially); 2) Jerusalem’s subsequent importing of this newly formed hybrid rite back from Constantinople, and 3) the codification of this latter hybrid into what is now, more or less, the “Byzantine rite.”8 This evolution and repeated hybrid-ization have left much liturgical diversity and inconsistency in contemporary practice.9

8 Robert F. Taft, “In the Bridegroom’s Absence: The Paschal Triduum in the Byzantine Church,” in La celebrazione del Triduo pasquale: anamne-sis e mimesis. Atti del III Congresso Internazionale di Liturgia, Roma, Pontificio Istituto Liturgico, 9-13 maggio1988 (Rome: Pontificio Ateneo S. Anselmo, 1990), 71–97 (here 74), reprinted in Liturgy in Byzantium and Beyond (Aldershot: Variorum, 1995), no. V. Cf. Robert F. Taft, “A Tale of Two Cities: The Byzantine Holy Week Triduum as a Paradigm of Li-turgical History,” in Time and Community: In Honor of Thomas Julian Talley, ed. J. Neil Alexander (Washington, D.C.: Pastoral, 1990), 21–41, reprinted in Liturgy in Byzantium and Beyond, no. VI. The above sum-mary of the liturgical development of the contemporary “Byzantine rite” is admittedly brief and only begins to hint at the intricacies involved. For far fuller accounts, see, in addition to these two essays by Taft, Gabriel Ber-toni.re, The Historical Development of the Easter Vigil and Related Services in the Greek Church (Rome: Pont. Institutum Studiorum Orien-talium, 1972); Sebasti. Janeras, Le Vendredi-Saint dans la tradition liturgique byzantine: Structure et histoire de ses offices (Rome: Pontificio Ateneo S. Anselmo, 1988), and Alkiviadis C. Calivas, Great Week and Pascha in the Greek Orthodox Church (Brookline, MA: Holy Cross Or-thodox, 1992), 1–19. On the Byzantine rite more broadly, see Robert F. Taft, The Byzantine Rite: A Short History (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical, 1992).

9 Regarding the liturgical inconsistencies in present practice, see Pavlos Koumarianos, “Liturgical Problems of Holy Week,” St. Vladimir’s Theo-logical Quarterly 46 (2002): 3–21.



An examination of the anti-Jewish hymns in light of the tradition history of the liturgical texts would undoubtedly be—and has been—incredibly valuable, but what follows below is primarily a synchronic, rather than diachronic, examination that explores how Jews and Judaism appear in the texts as practiced contemporarily rather than in the multi-faceted de-velopment of the individual pieces, each of which originates from often significantly different times and places.10 This syn-chronic focus, moreover, demands a third caveat. Partly due to the complicated liturgical history as well as the decentralized structure of the Orthodox Church as a whole, one cannot speak of the Holy Week and Pascha texts of the Orthodox Church. While many of the significant portions are the same across the various Orthodox ecclesial centers, each church nonetheless has its own traditions. In the case of this study, I have chosen to analyze the texts as commonly practiced in one particular Orthodox tradition: that of the parishes of the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America, the largest of the Orthodox jurisdictions in the United States.11 Though, again,

10 This is not to disregard the significance of the provenance of the various pieces of Holy Week and Pascha, both in terms of 1) the fourth-century historicization of the feast—which appears to have perpetuated more anti-Jewish elements—as well as 2) the more divisive “Gentiles-versus-Jews” as-pects that originate in the liturgical rites and hymnography of Constantinople—the politically tumultuous heart of the Byzantine Empire—rather than those of Palestine (cf. Elizabeth Theokritoff, “The Orthodox services of Holy Week: The Jews and the New Sion,” Sobornost incorpo-rating Eastern Churches Review 25 [2003]: 25-50, here 30).

11 The moveable (variable) portions of the Holy Week and Pascha services are found respectively in two liturgical books, the Triodion and the Pente-costarion. For a history of these texts, including the critical editions, see Calivas, Great Week and Pascha, 5–13 (esp. 11–13).  There is no “official” Greek/English compilation of the Holy Week and Pascha texts, but the most widely used (including both the moveable/variable as well as immov-able/fixed portions in both Greek and English) in the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese is George L. Papadeas, comp., Hai Hierai Akolouthiai t.s Megal.s Hebdomasos kai tou Pascha/Greek Orthodox Holy Week and Easter Services (New English trans.; South Daytona, FL: Patmos, 2007). Regarding Papadeas’s compilation (which was first published in 1963), Cavilas makes an apt observation: “This book has been reprinted several times and has enjoyed considerable popularity. Because of this, it could be

said that in some respects, it has determined the manner by which the di-vine services are celebrated and observed in many parishes of the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese” (Great Week and Pascha, 12).  For ease of reference and given its widespread use, this is the text whose page numbers I supply below (abbreviated as Hai Hierai Akolouthiai). The English translations below are generally based on those of Papadeas, though with modification where noted. For the services of Holy Week not found in Papadeas’s edition (especially Palm Sunday Vespers and Matins), I will refer to the most widespread English translation of the Triodion—namely, Mother Mary and Kallistos Ware, trans., The Lenten Triodion (London: Faber and Faber, 1978; repr., South Canaan, PA: St. Tikhon’s Seminary Press, 2002). Citations below refer to the St. Tikhon’s Seminary Press edi-tion.

the principal texts considered below are common to the ma-jority of Orthodox practices, I make no claims with regard to how these services are practiced in any other Orthodox juris-diction. This approach is simply a matter of focus and does not intend to underestimate the diversity and significance of the varied social and liturgical environments in which the rele-vant texts are sung and heard—environments, moreover, which cannot be fully communicated in this merely textual analysis.



Preference for Paradox and the Prophetic Inheritance



In the current shape of these observances, Jews and Judaism appear overwhelmingly, but not exclusively, with a negative stigma as the people and practice that have rejected Christ. Nonetheless, to dismissively characterize this negative portrayal as merely the result of an anti-Jewish or antisemitic spin on dubious history overlooks its important theological roots and thrusts the question of contemporary emendation into a simplistic light. In order to highlight these theological roots, the exploration below argues that the literary characteri-zations of Jews, Judaism, and Israelite history—and really all features of the Holy Week and Pascha texts, including Christ himself, the disciples, the crucifixion, the resurrection, etc.—arise from two key influences that shape the way the hymns exegete the biblical texts of Pascha (that is, the Gospels and Exodus). The first is the Orthodox theological preference for paradox and stark juxtaposition, and the second is the scrip-

tural matrix for expressing rejection and redemption provided by the Psalms and Prophets in particular. 



From the Gospel of Luke, with its crucifixion of the seemingly aloof Righteous Sophos,12 to Starets Zosima and his emphasis upon the true saint as the greatest sinner,13 Orthodox thought relishes the paradoxical, delights in the oxymoronic, and founds itself on the juxtaposition of the human and di-vine: the Virgin who gives birth, the God who suffers, the incorruptible assuming the corruptible, the Author of Life be-coming subject to death, the sinful woman who anoints Jesus’s feet while the disciple betrays. One finds this love of dissonant juxtaposition forcefully expressed in the Holy Week and Pascha texts, as the hymns often and unabashedly mold the biblical passages in order to highlight the divine-human para-dox. In other words, these hymns do not record the mundane details of Jesus’s judgment before Caiaphas and Pilate. Rather, they liberally marvel that God specifically stood before a priest; they marvel that the Judge of All stood before a tem-poral judge,14 that the “Lawgiver” was crucified “as lawless.”15  The hymns do not tell the congregants merely that the man who suffered was innocent, but that the man who suffered was God. As the well-known hymn sung during the dramatic pro-cession of the cross on Holy Thursday proclaims,

12 See, for example, Luke Timothy Johnson, The Gospel of Luke (Sacra Pagina 3; Collegeville, MN: Liturgical, 1991), 354–55.

13 Starets Zosima, for example, teaches, “There is but one salvation for you. Take yourself in hand, and be answerable for the sins of all men. My friend, this is actually true: you need only make yourself sincerely answer-able for everything and everyone, and you will see immediately that it really is so, and that it is you who are actually guilty of the sins committed by each and every man” (Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Karamazov Brothers, trans. Ignat Avsey [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994], 401 [VI.3]).

14 Kathisma before the Fifth Gospel, Holy Friday Matins (Hai Hierai Akolouthiai, 233).

15 Sixth sticheron after Lord I Have Cried, Holy Friday Vespers (Hai Hierai Akolouthiai, 342).



Today is suspended upon the tree, he who suspended     the earth amid the waters;

A crown of thorns crowns him, who is the King of the   angels;

He is wrapped in the purple of mockery, who wraps   the heavens in clouds;

He receives buffetings, who freed Adam in the Jordan;

He is transfixed with nails, who is the Son of the   Virgin.

We worship your passion, O Christ.

Show us also your glorious resurrection.16

16 Fifteenth Antiphon, Holy Friday Matins (Hai Hierai Akolouthiai, 238 [modified]).

17 Seventh sticheron after Lord I Have Cried, Holy Friday Vespers (Hai Hierai Akolouthiai, 342–43 [modified]).



Or again, from Vespers on Holy Friday afternoon,



A fearsome and marvelous mystery is today coming to   pass:

The incorporeal one is being held;

The one freeing Adam from the curse is bound;

He who tries the inner hearts and thoughts of man is   unjustly tried;

He who sealed the abyss is shut up in prison.

He before whom the powers of heaven stand with   trembling stands before Pilate;

The Fashioner is struck by the hand of the fashioned;

The Judge of the living and the dead is condemned to   the cross;

The Despoiler of Hades is closed up within a tomb:

O forbearing Lord, compassionately enduring all   things and saving all from the curse,

glory to you.17



Furthermore, beyond simply marveling at the divine-human paradox, these hymns stand in awe more specifically of Christ’s great sunkatabasis. Often translated as “condescen-sion” or “considerateness,” this word is central to patristic thought and exegesis as a literary means through which to ex-press the work of salvation enacted by God, from creation

onward.18 God led his people to salvation by “condescending” to their state. One finds the refrain, “Glory to your sunkataba-sis,” repeated on Holy Friday as a summarizing praise of Christ’s passion.19 In sum, when the hymns of Holy Week consider the gospel accounts and marvel at what is done to Christ, they do so in a manner that highlights the absurdity of his sunkatabasis, well beyond what the Gospels themselves do. 

18 See, for example, David Rylaarsdam, John Chrysostom on Divine Peda-gogy: The Coherence of his Theology and Preaching (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014) as well as Rylaarsdam’s dissertation out of which the book grew: “The Adaptability of Divine Pedagogy: Sunkatabasis in the Theology and Rhetoric of John Chrysostom” (Ph.D. diss., The University of Notre Dame, 1999). On the issue of translation specifically (and a key reason why I transliterate above), see R. C. Hill, “On Looking Again at sunkatabasis,” Prudentia 13 (1981): 3–11.

19 See, for example, the Aposticha of Holy Friday Vespers (Hai Hierai Akolouthiai, 358–60). Easily the climax of the service, this is chanted while the epitaphios is processed around the church, enacting the burial of Christ. (Literally meaning “tomb,” the epitaphios is a cloth embroidered with an icon of Christ’s being removed from the cross and prepared for burial.)

20 Undoubtedly, the frequent occurrence of these two words in the liturgical texts is inspired in part by the Psalms and Prophets, both of which repeat-



This interpretive tendency toward accentuating para-dox and sunkatabasis is chiefly what produces the overwhelmingly, but not entirely, negative picture of Jews and Judaism. In the same way that he who fashioned the heavens is struck by the hand that he fashioned, and he who is suspend-ed on a tree is he who suspended the land upon the waters, so also he who gave the law is condemned as lawless by those to whom he gave the law and turned over to those who have no law. Not coincidently, two of the most frequent descriptors marshaled against the antagonists are anomos and paranomos (both meaning “lawless”), sometimes with direct reference to Jews or the synagogue, but most often as substantive adjectives. The two words grammatically express not mere betrayal, but the mystery of the law-recipients’ turning over the Law-Giver. Those who had the law, who witnessed deliverance in the wil-derness, have become “lawless.”20 This stark and accusatory

edly use the same words, particularly anomos, to describe God’s oppo-nents or the speaker’s persecutors. This is the case especially with Isa 53.12, whose line, “He was numbered with the lawless,” is repeated both in Luke’s Passion Narrative (Luke 22:37) as well as the hymns of Holy Week.

21 On the prophetic and psalmic influence, see especially Theokritoff, “The Orthodox services of Holy Week.”

22 Take for example the liturgical words of Christ himself, which interweave Isaiah and the gospel events: “I gave my back to scourging, and turned not my face from spitting [cf. Isa 50:6]; I stood before the judgment-seat of Pi-late [cf. Matt 27:19; John 19:13], and endured the cross, for the salvation of the world [cf. John 4:42]” (final sticheron of The Praises, Holy Friday Matins [Hai Hierai Akolouthiai, 258 (modified)]).

juxtaposition fits smoothly, if undesirably, into the liturgical observances, given their dual emphases on both the exodus and the passion as the moments of salvation.



This leads to the second key influence upon the Holy Week and Pascha presentation of Jews and Judaism. As a means to fashion the distinctly Jewish elements of the story in such a manner that they serve to accentuate the paradox of the God-Man’s sunkatabasis, the hymns employ the motifs of re-jection and redemption found time and again in the Psalms and especially the Prophets.21 In other words, the Holy Week and Pascha texts—through their lament of rejection, recogni-tion of destruction, pleas for repentance, and so forth—intentionally and directly find their inspiration in the Prophets, including the sometimes hyperbolic accusation that all of God’s people had rejected him and his prophet. As the Prophets provide images by which Christ is later understood (most famously, the suffering servant of Isaiah), so also they provide images by which the reaction to Christ is compre-hended.22



The Holy Week texts with near ubiquity fuse these two influences—the preference for paradox and the prophetic or psalmic precedent—to create an image in which God him-self (that is, Jesus) is rejected not just by those who did not know him, but by his own people. This point, moreover, is a chief reason why Pilate’s culpability is notoriously diminished

and that of the Jews increased: God’s rejection by a pagan is nothing remarkable; God’s rejection by his own people accen-tuates the paradox of the God-Man’s sunkatabasis. While Pilate is by no means exonerated—he is clearly and repeatedly the one to whom Christ is handed over—his treachery is not the focus because a Gentile breaking the law is not as surpris-ing as the law-bearers’ becoming lawless.23 As much of the week progresses, this emphasis arises unambiguously as the hymns marvel not at the fact that Gentiles misunderstood Christ, but at the paradox that it was his own people who did so.24

23 Note, for example, the first verse of the Eighth Antiphon of Holy Friday Matins, where Pilate’s role is not denied, but neither is it the focus: “Say, you lawless men; what have you heard from our Savior? Did he not set forth the teaching of the Law and the Prophets? How then, could you take counsel to hand over to Pilate the Word, God from God, the Redeemer of our souls?” (Hai Hierai Akolouthiai, 227 [modified]). 

24 A similar idea appears in Byzantine icons of the Nativity of Christ, where one finds the image of an ox and a donkey worshiping the newborn, a clear allusion to Isaiah: “The ox knows its owner, and the donkey its mas-ter’s crib; but Israel does not know, my people do not understand” (Isa 1:3; NRSV).

25 See, e.g., Romans 3; 1 Cor 15:22; Gal 3:28.



Further Evidence from Palm Sunday, Holy Friday, and Pascha



In many ways, Palm Sunday and Pascha Sunday ap-pear as two peaks on either side of a valley. While the texts of Holy Week generally foreground the division between the congregants on the one hand and the culpability of Jews and foolishness of Gentiles on the other, Palm Sunday and Pascha Sunday show less concern for this sort of accusatory self-distancing. Rather, these two Sundays are characterized by a universal, inclusive focus, reminiscent of (and assuredly influ-enced by) some of Paul’s letters: All are subject to death, and all are redeemed through the death of Christ. There is neither Jew nor Gentile; all are one in Christ.25



Yet along with this emphasis on universality and ideal unity, the Palm Sunday hymns mold Jesus’s entry into Jerusa-lem in such a way so as to highlight a theological paradox—a paradox, moreover, employed by the Prophets (e.g., Isa 1:3), Paul (e.g., 1 Cor 1:18–31), and others. That paradox suggests that the foolish and simple understand God’s ways, even while the learned and wise authorities do not. Thus, the Psalm Sun-day hymns conflate, emend, and add to the gospel accounts in order to present the so-called “children of the Hebrews” (paides Hebrai.n) as the protagonists of the story (the phrase appears nowhere in the Gospels) and their leaders as the an-tagonists.26 It is “the children of the Hebrews” who hold the palm branches and praise the entrance of Christ while the leaders look on with disdain.27 There is a deliberate juxtaposi-tion here between the ignorant and the ostensibly learned leaders, similar to what one finds in the juxtaposition of the Samaritan woman and Nicodemus in John 3–4 or Athana-sius’s portrayal of the “unlettered” Anthony and the philosophers.28 The hymns encourage the congregants to imi-

26 The Gospels mention the “crowd” or “multitude” as holding the branch-es and do not specify further (see Matt 21:8; Mark 11:8; Luke 19:37; John 12:13). However, in Matthew’s account of the so-called temple cleansing immediately after the entrance into Jerusalem, the author narrates, “But when the chief priests and the scribes saw the amazing things that he did, and heard the children [tous paidas] crying out in the temple, ‘Hosanna to the Son of David,’ they became angry and said to him, ‘Do you hear what these are saying?’ Jesus said to them, ‘Yes; have you never read, “Out of the mouths of infants and nursing babies you have prepared praise for yourself?”’” (Matt 21:15–16; NRSV). The Palm Sunday hymns, in freely conflating multiple accounts into one, particularly with regard to the two “entrances” of Christ into both the temple (to “cleanse” it) and Jerusalem (on Palm Sunday), continue a long-standing Christian hermeneutical ten-dency (see, e.g., Origen, Commentary on John 10.119–306). 

27 E.g., second sticheron for Lord I Have Cried, Palm Sunday Vespers (The Lenten Triodion, 489), et alibi. Palm Sunday Vespers, served on Saturday night, is not included in Papadeas’s edition, which begins, rather, with the first Bridegroom Matins on Palm Sunday night.

28 See esp. Athanasius, Life of Anthony 72. The juxtaposition of the seem-ingly ignorant, yet eventually enlightened, with the fully culpable and erudite leaders is a well-established theme in Christian literature (and one that relates closely to Jesus himself as well as the crowds that follow him; cf. Jn 7:15, 49). Such a theme, furthermore, shapes the way that one of the

most influential patristic exegetes, Cyril of Alexandria, presents the Passion according to the Fourth Gospel: It is the story of the wise teacher attempt-ing to persuade the ignorant multitude away from the malevolent, but seemingly learned, leaders (see Commentary on John 11–12). Regarding Palm Sunday specifically, see also (Pseudo-)Epiphanius, Homilia in festo palmarum (PG 43.436.27).

29 See, e.g., the Apolytikion of Palm Sunday (The Lenten Triodion, 492). An important exception to this broad summary of the Palm Sunday motifs is the third sticheron of Lord I Have Cried at Palm Sunday Vespers (The Lenten Triodion, 489). Here, the congregants are addressed as the “new Israel, the Church of the Gentiles/Nations” (ho neos isra.l, h. ex ethn.n ekkl.sia). This hymn is oddly dissonant with the more inclusive character of the rest (see Theokritoff, “The Orthodox Services of Holy Week,” 27–29). On the congregants as Gentiles, see also the final verse of the Ninth Antiphon of Holy Friday Matins, which alludes to Gal 3:10–14 (Hai Hierai Akolouthiai, 228).

30 These services are so named due to their focus on Christ as the coming Bridegroom for whom one must be ready (cf. Matt 25:1–13). As with all of the services of Holy Week from Sunday evening onward, the Monday Matins is served the previous evening. Holy Thursday Matins, which is served Wednesday night in many jurisdictions, is not typically served in the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese.

31 While the service on Holy Thursday night is indeed a matins service for the following day, its hallmark is the twelve gospel readings that detail the final hours and passion of Christ.

tate the children, while berating the Jewish leaders for not grasping what their own children did.29



As the week progresses through the Bridegroom Mat-ins of Holy Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday,30 the ideal unity of Jews and Gentiles clearly breaks down in light of Christ’s impending crucifixion: The hymns precarious-ly, and sometimes inconsistently, distance the congregants from the culpability of Jews and foolishness of Gentiles, while also specifically condemning the leaders (rather than the peo-ple as a whole). By the Thursday night service of Holy Friday Matins (the Service of the Twelve Gospels31), however, events take a more drastic turn. At first, the hymns carry on a juxta-position that had been building since Palm Sunday between the unnamed sinful woman who anoints Jesus and the disciple

who betrays him.32 The focus is on the inward comparison of my own soul with these two routes, asking which direction my soul will take. When the hymns speak more historically of the actual events of the crucifixion, they do so at first by blaming the religious leaders. Their inspiration is an adapted form of Ps 2:2, a verse that occurs repeatedly in the course of the ser-vice: “The rulers of the people took council together against the Lord and against his anointed.”33 But the turn comes with the Sixth Antiphon (after the second gospel reading):

32 The hymns, which conflate multiple gospel accounts, do not name the woman juxtaposed with Judas, though John’s version identifies her as Mary, Martha’s sister (see John 12:1–8).

33 The Holy Week texts add la.n (“of the people”) after “rulers,” whereas the LXX simply has “rulers” (see, e.g., Hai Hierai Akolouthiai, 216). 

34 Second verse of the Sixth Antiphon, Holy Friday Matins (Hai Hierai Akolouthiai, 223 [modified]).

35 See also the sixth sticheron of Lord I Have Cried, Holy Friday Vespers (Hai Hierai Akolouthiai, 342).



Today, the Jews nailed to the cross

the Lord who divided the sea with a rod and led them through the wilderness.

Today they pierced with a spear

the side of him who for their sake smote Egypt with plagues;

They gave him gall to drink,

 who rained down manna on them for good.34



Shown here in parallel lines, the hymnographer’s preference to express the paradox of the God-Man and the wonder of his sunkatabasis is clearly evident. In light of the dual commemo-ration of the first Pascha with Moses and the Pascha of Christ’s passion, Exodus’s record of the people’s turning away from their deliverer time and again is not lost on these hymns. The same people whom Christ led through the Red Sea at the first Pascha now turn away at this Pascha of crucifixion.35 “The Jews” are thus presented as the very same people whom Christ freed in the Red Sea and fed with manna, as the hymn is re-plete with imagery that highlights the paradox: The tangible

tools used (nails and a rod), the act of violence (piercing and smiting), and the offering of food (gall and manna).36

36 One hears a concise summary of this perspective the following night as well, in the Canon of Holy Saturday Matins: “The children of those who were saved bury under the ground the one who long ago buried the pursu-ing tyrant in the waves of the sea” (Hai Hierai Akolouthiai, 376).

37 First verse of the Eleventh Antiphon, Holy Friday Matins (Hai Hierai Akolouthiai, 232 [modified]), sung after the reading of John 18:28–19:16.

38 Writers such as Athansius and John Chrysosom, among others, employ a similar accusation against Arians and Neo-Arians, as the term fittingly describes the reality of the incarnation vis-a-vis the claim that Christ was merely a created being (see, e.g., Athanasius, Against the Arians 2.62).



In the Eleventh Antiphon (after the fourth gospel read-ing), the indictment strengthens, and the guilt of those who condemned Christ is underscored:



In return for the good things that you granted, Christ,

to the offspring of the Hebrews [t.i genei t.n hebrai.n],

they condemned you to be crucified,

 giving you vinegar and gall to drink.

But render unto them, Lord, according to their works,

for they have not understood your sunkatabasis.37



Amid this paradox of condemnation in return for good gifts, the “offspring of the Hebrews” are indicted because they have not understood Christ’s sunkatabasis specifically.38  What is more, the hymn employs the prophetic matrix provided by Lamentations, where the author laments the destruction of Je-rusalem by enumerating the sins of his own people. Yet, despite his recognition of the failings of his own people, the author wishes the Lord to “pay [the destroyers] back for their works” (Lam 3:64). The hymns of Holy Week bear a similarly dissonant tension between the recognizably sinful souls of the congregants singing and the sins of those who actually brought the destruction of Jesus. To say the least, Lamentations does not comprise the only instance in which a biblical author calls

for the Lord to payback the destroyers of Jerusalem’s temple despite the admitted sins of his own people (see, e.g., Psalm 79). And given that Jesus’s Jewish and Gentile followers since at least the Fourth Gospel looked to Jesus as the Temple that was destroyed (see John 2:18–22), such prophetic and psalmic motifs find a conceptually fitting home in the poetic reflections on his passion.



Of all the Holy Week texts in which the Jews appear negatively, the most striking are the improperia or “reproach-es” (as they are commonly known in Western liturgy): the hymns within the Antiphons that comprise first-person ad-dresses on behalf of Christ toward the people, especially those who crucify him. These hymns, which have an important place in the history of Christian-Jewish relations, have several scrip-tural precedents. First, there are the words of Christ himself: In John 10:32, Jesus says to “the Jews” who are about to stone him, “I have shown you many good works from the Father. For which of these are you going to stone me?” (NRSV). Sec-ond, and perhaps more importantly, there are the numerous psalmic and especially prophetic first-person addresses of the Lord toward his people who have wronged him. Jeremiah’s fifth lament serves as one example, in which, not coincidently, Jeremiah asks why the people who are “plotting” and taking “counsel” against him are repaying him “evil” for “good” (18:20). Biblical scholars have often noted the Gospels’ typo-logical shaping of Christ in the image of a prophet like Jeremiah; the Holy Week hymns simply follow in that tradi-tion.39

39 With regard to Matthew, for example, where this motif is particularly ev-ident, see Michael P. Knowles, Jeremiah in Matthew’s Gospel: The Rejected Prophet Motif in Matthean Redaction (JSNTSup 68; Sheffield: JSOT, 1993). See also Gary E. Yates, “Intertextuality and the Portrayal of Jeremiah the Prophet,” Bibliotheca sacra 170 (2013), 286–303, esp. 295–302.



The first of these first-person addresses arises in the Twelfth Antiphon of Friday Matins:



Thus says the Lord to the Jews:

“My people, what have I done to you,

or how have I wearied you?

To your blind, I gave light;

Your lepers, I cleansed

Your paralytic, I raised up.

My people, what have I done to you,

and how have you recompensed me?

Instead of manna, gall;

instead of water, vinegar;

Instead of loving me,

you nailed me to the cross.

No longer do I endure;

I will call the nations [ethn.] to me,

And they will glorify me with the Father and the Spirit;

and I will grant them eternal life.”40

40 First verse of the Twelfth Antiphon, Holy Friday Matins (Hai Hierai Akolouthiai, 232–33 [modified]).

41 The Third Hour (observed Friday morning) summarizes this perspec-tive: “The Jews, O Lord, condemned you, the life of all, to death; the ones who, by the staff, crossed the Red Sea on dry land nailed you to a cross, and those whom you suckled with honey from the rock brought you gall. But willingly you endured to free us from the bondage of the enemy. Christ our God, glory to you” (Hai Hierai Akolouthiai, 293 [modified]).



Within this litany of prophet-like reminders of all the good “the Lord” has given “the Jews” is an allusion to Ps 69:21. In this verse, which one finds in the Gospels themselves, the psalmist records, “They gave me gall for food, and for my thirst they gave me vinegar” (NRSV). But here the Twelfth An-tiphon makes an important change by explicitly recalling the exodus, in which the Lord provided manna and water. Thus, rather than repeating this verse more accurately, the hymn says, “Instead of manna, gall; instead of water, vinegar.” The change serves to accentuate the paradox and juxtaposition be-tween the Pascha of the exodus and the Pascha of Christ’s passion.41



The first sticheron of The Praises after the ninth gos-pel reading from the same night carries a similarly direct employment of the prophets:



Israel, my first-born son,

 committed [epoi.sen] two evils:

He forsook me,

 the source of living water,

 and hewed out for himself a broken well;

He crucified me on the tree 

and asked for the release of Barabbas;

The heavens were aghast at this,

and the sun hid its rays;

Yet, you, Israel, were not ashamed,

 but delivered me to death.

Forgive them, Holy Father,

for they do not know what they have done [epoi.san].42

42 Hai Hierai Akolouthiai, 257 (modified).



Presented as if spoken by the very same Lord who both freed Israel from Egypt and was later crucified, the first line is a di-rect quotation of the Lord’s speaking through the prophet in Jer 2:13. With these words in Jeremiah, the Lord calls for Is-rael to repent by providing a stark juxtaposition between the God who freed from Egypt and the Israelites who repay with rebellion. Similarly to Jeremiah and others (see Ezek 43:10, et alibi), these words from Holy Week call for Israel to be ashamed. But even with such a call, the last line encapsulates perhaps the most prominent notions in all of these services: repentance and forgiveness (cf. Luke 23:34).



Carrying on a similar motif of first-person addresses and indictments, other hymns of Holy Friday Hours and Ves-pers (observed Holy Friday morning and afternoon, respectively) continue with paradoxical reminders of what the Lord (that is, Christ) had done for his people in both the exo-

dus and the Gospels.43 In one such hymn from the Sixth Hour (observed Friday morning), the congregants are exhorted to behold what the “lawless priests” have plotted with Judas, in order to—note the juxtaposition and sunkatabasis—“judge the immortal Word guilty of death” and deliver him to Pilate. Yet, the hymn again ends with a surprising request on Christ’s be-half:

43 See Hai Hierai Akolouthiai, 294 (Third Hour), 305 (Sixth Hour, though repeated from Holy Friday Matins), 321 (Ninth Hour), 342 (sixth sthicheron after Lord I Have Cried, Holy Friday Vespers).

44 Hai Hierai Akolouthiai, 306 (modified).

45 Fittingly, in the Ninth Hour reading from the Prophets (the final such reading of the morning, a compilation of Jer 11:18–23; 12:1–4, 9–11, 14–15), Jeremiah laments rejection while the Lord indicts his people for their sin. Nonetheless, the Lord ends with a note of compassion that he will again restore his people. Meanwhile, the epistle reading that immediately follows these selections from Jeremiah comes from Hebrews and, in quin-tessential Hebrews fashion, reminds the congregants that though God’s punishment with regard to the law of Moses seemed harsh, those who now have received the “knowledge of truth” but neglect it will be punished all the more (see Heb 10:19–31).



Suffering these things, our Savior cried out saying,

“Father, forgive them this sin,

that the nations [ethn.] may know my resurrection from the dead.”44



Further reminiscent of the prophetic matrix, the speaker nei-ther denies the erstwhile sins of the people nor fails to offer an intercessory plea for God’s compassion.45



As the days of Holy Week pass from Friday to Satur-day and Sunday, they return to where they left off on Palm Sunday: Departing, for the most part, from the human level of history and the events of Christ’s final days, they ascend to the divine and universal, marveling at the paradox of the divinity who lies in the tomb. The more universal—and less histori-cized—emphases come out especially strongly in the hymns of Holy Saturday night, namely, in the Paschal Matins and Litur-gy. There is far less self-distancing of the congregants from

those who ostensibly rejected Christ, Jews on the one hand or Gentiles on the other, as they instead concentrate on the cos-mic dimension of what has transpired.46 The focus is on Adam and the renewal of all of creation, and as such, the hymns re-peatedly employ the psalmic matrix in order to call for Zion, Jerusalem, and all of creation to rejoice.47 Christ has united our flesh—Jew and Gentile—to his and redeemed us from death that held us captive. Interestingly, the first-person hymns of Christ are addressed now not to those who crucified him, but to his mother and all of creation.48

46 One important exception is the first sticheron of the Canon (sung both at Holy Saturday and the Paschal Matins [Hai Hierai Akolouthiai, 376 and D, between pp. 447 and 448]). Here again one finds the juxtaposition be-tween those who were freed in the exodus while Pharaoh was buried in the sea and those who bury Christ while “we” are exhorted to praise the Lord. (Bibliographic note: Papadeas added the hymns of the Paschal Matins to his compilation only in later printings; these pages are numbered with the letters A through L between pp. 447 and 448.)

47 See Hai Hierai Akolouthiai, 456, 459, et alibi.

48 See, e.g., the Ninth Ode, sung at the Paschal Matins on Saturday night (Hai Hierai Akolouthiai, K–L [between pp. 447 and 448]).

49 In my opinion, some of the most problematic hymns that do occur (and which I have briefly mentioned above) are those very few that identify the congregants positively and seemingly exclusively as Gentiles. For a fuller account of the problematic texts and issues raised, see especially Thomas Kratzert, “Wir sind wie die Juden”: Der griechisch-orthodoxe Beitrag zu einem .kumenischen j.disch-christlichen Dialog (Berlin: Institut Kirche und Judentum, 1994), esp. 161–182 and also the slew of related articles by Bert Groen, e.g., “Anti-Judaism in the Present-Day Byzantine Liturgy” and “Attitudes towards Judaism in Greek-Byzantine Liturgy: Anti-Judaism in Holy Week Texts and the Appreciation of Israel’s Righteous,” Analecta Bruxellensia 12 (2007): 81–93.



Conclusion: Reflections on Amending or Removing Problem-atic Texts



The texts reviewed above are by no means the only texts of interest with regard to the negative image of Jews and Judaism presented during Holy Week and Pascha, nor per-haps are they among the most problematic with respect to contemporary concerns.49 These texts have been chosen, ra-ther, in order to foreground certain key influences that direct

the manner in which Jews and Judaism are shaped. The image that the texts offer is by and large, but not entirely, negative, and that is due chiefly to two reasons: The first is the Ortho-dox preference for paradox, the stark juxtaposition between saint and sinner, the divine and human, that frequently finds its expression in the poetic marveling at the sunkatabasis of the Creator and Fashioner becoming subject to death. The second is the motifs provided to the hymnographers by the Psalms and Prophets, in which time and again God laments, often hy-perbolically, his people’s rejection inspite of benevolance. To poetically and hyperbolically assert that God’s people have re-jected him despite the good things they have received is not new, so to speak. What is new is the reason for that rejection: And that frequently has to do with the people’s refusal to ac-cept the paradox, to accept the sunkatabasis of the God of Exodus on the cross.



The question of amending the liturgical texts in order to remove the negative image warrants a few additional points. First, the Orthodox Church has frequently amended its liturgi-cal texts and observances for a variety of reasons. With regard to the practices of Holy Week specifically, one could mention the addition of the procession of the cross during Holy Friday Matins (Holy Thursday night)—one of the most distinct and memorable moments of Orthodox Holy Week, but one that was not added until the nineteenth century.50 With regard to the negative presentation of entire groups, one could mention the contemporary practice of no longer proclaiming the Syn-odikon of Orthodoxy—a text that originates in the triumph against iconoclasm and is now proclaimed on the First Sunday of Lent (the “Sunday of Orthodoxy”)—with the more original censures against “the Greeks.”51 To choose to remove negative

50 See Calivas, Great Week and Pascha, 68. As Taft notes more broadly, many of the “mimetic elements” in contemporary Byzantine Holy Week practice “are so late as to be almost modern” (“A Tale of Two Cities,” 34).

51 Greek patristic writers commonly used Hell.n to refer to those who as-similated beyond the acceptable borderlines of Christian practice (as Jews earlier did for similar reasons). Most literally, the word is translated as “Hellene” or “Greek,” though “Gentile,” “pagan,” or “heathen” are often

used to express its usage among Christian and Jewish writers. Oddly enough, in much patristic usage, “Greek” and “Jew” have parallel histories, as both were rhetorical devices employed to delineate two different bor-ders around acceptable Christian practice, depending on the nature of the heresy (see Douglas Boin, “Hellenistic ‘Judaism’ and the Social Origins of the ‘Pagan-Christian’ Debate,” Journal of Early Christian Studies 22 [2014]: 167–96).  More broadly, see Judith M. Lieu, Christian Identity in the Jewish and Graeco-Roman World (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006).

52 Indeed, as many liturgical scholars have noted, a variety of elements in contemporary Holy Week and Pascha practice is in need of liturgical re-form (see, e.g., Taft, “A Tale of Two Cities,” esp. 34–35, and Koumarianos, “Liturgical Problems of Holy Week”).

53 Though not touched upon here, the same is the case with regard to Eng-lish translations used by other jurisdictions as well, as evidenced, for example, by Passion and Resurrection (Cambridge, NY: New Skete, 1995), a translation of the Holy Week and Pascha texts by the monks of New Skete, a monastery within the Orthodox Church in America (OCA). Furthermore, many Orthodox parishes commonly use texts and transla-tions as increasingly provided on diocesan websites, and these translations themselves are periodically adjusted and updated.

54 The first is the Papadeas translation used here (and hence a reason for modifying many of the translations); the second is Leonidas C. Contos, trans., The Services for Holy Week and Easter (Northridge, CA: Narthex, 1999).

references against Jews is not far from this, and to choose to amend liturgical texts is not, historically speaking, unortho-dox.52



Second, a few English translations used by the faithful within the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese have already re-moved such references.53 One popular translation inserts “Judean” whenever Ioudaios is mentioned—as some have sug-gested especially for the Gospel of John—and another generalizes the term, translating Ioudaioi or “sons of Israel” as “the Lord’s own people,” or “the lawless Ioudaioi” in the sub-stantive as simply “the lawless.”54 Far more than the first, the second option of generalizing the references has some merit (though it still does little with regard to the original Greek). Af-ter all, the original Holy Week texts themselves already frequently generalize. They more often than not simply speak of the “impious and lawless” or “unjust council,” when, histor-

ically, it is clear that the people to whom they refer were Jews. Such generalization, moreover, still bears the ability to empha-size the intended juxtapositions while also allowing the congregants to identify themselves with those who turn against Christ.



Third, the potential removal of negative references to Jews raises a concern analogous to those of many historical-critics with regard to the Gospels, particularly the Gospel of John. To disregard, generalize, or abstract all references to Jews stands in danger of completely dehistoricizing and decon-textualizing Jesus, his life and his passion. The Ioudaioi—as they were increasingly called, especially by outsiders, by the time of Jesus—were in fact his people, ethnically speaking and in terms of shared cultural heritage (but not necessarily, one should underscore, politically).55 One cannot dehistoricize the contemporarily unattractive aspects of the Jewishness of Jesus or those with whom he interacted, whether to avoid the posi-tive aspects of the Jewishness of the characters (e.g., that Jesus was a practicing Jew) or the negative (e.g., that some fellow Jews handed him over to Pilate). To completely dehistoricize the texts in such a way that Jews become entirely uninvolved in Christ’s ultimate demise would lose what is a tremendously es-sential element of the hymns: that the Creator and Redeemer from the Books of Moses is rejected by the same people whom he created and redeemed. To completely dehistoricize would lose the stark juxtaposition, the marvel of paradox, that so underscores the way Orthodoxy understands the mystery of the God-Man who was voluntarily crucified on a tree that he created.

55 Sources on the use and referent of Ioudaioi in antiquity abound. See, for example, Sean Freyne, “Behind the Names: Galileans, Samaritans, Iou-daioi,” in Galilee through the Centuries: Confluence of Cultures, ed. Eric Meyers (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 1999), 39–55.



That being said, however, there is much in the texts that reflects classic Greek psogos or “invective,” a rhetorical form of vilification that was unremarkably typical in earlier

centuries. Though the rhetorical elements allowed and en-couraged by the form of psogos are indeed troubling and shocking to modern ears, they were not necessarily tied to ac-tual violence.56 Such is evidenced by the varied treatment—ranging from violent opposition to stalwart defense—of Jews under the Byzantine Empire and within Orthodox Christian countries since.57 But this is also a rhetorical form that is no longer accepted, at least in the West (the hyperbolic rhetoric of other cultures, particularly those where the Orthodox Church is more ancient, not withstanding). One simply does not speak of one’s opponents as a “pack of dogs” or a “swarm

56 Aphthonius, a late fourth-century rhetorician who authored one of the textbooks on rhetoric (progymnasmata) that was widely used in Byzantine education, describes psogos as discourse that expounds “evil attributes” but differs from koinos topos in that, rather than “propose punishment” (epagesthai kolasin), it “contains mere slander alone” (psil.n mon.n eche-in diabol.n; Progymnasmata 10.27, H. Rabe, ed., Aphthonii progymnasmata [Leipzig: Teubner, 1926]). 

57 Sources on Jews in the Byzantine Empire abound; for a recent and wide-ranging examination, see Robert Bonfil, et al., eds., Jews in Byzantium: Dialectics of Minority and Majority Cultures (Leiden: Brill, 2012). On more recent Orthodox Christian-Jewish relations and dialog, see George C. Papademetriou, Essays on Orthodox Christian-Jewish Relations (Bris-tol, IN.: Wyndham Hall, 1990); Malcolm Lowe, ed., Orthodox Christians and Jews on Continuity and Renewal: The Third Academic Meeting be-tween Orthodoxy and Judaism (Immanuel 26/27) (Jerusalem, 1994); Nicholas de Lange, “The Orthodox Churches in Dialogue with Judaism,” in Challenges in Jewish-Christian Relations, ed. James K. Aitken and Ed-ward Kessler (New York: Paulist, 2006), 51–62, and Irina Levinskaya, “Jewish-Russian Orthodox Christian Dialogue,” in Challenges in Jewish-Christian Relations, ed. James K. Aitken and Edward Kessler (New York: Paulist, 2006), 63–68. Amid the most well known of violent oppositions (especially with regard to Holy Week) are the Russian pogroms of the1880s (see John Doyle Klier, Russians, Jews, and the Pogroms of 1881–1882 [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011]). Among the ardent defenses is the 1568 encyclical of Ecumenical Patriarch Metrophanes III that was issued after a localized outbreak of anti-Jewish violence and de-clared that “those Christians who commit these insolent acts against the Jews are excommunicated from God Almighty and are cursed and are un-forgiven and remain bound even after death” (trans. Papademetriou, Essays on Orthodox Christian-Jewish Relations, 87–88).

of God-Slayers [Theoktok.n]”58 anymore. Such appearances of psogos rhetoric one can do without, while nonetheless hopefully preserving the marvel of the paradox of Christ’s di-vine sunkatabasis. In fact, when Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew acknowledged the need to amend these texts, it seems that he called for the removal of these specimens of psogos specifically.59

58 Third sticheron of the Beatitudes after the Sixth Gospel, Holy Friday Matins (Hai Hierai Akolouthiai, 242). This otherwise harsh sticheron fol-lows the verse, “Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy” (Matt 5:7).

59 See Groen, “Anti-Judaism,” 382.

60 Of the latter, take for example the recent defacement of an Orthodox church in Israel, with slogans such as “Jesus [is] garbage” and “Death to Arabs” sprawled on its walls (see Ilan Ben Zion, “Church Defaced in Jeru-salem in Suspected ‘Price Tag’ Hate Attack,” The Times of Israel, May 9, 2014, http://www.timesofisrael.com/church-defaced-in-jerusalem-in-suspected-price-tag-attack/ [accessed March 2015]), or the torching of an Orthodox seminary in Jerusalem (see Judah Ari Gross, “Jerusalem Chris-tian Seminary Targeted in Apparent Hate Crime,” The Times of Israel, February 26, 2015, http://www.timesofisrael.com/jerusalem-christian-seminary-targeted-in-alleged-hate-crime/ [accessed March 2015]).



Fourth, one ought not decontextualize the conversa-tion related to possible emendation of these texts. To abstract any conversation related to Orthodox Christian-Jewish rela-tions denies, for example, the considerably different contexts in which Orthodox Christians of Russia or the West and Or-thodox Christians of Palestinian communities find themselves. The Orthodox Patriarchate of Jerusalem, as one important example, has diverse, complicated, and often tense relation-ships with the State of Israel, other Orthodox Churches (which are independent of each other) and, most importantly, the Christian faithful in its care that each offers a unique dimen-sion to the need for the betterment of Christian-Jewish relations. The call to amend these liturgical texts in countries where Christians experience little or no tension or hardship in the name of Judaism or a Jewish State is a call that must be ar-ticulated carefully and sensitively when transferred to those areas where Christians indeed experience such things.60

A final point: There is always a risk when analyzing a set of texts according to a category that does not chiefly con-cern those texts. Whether or not one calls for the amending of these texts, one cannot and should not characterize them in such a way so as to make the anti-Jewish passages appear as the norm while relegating the non-antagonistic or even positive references to mere exceptions (the term “anti-Jewish” as a generalized descriptor often obscures more than it reveals). Such characterization inappropriately labels these services as something they are not, and inapt categorization rarely serves to benefit. One must not, in other words, categorize the Holy Week and Pascha texts as products of anti-Jewish fervor rather than products of theological encounters with the God-Man, the Author of Life who became subject to death, that repeat-edly marvel at the redemption of all of humankind, Jews and Greeks, through the conquering of death. The unifying, uni-versal, and inclusive nature of Pascha, the Feast of Feasts, comes out especially clearly in the final troparion of Matins before the midnight Paschal Liturgy—easily the climax of the week and a fitting place to conclude:



It is the day of resurrection;

Let us be made bright in the festival,

 and let us embrace one another;

Let us say, “brothers,”

 even to those who hate us;

Let us forgive all things in the resurrection,

 and thus let us exclaim,

“Christ is risen from the dead,

 trampling death by death,

and to those in the tombs, bestowing life.”61

61 Hai Hierai Akolouthiai, 460 (modified significantly). Cf. Gregory of Na-zianzus, Oration 1.1.







*******



New Test. Stud. .., pp. ...–.... © Cambridge University Press, .... doi:10.1017/S0028688513000076

Passover and Last Supper Revisited

JOEL MARCUS

Duke Divinity School, Box 90968, Durham, NC 27708-0968, USA.

email: jmarcus@div.duke.edu



Although Jesus’ Last Supper probably took place on the night before Passover (as in John) rather than on the first night of Passover itself (as in the Synoptics), it contained elements strongly marked by the Jewish institution of the Passover seder (fixed order of service) and haggadah (ritual retelling of the exodus events). These elements were not, as some scholars of Judaism have recently argued, post-.. CE developments. Rather, evidence from Jubilees, Philo, and the NT itself indicates that seder and haggadah already existed in some form in the pre-.. period.

Keywords: Last Supper, eucharist, Passover, seder, haggadah

.. Introduction

Was the Last Supper a Passover seder? Although there have always been doubters, it is safe to say that, a generation ago, the usual scholarly answer was, ‘Yes’. To be sure, the discrepancy between John and the Synoptics over the dating of the Supper was acknowledged as a problem..

According to Mark (....., ..-..), who is closely followed by Matthew (.....) and Luke (....), the Supper occurred on the evening of ‘the first day of Unleavened Bread’, .

that is, at the beginning of Nisan ... .

The Last Supper, therefore, took place at the begin­ning of Passover. In accordance with this Synoptic chronology, Jesus’ death the following afternoon occurred on what was still Nisan .., the first ‘day’ of the holiday according to the normal Jewish method of time-reckoning, in which ‘day’ begins at sunset..

According to John, however, Jesus died on the afternoon

. See, e.g., J. Jeremias, The Eucharistic Words of Jesus (Philadelphia: Fortress, ....) ..-...

. Unless otherwise noted, all translations of NT texts are my own.

. On the dating of the Passover, see Exod ....; Lev ....; Num ..., ., ... These texts, however, do

not name the month as Nisan, which is a Babylonian term that only came into use among

post-exilic Jewish writers (see Neh ...; Est ...). The earlier name for the month was Aviv

(see Exod ....; .....; .....; Deut ....).

. This despite the terminology of Mark ....., which uses the normal Greco-Roman sunrise-to­

sunrise method of reckoning days, which was sometimes adopted by ancient Jews as well; see ...

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of the day of preparation for Passover, Erev Pesach (....., .., ..), that is, Nisan ..; his Last Supper the night before, therefore, was not a Passover meal.

This discrepancy, however, was not viewed as an insurmountable problem by NT scholars affirming a Passover setting. Either they argued that the Synoptics rather than John were right on this particular,.

or they speculated that John and the Synoptics were using different calendars,.

or they asserted that, while John’s dating might be correct, Jesus, sensing the imminence of his arrest and execution, may have modeled his last meal on the feast of deliverance he did not think he would live to celebrate..



But a more serious challenge to this consensus has emerged in recent years, and it has come primarily from scholars of ancient Judaism rather than NT specialists. The question these researchers have posed is: In Jesus’ time, was there actually such a thing as a Passover seder? That is, was there in the early first century CE a Jewish custom of gathering on the first night of Passover at a cer­emonial meal whose distinctive elements, arranged in a fixed order (the literal meaning of seder),.

were interpreted for the edification of the participants in a ritual retelling (haggadah) that linked those elements with the exodus from Egypt?.

And more and more of these researchers have been answering this ques­tion with a ‘no’, identifying the seder instead as essentially a post-.. CE replace­ment for the pre-.. tradition of Passover sacrifice, which came to an end when the Romans destroyed the Temple in which Jewish sacrifice took place...

And this

J. Marcus, Mark: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary [AYB ../..A; . vols.; New Haven and London: Yale University, ...., ....), ...... . See, e.g., Jeremias, Eucharistic Words, ..-.., who ascribes John’s dating to an ‘anti-passover

attitude’. . See A. Jaubert, The Date of the Last Supper (Staten Island, NY: Alba House, ....); cf. recently

D. Instone-Brewer, ‘Jesus’ Last Passover—the Synoptics and John’, ET ... (....) ...-.; Instone-Brewer, Feasts and Sabbaths: Passover and Atonement (Traditions of the Rabbis from the Era of the New Testament .A; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, ....) ...-..

. See recently R. Routledge, ‘Passover and Last Supper’, TynBul .. (....) ....

. The term itself is post-Tannaitic; see Baruch Bokser, The Origins of the Seder: The Passover Rite

and Early Rabbinic Judaism (Berkeley: University of California, ....) ....

. On the definition of seder and haggadah, see J. Kulp, ‘The Origins of the Seder and the

Haggadah’, CBR . (....) .... In what follows, I will use lower-case haggadah for this act of

ritual retelling and upper-case Haggadah for a book that fixes this retelling in literary form.

.. See the summary by Kulp, ‘Origins’, ...: ‘Nearly all rabbinics scholars…agree that most of the elements known from the seder as described in the Mishnah are missing from descriptions in Second Temple literature… This includes the absence of a seder or a haggadah. The primal element that did exist in the Second Temple was the sacrifice of the lamb.’ Among those whom Kulp mentions as sharing this consensus are Bokser, Origins, ..-..; S. Safrai and Z. Safrai, Haggadah of the Sages (....; repr., Jerusalem: Carta, ....) .-..; J. Tabory, ‘Towards a History of the Paschal Meal’, Passover and Easter: Origin and History to Modern Times (ed. P. F. Bradshaw and L. A. Hoffman; Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame, ....) ..;

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conclusion matters for historians of early Christianity because the words of insti­tution that Jesus speaks over the bread and wine in the Synoptics (‘This is my body… This is my blood’) are usually interpreted as his own twist on the Jewish custom of explaining the matzah and other seder elements—a connection that has helped scholars both to interpret Jesus’ words and to maintain their histori­city. But if there was no such Jewish custom, that whole approach falls to the ground...



What is the reason for these doubts about the existence of a seder rite in the pre-.. period? The central arguments are the following:

.. The foundational Pentateuchal passages dealing with the Passover festival (Exod ..–.. and Deut ..) outline neither a seder nor a haggadah, as defined above; they merely specify such things as how the sacrificial lamb should be chosen (from the sheep or the goats), how it should be cooked (roasted), and how it should be eaten (with unleavened bread and bitter herbs). No set order in the eating of these foods is prescribed, nor is it said what prayers or hymns, if any, should accompany their consumption. In other words, there is no seder in the strict sense. Neither is there a haggadah. The instructions that specify the way in which a father should reply to his son when the latter asks about the distinctive rites of the feast (Exod .....-..; .....-..; Deut ....-..; cf. Exod ....) are ad hoc; they outline the sort of thing that should be said if and when queries arise, not a fixed arrangement of ritualized questions and answers...



Judith Hauptman, ‘How Old Is the Haggadah?’, Judaism .. (....) .-..; S. Friedman, Tosefta Atiqta: Pesah.Rishon. Synoptics Parallels of Mishna and Tosefta Analyzed with a Methodological Introduction [Hebrew] (Ramat-Gan: Bar-Ilan University, ....) ...-.. See also C. Leonhard, The Jewish Pesach and the Origins of the Christian Easter: Open Questions in Current Research (Studia Judaica ..; Berlin and New York: de Gruyter, ....) .-....

Within this consensus, there are distinctions. Bokser, Origins, xiii, for example, thinks that, alongside of the Temple sacrifice, which was primary, there was some sort of domestic rite in the pre-.. period, but we can know little about it. Hauptman, ‘How Old’, ., acknowledges that, in biblical and Second Temple times, ‘people may have told the story [of the exodus] to their children’, but she thinks that we are ignorant about the form this narration took, and that whatever it was, it was far from the seder and haggadah as known today.

.. See J. Klawans, ‘Was Jesus’ Last Supper a Seder?’, BRev .., no. . (....) ..-.., ..; cf. C. Leonhard, ‘Das alttestamentliche und das j.dische Pesachfest’, Die Osterfeier in der alten Kirche (ed. H. auf der Maur, R. Messner, and W. G. Sch.pf; Liturgica Oenipontana .; M.nster: Lit, ....) ..: ‘Das gesamte Neue Testament bezeugt damit keinen Vorl.ufer der Pesachhaggada’.

.. As Hauptman, ‘How Old’, ., points out, similar ad hoc questions and answers are mentioned in passages not directly connected with Passover (e.g. Exod .....-..; Deut ....-..).

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.. Later biblical and Second Temple Jewish texts dealing with Passover concen­trate on the sacrifice in the Temple; they do not refer to a fixed order of foods, blessings, and hymns, or a ritual retelling of the exodus events...

Nor do they provide any clear evidence for a domestic celebration of Passover by Jews generally in the Second Temple period...

In fact, several texts militate against such a supposition, since they stipulate or suggest that the Passover sacrifice should be eaten only within the Temple courts (. Chron .....-..; Jub. .....-..; ..QTemple ....-.) or the city of Jerusalem (m. Zev. ...)...



.. The earliest evidence for a haggadic accompaniment to the Passover meal comes in the Mishnah (Pesahim ..), which was redacted in the early third century CE and basically outlines the seder as it presently exists: four cups of wine; haggadah before the meal consisting of interpretation of Passover sacrifice, matzah, and bitter herbs; recitation of the Hallel (Pss ...–...); and afikoman (post-prandial treat). But recent scholars have argued that this chapter of the Mishnah is secondary to the corresponding chapter of

.. The main texts are Ezra ....-..; . Chron ....-..; Jub. ..; Ezekiel the Tragedian Exagoge ...­..; Philo Spec. .....-...; V. Mos. .....-..; Josephus Bell. .....-..; Ant. .....-..; .....-..; .....-..; .....-..; ......-...; ......-... They are collected and discussed in Bokser, Origins, ..-.., and J. Tabory, The Passover Ritual Throughout the Generations (Tel Aviv: Hakibbutz Hameuchad, .... [Hebrew]) ..-...

.. Most scholars think that Passover originated as a domestic rite, or probably as two such rites (purging the house of leaven and apotropaic sacrifice), but that the majority of the biblical references reflect a later stage in which the holiday had been transformed into a pilgrimage festival centered on the Temple. See, for example, the contrast between Exod .., which describes a domestic rite, and Deut ....-., which emphasizes that the passover sacrifice may not be offered ‘within any of your towns which the Lord your God gives you; but at the place which the Lord your God will choose, to make his name dwell in it’ (RSV); cf. G. Foot Moore, Judaism in the First Centuries of the Christian Era (New York: Schocken, .... [orig. ....–..]) ..-., and R. De Vaux, Ancient Israel (. vols.; New York: McGraw-Hill, ....) .....-... This centralization is usually ascribed to the Deuteronomic reforms under Josiah. An awareness of the mixed signals given off by the biblical witnesses is evident in the harmo­nization in Jub. ..... (cf. v. ..): ‘It [the Passover sacrifice] is no longer to be eaten outside of the Lord’s sanctuary [as implied in Exod ..] but before the Lord’s sanctuary [as specified in Deut ..]’; trans. (minus bracketed material) from J. C. VanderKam, The Book of Jubilees [CSCO .../Scriptores Aethiopici ..; Louvain: Peeters, ....] ...-.; unless otherwise specified, all translations from Jubilees are from this edition). Whenever the domestic rite reemerged, therefore (if indeed it ever disappeared), it was not a new invention but the recrudescence of an ancient custom that had left its mark on an early stream of the OT. Leonhard, Jewish Pesach, .., however, argues that Passover never existed as a domestic rite in biblical times; the description in Exod .. ‘is an allegorical interpretation of the liturgy at the Temple in Jerusalem…shaped as a set of fictitious rules for a primeval ritual’ (..). This seems much less likely than that the domestic rite reflected in Exod .. was later absorbed into the Temple cult; why would anyone have shaped the Exodus text in such an inevitably misleading way?

.. See Safrai and Safrai, Haggadah, ..-...

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the Tosefta, which lacks reference to the haggadah and instead mandates a discussion of the laws (not the events) of Passover after (not before) the meal...

If these scholars are right, there probably was no such thing as the Passover haggadah until a very late stage in the game,..

certainly later than the first century...



;Exod.........1./בחפזון

ThebiblicalPassovermealistobeeateninhaste( ..

.....)...

According to Friedman and Hauptman, this was still the practice in late Second Temple times, as is shown by the custom of the ‘Hillel sandwich’, which was originally a device for fulfilling the biblical commandment by eating the three mandated foods all at once and thus dispatching them swiftly...

Hence in Hillel’s time, the early first century CE, the Passover cele­bration had not yet developed into the sort of gracious meal, accompanied by wine and appetizers, that it would later become and that is the presupposition for the haggadah. Friedman and Hauptman trace this innovation to the Tosefta, and Hauptman views it as a post-.. adaptation to the culture of the Greco-Roman symposium...



.. Jubilees and Philo

Strong as this case appears to be, and supported though it is by such an impressive consensus, I remain unconvinced. It seems to me that these recent views overemphasize the biblical and rabbinic evidence and downplay or ignore evidence from the book of Jubilees, Philo, and especially the NT. The latter sources, in my opinion, point towards the emergence of a leisurely Passover meal and a domestic seder, including haggadic recital, in the pre-.. period.

.. This reverses the traditional theory according to which the Tosefta, as its name implies, was a supplement to the Mishnah.

.. Hauptman, ‘How Old’, .., acknowledges that both the Mishnah and the Tosefta contain tra­ditions that have a pre-history, and that in individual cases Mishnaic traditions may be earlier than Toseftan ones. But the drift of her argument is that, in the most crucial ways, the Mishnaic account of Passover is secondary to the Toseftan one and that both reflect a long process of reshaping the Passover celebration after .. CE.

.. For example, J. Kulp, The Schechter Haggadah: Art, History and Commentary (Jerusalem: The Schechter Institute of Jewish Studies, ....) .., dates the invention of the seder to the late tan­naitic period (...–... CE).

.. The first part of this verse reinforces the impression of haste: ‘In this manner you shall eat it: your loins girded, your sandals on your feet, and your staff in your hand’ (RSV).

Hillel‘:הל להזק ןהי הכור ךשלשת ןז הבז הואוכל ן

:....t.Pes. Theearliestevidenceforthiscustomisin ..

the elder would wrap the three of them together and eat them’.

.. See Friedman, Tosefta Atiqta, ..., and Hauptman, ‘How Old’, .. n. .. On symposium elements in the seder, see S. Stein, ‘The Influence of Symposia Literature on the Literary Form of the Pesah Haggadah’, JJS . (....) ..-.., and Bokser, Origins, ..-..

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The neglect of these sources distorts the results of some Passover researchers. Several of the contentions of Friedman and Hauptman, for example, are belied by evidence from the book of Jubilees. That book shows that it was not the post-.. CE redactors of the Mishnah or Tosefta who first turned the Passover celebration from a hasty repast of lamb, matzah, and bitter herbs into a ‘gracious meal’ accompanied by wine. Rather, the second-century BCE author of Jubilees is already concerned to show that the biblical regulations about eating the meal in haste applied only to the first Passover celebration, not to subsequent ones: ‘For you celebrated this festival hastily when you were leaving Egypt until the time you crossed the sea into the wilderness of Sur, because you completed it [the first Passover] on the seashore’ (Jub ....., emphasis and bracketed material added). The intent here seems to be to show that the note in Exod ..... about consuming the Passover meal in haste is not meant to apply to life in the author’s present...

The hermeneutical strategy, therefore, is strikingly similar to that in the much later Targum Pseudo-Jonathan, which specifies that the instruc­tions in Exod ..... about eating in haste apply only to ‘this time and not to future generations’. ..

Both the author of Jubilees and Pseudo-Jonathan, apparently, lived in communities in which the Passover meal was consumed in a leisurely manner. But how could they square this custom with the explicit injunction to haste in Exod .....? The answer both adopted was to limit the applicability of that injunc­tion to the first Passover...



Thus, while Jubilees provides no evidence for a domestic celebration of Passover, and even polemicizes against it (see .....), it does show that, already in the second century BCE, some Jews were treating the Passover meal as a lei­surely repast to be enjoyed with wine (see ....), contrary to the spartan regu­lations of Exodus...

And the sharp polemic of Jubilees against domestic

.. Contra J. B. Segal, The Hebrew Passover: From the Earliest Times to A.D. .. (London Oriental Series ..; London/New York/Toronto: Oxford University, ....) ..., who does not notice the time-limited qualification and instead asserts that according to Jub. ..... ‘[t]he meal must be eaten in the Temple courts, as in Deuteronomy, and with haste’; similarly, Leonhard, Jewish Pesach, .., .... But Jub. ..... clearly intends to relativize the commandment in Exod ..... to

byemphasizingthatthatcommandmentappliedonlytothepre-sea-cross-בחפזו ן

eatthemeal

ing era; after the crossing, the remaining seven days of the festival were completed on the Sinai side of the sea in the leisurely manner that thereafter prevailed at Passover celebrations. A few

,hereinterpretingבחפזו ן

,theauthoradoptsadifferentstrategydefusing.....versesearlier,in

it as ‘carefully’ (cf. VanderKam, Jubilees, ...).

. וכד אהילכת אתיכלו ןיתי הבזימנ אד אול אלדרי א

:.....ExodTar.Ps-J. ..

.. For a similar rabbinic solution to the problem, see m. Pes. ..., which distinguishes between

).פס חדורות

(’thePassoverofgenerations‘)andפס חמצרי ם

(’thePassoverofEgypt‘

.. It is legitimate to ask how extensive the circles were that followed the injunctions laid down in Jubilees, and unfortunately there is little data to contribute to an answer, aside from the fact that fragments of the book have turned up at Qumran. But a similar question may be asked about the following that the rabbis enjoyed in the tannaitic age; see M. Goodman, State

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celebration of Passover may suggest that some Jews known to the author were cel­ebrating the feast at home.

That they were doing so a century or so later, but still before the destruction of the Temple, seems to be suggested by Philo, Spec. .....:

...... .. ..... ...’ ..1.... ... ...... ..... .1... ... .1....... .1.........., ... ............. .1.1... ....... ........... 1...... 1...1..........

On this day every dwelling-house is invested with the outward semblance and dignity of a temple. The victim is then slaughtered and dressed for the festal meal which befits the occasion...



If, as this passage seems to imply, the slaughter of the Passover sacrifice is to take place at every dwelling-house (......….....) in Jewry world-wide (cf. QE ....), we seem to be dealing with at least the rudiments of a domestic celebration of Passover...



We have evidence from Jubilees, therefore, that the Passover meal had become a leisurely repast by the second century BCE and from Philo that it had become (or reemerged as) a domestic celebration, at least in some circles, by the begin­ning of the first century CE. These are necessary conditions for the development of seder and haggadah, but Jubilees and Philo do not themselves provide unequi­vocal evidence for the emergence of those forms. There are, however, a couple of tantalizing hints in Philo that some form of the seder may have existed by his time. These hints are contained in two passages which, as Naomi Cohen points out, are similar in striking ways to two important sections in the Haggadah...



and Society in Roman Galilee, A.D. ...–... (Oxford Centre for Postgraduate Hebrew Studies; Totowa, NJ: Rowman & Allanheld, ....) and S. Schwartz, Imperialism and Jewish Society, ...

B.C.E. to ... C.E. (Jews, Christians, and Muslims from the Ancient to the Modern World; Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University, ....). .. LCL translation by F. H. Colson. Unless otherwise indicated, all translations of Philo are from this edition.

.. Bokser, Origins, .. asserts that ‘Philo’s presentation of the law closely follows the biblical record and does not add any local extratemple practices’, but he does not deal with the con­tradiction to this view presented by Spec. ...... Segal, Hebrew Passover, ... and Leonhard, Jewish Pesach, ..-. limit the applicability of Spec. ..... to the houses of Jerusalem, but there is no indication of such a limitation in the text. More astute is Tabory, Passover Ritual, .., who acknowledges that Philo might be referring to what takes place in dwellings in Jerusalem but thinks it more likely, in view of the remark about ‘every house’ being con­verted into a temple, that he is talking about celebrants ‘who have not engaged in pilgrimage but perform the Passover sacrifice in their own homes, wherever they are’ (my trans.).

.. N. G. Cohen, Philo Judaeus: His Universe of Discourse (BEATAJ ..; Frankfurt am Main; New York: Lang, ....) ...-...

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The first Philo passage, de Congressu ..., asserts that the unleavened bread of Passover, despite its biblical description as ‘the bread of affliction’ (see Deut ....), is not an instrument of suffering but an essential component of ‘the meal of fes­tivity and joy’ (... ......... 1......... ....1..., my trans.)...

This reversal of the valence of ‘bread of affliction’ is similar to that which occurs in a famous Aramaic passage in the Haggadah that also echoes Deut ...., since it begins,

)whichourancestorsateinthelandof ה אלחמ אעניא

Thisisthepoorbread(‘

Egypt’. ..

This passage, which is referred to as Ha Lachma after its first two words, goes on to invite the needy and hungry to come into the house where the meal is taking place and join in the paschal sacrifice by eating this ‘poor bread’. Thus, as in the Philo passage, the invitation to eat ‘the bread of affliction’ is paradoxically viewed as a cause not for sorrow but for joy. We will return to Ha Lachma below.

The second Philo passage, Quaestiones et Solutiones in Exodum ...., is even more striking:

Unleavened bread is (a sign) of great haste and speed, while the bitter herbs (are a sign) of the life of bitterness and struggle which they endure as slaves. That is that which is said (.....)...

But as for the deeper meaning, this is worth noting, (namely) that that which is leavened and fermented rises, while that which is unleavened is low. Each of these is a symbol of types of soul, one being haughty and swollen with arrogance, the other being unchangeable and prudent, choosing the middle way rather than extremes because of desire and zeal for equality. But the bitter herbs are a manifestation of a psychic migration, through which one removes from passion to impassivity and from wickedness to virtue. For those who naturally and genuinely repent become bitter toward their former way of life.

Here Philo cites an interpretation of the matzah as a sign of haste, presumably that with which the Jews were forced to leave Egypt, and of the bitter herbs as a sign of their suffering in that country. The exact same connections are made in the Passover Haggadah, in a passage partly paralleled by a Mishnaic saying attributed to Rabban Gamaliel, a first-century rabbi (m. Pes. ....; on Gamaliel’s identity, see below). Even more importantly, Philo makes it clear that the interpretations he relates are not his own invention (he goes on to give spiritual exegeses more to

.. On ....1.. (lit. ‘table’) as a term for ‘meal’, see LSJ .... (I.).

.. Translation altered from Kulp, Schechter Haggadah, ...

.. This passage, like most of the Questions and Answers on Genesis and Exodus, is extant only in



an Armenian translation of the fifth century, which seems to have been unusually literal; see R. Marcus, ed., Philo: Supplement. Vol. ., Questions and Answers on Genesis (LCL; London: Heinemann, ....) ix-x. In translating the Armenian for LCL, Marcus ‘retranslated into Greek words and phrases that have philosophical or theological importance’; see R. Marcus, ‘Notes on the Armenian Text of Philo’s Quaestiones in Genesin, Books I–III’, JNES . (....) ...

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his liking) but belong to .......—a term that means ‘that which is said’ and could appropriately be rendered in Hebrew with haggadah. ..

As noted, this is not unequivocal evidence for the existence of the haggadah in Philo’s time, but it does suggest that it may have existed by then...



.. The NT Evidence

Already, then, Jubilees and Philo suggest that by the early first century CE the Passover meal may have become an occasion for expounding the significance of the particular holiday foods at a leisurely repast held at home. The first unequi­vocal evidence for this custom, however, comes from the NT. I do not think that the seder-skeptics have fully weighed the significance of this testimony...



The most important datum is that, as we have already seen, all three Synoptic Gospels portray Jesus’ Last Supper as a Passover meal and show him ritually dis­tributing matzah and wine to his disciples at this meal and interpreting these

.. The Greek of this passage not being extant (see previous note), the Greek original here is somewhat conjectural, but in four of the five Armenian passages using the word c.ar..in which the Greek is extant (QG .....; QE ...., ..; Contemp. ..), the original is .....; see

R. Marcus, ‘An Armenian–Greek Index to Philo’s Quaestiones and De Vita Comtemplativa’, JAOS .. (....) .... In the exception, QG ....., the original is ........ = ‘narrative’, which fits my thesis even better, since it is closer in meaning to haggadah than ..... is.

Cohen, Philo Judaeus, ...-. notes that Philo ascribes the interpretations in QE .... to .. ....., which she translates as ‘traditional exegesis’, but does not note the similarity in meaning of this term to haggadah. In most of the other Philonic uses of (..) ..... (Leg. ....; Det. ..; Agr. ...; Ebr. ...; Sob. ..; Her. ...; Fug. ...; QG ...*; .....), the reference seems to be to the literal meaning of the scripture. But in our passage as well as Sob. ..; QG ....*-..; .....; QE ...., Philo uses it to refer to a scriptural hermeneutic that is somewhat imaginative, though different from the ‘spiritual’ exegesis that he embraces (asterisked pas­sages are extant only in Armenian). R. Marcus, Philo: Supplement. ., ix, notes that Philo’s ..... ‘corresponds to the “literal” or “historical” interpretation of the Church Fathers and to the pe.at of the Rabbis’.

.. Hauptman, ‘How Old’, .. n. .. criticizes Cohen for asserting that ‘the basic rubrics of the text of the haggadah’ were already current and traditional in Philo’s day (Cohen, Philo Judaeus, ...): ‘What she has shown, to my mind, is that Philo knew one of the developing midrashim on the three Passover foods’. The issue between Cohen and Hauptman, then, is whether Philo knew this midrash as a customary part of the Passover service or apart from it. Since Hauptman thinks that that service did not exist in Philo’s time, she cannot allow the former possibility.

.. Safrai and Safrai, Haggadah, .-.., in their section on ‘The Pesah Holiday During the Second Temple Period’, ignore the NT entirely. As we shall see below, other seder investigators use the Johannine evidence to relativize the testimony of the Synoptics about the seder-like features of the Last Supper, but I do not think they have drawn the right conclusions from this discre­pancy. I. J. Yuval, ‘Easter and Passover as Early Jewish–Christian Dialogue’, Passover and Easter: Origin and History to Modern Times (ed. Bradshaw and Hoffman) ..-... does take the evidence of the Gospels and other early Christian literature seriously, and criticizes other Jewish scholars for not doing so (...), but his usage of this material does not seem to me to be compelling; see below, Section ..

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elements symbolically and in sacrificial terms (‘my body [given for you]…my

blood shed on behalf of many’)...

Moreover, at least two out of the three

Synoptics (three out of three if the longer reading in Luke .....b-.. is accepted)..



link the ‘cup word’ with the covenant established by Moses in the exodus when

they show Jesus echoing Exod ...., ‘Behold the blood of the covenant…’..

As has been noted above, this Synoptic identification of the Last Supper as a

Passover meal contrasts with the situation in the Gospel of John, where the

Supper occurs on the night before Passover begins. Several recent seder investi­

gators have used this discrepancy to relativize the Synoptic evidence, arguing

that John is probably more accurate in dating the Supper to Erev Pesach. ..

I

agree on this narrow point of chronology,..

but in my view that does not diminish

.. ‘Given for you… Do this in my remembrance’ is present only in Luke ..... among the Synoptics, but it is paralleled in . Cor ......

.. On the textual question, see F. Bovon, Luke .: A Commentary on the Gospel of Luke .....–..... (Hermeneia; Minneapolis: Fortress, ....) ...-., who deems the problem insoluble.

.. Leonhard, Jewish Pesach, .., introduces a red herring when he impugns the Synoptic testi­mony by pointing out that it does not align with Exod ..: there is no mention of bitter herbs, a wanderer’s dress, or eating hastily, and ‘Jesus and the apostles do not even remotely resemble a “family” or a “house”’. But strict adherence to the pattern prescribed in Exod .. is not required for a meal to be considered a Passover repast; as we have seen above, both the author of Jubilees (.....) and the rabbis recognized that their Passover meals differed from the hurried ‘Passover of Egypt’ (Leonhard mentions the Jubilees text twice [pp. .. and ...] but without engaging this aspect of it). As for Jesus and his disciples not constituting a ‘family’ or a ‘house’, this objection ignores the widespread early Christian image of Jesus and his dis­ciples as an eschatological ‘family’ (see, e.g., Mark ....-.. and cf. Marcus, Mark, .....). Josephus, moreover, speaks of the Jews eating the Passover sacrifice in ‘fraternities’ (........; Bell. .....; Ant. .....; .....), a term that seems to transcend family groupings (see LSJ ....). Although Josephus wrote in the post-.. CE era, the Judaism he described was usually that of the pre-.. period.

.. See, e.g., Bokser, Origins, ..-..; Klawans, ‘Last Supper’, ...

.. The basic arguments are: (a) There would have been theological pressure to transform the Last Supper into a Passover meal because of the primitive Christian theologoumenon identifying Jesus as the Passover lamb (see . Cor ...; John ...., ..; ....., ..). (b) The legal activity that the Gospels attribute to the Jewish and Roman authorities is implausible on the first day of Passover, as is the travel implied by Mark .....//Luke ...... (c) Mark ....-.//Matt ....-. and Mark ..... go against Mark’s Tendenz by preserving hints that Jesus was crucified on the day before Passover began; see G. Theissen, The Gospels in Context: Social and Political History in the Synoptic Tradition (Minneapolis: Fortress, ....) ...-.; Marcus, Mark, ....., ...., ..... The main counter-argument is that John’s dating, too, may be theologically driven, since, as has just been seen, he thinks of Jesus as the Passover lamb, and so ex hypoth­ese he has him executed at about the hour that the Passover lambs were slain, i.e. noon on Erev Pesach (see John .....; Philo Spec. .....; m. Pes. ...; cf. Jeremias, Eucharistic Words, ..). I do not find this argument convincing, however, because (a) John does not explicitly say that Jesus died as the lambs were being slaughtered. (b) Awareness of the timing of the custom is unli­kely in readers whose knowledge of Judaism is so deficient that they need to be told, for example, that Passover is ‘a feast of the Jews’ (John ...). (c) Other evidence seems to favor

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the importance of the Synoptic evidence for the question about the existence of a pre-.. CE seder. The Synoptics, after all, are strongly rooted in pre-.. traditions, as is clearly demonstrated with regard to the Last Supper story in particular by the parallel in . Cor .....-.., and Mark at least may have been composed before the destruction of the Temple—if not, shortly thereafter...

Even in the latter case, there was scarcely sufficient time between the destruction of the Temple in .. and the composition of Mark perhaps a year or two later for a thorough transform­ation of the Passover celebration to occur. The important question for our pur­poses, then, is not whether or not Jesus’ Last Supper actually was a Passover meal, but whether or not the Synoptic Gospels, which are rooted in pre-.. realities, portray it as such. And since the answer to that question is ‘yes’, the Synoptics provide valuable evidence for the shape of the Passover celebration before ... ..



Moreover, it is striking that John, as noted, portrays Jesus’ last meal as occur­ring on the night before Passover and as lacking his symbolic actions and words over the bread and wine. The Synoptics, by contrast, picture Jesus’ last meal as a Passover supper, and this meal does contain those interpretative actions and words. Is this combination of Synoptic presences and Johannine absences just a coincidence? That seems unlikely; rather, it is probable that the authors of the Synoptics think that Jesus’ symbolic actions and words fit into the context of a Passover meal...

And this makes sense in light of the important ways in which these actions dovetail with the portrayal of the Passover seder in later Jewish

a midafternoon or later slaughter of the sacrificial animals, so the posited synchronicity does not work (see Exod ....; Jub. .....; Josephus Bell. .....; Philo QE ....; m. Pes. ...; cf. R. E. Brown, The Death of the Messiah: From Gethsemane to the Grave: A Commentary on the Passion Narratives in the Four Gospels [. vols.; ABRL; New York: Doubleday, ....] ....., ......-.). Contra Instone-Brewer, Feasts and Sabbaths: Passover and Atonement, ..., who implausibly thinks that the Synoptics, which have Jesus die at . pm (Mark .....), intend to link his death with the start of the Passover offerings—even though the Synoptics date Jesus’ death to the first day of Passover, not its eve.

.. See Marcus, Mark, ....-...

.. Contra Kulp, Schechter Haggadah, ..., who dismisses the Synoptic evidence by saying, ‘While these words are attributed to Jesus, whether or not Jesus actually uttered them is debatable and ultimately unknowable. All we know is that they are attributed to him by the authors of the Gospels, and therefore existed (in written form) by the time the Gospels were written. Scholars generally assume that the three synoptic gospels…were written in the decades follow­ing the destruction of the Temple, around the same time that Rabban Gamaliel lived, and before the redaction of the Mishnah.’ This is inaccurate, at least as far as the dating of Mark is concerned, and it glosses over the Synoptics’ rootedness in pre-.. traditions.

.. Klawans, ‘Last Supper’, ..-. points out that bread and wine are the basic elements of any formal Jewish meal, not just the Passover seder. He recognizes, however, that what is distinc­tive about the seder and about the Synoptic Last Supper is that words of interpretation, not just blessings, are spoken over the bread and wine.

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sources. This is not a matter of reading the evidence from these later sources back into the NT accounts but of concluding from their distinctive shared character­istics that the Passover rites depicted in these different corpora have some sort of genealogical relationship to each other...



.. The ‘Bread Word’ and Ha Lachma

The most important of these shared characteristics is what Jeremias refers to as Jesus’‘altogether extraordinary manner of announcing his passion’through ‘speaking words of interpretation over the bread and the wine’. ..

While this sort of table talk has precedents in the Greco-Roman symposium, where the foods at the feast sometimes turn into the subject of the conversation, it is unprecedented in ancient Jewish contexts—except for the Passover seder...

The earliest rabbinic reference to the custom is found in the Mishnaic passage to which we have already referred, Pesahim ...., in which Rabban Gamaliel designates the matzah as one of the three special foods that must be interpreted at every Passover meal. (We will return to the other two below.) This demand is repeated in the Passover Haggadah and is fulfilled there by an interpretation that treats the unleavened bread as a sign of the Israelites’need to hurry out of Egypt...



While wine is not specified as part of the Passover meal in the foundational texts in Exod ..– .. and Deut .., and hence Gamaliel does not in m. Pes. .... identify it as one of the seder elements that needs to be interpreted, it does form part of the Passover meal already in Jub. ..... The Mishnah and Tosefta specify that four cups of it must be drunk, and some later rabbinic authorities and the Passover Haggadah offer symbolic interpretations of it; see Jeremias, Eucharistic Words, ..-.; Bokser, Origins, index s.v. ‘wine’.

.. The method of using distinctive characteristics to trace genealogical relationships was of course pioneered by Charles Darwin in On the Origin of Species (orig. ....) and has sub­sequently been transferred to many other realms, including textual criticism; see S.C. Carlson, ‘The Text of Galatians and its History’(PhD diss., Duke University, ....).

.. Jeremias, Eucharistic Words, ... For a recognition of the importance of this parallel, even though he ends up disagreeing with Jeremias, see Klawans, ‘Last Supper’, ..-.. Jeremias, Eucharistic Words, ..-.. mentions thirteen other parallels between the Synoptic Last Supper and the Passover seder, the most important of which are reclining at the meal (Mark ..... pars.) and singing a hymn (Mark ..... pars.), which Jeremias assumes to be one of the Hallel psalms. Both of these details make sense in a Passover context, but neither is the sort of distinctive parallel that the interpretation of the matzah is, since the Gospels do not specify that the hymn was a psalm, and in the Gospel tradition Jesus also reclines at meals that are not Passover seders (see Mark ....; ....; Luke ....).

.. See Stein, ‘Influence’, esp. ..-.., ..-..

.. ‘This matzah which we eat, what is it for? It is because the dough which our ancestors pre­pared did not have sufficient time to rise before the King, King of all kings, the Holy One, Blesssed be He, was revealed to them and redeemed them.’ The passage goes on to cite Exod ..... as a prooftext. Trans. from Kulp, Schechter Haggadah, ...

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But it is also fulfilled near the beginning of the seder in the Ha Lachma para­graph to which reference was made earlier. For convenience of reference, I give the paragraph in full below and number its component sentences:

.( ה אלחמ אעני אד יאכל ואבהתנ אבארע אדמצרי ם

.( כ לדכפי ןיית יויכ לכ לדצרי ךיית יויפס ח

.( השת אהכ אלשנ ההבא הבארע אדישרא להשת אעבד ילשנ ההבא הבנ יחורי ן



.) This is..

the poor bread that our ancestors ate in the land of Egypt. .) All who are hungry, let them come and eat; all who are needy, let them come and partake of the Passover sacrifice. .) This year we are here, next year we shall be (or: let us be) in the land of Israel; this year we are slaves, next year we shall be (or: let us be) free people.

The similarity in structure and meaning of ## . and . to the ‘bread word’ in the Synoptic tradition is striking. Here, for example, is Luke’s version of this saying (Luke .....), the main elements of which are drawn from Mark and supported by the early passage . Cor .....:

........ ..... 1........... .....1........1....... .....· ..... ..... ...... ... ...... .... .....1...· ..... ...1..11..... .... ..........

And having taken bread and having given thanks, he broke it and gave it to

them saying:

This is my body which is given for you.

Do this for the remembrance of me.



as ה א

Forthetranslation ..

‘this is’, see N. H. Glatzer, The Passover Haggadah with English

Translation, Introduction and Commentary (New York: Schocken, ....) .., and Kulp, Schechter Haggadah, ... M. Jastrow, A Dictionary of the Targumim, the Talmud Babli and Yerushalmi, and the Midrashic Literature (New York: Judaica, .... [orig. ....–....]) ...,

as ה א

translates

‘behold’ and M. Sokoloff, A Dictionary of Jewish Palestinian Aramaic of the

Talmudic and Geonic Periods: Second Edition (Dictionaries of Talmud, Midrash and Targum II/Publications of the Comprehensive Aramaic Lexicon Project; Ramat-Gan: Bar Ilan University; Baltimore and London: The Johns Hopkins University, ....) ..., renders it

,whichissometimesren-הנ ה

isHaLachma in ה א

.TheHebrewtermbehind’behold,hereis‘as

dered in ancient Greek versions and modern English translations as ‘This is’ or ‘This was’. For example, Jesus’ words of institution over the cup in Mark .....//Matt ....., which repeat the

,הנ ה

,whichuses....formulafromthewordsoverthebread,areanechoofExod .......... .... ...as....,whichrendersExod....;cf.Hebה א

renderedintheTargumsonthisverseas ,....inExod הנ ה

,then,isanacceptableEnglishtranslationfor’Thisis‘.......... ......

and it is so rendered in NJPS; cf. David Clines, ed., The Dictionary of Classical Hebrew (.

vols.; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic, ....–) ....., ... [. and .i] which translates some circumstances as ‘there is’ and ‘he/she/it is’.

in הנ ה



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We have here, as in the Ha Lachma paragraph, an invitation to eat the matzah,..

and this act of eating is linked with the theme of remembrance that is implied in Ha Lachma (‘that our ancestors ate in the land of Egypt’) and is so integral to the whole seder...

In both cases, moreover, the eating of the matzah has sacrificial overtones (‘my body given for you/partake of the Passover sacrifice’). Most impor­tantly, Jesus’ introductory formula in all versions of the saying, ‘This is my body which…’ is strikingly similar to the first words of Ha Lachma, ‘This is the poor bread which…’..

What are we to make of these parallels?

They would be less important for our purposes—though they would still be interesting—if recent scholarship were right and Ha Lachma were a late addition to the seder service. Kulp, for example, notes that, while it ‘appears in geonic Haggadot and in most manuscripts and geniza fragments of the Haggadah…it does not appear in ancient Eretz Yisraeli Haggadot’, and Goldschmidt relates that, where the paragraph is present, the order of its sentences varies, and some­times the first sentence (the crucial one for our purposes) is missing altogether...

As for Talmudic evidence, Klawans remarks that, while the Bavli discusses the bib­lical phrase ‘bread of affliction’ in several places (see, e.g. b. Ber. ..b; b. Pes. ..ab, ...b), it never mentions Ha Lachma, ..

and Goldschmidt observes that, while b. Ta.an. ..b offers a parallel to the second sentence of the paragraph, it does not present the invitation to the needy in the context of the seder but simply relates it to the customary charity of R. Huna, a late second-century Amora...

There has been a recent tendency, therefore, to date Ha Lachma late; Safrai and Safrai, for example, pronounce it a product of the Babylonian Geonim, and Leonhard dates it even later, perhaps to the twelfth century CE...



.. As Yuval, ‘Easter and Passover’, ...-., notes, the correspondence is even closer in the Matthean form of the saying (Matt .....), in which Jesus explicitly says ...1.1 ...1.1 (‘Take, eat’).

In‘( בכ לדו רודו רחי באד םלראו תא תעצמ וכאל והו איצ אממצרי ם

Epitomizedaboveallinthestatement, ..

every generation, each person must regard himself as if he himself had come out of Egypt’,my trans.). This statement is not found in better Mishnah manuscripts but is present in the extant Haggadot, though the prooftexts that follow it vary; see Safrai and Safrai, Haggadah, ...-..; Kulp, Schechter Haggadah, ...-..

.. This similarity was already highlighted by J. Scaliger in his De Emendatione Temporum in ....; see A. Grafton, Joseph Scaliger: A Study in the History of Classical Scholarship (. vols.; Oxford-Warburg Studies; Oxford and New York: Clarendon/Oxford University, ....–..) .....; cf. Yuval, ‘Easter and Passover’, ... n. ...

.. See D. Goldschmidt, The Passover Haggadah: Its Sources and History (Jerusalem: Bialik Institute, .... [Hebrew]) .-.. He lists the version of Saadia Gaon, some of the Geniza frag­ments, and MS. Cambridge ... as missing the first sentence of Ha Lachma.

.. Private communication, .. May .....

.. Cf. Goldschmidt, Haggadah, .; Kulp, Schechter Haggadah, .... On Huna’s dates, see



J. Marcus, ‘A Jewish–Christian ‘Amidah?’, Early Christianity . (....) .-..

.. Safrai and Safrai, Haggadah, ..., offer no evidence for their specific dating, beyond saying that the Geonim ‘wrote many declarations and prayers in Aramaic’. But Aramaic, of course, was in

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These arguments, however, are perhaps less decisive than their framers think, given the fragmentary nature of our evidence from Jewish antiquity, in particular about folk celebrations such as the seder...

Moreover, the lack of attestation to Ha Lachma in rabbinic sources is counterbalanced by the parallels from other sources, which open up the possibility that some parts of it may have existed early on. We have already seen, for example, that Philo parallels the first two sen­tences of the paragraph by turning the biblical ‘bread of affliction’ into a paschal meal to be celebrated joyfully. There is also a noteworthy parallel between these same sentences of Ha Lachma and John ....—a passage that occurs, significantly enough, in a Passover setting (cf. ...):..



This is the poor bread… I am the bread of life

All who are hungry The one who comes to me

let them come in and eat will not go hungry



But the most compelling piece of evidence is, of course, the striking correspon­dence in form and meaning between Jesus’ words of institution, ‘This is my body’, and the beginning of Ha Lachma, ‘This is the poor bread’. Again, it

use before the Geonic period as well, and there is nothing distinctively Geonic about the Aramaic of Ha Lachma. C. Leonhard, ‘Die Pesachhaggada als Spiegel religi.ser Konflikte’, Kontinuit.t und Unterbrechung: Gottesdienst und Gebet in Judentum und Christentum (ed. Albert Gerhards and Stephan Wahle; Studien zu Judentum und Christentum; Paderborn: Sch.ningh, ....) ...-., thinks that Ha Lachma is a response to the Christian eucharistic theology of the late Middle Ages, specifically, perhaps, to the practice of elevating the host. On this interpretation of Ha Lachma as anti-Christian polemic, which develops further the approach of Yuval, see the next section.

.. Cf. Goldschmidt, Haggadah, ., who, although dating Ha Lachma late, says that the origin of its components is ‘in the customs of the people rather than in the dicta of sages’. Similarly, Lawrence A. Hoffman, ‘A Symbol of Salvation in the Passover Seder’, Passover and Easter: The Symbolic Structuring of Sacred Seasons (ed. Bradshaw and Hoffman) ... observes the absence of Ha Lachma from tannaitic and amoraic sources but nevertheless inclines towards a first-century composition for it, noting, ‘Students of ritual have long been aware that the actual extent of available custom is not represented in the Mishnah, say, or even the Tosefta or the Yerushalmi. These books represent only an isolated segment of contempor­ary usage.’ Cf. Kulp, Schechter Haggadah, .., who mentions a fact that in my view offers a strik­ing proof that folk customs can remain literarily invisible for a long time. A Barcelona Haggadah from around .... (BL Ms. Add ....., fol. ..b) contains an illustration depicting the Sephardic custom of lifting the seder plate—four hundred years before this practice is first mentioned in writing!

.. On the Passover symbolism in John ., see P. Borgen, Bread from Heaven: An Exegetical Study of the Concept of Manna in the Gospel of John and the Writings of Philo (NovTSup; Leiden: Brill, ....). I am grateful to Dale Allison for pointing out the parallel between Ha Lachma and John .....

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needs to be asked: Can this parallel be ascribed to chance? Such a striking corre­spondence in theme and wording seems unlikely to be fortuitous or an example of independent development...

Therefore there seems to be a prima facie case that some form of Ha Lachma, and hence of the Passover seder, already existed in the pre-.. era. ..



.. Seder as Reversal of Last Supper?

There is, however, an alternate way of explaining the parallels between the Passover seder and the Last Supper, and it has been argued with vigor in recent years by Israel Yuval. This is the theory that the seder itself is essentially a response to the Christian eucharist rather than being its source. Thus, for example, the strik­ing parallel between Ha Lachma and Jesus’words of institution is interpreted as a polemical reversal of the latter by the former...

Here is Yuval’s reconstruction of the way in which the seder developed in the context of what he calls ‘Jewish– Christian dialogue’(though it would probably be truer to his theory to speak of Jewish polemic against Christianity):

During the time of the Temple the celebration of Passover included two main components, the sacrificial meal and the Hallel. For two generations after the Temple’s destruction, instead of the defunct sacrifice, people generally ate a roasted kid..

(a custom, perhaps, in distant communities before the Destruction as well) and studied the laws of sacrifice that they could no longer perform. This is the tradition described in the Tosefta’s account of scho­lars gathering to study the laws of Passover all night long. At this stage, the Christian midrash on Exodus .. and the paschal sacrifice emerged. In response, the Jewish Haggadah distanced itself from sacrifice and emphasized instead the duty to tell the story of the Exodus, as described in the Mishnah

.. Contra Kulp, ‘Origins’, ..., and Kulp, Schechter Haggadah, .., ..., ..., who ascribes the simi­larities to independent development, since both early Christians and post-.. CE Jews were influenced by Greco-Roman symposium customs.

.. If some form of Ha Lachma did exist in the pre-.. era, it was probably one that lacked the third sentence, since all three pre-.. parallels (Philo’s de Cong. ..., the ‘bread word’ in the Synoptics, and John ....) link up with the first two sentences of Ha Lachma but not with the third, which on other grounds also seems to have a different origin. Unlike the first two sentences, which are in Aramaic, sentence #. is a mixture of Hebrew and Aramaic. Also, unlike the first two sentences, #. presupposes a Diaspora setting.

.. This opinion is apparently shared by Hoffman, ‘Symbol’, who speaks of ‘the use of bread as a symbol in both the Lord’s Supper and in the early seder’as ‘two sides of the same coin’(...) and of Ha Lachma as ‘an obvious Jewish parallel to the institution of the Lord’s Supper’(...). This language might suggest concurrent independent developments, but since Hoffman dates Ha Lachma to just after the destruction of the Temple (...) and Jesus’‘bread word’to the pre-destruction era (...), the implication would seem to be that Ha Lachma is modeled on the Last Supper saying.

.. This assertion, however, is controversial; see the discussion in Bokser, Origins, ..-.., ...-..

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(M. Pes. ..). This stage was crystallized by the beginning of the second century C.E...



Crucial to this theory is Yuval’s analysis of Gamaliel’s statement about the neces­sity of interpreting Passover sacrifice, matzah, and bitter herbs at the seder in m. Pes. ..... In line with most recent seder researchers, Yuval identifies this Gamaliel as Gamaliel II, a leader of the post-.. rabbinic movement, rather than Gamaliel I, his grandfather, a pre-.. figure who is mentioned in Acts ....-..; ..... ..

The dis­tinctive point of his analysis is to interpret Gamaliel’s statement as a ‘reversed par­allel’ to Christian theology, in which the pesach is Jesus (John ....; . Cor ...), the matzah is his body (Matt .....//Mark .....//Luke .....), and the bitter herbs are his suffering (Aphrahat Dem. ....)..

or the punishment awaiting Israel for reject­ing him (Melito Peri Pascha ..)...

According to Yuval, then, ‘Rabban Gamaliel is demanding a declaration of loyalty to the Jewish understandings and, therefore, an implicit denial of the Christian alternative’. ..

Yuval also sees Gamaliel’s ban on concluding the Passover meal with an afikoman (m. Pes. ....) as a response

.. Yuval, ‘Easter and Passover’, ...-...

.. Klawans, ‘Last Supper’, .., says that ‘virtually all scholars working today’ believe that the Gamaliel of m. Pes. .... is Gamaliel II. The argument in favor of this identification draws on t. Pes. ....., which shows Gamaliel II occupied with other sages in exposition of Passover laws. Moreover, as Klawans points out in a private communication, almost all the other sages mentioned in m. Pesahim .. are post-.. figures. The chief difficulty with this

anonsacri-‘as....m.Pes. in’passoveroffering‘= פס ח

theoryisthenecessityofinterpreting

ficial animal roasted to resemble the passover sacrifice’, but this sort of transformation of the term did occur in the post-.. period; cf. G. Alon, The Jews in their Land in the Talmudic Age (..–... C.E.) (Cambridge, MA and London: Harvard University, ....) ...-.; Bokser, Origins, .., ..-.., ...-.. In favor of Gamaliel I is M. Casey, Aramaic Sources of Mark’s Gospel (SNTSMS ...; Cambridge/New York/Melbourne: Cambridge University, ....) ..., who, however, relies on assertion (‘This must surely be Gamaliel I…’). If this were right, Yuval’s case would be impossible, since Gamaliel’s formulation could not be con­strued as a response to the changed post-.. situation. Gamaliel I, moreover, unlike Gamaliel II, is portrayed as sympathetic to Christians in Acts ....-...

.. But this passage from Aphrahat does not identify the bitter herbs with Christ’s suffering, as Yuval asserts, nor is that interpretation given by G. A. M. Rouwhorst, Les hymnes pascales d’Ephrem de Nisibe: analyse th.ologique et recherche sur l’.volution de la f.te pascale chr.tienne . Nisibe et . Edesse et dans quelques .glises voisines au quatri.me si.cle (. vols.; Supplements to Vigiliae Christianae .; Leiden and New York: Brill, ....) ....., whom Yuval cites for support on this point. Ephrem (d. ...), however, does link the bitter herbs with Jesus’ passion (Virg. ...; cf. I. Lizorkin, ‘Aphrahat’s Demonstrations: A Conversation with the Jews of Mesopotamia’ [PhD diss., Stellenbosch University, ....] ...).

.. Versions of this theory were already argued by A. Sulzbach, ‘Die drei Worte des Seder-Abends’, Jeschurun . (....) ...-..; S. Y. Fisher, ‘Sheloshah Devarim’, Hatsofeh Lechokhmat Yisrael .. (....) ...-..; and Goldschmidt, Haggadah, ..; cf. Yuval, ‘Easter and Passover’, ... n. ...

.. There is some ambiguity in Yuval’s phrasing here. When he says that Gamaliel was ‘demand­ing a declaration of loyalty to the Jewish understandings’, that seems to imply that such ‘Jewish

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to Christian beliefs about Jesus, since Melito (Peri Pascha ..) uses the word ......1... to speak about the ‘coming’ of Jesus in incarnation and passion...



As this last example might suggest, Yuval tends to see parallels and polemic everywhere, and some of his arguments seem far-fetched...

There is, as a matter of fact, a more sensible and widely accepted explanation for the afikoman, since that term seems to be a loanword (........) that is used, along with its cognates, in Greek sources to indicate the sort of after-dinner revelry that some­times followed Hellenistic banquets and symposia...

Gamaliel’s dictum, ‘They do not follow the meal at which the Passover sacrifice is eaten with afikoman’, fits this context perfectly. As Baruch Bokser points out, moreover, the Mishnah did not invent the contrast between Passover feasting and the debauchery of pagan ban­quets. Philo, for example, warns that those at the Passover feast are not to over­indulge in food and wine ‘like those in other symposia’, ..

and Josephus, in

understandings’ already existed. But how does that cohere with the previous paragraph, which

describes Gamaliel’s dictum as ‘a reversed parallel’ of the Christian interpretation? .. Yuval, ‘Easter and Passover’, ...-.. .. See the criticism of Yuval’s ‘polemicamania’ in Kulp, ‘Origins’, .... To give my own examples:

Yuval, ‘Easter and Passover’, ..., claims that the Bnei Berak account, in which Elazar ben Azaryah speaks of finding a scriptural justification for ‘mentioning the exodus from Egypt at night’, is designed to ‘establish the new edict’ to recite the Passover story during the holiday. But it is easier to understand this passage as providing a prooftext for a customary practice than as establishing a new one. Contrary to Yuval’s assertion, there is no evidence of anti-Christian polemic in the discussion of ‘all the days of your life’ later in the Bnei Berak account or in the depiction of the wicked son in the ‘four sons’ midrash. Nor is it obvious that ‘the end of Dayyenu, “[God] built us a Temple to atone for all our sins”,isa kind of afterthought, indicating that Temple offerings atone, in contrast to the Christian claim that atonement comes through the crucifixion of Jesus’ (...); on most of these criti­cisms, cf. Leonhard, ‘Pesachhaggada’, ...-., ...-.., ...-..

On the other hand, it is possible that the ‘I and not an angel’ midrash and the absence of Moses’ name in the Haggadah are directed at Christian conceptions of Jesus as an angelic figure and a second Moses (Yuval, ‘Easter and Passover’, ...-.. and ... n. ..; cf. Leonhard, ‘Pesachhaggada’, ...), though it is also possible, as recently suggested by

D. Henshke, ‘“The Lord Brought Us Forth from Egypt”: On the Absence of Moses in the Passover Haggadah’, AJSR .. (....) ..-.., that these circumstances are a response to Jewish revolutionary activism associated with the exodus typology. But even if Yuval is right about there being anti-Christian polemic at some points within the Haggadah, that does not necessarily mean that the Haggadah as a whole is a polemic against Christianity; cf. Leonhard, ‘Pesachhaggada’, ...-..

.. See, e.g., Polybius Hist. ......; Plutarch Is. Os. ... F.; Alcibiades ....; De tuenda sanitate prae­cepta ...D.; Athenaeus Deipnosophistae ... (...A); Diogenes Laertius Vitae ..... For this interpretation, see S. Lieberman, Hayerushalmi Kiphshuto: A Commentary (Jerusalem: Darom, ....) ...; Bokser, Origins, ..-.; Tabory, Passover Ritual, ..-.; Safrai and Safrai, Haggadah, ..; Hoffman, ‘Symbol’, ...-..; Kulp, ‘Origins’, ....

.. Spec. .....: ... .. 1........ ........ .......1... ........’ ..... .....1.......

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Bokser’s words, ‘sets the Passover rite apart from regular banquets with the phrase “feasting alone not being permitted”’. ..

Another example comes from a NT passage that to my knowledge has not previously been mentioned in this regard, . Cor ...-.:

.........1 ... ....... ....., ... ..1 .... ......, ..... ...1 ......· ............. .... ..... ........ ...1 ........1..... .... ...... ...... .... ...... ... ........ ...’ .. ....... 1.......1... .......1....

Purge the old leaven that you may be a new lump, as you really are unleavened. For Christ, our Passover lamb, has been sacrificed. Let us, therefore, celebrate the feast, not with the old leaven, the leaven of evildoing and fornication, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth.

Here we see reflected, not only the biblical ceremonies of purging the house of leaven (see Exod .....) and sacrificing the Passover lamb, but also a warning against letting the paschal feast become an occasion for dissipation—the same sort of reaction against Hellenistic banqueting practices that we have noticed in Philo, Josephus, and Gamaliel’s dictum about the afikoman. Rather than being a post-.. CE response to Christianity, then, the afikoman seems to reflect a Jewish understanding pitting the Passover meal against Hellenistic banqueting customs, an approach that existed already in the early first century CE and is attested in an early NT text.

As for Yuval’s argument that m. Pes. .... is a response to Christian interpret­ations of the biblical elements of the Passover meal, we have seen that Philo already offers interpretations of two of the three foods mandated here, interpret­ations very similar to those that later appear in the Haggadah, and ascribes these interpretations to ‘the traditional exegesis’ (.....). Yuval’s theory is rendered further suspect by the way in which he combines different Christian sources from widely varying times, some of them subsequent to the era of Gamaliel (Melito died around ... and Aphrahat wrote between ... and ...), to construct an artificial picture of a Christian understanding to which Gamaliel’s statement is supposed to be a response...



Moreover, the movement Yuval posits from the Christians’‘spiritual’, Christological interpretation of the Passover foods to the more literal interpret­ation of them in Jewish sources makes less sense than seeing the development as going in the opposite direction, from the more literal to the more spiritual. Indeed, the latter is the direction in which we can see Philo himself moving in

.. ..... ...... ..1.... ........., Bell. .....; cf. Bokser, Origins, ..-.. Also skeptical about

Yuval’s discernment of anti-Christian polemic in the afikoman is Leonhard, ‘Pesachhaggada’,

...-.. .. Cf. Leonhard, ‘Pesachhaggada’, ....

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QE ...., where he first cites the traditional, more literal exegesis of the bitter herbs and matzah, then develops his own spiritual exegesis, which is less tethered to the details of the biblical text. For similar reasons, it seems more likely that Ha Lachma’s literalistic ‘this is the poor bread’ statement was transformed into Jesus’ highly metaphorical ‘this is my body’ saying than the other way around. Furthermore, neither Ha Lachma nor Gamaliel’s statement in m. Pes. .... betrays any overt sign of being the sort of anti-Christian polemic that Yuval alleges. Ancient religious ideological warfare was usually not conducted so subtly, and it seems methodologically unsound to posit its existence in passages that betray no overt sign of it...

Yuval’s theory, moreover, ignores the different liturgical contexts of the Passover seder and the Christian eucharist, the former being celebrated annually and the latter weekly. If the rabbis had intended to respond to eucharist, one might have expected this response to be incorporated into the weekly Sabbath meal rather than the annual seder...

A movement in the other direction, from the seder-like Last Supper to the weekly celebration of the eucharist, makes more sense, given the centrality of Jesus’ death in early Christianity.

I do think that Yuval has performed a valuable service by raising the question of the function of Gamaliel’s dictum in m. Pes. ...., but I do not think that the answer he gives is the only one possible, or the most compelling. ‘Whoever does not mention these three things at Passover has not fulfilled his obligation’ might, as Yuval posits, be a way of introducing a new religious duty. But it might also be the repetition of a traditional demand or, more likely than either, a new version of a traditional requirement. In other words, before Gamaliel’s time it may have been recognized that there was an obligation to interpret the special holiday foods on the first night of Passover, but there may have been unclarity about exactly which ones needed to be interpreted, and Gamaliel’s dictum may have been an attempt to end that unclarity. And this sort of new twist on a traditional custom is exactly what we see Gamaliel doing in the famous passage in b. Ber. ..b-..a in which he seeks for a way to reformulate

)oneofthestatutoryEighteenBenedictions,thatagainsttheheretics,toלתקן

(

reflect the changed conditions of his own time...



.. Cf. J. M. G. Barclay, ‘Mirror-Reading a Polemical Letter: Galatians as a Test Case’, JSNT ..

(....) ..-... Similarly, Leonhard, ‘Pesachhaggada’, ..., suggests that we should find specific

signs of polemic, such as an antithetical formulation (‘not X, but Y’, as in the ‘not by the hand

of an angel’ midrash), before attributing a polemical intention to a text. .. I owe this point to the anonymous NTS reviewer, to whom I am also indebted for several other

valuable corrections and suggestions.

,’RevisitedBirkatHa-Minim ‘a,seeJ.Marcus,..b-..b.Ber. in לתק ן

Onthisinterpretationof ..

NTS .. (....) .... This passage is also important for Yuval’s case, since it shows Gamaliel commissioning a liturgical edict against the Christians (and on this interpretation of the target of Birkat Ha-Minim I follow the previously cited article in agreeing with Yuval against

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This sort of interpretation of Gamaliel’s dictum as trying to end an undesirable variety of practices also corresponds to the variation we have noted in earlier sources with respect to the foods that should be the center of attention at Passover. Jubilees mentions the sacrificial lamb and the wine, while Philo refers to and gives traditional interpretations for the matzah and bitter herbs. The Jesus of the Synoptics says words of interpretation over the matzah and the wine, whereas Gamaliel in the Mishnah specifies the Passover lamb, bitter herbs, and matzah, giving a slightly different interpretation of these elements, and in a different order, than appears in the Haggadah. The best interpretation of this variation would seem to be that, prior to Gamaliel’s time, there was a Passover custom of explaining the distinctive holiday foods, but there was vari­ation, as befits a folk ceremony, with regard to which foods needed to be explained and how. It was this variation that spurred Gamaliel to promulgate what he hoped would be an authoritative ruling...



.. Conclusions and Ramifications

..  Since Passover originated as a folk ceremony and probably continued to be so

in later periods, the best starting point for reconstructing its shape in the

Second Temple period is not priestly injunctions or the dicta of later sages

but the cumulative evidence of all sources from the pre-.. period, including

the

NT...



..  As might be expected in dealing with a folk rite, those sources provide evi­

dence for a variety of practices.

..  Common to at least several of those sources, however, is the custom of inter­

preting some of the special Passover foods—though the sources, again as

expected, differ on exactly which foods need to be interpreted and how.

..  In the post-.. period, rabbinic sages such as Gamaliel tried to standardize

these practices.

..  The sages were only partially successful in rabbinizing the seder, as can be

seen, for example, in the correspondence against the Mishnah between the



recent revisionists). But that does not mean that all of Gamaliel’s liturgical reforms had the same purpose. Birkat Ha-Minim is obviously polemical, whereas m. Pes. .... lacks a polemical tone.

.. Whether it would have functioned as authoritative outside of the rabbinic circles to which Gamaliel belonged, however, is a good question that has been raised by recent scholarship on the role of the rabbis in the early post-destruction era; see above, n. ...

.. Cf. the distinction between ‘folk religion’ and ‘book religion’ and between ‘official’ and ‘popular’ religion in M. E. Stone, Ancient Judaism: New Visions and Views (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, ....) ., ..

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Haggadah and the traditional exegesis cited by Philo (see above). Even today, the Haggadah is an amalgam uniting a popular underlay (e.g. Ha Lachma, Dayyenu, Chad Gadya) with a rabbinic overlay (e.g. Gamaliel’s dictum about what foods are to be interpreted, the Bnei Berak stories, the ‘I and not an angel’ midrash).

.. The variety of seder practices in the present is the latest reflection of the crea­tive tension that has always existed within Passover between that which has been handed down (traditum) and the traditioning process that continues to introduce change (traditio), which is partly catalyzed by popular interests and

..



pressure.

.. Recent examples include feminist seders and ‘peace’ seders. There is even a Haggadah for Jews and Buddhists (ed. E. Pearce-Glassheim; Mill Valley, CA: Modern Haggadah Distribution, ....)! For the traditum/traditio distinction, see M. Fishbane, Biblical Interpretation in Ancient Israel (Oxford: Clarendon, ....) .-...

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*****



Easter and Passover As Early Jewish­

Christian Dialogue



ISRAEL J. YUVAL

Introduction

Following the destruction of the Temple in 70 C.E., two com­peting interpretations were formed for Passover, one Jewish and one Christian. To replace the ritual of the defunct paschal sacrifice, each religion adopted the strategy of mandating the telling of a story. Jews adhered to the original meaning of the festival as deriving from the initial redemption from Egypt that served as a sign of a second deliverance still to come. Christians narrated the tale of a second redemption already in place: the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus.' Both stories offered a liturgical alternative to the old sacrificial rite, ad­dressing simultaneously the difficult question of how to cele­brate a festival of redemption in an age of foreign domination and oppression. Both began with degradation (g'nut)-either Egyptian servitude or the crucifixion-and concluded with praise (shevach), holding out hope for the future.

The parallel development of two different narratives of a similar nature, meant for the same festival and introduced by two rival groups who lived alongside one another, ought to be discussed in a comparative manner. This similarity was less ob­vious in Rome and the West, which tended to detach itself from its Jewish origins by fixing Easter on a Sunday. A rival party known as Quartodecimans, however, retained the 14th of Ni­san, the date of the Jewish Passover, as the date for Easter,2 and this custom, originating in Palestine, prevailed in the east­ern communities of Asia Minor and Syria. The western tradi­

98



EARLY JEWISH-CHRISTIAN DIALOGUE

tion thus emphasized the resurrection which had occurred on a Sunday, while eastern tradition emphasized the crucifixion and its calendrical date of 15 Nisan.



At the end of the second century, Pope Victor tried to co­erce the church into universal adherence to the Western Lord's Day custom, by branding the Quartodecimans as heretics. His extreme measures met with opposition even from those circles that celebrated Easter on Sunday,3 but gradually, Roman prac­tice prevailed, and at Nicea, Easter was fixed as the first Sun­day after the first full moon following the spring equinox (March 21).4 The Quartodeciman alternative, now heretical, persisted until the end of the fourth century, but then was for­

gotten. It is common knowledge that the decision at Nicea formal­ized the long-standing attempt to blur the inherent connection of Easter to its Jewish Passover origins. I claim here that a similar process of denial is evident in the early components of the Passover Haggadah, which is not just an attempt to fill the vacuum left by the destruction of the Temple and the cessation of the paschal sacrifice.s The Haggadah is equally a response to the challenge of a rival Christian interpretation of the fes­tival. Several Haggadah components reflect a conscious at­tempt to emphasize the validity of the Jewish interpretation over the Christian alternative.6 We have, therefore, two complementary sides of a single process: on the one hand, an external debate, and on the other, a new definition of self-identity. Ifthe Haggadah itself contains no explicit reference to Christianity, that is because it is a li­turgical text, which tends by its very nature to mark the com­mon consensus of the worShiping community by using "con­sensual value statements" that necessarily limit negations of alternatives to veiled references.'

The Obligation to Tell a Tale

The discussion should begin with the similarities in the Christian and Jewish stories, and the ritual that defines the way they were told.

A. The Haggadah speaks of five Rabbis meeting for a seder at B'nei Brak. All night long, they relate the Exodus story, until at last, their disciples interrupt to remind them that the time for morning prayer has arrived8 The Tosefta carries a similar story about R. Gamaliel and the elders in Lod, and although the skeletal story is the same, the Gamaliel group discusses the laws of paschal sacrifice (not the Exodus story), in recollection of the Temple ritual, and stop only when the cock crows (not when the students arrive).

B. The Haggadah, immediately following, presents an opin­ion of Rabbis Elazar ben Azariah and Ben Zoma, to the effect that the Exodus should be mentioned both day and night. A further citation by the sages indicates that the obligation to mention the Exodus will not be annulled by the coming of the

Messiah. All these segments are innovations of the immediate post­70 Yavneh generation; we have no evidence that the seder dur­ing the Temple period was centered around the telling of the Exodus story or the review of its laws.' A custom similar to A is attested to among Christians, who, however, recounted the story of the passion of Jesus, not the Exodus from Egypt. It is mentioned first in Epistula Apostolo­rum, an apocryphal composition datable to the third quarter of the second century C.E.lO According to the tradition, Jesus appears before his disciples and orders them to celebrate Pass­over by remembering his death. He warns that during the fes­tival, one of them will be jailed for his faith, and will suffer for his inability to celebrate with the others. But Jesus promises to send an angel to save him. The doors of the prison will open, the prisoner will be set free, and will participate in the vigil with the rest of the group. At dawn, with the cock-crow, when the disciples finish remembering Jesus's death, the prisoner will be returned to his cell. Jesus is alluding to Peter's release from jail on Passover (Acts 12)," itself a midrash on the Exodus narrativeP Herod is Pharaoh, the angel is Moses, and Peter is Israel. The angel wakes Peter at night "and a light shone in the prison" -paral-



EARLY JEWISH-CHRISTIAN DIALOGUE

leling the Haggadah's characterization of the Exodus "He has

brought us forth from darkness to bright light." The angel

urges Peter to escape quickly, saying, "Arise quickly .... Gird

yourself, and bind your sandals" -as in Exodus 12:11, "This is

how you shall eat the Passover: with your loins girded, and

your sandals on your feet." The four watches in prison are the

four kingdoms, and the idea that the redemption from Egypt

can be experienced personally recollects the Mishnah (Pes.

10,5: "In every generation one should see oneself as personally

having left Egypt."

Luke does not locate this episode on Passover eve, but it was



so understood in the Epistula Apostolorum, where Jesus' dis­

ciples celebrate Passover by remembering his passion and

death in a feast that lasts all night long, until the cock crows.

When Jesus reveals himself, he tells the group how he saved

Peter from prison, referring to Passover eve as a night of vigil.l3

But his freedom is short-lived; he must return to jail, a sign to

the disciples that they must suffer too, until, as Jesus explains,

he reappears with all who have been killed for believing in

him. The meaning is clear: The parousia, the second coming,

WIll occur only after the measure of suffering of the faithful

is fulfilled.

The similarities between this Christian source and the two rabbinic accounts of keeping Passover eve are striking. The Rabbis too spend "all night" together, either recounting the Exodus story or discussing the laws of the paschal sacrifice. In the latter case, the cock crows to herald a return to routine: Peter returns to jail; the Rabbis return to morning prayer.14 In all three cases, we have sages (disciples or Rabbis) who gather together, not in their own homes, and tell a story of redemp­

tion. The non-family character of the Jewish assembly prob­ably changed during the second century, when it became a family event that no longer lasted all night, a reflection of the seder's crystallization as a ritual emphasizing a father's obli­gation to relate the Exodus tale to his son. The Quartodeci­mans continued to celebrate until dawn, and their celebration retained a non-family character.t'



The B'nei Brak account (A) establishes the new edict to tell the story on Passover night. That is why the Haggadah follows it up with B, the Elazar ben Azariah fragment, which demon­strates the obligation to mention the Exodus at night.16 Now that fragment itself says that it reflects conditions during Elazar ben Azariah's old age, about 120-130 C.E. We should therefore understand it as supporting the B'nai Brak episode-both of which require telling the story, and both of which are canon­ized within the Haggadah-as against the older Gamaliel source which discusses the laws of the sacrifice instead, and which is therefore excluded from the Haggadah, and known to us only from the ToseftaP The Haggadah accounts of B'nai Brak and Elazar ben Azariah provide a foundation narrative substitut­ing the story of the Exodus for the sacrificial ritual.

The further homily in B, "all the days of your life," includes the Messianic epoch too, as an implicit polemic against the messianic Jews who transformed the memory of the Exodus into their new Passover account of the crucifixion of Jesus, bas­ing themselves on Jeremiah 23:7-8 and 31:31-3218-where a new covenant is predicted and the obligation to tell about the Exodus is limited to the pre-eschatological era. Against that view, the Rabbis stress the Obligation to recount the Exodus even in messianic times, just like the other commandments given at Sinai, for they too were considered null and void in the eyes of Christians."

The same motivation explains also the inclusion of the pre­vious paragraph in the Haggadah, beginning, "We were once slaves to Pharaoh ... ," which is justified as follows: "If the Holy One, Blessed be He, had not brought our ancestors out from Egypt, then we, our children and our children's children, would have remained enslaved to Pharaoh in Egypt. Therefore, even if we were all wise, all men of understanding and experi­ence, all fully versed in the Torah, we would still be obliged to tell about the Exodus from Egypt." These words could have been aimed at those who doubted the continued pertinence of the story of the redemption from Egypt. Again, in the back­ground is the alternative Christian story, which proposed a more relevant substitute.



EARLY JEWISH-CHRISTIAN DIALOGUE

Parallels between the Jewish Haggadah and

Christian "Haggadahs"



Both Christianity and Judaism developed parallel "Pass­over eve liturgies" featuring story-telling and commemorating. They both follow the Mishnah's prescription to' "begin with degradation (g'nut) and end with praise (shevach)," so as to offer consolation and hope for future redemption. Scholars have generally assumed the absorption of early Jewish mate­rial into Christian tradition. Since it is accepted that the Jewish version is earlier, the Christian parallels have proved uninter­esting to Jewish scholars.

But the discovery over fifty years ago of two important Christian texts should have changed all that. I refer to two tracts bearing the same name, About Easter (Peri Paschal, one by Melito of Sardis and the other by Origen.20

Melito was a bishop in Sardis, who wrote in the seventies of the second century.2! He describes a visit to Palestine,22 so that his tract may reflect his experience there. In 1960, the greatest of all Haggadah researchers, Daniel Goldschmidt, published a history of the Haggadah without even mentioning Melito.23 Baruch Bokser's 1984 account of the seder's origins refers to Melito, but limits the discussion of Christian origins to four pages, viewing Christian alternatives as mere alternative data and hostile at that. Passover is treated as a purely Jewish mat: ter; the possibility of Christian influence is not even enter­

tained. But the perception of Passover as a time of redemption and sacrifice originates in the Bible that Jews and Christians shared. Similarly, in the case of parallels between rabbinic midrash and early Christian literature, sometimes a later Jewish text represents an earlier tradition that circulated orally and only later became crystallized in the Talmud or Midrash. We, how­ever, should contest a method that gives automatic chronologi­cal precedence to midrashic texts that may be compiled hun­dreds of years later than Christian parallels.24 The Jewish view that sees Judaism as always influencing Christianity, but never the other way around, is theologically grounded, based on the



assumption that Judaism is the mother-religion of Christian­ity. But early Christianity and tannaitic Judaism are two sister religions that took shape during the same period and under the same conditions of oppression and destruction.25 There is no reason not to assume a parallel and mutual development of both religions, during which sometimes Judaism internalized ideas of its rival rather than the other way around. During the second and third centuries there were all kinds of Jews and all kinds of Christians, all struggling against pagan Rome and all sharing the centrality of the messianic idea and the ritual of Passover.

The problematic view that posits Judaism as the source of every Christian ritual or text is exemplified by scholarly opin­ion on the relationship between the Christian Improperia for Good Friday liturgy and the Passover Haggadah poem Day­yenu. The similarities between these two texts are apparent, and are discussed in depth by Eric Werner and Stewart G. Hall," both of whom adopt Goldschmidt's claim that Dayyenu was composed during the last century of the Temple era27 and must therefore be a forerunner to the Christian parallel. But as Hoffman demonstrates, this assumption is unwarranted. Goldschmidt himself admits that tannaitic and amoraic litera­ture never mentions Dayyenu, which appears first in the tenth­century prayer book of Saadiah Gaon, as an optional addi­tion to the Haggadah.28 On the other hand, even though the Improperia itself is Byzantine, its origins (as Eric Werner has shown) go back to Melito of Sardis's composition "About



Easter":

Israel the ungrateful [ ... J

How much did you value the ten plagues?

How much did you value the nightly pillar and the daily cloud,

And the crossing of the Red Sea?



How much did you value the giving of manna from heaven,

and the supply of water from a rock,

and the giving of Torah at Horeb,

and the inheritance of the Land?29

EARLY JEWISH-CHRISTIAN DIALOGUE



Despite its late appearance in Jewish literature, I believe (with Goldschmidt and against Hoffman) that Dayyenu was indeed composed long before the tenth century. But should we assume that a Jewish text of which our earliest knowledge is from the tenth century is the SOurce of a Christian text known to us already eight centuries before? It is more likely that Day­yenu is part of the Jewish-Christian dialogue, and a reaction to the Christian criticism about Jewish ingratitude. Its praise to the God who delivers his people from Egypt, leads them in the desert, and brings them to the Land appears in Psalm 136, but then again in Psalms 78 and 106, as a means to criticize

the ungrateful People of Israel. Melito used the latter, tying it for the first time (as far as we know) to Passover.JO

The eucharist is a clear imitation of the "last" Passover meal of Jesus, meaning, literally, thanksgiving. It therefore parallels the Jewish Halle!, a seder component that goes back to the time of the Temple. As late as the second century, the Jewish seder and the Christian eucharist maintained a common char­acter of the Greek Agape (love) meal, a meal to which widows and orphans were invited, and in which people would eat to­gether in groups and praise God.3! This is the context in which one should understand the dialogue between the Improperia and Dayyenu. The Christian prayer aCCUSes the Jews of ingrati­tude; the Jewish prayer denies it. The end of Dayyenu, "[God]

built us a Temple to atone for all our sins" is a kind of after­thought, indicating that Temple offerings atone, in contrast to the Christian claim that atonement comes through the cruci­fixion of Jesus.'2 The location of Dayyenu in the center of the Haggadah and right before the words of Rabban Gamaliel ad­dressed against the heretics (see below) is evidence of its im­portance as a Jewish response to these accusations.

The general view of Jewish and Christian ritual texts exist­ing in mutual dialogue sheds new light on the Haggadah open­Ing, Ha !achma anya, which begins, "This is the bread of afflic­tion that our forefathers ate in the land of Egypt." These words appear to be aimed against the Christian liturgical parallel drawn from Jesus's words, "This is my body which is given for you; do this in remembrance of me" (Luke 22:19, e.g.). In Mat­thew (26:26) the formula includes also an invitation to. eat: "Take, eat; this is my body," a reminder of the Haggadah mVI­tation with which Ha lachma anya continues, "Let all who are



hungry come and eat." One could claim a reverse connection: that reading Ha lachma anya was an older ritual (from Temple times) that Je­sus adapted to serve his own needs"-a possible scenario, but unlikely. In the first place, it is hard to assume that Ha lachma anya was normally recited even before the crystallization of the Haggadah. In the second place, no tannaitic work mentions it. Once again we face the question of whether to assume that a Jewish text mentioned only in late sources predates and pre­determines a Christian text that we know to be earlier. Even if we ignore the question of which text came first, it is at least hard to imaoine that Jews used Ha lachma anya without having

o .

in mind the very similar liturgical formula that charactenzed Christian ritual. It would seem that a new story requires new meaning for old symbols. The three symbols of Passover, pesach, matsah, and marar (paschal lamb, unleavened bread, and bitter herbs) were awarded different meanings in each of the two relig­ions. Christianity identified the pesach with Jesus, the lamb of God (agnus dei).34 Matsah was the body of the Savior (cO/pus Christi), a remembrance of the bread of the Last Supper;35 and maror became symbolic of the suffering of the Savior (passio domini)" or of the punishment awaiting the People of Israel for what they did to their Messiah.37 In a reversed parallel to this interpretation we find Rabban Gamaliel's instructions (Pes. 10:5) that were incorporated into the Haggadah:

Rabban Gamaliel used to say: Whoever does not explain the fol­lowing three things at Passover has not fulfilled his obligation:

namely,pesac/z, matsah, and rnar01: What is the reason for the pe­sach that our ancestors ate in Temple times? It is because the Holy One, Blessed be He, passed over the houses of our ancestors in

Egypt. Why do we eat matsah? Because there was not time for the dough to become leavened. Why do we eat this marar? Be-



EARLY JEWISH-CHRISTIAN DIALOGUE



cause the Egyptians embittered the lives of our ancestors in

Egypt.



Rabban Gamaliel is demanding a declaration of loyalty to the Jewish interpretations and, therefore, an implicit denial of the Christian alternative.'s He goes so far as to claim that those who fail to do so fail also to discharge their festival duty, obviously because they may be rightfully suspected of heresy. Relevant here is the recollection that it was during the time of Rabban Gamaliel that Birkat Haminim, the "Benediction of the Heretics," was composed as a liturgical formula to exclude Jewish-Christians. Rabban Gamaliel is also considered to have authored a sophisticated parody of the Gospel according to Matthew.39

The assumption that the Haggadah was composed, in part, with an eye to excluding Christian heretics explains also the image of the wicked son in "The Four Sons Narrative." Our Haggadah presents the wicked son as asking, "What does this service mean to you?" By throwing into question the laws and commandments (say our texts), "he excludes himself from the community and denies the foundation of our faith"-a de­scription that suits the Jewish-Christian very well.40 We there­fore see a new meaning to the answer that is assigned to the wise son (or to the foolish son, according to the Yerushalmi). It cites M. Pes. 10, 8, Ein ma!tirin achar hapesach afikoman, "One may not conclude the paschal lamb with afikoman." In order to understand this cryptic remark, we must observe how Melito used the word afikomenos (meaning "coming") in or­der to describe the incarnation and passion of Jesus. "It is he who is coming from heaven to earth" (Houtus afikomenos ex ouranon epi ten gen).41 Melito describes the afikoman of Jesus immediately after his sermon about the Passover being a sym­bol for him, thus completing his symbolic treatment of the pe­sach, matsah, and maror-paralleling the sermon of Rabban Gamaliel. The ruling that "One may not conclude ... with afi­koman" was meant to undermine the Christian interpretation.

This rabbinic struggle to meet the challenge of Christian exegesis includes ~et another meal regulation, first encountered



j

ISRAEL 1. YUVAL



among the amoraim (post-200 C.E.). While in mishnaic times, they ate first and then recited the Haggadah, by the amoraic era, they recited the Haggadah before the meal. David Daube properly locates this change in an attempt to counter the Christian interpretation of the festival symbolism42

A second amoraic issue that concerns us here is the talmu­

dic debate on the meaning of the Mishnah's instructions to

"begin with degradation and conclude with praise" (matchil

big'nut um'sayem b'shevach). In the opinion of Rav' (d. 249),

"degradation to praise" means, "In the beginning our fathers

were worshipers of idols, but now the Ever-present One has

brought us to his service" -that is to say, Israel is the chosen

people. Immediately following are Joshua 24:2-4, on choosing



Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. "Your forefathers lived beyond the Euphrates.... To Isaac I gave Jacob and Esau. To Esau, I be­queathed the hill country of Seir, while Jacob and his children went down to Egypt." The quotation ends here, even though the biblical text continues with the Exodus: "Then I sent Moses and Aaron, and I plagued Egypt. ... " Stopping the quotation after the verse about the separation between Jacob and Esau may also have constituted a rejection of the Christian denial of the continued chosen ness of Israel.43

The Midrash

The tendency to neutralize an alternative Christian inter­pretation is expressed especially in the midrash, the heart of the tannaitic Haggadah. The Mishnah (Pes. 10:4) imposes the duty to expound Deuteronomy 26:5-8 (Arami oved avi ... ): "My father was a wandering Aramean," but interpreted to mean, "The Aramean sought to destroy my father." The Hag­gadah came at some time to include a midrashic elaboration of those verses, juxtaposing the concise account from Deutero­nomy with the longer version from the book of Exodus. We should ask why the Mishnah mandates the shorter Deutero­

nomic version to begin with. Goldschmidt offered a literary solution: "The verses that discuss the miracle [in Exodus] are scattered, so the authors of



EARLY JEWISH-CHRISTIAN DIALOGUE

the Mishnah chose Arami oved avi [from Deuteronomy]." Moreover, "It was already part of the ritual recitation of the First Fruits, so was well known to the people, and its language was easy and simple."44 But why would verses recited once an­nually at most, and only during Temple times, be better known than other verses of Torah? We should assume' memory was facilitated not by the verses themselves but the homilies at­tached to them. The mishnaic demand to recite the passage thus remains unexplained.

We might imagine its preference of the short version of Deuteronomy as a mere accident or literary preference, were it not for the fact that Melito was already preaching on Exodus

12.45 The paschal sacrifice becomes a typological model for Jesus and the redemption merited through his blood.46 Origen too (third century) focuses on Exodus 12.47 The Rabbis there­fore avoided Exodus in their own celebration.

Deuteronomy, moreover, omits two controversial motifs in Exodus: the festival sacrifice, and Moses' name. Moses is absent thronghout the Haggadah:s and the midrash emphasizes:

A. "God brought us out of Egypt with a mighty hand, with an

outstretched arm, with great fearfulness, and with signs and won­

ders" (Deut. 26:8).... "Not through an angel, seraph or messen­ger,49 but the Holy One, blessed be He, He alone, in His glory, as it is said: "I will pass through the land of Egypt in that night, and I will slay every first-born in the land of Egypt, from man to beast, and I will execute judgment against all the gods of Egypt, I, the Lord" (Exod. 12:12).

B. "I will pass through the land of Egypt"-I, and no angel, "I will slay every first-born"-I, and no seraph; ''And I will execute judgment against all the gods of Egypt," -I, and no messenger:





"I, the Lord"-I and no other.



In comparison with the other exegeses in the Haggadah midrash, this one is unique. The others rest content with citing the parallel from Exodus. Here, however, that parallel (A) at­tracts its own homily (B) to drum home the point that redemp­tion is in God's hands only. The expounder need not entirely give up the detailed account from Exodus. But by including it as a gloss on Deuteronomy, where Moses is not mentioned, he can tell the story without mentioning the "messenger," thereby refuting the view that Moses is an archetype of Jesus.

As we might expect, the ideological point recurs in the final lines, which expound the verse, "God brought us out of Egypt with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm, with great fear­fulness, and with signs and wonders." The final homily is: '''With wonders'-that is the blood, as it is said: 'I will show wonders in heaven and on earth, blood and fire and pillars of smoke'" (Joel 3:3). The citation from Joel is striking, since its context is eschatological: "In those days I will pour out My spirit. ... I will set portents in the sky and on earth, blood and fire and pillars of smoke; the sun shall turn into darkness and the moon into blood, before the arrival of the great and ter­rible day of the Lord" (Joel 3:2-3).

Elsewhere in this volume, I deal with "The Great Sabbath" (Shabbat Hagadol)50 Suffice it to say here that in regard to Passover, the name conjures up hints of the messianic-an ex­pectation, therefore, of Joel's "great and terrible day of the Lord." The same verse is expounded in Acts 2 regarding the occurrence during Pentecost, seven weeks after the crucifixion, when the apostles were treated to a sort of a private revelation at Sinai.51

Peter's claim is that Joel's "signs and wonders" have mate­rialized in Jesus. Proclaiming Jesus the Messiah (the kerygma) recalls Deuteronomy 4:34: "Has any god ventured to go and get for himself one nation from the midst of another, by pro­digious acts, by signs and portents, by war, by a mighty hand and an outstretched arm and awesome power, as Adonai your God did for you in Egypt before your very eyes?"

The same two verses from Joel and Deuteronomy that served

Peter are incorporated in the Haggadah midrash. The midrash

ends with Joel, but Deuteronomy 4:34 appears earlier: " 'With

great fearfulness' -this refers to the revelation of the Divine

Presence, as it is said: 'Has any god ventured to go and get for

himself one nation from the midst of another. ... ,,, We should

assume that Jewish and Christian homilists used similar ma­

terials to debate the meaning of "signs and portents."" For

EARLY JEWISH-CHRISTIAN DIALOGUE

Christians, the "great fearfulness" of Deuteronomy is echoed in the Pentecost experience of Acts when "fear came upon every soul." For the Jew, however, the signs and wonders are unique to Egypt. The Exodus is not a model for a messiah that has already come, but for one who is yet to arrive.

With this in mind, we can return to another exegesis in our

Passover midrash: "'He saw our ill treatment': that is, the ces­sation of sexual relations, as it is said: 'God looked upon the children of Israel and God knew.''' Daube suggests that the homily depends on using "and God knew" in the biblical sense of "knowing as intercourse," the point being that the Israelites practiced abstinence, but managed to have offspring miracu­lously.53 He refers to an early (pre-Christian) Jewish tradition about a supernatural pregnancy, that for some obscure reason remained in the Haggadah. I think the homily counteracts the Christian claim of Jesus's miraculous birth. For Jews, such a birth did occur, but only in Egypt, again as an archetype of redemption yet to come.54

Hence the enigmatic opening of the midrash:

Go and learn what Laban the Aramean planned to do to our fa­

ther Jacob; for Pharaoh decreed only that the male (children) should be put to death, but Laban had planned to uproot all, as it is said: Arami Dved avi vayered mitsra'ima . .. , "compelled by Di­





vine decree."



The most straightforward interpretation of this verse is that it deals with Jacob the Aramean, who was exiled (oved = "lost") from his home. So the verse was understood in the Septuagint and Sifre,55 and probably by Melito toO.56 Melito describes Jesus as taking his believers from slavery to freedom, from darkness to light, from death to life, and from bondage to the kingdom-come. Jesus suffered greatly: he was the slain Abel, the bound Isaac, the exiled Jacob, Joseph who was sold, Moses who was put into the basket, the slaughtered paschal sacrifice, and the persecuted David. Stewart Hall and Shlomo Pines no­ticed the parallel between the beginning of Melito's sermon and what the Haggadah says of God: "He brought us forth from slavery to freedom, from sorrow to joy, from mourning to

festivity, from darkness to bright light, and from bondage to redemption."" It is therefore quite possible that what we have here is part of a Christian-Jewish Haggadah from Palestine.58

At any rate Melito explicitly adds "the exiled Jacob" to the chain of the typologies of the suffering Jesus, possibly building on John 4:12, where the Samaritan woman asked Jesus: "Are you greater than our father Jacob?,,59 He understands the "Aramean" passage as referring to himself, whereas the Hag­gadah alters the meaning until it no longer refers to "a wan­dering" ancestor at all.

The Targum tradition too changes the verse to say, "Laban the Aramean tried to destroy my father." But how do we know that Laban wanted to kill Jacob, especially since in Genesis 31:24, an angel warns him, "Beware of attempting anything with Jacob, good or bad," and there is no mention of any in­tention to kill him. Second, how does the expounder know that Jacob went down to Egypt "compelled by Divine decree"? De­cree (hadibbur) here is logos, meaning an angel, but where do we find an angel commanding him to go to Egypt? Third, how can we fathom the heart of the Haggadah opining that Laban's intention to kill Jacob was worse than Pharaoh's murder of the Israelite children?

This framing of Laban as the antagonist in the Haggadah



caused Louis Finkelstein to date the Haggadah to the last part

of the third century B.C.E. as a pro-Egyptian (Ptolemaic) and

anti-Syrian (Seleucid) polemic.60 Finkelstein also noted the

similarity between "Aramean" (Arami) and "Roman" (Rami),61

so that, as Hoffman claims,62 the midrash may be a gloss on

life under Rome. Laban personifies Rome, whose bondage was

worse than that of Egypt. Jacob symbolizes Israel the people;

as his exile in Egypt was temporary-he did not go there to

settle-so Israel's new exile will not last.

The typological account of the midrash is based on the



skeletal narrative frame whereby an evil man (Laban) wants

to kill a good man (Jacob); an angel orders the good man to

go down to Egypt for a limited time. By substituting Herod

the Edomite for Laban the Aramean, and Jesus for Jacob, we

get the following: "The angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph



EARLY JEWISH-CHRISTIAN DIALOGUE

in a dream, saying, 'Arise, and take the young child and his mother, and flee into Egypt, and remain there until I bring you word; for Herod will seek the young child to destroy him.' When he arose, he took the young child and his mother by night, and left for Egypt" (Matt. 2:13-14).

Both stories are built according to the same scheme. For the Evangelist, (1) Herod (2) sought to destroy (3) Jesus. But (4) at the command of an angel, (5) he went down to Egypt tem­porarily. For the Haggadah, (1) Laban (2) sought to destroy (3) Jacob. But (4) when forced by divine decree, (5) he went down

to Egypt temporarily. The narrative tapas that served the Gospel-the birth of

the Christian savior, the danger that threatened him, his going to Egypt and being saved-thus served the Jewish expounder as well with regard to Jacob.63 But the Gospel came first, so

that we observe another instance of the prior Christian re­demption story being directed in a Jewish way.

Conclusion



The Haggadah represents the Jewish dialogue with the Christian interpretation of Passover. That dialogue revolves about a shared hope of redemption, but is polemical in nature, because it includes common material used differently by each group to define itself by negating the other. Melito adopts the harshest tone, a strong rejection of Judaism. Jews react with greater restraint, but respond to objections raised against them by Christian homilies. The reading of the Haggadah becomes a pledge of allegiance to the Jewish religion. It differentiates friend from foe, implicitly rejecting Christianity's historical, eschatological, and theological interpretations.64 Its rejection is religious, therefore, not political; the political enemy is still Rome, from whose oppression the Rabbis yearn to be freed.

This interpretation of the Haggadah and the seder support the following reconstruction.

During the time of the Temple the celebration of Passover included two main components: the sacrificial meal and the Halle!. For two generations after the Temple's destruction, instead of the defunct sacrifice, people generally ate a roasted kid (a custom, perhaps, in distant communities before the De­struction as well) and studied the laws of the sacrifice that they could nO longer perform. This is the tradition described in the Tosefta's account of scholars gathering to study the laws of Passover all night long. At this stage, the Christian midrash on Exodus 12 and the paschal sacrifice emerged. In response, the Jewish Haggadah distanced itself from sacrifice and empha­sized instead the duty to tell the story of the Exodus, as de­

scribed in the Mishnah (M. Pes. 10). This stage was crystallized by the beginning of the second century C.E.

A family celebration thus developed, revolving about edu­cating children and observing the commandment, "You shall tell your son"-parallel, in Christianity, to the baptizing of new believers. The dispute between the Jewish interpretation of the festival and the Christian one is already evident: one tells the tale of Passover in Egypt, the other, the Passover in

Jerusalem. By taking into account Christian interpretations, the Hag­gadah forced the issue of the Quartodeciman alternative, so that the Christian celebration shifted from Nisan 14 (with an emphasis on crucifixion and sacrifice) to Easter Sunday and an emphasis on resurrection-redemption. A similar process oc­curred in tannaitic Judaism, as the seder changed from being a celebration emphasizing sacrifice (Rabban Gamaliel) to a celebration of the Exodus event and the redemption it sym­

bolized. This reconstruction assumes that the Haggadah's liturgi­cal origin did not evolve as a rabbinical and Jewish tradition alone, but as a dialogue with a rival liturgy. If those who think that Mark's Gospel was written right after the Destruction as a "Christian-Jewish Haggadah for Passover" are right,65 then we should perceive even the Gospel as liturgical, not just theo­logical-historical-like the Torah which served as a public reading." If so, it may be that already in the generation fol­lowing the Destruction, Christian-Jews "told" their story of re­demption by reading the Gospel. The Passover Haggadah is

EARLY JEWISH-CHRISTIAN DIALOGUE

thus a Jewish "counter-Gospel" -one story opposite another,

one Haggadah opposite another.

That may account for the similarity between the midrash on Deuteronomy 26 and the Christian story: the midrash of­fers an alternative to the birth of Jesus ("Laban wanted to de­stroy everything"), followed by a description of the suffering of Israel in Egypt (opposite the suffering of Jesus on the cross) through a description of the redemption in Egypt (but "not by an angel," that is, by a savior), and concludes with Joel 3:3 hint­ing at the Pentecost ("I will pour out my spirit") that recurs at the end of the "life" of Jesus.

Our survey has linked many of the central rubrics of the Passover Haggadah to an anti-Christian polemic, suggesting that we ought to reevaluate the intense and difficult struggle waged by the great religious reformers, Christian and Jewish, during the generations after the destruction of the Temple. Accordingly, rabbinic literature should be read not only as a source for Christian ideas and rituals, but also as a reaction to them, because in its deepest meaning, the Oral Law should be seen as the Jewish response to the Christian New Testament.67

Appendix: This Research in Context

The interpretive assumptions on which this article is based were pioneered by David Daube, and even earlier by Robert Eisler, who claimed already in 1925 and 192668 that the afiko­man parallels the host of the Christian ritual. Though a New Testament scholar, Eisler knew little about Judaism, so that his article contains grave errors.69 However, these are not enough to refute his main argument, which breaks new ground in ex­posing the parallel development of Passover and Easter.

Eisler's approach provoked Jewish and Christian detractors. Immediately following the publication of the first part of his article, Hans H. Lietzmann (the editor of the journal in which it appeared) asked him to retract his second installment. Eisler refused, going so far as to hire an attorney and threaten a law suit should Lietzmann renege on his prior commitment.





Lietzmann was forbidden even to append an editorial note saying that the article was being published under legal duress. So Lietzmann opened the contents of volume 25 (1926) both with his own article criticizing Eisler and with a strong rebut­tal by Marmorstein.70 Eisler demanded the right to respond in volume 26, but Lietzmann refused. Eisler offered to publish Lietzmann's own response in a journal outside Germany, if Lietzmann would at least include Eisler's remarks in the "Let­ters from Abroad" section, but Lietzmann was adamant. Eisler remained isolated, attacked on all sides and unable to respond to his critics.

Forty years later (1966), Daube gave a lecture about the afikoman in St. Paul's Cathedral in London." In it, he vali­dated in principle Eisler's interpretation, correcting Eisler's errors and adding his own innovations. Daube related the bit­ter fate of Eisler, and expressed doubts about whether it was the right time to return to comparisons between Christianity and Judaism. As an example of his fears, he cited the fact that Goldschmidt's recent edition of the Passover Haggadah never mentions the New Testament, even though it contains much evidence of the antiquity of Passover customs. It appears that Daube doubted the wisdom of reopening the debate, since he avoided wide pUblicity for his lecture, and pUblished it in an offprint that circulated only by personal request to the secre­tariat of the committee for Christian-Jewish understanding in London. Contrary to Eisler, Daube was not silenced, but his interpretation remained on the margins of Haggadah research and has yet to receive appropriate academic attention."

NOTES

This essay was written after a 1995 stay in the Center for Jew­



ish Studies, University of Pennsylvania, and was published in ex­

panded form in Hebrew (Tarbiz 65, no. 1 [October/November 1995]: 5-28).

1. Joachim Jeremias, The Eucharistic Words ofJesus (New York, 1955), p. 2.



EARLY JEWISH-CHRISTIAN DIALOGUE

2. On the date of Easter, see B. Lohse, Das Passafest der Quar­tadecimaner (Giitersloh, 1953); W. Huber, Passa und Ostern: Unter­suchungen zur Osterfeier der alten Kirche (Berlin, 1969); T. J. Talley, The Origins of the Liturgical Year (New York, 1986), pp. 1-37; S. G. Hall, "The Origins of Easter," Studio Patristica 15 (1984): 554-67.

3. J. A. Fischer, "Die Synoden im Osterfeststreit des 2. Jahrhun­derts," Annuarium Historiae Conciliorum 8 (1976): 15-39; T. c. G.

Thornton, "Problematical Passovers: Difficulties for Diaspora Jews and Early Christians in Determining Passover Dates during the First

Three Centuries A.D.," Studia Patristica 20 (1989): 402-8.

4. L. Duchesne, "La question de la Poque au Conci! de Nicee," Revue des questions historiques 28 (1880): 5-42. On the content of the

Easter celebration among the Quartodecimani on the eve of Nicea

see G. A. M. Rouwhorst, Les hymnes Pascales d'Ephrem de Nisibe: vol. 1 (Leiden, 1989), pp. 128-205.

5. Cf. Baruch Bokser, The Origins ofthe Seder (New York, 1984),

and idem, "Ritualizing the Seder," Journal ofthe American Academy

of Religion 56 (1988): 443-71.

6. Cf. T. Herford, Christianity in Talmud and Midrash (London, 1903); L. H. Schiffman, ''At the Crossroads: Tannaitic Perspectives On the Jewish-Christian Schism," in E. P. Sanders, A. I. Baumgarten, and A. Mendelssohn, eds.,Jewish and Christian Self-Definition, vol. 2 (Philadelphia, 1981), pp. 115-56; R. Kimelman, "Birkat Ha-Minim and the Lack of Evidence for an Anti-Christian Jewish Prayer in Late Antiquity," ibid., pp. 224-26; M. Hirshman, A Rivalry ofGenius:

Jewish and Christian Intelpretation in Late Antiquity (New York:

1996). The Rabbis knew Christian literature. See J. Schwartz, "Ben

Stada and Peter in Lydda," Journal for the Study ofJudaism 21 (1990):

1-18; and R L. Visotzky, "Trinitarian Testimonies," in Fathers of the

World: Essays in Rabbinic and Patristic Literatures (Tlibingen, 1995).



7. On consensual value statements in liturgy, see Lawrence A.



Hoffman, "Liturgical Basis for Jewish Policy," in Daniel R Polish and Eugene J. Fisher, eds., Liturgical Foundations of Social Policy in the Catholic and Jewish Traditions (Notre Dame, 1983), pp. 151-68.

8.

Cf. M. Hershkowitz's claim that the gathering was part of the fight against Christian heretics: "Hakenes Shebiv'nei Brak," Or Hamizrach 26 (1978): 71-91; "Hatanna'im Shelachamu Neged Ha­natsrut," Ibid., 26 (1978): 229-46; 28 (1980): 62-78, 193-205, 332-49; 29 (1981): 404-14; 30 (1982): 75-89.



9.

Research often assumes that the Haggadah predated the Tem­







ple's destruction. Finkelstein even placed it prior to the Hasmoneans

(cf. his "The Oldest Midrash: Pre-Rabbinic Ideals and Teachings in the Passover Haggadah," HTR 31 [1938]: 291-317; idem, "Pre-Mac­cabean Documents in the Passover Haggadah," ibid., 35 [1942]: 291­332; 36 [1943]: 1-38). His theory is rejected by Goldschmidt (Hag­gadah shel Pesach V'toldoteha [Jerusalem, 1960], pp. 31-39), who held,

however, that early parts of the Haggadah were composed during

Temple times. He follows (p. 55, n. 77d) G. Alon, for whom, even though there is no "clear evidence" that the Haggadah was used that

early, it is "reasonable to assume that it existed." See G. Alan, Toldot

Hay'hudim Be'eretz Yisrael Bit'kufat Hamishnah V'hatalmud, vol. 1 (Tel Aviv, 1967), pp. 164-66. E. Urbach assumes that Philo's direc­

tions "to maintain in prayers and songs the custom of the ancestors"

refer to Deuteronomy 26 (on which the Haggadah Midrash of the Haggadah is based). Without textual support, he believed that "the

ancient custom was to read that story when bringing the Passover

sacrifice." See his critique of Goldschmidt, Kiryat Sefer 36 (1961): 144-45. See also Joseph Tabory, ''AI Nusach Hahaggadah Bizman Habayit," Sinai 82 (1978): 97-108; idem, "Hachagigah Hakerevah im Hapesach: Mitus 0 Metsi'ut?" Tarbiz 64 (1995): 49. Tabori assumes that the obligation to recite the Exodus account existed already in Temple times. However, the Haggadah itself shows no evidence of

composition prior to the Destruction, and no source predating the Destruction testifies to the custom to recite the Exodus story. The

only known Passover liturgy from the time of the Temple is the HaI­le! (M. Pes. 5, 7; Matt. 26:30; Mark 14:26). The Hillelites are said to have added Psalm 114 ("When Israel left Egypt ... ") to the Hallel so as to mention the Exodus at night (T. Pes. 10:9), an event that may have led, after 70, to the obligation to tell the story of the Exodus. In cordial conversations (1995), Dr. Shlomo Cohen raised three ar­guments that strengthen the claim that reciting the Haggadah was not customary during the time of the Temple. (1) M. Pes. 9:3 mentions

only the eating of the sacrifice and the recitation of Hallel, never mentioning the recitation of the Exodus account as an obligation.

(2) T. Pes. 10 discusses only the Hallel; the custom of R. Gamaliel and



the elders to discuss the laws of the Passover sacrifice is mentioned

in 12-13, but here too there is no hint of the obligation to tell the story. (3) Pes. 85a discusses the Passover offering prior to 70 but also

omits any reference to a recitation of the Exodus.

10. Epistula Apostolorum, 15. See J. K. Elliot, The Apocryphal New Testament (Oxford, 1993), p. 565.

11. W. Strobel, "Passa-Symbolik und Passa-Wunder in Acts 12:3





EARLY JEWISH-CHRISTIAN DIALOGUE

ff.," New Testament Studies 4 (1957): 210-15. Schwartz ("Ben Stada and Peter") sees the talmudic story about Ben Stada who was killed in Lydda on Passover eve (San. 67a) as a Jewish version of this story.

12.

W. Rordorf, "Zum Ursprung des Osterfestes am Sonntag," Theologische Zeitschrift 18 (1962): 183 f., but see Huber's objections (Passa und astern, pp. 45-46), and J. Manek, "The New Exodus in the Books of Luke," Novum Testamentum 2 (1958): 8-23. Exod. Rab.15:11 has a similar homily about Nisan as the month of redemption.



13.

See Targum Yerushalmi to Exod.12:42, and Le Deaut, Lo mdt





pascale: Essai Sur la signification de fa Ptique a partir du Targum

d'Exode 12:42 (Rome, 1963).

14. On the cock-crow in early Christianity, see "Gallicinium" Dictionflaire d'archeofogie chretienne et de liturgie, vol. 6 (Paris, 1924),

pp.593-96.

. 15. Lohse, Passafest, p. 94; Huber, Passa und astern, p. 9. Accord­mg to M. Pes. 10:9, the sacrifice ended by midnight.

16.

R. Elazar's dictum is cited in M. Ber. 10, but without connection to the Haggadah (see S. Lieberman, Tosefta Kifshutah to Ber., p. 12).



17.

In M. Betzah 2:7, Gamaliel (against the sages) also orders the preparation of a roasted kid (see Bokser, Origins of the SedC/; pp. 101-6), agam retammg the lInk between seder and paschal sacrifice.



18.

See "Twelfth proof of Aphrahat [a fourth-century bishop whose composition resembles the Haggadah]"; Eng. trans., J. Neusner:





Aphrahat and judaism: The Christian-Jewish Argument in Fourth­

Century Iran (Leiden, 1971), pp. 31-40.



19. S. T. Lachs, ''A Polemic Element in Mishna Berakot," JQR 56

(1965): 81-84. Cf. S. H. Levey, "Ben Zoma, the Sages, and Passover,"

Journal of Reform Judaism 28 (1981): 33-40.



20. Cf. S. G. Hall, ed., Melito of Sardis: On Pascha and Fragments



(Oxford, 1979); and R. J. Dally, trans. and ed., [Origen's] Treatise on

the Passover (New York, 1992).



21.

Hall, Melito, p. xii.



22.

Ibid., p. 76.





23.

Parallel Christian literature also goes unmentioned in Gold­schmidt's Haggadah of 1960; cf. Urbach, Kiryat Sefer 36 (1961): 143­50; J. Heinemann, Tarbiz 30 (1961): 405-10.





24. Cf. Visotzky,Fathers ofthe World, pp. 5-10, 62,113. For Chris­tian influence on midrash, see P. R. Davies, "Passover and the Dating

of the Aqedah," JJS 30 (1979): 59-67.

. 25. See A. E Segal, Rebecca's Children: Judaism and Christianity

In the Roman World (Cambridge, Mass., 1986).



26.

Cf. Eric Werner, "Melito of Sardis, the First Poet of Deicide," HUCA 37 (1966): 191-210; idem, "Zur Textgeschichte der Imprope­ria," in M. Ruhnke, ed., Festschrift Bruno Stablein zum 70. Geburtstag (Kassel, 1967), pp. 274-86; idem, The Sacred Bridge, vol. 2 (New York, 1984), pp. 127-48; S. G. Hall, "Melito in the Light of the Passover Haggadah," Journal of Theological Studies 22 (1971): 29-46.



27.

Goldschmidt, Haggadah, p. 50. Finkelstein too ("Pre-Macca­bean Documents [1943]," p. 73) dates Dayyenu all the way back to the





third century B.C.E., but his speculations are groundless.

28.

Goldschmidt, Haggadah, p. 48; Hoffman, Beyond the Text: A Holistic Approach to Liturgy (Bloomington, 1987), pp. 95-196, n. 46.



29.

Melito, paras. 87-88 and 84-86.





30.

J. H. Charlesworth, ed., The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha (New York, 1983), p. 525. Cf. 5 Ezra for anti-Jewish song (Werner, "Melito," pp. 208-9) that is Christian (D. Flusser, "Some Notes on Easter and the Passover Haggadah;' Immanuel 7 [1977]: 52-60). Ac­tus Pilati too contains such accusations (Werner, "Melito," p. 195).





Christian accusation may be a response to the Hallel, condemning Jews, who praise God for the first redemption, for their actions dur­

ing the second redemption. It is likely that the Christian critique which turns the Hallel on its head preceded the Jewish response of Dayyenu. Aphrahat provides an additional poem that parallels Day­

yenu. See ROllwhorst, Hymnes Pascales, vol. 2, p. 711.

31. On the seder and the Agape, see A. Sulzbach, "Die drei Worte des Seder-Abends," Jeschurun 4 (1917): 216-19. Cf. Acts 2:42-47; Luke 6:39-44; 1 Cor. 11:17-34. Agape celebrations ended during the

fourth century.

32.

Suggested to me by Dr. Shlomo Cohen. Indeed this is how Aphrahat's Twelve Arguments ends.



33.

A resemblance between Ha lachma anya and "This is my body"







was already recognized by the Renaissance man, Joseph Scaliger,

who thought Jesus had drawn on the Haggadah. See A. Grafton, Joseph Sca/iger: A Study in the History of Classical Scholarship (Ox­ford, 1993), p. 316. Hoffman has published an important analysis of

Ha Lachma, which he dates after the Destruction, in accordance with the matsah becoming the substitute for the Passover sacrifice.

Hoffman also describes the parallelism with the status of the bread in the Last Supper. See Lawrence A. Hoffman, "A Symbol of Salva­tion in the Passover Haggadah," Worship 53 (1979): 519-37, reprinted in volume 6 of this series as "A Symbol of Salvation in the Passover



Seder."

EARLY JEWISH-CHRISTIAN DIALOGUE

34.

John 1:29: "Behold the Lamb of God, which takes away the sin of the world"; 1 Cor. 5:7: "Clean out the old leaven, that you may be a new batch, as you really are unleavened. For our Paschal lamb, Christ, has been sacrificed." See also Lohse, Das Passafest, pp.52-55.



35.

Matt. 26:26; Mark 14:22; Luke 22:19; see Huber, Passa lind Ostern, pp.135-37.



36.

Aphrahat, in Rouwhorst, Hymnes Pascales, vol. 2, p. 116, and discussion by Rouwhorst, vol. 1, p. 146.



37.

Melito's homily on Exod. 12 (Peri Paschal, para. 46: "What is





the pascha? It gets its name from its typifying characteristic: from

'suffer' (pathein, in Greek) comes 'suffering' (paschein)." On this

mistaken etymology in Christian literature, see Hall, Melito, note to afar. In para. 93, Melito explains maror as punishment to Jews for crucifying Jesus.

38.

See Sulzbach, "drei Worte," and thereafter, S. Y Fisher, "Shelo­shah Devarim," Hatsofeh Lechokhmat Yisra'el 10 (1926): 238-40. Goldschmidt concurs (Haggadah, p. 52).



39.

Birkat Haminim ("The benediction of heretics") Ber.28b. The parody: Shabo 116a/b. See B. L. Visotzky, "Overturning the Lamp," JJS 38 (1987): 72-80 (reprinted in Fathers ofthe World, pp.75-84).



40.

Suggested by Finkelstein ("Pre-Maccabean Documents [1943]," p. 12). D. Daube (The New Testament and Rabbinic Judaism [London, 1956], pp. 158-69) noted the parallelism between the "Four Sons" of the Haggadah and Matthew 22, but assumed Matthew was influenced by the Haggadah, whereas one should consider that it was





the other way around.

41.

Melito, para. 66. See Werner ("Melito," pp. 205-6), and Daube, He that Cometh (London, 1966), pp. 1-20.



42.

Daube, New Testament, pp. 194-95.



43.

Aphrahat's Passover homily opens by denying Israel is still the Chosen People.



44.

Haggadah, p. 30. D. Halivni agrees: see "Answers to Questions about The Four Questions," in Ezra Fleischer and Jakob J. Petuchow­ski, eds., Mechkarim Be'aggadah, Targllm, Utefillot Yisrael: ill Memory of Joseph Heinemann (Jerusalem, 1981), p. 67. But see S. T. Lachs, "Two Related Arameans: A Difficult Reading in the Haggadah;' Journal for the Study ofJudaism 17 (1980): 65-69.



45.

Melito, paras. 1-2.





46. His words, "Understand, therefore, beloved, how it is new and old, eternal and temporary." Cf. Passover poem by Yannai, "That which was in the beginning will also be at the end." (Z. M.





Rabinowitz, Piyyutei Rabbi Yannai Latorah Ul'mo'adim, vol. 1 [Tel Aviv, 1985], p. 300).

47. Origen, Treatise on the Passover (ed. Dally). On Easter homi­



lies, see also Huber, Passa und Ostern, pp. 139-47, and ROllwhorst,

Hymnes Pascales, p. 111.

48. On Moses' absence, cf. Jakob J. Petuchowski, "Do This in Re­

membrance of Me," JBL 76 (1957): 295-96; Daube, He that Cometh,



p. 12; A. Shinan, "Madu'a 10 Nizkar Moshe Rabbenu Bahaggadah

shel Pesach," Amudim 39 (1991): 172-74.



49. Saadiah adds, "and not by the word (davar)"-that is, Logos, contradicting John 1:1. Similarly, Avot d'Rabbi Nalan 1 (Shechter, p. 2): "Moses received the Torah from Sinai. Not from an angel or a seraph but from the King of all kings, the Holy One Blessed Be He."

F. E. Meyer ("Die Pessach-Haggada und der Kirchenvater Justinus Martyr," in 1'. v. d. Osten-Sacken, ed., Treue zur Tara. Festschrift far Ganter Harder zum 75. Geburtstag [Berlin, 1977], pp. 84-87) thought "I and no angel" was aimed at Justin Martyr (Dialogue with Trypho, para. 75), who sought a reference to Jesus in Exodus 23:20: "I send an angel before you." See also J. Goldin, "'Not by Means of an Angel and Not by Means of a Messenger''', in B. L. Eichler and J. H. Tigay, eds., Studies in Midrash and Related Literature (Philadelphia, 1988), pp.163-73, and Hoffman, Beyond the Text (Bloomington, 1987), p. 92.

50. See the discussion in part 2 of this volume, "Passover in the



Middle Ages," pp. 128-42.

51. Cf. Acts 4:30; 5:12; 6:8. On Pentecost and Shavuot, see H. Con­zelmann, Acts of die Apostles: A Commentary on the Acts ofthe Apos­tles (Philadelphia, 1987), p. 16.

52. See Visotzky, "Trinitarian Testimonies," in Fathers of the



World, pp. 61-74. The Rabbis were familiar with Acts (see Schwartz, "Ben Stada and Peter"). The parable from Sifre to Deut. 3:12 (Fin­kelstein, ed., p. 353) which likens the chosenness of Israel to "a king

who had a field and gave it to tenant farmers") seems to be a re­

sponse to Matthew 21:33-46 ("There was a certain householder who planted a vineyard ... and leased it ... "). Cf. Eugene Mihaly, "A Rabbinic Defense of the Election of Israel," HUCA 35 (1964): 103­35; D. M. Derett, "Allegory and the Wicked Vinedressers," in Studies in the New Testament, vol. 2 (Leiden, 1978), pp. 426-32; David Flusser, Yahadut Um'korot Hanatsrut (Tel Aviv, 1979), pp. 180-83.

53. Daube, He that Cometh, pp. 5-9. But rejected by Urbach (Kiryat Sefer 36 [1961], n.16) as "absurd."

EARLY JEWISH-CHRISTIAN DIALOGUE

54.

See Midrash Hagadol to Exod. (pp. 22-23) for exegesis liken­ing the mothers of Moses and Jesus. Cf. 1'. T. Ber. 2:4 for further par­allels to the story of Jesus' birth.



55.

See Tabori, "AI Nusach Hahaggadah," pp. 104-6.



56.

Melito, paras. 49, 68.



57.

Cf. Hall, "Melito," pp. 31-32; S. Pines, "Me'afelah Vor Gadol"; Eng. version in Immanuel 4 (1974): 47-51; Werner, "Melito."



58.

The structure of Melito's sermon is congruent with the Hag­gadah as a whole. It opens with a "Midrash," clarifies the symbolic





meaning of the symbols (pesach, matsah, maror), and ends with an "anti-Hallel," attacking Israel's ingratitude.

59.

See J. H. Neyrey, "Jacob Tradition and the Interpretation of John 4:10-26," Catholic Biblical Quarterly 41 (1979): 419-37.



60.

Finkelstein, "The Oldest Midrash," pp. 300-301 and n. 20.



61.

Cf. D. Berger, "Three Typological Themes in Early Jewish Messianism," AJS Review 10 (1985): 161.





62. Hoffman, Beyond the Text, p. 100.

63.

Cf. Daube He that Cometh, pp. 189-92; and R. E. Brown, The Birth of the Messiah (London, 1977), p. 545. Both think Matthew is a Christian story based on the Jewish homily about Laban, while I find it likelier to assume the opposite.



64.

See Amos Funkenstein, Perceptions of Jewish History (Los Angeles, 1993), p. 170.







65. Cf. J. Bowman, The Gospel ofMark: The New Christian Jewish Passover Haggadah (Leiden 1965); K. Hanhart, The Open Tomb: A New Approadl, Mark's Passover Haggadah ([ca.) 72 CE.) (College­ville, 1994); J. Petuchowski, '''Do This in Remembrance of Me."

66.

For a similar theory, see M. D. Goulder, Midrash and Lection in Matthew (London, 1974). See also critique by Paul F. Bradshaw, The Search for the Origins of Christian Worship (New York and Ox­ford,1992),pp.30-32.



67.

Tanchuma Ki Tissa 34: "The Holy One Blessed Be He said to the Nations (= Christians) you say that you are my children? I know





only those who have my mystery; these are my children, and what is

that? The Mishna that was given orally." Bergman ("A Textual Note to Tanchuma Ki Tissa 34," Tarbiz 53 [1984]: 289-92, n. 14a) identifies the use of "mystery" as applied to Mishnah as a polemic against Paul (Eph. 6:19), for whom it is the gospel.

68. Robert Eisler, Zeitschrift far die Neutestamentliche Wissen­



schaft 25 (1926).



69.

On Eisler personally, see Gershom Scholem, From Berlin to Jerusalem (Tel Aviv, 1982), pp. 150-56.



70.

See A. Marmorstein, "Miscellen: I. Das Letzte Abendmahl und der Sederabend," Zeitschrift fur die Neutestamentliche Wissen­schaft 25 (1926): 249-53.



71.

David Daube, He That Cometh.







72. For one recent analysis, see Deborah Bleicher Carmichael,



"David Daube on the Eucharist and the Passover Seder," Journal for the Study of the New Testament 42 (1991): 45-67.

PART 2











Medieval Developments



TWO LITURGICAL TRADITIONS Volume 5



/



Passover and Easter /



(fOrigin and History to Modern Times

Edited by

PAUL F. BRADSHAW

and

LAWRENCE A. HOFFMAN



University of Notre Dame Press

Notre Dame, Indiana



*******



THE ORIGINS OF THE SEDER AND HAGGADAH

Joshua Kulp

Schechter Institute for Jewish Studies

Jerusalem

kulp@uscj.org



ABSTRACT

Emerging methods in the study of rabbinic literature now enable greater precision in dating the individual components of the Passover seder and haggadah. These approaches, both textual and socio-historical, have led to a near consensus among scholars that the Passover seder as described in rabbinic literature did not yet exist during the Second Temple period. Hence, cautious scholars no longer seek to .nd direct parallels between the last supper as described in the Gospels and the rabbinic seder. Rather, scholarly attention has focused on varying attempts of Jewish parties, notably rabbis and Christians, to provide religious meaning and sanctity to the Passover celebration after the death of Jesus and the destruction of the Temple. Three main forces stimulated the rabbis to develop innovative seder ritual and to gener­ate new, relevant exegeses to the biblical Passover texts: (1) the twin calamities of the destruction of the Jerusalem Temple and the Bar-Kokhba revolt; (2) competition with emerging Christian groups; (3) assimilation of Greco-Roman customs and manners. These forces were, of course, signi.cant contributors to the rise of a much larger array of rabbinic institutions, ideas and texts. Thus surveying scholarship on the seder reviews scholarship on the emergence of rabbinic Judaism.

Introduction

The remarkable phenomenon of contemporary Christians celebrating the Jewish seder (see Senn 1999) and the recent appearance of two collec­tions of articles entitled Passover and Easter (Bradshaw and Hoffman 1999a, 1999b) af.rm the hold that these respective holidays have over both the faith and scholarly communities. The relationship of the seder to

© 2005 SAGE Publications (London, Thousand Oaks CA and New Delhi)

Jesus’ last supper and to developing Christian practice—topics that con­tinue to stand at the centre of scholarly inquiry—hinge on two questions. First, do the Gospels—which place the last supper either on the 14th of the month of Nissan, the eve of the .rst day of Passover (the synoptics) or on the day before Passover (John; see Bradshaw 2002: 63-65)—present a historically accurate picture of the .nal events of Jesus’ life? Second, can we use rabbinic literature to reconstruct the Passover meal as celebrated at the time of Jesus? This article will explore the second issue only, as the .rst issue is best left to New Testament scholars.

The central issue that I will discuss in this review is current scholarly opinions on dating the origins of the Passover seder and haggadah (for de.nitions see below) and the individual elements of which they are com­posed. Scholars of rabbinic literature have made signi.cant advances on this issue in the past 20 years since Bokser’s (1984) monumental work on the seder appeared, and as some important research remains in Hebrew, it is crucial to bring these scholarly achievements to the attention of a wider audience.

As we shall see, current scholars agree that many of the seder customs as described in rabbinic literature were innovations of the post-70 CE period, and nearly all scholars agree that there was no seder or haggadah while the Temple still stood. Since these are important innovations of rabbinic Judaism, we shall also discuss the varying opinions as to the impulses that led to the rabbinic transformation of the earlier Temple-based rituals. Uncovering such impulses can be used as a window to understanding phenomena occurring in rabbinic Judaism on a wider scale. How was the seder created/enriched in order to .ll the religious gap left by the destruction of the Temple? What strategies did rabbis employ in their attempt to convince Jews of the continuing validity and vitality of Passover after the destruction? Did rabbinic statements give rise to com­peting Christian polemics or are the rabbis themselves responding to Christian supersessionist claims? What role did Hellenistic customs, in this case the symposia, play in the shaping of rabbinic literature and customs? Finally, how did the rabbis perceive of their own role in relation to other Jews, either non-rabbis or perhaps even non-rabbinic? While in the past generation a scholarly consensus on the post-Second Temple dat­ing of the earliest strata of the seder has emerged, there remains a plural­ity of opinions regarding the social and historical factors which led to the ritual’s ascension in the mishnaic and talmudic periods.

A De.nition of Terms



There are two terms which require more precision than they sometimes receive in scholarly literature: seder and haggadah (Stewart-Sykes [1998: 32] deftly handles the distinction between the two). By ‘seder’, which literally means ‘order’, I refer to a meal with rules governing the presentation and consumption of wine, appetizers, main course and dessert. The ‘order’ would include hand-washing and dipping. In addi­tion, any rabbinically-guided meal would mandate the recitation of benedictions over food and drink. All of these elements are included in the frequently cited passage in Tosefta Berakhot 4.8 (see Friedman 2002: 423-24; for a comprehensive description of Greco-Roman eating customs see Leyerle 1999). By ‘haggadah’ I mean either a ritual retell­ing of the story of the exodus from Egypt or a redacted, written work containing the text of that which is recited on Passover eve. To distin­guish between the two, the former is not capitalized while the latter is.

Once the Haggadah was compiled as a written text, it continuously expanded, accruing midrashim, benedictions and songs (see Hoffman 1999a: 19-22). Some of the most famous elements of the current seder— recitations such as the dayyenu (‘it is enough for us’; Glatzer 1989: 52­57) and the ha lachma anya (‘this is the bread of af.iction’; Glatzer 1989: 24-25)—were not part of the evening’s ritual until the post-Talmudic period. As interesting as these expansions may be, they tell us little about the origins of the seder and therefore will not be discussed here.

The Mishnaic Seder

For clarity’s sake, I shall outline the description of the seder as con­tained in m. Pesahim, ch. 10, the main source for our knowledge of the tannaitic seder. These customs will be the main focus of our discussion. A good English translation can be found in Bokser (1984: 29-32). When quoting from this chapter, scholars should be careful to use a version found in the better manuscripts of the Mishnah—the Kaufmann, Parma and Loewe manuscripts (the Kaufmann manuscript is available online at http://jnul.huji.ac.il/dl/talmud/) and not those in the printed editions of the Haggadah or Mishnah (as does Yuval 1999: 101), as there are signi­.cant discrepancies between the versions. Neusner’s recent translation of the Mishnah (1988) is based on the printed edition.

The seder’s structure is based on the drinking of four cups of wine

(m. Pesahim 10.1). Each cup is accompanied by a benediction. The .rst cup accompanies kiddush, the sancti.cation of God’s name with which every festive meal begins (10.2). Afterwards, an appetizer of lettuce is brought before the participant, as perhaps are other appetizers. Subse­quently matzah (unleavened bread), more lettuce (bitter herbs) and haro­set (a mixture of fruits, nuts, spices and wine) are brought in front of the participant (10.3). The second cup is poured and the telling of the story begins. This includes a question from the son, a story which begins with the mentioning of disgrace and culminates with praise, and a midrash on Deut. 26.5-9 (10.4). Rabban Gamaliel (early second century CE) mandates an explanation of the symbolic signi.cance of the Passover offering, the bitter herbs and the matzah (10.5). There are some statements of thanks­giving and praise, including the recitation of a set of psalms (called ‘Hallel’, Psalms 113–18) and a benediction, coupled with the drinking of the second cup (10.6). After the meal is eaten, a third cup is drunk with the benediction over the meal. A fourth cup is drunk with the completion of Hallel and a .nal benediction (10.7). The Mishnah states ‘after the pesah they do not conclude with an a.qoman’, the meaning of which we will discuss below (10.8).

The Second Temple Passover Celebration

Nearly all rabbinics scholars (Bokser 1984: 14-28; Safrai and Safrai 1998: 13-18; Tabory 1999: 63; Hauptman 2001: 11; Friedman 2002: 430-32) agree that most of the elements known from the seder as de­scribed in the Mishnah are missing from descriptions in Second Temple literature, including Jubilees, Josephus, Philo, the Gospels, and the sec­tions of the Mishnah and the Tosefta which deal with the Passover as offered in the Temple (m. Pesahim 5–9). This includes the absence of a seder or a haggadah. The primal element that did exist in the Second Temple was the sacri.ce of the lamb. Unlike other sacri.ces, this sacri­.ce was slaughtered by non-priests (Safrai and Safrai 1998: 13-14). This difference is highlighted by Philo, The Special Laws, 2:145-46 (Bokser 1990: 3). Hence, already in this period, the Passover ritual was more par­ticipatory than were other sacri.cial rituals. The lamb was eaten within the precincts of the city of Jerusalem, as described in both the Gospels and in the Mishnah. The eating of the lamb, done in the company of a havurah, was accompanied by the singing of psalms of praise, as de­scribed in Jubilees, Philo, the Gospels, Josephus and rabbinic literature. The meal of lamb was supplemented by the eating of matzah and bitter herbs and might also have been supplemented by the drinking of wine, mentioned by Philo and Jubilees. According to Safrai and Safrai (1998: 16), haroset too would have been eaten. However, this assumption is based on a later talmudic source, which, as Friedman (2002: 426-30) points out, is contradicted by an earlier tannaitic source. According to Friedman, the haroset was a later innovation.

In summary, pre-rabbinic descriptions of the Passover ritual emphasize the sacri.cial aspect of the meal and lack the major features of the seder as described in rabbinic literature (Bokser 1990: 2-4). While we may .nd hints in Second Temple literature at practices that will later become part of the Mishnah’s ritual, such as the drinking of wine and the recitation of Hallel, the full-born seder did not yet exist. These earlier practices may have paved the way for later expansions, but the parts are not to be seen as equal to the later whole (Bokser 1984: 76-77).

These historical .ndings are supported by the philological analysis of the Mishnah and Tosefta by Friedman and Hauptman, evidence which shall be discussed below. The only rabbinics scholar who continues to use the Mishnah as a source for a seder conducted during the Second Temple period is Tabory (1999). Nevertheless, even Tabory agrees that many elements of the seder as described in the Mishnah were not cus­tomary in the Second Temple period.

This overwhelming trend among historians and rabbinic text critics leads to the conclusion that Jesus’ last supper, even if it did occur on the eve of Passover, was not a ‘seder’, for there was no ‘seder’ in the Second Temple period (Bokser 1987; Hilton 1994: 33-34; Klawans 2001). Schol­ars (Carmichael 1997; Stewart-Sykes 1998: 32-54; Brumberg-Kraus 1999: 166; Routledge 2002) who persist in accepting the Mishnah (or even worse, later rabbinic literature) as depictions of Second Temple practice, and hence as containing practices that may have been observed by Jesus and his disciples, are not suf.ciently familiar with the research conclu­sions of nearly a generation of scholars of rabbinic literature (as noted by Bradshaw 2002: 23-24). Klawans (2001: 29) points out that even scholars who are willing to accept the use of rabbinic literature in reconstructing earlier history do not accept the Mishnah as a description of Second Temple practice in this case. Scholars will certainly continue to debate the interrelation between developing Christian and Jewish ritual for Passover eve, and the veracity of the different accounts of Jesus’ last meal. Still, there is virtually no ground to assume that Jesus would have practised the rituals described in later rabbinic literature (Bokser 1987: 32; Bradshaw 2002: 63-65).

A Second Temple Mishnah



Despite this aforementioned trend, we must deal with Tabory’s cautious use of the Mishnah to reconstruct the Second Temple seder ritual. As a composition, the Mishnah in its current form did not exist until the early part of the third century. Whether one may use tannaitic texts to recon­struct the status of Jewry, the Pharisees or a rabbinic movement in the pre-Bar Kokhba period has been an issue of great scholarly debate for well over a century. Tabory’s work on the Passover seder, which was completed as a doctorate in 1977, published in Hebrew as a book in 1996 and has come out in several English articles (1991; 1999), assumes that the Mishnah can cautiously be used to reconstruct the Passover ritual as celebrated by Jews before 70 CE.

Virtually alone among current scholars, Tabory maintains an assump­tion that dominated the .eld until the appearance of Bokser’s work in 1984, that a more pristine version of the tenth chapter of m. Pesahim existed towards the end of the Second Temple period and describes the Passover ritual as celebrated at that time (1999: 64). By removing what he claims are later accretions, Tabory comes to what he believes to be a description of the Second Temple seder. According to his reconstruction the elements of the Passover seder which were customary during this period include the framework of four cups and their accompanying benedictions, the eating of the paschal lamb, the telling of the story, the midrash on Deuteronomy, and the recitation of the Hallel (1996a: 70-78; 1999: 64-65). Tabory conjectures that the lamb, matzah and bitter herbs were originally eaten before the meal, a theory originally put forth by mediaeval Jewish exegetes. Tabory adds that the change to recitation of the haggadah before the meal parallels developments in Greek symposia (1999: 65-67). In contrast, Safrai and Safrai (1998: 24) point out that the idea that the meal was originally eaten before the telling of the story does not match the description of the meal in the Tosefta.

An earlier generation of scholars (references in Tabory 1996: 74

n. 161; Friedman 2002: 430-32) noted that both the Tosefta and the Mish­nah state ‘in the Temple they bring in front of him the carcass of the Pass­over’ (m. Pesahim 10.3; t. Pesahim 10.10). The present tense, preserved in manuscripts but corrupted in the printed edition of the Mishnah, was understood by these scholars as a sign of the text’s having been composed while the Temple still stood. The words ‘in the Temple’ strike a contrast between practice performed in Jerusalem, and practice outside of the city.

In contrast, Friedman (2002: 430-32) rejects this proposal on both logical and philological grounds. It would not make sense for a mishnah com­posed while the Temple still stood to .rst describe the rituals as per­formed outside of the Temple and then, in an aside, mention what is done in the Temple itself. Furthermore, tannaitic halakhah continues in many instances to describe the Temple as if it is still standing (Friedman 2002: 403-32; Safrai and Safrai 1998: 25-26). The Mishnah’s use of the present participial form is not proof of its Second Temple composition. Bokser (1984: 39) proposes that this syntax expresses continuity with the Second Temple sacri.cial meal.

In general, Tabory’s thesis is predicated upon certain historical and textual assumptions. Historically, Tabory would need to assume a large degree of continuity between Second Temple and rabbinic Judaism. Tex­tually, he must assume that portions of the Mishnah were edited at an early period, and that the Mishnah as a text retained these earlier sources while simultaneously expanding throughout the .rst and second centuries. Later editors did not recompose the Mishnah, an editorial activity which would have ruled out the possibility of our uncovering earlier versions, but rather preserved the earlier form and added on to it.

Tabory’s historical and text-critical assumptions are less accepted today than they were in previous generations. The same is true for Hoffman’s (1987 and 1999b) acceptance of late texts and practices such as the ha lachma anya (‘this is the bread of my af.iction’) as being re.ective of much earlier periods. Scholars of rabbinic texts such as Neusner (for a recent summary of his approach see Neusner 1994: 19-29, 651-79) and Boyarin (for an example of his extreme skepticism see 2001) radically doubt whether we can use tannaitic, let alone amoraic, texts to reconstruct Second Temple history (for a comprehensive, recent summary of the use of rabbinic texts to reconstruct history see Hayes 1997: 8-24). As we shall see below, current rabbinics scholars such as Friedman and Hauptman tend to agree that it is exceedingly dif.cult, if not impossible, to separate the Mishnah into early and later strata. Even for schools of thought which do accept cautious use of rabbinic material to reconstruct earlier historical periods, Tabory’s thesis is problematic considering that the textual evi­dence from the period itself does not match the descriptions contained in rabbinic literature. Tabory claims that although Second Temple descrip­tions of Passover do not mention the retelling of the story of the Exodus, Jews would naturally have used such an occasion to do so (1981: 37; see also Bokser 1984: 71; Hoffman 1987: 87; Stewart-Sykes 1998: 35-36). Of course, the silence of Second Temple sources on a seder or haggadah cannot decisively preclude their existence. It does, however, make such conjectures highly speculative. We certainly cannot, as Stewart-Sykes (1998: 45) is, be ‘assured of the basic trustworthiness of the Mishnah as a means of gaining an outline of the Passover rite of the .rst century’.

Transformation and Continuity

As stated, nearly all scholars locate the origins of the seder and haggadah in the advancement of the rabbinic movement in the post-destruction period. Hence, we shall of necessity explore the impulses in rabbinic cir­cles that led to their creation.

A turning point in the modern understanding of the rise of the rabbinic seder was Bokser’s (1984) monumental study of the origins of the seder. Bokser’s central thesis is that the tenth chapters of m. and t. Pesahim trans­form earlier Temple practice, adapting it to the needs of post-destruction Jewry, while attempting to portray and in fact maintain continuity with earlier periods.

Bokser does not deny outside in.uence on the shaping of the rabbinic seder. He notes that Justin Martyr, Origen and Melito all emphasize that without a Temple the Jews can no longer celebrate Passover, their holiday of redemption (1984: 25-28). Christian communities in this period were developing their own rituals to be observed on the eve of Passover. Rabbis of the second century might have felt the need to offer compelling answers to such challenges. Elsewhere he notes parallels between the seder and Greek symposia (1984: 50-66). However, Bokser posits that neither a response to Christianity nor assimilation of Greek custom was the sole or even the main generative cause of the formation of the seder. Rather, throughout his research Bokser emphasizes an internal need felt among rabbis for reconstruction and continuity after the two devastating revolts. Such a need would have existed even among circles unaware of or uncon­cerned with competition from groups forming other answers to the crisis.

Based on this premise, Bokser closely analyses the tenth chapter of

m. and t. Pesahim. He lists nine ways in which these texts transform early ritual while maintaining continuity with the past. These include raising the status of the matzah and bitter herbs such that they are equal with the paschal lamb which can no longer be offered (1984: 39, 41-42; 1990: 8-9). When the Temple still stood, these foods would have taken a secondary role to the sacri.ce. Wine, mentioned by Jubilees and Philo as customary, is now mandated (1984: 41). The practice of reciting the Hallel is contin­ued and in the same manner as it may have been when the Temple stood (1984: 42-43; see also Friedman 2002: 458). Even the literary structure of tractate Pesahim, in which the description of the seder is preceded by four chapters describing Temple Passover ritual, leads to the literary impres­sion that the seder was performed in Temple times (1984: 48). We can add that Hoffman (1999b: 114) points to several ways in which the matzah received the symbolic signi.cance and actual regulations earlier accorded to the paschal lamb. In sum, the aforementioned scholars emphasize the deeply felt rabbinic need to portray themselves in close continuity and harmony with the past. In contrast, Zahavy (1990: 93-94) locates in the post-70 CE rabbinic seder a ‘blatantly anti-cultic’ impetus. With a distinct, although not altogether different emphasis, Zahavy writes, the ‘scribal factions renovated the festival and transformed the feast into an occasion for Torah-study and a deft means of usurping the authority for controlling ritual formerly claimed to be exclusively in the domain of the priesthood’ (1990: 93-94; compare Bokser 1984: 87-88).

Two larger implications that stem from Bokser’s research should be noted. First of all, Bokser’s analysis of the Mishnah is synchronic. Throughout his book, he analyses the Mishnah as a coherent document carefully crafted by editors with a decisive agenda. As such, diachronic analysis is inappropriate to the Mishnah, or at the least does not exhaust its hermeneutics. Second, rabbis perceive of themselves as leaders of the larger Jewish community. The seder ritual as described in rabbinic texts is not an intellectual exercise intended for an audience of other rabbis. Rather, it is a pedagogical ritual intended for a broader audience. The place of rabbis in these centuries is a hotly debated topic, with a noted trend toward minimalism (Schwartz 2001). While Bokser’s theories do not bring answers to this question, they do demonstrate that when creating ritual, the rabbis saw themselves as serving the larger Jewish community.

External In.uences: The Symposium

Since Stein’s groundbreaking work in 1957, the similarities between Greek symposia and the descriptions of the seder in tannaitic literature have been thoroughly documented. Tabory (1996a: 373-77; 1999) elabo­rates on several points of similarity between symposia and the seder (see also Friedman 2002: 423-24). Tabory’s discussion is based upon his sepa­ration of the seder into two historical levels (one which existed before 70 CE and one which was created after the destruction) and upon his analysis of the development of sympotic literature. Tabory .nds differing levels of in.uence for each historical strata, with more external in.uence located in the later strata (1999: 67-68). Tabory even .nds sympotic in.uence in the later, perhaps geonic (eighth to tenth centuries), redaction of the Hag­gadah (1999: 68). Indeed, he summarizes by stating that ‘the paschal meal has changed from a sacri.cial meal, in which the food was the main event of the evening, into a type of sympotic meal which itself went through changes’ (1999: 73-74). This leads to the conclusion that sympotic in.u­ence was the main factor in the seder’s development.

In contrast, Bokser (1984: 50-66) emphasizes that while the rabbis did borrow external customs, they were adamant at creating distinctions which would prevent participants from confusing the cultural identity of the meal in which they were participating. The symposium was, according to Bokser (1984: 94), not ultimately determinative in shaping the seder’s overall character. Rather, ‘the impetus for recasting the celebration lay in the need for continuity with the past and for overcoming the loss of the paschal lamb’ (1984: 53). After surveying pre-70 CE evidence of Jewish groups using meals to celebrate religious moments outside of the Temple, Bokser concludes that these Jewish precedents make it unlikely that the rabbis were impelled to reshape the seder based on the model of Hellenis­tic symposia (1984: 61-62). Finally, Bokser lists ways in which rabbis intentionally dissociated the seder from key elements in the symposia (1984: 62-66). The two that seem most convincing are the mandated par­ticipation of all social classes and the forbidding of the a.qoman (m. Pes. 10.8), understood as Greek after-dinner revelry. However, we should note that the need to create signposts to distinguish the Jewish ritual from Greek pagan ritual only emphasizes how close the two may have seemed to actual participants.

Christian Competition

While the symposia parallels have been the focus of much research, re­cently greater attention has been paid to Christian–Jewish parallels (for a summary see Hoffman 1999a: 15-19). I will focus on the possibility that rabbis shaped the seder in response to early Christianity. To appraise this possibility we must proceed cautiously with regard to the dating of the rabbinic seder and the development of its individual components.

In a recent Hebrew article (1995), which was later published as part of a Hebrew book (2000) and in an abbreviated form in English (1999), Yuval, a historian of the mediaeval period, claimed that many elements of the rabbinic seder were created in order to distinguish their ritual from the parallel Christian Easter celebration and to respond to Christian theo­logical claims made in the wake of the destruction of the Temple. Yuval points to Passover/Easter parallels from the end of the .rst century through the mediaeval period. Since this review article focuses on the earlier period, we shall concentrate on Yuval’s claims with regard to the mishnaic and talmudic periods.

Yuval begins (1999: 100) by comparing the story of the .ve rabbis who gathered in B’nei Brak to spend the night telling the story of Pass­over (see Glatzer 1989: 26-29) with the Easter celebration as described in the Epistula Apostolorum 15. In both cases sages/disciples gather together to study all night until the rooster crows. Yuval continues by pointing out that following this story in the Haggadah there appears a midrash attributed to R. Elazar b. Azariah concerning the obligation to tell the story of the exodus at night (see Glatzer 1989: 28-29). As an addendum to R. Elazar’s midrash, other sages add that the obligation to tell the story of the exodus will exist also in the coming messianic period. Because the rabbis to whom these traditions are attributed are all believed to have lived in the late .rst century CE, Yuval concludes that the practice of telling the story of Passover was initiated in the Yavneh generation (for a more skeptical approach to attributions, see Neusner 1994: 668-79). Yuval compares this with the parallel toseftan story

(t. Pesahim 10.12) in which Rabban Gamaliel and other sages spend all night in Lydda learning the laws of Passover. Yuval sees a transition between the earlier story in the Tosefta (in which rabbis discussed the laws of Passover) to the later stories included in the Haggadah (in which rabbis discussed the story of Passover). Later rabbis began to tell the story of the exodus as ‘an implicit polemic against the messianic Jews who transformed the memory of the Exodus into their new Passover account of the cruci.xion of Jesus’ (1999: 102).

Hauptman (2001: 15-16) criticizes Yuval for his use of these stories. The story of the .ve rabbis gathered in B’nei Brak is not found in tan­naitic or amoraic literature, and is only found in the Haggadah starting in the geonic period. Hauptman does not believe that the Haggadah’s B’nei Brak story should be used in reconstructing the history of the tannaitic period. While other scholars besides Yuval, such as Safrai and Safrai (1998: 45-46, 117, 208), do regard the Haggadah’s story as an authentic tannaitic source that was preserved orally outside of any other rabbinic composition until it appears in the geonic period, the textual evidence supports Hauptman’s proposal. Recently Mor (2003: 304-11) posited that the Haggadah’s B’nei Brak story is a late talmudic and perhaps even early mediaeval, Babylonian creation which polemicizes against the spiritual and halakhic concerns of the Palestinian, toseftan story. The later story, in which R. Gamaliel is conspicuously absent, polemicizes against his insistence that a roasted lamb can and should continue to be eaten after the destruction (this practice will be discussed further below). Mor detects other polemical elements and shifts in focus from the earlier story. As a late polemical story, it may tell us something about its Babylonian edi­tors, but it should not be lent any credence as a historical source for the second century.

Above all, most scholars of rabbinic literature would consider it meth­odologically unsound to rely on literary testimony that .rst appears in the eighth to tenth centuries to reconstruct the history of the early second century. This is especially true when the Tosefta, an authentic tannaitic text, contains a parallel story lacking any mention of rabbis telling the story of the exodus. Furthermore, in the Mekilta DeRabbi Ishmael Pascha 18 (Lauterbach 1933: I, 167) a tannaitic midrash on Exodus, R. Eliezer, an early-second-century sage, mandates that a group of sages must study the laws of Passover until midnight, a requirement similar to that in the Tosefta and different from that in the Haggadah’s B’nei Brak story. Hence, proper scholarly caution rules against the use of the Haggadah’s story in any reconstruction of what occurred in Yavneh or at any point in the tannaitic period. With regard to the Haggadah’s midrash obligating the telling of the story of the exodus in the messianic period (Glatzer 1989: 28-29), Hauptman correctly points out that the source is taken from

m. Berakhot (1.5), where the context is the obligation to mention the exodus during the benedictions accompanying the evening Shema. This text too should therefore not be interpreted in the context of second-century Passover polemics.

Yuval (1999: 106-107) also identi.es anti-Christian polemics in Rab­ban Gamaliel’s mandating the symbolic explanation of the three central Passover foods, paschal lamb, matzah and bitter herbs (m. Pesahim 10.5). Rabban Gamaliel’s strong language (‘anyone who does not say these three things on Passover has not ful.lled his obligation’) is intended to exclude from Judaism those who impart christological meaning to the foods, a tac­tic similar to that employed in the same sage’s establishment of the ‘bless­ing against heretics’ (see t. Berakhot 3.25; Palestinian Talmud Berakhot 4.3, 8a; Babylonian Talmud Berakhot 28b). However, we should note that Kimmelman (1981; see also Boyarin 2001: 427-37) concludes that the ‘blessing against the heretics’ was not originally directed against Chris­tians, and Yuval has not demonstrated why Kimmelman’s opinion should be rejected. Tabory (1999: 69) suggests that both Rabban Gamaliel’s mishnah and Jesus’ explanation of the bread and wine can be attributed to the sympotic custom of providing symbolic explanations for foods brought to the table. Hoffman (1999b: 116-17) notes that the matzah provided symbols of salvation for both Jews and Christians. Their development is parallel but it remains to be proven whether they are polemical.

Mishnah Pesahim 10.4 mandates the recitation of a midrash on Deut. 26.5-9. Although the Mishnah itself does not contain the text of this midrash, it appears in all editions of the Haggadah (e.g., Glatzer 1989: 38­49). Hoffman (1987: 91-92) dates the midrash to the late parts of the .rst century CE, although his proofs are largely conjectural (for a structural and interpretive analysis of pieces of the midrash see 1987: 90-102). Yuval interprets nearly the entire midrash, its structure and its individual points as an anti-Christian polemic (1999: 109-13; see also Hoffman 1987: 92). According to Yuval, the rabbis chose the passage from Deuter­onomy as opposed to Exodus 12 in order to distinguish themselves from Christian exegetes such as Melito and Origen, who based their Easter/ Passover sermons on Exodus. The Deuteronomic passage avoids mention of Moses, ‘thereby refuting the view that Moses is an archetype of Jesus’ (Yuval 1999: 110; see also Bokser 1984: 78-79). In contrast Hoffman (1987: 101) suggests that the Deuteronomic passage, originally recited by farmers upon bringing their .rst fruits, was chosen due to the Roman destruction of Palestinian food supply. Yuval (1999: 111) also under­stands the Haggadah’s comment on ‘He saw our ill treatment’ (Deut. 26.7) in this light. The Haggadah understands this ill treatment as refer­ring to ‘the cessation of sexual relations, as it is said: “God looked upon the children of Israel and God knew” ’ (Glatzer 1989: 44-45). According to Yuval, the allusion to God’s providing the Israelites with children even when the Egyptians prohibited them from having sexual relations ‘coun­teracts the claim of Jesus’ miraculous birth’ (compare Hoffman 1987: 95). Yuval (1999: 112-13) locates other parallels and polemics between the midrash and early Christian literature.

A note of caution, however, should be made with regard to dating this midrash. Early Palestinian Haggadot (eighth to eleventh centuries CE) contain a much abbreviated and somewhat different version of the midrash (Rovner 2000 and 2002). Hence, any attempt at construing the historical context in which the midrash was created must be cognizant of the ear­liest appearance of each of its individual elements. In all likelihood, many of the elements of the midrash as it appears in geonic Haggadot— the version to which most scholars, including those cited above, refer— first emerged in Babylonia in the talmudic and even geonic periods.

Yuval also .nds an anti-Christian origin in the prohibition against concluding the meal with a.qoman (m. Pes. 10.8). Since the a.qoman continues to receive such a wide variety of interpretations, it is worth­while to restate Lieberman’s interpretation, which, as far as I know, has never been refuted. Lieberman accepts an amoraic interpretation to a.qo­man found in both talmuds ‘that one should not go from havurah (eating company) to havurah’ (y. Pesahim 10.4, 37d; b. Pesahim 119b). Lieber­man writes,

[The rabbis] were familiar with Greek customs and their banquet man­ners, that when the festivities would reach their peak, they would burst into others’ homes to force them to join in the continuing party, and they called this ‘epikomazein’. The Mishnah warns that one does not conclude the Passover meal with an a.qoman-epikomazein, and this is the interpretation of the Babylonian and Palestinian Talmud (1995: 521).

Building on Lieberman’s interpretation, Bokser (1984: 132 n. 62) and Tabory (1996a: 65-66) claim that the other explanation found in the Tosefta and in the Babylonian Talmud–—that a.qoman refers to dessert —is harmonious with Lieberman’s explanation, for these were ‘types of delicacies served after a meal, especially to whet one’s thirst’ (Bokser 1984: 132 n. 62); compare Tabory 1999: 72-73). Safrai and Safrai (1998: 44) also accept Lieberman’s identi.cation of the a.qoman (see also Hoff­man 1999b: 112). In short, as Hoffman (1999b: 113) summarizes, instead of engaging in revelry, t. Pesahim 10.11 mandates the seder participants to spend the remainder of the night studying Torah.

Despite all this, Yuval (2000: 250) claims that the prohibition of the a.qoman distinguishes Jewish practice with the Christian custom of ‘missa’. In another place (1999: 107; 2000: 92) he gives an entirely dif­ferent interpretation to a.qoman, it too an anti-Christian polemic. Yuval (1999: 115-16) notes that some of his ideas were pioneered a generation ago by Daube (see Carmichael’s recent review, 1997) who saw messianic signi.cance in the a.qoman. Daube’s interpretation of the a.qoman is largely based on a post-talmudic practice of calling the last piece of matzah eaten at the seder the a.qoman. This is not the original meaning of the word a.qoman in the Mishnah or in the Talmuds, nor is the phrase ‘they don’t conclude the Passover meal with an a.qoman’ (m. Pes. 10.9) inexplicable, as Daube (Carmichael 1997: 94) and Hoffman (1999b: 112) claim. Amoraic debate over the interpretation of a mishnah is not a de­pendable signpost for a truly obscure, perhaps ancient, mishnah—after all, amoraim (rabbinic sages who lived from 200–500 CE and whose words are found in the two talmuds) debate nearly everything! Daube’s interpretation was refuted by Tabory (1981: 35 n. 9) and Bokser (1984: 132 n. 62).

Yuval’s work is a rich source for comparing the observances, liturgy and sermons surrounding Passover and Easter. There is little doubt that leaders of each tradition promoted their Passover stories of redemption in competition with other groups, either adopting similar hermeneutic strate­gies in order to surpass those of their competitors or adopting differing ones in order to distinguish ‘theirs’ from ‘ours’. According to Boyarin (1999: 12) the Passover–Easter connection of the Quartodecimani is ‘the most important case of Christian-Jewish intimacy in late antiquity’. Segal’s (1986) conception of rabbinic Judaism and Christianity as ‘sister religions’ (Yuval 1999: 104) as opposed to the previous, theologically based model of mother–daughter religions, is a concept which is increas­ingly .nding favour among scholars. Boyarin (1999: 8) proposes ‘a model of shared and crisscrossing lines of history and religious develop­ment’. Yuval’s work is an important corrective to the previous assump­tion that Jewish practice was always earlier than its Christian parallels, an assumption still occasionally made (Stewart-Sykes 1998: 32-34; Lieu 1996: 222-28).

Yuval’s work would be improved by combining it with that of special­ists in rabbinic texts in order to more accurately date the original appear­ance of phrases, ideas and practices. For instance, in a letter which Yuval appended to his original article (1995: 27-28), D. Rosenthal claims that one sign that the seder is polemical is the repeated trope ‘so that the chil­dren will recognize’ or ‘so that the children will ask’. However, Friedman (2002: 439-46) shows that this trope appears only in the Babylonian Talmud. The trope is used to explain why certain actions, which appear perplexing to later Babylonian/Persian eyes unfamiliar with Graeco-Roman eating habits, are performed at the seder. In the earlier, Palestinian literature the idea that actions are performed in order to induce the chil­dren into asking questions is completely absent. According to Friedman, the customs at the seder were patterned after Greek eating customs and not initiated as opportunities to polemicize against others.

A problem with Yuval’s work is that once he starts looking for polem­ics, he .nds them nearly everywhere. Instead of Sandmel’s famed ‘paral­lelomania’ we encounter ‘polemicamania’. Rabbinic practice is nearly always in.uenced by and engaging in polemics against Christians. In a review of Yuval’s book, Raz (2001) writes, ‘one of the questions which requires clari.cation is the concept “in.uence”, which the author fre­quently employs… The concept of in.uence assumes two separate and de.nable identities, each in.uencing the other, whereas the topic under discussion presents a more complicated and dialectic relationship’. This statement .ts well with Boyarin’s extreme caution against de.ning Jews and Christians in this period as two distinct identities. As Boyarin (1999: 205) writes, ‘Yuval…tends to lean exclusively on the model of polemical interaction, rather than considering the possibility of shared and diffuse exegetical traditions, as well’.

Other scholars are more successful at making comparisons without assuming that one group (rabbis or church fathers) are shooting arrows directly at another. Rouwhorst (1998: 269-76) notes the similarities be­tween the Passover seder and Melito’s homily but avoids concluding that one was a direct polemic against the other. In reference to Rabban Gama­liel’s duty to explain the food items, Hilton (1994: 35) writes ‘just as Christians learned to cope with the loss of Jesus by giving a potent sym­bolism to the bread and wine of the “last supper”, so Jews learned to cope with the loss of the powerful temple ritual at Pesach by giving a symbolic value to the main foods’. Other Passover similarities, and not necessarily polemics, are noted by Tabory (1996b) in an article on Justin Martyr’s depiction of the cruci.xion of the paschal lamb. Brumberg-Kraus (1999) suggests that both Luke’s eucharist and the seder’s speci.c eating and speaking rituals stem from the internal needs of each community to sym­bolically express their theological aims (see also Hoffman 1999b: 124). In contrast to Yuval’s reading of the Haggadah’s midrash as thoroughly anti-Christian, Hoffman (1987: 96-102) locates in it an encoded message of encouragement to Jews not to .ee to the Diaspora in the wake of the Roman devastation of Palestine. In truth, the evidence forces Yuval to admit (1999: 99) that the ‘Haggadah itself contains no explicit reference to Christianity’. This sharply contrasts with Christian homilies that are overtly directed against Jewish (but not necessarily rabbinic) Passover exegesis. Indeed, Yuval never proves why we should understand rabbinic practice as polemical and not stemming from the internal needs of a relig­ion facing the destruction of one of its central symbols (as Bokser argues).

Even Boyarin (1999: 19), while reading rabbinic texts as responses to Christianity notes, ‘this hardly constitutes a claim…that every aspect of rabbinic Judaism is a response to formative Christianity’. As Raz noted, stricter methodological considerations for de.ning when a text is polemi­cal are desirable.

In summary, while Yuval’s work can be mined for its rich suggestions of polemics and parallels, it should be used with caution and with the recognition that his overall thesis is not representative of the conclusions of most scholars of rabbinic literature and history.

Mishnah–Tosefta Comparisons

Recently, Friedman and Hauptman, two scholars active in source criti­cism of rabbinic literature, have signi.cantly improved our ability to trace the post-destruction rabbinic transformation of the Passover ritual. First of all, Friedman has pioneered a more methodologically rigorous philologi­cal approach towards analysis and comparison of text than was available to or practised by scholars of previous generations. This approach leads to greater precision in tracing the development of rabbinic texts, concepts and practice. Second, whereas Bokser, Safrai and Safrai, and Tabory con­sistently understand t. Pesahim as supplemental to its mishnaic paral- lels, both Friedman and Hauptman view the Tosefta as preserving earlier sources than those in the Mishnah, and therefore containing a more pri­mal version of the tannaitic seder or at least elements thereof. This theory leads to different results in the dating of the origins of the seder, the haggadah and other elements of the evening’s ritual. Indeed, both Fried-man and Hauptman push the creation of the seder into even later tannaitic times than was previously thought, to a time very close to, if not synony­mous with, the redaction of the Mishnah (220 CE).

For three technical reasons I shall devote considerable space to a de­tailed review of their work. First of all, Friedman’s research on the seder was published in Hebrew. Second, both scholars’ research is geared toward the specialist in rabbinic literature. Finally, their recent conclu­sions have not yet been assimilated by historians and scholars of early Christianity. I hope that this review will introduce an avenue of research that will have impact on scholars of .elds other than rabbinics.

In order to understand Friedman and Hauptman’s claims, it is neces­sary to brie.y discuss their thoughts on the dating of the two tannaitic collections of halakhah, the Mishnah and the Tosefta. Friedman (1999) and Hauptman (2000, 2001) both propose that the generally conceived notion of the Tosefta as a ‘companion’ to the Mishnah (Goldberg 1987) or a ‘commentary’ on the Mishnah (Neusner 1994: 152) is often inaccu­rate. According to Friedman, while the Tosefta received its .nal redacted form after the redaction of the Mishnah, much of its material is primary to the mishnaic parallels. Friedman’s work focuses on parallel pericopae from the two corpuses, demonstrating cases in which the toseftan material contains the pre-redacted sources of the Mishnah. We should note that Friedman’s theory of the primacy of the Tosefta contradicts that of Lieberman, his revered teacher, one of the foremost talmudic scholars of the twentieth century, who devoted his life to producing a critical edition of the Tosefta, and succeeded in completing about two-thirds of the work. Friedman’s approach has thus caused some controversy among scholars of rabbinic literature. Nevertheless, as of yet, no comprehensive refutation of his work has been published.

Hauptman tends to push the theory of the primacy of the Tosefta even further. According to Hauptman, the Tosefta as we know it today (minus a relatively small amount of later additions, generally obvious by their attribution to late tannaim) existed prior to the publication of the Mishnah and therefore as a redacted corpus re.ects a stage of development prior to the Mishnah. For a more detailed review of Friedman and Hauptman’s work on this topic see Kulp (forthcoming).

I shall now brie.y demonstrate how this theory impacts the dating of the development of the seder/haggadah and its individual elements. One of the outstanding features of the Mishnah is the framework of four cups of wine. Friedman (2002: 405-409, 415) demonstrates that while t. Pesahim

10.1 refers to four cups of wine, it is only in reference to the minimum amount of wine that must be provided to poor people in order to celebrate the evening’s ritual. The Tosefta does not state that this wine must be ritually drunk on four distinct occasions during the meal. According to Friedman, the idea that the meal is to be organized around these four cups of wine is an innovation of the redactors of the Mishnah.

Hauptman (2001) emphasizes another essential difference between the two tannaitic corpuses: instead of the ritual of questions, midrash on Deuteronomy and telling of the story of Passover as mandated by the Mishnah, t. Pesahim 10.12 mandates studying the laws of Passover all night. The toseftan chapter ends with a story of Rabban Gamaliel and his colleagues studying the ‘laws of Pesah’ until morning. Importantly, the focus of the night’s study was law not story. According to Hauptman, at some point after the redaction of the Tosefta and before that of the Mish­nah, two essential changes occurred: the learning of laws was replaced by the telling of the story and the intellectual element was moved up to precede the meal. She surmises that both of these changes were initiated in order to allow for broader participation in the ritual (2001: 10). Stories are more accessible to non-rabbis than are halakhot (this tension was also noted by Bokser 1984: 70-71). Participants are more likely to be awake before the meal than to stay up all night afterwards. Hauptman is the only scholar con.dent at dating the innovation of the retelling of the exodus towards the end of the tannaitic period. Whether her noteworthy theory will gain general acceptance remains to be seen.

Hauptman sees in the Tosefta a description of an ordered meal, a proto­seder, and not just a collection of material relating to the Mishnah (2001: 6). This seder does not differ greatly from the customs that were observed during the Second Temple period (wine, food and Hallel). Nevertheless, it does attest to a post-destruction continued observance of the Passover ritual and a slight expansion of the earlier ritual as well. Although the Temple no longer stood, the Tosefta is witness to a rabbinic belief in the continued validity and indeed necessity of a ritualized assembly on the .rst night of Passover. This assembly consisted of the eating of a commu­nal meal which included the non-sacri.cial elements of the Temple meal (matzah and bitter herbs), and the recitation of Hallel. The rabbis began the process of adding to the ritual by including haroset and the mandated study of Torah.

 Friedman (2002: 426-30) stresses the signi.cance of the post-destruction addition of the haroset to the Passover meal. In t. Pesahim 10.10, R. Elazar

b. Zadok (early second century) tells the merchants of Lydda to come and take the ‘commanded spices’, a reference to the haroset. Earlier scholars (Tabory 1996a: 74; Safrai and Safrai 1998: 16) had preferred a version of this source contained in the talmudim (Palestinian Talmud Pesahim 10.3, 37d; Babylonian Talmud Pesahim 116a) according to which the merchants of Jerusalem told their customers to come and buy ‘commanded spices’. From this version of the story, they concluded that the haroset was already customary in Jerusalem in Second Temple times. In contrast, Friedman believes that the Tosefta nearly always contains a version primary to paral­lels preserved in the talmudim (Friedman 2000) and, therefore, scholars should be reticent in reconstructing tannaitic halakhah based on talmudic (amoraic) sources. According to Friedman, the haroset is an early, but post­70 CE attempt to broaden the practices of the seder ritual. When listing the Passover foods, the second chapter of the Tosefta (which purports to describe the ritual as performed in the Temple) states, ‘the lettuce (bitter herbs), the matzah and the Passover are obligatory on the .rst night’

(M. Pes 2:6) In contrast, the Mishnah and Tosefta of the tenth chapter state, ‘they bring in front of him matzah, lettuce and haroset’ (m. Pes. 10.3; t. Pes. 10.9). As Friedman summarizes (2002: 438) ‘the paschal lamb goes out and the haroset comes in’.

Despite the later redaction of the Mishnah, Friedman agrees that some of its practices were initiated during the Yavnean generation, the genera­tion that lived after the destruction of the Temple (2002: 457-58). After all, as Safrai and Safrai (1998: 19) point out, there are several Yavnean rabbis whose statements are found in the chapter. In other words, Fried-man does not completely rule out using elements of the Mishnah, especially those which also exist in the Tosefta, to reconstruct earlier practice. Nevertheless, it is worth noting that none of these rabbis men­tions a haggadah or a seder. R. Elazar b. Zadok discusses the status of the haroset, R. Gamaliel requires symbolic interpretation of the foods, and

R. Tarfon and R. Akiva disagree concerning the wording of the benedic­tion over the Hallel. Therefore, unlike Safrai and Safrai (1998: 49) who based on these attributions conclude that there was already a haggadah and seder in Yavneh in the generation immediately following the de­struction, Friedman and especially Hauptman delay such a development for another couple of generations. Friedman claims that a statement by

R. Judah (late second century) in t. Pesahim 10.9; which mentions ‘one appetizer’ and ‘one [serving of] lettuce’, is the earliest reference in rab­binic literature to an ordered meal.

Finally, we should note that Friedman and Hauptman, along with Bokser, view the editors of the Mishnah as shaping and transforming the observances customary until that time. The Mishnah, therefore, tells us a great deal about the ideals and goals of its redactors. However, if the Mishnah is prescriptive, it will be dif.cult to know how many Jews actu­ally performed the seder/haggadah on Passover, as we do not know what level of authority the Palestinian rabbis had in this period in their own region, not to mention in the Diaspora. Seth Schwartz (2001) recently claimed that rabbis had little to no authority in the larger Jewish commu­nity until the fourth century. Even if scholars will disagree with the radi­cality of some of his conclusions, we should be hesitant about assuming a widespread observance of rabbinic custom. This caution should be heeded when comparing rabbinic and early Christian writings, especially those composed outside of Palestine.

Paschal Sacri.ce after the Second Temple



We have up until now been dealing with the development of the seder and haggadah, widely viewed by scholars as the creative response of rabbis in the second century to the destruction of the Temple. However, there also existed a different response among rabbis and others, accord­ing to which the Temple practice of eating a roasted lamb and perhaps even considering it a sacri.ce could continue after the destruction (Bokser 1984: 101-106; 1990: 4-6; Tabory 1996a: 92-105; 1999: 71). R. Gamaliel (early second century) seems to have been a proponent of this practice

(m. Pesahim 7.2; m. Betzah 2.7 = m. Eduyyot 3.11). There is some evi­dence elsewhere in rabbinic literature of Jews eating a Passover lamb outside of Jerusalem, in Palestine and perhaps in Rome, after the destruc­tion of the Temple (t. Yom Tov 2.15). Scholars debate whether Josephus (Antiquities 2.312), refers to this practice as well (Bokser 1984: 105-106). The evidence therefore points to a struggle among Jews over how to continue to commemorate Passover after the destruction; some advo­cated a continued quasi-sacri.cial Passover celebration, while others were adamant that the evening not include anything which even resembled the Passover sacri.ce. According to Bokser (1984: 91, 106) most scholars hold that after the Bar-Kokhba revolt all sacri.ces ceased to exist. Hence­forth, the notion of continuing to eat a lamb on Passover eve fell into disfavour. The reason for the failure of this response to the Temple’s destruction is that Jews would not have viewed the newer non-Temple sacri.cial practice as being as meaningful and religiously effective as the old practice (Bokser 1990: 7). Henceforth, rabbis and early Christians alike had to search for non-sacri.cial replacements for the Passover.

Talmudic Expansions

This review is not the place to discuss the later expansions of the seder, a ceremony which continually grew until the printing presses caused its development to freeze (Hoffman 1999a: 23) until the modern period. Nevertheless, we should note that amoraim faced different historical circumstances than did the tannaim (Bokser 1990: 11-13). The post­tannaitic development and expansion of the seder must be understood in this light. First of all, for the amoraim, the bitter memory of the destruction of the Temple was fading and therefore the lack of the sacri.ce could be more freely acknowledged. Bokser (1990: 11) writes, ‘they [post-mishnaic circles] were able openly to acknowledge that a change had taken place, in particular regarding the end of the sacri.cial cult’. The sacri.cial meat was replaced, in later amoraic times, by the bringing of two other types of meat (Friedman 2002: 437; Bokser 1988: 452-53). To Bokser (1990: 13), such a symbolic substitute would not have been possible to those still actively mourning the loss of the original and authentic Passover.

The second change in historical circumstance is that the seder ritual had already been established in the Mishnah and was already customary (at least in rabbinic circles) by talmudic times. Hence, amoraim are re­sponding to and developing the text of the Mishnah as well as expanding a performed ritual (Bokser 1988). Bokser (1988: 446) demonstrates three phenomena that occur as a result: ‘a) diverse neutral features in the mish­naic account of the seder become part of the ritual with added signi.cance and symbolic meaning; b) new symbolic gestures and objects are added; and c) existing features become transformed’. For example, the haroset receives symbolic meaning (1988: 446-48, 453-55). The Talmud requires the matzah and bitter herbs but not the Passover to be lifted when their symbolic meaning is recited. The wine is transformed from simply a means by which to cause happiness, as it is understood in t. Pesahim 10.4, to a symbolic representation of either God’s bringing the people out of Egypt or to future acts of redemption of Israel and divine retribu­tion against the Gentiles (1988: 456-57; see also Hoffman 1987: 88). To Bokser (1988: 465-66), then, the seder is a paradigmatic example ‘in which an amoraic dynamic process builds on a mishnaic reworking of the biblical heritage by expanding it and by articulating and making explicit many of the ideas and structures which have come to character­ize rabbinic Judaism’.

Again, we are witness to the fact that accurate dating of rabbinic sources allows us to understand the development of the seder’s com­ponents against the backdrop of different time periods and in light of the texts and customs which each generation inherited.

Conclusion

The work of recent historians and rabbinic text scholars has greatly ad­vanced our understanding of the origins of the rabbinic seder. A near consensus has been reached that the seder and the haggadah were inno­vations of the post-70 CE period and some scholars are con.dent of their ability to date these developments within the period between 70–220 CE. The historical, polemical and literary sources that worked to shape the seder have been brought to much greater light. Early Christian prac­tice, including the framing of the last supper by New Testament authors as a Passover meal, are seen not so much as imitating hoary Jewish practices, but as parallel and competing practices among groups occupy­ing similar cultural space, both attempting to provide religious meaning to Passover after the destruction of the Temple and Jesus’ death. What remains a desideratum is the production of a critical edition to the Hag­gadah in English, one patterned after the Safrai and Safrai Hebrew edition but taking into greater account the parallels between rabbinic and Christian developments noted by Yuval and others, the religious/cultural examinations of the rabbinic texts by Bokser and Hoffman, the sympotic in.uences and parallels examined by Tabory, and the Mishnah–Tosefta comparisons of Friedman and Hauptman.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

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1-19. Boyarin, D. 1999 Dying For God: Martyrdom and the Making of Christianity and Judaism (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press). 2001 ‘Justin Martyr Invents Judaism’, CH 70: 427-61. Bradshaw, P.F. 2002 The Search for the Origins of Christian Worship (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2nd edn). Bradshaw, P.F., and L.A. Hoffman (eds.) 1999a Passover and Easter: Origin and History to Modern Times (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press).  1999b Passover and Easter: The Symbolic Structuring of Sacred Seasons (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press). Brumberg-Kraus, J. 1999 ‘“Not by Bread Alone…”: The Ritualization of Food and Table Talk in the Passover Seder and in the Last Supper’, Semeia 86: 165-91. Carmichael, D.B. 1997 ‘David Daube on the Eucharist and the Passover Seder’, in C.A. Evans and

S.E. Porter (eds.), New Testament Backgrounds: A Shef.eld Reader (Shef.eld: Shef.eld Academic Press): 89-108.

Friedman, S.

1999  ‘The Primacy of Tosefta to Mishnah in Synoptic Parallels’, in H. Fox and

T. Meacham (eds.), Introducing Tosefta, Textual, Intratextual and Intertextual

Studies (New York: Ktav): 99-121.

2000  ‘Uncovering Literary Dependencies in the Talmudic Corpus’, in S. Cohen

(ed.), The Synoptic Problem in Rabbinic Literature (Providence, RI: Brown

Judaic Studies): 35-60.

2002  Tosefta Atiqta Pesah Rishon: Synoptic Parallels of Mishna and Tosefta

Analyzed with a Methodological Introduction [Hebrew] (Ramat-Gan: Bar-Ilan

University Press).



Glatzer, N. (ed.) 1989 The Passover Haggadah: Introduction and Commentary Based on the Studies of E.D. Golschmidt (New York: Schocken Books [1953]). Goldberg, A. 1987 ‘The Tosefta—Companion to the Mishna’, in S. Safrai and P.J. Tomson (eds.), The Literature of the Sages (CRINT, II:3.2; Philadelphia: Fortress Press): 283­

300. Hauptman, J. 2000 ‘Mishnah as a Response to Tosefta’, in S. Cohen (ed.), The Synoptic Problem in Rabbinic Literature (Providence, RI: Brown Judaic Studies): 13-34. 2001 ‘How Old is the Haggadah?’, Judaism 51: 5-18. Hayes, C.E.

1997 Between the Babylonian and Palestinian Talmuds: Accounting for Halakhic Difference in Selected Sugyot from Tractate Avodah Zarah (New York: Oxford University Press).

Hilton, M. 1994 The Christian Effect on Jewish Life (London: SCM Press). Hoffman, L. 1987 Beyond the Text: A Holistic Approach to Liturgy (Bloomington: Indiana University Press). 1999a ‘The Passover Meal in Jewish Tradition’, in Bradshaw and Hoffman (eds.) 1999a: 8-26. 1999b ‘A Symbol of Salvation in the Passover Seder’, in Bradshaw and Hoffman (eds.) 1999b: 109-31. Kimmelman, R.

1981 ‘Birkat Ha-Minim and the Lack of Evidence for an Anti-Christian Jewish Prayer in Antiquity’, in E.P. Sanders et al. (eds.), Jewish and Christian Self-De.nition. II: Aspects of Judaism in the Greco-Roman Period (Philadelphia: Fortress Press): 226-44.

Klawans, J. 2001 ‘Was Jesus’ Last Supper a Seder?’, BR 17.5: 24-33. Kulp, J. Forthcoming ‘Organizational Patterns in the Mishnah and Tosefta’, JJS. Lauterbach, J.Z. 1933 Mekilta de-Rabbi Ishmael: A Critical Edition on the Basis of the Manuscripts and Early Editions with an English Translation, Introduction and Notes

(3 vols.; Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society).

Leyerle, B. 1999 ‘Meal Customs in the Greco-Roman World’, in Bradshaw and Hoffman (eds.) 1999a: 29-61. Lieberman, S. 1995 Ha Yerushalmi Kiphshuto [Hebrew] (New York: The Jewish Theological Seminary of America [1st edn Jerusalem: Darom, 1934]). Lieu, J.M. 1996 Image and Reality: The Jews in the World of the Christians in the Second Century (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark). Mor, S. 2003 ‘The Laws of Sacri.ce or Telling the Story of Exodus’ [Hebrew], Zion 68: 297-312.

Neusner, J. 1988 The Mishnah: A New Translation (New Haven: Yale University Press). 1994 Introduction to Rabbinic Literature (ABRL; New York: Doubleday).

Raz, A. 2001 ‘Judaism as a Polemic Against Christianity’ [Hebrew], Haaretz Daily News­paper February 28. Routledge, R. 2002 ‘Passover and Last Supper’, TynBul 53: 203-21. Rouwhorst, G.

1998 ‘Liturgical Time and Space in Early Christianity’, in A. Houtman et al. (eds.), Sanctity of Time and Space in Tradition and Modernity (Leiden: E.J. Brill): 265-84.

Rovner, J. 2000 ‘An Early Passover Haggadah According to the Palestinian Rite’, JQR 90: 337-96. 2002 ‘A New Version of the Eres Israel Haggadah Litury and the Evolution of the Eres Israel “Miqra’ Bikkurim” Midrash’, JQR 92: 421-53. Safrai S., and Z. Safrai 1998 Haggadah of the Sages [Hebrew] (Jerusalem: Karta). Schwartz, S. 2001 Imperialism and Jewish Society: 200 B.C.E. to 640 C.E. (Princeton, NJ: Prince­ton University Press). Segal, A. 1986 Rebecca’s Children: Judaism and Christianity in the Greco-Roman World (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press).  Senn, F.C. 1999 ‘Should Christians Celebrate the Passover?’, in Bradshaw and Hoffman (eds.) 1999b: 183-206. Stein, S. 1957 ‘The In.uence of Symposia Literature on the Literary Form of the Pesah Haggadah’, JJS 8: 13-44. Stewart-Sykes, A. 1998 The Lamb’s High Feast: Melito, Peri Pascha and the Quartodeciman Paschal Liturgy at Sardis (Leiden: E.J. Brill). Tabory, J. 1981 ‘The Passover Eve Ceremony—An Historical Outline’, Immanuel 12: 32-43.

134  Currents in Biblical Research 4.1 (2005)

 1996a  The Passover Ritual Throughout the Generations [Hebrew] (Tel Aviv: Hakib­

butz Hameuchad).

1996b  ‘The Cruci.xion of the Paschal Lamb’, JQR 86: 395-406.

1999  ‘Towards a History of the Paschal Meal’, in Bradshaw and Hoffman (eds.)

1999a: 62-80.

Yuval, I.

1995  ‘The Haggadah of Passover and Easter’ [Hebrew], Tarbiz 65: 5-29.

1999  ‘Easter and Passover as Early Jewish-Christian Dialogue’, in Bradshaw and

Hoffman (eds.) 1999a: 98-124.

2000  Two Nations in Your Womb: Perceptions of Jews and Christians [Hebrew]

(Tel Aviv: Am Oved).

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1990  Studies in Jewish Prayer (Lanham, MD: University Press of America).





*****



The Passover Controversy in the East and West



David Rudolph

Cambridge University

2004

(unpublished)



Second century Gentile churches followed two calendar traditions concerning Passover. Almost all of the churches in Asia (where Paul devoted much of his ministry [1 Cor 16:8, 19;Acts 19:10, 26), as well as churches in Asia Minor, Cilicia, Syria, Judea (until c. 135) and Mesopotamia, observed Passover in accordance with the Jewish calendar, on the fourteenth day of the first month, the month of Nissan (Eusebius, Hist. eccl. 5.23.1; 5:24:1; Athanasius, Syn. 2; Epiphanius, Pan. 70.9.8-9; 10.3-5; Theodoret, Haer. Fab. Comp. 3.4; see Cantalamessa 1993:128b).1 Far from being a minor schismatic group, Gentile Christians who celebrated Passover on Nissan 14 stretched across a vast geographic region that represented the heartland of apostolic Christianity.

By contrast, the churches in the West—in Italy, Greece (including Corinth), Spain, Britain, Gaul (which included the present-day area of France, Belgium, the south Netherlands, south-west Germany)—observed Passover on the Sunday following Nissan 14 (Eusebius, Hist. eccl. 5.23.1; Vit. Const. 3.18). These churches retained the name pa¿sca (Passover)2 but they moved away from celebrating Passover on the same day as Jews, with Jews and in the manner of Jews. Little by little, they de-Judaized Passover.

When did the split between East and West over the dating of Passover occur?According to Epiphanius (Pan. 70.9.2), who sought to answer this question, most of thechurches in the East and West until c. 135 followed a common tradition of observing Passover when the Jerusalem church did, on Nissan 14.3 The Jewish overseers (e.pisko/pwn) of the

1 ‘The Quartodeciman [Passover on Nissan 14] controversy, which continued for over two centuries in AsiaMinor (Canon no. 7 of the Synod of Laodicea, ca. 350), testifies with clarion voice to the perennial desire of many Anatolian Christians to maintain the Jewish heritage of the Christian observance of Easter/Passover’ (Oster 1992).Athanasius (Syn. 2) writes in the fourth century that ‘the Syrians, Cilicians, and those who dwell in Mesopotamiadissented from us and kept the Pascha at the same time as the Jews’ (trans. Cantalamessa 1993:162).2 The term ‘Easter,’ with reference to the Christian festival, is first attested in the writings of Bede (eighth century). Many scholars today anachronistically use the term when rendering pa¿sca (or its equivalent) inEnglish translations of patristic texts (even Acts 12:4 in the King James Version mentions ‘Easter’). This hasunfortunately contributed to the mistaken notion that the early church abandoned the name ‘Passover’ for ‘Easter’or instituted a completely new Christian festival.3 Epiphanius quotes the Regulation of the Apostles, which he considers to be a reliable source, ‘You shall notcalculate, but celebrate the feast whenever your brethren from the Circumcision do. Keep it together with them…Even if they err, do not be concerned’ (Epiphanius, Pan. 70.10.2, 6; trans. Cantalamessa 1993:73-74; critical edition: GCS [Holl/Dummer] 3.243; cf. Boyarin 1999:13; L’Huillier 1996:21). Epiphanius rejects theAudian interpretation of the Regulation that ‘Keep it together with them’ refers to Christians celebrating Passoverwith non-Christian Jews. However, he acknowledges that ‘the Circumcision’ (Jewish Christian overseers in Jerusalem until c. 135) observed Passover on Nissan 14 and led the whole church in following this practice.

Jerusalem church were instrumental in determining the proper date of Passover for the Gentilewing of the church:

For this was their chief and entire concern: the one unity, so that there would be no schisms ordivisions…Now altogether there were fifteen bishops from the circumcision, and it wasnecessary at that time, when the bishops from the circumcision were being ordained in Jerusalem, for the whole world to follow them and celebrate the feast with them, that theremight be one accord and one confession, one feast celebrated; this was the reason for theirsolicitude which gathered the minds of people into the unity of the church. <But since thefeast?> could not be celebrated <in this fashion?> for such a long time, by God’s good pleasurein Constantine’s reign the matter was <set right> for the sake of harmony (Epiphanius, Pan. 70.10.3-5; trans. Amidon 1990:274; critical edition: GCS [Holl/Dummer] 3.243; cf. Eusebius, Hist. eccl. 4.5-6).

Epiphanius comments that the unifying influence of the circumcised overseers ceased during the reign of Hadrian when all Jews, including Christian Jews, were expelled from Jerusalem (c. 135).4 The subsequent two centuries, from the Hadrianic exile until the Council of Nicaea (c. 325), was marked by controversy in the church over the dating of Passover:

In a word, there was great confusion and fatigue, as many of the scholars know, during thetimes when a tumult arose in the preaching of the church concerning the debate about this feast, and in the time of Polycarp and Victor, when the East and the West in their dissension did not accept letters of commendation from each other, but at certain other times as well, and in the time of Alexander bishop of Alexandria, and Crescentius, each of whom is known to havewritten to the other and quarreled, and down to our own times. <The church> had continued inthis troubled state since the time following the circumcised bishops. Therefore the <bishops>from every place gathered at that time and having investigated the issue carefully, ruled that the feast should be celebrated with unanimity, according to what was fitting to the date and the rite(Epiphanius, Pan. 70.9.8-9; trans. Amidon 1990:273-74; critical edition: GCS [Holl/Dummer] 3.242).

Epiphanius mentions Polycarp (bishop of Smyrna) and Victor (bishop of Rome), two second-century church leaders who agreed on the importance of celebrating Passover but differed strongly over when the church should celebrate the festival. Victor was furious that the churches of the East continued to observe Passover on Nissan 14 and he threatened to

Epiphanius’ account would explain how such a large geographic segment of the second century church, in all ofAsia and much of Asia Minor, came to accept and maintain the practice of celebrating Passover on Nissan 14. Theaccount is also consistent with the Torah-observant ethos of the early Jerusalem congregation (Acts 21:17-26) and what we know of the later Jewish Christian ‘Nazarene sect’ (cf. Eusebius, Hist. eccl. 4.5; Epiphanius, Pan. 29.7.1­8). Moreover, John, one of the pillars of the Jerusalem church, is reputed to have observed Passover on Nissan 14 (Eusebius, Hist. eccl. 5.24.16). It makes the most sense, in our view, to assume that the decline of Jerusalem(Jewish) leadership in the church (from c. 135) cut lose an already existing tendency to de-Judaize Passover in thechurches of the West, around the time of Xystus’ bishopric in Rome (Eusebius, Hist. eccl. 4.4-5; 5.24.14). Cf. Holl 1927:218ff.; Richard 1965:260-82; 1961:179-212; Huber 1969:56ff.4 See Eusebius, Hist. eccl. 4.5-6.

excommunicate the Asian dioceses unless they conformed to the Passover tradition in Rome.5 In response, the bishops in the East gathered together and appointed Polycrates, the bishop ofEphesus, to reply to Victor.

Polycrates’ Letter to Victor

Polycrates wrote to Victor in c. 191 from Ephesus, the city from which Paul wrote FirstCorinthians (1 Cor 16:8). The letter is preserved for us in Eusebius’ Ecclesiastical History (c. 311),6 and we may assume that Eusebius came across it when he catalogued the library atCaesaria. Eusebius introduces the letter with editorial comments:

At that time, no small controversy arose because all the dioceses of Asia thought it right, asthough by more ancient tradition, to observe (parafula¿ttein) for the feast of the Saviour’s Passover (pa¿sca) the fourteenth day of the moon, on which the Jews had been commanded tokill the lamb. Thus it was necessary to finish the fast on that day, whatever day of the week itmight be. Yet it was not the custom to celebrate in this manner in the churches throughout therest of the world, for from apostolic tradition they kept the custom which still exists that it isnot right to finish the fast on any day save that of the resurrection of our Saviour. Manymeetings and conferences with bishops were held on this point, and all unanimously formulatedin their letters the doctrine of the church for those in every country that the mystery of theLord’s resurrection from the dead could be celebrated on no day save Sunday, and that on thatday alone we should celebrate the end of the paschal (pa¿sca) fast…but the bishops in Asia were led by Polycrates in persisting that it was necessary (crhvnai) to keep the custom whichhad been handed down to them of old. Polycrates himself in a document which he addressed to Victor and to the church of Rome, expounds the tradition which had come to him as follows:

Therefore we keep the day undeviatingly, neither adding nor taking away, for in Asia great luminaries (stoicei.a) sleep, and they will rise on the day of the coming of theLord, when he shall come with glory from heaven and seek out all the saints. Such werePhilip of the twelve apostles, and two of his daughters who grew old as virgins, whosleep in Hierapolis, and another daughter of his, who lived in the Holy Spirit, rests atEphesus. Moreover, there is also John, who lay on the Lord’s breast, who was a priestwearing the breastplate, and a martyr, and teacher. He sleeps at Ephesus. And there isalso Polycarp at Smyrna, both bishop and martyr, and Thraseas, both bishop, fromEumenaea, who sleeps in Smyrna. And why should I speak of Sagaris, bishop andmartyr, who sleeps at Laodicaea, and Papirius, too, the blessed, and Melito the eunuch,who lived entirely in the Holy Spirit, who lies in Sardis, waiting for the visitation from

5 Dissension existed in the church of Rome over the dating of Passover. Prior to Victor, during Eleutherius’bishopric (c. 174-189), a presbyter by the name of Blastus, and ‘many of the Church’ who followed him, called into question the Western dating of Passover, ‘…there is Blastus, who would latently introduce Judaism. For hesays the Passover is not to be kept otherwise than according to the law of Moses, on the fourteenth day of themonth’ (Pseudo-Tertullian, Haer. 8; cf. Eusebius, Hist. eccl. 5.15; 5.20.1). 6 The source documents quoted in Hist. eccl. 5.23–25 are generally held to be reliable. Petersen 1992:317-21 raises the problem of inconsistencies in Eusebius’ editorial comments but concludes that the revisions are superficial.

heaven when he will rise from the dead? All these kept the fourteenth day of thePassover according to the gospel, never swerving, but following according to the rule ofthe faith. And I also, Polycrates, the least of you all, live according to the tradition of my kinsmen, and some of them have I followed. For seven of my family were bishops and Iam the eighth, and my kinsmen ever kept the day when the people put away the leaven.Therefore, brethren, I who have lived sixty-five years in the Lord and conversed withbrethren from every country, and have studied all holy Scripture, am not afraid of threats,for they have said who were greater than I, ‘It is better to obey God rather than men.’

He continues about the bishops who when he wrote were with him and shared his opinion, andsays thus:

And I could mention the bishops who are present whom you required me to summon,and I did so. If I should write their names they would be many multitudes; and theyknowing my feeble humanity, agreed with the letter, knowing that not in vain is my head grey, but that I have ever lived in Christ Jesus.

Upon this Victor, who presided at Rome, immediately cut off from the common unity thedioceses of all Asia, together with the adjacent churches, on the ground of heterodoxy, and heindited letters announcing that all the Christians there were absolutely excommunicated. But byno means all were pleased by this, so they issued counter-requests to him to consider the causeof peace and unity and love towards his neighbours. Their words are extent, sharply rebuking Victor. Among them too Irenaeus, writing in the name of the Christians whose leader he was inGaul (Eusebius, Hist. eccl. 5.23.1–5.24.11 [Lake, LCL]).

It is notable how many apostles, bishops and heroes of the faith Polycrates mentions who observed Passover on Nissan 14. Moreover, it is significant that he refers to them positively as stoicei.a (Eusebius, Hist. eccl. 5.24.2), the term Paul uses in Galatians 4:9 (cf. Gal 4:3; Col2:8, 20) to refer to some kind of calendar-related enslavement. We may conclude thatPolycrates, who ‘studied all holy Scripture,’ did not interpret Paul’s comments in Galatians4:9-10 as precluding the Christian observance of Passover.

Striking also is the language of ‘oughtness’ used in reference to celebrating Passover. Neither Polycrates nor Victor considers the dating of Passover to be a matter of indifference or adiaphora. Neither is flexible on this issue. On the contrary, both bishops consider thecelebration of Passover to be a matter of obeying God and deviation from their received traditions to be heterodoxy:

1.

According to Eusebius, Polycrates believed that it was ‘necessary (crhvnai) to keep (diafula¿ttein) the custom’ (Eusebius, Hist. eccl. 5.24.1).



2.

Polycrates quotes Acts 5:29 concerning the celebration of Passover on Nissan 14, ‘…for they have said who were greater than I, “It is better to obey (peiqarcei.n) God rather than men”’ (Eusebius, Hist. eccl. 5.24.7). For Polycrates and the bishops of Asia,



observing Passover on Nissan 14 was not only a good tradition, an ancient tradition and an apostolic tradition. It was a matter of obeying God.



3.

Polycrates writes that the tradition of observing Passover on Nissan 14 is ‘according to the gospel…according to the rule of the faith’ (Eusebius, Hist. eccl. 5.24.6).



4.

Victor excommunicated all the churches of the East because he believed that observing Passover on the proper date was essential. Similarly, Polycrates and all the bishops ofAsia were willing to be excommunicated by Victor rather than violate what they believed to be God’s will (Eusebius, Hist. eccl. 5.23.2-4).





Why did Polycrates and the bishops of Asia consider the celebration of Passover on Nissan 14 to be mandated by God? Support for their position came from the laws of Passover in Exodus12 (read at Melito’s Passover seder [Melito, Peri Pascha 1]) and the example of Jesus in the gospels (Eusebius, Hist. eccl. 5.24.6; Hippolytus of Rome, Against All the Heresies). In addition to these authoritative texts, a living chain of apostolic tradition existed in the person ofPolycarp (bishop of Smyrna), who lived from c. 69-155.7 Polycarp served as a bridge between the apostolic and post-apostolic period. He knew John and the other apostles and testified thatthey observed Passover on Nissan 14 (Eusebius, Hist. eccl. 5.24.16). Polycarp passed on thistradition, which he learned from the apostles, to Polycrates’ generation of bishops in Asia. Thischain of apostolic tradition (John . Polycarp . Polycrates and the bishops of Asia) ishistorically plausible and not disputed by Victor, bishop of Rome. The traditional place ofJohn’s burial in Ephesus would have also been a perpetual reminder of the apostolic origin ofthe tradition.

Irenaeus’ Testimony About Polycarp

Irenaeus (bishop of Lyons in Gaul), who followed the Roman dating of Passover, explains thatthe Asian tradition of observing Passover on Nissan 14 originated, at least in part, with theapostle John. Irenaeus knew this because he personally knew Polycarp (John’s disciple) when he was a boy:

For while I was still a boy I knew you in lower Asia in Polycarp’s house when you were a manof rank in the royal hall and endeavoring to stand well with him. I remember the events of thosedays more clearly than those which happened recently, for what we learn as children grows up with the soul and is united to it, so that I can speak even of the place in which the blessedPolycarp sat and disputed, how he came in and went out, the character of his life, theappearance of his body, the discourses which he made to the people, how he reported hisintercourse with John and with the others who had seen the Lord, how he remembered theirwords, and what were the things concerning the Lord which he had heard from them, and abouttheir miracles, and about their teaching, and how Polycarp had received them from the

7 Polycrates was about thirty years old when Polycarp died.

eyewitnesses of the word of life, and reported all things in agreement with the Scriptures(Eusebius, Hist. eccl. 5.20.5-6 [Lake, LCL]; Irenaeus, Haer. 3.3.4).

According to Irenaeus, Polycarp always celebrated Passover with John and the other apostleson Nissan 14. After becoming the bishop of Smyrna, Polycarp sought to convince Anicetus(the bishop of Rome) to observe Passover on Nissan 14 as the apostles did:

…and when the blessed Polycarp was staying in Rome in the time of Anicetus, though theydisagreed a little about some other things as well, they immediately made peace, having nowish for strife between them on this matter. For neither was Anicetus able to persuade Polycarpnot to observe it [Passover on Nissan 14], inasmuch as he had always done so in company with John the disciple of our Lord and the other apostles with whom he had associated; nor didPolycarp persuade Anicetus to observe it [Passover on Nissan 14], for he said that he ought tokeep the custom of those who were presbyters before him (Eusebius, Hist. eccl. 5.24.16 [Lake, LCL]; cf. 4.14.1; Irenaeus, Haer. 3.3.4; Jerome, Vir. ill. 17).

Anicetus did not claim to follow apostolic tradition as the basis for Rome’s Passover dating, the Sunday after Nissan 14. Rather, he claimed to follow the tradition of the ‘presbyters beforehim’ who, according to Irenaeus, went back only as far as ‘Pius and Telesphorus and Xystus.’ These were the bishops in Rome just before, during and after the Jerusalem church went into exile (Eusebius, Hist. eccl. 4.4-6; 5.24.14). Eusebius (in the fourth century), on the other hand, held that the Roman dating of Passover originated with the apostles, but he provides no line oftransmission to substantiate his claim (Eusebius, Hist. eccl. 5.23.1; 5.24.14, 16). Not unexpectedly, later sources attribute the tradition to Peter and Paul.8

Bibliography

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Barclay, John M. G. ‘“Do we undermine the Law?” A Study of Romans 14.1-15.6.’ Pages 287-308 in Paul and the Mosaic Law. Edited by James D. G. Dunn. WUNT 89. T.bingen: J. C. B. Mohr (Paul Siebeck), 1996.

Barnes, Timothy D. Constantine and Eusebius. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1981.

Later sources claim that the Sunday Passover tradition originated with Peter and Paul, ‘Moreover the Quartodecimans affirm that the observance of the fourteenth day was delivered to them by the Apostle John:while the Romans and those in the western parts assure us that their usage originated with the Apostles Peter andPaul. Neither of these parties however can produce any written testimony in confirmation of what they assert’(Sozomon, Hist. eccl. 2.2.131; cf. The Paschal Canon of Anatolius of Alexandria).

Beckwith, Roger T. ‘The Origin of the Festivals Easter and Whitsun.’ Studia Liturgica 13 (1979): 1-20.

Boyarin, Daniel. Dying for God: Martyrdom and the Making of Christianity and Judaism. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1999.

Bradshaw, Paul F. ‘Easter in Christian Tradition.’ Pages 1-7 in Passover and Easter: Origin and History to Modern Times. Edited by Paul F. Bradshaw and Lawrence A. Hoffman. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1999.

_______________. ‘The Origins of Easter.’ Pages 81-97 in Passover and Easter: Origin and History to Modern Times. Edited by Paul F. Bradshaw and Lawrence A. Hoffman. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1999.

Brightman, Frank E. ‘The Quartodeciman Question.’ Journal of Theological Studies 25 (1923-1924): 254-70.

Broadhurst, Donna and Mal Broadhurst. Passover Before Messiah and After. Carol Stream: Shofar, 1987.

Cadman, W. H. ‘The Christian Pascha and the Day of Crucifixion: Nisan 14 or 15.’ Studia Patristica 5 (1962): 8-16.

Cantalamessa, Raniero. Easter in the Early Church. Collegeville: The Liturgical Press, 1993.

__________________. L’omelia ‘In s. Pascha’ dello Pseudo-Ippolito di Roma. Ricerche sulla teologiadell’Asia Minore nella seconda met. del II secolo. Milan: Vita e Pensiero, 1967.

Campbell, William S. ‘The Crucible of Christian Identity: Paul Between Synagogue and State.’ TheBritish New Testament Conference, Birmingham, UK. September 2003.

__________________. ‘“I Laid the Foundation”: Paul the Architect of Christian Identity?’ SBL International Meeting, Cambridge, UK. July 2003.

Chilton, Bruce. Redeeming Time: The Wisdom of Ancient Jewish and Christian Festal Calendars. Peabody: Hendrickson, 2002.

Colautti, Frederico M. Passover in the Works of Josephus. Leiden: Brill, 2002.

Dederen, R. ‘On Esteeming One Day Better Than Another.’ Andrews University Seminary Studies 9 (1971): 16-35.

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Eisenbaum, Pamela. ‘Is Paul the Father of Misogyny and Antisemitism?’ Cross Currents 50:4 (2000­01): 506-24.

Gerlach, Karl. The Antenicene Pascha: A Rhetorical History. Leuven: Peeters, 1998.

Grossi, Vittorino. ‘La Pasqua quartodecimana e il significato della croce nel II secolo.’ Augustinianum 16 (1976): 557-71.

Hall, S. G. ‘Melito in the Light of the Passover Haggadah.’ Journal of Theological Studies 22 (1971): 219-46.

Hardin, Justin K. ‘“Days, Months, Seasons, Years”: Gal 4.8-10 and the Imperial Cult?’ Paper presented at the Annual Tyndale Fellowship Conference, 2004 (forthcoming). The paper is part of a largerPh.D. thesis provisionally entitled ‘Galatians and the Imperial Cult: A Critical Assessment.’

Holl, Karl. ‘Ein Bruchst.ck aus einem bisher unbekannten Brief des Epiphanius.’ Pages 159-89 in Festgabe f.r Adolf J.licher. T.bingen: Mohr, 1927.

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54. G.tersloh: Bertelsmann, 1953.Martin, Troy. ‘Pagan and Judeo-Christian Time-Keeping Schemes in Gal. 4.10 and Col. 2.16.’ NewTestament Studies 42 (1996): 105-19.__________. ‘Apostasy to Paganism: the Rhetorical Stasis of the Galatian Controversy.’ Journal of Biblical Literature 114 (1995): 437-61. Martyn, J. Louis. Galatians: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary. The Anchor Bible 33A. New York: Doubleday, 1997.Metzger, Bruce. A Textual Commentary on the Greek New Testament. London: United Bible Societies, 1975. Nanos, Mark D. The Irony of Galatians: Paul’s Letter in First-Century Context. Minneapolis: Fortress, 2002. _____________. The Mystery of Romans: The Jewish Context of Paul’s Letter. Minneapolis: Fortress,

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_____________. La question pascale au Iie si.cle.’ L’orient syrien 6 (1961): 179-212.

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(1973): 74-84.________________. ‘The Quartodecimans and the Synoptic Chronology.’ Harvard Theological Review 33 (1940): 177-90.Rordorf, Willi. ‘Zum Ursprung des Osterfestes am Sonntag.’ Theologische Zeitschrift 18 (1962): 167­

89. Rosner, Brian S. Paul, Scripture & Ethics: A Study of 1 Corinthians 5-7. Leiden: Brill, 1994. Ross, J. M. ‘The Extra Words in Acts 18:21.’ Novum Testamentum 34 (1992): 247-49.Rouwhorst, G. A. M. ‘The Quartodeciman Passover and the Jewish Pesach. Questions Liturgiques 77

(1996) 152-173.

_________________. Les hymnes Pascales d’Ephrem de Nisibe. Analyse th.ologique et recherche surl'.volution de la f.te pascale chr.tienne . Nisibe et . .desse et dans quelques .glises voisinesau quatri.me si.cle. 2 vols. Leiden: Brill, 1989.

Saldarini, Anthony J. Jesus and Passover. New York: Paulist, 1984.

Schlatter, Adolf. Die Korintherbriefe. Schlatters Erl.uterungen zum Neuen Testament 6. Stuttgart: Calwer Berlag, 1950.

Schrage, Wolfgang. Der erste Brief an die Korinther 2. Evangelisch-Katholischer Kommentar zum Neuen Testament. D.sseldorf: Benziger, 1995.

Shulam, Joseph and Hilary Le Cornu. A Commentary on the Jewish Roots of Romans. Baltimore: Lederer, 1997.

Stewart-Sykes, Alistair, trans. On Pascha: With the Fragments of Melito and Other Material Related to the Quartodecimans. Crestwood, N.Y.: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2001.

___________________. The Lamb’s High Feast: Melito, Peri Pascha and the Quartodeciman Paschal Liturgy at Sardis. Leiden: Brill, 1998.

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_____________. Paul and the Jewish Law: Halakha in the Letters of the Apostle to the Gentiles. Minneapolis: Fortress, 1990.

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3. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1979.

Wilson, S. G. ‘Passover, Easter, and Anti-Judaism.’ Pages 337-55 in ‘To See Ourselves as Others See Us’: Christians, Jews, ‘Others’ in Late Antiquity. Edited by Jacob Neusner and Ernest S. Frerichs. Chico: Scholars, 1985.

Witulski, Thomas. ‘Galatians IV 8-20 Addressed to Pisidian Antioch. Pages 61-66 in Actes du 1er Congr.s International sur Antioche de Pisidie. Edited by T. Drew-Bear, Mehmet Taslialan andChristine M. Thomas. Collection Archeologie et Histoire de L’Antiquite Universite Lumiere-Lyon 2, 5. Lyon: Universit. Lumi.re, 2002.

_______________. Die Adressaten des Galaterbriefes: Untersuchungen zur Gemeinde von Antiochia ad Pisidiam. FRLANT 193. G.ttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2000.

Yuval, Israel J. ‘Easter and Passover As Early Jewish-Christian Dialogue.’ Pages 98-124 in Passover and Easter: Origin and History to Modern Times. Edited by Paul F. Bradshaw and Lawrence

A. Hoffman. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1999.

Zernov, N. ‘Eusebius and the Paschal Controversy at the End of the Second Century.’ Church Quarterly Review 116 (1933): 24-41.





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Michael Straus* Questo sicuro e gaud.oso regno frequente in gente antica e in novella, viso e amore avea tutto ad un segno. O trina luce che ‘n unica stella scintillando a lor vista, s. li appaga! guarda qua giuso a la nostra procella!1 This article examines the Easter festival from an ecumenical point of view, focusing on the Patristic period and the so-called “Easter Controversies” in the Early Church concerning the date on which the Resurrection should be observed, as a means of assessing both the validity of the resolution of such controversies and the possibly continuing impact of that resolution on the Church today. I will divide this examination into four parts.

First, I will consider what guidance we have from the Scriptures as to how, if at all, the Church is to celebrate the Resurrection. Second, I will focus on the Easter Controversies, and in particular the quartodeciman position, in the context of the Council of Nicaea and Nicaea’s resulting decision concerning the need for a uniform date on which to celebrate Easter. Third, I will note the disputes that remained within the Church concerning the observance of Easter after Nicaea, notwithstanding the attempt at reaching full unity on this issue. Finally, I will attempt to gauge whether any failure to reach unity on the question of when to observe the Resurrection has any continuing impact on the Church today.

I. The Easter Festival from a New Testament Point of View

This is not the place for an extended treatment of worship practices in the New Testament, let alone for how such practices might be informed by Old Testament practices. That

*

A.B., M.A. (Columbia Univ.); M.Th.St. (Samford Univ.); M.Phil. (Cambridge Univ.) 1 Dante, Paradiso XXXI, 25-30.

worship practices not only by efforts to glean from Acts and the Letters just what it was that the first Christians did when they gathered, but also to suggest themes and overtones that might carry over from the Church in the Wilderness, i.e., Biblical Israel.2

For present purposes, however, it will suffice to examine something of the beginnings of what for many Christians is the Church’s central festival, that of the Resurrection, and its relationship to the Old Testament feast of the Passover. But while the Scriptures seem quite clear as to when the Resurrection occurred – the third day following Jesus’ death during a Passover feast – it is remarkable that nowhere in the Scriptures is the Resurrection, let alone the Passover, enjoined upon the Church as a separate festival, or feast day, to be observed. Indeed, Jesus’ only command to his disciples about a continuing observance is His direction that after His death, the disciples break bread and drink wine together “in remembrance of me.”3 Moreover, there is no set time for observance of even this memorial feast. Paul, for example, gives guidelines on the form of proper observance of the Lord’s Supper, but simply states: “For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes.”4

That the Apostles may have had a more Latitudinarian stance towards the particular timing or mode of such observances than is now found may seem counterintuitive, in that if any group of Christians was ever likely to have achieved and called for uniformity in worship, one would suppose it was they. And yet, Paul – who can be rather precise on such matters as the length of men’s hair or the role of women in worship services – seems to regard it as a light

2 See, e.g., C. Bechtel (ed.), TOUCHING THE ALTAR (Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans Pub. Co.,

2008).

3 Matthew 26:26-28 Mark 14:22-24; Luke 22: 19-20. (All quotations from Scripture are from the

English Standard Version (Wheaton: Crossway Bibles, 2001).

4 I Cor. 11:26 (emphasis added).



judgment on you in questions of food or drink, or with regard to a festival of a new moon or a Sabbath. These are a shadow of the things to come, but the substance belongs to Christ.”5

Against that background, there is nevertheless considerable evidence that it soon became a custom in the Early Church to meet together on the first day of the week for fellowship, including but not limited to the sharing of this memorial meal, a meal with a necessary historical and theological6 relationship to Passover.7 Sunday of course is not the day of the week on which Jesus ate a last Passover meal and/or that on which He died, but that on which He rose from the

5 Colossians 2:16-17. 6 See Melito of Sardis, Peri Pascha, available at http://www.kerux.com/documents/KeruxV4N1A1.asp, ¶ 103: “Therefore, come, all families of men, you who have been befouled with sins, and receive forgiveness for your sins. I am your forgiveness, I am the passover of your salvation, I am the lamb which was sacrificed for you, I am your ransom, I am your light, I am your savior, I am your resurrection, I am your king, I am leading you up to the heights of heaven, I will show you the eternal Father, I will raise you up by my right hand.” (Emphasis added). And thus we say in our own liturgy, “Christ our Passover is sacrificed for us.” 7 See Acts 20:7: “On the first day of the week, when we were gathered together to break bread….” See also I Cor. 16:2: “On the first day of every week….” There also appears to be solid evidence of authority among the early Church fathers for observing the first day of the week as the ordinary meeting day among believers. See, e.g., The Didache, § 14:1, reprinted in

J.B. Lightfoot, J.R. Harmer, trans., and M. Holmes, eds., THE APOSTOLIC FATHERS (2d ed.) (Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1989), 157; Ignatius, "Letter to the Magnesians," § 9, reprinted in ibid., 95; and Dionysius of Corinth, as quoted by Eusebius, ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY, Vol. I, H. Lawlor and J. Oulton, trans. (New York: S.P.C.K., 1927), Book IV.23.11. There is also an obvious practicality in selecting at least one day for common worship, given most believers’ need to work. Nothing, however, suggests that the Apostles set one day aside as the equivalent of a legally compelled form of replacement “Sabbath.” It is noteworthy, for example, that no such rule was proposed or announced at the Council of Jerusalem. Acts 15:19­

20. Moreover, there is no suggestion that other days are not also appropriate for worship services. And Paul also instructs us not to impose a rule that suits our conscience on another believer who may “honor the Lord” at a different time or in a different manner. See Romans 14:1-23. Indeed, Paul does not speak well of those who would enjoin a rigid worship calendar on the Church. See Gal. 4:10: “You observe days and months and seasons and years! I am afraid I may have labored over you in vain.”

anything, this custom suggests that the Resurrection was marked not with any particularity on the

calendrical day annually corresponding to the Resurrection, but on every Sunday, at which time

the Church generally came together not only to “proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes,” but

also “for building up” with “a hymn, a lesson, a revelation, a tongue, or an interpretation.”10

In short, while the Scriptures state when the Resurrection occurred, they do not provide

any guidance whether, let alone when, to celebrate it as a particularized feast.

If we start from the premise that the Resurrection is not enjoined upon the Church to be

observed as a separate feast day at all, let alone a feast to be observed at a particular time of the

year, then what are Easter’s11 origins? The earliest indications in Acts are, as suggested above,

8 Matthew 28:1: “Now after the Sabbath, toward the dawn of the first day of the week….” Mark 16:1-2, [9] (same); Luke 24:1-2 (same); John 20:1 (same). Of course, the fact that the third day following Jesus’ Passover death in a given year (whether 30 A.D. or thereabouts) was a Sunday does not itself answer the question whether the Resurrection ought to be celebrated on a Sunday regardless when the third day following Passover in some other year might occur, since by definition it will not occur on the same day of the week in every year where the determining calendar is lunar. 9 Rev. 1:10: “I was in the Spirit on the Lord’s day….” 10 I Cor. 14:26. The Roman Catholic Church takes the position that Sunday is a form of weekly celebration of the Resurrection. “‘We celebrate Sunday because of the venerable Resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ, and we do so not only at Easter but also at each turning of the week:’ So wrote Pope Innocent I at the beginning of the fifth century, testifying to an already well established practice that had evolved from the early years after the Lord's Resurrection. Saint Basil speaks of ‘holy Sunday, honored by the Lord's Resurrection, the first fruits of all the other days;’ and Saint Augustine calls Sunday ‘a sacrament of Easter.’" Pope John Paul II, Dies Domini, § 19, available at http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/john_paul_ii/apost_letters/ documents/hf_jp-ii_apl_05071998_dies-domini_en.html (footnotes omitted). 11 Use of the term “Easter” in English to refer to the celebration of the Resurrection is itself problematic. As explained below, the word “Easter” is derived from one or another pagan fertility goddess. But the etymologically – and, one might suggest, theologically – sound name probably ought to be some form of “Pesach,” which is derived “from the Latin pascha and the Greek .....'. These words in turn apparently come from the Chaldee or Aramaic form of the Hebrew name of the Passover festival, meaning ‘he passed over,’ in memory of the great deliverance, when the destroying angel ‘passed over the houses of the children of Israel in Egypt when he smote the Egyptians’ (Exod. 12:27).” Encyclopedia Britannica, 11th ed., s.v. “Easter,” by T. Fallow (Cambridge: The University Press, 1910).

of the week, but effectively whenever believers shared a communion meal in obedience to the Lord’s command. There is also evidence, however, that the Jewish members of the Early Church

– the dominant constituency at the outset – continued to observe the Old Testament feasts of

Israel as they came due during the year.12 The principal feasts commanded in the Law of Moses were the Sabbath, Passover, Firstfruits, Weeks (or Pentecost), Trumpets, the Day of Atonement and Booths (or Tabernacles).13

While the Early Church may well have observed some or all of these during the Church’s formative period when there were uncertainties as to which commandments of the Law, if any, had continued validity,14 the Jewish members of the Church could defensibly continue to observe such feasts not as a matter of compulsion, but: (1) with the enhanced perception that these prophetic feasts were fulfilled in Christ; and (2) as a testimony to their non-believing Jewish brethren.15 Regardless of the reasons for differing approaches, they soon enough led to controversies within the Church at large as to how and when the Resurrection ought to be celebrated.



II. Nicaea and the Separation of Easter from Passover

Among several controversies concerning the proper date on which to observe the Lord’s Resurrection as a Christian holiday, perhaps the most interesting is the so-called Quartodeciman Controversy. The term “quartodeciman” is simply the Latin word for the ordinal "fourteenth"

12 P. Bradshaw, L. Hoffman, eds., PASSOVER AND EASTER: ORIGIN AND HISTORY TO MODERN

TIMES (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1999), 81 ff.

13 Leviticus 23.

14 See, e.g., the events leading to the Jerusalem Council as described in Acts 15.

15 Thus it was, for example, that the Apostles and the 120 were in one place together in



Jerusalem on the feast of Pentecost; at which point the prophetic type of the harvest festival of

Pentecost was fulfilled with the giving of the Holy Spirit and the resulting founding of the

Church as the ingathering of all those whom God was calling. Acts 2:1.



lunar calendar16 and the day of that month ordained to Israel by God for the killing of the

Passover lamb, thus marking the commencement of the Passover Feast.17

In its earliest form, the question was not so much when to celebrate the Resurrection as

when to begin a overnight fast and vigil that would end with the dawning of Easter morning.

The ending of the vigil/fast would mark both His death and the Resurrection, a tradition

preserved today in Easter Vigil services.18 It thus appears that the earliest form of the

Church’s celebration/remembrance of the Lord’s death and resurrection may have involved a

single festival beginning on what is now Holy Saturday rather than, as is now the case, several

festal days separated by a gap, i.e., that from Maundy Thursday to Easter Sunday.

Broadly speaking, then, the quartodecimans were those who asserted that because Jesus

was killed on a Passover, any Church festivals celebrating His death, and thus, upon breaking the

fast, His Resurrection, must be tied to the Jewish lunar calendar as movable feasts. Accordingly,

they looked to the date set each year by the Rabbis in Jerusalem for the commencement of the

16 The Jewish calendar is based on 30-day months, each beginning with the arrival of a new moon. As a result, the Jewish year is 360 days long, rather than a solar-based 365 day year. 17 The Passover Feast has its origins in the Law of Moses and marks the deliverance of the Children of Israel from slavery in the Egypt. The Israelites were enjoined in the Law to celebrate the feast annually in remembrance of this central event in their history. Exodus 12:6: “…and you shall keep [your lamb] until the fourteenth day of this month, when the whole assembly of the congregation of Israel shall kill their lambs at twilight.” Following the killing of the lamb, the congregation was instructed to eat the meat that same night. Beginning on the following day, the congregation commenced observance of a weeklong Passover feast. See Leviticus 23:5-6: “In the first month, on the fourteenth day of the month at twilight, is the Lord’s Passover. And on the fifteenth day of the same month is the Feast of Unleavened Bread to the Lord; for seven days you shall eat unleavened bread;” and Exodus 12:18: “In the first month, from the fourteenth day of the month at evening, you shall eat unleavened bread until the twenty-first day of the month at evening.” 18 See A. Stewart-Sykes, THE LAMB’S HIGH FEAST: MELITO, PERI PASCHA AND THE QUARTODECIMAN PASCAL LITURGY AT SARDIS (Leiden: Brill, 1998), 148 (“Although … Pascha is not precisely a festival of resurrection, a synoptic basis to the celebration would indeed make sense of an act of commemoration which holds both the passion and the resurrection in view.”).

celebration could fall on any day of the week, thus obviating the need to designate a “Maundy Thursday,” “Good Friday,” or even an “Easter Sunday.” And it followed that when, over time, celebration of the Passion and celebration of the Resurrection were observed on distinct days, the Resurrection feast could fall on any day of the week, whether on the first day of the week, i.e.,a Sunday, or not.

It is important to note that those holding to the so-called quartodeciman view were not "judaizers," such as concerned Paul in the Letter to the Galatians,19 nor did they link their celebrations of the Resurrection to the Jewish Passover as a basis for salvific justification or for

other legalistic reasons. Rather – and this is a key point – the quartodeciman view as to when the Passion and Resurrection should be celebrated was the dominant view in the Early Church.20 As the Gentile composition of the Church increased, however, alternative dates for a

Resurrection celebration were advanced, all tending towards a date coinciding, every year, with the first day of the week. The view that the Resurrection should be celebrated on a date tied to celebrations beginning at the Jewish Passover was ultimately condemned as heresy at the 4th century Council of Nicaea in an effort to find a fixed date acceptable to the Church as a whole. One incidental question posed in this paper is thus whether the quartodeciman position was justly condemned as heresy; and, if not, what consequences the Church may now suffer as a result of any wrongful condemnation and resulting rejection of that tradition.

19 See, e.g., Gal. 2:14: “But when I saw that their conduct was not in step with the truth of the gospel, I said to Cephas before them all, ‘If you, though a Jew, live like a Gentile and not like a Jew, how can you force the Gentiles to live like Jews?’” 20 P. Hoffman and F. Bradshaw, op. cit., at 82. See also Stewart-Sykes, op. cit. at 19 (“The point is that the Quartodecimans were not consciously imitating the Jews but derived their paschal practice from their Johannine Christian roots, and that what holds good of their paschal practice holds good for all aspects of their faith and cult.”)

Passover feast, because that date is clearly set forth in the Law of Moses.21 Moreover, there

should not be a meaningful controversy as to the date Jesus celebrated His last22 Passover meal

with his disciples: He shared that meal with them on 14 Nisan, as the Law also commanded.23

Similarly, there should be no controversy as to the date of Jesus' Resurrection: it was on the third

day following His death, which the Scriptures uniformly state fell on a first day of the week, i.e.,

on the day we now call Sunday, in the particular year of His death.24

It is important in this connection to note that numbered Hebrew “days” were reckoned

from twilight to twilight, not from midnight to midnight as we do.25 Thus, Jesus ate the Passover

meal in the evening – that is to say, at the start – of 14 Nisan; was betrayed that same night; was

tried and crucified the next morning; and died at about the 9th hour, or 3 p.m., of the daylight

period of 14 Nisan. All these events therefore occurred during 14 Nisan itself because they took

place before the beginning of the twilight commencement of the next day, which was 15 Nisan.

21 Exodus 12:1-28; Leviticus 23:4-8; Numbers 28:16-25; Deuteronomy 16:1-8.

22 Last, that is, until celebrating it anew in the Kingdom of God. Matthew 26:29; Mark 14:25;

Luke 22:16.

23 Matthew 26:17 ff.; Mark 14:12 ff.; Luke 22:7 ff. Notwithstanding the uniformity of the

Synoptic Gospels on this point, there have nevertheless arisen several “Easter controversies”

over the question whether Jesus’ last meal was in fact a Passover meal, or whether it was a unique

form of the traditional Passover meal adopted by Him one day prior to the actual Passover in

order to prefigure His death, and whether there are thus inconsistencies between the Synoptic

Gospels and the Gospel of John as to the date of the meal. See generally A. Edersheim, THE

TEMPLE: ITS MINISTRY AND SERVICES (updated edition) (Peabody: Hendrickson Publishers,

1994), Appendix at 310-18 (“Did the Lord Institute His ‘Supper’ on the Paschal Night?”); J.

Jeremias, THE EUCHARISTIC WORDS OF JESUS (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1966); R.

Clover THE FESTIVAL AND SACRED DAYS OF YAHWEH (Garden Grove: Qadesh La Yahweh

Press, 1998), 223 ff., available at http://www.yahweh.org/publications/fsdy/festivals.pdf.

24 Matthew 28:1: “Now after the Sabbath, toward the dawn of the first day of the week, Mary

Magdalene and the other Mary went to see the tomb.” See also Mark 16:1-2, [9] (same); Luke



24:1 (same); John 20:1 (same).

25 R. Clover, op. cit., 223 ff.; see, e.g., Leviticus 23:5 n. 1 (the Hebrew text translated as “at

twilight” means “between the two evenings”).



was that? The answer would appear to be found in Jesus’ own words: “For just as Jonah was

three days and three nights in the belly of the great fish, so will the Son of Man be three days and

three nights in the heart of the earth.”27 A fair reading of the text would be that the remaining

daylight portion of 14 Nisan after 3 p.m. and the ensuing nighttime portion of 15 Nissan was His

first “day and night” in the heart of the earth;28 that the daytime of 15 Nisan and the nighttime of

16 Nisan, a Sabbath, was the second “day and night;” and that the daytime of 16 Nisan and the

nighttime of 17 Nisan was the third “day and night.” On this reading, the “three days and three

nights” ended with the dawning of the daytime hours of 17 Nisan. And Jesus’ tomb was in fact

discovered empty “toward the day[time],” which was of course still 17 Nisan.29

Thus, if 17 Nisan in the particular year of Jesus’ death happened to occur on the first day

of the week, or a Sunday, then 14 Nisan necessarily ran from the evening of the day we

now call Wednesday through the daytime of the day we now call Thursday. That Jesus died on

a Thursday is also clear from the story of Nicodemus and Jesus’ burial. The Synoptic

Gospels uniformly record that “evening had come” by the time that Nicodemus “went

to Pilate and asked for the body of Jesus” in order to bury him in his

26 1 Cor. 15:4: “For I delivered to you…what I also received…that he was buried, that he was

raised on the third day….”

27 Matthew 12:40; see also John 2:19: “Destroy this temple and in three days I will raise it up.”

28 On this reading, Jesus’ statement that he would spend “three days and three nights in the heart

of the earth” referred not so much to his physical burial in the tomb as to his preaching of the

gospel to the souls in prison (1 Peter 3:19), which could have commenced from the moment He

“yielded up his spirit” at about 3 p.m. on 14 Nisan (Matthew 27:50). There is also support for

this view in the Early Church’s explanations of the observance of the Easter vigil. See, e.g.,

Amphilochius of Iconium, Oration 5: For Holy Saturday, 1, reprinted in R. Cantalamessa, ed.,

EASTER IN THE EARLY CHURCH (Collegeville, Minn.: The Liturgical Press, 1993), Document 73,



p. 77; and Chromatius of Aquileia, Sermon 17A: On the Pascha, 1, reprinted in id., Document 121, p. 107. 29 The resurrection had thus already occurred by the dawn; hence the angel who greeted the women inside Jesus’ tomb said, “He has risen; he is not here…[H]e is going before you to Galilee.” Mark 16:6-7; Luke 24:6 (same).

Preparation, that is the day before the Sabbath.”31 In other words, Nicodemus obtained Jesus’

body during what we refer to as a Thursday evening, but which in the Hebrew

calendar was the beginning of Friday, in this case 15 Nisan.



Notwithstanding the plain language of the texts, the majority of Christians currently celebrate the Last Supper during the evening of “Maundy Thursday;” observe Jesus’ death on “Good Friday;” observe a fast and vigil on “Holy Saturday;” and celebrate the Resurrection on “Easter Sunday.” They therefore apparently count “Good Friday” as the first of the “three days” that Jesus was “in the heart of the earth,” while ignoring the required “three nights.” On no calculation, however, can “three days and three nights” be found between Jesus’ supposed death on a Friday and His Resurrection on a Sunday.32

How did this mathematically impossible set of observances come about? The explanation possibly lies in the changing composition of the Church. Thus, as the Church expanded to include both Gentile and Jewish Christians, the question arose as to how, if at all, to integrate the facts of Jesus’ death as the true Paschal Lamb and His subsequent Resurrection into the existing Mosaic framework for celebrating the Passover feast, the resurrection of course

33 34

being that “new thing”done by the Lord which gives completed meaning to the sacrifice.

30 Mark 15:42-43; Matthew 27:57-58 (same); Luke 23:50-54 (same). 31 Mark 15:42 (emphasis added). 32 Indeed, it appears that the entire notion of a “Good Friday” observance did not appear until “towards the end of the 4th century in Jerusalem.” F. E. Brightman, “The Quartodeciman Question,” Journal of Theological Studies 25 (1924), 257, reprinted in E. Ferguson, ed., STUDIES IN EARLY CHRISTIANITY, Vol. XV (New York: Garland Publishing, Inc., 1993), 322-338. 33 Isaiah 43:19. 34 These debates were thus not about “merely technical” issues, as James Campbell points out in his commentary on the Venerable Bede’s report about the Easter controversy at the Synod of Whitby, but concerned central symbols of the faith. BEDE: THE ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE (J. Campbell, ed.) (New York: Simon & Schuster, Inc., 1968), xviii,

such, but three emerged initially as the principal options and each seemed to have some adherence at one time or another: (1) celebrating the Resurrection as an integrated part of the sacrificial Passover meal on 14 Nisan; (2) celebrating the Resurrection as a separate event “on the third day” thereafter, regardless of the day of the week on which it fell; or (3) celebrating the Resurrection on the first day of the week occurring after 14 Nisan, but still within the seven-day Feast of Unleavened Bread beginning on 15 Nisan and ending on 21 Nisan.

The first option became known as the pure “quartodeciman” position; the other two are really variants of that position because they are also tied to 14 Nisan and are therefore referred to as “quasi-quartodeciman.”35 While none of these variations prevails in the Western Church today, it appears from recent scholarship that one or another form of quartodecimanism was, as noted, the dominant position in the Early Church as a whole, not limited to the Jewish

believers.36 For the first few centuries at least, members of the Church thus maintained a clear link to Passover, not only through their communion meals on the first day of the week, but also through annual Paschal celebrations tied in some way to the Passover celebrations commencing

on 14 Nisan both in Jerusalem and elsewhere.37 That there was a richness to such observances

reprinted with permission in J. R. Wright, A COMPANION TO BEDE (Grand Rapids: Wm. B.

Eerdmans Pub. Co., 2008), 135.

35 R. Clover, op. cit., 275 ff. (describing several variations on the same theme, all based on 14

Nisan).

36 P. Bradshaw and L. Hoffman, op. cit., 82 (suggesting that “quartodecimanism is not some

local aberration from a supposed normative practice dating from apostolic times, but is instead

the oldest form of the Easter celebration”); T. Talley, “Liturgical Time in the Ancient Church:

The State of Research,” Studia Liturgica 14 (1982), 34-35, reprinted in E. Ferguson, op. cit.,

304-321. It is beyond the scope of this paper to address the different forms these early Easter

celebrations took, i.e., whether they involved fasts, vigils, quasi-Passover meals, or the like; it

will suffice for now to establish a continuing relationship between the Jewish Passover and the

Church’s celebration of the Lord’s Death and Resurrection.

37 P. Bradshaw, L. Hoffman, op. cit., 81 ff.



established through recent examination of a Paschal liturgy attributed to Melito of Sardis.38

By definition, in each of these “quartodeciman” celebrations, there was thus a plain and visible, chronological connection between the celebration of Passover by non-believing Jews and the concurrent celebration of Christ as the true Passover by believing Jews and Gentiles. As noted, Passover commenced with the full – or “14th” – moon of the first month of the Jewish lunar year; that month in turn began with the rabbis’ first sighting of the new moon over Jerusalem.39 Given the relatively primitive state of astronomy in the first century, the start of the first month itself was not easily determined in advance. Moreover, the Jewish calendar periodically inserts an extra month in order to make up for the fact that the moon revolves around the earth only every 29 ½ days.40 Thus, the rabbis did not always determine far in

advance when the full moon of the first month – 14 Nisan – would occur, with the result that distant Jewish communities on occasion celebrated the Passover feast an entire month before the Jerusalem community because the news might take more than two weeks to reach them. The same result therefore obtained as well with respect to Passover/Paschal celebrations in more distant Christian communities, who were likewise dependent on travelers from Jerusalem informing them, in due course, of the rabbis’ determination when Passover commenced.41

In short, the Christian community – including of course both Gentiles and Jews – depended on the non-believing Jewish community to set the time for the Church’s central feast

38 A. Stewart-Sykes, op. cit. (linking the liturgy to Haggadah traditions, the Gospel of John and

the Book of Revelation).

39 P. Bradshaw and L. Hoffman, op. cit., 91.

40 G. Declerq, Anno Domini (Turnhout, Belgium: Brepols, 2000), 60 ff.

41 Id., 91-92; For example, it was the prevailing custom in Asia Minor to let the feast “be

governed by the day of the Jewish month on which [the Jewish Passover] was set regardless of

the day of the week on which it fell.” K. S. Latourette, A HISTORY OF CHRISTIANITY (New York:

Harper & Brothers Publishers, 1953), 137.



authorities in the Roman Church; and thus Constantine convened the First Council of Nicaea in 325 A.D. to address, along with Arianism, the differing times at which the Pascha/Passover was observed. The Council recognized that while the feast was celebrated in the churches of Asia on 14 Nisan to coincide with the Jewish Passover, it was celebrated in the churches of the West (centered by then in Rome) on the Lord’s Day following the Passover. To add to the complications, the Church in Alexandria had determined that the relevant full moon, and hence

the Easter Sunday to follow it, should not occur prior to the vernal equinox.42

In one sense, these differences reflected an evolving shift in liturgical emphasis from

Jesus’ sacrifice as the Paschal lamb to an emphasis on His passage from death to life. That shift

arguably mirrored the altered composition of the Church from its base in Jerusalem, where it was

still closely tied to its roots in Judaism, to the broader, Graeco-Roman oriented Church, where

Rome was first among equals. But by Constantine’s time, the liturgical shift – whatever its

genesis – had already given rise to a serious split between the Western and Eastern branches of

the Church, as the latter still adhered to a more Passover-based celebration. As Eusebius writes:

A question of no small importance arose at that time. The dioceses of all Asia, as from an older tradition, held that the fourteenth day of the moon, on which day the Jews were commanded to sacrifice the lamb, should always be observed as the feast of the life-giving pasch, contending that the fast ought to end on that day, whatever day of the week it might happen to be. However it was not the custom of the churches in the rest of the world to end it at this point, as they observed the practice, which from Apostolic tradition has prevailed to the present time, of terminating the fast on no other day than on that of the Resurrection of our Savior. Synods and assemblies of bishops were held on this account, and all with one consent through mutual correspondence drew up an ecclesiastical decree that the mystery of Resurrection of the Lord should be celebrated on

42 G. Declerq, op. cit., 50. Declerq also notes that in the third century, the Alexandrians developed their own methods, using both lunar and solar cycles, for determining the full moon of the first lunar month.

While the nominal reason for fixing a single date for Easter was thus to achieve unity in

the Church, the underlying motivation was plainly to distance the Church from its Jewish roots.

The issue, in other words, involved more than the mere technical difficulties of determining

when 14 Nisan would occur in any given year. Rather, what apparently grated on the Gentile

Christians was their continued association with, and dependence upon, the rabbinic authorities in

Jerusalem to make that determination. The clearest evidence of a harshly anti-Jewish motivation

comes from Constantine himself, as convener of the Council:

At this [council of Nicaea] the question concerning the most holy day of Easter was discussed, and it was resolved by the united judgment of all present, that this feast ought to be kept by all and in every place on one and the same day. For what can be more becoming or honorable to us than that this feast from which we date our hopes of immortality, should be observed unfailingly by all alike, according to one ascertained order and arrangement? And first of all, it appeared an unworthy thing that in the celebration of this most holy feast we should follow the practice of the Jews [that is, by celebrating it at the time of the Jewish Passover, on a Jewish calendar date, Nisan 14], who have impiously defiled their hands with enormous sin, and are, therefore, deservedly afflicted with blindness of soul .… Let us then have nothing in common with the detestable Jewish crowd; for we have received from our Savior a different way. A course at once legitimate and honorable lies open to our most holy religion. Beloved brethren, let us with one consent adopt this course [that is, the celebration of the resurrection, always on a Sunday], and withdraw ourselves from all participation in their baseness .… that this matter should be rectified, so that we might have nothing in common with that nation of parricides who slew their Lord …. 44

43 Eusebius, op. cit., Book V.23 (emphasis added). The dispute had in fact already boiled over by the end of the second century, when the Roman Pope Victor went so far as to excommunicate the Asian bishops and churches that adhered to 14 Nisan rather than a Sunday. Id., Book V.9-11. That excommunication was rescinded at the plea of Irenaeus, but “long remained an unpleasant memory.” K. S. Latourette, op. cit., 137. 44 Constantine, Letter to the Churches Concerning the Council at Nicaea, quoted in Eusebius, THE LIFE OF CONSTANTINE, Book III.18, 19, pp. 524-25 (emphasis added), available at http://www.tofm.org/HOLIDAYS/easter_controversy.htm. See also Tertullian, Against the Jews, reprinted in R. Cantalamessa, op. cit., Documents 98 and 99, at 92-93. Constantine’s manifest hostility towards the Jews should alone given one pause about his position. It is plainly an embarrassment to anyone seeking to defend the Council’s decision. Perhaps for this reason in many scholarly treatments of the subject the relevant text is only cited but not quoted. See, e.g..

Accordingly, the Council did not limit itself to determining whether Easter should be observed the Sunday following the Passover rather than on the Passover itself, but further determined that Easter should not be linked to Passover at all. The Council thus decreed that Easter should only be celebrated on the first Sunday after the first full moon succeeding the vernal equinox (March 21);45 and that it “should under no circumstances coincide with the

Jewish Passover (and thus with the day of the Paschal full or 14th moon), even when 14 Nisan happened to be on a Sunday.”46 There is, of course, nothing in the Bible that ties anything to the vernal equinox; and no Biblical justification has ever been given for the Council’s decision in that regard.

In all events, based on the Council’s ruling, Easter would always occur at some point after the Jewish Passover; for example, if the full moon occurs on a Sunday, Easter is the Sunday after. By this arrangement Easter may take place as early as March 22, or as late as April 25.47 Because the Jewish Passover is keyed to a lunar, rather than solar calendar, the Church’s Good

P. L’Huillier, THE CHURCH OF THE ANCIENT COUNCILS (Crestwood: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1996), 23 and n. 49 (omitting the hostile words). 45 The vernal equinox is one of two days during the year marking the moments when the sun crosses directly over the equator, such that the days and nights are of equal length. WEBSTER’S II NEW COLLEGE DICTIONARY (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1995), s.v. “vernal equinox.” 46 G. Declerq, op. cit., 51. The records of the Council are apparently incomplete on this score. See The First Council of Nicaea, Decree on Easter, reprinted in R. Cantalamessa, op. cit., Document 53, pp. 63-64. Nothing on this question appears, for example, in the Canons of the Council. See W. Bright, THE CANONS OF THE FIRST FOUR GENERAL COUNCILS OF NICAEA, CONSTANTINOPLE, EPHESUS AND CHALDEDON: WITH Notes (Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1892). There are other witnesses, however. See, e.g., the description in Eusebius, op. cit., Book

V.23. 47 G. Declerq, op. cit., 51, 58-59. The Orthodox Church, however, alleges that the Western Churches do not accurately follow Nicaea; they read the Council’s rule as providing “that the Christian Easter shall never either precede or coincide with the Jewish Passover, but must always follow it. Easter cannot fall earlier than March 23….” I. Hapgood, SERVICE BOOK OF THE HOLY ORTHODOX-CATHOLIC APOSTOLIC CHURCH (New York: Association Press, 1922), xix (emphasis added).

Friday/Easter celebrations would henceforth only irregularly coincide with the Jewish Passover.48 The net result was that those who had previously focused their celebrations of the Lord’s death and resurrection on 14 Nisan and/or the Sunday immediately following – i.e., the quartodecimans and quasi-quartodecimans – were condemned as heretics by the Council; and their practices essentially faded away.49 It would thus be fair to mark the decision of the Council of Nicaea as

among the Church’s most purposeful – and indefensible – separations from its Jewish roots.



III. Continuing Divergence within the Church after Nicaea

If the Council’s further goal was uniformity among Christians as to the observance of Easter, it failed miserably. For example while, as noted, the quartodeciman position faded relatively quickly in the Roman Church as a result of its condemnation as heresy, for some

period of time into the 7th century, members of the Irish and Scottish churches adhered to a form of quartodeciman position, asserting that they did so in faithfulness to tradition originating with the Apostle John. Not surprisingly, this led to considerable conflict with missionaries from

Rome, a conflict which was only resolved at the synod held under the decision-making authority of the King of Northumbria at the monastery of Streaneshalch (later called Whitby) in 664 A.D.

The leading account of the Synod is that of the Venerable Bede and he relates at some length the debate between Colman and Wilfrid on the subject, the former appealing to John as authority and the latter to Peter and Paul.50 One cannot read Bede without being taken

48 Because the Jewish calendar is based on the rotation of the moon around the earth, individual

dates within its 12 months of 30 days will only infrequently match dates within the 12 months of

28/29, 30 or 31 days in solar-based calendars such as the Julian and Gregorian calendars.

49 But see the discussion in Point III, infra, concerning the maintenance of a quartodeciman

position in the British Isles into the 7th century.

50 Bede, ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY OF ENGLAND, Book III:25 (J. A. Giles, ed. and trans.)

(London: Henry G. Bohn, 1847), 153 ff.



ignored Paul’s injunction in Colossians 2; at another, no good could come of an outcome imposed by the King, whereby the losing party seems not so much as to have come to agreement as a result of prayerful discourse, but to have left sulking back to Iona.52 And, as has recently

been observed, the debate whether Whitby’s outcome was “positive or negative” continues

depending upon whether the “Roman” values of unity and centralization and hierarchical

authority that it is thought to have affirmed are evaluated positively, or whether the

“Celtic” values of diversity and freedom and so-called “creation-centered spirituality”

that it is thought to have suppressed are considered to be more desirable, or vice versa.53

How might it be that despite the Council of Nicaea being one of the few Councils broadly accepted in the Church at large as authoritative, such disunity continued? First, the Council of Nicaea did not provide a table for computing the date of Easter.54 As noted, the Alexandrian and

Roman Churches used different methods, with the result that they set different dates for the vernal equinox and hence Easter. Nor did they agree what do when the full moon fell on a Sunday, i.e., should Easter be celebrated then, or the following Sunday? Moreover, because the Council itself determined that Easter should not coincide with the Jewish Passover regardless when the first full moon following the vernal equinox should fall, those Churches adhering to its ruling still depended on the Jews’ determination when 14 Nisan fell, if only in order to avoid it.

Paul Bradshaw illustrates the ensuing chaos by noting that “in the year 387, Easter was observed at Alexandria and in North Italy on April 25, in Gaul on March 21, and at Rome on

51 E.g., id. at 159: “But as for you and your companions, you certainly sin [in your observances

of Easter]….”

52 Id., at 160. And ironically, it may well be that Colman had the better of the argument, if the

links to John explored by Stewart-Sykes in his monograph on the Melito of Sardis’ Paschal

liturgy are credited, whereas there is no hard evidence of what Peter, Paul or any other Apostle

did with respect to observance of the Passover and Resurrection.

53 J. R. Wright, op. cit., 83.

54 G. Declerq, op. cit., 52-53.



Orthodox Church reads March 22 as an impermissible starting day but also because the Orthodox Church has never accepted the Roman shift from the Julian to the Gregorian calendar, with the result that the Orthodox Easter is sometimes before and sometimes after, but rarely the same day, as the Roman Easter.56

Second, we cannot lose sight of the frankly pagan link that results from the Church’s explicit reliance on the vernal equinox as the reference point for determining the date of any Resurrection celebration. Because the vernal equinox marks the increasing lengthening of days and the return of Spring, it is a focal point for pagan fertility celebrations. Indeed, while the Church’s Resurrection feast still reflects its original etymology with names such as “Pasqua” (Spanish), “Paques” (French) or “Paaske” (Danish), the English word “Easter” is perhaps more to the point. The name Easter is derived from Eostre or Ostara, the Anglo-Saxon

55 P. Bradshaw, op. cit., 93. Much of this is of course arcana and a full explanation would involve comparing the various mathematical tables devised for determining in advance when the full (i.e., 14th) moon might appear during any given month, some of which are based on 19 year cycles, some on 84 year cycles, and some on 112 year cycles, but virtually all having the deficiency that at some point they diverge from the observed new moon marking the commencement of a lunar month. See generally G. Declerq, op. cit., 54-55. The key point, however, is that the ultimate result of the Council of Nicaea’s decision on this issue was disunity both within the Church and as between the Church and the non-believing Jews. 56 Ibid.; see also T. Fallow, op. cit. The continuing division between East and West over the Council of Trent’s decision in 1563 A.D. to change the calendar base in order to correct for the multi-day errors that had arisen over the past 1000 years is beyond the scope of this article, though it does provide yet one more illustration of the virtually gospel-irrelevant issues that divide the Church to this day. For more detail on this calendar issue, see THE CATHOLIC ENCYCLOPEDIA (1908 ed.), Vol. III, s.v. “Reform of the Calendar,” by J. Gerard, available at http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/03168a.htm. And for yet more (and admittedly excruciating) detail on the difference between astronomical moons and paschal full moons, see “How [the] Easter Date Is Determined,” available at http://users.sa.chariot.net.au/~gmarts/easter.htm.

fertility, as well as to a Phoenician goddess Astarte, sister to and lover of Baal.57

It is difficult to escape the conclusion that one motivating factor in shifting to a vernal equinox based celebration was that it provided a smoother entry way for pagan peoples who were already accustomed to celebrating some form of life-giving/life-returning feast at that time. Such a connection is hardly lost on modern day witches and warlocks, who time their own

fertility “celebrations” to coincide with the vernal equinox.58 This cannot be a link of which the Church should be proud. And again, it implicitly calls into question the correctness of the original decision of the Council of Nicaea.



IV. Easter as an Ecumenical Conundrum

There are several bad consequences from the Church’s decision to separate its celebrations of the Lord’s death and resurrection from the Jews’ continuing celebrations of Passover; and from the Church’s continued inability to reach harmony within itself even apart from the Jewish celebrations. First, at the most basic level – and despite the fact that Christianity, like Judaism, is a faith based on history not abstracted metaphysical principles59 – the Church has lost an

important historical mooring and deprived itself of the inherent benefit of an accurate and continuing tradition. Celebrating Jesus' Resurrection in a manner that is keyed to the Jewish

57 See “Easter,” available at http://www.echoedvoices.org/Apr2003/Easter.html. 58 In the witches’ hands, Easter is twisted as the feast of “[t]he Resurrection Full Moon … a time to celebrate the beauty and wisdom of the teachings of the Christ and the beginning of a new astrological year. Christ stood for the balance of the masculine and feminine and represented truth and wisdom.” New Moon Rising: A Magickal Pagan Journal, Issue 6, available at http://www.nmrising.com/public/881.htm.” Needless to say, this is nonsense, making it all the more peculiar that the Church’s central feast should be knit to an astrological coincidence rather than, for example, to the historical fact of Israel’s deliverance from Egypt. 59 Islam is also a faith based on many historical facts; whether events such as Mohammed’s alleged nighttime trip to Mount Moriah actually occurred is a subject well outside the scope of this article.

not simply its historical but also its theological significance. In contrast, if my analysis is anywhere near correct as to the non-Biblical basis for current practices, the feast as now celebrated has lost a good deal of its Biblical moorings.

Second, even apart from the loss of the inherent value as a witness to the world of the truth of the Resurrection that would arise though a demonstrable continuity of historical practice, there is still no unity within the Church as a whole concerning the observation of its central feast. Thus, as noted, there remains a sharp divide between those Churches following the Roman custom of celebrating Easter on the first full moon following the vernal equinox as determined under a Gregorian calendar; and those following the Orthodox celebrations based on a Julian calendar. How weak indeed must the Church appear to the rest of the world when the Resurrection itself is a sign of division. Perhaps as a result, there have more recently been ecumenically-based calls for all Churches to reach common agreement on the date for Easter.

The most notable is the Aleppo Statement, issued in 1997.60 The Aleppo Statement received general support,61 and yet for all that appears, the search for unity on this issue has essentially been put on everyone’s back burner.62 As noted in the response of the United States Conference

60 World Council of Churches, “Towards a Common Date of Easter,” available at

http://www.oikoumene.org/en/resources/documents/wcc-commissions/faith-and-order­commission/i-unity-the-church-and-its-mission/towards-a-common-date-for-easter/towards-a­common-date-for-easter.html. 61 See, e.g., Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, “Common Response to the Aleppo Statement on the Date of Easter/Pascha (July 13, 1999), available at http://archive.elca.org/ecumenical/ecumenicaldialogue/orthodox/easter.html. 62 Well, not everyone’s back burner. One Canon Andrew Dow, Dean of Cheltenham, with the support of several dozen General Synod members, has called on the Archbishop to fix a single date for Easter to fall on a given weekend in the Spring, without regard to such matters as equinoxes, full moons, Biblical texts or historical fact, solely in order to harmonize school vacations and thus to “make life easier for schools and end the disruption and confusion over the timing of bank holidays.” S. Doughty, “Church of England Clerics Want Easter Date Fixed for

perceptible” changes in practice on the part of the Eastern churches.63 Third, it is difficult to see how the Gospel is advanced for the celebration of Jesus’ death and resurrection to coincide with pagan celebrations; yet that is the necessary result to the extent that the Resurrection is described as simply one among a series of equinox-based rituals celebrating the return of Spring. Fourth, and at the heart of this article’s thesis, by purposefully distancing itself from the Jewish Passover, the Gentile Church falls short in its mission to preach the Gospel to the Jews.

In contrast, the link between Passover and the Gospel of Christ was maintained in the Early Church's celebrations.64 To be sure, a Christian remembrance at this season of the year must be entirely based on the truth of Jesus’ once and sufficient sacrifice as the Lamb of God;

Every Year” (January 19, 2009), available at http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article­1123122/Church-England-clerics-want-Easter-date-fixed-year.html. The vacant theology,

indeed the very triviality and foolishness of that position, needs no further comment.

63 U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, “Common Response to the Aleppo Statement on the

Date of Easter/Pascha” (October 31, 1998), available at

http://www.esccb.org/seia/orthodox.shtml.

64 See again Melito of Sardis’ Peri Pascha, which might be written in hymn form:



“Understand therefore, beloved,

how it is new and old,

eternal and temporary,

perishable and imperishable,

mortal and immortal, this mystery of the Pascha:

old as regards the Law,

but new as regards the Word;

temporary as regards the model,

eternal because of the grace;

perishable because of the slaughter of the sheep,

imperishable because of the life of the Lord;

mortal because of the burial in earth,

immortal because of the rising from the dead.”



R. Cantalamessa, op. cit., Documents 20-24, at 41-46.

the point: when the Church proclaims Jesus as the true Paschal Lamb concurrently with the

season of the Jewish Passover, it testifies to Jesus’ accomplished work on the cross as salvation “to the Jews first and also to the Greeks.”65 Moreover, by celebrating Jesus' resurrection on a date that appears to have been fixed by animus to the Jews, the Church flatly turns its back both on the importance of the Old Testament to the Early Church as its own Scriptures, while also implicitly disavowing God's unchanged promise of salvation to the Jews.

That such salvation remains God’s purpose is clearly stated in Romans 11. There Paul admonishes the Gentile believers not to boast in their new-found favor with God, but rather to recall that they, being wild, were but grafted into the good olive tree, which is Israel, the natural branches being broken off when Israel rejected Jesus. Paul then prophesies that God will restore Israel when “the fullness of the Gentiles has come in,” thus bringing to perfection His plan: “For

God has consigned all to disobedience, that he may have mercy on all.”66

To the extent that the Church ignores – or worse, as evidenced by Constantine and others, demeans – its Jewish roots, the Church falls into precisely the snare of which Paul warned: “Do not be arrogant toward the branches.”67 The Church thereby fails of an important charge of the Great Commission to the extent it fails to testify in its feasts, as well as through its teachings, that God’s grace continues today for the Jew as well as for the Gentile.68

65 Romans 1:16, 2:9-10; 1 Corinthians 1:22-24.

66 Romans 11:25-26, 32.

67 Romans 11:18.

68 Romans 2:9-10.





V. Conclusion



Fortunately, of course, no ultimate doctrine turns on whether Jesus died on a Thursday or a Friday; or whether the Resurrection should be celebrated once a year, or every time communion is served; or whether, if celebrated once a year in a special way, that celebration must be tied to a third day following celebration of the Passover by ancient, medieval or modern-day Jews; and nothing in this paper is meant to suggest otherwise. The relevance of the kind of divergence from the Scriptural texts noted above, however, is that it demonstrates that the Church has departed from a reasonably clear Biblical interpretation of these events, and in particular from their historic and calendrical ties to the Jewish Passover. And the Church’s decision over time to adhere to a mathematically impossible set of date observances – with Jesus dying during the daytime on a Friday and rising from the dead on Sunday morning, as though this were a full three days and nights after – suggests that something other than Biblical truths was at issue in coming to that position.

The historical record described above, measured against the Scriptures, thus lays bare a series of errors in the Early Church. Not only did the Council of Nicaea depart from what was in the Early Church the dominant time for observance of the Lord’s death and resurrection, it did so

out of hostility to the Jews, thus doubly-depriving its decision on that issue69 of any validity. Thereafter the Church, by persisting in the Council's error and distancing itself from a Passover-linked festal calendar, at a minimum diminished, and for some most likely lost, the historical and theological moorings of the Resurrection. Further, while purporting to seek unity among the

Churches in the observance of the Resurrection, the Council failed to achieve even that much,

69 There is no such problem with the Council’s resolution of the Arian dispute. See generally R. Williams, ARIUS: HERESY AND TRADITION (revised edition) (Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans Pub. Co., 2002).

with the unjustifiable result that the Western and Orthodox observances still diverge on the question, while deeply spiritual traditions such as those of the Celts were suppressed and submerged.

The Church, of course, should look to the Gospels and its own history, not to the stars, for its times of festal worship. And if true Christian unity is to be part of its mission, then the Church by definition should heed the call of Romans 11, which becomes increasingly imminent with the passage of time.


Grand Duke Alexis of Russia visited the United Statesduring the winter of 1871–1872 and declared that therewas no true American cuisine, James Parkinson re-sponded with his culinary manifesto American Dishes atthe Centennial.In a call to arms for the nation’s cooks,Parkinson extolled the rich variety of American ingredi-ents and said that it was this body of regional foods thatshould serve as a basis for our national cuisine. It was hishope that these ingredients would be showcased at theU.S. Centennial in 1876. Unfortunately, due to Centen-nial politics, Parkinson was never invited to put his vi-sion into practice, yet even today this theme is one of theunderlying forces in modern American cookery.Parkinson’s manifesto also launched his career astrade editor for the Confectioners’ Journal,a position heheld from 1874 until his death in 1895. During this pe-riod he published hundreds of articles on specific topicssuch as “The Raspberry: Its Peculiarities and Uses,”“Gelatin,” or “Colored Sugars for Decoration.” His ma-terial not only contains information not readily availablein cookbooks of the period, but also a wide selection ofrare recipes from leading cooks and confectioners.See alsoCandy and Confections; Delmonico Family; IceCream; Leslie, Eliza.BIBLIOGRAPHYConfectioners’ Journal. Philadelphia, 1874–1895.“Famous Old Caterer Dead,” Philadelphia Times(16 May 1895).Hines, Mary Anne, Gordon Marshall, and William WoysWeaver. The Larder Invaded. Philadelphia: Library Com-pany of Philadelphia, 1986, pp. 61–62Kynett, Harold. For Better or For Worse. Privately printed, 1949,pp. 97–98.Parkinson, Eleanor, The Complete Confectioner. Philadelphia: Leaand Blanchard, 1844.Parkinson, James W. American Dishes at the Centennial.Philadel-phia: King & Baird, 1874.“Parkinson, Provider for Epicures,” Philadelphia Ledger,De-cember 1, 1907.Valentine, R. B. “Les Bon Vivants,” Confectioners’ Journal(Jan.1880), 16–17.William Woys WeaverPASSOVER.Passover celebrates the Exodus of theIsraelites from Egypt in the second millennium B.C.E.asnarrated in the Bible (Exod. 1–15). According to the Jew-ish calendar, the holiday begins on the evening of thefourteenth of Nisan, which falls in late March or earlyApril. Passover is observed for seven days in Israel andeight days elsewhere. On the first one or two eveningsof the holiday, Jews are required to recite the Exodusstory (Exod. 13:8) at a family feast called the seder andto eat matzo, an unleavened flat bread. They are pro-hibited from eating foods containing leaven (hametz) dur-ing the entire holiday.History of PassoverThe eating of a sacrificial animal, together with unleav-ened bread and bitter herbs, was central to Passover ob-servance until the destruction of the Second Temple in70 C.E.However, the paschal sacrifice and eating un-leavened bread actually predate the Exodus, even in theExodus account itself (Exod. 12:8), and are associatedwith two distinct holidays: Pesach, a pastoral holiday dur-ing which animals were sacrificed and eaten, probably asa propitiatory measure to protect the flocks; and HagHa’Matzoth, an agricultural festival associated with thebeginning of the barley harvest, during which unleavenedbread was eaten. The Bible distinguishes these two hol-idays (Lev. 23:5–6; Num. 28:16–17) and, in Exodus 12,juxtaposes them. The Samaritans still observe them astwo separate events. Unleavened bread was also an ordi-nary bread made in haste. Sarah served it to guests (Gen.18:6), and Lot offered it to the angels (Gen. 19:3). It isthought that eventually these two spring festivals wereobserved together and were later identified with the com-memoration of a historical event, the Exodus, which alsooccurred in the spring.According to the biblical account of the Exodus, Godvisited ten plagues on the Egyptians to persuade them toPASSOVERENCYCLOPEDIA OF FOOD AND CULTURE41Parkinson’s restaurant at 180 Chestnut Street in Philadelphiawas once a private mansion. There was a separate entrancefor the confectionery store (on the right). Wood engraving fromGleason’s Pictorial (May 1853). ROUGHWOODCOLLECTION.
release the Israelites from bondage. Before the lastplague, during which the firstborn in each householdwould be slaughtered, God told Moses to tell the Is-raelites to slaughter an unblemished yearling lamb or kidand smear the blood on their two door posts and lintelso their homes would be passed over and their firstbornspared. The Israelites, as instructed, roasted and ate theanimals just before leaving Egypt but were in such a hurrythat their bread had no time to rise (Exod. 12:1–28). Alsosymbolizing the food eaten by slaves and the poor, matzois known as the bread of affliction or poverty (Deut. 16:3).Passover became one of three pilgrimage festivalsduring which Israelites traveled to Jerusalem to make of-ferings, including the sacrifice of animals, at the Temple.They consumed parts of the roasted animal at a familyfeast. After the destruction of the Second Temple, ani-mals could no longer be sacrificed, but the practice wasremembered through symbols, such as the roasted shankbone placed on the seder table.After the destruction of the second Temple in 70C.E.and the wide dispersal of the Jews, Passover was grad-ually codified, and many local variations developed. Thelaws concerning Passover are in the Bible (Exod. 12–15),Tractate Pesahim of the Mishnah and Toseftah (compi-lations of the Oral Law completed in about 200 C.E.),Talmud, and later works. The Shulhan Arukh,written byJoseph Caro (1488–1575), with glosses by Rabbi Mosesben Israel Isserles (1530–1572), is the basis for modernreligious practice.HaggadahThe story of the Exodus is recounted from the Haggadah,which means ‘narrative’ in Hebrew, at the seder, duringwhich participants eat foods symbolizing the Exodusfrom Egypt. The traditional Haggadah, which containspassages from the Bible and the rabbinic literature, bless-ings, prayers, and songs, is based on a compilation thatbegan to be assembled in the Second Temple period.With several core elements in place by 200 C.E., the Hag-gadah continued to evolve, as did the seder, whose formis set out in the Haggadah.The diverse Jewish communities of the Diasporahave created thousands of distinctive Haggadahs andmodified them to reflect such concerns as egalitarianism(removing masculinist language), feminism (emphasizingthe role of women in the Exodus story and in Jewish his-tory), environmentalism (adding pollution and other dan-gers to the list of plagues), oppression (expressingsolidarity with African Americans, Soviet Jews, Tibetans,Palestinians), social justice (adding poverty, homeless-ness, and AIDS to the list of plagues), humanism (stress-ing the theme of freedom rather than divineintervention), personal liberation (freedom from addic-tions), and remembering the Holocaust. These texts haveencouraged the creation of new kinds of seders, whetheradaptations of the seders held on the first two nights ofPassover or a special third seder, as well as new and newlyinterpreted symbolic foods and cuisines. For example, Ti-betan food is served at interfaith and international sedersfor a free Tibet, whether on American university cam-puses or in Dharamshala, India, home of the Dali Lamain exile.SederThe seder is organized around seven symbolic foods.They include three matzoth (two in some communities);four glasses of wine; a roasted bone (zeroa)symbolizingthe Paschal animal sacrificed at the Temple; a green veg-etable for spring; bitter herbs (maror)for the bitternessof slavery and for the ancient practice of eating hyssopwith the Paschal offering; a roasted egg symbolizing afestival sacrifice once made at the Temple; and a mixtureof fruit, nuts, spices, and wine or vinegar (haroset)for themortar used by the enslaved Israelites.Ashkenazim (Jews who derive from Germany andcentral and eastern Europe) present these foods on a spe-cial seder plate. Some Sephardim (Jews who derive fromthe Iberian Peninsula and the places they settled after theExpulsion in 1492) place these foods in a basket. YemeniteJews set little bowls on a table covered with leafy greenvegetables. In the late twentieth century, vegetarians re-placed the bone with a roasted beet, or “Paschal yam,” tosymbolize the blood of the Paschal lamb. Among themany new Passover traditions is an orange on the sederplate, a practice introduced in the early 1980s by Susan-nah Heschel as a gesture of solidarity with those who havebeen marginalized within the Jewish community, includ-ing lesbians, gay men, and widows.The seder, which means ‘order’ in Hebrew, proceedsthrough a set sequence of fifteen elements. These includeblessings on the wine, the matzoth, and other symbolicfoods; blessings and ceremonial washing of the hands;recitation of the Haggadah; eating the festive meal; theafikoman(half of the second of two or three matzoth);grace before and after the meal; and concluding songsand poems.Many customs vary. Toward the end of the seder,Ashkenazim set aside a special goblet of wine for theProphet Elijah and open the door to allow him to enter.The arrival of the Prophet Elijah is believed to herald thecoming of the Messiah. A feminist innovation is the ad-dition of Miriam’s goblet, which is filled with water because Miriam, the older sister of Moses, is called aprophetess in the Exodus account and is associated witha miraculous well (Exod. 15:20). According to ErichBrauer (The Jews of Kurdistan,1993, first published in1947), with the mention of each of the ten plagues, Jewsfrom Ushnu dip a finger in wine and shake a drop intoan empty eggshell, to which they add some arrack, to-bacco, and bitter herbs. Then “one of the men takes theegg and in silence throws it on the doorstep of one knownto hate the Jews, returns in silence, and washes his faceand hands before taking any further part in the Seder”(Brauer, 1993, p. 288). During the song “Dayenu,” inPASSOVER42ENCYCLOPEDIA OF FOOD AND CULTURE

which the refrain “that would have been enough” followsa verse describing how God executed justice, someSephardi, Afghani, and Persian Jews beat each other gen-tly with scallions to symbolize the lashes of Egyptiantaskmasters.HarosetHarosetis eaten at points nine (maror)and ten (koreh)inthe seder sequence, after which the meal proper com-mences. Many of the ingredients in haroset,which varyfrom one community to another, have symbolic signifi-cance. The spices stand for the straw that was mixed intothe mortar, red wine refers to the plague of blood, sweet-ness signifies hope, apples are mentioned in the Song ofSongs (8:5), and various fruits (figs, dates, raisins) are as-sociated with Bible lands. Ashkenazim favor apples, nuts,cinnamon, and red wine. Yemenite Jews, who refer toharoset as dukeh,a Talmudic term that only they use, combine dates, raisins, dried figs, roasted sesame seeds,pomegranate, almonds, walnuts, black pepper, cumin, cin-namon, ginger, cardamom, and a little wine vinegar. TheLopes family in Jamaica makes a paste of dates and sul-tanas soaked in orange juice and adds grated citron rind,port wine, and shredded coconut. The paste is shaped intolittle bricks and dusted with cinnamon (Michel, 1999).AfikomanThe afikoman,a reminder of the Paschal sacrifice, is thelast morsel consumed at the seder. The word afikomanderives from the Greek epikomion(‘dessert’) and epikomioi(‘revelry’), which are associated with the final phases ofthe Greek symposium. While the seder resembles theGreek symposium in other ways, most importantly So-cratic dialogue and learned discussion in the context of afestive meal (the symposium generally followed the meal),the rabbis stressed the differences between them becausethe symposium was associated with excessive drinking andlicentious behavior. Many similarities between the sederand symposium (drinking wine, reclining, song) werecharacteristic of ancient banquets rather than unique toeither of them, but these and other common practices(for example, dipping appetizers in a condiment) acquiredspecial meaning in the Passover seder.Ashkenazim hide the afikomanand reward a child forfinding it at the end of the meal. While neither Sephardicnor Yemenite Jews hide the afikoman,they do reenact theExodus, consistent with the obligation stated in the Hag-gadah that one is obliged to see oneself as if one had per-sonally left Egypt. Syrian Jews do this by wrapping theafikomanin a special embroidered napkin cover, throw-ing it over their shoulders, reciting Exodus 12:34, andthen asking and answering the following questions in Ara-bic: Where are you coming from? (Egypt) Where are yougoing to? (Jerusalem) (Dobrinsky, 1986, p. 256). In someMediterranean and Central Asian Jewish communities, apiece of the afikomanis saved as a protection against mis-fortune. It is also a Sephardic custom, when breaking theafikomanduring the seder, to do so in a way that formsa letter of symbolic significance.MatzoAlthough matzo is required only during the seder, it iscustomary to eat matzo throughout the holiday. To markthe distinction, many Jews use guarded (shmurah)matzofor the seder and regular matzo on the remaining days,while others eat shmurahmatzo throughout the holiday.To ensure that the grain never comes into contact withany water or trace of leaven, shmurahmatzo is guardedfrom the moment the wheat is harvested until the matzoleaves the oven, whereas regular matzo (matzopeshutah)is made from wheat that has been supervised only fromthe point of milling. Of concern is the practice of tem-pering grain by moistening it with water before milling.The flour for shmurahmatzo is mixed with mayim she-lanu,water that has been drawn from a natural source af-ter sunset and left to stand overnight in a cool place.All matzo, to be kosher for Passover, must be madefrom dough mixed, kneaded, rolled, perforated, and bakedat a high temperature within eighteen minutes. A rabbisupervises the process and checks that the matzoth areproperly backed, with no bubbles, folds, or soft spots. Between each batch of matzoth, tables and tools arescrupulously cleaned to ensure that no traces of doughPASSOVERENCYCLOPEDIA OF FOOD AND CULTURE43Manuscript illumination from the fifteenth century showing acouple celebrating the Passover seder. © ARCHIVOICONOGRAFICO,S. A./CORBIS.

adhere to them. In Yemen, Jews used to bake matzothduring Passover in order to have fresh soft matzoththroughout the holiday. Baked directly on the walls of aclay oven, these matzoth were somewhat like pita.Yemenites served thick matzoth at the seder, as did me-dieval Jewish communities, and thin ones during the restof the holiday.A traditional rich matzo (matzo ashirah)is made withwhite grape juice or eggs rather than with water. Onlythose who have difficulty digesting regular matzo, in-cluding the sick, elderly, or young children, may eat thiskind of matzo during Passover. The Talmud and latersources debate the permissibility of decorating matzoth,whether by pressing them into molds or perforating themto make patterns, because the extra time devoted to thisprocess might cause the dough to ferment. IllustratedHaggadahs show, however, that matzoth were indeed or-namented. In 1942, matzoth in the shape of V, for vic-tory, were baked in the United States.Rolled by hand, shmurahmatzoth are round, in con-trast with the square matzoth made by machines intro-duced during the 1850s in Austria. Machine-madematzoth were controversial for several reasons. First,round matzoth were stamped out of sheets of dough. Be-cause the scraps were reused, there was a delay betweenmixing and baking the dough, prompting concern thatthe dough would start to rise. Second, to fulfill the reli-gious obligation of eating matzo during the seder, matzomust be made intentionally for that purpose. Whether ornot the intentional starting of the machine is sufficientto meet this requirement has been debated, and steps havebeen taken to increase human involvement in the ma-chine process.In time, square matzoth made by machine came tobe widely accepted, so much so that matzo companies,such as Manischewitz, established in Cincinnati in 1888,made every effort to diversify their matzo products andto create a market for them all year round. Since the1930s, their cookbooks have provided recipes for how touse their matzo products in everything from tamales tostrawberry shortcake. In the late twentieth century, Man-ischewitz added an apple cinnamon matzo to its productline. Chocolate-covered matzo has become popular.The claim that Jews added a victim’s blood to thematzo or drank the blood at the seder is a late additionto the long history of blood libels accusing Jews of kid-napping and killing a Christian, usually a child. Blood li-bels have led to the execution of accused Jews and themassacre of Jewish communities. In 2002 in Saudi Ara-bia, a blood libel accused Jews of using the blood of non-Jewish teenagers in their Purim pastries.HametzWhereas one is only obligated to eat matzo at the seder,hametzis prohibited during all eight days of Passover.Hametzrefers to any of the five species of grain men-tioned in the Bible (wheat, rye, oats, spelt, barley) thathave come into contact with water after being harvestedand allowed to ferment. These grains and anything thathas come into contact with them or has been made fromthem cannot be eaten or be in one’s possession duringthe holiday. Preparation for Passover entails a scrupulouscleaning of the home to remove every last trace of hametz,the “sale” to a non-Jew of any remaining hametzin one’spossession (and repurchase following the holiday), the useof dishes and utensils dedicated exclusively to Passoveror specially prepared for that purpose, and consumptionof food that is kosher for Passover.To prevent any possibility of violating the prohibi-tion, “fences” have been created around these rules. ManyAshkenazim do not eat kitniyot(legumes, grains, andbeans, including lentils, rice, corn, peas, millet, buck-wheat, and anything made from them or their derivatives,such as oil, sweeteners, or grain alcohol). Sephardim gen-erally eat fresh beans, and some groups eat rice. MostHasidim do not eat gebrokts(matzo, whether whole, bro-ken, or ground into meal, that has been mixed with wa-ter). Italian Jews do not consume milk during Passover,while Ethiopian Jews abstain from consuming fermentedmilk products. Many Jews do not conform to these re-strictions, while some observe kashruth(Jewish dietarylaws) during Passover but not during the rest of the year.CuisinePassover dietary restrictions and requirements haveprompted distinctive culinary responses. Signature dishesof the seder meal itself vary according to Jewish com-munities. While many are also served on the Sabbath andother holidays, some are specific to Passover.Ashkenazim serve clear chicken broth with dump-lings (kneydlakh)made from matzo meal and noodlesmade of egg and potato starch or matzo meal, gefilte fish(poached balls of ground fish), roasted fowl, stewed car-rots, and nut tortes made without flour. Because of thelimited availability of fresh fruits and vegetables in east-ern Europe during late March and early April, carrots,beets, radishes, potatoes, and other root vegetables areimportant. Rosl,prepared weeks in advance by allowingraw beets covered with water to ferment, is the basis fora hot or cold borscht consumed during the week. Deli-cacies include beet or black radish preserves, khremslakh(pancakes made from matzo meal), sponge cakes, maca-roons, and ingberlakh(candies made with grated carrot orsmall pieces of matzo and honey, nuts, and ginger).Sephardim prepare haminados,eggs in their shellsbraised in water with red onion skins, vinegar, and saf-fron. Favorite Passover dishes among Moroccan Jews in-clude dried fava bean soup with fresh coriander andstewed lamb with white truffles, which are harvested inFebruary. Greek Jews feature artichokes with lemon, fishin rhubarb sauce, stuffed spinach leaves, leek croquettes,various dishes calling for lamb and lamb offal, and abaklava made with matzo. East European Jews tradition-PASSOVER44ENCYCLOPEDIA OF FOOD AND CULTURE

ally made their own raisin wine for Passover, while Greekand Turkish Jews made raki, a liqueur derived fromraisins through a process of distillation. Purchased winemust not only be kosher, which involves many strict re-ligious regulations, but also kosher for Passover.As if to demonstrate that Passover dietary restric-tions are no impediment to innovation and variety, thekosher food industry has developed an astonishing arrayof Passover products. The historian Jenna WeissmanJoselit, in “The Call of the Matzoh,” notes that by 1900Bloomingdales and Macy’s featured Passover groceries,wine, and other holiday necessities (Joselit, 1994, p. 221).The most widely observed of the Jewish holidays, Pass-over occupies only 3 percent of the calendar, but gener-ally accounts for 40 (and in some areas up to 60) percentof kosher food sales in the United States annually. Thismakes kosher for Passover products an estimated $2 bil-lion industry. According to Kosher Today, a trade publi-cation of the kosher food industry, more than six hundrednew Passover products were introduced in 2001 alone,which gave consumers up to four thousand items fromwhich to choose. However, in a world where almosteverything is becoming kosher for Passover, from pizzato noodles, Passover may lose some of its culinary dis-tinctiveness.Public SederWhereas the seder is traditionally a family event, publicand organizational seders arose even before the twenti-eth century in Europe, the United States, and elsewhereto meet the needs of Jewish soldiers away from home (forexample, during the American Civil War and today in Is-rael); Jews confined in hospitals, nursing homes, and pris-ons; and the destitute. During the twentieth-century, thekibbutz, a collective agricultural settlement in Palestineand then in Israel, created its own Haggadahs and seders,consistent with the socialist and even atheistic tendenciesof its founders and the practice of eating together in largepublic dining halls. During the Holocaust, Jews inBergen-Belsen, separated from their families, organizedto observe the holiday as best they could. Unable to ob-tain matzo, they determined that hametzwas permittedand created a special prayer to say over it.Even before World War I, seaside resorts in theUnited States attracted Jewish visitors who preferred toavoid the elaborate preparations for Passover and observethe holiday away from home. According to Kosher Today,over seventy-five thousand people participated in Pass-over programs in hotels during 2000 in the United States,and the Passover getaway business, which has grown insize and variety, hoped to fill thirty thousand rooms in2002. In Israel, many orthodox families spend all eightdays of the holiday at a hotel or kibbutz pension to avoidthe considerable effort of preparing for Passover. Com-munal seders are also held in Europe. The first commu-nal seder in Beijing took place in 1998. Caterers organizeseders in banquet halls, and restaurants offer seders, inpart as a response to the dispersal of families. WolfgangPuck, at the prompting of his Jewish wife, began to hostPassover seders at Spago, his Los Angeles restaurant, in1985. The menu features such delicacies as roasted whiteAlaskan salmon (Panitz, 1999). Peter Hoffman, who hasbeen hosting seders at his Mediterranean-style restaurantSavoy since 1994, created a seder inspired by Marranotraditions. Other restaurants may simply include matzoon the menu.Third SederWhereas only one seder is required in Israel (and amongsome Reform Jews) and two seders in the Diaspora, aLubavitcher tradition holds that the Baal Shem Tov, theeighteenth-century founder of Hasidism, a pietist move-ment, instituted a Messiah’s Feast, mirroring the sederwith matzo and wine, on the afternoon of the eighth dayof Passover. During the 1920s, Zionist groups and mem-bers of the Jewish Labor movement organized thirdseders, although radical secular Haggadahs, whichstressed human agency over divine intervention, wereprinted as early as the 1880s. In 2002 the Workmen’sCircle, which is associated with the Jewish Labor move-ment, celebrated fifty years of its annual Third Seder, re-cently renamed A Cultural Seder. Their special YiddishHaggadah, which makes no mention of God, focuses onliberation struggles and Yiddish cultural achievements. Inthe late twentieth century, they incorporated elements ofthe traditional seder for those who only observe this oneseder. Other groups, prompted by such crises as Israelisoldiers missing in action and AIDS, also have created athird seder.The Christian SederThere is disagreement as to whether the Last Supper tookplace during the evening of the fourteenth of Nissan, af-ter the Paschal sacrifice, in the form of a Passover meal(synoptic Gospels), or on the afternoon of the precedingday as an ordinary meal (Gospel of John). Consistent withthe former, some Christians reenact the Last Supper asa seder, usually on Holy Thursday, based on practicesthought to have been followed at the time of Christ. TheChristian seder typically includes lamb, unleavenedbread, bitter herbs, haroset,karpas(raw vegetables), andwine; washing of hands and feet; reclining at the table;recitation of appropriate blessings and passages from Ex-odus, and singing of Psalms. As Gillian Feeley-Harnikexplains in The Lord’s Table: Eucharist and Passover in EarlyChristianity (1981), the Last Supper, as a sacrificial meal,“most closely resembles the passover, but every criticalelement in the passover is reversed: the time, the place,the community, the sacrifice, and ultimately the signifi-cance of the meal” (Feeley-Harnik, 1981, p. 19).MimounaIn some communities, a special meal ushers out the hol-iday or otherwise marks the return to everyday life. Mo-roccan Jews celebrate the Mimouna after sundown on thePASSOVERENCYCLOPEDIA OF FOOD AND CULTURE45

last day of Passover and on the following day with a greatvariety of post-Passover foods, music, and dance. Theearliest record of the holiday dates from the eighteenthcentury. While the etymology of Mimouna remains un-clear, some find a connection with maimouna(Arabic,meaning ‘wealth’, ‘good fortune’), emunah(Hebrew,meaning ‘faith’), and mammon(Hebrew-Aramaic, mean-ing ‘riches’, ‘prosperity’). Some link the timing of the Mi-mouna with the anniversary of the death of the reveredRabbi Maimon, father of Moses Maimonides, who movedfrom Cordoba to Fez in 1159/1160. Moroccan Jews be-lieve the holiday originated in Fez.The evening holiday is traditionally celebrated athome, with doors open to relatives and friends. Ears ofwheat and flowers are placed on the table and around theroom. A lavish table is set with a white cloth, and de-pending on the community, symbolic foods may includeflour, yeast, wine, five coins, five beans, five dates, fiveeggs, sweets, nuts, fruits, milk, buttermilk, butter, a livefish, and mofleta,the first leavened food eaten afterPassover. Mofleta is a yeast-risen pancake fried in a skil-let, spread with butter and honey, and rolled. In Mo-rocco, where Jews “sold” their hametzto their Muslimneighbors before Passover, the Muslims brought thewheat, flowers, dairy products, and other foods to theJews during the afternoon of the last day of Passover. Af-ter Passover, Muslims returned the hametzand were re-warded, in addition to receiving a piece a matzo, believedto bring good fortune. The day following Passover is atime for family excursions and picnics. During the Mi-mouna, a time of courtship, young people dressed in theirfinery, and betrothed couples exchanged gifts. With theimmigration of North African Jews to Israel, otherMaghrebi and Levantine Jews also celebrate the Mi-mouna, which has become a large public event.See also Bible, Food in the; Christianity; Fasting and Ab-stinence; Feasts, Festivals, and Fasts; Islam; Judaism;Last Supper; Middle East; Religion and Food; UnitedStates: Ethnic Cuisines.BIBLIOGRAPHYBokser, Baruch M. The Origins of the Seder: The Passover Rite andEarly Rabbinic Judaism.Berkeley, Calif.: University of Cal-ifornia Press, 1984.Bradshaw, Paul F., and Lawrence A. Hoffman, eds. Passover andEaster: The Symbolic Structuring of Sacred Seasons.TwoLiturgical Traditions series, vol. 6. Notre Dame, Ind.: Uni-versity of Notre Dame Press, 1999.Brauer, Erich. The Jews of Kurdistan.Edited by Raphael Patai.Detroit, Mich.: Wayne State University Press, 1993.Dobrinsky, Herbert C. A Treasury of Sephardic Laws and Cus-toms: The Ritual Practices of Syrian, Moroccan, Judeo-Spanish,and Spanish and Portuguese Jews of North America.Hobo-ken, N.J., and New York: Yeshiva University Press, 1986.Feeley-Harnik, Gillian. The Lord’s Table: Eucharist and Passoverin Early Christianity.Philadelphia: University of Pennsyl-vania Press, 1981.Fredman, Ruth Gruber. The Passover Seder: Afikoman in Exile.Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1981.Goodman, Philip. The Passover Anthology.Philadelphia: JewishPublication Society of America, 1961.Joselit, Jenna Weissman. “The Call of the Matzoh.” In The Won-ders of America: Reinventing Jewish Culture, 1880–1950,pp.219–263. New York: Hill and Wang, 1994.Michel, Joan. “The Mortar the Merrier.” Jewish Week(NewYork) (1999).Panitz, Beth. “A New Tradition: Dining Out for Passover.”Restaurants USA(1999).Segal, Judah Benzion. The Hebrew Passover, from the EarliestTimes to A.D.70.London Oriental Series, vol. 12. London,New York: Oxford University Press, 1963.Schauss, Hayyim (Shoys, Hayim). Guide to Jewish Holy Days: His-tory and Observance.New York: Schocken Books, 1962.Shuldiner, David P. “The “Third” Seder of Passover: Liberat-ing a Ritual of Liberation.” In Of Moses and Marx: Folk Ide-ology and Folk History in the Jewish Labor Movement,pp.119–140. Westport, Conn.: Bergin and Garvey, 1999.Stavroulakis, Nicholas. Cookbook of the Jews of Greece.Port Jef-ferson, N.Y.: Cadmus Press, 1986.Weinreich, Beatrice S. “The Americanization of Passover.” InStudies in Biblical and Jewish Folklore, edited by RaphaelPatai, Francis Lee Utley, and Dov Noy, pp. 329–366.Bloomington, Ind.: Indiana University Press, 1960.Barbara Kirshenblatt-GimblettPASTA.Ground grain of the wheat plant (genusTriticum;family Gramineaeor grass), native to Eurasia,forms the fundamental component of commercial“pasta,” the generic term for what the U.S. Federal Stan-dards of Identity call “macaroni products.” Italian com-mercial dried pasta combines durum wheat (Triticumdurum, hard wheat, or semolina, its coarsely ground en-dosperm) and water into a large number of shapes andsizes. Soft or common wheat (Triticum vulgare) is usedfor homemade or “fresh” pasta (which often contains egg,and sometimes oil and salt), as well as for bread and pas-tries. These are the two most important wheat grains inthe Mediterranean diet.Pasta is a versatile, nutritious, economical, thus de-mocratic, and increasingly international food. In pasttimes, it was fried and sweetened with honey, or tossedwith garum (fish paste) by the ancient Romans. Or itmight have been boiled, or baked in rich pies, called tim-balli, that defied Renaissance sumptuary laws. Today,pasta is usually boiled to a slightly chewy, resistant con-sistency (al dente), and dressed with a variety of sauces,eaten in soup, or baked. The oldest, most traditional Ital-ian condiment from the thirteenth to the nineteenth cen-turies consisted of butter and cheese (and sugar,cinnamon, and other spices); pasta was also boiled in meatbroths. Only since the 1830s was it combined with thePASTA46ENCYCLOPEDIA OF FOOD AND CULTURE