Passover: Encyclopedia II - Passover - Origins of the feast

Passover - Origins of the feast

The term Passover comes from the Hebrew Bible, first mentioned in the Book of Exodus. It came into the English language through William Tyndale's translation of the Bible, and later appeared in the King James Version as well. The final plague of the Plagues of Egypt, the killing of all the firstborn like the other plagues, did not affect Israelites. The Torah goes on to state, that upon seeing the blood, God would pass over the homes of the Israelites. The original verb in the Hebrew Torah is posach. The noun form, pesach, also appears in that same chapter, in reference to that lamb (sometimes referred to as the paschal lamb), which was sacrificed earlier that day and then eaten on that night: "and ye shall eat it in haste: it is the Lord's passover." (Exodus 12:11)

Although the term itself is not mentioned until the Book of Exodus, there are indications that at least parts of the feast were observed in times earlier than the writing of the Book of Exodus. For example, Genesis 19:3 makes reference to "unleavened bread" without any reason given. The scholar Maimonides leaves a short commentary on the end of the verse ("It was Passover" "פסח היה"), indicating that it wasn't necessarily a standard practice to prepare and eat unleavened bread, but that Lot was in a rush to serve the angels, and therefore did not have time to prepare proper, leavened bread.

Critical scholarship indicates that the word now translated passover derives from a root generally meaning skipping, and thus is likely to originally have simply meant the skipping motion of a young lamb. Consequently, critical scholarship supports the idea that the original meaning of the festival becoming lost over time, and what was once a secondary interpretation of passover as meaning sparing eventually causing an association of the festival with the plagues of Egypt. This change in interpretation would have had to happen before the Elohist wrote down its version of the tale of the plagues, which makes the connection with sparing, thus, according to the documentary hypothesis, this occurred at some time prior to 800BC. Thus, the passover festival was originally the spring lamb festival, explaining the sacrifice of a lamb, and the use of its blood.

According to the ancient Holiness Code, which in the documentary hypothesis is believed to pre-date much of the remainder of the priestly source portion of the torah, the festival of unleavened bread and the passover are distinguished as separate festivals (Leviticus 23). It is only in the Holiness Code and the priestly source that a community sacrifice is mentioned for the day, JE does not mention such a thing. Critical scholarship points to the festival of unleavened bread as the festival of the firstborn of the agricultural crops (i.e. wheat and barley), whereas the passover, interpreted as the feast of the spring lamb, is pointed to as being a festival of the firstborn of livestock farming.

Thus, to critical scholarship, rather than being connected to remembrance of an ancient plague, the modern passover festival is the combination of two similar ancient festivals celebrating successful yields in farming, one of agriculture, and the other of livestock.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Origins of the feast", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki