(Studia Judaica 35) Clemens Leonhard - Jewish Pesach and The Origins of The Christian Easter - Open Questions in Current Research-Walter de Gruyter (2006)

CLEMENS LEONHARD
THE JEWISH PESACH

AND THE ORIGINS OF THE CHRISTIAN EASTER
w
DE
G
STUDIA JUDAICA
F O R S C H U N G E N ZUR W I S S E N S C H A F T
DES J U D E N T U M S
HERAUSGEGEBEN VON
E. L. E H R L I C H U N D G. S T E M B E R G E R
BAND XXXV
W A L T E R DE G R U Y T E R · B E R L I N · N E W Y O R K
THE JEWISH PESACH
AND THE ORIGINS
OF THE CHRISTIAN EASTER
OPEN QUESTIONS IN CURRENT RESEARCH
BY
CLEMENS LEONHARD
W A L T E R DE G R U Y T E R · B E R L I N · N E W Y O R K
® Printed on acid-free paper which falls "within the guidelines of the ANSI
to ensure permanence and durability.
ISBN-13: 978-3-11-018857-8
ISBN-10: 3-11-018857-0
ISSN 0585-5306
Bibliographic information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek
Die Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie;

detailed bibliographic data are available in the Internet at http://dnb.d-nb.de.
© Copyright 2006 by Walter de Gruytcr G m b H & Co. KG, D-10785 Berlin

All rights reserved, including those of translation into foreign languages. N o part of this book
may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical,
including photocopy, recording or any information storage and retrieval system, without permis-
sion in writing from the publisher.
Printed in Germany
Cover Design: Christopher Schneider
Contents
Contents V
Foreword IX
1 Questions, Methods, and Sources 1
1.1 The Origins of Pesach and Easter 1
1.2 'The Creation of a New Festival is Almost Unimaginable' 4
1.3 Sources and Approaches 9
2 The Egyptian Pesach 15
2.1 Exodus 12 and the Origins of Pesach 15
2.1.1 'Our Fathers Had Three Altars in Egypt' 15
2.1.2 Reading Exodus 12 in the Liturgies 24
2.1.3 Pesach Without Exodus 27
2.1.4 Exodus 12 and Domestic Liturgies in the First Century 31
2.1.5 Samaritans and Beta Esrael: Reconstruction of Liturgies 39
2.1.6 Melito's Peri Pascha 42
2.2 An 'Optical Illusion' 56
2.2.1 A Nomadic Ritual 56
2.2.2 'Surely There was not Holden such a Passover from
the Days of the Judges that Judged Israel' 59
2.2.3 Layers in the Text of Exodus 12 60
2.2.4 The Liturgy of Exodus 12 62
2.3 Conclusions 69
Excursus: The Impact of the Narrative of Exodus 12 70
3 The Date of the Haggada 73
3.1 Seder Without Haggada 74
3.1.1 A Pre-Maccabean Date for the Haggada? 74
3.1.2 The Seder 76
3.2 The Haggada According to the Palestinian Rite 89
3.2.1 The Palestinian Haggada and the Mishna 92
3.2.2 Recitation of Rubrics 94
3.2.3 Creating Liturgical Text 95
3.2.4 Constructing Ritual out of Text 99
3.2.5 The Basic Elements of the Haggada 100
3.2.6 The Additions of the Babylonian Haggada 102
VI Contents
3.2.7 The'Midrash'to Deut 26.5-8 107

3.3 Conclusions 117
4 Easter Sunday 119
4.1 Sunday and Easter Sunday 121
4.1.1 Pliny 122
4.1.2 Ignatius 124
4.1.3 The Didache 129
4.1.4 Barnabas and the Christian Sunday 136
4.1.5 Conclusions 139
4.2 A Christian Understanding of the Omer Ritual 140
4.2.1 Early Sources on Firstfruits and Challa 141
4.2.2 The Omer and Christ 150
4.3 Fifty Days Easter Sunday 159
4.3.1 'Hippolytus' and Pentecost 161
4.3.2 A Jewish Background for the Christian Pentecost? 166
4.3.3 Tertullian and the Emergence of the Christian Pentecost 172
4.3.4 Ά Kind of Festival' According to the Acta Pauli 183
4.3.5 The Emergence of the Christian Pentecost 186
4.4 The Seventh Day of the Festival of Unleavened Bread 188
4.4.1 The Third Day 189
4.4.2 The Seventh Day 192
4.5 A Christianized Festival of Unleavened Bread 205
4.5.1 The Expositio Officiorum Ecclesiae 206
4.5.2 Aphrahat 210
4.5.3 Diataxis and Didascalia 217
4.5.4 The Gospel of Peter 224
4.6 Qumran Calendars and Commemorations at Festivals 230
4.6.1 The Meaning of Time and the 364-Day Calendar 232
4.6.2 Essenes and Christians 246
4.6.3 Liturgical Realities Behind the 364-Day Calendar(s) 250
4.6.4 Jesus' Pesach in the Night of Wednesday 267
4.7 Why is this Night Different From the Rest of Holy Week? 293
4.7.1 The 'Service of the Resurrection' 296
4.7.2 The Easter Vigil and the Quartodeciman Pascha 301
4.8 Easter Sunday 314
Contents VII
5 The Targum Expansion of the Four Nights 317

5.1 The Text of the Targum Expansion 318
5.2 Contexts of the Palestinian Targum Tradition 325
5.2.1 Forgotten Traditions? 325
5.2.2 The Oldest Aramaic Translations of the Bible 329
5.2.3 Remarks on the Liturgical Background of the Translations 331
5.3 The Form and the Genre of the Text 353
5.4 The 'Four Nights' and Their Parallels 361
5.4.1 Important Nights 361
5.4.2 Remarks on Abra(ha)m's Night(s) 375
5.4.3 The Nights of Creation, the Exodus, and the Messiah 391
5.4.4 Observations on the 'Four Nights' in Christianity 408
5.5 Conclusions 422
6 General Conclusions 425
6.1 The Egyptian Pesach as Interpretation of Pesach and Easter 425
6.2 The Geonic Haggada 427
6.3 The Sunday 429
6.4 The Omer 429
6.5 Pentecost 430
6.6 The Seventh Day of the Festival of Unleavened Bread 430
6.7 The Week of Unleavened Bread in Christianity 431
6.8 Calendars of Qumran and Christianity 432
6.9 Easter Sunday 433
6.10 The Targum Expansion of the 'Four Nights' 433
6.11 Towards a History of Pesach and Easter 435
6.12 Perspectives for Further Research 436
7 Bibliography 439
7.1 Abbreviations 439
7.2 Sources 439
7.3 Studies and Editions 441
8 Indices 483
Foreword
The foundation for this study was laid by Hans Jörg Auf der Maur's interest in
the liturgy and meaning of Easter in all its manifestations and throughout its
history. As a most open-minded scholar, he generously supported and moti-
vated his students and the members of his institute while providing a maxi-
mum of intellectual and practical freedom. Harald Buchinger joined the in-
stitute and this discourse before myself and had already become an erudite
expert in many questions when I became employed there in 1993. After Hans
Jörg Auf der Maur's untimely death in 1999, Harald Buchinger continued to
share his insights and observations about Pesah and Easter and many other
issues with me in numerous and long discussions. I am most grateful for the
contributions of these two scholars and the atmosphere of support and friend-
ship that characterized the Institut für Liturgiewissenschaft in Vienna. A little
later, Michael Margoni-Kögler joined the institute as an assistant and entered
into the discourse as a friend and scholar.
My interests in Jewish studies were greatly enhanced by Tirzah Meacham
in a course that she gave in Toronto during the academic year of 1992-93. Af-
ter my stay in Toronto, I returned to Vienna and joined the 'Privatissima' of
reading Talmud and Midrash, directed by Günter Stemberger. Günter Stem-
berger soon took a very active part in the shaping of my career giving advice
and support. Thus, I was able to follow his suggestion to apply for the Gov-
ernment of Israel scholarship in 1997-98. In this year of studies at the Hebrew
University, I also met scholars who continued the discourse about issues of
Christianity and Judaism with me, among them: Menahem Kister, Serge Ru-
zer, Daniel Stökl Ben Ezra, Guy G. Stroumsa, and Israel Y. Yuval.
The idea to set up the project that eventually led to the composition of the
following study emerged in discussions with Harald Buchinger and was sup-
ported by Günter Stemberger. The question that stood at the beginning of all
planning was, however, posed by Israel Yuval with the publication of his
seminal article on the early history of Pesah and Easter (1995/96), that I studied
soon after its appearance when Hans Jörg Auf der Maur and Günter Stember-
ger gave a joint seminar on Pesah and Easter. Menahem Kister also supported
me with encouragement and advice during my years in Jerusalem. Joseph Ya-
χ Foreword
halom allowed me to take part in his course that introduced me into the won-
derful world of classical piyyut. In Jerusalem, I was fortunate to meet Michael
Rand, who shared many elements of his expertise in Jewish poetry and liturgy
with me, invited me to New York several times and established further im-
portant scholarly contacts for me. I am also most grateful to him and Tamar
Marvin for improving the English style of several chapters of this book.
During the last three years, I was allowed to join the Seminar for Early Li-
turgical History at the North American Academy of Liturgy. In three con-
secutive meetings, the members of the seminar patiently studied my lengthy
texts. Their supportive as well as critical remarks were incorporated into the
respective chapters of the following study. Apart from the Hebrew University
in Jerusalem, the Academy provided the finest scholarly environment for the
discussion of my theses. I was also allowed to read a paper in front of a most
learned audience at the Hebrew University and took great profit from critical
remarks and suggestions.
Drafts to several sections and chapters were meticulously studied by col-
leagues who offered valuable comments and suggestions and found many er-
rors and inconsistencies. Thus, Günter Stemberger read and corrected earlier
versions of almost the whole book at different occasions in English or German.
He read texts most carefully and quickly and answered many questions in
long conversations in Vienna and in hundreds of emails. Gerard Rouwhorst
took much time for reading and discussing especially the material that con-
cerns Christian sources, but also those on Jewish liturgy. His insights some-
times required the rewriting of whole sections. Harald Buchinger and Daniel
Stökl Ben Ezra read parts of it, but also contributed greatly to my general un-
derstanding of the subject in many conversations and emails. Albert Gerhards,
Michael Rand, Michael Margoni-Kögler and many others helped me with re-
marks about details and their reading and evaluation of portions of the text.
Just before I received the generous grant of the Osterreichische Akademie
der Wissenschaften to work three years on this project, I was invited to read a
paper at the Sonderforschungsbereich in Bonn. There, I realized many com-
mon interests with Albert Gerhards, who kept in contact with me about my
research projects and eventually invited me as a guest researcher to his insti-
tute on the basis of the scholarship of the Alexander von Humboldt-Stiftung.
While some of my time in Bonn was spent for the finalization of the Habilita-
tionsschrift, I greatly profited from the work at the Seminar für Liturgiewis-
senschaft in Bonn.
I am grateful to the members of the Katholisch-theologische Fakultät at the
Rheinische Friedrich Wilhelms-Universität in Bonn who accepted this study as
Foreword XI
a Habilitationsschrift and me as a member of the faculty. Albert Gerhards and

Heinzgerd Brakmann wrote the expert's opinions. Their insightful remarks
and points of criticism helped me in the process of the reworking of this text.
In this context, I also thank Ernst Ludwig Ehrlich and Günter Stemberger as
well as the publishing house de Gruyter for accepting the manuscript for
Studia Judaica.
This study was composed based on the treasures of libraries in Vienna, Je-
rusalem, Bonn, and Köln and profited greatly from the generosity of the re-
spective universities as well as the daily help of their staffs. I should like to
extend my special thanks to Andreas Weyringer and Alfred Friedl who gener-
ously devoted their time and the budget of their library to the support of this
work in all its ramifications and preparatory stages.
Münster, October 2006

Clemens Leonhard
1 Questions, Methods, and Sources
1.1 The Origins of Pesach and Easter
Long before Biblical Israel began to commit to writing what would eventually
become the centerpiece of its collective cultural memory, it shared with other
peoples the performance of a sacrifice according to the primordial customs that
are reflected in Exodus 12. Israel continued to do so throughout all epochs of
its history. In peace and stability as well as in times of destruction and exile,
this celebration helped to maintain Israel's identity as the people that was cre-
ated by the common experience of the Exodus from Egypt. Being the most
important and best attested festival of all periods of the history of the Jewish
people, it was of course taken over and integrated into Christianity at its very
beginning. Christians redefined it in a Christological way. This was done in
order to preserve its fundamental theological message in its new context. It
could, however, also serve as a cultic enactment of the difference to Judaism.
The theologies and liturgies of the Jewish Pesah and the Christian Easter ex-
press and preserve the common origins and hence the theological, as well as
historical relationship of the two religions. While Judaism continues to cele-
brate the festival until today more or less as it was customary in Second Tem-
ple times, the Christian redefinition tends to hide the fundamental identity of
the two festivals.
The preceding paragraph is not corroborated by available data. It is one of
the aims of this book to falsify its contents. Any unbiased observer of the
Christian and Jewish liturgies of Pesah and Easter will hardly get the impres-
sion that this is basically one and the same festival. It is true that some simi-
larities become visible upon very close inspection and by means of several
theories of liturgical change. Nevertheless, they only enforce the question of
how two such blatantly different systems of rituals can be claimed to derive
from the same 'roots'.1 Thus, modern (conservative or orthodox) Jews and
1 The idea of common 'roots' of Judaism and Christianity emerges quite early (espe-
cially, if Sulpicius gleaned his observations from Tacitus, cf. Stern and De Senneville-
presumably most Christians do not read the same Biblical texts in the liturgies
of Pesah and Easter. Except for very recent adaptations, Christians do not cele-
brate a kind of seder in their families. Jews do not keep a vigil in the syna-
gogues. The Christian structure of liturgical time reflects texts of the New and
not of the Old Testament and the festival periods only rarely overlap in Juda-
ism and not even in all denominations of Christianity. It is true that identity
does not imply similarity. Yet, it is clear that the burden of proof lies on
whomever claims that the two festivals are identical against their overwhelm-
ing dissimilarity.
At this point, one might answer that two millennia of liturgical develop-
ment forced the branches of the tree apart, although its trunk is one and the
same. A look at the roots of the celebration is, however, likewise inconclusive.
The texts of the Old Testament do not support the idea that Pesah was cele-
brated throughout Israel's history. The Bible contains several narratives of its
re-institution after a long time of neglect. Exodus 12 tells the story how it was
given as a commandment to the people and celebrated for the first time. Being
the most detailed account about the festival, this text is normally pillaged in
search for its own prehistory. While specialists for the literary structure of the
Pentateuch tend to find signs of more recent layers in this text, it has become a
cliche to affirm that the very late text should preserve information about very
early liturgies. Indeed, its liturgy is said to antedate even the epoch of its in-
stitution narrative, Exodus 12. In the wake of Julius Wellhausen's postulate
that 'festivals of ancient Israel must be based on the way of life of shepherds',2
it seems evident that the chapters of Exodus 12f are designed to create the illu-
sion that Moses' legislation only provided an etiology for an otherwise wide-
spread and primordial ritual that was kept by Israel already for a long time.
Thus, the ritual of the Pesah was only reinterpreted, but not invented at the
time of the Exodus from Egypt. These and similar claims depict the Pesah as a
Near Eastern nomadic custom whose cultural reverberations can be seen in
Grave 1999, 41). Yet, it is expressed in the context of the desired elimination of both.
Thus, Sulpicius Severus claims that Titus supported the destruction of the Temple in
Jerusalem in order to destroy Judaism and Christianity: Christianos ex Iudaeis extitis-
se: radice sublata stirpem facile perituram; Stern 1980, 64-67 no. 282; 2.30.4 SC 441.294.
2 'Altisraelitische Feste müssen das Hirtenleben zur Grundlage gehabt haben'; 1927, 88;
cf. Wambacq 1980, 31-54. 33; 1976, 206-224, 301-326; 1981, 499-518. According to
Wambacq, the Pesah existed as a ritual of nomadic clans in the later history of Israel
or in the Diaspora only.
The Origins of Pesach and Easter 3
19th century Palestine as well as in customs of Berbers in Morocco.3 It seems

that modern scholarship succeeded in proving what early Christian apologists
could only claim - that Passover actually never was a genuine element of Isra-
el's culture.
It is true that the opposition 'syncretism' versus 'the pristine purity of
one's religious identity' is nothing but a value-judgment about features shared
between different groups and hence irrelevant for the description of the devel-
opment of religious systems. One who continues to accept the premises stated
in the first paragraph of this section, would in any case be asked why the Pe-
sah, as it is described in Exodus 12, is apparently not attested as a ritual in the
Dead Sea scrolls, why it hardly influenced the rabbinic seder, and why the rit-
uals of the Christian Easter have nothing in common with it.
Unfortunately, New Testament texts do not provide the material to answer
the questions that are posed by the historian today. Thus, they encourage re-
constructions of elaborate liturgical 'backgrounds'. The narratives of the last
supper are, indeed, undetermined enough to allow one to add the rituals of
Exodus 12, the Pesah Haggada, as well as elements of fourth century Christian
celebrations of Easter in order to replenish the event with any detail that one
should want to have been present in that situation. Actually, such a procedure
would invalidate the New Testament as a meaningful element for the recon-
struction of the development of the Christian Easter. If Jesus and the apostles
(or the Christian communities for whom the Gospels were written) performed
what can be found in the Old Testament and in the Haggada, the testimony
about them only proves what has been known in advance: the cliche of the
stability of all liturgies.
3 Dahm 2003, 156-160 remarks that the name of the ritual 'tfaska' be related to nOD and
that 'four Jews' be represented by certain liturgical 'roles' within the large ritual com-
plex, I.e. n. 223. Dahm does not wonder whether she thus interprets the Biblical Pe-
sah by means of a ritual that has actually been influenced by the Jewish Pesah. Fur-
thermore, one may ask why a modern Moroccan ritual should explain a Biblical ritual
better than any other offering that can be observed in the Mediterranean and the Mid-
dle East. The conclusions regarding the Biblical Pesah could as well be derived from
the observation of many other rituals. Thus, incidental scraps of anthropological in-
formation are used to illustrate the point that social functions of groups are reflected
in rituals. Cf. n. 130 on p. 59 below.
1.2 'The Creation of a New Festival is Almost Unimaginable'
The present study is not built upon the axiom that liturgies are 'stable', 'con-
servative', or tend to develop slowly in a continuous or even 'natural' way.
This does not mean that observations of tendencies in the history of rituals by
scholars of religion or liturgy are disregarded. While the study of more recent
phenomena can rely on more abundant documentation, the early history of the
liturgies is faced with highly diverse sources on the one hand and, sometimes,
the absence of any documentation on the other. In this context, a scholar's po-
sition towards the likelihood of liturgical change as well as its preconditions
exerts a high influence on his or her way of dealing with the silence of the
sources. The invention of the printing press has enabled texts like the Hagga-
da of Pesah or the Canon Romanus of the Catholic mass to preserve their con-
tents over many centuries almost unaltered. Nevertheless, the Catholic church
has proven at least since the second Vatican council that stability versus flexi-
bility of liturgical texts4 is not dependent upon technical progress. Further-
more, oral traditions may in some circumstances be remarkably stable, too. It
is true that the absence of certain technical equipment does not indicate the
degree of stability or change of rituals during the time period under consid-
eration. Liturgies may or may not have been 'stable'. In the present study, a
claim of the alleged immutability of rituals and customs will not be regarded
as a sufficient reason for filling gaps in the documentation.
Jan van Goudoever says: 'De tous les elements de la liturgie, les fetes sont
peut-etre le plus permanent: il est pratiquement impossible de changer la date
ou la forme des anciennes fetes, et la creation d'une nouvelle fete religieuse est
presque inconcevable'.5 This and similar postulates entice scholars into dating
back the origins of an abundance of festivals that are only attested in more re-
cent sources. For a festival is never 'created' or 'emerges', but can only be re-
interpreted. The high importance of the Pesah in the Middle Ages seems to
indicate that it must have originated in prehistoric times. If Pesah was always
kept in Israel and if festivals do not change, why did early Christianity de-
velop a liturgy of Easter that is hardly comparable with the seder and which
4 While the historians of liturgical texts face a relative uniformity (apart from some
survivals in the margins), the musicologist will hardly share the notion that 'the mass'
remained unaltered between 1570 and 1970.
5 Van Goudoever 1967, 213f (two obvious typing errors are corrected).
'The Creation of a New Festival is Almost Unimaginable' 5
did not leave any trace in the Christian traditions?6 The following study at-
tempts to trace some of the threads of the development of Pesah and Easter. It
has, however, a vital interest in a basic continuity of its very subject. As a heu-
ristic thesis, a form of 'Pesah' will be searched in each epoch. In contrast to
van Goudoever, one must, however, be prepared to admit that it might not be
found in some.
Fritz West says in a summary of his earlier studies about Anton Baum-
stark's approach: 'Since the evidence for the early liturgy is fragmentary, the
historian of the liturgy cannot write a history of it based solely upon direct
evidence. Given this circumstance, the historian is left with a stark choice: ei-
ther to despair of the task of writing a history of the liturgy or to use inferential
reasoning.'7 He goes on to describe how Anton Baumstark used the second
method based on the assumption of 'the organic nature of the liturgy'. Several
scholars found, nevertheless, ways between despair and inference. Since it is
an important challenge for research to understand the history of Pesah and
Easter, 'despair' must not reach the point where it suggests the abandonment
of the subject. Nevertheless, the expectation of a high degree of 'despair' is the
most promising prerequisite for a fecund assessment of the data in the con-
temporary situation of research.
This hints to the fact that several methods and aims of the history of litur-
gies have been developed. This introduction cannot present a sophisticated
theory of research in liturgical studies. Being aware of this limitation, five
'points of interest' (far from even resembling something like 'hermeneutic
principles') may be noted in advance. While they clearly govern the choice of
sources and the mode of presentation, they are themselves put to the test indi-
rectly by the extent to which this endeavor succeeds in convincing its readers
that the positions taken are sound and that its subjects are, consequently, un-
derstood better than before.
First, the following study is not a comprehensive history of Pesah and
Easter. It provides prolegomena to a history of these festivals and indicates
directions for future syntheses. Nevertheless, it suggests answers to its most
important questions. Thus, its general aim is historical synthesis and recon-
6 The claim that Christians took over and refashioned the Biblical ('Jewish') Pe-
sah emerges in the 4th cent.; cf. for Eusebius, Buchinger 2004, 199-202 and the remarks
on p. 47 and n. 95. Such as the idea that preceded it - that Christians should not keep
a celebration like Exod 12 or like the 'Jews' allegedly do - it is profoundly anti-Jewish.
7 West 2001,174.
struction, and the formulation of theses that help to understand the character
of the sources.
Second, it advocates a 'hermeneutic of suspicion'. This does not exclude
the necessity to take at least some of the sources seriously enough in order to
infer from them elements of the development of Pesah and Easter. As almost
all conclusions are based on textual evidence, it is tempting to deconstruct all
sources as biased and to describe the history of these liturgies as sequence of
statements that reveal their writers' strategies in (mis-) leading their readers.8
The balance between discarding most sources as unhistorical on the one hand
and generalizing every scrap of evidence on the other must be achieved anew
in each individual case. Positivistic deconstructions may help the modern
reader to reach a sound hermeneutic distance to his or her sources. As soon as
this is achieved, one has to reduce that distance again, in order not to miss the
tiny details in their structures. Sometimes, important insights can be derived
from the plain sense of the most biased texts.9
Third, the following approach attempts to find at least bits of a relative, if
not absolute chronology of texts and developments under discussion in order
to establish elements of what can eventually be integrated into a comprehen-
sive history of Pesah and Easter. Thus, much ink and paper is used to estab-
lish arguments about dates. The presumptions that liturgies grow 'slowly',
hardly develop at all, do not change in general, etc. supports what comes to be
regarded as gross anachronisms in the following pages. This must not be con-
fused with a positivistic use of manuscript evidence. Attestation in manu-
scripts is not the most important guideline for the establishment of the age of a
text. Texts may have been composed centuries before they first appear in ex-
tant manuscripts. One must formulate hypotheses about the age of certain
texts and phenomena in a dialogue with the sources, in order to enable the
falsification of the conclusions of such a study. This is especially important for
Jewish sources, which are (at least in the discourse about the history of the
Christian liturgies) sometimes regarded as 'undatable' and hence either ig-
nored or presumed to have been available within the whole period under con-
8 Karl Gerlach's approach is commented upon below, p. 277.

9 Tertullian's theological interpretation of Pentecost opens new ways to understand its
origins and meaning in the early church, cf. ch. 4.3.5. Another example can be found
on p. 80. It can be seen as extreme positivism as well as a sign of utmost naivety, to in-
fer from Raba's statement, that 'he' would not say ma nishtana during this seder at all.
However, only if the text is read in this simple way, it has any meaning for the history
of Pesah.
'The Creation of a New Festival is Almost Unimaginable' 7
sideration. 10 Even if not every reader will accept all dates that are proposed for
the composition of texts or the emergence of phenomena of the liturgies, it will
be regarded as a major achievement of this book if he or she acknowledges the
need for finding dates in this discourse in general.
Fourth, it is the sole aim of this study to elucidate the history of liturgies.
Describing their history reveals their origins and may tell something about
their meaning throughout the ages. The subject is, therefore, chosen from a
purely modern perspective. Pesah and Easter are important for us today.
Therefore, it is desirable to know where they came from and what this may
imply for their future. The following essay proceeds from a hardly defined
concept of 'liturgy' - a case of neglect that widens the scope and allows the
considerations of phenomena that are probably not 'liturgies' but may provide
answers to questions that are asked. Yet, it must be admitted that many im-
portant aspects of the societies that are discussed cannot be assessed ade-
quately. The selective emphasis of this study does not imply that the liturgies
are thought to have enjoyed the same position even in those societies in which
they are assumed to have been practiced. The participation in what is de-
scribed as a 'liturgy' here (such as a seder banquet among rabbis of 3 rd cent.
Palestine) must not be regarded as the most important activity of the persons
involved, only because it is the most important subject of this book. This may
help to explain 'dark periods' in the development of certain rituals. One
scholar's 'badly documented period of the history of phenomenon X' may be
another's 'well documented period for the irrelevance or inexistence of phe-
nomenon X'. The liturgies of Pesah and Easter are portrayed in some texts as
relevant in the process of creating border lines between Judaism and Christi-
anity. They may be assumed to have played their role in a group's conscious-
ness of religious identity. Yet, there may be many other factors that would
today not be perceived as 'liturgy' and which may have played a similar role
in other epochs or in other places at the same time. 11 The cliche of liturgical
10 Thus, the main achievements of the chapters on the history of the Haggada (3) and the
targum expansion of the 'four nights' (5) are theses about the emergence of these texts
and the concepts that are discussed there.
11 Someone who kept most of the laws of the Sabbath, chose the majority of his friends
according to their adherence to precepts regarding tithes and the observation of cus-
toms of purity, and circumcised his sons (etc.!) would have been very busy with ac-
tivities that were determined by the fact that he belonged to a Jewish community. He
might not have needed to 'tell the story of the Exodus' once a year in order to
strengthen his 'identity' as a Jew. Furthermore, there is no reason why (Christian)
continuity should not be replaced by another one of an 'a-liturgical' character

of Early Christianity or Judaism after 70 C. E. It should be admitted that peo-
ple found ways to express and support their ethnic, religious, etc. 'identity'
also by other means than by celebrating festivals in a (roughly) yearly cycle.12
Fifth, the present approach reads older sources as preconditions for more
recent developments. It asks about liturgies that the old sources reflect from
the point of view of the impact those liturgies had or did not have on what
seems to be (or claims to be) their successors.13 This facilitates the avoidance of
groups who were used to meet for a banquet towards the ends of the Sabbath each
week would necessarily need a yearly cycle of festivals, in order to establish their
'identity'. Such a calendar may have been important for the Temple that was de-
signed to attract crowds of pilgrims at certain dates which creates an especially inten-
sive atmosphere. As soon as that institution vanished, the burden of proof lies on
whoever wants to claim that such a system was not abandoned. As it is more a truism
than an axiom that 'ritual action defines community' Gerlach 1998, 6, it does not say
anything about the history of the Jewish Christian Easter before the middle of the 2nd
cent.
12 Christian preachers who admonish their listeners not to celebrate Jewish festivals re-
veal a difference in the importance that the preacher and his audience assign to the
festivals as basis for the establishment of one's identity. Whoever commissioned the
inscription on the sarcophagus of their family in Hierapolis (cf. p. 53) demonstrated at
least that paying attention to the others' festival(s) was not only a sign of good taste.
Celebrating only the festivals of one group was not important for those people's per-
ception of their identity and probably also not for their idea about group membership.
'Like all other ethnic-geographic groups, Judeans [a term that Cohen distinguishes
from that implying religion: 'Jews'] have their own language, customs, institutions,
dress, cuisine, religions, and so on, but no one of these characteristics is necessarily
more important than any other in defining a 'Judean'" Cohen 1999, 105. Celebrating
the correct festivals (and not celebrating one's own) may be enforced by authorities,
91. Not even such drastic measures create water-tight border lines. As can be seen in
the Christian debate about the re-admission of people who succumbed to outward
pressure in times of persecution, it differentiates between martyrs, confessors, and
many other categories of 'Christians'. The Temple as well as synagogues remained
quite open for a long time, cf. Cohen 55. For some people in certain epochs, atten-
dance of liturgies was an articulus stantis et cadentis ecclesiae, for others (even at the
same time) it was not.
13 This may have diverse consequences for the understanding both of the older sources
and the reconstruction of the following history of texts and liturgies. In the case of
Exod 12, it shows that the liturgy that is described there cannot have been the precur-
sor of the Pesah in the subsequent generations. In the case of the Haggada, it supports
the dating of that text which is based on other evidence.
Sources and Approaches 9
anachronistic interpretations of the older sources in support of the younger

ones, because it does openly what others might do only implicitly. It does not
suppress points of discontinuity but tries to explain them.
1.3 Sources and Approaches
As the present study does not claim to replace existing surveys of the history
of Pesah and Easter, it need not proceed chronologically in the presentation of
its arguments. The status of Wolfgang Huber's (1969) magisterial study has
not been challenged so far. It remains an indispensable repertoire of sources
and syntheses about the history of Easter. Even this comprehensive book is
structured according to thematic as well as chronological aspects.
August Strobel (1977) tries to solve the problems of the New Testament
chronology of the Passion by means of a very detailed study of selected texts
and problems of the early history of Pesah and Easter and the ways in which
the dates of these festivals were determined. While some of his insights re-
main important for future studies, Sacha Stern's assessment of the history of
the Jewish calendars has shown that the data do not allow us to draw conclu-
sions such as Strobel's.14 These two studies make it clear that the technical is-
sues of the manifold ways to compute dates of Easter (and Pesah) and estab-
lish festival calendars in practice cannot be discussed en passant in an essay on
these festivals. In general, the Christians' attempts to calculate the date of
Easter are an important element in the conscious differentiation from Judaism.
It must be left to a separate study, to describe the details of this process.
In a more recent and likewise general survey, Karl Gerlach (1998) assem-
bles a broad range of sources and describes their position vis-ä-vis the history
of Pesah and Easter. He applies a hermeneutic of suspicion to the sources in a
rigorous way deconstructing many of them as hardly relevant for the descrip-
tion of the development of Easter. Gerlach's study is important because of his
high awareness of the intricate relationships between texts and liturgies and
14 Stern 2001. Regarding Pesah, Thornton 1989 already raised many important issues.
Gerard Rouwhorst pointed out that Strobel tends to oversystematization in his
categorization of different branches of Quartodecimanism. As Stern has demon-
strated, it is anachronistic to read 'the' Jewish calendar of the high Middle Ages into
pre-geonic times although some of its elements already emerge in rabbinic texts.
contains many insightful analyses of the sources. He assumes, nevertheless,

that Easter Sunday emerged in the first century Antioch. He has to push the
most momentous element of the cultural discourse about Pesah and Easter into
an epoch in which the documentation neither supports, nor contradicts, nor
elucidates, because any extant documentation would be historically unreliable
rhetoric. Nevertheless, Gerlach's work shows that the question of Easter Sun-
day requires a thorough treatment. A long chapter of the following study is
devoted to this issue.
The present approach seems to lack a thorough treatment of the Quarto-
deciman Pascha. On the one hand, aspects and elements of the Quartodeci-
man Pascha are interspersed in other chapters. On the other hand, Gerard
Rouwhorst has recently studied its sources and history. The following presen-
tation may sometimes emphasize points of difference to Rouwhorst's synthe-
ses. This indicates that there is hardly any chance to find something new be-
yond what he has written about it.15
Huber and Gerlach, who claim to include Easter as well as Pesah in their
studies, begin with short chapters on the Jewish Pesah and proceed to lengthy
discussions of the Christian Pascha and Easter.16 For Gerlach, it is plainly obvi-
ous that Christian liturgies have 'Jewish roots'.17 In the case of Pesah, this com-
prises basically Exodus 12, the Haggada, and the Mishna that allegedly sup-
ports the assumption of the existence of the Haggada in second century (if not
Second Temple) Judaism. Both the position of those chapters at the beginning
of each of the two studies and the extent of these chapters are revealing. These
treatments suggest that the Jewish Pesah be a quite well known, highly stable,
more or less pre-Christian set of rituals that can be reconstructed on the basis
of sources such as the Old Testament and the Haggada. It is known to Chris-
tians from the beginning and can be attacked, ignored, or emulated by them.
The Jewish Pesah is presented as a phenomenon in the background of the
emergence of the Christian Easter.
15 Note that ch. 4.5.3 is mainly based on two footnotes of his study 1989.
16 Huber 1969 describes 'Das jüdische Passa' on two pages (2f), although he discusses
Jewish sources in comparison with Christian texts in the following sub-sections.
17 This is already stated in the programmatic introduction, p. 7. Gerlach collects cliches
about the early history of the Pesah basically on pp. 24-30. He evokes the powerful
but fallacious image of a tree. This has, however, only some significance, if one
imagines it upside down: a plethora of different branches attaining to a remarkably
unified 'trunk' in the fifth century.
In his programmatic essays, Israel J. Yuval refutes this approach and sug-
gests many points of contact between Jews and Christians throughout the
ages18, contacts that resulted in a much later creation of elements of the Jewish
liturgies. Although the following essay will lead to some points of disagree-
ment with Yuval, the paradigm of Christianity 'inheriting' the Jewish Pe-
sah cannot be maintained any more after his studies. Likewise ignored by Ger-
lach, Joseph Tabory has published several articles on the Jewish Pesah which
he combined in 1996 into a monograph on the subject. While the wealth of
Hellenistic and Jewish material that Tabory analyzes remains an indispensable
repertoire for the study of Pesah and Easter, he tends to assume rather old ages
for several elements of the Jewish Pesah that cannot be endorsed in the follow-
ing pages.
One author of paramount importance for the study of the Christian Easter
is almost neglected in the following discussions: Origen. This prolific writer
did not only exert a lasting influence on what the following generations
thought and wrote about Easter, but is also said to have had close contacts to
Jews and a thorough knowledge of Judaism. His vast ceuvre and his sophisti-
cated exegetical methods do not allow one to mention his theses en passant.
Fortunately, Harald Buchinger has closed this gap in his magisterial study
'Pascha bei Origenes', 19 which analyzes the whole corpus of Origen's writings.
Origen's approach to Pesah and Pascha is not any more an 'open question in
current research'. Moreover, Buchinger's observations on Origen's knowledge
of Jewish sources and customs show that Origen derived most of what he pre-
sents as 'Jewish' from the Old Testament and from sources in his library. 20
While a few bits of information may derive from actual contacts with contem-
18 His approach will partly be discussed below, 73.

19 Buchinger 2005.
20 Esp. Buchinger 2005, 667-708; cf. 28f. 402 n. 36. 473 n. 530. 667 for reactions to Ruth
Anne Clements's approach to the subject. As is shown there, the 'Jews' Pesah' is a
highly important rhetorical category for Origen. He distinguishes, however, not in all
cases between the Biblical Jews, who slaughtered lambs and ate with staffs in their
hands etc., and the Jews of Caesarea, who remove leaven and eat unleavened bread in
the days of the Pascha, 96. 363ff. 674. On the one hand, Origen remarks that the Jews
offer lambs in their houses in Caesarea, 604f. 678-681. On the other hand, it is one of
his (and other Christians') most important polemical issues to assert gloatingly that
Jews do not fulfill the law, because the Temple is in ruins, cf. 174. 342. 419. 679. His
remark about the dipping of the meat of the lamb during the meal (681) suggests that
he does not teach about Judaism from first-hand knowledge, unless one is prepared to
reconstruct a very queer brand of 'Judaism' from Origen's writings.
porary Jews,21 many of his explanations betray his glaring ignorance of rab-
binic tradition.22 While Buchinger's studies highlight the great impact of Ori-
gen on later Christian writers,23 they also provide the basis for the conclusion
that Origen's interpretation of the Christian Pascha did not emerge from a
21 Origen warns Christians not to use the popular etymology of πασχα (as derived from
παθειν) in disputes with Jews. It may be based on an actually embarrassing event in
Origen's own career; cf. Buchinger 2005, 153. 169. Origen, who neither knew Hebrew
nor Aramaic (cf. 281 p. 409), could as well have learned the phonetic value of h in a
live discussion. He may also have read it in one of the Onomastica at his disposal, cf.
397. Cf. also the removal of leaven and his very interesting knowledge about the
dedication of the Paschal animal (see below p. 271) to the members of the group that
will eat it, 58. 204. 675-677. Philo has a much less explicit but similar idea about this
custom, 676. Such bits of information may occur as combined with customs that are
not rabbinic at all, 211f. Any eclectic approach that looks for 'parallels' between Ori-
gen and the rabbis fails to reconstruct what actually happened in Caesarea, if it does
not account for the non-parallels and weird remarks in the context of such 'parallels'.
Furthermore, instances of polemics need not be addressed to (real or fictional) Jews,
but reproach members of the Christian community, e.g., women who are said to
emulate the OT customs surrounding unleavened bread, 101 and 369. 378. 693f.
22 As shown below, p. 19, the rabbis are very reluctant to regard the Egyptian Pesah as
the halakhic model for the Pesah of the following generations. If Origen had access to
rabbinic texts, he missed this point. Buchinger also wonders whether or not Origen
was aware of any change after the destruction of the temple, 692. Thus, Origen blurs
the difference between a pre- and post-destruction Pesah. While the rabbis deempha-
size this difference for reasons of halakha and their understanding of Jewish history,
Origen seems to have done so mainly out of ignorance. Buchinger also refers to a re-
mark by Origen about the Sabbath that reflects a widely held prejudice against the
cessation of any work. It shows again Origen's ignorance of the rabbinic under-
standing of the Sabbath; cf. 2005, 223f. In his discussion of John 7, he does not associ-
ate the rituals dealing with water in the context of Sukkot that are described in the
Mishna, 231. Furthermore, Origen's remark that the unleavened bread be made from
the new grain of the season is likewise difficult to reconcile with any practice. As long
as the temple was functioning, unleavened bread would by definition never be made
from new grain according to rabbinic standards. Such alleged knowledge about Ju-
daism could also be inferred from Joshua 5.11 (587), Dtn 16.1 LXX (cf. 578), and the
name of the 'month of Aviv ' in the LXX 'month of the new'; more optimistic: Buchin-
ger 2005, 77 η. 363. It is noteworthy that Origen knows about two dates of a new year
in Judaism, 669'. This cannot be counted as intimate knowledge of rabbinic traditions.
The Mishna mentions four, mRHSh 1.1. (Everyone who tries to understand Ezek 40.1
and its emphasis on the 10th day of this month will wonder how to reconcile this with
Exod 12.)
23 Buchinger 2003.
Jewish-Christian discourse on the subject in his time. 24 In general, Origen's

method and the bits of information that he collected do not require the postu-
late that he discussed the subject with Jews. His remarks that he did so are the
sole evidence for this activity.25
The almost 'classical' structure of presentations of phenomena within the
Christian tradition - Old Testament - Judaism - New Testament - Fathers of
the Church, etc. - obscures the subject more than it elucidates it. It is true that
the traditions about the Pesah of the religion of Biblical Israel were of para-
mount importance for any following celebration. Yet, the development of its
shape and meaning is far from evident. As the Old Testament Pesah is the
yardstick for any later celebration, it must be read as the foundation of more
recent phenomena rather than as only a witness to customs in (pre-) Biblical
times. Furthermore, Judaism was and continues to be a thriving religion.
Jewish liturgies have their own rich documentation and multiform develop-
ment. Someone who opens a modern Siddur faces a variegated repertoire of
sources that reflects many centuries of liturgical development and under-
standing - almost exclusively of epochs after that of the New Testament. Nev-
ertheless, the following study must assess the meaning of Exodus 12 (the story
and law about the first Pesah) and the Haggada first. This does not reflect an
attempt at a chronological presentation of the history, but responds to the still
widely accepted position that sees the Haggada as emerging from a celebration
of Pesah like that of Exodus 12. Any further treatment of the subject must clar-
ify its position towards these two fundamental texts of the history of Pesah.
Thus, the Haggada is most appropriately discussed in the wider context of
Exodus 12.
After the discussions of Exodus 12 and the date of the Haggada, the ques-
tion of Easter Sunday will be taken up. It is followed by the last chapter about
what is cautiously labeled 'the targum expansion of the four nights'. The po-
sition of the chapter on the targum after the discussion of Easter Sunday re-
sponds to the last subsection of that chapter. For this targum text seems to be
the only relevant objection against the thesis that is brought forward there.
The chapter is, however, an otherwise independent discussion of Roger le De-
24 Buchinger 2004 also indicates the total lack of interest of later writers who preach on
the Christian Pascha (Cyrill of Jerusalem, Hesychius of Jerusalem) in a contemporary
Jewish celebration.
25 Cf. Buchinger's more optimistic conclusion; 2005, 693.
aut's (1963) understanding of the targum expansion. It revises the position of

the expansion vis-ä-vis the evolution of the meaning of the Christian Easter.
To sum up, the following study begins with a clarification of the historical
position and meaning of the most important 'institution narrative' of the Pe-
sah in the Old Testament, Exodus 12, and that of the most important liturgical
script of the Jewish Pesah, the Haggada. It proceeds to answer the question of
when and why Easter Sunday emerged. This leads to an assessment of the
meaning of Easter Sunday, which is often seen in combination with a targum
expansion to Exodus 12 that should allegedly provide the major themes of the
Christian Easter as well as the Jewish Pesah from Second Temple times on.
Each of the subjects under discussion sees the Christian Easter in diverse rela-
tionships to sources pertaining to the Jewish Pesah.
2 The Egyptian Pesach
2.1 Exodus 12 and the Origins of Pesach
In scholarly discussions of the pre-history and meaning of Exodus 12, the pre-
sumption of the continuous and widespread use of its rituals prevails.1 Thus,
Ancient Israel is seen as celebrating Pesah roughly according to Exodus 12f
from earliest times to Second Temple Jerusalem and even to some extent up to
Rabbinic Galilee. Moreover, the postulate of a continuity of these rituals and
their understanding implies that the Christian Pascha or even forms of the
Eucharist are an adaptation of the Jewish Pesah. As the Pascha and the Pe-
sah (according to Exod 12f) hardly resemble each other, it could even be sug-
gested that Christianity rejected most element of a celebration that they under-
stood as Jewish Pesah. The discussion of the meaning of this text must, there-
fore, begin with its reception history, in order to avoid a possibly unfounded
appropriation of later epochs to support one's thesis about Israel's ancient
history.
2.1.1 O u r Fathers Had Three Altars in Egypt'
The Tosefta and the Mishna are the most important sources that openly dis-
cuss the differences between the 'Egyptian Pesah' of Exodus 12f and the
celebrations of the Pesah in the later times of Israel's history. In certain cases
(to be assessed individually for each halakha), the Tosefta preserves older ma-
terial than the Mishna. The sages of the Mishna may, therefore, presuppose
certain rulings of the Tosefta, abbreviate or reject them, or convert a minority
opinion of the Tosefta to become a general rule.2 It is, therefore, convenient to
1 This chapter is an expanded and updated version of Leonhard 2003b.

2 Several cases have been established for t/mPes by Friedman's 2002 seminal study (cf.
also his article 1999) and J. Hauptman 2000 and 2002.
quote the Tosefta first, followed by the short paragraph of the Mishna, in order
to introduce the point of this section.
tPes 8.10 187 enumerates differences between the regular Pesah and the
second Pesah (Numb 9). tPes 8.11-22 187f continues this topic with a long list
of differences and similarities between the Egyptian Pesah and the Pesah of the
coming generations:3
These are the points (of difference) between the Pesah (observed in) Egypt and the
Pesah (observed in the coming) generations.
On account of the Pesah (observed in) Egypt, they are not liable to extirpation (if
they do not keep it). - But on account of the Pesah observed by (the coming) gen-
erations, they are liable to extirpation.
At the Pesah of Egypt, they did not consider cataracts and blendings of the eye to
be disqualifications (of the animal), nor did they consider (animals acquired for
the) hire (of a harlot) or the price (of a dog) to be invalid - which was not the case
in the Pesah observed by (the coming) generations.
In regard to the Pesah of Egypt it is said: '(If the household is too small for a lamb),
a man and his neighbor next to his house shall take (according to the number of
persons...)' (Exod 12.4) - which does not apply to the Pesah (observed by the com-
ing) generations. R. Shimon says: I say, also in regard to the Pesah (observed by
the coming) generations, the same thing is stated. And why is all this so? So that a
man should not leave his neighbor, who lives next door, and go and prepare his
3 Translation based on Neusner 1981, 155-157. Turetski 1963, LXXXIV describes the
Karaite approach to the liturgical texts of Pesah: 'The Karaites ... omit all such refer-
ences to the Egyptian Passover in their liturgy'. However, Exod 12 is among the
readings of the festival, cf. CXIIf. Cf. also a piyyut p. 233 fol. 109 'From His place (Ezek
3.12, see Turetsky 251 n. 28), He delivered from the iron yoke at night. He (God) burst
thy bonds asunder and brought you out by light of day, your poor then finished to eat
the Passover (p. 234) sacrifice at night. Adhorned to travel on the fifteenth when it
was day. How graceful were you when you sacrificed to God. When He went out at
midnight. When He brought out thy hosts in the self same day. You are as stately as
a palm tree to stand up and go out in the night. Only before the eyes of Egyptians to
lead you in this day. I said it was a night of watching for generations this night. He
will keep it for the day of vengeance, it is hidden this day. With your sweet and hon-
ourable mouth sing to the one who performs thanksgiving acts at night. Thanksgiv-
ing and the voice of song to praise and to proclaim by day. In the day you should de-
clare his loving kindness and his faithfulness you should sing at night (to declare) his
oneness twice - night and day. As it is written (Ps 92.2; Deut 6.4f).'
Exodus 12 and the Origins of Pesach 17
Pesah-offering with his friend.4 Thus is fulfilled the following verse: 'Better is a
neighbor who is near than a brother who is far away' (Prov 27.11).5
The Pesah (observed) in Egypt did not require that blood and pieces of fat (be of-
fered) on the altar - which is not the case of the Pesah (observed in the coming)
generations.
Concerning the Pesah (observed) in Egypt, it is said: '(They shall take some of the
blood) and put it on the lintel and at the two doorposts' (Exod 12.7) - which does
not apply to the Pesah (observed in the coming) generations.
Concerning the Pesah (observed) in Egypt it is said: 'None of you shall go out of
the door of his house until the morning' (Exod 12.22) - which does not apply to the
Pesah observed in the coming generations.
At the Pesah (observed) in Egypt, each and every one slaughters (his Pesah-offer-
ing) in his own house. - But the Pesah (observed in the coming generations sees)
all Israel slaughtering (the Pesah-offering) in one location.
At the Pesah (observed) in Egypt, the place in which the Pesah-offering was eaten
was the place where (the people) spent the night. - But as to the Pesah (observed
in the coming) generations, they eat in one place and spend the night in some
other place.
All the same are the Pesah (observed) in Egypt and the Pesah (observed in the
coming) generations:
He who had slaves whom he had not circumcised or slave-girls whom he had not
immersed - they keep him from eating the Pesah-offering. R. Eliezer b. Jacob says:
I maintain the Scripture speaks (solely) of the Pesah (observed) in Egypt.6
4 Neusner translates nan "JXX lnos ntffsri in sacrificial language. 'To make his Pesah' does
not exclude the seder that is celebrated after 70. From the point of view of Second
Temple Judaism, R. Shim'on's opinion could not be predicted. Pilgrims coming to
Jerusalem would not necessarily gather in the same groups as they are used to live in
their villages. The anonymous ruling of the Tosefta also fits better to what seems to
have been rabbinic practice in late Antiquity. Then, a group of scholars would gather
to celebrate Pesah. After all, the Biblical reason for this measure, the intention to mini-
mize the sacrificial meat that is left over and must be destroyed later is irrelevant.
Thus, there is no reason to assume that the sages who celebrated Pesah in the house of
Ben Zonin in Lod (tPes 10.12 198f) were 'neighbors'.
5 MekhY pisha 15 L 1.125 emphasizes that the Pesah of the coming generations will not
be restricted to 'families', such as it was commanded regarding the Egyptian Pesah:
r r o n u n nnn nos» TIS. On the one hand, this tradition refers to Second Temple times,
when groups of Pilgrims gathered to eat the Pesah. One may, however, also read a
reference to the time of the rabbis in this text. For the tannaitic and even still the amo-
raic seder was not primarily understood as a 'family' ritual.
In these regards, the Pesah (observed) in Egypt and the Pesah (observed in the
coming) generations are equivalent:
The Pesah (observed) in Egypt was (kept by dividing the people) into three
groups. - The Pesah observed in coming generations follows suit.
Concerning the Pesah (observed) in Egypt, it is said: Ά lamb which is perfect, a

male, a year old' (Exod 12.5)7 - The Pesah (observed in the coming) generations
follows suit.
Concerning the Pesah (observed) in Egypt, it is said: 'You shall let none of it re-
main until the morning' (Exod 12.10). - The Pesah (observed in the coming)
generations follows suit.
The Pesah (observed) in Egypt is kept all seven days. The Pesah (observed in the
coming) generations follows suit. R. Yose the Galilean says: I maintain that leaven
was prohibited in Egypt for only one day, since it is said: '(Remember this day, in
which you came out from Egypt.) No leavened bread shall be eaten this day.'
(Exod 13.3)8
The Pesah (observed) in Egypt requires a song.9 The Pesah (observed in the com-
ing) generations requires a song.
6 This rule is probably of vital interest for banquets held in late antiquity, because it
would preclude wealthier rabbis from employing gentile slaves as waiters at Pesah.
As Roman legal sources forbid the circumcision of gentile and Christian slaves, this
may have created problems (from the 3rd cent, on, but) especially in Byzantine times;
Hezser 2003,133.
7 Cf. MekhSh 13.5 EL 39 = ms. Firkovich II, 268 that excludes cattle for both forms of the
Pesah against Deut 16.2.
8 For MekhY, see p. 197; yPes 9.5 37a and Lehnardt 2004, 347f and 345; bPes 92b. yPes
only quotes tPes as an explanation to the Mishna. R. Yose creates his ruling by draw-
ing ανπ from the following verse into the sentence at the end of v. 13. This is a very
appropriate procedure, because v. 14 contains two temporal specifications: 'Today (=
this day) you leave Egypt in the month of Aviv (the month of spring).'
9 mPes 10.6, cf. tPes 10.7 197 for the reference to Ps 118 and 10.9 par. to the Mishna.
This does not refer to Exod 14f, but rather to the otherwise undefined 'song' that is re-
cited in the Temple, cf. 2 Chron 35.15; mPes 5.7 and tPes 4.11163f, called 'Hallel'.
The Mishna enumerates four points of difference:10

What is (the difference) between the Egyptian Pesah and the Pesah of the (later)
generations? The Egyptian Pesah is (1) taken from the tenth (of Nisan; 12.3),11 (2) it
requires sprinkling (of the blood) and (the use of) the bundle of Hyssop (to smear
the blood) on the lintel and the two door-posts (12.22), (3) it is eaten hastily one
night (12.11). (4) The Pesah of the (later) Generations is kept all seven (days).
This passage of the Mishna is best understood as based upon the assumption
that it presupposes the text of the Tosefta. The sages of the Mishna opt for R.
Yose's opinion according to the Tosefta against the anonymous ruling there.
Indeed, the fourth halakha of the Mishna cannot be understood without the
Tosefta. The Mishna mainly adds information to the repertoire of the Tosefta
except for the mention of the blood application. However, even that is said
with respect to the Hyssop and thus also mentioning a detail that is not pre-
sent in the Tosefta.
The tannaim draw thus a careful line between the Egyptian Pesah and all
following celebrations. In accordance with their general understanding of the
history and the function of the Mishna, they are not interested in creating a
contrast between the time when the Temple was standing and their own ep-
och, because their rulings will be applicable again when the Temple will be
rebuilt. Some of them remain in use in the intermediate time as well. Contrary
to a 'modern' (and early Christian, polemic) perspective that tends to distin-
guish between injunctions that may be applied in Biblical times and such that
belong to the time after the destruction of the Second Temple, the rabbis say
that most of the rules of Exod 12 were applied once only. It is obvious that
they do not understand any celebration of Pesah as a commemoration, let
alone as a reenactment12 of the Egyptian Pesah. After their first Pesah, Israel is
not commanded to perform mimetic celebrations thereof.13
10 mPes 9.5 ms. Kaufmann Maagarim. Exod 12.7 does not use the term nun1? for 'sprin-
kling' (esp. blood on the κπρη nms in the innermost sanctuary, Lev 4.6), but nn1?
'give/put' (blood on the horns of the small incense altar, Lev 4.7). Both, Exod 12 and
the Mishna refrain from using "ροιΛ 'pour' (the blood of the victim on the basis of the
altar, Lev 4.7). While one must assume that readers of the Mishna associated such
texts, these three roots are no technical terms by themselves. The thesis that will be
put forward in this section is supported by several texts, but not by the wording of
this Mishna.
11 Par. MekhY pisha 3 L 1.25; 5 L 1.40.
12 'In every generation everyone has to regard himself as if he (himself) had left Egypf
Ms. CJS 211 8r9f Goldschmidt 1960 is a (Medieval) addition to the text of the Mishna
These points are enforced in later texts. Thus, the Talmud Yerushalmi
even states that 'our fathers had three altars in Egypt'14. The cult of the Temple
is used to explain the Egyptian Pesah, not vice versa. The latter is not under-
stood as an institution narrative that provides the model for the ritual details
of the celebrations in the coming generations. Likewise, Exodus 12.11, the
verse that seems to recommend itself for a simple and easy mimetic reenact-
ment of the first Pesah is hardly mentioned in the Mekhilta of Rabbi Ishma'el
(MekhY), which expounds the rest of Exod 12 at length. Nobody even bothers
to show how girded loins, sandals, and staves could fit into the seder. MekhY
pisha 7 L 51f15 even quotes Is 52.12 as a scriptural support for the abolition of
'haste' from the celebration of Pesahs after the Egyptian Pesah: 'Do not go out
hastily and do not go in flight, because Y' goes in front of you and Israel's God
gathers you.' As a ritual, the Egyptian Pesah was kept only once in the history
of the world. Sifre to Deuteronomy 130 F 188 goes beyond that explanation
and turns the account of the Egyptian Pesah itself upside down. As this
midrash primarily interprets the book of Deuteronomy and not Exodus 12, it
can state that 'haste' applies to the Egyptians, but not to Israel.16
that is quoted in the Palestinian Haggada. It is not extant in the older recensions of
the Mishna. Origen formulates a seemingly similar idea in his Homilies on Numbers
17.4.8 SC 442.296.331-336; Buchinger 2005, 127; cf. Peri Pascha, p. 172f. Allegorization
does also not imply liturgical representation let alone a mimetic reenactment in Ori-
gen's time. Origen explains Pesah and Sukkot in this way. They require the
commemoration of the Exodus and the sojourn in the wilderness. There is no Chris-
tian celebration of Sukkot, where one could express or even enact this commemora-
tion.
13 R. Jonathan's remark, that one must keep the commandments of Exod 12 also in the
later generations is apparently a paraphrase of the Biblical text and not a rule for the
liturgy of the seder, MekhY pisha 17 L 1.144.25f.
14 yPes 9.4 36d-37a Lehnardt 2004, 346. Cf. MekhY pisha 6 L 1.45.16-22 L 1.84f and bPes
96a that observes that the altars were only used to receive the blood, not the portions
of fat that must not be eaten: correcting tPes 8.14 p. 188.
15 Similarly MekhSh to 12.11 EM 14.10f Maagarim (ms. Oxford Heb. e. 55) "'(in this way
you shall eat it, your loins girded ... eat) it (hastily!)": (Eat) it hastily and (do) not (eat)
the Pesah of the coming generations hastily. Another interpretation: "(eat) it hastily"
and (do) not (eat the) unleavened bread and (the) bitter herbs hastily.' As observed
below (see p. 215), the rabbis make sure, that the Pesah does not become a mimetic ob-
servance of pre-Exodus times.
16 '"For you went out of the land of Egypt in haste" (Deut 16.3). Could it be that "in
haste" applies to Israel and to Egypt? (Certainly not, because) Scripture says: "Not
(even) a dog will become dangerous (lit.: sharpen his tongue) for all Israelites". Say
This is supported by the halakhot regarding the seder in mPes 10.5:

Rabban Gamaliel (II.) says: He who has not mentioned the following three things
on Pesah, has not fulfilled his obligation: Pesah (viz., the Pesah-offering), un-
leavened bread, and bitter herbs.
After the destruction of the Temple, no Pesah-offering is available any more.

Rabban Gamaliel elevates unleavened bread and bitter herbs to the same dig-
nity as was formerly ascribed to the Pesah animal.17 Only the bitter herbs are a
new mimetic allusion to Exod 12, because the prohibition to eat leavened bread
and the slaughtering of the Pesah animals were obvious elements of the
celebration in Second Temple times in Jerusalem. In his etymological explana-
tions of these three terms,18 Rabban Gamaliel alludes to Exod 1.14 (The Egyp-
tians 'embittered their lives'...), not Exod 12 in order to interpret the bitter
herbs. The Pesah animal is explained according to the popular etymology of
Π02 as it appears in Exod 12.13, 23, and 27.19 Contrary to Deut 16.3, Rabban
(viz. infer) from this (verse): the Egyptians had "haste" and the Israelites did not have
"haste"' Maagarim (ms. Vat. 32).
17 Bokser 1984, 38ff. 42f. The unleavened bread and bitter herbs even replace the Pe-
sah offering after 70 C.E.
18 Bitter herbs must be mentioned - not eaten - according to Rabban Gamaliel. See for
this issue n. 277 p. 218 and 57 p. 95.
19 Otto 1989 (referring to Gerleman) reaches an understanding of the term Π03 by formu-
lating the broadest possible 'meaning' that encompasses all attestations of the term:
'(an-, auf-, zurück-) stoßen / schlagen' 665. This does not help to understand the des-
ignation of the festival. One may find a plausible common meaning for all attestations
of use of the root as adjective. Yet, a similar interpretation of the verbs is mere guess-
work. The adjective implies some bodily defect. It is also translated as such (in most
attestations) in the LXX. 1 Kings 18.26 is not an unbiased description of the techni-
calities of the cult of Baal. It is an ironic and polemic description of the idolaters' futile
and ridiculous behavior; cf. Dahm 2003, 118. Thus, a meaning that compares their
movement ironically with that of a handicapped person is probably accurate. Is 31.5
is inconclusive. Only on the basis of the presumption that all elements of this se-
quence of verbs mean the same (which is not obvious at all), one may read a meaning
such as 'to spare' into nos. All ancient etymologies for the name of the festival are de-
rived from the context of Exod 12.13, 23, 27 or Is 31.5 (Exod 12.13, 27 σκεπάζει LXX).
It is impossible to determine whether these interpreters understood Is 31.5 'correctly'
and read Exod 12.13, 27 on that basis or whether they derived the meaning of Is 31.5
from a comparison with the narrative of Exod 12. This applies also to Philo (SpecLeg
2.145f CW 5.120f) and Josephus (Ant 2.313/2.14.6 LCL 300ff) who expound the term in
the broader context of the Exodus. The popular etymology in Jub 49.2 cannot reflect a
Hebrew Vorlage of Jub, because in Hebrew, the Ethiopic pun on 'joy' (fesseha) = Pe-
Gamaliel does not interpret the unleavened bread as 'bread of affliction' (Deut
16.3) but, mentioning it as the last element in his elucidation, he creates a p u n
on the phonetic similarity between 'to go out' ΠΝϊ1? and 'pieces of unleavened
bread' msa, although he does not use nxs1? in this interpretation but bxrn1?:
"'Unleavened bread", because they were redeemed'.20
Roasted - not cooked - meat m a y have been eaten in some places after the
destruction of the Temple. 2 1 This could not, however, be perceived as an imita-
sah (fesh) does not work. (It works in Syriac.) It is evident that the authors of Exod
12 do not know a non-technical meaning of nOD. Thus, they use the root as a verb
three times, each time appending a paraphrastic explanation of the sentence in which
the root was used. The relationship between the meaning of the name of the festival
and the adjective as well as the verb of the same root is unclear. Exod 12 is (among
other purposes) an etiological story that provides the name of the festival with a
meaning. It does not explain it with the plain meaning of the adjective. Therefore, the
name of the festival is today as obscure as it was when Exod 12 was written. Any
attempt to explain each attestation of the root by means of a 'basic meaning' overstates
the cases of Exod 12 and Is 31.5. The Biblical festival ΠΟΒ neither means 'passio' nor
'transitus' and modern attempts to find a meaning of the root do not surpass the
guesses of the translators of the LXX. The name of the festival should, hence, been
transliterated: Ύ will "pesah" over the entrance. (His act of pesah-ing implies that) he
will not allow the n e to enter your houses in order to strike (your firstborn male
children)' v. 23, similarly w . 13 and 27.
20 a© "w .ΠΪ0 ms. Kaufmann, Maagarim. I thank Günter Stemberger for calling
my attention to this interpretation. Cf. Stein 1957, 43f who shows that popular etymol-
ogies loomed large in sympotic discourses and the literature about it.
21 Eating a D^lpa 'U 'lamb/kid roasted as a whole' (?) was for some time a possibility but
not a widely accepted practice. Bokser 1984, 90f. 101-106 interprets the term accord-
ing to Exod 12.8 (where it does not occur). An animal that should have been roasted
and eaten together with its fat is unlikely for Second Temple times. Cf. Tabory 1996,
97-122, who also discusses the younger history of reception. For Todos of Rome, see
Bokser 1990. mPes 4,4 leaves it to local customs to decide whether they would eat
roasted meat (after the destruction of the Temple, according to Bokser) in the celebra-
tions of the Pesah. Josephus Bell 2.289f/2.14.5 LCL 434ff tells the story of a gentile who
performed what seems to have been understood as an offering of birds (έπέθυεν όρ-
νεις) near the entrance of a synagogue in Caesarea, in order to provoke the Jews. The
Jews of Caesarea were certainly not used to sacrifice animals there. The gentile perpe-
trator had to create a structure first, on which he could 'offer' the birds. If one wants
to regard the account as historically reliable, it only shows that there was no altar near
this synagogue. Origen did apparently not know Jews who offered a Pesah animal in
his time, although he speaks about 'Jews' who 'offer' a sheep each year; Buchinger
2005, 174. He does, however, not always distinguish between contemporary and
Biblical 'Jews'. Buchinger observes that 'celebrating Pesah' and 'slaughtering a lamb'
tion of Exod 12, but only as a continuation of the ritual at the Temple. After
the destruction of the Temple, the rabbis mention the custom of eating similar
foodstuffs as were eaten at the Temple. In general, they disliked such tenden-
cies and preferred to make it clear that no ritually slaughtered meat was avail-
able any more.22 While this shows that some tendencies to establish a minimal
kind of continuity to the ritual at the Temple existed, the development of the
rabbinic seder does not reflect a continual practice of any ritual that resembles
Exod 12. The rabbis do not find roasted lambs objectionable because of the
danger of an enactment of a domestic liturgy (such as that described in Exod
12), but because of its resemblance to the Temple cult.
Nevertheless, one of the three questions of the 'Ma Nishtana'23 according
to the older, Palestinian, recension of mPes 10.4 envisages roasted meat being
eaten on that night. The possibility cannot be excluded that this question was
formulated on the basis of an actual custom to serve 'roasted meat'. Two bet-
ter explanations may, however, be advanced for the formulation of this ques-
tion.
It may, first, be due to the intention of the Mishna to represent an eternally
applicable law - especially one that would remain valid at the time when a
Temple would be available again. As such, it must take into account a future
situation when ritually slaughtered meat can again be served at the seder ban-
quet. The same tendency is expressed in mPes 10.3: 'in the Temple, they (viz.,
the servants) bring (in front of the president of the seder) the carcass of the Pe-
sah (animal)'. Thus, the reference to the Pesah animal need not be an allusion
to Exod 12.
At the same time, a second feature of the context of mPes 10 certainly sup-
ported this question of Ma Nishtana that mentioned roasted meat. For the
three questions are very likely modeled upon the three symbolic foodstuffs
refers to the same act, 364 n. 2040. Origen does normally not speak about 'offering' a
lamb when he refers to what he thinks is actual Jewish practice; 678-681. Tabory
1996a suggests a sophisticated interpretation of the term cftlpa m, that is, however,
built on insecure evidence such as reading Justin Martyr as an eye-witness of the Sa-
maritan Pesah.
22 Cf. n. 270 p. 216. McGowan 1999 describes the ascetic tendencies in Christianity that
reject the eating of meat because of its association with pagan cults. This may have
been among the rabbis' motives. Buchinger 2005, 678-681 shows that it is impossible
to infer from Origen's writings that he knew Jews who slaughtered (and offered) Pe-
sah animals.
23 Ma Nishtana introduces the three questions that are suggested in mPes 10: 'what is
different regarding this night?' - tr. p. 82.
that Rabban Gamaliel requires to be mentioned during the seder. Thus,

unleavened bread, bitter herbs (that are dipped), and the Pesah animal are re-
ferred to. This implies that the third question may be part of the literary de-
velopment of Rabban Gamaliel's three items and neither a proof for the custom
of eating roasted lambs after 70 C. E. nor for the origins of the text before the
destruction of the Temple. The three questions lead thus directly to what one
may imagine as Rabban Gamaliel's discourse about the three 'elements' of the
Pesah. In his discourse he could blend the myth and the ritual reality of the
banquet.
Nevertheless, the bitter herbs eventually enter the menu. The Mishna - not
the Tosefta - prescribes the discussion between a 'father' and a 'son', which
enacts Exod 12.26; 13.8, 14; as well as Deut 6.20. This latter element aligns the
sympotic customs with the Biblical laws.24 Although this is clearly reminiscent
of 'Exod 12' as a text, it is far from being a re-enactment thereof, because Exod
12 does not prescribe that the father teaches the son at the Pesah in Egypt. On
the contrary, if the Pesah is celebrated or as soon as the redemption of the first-
born is performed by the later generations, the father has to explain the reason
and meaning of the ancestral custom. The Old Testament does not prescribe a
ritualized instruction at the celebration of Pesah and the Mishna follows the
Bible.
To sum up, Exod 12 seems to prescribe a liturgy that is essentially inde-
pendent of the Temple. If the text should reflect a liturgical reality at least of
Second Temple times, it would be astonishing that rabbinic Israel totally abol-
ished this ritual in theory and practice in a time that would have required its
continuation.
2.1.2 Reading Exodus 12 in the Liturgies
From the observations in the preceding section, it hardly comes as a surprise

that Exodus 12 was not read as a special text in the synagogues at the festival.25
24 This question is discussed p. 73. Reading tPes 10, additional observations can be
made. The Tosefta, that is much more explicit about the customs surrounding the Pe-
sah meal, records normal features of festive symposia some of which cannot be de-
rived from Exod 12. 10.1: drinking wine, 10.4: bringing joy to one's family, 10.5: hors
d'oeuvres, 10.6-9: the halakhot surrounding the Hallel and the elements of the meal
such as haroset, 10.11: studying the laws of Pesah, etc.
25 Cf. Rouwhorst 1996,152-173, esp. 172.
The first verses of the chapter, 'keep this month as the beginning of the
months...', are, however, mentioned as a reading at the beginning of Nisan in
the Mishna. That reading is only marginally associated with Pesah. It is an in-
stitution narrative of the beginning of the year on the first of Nisan and not of
Pesah.
Neither the Mishna nor the Tosefta prescribe Exod 12 as a reading for the
15th of Nisan. The Mishna (not mentioned in the Tosefta) suggests using the
'recitation accompanying the (presentation of the) firstfruits'26 at the seder as a
point of departure for the learned explication of Israel's history.27 Although
this text mentions the Exodus from Egypt, it does not refer to the Egyptian Pe-
sah. This liturgy is essentially part of a banquet. A formal 'reading' from the
Tora would probably not be expected at such an occasion. The Talmud Yeru-
shalmi suggests reciting Joshua 24.2ff (yPes 10.5 37d; also bPes 116a). The
Bavli adds Deut 6.21 (bPes 116a).
The Tosefta suggests a different approach to the meaning of the seder.28 It
prescribes the study of the 'halakhot of Pesah' which could theoretically imply
Exod 12. If the reading in the synagogue is taken into account or the opinion
of the Tosefta about the 'Pesah of the (coming) generations', one may assume
that not many laws pertaining to the seder would be deduced from this text.
The Tosefta is rather based on the principle that the study of the laws of the
sacrifices, as they were offered in the Temple, is regarded as the fulfillment of
these laws. They replace (to a certain extent) the sacrifices during the period of
time of the absence of a Temple. Studying the 'laws of (the) Pesah (sacrifice)'
implies that the sages of the Tosefta work on the understanding of the sacrifi-
26 Deuteronomy 26 prescribes this text, later called nniD'3 ΝΊρη, to be recited at the occa-
sion of the handing over of the firstfruits at the Temple.
27 Stein 1957. 'The Midrash' of the Haggada is discussed below, ch. 3.2.7 p. 107.
28 tPes 10,12 198f. Cf. Hauptman 2002. MekhY pisha 18 L 166f paraphrases tPes 10,12
and expands it: '"What are the commandments and laws and injunctions" etc. R. Eli-
ezer says: What is the reason that you say: If there is a group of sages or of disciples of
sages, they must sit and deal with the halakhot of Pesah until midnight. For this case
it is said: "What are the commandments and the laws'" etc. 'Until midnight' is likely a
halakhic adaptation of the nightly discussion of the sages according to the Tosefta.
Note that MekhY interprets the question which is posed by the 'son' in Deut 6.20
independently from such a father-son relationship. MekhY pisha 18 L 1.166f makes
the 'wise son' ask Deut 6.20 and suggests that the 'father' should not answer Deut
6.21, but explain the halakhot of Pesah that conclude with the Mishna I'TBSH I'K
paVEiX. Even according to the Mekhilta, the 'wise' son is thus taught halakhot instead
of the story of the Exodus.
cial laws and do not concentrate on the story of the Exodus from Egypt. The
banquet that should be held at Pesah does not suggest that it be a direct fulfill-
ment of the rituals commanded in Exod 12. From a theological point of view,
which is not yet expressed as such in tPes 10, the discussions at the seder could
replace the fulfillment of the commandments to slaughter and eat the Pesah in
the Temple of Jerusalem.
Yet, one may wonder why tPes 10.12 does not specify any contents of 'the
laws of (the) Pesah'. tMeg 3.5 354 may legitimately be read into tPes 10.12.
This implies that the topic of the discussion would take Lev 23 into account. In
addition to that, 'the laws of (the) Pesah' (of tPes 10.12) may be read within a
sympotic context. Questions of table etiquette loomed large in the literature on
the symposia - not only as items of knowledge that one should have internal-
ized in order to behave properly there, but even more as a topic of the learned
discourse itself. According to the florilegia of sympotic literature, one would
normally quote the ancient sources as proof for a description of the history, an
interpretation, or a rule of behavior in the present. From this point of view, the
whole chapter tPes 10 is itself an example of 'laws of (the) Pesah', especially
10.1-6 and 11 as well as the question of the status of the haroset (9,10). Thus, a
learned Greek scholar would watch the waiter's actions in 10.5 and quote
Homerus while the Rabbi associates a saying of the book of Proverbs. Exodus
12 is conspicuously absent from both the ritual and its interpretation. The se-
der of tPes 10 is neither a reenactment of the Egyptian Pesah nor a celebration
of the commemoration of the Exodus from Egypt. It is a 'normal' symposium
at the occasion of Pesah. 'Discussing the laws of (the) Pesah' may, therefore,
only imply: 'make sure that the celebration contains a proper sympotic dis-
course'. 'Proper' means 'according to Greek standards' here.
The Bavli (bMeg 31a, ms. München 95) adds the reading of Exod 12 in the
synagogue at Pesah. The halakhot begin with the quotation of the Mishna: 'On
Pesah, one reads from the chapter of the festivals of the law of the priests
(Leviticus)'. The Talmud goes on to discuss the haftarot - Jos 5 (the Pesah of
Gilgal), 2 Kings 22f (Josiah's Pesah). For the lesser holidays, the Bavli refers to
the ruling of the Tosefta to select texts that are related to Pesah in some way.
This requires a specification. Thus, the Bavli quotes a notarikon in the name of
Rav Pappa V'DXtt.29 After this, Abaye (ca. 280-339) is quoted in an Aramaic
29 ιηό 15X® "f? "jod DK m » ms. München 95. The ms. quotes a notarikon (lSNW) that
contradicts its own explanation. The notarikon "B apparently implies the reading of
azo IX 11» (Lev 22.26f) at the first (Rashi: and second) day(s) of the festival. The
statement with the regulation that is kept until today: 'Today, everyone reads:
take (Exod 12.21), cattle (Lev 22.27), declare as holy (Exod 13.2), by means of
money (Exod 22.24), cut (for yourself two tablets... Exod 34.1), in the desert
(Numb 9.1), when he lets go (Exod 13.17), firstling (Deut 15.19; i.e. 14.22-16.17).'
Thus, the Bavli shifts the Palestinian reading for the first day to the second and
selects a passage from Exod 12 for the first day. This development shows a
growing interest in the 'historical' Pesah and the Exodus from Egypt.
To sum up, Exod 12 plays a late and marginal role as a text to be read in
the rabbinic liturgies or study sessions at Pesah. Babylonian amoraim are the
first ones to mention the chapter in the context of the readings for Pesah.
Apart from the differences in the understanding of the seder according to the
Tosefta and the Mishna, both tannaitic texts do not prescribe the recitation of
Exod 12 at that occasion.
2.1.3 Pesach Without Exodus
Although Jubilees and its approach to Pesah will be discussed in greater detail
below, 30 it must also be mentioned here, because it elucidates an important
aspect of the understanding of the pre-Christian Pesah. The greater part of
Jubilees retells the book of Genesis. The book ends with the description of the
Egyptian Pesah. The whole composition reflects a thorough interest in prece-
dents for Israel's festivals in the time of the patriarchs. Thus, the festival of
Unleavened Bread is established by Abraham, although it is not yet given that
name. Pesah is the only festival whose institution narrative falls within the
boundaries of the history that Jubilees relates. The other festivals emerge from
the Law that is given on Mount Sinai and thus outside of the scope of Jubilees.
Thus, Jubilees rewrites Exod 12. Many of the elements of the ritual of the
Egyptian Pesah are mentioned, including 'haste' (49.23), but not the other ele-
ments of Exod 12.11.
Jubilees indicates some elements of the ritual that are not mentioned in
Exod 12, but that are known from other sources. Thus Israel is said to have
explanation refers to Exod 12.21 as the beginning of the sequence of readings. The ex-
planation does not appear in the other mss. and seems to be thus a younger addition
to ms. München. Thus, the establishment of a separate reading for the second day of
the Pesah in the Diaspora seems to be an even younger development. This is not sup-
ported by the attribution of the statement to R. Pappa (Abaye's pupil, died ca. 375).
30 See p. 234f and p. 385f.
praised God during the meal (49.6). Jubilees mentions wine for the first time in
the context of the Pesah.31 It also requires a state of purity for the participants
of the meal.32 In 49.13f, 20, it prescribes the commandments of Exod 12.8-10
for all celebrations of Pesah. Jubilees interprets the prohibition to break a bone
of the Pesah animal twice, each time in a symbolic way. This may be due to
the fact that such a prohibition is unknown from other types of sacrifices ac-
cording the Bible.33 In 49.16f, 20f, Jubilees agrees with the Temple Scroll34 in
the commandment that (only) Israelite men above the age of 20 should eat the Pe-
sah. The Temple Scroll excludes 'young' men and women from joining the
sacrificial meal of the Pesah. In Biblical times, the Pesah is no domestic ritual
designed to educate children. It is not the place and situation where one
would hand down the narrative of the Exodus in order to establish a 'cultural
memory'.35
These commandments and prohibitions must be contrasted with what
emerges from a naive reading of the Egyptian Pesah that makes it appear as a
domestic celebration outside of any sanctuary. The data that can be gleaned
from the Scrolls could not be further away from it. Both Jubilees and the Tem-
ple Scroll emphasize that the Pesah must be eaten within the Temple precincts
(cf. Deut 16.7). If the inhabitants of the settlement at Qumran are responsible
for the preservation of the scrolls, one must refrain from a reconstruction of a
celebration of Pesah according to Exod 12 in their sphere of influence. Jubilees
is only interested in the liturgy at the Temple. Jub 49,20 refers to the taberna-
31 Note the long discussion of wine beginning with p. 132 in Tabory 1996. Wine entered
the seder as an element of a normal Jewish as well as Hellenistic banquet. The Baby-
lonian sages suggested that wine took over the function of the meat of the Pesah ani-
mal within the seder (after 70 C.E.), bPes 109a.
32 See Philo SpecLeg 2.148 CW 5.121.
33 Henninger 1975 refers to customs and magical acts of Near Eastern peoples before the
times of the Arabs, but opts for an interpretation to see the purpose of the ritual in the
preservation of the integrity of the animal in order to guarantee that it can return to
life again; likewise Delcor 1984. Stendebach 1973 thinks that this is a secondary motif.
Kohler 1910 refers to Germanic myths. Such farfetched analogies hardly help to
understand this prohibition in its historical setting. The legislators may had in mind
the preservation of the animal before its slaughtering (cf. Exod 12.5) and during its
preparation. After the meal, the bones are burnt anyway, at least according to mPes
7.10. MekhY pisha 15 L 1.125.94-98 sees the problem that this prohibition only applies
to the Pesah, and derives from it a prohibition to eat the marrow of the bones.
34 Cf. Maier 1997 for T» 11Q19 17.7-9; 4Q265 3 1. 3 DJD 35.
35 This link is tentatively established in the older sources; cf. Kadari 2003, 65.
cle, the p o u r i n g of t h e b l o o d o n the b a s i s of the altar, as w e l l as the b u r n i n g of

the fat of the animals. Finally, J u b 49.9 clearly defines the e s s e n c e of t h e Pesah:
'to b r i n g a sacrifice that is p l e a s i n g b e f o r e t h e L o r d a n d to eat a n d d r i n k b e f o r e
the L o r d on t h e d a y of his festival'. 3 6 It a d d s to this fulfillment of the c o m -
m a n d m e n t a n e x p l a n a t i o n of its p u r p o s e a n d m e a n i n g : 3 7
Then a pleasing memorial will come before the Lord and no plague will come
upon them to kill and to strike (them) during that year when they have celebrated
the Passover at its time in every respect as it was commanded.
Jubilees interprets the festival of P e s a h as G o d r e m e m b e r i n g t h e E g y p t i a n Pe-

sah. It is, therefore, a ' m e m o r i a l ' of G o d ' s s a v i n g the Israelites f r o m the p l a g u e
of t h e killing o f the firstborn. 3 8 T h e f u n c t i o n of the ritual of the E g y p t i a n Pe-
s a h w a s exactly that. If J u b i l e e s reflects a n y liturgical reality a n d its interpreta-
tion, t h e E x o d u s f r o m E g y p t w a s not r e m e m b e r e d o n Pesah. 3 9 G e n e r a l i z i n g the
a p p r o a c h of Jubilees ( 4 9 . 2 - 5 , 7, 15), it m a y b e o b s e r v e d that the interpretation
of the E g y p t i a n P e s a h as t h e n a r r a t i v e of t h e festival of P e s a h leads to t h e
r e d u c t i o n of t h e m e a n i n g of the P e s a h of the later g e n e r a t i o n s to t h e p u r p o s e
a n d f u n c t i o n of the E g y p t i a n Pesah: an a p o t r o p a i c ritual.
36 CSCO 511.317. Cf. Numb 9.7,13 and n. 132 p. 59.

37 Jub 49.15 CSCO 511.321. The term 'memorial' will be discussed on p. 240 below.
38 (Without dependence upon Jubilees) Origen is, likewise, puzzled in his determination
of the essence of the Egyptian Pesah. Buchinger 2005, 401 observes: 'Die Verbindung
der verschiedenen exegetischen Motive bleibt aber insoferne etwas inkonsistent, als
Origenes die soteriologische Wirkung des Pascha, nicht mit den Erstgeborenen der
Ägypter vernichtet zu werden, denen zuspricht, welche hinübergehen.' As Origen
tried to combine the folk etymology of 'the Hebrews' as 'those who pass over' with
the people (not with God, who passes over the Israelites' houses...) he had to notice
that during the Egyptian Pesah only the firstborn Hebrews were saved from an immi-
nent danger. As soon as such a repertoire of 'types' was established, it could be used
by preachers. Thus, Cyril of Jerusalem also sees the celebration of the Pascha as com-
memoration of the 'passage of the firstborn of the Hebrews' through the tenth plague;
Danielou 1946, 412. It is true that the Haggada provided the point of departure for a
symbolic representation of the Exodus in the seder, cf. Gerhards 2005, 125-127. This
is, however, a feature of the medieval development of the seder and not a characteris-
tic of the rabbinic celebrations.
39 The Exodus did, however, not yet happen in the course of the narrative of Jubilees.
This is probably not the reason, why it could not yet be 'celebrated'. For Jubilees also
found many ways to identify patriarchs' festivals with Shavuot, the festival of cove-
nants, long before the covenant at Mount Sinai, which is not described within the
course of its narrative, was concluded.
This fits to the commandment of Exod 12.27 that recommends the Egyp-
tian Pesah as a model for the coming generations. It contradicts Deut 16.6 that
subordinates even the date of the Exodus from Egypt to the liturgical reality
and has the Israelites leave Egypt at the time of the slaughtering of the animals
at the Temple.
The author of Jubilees is not the only one who wonders about the relation-
ship of the Egyptian Pesah and the Pesah at the Second Temple. Thus, Wis-
dom 18.10-19 is not even able to imagine the Pesah as a domestic rite. It must
blend the figure of the agent of liberation with the (high-) priest at the Sanctu-
ary (Wisdom 18.21, 24) who actually performs the salvation from Egypt. V.
18.9 gives some details about the celebration referring to three elements: the
performance of a sacrifice in a hidden way (κρυφή ... έθυσίαζον), the accep-
tance of the divine Law for themselves implying to share their fate, and sing-
ing the sacred hymns of the ancestors in advance (ήδη προαναμέλποντες
αίνους). 40 In this way, the Egyptian Pesah, as the first Pesah in general, can
already invoke the memory of the liberation from Egypt. This is possible, be-
cause that information was accessible to the Patriarchs for many centuries (Gen
15.13f; 46.4; 50.24). The Pesah of the later epochs celebrates the Exodus by imi-
tating the Egyptian Pesah. As the later epochs did not perform an apotropaic,
domestic ritual, Wisdom must find the high priest as well as the Exodus al-
ready in the Egyptian Pesah, in order to be able to imitate the Egyptian
Pesah in the Pesah of the upcoming generations. 41 Wisdom 18 is a modern text
in its time. In contrast to others, Wisdom testifies that Exod 12 has a high im-
portance for the definition of the Pesah, but it must reinterpret the Biblical text
in order to be applicable to the later rituals and their interpretation.
This is corroborated by the scrolls of Qumran that are associated with Pe-
sah. They preserve, most probably, elements of the Temple cult.42 The Qum-
40 Τον νόμον τάθημι. implies rather that they recited (but did not compose) the law. Note
that Moses receives the law and repeats it for the elders in Exod 12.
41 In his dramatic recast of the Pesah, Ezekiel only paraphrases Exod 12. He does not
pose the question about the future of that celebration; Eusebius, Praeparatio Evan-
gelica 9.28-30 SC 369.282-313. LibAnt (written after 70 C.E.) paraphrases the festival
calendar of Lev 23, but skips the Egyptian Pesah in its 10th chapter.
42 Daniel Falk 1998 basically accepts Maier's 1990 approach to the analysis of the Qum-
ran prayer texts. Johann Maier 2003 further expanded this approach. For further re-
marks on the scrolls, see ch. 4.6 beginning p. 230. Esther Chazon 2000 rejects the
understanding of 4Q503 as part of the liturgy of the Temple. She shows that refer-
ences to the priesthood in these texts need not necessarily be interpreted as the proof
for a Sitz im Leben of the Temple liturgy. Yet, the assumption that these texts were
ran texts that deal with etiquette at symposia do not discuss meals in analogy
to Exod 12.43 The texts preserved from the Qumran library were not selected
according to their importance for any community, but remained in existence
by mere chance. If there was ample evidence for Jews celebrating Pesah such
as it is prescribed in Exod 12 outside of the Temple in Jerusalem, one should be
entitled to read this into the silence of the scrolls. The silence of the scrolls
joins the general silence in this regard and supports, therefore, the thesis that
Exod 12 does not reflect a ritual that was performed according to its
descriptions in Second Temple times. Authors who tried to see the Pesah of
their age as a fulfillment of the laws of Exod 12 encountered many difficulties
and had either to give up Pesah as a celebration of the Exodus (such as Jubi-
lees) or read and write elements of the contemporary celebrations back into
Exod 12 (like Wisdom).
2.1.4 Exodus 12 and Domestic Liturgies in the First Century
In the New Testament, Pesah plays an important role. It is not, however, justi-
fied to read details of a Jewish liturgy of Pesah or an originally Jewish liturgy
that was adapted to Christian beliefs into these texts. There is no reason to
assume that Judean Jews who came to believe in Christ should have discontin-
ued taking part in the celebrations of the Pesah at the Temple in Jerusalem.
This only suggests that the 'first Christians' were insignificant in terms of the
liturgy of Pesah.
The New Testament does not contain unequivocal data to answer two
questions that are decisive here: first, whether (Judeo-) Christians changed
their approach to the Jewish Pesah as a consequence of their being Christians;
second, whether Jews (as well as 'God-fearers') outside of Palestine would
have celebrated a domestic form of the Pesah that resembled rituals of Exod 12
performed by the people living in Qumran and other Jewish groups cannot be sub-
stantiated either. These texts may still be read in search for ancestors of rabbinic litur-
gies. This does, however, not require anachronistic reconstructions of statutory
prayers in Second Temple Judaism. Well established parallels may indicate that the
rabbis had access to traditions of prayer at the Temple. Cf. Stefan Reif's general
conclusions and observations on this question 2003, esp. 148f and n. 313 p. 231.
43 The depots of bones found in Qumran do not contain bones of lambs, Delcor 1984.
These animals have also been cooked and not roasted. There is no connection to
Pesah.
- indeed whether or not Diaspora Jews celebrated Pesah at all in Second Tem-
ple times. The data are inconclusive. Yet, some suggestions may be made.
Paul (hardly ever) refers to festivals as indications for the structure of time
in his correspondence (1 Cor 16.8). This does not imply that he assumes that
the Corinthians celebrate Pesah (or Pentecost). It shows that he thinks in these
categories. In a similar way, allegorizations of elements of the ritual do not say
anything about any performance in the Diaspora. In 1 Cor 5, Paul uses the
Pascha and the festival of Unleavened Bread as metaphors to make the Chris-
tians abide by certain ethical and communal standards. The idea that 'Christ is
our Pascha' implies that the Corinthians would not need any other Pascha. It
hardly implies that the Corinthians slaughtered animals and understood them
as 'Christ' in some way or that they should have celebrated a festival that is
somehow 'Christ'. 44 In 1 Cor 5.7, Paul refers to the removal of leaven and
identifies the Christians with unleavened bread. 45 The metaphors change in v.
8. Now, unleavened bread is an image for the state of purity of the commu-
nity. In vv. 9-13, Paul explains what it means to 'celebrate (the festival)' in this
context: the community must remove the fornicator from their midst - and not
keep a domestic Pesah ritual.
The image of the 'Lamb of God' (John 1.29, 36) is not built upon the mean-
ing or the ritual of the Pesah. The Pesah animal is called τό πάσχα in the New
Testament. While there is no positive proof that the 'Lamb of God', άμνός, 46
44 Col 2.15f applies this approach to the new moons, festivals and Sabbaths in general:
they are 'shadows of the future things, which is the body of Christ'. Huber 1969, 102
remarks regarding 1 Cor 5 that the Corinthians never celebrated the Pascha, and were
also not required to do so after their conversion to (what would eventually become)
Christianity.
45 This was not a coined expression. The New Testament uses leaven as a metaphor in
various positive and negative contexts. In Matth 16.5-12; Mark 8.15; Luke 12.1; simi-
larly Gal 5.9, 'leaven' is the 'teaching' (Luke even 'hypocrisy') of the Pharisees and
Sadducees. Matth 13.33; Luke 13.20f compare the kingdom of God with leaven.
46 Among other designations for sheep and goats as offerings for Pesah, in 2 Chron 35.7.
Wisdom 19.9 (διασκιρτάω) apparently alludes to Ps 114 (113),4, 6 (σκιρτάω) although
it uses the only term for 'sheep' that does not appear in Ps 114 (113). The άμνός
άμωμος of 1 Peter 1.19 does not refer to the Pesah (Exod 12.5 πρόβατον τέλειον
άρσεν ένιαύσιον), but rather to the tamid (Exod 29.38; Numb 28.3 which is also
ένιαύσιον) or another offering; cf. Lev 9.3 etc.; often in Numb 28f und Ezek 46. See p.
235 for the atoning function the tamid. Interpreters of the NT could combine these no-
tions. Note Origen's sophisticated understanding of Christ as a lamb in Buchinger
2005, 732-753. Origen, who rejects the typological link between 'Pascha' and Christ's
does not refer to the Pesah, it is, nevertheless, unlikely from the point of view
of the terminology and the theological implications, especially because the
Pesah (animal) is not likely to 'carry away (the) sin (of the world)'. There are
rituals involving animals, especially sheep, which are more likely imagined to
'carry away sins'. The 'lamb of God' evokes the tamid and the text of the suf-
fering servant in Isaiah that is itself based on sacrificial imagery. 47 The New
Testament does not use the term for 'lamb' (πρόβατον) of Exod 12 in the con-
text of the cult or the Pesah (except for John 2.14f). The book of Revelation pre-
fers άρνίον (cf. also John 21.15). The latter is not connected with Pesah in the
Septuagint. The atoning power of rituals involving sheep is found in several
Old Testament contexts. The metaphoric use of 'sheep' does not imply the
Pesah animal in the first place.
The Synoptic Gospels understand the last supper as a Pesah meal. They
refer to sympotic elements, but do not align the rituals with Exod 12.48 The
preparations of the meal imply that Jesus and the apostles would have eaten a
Pesah animal. Bitter herbs, a wanderer's dress, eating hastily, and the like are
not mentioned. Furthermore, Jesus and the apostles do not even remotely re-
semble a 'family' or a 'house'. The gospels presuppose that there are normal
and widespread customs to celebrate the Pesah in Jerusalem.
Writing earlier than most of the New Testament authors, even Philo cannot
be interpreted as attesting the celebration of Pesah in the Diaspora, not to men-
tion a celebration in the form of a ritual that should have resembled Exod 12.49
'passion' uses John 1.29 in order to create a similar association, 737. Earlier authors
(Justin, Melito, Irenaeus a.o.) follow the Biblical terminology. They do not identify the
lamb of John 1.29 with the Paschal lamb, 733. 735.
47 Is 53.7 and Acts 8.32 using both άμνός and πρόβατον.
48 The NT uses άνακείμαι for 'being seated at a banquet' etc. This may be compared to
rabbinic terminology, mPes 10.1. The use of wine, some food to dip (bread or vegeta-
bles?) into it, a song at the end of the meal (Matth 26.30; Mark 14.26), blessings over
the cups (and bread), as well as the host's or president's interpretation of the foods
that were served have nothing to do with Exod 12. Chilton 2002, 26 reconstructs
groups and their ideologies such as 'James and his circle' within Early Christianity.
As the Last Supper (as observed by Chilton) has no connection whatsoever with Exod
12, there is no reason to postulate, for instance, that the story about this event should
imply a kind of church legislation (of a sub-group of Christianity) that requires cir-
cumcision for the participation in the Pascha, cf. Exod 12.48. Furthermore, Paul used
the tradition about the Last Supper in order to stimulate changes in what we would
regard as a Eucharistie meal, not a form of Pesah or Pascha.
49 See n. 134 p. 167 for the annual festival of the translation of the LXX.
Philo refers to this text in his exegesis. Where he describes celebrations of fes-
tivals, he intends to present what happens in the Temple in Jerusalem.50
Philo's interpretation of the Pesah as διαβατήρια identifies the Jewish ritual
with offerings that Greeks used to sacrifice at the occasion of important transi-
tions, such as the passing of a border.51 Even if pilgrimage is thought to be an
essential component of Pesah, this strongly deemphasizes the fact that Pesah is
celebrated in Jerusalem once a year and not at the occasion of a journey. Philo
could easily have referred to a simple banquet (in order to explain what later
generations could interpret as a 'proto-seder') to his Egyptian readers, if he
should have known such a custom. Yet, he refers to the offering of the Pe-
sah as a 'memorial and a thanksgiving'52. He blends Exod 12 with the practice
in Jerusalem:
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. The guests assembled for the banquet have been
cleansed by purificatory lustrations, and are there not as in other festive gather-
ings, to indulge the belly with wine and viands, but to fulfil with prayers and
hymns the custom handed down by their fathers.53
In this text, he does not say anything about the Diaspora, but solves a problem
that was also seen in Jubilees. For the banquets in which the Pesah animals
were eaten were already held in the city of Jerusalem instead of being kept
within the Temple precincts only. Thus, Exod 12 can be referred to as an ex-
cuse for this custom. Moreover, Philo has to explain his Biblical text. Accord-
ing to most sources, the person who brings the offering to the Temple is sup-
posed to slaughter it (cf. Lev 1.5 Masoretic text). The rest of the ritual is per-
formed by specialized personnel. The Pesah is no exception to this rule. How-
ever, according to the Septuagint text of Lev 1.5, the priests slaughter the ani-
50 Leonhardt 2001, 32f. Cf. Mendelsohn's 1994 lucid paper on the Shma'. Mendelsohn
likewise assumes that no ritual according to Exod 12 was enacted in the Diaspora.
51 Isaac Heinemann 1932, 120; Leonhardt 2001, 29-36.
52 SpecLeg 2.146 CW 5.120.
53 SpecLeg 2.148 CW 5.121 transl. Colson. Colautti 2002, 138 refers to Josephus Ant
2.312/2.14.6 LCL 300 as an interpretation of the 'purification' of the houses. However,
Josephus does not want to associate the Temple with the houses here, but interprets
the use of Hyssop in Exod 12 in this instance. Martola 1998 infers from this passage
that Jews used to slaughter Pesah animals 'in their own houses', 523. This is unlikely.
Especially his references to Elephantine and Leontopolis weaken his theory. This
point is taken up below.
mal.54 Thus, Philo's paragraph may be an apology for the difference between
his Biblical text and the actual practice in Jerusalem that would then be re-
flected in the Masoretic text. In SpecLeg 2.145-149 (CW 5.120-122), the slaugh-
tering by laymen remains the only parallel found by Philo between the con-
temporary (practice in Jerusalem) and Exod 12.55 In the celebration of his time,
εύχαί and ύμνοι are part of the repertoire of Hellenistic banquets and do not
belong to Exod 12. Where Philo paraphrases Exod 12, he refers to the Temple
and the houses in Jerusalem, the only place where the Pesah can be held. Jews
in the Diaspora did not, in any case, celebrate a Pesah that resembled Exod 12.
Philo's general approach of expounding the laws in an allegorical way
suggests, furthermore, that he and his readers would not have inferred laws
and customs from the Biblical text that were irrelevant to their own lives
(except for those few who visited Jerusalem as pilgrims).56
54 I. Heinemann 1932, 33. According to Segal 1963, 30-32, Philo distinguishes in

QuaestEx between rituals that were customary in contemporary Jerusalem and others
that were obsolete and belong to the Egyptian Pesah only. The latter are introduced
by '(Why) does he command (or: say) that...?' The latter are: the selection of the ani-
mal on the 10th of Nisan and its preservation until the 14th, the application of the blood
to the lintel and the doorposts, girdle, sandals, sticks; the burning of the remains until
dawn, as well as the commandment to eat the meat during the night. In VitMos
2.222-224 CW 4.252 Philo first explains the 'beginning of the months' in Exod 12.2 as
dependent upon the spring solstice. Such as his understanding of the festival of Un-
leavened Bread, he also explains here that the choice of the months is dependent upon
phenomena of nature. He goes on to give a short overview over the 'Pascha' men-
tioning that at this time, the laymen bring and slaughter their animals. This is no ref-
erence to a practice of the Diaspora, because Philo mentions the altar in this context.
The remark about the Pesah is an excursus within the re-narration of Numb 9. The ex-
cursus explains the Pesah as a ritual of the Temple.
55 Philo refers to the hasty eating of the Pesah in Migr 25 CW 2.273 (quoting Exod 12.11).
He is only interested in the allegory of the νοϋς who should hasten to leave the hu-
man passions, etc. It is significant that he reads this advice as applying to the transi-
tion (Exodus) and not to the meal before it. As Philo interpreted the etymology of
'Hebrew' (applied to Joseph there) as 'going over (μετανίστασθαι) from the sensual
feelings towards the intelligible (world)' in Migr 20 CW 2.272, this Pesah is an expres-
sion of the essence of Judaism; cf. Leonhardt 2001, 35.
56 Leonhardt 2001, 22 refers to the high importance of pilgrimage centers for the identity
of people in Antiquity: 'The pilgrimage unites them as a nation as opposed to staying
at home with their pagan neighbours.' Thus, her assumption that 'the Passover was
celebrated among the Jews everywhere. But Philo is adamant that there is only one
place where God allows sacrifices', 31, is not borne out by the evidence and not sug-
gested by the cultural parallel that she mentions. There is no reason to assume that
Among the later texts of the New Testament, Acts 12 is often read as refer-
ring to a Christian celebration of Pesah.57 Some elements of the narrative sug-
gest themselves as allusions to Exod 12. Thus, the events take place 'in that
night' (τη νυκτί εκείνη, cf. Exod 12.8, 12). The angel asks Peter to get up
quickly (έν τάχει - not exactly recalling the Pesah according to the LXX saying
that it must be eaten 'in haste' μετά σπουδής). Peter is likewise commanded
to don his belt and to bind his sandals.58 These are elements of the ritual of
Exod 12.
The liberation at night, however, is a literary cliche that need not point to
Pesah.59 Nevertheless, the Pesah is mentioned in the context of the story as its
narrative setting.60 'It happened in the days of Unleavened Bread' (Acts 12.3)
implies that Peter was arrested between the 15th and the 21st of Nisan. Herod
wanted to present him to the people 'after the Pascha'. This implies that 'Pas-
cha' and 'Unleavened Bread' are used synonymously.61 The miracle happens
after the 7th day of Pesah (v. 6). This has two implications. First, apart from the
anachronistic assumption that Judaism always regarded the 7th day of the fes-
tival of Unleavened Bread as the day of the crossing of the Red Sea,62 it is more
reasonable, within the context of the narrative, that Herod planned to kill Peter
after the festival - that is, after its 7th day. The night of the liberation is, there-
fore, the night after the 7th day of the festival. Second, the Christian community
the Mishna (mPes 4.4, mBeza 2.7) refers to roasted lambs in the Diaspora before the de-
struction of the Temple. Leonhardt points out that quotations of a decree permitting
'to offer the ancestral prayers and sacrifices to God' Josephus Ant 14.260/14.10.25 LCL
588 does not imply that Jews actually 'offered' animals in Sardis. It may imply that
the authors of the decree think that they will - or express their equal status with other
cults. If one wanted to maintain that animals were indeed offered in a Jewish 'temple'
in Sardis, it would be easier to compare such offerings with institutions like the tamid
instead of the slaughtering of Pesah animals only once a year.
57 Cf. Yuval 2000, 77-83; Strobel 1957, but see Radl 1983 against Strobel.
58 See Barrett 1994, 579f for parallels. The commandments of the angel 'are also com-
mon-sense instructions'. Barrett assumes that Luke is rather telling a nice story 'than
that he is working out a subtle typological scheme'.
59 Cf. Acts 5.19; for parallels: Barrett 1994, 580-582; Weiser 1981 I, 284f and Radl 1983.
The repertoire of images is also present in similar stories in antiquity.
60 Barrett 1994, 573 observes that the time frame is not connected to a previous event
within Acts.
61 Cf. Luke 22.1. Strobel 1957, 213 and others (not Barrett 1994, 576) want to delete the
sentence: 'It happened in the days of Unleavened Bread'.
62 This topic is discussed in ch. 4.4 p. 188.
is, therefore, truly assembled to pray 'for him' (explicitly in v. 5). There is no
festival liturgy being enacted, because nobody would celebrate the 22nd of Ni-
san (or the 8th day of Unleavened Bread) in first-century Jerusalem.63 The ap-
pearance of light belongs to the narrative repertoire of theophanies.64 It would
not be associated with Exod 12, but rather with the column of fire that accom-
panies the Israelites in their crossing of the Red Sea, or with Wisdom 18.3f.
Exod 12 is also not a prototypical story of liberation, as the people are com-
manded to stay inside their houses, whereas Peter leaves the prison in Acts 12.
Nevertheless, Luke probably alluded to Exod 12. He used elements of the
Old Testament narrative in order to embellish his story, but without teaching
anything about a Christian liturgy. Acts 12 joins thus all descriptions of ban-
quets at Pesah in their silence about eating with belts, staffs, and sandals on
one's feet. Typical points that the Mishna attests for the liturgy of the seder,
like bitter herbs, are not mentioned. Peter 'tells' about his liberation. How-
ever, this is, likewise, no indication that anybody recalled Exod 12 here. Simi-
lar occasions where somebody 'tells' what happened, etc. are recorded more
often within Acts.65 The Epistula Apostolorum (15/26-17/28) must not be read
into Acts 12.66 It is part of the reception history of Acts 12.
In roughly the same time, Josephus Flavius brings details to the Pesah that
could be understood as references to contemporary celebrations.67 He mainly
paraphrases the Biblical text and does not know of a domestic liturgy of the
Pesah. Federico Colautti (2002, 91), who assumes that Josephus knows about
the celebration of a Pesah outside of Palestine, discusses this (highly problem-
atic) passage in the context of the temple of Onias in Egypt. This reveals the
fallacy of the association of the Pesah with a ritual like Exod 12. For references
63 Barrett 1994, 583f; cf. Huber 1968, 46.

64 Cf. also Acts 9.3; 22.6; 26.13.
65 Acts 9.27; 10.30ff; 21.40; 22; 26.1.
66 Cf. Rouwhorst 2004, 68.
67 The terms νϋν έτι in Ant 2.313/2.14.6 LCL 300 cannot be taken as referring to a Pe-
sah of Josephus' time. Except for Ant 10.267/10.11.7 LCL 304 and 14.188/14.10.2 LCL
548, Josephus combines bits of information about foreign countries and etiologies with
νϋν έτι; Colautti 2002, 233, η. 56. In Ant 3.31/3.1.6 LCL 332ff, he rationalizes the narra-
tive of the Manna to such an extent that he even assumes that the same natural (!) phe-
nomenon continues until his own time. Bokser rightly observes that 'Josephus ...
adds little that differs structurally from what has been encountered in other sources'
1984, 24. Colautti opposes this stance, but the information that he provides vitiates his
conclusions.
to O n i a s ' t e m p l e or Elephantine 6 8 do n o t t e a c h a n y t h i n g a b o u t w h a t w o u l d
n o r m a l l y b e u n d e r s t o o d as ' D i a s p o r a ' or i n t e r p r e t e d as a d o m e s t i c liturgy.
W h i l e s u c h instances of a P e s a h are related to a place o u t s i d e of J e r u s a l e m ,
they are b o u n d to a temple.69
J o s e p h u s b e t r a y s his u n d e r s t a n d i n g of the P e s a h also in his interpretation
of the P e s a h of Gilgal (Joshua 5). 7 0 T h e text that c a n b e r e c o n s t r u c t e d f r o m
4 Q J o s h a as w e l l as J o s e p h u s ' p a r a p h r a s e of t h e Biblical text shift the b u i l d i n g of
the first altar a n d the first sacrificial liturgy in t h e H o l y L a n d b e f o r e t h e n a r r a -
tion of the m a s s c i r c u m c i s i o n a n d the P e s a h at Gilgal. 7 1 After this P e s a h , t h e Is-
raelites capture Jericho in s e v e n days. 7 2 J o s e p h u s is e v e n m o r e explicit t h a n the
68 Next to nothing is known about the liturgy of Pesah in Elephantine. It is, neverthe-
less, a plausible thesis that the conflict with the local Egyptian priests which resulted
in the destruction of the lewish temple was set off by the slaughtering of rams at Pesah
in Elephantine. Even the rabbis referred to the cliche that a conflict with the Egyptians
about the slaughtering of Pesah animals would eventually have been inevitable, for
instance MekhY pisha 5 L 1.39.67-71. It must, however, be remarked that the Egyp-
tians would also not have appreciated a daily offering like the tamid for the same rea-
son, although it is doubtful that the small Jewish community at Elephantine would
have had the means to sacrifice two sheep each day. Elephantine is, furthermore, no
witness to the question of the celebration of the Pesah in 'the Diaspora'. The Jews in
Elephantine were also in conflict with the establishment in Jerusalem because of the
offerings in their temple (that were apparently discontinued after an intervention
from Jerusalem, according to the extant correspondence). The Jewish temple at Ele-
phantine disqualifies their Pesah as an instance of a ritual that was independent of a
temple. See for the texts Porten and Yardeni 1986 (vol. 1) and 1999 (vol. 2): A4.1; cf.
A4.7-9; D7.6; D7.24 and Gaß 1999.
69 Ant. 2.312/2.14.6 LCL 300 and 3.248/3.10.5 LCL 436 paraphrase Exod 12. This does,
however, not imply that celebrations of Pesah according to Exod 12 were in use before
or after 70.
70 Joshua 5.11 LXX presupposes that unleavened bread and 'new' cereals were eaten at
the same time and on Pesah. The MT can be understood to have aligned this text with
the Deuteronomic laws about the Omer.
71 Cf. Colautti 2002, 46f. 4QJosha 1-2 DJD 14, no. 47 (Rofe 1994, Ulrich 1994) continues
with Joshua 5.2 after the pericope of the building of the altar (that ends v. 8.34f) and a
short non-masoretic passage. Joshua's offerings are not connected with the Pesah, Co-
lautti. The position of the pericope is in any case striking. It can be understood as an
allusion to the Pesah at the Temple (in Jerusalem). This makes the following 7 days of
the conquest of Jericho a model for the festival of Unleavened Bread.
72 It is true that the processions of Sukkot are associated with the people's circling Jeri-
cho in ySuk 4.3 54c. However, as the text is presented by Josephus, it is too close to
Pesah in order to suggest itself as a model for Sukkot. Cf. Colautti 2002, 48f.
Septuagint in his identification of these days as 'festival days' (Ant. 5.22/1.5

LCL lOff). In this system, the Pesah in Gilgal is followed by a 7-day sequence
of the festive capture of Jericho and it is preceded by a sacrificial liturgy. Even
if the question whether Josephus should have been in a position to know a ver-
sion of Joshua 5 that is attested in a Qumran scroll cannot be answered here, it
is in any case evident that Josephus missed another opportunity to describe a
celebration of the Pesah which is independent of a temple. He joins his peers
in their utter inability to imagine a non-Temple liturgy of Pesah - despite the
plain text of Exod 12.
To sum up, there is no reason to assume that Pesah was celebrated as a do-
mestic liturgy similar to Exod 12 in the first century.
This does not rule out that some experiments with the enactment of the
Biblical text may have been conducted in the Diaspora after 70 C. E. There is,
however, no reason to assume that Jews at large began to do what they were
not used to doing before: to celebrate Pesah in the Diaspora after this festival
could not be held in Jerusalem any longer. Even if the tannaim began very
early to re-establish parts of the festival calendar of the Temple as regularly
held symposia and studied the laws of the offerings in their collegia, this does
not imply that many Jews of their age followed their example.
2.1.5 Samaritans and Beta Esrael: Reconstruction of Liturgies
Two further remarks provide paradigmatic evidence for the main issues in the
present context. For two allegedly ancient traditions at the margins of 'Juda-
ism' seem to have preserved a form of celebration of Pesah that was lost in
Judaism proper: those of the Samaritans and the Ethiopian Jews.
In the Samaritans' liturgy on Mount Garizim, many ritual elements of
Exod 12 can be observed and the text of Exod 12 itself plays an important role.
Although a cult at Mount Garizim is attested during Biblical times, it did not
persist uninterrupted throughout the ages. Apart from the destruction of the
temple in the second century B.C.E., many sources point to Hellenistic cults
and conflations of Israelite and Hellenistic elements at their site.73 The celebra-
tion of the Samaritan Pesah is attested from the 16th century in the form in
which it can be observed today.74 The earliest extant liturgical texts cannot go
73 Friedheim 2004, 206-212.

74 Jeremias 1932, 64.
back beyond the 4th cent. C. E.75 The history of this cult makes it evident that it
was reinstituted on the basis of the Bible not before the early Middle Ages.76
If the Pesah was celebrated on Mt. Garizim in Biblical times, it presumably
resembled the sacrificial liturgy of the Temple in Jerusalem (and not a domes-
tic liturgy like Exod 12). The Samaritans based the new liturgy to be per-
formed on Mt. Garizim on Exod 12, although they did not fashion a liturgy
designed to be held in small groups in private houses.77 The Samaritans
understood (and understand) Exod 12 as a liturgy intended for a sanctuary
and not as a domestic rite 78 This may be interpreted as an archaism. It is not a
remnant of an ancient custom.
75 The Jewish (rabbinic) and Samaritan liturgies are highly different. Crown 1991, re-
cently supported by Friedheim 2004 and esp. regarding the Yerushalmi by Lehnardt
2002, shows that a 'parting of ways' between Samaritans and rabbinic Jews only began
in the third century C.E. and remained a longer and complicated process. The rabbis
were at that time not representative of 'Judaism'. Friedheim collects evidence for pa-
gan or at least syncretistic cults on Mount Garizim. The extant liturgy of the Samari-
tans postdates the Schism and is hence no indication of an earlier, common stage of
the development of the liturgies. Pummer 1979, esp. 165ff refutes Jeremias' 1932, 69
opinion that Jub 49.16-21 should have been written against Samaritan opponents who
should have defended a pre-Deuteronomistic domestic celebration.
76 Meshorer 2002, 194f tab. 21 interprets the image of a coin of ca. the third century as a
Pesah offering. However, he explains the raised hands of a group of persons as blood
application on their foreheads. He interprets a hardly different gesture of one person
(Zeus Hypsitos?) who is depicted in profile as a greeting. Although the application of
the blood on the forehead of children can be observed in the modern ritual, one
should rather look for customs among the Arabs of Palestine than in the Bible in order
to discover its origins. There is no such ritual in Exod 12. Meshorer also interprets the
image of another coin as depiction of the Binding of Isaac, 1989. This is, likewise, no
indication of a Biblical cult there, because the image does obviously not depict the rit-
ual act (as he claimed with regard to the alleged application of the blood), but either
its meaning or its institution narrative.
77 As next to nothing is known about the shape of the liturgy in the first centuries of its
beginnings, it cannot be ascertained that they took Exod 12 as a point of departure.
For the present argument, the alignment with Exod 12 may also have happened later -
showing the marginality of Exod 12 in that case.
78 Turetsky 1963, CXXII-CXXV describes the relationship between the offerings at the
Temple and the structure of the Karaite liturgy (that was also interpreted as such), cf.
also 48ff. The idea of prayer as substitute for sacrifice is attested in piyyutim and
Karaite texts about the liturgy, cf. Lev 23.5 on p. 21 fol. 33 and the n. 29 p. 58. Never-
theless, there is a second layer of understanding that depicts the celebration of Pe-
sah as a physical reenactment of Israel's time in Egypt. Turetsky mentions Ibn Ezra
Until the middle of the 20th century, the Beta Esrael79 celebrated a seem-
ingly old form of the Pesah, eating unleavened bread and slaughtering lambs
ritually. Before their contacts with Jews in the 19th and 20th centuries, they
neither knew the seder nor the Haggada. Although their celebration obviously
violated the Deuteronomic idea of a centralization of the cult, many elements
of the ritual of the Pesah seemed to have been preserved there, in a virtually
isolated place over many centuries.
Musicological examinations of the liturgy of the Beta Esrael as well as his-
torical comparisons of their oral traditions with written testimonies proved,
however, that their liturgy and theology are rooted in 13,h-15th century Ethio-
who recalls that 'the Karaites of Warjalen ... would leave their territory on the first
day of the Passover to commemorate the Exodus...'. Turetsky also refers to a mimetic
reenactment of the injunctions of Exod 12.11. As customs that originated after the
turn of the millennium, they further emphasize tendencies that are visible in the Rab-
banite understanding of Pesah of the high Middle Ages. This fits to Turetsky's
observations about important role of Messianism in the Karaite liturgy, CXLIX-CLIV.
Turetsky supposes that the recension of the Karaite liturgy as it is represented in mss.
of the British Museum (the 'Damascus Text') go back to a prototype of the 10th century
(XV). He mentions four (types of) Karaite Haggada's, which do (of course) not con-
tain 'midrashic' material, XVI. That Pesah was a time of fasting and mourning is
insignificant, because this applies to other festivals as well. Turetsky tends to gross
anachronisms when it comes to describe the roots of Karaite customs. Relations to
'the' Sadducees (XLI, rightly characterized as accidental in the case of the determina-
tion of the day of the Omer, CXIXff) cannot be established for the 8th and the following
centuries when the Karaite liturgy was created. He mistakes liturgical reconstructions
on the basis of rabbinic and Biblical texts with traditions that were 'formulated' ...
'based upon knowledge he (Anan) possessed of some earlier established order of ser-
vice connected with the Temple which had since its destruction fallen into disuse'
(LXIV). The close relationship of Rabbanite and Karaite liturgies with regard to the
Pesah (LXXXIII-XCI and in the description of the service XCVI-CXI; cf. also Goldberg
1957) is no reason to postulate common 1st cent, sources for example for similar bits of
Biblical exegesis, but rather to assume ongoing contacts, especially in pre-Crusader Je-
rusalem (settlement from the 9th cent, on, Ben-Shammai 1996 = 1987, 203f; improved
relations to the Rabbanites in the l l l h cent., 219ff). The claim that the liturgy of the
Maamadot should have been kept in the Temple (CXIII), dropped by the Rabbanites,
but somehow 'preserved' by the Karaites, ignores the high importance that the
Maamadot play in many Rabbanite piyyutim and synagogue inscriptions. The history
of the impact of this idea is more complex.
79 As the term 'Falasha' is regarded as politically incorrect, it is not used here for the
Ethiopian Jews.
pian Christian monasticism.80 The tradition of the Beta Esrael provides a para-
digm of paramount importance, for it shows that the mere reading of the Old
Testament could at any time and in any place lead to the construction of a lit-
urgy and, eventually, even to the creation of a people. In similar processes,
anyone could at any time create rituals.81 The close resemblance of a rite or
custom to the contents of a Biblical text does not say anything about its age or
provenance.
2.1.6 Melito's Peri Pascha
In the middle of the second century, the Christian Pascha is documented for
the first time, with a strong emphasis on Exod 12. Indeed, it is so inextricably
connected with Exod 12 that one would readily admit that this must be a pri-
mordial combination of an old liturgy with an old text. Melito's homily even
begins with a remark about the reading of the 'Hebrew Exodus', ή γραφή της
εβραϊκής εξόδου. Although it is clear that this does not refer to the recitation
of a text in the Hebrew language (έβαραϊστί),82 but to the 'Exodus of the He-
brew (people)', and although there is no way to know which chapters of the
Bible were regarded as 'the Hebrews' Exodus' by Melito, the preacher ex-
pounds Exod 12 in the following homily.83 The shape of the Pascha in Quarto-
decimanism will be discussed in the chapter on the development of Easter
80 The following observations are based on Kaplan 1992 and Shelemay 1986. Brakmann
1994 devoted a thorough and lavishly documented study to the history of the church
of Aksum. His observations about the beginnings of Christianity in Ethiopia fully cor-
roborate Kaplan's and Shelemay's findings; 43-50,172-185.
81 mSuk 5.4 is a rabbinic example of the creation of a liturgy on the basis of a text. For
the general principle, it is irrelevant whether the rabbis dated back their own inven-
tion or whether priests at the Second Temple decided to introduce that feature into the
procession towards the sanctuary.
82 Huber 1968, 32f; Hall 1970.
83 Cohick 2000 deemphasizes the liturgical background of the homily. On the one hand,
the search for traces of the use of a collection of testimonia is an important tool for the
understanding of Melito's use of scripture. On the other hand, some of his allusions
may be deliberate paraphrases. What is more, the possibility to give a text in one's
own paraphrase presupposes that the text was somehow known to the audience who
could associate the wording of the source. For several Biblical texts, it remains plausi-
ble that Melito quotes testimonia without knowledge of the broader context.
Sunday. 84 The use of Exod 12 by Christian authors like Melito requires some
remarks in the present context. For Melito's homily is a witness of the time of
the floruit of the later tannaim and illustrates another community's approach
to the festival and Exod 12.
The answer to the question of why the history of the Christian Easter be-
gins with Exod 12 is not obvious. Two well argued stances are normally de-
fended in this context. First, Christians may have inherited the use of Exod 12
together with the Jewish Pesah from Second Temple Judaism. 85 Thus, the
Christians should have aligned the interpretation of the Old Testament text
with Christology, but kept the text itself as a key for the understanding of the
festival. This position must be modified based on the aforementioned obser-
vations. For whatever can be known about 'Judaism' before and during Me-
lito's time, Exod 12 was a marginal text for the ritual and was more an aid in
understanding it than a means of shaping it. In other words, the concentration
on Exod 12 in the context of the Pascha is not a survival in Christianity.
Second, Israel Yuval takes his observation that Exod 12 is missing from the
important Jewish texts on Pesah, like mPes 10 and the older parts of the Hag-
gada, as a point of departure. He suggests that Exod 12 was first appropriated
by Christianity. Hence, Judaism avoided this text and placed others, such as
Deut 26.5ff into the center of their understanding of Pesah. This latter ap-
proach can be endorsed and modified here. 86 Regarding modification, it seems
unlikely that (rabbinic) Judaism consciously avoided Exod 12. For this assump-
tion tacitly presupposes that Exod 12 was a good, if not the obvious choice for
the understanding of any liturgy of Pesah. However, it is demonstrated here
that Exod 12 was utterly irrelevant for the 'Pesah of the coming generations',
even detrimental to its central message and its ritual form. Therefore, the
84 See ch. 4.6.4 p. 267.

85 This seems to be Gerlach's opinion 1998, 30f. Huber 1969, 4 was already careful
enough to assume that Exod 12 replaced Deut 26.5-11 (sic) in the Christian adaptation
of the Pesah liturgy.
86 A more detailed discussion with Yuval's thesis is Leonhard 2005b. A point of caution
must be introduced into all theses that presuppose a date of the Haggada. The as-
sumption of such a date in Mishnaic or Talmudic times are obsolete. This point will
be explained in the next chapter, 3 beginning p. 73. This implies that traces of
interreligious conflicts that are found in the Haggada are either reflections of medieval
encounters or the consequence of quotations of rabbinic texts (that may reflect Jewish
opposition against Christianity in late Antiquity) within the Haggada.
rabbis did not need Melito's invectives as a motive to look for other proof-
texts.
Melito's understanding of the Egyptian Pesah shows his ignorance of the
rabbinic interpretation of the festival and the text. This emphasizes the ques-
tion of why Melito and later preachers who explained Exod 12 in the wake of
this movement relied so heavily on that text. Their major claim to under-
standing Exod 12 better than the Jews corresponds to other exegetes' ap-
proaches to the Old Testament in general. It does not say anything about lit-
urgies. One may wonder why the ancient Christian exegetes attacked the Ju-
daism of the past: the Israelites who sacrificed the Pesah animals in a kind of
quite innocent ignorance. Jews of Melito's time had presumably abolished all
sacrifices.
One of the salient features of Melito's homily is its harsh anti-Judaism.
Thus, it suggests that Melito should have had troubles with Jews. Yet, there
are not data to substantiate such a claim. David Satran's discussion offers the
best general access to the question.87 Satran points to the lack of information
regarding Melito's social context. A broad scholarly consensus attempts to
explain Melito's anti-Judaism on the basis of the truism that 'the closer the re-
lationship, the more intense the conflict'.88 The historical and archeological
evidence do not support those reconstructions. Theses about the Jews in sec-
ond century Sardis are either extrapolations from Obadiah 20 and Josephus89
or based on an untenable early dating of the synagogue and its inscriptions.
87 Satran 1996 refers to Bonz 1990 and 1993. Cf. also Botermann's 1990 article and Co-
hick's literary analyses of the homily, esp. 2000. Cross's 2002 analysis of the Hebrew
inscriptions (and a quantitative and qualitative comparison with the available Greek
inscriptions, Kroll 2001) does not contribute anything to the description of a Jewish
presence in Sardis prior to the fourth century. Cross 2002, 3ff refutes the unfounded
speculation that inscription No. 1 (in his count) 01T3[ imply that the emperor Verus
visited Sardis - a visit that is not attested anywhere else - and even donated the
'synagogue' to the Jewish community; cf. Cohick 2000, 65f. Ameling 271f no. 105 sug-
gests a later date than Cross (in the last quarter of the fourth century at the earliest)
but apparently misreads the inscription. The reconstruction of the text as referring to
the frequently used personal name '[Se]verus' shows that even an inscription in He-
brew letters would refer to a person who had received a gentile name.
88 Cf. Satran 1996, 51 n. 4 who does not endorse it.
89 Obadiah refers to Jews exiled in Π DO. Even if the authenticity of the documents
quoted by Josephus (cf. Ant 14.10.24/14.259-261 LCL 588ff) is accepted, their meaning
for the reconstruction of the importance of the Jews of Sardis in the second century is
not evident.
While there is no reason to deny that 'God-fearers' may have played an impor-
tant role even in second century Judaism,90 neither the book of Acts nor the
extant inscriptions of the fourth century support a claim that it was the attrac-
tiveness of Judaism and hence the fear of marginalization that prompted Me-
lito to develop such a rude anti-Judaism in the second century.
The major problem for any assessment of the question is that Melito's in-
vectives against Judaism are the only basis for a consideration of his relation-
ship to Jews. While it can be argued, that the audience of Melito's sermon as-
sociated their Jewish neighbors when they listened to the homilist speaking
about 'the Jews', the text accuses Jews of Jesus' time only. Satran (57) refers to
Tertullian, Cyprian, and Augustine, who included fierce accusations against
Jews in their writings, although it cannot be shown that their communities suf-
fered under social pressure from Jews. Melito's anti-Judaism cannot be ex-
plained as a necessary by-product of his social relations with Jews in Sardis.91
Anti-Judaism played a powerful role in the self-definition that Melito wants
his audience to embrace.
Two recent monographs that assess Peri Pascha and its relationship to
Jewish liturgy and literature contribute important points to the discussion. In
1998, Alistair Stewart-Sykes published his study of 'Melito, Peri Pascha, and
the Quartodeciman paschal liturgy at Sardis' which represents a broad consen-
sus about Melito and his world. Stewart-Sykes reconstructs Melito's context
by expanding the remarks in Eusebius' Ecclesiastical History with additional
interpretative material. Thus, Melito emerges as a Quartodeciman bishop of
Sardis. His Jewish pedigree is derived from Polycrates' remark (h.e. 5.24.6
GCS 492) that the persons enumerated were συγγενείς μου, which Stewart-
Sykes understands as a reference to their common descent from Jewish ances-
tors.92
90 Stemberger 1998a, 201 leaves open whether the 'God-fearers' of the dedication inscrip-
tions of the Sardis synagogue (all of which are far beyond any possible date of Peri
Pascha) be 'pious' individuals or non-Jewish supporters and friends of Judaism.
91 Although Stewart-Sykes 1998, 8-11 quotes Botermann 1990, he does not question the
assertion, that 'it has been argued' regarding Melito's anti-Judaism that it be 'the re-
sult of the Christians' and Jews' differing social situation in Sardis. He thinks that the
assumption of the Christians' recent 'expulsion from the synagogue' (9) is so evident
that he does not feel the need to substantiate it.
92 P. 3f. It is more reasonable (and Stewart-Sykes even seems to accept this later, p. 5)
that these persons share the office of a bishop as common γένος with Polycrates and
not a common ancestor or ethnic background. See p. 271 below.
However, Melito's text neither supports nor vitiates the assumption that he
was born from Jewish parents. 93 It is, in any case, irrelevant for the
understanding of his thinking. If Melito should have had a 'Jewish' intellec-
tual education, one wonders in what respect this can be distinguished from a
Hellenistic one. He was in any case not educated according to rabbinic con-
cepts.
Stewart-Sykes also finds a close relationship between Melito and the Gos-
pel of John. Although Melito does not quote the Gospel (1998, 152), his type of
Christianity is said to be 'Johannine'. Stew art-Sykes attempts to dissolve
contradictions between Melito and John by assuming that Melito had access to
oral traditions that were reworked differently by the author of the 'canonical'
Gospel of John (163).
It is doubtful whether this assumption is helpful in understanding the set
of parallels and contradictions between Melito and the Gospel of John. Prob-
lems arise from Melito's obvious claim (Peri Pascha 80) that Jesus suffers and
dies during the time of the celebration of the Passover meal which contradicts
John, from whose account it may be inferred that Jesus died in the afternoon of
the 14th of Nisan - hours before the beginning of the meal. These problems
should rather be read as support for the reconstruction of an important her-
meneutic feature of the Quartodeciman Pascha: the liturgy is not a reenactment
of any account of Christ's passion or an analogous oral tradition. By its posi-
tion in the calendar or on the day, Melito's celebration neither contradicts nor
supports any chronology of the last hours of Jesus' life. Melito's theology,
which is based on Exod 12, presupposes that Christ died on the 14th rather than
on the 15th of Nisan. This is not important for the time of the celebration. It
partly answers the question of why Melito was interested in an Old Testament
text, and especially in Exod 12. Melito was not yet able to base a serious ser-
mon on New Testament texts. He based his sermon on what was recited in the
93 Stewart-Sykes's invectives against Bokser ('a dissenting voice', not to be enumerated

as part of the 'unanimity among authorities') and Stein (34f) that are designed to sup-
port a Second Temple date for the Haggada are unwarranted, cf. ch. 3 p. 73. Cf. Co-
hick 2000, 14f for further puts forward several arguments why Melito should not be
regarded as coming from a Jewish background. Furthermore, bearing in mind Boya-
rin's 1999 observations, designations as 'Jewish' and 'Christian' must be treated with
much caution for the 2 nd cent.
assembly. The 'Gospel' of Peri Pascha is actually not a Johannine oral tradi-
tion, but Exod 12.94
Exod 12 is almost never quoted in the New Testament. Nevertheless, John
19.36 and 1 Cor 5.7 show that Melito would not have been the first one to in-
vent a typological link between Christ and the Pesah animal. While this is no
sufficient explanation for the Christians' high appreciation for Exod 12, this
tradition may have supported the choice. Like the two New Testament texts,
Melito also uses the typology for a theological explanation of the passion and
not as an explanation or even set of rubrics for a liturgy. Melito does not find
mimetic elements of Exod 12 in his own liturgy. Exod 12 was not more than a
model (34-45,1. 216-300) that was abolished when Christ came. Every Chris-
tian who should want to derive rules for the Christian liturgy from this text
would fall 'below' the level that he could reach through Christ.95 From Peri
Pascha 72 (1. 507) on, Israel is accused as murderers of Christ, but not as people
who keep the wrong liturgy.
Elements of table etiquette in Antiquity follow a basic structure that was
more or less predictable. It was, however, important for many customs of a
banquet to be left to improvisation. If themes were discussed or stories told,
their inclusion in such a 'liturgy' would not demand that they be fixed com-
positions to be recited. This does not preclude the writing of long expositions
either as literary fiction about discussions that went on at a symposium and
were worth being recorded, or as even longer treatises and manuals about
what to speak about at banquets. Plato's Symposium would not be recited or
94 The primitive church in Jerusalem only read the OT but supposedly with a Christian
'relecture', Brakmarm 1997, 576f. This is the paradigm that explains Melito's use of
Exod 12. Cf. similar observations by Stewart-Sykes; 50, 125 and Gerlach 1998, 43. The
Epistula Apostolorum may be regarded as a witness to another attempt to find a
theological meaning for a yet underdetermined celebration. It mentions 15/28 the
commemoration of Jesus' death but develops a festal narrative on the basis of Peter's
escape from prison in Acts 12. This creative, but failed attempt to provide the cele-
bration with a meaning does not indicate that Acts 12 was always regarded as a 'Pas-
chal' text. It shows, that it took some time, before the Lord's death, interpreted by
Exod 12 and interpreting Exod 12, had become the standard meaning of the Pascha.
95 Justin would share this stance. His absolute silence about Jewish and Christian
contemporary rituals on Pesah or Pascha suggests that he did not celebrate it, although
it was an important theological topos within a chain of anti-Jewish arguments. Cf.
Buchinger 2004,185-190.
reenacted in a triclinium.'16 It remains open for what purpose texts such as Peri
Pascha were composed. To answer this question, the Haggada is a poor
analogy, for the Haggada would not have been recited at a symposium at that
time. After these customs of Greek culture had vanished at the turn of the
millennium, the Haggada became what Stewart-Sykes presumes that it should
have been eight centuries earlier.
Furthermore, both Peri Pascha and the Haggada are prose texts, although
the Haggada absorbed poetic pieces from the 10th century on. The presump-
tion that Peri Pascha be 'hymnic' is false.97 Peri Pascha belongs to a well-
known and clearly described artistic tradition of embellished prose. If ban-
quets among Christians in Melito's time comprised the singing of 'hymns', Peri
Pascha would not qualify as such for that occasion. Yet, the lack of meter -
and hence the prose character - of Peri Pascha does not prove that it should not
have been recited in the context of a Christian solemn assembly.98 It is, how-
ever, neither a 'liturgical text'99 nor a script for a liturgy. It was composed
carefully by 'Melito' in order to be delivered by him - probably at the occasion
of a celebration of a Quartodeciman Pascha.100 If anyone should have recited
96 This point is important for the discussion of the origins of the Haggada and the func-
tion of mPes 10 (see p. 77) because it is the most important formal difference between
mPes 10 and the Haggada. Both cannot be recited at a symposium: mPes 10, because it
is a piece of 'background' literature for banquets, and the Haggada, because it was
created for a liturgical environment that does not exist in a symposium.
97 Stewart-Sykes 130. There is, furthermore, no indication in Peri Pascha that it should
be a 'table rite', 50ff. Cf. Brucker's 1997 magisterial analysis of the question of real and
allegedly 'hymnic' texts.
98 Melito may have delivered his speech at the occasion of a symposium. In this context,
one may also recall the structure of the Quartodeciman Pascha. The reference to a
'reading' of 'the Hebrews' Exodus' may also suggest that this did not happen at the
occasion of a normal symposium. The liturgy of the Quartodeciman Pascha is said to
have begun with an earnest, first phase - definitely not a banquet. It may be envis-
aged that people would actually 'read' Exod 12 from a precious codex within a solemn
part of a liturgy. Melito's homily might have been written for the deliverance within
such a pre-banquet gathering. There are no further data that could corroborate this.
99 Thus, Stewart-Sykes 136.
100 Cf. for the tradition of the improperia the magisterial presentation in Gerhards 1996.
Janeras 1988, 250-272 discusses the faint traces of Peri Pascha in the troparia idiomela
of the Byzantine liturgy. While these texts are not attested in mss. of the first millen-
nium, Janeras thinks that their attribution to Sophronius indicates a time of redaction
of older material. (Compositions like) Άρχοντες Εβραίων Maas 1909 (5th. cent.) may
have transmitted similar ideas as Melito's to be included in the Byzantine liturgies
this text afterwards, it would remain the presentation of another person's

homily and not the backbone of a ritual.
In 2000, Lynn Cohick published a monograph about Melito which takes a
fresh look on many issues in the debate around Peri Pascha. Thus, she rightly
observes (5) that many scholarly opinions about the life and position of 'Me-
lito' 'suffer from the debilitating flaw of equating our homilist with Eusebius'
Melito of Sardis'. She does not accept the place and context of the composition
that arises from such hypothetic reconstructions. She agrees, nevertheless,
with a date of the homily in the later second or, at the latest, third century.
Especially the Sophistic rhetoric and the absence of New Testament quotations
support such a date (6). In the absence of a better established name for the
author of Peri Pascha, 'Melito' may be retained as a label for that text.
Peri Pascha is, unfortunately, one of the few sources for the reconstruction
of Quartodecimanism. It amounts to an almost circular argumentation to state
that 'Melito's' extant homily fits very well to that movement.101 Since no trace
of Easter Sunday can be found in the text, it is not irresponsible to look for par-
allels to other works that are considered to represent Quartodecimanism.
'Melito's' Quartodecimanism may thus also be retained, even if Cohick's
doubts must be taken seriously. While many of her points of deconstruction
reveal that older bits of interpretation of the homily are based on unfounded
assumptions, Cohick's own explanation of the homily in the context of 'an in-
tra-Christian debate on the proper understanding of Jesus' (152) remains
vague, especially because the position of 'Melito's' alleged adversaries is not
clear. The older position that the author of the homily shares with many texts
later. Yet, it is not evident that Άρχοντες Εβραίων be dependent upon Melito. Fur-
thermore, the parallels between Melito's text and the troparia idiomela amount to a
couple of words according to Janeras. The Byzantine liturgy does, therefore, not pro-
vide sufficient data for the reconstruction of a liturgical tradition in which Melito's
homily was used. That (parts of) Melito's homily entered the continuous process of
scribal reproduction and that some of his ideas are reflected in later liturgical texts
does not suggest that the homily itself was understood as a liturgical text at any time.
The Aqeda may be a similar phenomenon (which cannot be assessed sufficiently, be-
cause of the fragmentary character of the texts; cf. Hall 1979, xxxiif and Cohick 2000,
42-47). Stewart-Sykes's observations about the Aqeda do not explain Peri Pascha, be-
cause the Aqeda is unimportant for this text; cf. 1998, 17f. For the Aqeda, see ch. 5.4.2
p. 375.
101 Cohick 2000, 26 etc. Huber 1968, 31-49 infers from the (correct) observation that Peri
Pascha has no interest in eschatology, that Melito should not be Quartodeciman. This
conclusion is refuted by Rouwhorst 2005, 344.
a tendency to establish elements of a Christian identity at the expense of

Judaism still explains many of its characteristics. As Satran and others ob-
served, Melito's anti-Judaism cannot be derived from his social context; Me-
lito's idea of 'Judaism' must be regarded as having been as vague as his idea of
Christianity.
Arguments from silence and somewhat circular reasoning are unavoidable
in any assessment of parallels between Melito's rituals and those of Jews.
Jewish sources must, in any case, be read in their proper historical context in
order to avoid anachronisms. Rabbinic Judaism hardly exerted any influence
on Jewish communities in the second century.102 As no literary traces of Helle-
nistic Jewish liturgies and customs of that age survived, one may try to read a
non-rabbinic, but Jewish, background out of Melito's homily. Melito distin-
guishes between 'Judaism' in Old Testament times, which had had a limited
right to exist, and the Judaism that was abolished in Christ's death. The con-
flict between Judaism and Christianity is not depicted as taking place in his
own time.103 Yet, regarding the liturgy of the Pesah in Jesus' time, Melito does
not know more than what can be derived from Exod 12. Nevertheless, he is
not writing history, but fighting for his group's identity.104 Therefore, a few
indications of a dialogue between Exod 12 and what Melito thinks about the
Jewish Pesah of his time can be discerned with due caution.
Peri Pascha 79f (565-580) is the centerpiece of any reconstruction of the
Jewish liturgy to which Melito may be responding. 'And you killed your Lord
at the great feast' sets the stage for the following parallels.105 Έν τη μεγάλη
εορτή (cf. 677) does not imply that Christ died at the 15th of Nisan - as one
could assume on the basis of the similar formulation in John 19.31.106 On the
contrary, no. 16 shows that Melito sees 'the festival' from the point of view of
Exod 12, which begins with the slaughtering of the animal and continues with
102 See Seth Schwartz's studies 2002, and Stemberger 1999.

103 This is elaborated by Cohick 2000, esp. 57 where she assumes that Melito's homily
does not reflect any form of Jewish Pesah.
104 Cf. Cohick 2000, 74.
105 Cf. Hall's n. 45 to the line. All translations of Peri Pascha are Hall's.
106 Some details that Melito could have learned from the Gospels are overridden by
rhetoric: Jesus' death 'in the middle of Jerusalem' 72/506, 93/692, 94/694 (Cohick 2000,
36: rhetoric not knowledge of the place against Hall 53 n. 55); 80/581 Jesus' burial in a
σορός 'coffin' but cf. Hall 45 n. 49; 94/705 contradicting 71/499 in the assumption that
Jesus died 'in the middle of the day'. In light of these liberties that Melito takes, one
cannot infer from 'on the great festival' that Melito thinks that Jesus died exactly on
the 15th of Nisan and should, hence, be no Quartodeciman; as Huber assumes 1968, 44.
the meal. 'The great feast' is Israel's celebration according to what is written in
Exod 12. It must be emphasized that Melito does not speak about the contem-
porary Pesah but the 'last' Jewish Pesah ever - at the time of Jesus' death.
There is, however, an element which is crucial for the Quartodeciman under-
standing of the Pascha and which cannot be inferred from Exod 12: 'and you
were making merry, while he was starving'.107 The best interpretation for this
point in Melito's text remains that he imagines (or knows108) a Jewish celebra-
tion of Pesah to be a joyful event in contrast to the Lord's death that precludes
the Christians from joining in the festal atmosphere of the Jewish Pesah.
The following elements are not exclusively characteristic for any kind of
Jewish Pesah: eating bread, drinking wine, etc. Stewart-Sykes (131) infers from
three items of the enumeration, 'making music', 'giving the beat', and 'danc-
ing' (574-579) that 'Jews and Quartodecimans alike celebrated the Passover
with dancing as well as music and hymn-singing and that this was a tradition
passed to Melito through his Jewish predecessors.' This overstates the case of
the text. While it cannot be denied that Hellenized Jews would have cele-
brated symposia as other members of the society, and hence would obviously
have sung hymns and probably employed musicians and dancers,109 this
shows that a joyful feast is being celebrated and does not imply that 'the Jew-
ish Pesah' comprised ritual dancing. An element that does not fit to the atmos-
phere of a meal held according to Exod 12.11 is: 'you were reclining on a soft
couch, he in grave and coffin' (580f). The issue of 'reclining' entered the three
questions of the Mishna (Ma Nishtana) only in the Babylonian reworking of
the Palestinian Haggada. It is missing in the Palestinian Haggadot proper and
the Mishna. It is, however, mentioned in t/mPes 10.1. This neither implies that
Melito had access to rabbinic sources nor that the Jews of Sardis celebrated the
seder according to the halakhot of the sages, but that Melito cannot envisage
even the 'Jewish' Pesah at Jesus' time in any way other than as a normal ban-
quet. If one can learn something about the Jewish Pesah from this line, it is
only the fact that the latter participates in the surrounding culture.
This is more trustworthy than Melito's following interpretation of the bit-
ter herbs (93/678-691; Exod 12.8; Numb 9.11). Through Christ's death, the
festival of Unleavened Bread is bitter: 'bitter therefore for you is the feast of
107 Έυφραίνεσθαι 1. 565 and 95. Joy is, incidentally, also mentioned as a major element of
the Pesah according to tPes 10.4 196 and texts that quote this passage.
108 No. 16 1. 94 interprets the Egyptian Pesah as: 'and the mystery is being performed'.
109 Cf. Klinghardt 1996,124f.
unleavened bread, as it is written for you'. This is no allusion to Rabban Ga-

maliel's three symbolic foodstuffs (mPes 10.5) and no indication that the Jews
of Sardis kept the festival of Unleavened Bread as a time of mourning, but a
tendentious application of Exod 12.8 to the Jewish festival.110
Melito finds many theological and even a few liturgical parallels between
Exod 12, the Jewish Pesah, and the Christian Pascha. His closest parallel be-
tween the Jewish Pesah and the bitter herbs of Exod 12.8 is either pure
theological interpretation or a misunderstanding of everything that can be
imagined about any form of the Jewish Pesah. Melito is unable to imagine
Pesah in another way than as a banquet. 111 When he changes from theological
deliberations to remarks about the liturgy, he does not refer to the specific rit-
ual elements of the Egyptian Pesah, but mentions joy, music, and reclining.
Melito does not describe the Christian celebration of the Pascha. He refers to
the Pesah that 'the Jews' held at the time when Jesus died at the cross and was
buried. The pathetic contrast that Melito builds up between the Jews cele-
brating and Jesus being tortured to death can be understood as the Quarto-
deciman approach to the relationship between Pesah and Easter. According to
Melito, the Christian Pascha cannot imitate nor inherit the Jewish Pesah which
is (thought to be) outdated and overcome by Christ as well as fundamentally
anti-Christian. Melito seems to derive the essence of the Christian Pascha from
a negation of Pesah as the utmost expression of the Jewish negation of Christ.
Celebrating an anti-Pesah can thus be understood as the ritual vehicle for af-
firming Christ. This fits well with other expressions of Quartodecimanism that
require the Christian Pascha to consist of fasting and praying for the (erring)
Jews while the latter celebrate the Pesah and to celebrate the Eucharist when
the Jewish Pesah ended. In Melito's words, the Christians join Christ in pain
and sorrow against the feasting Jews. Exod 12 provides the theological back-
ground for this procedure. In Egypt, Israel celebrated while the Egyptians
were slain. Although the Jews continued to do so while Jesus was dying, they
110 See n. 281 p. 220 below. Melito is apparently the first one to draw this otherwise well
attested (Ps.-Hippolytus, no. 31 Visonä 278) conclusion that is independent of Jewish
sources.
111 Buchinger 2005, 82 η. 391 understands Origen's remark that celebrating the Pascha
imply 'eating the Pascha' (and not the ritual at the Temple) as a reference to the seder.
This overstates the case, because Origen expounds Jesus' and the disciples' prepara-
tions for a meal, Luke 22.15. Origen is not a witness to 'the seder'.
were wrong, because Jesus' death turned around the paradigm and brought
about Israel's destruction in reality.112
Melito is probably not the inventor of the Pascha. His interpretation seems
to have been shared by others. It even contains the prerequisites for its demise
and its replacement by the Dominical Easter.113 As soon as the anti-Jewish ele-
ment is structurally weakened, the content of the celebration mainly remains
Christ's passion that is tied to a specific time in the day - incidentally one that
does not fit into the liturgy - and strongly invites observers to draw parallels
to the Gospel accounts. At this point, Exod 12 will begin to lose its power to
interpret this celebration and Christ's passion and death.
The conditio sine qua non of a Christian anti-Pesah is the existence of a
Jewish Pesah. Since it is presupposed in this study, that the Mishna was not
accepted or even known in the Judaism (and Christianity) of Antiquity to the
extent that knowledge and appreciation of it increased in the early Middle
Ages, one must ask whether Melito's homily should be the only attestation of a
Jewish celebration of the Pesah in that time and region. One need not, how-
ever, postulate the significant influence of rabbinic sages in Sardis. An in-
scription on a sarcophagus in Hierapolis may provide a hint to an answer to
this question. 114 The inscription mentions the deposit of an endowment of 200
Denars for the distribution of the interest to the presidents of the guild of the
dyers of purple and 150 Denars to the guild of the carpet-weavers as
στεφανωτικόν (a sum of money for crowning a tomb). These should ensure
the embellishment of his tomb on three festivals: 200 on behalf of ή έορτή των
άζύμων in the (gentile) seventh month, and 150 each for distribution on the
festival of the Kalends 'in the fourth month on the eighth day' as well as on ή
έορτή της πεντεκόστής. While the inscription does not give enough details
112 This is described in Peri Pascha 99/730-747. The key line is 'you did not lament over
the Lord, so you lamented over your firstborn' 735f which leaves the destruction of
Second Temple Judaism by the Romans and applies the imagery of the Egyptians to
Israel. In haer. 4.28.3 SC 100 2 .760-764, Irenaeus also compares the Jews and the
Egyptians, cf. epid. 69 and haer. 4.29.1f. He does not refer to the Pascha in this
context.
113 This agrees partly with Huber 1969, 54f, who thought that the commemoration of the
resurrection must have been part of the Quartodeciman Pascha, as it led to the crea-
tion of the Dominical Easter out of itself.
114 I am grateful to Daniel Stökl Ben Ezra for having drawn my attention to this text. The
inscription CIJ II 777 Frey 1952, 36 is republished in Ameling 2004, 4 1 4 ^ 2 2 no. 196.
This is the only attestation of άζυμα and πεντεκοστή in Ameling 2004; cf. Harland
2003, 85.
about the relationship of the guilds that are mentioned to Judaism, it is never-
theless remarkable that the donator feels comfortable enough to trust that they
would abide by the dedication of his endowment. Moreover, the exact status
of the donor himself - whether he should have been a Jew or a gentile sympa-
thizer with Judaism - is likewise of secondary importance. The inscription
combines the observance of a gentile115 and two Jewish festivals and places the
festival of Unleavened Bread by far on the first place. It indicates that the
Jewish festival be fixed in a month of the gentile calendar. From the woman's
name Aurelia Amia, it can be inferred that the inscription was written at some
time after 212 C.E. If any celebration of these festivals may be read into this
evidence, it would be a Hellenistic rather than any other one.116 Thus, in pre-
sumably in mid-third-century Western Asia (admittedly several generations
after Melito and not in Sardis), it could simply be 'normal' to have one's grave
decorated with wreaths on two Jewish and a pagan festival by two trade
guilds.
Philip Harland mentions a 3rd century Christian epitaph from Akmoneia.
In its inscription, 'Aurelius Aristeas promises "the neighborhood of those by
the gateway" provisions for regular banquets if they fulfill their obligation by
putting roses on his wife's grave once a year'.117 If these two texts are read into
the same social institution, they may indicate how Diaspora Jews and Christi-
ans began to construct what emerged as a yearly cycle of festivals only much
later.118 Somebody donates an endowment for a banquet of an association at a
115 Cf. mAZ 1.2 for the rabbinic understanding of the Kalends as pagan.
116 The inscription does not speak about keeping the festival beyond the embellishment
of the grave. Ameling's remark 421, that quotes Hadas-Lebel 1979, 428ff, emphasizes
the rabbis' rejection of the festivals of the Kalends beyond Hadas-Lebel's paper. Thus,
the texts quoted there are less hostile to the pagan festivals than Ameling suggests.
yAZ 1.1 39b even sees Yehuda Ha-Nasi having offered a plate full of Denars through a
Roman military commander (with Rabbi Meir criticizing this procedure). The rabbis'
assessment of 'idolatry' was much more sophisticated than a simple rejection. The
personal names in the inscription do not suggest that these Jews were somehow re-
lated to the rabbis. There is no reason to assume any influence of the rabbis as basis
for the endowment. Ameling's remark about the second day of the festivals in the
Diaspora is out of place here. As Stern 2001, 82ff. 115f. 243-247 shows, there is no rea-
son to speculate about this day for that period of time. It is also not hinted at in the
inscription.
117 Harland 2003, 37 referring to Ramsay.
118 This thesis cannot be discussed sufficiently within the framework of the present study
and will be taken up in a later one.
certain date of the year (being unable to do so for a certain day of each month)
in exchange for some honorary service by the association. Looking for mea-
ningful dates, he can choose between customs of his city or traditions of his
association (like stories or even texts) that belong to many of its members' ge-
ographical background. Thus, association X may find itself celebrating a ban-
quet at the pagan New Year's festival and at Pesah while association Y may
happen to be dominated by Christians meeting every Saturday evening but
also celebrating Easter once a year. A dialogue about such customs is very
plausible based on the networks between associations and the multiple mem-
berships of the citizens. In such a situation, festivals and customs may spread
without anyone who should be in a position to dictate contents, time, or details
of the ritual - unless he had the means to pay for food and drink on a regular
basis.119
To sum up, Exod 12 is the theological, not liturgical, basis for the Jewish
Pesah until Christ's death for Melito. He does not need it in order to argue for
the 14th of Nisan against another day to keep the Pascha, because the observa-
tion of the moon (and perhaps already some form of computation or their ori-
entation by means of a gentile calendar) is apparently done by the Jews, to
whose celebration this Christian group only reacts. He also does not need to
derive liturgical rules from it, because the Christians are not compelled to keep
them and he may have known that the Jews also do not reenact the Egyptian
Pesah in their celebrations. For the present context, it is essential to note that
Melito neither consciously elaborates nor implies tacitly that the Christian Pas-
cha or a Jewish Pesah of his time are elements of a continuous history of recep-
tion of this text. It provides highly important hermeneutic points of departure
for the description of the relationship between Judaism and Christianity. It is,
however, irrelevant to liturgical practice. Moreover, Exod 12 is not a (or the)
'content' of the Christian festival, although the text is read and expounded. It
is essential for Melito's argumentation, but the Egyptian Pesah is not 'com-
memorated'.
119 Cf. n. 418 p. 272.

2.2 An Optical Illusion'
Menahem Haran describes the Pesah of Exod 12 as an 'optical' illusion,120

implying that many ritual elements of the Egyptian Pesah must be understood
as references to the Temple cult. It has been demonstrated in the foregoing
chapter that the liturgy of Exod 12 does not continue to be used beyond the
time of the Second Temple. Exod 12 has no 'afterlife'. Was it 'used' before 70
C. E.? This is not evident, as Exod 12 seems to be written as an institution nar-
rative of a liturgy that is quite different from the Temple cult. The present
chapter asks whether or not - and if yes, which - ritual(s) of real life are re-
flected in this text.
2.2.1 A Nomadic Ritual
A short section like the present one cannot challenge the paradigm of the his-
tory of Israel's rituals as a development from pristine, clear, and simple origins
towards the complex, sophisticated, and theologically abstract religion as it is
reflected in the sources. The subject of this study requires, however, to ask
what Exod 12 teaches about the origins and history of the Biblical Pesah. For if
Exod 12 should have defined 'the' Pesah in the Babylonian Exile and in Second
Temple times, it must be asked why these laws became totally obsolete with
the destruction of the Temple.
It is said that the primeval Pesah, whose traces can be found in Exod 12,
emerged as a celebration of nomads in an unspoiled contact with their envi-
ronment. Herbert Haag suggests that the festival was a 'natural' response to
the beauty of 'an Oriental night of the full moon'.121 Shepherds gathered in a
120 Haran 1978/1995, 384 cf. 342 and 1972. Haran accepts the usual division of the chapter
in layers and defends the nomadic origins of the Pesah.
121 Haag 1971, 49. The Pesah may even have been offered to the moon-god, 50. This does
obviously not explain why it should be the 15th of Nisan and not any other or every
other full moon. Haran 1978/1995, 300-303 observes that the offering that the people
wants to bring in the desert (Exod 3.18; 5.1, 3; 7.16; 8.4,16, 21-25; 9.1,13; 10.3, 9, 24-26)
cannot be 'the Pesah'. Note Ulrike Dahm's survey 2003, 141-160 for many more
examples of this approach. She also observes that the parallels from other religions
extract one element out of the whole ritual of Exod 12, 143. It is astonishing that
Dahm does not question the axiomatic assumption that Exod 12 reflects an ancient,
An Optical Illusion' 57
local sanctuary.122 This explains why they must roast the Pesah animal: at such
a place, no cooking utensils are available.123 As nomads are used to wandering
from place to place, they are obviously clothed in wanderers' garments. The
bitter herbs replace the salt, which cannot be obtained easily in the desert.124
As they do not (yet) have priests, the fathers of the families must preside over
the ritual.125 Unleavened bread is in any case a typical food of the nomads.
Moreover, it can be easily combined with similar customs of agrarian cul-
tures.126 Thus, an old Canaanite festival that celebrated the beginning of the
harvest of barley by means of the production and consumption of quickly
made unleavened breads from the new harvest could easily be combined with
the nomadic ritual.127 The 'destroyer' of Exod 12.23 betrays the ancient pur-
pre-historic ritual. In this context, even mPes 10.4 is quoted as a proof-text, that 'bei-
des, gesäuertes und ungesäuertes Brot auch in atl. Zeiten als Nahrung diente', 154.
122 This is not evident. Henninger 1975, 42 says that 'the Bedouins' do not celebrate pil-
grim festivals. This element must reflect 'later' circumstances. Henninger also quotes
other bits of information that do not fit to this interpretation. Thus, he admits that ob-
servations of 'Semitic' nomads and African shepherds to not contribute anything to
the understanding of the Pesah; 109, the same 121f for Asia.
123 Haag 1971, 51f; Laaf 1970, 149f. Laaf thinks that the primeval Pesah did not comprise
a meal, but only an apotropaic ritual. The meat of the sacrifice was disposed of in an-
other way than being eaten.
124 Laaf 1970,137.
125 Haag 1971,55.
126 Haag 1971, 64-66.
127 Laaf 1970, 123. Such a theory must ignore (or regard as a late addition) Lev 23,14. The
new crops are only fit for consumption after the ritual of the first sheaf. Therefore, no
new barley is available at the evening of the Pesah and even at the first and most
important holyday of the festival of Unleavened Bread. Cf. also Van Seters 1983, 171f
and Wambacq 1980. Wambacq 1980, 44; 1981, 504 observes that the Bible only knows
about the origins of the festival of Unleavened Bread in combination with the Pe-
sah and not independent from it. mBik 1.3, 6 confirms this understanding and rules
that firstfruits should be brought to the Temple from Shavuot until Chanukka at the
latest. They have no relation at all with Pesah. Wambacq's thesis 1981, 504f that the
festival of Unleavened Bread was created for the purpose of the commemoration of
the Exodus deserves further study, although it cannot be endorsed here. In addition,
the pieces of unleavened bread of this festival are no firstfruits, cf. Exod 22.29.
Deuteronomy also distinguishes between these categories, cf. Wambacq 1976, 212-215.
The redemption of the first-born (male) children is later connected with the Exodus.
This is no reason to assume that the Pesah was originally an offering of the first born -
whether animals or children. Fortunately, there are voices who question the likewise
pose of the ritual. It is designed to avert the lethal influence of a demon of the
desert.128 The whole rite has to take place by night, because demons are usu-
ally active during the nights.129 The nomads originally smeared the blood of
the Pesah animal on the entrance of their tents. Later, as Israel moved into
houses, this was transferred to the doorposts. This detail does not contradict
the reconstruction of the nomadic origins of the Pesah. On the contrary, it re-
flects the development of the ritual throughout the ages.
Thus, the Pesah is actually a survival within the Israelite religion that dates
from the times of the pagan savages whose customs and beliefs are wholly
determined by nature, anxiety, and superstition. Beyond all dissimilarities, a
few rituals that could be observed in the 19th and 20th century among inhabi-
tants of Palestine (or even Morocco), as well as the idea that religion is a natu-
ral, even predictable, function of human beings' environment, further supports
this reconstruction of the evolution of the Pesah. Exod 12 is understood as
having preserved traces of all those developments over the millennia.
Beyond many problematic assumptions that underlie such a reconstruc-
tion, it must be remarked that neither Egypt nor Mesopotamia yielded clear
and important parallels to the Israelite Pesah. Also the Palestinian Bedouin do
not celebrate it. Muslims of the region used to slaughter sheep and to use their
blood in certain rituals. These 'parallels' do not support a common ancestor of
unacceptable interpretation of the Binding of Isaac in the context of presumed offer-

ings of firstborn children, cf. Kaiser 2003.
128 Laaf 1971, 116ff. From a modern perspective, one could tend to see a progress from
the pristine, but stupid belief in demons towards the complex, but theologically ac-
ceptable religion of YHWH in this text, cf. Grünwaldt 1992, 82. Such an approach
must, however, regard the later texts of the Old Testament (Job, Tobit) and the New
Testament as falling back behind the enlightened state of early Second Temple times.
The texts do not corroborate value judgments. Furthermore, it is not even evident that
the ivntra should be a demon at all. It is mentioned in Exod 12.13 (LXX πληγή τοϋ έκ-
τριβήναι) and 23 (όλετρεύων). Buhl 1915 (referred to by Wambacq 205-215 esp. 211
n. 14 as well as Van Seters 1983, 172) interprets ΓΡΠΙΜ in Exod 12.23 in the same way as
in v. 13, as (non-personal) 'destruction'. In its second mentioning it is determined ("Π)
because it is referring back to v. 13. HALAT 609,1365 divides the two attestations and
interprets the lemma in its first attestation as 'destruction' and in its second one as a
demon. One should, however, try to use the same meaning for both attestations. A
demonological interpretation may also fit to both of them. HALAT misleads its
readers by the introduction of a highly hypothetic interpretation of the whole text into
its lexemes.
129 Laaf 1970, 111. 155.157 n. 150 referring to Henninger.
these rituals and Exod 12, but they do show that the ritual potential of blood
and sacrifice was exploited by many different religions.130 The presumption
that everyone in the region always performed (an performs) offerings like the
Pesah as various occasions reads the text within a pseudo-anthropological con-
text and makes one dispense with an explanation of Exod 12 as Biblical text.
Yet, rituals kept by people in the modern Mediterranean and Near East are
simply not witnesses for the pre-history of the Pesah. The text of Exod 12 re-
mains, therefore, the only resource for the reconstruction of its own pre-his-
tory.
2.2.2 'Surely There was not Holden such a Passover from the Days of the
Judges that Judged Israel'
The assumption that the Pesah was actually celebrated (more or less) all over
the Middle East before the Exodus from Egypt may be supported by the tacit
postulate that it was celebrated continuously after the Exodus. The latter idea
is, however, explicitly rejected by several Old Testament passages which assert
that the Pesah began to be celebrated at other times in the history of Israel, al-
though such 'beginnings' are nothing but incidents of the restoration of the
primordial age of Israel. Unlike any other festival, the Old Testament empha-
sizes more often that it was not celebrated continuously in Israel's history.131
Before entering the Holy Land, Israel did not celebrate the Pesah. Joshua
(Joshua 5,4-8132) must first circumcise the Israelites in order to make them fit
for the celebration. In 2 Kings 23.22, Josiah again restores the Pesah after a
130 Despite the promising title of Bergant's paper 1995, no results of anthropological re-
search are reworked there. It assembles cliches ('cooked' versus 'raw'; cf. Dahm 2003,
154) and does not go beyond what Roland de Vaux wrote about Exod 12. Anthropo-
logical data and syntheses might support the understanding of this text. Dahm still
collects incidents of the use of blood in Palestine mainly based on observations by
Paul Kahle in the early 20lh cent, and devoid of any anthropological analysis; 2003,
149ff.
131 Neh 8.17 refers to Sukkot in the same way.
132 Wagenaar 2000 (cf. Van Seters 1983, 168f) reads the Pesah in Joshua 5 as a priestly
addition to the text. Cf. also Wambacq's observation 1976, 304 to Numb 9.7, 13 that
defines what it means 'to celebrate Pesah': 'to offer the offering of YHWH at its date
among the Israelites'.
long time of discontinuity.133 These texts do not even reflect a common tradi-
tion of origins of the Pesah. They state that Israel lived in many epochs of their
history without it. Although some of the texts date the existence of the Pe-
sah back to pre-Temple times, all agree that the reinstated Pesah must some-
how be connected with the Temple. Thus, Josiah takes up a custom that was
kept in the times of 'the Judges', but he does not establish it as a domestic rit-
ual in the wake of Exod 12. On the contrary, he understands it as a centralized
celebration at the Temple. In whichever way 'the Judges' might have celebra-
ted it, its 'correct' restoration ties it to the one and only Temple and to the initi-
ative of the king.134
No Biblical author (except for that of Exod 12) can even imagine a con-
tinuation of the 'domestic' ritual of the Pesah according to Exod 12. The cel-
ebration is also never attested in a narrative context beyond those notes of
'restoration'. Except for Deut 16,1-8, no other text knows ritual elements of the
celebration according to Exod 12.
2.2.3 Layers in the Text of Exodus 12
A broad consensus analyses Exod 12 as a multilayered text. This is based on

two assumptions. First, no author repeats a thought or a piece of text. Exod
12.1-20 and 21-27a must, therefore, be ascribed to different layers. There is,
however, no agreement about the relative age and hence the relationship of
these layers to one other. For each of the two blocks of text (1-20* and 21-
27a*), scholars claim historical priority.135 Second, such reconstructions pre-
suppose that Exod 12, which has many characteristics of a late text, preserves
words or phrases of a time in which the old nomadic ritual was kept. Thus,
133 2 Kings 23.22 states that the Pesah was not celebrated since the time of 'the Judges'. 2
Chron 30.5, 26 has it restored after it was celebrated by Solomon for the last time. 2
Chron 35.18 again ignores this restoration in Hezekiah's time and assumes a gap of
celebration between 'Samuel' and Josiah. Of course, Ezra 6,19ff also makes a new be-
ginning of the Pesah.
134 Cf. Wambacq 1976, 224 and 309 for Deut. Josiah makes temples and high places unfit
for ritual use, but does not forbid a domestic rite.
135 The asterisk indicates that roughly this group of verses is meant. Thus, Bar-On 1995
describes four stages of the development of Exod 12 and thinks that the vv. 21-27*
belong to a priestly and hence young layer. Weimar 1995 assumes three stages in
which 1-14* reworks the yehowistic 21-23*.
An 'Optical Illusion' 61
both passages (1-20* and 21-27a*) must be dissected. Later accretions must be
removed in order to show the ancient kernel of the ritual. Clear references to
the Temple are obviously 'late' additions to the old text. Exod 12 is the proof-
text for its ritual pre-history, after it has been analyzed according to untenable
presumptions about its ritual pre-history.136 These observations do not suggest
discarding the achievements of literary criticism and they must not be
generalized. It would be facile to claim that the best reading of the text be
precisely what is represented in the Codex Petropolitanus. Nevertheless, Exod
12 must not be misused to support a preconceived idea about the liturgy of the
Pesah.
As a heuristic approach, the broad outline of the text can be left intact in
order to answer the question about which liturgy this text is actually speaking.
Thus, the account of the Exodus is an exciting story. Before Exod 12, it is clear
that there must be a final showdown between Pharaoh and Israel and a deci-
sion about who is the more powerful party. At precisely this point, the text
interrupts the stream of the narrative. Moses and Aaron begin to teach the
people a set of laws regarding a new festival that begins as an apotropaic ritual
for their survival of the last plague, which threatens them as well as the Egyp-
tians. After Moses received the law from God, he tells it again in front of the
elders of the people (21-27). The two legislative passages are not identical, but
complementary regarding some points. Only after this account, the narrative
of the Exodus is resumed. The text does not describe the actual performance of
the ritual. Thus, the story builds up a great tension only to interrupt it before it
reaches its climax. At this point, the retardation of the narrative has a great
effect. The double account of the law can be explained as an author's rhetori-
cal strategy instead of a compiler's helpless and futile effort to preserve two
older traditions.137
136 Klaus Grünwaldt 1992, 71 accepts Martin Noth's exclusion of Exod 12,15-20 from the
early material being a late priestly layer: 'Hier schwebt ... die Kulturlandsituation
vor.' The nomadic Pesah was reworked in the Pesah of the Babylonian exile. There-
fore, v. 16 contains an 'anachronism', 90. Grünwaldt reconstructs Ρε as a layer of the
text by deleting all elements that refer to the Temple as 'additions', 84-89. This text
should display the tendency to remove from the domestic Pesah its character as an of-
fering, 82f. Where parallels to the laws about the Temple cult are obvious, Grünwaldt
claims that they be only accidental: 'Es muß schon für ein solches besonderes Fest ein
besonderes Tier sein.'
137 Cf. Gen 24.15-27 and 43-48 which also do not reflect two layers but one narrative
strategy.
Moreover, in the two speeches by Moses and by God, the author momen-
tarily leaves his distanced account of things past and tells the readers some-
thing that is of direct relevance for them. For this law is not a one-time
apotropaic ritual, but the foundation of a cult that must be kept throughout the
generations. As any etiology, this text explains to the readers the meaning of a
liturgy in their present by telling the story of its origins. The author draws bits
his audience's liturgical experience into the narrative and creates associations
between the past and the present. The critic is left with the question of which
liturgy these readers were supposed to associate with the narrative.138 For it is
clear that the Egyptian Pesah was actually nothing but a one-time ritual and
that it is neither necessary nor efficacious afterwards. The 'destroyer' is not
coming back each year to kill the Israelite firstborn. On the basis of the fore-
going observations, the answer to the question of which liturgy must be meant
by Exod 12 is obvious. Exod 12 tells the (historically fictitious but theologically
powerful) story of the origins and meaning of the only Pesah that is attested by
the Old Testament, the extracanonical literature, and rabbinic texts: the pilgrim
festival at the Second Temple.
2.2.4 The Liturgy of Exodus 12
As soon as it is conceded that Exod 12 actually explains the Pesah at the (Sec-
ond) Temple in Jerusalem, many of its strange elements can easily be inte-
grated into a coherent description.
Thus, the quality of the animal is well known from other texts dealing with
offerings at the Temple. Exod 12 only projects that back into the time when the
people of Israel were staying in Egypt.139 The Liturgy of Exod 12 begins with
the first of the month of Nisan, prescribes the 'taking' (v. 5) of the animal on
the 10th and its 'preservation' until its slaughtering on the 14th. These elements
138 Deut 16.1-8 requires a separate treatment. Cf. the cautious discussion in Veijola 2000,
141. One must avoid reading the alleged nomadic Pesah into Deut 16, too. Braulik
1981 shows that Pesah is not designated as a pilgrim festival in Deuteronomy. This
corresponds to the theology of the whole book and shows that even Deut 16 does not
envisage a domestic celebration of the Pesah outside of the Temple, but rather the hu-
manistic Utopia that is created there. Cf. also Haran 1978/1995, 342.
139 'Without blemish', 'male' and/or 'of the first year': Lev 1.3, 10; 3.1, 6; 4.3, 23, 28, 32;
5.15, 18, 25; 9.2, 3; 12.6; 14.10; 22.19, 21; 23.12, 18f; Numb 6.12, 14; 7 and 28 and more
often in Ezek 43; 45; 46.
can n e i t h e r b e e x p l a i n e d f r o m the necessities of t h e cult at t h e T e m p l e n o r f r o m

t h e E g y p t i a n narrative setting. J a n W a g e n a a r (2005, esp. 239) s h o w s , h o w e v e r ,
that the festivals of P e s a h a n d Sukkot 1 4 0 ' w e r e f r o m t h e outset i n t e n d e d as c o m -
p r e h e n s i v e parts of a single priestly festival c a l e n d a r ' w h e r e t h e structure of
E x o d 12 ( b e g i n n i n g on t h e first of t h e m o n t h , ' t a k i n g ' the a n i m a l on the tenth,
celebrating o n t h e 15 t h a n d a d d i n g a 7 - d a y period) c o r r e s p o n d s to that of S u k -
kot. 1 4 1 T h u s , the structure of N i s a n prior to P e s a h a c c o r d i n g to E x o d 12 w a s
created o n the basis of the similar ritual structure b e f o r e Sukkot. B o t h are de-
p e n d e n t u p o n t h e festival calendar of Babylonia. 1 4 2
T h e f o r m a t i o n of g r o u p s is attested in s o u r c e s of S e c o n d T e m p l e t i m e s a n d
is e x p o u n d e d in t h e literature of t h e sages. B e y o n d all differences in those
texts, t h e y agree in o n e aspect: that these g r o u p s d o not consist of m e m b e r s of
140 Exod 12.1-13 and Lev 23.4, 5-8, 23-25, 26-28aa, 33-36,37aba.
141 The purpose of the liturgy on the 10th of Nisan is not an elaborate purification liturgy
like the Day of Atonement. 'On the 8th of Xantikos' in Bell 6.290/6.5.3 LCL 460 is part
of a longer indication of time that does not refer to the normal gathering of the pil-
grims but to the miracle of the light that is mentioned there. It does not imply that the
people should have gathered on the 8th of Nisan in Jerusalem, in order to guarantee
their purity, as assumed by Colautti 2002,140-142. Colautti also connects the passage
in Bell with Ezek 45.18-20. Josephus read Ezek 45.20 in the LXX and could not have
this association. Ezek LXX prescribes a ritual of purification of the Temple by means
of the application of blood to its doorposts on the first of the month before Sukkot and
Pesah. Cf. Wagenaar 2005, 241f who supports the reading of the LXX with evidence
from the structure of the priestly festival calendar that is represented by Ezekiel.
Thus, there is no evidence for an assembly of the pilgrims on the 8th of Nisan in Jeru-
salem and the 10th of Nisan is not associated with the purification of the people; cf.
also Stern 2001, 57. Several sources apart from Exod 12 imply that the Pesah was cele-
brated in purity. Buchinger 2005, 688 refers to Philo, Josephus and John 11.55 (18.28)
and shows that this idea could have been derived from the raison d'etre of the second
Pesah, Num 9.10f, that was designed for those who could not celebrate the first be-
cause of their status of uncleanness. An expiatory function of the Pesah emerges late
in post-rabbinic Judaism; ShemR 15.12 Mirkin 176 cf. Buchinger 2005, 687ff and 766 n.
2069.
142 Cf. Wagenaar 2005: the ritual to smear the blood of the Pesah animals on the door-
posts and the lintel reflects a transformation of the priestly liturgy. In accordance with
to Ezek 45.18-20 LXX, this was still part of the (Babylonian) biennial purification ritual
of the Temple. It was subsequently transformed into an annual event: the Day of
Atonement where the blood was sprinkled on the lid of the ark of the covenant.
families or of a household.143 In Second Temple times, it became customary

and hence admissible to celebrate the Pesah in the houses of Jerusalem instead
of the Temple precincts. This is obviously a practical solution for the problem
of a huge crowd of pilgrims who came to Jerusalem in order to slaughter and
eat the Pesah there.144 Jubilees does not accept this solution and requires the
consumption of the Pesah within the Temple - as is customary with other
offerings that are eaten by the persons who bring them. Furthermore, the meat
of all offerings that are partly eaten by these persons must be consumed within
a fixed amount of time. Otherwise, the meat must be destroyed.145 Within this
system, it is reasonable to assume that the nightly celebration of the Pe-
sah developed exactly out of the time that is available to eat the meat of an of-
fering. This is corroborated by additional features of Exod 12.
It is logical that the participants of the meal of Exod 12 (vv. 22,46) must not
leave the 'house' or carry portions of the Pesah animal outside. On the one
hand, this is well integrated into the narrative. While Israel eats the Pesah in-
side the Temple or within the area of Jerusalem, the 'destroyer' goes around
outside. This imagination helps to transform the people into a community
who share the same danger and the same fate inside, based on the Exodus
from Egypt. This transposes boundaries of place from the Temple into the
houses in Egypt. The meat of offerings as well as the garments of the priests
were not allowed to leave certain boundaries of areas of the Temple.146 Exod
143 Φατρίαι is a normal term for association and does not imply kinship in Josephus; cf.
Liddell and Scott 1953 and Harland 2003, 76. 84. It must not be translated as 'family
groups', as defended by Colautti 2002, 34.
144 The Temple was already too small for the number of pilgrims to slaughter the ani-
mals; cf. Segal 1963, 240; Wambacq 1976, 222ff.
145 This also applies to the Manna that must be eaten on the weekday when it was gath-
ered until the morning. Israel is trained in the proper handling of sacrificial matter by
means of the Manna. Laws regarding the other offerings are: Exod 23.18; Lev 7.15-18;
probably 8.32; 22.30; as well as the meat and the bread of the offering at the occasion
of the investiture of the priests, Exod 29.34. The exact details are, however, not agreed
upon by the specialists. Thus, 4QMMT Β 10 = 4Q394 3-7 i 12-16; DJD 10 p. 47 and
150-152 (against mZeb 6.1: until midnight; cf. 11QT» 20.12f; 43.10-12) rules that the
portions of these offerings must be eaten before nightfall. Normally, actions that are
connected with the service at the Temple proper must be completed by nightfall.
146 Maier 1997, 176 n. 499 and Lev 6.1^1; 16.23f. MekhY pisha 15 L 1.123.76-82 already
connects the prohibition to carry parts of the meat outside with the laws regarding the
Shlamim. Thus, MekhY was well aware that Exod 12 follows widespread laws that
govern the service at the Temple.
12.3f, 10 prescribes the approximate size of a group of people who should take
part in the meal of one Pesah animal. For Exod 12, it is also clear that leftovers
must be burned. This reflects the intention of all these laws to prevent those
cases in which the rule regarding the consumption of offerings must be ap-
plied: that is, that the meat of offerings has to be destroyed if it has not been
eaten within a certain amount of time. The reference to the 'neighbor' anchors
the story in the Egyptian setting. In Jerusalem, pilgrims from many different
places gather in different kinds of groups in order to eat the Pesah. Even Exod
12 regards the laws that regulate the proper dealing with offerings as more
important than its own fiction of a family meal. If the community of the house
is not big enough, the neighbors, who do not belong to the family, should join
them - in order to prevent the necessity of the destruction of leftovers. Exod
12 transposes the situation of the pilgrims' festival in Jerusalem into a village
in Egypt.
Like all private offerings, the Pesah is also slaughtered by the persons who
bring it. However, the amount of time that is available within the limited
space of the Temple requires that a large group of people must perform the
ritual in a well ordered procedure. Special measures taken to ensure the
smooth performance of all rituals are not projected back into Egypt. The au-
thor of Exod 12 does also not tell whether or not he thinks that the fat was
eaten by the Israelites in Egypt.147 This may have been left open, because on
the one hand, Israel did not yet receive the commandment not to eat the fat
and could not yet offer it up on an altar. On the other hand, he would proba-
bly not want to describe the generation of the Exodus as being in flagrant vio-
147 Haran 1978/1995, 344 thinks that the fat of the animals was offered up according to the
old layer 'J'· If 2 Sam 2.13-16 is taken as a paradigm for the procedures at the (or 'a')
Temple, it is necessary to burn the fat quickly. For this text implies that the meat must
not be eaten before the fat has been offered up. In the situation of a huge pilgrim fes-
tival, it was, therefore, not reasonable to begin the meal before nightfall. Before that
time nobody could be sure that the fat of his group's animal had already been placed
on the altar. Thus, mPes 5.10 supposes that the 'portions' (μηρία anas Dalman 1938,
24) that are being burnt are separated from the animals. Everybody waits until this
has been done for the last group. They start only then (already in the evening) roast-
ing the animals. See also 2 Chron 35.12ff. Deut 16.6 even reconstructs the memory of
the Exodus as fitting to the sacrificial realities of the Temple. It remarks that the
slaughtering happens in the evening when the Exodus had taken place - against 16.1;
Exod 12.42; Numb 33.3. Cf. for the slaughtering in the evening Lev 23.5 and mPes 5.3
that implies a broad understanding of the term.
lation of an i m p o r t a n t law. 1 4 8 R e g a r d i n g the b l o o d , G e n 9.4 h a d already b e e n

m o s t explicit. T h u s , there w a s n o question that the Israelites in E g y p t w o u l d
not h a v e eaten t h e m e a t c o n t a i n i n g the a n i m a l ' s b l o o d . N e v e r t h e l e s s , t h e b l o o d
w a s n o t p o u r e d out (Deut 12.24), b u t s m e a r e d o n the d o o r p o s t s a n d the lin-
tel. 1 4 9 T h i s a p p l i c a t i o n of the b l o o d h a s led to m a n y theories w h i c h try to ex-
plain it. T h e a f o r e m e n t i o n e d rabbinic interpretation elucidates it as a n etio-
logical narrative. In E g y p t , the p e o p l e h a d n e i t h e r priests n o r a n altar. Thus,
t h e y w e r e n o t able to fulfill the l a w of p o u r i n g the b l o o d o n the b a s e of the al-
tar. T h u s , the d o o r p o s t s a n d the lintel b e c o m e the Israelites' 'altars' a n d pro-
v i d e a n o t h e r link to the n a r r a t i v e setting w i t h i n t h e s e q u e n c e of p l a g u e s . This
s h o w s t h e p u r p o s e of E x o d 12. F o r p e r s o n s w h o w a t c h e d the rituals in t h e
148 One could also remark, that Abel offered the fat of his animals, Gen 4.4.
149 The term ηο is used as meaning 'threshold' or 'bowl'. This multivalence of ηο may
have supported the application of the blood on the doorposts. It is more likely an al-
lusion to Ezek 45.18ff. There, a similar ritual is recorded for the I s ' of Nisan (and Tish-
ri, LXX). The Temple is also called 'house' in Ezek 19f. Van Seters 1983, 174f and
Wambacq 1976, 319-323 (cf. Wagenaar 2005) assume that the ritual of the blood ap-
plication is transferred to the houses of the Diaspora in order to create temporary
temples in the country of the gentiles. The mention of Hyssop (v. 22) in Ps 51.9 (cf.
Ant 2.312/14.6), in the law about the cleansing of a leper (Lev 14), and in the produc-
tion of the purification water with the ashes of the red heifer (Numb 19) likewise sup-
ports the idea of a rite of purification (of a sanctuary). The idea that it is the entrances
of these houses that are smeared with blood make it almost inconceivable that this text
should not have Ezek 45 in mind. Yet, one must not transpose all implications of Ezek
45 into the Egyptian Pesah. That ritual was a very special provision for the cleansing
of the Temple from the consequences of the sins that have been committed without in-
tention or unknowingly. It should be curious that such a sophisticated ritual should
be dated back into the time of the Egyptian slavery. Furthermore, that rite would
have been a very esoteric (cf. Lev 4,7 and 8) and a totally marginal event compared
with the hundreds of liters of blood that had to be disposed of during the time of the
slaughtering of the Pesah animals. tPes 4.12 164, bPes 65b even relate that the partici-
pants in the cult on the 14th of Nisan were standing in blood up to their ankles when
the doors were closed. In addition, that ritual was performed on the 1st and not the
14th of Nisan. Other features of Exod 12 indicate, furthermore, that the houses in the
Diaspora should not be regarded as temples. Thus, Exod 12.11 explicitly commands to
wear sandals during the meal. This can only be meant to exclude the idea that the
participants in the Egyptian Pesah were taking part in a truly sacrificial meal within
any kind of holy place. Other OT texts are quite explicit when they want to indicate
that a person stands on such a holy place, that must in each case be related to the
Temple in lerusalem where the priests did not wear shoes; cf. Exod 3.5 and loshua
5.15. This was even recognized by Pseudo-Hippolytus no. 34 Visonä 278.
An 'Optical Illusion' 67
Temple, the pouring of the blood on the base of the altar could have been in-
terpreted in many ways. From what can be learned in the Old Testament
about the religion of YHWH, it is meaningless. For somebody who knows
Exod 12, this part of the ritual at the Temple suddenly becomes a pointer to the
history of the Exodus. The ritual of the Temple that follows its own laws and
customs is thus transformed into a commemorative liturgy. A similar proce-
dure can be seen in Sukkot, in which the booths acquire a symbolic meaning
on the basis of one of the stations of the people on their way through the wil-
derness.150 Exod 12 even provides a point of departure for the necessary meta-
discussion about a pseudo-mimetic ritual. It interprets the application of the
blood as a sign for the people as well as a sign for God.151 This double function
is again formulated in Exod 12.42 regarding the whole ritual. The blood rite of
Exod 12 does, therefore, not indicate a special purity as a requirement of the
participants or a ritual of purification as part of the cult surrounding the festi-
val of Pesah.152 There is also not a shadow of an apotropaic rite. Finally, Exod
12 does not prove that anybody should have ever smeared the blood of a Pe-
sah animal on a doorpost in Israel's history.
The injunction to roast the animals is problematic as it does not correspond
to the treatment of the meat of normal offerings, which must be cooked.153
Exod 12 could reflect and support an innovation in the ritual that was adapted
to a great crowd of pilgrims. The Pesah would then have been lowered in im-
portance with respect to its holiness and hence not regarded on the same level
of purity as was required for the other offerings. The extra-Biblical sources
150 The place is named by Jacob in Gen 33.17. It is mentioned in Exod 13.20; Lev 23.43;
and already appropriated as a background for the festival in the ambiguous formula-
tion of Numb 33.5.
151 In v. 13, the blood is a sign 'for you'; v. 23 Π1Π1 is said to 'see' the blood and to react to
his sight.
152 See n. 141 p. 63.
153 The rest of the tradition is not even sure about that. Thus, 2 Chron 35.13 prefers to
harmonize Exod 12 and Deut 16 instead of clearly stating its own practice and dating
it back into Josiah's time. Deut 16 implies that the animal is cooked (^tra1?) which is
forbidden in Exod 12. It is too facile to eliminate the problem by translating "jtzn1? as
'prepare (for consumption)'; Segal 1963, 205. Deut 16 may reflect a fiction or an earlier
reality when the Pesah is treated like other offerings and thus only fixed within one
month, but not on a single day of that month. However, if Β7Π does not mean 'new
moon', Deut 16 would be the only attestation of this dating of the Pesah.
also agree that the Pesah animal is not cooked.154 This becomes logical if one
imagines the opposite, that the Pesah animals would have been cooked. This
would require a huge amount of pure vessels for cooking the animals. A
wooden spit does not require such a state of purity. Moreover, from an eco-
nomical point of view, it may be supposed that cooking would require much
more energy - and hence fuel - as well as time. Thus, several good reasons for
roasting the Pesah animal may be adduced from the sacrificial system of the
Temple. Exod 12 also cares to provide a precedent for this unusual feature of
the ritual within God's commandment for the Egyptian Pesah. Against this
background, the survival of features of a primeval nomadic ritual is a far-
fetched and unlikely explanation.
Leavened bread is normally excluded from being offered together with
sacrificial meat.155 It is, therefore, not astonishing that unleavened bread ap-
pears in the context of the Pesah in general as well as in the Egyptian Pesah. It
is to be expected that they will also receive a 'historical' meaning (v. 39; Deut
16.3). This does not explain why the liturgy of the offerings prefers unleav-
ened bread in general and why the seven days following Pesah continue this
custom. It explains, however, how the normal liturgy at the Temple is con-
nected in many details with the Exodus from Egypt. The bitter herbs become
important in rabbinic times and are apparently introduced into the seder as a
tentative mimetic alignment of that liturgy with the text of Exod 12.156 If the
bitter herbs of Egypt indeed replace the salt (as suggested by Laaf), the law
that all sacrifices that involve meat must be seasoned with salt (Lev 2.13) is
transposed into pre-Temple times.
154 Apart from explicit references that may in any case be influenced by the text of Exod
12, mTaan 3.8 recalls that Honi warns that the rain that he is going to ask from God
will destroy the ovens prepared for Pesah. tSan 2.12 Zuckermandel 417 that is made
more explicit in bSan 11a rules that the state of the preparation of the ovens for Pe-
sah is no reason for the intercalation of a year.
155 In Lev 23.17, two apparently leavened loaves of bread of the firstlings are 'offered'.
However, they belong to the priest (v. 20) and are not burned on the altar. Lev 7.13
can also be understood in this way. Otherwise, only unleavened bread is used in the
service of the Temple; Lev 2.4f, 11; 6.9, 10; 7.12; 8.2, 26; 10.12; Numb 6.15, 17, 19. This
idea was not espoused by the rabbis, who allowed leavened (bread) to be kept in the
house together with the second Pesah, cf. mPes 9.3.
156 Texts might have even influenced the liturgy at the Temple. 2 Chron 30.16 (cf. vv. 5,
18) refers to a 'law of Moses'.
Conclusions 69
Exod 12.11 (Deut 16.3 refers to 'haste'157) gives four mimetic rules for
behavior and attire during the meal. According to rabbinic texts and the scarce
information that emerges from the New Testament, one may suggest that the
pilgrims would not have desired to create exactly that atmosphere during their
banquets. Exod 12 is, however, not prescription, but interpretation. Bordering
on caricature, this verse describes the actually prevailing situation during the
meals in the city of Jerusalem. The crowd of pilgrims was split up in smaller
groups who had to eat the sacrificial meal under very cramped circumstances.
Far from being at ease, many of them keep their clothing and staffs and hasten
to eat the meal in their group - in some cases perhaps together with other
groups in the same room. Thus, Exod 12 manages to turn a rather unpleasant
feature of the festival into a mimesis of the Egyptian Pesah and hence into a
commemoration of the Exodus.
Like Exod 12, which is a retrojection of elements of the Temple cult into a
distant past, Wisdom 18 reshapes the etiological narrative in order to increase
the correspondence with the celebration that is allegedly founded on that nar-
rative.158 Wisdom 18 uses the same literary device as Exod 12 in order to up-
date the latter.
2.3 Conclusions
Exod 12 is an allegorical interpretation of the liturgy at the Temple in Jerusa-

lem. It is shaped as a set of fictitious rules for a primeval ritual. As that ficti-
tious liturgy was never kept in reality, every observer or participant could eas-
ily associate it with the cult at the Temple. As the rituals and customs that
were actually kept partly fulfill that rules or emerge as a developed form of
that old liturgy, which is described in the setting of Egypt, details of the Tem-
157 Τ1Τ5Π can be understood as a folk etymology for Π02. In that case, it need not have a
liturgical background. A similar concept is known to Tacitus as an interpretation of
the unleavened bread, but not as a rule for the behavior at the meal; Historiae 5.4.3
Stern 1980 no. 281 p. 18.25. Being the only gentile source that knows anything about
the festival of unleavened bread, Tacitus is apparently dependent upon Exod 12.39;
Stern 37. In contrast to circumcision and the Sabbath, Pesah was not noticed by gen-
tile, non-Christian authors as a characteristic of Judaism. Note that Ps.-Hippolytus no.
32-35 Visonä 278ff interprets the commandments of Exod 12.11 allegorically.
158 Cf. for Wisdom 18 p. 30.
pie cult become charged with memories. The knowledge of Exod 12 draws the
celebrating individuals or groups into the memory of the last meal in the con-
text of the Exodus from Egypt. Many modern literary critics got caught in the
narrative trap of this carefully composed story. The Pesah at the Second Tem-
ple is not the successor of an Egyptian Pesah, even less that of a pre-historic
feature of Near Eastern nomadic life. Exod 12 tries to impose its interpretation
on the existing Temple cult. This explains why Exod 12 vanishes together with
the Pesah at the Temple. It never had any reality beyond the latter.
Even if the rabbis recreated the Pesah after 70 C.E. on the basis of some
memories about the ritual meal in Jerusalem, they would not associate that
with Exod 12 in the first place. Deprived of the possibility to slaughter animals
ritually as well as to visit Jerusalem in the pilgrimage, the Pesah could re-
emerge as what it may have been for some wealthier pilgrims or inhabitants of
Jerusalem before the destruction of the Temple: a banquet. Thus, the old
sources almost absolutely ignore Exod 12 when it comes to describe or to
shape the liturgies. The text exists, however, and the sages must expound it,
especially because it is formulated as a legal source. Thus, the rabbis are care-
ful to make sure that it remains marginal with regard to the contemporary lit-
urgy both in terms of interpretation and mimetic reenactment. It is only taken
up by Christians as the textual basis for a theological meaning of the newly
emerging Pascha. Even there, it does not become a set of rubrics for a ritual.
Regarding the Old Testament text of Exod 12, a further refinement of the
theories about layers and additions within the text will not increase the under-
standing of its liturgical background even if it may contribute to the descrip-
tion of the affiliation of this text to other parts of the Pentateuch. The text does
not support the assumption of a nomadic or exilic Pesah. A reading of Exod 12
as an etiology for the Pesah at the Second Temple understands the text within
a coherent context.
Excursus: The Impact of the Ήanatme of Exodus 12
In the present context, it can only be asked, but hardly answered, who were
the persons who could have been reached by this interpretation of the Pesah.
The link that Exod 12 creates between the performance of rituals at the Temple
and the history of the people is visible in other festivals, too. It does not take
much imagination to infer from Exod 19.1 that the giving of the Law at Sinai
happened around the time of Shavuot. The celebration of Shavuot was, how-
Conclusions 71
ever, not immediately understood as a festival of the giving of the Tora.159

Exod 12 is a late text and even at that time only the first elaborate witness to
the process of the increasing association of Israel's festivals with the Exodus.
The calendars of the Qumran scrolls also suggest that the pilgrim festivals
were not invented as commemorations of the Exodus and continued not to be
understood as such. Furthermore, rituals that are remembered to have made
up the festival of Sukkot - the ritual of water drawing (mSuk 4.9) and the
allegedly most impressive celebration of Simhat bet ha-Shoava (mSuk 5) - as
well as the connection of Pentecost with firstfruits - remain independent of the
Exodus. These two categories of festivals are created because of two reasons:
first, as ritualizations of agrarian life-cycles; second, because of elements of an
inner logic of requirements of the Temple cult, although the sources do not
allow the reconstruction of that logic as an absolutely coherent system. 160 Both
causes for festivals are often combined. Thus, offering firstfruits and provid-
ing wood for the Temple are part of the economic basis of the cult and its per-
sonnel, they are a means of participation of a large group of people in the cult,
and they retain their links to an agrarian background.
The legislation about Pesah and its early interpretation (such as in Jubilees)
is contradictory enough to suggest that it was not a given in Second Temple
times to understand the Pesah as 'a commemoration of the Exodus'. At the
same time, specialists (like the authors of Jubilees) speculated about the pre-
history of the liturgies of the pilgrim festivals in the time of the patriarchs.
This is an entirely different attempt to integrate the existing liturgies into an
intellectually satisfying system. Others would probably have described the
essence and meaning of the pilgrim festivals with what they were actually
used to do: bringing firstfruits, offering an animal at the Temple, sharing the
manifold experiences of the city of Jerusalem with other pilgrims, celebrating a
ritual meal, engaging in commerce, nurturing illusions about the political fu-
ture, and enjoying the expression of these illusions in a great crowd of compa-
triots.
Josephus describes the festivals as dangerous gatherings of large crowds
that 'required' political and military management (from the point of view of
the Roman oppressors). Thus, one wonders how important the Biblical 'con-
159 This is discussed below, p. 168. Cf. Lev 23.42f for Sukkot.
160 The Day of Atonement is never connected with any historical commemoration. The
death of Aaron's sons would probably not count as such. As it is described in the Bi-
ble, a very general commandment to afflict oneself (Π13Λ Lev 16.29) joins an esoteric
sequence of rituals in the temple.
tents' of such festivals were. Someone who hopes to see soldiers of the occu-
pying forces beaten up by the crowd on Pentecost may be a less competent
interpreter of 'the meaning' of the festival than another one who wants to
bring some firstfruits to the Temple. 161 In any case, neither of the two needs an
Exodus ideology or a cultic expression of eschatology, although both may long
for liberation, a feeling that is caused by many decades of insecurity and dicta-
torship, not by an old text.
Although the following chapters will continue the study of texts as wit-
nesses for Jewish and Christian practices and beliefs, it must be borne in mind
that notions such as 'the association of Exod 12 with Pesah' would not have
been held by the Jews or the Christians in the first century. Jewish and Chris-
tian scholars were apparently quite free in their attempts to organize their in-
tellectual and religious map after the destruction of the Temple.
161 Cf. as examples: Josephus Ant 17.254/17.10.2 LCL 490 tr. 491 'When Pentecost came
round ... a great many tens of thousands of men gathered (in Jerusalem) who came
not only for the religious observances but also because they resented the reckless in-
solence of Sabinus.' regarding Pentecost and Bell 2.10/2.1. 3 LCL 326 and Ant
20.106/20.5.3 LCL 446 regarding Pesah. According to Weitzman 1999, ritual plays an
important role in defining and expressing the relation of different Jewish groups
among them and to foreigners and foreign powers. They create for a few days an ide-
alized social order, 562f. The feelings that were created make the participants in the
festival actors in other persons' scripts - such as in those of the occupying forces who
could demonstrate their power in utmost brutality in front of a large audience.
3 The Date of the Haggada
The Haggada is often referred to in order to explain not only the correspond-
ing Jewish liturgy in the context of Pesah, but also the Christian Easter and
even the origins of the Eucharist.1 The text of the Haggada does not give refer-
ences to places or persons. It carries a timeless message that seems to defy any
classification. Thus, the core of the Haggada (from Ma Nishtana - today the
question recited by the youngest son - to the blessings before the meal) cannot
be assigned to a certain epoch as easily as pieces whose author is known.
Moreover, after the studies of Louis Finkelstein, who assumed that its most
important elements were composed long before the Common Era, the
Haggada became a point of departure for comparisons with any Jewish or
Christian source after the Maccabees. Studies that challenge this approach or
scholars who demand a differentiation between older and later parts of the
Haggada are notoriously ignored. Thus, the following chapter takes up a
question that has been raised and answered by Günter Stemberger as early as
1987.2 Apart from its interest in the history of the Haggada, this article is
important for the reconstruction of the origins of the Christian Easter. For only
if the Haggada existed in Judaism (and was widely used there), may it be sug-
gested that Christian texts like Melito's Peri Pascha, the Gospels, and the
narratives of Christ's Passion could have either been 'Christian Haggadot' or
1 A draft of this chapter (3) was read by the members of the seminar for Early Liturgical
History at the North American Academy for Liturgy. I was also allowed to present
some of its insights at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. I am grateful for the
comments and suggestions of these learned audiences. The subject of this paper has
partly been addressed in Leonhard 2003a. Many topics that are discussed in the notes
there need not be repeated here. In Leonhard 2003a, all paragraphs on p. 211 and 212
should be indented (being a translation of CJS) and 'Geist' must be changed into 'Frei-
raum' on p. 220 § 52.
2 The paper was ignored again by Joshua Kulp 2005. Although Daniel Goldschmidt
1960 still maintains some very early dates for certain paragraphs, he rejects Finkel-
stein's theses.
'anti-Haggadot' composed as replacements of the 'Jewish' Haggada. They

would have fulfilled the same function in roughly the same ritual. If this is
true, then Christian texts that do not show any trace of the Haggada must be
interpreted as products of a conscious rejection of the Haggada, as their au-
thors should have known the original, 'Jewish' Haggada. The date of the Hag-
gada is, therefore, of paramount importance for the history of the relationship
between the Jewish Pesah and the Christian Pascha. The assumption of an
early date of the Haggada is called in question by two groups of data: first, the
reconstruction of the liturgical environment of the text, and second, the Hag-
gada according to the Palestinian rite.3 It is the purpose of the present chapter
to address these two aspects.
3.1 Seder Without Haggada
3.1.1 A Pre-Maccabean Date for the Haggada?
The fact that the Haggada is attested in manuscripts only from the 10th century
on does not imply that it cannot have been composed a millennium earlier.
The first manuscripts of the Mishna are from the Middle Ages, although even
the most skeptical scholar would not deny that most of the text of the (Pales-
tinian recension) of the Mishna existed in the third century.
In three articles,4 Louis Finkelstein proposed dates of composition for the
'Midrash'5, the Dayyenu, and other elements of the Haggada. His approach is
thwarted by two problematic presuppositions.6
3 'The Palestinian' and 'the Babylonian' rites are heuristic categories. Mss. can be
distinguished by means of certain features, but an individual ms. may also represent a
mixed form.
4 Finkelstein 1938,1942,1943.
5 In this chapter, references to the explanations of Deut 26.5-8 that appear mainly in the
Babylonian recension of the Haggada are called 'the Midrash' in quotation marks in
order to show that this refers to a well defined text rather than a literary genre or a
group of rabbinic Texts.
6 For a thorough criticism of Finkelstein's theses that emphasizes other points, cf. Gold-
schmidt's chapter on the 'Midrash' 1960, 30-47.
Seder Without Haggada 75
First, according to Finkelstein, the Haggada is a polemical statement in a

political discourse. It should hence betray its date by its tendencies. Finkel-
stein reconstructs stances for and against the Ptolemies or the Seleucids in the
Haggada. Based on this method, he claims dates of composition within the
range of a few years before the era of the Maccabees.
Very few features of the text can be explained by this method. It is true
that liturgies may absorb theologically and politically sensitive material. If
such texts are, however, hidden in veiled allusions and subtle choices of Bib-
lical texts (or even omissions of texts that one would actually expect to be
mentioned in certain contexts), such a political message becomes highly am-
biguous. The number of possible 'meanings' of the text is increased and in-
vites later generations' additional associations. While such a development of a
text is not implausible, the chances are small that one will be able to determine
its original setting by means of an analysis of the polemics hidden therein. To
be sure, no reconstruction of the political or interreligious discourse within the
text can be free of circular argumentation. One's choice of 'parallels' and/or
significant passages are dependent upon one's emphasizing and deemphasiz-
ing certain elements of the text. Conclusions may, therefore, turn out to follow
from one's initial choices. As long as the Haggada was only known in its me-
dieval form, its analysis would have necessarily been based regarding obser-
vations of its structure as well as its relationship to parallels. In this situation,
the Geniza fragments of Palestinian Haggadot, which will be discussed below,
provide external evidence for the development of the text of the Haggada.
They put to the test many dates of origin that were suggested for its elements.
Finkelstein's approach was rejected by Israel J. Yuval. Based on more bal-
anced analyses, Yuval claims that many passages of the Haggada originated in
the Jewish-Christian discourse over Pesah, some centuries later than Finkel-
stein thought.7 Other scholars look for parallels to rabbinic texts and presup-
pose that the Haggada be a statement within this world of thought and that its
elements may be understood on exegetical, halakhic, and theological grounds.
Second, Finkelstein does not describe the rituals in which these texts
would have been used as carefully as he reconstructs their alleged historical
background. He assumes that their author, the high-priest, encoded his politi-
cal messages in the texts, which were then immediately understood as such
7 For a more detailed discussion of Yuval's theses, see Leonhard 2005b, 144-149. Yuval
has integrated earlier studies into 2000. For the present context is 1995/96 esp. impor-
tant. The seminal study 1995/96 is also published as an English summary 1999.
and accepted - but also removed and changed as quickly as they were ab-
sorbed in the first place - by all pilgrims who flocked to Jerusalem in order to
celebrate Pesah. Apparently, these pilgrims performed rituals quite similar to
those that are attested at the end of the first millennium C. E. Thus, a medieval
state of affairs - namely that the Haggada completely represents the stan-
dardized parts of the liturgy of the seder - is dated back into the time before
the Maccabees.
Having been composed between these dates, the Mishna appears as if it
contained parts of the Haggada. Thus, it is said to support the whole recon-
struction. Yet, the Mishna mentions neither Deut 6.21 nor Joshua 24.2-4.
Finkelstein suggests that it did not want to make a decision about a sensitive,
political issue which is expressed in the choice of these texts. If the liturgy is
thus thought to have consisted always more or less exclusively of the recitation
of the same standardized text, any shorter documentation may be replenished
with material from the richest (most 'complete') source in order to reconstruct
what the people who used it actually did.
3.1.2 The Seder
The reference to the liturgical 'background' of the Haggada shows that one
must distinguish between the seder and the Haggada and describe their rela-
tionship and mutual influence separately for each epoch. The question of why
we do not have the Haggada of the first century C. E. may be answered in two
ways. First, it may have been there in a standardized oral form (or it was
written in many copies, but archeology has yet to bring forth one of them).
Secondly, it did not yet exist. Both answers must be tested against the back-
ground of circumstantial evidence. Thus, it has to be asked, whether a stan-
dardized Haggada - oral or written - may be expected at all in the context of a
tannaitic or amoraic seder. Three points have to be made here: the background
of the Hellenistic symposia, the extent to which a standardization of the rituals
can be expected on the basis of Talmudic texts that describe elements of the
seder, and alternative approaches to understanding the meaning of the seder
in general.
A Symposium
At least since Siegfried Stein's seminal study (1957), scholars rightly emphasize
the indebtedness of the seder to the Hellenistic symposium.8 Thus, the seder
reflects customs and rites that were current in banquets. Texts which discuss
or describe the seder (or a particular seder) contain cliches that can also be
found in sympotic literature - descriptions of the customs of the symposia that
may teach their readers how to function perfectly in this environment, or ar-
rangements of the discussion of a topic as if it had taken place at a sympo-
sium.9 The ritual framework of a symposium included standardized elements
like short eulogies, hymns, toasts, and stereotyped approaches to the (more or
less) learned discourse. However, it was one of the essentials of this institution
to include a high degree of spontaneity and improvisation in the course of the
conversation beyond all restraints of etiquette. It was left to the skills of the
symposiarchos (and of course also of the participants) to find the most pleas-
ant balance between observing and neglecting rules of behavior and accepted
ways to conduct a discussion. Within this environment, it is improbable that
the sages should have reclined and recited the same piece of text every year.
Furthermore, since the Mishna (mPes 10) can be understood as a piece of
sympotic literature, it would not contain universally standardized texts and
customs but some guidelines indicating how to organize a successful banquet.
Likewise, nobody would be expected to recite passages from Athenaeus' Deip-
nosophistes. On the contrary, one would study such texts, in order to then
boast a broad and spontaneously available knowledge of literature and eti-
quette as a guest at a real symposium. It would prove one's misunderstanding
of the nature of the event if one tried impressing the other guests by reciting
memorized passages of such a source, unless the work should have been the
8 Cf. the wealth of references in Tabory 1996 (esp. from 368 on). Tabory's criticism of
Stein is partly unjustified. Tabory suggests, for example, that a distinction should be
made between a symposium and rules that pertain to a meal within a family, 369.
This, however, reads a situation into the setting of the seder which is suggested by the
Mishna only tentatively arid as an innovation. It is still not a general rule in late amo-
raic times. Apart from Stein's merit to have drawn attention to the sympotic back-
ground of mPes 10, not all of his detailed observations remain valid, because he
largely equates the seder with the Haggada. The symposium and sympotic literature
has been the object of many studies after Stein's seminal article. For surveys with an
interest in the Jewish and Christian reception of these customs, cf. Smith 2003, 1-127
and more detailed Klinghardt 1996, esp. 21-267.
9 Martin 1956.
topic under discussion.10 The very nature of the tannaitic seder forbids, there-
fore, the assumption that the Mishna (mPes 10) was recited, not to mention a
text like the Haggada.
A rabbinic scholar would, therefore, develop the discourse having Rabban
Gamaliel's three symbolic foods in mind. He would be able to refer to them
even better if he had prearranged that they be actually present on the tables.
Another sage would give a speech that proceeds from 'disgrace' to 'glory'. In
the following year, the same person would rather take Deut 26.5 as a point of
departure. The Mishna is thus neither intended for recitation nor for slavish
imitation. The Haggada, on the other hand, is a text that is entirely different
from the Mishna. It is certainly intended for recitation, and its rubrics are to be
followed meticulously. It therefore has no function in a seder in tannaitic (and
amoraic) times.
Counter-Ritualization and Anti-Standardization
Baruch M. Bokser (1988) describes the increasing ritualization of the seder in

amoraic times. This process created one of the preconditions for the creation
of a standardized Haggada. The Babylonian Talmud contains, however, traces
of an opposition against the tendency of turning the participants' lively dis-
course into a petrified ritual.11 The Babylonian Talmud preserves two highly
instructive passages in this context:12
'They 13 begin with disgrace and end with glory' (mPes 10.4). What is 'disgrace'?
At the beginning, our ancestors were idol-worshippers. Rav says: 'We were
slaves' (Deut 6.21).
Rav Nahman said to Daru, his slave: 'What has a slave whose master brings him
out to freedom and gives him much silver and gold to say?' He (Daru) said to him:
'Much thanksgiving and praising!' Rav Nahman opened (the discourse) arid said:
'we were slaves'.
10 See, however, n. 80 p. 343.

11 The Palestinian Talmud to mPes 10 does not discuss this issue. This may be due to the
fact that Palestinian amoraim were in much closer contact to Hellenistic culture and
hence had no need to clarify those points.
12 bPes 116a ms. München 95.
13 Mishna ms. Kaufmann and all the other mss. of the Talmud (according to the 'Lieber-
man Database') read: 'He (i.e., the father or the president of the seder, if the passage is
not read in the context of the Mishna) begins with disgrace...'.
Rav Nahman cynically exploits his slave's status (that presumably remains
unchanged in spite of any 'narrative of liberation') for introducing the dis-
course with Deut 6.21 - 'We were slaves'. The dialogue does not reflect a stan-
dardized ritual and was not reenacted in later Haggadot except for the recita-
tion of the Biblical verse. Reciting Deut 6.21 was not even presented as a stan-
dardized custom, but is understood as an optional element that might be used
if it fits into the context. The answer of the slave is only impressive if it is
given spontaneously. The passage conveys the message that one may begin
with topics that are contained in Joshua 24.2, in order to fulfill the precept of
the Mishna 'to begin with disgrace'. Improvisations are, however, preferred.
Rav Nahman would obviously not have recited the three questions of the
Mishna (Ma Nishtana), nor referred to Joshua 24.2, nor recited Deut 26.5-8. He
is depicted as having developed a discourse about the Exodus, the redemption
'from disgrace' to 'much thanksgiving and praising' of God from his slave's
answer in one particular celebration.
Several scholars tried to develop sophisticated schemes in order to explain
why the Talmudim should come up with additional Biblical texts after the
Mishna had already stipulated the use of Deut 26.5ff.14 But these passages
should not be understood as a closed system of Biblical topics, but as an indi-
cation of an open repertoire of alternatives. The Bavli shows, moreover, why it
was necessary to invent alternatives and to commit them to writing. This
shows how the amoraim tried to preserve their understanding of the function
of mPes 10 as a general guideline rather than as a strict law regulating an in-
stitution that would lose its character if regulated: i.e., the seder banquet.
A likewise skeptical position towards the already inevitable ritualization
and standardization of the seder can also be read in the second brief story that
the Babylonian Talmud gives in this context:15
Rav Shimi Bar Ashi said: 'Unleavened bread (is put in front of) each one (of the
participants of the seder banquet). Bitter herbs are (put) in front of each one.
Haroset is (put) in front of each one. However, one [only] removes the table in
front of that one, who recites the narrative.'
Rav Kahana said: 'Everything (i. e., unleavened bread, bitter herbs, and haroset) is
also (only) in front of that one who recites the narrative.'
The law is according to Rav Kahana's opinion.
14 This topic is discussed below, ch. 3.2.7, on p. 107. The quest for an over-arching
scheme emerges from the background of the Babylonian Haggada as read within an
early rabbinic setting.
15 bPes 115b ms. München 95 according to the 'Lieberman' Database.
But why do they remove the table? In order that a child should recognize it and
ask.16
Abaye was sitting in front of Raba.17 They lifted the table in front of him. He said:
'We are not yet eating and you remove the table?' Raba said to him: 'You released
us18 from the duty to say Ma Nishtana.'
The Talmud locates the discussion about the distribution of 'tables' (or plates)
among the participants of the seder at the end of the amoraic period. These
elements are already fully ritualized. The rabbis have even begun to reduce
the 'symbolic' actions and the required implements to a minimum. At a Hel-
lenistic banquet, there would be a table in front of every participant (or at least
in front of every couch) and everyone would have the hors d'oeuvres on his
table. After the courses of the meal, servants would remove the tables and
serve the next course on newly dressed tables. In fifth century Babylonia the
custom did not have a practical function any more, was devoid of any mean-
ing, and disconnected from its cultural background. As parts of it were pre-
served, it had to be explained.19 Two answers are given in the course of the
explanation. The first one points to the children, who do not yet know the de-
tails of an otherwise foreseeable ritual and may, therefore, ask questions. This
custom apparently distinguishes the seder from normal meals. The paragraph
goes on to tell an etiological story about a (fictitious) time when the removal of
the table was still a novelty for everybody. It was a widespread custom to start
the table talk from events that happened during the meal or from the foods
16 The attribution of the remark about the 'children' to 'those of the house of Yannai' in
some mss. may give the statement a higher age than it has if it comes from Rav Shimi.
17 Some commentators try to harmonize the two answers and assume that Abaye took
part in that seder when he was a child (Rashi). This solution spoils the point of the
narrative and does not fit to the persons involved. As the mss. are not consistent in
their reading of Rava (bar Josef bar Hama) or Raba (bar Nahmani) one may either as-
sume that the paragraph presents one of the discussions between Abaye and Rava or
that it refers to the time when Abaye was a pupil of Raba - cf. 'was sitting in front
of...'. Abaye is not a child (and in any case not Rava's/Raba's son), but the story is
told in order to show (1) that the tables were once removed in front of everyone,
against both Rav Shimi and Rav Kahana who represent an innovative practice, and (2)
that this new practice was not self-evident when it was invented.
18 The ms. reads ιιγίοβ or lmDD which is assumed to be irnQS above. Several texts take it
for granted that 'the father' recites the Ma Nishtana. This custom was still the norm in
the Palestinian rite in the high Middle ages, cf. Goldschmidt 1960,10f and the rubric in
Rovner 2000, 350 and n. 50 as well as the Arabic rubric in ms. Abrahams XII.
19 Cf. Friedman 2002, 445.
that were served. 20 Thus, it would even be reasonable within a Palestinian set-
ting for a symposiarchos to open the discourse by a remark about the tables
that are carried away by the servants. Abaye complains, however, about the
removal of the untouched food in front of him. Therefore, the story does not tell
anything about the removal of the table or seder plate in tannaitic times or the
position of the discourse within the Mishnaic meal, 21 because it is not plausible
as a normal custom that food be served and carried away immediately. On the
contrary, 5th century (or later) Babylonian scholars create a story for the expla-
nation of a custom the meaning and function of which was forgotten. The
story is told about an incident when a table was removed with untouched food
on it for the purpose of making a participant of the seder ask a question.
Leaving aside the issue of removing the tables, the story reflects the same
understanding of the purpose of the seder as the preceding one about Rav
Nahman. Someone has to initiate the free discourse and the patron or
president of the seder may employ drastic measures in order to spur curiosity
rather than reciting a well known text.22 Some degree of standardization can-
not be avoided and should not be denied. Yet, one should at least interpret
standardized elements as a memorial of a successful improvisation in the past.
Both passages of the Talmud understand the Mishna exactly in accordance
with its original meaning and purpose. For Ma Nishtana of the Mishna has
only to be recited if the 'son' does not ask anything on his own, and spontane-
ous discourse is, in any case, preferable: 23
20 Cf. Tabory 1996, 371ff.

21 Cf. against this description, Tabory 1996, 366f. Tabory assumes that the removal of
the tables should indicate the end of the meal which is not necessarily the case, be-
cause tables could also be removed after the hors d'oeuvres. Plutarch's rule that a ta-
ble should never be carried away totally empty (and a lamp should not be extin-
guished; cf. Tabory 1996, 370) has no cultural parallel here, because Abaye would not
have complained about the removal if he had eaten already.
22 Cf. J. Martin's 1956, 662 example for this process where a complaint about the
composition of the meal leads to a discussion of heavy food as causing an inclination
to commit suicide.
23 Tr. mPes 10.4 ms. Kaufmann Maagarim. Friedman 2002, 445 quotes the Maimonides
who develops the idea that the children should be brought to ask 'why is this night
different' on their own: 'It is necessary to make a change in this night, in order that the
children (D^) should see it and ask and say: "What is different regarding this night
from all the other nights", until he answers them and says to them: "This and that
happened and it was such and such."...', 7.3 nxoi fan. He goes on to quote the sugges-
tions of the rabbinic texts what to do in order to make them ask. Even the Maimon-
1 They mix (and pour) him a second cup (of wine).

2 Thus, the son asks.
3 If the son does not have (enough) knowledge (to ask some-
thing on his own), his father teaches him (saying):24
4 Ma Nishtana - what is different regarding this
night? For in all the (other) nights we dip only
once, this night twice.
5 For in all the (other) nights we eat leavened and
unleavened (bread), this night all (bread) is un-
leavened.
6 For in all the (other) nights we eat roasted, boiled,
and cooked meat, this night all (meat) is roasted.25
7 His father teaches him according to his (the son's) knowl-
edge.26
8 He begins with disgrace and ends with glory.
9 They expound (beginning) from: 'An Aramaean (wanted to) destroy my
father' (Deut 26.5)27 until he finishes the whole passage.
10 Rabban Gamaliel says: 'Everyone who has not said (mentioned) these
three things on Pesah has not fulfilled his obligation: (the) Pesah (offer-
ing), unleavened bread, and bitter herbs...'
Reading nos. 1, 8, and 9 in isolation, we see that the Mishna prescribes simple
sympotic rules how to proceed at the seder banquet. After the second cup has
initiated the second course of the meal, the president of the seder may indicate
the meaning and history of the event. He should follow a normal trajectory
ides, who knows the Haggada very well, interprets the original rabbinic law as a re-
quirement to organize a spontaneous discourse at the seder.
24 The following rules only apply to the case in which the son does not 'ask' - according
to the situation that is envisaged in the Bible, cf. p. 24.
25 For the question about the roasted meat, see p. 23.
26 This line repeats the preceding one: 'If the son does not have (enough) knowledge...'.
The repetition indicates the end of a digression (not a later insertion) and contains
what the 'father' can say, in order to teach the 'son', in case that the 'son' does not ask
by himself.
27 The translation given above follows the Palestinian targumim. As Steiner 1997 has
shown, the analysis of the targum is a reasonable solution for the problem to the un-
derstanding of the verb in ON "ΠΝ 'SIN. The identification of 'the Aramaean' with La-
ban is evident for every reader of the Tora. 'The Aramaean' is said four times about
Laban in Genesis and is used only of him in the Pentateuch; 25.20; 28.5; 31.20, 24. As
soon as one was prepared to understand 72N as transitive (Steiner 1997 compares it to
Aramaic 731S), it was clear that Deut 26.5 alluded to the conflict between 'Israel' and
Laban.
'from disgrace to glory'. He may also take a short Biblical text for orientation:
Deut 26.5ff. It is a plausible interpretation of the Mishna to see no. 9 as an ex-
emplification of no. 8. If the two injunctions are not alternatives but explain
each other, Deut 26.5ff serves as a Biblical text to be expounded in one's expo-
sition 'from disgrace to glory'.28
The remark on the 'second cup' in the Mishna poses a problem for the
alignment of the Mishna with a normal symposium. For the Mishna envisages
the president as reciting the birkat ha-mazon over the third cup. Now, one
would normally expect the discussion to take place after the meal and hence
after the 'third' cup and the birkat ha-mazon. Several solutions can be pro-
posed. One may, for example, assume that the president had to explain exotic
foods while they were served,29 or that the symbolic food was actually served
after the main course which would imply that the discussion at the table took
place after the meal.30 Such suggestions do not address the notion that the
learned discussion should actually take place after birkat ha-mazon in a nor-
mal banquet, in which birkat ha-mazon would be performed at the time when
a non-Jewish group would have cleaned the room, recited a paean, poured
libations, etc.
Any approach to a solution of this problem should begin reading the
Mishna as a reaction to the laws of the Tosefta:
What is the order of the meal? Until (all) of the guests entered, they enter and sit
on benches and chairs. As soon as all of them entered, they give them (water) for
(washing) their hands. Each of them washes one hand. They mix (and pour) them
the cup(s). Each one recites the blessing on his own. They serve them bread.31
Each one recites the blessing on his own. As soon as they ascend (into the triclin-
ium or the upper room) and recline, the (waiters) give them (water) for their
hands. Even if (each one) already washed one of his hands, he washes both (now).
They mix (and pour) them the cup(s). Even if (each one of them) already recited a
28 The following rule of Rabban Gamaliel can, likewise, be understood as a guideline for
the sympotic discourse or a speech given by the president. It would replace the earlier
ones (nos. 8 and 9) and make sure that the symposiarchos speaks about three things:
the Pesah offering, bitter herbs, and unleavened bread.
29 Cf. Tabory 1996, 69. Tabory reconstructs a complex development of the seder and the
Mishna in Second Temple times. The present approach tries to avoid the reconstruc-
tion of layers in the text of the Mishna as a means of describing the historical devel-
opment of the ritual, cf. also Kulp 2005 for an assessment of Tabory's approach.
30 Cf. Tabory 1996, 77.
31 Günter Stemberger interprets rnsis on the basis of περιφέρειν - passing around
pieces of bread.
blessing about the first one, he (now) recites a blessing over the second. They serve
them bread. Even if (each one) already recited a blessing about the first one, he
(now) recites a blessing over the second. (Now,) one (person) recites the blessing
for all of them. Anyone who should come after three rounds of bread is not al-
lowed to enter (any more; tBer 4.8 20).
The Tosefta describes the customs of a symposium. Wine is served all the
time. The passages quoted above indicate that the guests are served a cup at
the beginning, sitting in the atrium, presumably eating some light food to ac-
company their bread. Each one recites blessings on his own. After all the in-
vited (and uninvited) guests arrive, they ascend into the upper room, recline,
(wash their hands, begin to dip the hors d'oeuvres)32 and receive another cup
of wine. tBer 4.12 20f emphasizes that each one recites a blessing on his own
over further cups during the meal. The Tosefta goes on to discuss questions of
the interruption of a meal. One of the cases involves the interruption of the
meal at the beginning of the Sabbath, apparently after the main course:
They mix (and serve) him the first cup. He recites over it the birkat ha-mazon. He
mentions the (blessing of the) Sabbath in the birkat ha-mazon. (They mix and
serve him) the second: he recites over it the (blessing) of the holiness of the day
(tBer 5.4 26).
The blessings that are connected with the Sabbath are now inserted into the
blessings over the more solemn cups that are drunk after the meal, during the
symposium. tBer 5.5 continues with general rules about seating people at the
symposium. The really important cup is drunk only after the meal. If one has
but one cup,33 it must be kept and drunk at the symposium (tBer 5.30 31.76f).
The discussion of the meal closes with an attempt to find a Biblical proof-text
for the blessings before the meal (tBer 6.1 32).
tPes 10 is built upon these rules of the banquet and even quotes some of
them. The Tosefta indicates that there is no fixed number of cups in a banquet.
It mentions two cups before the main course, an indefinite number during the
meal, and two after the meal. This would make four of the more ceremonial
cups. Is this the origin of the number of four cups in the Mishna? Shamma
Friedman's (2002, 405-420) interpretation of tPes 10.1 196 adds an important
explanation. He observes that the Tosefta begins with the assignment of a
minimum of 1/4 log of unmixed wine for a poor person on Pesah. If the person
who is responsible for the welfare of the poor should distribute mixed wine, it
32 Cf. tBer 4.8 20,5.20 28.

33 Complaining about having been served only one cup makes a bad guest, tBer 6.2 34.
would amount to 4/4 log. Wine is diluted with water in a ratio of 1 to 4. Each
person should be able to drink no less than 4/4 log of mixed wine. The Mishna
transforms the minimum allowance assigned to the poor person into the ha-
lakhic standard for everyone. Thus, the Tosefta does not know anything about
'four cups' that must be drunk at the seder. Having standardized the cups to
be drunk, the Mishna inserts them into a sequence of ritual acts like it can be
deduced from the aforementioned texts of Tosefta Brakhot. The creation of
'four cups' is, therefore, the result of a literary process. Later, the literary seder
is enacted in a ritual. The Mishna goes on to abbreviate the text of the Tosefta
and to add new material. This may explain why its text is not easily reconcil-
able with the customs of a normal banquet at its time. It is already a literary
banquet. Its punctilious fulfillment creates more problems than it solves.
However, the liturgically and halakhically competent president would in any
case know how to use this text in order to edify his guests and to keep the laws
of Pesah. Furthermore, this is exactly how one must understand tPes 10,
which also does not give a clear sequence of rituals but rather collects halakhot
for the occasion.
The Mishna has additional interests. It introduces the question of 'the son'
as a mimetic element (no. 2) that gives 'the father' an opportunity to explain to
him the reasons for the law.34 Consequently, the sages have to make sure, that
this measure does not destroy the basic function of the seder as a normal sym-
posium. The tentative ritualization of the Biblical texts stipulates that there be
a well educated 'son', who would know how to behave at a symposium. But
what if 'the son' is not yet able to function in this way? In that case, the father
teaches him how to fulfill his role at the banquet (nos. 3 and 7). He should do
that in a spontaneous and appropriate way. However, the Mishna goes on to
give an example how 'the father' could teach 'the son' (nos. 4-6), presumably
at the banquet itself. The father asks questions about the food that is being
eaten and that acquires a symbolic value in his discourse. Ma Nishtana is,
therefore, nothing but an emergency measure that helps to contend with the
mimetic requirements of the Mishna, which threaten to become a stumbling
block for the smooth course of the symposium. It is a remedy for the double
emergency that 'the son' cannot ask and that 'the father' is somehow not pre-
pared to find his own way of 'teaching' the son.
34 The fact that Second Temple sources indicate that only men over the age of 20 should
eat the Pesah shows that when it emerged, the celebration did not function as a means
to teach the children the cultural memory of the people. See p. 28.
The sages of the Babylonian Talmud understand the Mishna in this way,35
although it has already become customary for the president of the seder to re-
cite the three questions, if he does not know another way of introducing the
discussion. Therefore, Raba says: 'You released us (not yourself!) from the
duty to say Ma Nishtana/
The Laws of the Pesach Sacrifice
Telling the story of the Exodus from Egypt was not the original way to spend
the night of the 15th of Nisan. As remarked above, the Tosefta often preserves
older elements of the rite than does the Mishna. This has been observed by
Israel Yuval,36 who describes the development of the celebration of the seder in
four stages. First, the sacrificial meal and the Hallel make up the celebration in
Second Temple times. Second, after the destruction of the Temple, eating a n j
D^Tpa continues in certain places.37 The halakhot of Pesah are studied accord-
ing to the Tosefta. During this stage, the Christians develop their interpreta-
tion of the sacrifice on the basis of Exod 12. Third, Judaism turns back from
the interests in the sacrifices and emphasizes telling the story of the Exodus.
Fourth, in the early 2nd cent., Judaism develops the family meal that is reflected
in the Mishna.38
The observation about the fundamental difference between the Pesah ban-
quets according to the Tosefta and the Mishna is of paramount importance for
the study of the history of the seder.39 It acknowledges the existence of differ-
35 Friedman 2002, 4 3 9 ^ 4 6 discusses the idea of asking the questions at the seder in the
context of the rabbinic sources. He also observes that tPes 10.4 196 prescribes for the
head of the house that he must make happy the members of his household at the fes-
tival. Only the Babylonian sages understand the measures of the Tosefta and the
Yerushalmi (i.e., to make the house enjoy the festival) as designed to make the chil-
dren ask questions at the seder. Friedman quotes several texts that show the Babylo-
nian sages' great interest in the questions of the children (mpim).
36 Yuval 2000, esp. 104; Hauptman 2002; and in much greater detail Friedman (1999 and)
2002. Yuval's analysis is accepted by Irshai 2000,124ff.
37 See. n. 21 p. 22.
38 The discourse with the 'son' is only envisaged as one of the non-mimetic situations
that may occur. The son must be instructed to play his truly mimetic role during the
real performance. It should apparently be avoided according to tPes 10.11 198f.
39 Kadari 2003 sees two types of seder - one centered around the family (Mishna) oblig-
ing one to tell the story of the Exodus and one belonging to the rabbinic house of
ent approaches to this question within rabbinic Judaism. It also establishes the
substitution of the sacrifices by means of the study of the Laws pertaining to
them as the older paradigm for the structure and meaning of the seder.
The present study disagrees with Yuval's approach in three regards: the
purpose and the functions of Exod 12, the date of the Haggada (being the sub-
ject of the present chapter), and the assumption that the Quartodeciman Pas-
cha developed in the middle of the second century as an innovation in Christi-
anity and as a reaction to a form of the Jewish Pesah.
Rabban Gamaliel's seder in Lod (tPes 10.12 198f), where the participants
spend the whole night discussing the 'laws concerning the Pesah (sacrifice)'
reflects the idea that sacrifices could be substituted for by means of study or
prayer. This is an important paradigm that can be found in many other con-
texts. It also determines other elements of the Jewish liturgy, such as the se-
lection of the oldest festival readings according to the Mishna. The discussion
of 'the laws concerning the Pesah (sacrifice)' is an effective performance. It
enables the participants to fulfill their religious obligation to sacrifice and eat
the Pesah in a situation where no sacrifices can be offered.40
The replacement of the study of halakhot with the obligation to tell a story
'from disgrace to glory' (mPes 10.4) that eventually concentrated on the Exo-
dus may for some time have existed side by side with forms of the seder as it is
referred to in the Tosefta (and perhaps with other, unknown models). Finally,
it superseded the latter and became the only way to celebrate Pesah. At the
time of the compilation of the Tosefta, however, it was still possible to under-
stand the seder not only without a standardized Haggada but even without
any remark about the Exodus at all.
study (Tosefta) where the sages are supposed to study the halakhot of Pesah. He goes
on to observe that the domestic type is in fact deeply rooted in world of the sages.
This approach misrepresents the context of the texts and the social background of this
institution: the Hellenistic banquet and the literature surrounding it. Thus, Kadari
asks why the d t d o mpö is not connected with a ΠΒΠ while Deut 26.5ff within the se-
der has to be expounded, 63. The answer is that the Mishna envisages a sympotic dis-
course while the firstfruits are brought to the temple in a totally different kind of rit-
ual. The domestic 'type' is nothing but the inclusion of a few mimetic elements (such
as the Biblical roles of father and son) into the rabbinic symposium. This is not a ritual
reversal of social roles and the father is not becoming a sage 'for one day' as assumed
by Kadari, 69f.
40 Cf.p.25.
Conclusions
It is unlikely that the amoraic seder contained anything like a standardized

Haggada. There is no need - and hence no place - for such a text in the seder
in rabbinic times. If the Haggada can be shown to include traces of the politi-
cal or interreligious strife of late Antiquity, it would have absorbed these by
reworking other texts.*1 The Haggada is not a statement in a political dialogue
of amoraic times, let alone earlier phases of the history of Judaism.
This answers a question raised by Joseph Tabory about the recitation of the
Haggada before the meal, which does not jibe with the customs of the sympo-
sium. 42 As soon as it is acknowledged that the Haggada was created long after
the sages completed the Mishna, the tannaitic and amoraic celebrations of the
seder may be reconstructed in accordance with the relevant texts and within
their cultural environment. When the Haggada emerges and begins to reflect
the shape of the seder, the Hellenistic customs pertaining to the organization
of a banquet are already irrelevant. There is, therefore, no need to reconstruct
a shift of the place of 'the Haggada' within the rabbinic seder.
It was, however, necessary to ask about the place within the ritual of what
the Mishna describes as a table discourse within the seder. If the Mishna is
taken seriously as a script for a liturgy that is meticulously performed as writ-
ten, this discussion is scheduled before the third cup - the one that is associ-
ated with birkat ha-mazon. Apart from explanations of elements of the food
that was served, participants in a Hellenistic symposium would normally not
engage in serious discourse over the meal. This question is not fully solved
here. Yet, any progress in its solution must include taking seriously Stein's
observation that the Mishna contains pieces of sympotic literature. It abbrevi-
ates and reworks halakhic elements of the Tosefta. If the chapter in the Mishna
is regarded as a collection of halakhic observations for the time of the sages as
well as for a situation in which a Temple would again be available, all its ele-
ments make perfect sense when they are read individually, rather than being
regarded as a sequence of rubrics in a strict sense. After it had increased its
halakhic authority, the Mishna began to exert more influence on the structure
of the seder. However, only after the total demise of the institution from
which it emerged, viz., the Hellenistic symposium, did the seder become an
image of Mishna Pesahim 10.
41 See Leonhard 2005b.

42 See Tabory 1996, 77f and 368-377.
The Haggada According to the Palestinian Rite 89
Archeological finds may always overturn theses based on the reading of

texts. The finding of a Haggada from at least the first four centuries of the
Common Era would create many troubles for the explanation of its purpose
and use in practice. For, according to the present analysis, a majority of adher-
ents to rabbinic Judaism would have regarded it as out of place in their per-
formance of the seder. The missing sources from the first centuries of the
Common Era indicate that the text did not yet exist.
3.2 The Haggada According to the Palestinian Rite
The preceding section has shown that the Haggada was probably not com-
posed in rabbinic times. Arguments for this conclusion were drawn from the
ritual environment of the seder. It must now be asked whether an internal
analysis of the Haggada itself supports this conclusion.
Until the 20th century, the Haggada could be regarded as a very stable text
with some minor variants and later additions at its end. As mentioned above,
the texts from the Cairo Geniza overturn this picture because they allow a re-
construction of the history of the text on the basis of manuscripts.
When Israel Abrahams first published extracts of thirteen Geniza frag-
ments of the Haggada in 1898, he recognized their importance for the recon-
struction of its history: 'Some of them, both by their omissions and additions,
are further links in the chain which connects our present Hagada with its
original form.'43 In 1911, Julius H. Greenstone published (in abbreviated form)
one of the most important and complete texts of the Haggada of the Palestin-
ian rite, the manuscript CJS Halper 211.44 Some of its Palestinian features were
43 Abrahams 1898, 41. In η. 2, he mentions the absence of the Dayyenu in these frag-
ments. Finkelstein's treatment of these sources is paradigmatic in the way in which it
passes over the problem posed by the fact that such texts as the 'Midrash' of Deut
26.5-8 and the Dayyenu are absent from Haggadot in the tenth century although they
should have been recited by all pilgrims and all Babylonian (i. e. mainstream) Jews
once a year for far more than a millennium.
44 Sh. and Z. Safrai call it 'ms. Greenstone '. In earlier discussions, it is referred to as
'Dropsie Haggadah' or the like, because of the name of the institution in which it was
kept - 'Dropsie College', today 'The Center for Advanced Judaic Studies' in Philadel-
phia, PA. Rovner 2002, 245 n. 24 and Fleisher 1996, 123 refer to it by the standard
designation given above.
explained by Viktor Aptowitzer a year later (1912). The importance of these

new finds for the Haggada was hardly realized. When Menahem M. Kasher
and Shmuel Ashknage published their edition and study 'Hagada Shelemah'
(1955), they did not regard these manuscripts as a separate rite, but hid some
references to the variants contained in a few of them within the apparatus of
the edition of the Haggada of the Babylonian rite.45 Kasher and Ashknage
even regard the Haggada as it appears in those fragments as a shortened ver-
sion of the (Babylonian) Haggada.46 Scholars who base their studies on this
edition are misled with regard to their access to the Haggadot of the Palestin-
ian rite. Daniel Goldschmidt broke this paradigm in 1960 and gave a full tran-
scription and facsimile of CJS 211 with references to other manuscripts and
remarks on the text in his study of the Haggada. The structure of Gold-
schmidt's fine book still shows the predominance of the Babylonian Haggada
as a standard of reference, which is analyzed first. Despite its accurate pres-
entation and discussion, the impact of the publication of the long fragment of
the Haggada according to the Palestinian rite and Goldschmidt's suggestions
to reconstruct a full Palestinian Haggada by means of additional fragments
and traditions were minimal. However, Günter Stemberger used it in 1987 in
order to demonstrate that the Haggada cannot be used for reconstructions of
the form of the celebration of Pesah in New Testament times. The increased
interest in Geniza studies of the 1990's brought several important editions of
further manuscripts. Thus, Nicholas de Lange published in 1996 four frag-
ments of Haggadot that contained Greek rubrics.47 A century after Abrahams's
publication Shmuel and Zeev Safrai published a thorough study of the tradi-
tions about the Haggada (1998). In an appendix, they give a transcription of
CJS 211 in parallel columns with ms. T-S H2.108. In an apparatus, they pro-
vide many variants from unpublished Haggadot belonging to the same rite. It
is, however, the aim of that study to elucidate the Babylonian Haggada that is
in use today. The discussion of the Haggada of the Palestinian rite is, there-
fore, only a by-product of the whole project. In 2000, 2001, and 2002, Jay Rov-
ner published fragments of manuscripts in the possession of the library of the
Jewish Theological Seminary in New York, esp. JTS 9560, together with a fresh
45 The division of the history of the Haggada into two 'rites' allows to highlight the most
important features of the development of their texts. It does not, however, explain
every detail of a given text, because many typically Babylonian elements were in-
cluded in the Haggadot which otherwise reflect a Palestinian structure and text.
46 3rd ed. 1967, 4 2 ^ 7 .
47 Cf. Rovner 2002 for a discussion of the rite to which these fragments belong.
analysis of the Haggada according to the Palestinian rite. JTS 9560 is dated
between 950 and 1050 (2000, 364) and hence represents the oldest extant
Haggada. Rovner regards its text as a representative of an older stage of the
development of the Haggada than that of CJS 211.
Thus, a considerable sample of Haggadot from the Palestinian rite is easily
available in print. As manuscripts from the beginning of the second millen-
nium, their relationship to liturgical practices is totally different from the rela-
tionship between the text of the Mishna and the symposia in tannaitic and
amoraic times. The early documents dealing with the seder do not reflect the
course of the liturgies 'accurately', because elements such as 'improvisation'
and 'spontaneity' can only be captured by descriptions of examples. Different
examples only testify to a greater variety and multiformity of patterns of per-
formances in real life. The Haggadot reflect many more elements of the cele-
brations of the seder. They present them in the way and the sequence in which
they were actually performed.48 This difference is important for the under-
standing of the sources and the analysis of their liturgical background. It im-
plies that texts of the Mishna are only indirectly comparable with the Hag-
gada. Both belong to different genres and both reflect liturgies in a different
way.
The Haggadot include rubrics and texts to be recited. Some elements are
committed to writing, although they are so obvious that one should assume
that they were known by heart or could be performed without a detailed
script. Thus, the Haggada of ms. JTS 9560 repeats in writing parts of the lines
of the Hallel Psalms 113 and 114. This reflects a halakha about the form of the
recitation of the Hallel in the Tosefta.49 Such details prove that the scribes of
48 Being a widely used and not yet highly standardized text, the process of the reproduc-
tion of Haggadot was much less careful than for other texts of Jewish literature. Thus,
the extant Haggadot contain many scribal errors and corrections each of which has to
be weighed carefully, in order not to mistake a simple error for a variant in the ritual.
This implies, however, that such texts could be actually used at the table and are a re-
liable guide for a reconstruction of the ritual. This is also corroborated by their for-
mat. The ms. CJS 211 measures 8.9 χ 12.7 cm, although it is the only extant part of a
codex that may have contained some additional quires. Another text is preserved on
the obverse of the first leaf (the reverse of which contains the beginning of the
Haggada). It could be used in any table liturgy.
49 Rovner 2000, fol. 6r; cf. tPes 10.9 197 and mSot 5.4 as well as MekhY sirata 3.1 L 2.7f
that provide a Biblical precedent for the performance. Dölger 1930a describes the pa-
gan custom of having sacred texts read by a specialist in order to be repeated by the
the medieval Haggadot indeed tried to represent as many features of the lit-
urgy as possible in the written source. In such a situation, portions of the more
recent, Babylonian Haggadot that are missing in the Palestinian versions can-
not be assumed to have been supplied orally. These Haggadot reflect the se-
der ritual that was performed as written.
Furthermore, some features of the rite are discussed in responsa. This rich
literature cannot be assessed here.50 The most important example, which has
been known since the first publication about these Haggadot, is constituted by
Rav Natronay Gaon's (9th cent.) polemical remarks against the Palestinian rite,
which he classifies (inaccurately)51 as 'Karaite'. There, he scorns people who
only 'read' the Biblical text of Deut 26.5ff, but do not recite the 'Midrash'. This
also shows that the Palestinian Haggadot which only contain the Biblical text
in their written form were not necessarily meant to be supplemented by an
oral recitation of a form of 'the Midrash'.52
In order to assess the importance of these texts and to look for indications
of the time when they were composed, three aspects will be emphasized be-
low: First, the relationship of the Palestinian Haggadot to the oldest form of
the Mishna; second, the character of those passages of the Babylonian Hag-
gadot that are missing in the Palestinian texts; third, the 'Midrash' to Deut
26.5-8 of these Haggadot.
3.2.1 The Palestinian Haggada and the Mishna
Studies of the Palestinian liturgy show that it continues typical features of the
rite according to the Palestinian Talmud and the older, Palestinian, text of the
Mishna. Moreover, the Haggadot of the Palestinian rite contain the text of the
person who is in charge of the offering. This ensures that the sacred rites and solemn
words are not performed or pronounced in a deviant and harmful way.
50 Cf. Tabory's study 1996 that contains rich documentation also for the younger litera-
ture on the history and understanding of the seder and the Haggada.
51 Turetsky 1963, XVIff thinks that R. Natronay Gaon refers to the Karaite Haggada. He
does not, however, discuss the text in its details. R. Natronay Gaon describes the (Pal-
estinian) rabbanite Haggada very accurately and mentions many details that are unac-
ceptable for Karaites, such as his adversaries' recitation of Ma Nishtana.
52 This is Natronay's opinion (and observation?): 13N Ήΐκ snpi in1?! NXTOIffltff -p-aa 1»liO
btei vrrm nam ?JW ]rm mm ΐψιοα rfra rnznsn "73 TO όν. Thus, Natronay Gaon would
not have objected to an oral recitation of (any?) midrash. On the contrary, he com-
plains that those people do not say anything to Deut 26.5, that is recited only.
older, Palestinian, recension of the Mishna, whereas the Haggadot of the

Babylonian rite largely reflect a later recension of the Mishna as it is added to
the manuscripts of the Babylonian Talmud (but not extant as an independent
text in contrast to the Palestinian recension of the Mishna53). There is a simple
explanation for this state of the transmission of the two texts.
In a first stage, the Haggada originates within the Palestinian rite. It is
partly created out of quotations of the Palestinian form of the Mishna. To this,
some lines of text are added.
In a second stage, this form of the Haggada is transferred to communities
who celebrate the liturgy according to the Babylonian rite. They do not change
the text but only expand it.
After the first additions to the Haggada, both within the Palestinian and
the Babylonian rite, the Haggada enjoys a tremendous popularity. Babylonian
scribes who copy the Mishna (Pesahim chapter 10) into the manuscripts of the
Babylonian Talmud realize that the Haggada, which they know very well,
contains parallels to the Mishna which are not consistent with the Mishna ac-
cording to the old manuscripts. Thus, they update the text of the Mishna ac-
cording to the Haggada.
After the extinction of the Palestinian rite, and the marginalization of the
Palestinian Talmud as well as the Palestinian form of the Mishna, all parallels
between 'the (Babylonian form of the) Mishna' and ' the (Babylonian form of
the) Haggada' are more or less consistent and one can speculate about all
kinds of relationships between these texts. Thus, the Mishna came to be re-
garded as an abbreviation of a Haggada of Second Temple times or both texts
could be read as at least reflecting a tannaitic ritual. The only hint of the fact
that the situation was not necessarily like that, namely that some passages of
the Mishna (viz., passages that were copied from the Haggadot into the
Mishna) were not expounded or quoted in the Babylonian Talmud, was easily
overlooked.
The discovery and publication of the fragments of Haggadot that origi-
nated from the Palestinian rite provided the missing link between the Babylo-
nian Haggadot and the Palestinian Mishna. This is evident from the following
observations.
53 Stemberger 1996,140-142.
3.2.2 Recitation of Rubrics
If a text becomes important for a community, it may be recited solemnly, even

if it was originally not written for that purpose.54 The (oldest) Mishna is thus
quoted in the (oldest) Haggada as authoritative text. Thus, the Haggada does
not only enact the rules of the Mishna, but it even recites its texts. As mPes 10
quotes persons in direct speech or even demands that certain things be uttered,
it is not astonishing to find a seder ritual that follows those rules and makes
participants in the liturgy recite those texts. From this, one could not yet infer
that the Haggada quotes the Mishna as a text. The Haggadot contain, how-
ever, not only these portions of text for recitation but also the rubrics of the
Mishna.
Thus, ms. CJS 211 continues after Ma Nishtana with the words of the
Mishna: 'According to the knowledge of the son, his father teaches him. He
begins with disgrace and finishes with glory [+ and he says]' (4v4-7). It could
be argued that Ma Nishtana was intended for recitation as a liturgical text (al-
though it was, in fact, not). The rubric afterwards, however, cannot be under-
stood as such.
Two arguments must be raised against this observation. First, the rubric is
absent from the Babylonian Haggadot. Should they represent the preferable
lectio brevior in this case? Secondly, the rubric is also missing in the important
Palestinian manuscript JTS 9560. Regarding the Babylonian Haggada, this
seems indeed to be a rare case where the Babylonian rite abbreviated the Pales-
tinian Haggada. This becomes the most plausible solution in light of the fol-
lowing observations. The absence of the rubric in JTS 9560 may be explained
in another way. This manuscript contains an otherwise unattested Aramaic
rubric before Ma Nishtana: '[one brings?] the (serving) table/tray and [sets be-
fore him?] lettuce, unleavened b[read], [roasted meats], bitter herbs, haroset,
[srrh?], and mixes (and pours) for him the second cup, and he recites over it.'55
It is imaginable that the scribe of JTS 9560 felt that this rubric within the
Haggada replaced the rubrical text of the Mishna after Ma Nishtana. Thus, the
scribe left out the 'second' one.
In addition to this rubric, all Haggadot prescribe the recitation of: 'Rabban
Gamaliel says: "Everyone who has not said (mentioned) these three things on
54 Cf. Sh. and Z. Safrai 1998, 64 and 169 for vipn1? "DT, a phrase that eventually became
part of the text to be recited.
55 Rovner 2000, 349 = JTS 9560 lr3-7.
Pesah has not fulfilled his obligation...'". Somebody who wants to follow the
rules of the Mishna would want to emphasize the three words somewhere, in
order to be sure that he has fulfilled his obligation.56 Only someone for whom
the Mishna is not only a yardstick for the correctness of the seder, but also a
canonical text would want to recite the law instead of only keeping it. Here,
the Palestinian Haggadot follow the oldest manuscripts of the Mishna in the
sequence of the explanation of the three elements and expand their explana-
tions with quotations from the Bible. The Babylonian Haggadot change the se-
quence of the explanation of the three elements, perhaps in order to align that
sequence with the order in which they are mentioned by Rabban Gamaliel.
3.2.3 Creating Liturgical Text
A still more important case is the 'blessing of the redemption', which con-
cludes the first part of the Hallel:
Haggada (CJS 211 9v8-10r9) Mishna (ms. Kaufman)
B(lessed are you YY, our God, king of the R(abbi) Tarfon sa(ys): 'Who has redeemed
universe,) who has redeemed us and who us and who has redeemed our fathers from
has redeemed our fathers from Egypt and E(gypt) and who brought us to this night.'
who brought us to this night in order to eat He does not conclude58 (the blessing with
unleavened bread and bitter herbs.57 the normal concluding formula).
56 Goldschmidt 1960, 51 clearly sees the problem the Haggada's taking rubrics of the
Mishna as though they were intended for recitation. The following observations show
that it was exactly the intention of the composers of the Haggada to recite the Mishna.
57 The three additions to the text of the Mishna may have already been part of the
Mishna which was reworked in the Haggada. '...and being joyful in your (Temple)
service' and '(by means of) a new song' is already included in the Parma ms. of the
Mishna although it is missing in ms. Kaufmann. The benediction implies that the bit-
ter herbs are actually eaten. Therefore, it does not mention the Pesah offering any
more. The (older) Palestinian version of the Mishna does not include a question
(mPes 10.4) as to why 'bitter herbs' are 'eaten' that night. The bitter herbs only enter
the Babylonian recension of the Mishna much later. Nevertheless, the Mishna men-
tions 'dipping' there. If the three questions of the Mishna are modeled upon Rabban
Gamaliel's three symbolic foods (as suggested above), it is clear that 'dipping' in-
volves the bitter herbs. This is corroborated by mPes 2.6 where the eating of bitter
herbs is regarded as mandatory. Bitter herbs as a bit of mimesis of Exod 12 is an in-
novation of the Mishna. The Tosefta does not know it.
So, our God and the God of our fathers will R(abbi) Aqiva sa(ys): 'So, our God and the
bring us in peace to future festivals that ap- God of our fathers will bring us in peace to
proach us, rejoicing in the building of your future festivals that approach us, rejoicing in
city and being joyful in your (Temple) ser- the building of the world [sic], in order to
vice. There, we shall eat of the sacrifices eat! of the Pesah animals and sacrifices,
and Pesah animals, whose blood will reach whose blood reached the wall of your altar
the wall of your altar to (your) favor. We to (your) favor. We shall thank you for our
shall thank you (by means of) a new song redemption. Bl(essed) are you YYY, who
for our redemption. Blessed are you YY, has redeemed Isra(el).'
who has redeemed59 Israel.
The Haggada does not quote the text of the Mishna here, but conveys real li-
turgical text. The short prayer has two parts. The first part is a simple blessing
(without final formula - according to the Mishna) which is attributed to Rabbi
Tarfon in the Mishna. The second part is attributed to Rabbi Aqiva. The
names of the two rabbis cannot be mentioned in the context of the Haggada.
If the Haggada should have preserved a single, original blessing from tan-
naitic times here, the Mishna must have split it in two parts and attributed
each of them to two different rabbinic authorities. This seems unlikely, pre-
58 For the present issue, the relationship between the Mishna and the Tosefta is of lesser
importance than that between the Mishna and the Haggada. Nevertheless, the
Mishna cannot be understood without the Tosefta, as has been demonstrated by
Friedman 2002, 447-^58. The question will be taken up below, p. 201. The Mishna
first abbreviates and the supplements the Tosefta here. Friedman observes that the
difference between the Hillelites and the Shammaites in tPes 10.9 197f implies, first,
that the Shammaites recite Ps 113 without the blessing of the redemption and that the
Hillelites recite Ps 114f and add the benediction of the redemption. In a second argu-
ment, that presents the two 'houses' in a direct confrontation, it is presupposed that
both in fact recite the benediction of the redemption which makes the Shammaite po-
sition self-contradictory. In any case, the Hillelites' and the Shammaites' dispute is
partly based on the recitation or non-recitation of a/the 'benediction of the redemp-
tion', whereas Rabbi Tarfon and Rabbi Aqiva both recite a 'benediction of the redemp-
tion'. na'rin is, therefore, used in a different sense in the two disputes; cf. for this,
Friedman 450. Rabbi Tarfon does not conclude his 'benediction of the redemption' by
means of 'Blessed are you, Y', who has redeemed Israel' against Rabbi Aqiva, who
does. A reason for this may be that the central (relative) clause of Rabbi Tarfon's
benediction is much shorter and already contains the decisive element of (Rabbi
Aqiva's) na'nn: 'who has redeemed...'. These observations show that the composers/
redactors of the Mishna could not even imagine that these texts could ever be com-
bined to form a single benediction, not to mention that it should have ever been one.
59 CJS 211 reads (unvocalized) past tense. The Mishna and some Haggada texts read
present tense.
cisely because there is no reason why the Mishna should divide an allegedly
well known and widely accepted blessing in order to attribute it to two sages,
thereby disturbing its liturgical use in the seder. If the redactors of the Mishna
should, nevertheless, have done this, one must wonder why this did not influ-
ence the liturgies afterwards. It is thus more plausible that the composers of
the Haggada created a piece of new liturgical text on the basis of the Mishna
than that the Mishna reworked the blessing of a precursor of the Haggada.60
For the liturgical purpose of the Haggada, one needs a piece of genuine liturgi-
cal text here. Manuscripts of the Mishna could retain attributions to authori-
ties.
The composite blessing of the Haggada has two different topics: past and
future redemption. This leads to tBer 6.16 37f as a structural parallel. There,
the Tosefta suggests blessings for people entering and leaving a town. Al-
though they do not begin as a standard blessing, they use ρ at the point within
a composite prayer where the topic shifts from thanksgiving for a favor in the
past towards a request of that same favor in the future:
Someone who enters a town prays two (blessings). One at his entering (the town)
and one at his leaving (it). R. Shim'on says: four (blessings); two at his entering
and two at his leaving. What does he say at his entering (the town)? 'May it be re-
garded as (your) will before you, YYY, my God, that I enter in peace.' After he en-
tered in peace, he says: Ί give thanks before you, YYY, my God, who (you) made
me enter (the city) in peace. Thus (p), may it be regarded as (your) will before
you, YYY, my God, that you lead me out (of it again) in peace.' After he left (it) in
peace, he says: Ί give thanks before you, YYY, my God, who (you) brought me out
(of it) in peace. Thus (p), may it be regarded as (your) will before you, YYY, my
God, that you bring me to my! (own) place in peace.' 61
The text that is ascribed to Rabbi Aqiva may thus have been appended to that
of Rabbi Tarfon's blessing. This implies that at least Rabbi Aqiva (or the re-
60 The Mishna may be interpreted as having Rabbi Aqiva add his blessing to Rabbi Tar-
fon's; cf. Sh. and Z. Safrai 1998, 230.
61 Heinemann 1977, 159f refers to these blessings in his discussion of 'private and non-
statutory prayers'. mBer 9.4 is well understood as an abbreviation and explanation of
the blessings as they appear in the Tosefta: 'Someone who enters a city prays two
(blessings). One at his entering (the city) and one at his leaving (it). Ben Azzai says:
four (blessings); two at his entering and two at his leaving. He gives thanks for the
past and cries (for help) regarding the future' (ms. Kaufmann, Maagarim).' The
Mishna interprets 'R. Shim'on' of the Tosefta as Shim'on ben Azzai; cf. Stemberger
1996, 74. It does not record the text of the blessings but describes their form.
dactor of the passage) should have known the 'blessing of the redemption' in a
form that closely resembled that which is included in the Haggada.
The Mishna may either contain two short blessings - one ascribed to Rabbi
Tarfon and one to Rabbi Aqiva - or Rabbi Tarfon's short one and this same
blessing with an addition as performed by Rabbi Aqiva. On the one hand, the
Haggada could have chosen Rabbi Aqiva's longer version. On the other hand,
it could have united two alternative blessings of the Mishna into a single one
in order to create a liturgical text out of both of them.
The Haggada contains the most comprehensive tradition. tBer 6.16 37f
shows that the concluding blessing for the first part of the Hallel, as it is con-
tained in the Haggada, may have originated in the early history of the rabbinic
seder. It may, however, have been created at any later time as well. If the
Haggada artificially combined two Mishnaic blessings or read Rabbi Aqiva's
version in light of tBer 6.16 - probably against its original use in domestic lit-
urgies - it departs from two examples of tannaitic customs. In any case, the
Haggada erased Rabbi Tarfon's blessing from the liturgical repertoire of Juda-
ism. It is the product of a liturgical reform on the basis of a text and against
older, living and hence more variegated liturgical traditions.62 The procedure
of creating encompassing forms of liturgical texts by combining alternatives
that are quoted in rabbinic traditions has been described by Ruth Langer.63
Such processes may also have been operative in the development of the Hag-
gada. Even if the Haggada was not composed by one individual and promul-
gated by one authority, its dissemination and wide acceptance either de-
stroyed older local customs or shows that such local (tannaitic) customs had al-
ready vanished when it was invented. The 'blessing of the redemption' does
not lend itself to an indication of a definite date of the Haggada. After all, the
Hallel had been an element of the seder long before the emergence of the Hag-
gada as standardized text. Nevertheless, the Haggada either creates or enfor-
ces and perpetuates a relatively late state of uniformity. As opposed to its con-
62 The two alternatives of the Mishna must not be taken as a complete list of possible
blessings. They rather give two examples of well known rabbis with two different ap-
proaches to the meaning of the festival in accordance with the presumable Weltan-
schauung of at least one of them (Rabbi Aqiva). The examples point to a greater vari-
ety of customs and possibilities to be determined by the respective president of the se-
der. Rabbi Aqiva's blessing does also not suggest an 'eschatological' meaning of 'the
seder'. It links intercession with the laws of the festival.
63 Langer 1998, 35f n. 141: procedure no. 7. Variant customs may be combined to create
a universal norm.
stituents, this state of uniformity must not be mistaken for a survival from
ancient times.
3.2.4 Constructing Ritual out of Text
The president of the seder says to Abaye: 'You released us from the duty to say
Ma Nishtana'. According to the Mishna (mPes 10.4), Ma Nishtana is not the
standardized text to be recited by the (youngest) 'son', but an example that
should help the 'father' to begin the discourse of the symposium provided that
the 'son' is not (yet) able to ask any questions which prompt the father to re-
spond. As the Mishna became the core of the liturgical text for the seder, Ma
Nishtana came to be recited at every seder at first by the president of the table,
later by the 'son'. Supposing that the Haggada and its ritualization in the
Middle ages preserved customs from tannaitic times, does the Mishna reflect a
process that created a solution for an emergency situation (viz., that nobody
begins the conversation) out of a well established practice with which every se-
der was introduced? This is unlikely. It is much more plausible that the cre-
ators of the Haggada ritualized a piece of an old text that was understood in a
different way by its authors. As has been shown above, the Haggada is not
connected with a living tradition of the symposium, but constructs a form of
the seder from the text of the Mishna against the meaning that it had in its
original cultural context.
One differentiation further elucidates this process. Ms. CJS 211 still makes
the president of the seder recite this text as part of the quotation of the Mishna
and not as his own 'teaching the son' (cf. 4v4f). As remarked above, ms. JTS
9560 transforms the instruction of the Mishna into an Aramaic rubric of the
Haggada. The change of language clearly marks the shift from quoted tan-
naitic Hebrew text to a part of the Aramaic meta-language of the Haggada
manuscript. In this instance, ms. CJS 211 may preserve an older feature of the
text than ms. JTS 9560. The difference between these two manuscripts indi-
cates a development of the understanding of the role of Ma Nishtana in the se-
der. What was formerly (in CJS 211) only a part of a quotation of the Mishna
became first the text of the liturgical role of 'the father' (JTS 9560) and eventu-
ally even that of 'the son' (in the later and contemporary performance of the
ritual).
3.2.5 The Basic Elements of the Haggada
The analysis so far shows that those texts of the Haggada that parallel the
Mishna presuppose the final redaction of the Mishna and its acceptance as an
authoritative text. There are, furthermore, some short insertions into the text
of the Mishna that entered the Haggada during the early stages of its devel-
opment. Apart from that, the Hallel has a history of its own that is not de-
pendent upon the Haggada. It may be worth noting that the exact structure of
the Hallel is not beyond dispute even in the Babylonian Talmud (bPes 117a-
118a). The Tosefta alludes to parts of its structure and indicates that few peo-
ple were able to recite it at all.64 A form of the Hallel was certainly part of the
early seder (after the destruction of the Temple).65 As the 'Midrash' of the
Haggada will be reviewed briefly below, only elements of the Haggada that
belong to the meal in the strict sense are left. As such, they are not characteris-
tic for Pesah. Nevertheless, a piyyut by Yohanan Hakohen Birabi Yehoshua,
64 tPes 10.6 197. tPes 10.7 197 quotes Ps 118 and tPes 10.9 197f gives two opinions about
the end of the (first part of the?) Hallel.
65 As a parallel to Hellenistic symposia, it is not unlikely that 'hymns' were sung at the
end of meals and hence also at the meal during which the Pesah animal was eaten,
Mark 14.26 and par. There is no reason to assume that this should have been 'the
Hallel'; cf. Stemberger 1987 = 1993, 154f. 'The Hallel' may have been part of the Tem-
ple service, cf. mPes 5.7. Goldschmidt I960, 55 quotes mPes 9.3 in order to prove that
'the Hallel' was recited at the meal of the sacrifice in Second Temple times: live lltffion
lnVDiQ "Λπ. Friedman 2002, 458 infers from the notion that the Hallel was said m^Dia
that it would already have been said as divided into two parts - one before, one after
the meal - as nobody would assume that it should be recited actually while people
were eating. It seems more likely that the tannaim included texts that were associated
with the Temple service within the seder banquet than that they should have chosen
to continue (or rework) an old custom of the Pesah meals in Second Temple Jerusa-
lem. The fact that the sages are not sure about the form of the Hallel also implies that
they rather create liturgies out of appropriate Biblical texts than that they have accu-
rate information about a ritual whose performance had been interrupted for some
time. A reason why the rabbis decided to prescribe (or even continue to keep) the
recitation of the Hallel at the seder may be that the discussion of the 'laws of the Pe-
sah' (sacrifice) was considered the liturgical focus of the seder. The slaughtering and
preparation of the animals, i. e. the most important elements of the ritual of Pesah,
were performed within the Temple precincts and were accompanied by the Levites
singing the Hallel. The Hallel would then accompany the core of the event, the study
of the laws. It would thus accompany the meal not because of itself. The study of the
laws was connected with a symposium and hence combined with a meal.
who probably flourished in the first half of the seventh century, shows that at
least by that time, there was a fairly standardized sequence of blessings over
the hors-d'oeuvres of the meal.66 The sequence is roughly corroborated by
some manuscripts of the Haggada. Grace after Meals of Pesah is expanded in
the Palestinian Haggadot by an acrostic poem and Biblical quotations, but this
is also not a unique feature of the Haggada.67 The basic, most characteristic
constituents of the Haggada are quotations of the Mishna.
From this, it can be inferred that the Palestinian Haggada presupposes a
time when the Mishna had already become a text of such a religious dignity
that it could be recited as part of a domestic liturgy. Taking the development
of the Siddur as a parallel, the introduction of selected portions of rabbinic lit-
erature as texts for 'study' preceding the morning prayer hardly began long
before the end of the first millennium.68
If the Haggada is not only interpreted in light of the rabbinic texts that are
added to the 'morning benedictions', there is an additional possibility to
understand the function and position of the Mishna in the seder. Evidence for
this also comes from the Palestinian Haggadot, like CJS 211. The latter has two
parts that are indicated by headers in the manuscript: 'Qiddush of Pesah' (CJS
211 l v l ) and 'Blessing' (10v8, i.e. Grace after Meals).69 Thus, the Haggada is
divided up into one part preceding the meal and one part following it, the sec-
ond part only containing birkat ha-mazon, the rest of the Hallel, and birkat ha-
shir (the benediction recited over the 'song', i.e., the Hallel). In terms of 'the
Haggada', only the first part is relevant. It consists of the blessings over the
hors d'oeuvres, the expanded quotations of the Mishna, the Hallel and the
blessings that must be recited before the meal. Apart from the fact that the
hors d'oeuvres were already highly standardized, only the quotations of the
Mishna are specific for Pesah. From a bird's-eye view, 'the Haggada' is, there-
66 For the payyetan; cf. Weissenstern 1983, 319 and for the text, p. 13f. For the hors
d'oeuvre; cf. Goldschmidt 1960, 76 and Aptowitzer 1912.
67 Habermarm 1939 collects some forms of poetically reworked birkot ha-mazon.
68 Part of the evidence is reviewed in Leonhard 2005a. For the date, cf. Elbogen 1913 =
1993, 80: 9th cent.
69 The piyyut 'Simane ha-seder' (... pmi Επρ) that implies a segmentation of the seder
and is given at the beginning of the Haggada in most printed editions obscures the
structure of the ritual rather than providing an overview over it. It is not attested in
mss. of the Geniza and belongs to the development of the rite and its interpretation
after the first millennium; cf. also Sh. and Z. Safrai 1998, 93-96 for alternatives to the
most widespread version.
fore, an expansion of the Qiddush of Pesah by means of a short introduction

into 'the laws' of Pesah, the Mishna, with additional blessings over food. The
Palestinian Haggada ritualizes a study session for everybody. The Babylonian
expansions of this basic structure emphasize certain elements and deempha-
size others.70 They create a less clearly arranged collection of material that
makes the 'telling of the story of the Exodus' a major purpose of the Haggada.
This latter observation has important consequences for the understanding
of the seder before the invention of the Haggada - that means, roughly the se-
der before the age of the geonim. As indicated above, speculations about the
position of the Haggada vis-ä-vis the meal within the Hellenistic symposium
are unnecessary. The Haggada was created after the cultural background in
which such banquets were customary had vanished. The dissemination of the
Haggada marks a watershed in the development of the seder. This implies
that before the geonim 'the seder' (wherever it was actually kept during rab-
binic times) was determined by local customs.
3.2.6 The Additions of the Babylonian Haggada
After having suggested a time of composition for the Palestinian Haggada, it

has to be asked whether the Babylonian Haggadot can be shown to antedate
their Palestinian counterparts. For it is not a priori improbable that the Baby-
lonian seder includes old elements that did not even enter the Mishna. This
section briefly analyzes the character of the additions found in the Babylonian
Haggada in order to assess its antiquity vis-ä-vis the repertoire of the Pales-
tinian Haggada.
Proceeding from the later to the earlier elements, it is evident, that the
piyyutim71 after the blessing over the fourth cup entered the Babylonian Hag-
gada long after its Palestinian rite was established. The same is true for the
recitation of Ps 136. Likewise the quotations of the Psalm verses, 'Pour your
wrath...' 72 after birkat ha-mazon is a medieval addition to the Haggada.73
70 Note that R. Natronay Gaon speaks about the Haggada still as nos 'jw ϋΐτρ, as quoted
by Goldschmidt I960, 73.
71 Sh. and Z. Safrai 1998, no. 36-42; Kasher and Ashknage 1955 = 1967, 83-91; including
'Π "73 riatM Safrai no. 34 p. 80f.
72 Sh. and Z. Safrai 1998, no. 30 "|Π»Π "[DB.
73 These date to the 12th century; cf. Sh. and Z. Safrai 1998, 238. Cf. also Yuval 2000,141-
150; discussed in Leonhard 2005b, 161f. The Babylonian versus Palestinian form of
Ha Lahma 'this is the bread of affliction'74 emerged in Babylonian Hag-

gadot in geonic times.75 Saadya only quotes its third sentence. 'Let all those
who are hungry come and eat' ritualizes bTaan 20b, a story that is independent
of Pesah in its original context.76 Note that Rabban Gamaliel does not interpret
unleavened bread as 'the bread of affliction' according to Deut 16.3, but im-
plicitly as 'the bread of liberation' in mPes 10.5: '..."unleavened bread", be-
cause they were redeemed'.77 Ha Lahma may be a consequence of the medieval
re-interpretation of the seder according to Exod 12 that introduces the sad
situation of the present rather than the glory of past liberation into the mean-
ing of the celebration.78
The passages after 'We were Pharaoh's slaves'79 are not direct quotations of
rabbinic texts. They are appended to Deut 6.21, the use of which is a typically
Babylonian feature of the Haggada. It is suggested by the Babylonian Talmud
(in the story about R. Nahman quoted above). It is not quoted in the Palestin-
ian versions of the Haggada. Saadya only knows the first sentence after the
allusion to Deut 6.21: 'Had the Holy One, may he be blessed, not brought our
ancestors out of Egypt, then we, our children, and our children's children,
would still be Pharaoh's slaves in Egypt.'80 Shmuel and Zeev Safrai observe
that the following passages81 only occur together, never separated from each
other. As they are still not present in Saadya's Siddur,82 they were obviously
composed for insertion into the Haggada after the 10th century. If they were
composed somewhat earlier, they were at least still unimportant in Saadya's
time. Moreover, the comparison with the Tosefta suggests that both passages
birkat ha-mazon is irrelevant for the history of the Haggada. Its form and wording
has to be discussed separately. The Haggadot only contain birkat ha-mazon because
the seder contains a festive meal that requires it.
74 Sh. and Z. Safrai 1998, no. 4 feu xarf7 ΝΠ.
75 Stemberger 1987 = 1993,148f; cf. Leonhard 2005b, 162f.
76 Cf. bTaan 20b-21a and Sh. and Z. Safrai 1998, 109-112. In Second Temple Times, it
was not possible to join the meal of the Pesah late, because the Pesah animal was
dedicated to the participants of the meal long before its beginning.
77 See p. 22.
78 The ritual that is connected with it (lifting the piece of unleavened bread), but not the
text (ΚΊΧ ΝΜΠ1? ΝΠ), may carry anti-Christian connotations; cf. Yuval 2000, 257 and Leon-
hard 2005b, 162f.
79 Sh. and Z. Safrai 1998, no. 7 "inrtx ' m hots and 8 nnts ρ ιτΛχ '3Ί ion.
80 Sh. and Z. Safrai no. 6; Kasher and Ashknage 1. 66ff.
81 Including paragraphs 7 and 8 according to their count.; Sh. and Z. Safrai 1998,115f.
82 Davidson, Assaf, and loel 1941,137.
are a reformulation of the Tosefta (tPes lO.llf 198f) regarding a point that is
crucial for the doctrine of the Haggada:
Haggada Tosefta
And even if all of us were scholars, all of A man (i.e. everybody) is obliged to occupy
us full of understanding, all of us elders, himself with the laws of the Pesah during the
all of us learned in the Torah, it would still whole night - even he together with his son
be a commandment for us to tell the story (if there is nobody else) - even he himself -
of the Exodus from Egypt. And he who even he together with his pupil.
tells many stories about the Exodus from
Egypt shall be praised.83
A precedent involving Rabbi Eliezer, A precedent involving about Rabban Gama-
Rabbi Joshua, Rabbi Elazar ben Azaria, liel and the elder (sages) who were reclining
Rabbi Aqiva, and Rabbi Tarfon. They in the house of Boetos Ben Zonin in Lod.
were reclining (at the seder) together in They occupied themselves with the laws of
Bne Brak and were telling stories about the Pesah(-offering) during the whole night
the Exodus that whole night long, until until cockcrow. (Then) they (the servants)
their pupils arrived and said to them: lifted up (the tables) in front of them. They
Masters, it is time to recite the morning were stirred up ! and went to the study house.
Shma'. 84
The two consecutive passages in the Haggada rework the Tosefta according to
the paradigm that is based on the Mishna and that became normative for the
understanding of the seder. Theoretically, the whole passage could be con-
temporaneous with the Mishna. However, this text of the Haggada can hardly
be tannaitic. It is never mentioned or even hinted at until it emerges in the
Babylonian Haggada a millennium after the age of the tannaim. It is missing
from the Palestinian as well as the older specimens of the Babylonian Hag-
83 The wording of the passage may recall texts like mSanh 5.2 'Everyone who searches
(leaven) abundantly shall be praised.' It is not attested elsewhere; Goldschmidt 1960,
17.
84 Several scholars show that this it is a geonic addition to the (Babylonian) Haggada and
was also created for the purpose of being included in that text, cf. Mor 2003. Judith
Hauptman 2002 n. 3 also discusses Yuval's early dating of the passage and under-
stands it as a response to tPes 10.12 198f. Daniel Boyarin 2004, 83f sees the roots of the
story about the sages in Bne Brak versus tPes 10.12 in Second Temple Judaism. He
tries to read the two different approaches as reflecting the religious groups before 70
C.E. Yet, even a moderately critical reading of Josephus' texts about the Pharisees
makes this documentation incapable of supporting this argument, cf. Stemberger
1991, esp. p. 84—90; 1999; 1999a for the alleged continuity between the Pharisees and
the rabbis.
gadot. These passages were composed for the Haggada. It is their purpose to
adapt the characterization of the seder as it appears in the Tosefta to the new
standards. Studying the laws of the Pesah (sacrifice) has now been replaced by
telling the story of the Exodus.
A tannaitic remark about the notion of telling the story during the 'night' is
appended here: 'Rabbi Elazar ben Azaria said: I have lived to be seventy
years...' (mBer 1.5, tBer 1.10 4). The passage occurs only together with the
preceding ones and is thus absent from Saadya's Siddur. Although it is based
on a tannaitic text, it entered the Haggada late. In its original place, it is not
concerned with Pesah but with the benedictions of the recitation of the Shma'
in the evening. In its context in the Haggada, it is designed to support the
Babylonian interpretation of the seder. The quotation of this line of the Mishna
does not imply that this Babylonian interpretation is as old as the Mishna.
The following exegetical piece of the 'four sons' is attested in rabbinic texts
(MekhY pisha 18 L 166f and yPes 10.4 37d).85 The Tosefta describes the seder
as a celebration of a group of scholars. This comes closer to the reality in tan-
naitic times than the concept of the Mishna. As remarked above, the Mishna
constructs the seder as a suggestion to enact the situation of a 'son' asking his
'father', against the Tosefta. Thus, the Mishna introduces liturgical roles of
'father' and 'son'. The barayta of the 'four sons' further expounds this ap-
proach to the understanding of the Haggada in the Babylonian context. For
only there is the Ma Nishtana answered with Deut 6.21, which follows the
verse 'When your son asks you...' (Deut 6.20) in the Bible. In the more recent
Babylonian Haggadot, 'the son' has asked (having recited the Ma Nishtana).
Deut 6.21 is thus a much better introduction to the Haggada according to this
structure than Joshua 24.2ff.86
The Babylonian Haggadot append rabbinic statements to the Midrash.87
Saadya does not quote them in the main text of the Haggada, but in an appen-
85 It is known to Saadya. For the relationship between the version of the barayta in the
Haggadot and the rabbinic literature, cf. Stemberger 1987,151f. Kasher and Ashknage
refer to the rite of the reading of the Tora as parallel for: 'Blessed be God (lit. the
place), blessed be he...' 1955 = 1967,191. 81f. This is not attested in rabbinic literature.
86 As a further addition, ©in Win "ra1 'One could think (that the seder should take place)
from the first day of the month on...' only occurs together with the barayta of the four
sons. It originated within MekhY. Cf. Sh. and Z. Safrai 1998, 124; Stemberger 1987,
151f.
87 'Rabbi Judah abridged the list with mnemonic words...' Sh. and Z. Safrai 1998, no. 19
and p. 184f quotes SifDev 301 Finkelstein (318-320) 319.10 (if the text originated there).
dix. They are absent from the Haggadot of the Palestinian rite. The texts were
not composed for the use in the Haggada and were added to it late in its his-
tory. They also contain the Dayyenu and its prose summary,88 both of which
only occur together with the preceding rabbinic paragraphs.89 The Dayyenu
has to be distinguished carefully from similar listings of Biblical events or
other witnesses for the rewriting of the prophetic motif that is also reworked in
the Christian Improperia. As the Dayyenu contains only commonplace Bibli-
cal motifs, it cannot be dated on the basis of its contents. It may have been
composed for another (unknown) occasion, but was combined with the
(Babylonian) Haggadot not before geonic times.90 The vague parallels to
midrashim and Christian texts such as Melito's Peri Pascha do not justify the
hypothesis of any direct literary connection between them.91 Those elements
where the Babylonian Haggadot correspond to the later form of the Mishna
against its old manuscripts are later modifications of the more original Pales-
tinian Haggada and Mishna.92
'Rabbi Yose the Galilean says' (no. 20) until (excl.) the Dayyenu is quoted from MekhY
besallah 7 L 1.251. Sh. and Z. Safrai 1998,146 η. 1: copyists' abbreviation.
88 Cf. Stemberger 1987, 153. Goldschmidt 1960, 48 interprets the repetition of the con-
tents of the Dayyenu as another piece of poetry.
89 Cf. Sh. and Z. Safrai 1998, 148; who do not see the reason for the combination of these
pieces with the Dayyenu and assume that this was done in geonic times.
90 Sh. and Z. Safrai 1998,148.
91 Sh. and Z. Safrai 1998, 151f reject the argument that the last line, which refers to the
Temple, is an indication that the whole text would have been composed before 70 C.E.
Flusser's 1974 assumption that the Dayyenu reworked a text that is extant within a
piyyut of the Qalliri for the 9th of Av but should actually be a much earlier 'Paschal'
text has been refuted in Leonhard 2005b, 152-160. Likewise, Bergren's 1999 observa-
tions about the Dayyenu are obsolete, because he does not even question Finkelstein's
dating of the (Haggada and the) Dayyenu. I am grateful to Michael Rand who adds
the following observation: The Qalliri's piyyut πρίϊπ " -fr = ΤΜΗΡ 765 ed. Gold-
schmidt 1968, no. 20 p. 79f is, first, certainly this poet's creation, and, second, the piy-
yut is intact and closely interconnected with the preceding and following pieces of po-
etry. Thus, the whole series of piyyutim for the 9th of Av would have to be 'paschal',
which is absurd. The Dayyenu is independent from this piyyut, and is best consid-
ered to be a piece of folk poetry.
92 Cf. the different traditions of the four (!) questions of Ma Nishtana; the sequence of Pe-
sah, unleavened bread, bitter herbs in Rabban Gamaliel's statement and its following
explanation; 'in every generation' with its scriptural reference to Exod 13; Stemberger
1987,154; the pairs 'from'/'to', except for 'from slavery to liberty', as remarked below.
A final remark concerns a Babylonian expansion of the Haggada (and

Mishna): 'He has brought us out from slavery to liberty, from sorrow to joy,
from mourning to festival, from darkness to bright light, and from bondage to
redemption.' The whole list except 'from slavery to liberty' is absent from the
Palestinian texts (Mishna and Haggada) and even from Saadya's Haggada.
Thus, neither the Mishna nor the Haggada contain references to something like
a 'Paschal symbolism of light and darkness' or a hint to the Christian allegories
on the Exodus that should resemble 'transitus'-patterns in theological think-
ing.93
To sum up, the additions of the Babylonian Haggadot over the Palestinian
ones have to be regarded as recent insertions into the Haggada. They quote or
rework rabbinic texts and other compositions whose authors are either known
(and definitely post-Talmudic) or compositions that are not known from any-
where else. It has been shown above that the Palestinian Haggada presup-
poses the Mishna as an authoritative text. The connection of the Babylonian
additions with the Haggada is without exception at least geonic.
3.2.7 The 'Midrash' to Deut 26.5-8
The Palestinian Haggadot show that the main part of the 'Midrash' to Deut
26.5ff is a secondary element in the Haggada. It seems to have entered this text
in late geonic times.94 The 'Midrash' of the Haggada is, however, a special
case, that was often used to demonstrate the high age of the Haggada.
The oldest form of the 'Midrash' is well known from manuscripts such as
CJS 211 and JTS 9560. Close to the beginning of the recitation of the Biblical
text of Deut 26.5-8, these Palestinian Haggadot add 'compelled by the word'
93 Cf. Leonhard 2003a, 215f n. 75. According to Flusser 1977, 58 'from darkness to bright
light' is the only point of contact between the Haggada and a symbolism of light. As
ms. T-S NS 122.126 (ed. De Lange 1996) gives four such pairs but leaves out 'from
darkness...' and because this phrase is not found in any of the Palestinian Haggadot,
it must have been added to the core of the Palestinian Haggada in the process of its
enlargement within the Babylonian rite. There is simply no 'symbolism of light and
darkness' in the Haggada of the first millennium. Christians developed this motif in-
dependently of Judaism; cf. Buchinger 2005, 175 η. 981. In his remarks about a transi-
tion 'from darkness to light', even Origen does not attest any liturgical formula nor
any experience of an Easter vigil, 681-686. 805f. And cf. 882 regarding baptism.
94 Even Goldschmidt 1960, 46f assumes the 7th cent.
and at its end 'not by means of an angel...'. 9 5 Both explanations are carefully
preserved in the Babylonian Haggadot and only supplemented, rather than
being replaced, by other bits of interpretation. The Palestinian Haggadot even
preserved another, more elaborate 'Midrash' independently from this one.96
The Babylonian 'Midrash' was, therefore, not yet part of the seder when the
Haggada was created. For how could the Palestinian Haggadot ignore or re-
place a 'Midrash' that has been known to all participants of celebrations of
Pesah for centuries? 97
These observations are also important for the question of when it became
customary to stop the recitation of Deut 26.5ff before the end of the passage
(probably against the precept of the Mishna to recite it 'until he finishes the
whole passage'). 98 It has been suggested that Deut 26.5-8 was recited at the
seder together with verse 9: 'He brought us to this place (i. e. the Temple) and
gave us this land. A land that flows with milk and honey.' This should point
to the ritual of the seder before the destruction of the Temple. It should there-
fore (theoretically) have remained the custom in Palestine even after 70 C.E.
Furthermore, the recitation of Deut 26.5-9 should have been accompanied by
'the Midrash' as is attested in the Babylonian Haggadot.
While this opinion does not say very much about the Haggada, it claims,
however, that the ritual of the seder as it is hinted at in the Mishna should
have contained the recitation of Deut 26.5-9. If it should, however, be possible
to prove that the 'Midrash' of the Babylonian Haggadot also originated within
the age of the tannaim or even precedes it, one would have to explain why the
Palestinian Haggadot do not contain the 'Midrash'. As shown above, the idea
that larger parts of the Babylonian Haggada should have originated before or
in tannaitic times is anachronistic.
This issue was raised by David Zvi Hoffmann in 1891. Hoffmann assumes
that the Biblical text that is alluded to in the Mishna must reflect the rhetorical
principle 'from disgrace to glory'. 99 He concludes that v. 9 must have been
95 Cf. Leonhard 2003a, 213f n. 54 and the study of the motif by Pesce 1979.
96 Rovner 2000 and 2002.
97 It has been argued above that the text of the Palestinian Haggada reflects the actual
liturgical practice of reciting only the Biblical text and that the recitation of some stan-
dardized explanations as part of an oral tradition was not envisaged.
98 Cf. mBik 3.6, mPes 10.4.
99 The discussion begins with a barayta in the Babylonian Talmud bSot 32b (ms. Oxford
2675,2 Maagarim): '(It is a) tannaitic teaching: R. Shim'(on)d ben Yohay (says): A per-
son says his disgrace silently and his glory loudly. His disgrace silently1: (this is
recited as an element of 'glory' of the discourse in Palestine before 70 C.E.,

whereas it would have been left out in Babylonia before and everywhere after
70 C.E. Thus, after 70 C.E. the rabbis had to supply a new equivalent for
'glory', which led to Joshua 24.2ff (and Deut 6.21-25). For, even after 70 C.E.,
it is Judaism's 'glory' to have overcome idolatry.
In the background of this thesis stands Hoffmann's reconstruction of
'Midrash Tannaim' to Deuteronomy, into which he copied parts of the
'Midrash' of a (Babylonian) Haggada,100 although the 'Midrash' only runs until
verse 8. In its simple form, Hoffmann's argument is intriguing. Nevertheless,
mPes 10 did not exist before 70 C. E. and there is no source available beyond
the Babylonian Haggada which would support the idea that the Babylonian
'Midrash' should have been extant in tannaitic times. Quoting Hoffmann's
'Midrash Tannaim' (1909, 172f) in support of this latter claim would be bla-
tantly circular argumentation. Furthermore, any older parallel to the
'Midrash' of the Haggada can be interpreted as text that was reworked in the
Haggada and hence irrelevant for the date of the Haggada.101 Alternatively, it
is plausible that the text originated within the Babylonian Haggada (some time
before Natronay Gaon) but was copied into other works where it replaced
learned from) the confession of the tithes (beginning in Deut 26.13). His disgrace
loudly: (this is learned) from the recitation (text) of the firstfruits (Deut 26.5-9).' The
only parallel between this text and the liturgy of Pesah is the reference to the 'recita-
tion of the firstfruits'. It does not expound the rhetorical principle of the Mishna and
should not be read into the Mishna. The latter is not interested in a determination of
which text or verse should be understood as 'disgrace' or 'glory'. Hoffmann must
even admit that in Second Temple times, 'disgrace' and 'glory' were encompassed in
the 'recitation of the firstfruits'. The exegetical background and additional parallels
are discussed by Kahana 2002, 416f, whose theses are built on Hoffmann's and Hen-
shke's observations. There is no reason why the understanding of '3X Tax 'mx as 'An
Aramaean (tried) to destroy my father' could not qualify as 'disgrace', whereas 'My
father was a wandering Aramaean' could. Thus, there is no basis for the assumption
(recently Kahana 2002, 417 and n. 13) that a primordial version of 'the Midrash' of the
Haggada must have been based on 'My father was a wandering (or: lost) Aramaean',
if it would have represented 'disgrace'. This is no argument for the assumption that
Pitron Tora reflects the understanding of a pre-rabbinic 'Haggada'.
100 Rovner 2002, 424 n. 16.
101 Kahana 2002, 415-422 quotes some parallels to the Haggada. This does not prove any
direction of borrowing.
older expositions of these verses, because the 'Midrash' of the Haggada was so
popular that (medieval) scribes updated their sources. 102
Joseph Tabory (1977/78) and David Henshke (1988/89) further explore the
history of the recitation of the Biblical text in the seder (and hence the
Haggada) in the wake of Hoffmann's studies. Both continue to ask about the
identification of 'disgrace' and 'glory' within the texts quoted. For both the
question of location - Babylon versus Palestine - is an important factor in the
background of the creation of these liturgies. Thus, Tabory suggests that Rav
recited v. 9, which ended with a reference to the Temple ('glory') and provided
Joshua 24.2 as a fitting 'disgrace' whereas Shmuel 103 , who lived in Babylonia,
would not read v. 9. He is said to have ended with the liberation of v. 8 as
'glory' and to have supplied the idea of slavery according to Deut 6.21 as a
replacement for the 'disgrace' of Deut 26.5. Henshke further increases the
complexity of the argument. While originally Deut 26.5ff contained both 'dis-
grace' and 'glory', a change in the popular, grammatical understanding of
ON 1-K set off the following development. After 'my father was a wandering
Aramaean' became interpreted as 'an Aramaean (almost) destroyed my father',
the passage could no longer be understood as 'disgrace' and the sages looked
102 Finkelstein observes from the style of the explanations in SifDev 301, that the text of
this tannaitic midrash was influenced by the Haggada. This is, on the one hand, not
astonishing for Finkelstein, who assumes that the Haggada was created long before
the beginning of the C. E. While his date for the Haggada is unacceptable, his obser-
vations regarding SifDev remain in force. SifDev 301, which is not attested in mss. be-
fore the 10th cent., must therefore be counted as another witness to the quick, over-
whelming, and unparalleled success of the Haggada in geonic times such that even
SifDev was slightly updated according to the Babylonian 'Midrash' of the Haggada.
103 One may observe that the name of Shmuel is only attested in ms. Vatican 109; cf. Hen-
shke 43. The other mss. mention Χ3Ί, I'm, ms. München 95 attributes the reading of
Deut 6.21 to τι. It is true that this statement is only quoted in the Bavli and is con-
nected with Rav Nahman there. No conclusions can be drawn from the name of
Shmuel in the editions. Should Shmuel's name have been mentioned in this context,
because he was Rav Nahman's teacher? (Cf. Stemberger 1996, 92 for the relationship
of the two sages.) Stemberger 2002b, 306f observes that MekhSh 13.14 EM 44 dis-
cusses the question of the 'son' in Exod 13.14 presupposing Deut 6.20 and mPes 10.
This indicates that an association of Deut 6.21 and the seder is not an exclusively
'Babylonian' idea. As it was not, however, suggested in the Talmud Yerushalmi, it
did not enter the Palestinian Haggadot. Only the Babylonian Haggadot which update
the Haggada to the standards of their tradition, add this text. This is a ritualization of
a piece of text and not a liturgical tradition.
for another text to replace it. Adding the reading of Joshua 24.2ff, the rabbis
understood this text to contain both elements.
Both authors try to reconstruct the thinking of the amoraim in their inter-
pretation of the Mishna. Both ignore the only explicit text that the Babylonian
amoraim themselves provide for the elucidation of 'disgrace' and 'glory': the
story of Rav Nahman and Daru. There, 'glory' is spontaneously anticipated by
the slave's answer: 'Much thanksgiving and praising'. After the Talmud has
asked 'what is disgrace' (in the context of a quotation of the Mishna), Rav
Nahman opens the discourse with a phrase of Deut 6.21 'we were Pharaoh's
slaves in Egypt'. There is no reason to assume that he would have felt obliged
to recite Deut 26 or Joshua 24 in the following discourse or in his speech. As
remarked above, Babylonian amoraim still try hard to keep alive certain
Palestinian, or rather Hellenistic, customs and do not yet understand Deut 6.21
as an answer to a 'son's' question, not to mention an answer to Ma Nishtana.
Thus, before the creation of the Haggada, there is simply no intellectually
coherent system (whether diachronic or based on the Haggada alone) that
would include all elements of the Mishna and the Talmudim. The rabbinic
texts provide Biblical passages to which the president of the seder could allude
or take as a point of departure for the discourse at the banquet. Centuries
later, the situation changes. At first, the Palestinian Haggada ritualizes the
Palestinian Talmud and adds Joshua 24.2 before Deut 26.5-8. Then Babyloni-
ans introduce the text that was given as an additional alternative in the Baby-
lonian Talmud and insert it before the recitation of Joshua 24.2. Again, the
composers of the Haggadot combine alternatives that they find within their
traditional texts in order to create new liturgies that correspond to all earlier
suggestions and injunctions.104 Just as their rabbinic precursors, the composers
of the Haggadot did not devise sophisticated schemes which identify 'dis-
grace' and 'glory'. Those were left to be sought after and found by the inter-
preters of the high Middle Ages.
Henshke also tries to prove the high antiquity of the Babylonian 'Midrash'
from a formal point of view. Thus, he establishes a hypothesis about the
global development of the form of the presentation of Biblical exegesis and
postulates that the earliest form of any midrash should have consisted of ex-
planations of one text by the simple quotation of phrases from another.105 This
form should have been expanded later by explanatory material and eventually
104 See above, p. 98.

105 Cf. Tabory 1996, 376f.
became the form of midrash that is actually attested and that explains the
verses more elaborately. However, the allegedly most pristine form of
midrashim is not attested and the 'Midrash' of the Babylonian Haggadot has
first to be reworked by Henshke in order to show that its reconstructed kernel
fits into this theory.
In his monumental reconstruction of 'Sifre Zuta on Deuteronomy' Mena-
hem Kahana (2002) supports Hoffmann's approach. He claims that a passage
from the Midrash Pitron Tora preserves the Haggada from (at least) Mishnaic
times:106
My father was a wandering Aramaean.
My father went down to Aram and was already lost' there when he came from there.
He went down to Egypt.
Exiled and cast about.
The Egyptians treated us badly, etc. We shouted to Y', the God of our fathers, etc.
As it is wr(itten): Exod 3.9.
Y' heard our voice.
As it is sa(id): Exod 3.7.
He saw our affliction and our tr(roubles) and our o(ppression), etc.
As it is sa(id): Exod 3.9.
Y' brought us out of Egypt with a strong hand, etc.
Because our fathers went out of Egypt, we are obliged to thank, to praise, to pro-
claim his superiority, to glorify, to elevate Y' - m(ay) he b(e) b(lessed).
For if our fathers should not have gone out of Egypt, we and our children's chil-
dren would still be Pharaoh's enslaved slaves.
He brought us to this place, etc.
As it is wri(tten): I came into the land (Deut 26.3).
And he (i. e. Scripture) say(s): And he gave us this land.
A land the fruits of which are (ripening) swiftly to be eaten like milk and are fat
like honey.107
106 Pitron Tora; Urbach 1978, 279; cf. Kahana 2002, 30-37. The ms. was written in 1328.
Urbach's dating of the compilation to the 9th cent, might require a revision pointing to
a somewhat later date, cf. Kahana's summary 2002, 30 n. 3. In the context of the pre-
sent study, it is not possible to contribute anything to the dating of this work. From a
methodological point of view, the (often tacit) assumption that 'non-Mishnaic implies
pre-Mishnaic' must be rejected. If the author /compiler of Pitron Tora does not follow
the mainstream rabbinic interpretation of lax 'HIS or of nij?a in Deut 26.9, this may
be due to an old source which he knows as well as his own analysis of the text, or to a
much more recent source, cf. n. 110 p. 113.
107 Urbach 1978 refers to SifDev 37 Finkelstein 73 (316 p. 358); bKet 112a; cf. Kahana 2002,
424f.
Kahana observes the formal similarities of the 'Midrash' of the Haggada and
this paragraph of Pitron Tora, but also notes that the scriptural parallels in the
Babylonian Haggada are different. 108 He suggests that Pitron Tora quotes an
otherwise unknown Haggada or even Sifre Zuta Devarim. Thus, parallel
structures between Pitron Tora and the Haggada (as well as between the Hag-
gada and SifDev) indicate for Kahana the high age of the 'Midrash'. Two ob-
servations show that this is a case of circular argumentation that is built on the
presumption of the high age of the ('Midrash' of the Babylonian) Haggada.
First, it is important to note that the text of the actual manuscript that Ka-
hana quotes for Deut 26.5 (418f) as reconstruction of Sifre Zuta Devarim does
not resemble the form of the passage in Pitron Tora here. This already implies
that the reconstructed tannaitic midrash must have changed its style within the
explanations of Deut 26. Furthermore, Pitron Tora does not expound the pre-
ceding (and following) verses in this way (Biblical verse + nm ,ηίΓΟϋ' nas)
but employs the style of tannaitic midrashim, etc. ΐίΚϊϊ' ... na ,ΊΏΙ1? na^n ... '"ι;"
ID -ι»ίΰΒ> ... ηκ ... itmV109 The similarities to the 'Midrash' of the Haggada only
begin with .. ,'n pi?m
Second, Pitron Tora leaves its distanced, midrashic approach and suddenly
alludes to two passages that are also found in the Haggada after the last verse
(8) that is quoted there. As Kahana mainly uses Kasher's and Ashknage's edi-
tion of the Haggada (sometimes quoting Goldschmidt 1960), he does not warn
his readers, that the passage: 'For if our fathers should not have gone out of
Egypt, we and our children's children would still be Pharaoh's enslaved
slaves' has its parallel only in the Babylonian Haggadot and there in a place
where it can never have a parallel to the Palestinian recension: after the quota-
tion of Deut 6.21 and before the story of the Pesah in Bne Brak. The passage is
not quoted in any of the manuscripts of the Palestinian rite.
Whatever should have been the Vorlage of Pitron Tora in the case of Deut
26.5-8, a scribe (or compiler) associated the Babylonian Haggada with this Bib-
lical Passage. 110 He may have imitated the style of the Babylonian 'Midrash'
108 Kahana 2002, 420; cf. also 36 n. 51 and p. 90f.

109 Cf. Kahana 2002, 35 no. 3.
110 Steiner 1997, 127f refers roughly to Abraham Ibn Ezra's time (12th cent.) for the first
attestations of the psat of 'as "ΠΝ '»ΊΚ (which is also attested in Pitron Tora). That the
author/compiler of Pitron Tora only follows the 'Midrash' of the Haggada in the for-
mal organization of the text can be seen in his own choice of parallels from Exodus 3.
It is, therefore, possible that he knows the Babylonian 'Midrash' although he does not
accept its understanding of '3S "ΠΝ '81*.
which was, however, too long for his own highly abbreviated collection of
notes to the Tora. Thus, he added (in a much more coherent way than the
'Midrash' of the Haggada) some verses from Exod 3. At the end of this pas-
sage, his associations carried him away and he added a few lines of the Hag-
gada from his memory.
Kahana also sees in the following lines of Pitron Tora a corroboration of
Hoffmann's assumption that v. 9 was recited at the seder according to the
intention of the Mishna. While it cannot be proven that it was not quoted in a
rabbi's seder, the character of the passage of Pitron Tora that precedes this line
rules out the possibility that Pitron Tora may be quoted as proof that it was.
The text 'He brought us to this place, etc. As it is wri(tten): I came into the
land' implies the identification of 'this place' with the Land of Israel - an inter-
pretation that is explicitly rejected in SifDev. 111 It is much more likely that the
compiler of Pitron Tora, who took his general inspiration from the 'Midrash' of
the Babylonian Haggada for the interpretation of the verses 5-8, continued in
this way also regarding v. 9a. As he was free to deviate from the choice of
verses that are quoted in the Haggada, he was also free to quote a verse of the
same chapter as 'interpretation' here. Therefore, the 'Midrash' of the Babylo-
nian Haggada should be taken as a point of departure for the study of the in-
terpretations of Deut 26.5-8 within texts that contain much older material. The
closest parallels to the Haggada which do not fit the style and approach of
their respective contexts prove the great popularity of the Babylonian Haggada
from the end of the first millennium onward and not the high age of those par-
allel texts.
The form of the Babylonian 'Midrash' can, however, be interpreted in an
easier way, because tMSh 5.23-29 272-274 112 provides a literary model for it.
Thus, the Babylonian authors of the 'Midrash' did not copy a tannaitic text and
never had a Second Temple Haggada at their disposal, but created a parallel to
the interpretation that is given in their sources to a very similar text of the
same Biblical chapter as their own Biblical source. Furthermore, this proce-
dure allowed them to emphasize an important point of the older Palestinian
Haggada. They could enrich the Haggada with narrative material, like verses
from Exodus. Even if the history of the people of Israel played an important
111 Kahana 2002,423.

112 tMSh quotes the phrases of the 'confession of tithes', gives a short explanatory phrase,
and goes on to quote a verse after '3®. mMSh 5.10-13 gives longer explanations and
does not quote proof-texts.
role in the Haggada based on the Biblical texts that were recited, the Palestin-
ian rabbis and apparently also the Palestinian geonim were not interested in a
broad expansion of this aspect within their liturgies. The story about the sym-
posium at Bne Brak, which Babylonian scholars composed for the Haggada, is
a programmatic statement. 113 It makes the telling of the story of the Exodus the
halakhic center of the Haggada and shows thereby that observations about the
increase of narrative material in the Babylonian Haggadot (such as the
'Midrash') were seen as fitting the intentions of the Babylonian scholars.
As a final argument, the purpose and hence the length of the quotation of
Deut 26.5ff itself suggests a date when it could have been combined with the
seder. If one takes the Biblical and Mishnaic laws seriously, Deut 26.5-9 had a
very well defined position within the liturgy of the Temple. Firstfruits are
never brought at Pesah. The season for bringing the firstfruits begins at Sha-
vuot and ends at Sukkot. 114 Nobody who had any idea about the function of
the E m m ίηρΏ (the recitation of Deut 26.5-9) would associate it with Pesah as
long as the liturgy of the Temple was somehow functioning or only supposed
to have functioned as it was written. It must, therefore, not be asked until
which verse one would have recited the D1TD,a iCipa before 70 C. E. in the seder,
but rather how much time must have elapsed after 70 C. E., in order that any
connection of this text to the Temple liturgy would have been forgotten, so as
to set the text free for its being inserted into a new liturgical context, i. e., Pesah.
The Tosefta does not yet know anything about a combination of Deut 26 and
the seder.
Sometimes, the reference to Deut 26.5ff as point of departure for the dis-
course at the seder is explained by the general use and knowledge of this
verse. 115 This is not probable. On the one hand, the liturgical context of this
passage makes clear that only a small sector of the society was able (and hence
supposed) to perform the ritual at all. Only farmers of the Holy Land who
harvested certain crops in certain areas could bring firstfruits to the Temple.
On the other hand, the Mishna says about exactly this text that many of those
113 Cf. Mor2003.

114 According to 1 Kgs 8.1f, Sukkot was the festival of the dedication of Solomon's
temple. Perhaps because some of the contents and the structure of Sukkot were dou-
bled in order to create the festival of Hanukka, one was allowed to bring the firstfruits
until Hanukka, but without the recitation of D'TD'n Klptt, according to Rabbi Yehuda
bar Ilai. Rabbi Yehuda ben Bathira thinks that the text is also recited after Sukkot,
mBikl.6.
115 Goldschmidt I960, 30.
few people were not able to recite it (mBik 3.7).116 Consequently, it had become
convenient not to test each one's capabilities, but to have it said by the offici-
ating priest on behalf of the person who brought the firstfruits. People on
whose behalf the sages decreed (or remembered) that it would be better to re-
cite those few verses, rather than to embarrass them, cannot be expected to
recite, much lesser even expound, this text in their homes. 117
The Mishna brings Deut 26.5ff either as an elucidation of a principle of
Hellenistic rhetoric or as an independent suggestion of a topic for the dis-
course at the seder. The Talmudim hasten to emphasize the limited impor-
tance of this text by suggesting that one could as well use Joshua 24.2ff and
Deut 6.21. The geonim who created the Palestinian Haggada cut off the recita-
tion at v. 8.118 This removes from the text exactly the verse which would iden-
tify its former function within the cult of the Temple: 'he brought us to this
place...'. It makes the text end with the topic of the day - the liberation from
Egypt - and it increases its applicability to new liturgical contexts.
Joshua 24.2ff, the passage that is proposed by the Yerushalmi, is cut off at
v. 4, ending with: 'Jacob and his children went down to Egypf. This refers to the
116 Daniel Stökl Ben Ezra called my attention to SpecLeg 2.216 CW 5.140. Philo says that
those who do not know the text listen to its recitation by the priest. This may or may
not be based on Philo's own observation, since the Codex Vaticanus of LXX reads 'an-
swering he [ό ιερεύς, the priest, who is the subject of the verbs in v. 4] says' as an in-
troduction to the 'recitation of the firstfruits'. See p. 34 for the slaughtering of the Pe-
sah animal as a similar case. It is noteworthy that this text is noted as not being
known by the people who were supposed to recite it. SifDev 301 Finkelstein 318f and
mSot 7.3 specify the Hebrew language of the text as the specific obstacle for its recita-
tion by a wider public.
117 Cf. also the organization of the recitation of the Hallel according to tPes 10.6-8 197,
which also shows that a normal person was not expected to know the Hallel by heart.
It seems to be the only parallel between Pesah and the 'recitation of the firstfruits' that
those who should recite it, do not know it. It may be added that the collections of Bib-
lia Patristica, vol. I—III do not record quotations of this text (except for one in 4 Ezra
that may also refer to other OT texts). Even Origen did not bother to mention it; cf.
Buchinger 2005, 690f.
118 There is no way to know whether or not tannaim and amoraim who aligned their
seder with the Mishna recited and/or expounded v. 9. Ending with v. 8 as well as v. 9
avoids an eschatological interpretation of the liturgy. It would be as reasonable to
speculate that the sages of the Mishna actually wanted the text to be expounded until
v. 11, which could in this context even be read as a kind of Scriptural support for the
seder after 70 C.E.: to celebrate a festive and most joyful meal with one's enlarged
household, and without a Pesah animal.
Conclusions 117
beginning of Deut 26.5: 'An Aramaean (almost) destroyed my father. He went

down to Egypt'. Between the two passages, the Haggada first refers to the
covenant of Gen 15, which provides an apology for the ancestors' moving to
Egypt. Then, it identifies Laban as 'the Aramaean' probably in order to create
a smooth transition to the beginning of Deut 26.5. A recitation of Joshua 24.5
would double the reference to the Exodus that is already contained in Deut
26.8 and would mention Moses, whose name is avoided in the Haggada. Thus,
there are several reasons for leaving out Joshua 24.5. The omission is condi-
tioned by the literary composition of the Haggada.
To sum up, Deut 26,5ff is an important suggestion of a topic to be dis-
cussed at the seder long after 70 C. E. Where the symposiasts were supposed
to stop expounding the passage in rabbinic times was left to the choice and
understanding of the president of the seder. In its concatenation of Biblical
passages, the Palestinian Haggada does not hand down a tannaitic custom but
creates a geonic one. The tendency is continued by the Babylonians. The
Babylonian 'Midrash' of Deut 26.5-8 may follow the model of tMSh 5.23-29 in
its form. It emphasizes the element of a ritualized 'telling the story of the Exo-
dus' within the Haggada. While this element was not absent from the Hag-
gadot of the Palestinian rite, it was greatly enhanced by the Babylonian revis-
ers of that text.
3.3 Conclusions
Palestinian rabbis and adherents to their movement celebrated Pesah after 70

C. E. by adapting it to the customary forms of Hellenistic symposia. The To-
sefta and the Mishna (Pes 10) suggest different forms of the course of the meal
as well as different contents for the participants' discourse. Younger Babylo-
nian sources show that such older customs tended to be ritualized within an
environment that was further away from the influence of Hellenism than Pal-
estine. Even the Babylonian Talmud tries, however, to slow down the inevita-
ble process of standardization and to keep up a certain level of spontaneity in
the discourse at the seder. In these celebrations, there is no opportunity for a
ritual like the Haggada.
There is no unequivocal indication of when the Haggada was composed.
It emerges, however, in Palestine as a ritualization of the Mishna (Pesahim 10)
and the Yerushalmi (regarding the benedictions over the hors d'oeuvres and
the introduction of the recitation of Joshua 24.2-4). The emergence of the Hag-
gada begins as a slightly expanded quotation of mPes 10 in the context of the

Qiddush preceding the meal of the Pesah evening. Some time before the 9 th
century, the Palestinian Haggada was transferred to communities that fol-
lowed the Babylonian authorities in determining the shape of their liturgies.
These adherents to the Babylonian rite carefully preserved the Palestinian
Haggada but added extensive material that transforms the Palestinian Hag-
gada, which concentrates on mPes 10, into a long narrative of the Exodus.
Communities that followed the Palestinian rite did not take over most of the
expansions that were introduced by the 'Babylonians'. The extant fragments
of the Cairo Geniza that represent the Haggada of the Palestinian rite preserve
a much more archaic version of the Haggada than the various forms of the
Babylonian Haggada.
The Haggada is not the result of a standardization of a certain stage in the
development of the seder liturgy, but constructs a new script ritualizing and
reciting texts of the rabbinic tradition. Nevertheless, those texts preserve
knowledge about liturgies. The emergence of the Haggada thus marks a wa-
tershed in the development of the seder. Its broad acceptance and dissemina-
tion shows a paradigm in which liturgies are constructed and reconstructed
with reference to texts rather than to traditions of actually practiced but more
spontaneous rites.
'The Haggada' is not a literary genre. It is not a rewritten Exodus narra-
tive. It is a single text that was transmitted quite accurately in two recensions.
This long discussion of the Haggada is of paramount importance for the fol-
lowing observations as it removes this text from the list of possible parallels to
Christian phenomena within the scope of this study. It would be a crude
anachronism to compare Christian texts of at least the first four centuries C. E.
with the Haggada in order to establish elements of a Jewish-Christian dis-
course on Pesah and Easter. The dissemination of customs around the seder
among Jews and its knowledge among Christians must be discussed inde-
pendently from the Haggada.
4 Easter Sunday
The origins and early history of the Christian Easter can only be understood in
relation to the Jewish Pesah. Although there is no doubt regarding the validity
of this basic assumption, the question of which form of the Jewish Pesah should
be compared to which form of the Christian Pascha or Easter in order to write
its early history can be answered much less easily. Some issues have been ad-
dressed in the preceding two chapters. Thus, the function and meaning of two
of the most important texts in the history of Pesah and Easter have been as-
sessed: the Haggada and the Biblical account and legislation about the Egyp-
tian Pesah (Exodus 12). The later celebrations of the Pesah and the Pascha are
not dependent upon them. Furthermore, two churches engage in a bitter con-
flict about the correct date of the celebration soon after the emergence of the
oldest witnesses for the Christian Pascha. This indicates that too simple a re-
construction will not be able to explain the data.
Fortunately, the most important aspects of these forms of the Pascha have
been studied thoroughly. Thus, the shape and meaning of the Quartodeciman
Pascha, as well as the background for its conflict with the Dominical Easter,
have been described. Some scholars would admit that the Quartodeciman
Pascha preserves the older form of the Christian celebration. There is, how-
ever, no reliable consensus about when this liturgy emerged and when and
why it gave rise to the innovation of the Dominical Easter. If the relation of the
Quartodeciman Pascha to Judaism is accepted as a proof for its antiquity, it
must be asked why this custom was changed. It is irrelevant in this context
whether the (gentile) bishops of Jerusalem after the Bar Kochba revolt,1 the
mainstream clergy of the Romans some decades later, or another church
started to shift the celebration to a Sunday. For each of them, one can imagine
reasons why they should have introduced that innovation. The question may
be answered by means of the model of multiple origins that converge with
each other over time. If the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem and the
1 Cf. Huber 1969, 49-61.

120 Easter Sunday
decline of Palestinian Jewry because of the Bar Kochba revolt, as well as that of
the Jewish communities in the Cyrenaica and Egypt in the wake of the Dias-
pora uprising in 117 C.E., are taken seriously, Jewish and Christian liturgies
that begin to be attested after this period can be explained as new beginnings -
rather than as proofs for a never-interrupted practice. Similarly, different
churches may have begun with different calendars to celebrate Christ's death,
which only led to conflicts and ultimately to unification after two of those ap-
proaches gained more momentum and began to fight for supremacy - Quarto-
decimanism and the Dominical Pascha. Rabbinic Judaism had a marked inter-
est in the reestablishment of certain features of the Judaism of Second Temple
times, among them the Biblical festivals. A similar interest may have been
shared by some Jewish communities in the Diaspora. Thus, Melito of Sardis
can be interpreted as a participant in a discourse that may have been going on
for some time between some Christians and Jews, and that led to the creation
of what Gerard Rouwhorst interprets as 'anti-Pesah', the Quartodeciman cele-
bration of the Pascha. The following discussion accepts most elements of this
reconstruction. This does not, however, solve the question of the emergence
and meaning of Easter Sunday.
Karl Gerlach has recently suggested an early date for the origin of Easter
Sunday. Several scholars, especially Jan Van Goudoever, whose seminal study
on the Biblical calendars is still widely quoted, and Willy Rordorf, who bases
his theses on Van Goudoever's, have proposed precursors of Easter Sunday in
Second Temple Judaism and the apostolic churches. Yet, the question of when
and why this celebration emerged must be regarded as unanswered. The dis-
cussion has reached a new level of interest by the final publication of the cal-
endars that are attested in the scrolls from the Judean Desert. A crucial point
for the assessment of the date of the emergence and meaning of Easter Sunday
is its relation to Jewish institutions and Biblical texts. This implies that Easter
Sunday may not be a typically Christian invention, but could also be the result
of a reinterpretation of an old Jewish custom.
The following chapter addresses the following issues regarding the emer-
gence of Easter Sunday vis-ä-vis Jewish sources: the emergence of the Chris-
tian Sunday itself; the Omer ritual and its possible influence on Christian litur-
gies; the seventh day of the festival of Unleavened Bread in Judaism and the
question of whether it left some traces in the Christian cycles of festivals; the
Christian Pentecost; the question of a Christian form of the festival of Unleav-
ened Bread; and the relationship of the 364-day calendar (as it its attested in
the Qumran scrolls and related literature) to forms and contents of the Chris-
tian Easter.
Sunday arid Easter Sunday 121
In these comparisons, the contents and meaning of Easter Sunday, and

Sunday in general, is only hinted at in very general terms, because the data are
inexplicit or at least not verbose about texts being read and events being com-
memorated. The last and seventh section of this chapter will, therefore, widen
the scope and take up the question of the manifold contents of the Easter vigil
of the liturgy of Jerusalem in the fourth and fifth centuries. The Easter vigil
must be discussed here, because it is claimed to be a survival from ancient
times. Thus, it seems that the fourth century Easter vigil supplies exactly those
data that are missing from the previous three centuries and necessary for un-
derstanding them. It is very tempting to read them back into earlier epochs.
One aspect of this latter question requires a broad discussion: the so-called
'Hymn of the four nights' that is preserved in the Palestinian targums to Exod
12.42. This text will be studied in the last of the main chapters of the present
study.
4.1 Sunday and Easter Sunday
Wolfgang Huber concludes that Easter Sunday resulted from the encounter of
the Quartodeciman Pascha and the Christian Sunday.2 It seems indeed that
the celebration of the Sunday was already widespread when Easter Sunday
emerged. Yet, the relation between Sunday and Easter Sunday may be more
complex. Karl Gerlach locates the emergence of Easter Sunday in Antioch,
apparently in the first century C. E. It should have been perceived as 'more
"Christian" (...) because it takes its cue from the chief day of worship rather
than the equally Christian interpretation of Exod 12'.3 Both the celebration of
Sunday and that of a movable form of Easter are presupposed to have existed
in apostolic times. Moreover, Sunday is already a typical feature of 'Christi-
anity' and as such powerful enough to lead to the change of the date and char-
acter of the Judeo-Christian Pesah. Gerlach assumes that this custom was pas-
2 'Die Osterfeier am Sonntag aber verdankt ihre Entstehung dem Zusammentreffen der
an keinen bestimmten Wochentag gebundenen Passafeier mit der wöchentlichen
Sonntagsfeier der Christen'; Huber 1969, 47 and n. 11.
3 Gerlach 1998, 407. In 370-372, he sees the combination of the Omer and Sunday as a
rhetorical argument that should establish the observance of Easter Sunday as '"old
style" mimesis designed to negate the "very ancient custom" of Asia Minor' - i. e.
Quartodecimanism; 371.
122 Easter Sunday
sed on to the other Churches 'early enough' in order that information about its
origins should already have 'fade(d) from living memory'. It may be left un-
decided for now whether or not the remark about the invention of the name
Χριστιανοί 4 reflects a historical reality. Gerlach's assumption first poses the
question of why Jewish-Christian groups should have changed the liturgical
calendar of their community in order to make it more 'Christian'. In addition,
it has to be asked how it can be substantiated that this occurred 'early enough'
in order that it had already 'fade(d) from living memory' when Christians be-
gin to write about it. The idea in itself is not implausible, as there are more
recent instances which show that people who believed in Christ introduced
changes into their customs apparently in order to resemble less what they per-
ceived as 'Judaism'. Nevertheless, Gerlach presupposes that (1) Antiochene
Jews and 'Christians' celebrated Pesah at that time, while (2) some of them had
already a clear idea about a Christian and non-Jewish character of the Sunday,
and (3) that both forms of the celebration of Pesah and Easter were deeply con-
cerned with Exod 12. The first and third points have been rejected in the pre-
ceding chapters. It is, therefore, unlikely that Antiochene Jews celebrated a
form of Pesah as a reeneactment of Exod 12. The question (2) of when Sunday
became a generally accepted custom in early Christianity must be addressed
now, because Gerlach presupposes its existence and its clearly Christian - even
implying non-Jewish - character for the first century.
4.1.1 Pliny
Christians certainly began to hold assemblies on Sundays before the middle of

the second century. There is no consensus about the time when this practice
began. The information that is provided by Pliny the Younger, who is often
quoted in support of a very early date when Christians began to celebrate on
Sundays, is inconclusive. The testimony is included in Pliny's letter to the em-
peror that seeks to bolster up his claim that his way of dealing with the Chris-
tians was well ordered and in accordance with the emperor's interests, the law,
and political reason. Pliny's account indicates that he does not know very
much about the customs of the Christians, whom he persecutes:
Others, whose names were given to me by an informer, first admitted the charge
and then denied it; they said that they had ceased to be Christians two or more
4 Acts 11.26. Cf. also 26.28; 1 Petr 4.15f.

Sunday and Easter Sunday 123
years previously, and some of them even twenty years ago. They all did reverence
to your statue and the images of the gods in the same way as the others, and re-
viled the name of Christ. They also declared that the sum total of their guilt or er-
ror amounted to no more than this: they had met regularly before dawn on a fixed
day to chant verses alternately5 among themselves in honour of Christ as if to a
god, and also to bind themselves by oath, not for any criminal purpose, but to ab-
stain from theft, robbery, and adultery, to commit no breach of trust and not to
deny a deposit when called upon to restore it. After this ceremony, it had been
their custom to disperse and reassemble later to take food of an ordinary, harmless
kind; but they had in fact given up this practice since my edict, issued on your in-
structions, which banned all political societies. This made me decide it was all the
more necessary to extract the truth by torture from two slave-women, whom they
call deaconesses6. I found nothing but a degenerate sort of cult carried to extrava-
gant lengths.7
The last sentence, Ί found nothing but a degenerate and extravagant supersti-
tion8', refers to the beliefs of the two women rather than to the cult described
above. The liturgy is described by people who emphasize that they stopped
practicing it a long time ago. Moreover, Pliny does not show that he found out
anything about a day within the weekly cycle when the liturgy should have
been enacted: 'stato die (ante lucem convenire)'. Pliny is not a witness to
Christian celebrations on Sundays.
These observations correspond to the situation of the New Testament that
likewise does not know the celebration of Sundays or the main Christian gath-
ering on those days.9 Thus, Paul generally denounces 'weak and inferior ele-
5 'Carmenque Christo quasi deo dicere secum invicem...' The context of the letter does
not allow to build a history of Christian music on invicem. Cf. also Thraede 2004, 175
n. 78. Brucker 108ff observes that 'carmen' does not imply a hymnic text, especially
not the existence of 'Christushymnen' in New Testament times.
6 'Ministrae dicebantur' does not indicate that these women were called διάκονοι, as
assumed by Thraede 2004,127.
7 Pliny the younger, letter 10, tr. by Radice, LCL 289 (text 288).
8 Thraede 2004, 127 describes the opposition religio - superstitio in Roman thinking.
Pliny does not want the emperor to think that he regarded the set of believes that he
found as worthy of the designation 'religion'.
9 Thraede 2004, 124f observes that the celebration of the weekly Sunday cannot be
reconstructed from the NT. He (125 and n. 77) refers to the reemergence of the discus-
sion about the NT texts on the Sunday between Llewelyn 2001 and Young 2003 (who
rejects Llewelyn's arguments for the assumption that the Sunday emerged in NT
times; cf. also Bacchiocchi 1977, 90-131 and Rouwhorst's summary 2001, 232-234).
The main arguments are: (1) Regarding 1 Cor 16.2, Paul suggests that people add to a
collection of money on their own each first day of the week. He might have wanted to
124 Easter Sunday
merits' (ασθενή και πτωχά στοιχεία) such as 'days, appointed times (καιροί),
months, years' (Gal 4.8-11). Although the preceding chapter discusses the va-
lidity of the Law for Christians, which also implies that the Old Testament
festivals were abolished, it cannot be inferred from Gal 4 that the Galatians
were tempted to celebrate the Jewish festivals in particular. Paul attacks those
who fall back into pagan idolatry and the worship of the στοιχεία. 10 His
successor turns this into a refutation of a specifically Jewish practice, such as
rules about food and 'festivals, new moons, and Sabbaths' (Col 2.16f; cf. Is
1.13). In any case, neither Paul nor the author of the letter to the Colossians
provides a replacement for the rejected customs - like a proclamation of other
καιροί to be held on other dates or another καιρός to be kept after the Sab-
bath. 11
4.1.2 Ignatius
A reference to the observance of a Christian Sunday is often read in(to) the

shorter recension of Ignatius of Antioch's letter to the Magnesians (9.1):
If, therefore, those who were dwelling12 in the old things came to the newness of a
hope (viz. could reach a new hope) - on the condition that they did not keep Sab-
avoid the handling of money on the Sabbath. There is no indication that this hap-
pened in a community gathering; thus also Rouwhorst 2001, 251. (2) Acts 20.7 refers
to a Christian gathering on 'the first day of the week' within a sequence of many ref-
erences to periods of time: Acts 19.8-21.18; Young 2003, 118. The text does not indi-
cate whether this reflects a regular or even liturgical custom or is an accidental feature
of the narrative about Paul's itinerary. (3) The situation of Rev 1.10 does not suggest a
Christian gathering on this κυριακή ήμερα on which the seer 'was (engaged) in the
spirit έγενόμην έν πνεύματι. A remark about the loneliness of the seer ('being on
the island of Patmos') can hardly count as argument for that day as typical of Chris-
tian communal gatherings. Moreover, several interpretations for κυριακή can be en-
visaged here.
10 Klauser 1967, 763. Harland 2003, 184 shows that the social problems behind Paul's
rhetoric emerge from the Christian's dual or multiple affiliations and continuing loy-
alties to different sectors of society.
11 Rom 14.5f regards the keeping or neglect of certain 'days' as analogous to eating vs.
refraining from eating meat.
12 Αναστρέφω, cf. Gal 4.9 επιστρέφω.
13
baths any more, but were living according to a Lordly {(way of) life) - in which
(referring to the hope rather than the life) also our life emerged (άνέτειλεν)
through him and through his death - which some deny - through which mystery
we received the faith and because of (which) we remain steadfast, in order that we
be regarded as disciples of Jesus Christ, our only teacher; how can we then live
without him, whose disciples were also the prophets in the Spirit and whom they
expected as a teacher?
Therefore, he, whom they justly expected, came and raised them from the dead,
too.
The meaning of the text itself is as debated as the age of the whole composi-
tion. Martin Wallraff (2001, 94 η. 21) and Andreas Lindemann (2002) review
the recent discussion of the dating of this corpus of letters between the earlier
and later second century.14 While the discussion developed into a highly
sophisticated dispute about its relationship to doctrinal matters, several argu-
ments continue to caution the reader not to build important theses on an early
second century date of these texts. Thus, Reinhard Hübner's (1997) argument
that the lists of early bishops in Eusebius' Church History are not reliable
enough information from which to infer the date of a text is also accepted by
13 ΆΛΛά κατά κυριοικήν + ζωήν ζώντες. The translation follows the Greek text which is
normally emended according to the Latin version that may reflect a Greek Vorlage
without ζωήν. The Latin translation understands κυρι/χκή as the Lord's (day). In the
longer recension of Magn. 9.1-5 (which takes u p every word of the shorter recension
and puts it into a much more explicit, even redundant context), it is evident that the
Lord's day is meant (esp. 9.4) while the term 'life' is not mentioned there. This shows
that if ζωήν is a loss in the shorter texts rather than an addition in the Greek, it was
lost within the Greek tradition and not left out by the translator. It would be a com-
mon error, if a copyist dropped ζωήν before ζώντες (homoioarkton). Cf. Schoedel
1985, 123-125 against Bacchiocchi 1977, 213-218. Rordorf 1962, 208 n. 84 rejects the
reading of the Greek text as dittography on the basis of two arguments: first, the evi-
dence of the versions and the longer recension; second, because the Greek reading
should be nonsensical ('...wird auch der Sinn der Stelle dadurch völlig verdunkelt').
While the first objection must be taken seriously, the second one depends on what
Rordorf is prepared to accept as 'sense' of the passage.
14 Lindemann 2002 discusses Lechner 1999 and summarizes (161) the consensus. He
admits that it cannot be substantiated that Ignatius' letters were written in the time of
Trajan (Lechner's argument). Yet, Lechner did not corroborate his later date in the 2nd
half of the 2nd cent. Lindemann supports the older opinion that regards the letters as a
product of the early 2nd cent, and regards the social and religious background of the
letters as historically reliable.
126 Easter Sunday
Lindemann (1997, 186). 15 Hübner's (1997) conclusions based on (Ps.-)Ignatius'

vocabulary were, however, rejected by Mark Edwards (1998, 217-222), who
shows that Ignatius' terminology is possible in the early second century.
Georg Schöllgen (1998) asserts that some of Hübner's new arguments (new
insofar as they surpass what has already been discussed in the 19 th century)
remain dependent upon one's idea of what is 'plausible' for a pseudepigraphic
text or not. 16 While Schöllgen does not think that Hübner proved his point
regarding the pseudepigraphy of the text, he acknowledges the problems that
supporters of the authenticity of the letters continue to have (25). The follow-
ing discussion of the text accepts what seems to be a broad consensus that pre-
supposes an early second century date for the Ignatian corpus.
Wallraff interprets Magn 9.1 as evoking the association of the sun in 'Sun-
day' by mentioning 'the Lord's' (κυρίακή 17 ) and 'rising' (άνατέλΛειν) in the
following sentence. 18 The emended Greek text reads: 'but live according to
Lord's (viz. day), on which also our life rose (like the sun)'. This would be a
good interpretation if the passage originated late in the second century. Wal-
lraff notes (2001, 91), however, that the Romans were adapting their customs to
the planetary week (of 7 days) at Justin's time - after the presumed date of the
15 Hübner blurs the picture drawn in ch. 5 (1997, 67-70) in his earlier (50) remark, that
the testimonium in Polycarp's letter be an interpolation. He suggests in ch. 5 to inter-
pret many traits of Ignatius' letters as based on the kind of information that can be
found in Polycarp's letter. It is, therefore, unnecessary to assume that the
testimonium in Polycarp's letter be a later interpolation. Assumptions about the style
(resembling Asianic rhetoric; Hübner 1997, 66) and Ignatius' concept of the office of
the bishop suggest a dating in the 2nd half of the 2nd cent.
16 It may be remarked that the later 2nd cent, also saw the creation of a text like the Acta
Pauli, a short passage of which will be reviewed below. 'Plausibility' is a vague con-
cept there. If Paul can baptize a lion which embraces celibacy after its conversion
(NTApo II51989, 242), how should Ps.-Ignatius' failure to mention the Roman bishop
show that he wrote at the beginning of the 2nd cent.? The recipients probably forgave
the author's deviation from what they knew to have been historical reality in ex-
change for a good story.
17 In light of Did 14.1, a missing ήμέραν after κατά κυριακήν is not a reason to reject
κυρι/χκή as meaning 'the Lord's (day)' here.
18 While it is true that ανατέλλω is typically used for the rising of a heavenly body over
the horizon, Liddell and Scott 123 also refer to metaphoric uses such as Hebr 7.14
where it is said that Jesus 'originated' from the tribe of Judah. 2 Peter 1.19 refers to Je-
sus' 'rising' in the hearts of people compared with the morning star and not with the
sun.
letter.19 An early date of the whole corpus makes it, therefore, more difficult to
read a self-evident reference to 'the Sunday' in this expression of Magn. 9.1.
This is corroborated by the wider context of the passage. If the Greek text
is adopted as the main source, Ignatius remains within the borders of Paul's
criticism of keeping appointed times in general, while renouncing the promo-
tion of other appointed times instead of them.20 Moreover, Magn 9.If is not a
piece of anti-Jewish polemic. It is also not an invective against festivals (such
as Gal 4.8f), but a discussion of the meaning of the Old Testament prophets'
lives for Christians: Even persons living in Old Testament times and belonging
to a kind of old dispensation ('dwelling in old things') could attain to the new
hope of Christ, provided that they led a life that was worthy of Christ. Insofar
as they did that and even suffered for it (ch. 8) they eventually received their
reward. Ignatius goes on to conclude a minori ad maius that if this already
applies to the Old Testament prophets, how much more should the Christians
live up to their vocation - not 'keeping the Sabbath' (and other laws of the
past) but (lead) 'a Lordly (life)' (or 'day' as a metaphor for 'life').21
Ignatius expresses the same thought in the preceding chapter (8.1): 'For the
most divine prophets lived according to Jesus Christ'.22 Magn 10.1 goes on to
19 See p. 138. Wallraff is interested in much later material. His qualification of the 'cele-
bration of the Sunday' as 'Urgestein' of the tradition of Christianity and as 'going back
into the earliest times of the Church' requires a revision; 2001, 89. This does not in-
validate the rest of his observations.
20 It must be admitted that Ignatius changes 1 Cor 5.7f in a way the significance of which
is difficult to assess. For he admonishes his readers to change into a 'new leaven' in-
stead of an unleavened state, Magn 10.2. Ignatius apparently combines Matth 16.6-12
with 1 Cor 5. Therefore, his metaphors should not be over-interpreted.
21 The text is best understood as referring to the Old Testament prophets and not inter-
preted by means of sophisticated theses about different shades of Judeo-Christianism.
Bacchiocchi 1977, 215 likewise uses the concept of Judeo-Christianism too lightly: the
thesis of a 'constant influx of converts from the synagogue' at the beginning of the 2 nd
cent., as well as the idea that exactly such 'converts' would have influenced 'the
church' to keep 'Jewish' practices would require some documentation. Rordorf's
(1980b, Review of Bacchiocchi 1977) and Schoedel's 1985, 123 n. 3 invective against
(Bacchiocchi's) Seventh-day Adventism misses the point. Cf. Rouwhorst's 2001, 235f
much more balanced view. A reading is not per se suspect, because it can be used to
bolster up claims of Seventh-day Adventism.
22 Schoedel (1985, 118): 'Be not deceived by erroneous opinions nor by old fables, which
are useless. For if we continue to live until now according to Judaism, we confess that
we have not received grace. For the most divine prophets lived according to Jesus
Christ. For this reason they were also persecuted, inspired as they were by his grace
128 Easter Sunday
explain that Christian discipleship implies that one must 'learn to live accord-
ing to Christianity'. Ch. 8-10 are united by the idea of a Christian way of life:
κατά νόμον ζώμεν (8.1), κατά Χριστόν Ίησοϋν έζησαν (8.2), κατά κυριακήν
(± ζωήν) ζώντες (9.1), κατά Χριστιανισμόν ζην (10.1). In this context, ζωήν
could be read as a more accurate explication of what is implied in the text
rather than ή μέραν - even if it was a textual addition.23
Willy Rordorf (1962, 138) rejects an understanding of Magn 9.1 according
to its wider context (8.If). He supposes that 9.1 speaks about Jewish Chris-
tians:
Nach allem aber, was wir von der palästinensischen Judenchristenheit wissen,
kann sie nicht in Betracht kommen: sie und ihre ebionitischen Abzweigungen ha-
ben immer am Sabbat festgehalten. Darum spielt Ignatius Magn. 9,1 offenbar auf
Judenchristen an, die kürzlich sich ganz der heidenchristlichen Grosskirche ange-
schlossen und ihre jüdischen Bräuche aufgegeben haben. Wir denken unwillkür-
lich an die 'schwachen Brüder' der Paulusbriefe, die inzwischen zu 'Starken' ge-
worden sind!
Why does Ignatius mention this special case at all and why would he have de-
nied these Christians the discipleship of Jesus because of some kind of 'keep-
ing the Sabbath'? In order to support this thesis, Rordorf interprets 'keeping
the Sabbath' as a metonymy for 'keeping Jewish customs'. Similarly, both
Sabbath and Sunday 'serve primarily to characterize two whole ways of life'
according to William Schoedel (1985, 123). It is an ironic feature of Schoedel's
commentary that he explains the term 'Sunday' in the Latin version in the
same way as it is given in the rejected text of the Greek manuscript as 'way of
life' in order to be able to understand the passage at all. Even if Ignatius
should speak about 'Sunday' against 'Sabbath' here, this should not be an ex-
hortation to attend the Eucharist on Sundays, but to live an acceptable life.
Thus, if 'Sunday' should have been meant in the original text, it would have
so that the disobedient might be persuaded that there is one God who revealed him-
self through Jesus Christ his Son, who is his Word which proceeded from silence, who
in every way pleased him who sent him.' In light of this passage, it is clear that the
prophets are also seen as not having kept the Sabbath - according to 9.1; Schoedel
1985, 119 against his own commentary to 9.1. Schoedel also refers to Barn 15.8 (and
2.4-6 esp. on sacrifices; 9.4 circumcision; 10.11-12 on the law in general) for a similar
understanding, likewise based on Is 1.13.
23 NT passages express this idea, for example, with αναστροφή (rather than ζωή, cf. Gal
1.13; Eph 4.22f; 1 Peter 3.15f) or περιπατεΐν (as in Rom 6.4 or μή κατά σάρκα
περιπατοϊχπν άλλα κατά πνεύμα 8.4 and cf. 2 Cor 10.2f; κατα άγάπην περιπατείς
14.15; κατά ανθρωπον περιπατείτε 1 Cor 3.3; 2 John 6.2 Gal 1.13.1).
been only a shadowy metaphor that must be understood such as the Greek
text. Commentators who reject the Greek ζωήν, come back to it in their inter-
pretation of the alleged meaning 'Sunday'. To sum up, Ignatius' Magn 9 is not
a reliable testimony to an early institution of the Christian Sunday, much less
for its meaning and certainly not for any liturgy.
4.1.3 The Didache
The Didache24 devotes a paragraph (14) to the description of penitence that is

well placed in the context of the remarks on the Eucharist. The latter is dis-
cussed as a pure offering (θυσία) in the sense of Mal l.ll. 2 5 The pleonastic
indication of the time, κατά κυριακήν δέ κυρίου, invites emendations or at
least the special attention of interpreters.26 Already the compiler of the Apos-
tolic Constitutions (7.30 SC 336.60) felt the need to clarify this expression and
paraphrased it την άναστάσιμον τοϋ Κυρίου ήμέραν, την κυριακήν φαμεν.
In the fourth century, this phrase of the Didache referred to 'the Sunday'. Did
it imply that two centuries earlier? According to Kurt Niederwimmer, the Di-
dache takes the celebration of the Sunday for granted and does not know a
Christian Sabbath. It is apparently a hint to the circumstances of the emer-
gence of the custom of keeping the Sunday. The reference to the Lord's (day)
may seem awkward. At best, it stands at the beginning of the development of
a new terminology as well as new customs that eventually led to support a
Christian identity as a non-Jewish one.
24 Niederwimmer 1998, 53: 110 or 120 C. E.

25 Niederwimmer 1998,194-199.
26 Dugmore 1962, 419 suggests to understand a reference to Easter Sunday in this text as
part of a broader thesis to read much more references to the yearly Pascha in the early
texts than to the Sunday. His theses are based on the assumptions that Pentecost was
celebrated in the apostolic church and 'Sunday as the weekly commemoration of the
Resurrection' (418). Both are rejected below. Tidwell 1999 thinks that the pleonastic
phrase refers to Yom Kippur. This is unacceptable. Stökl Ben Ezra 2003, 217f refutes
the idea by showing that Tidwell tacitly builds his claim on a concept that he actually
rejects, namely that κυριακή (κυρίου) means 'Sunday 7 . For only if κυριακή somehow
means 'Sunday', its allegedly 'Semitic superlative' κυριακή κυρίου can mean 'greatest
of the Lord's Days, the most solemn of the Lord's Days'. Κύριος may point to YHWH.
However, κυριακή does not mean 113® as in fim© rntff Lev 16.31 (LXX σάββατα
σαββάτων). Κυριακή κυρίου does not mean 'Day of Atonement', because it is a
phrase that consists of two words which are derived from the same root like iirattf mtff.
130 Easter Sunday
This tendency is evident in the letter of Barnabas, but one may also inter-
pret certain passages of the Didache in a similar direction. In this context, the
stance of the Didache towards fasting on certain days of the week is an im-
portant test-case for its stance towards Judaism. It must, firstly, be discussed
in some detail here, because the Didache is repeatedly quoted in support of the
assumption of a regular Jewish fast on Mondays and Thursdays. Secondly, if
the Didache shares a tendency to construct Christianity bit by bit as non- or
even anti-Judaism, one would expect more such negative correspondences
apart from the Lord's day, which is not explicitly said to replace the Sabbath.
The following observations show, however, that the position of the Didache is
much less anti-Judaic and that it may reflect a much less tangible attempt to
create Christianity - or rather to experiment with language about the creation
of Christianity.
Unlike the unclear terminology about the Lord's day in ch. 14, the Didache
says explicitly that the Christian fasts create a difference to the customs of the
'hypocrites':27
Let your fasts not (take place) with (those of) the wicked (μετά των ύποκρπών).
They fast on Monday and Thursday; you, though, should fast on Wednesday and
Friday.
As remarked above, the Didache remains silent where one would expect its
opposition against the Sabbath, which is obviously Jewish, but it polemizes
openly in the question of the days of fasting. Many critics identified the Di-
dache's 'hypocrites' with the Jews. The method of creating a new group iden-
tity in opposition to others is the same. Yet, the identity of those 'others' re-
mains unclear.28
27 Translation: Niederwimmer 1998, 131. For Niederwimmer (and others) ch. 14 and 8
belong to a more recent layer of the text, cf. 131 'It is clear that 8.1-3 is an addition.'
and 194 'The text [ch. 14] is redactional.' In the present context, it is irrelevant
whether or not this claim can be substantiated. Cf. also Schöllgen's 1986, 23 warnings.
The establishment of later or younger layers within the Didache may be based on un-
tenable opinions about the genre of the text and hence its ideal style. Deviations from
the latter would point to compilers' activities. It is assumed here that the Didache
shares a tendency that eventually leads to the mind-set of Barnabas while it is still less
explicit. The sources hardly allow to assign precise decades within the 2nd cent, to
such developments.
28 Cf. Draper 1992 (= 1996), 231ff for attempts to identify the 'hypocrites'. The 'hypo-
crites' are not 'the Jews'. If the author should have wanted to refer to Pharisees or
Jews, he would have been able to say so. Marcello Del Verme 2003, 347 tries to iden-
Luke 18.12 assumes that the 'hypocrites' fast two undefined days of the
week. There are no indications about the practice to fast exactly on Monday
and Thursday in the first century. Later, the two days are reported to be held
as the main market days every week and hence also serve as occasions to call
public fasts if the circumstances require that.29 It is highly unlikely and not
tify the 'hypocrites' as a group within first century (Judaeo-) Christianity that derived
from the Pharisees and was opposed by the 'others' who were 'Essenic/Enochian off-
shoots'. Apart from the much too early date for the Didache (cf. n. 24 p. 129) and the
problematic link between Christianity and 'Essenism' (cf. ch. 4.6.2), Del Verme does
not refer to external sources in order to support customs of fasting on these days.
Why should the 'two days per week' (Luke 18.12) be Monday and Thursday and why
should the predilection for Wednesday and Friday point to the 'Essenes'? Del
Verme's implicit reference to Wednesday, Friday, and Sunday as 'specific days' for
festivals in the 364-day calendars (356) echoes an observation by Annie Jaubert that is
untenable now, cf. VanderKam (cf. n. 390 p. 260). Moreover, one may assume that
holding a festival should exclude fasting. Thus, it would be strange, if days that were
allegedly singled out for festivals should at the same time be the most appropriate
times for regular ascetic exercises. Tertullian is the only early witness to a Eucharist
on Wednesdays and Fridays; Buchinger 2005, 50f n. 193 and p. 148f and for Rufinus'
Latin translation (and adaptation) of Origen 121 n. 634. There is no reason to assume
that Origen's homilies on NT texts be connected with such a custom. The fast is not
associated with Easter, Buchinger I.e.
29 tTaan 2.4 330f (not in ms. Erfurt), more implicitly mTaan 2.9. Urbach 2002 (= 1960/61),
55/444 supposes that fasting on Monday and Thursday was a replacement for the fast
of the men of the Maamadot after the destruction of the Temple. In order that every-
body should be able to keep this fast, it was abbreviated and only decreed to be held
on the first and the last day of the fast of the Maamadot. Urbach does not quote
sources that support this reconstruction directly. The fact, that Jews should fast at all
on Mondays and Thursdays is mentioned in one recension of a medieval addition to
'Megilat Taanit' (Urbach η. 33; 'der apokryphe Schluß von Meg. Taan.' Elbogen
already 1931, 76 also referring to the dates in Seder Olam Rabba that are given as
reasons for the fasting in other sources). I am grateful to Günter Stemberger for his re-
mark that even in that late text, it only occurs in one recension. One may add BerR
76.3 TA 900, where a form of fasting or mourning (απ'1?» νπ Π'ΜΓΙΟ) on Mondays and
Thursdays is referred to. The editors of BerR TA 900 also quote (besides 'Megilat
Taanit') Masekhet Sofrim 21.1 352-354. The latter source (ch. 10-21) is not attested by
the geonim or among the Geniza mss., but was composed in Italy or Byzantium,
brought to Ashkenaz and received a final redaction in the 14th cent., Blank 1999/2000.
All those sources are not relevant for customs of the first century. Sofrim 21.1 is even
a blatant misquotation in this context. It mentions fasts and the prohibition to call
public fasts in Nisan. Moreover, it mentions a sequence of Monday - Thursday -
Monday to be fasted after Purim and the same sequence of three days is fasted by 'the
132 Easter Sunday
intended by the old sources that large groups of Jews should have been used
to fasting on these days each week during the whole year - on the days when
courts of law were in session (mKet 1.1) and people gathered in the local cen-
ters for many purposes. On the contrary, these public processes are reduced
and later even interrupted during times of prolonged public fasting (mTaan
1.7). Extrapolating wider accepted customs from the tannaitic sources, one
may say with some confidence, that 'Jews' did not fast on Mondays and
Thursdays in Antiquity.
The term 'fast' has, apparently, different meanings in the Didache and in
the Tosefta. While the Tosefta refers to the public customs of Τ " ϊ rriyr de-
clared on Mondays and Thursdays in cases of especially agrarian catastrophes
that pose a danger for the whole community, the Didache apparently has a
regular ascetic practice in mind.30 Even if forms of fasting by individual per-
disciples' apparently before Pesah and as one of the exceptions of a general

prohibition to fast in Nisan. The three days as well as the reference to 'the disciples'
echo the Babylonian Talmud. There is not the faintest trace of a general custom to fast
on Mondays and Thursdays in Sofrim 21.1. The only reliable witness to the high age
of the Jewish custom is the Didache; Urbach, η. 34. A general fast on Mondays and
Thursdays as it is attested in Seder Rav Amram Gaon (seder Hilkhot Taaniyot no. 49 1.
23f Goldschmidt 92) cannot be older than from geonic times. There, a fast on Monday
and Thursday is proposed: 'for the destruction of the Temple, for the Tora that has
been burnt, and for the revilement of the Name (of God)'. As these are neither
necessitated by catastrophes nor by calendrical commemorations, they seem to have
been suggested for permanent practice. Böhl 1987 interprets this fast as pentiential
fast after Antiochus Epiphanes destroyed the books of the Law. The main evidence
for this are his assumptions that the 364-day calendar of Qumran should only allow a
regular fast on Mondays, Tuesdays, and Thursdays and that the saying of Luke 18.12
antedates the destruction of the Temple. The occurrence of a national catastrophe is,
however, no reason to reconstruct the institution of a regular custom of fasting in its
wake. Böhl himself observes that it does not make much sense that the fast days co-
incide with the market days.
30 Schöllgen 1986, 9 draws the reader's attention to the fact that nothing is actually said
about duration, intensity, or restrictions of this fast. For the discussion here, it is as-
sumed that the Didache wants most Christians to 'fast' on both of these days during
the year. This is sufficient to highlight the differences to Judaism given above. Van de
Sandt and Flusser refer to mMeg 3.6 and 4.1; 2002, 293 n. 74. The reference to mMeg
seems to reflect an unusual understanding of the division of this text into syntactic
units:'... on fast days (one reads) the benedictions and curses. One does not interrupt
the curses, but one (reader) reads all of them' - new subject - 'On Monday, Thursday,
and the Sabbath at Minha one reads according to their order...' Theoretically, one
could draw 'Monday and Thursday' to the preceding clause. This would imply that
sons,31 CPTTP rrrayn, are among the initial stages of an elaborate ritual process
that culminates in t i t s irnsn (mTaan 1.4-7), both customs are different with
regard to their social and liturgical circumstances. 32 The νηστεία of the Di-
dache is not a fast in the sense of the Tosefta and the Mishna rravn.
Only in Palestine were public fasts customary. 33 In Babylon, scholars con-
verted the rituals (intended for use in cases of danger for the life of the com-
the Mishna only prescribes an additional reading of the Tora at Minha on Sabbaths,
but rules that (every?) Monday and Thursday the curses be read. If Van de Sandt and
Flusser should have had this interpretation in mind, it would have required an elabo-
rate discussion of the passage.
31 tTaan 2.4 331f does not obviate these observations. The Tosefta gives a list of differ-
ences between a 'public' fast and the fast of an 'individual'. This can be read in the
context of 2.15f 335f, where people fast in a case emergency (for a sick person). As
such it is in no way connected with Mondays and Thursdays. One may, however,
read the injunctions of the Mishna, that regard the fast of individuals as precursor for
the public fast, into this text, because the Mishna seems to make explicit what is im-
plied in tTaan 1.3 323.12f ('The individuals only begin to fast on the beginning of the
month'). tTaan 1.7 324f also implies that the ascetic practice of the ΤΓΡ is connected
with the public. The EPTTP are not a class of Jewish hermits, but single people who
start to fast before the whole community is forced to do so. The question of why the
cpm' fast on Mondays and Thursdays instead of other days is thus answered by the
observation that the 'fasf cannot be imagined as anything else than "Πϊϊ iron which is
fixed to the market days. Those who practice this first stage must do so on the appro-
priate days. It is not likely that the Didache should imply: 'If there is a drought, and
the town decides to call a public fast, do not join the rabbis on Mondays and Thurs-
days, but...'. Such a Christian 'identity' as a public provocation would only function
in times of drought, in Palestine, and in the winter season.
32 Daniel Stökl Ben Ezra's 2001 observations even suggest that Christian polemics
against Jewish fasts concern Yom Kippur. Thus, Christians may have felt superior be-
cause of their ascetic customs, but there were no two regular days of fasting per week
in Judaism that one could emulate or oppose.
33 This may be due to the fact that Palestine was located within the sphere of influence of
Greco-Roman customs. Cf. Baumann 1993 for (a) public fast(s) as recorded by
Josephus Vita 290-303/56-58 LCL 108-112 (with a liturgy of prayers conducted inside
the προσευχή, although the people could pick up stones at the place) and Lapin 1996
for a collection of rabbinic texts. Tertullian, De Ieiunio 16.5f CChr.SL 2.1275, describes
pagan public fasts with many similarities to rabbinic "UTS ΓΡΒΪΓΙ. Tertullian also refers
to such a fast as an annual rite (in paganism) and even notes the parallels to 'a' (like-
wise annual?) 'Jewish' public fast. Apart from the similarities (like rites of mourning
and prayer to be conducted in open spaces), Tertullian mentions non-Jewish elements
like the magistrates putting down their purple garments, turning around the fasces,
and performing a sacrifice in § 5. Daniel Stökl Ben Ezra 2003, 71f suggests to detach
134 Easter Sunday
munity in the broadest sense) to an optional practice for pious individuals.

TTP rnyri acquires a different meaning there. The Babylonian Talmud carefully
leads the reader away from the topic of the public (and its preceding individ-
ual) fasts towards more general ascetic exercises. Thus, bTaan 10a explains
that ffTTP in the Mishna actually refers to the sages.34 10b continues to expand
the rule of the Tosefta for changing from one semi-public situation to another,
where groups of people are keeping a fast in order to achieve a certain goal,
such as the healing of a person. 11a already discusses the intrinsic value of the
(less voluntary) deprivation of food (in years of famine): the merit that is ac-
crued by those who endure it helps to avoid the risk of a 'strange death'. The
following paragraph (lla-b) goes on to enumerate epithets for ascetics such as
'holy', l i b formulates the first intention of this literary process: 'Rav35 Yirmeya
bar Aba says: there is no public fast in Babylon except the ninth of Av.' bTaan
12a knows the possibility that someone could vow to fast every Monday and
Thursday: 'An individual who accepted upon him(self) a fast of the second
and the fifth (days) of the whole year...' 36 . Even there, the fast is not a quasi-
monastic habit but the (temporally limited) consequence of a vow. It would be
anachronistic to reconstruct the polemic dialogue of the Didache on the back-
ground of these texts, because the Didache should rather mirror a state of af-
fairs much further to the west - in early second century Syria or Palestine
rather than in third or fourth century Mesopotamia. The polemic remark of
the Didache is, therefore, the only source for its adversaries' opinions and
customs and it is unlikely that it targeted rabbinic Judaism.
De Ieiunio 16.6 from § 5 arid to read maeroris as qualifying munus. It is plausible to

interpret this 'Jewish fast' as a description of Yom Kippur, especially because of Ter-
tullian's negative attitude towards its deviations from elements of the allegedly pagan
practice as suggested by Stökl Ben Ezra. For a similar remark, cf. n. 281 p. 220. John
Chrysostom describes a similar custom for 4th cent. Antioch; Ad illuminandos cateche-
sis 2.4 PG 49.238. He reminds his audience that a group of women whose men and
sons were tried in court assembled in front of the court building, put on simple
clothes, removed their finery, wallowed in the dust, and applied ash on their heads.
Their intercession was successful. This shows the power of Greco-Roman institutions
not only upon the Jewish public fast that was called in cases of emergency but also
upon Yom Kippur.
34 tTaan 1.7 324f distinguishes between them.
35 "Ts in ms. Jerusalem, Yad Rav Herzog, Maagarim; in ms. Munich 95 (a.o.) not
'Rabbi' as in the standard editions (Vilna) - a pupil of Rav, he lived in Palestine for
some time; Stemberger 1996, 89.
36 Ms. Jerusalem, Yad Rav Herzog, Maagarim.
It is, nevertheless, significant that the Didache suggests to fast on different

days than the 'hypocrites' even if their exact character cannot - and probably
also should not - be revealed.37 As the Didache does not polemize against
keeping the Sabbath, it cannot be proven that it promoted the Sunday as a re-
placement for the Sabbath with regard to the festive and Eucharistie meal of
the Christians. The case of the shift of the days that were appointed for fasting
suggests that the day of the week that was devoted to reconciliation and a fes-
tive meal may likewise have been conceived of as an innovation alongside - or
already as an alternative to - the Sabbath. The parallel to the institution of the
weekly fasts shows that the Didache does not yet know a strong or even self-
evident tradition of keeping a Christian Sunday against a 'Jewish' Sabbath.38
Unlike the days of fasting, the Lord's (day) is not contrasted with some 'hypo-
crites" custom and hence not defined as typical for Christianity.
37 Υποκριτής in the Didache can hardly be understood as 'heretic'. It is not clear why
those people should be 'hypocrites' if they fast sincerely - on the wrong days; cf. Van
de Sandt and Flusser 2002, 291ff. The lexica (Lampe 1450; Liddell and Scott 1886)
assemble many attestations that link the term 'hypocrite' to speaking what are not
one's own words in the theatre. If the term in the Didache is not interpreted as an al-
lusion to the Gospels, the description of these people poses the same problems as any
determination of DTE in rabbinic Judaism. One should be very reluctant to regard
both terms as referring to a social entity (Van de Sandt and Flusser 292; 'pious Jews',
not 'the Pharisees') including categories like 'Judaism' or 'Christianity'.
38 At this point, the Lord's Prayer (Did 8.2f) that should be recited as an innovative and
(according to the text of Did) 'bookish' practice against the hypocrites' prayers may be
mentioned. Such as the days of fasting, one must hesitate to infer from this paragraph
how 'the Jews' used to 'pray' as well as to identify the 'hypocrites' with a recon-
structed movement in l s l cent. Judaism. There is, first, no reason to assume that 'the
Jews' prayed three times a day. If rabbinic Judaism is taken as a witness to groups
that could have been in contact with the authors of the Didache (which presupposes
an early impact of that movement, that it did not have) the prayer, the Amida, is
prayed according to a more sophisticated system of rules and beliefs. Thus, it is re-
cited three times on weekdays, cf. tBer 6.24 40.115. Yet, these three times seem to be
the result of a complex development from its basic performance twice a day and its
intrusion into the context of the evening Shma'. The situation is still different for Sab-
baths, festivals, and the Day of Atonement. The Lord's Prayer was, second, not used
in Christian liturgies before the fourth century when it entered the liturgy of the
Eucharist first and that of daily prayer later, cf. Buchinger 2003a and Leonhard 2003c.
If the Didache wanted to set up a border with this measure, it could not have been
perceived as directed against or imitating 'the Jews'. It was in any case unsuccessful
in Christianity.
136 Easter Sunday
4.1.4 Barnabas and the Christian Sunday
'Barnabas'39 (ch. 15) is more explicit about the Sunday than previous sources.
His rejection of the Sabbath in favor of the Sunday is also clearly stated (in
contrast to Didache 14). If the Sabbath could be kept at all, Christianity would
be void. If it cannot be kept, it must be interpreted in an eschatological or
chiliastic way. Barnabas replaces the actual custom with another one, 'in order
that we make the eighth day (an occasion) of happiness'. He supports this
with three Christological arguments: Christ's resurrection, epiphany, and as-
cension40 on the eighth day. 'Barnabas' did not want to indicate that these
events happened each on a Sunday. Such a concept would only emerge in the
wake of the liturgies of the fourth century, which tended to assign dates in the
calendar to the celebration of such New Testament events. Furthermore, in the
first half of the second century, 'Barnabas' cannot have known a Christian
celebration of Pentecost (that falls on a Sunday by definition).41 As Luke does
not indicate the days of the week on which the events of Acts If happened or
whether one would start counting the 50 days on the day after Christ's resur-
rection in that time, 'Barnabas' could not even infer from Acts that the ascen-
sion took place on a Sunday. Christ's resurrection, epiphany, and ascension
describe what came to its completion and was acknowledged by the first
Christians on the morning of Easter. In this way, they support the liturgical
innovation of the Sunday. There is no indication that it was celebrated as a
weekly memorial of Christ's resurrection, epiphany, and ascension. 'Barnabas'
uses this argument for the introduction of the Sunday, which played a power-
ful role in the creation of Easter Sunday only later.
Although 'Barnabas' is the first one to refer to Sunday observance and to
support it by mentioning the resurrection, one could infer from the conver-
gence of the chronologies of the Gospels on the day after the Sabbath that they
be based on an ancient liturgical character of the Sunday as the day of the res-
urrection.42 This deemphasizes, however, the precision of the gospel accounts.
39 The book was composed during the Bar Kochba revolt according to Prostmeier 1999,
118. It is first quoted by Clement of Alexandria (ca. 190).
40 The remark about the ascension does not imply the existence of a festival, but either
reads Acts 1.6-9 as happening on a Sunday (which is not supported by the text) or as
an explanation of what happened on the morning of (the first day of the week at)
Easter.
41 Cf. ch. 4.3.
42 Similarly Rouwhorst 2001, 253.
On the one hand, the gospels disagree among themselves about the precise
time of the discovery of the empty tomb.43 On the other hand, they avoid a
description of the resurrection or an indication of when it took place. That
Sunday is merely the day of the discovery of the empty tomb and the procla-
mation of the resurrection. Yet, the gospels simply do not provide what
Christians of the third and especially the fourth centuries would have needed
desperately: the time of Christ's resurrection. This knowledge would enable
them to celebrate it exactly within a historicizing liturgy. The claim that the
gospel accounts are actually an etiological narrative for a liturgy is a petitio
principii. It reads fourth-century questions into first-century answers. It will
remain a moot point why all the narratives set it on a Sunday while they dis-
agree about the date of the month. At least the synoptic gospels imply that the
Sabbath prevented the Christians from visiting the grave and from learning
about the resurrection earlier. Even if one wants to read the emergence of the
Sunday as a Christian day of worship in Acts 20.7, the gospel accounts are not
an exception to the rule that Sunday is not regarded as a weekly commemora-
tion of Christ's resurrection keyed to the very time when it happened.
Later authors add cosmic arguments. They refer to the eighth day as the
first day at all and as the day of creation. Justin still sees the need to defend
the Sunday with numerical speculations, such as the eight persons who were
saved in the ark (Dial 138.1 PTS 47.308). In Dial 24.1 (PTS 47.109), he refers to
circumcision on the 'eighth day' (after birth) and its new meaning in Christ.
Later, (Dial 41.4 PTS 47.138), he connects the old circumcision with the 'true'
one. Christ's resurrection led to the Christians' 'circumcision' separating them
from error and depravity. The preceding paragraphs (41.1-3) connect the
eighth day, that is mentioned in 41.4, with the Eucharist. In the first Apology
(67 PTS 38.129f), Justin describes the Christian assemblies on the 'day that is
called (the day) of the Helios' and appends (67.8) an explanation for the choice
of this day, mentioning the creation,44 Christ's resurrection, and his appearance
43 Mark 16.2 και λίαν πρωί τη μια τών σαββάτων ... άνατείλαντος τοϋ ήλιου ('very
early on the first day of the week when the sun was rising'); Matth 28.1 Όψέ δέ σαβ-
βάτων τη έπιφωσκούση εις μίαν σαββάτων ('after the Sabbath, at the beginning of
the Sunday', later Christian authors include the night preceding the day in this 'be-
ginning', Lampe 540; Luke 24.1 τη δέ μια τών σαββάτων όρθρου βαθέως ('on the
first day of the week in the morning twilight'); John 20.1 Τη δέ μια τών σαββάτων ...
πρωί σκοτίας έτι ούσης ('on the first day of the week, early, still being dark').
44 Klinghardt 1991, 210 refers to Philo's interpretation of the Sabbath as the 'birthday of
the world' VitMos 2.210 CW 4.249 and wonders how he can ignore the 6 days pre-
138 Easter Sunday
in front of the apostles. It is true, that Justin remarks that Christ was 'crucified
before the (day of) Kronos (= Saturn, i. e. Saturday)'. This is, however, an ex-
plicative remark within the apology which does not describe the Christians'
attitude towards Fridays in general, but explains Jesus' death as the conditio
sine qua non for the resurrection. Wallraff (2001, 89-96) discusses the origins
of the Christian Sunday and its Roman background. He suggests that Justin's
clumsy references to the Sunday could be due to his own reservation about a
pagan institution. The same pagan convention of the week of the Planets was
developing in that time. Justin's reservation can also be due to the fact that his
readers would not yet understand his terminology and the institution to which
it refers. Justin's remarks about the Sunday show that it was not understood
as a weekly commemoration of the resurrection. It is likewise futile to claim
that Sunday should have been a 'commemoration' of the number of persons
that entered the ark, the beginning of creation, and the true circumcision in
Christ.
Eusebius is the first author to express the idea of a 'weekly Pascha'.45 Only
after the custom to celebrate Easter on a Sunday had been well established in
Christianity, did it become possible to attach bits of the meaning of this festival
to the weekly Sunday - not vice versa.
An important issue that cannot be appreciated in the present study is the
shift of the Eucharistie celebration from being attached to an evening banquet
to becoming part of a morning assembly. McGowan 2004 and Bradshaw 2005
demonstrate how the morning celebration of the Eucharist emerged from the
logistic necessity to accommodate larger groups of people at the celebrations -
groups which were too large to be invited to a real banquet. The shift of
celebrations of the Eucharist to Sunday mornings was (at least in Carthage)
neither an anti-Jewish (against the Sabbath) nor a mimetic development (tak-
ing place at the time of Christ's resurrection). The early development of 'the
Sunday' could only have concerned the evenings after the Sabbath. Any later
development is dependent upon (inner-Christian) practice. This emerges from
ceding it. Philo is (explicitly) interested in the cosmic function of the number of seven
according to his Pythagorean approach. The harmony of creation must be shown to
correspond to the precepts of the Law. Christians speak about the Sunday as the day
of creation and emphasize its beginning - not its completion. Yet, this is not necessar-
ily a response to Judaism or a different approach to cosmology. The Bible can be
quoted to bolster any claim about any important number.
45 See Buchinger 2005, 783-785 and 2004, 197-203 for a presentation of the data and their
interpretation.
Tertullian's writings, which imply that the elements were consecrated in this
evening celebration of an inner circle of the church with the bishop presiding.
Yet, they were distributed later at another occasion on the following morning.
In Cyprian's time, the core of the celebration was already transferred to that
morning assembly.46 The banquet-like assemblies continued for some time
and in places with smaller communities.
4.1.5 Conclusions
Christ's resurrection is one justification among others for a Christian innova-

tion which has no basis in the Bible or in apostolic traditions: the Sunday. Five
points must be taken into account for the reconstruction of the emergence of
Easter Sunday. First, the Sunday as the Christian day for the celebration of the
Eucharist is not attested before the second century.47 Second, it cannot be
ruled out that the intention to replace the Jewish Sabbath (Barnabas) may have
been among the reasons for the rise of the Sunday to the height of importance.
Third, the institution of the Sunday was justified a posteriori by means of an
appeal to several Biblical motifs, for instance the day of the Lord's resurrection,
appearance, and ascension. This set of motifs was enlarged by others. Fourth,
no generally accepted or obvious 'meaning' of the Sunday could, therefore,
influence the understanding of the Christian Pascha. As the emergence of the
Sunday seems to precede that of the Quartodeciman Pascha, the Sunday was
not created as a weekly form of the Pascha at its beginning. When hints to a
yearly Pascha emerge in the second century,48 its meaning comprises more
46 Cyprian argues, moreover, for the celebration on each morning with Christ's resurrec-
tion, McGowan 2004, 173 quoting letter 63.16.2 CSEL 3.2.714. This reflects a further
advanced state of the development of the Eucharist. It shows that the concept of
Christ's resurrection was as good an argument for the Sunday as for any morning.
47 This implies that it is inadmissible to explain the Pentecost as an expansion of an older
octave of Easter that presupposes Easter Sunday; Boeckh 1960, 4 2 ^ 5 quoting A.
Baumstark. The octave of Easter is the result of the disintegration of the 50 days after
Easter Sunday into a sequence of festivals. It may have been understood as an oppo-
sition against the Jewish festival of Unleavened Bread and as an expression of a sym-
bolism of the number of 8 only after that process was well under way (i. e. in the late
4th cent.).
48 Melito and the Epistula Apostolorum give some details about its contents. The frag-
ments of the correspondence about the date of Easter which are quoted by Eusebius
do not touch the meaning of Easter Sunday. The remark about the 'mysterion of the
140 Easter Sunday
than Christ's resurrection on the eighth day. The Pascha did not begin as a
'yearly Sunday'. The theological connection between the weekly Sunday and
Easter Sunday was created after Easter Sunday had become an undisputed
part of the celebration of Easter in most parts of Christianity. Fifth, it may be
suggested that the association of Pascha and Sunday led to a mutual enrich-
ment in the contents of both after the majority of the churches had adopted the
custom to celebrate Easter on a Sunday. Even if one of the motives for the
connection of Easter with a Sunday was the mimetic representation of Biblical
time in liturgical time, there is no indication that this should have been the rea-
son for the emergence of the Sunday as a day of worship in the first place.
This kind of mimesis became operative only later.
4.2 A Christian Understanding of the Omer Ritual
The institution of the Christian Sunday as a weekly and/or yearly festival of

the resurrection is sometimes connected with the rite of the weaving of the first
sheaf, the 'Omer' (Lev 23.11).49 The Johannine chronology of Christ's passion
and death implies that the 'third day' on which Christ rose from the dead was
the 16th of Nisan and a Sunday. 50 According to the rabbinic computation, it
would have been the day when the people cut the first sheaf of the new har-
vest that was supposed to be brought before God in the Temple. If it is sup-
posed that the Omer was offered according to the understanding of the rabbis
(or the Septuagint), these calendrical associations are obvious. The rabbis were
not particular about the day of the week. They were interested in the 16th of
Nisan. Eutychius of Constantinople (who flourished in the sixth century)
says:51 'he (Christ) stood up from the dead, offered himself up for us to the Fa-
ther, and fulfilled the type of the sheaf.' This bears some resemblance to the
idea that is also expressed in Paul's first letter to the Corinthians: 'now, Christ
Lord's resurrection' is not quoted from the acts of the synods, Ecclesiastical History
5.23.2 GCS 488 or Irenaeus' letter 5.24.11 GCS 494 but is part of Eusebius' (biased)
paraphrases and conclusions; cf. Brox 1972.
49 Cf. Bradshaw's 1993a seminal study. Visona 1995, 519; 1988a, 298f; Gerlach 1998, 366-
370.
50 According to the Synoptic Gospels, the morning on which the empty grave was
discovered happened to be the 17th of Nisan.
51 Eutychius: 512-582; Gahbauer 1998,223.
A Christian Understanding of the Omer Ritual 141
has been raised up from the dead as an απαρχή of the deceased (literally, the
sleeping ones)', 15.20. This chapter traces the meaning of the Omer ritual for
the emergence of Easter Sunday in early Christianity.
4.2.1 Early Sources on Firstfruits and Challa
It is striking that the sources between the first and the sixth centuries hardly
mention the typological connection of Christ's resurrection and the ritual of
the Omer. This silence could be explained quickly simply by assuming that
the Omer was actually never offered on the 16th of Nisan, but on another day
as is presupposed by the calendars that are attested in the Qumran scrolls.52 In
that case, the Sunday after the 14th of Nisan, on which Christ's resurrection was
discovered and proclaimed, could never be associated with the ritual of the
Omer by anyone who had some experience with the Temple cult.53
The situation is, however, more sophisticated, for the Septuagint estab-
lishes a firm link between the 16th of Nisan and the ritual of the Omer. It is not
known on which day the Omer was actually offered in Second Temple times
or whether similar rituals were performed side by side by different groups
with conflicting ideas about the calendar. Thus, the older sources must be ex-
amined in order to assess to which degree their authors only read books or
actually saw ritual performances. Later Christian use of this typology would
be a purely 'bookish' exercise. The earlier authors of the New Testament could
have asked people who had first-hand experience of the rituals at the Temple.
Later Christian exegetes did not have access to knowledge about the customs
52 See the discussion of the Boethusians' approach to the Omer ritual below, p. 257.
53 This calendar is discussed in greater detail in ch. 4.6. Jewish Palestinian liturgical con-
sciousness - whether it goes back to the formative time of the Mishna or was recon-
structed on its basis later - knows the second day of the festival (16th of Nisan) as the
day of the Omer. This continues to influence the early payyetanim, who work in the
context of the liturgy of the so-called 'triennial' lectionary, or septennial double-lec-
tionary according to Naeh 1997/1998. Fleischer 1988, 320-323 gives the following
readings for the days of Pesah in the Palestinian communities: Lev 22.27; Lev 23.9;
Exod 12.43; Numb 9.1; Deut 16.1; Exod 22.24; parts of the Babyl. Parasha beshal-
lah (Exod 13.17); on the Sabbath in the week of Pesah, Deut 14.22. Even those Pales-
tinian communities that had changed the 'triennial' cycle for an annual one (at least
from the 10th cent.) kept reading the Palestinian lessons for the festivals in the high
Middle Ages; Fleischer 1988, 323. No trace of something like a 'Qumran calendar' is
extant there.
142 Easter Sunday
and rituals of the Second Temple besides what is preserved in the Bible. At
that time, the ritual of the Omer could exert its influence on Christianity only
through comparisons of the New Testament with the Septuagint.
The discussion must begin with Paul's testimonies, because Paul was an
eye-witness to procedures at the Second Temple and at the same time was
well-versed in the Scriptures. Does his statement 'now, Christ has been raised
up from the dead as an απαρχή of the deceased' (1 Cor 15.20, cf. 23) imply a
date or time, even a reference to the 16th of Nisan?
Απαρχή is a technical term pertaining to the sphere of the cult.54 People
who read Paul's letter or listened to it when it was read could be expected to
associate this. The term would not be understood as 'beginning' in the first
place. Paul's theological and metaphorical implications are built on this asso-
ciation. In the rest of the chapter, Paul explains απαρχή as a metaphor refer-
ring to the first one of the sequence of events of the Eschaton that includes the
resurrection of the dead and the acknowledgement of God as supreme power
of the universe. Paul needs several verses in order to develop that meaning.
He did not regard it as a coined metaphor that could be alluded to.
Which cultic aspects were implied by the term is a matter of great signifi-
cance. For if Paul should have expected his readers to think immediately
about the 16th of Nisan as the day when the eschatological 'sheaf', Christ, was
offered up to God, it could be supposed that they celebrated a kind of Easter
Sunday55 and that Paul enriched the meaning of this day by a typological con-
nection to the Temple cult. Does this text refer to the Omer?
The Septuagint translates Π3τχρ rri'K"i nay m 'the sheaf of the first (part) of
your harvest'56 as δράγμα άπαρχήν τοϋ θερισμοΰ ύμών 'a sheaf - (as) a
firstfruit of your harvest'. In the subsequent verse, the sheaf is referred to as τό
δράγμα. Δράγμα and not απαρχή is the translation for Omer here. Did Paul
understand άπαρχή as translation for Omer ('sheaf') anyway?57
54 Liddell and Scott 180: rarely in a metaphorical use. Lampe 177 records more applica-
tions of the term for 'beginning' in Christian Greek texts.
55 According to the Johannine chronology, the 16th of Nisan was a Sunday in the year of
Jesus' death.
56 Cf. Lev 23.15 for a construct state of lös. There is no reason to suggest a different He-
brew Vorlage for the LXX here. The Masoretic construct state of Ί»1ϊ was not visible in
writing before punctuation.
57 Already the author of Col 1.18 did not like (or understand) the cultic associations of 1
Cor 15.20, 23. He took πρωτότοκος instead of άπαρχή. This evokes the image of the
Απαρχή mainly translates rpTOl and nann (henceforth 'truma') in the Sep-
tuagint. The latter is often rendered etymologically as άφαίρεμα, which is not
used in the New Testament. Paul uses άπαρχή (Rom 11.16) in accordance
with Numb 15.20f LXX as reference to truma - but in the context of the com-
mandment of rf?n ('Halla' - once rendered άρτος in the Septuagint).58 In Rom
16.5 and 1 Cor 16.15 (similarly Jam 1.18, Rev 14.4, and 1 Clem 42.459), άπαρχή
can be interpreted as any kind of portion dedicated to Christ. It seems to be a
metaphor for the first member of the community to have been converted by
Paul.60 What is more, 1 Cor 5.7f shows that Paul is fond of the application of
the image of the dough to the community of the Christians. Απαρχή in 1 Cor
15.20, 23 can, therefore, be understood as a priestly portion that is singled out
or dedicated and removed from the rest of the raw material for the production
of food. Its separation from the dough makes the rest of the food fit for con-
sumption. In 1 Cor 5.7f and Rom 11.16, Paul had the institution of Halla in
mind and not truma. The cultic and material implications of Halla must, there-
fore, be read into 1 Cor 15.20.
Rom 8.23, την άπαρχήν τοϋ πνεύματος έχοντες, ourselves 'having the
firstlings of the Spirit' does not fit into this set of attestations. For the text does
not refer to an Old Testament cultic institution. The Christians received the
Holy Spirit from God, who is not supposed to separate and hand over priestly
portions of his produce to mankind. Likewise, firstfruits are given to priests in
order to make the rest of the harvest fit for profane use. They are never under-
stood as a promise to bring more of the same commodity in front of God later,
as it would be the case, if they should have been understood as 'pledge' or the
like in the Old Testament. If Paul should have envisaged such a scenario, he
would have had to explain it in great detail. Paul used άπαρχή as metonymy
implying that the Christians are groaning, although they (unlike the rest of the
rights of the firstborn in a family rather than the removal of the priestly portion from
the grain or dough.
58 2 Thess 2.13 evokes Numb 15.20f where truma in the commandment of Halla is com-
bined with αίρεΐν: ε'ίλατο ύμάς ό θεός άπαρχήν. The 'lifting up' or 'waving' of the
Omer before God (η'3Γή) is translated by αναφέρω in Lev 23.11. 2 Thess 2.13 does like-
wise not evoke the ritual of the Omer.
59 Ps 78.51 LXX contains both terms in parallelism (rendering n m and rrom) and refer-
ring to human beings. 1 Clem 24.1 is a paraphrase of the remark on the resurrection
according to 1 Cor 15.20.
60 Members of Hellenistic associations may be ranked in a hierarchy according to their
time of joining the community; Klinghardt 1996,193.
144 Easter Sunday
creation) have already received the first installment or earnest-money of a

huge amount that is in stake for them.61 Απαρχή is apparently only used to
denote 'a small part of a large quantity', without further cultic or theological
implications.
There is another text in the New Testament that uses similar cultic im-
agery. As Charles Barrett notes (1994,108), Luke does not regard the gift of the
Spirit as a unique event.62 Pentecost was one incident when the Apostles re-
ceived the Spirit in a situation of distress and challenge among others. Like
Paul's use of the idea that the Spirit be απαρχή in Rom 8.23, Luke may have
created his narrative on the basis of the idea that the giving of the Spirit be
comparable to the firstfruits that are brought by the farmers from Pentecost on.
It is true that Luke neither mentions απαρχή nor πρωτογεννήμα.63 Yet as a
'firstfruit' (in the broadest sense of the word), the Spirit was most appropri-
ately granted for the first time at Shavuot, the only Biblical festival of first-
fruits.64 If Luke should have had similar considerations in mind, he would
have understood απαρχή and the like in a metaphoric sense as 'beginning' like
Paul in Rom 8.23. The absence of απαρχή in Acts If reflects the absence of the
association of this cultic concept within Luke's idea about the first time the
Spirit was given to the church in a severe crisis.
This fits to the rest of the New Testament. Neither John (cf. John 19.30;
20.22) nor Paul know anything about the gift of the Spirit at Shavuot nor about
a celebration of such an event at that time. Without any liturgical precedent,65
61 Liddell and Scott 180 suggest a metaphorical use 'birth certificate of a free person'. This
would also fit to the interpretation given above. Paul's understanding of the concept
in Rom 8.23 apparently emerges from a similar background as the understanding of
Luke's account of the gift of the Spirit at Pentecost. Boeckh's discussion 1960, 37ff
comes close to this idea.
62 This is important for the correct understanding of the mentioning of Pentecost in the
context of Acts 2. Pentecost is not 'one of the most important events in his narrative'
as suggested by Walter Ray 2000, 218 and 129-224.
63 The spirit is δορεά in Acts 2.38; 8.20; 10.45; 11.17. Origen interpreted the firstlings that
would be offered to God as God's gift to the church; cf. Buchinger 2005, 816.
64 This interpretation of Acts 2 presupposes, however, that Luke did not follow the laws
by the letter, as the LXX does not mention απαρχή in the context of the offerings of
Shavuot. Nevertheless, απαρχή is combined with 'firstfruits' πρωτογενή ματα in
Exod 23.19 LXX and the latter are to be brought at Pentecost in 23.16 LXX.
65 According to Schreiber 2002, 70f; Luke created the link between the giving of the spirit
and Shavuot by himself. There was no Christian liturgical antecedent for Luke's narra-
tive and Acts neither presupposes, nor expounds, nor intends to create a festival, 77.
Luke's story became the point of departure for many liturgies and their inter-
pretations in later Christianity.
Despite the highly figurative use of the term in Rom 8.23, Paul did not
want his readers to associate απαρχή with DTD'':: (rendered as πρωτογεννή-
ματα in the Septuagint and not attested in the New Testament). This makes
sure that 1 Cor 15.20 - the resurrected Christ compared with the 'firstfruits of
the deceased' - does not imply any 'festival'. The only festival that is men-
tioned in the context of firstfruits66 is Pentecost.
The ritual of the Omer is also not part of a 'festival' according to the Bible.67
On the contrary, it is performed 'after the first (day of the festival)' (Lev 23.11
LXX). Rabbinic sources highlight it as a problem that the day of the cutting of
the Omer can fall on a Sabbath. The problem is expressed and solved within a
special ritual which emphasizes that the work of harvesting the sheaf is not
performed unwittingly on the Sabbath, but consciously, publicly, and carefully
as a fulfillment of a special commandment. The cutting of the Omer is a typi-
cal working day performance and as such the symbolic beginning of the har-
vest, not its end. The Bible envisages the people who cut the Omer after Pe-
sah not as retreating after this ritual in order to rest for another festival day,
but to start harvesting. There is no indication in the sources reviewed here
that anybody misunderstood this Biblical provision.
Therefore, New Testament authors do not associate the offering of the first
sheaf that is presented to God after Pesah with the Lord's resurrection. The
imagery behind 1 Cor 15.20 is taken from the ritual of the Halla and does not
allude to the Omer. The text elucidates the relationship between Christ and
the Christians and its theological implications. It does not contain a typologi-
cal interpretation of the Omer ritual.
Against these observations, it is remarkable that Philo constructs the Omer
as a 'festival within the festival (of unleavened bread)' - one of Israel's ten fes-
66 Πρωτογεννήματα Exod 23.16; Lev 23.16-21, not Exod 34.22.

67 Normally, the Omer is not called 3Π in the Qumran scrolls, but ΊΰΐϊΠ η^π αν and the
like, cf. 4Q321 vi 7; 4Q513 ii 3, 4; DJD 7.289; cf. also 4Q326 4 and 4Q365a 2 i 1. In the
system of the priestly calendars of Qumran, the Omer could have been called a 'festi-
val' - the 'festival of amy»' (restored); cf. 4Q326 4 DJD 21 not mentioned under this
designation in the introduction p. 5, 135. Philo does not know anything about the
other non-Biblical festivals of the harvest of the oil and the firstfruits of the vine as
well as the offering of the wood that is combined with the feast of the New Oil; Yadin
1983 I, 128-131. 4Q326 is probably an erratic attestation and not a meaningful link to
Jewish theology in Alexandria.
146 Easter Sunday
tivals. It is called 'sheaf'. Philo (SpecLeg 2.162 CW 5.125; Somn 2.75 CW 3.271)
remains the only exegete who introduces the Omer in this way into the system
of the festivals.68 He rationalizes it as a thanksgiving for the land of Israel as
well as an offering for the benefit of mankind.69 Furthermore, it is a 'remem-
brance of God' (θεοϋ μνήμη, SpecLeg 2.171 CW 5.128.3) and a recompense for
the 'begetting nature' (γεννήσασα φύσις, 2.173 CW 5.128.12), the 'source of
fertility' (2.171 CW 5.128). Offering barley instead of the more sublime wheat
indicates that the Omer is only a pre-festival - προέορτος70 - that refers to the
higher occasion: Pentecost. The προέορτος of Pentecost is, therefore, not a
vigil preceding it. Like in his description of Pesah and the festival of Unleav-
ened Bread, Philo's knowledge hardly surpasses what can be inferred from the
Bible.71 His understanding of the meaning of the festival contains the stereo-
68 See the attestations collected by Leonhardt 2001, 29-38.

69 SpecLeg 2.168 (2.171 CW 5.127f, 2.175 CW 5.129): the Jews 'give thanks for everything'
εύχαρίστοϋσι <δώ> πολλά. This is a topos in Philo's interpretation of festivals; see
Leonhardt 2001, 179-182 for other examples. In Somn 2.75 CW 3.271, he gives a
moralizing allegory; Leonhardt 2001,199f.
70 Besides the passage about the Omer in SpecLeg, VitCont 65 (cf. ch. 4.3 below) was
read as reference to the beginning of (the) 50 days (of Pentecost). Bergmeier 2002, 51-
54 does not go far enough in his own description of the Therapeutae as Pythagorean
fiction. Προεορτ(ι)ος has different meanings in SpecLeg and VitCont. In VitCont, it
does not refer to the day of the Omer, but to the 49th day that precedes the 50th day,
which is likewise not Shavuot/Pentecost, but the day that bears the most astonishing
and venerable number of 50. Προέορτος is not a technical term of cultic language.
Liddell and Scott 1478 refer to the two attestations in Philo's works. In Christian
sources, προεόρτιος is used much more often than προέορτος, Lampe 1146. The term
occurs from the fourth century on, implying the preparation for a festival: Lent, Easter
Eve, the evening before a Sabbath, Palm Sunday, etc. Eusebius De solemnitate
paschali 4 PG 24.697C '...we received the training of the forty-day period as pre-festi-
vals of preparation according to the holy zeal of Moses and Elijah...'; and Athanasius of
Alexandria, Lampe 1146, Apologia ad Constantium, CPG 2129, ch. 15 SC 56bis.ll6ff
use the noun in the plural. Athanasius apologizes for celebrating liturgies of the
Quadragesima with a large crowd in a yet unfinished church building. He empha-
sizes the practical necessity of his choice of this place and that this did not imply the
inauguration of the structure. He adds: 'If such trouble happened even in the pre-fes-
tivals, what would have happened on the festival itself!' In these attestations,
προέορτος is no festival, but only the period of preparation for a festival. It does not
refer to the Omer and it did not become a widespread technical term.
71 Such as the LXX, Philo corroborates the rabbinic chronology of the Omer as being
performed on the 16th of Nisan. He knows, however, that the Omer is taken from
types that he also evokes to explain the other festivals and offerings. Philo's
idea that δράγμα is a 'festival' is not corroborated by other sources. Just as is
the case with his special apologetic situation and philosophic agenda, his un-
derstanding of the Omer remains idiosyncratic. There is no indication that
Philo should have interpreted the ritual in the same way as Jews or Christians
in first century Palestine would have understood it.
In the late Second Temple times, the Omer ritual would be far less impor-
tant and less readily at hand for the creation of metaphors than the other
commandments surrounding the harvest of crops and the preparation of food.
The Mishna and several Qumran texts suggest that the ambiguous Biblical text
regarding the timing of the ritual was understood and hence ritualized in dif-
ferent ways. If the Mishna preserves accurate historical information about rit-
ual practice in Second Temple times in this instance, there was no stable and
widely accepted liturgical tradition from which one interpretation of the Bibli-
cal text would have been evident. Such details of the ritual and its conse-
quences for the cultic calendar were highly esoteric. For if the Omer should
ever have been a 'festival' of great public importance, the force of the masses'
habit would have been more influential than the scholars' sophisticated exege-
ses. Rabbinic texts tend to reconstruct 'proto-rabbinic' authority as powerfully
guiding the whole Jewish people in halakhic questions. This is not corrobo-
rated by other sources and historically unlikely before the Middle Ages.72 On
the basis of all that can be known about it now, the Omer as a ritual cannot
have played a role in public consciousness that was powerful enough to make
it an immediate association if someone mentioned απαρχή. Why should the
Christians build on this marginal and highly technical rite their oldest and
most important two feasts: the Sunday and Easter?
The collections of Biblia Patristica show the early Christian writers' strik-
ing lack of interest in the Omer.73 Except for the passage that the Chronicon
Paschale identifies as an extract of Clement of Alexandria's (lost) work Περί
barley, whereas the firstfruits of wheat are only offered at the festival of weeks, Spe-
cLeg 2.175 CW 5.128f.
72 Cf. Bokser's 1990 interpretation of the rabbinic sources that contain the tradition about
Todos of Rome; and Stemberger 1999; as well as Schwartz 2002 who shows that wide-
spread rabbinic influence was only achieved from the 6th cent. on.
73 Gregory of Nazianzus describes the hallowing of time and of the land by the Jews.
There, he refers to the law of the Omer and the festival of Pentecost; Oratio 41.2 1990
SC 358.316.29. He does not discuss the date or the time of Chrisf s resurrection.
148 Easter Sunday
τοϋ πάσχα, the verses Lev 23.10f, 15; Deut 16.974 are hardly alluded to at all
and are not connected with the vigil of Easter Sunday.
Thus, Origen refers to Lev 23.15 and Deut 16.9 in a few passages.75 He nei-
ther mentions the Omer nor the topic of 1 Cor 15.20. In his commentary on
John (1.12-14 GCS 5f SC 120.64), Origen interprets the terms πρωτσγέννημα
and άπαρχή as referring to the study of the Scriptures. In a long fragment,
Origen interprets 1 Cor 15.20.76 He takes πρωτότοκος from Colossians as
hermeneutic key for άπαρχή. He discusses the meaning of Christ's resurrec-
tion for the human beings and the 'resurrection' (of mankind), especially by
means of the image of the seed. Although he refers to an OT background later
(1. 72-100), he does not exploit OT institutions of firstfruits or tithing for a legal
interpretation of άπαρχή. Origen learns from the OT examples the same that
he already inferred from πρωτότοκος, that what happens to the άπαρχή
(Christ) is related to others that belong to the same commodity. He does not
mention the Halla (φύραμα), although this would have supported his inter-
pretation.
Irenaeus of Lyon interprets Christ as offering man(kind) to God, the fa-
ther.77 In Adv. Haer. 3.17.2 SC 211.330ff, he interprets Pentecost as the date
when the Holy Spirit descended in order to give the new covenant (novum
testamentum) to the (non-Jewish) peoples, to gather together and to unite the
dispersed tribes and to offer them to the father as firstfruits of all peoples.
Thus, the Spirit is not a 'firstfruit' and the Son does not offer anything to the
Father here. Irenaeus clearly associates firstfruits and Pentecost. Yet, he de-
rives his concept of 'firstfruits' from Paul. As he mentions the Lord's ascen-
sion before Pentecost, it is only natural that Christ is not the one who ascends
at Pentecost and brings anything to the Father. Where Christ ascends as
74 Lev 23.10f, 15; Deut 16.9 are not quoted at all in the corpus of the first two volumes of
Biblia Patristica. The only reference recorded is to Victorinus of Pettau's mentioning
of the Pentecost in a long list of items that occur seven times in the Bible; De fabrica
mundi 8 CSEL 49.7.22. This does not elucidate the history of the Christian Pentecost.
75 E.g., in the Homily to Lev 2.2 GCS 29.291.25, SC 286.98: there, he creates a typological
link between the offering of the firstfruits at Pentecost and the gift of the Holy Spirit in
Acts 2.
76 Jenkins 1909, § 84 p. 4 5 ^ 8 . For the present purpose there are no important emenda-
tions by Turner 1909, 273-276.
77 Primitias resurrectionis hominis in semetipso faciens - 'making the firstfruits of the
resurrection of mankind in himself', Adversus haereses 3.19.3 SC 211.380.71ff. This
unintelligible dictum is immediately interpreted: Such as the head of the body rose
from the dead, the rest of the body will follow suit.
primitae (3.19.3 SC 211.380ff) this refers to the resurrection. There is no asso-

ciation of the Omer in this context.
A reference to the Omer can be found in the Chronicon Paschale. The va-
lidity of the attribution of that passage to Clement of Alexandria (who died
before 215) in the this collection (7th cent.) could be called into question.78
There is, however, no reason why Clement should not have been able to ob-
serve about Christ's resurrection: 79 'He rose (from the dead) on the third day,
which was the first (day) of the weeks of the harvest, on which is was com-
manded that the priest should offer the sheaf'. A careful reading of the pas-
sage shows his great distance to fourth century liturgies and their interpreta-
tion. The Chronicon cuts Clement's text after the remark about the sheaf. On
the basis of the extant text, three observations are important for the contextu-
alization of this fragment. First, Clement does not create a typological link
between the Omer and Christ. The ritual of the sheaf is only given as part of
the significance of the date according to the Biblical liturgical calendar. Second,
the context of the fragment implies that the 16th of Nisan is the Sunday (ac-
cording to the Johannine chronology that is endorsed by Clement), 'which was
the first (day) of the weeks of the harvest'. Clement does not refer to a Chris-
tian celebration of the Pentecost. He alludes to the commandment to count the
weeks as part of the Biblical ritual that would have been performed shortly
after Jesus' death. 80 Third, he neither implies a Biblical nor a contemporary
festival on this Sunday. On the contrary, the resurrection is only mentioned in
order to support the chronological observations about Christ's death that are
discussed in the preceding passage. Bringing the Omer into the discussion of
the chronology of the Passion allows Clement to infer the calendrical date of
78 Cf. Visonä 1988a, 277 and n. 89; 298f n. 187.

79 Dindorf 1832,15.11ff.
80 See above p. 257. for the Boethusians. The rabbis interpret rotff as 'the day of the festi-
val (the 15th of Nisan)' and have the Omer cut in the evening of the 16th of Nisan:
mMen 10.2f; tMen 10,23 Zuckermandel 528. The LXX renders mtffn mnnn in this verse
τή επαύριον της πρώτης 'on the following (i.e. day) of (i.e. after) the first (day)'. Ή
πρώτη refers to the 'first (day)' of the festival like Lev 23.7, 35, 39, 40 and not to the
'first (day)' of the week. Philo also reads the LXX in this way in SpecLeg 2.162. The
rabbis' prescriptions for the ritual cutting of the Omer imply that the 'Boethusians'
understood ratff as 'Saturday'. The Boethusians' festival of Pentecost falls on a Sunday
every year. Clement of Alexandria does not understand the Sunday of the resurrec-
tion as 'gate to the joyous time of Pentecost' or the like. He supports the understand-
ing of Lev 23.11 according to the LXX. He is thus no witness to a calendar that had the
Omer ritual performed 'after a Sabbath' in the strict sense of 'Sabbath'.
150 Easter Sunday
Christ's death from the day of his resurrection. From this text, it cannot be
inferred that Clement celebrated Easter Sunday. If he celebrated it, he did not
support this practice with a reference to the Omer.
In his Demonstratio Evangelica,81 Eusebius enumerates the Biblical festi-
vals, mentioning the count of the weeks according to Deut 16.9 but not the
(day of the) Omer as a festival. Likewise, in De solemnitate paschali 4 (PG
24.700A), he still does not see a parallel between the offering of the Omer and
Easter Sunday. Alluding to Passover and Pentecost as festivals that are cele-
brated by the Christians, he interprets the Omer - apparently in light of Ori-
gen's understanding - in very general terms and only in an allegorical way.
The harvested grain is a typos for the gentiles who are reaped by the Apostles,
processed to become bread, and offered up to God through Christ. The Omer
or the firstfruits are not an image for Christ. Thus, 1 Cor 15.20 is not drawn
into the discussion. This may be due to the still powerful imagery of Christ as
the true Passover lamb. Only after Holy Week had become an elaborated sys-
tem of commemorations, the mournful celebration of the time of Christ's mur-
der was seen as one element in a sequence of commemorative liturgies. In
such a system of detached celebrations, one could evoke different typologies
on different occasions and (in Jerusalem) at different places, all the more so if
they could be used as etiologies for the time and the meaning of the celebra-
tion. This is corroborated by the fact that the interpretation of the Omer
changes significantly within the fourth century.
4.2.2 The Omer and Christ
Epiphanius interprets the sheaf that is harvested on the third day after the
slaying of the Passover lambs as a reference to Christ.82 Later authors like
Epiphanius are working in the context of already well-established liturgies of
Holy Week, Easter Sunday and Pentecost. For centuries, the Biblical text has
been the only 'reality' of the Omer ritual. Its day is obviously Easter Sunday.
In a typological approach to the Old Testament, it is easy to find a relationship
between this ritual (which is as obsolete as all the others) and one's contempo-
rary system of celebrations.
81 1.3.2 GCS 23 Eusebius 6 11.8, cf. 1.3.22 1. c. 14.16.

82 Panarion 51.31.5-9 GCS 2.304f.
Cyril of Alexandria quotes the law of the portion of the dough, the Halla.83
He goes on to expound this law in the following way: Having become similar
to mankind, such as the Halla and as a piece that is removed from the rest of
the dough, Christ is raised as the firstling (1 Cor 15.20) of the dough of hu-
manity and offered to God such as the sheaf from the threshing-floor (!). Cyril
confounds the laws of tithes and priestly taxes with the Omer. In the context
of the legal texts (and Ruth), the Septuagint only translates Omer by means of
δράγμα. The Israelites' (and Levites') contributions that are separated at the
threshing-floor as well as the Halla have nothing in common with the Omer
(cf. Numb 18.27). Cyril's conflation of these Biblical laws shows that he does
not create a precise typological parallel between Easter Sunday and the day of
the offering of the Omer (unlike Epiphanius). Cyril uses Biblical imagery in
order to discuss the Christological implications of 1 Cor 15.20. He does not
know anything about a 'festival' of the Omer. While the liturgies are evident
but in the remote background, he is not interested in expounding them. It is
thus significant that Cyril associates the law of Halla in his explanation of 1 Cor
15.20. This implies that readers of the Old Testament without any Jewish
background or access to traditions about the Second Temple could still under-
stand Paul's imagery in a correct way (especially if they did not intend to cre-
ate apologies for any liturgy).84
83 Numb 15.17-21, Commentarii in Joannem 4.2 Pusey 1.521f.

84 Cf. Lampe 177 on απαρχή B.l.a: 'Christ - as united to and so representative of the
whole of humanity' with Gregory of Nyssa as first attestation referring to 1 Cor 15.28
and based on the image of the dough. Van Goudoever 1967, 323 refers to a fragment
that is attributed to Irenaeus but that does not have a parallel in a known work of this
author (no. 19 in Harvey 1857 II, 488f = CPG 1315.11 fragment 19, of the catena on
Numbers CPG IV n.C2). The attribution of the fragment to Irenaeus is wrong (CPG
1315.11: 'Irenaeo abiudicandum est'). Moreover, the fragment explains Numb 27.18
and contrasts Moses and Joshua who gave the people 'by means of bread the firstling
of the life, the type of the body of Christ' άρτι την άπαρχήν της ζωής, τύπον τοϋ
σώματος τοΰ Χριστού. The allusions to Joshua 5 do not draw a link between the
Omer and the resurrection of Christ. This is not a statement about the calendar.
Irenaeus himself refers to the firstfruits in Adversus Haereses 4.17.5 SC 1002.590ff:
'...but giving advice to his disciples that they should offer to God as firstfruits from
his created things - not to him as if to someone who needed (it), but that they should
themselves be neither fruitless nor ungrateful - he took that from the creation namely
bread and gave thanks saying "This is My body.'" This is no allusion to the Omer but
an explanation of the Eucharistie elements as firstfruits from the produce of creation.
The link between Christ and the firstfruits are Jesus' words at the Last Supper and not
152 Easter Sunday
This brings the discussion back to the sixth century (512-582) writer
Eutychius of Constantinople, who was referred to at the beginning of this sec-
tion:85
(4) But the offering of the sheaf (ή του δράγματος προσαγωγή) that they per-
formed on the sixteenth - this one that they offered up on behalf of the salvation of
the whole human 'dough' in accordance with the precept of the law - does not ap-
ply any more. From this sixteenth (day) also began the computation of the weeks
that leads to Pentecost. For when this sixteenth (day) began - a (day) which is also
a Sunday, which also appears as the first one of the following week - our Lord
rose from the dead and offered up himself to God, the Father instead of the sheaf
for the salvation of the whole human 'dough'. 86
Visonä (1988a, 299 n. 187) hides the metaphor of the 'dough' by rendering it as
'genere umano'. He blurs the ramification of its Biblical associations, because
'dough' evokes the law of the Halla (Numb 15.20 LXX) and not that of the
Omer. Eutychius would, however, have agreed with Visonä's translation.
Eutychius is not interested in the distinction between Halla and Omer. Taking
Paul's theological concepts that are built on the Halla, he combines it with the
liturgical date and the shape of the ritual of the Omer. The purpose of his
homily is to explain the liturgy and not aspects of Christology. As the Halla
has no date, this is supplied by the Omer. After Easter Sunday had become an
undisputed liturgical custom, exegetes expanded the repertoire of typology.
The imagery of the Halla is still important for Eutychius' understanding of
Christ as απαρχή.87 The Omer, which only contributes the date of the 16th of
Nisan to the discussion, is interpreted by means of the Halla, not vice versa.
Eutychius continues (after the editor has deleted a passage attributed to Cyril):
Furthermore, there (is) no offering of the sheaf any more, as the Lord offered up
himself to God, the Father, instead of the sheaf. Likewise, there is no counting of
the weeks and no Pentecost according to the Law. However, another (Pentecost)
his resurrection on the 16th of Nisan. In the gospels that contain those words, the
revelation of the resurrection falls on Sunday, the 17th.
85 The text is partly translated and interpreted by Visonä 1988a, 298-300.
86 Eutychius, Sermo de Paschate et de Sacrosancta Eucharistia 4 PG 86.2396B-C. 'Dough'
= φύραμα such as in 1 Cor 5.7f. Note the literal repetition of ύπέρ σωτηρίας όλου τοϋ
ανθρωπίνου φυράματος that underscores the typological parallel.
87 In n. 4 PG 86.2395f the editor (cf. CPG 6939) refers to a passage by 'Cyril' that was
interpolated here in the catena. He does not quote the text.
reveals a perfect knowledge by means of the coming of the Spirit. This one, we
celebrate as the perfect coming of the holy Spirit.88
(There is) not any more a festival of trumpets (Lev 23.24) nor of booths, (as they
are only) carrying a type of the resurrection, because the real resurrection of our
Lord has been revealed. One will no longer celebrate three appointed times in one
year in a typical way. For the absolute life has set up one festival today. And, said
simply, all (mere) images89 which (existed) by means of the Law are fulfilled, be-
cause Christ is the fullness of the Law. Therefore, Christ7 s church also celebrates
his holy resurrection, which happened when the sixteenth (day) began. Having
driven out the fourteenth of the moon, she (the church) also does not any more
celebrate together with the Jews. In the same way, he (Christ) rose from the dead,
offered himself to the Father on behalf of ourselves, and fulfilled the type of the
sheaf, such as [col. 2397] he slaughtered himself instead of the lamb when the
fourteenth (day) began in a mystic and anticipatory way, and (thereby) obviously
mingled (himself) with the antitype.90
It is a mystic thing, a firstfruit (απαρχή) and pledge91 of the real thing. The real,
perfect thing is (learnt) from: Ί shall not eat it, until it will be fulfilled in God's
kingdom' (Luke 22.16) - when he had his holy resurrection. For this is 'God's
kingdom', because having already died once, he could not die again.92
(5) That it is like this, behold, we also die in a mystic way 93 in holy baptism - or in
martyrdom after this, or also, except for martyrdom, in actual fact. Our mystic
(sacramental) death is not dissociated from the factual (death of the real martyr-
88 Eutychius dissociates the Christian Pentecost from OT Shavuot. In his strictly super-
cessionist reading of Paul, an Old Testament pedigree of a festival requires an apology
for its allegedly continued celebration by Christians. Thus, Eutychius has to find a
precedent for it in the new dispensation.
89 Έμφασις Lampe 457: identical with types.
90 This is an allusion to the Eucharist. Lampe 454 refers to a later passage in Eutychius'
work: εκλασεν, έμμίξας εαυτόν τω άντιτύπω - with the Eucharistie element. The
text explains that Chrisf s slaughtering himself is the meaning of the Eucharist, which
is mystical and anticipatory, because Jesus celebrated the last supper before his actual
death. The 'beginning of the fourteenth' is (according to Johannine chronology) the
evening and night of Maundy Thursday.
91 For Eutychius, απαρχή is not sufficiently clear in order to be used as an independent
metaphor. He has to add άρραβών.
92 This paragraph explains the relationship of Christ's anticipatory death in the last sup-
per and his death in reality.
93 Apostolic Constitutions 5.6.8 SC 329.218 (cf. Metzger in Brakmann, Drews, and Metz-
ger 2003, 525 referring to Rom 6.3-10 as the scriptural basis) contrasts the catechu-
men's martyrdom with baptism. The first is a γνησιώτερον βάπτισμα the second a
'symbolic' (τύπ^) one.
154 Easter Sunday
dom) even if it was (not?94) fulfilled in actual fact. For we receive another life be-
sides the first one in the mystic (death), as a kind of a firstfruit (απαρχή) of the
resurrection and of a release of sins and the adoption as children and sanctifica-
tion. And we become participants in Christ's inheritance. The mystic (things)
were not broken away from the factual things, even if it was (not95) fulfilled in ac-
tual facts.
The Church celebrates the memory of the fourteenth on Maundy Thursday (lit.: on
the great fifth), as at that (Christ's) time, the mystic Pascha was performed by the
Lord, when he sacrificed himself as the fourteenth (day) began. 96 Whether the
fourteenth (day) should fall on the first day of the week of the Pascha - that is also
a Sunday - or on the other one (viz., Monday), or on the third or on the fourth (For
this is asked), the Church celebrates the festival of the mystical Pascha on Maundy
Thursday, when also the Lord sacrificed himself in a mystic way. She celebrates
the perfection and fullness of the mystic festival according to the holy resurrection,
which happened when the sixteenth began, at that time also falling on the Sunday.
(6) As some of the church did not do so, the Nicene Fathers defined, therefore, that
all should celebrate (the festival) together according to the sixteenth and the Sun-
day that coincided at that time with the saving resurrection, as if it (viz., the day)
had the perfection and factuality according to the Lord's voice.97 And they write
this to the Alexandrian church, saying: 'We bring you the good news about the
consensus regarding the most holy Pascha, that has been established by means of
your prayers and this is (its) detail: that all the brothers of the East who were for-
merly used to celebrate with the Jews should perform the Pascha in harmony with
the Romans and with you and from now on with us - with all of us who kept (it)
from the beginning.'
94 In the same paragraph, a clause containing καν εί ... τελειοΰται occurs twice. Here,
Eutychius implies that the sacramental 'death' of the believers (in baptism) is (func-
tionally) as good as martyrdom, even if it was not actually performed. Below, he
seems to refer to the same close connection between the mystic and the actual per-
formance. If he refers to Christ, whose 'martyrdom' was of course 'fulfilled έν τοις
πραγματικοΐς', no negation should be added there. One could also assume that the
latter passage has exactly the same meaning as this one and that there too the negative
be implied in καν εί. In that case, the last sentence of the paragraph would summa-
rize the meaning of the whole.
95 See n. 94 p. 154.
96 Christ was considered 'dead' when he handed over his 'body' to his disciples. This is
an old stereotype.
97 The editor refers to Luke 22.37 that must be read with its context of the earlier quota-
tion of v. 16 in this text. The church celebrates that day in the context of the fulfill-
ment of Jesus' vow, Luke 22.16.
Although the institution (of the procedure) was perfect, some did not blush when
celebrating this in an imperfect way. In the same way also those - who put only
the water98 into the chalice on the altar instead of the mixture with the fruit of the
vine according to the Lord's tradition - ignored that they were separating them-
selves from the Lord's blood and body; For one thing is fulfilled by the other.
Someone who does not have the one of them, likewise does not have the other that
he (only) seems to have. Such people are shown as foreign to Christ's holy
Church.
We celebrate the festival of the fourteenth on Maundy Thursday (lit.: the fifth day
of [2400] the Great Week), like it was handed down by the Lord, even if this one
should have been falling on the earlier days. We also celebrate the holy resurrec-
tion that happened on the sixteenth on the liberating time on a Sunday, after the
spring equinox. And we do not put the water without the product of the vine (on
the altar), but only with it, thus deciding in accordance with the Lord's tradition."
Theologumena of the Eucharist, Easter, and Baptism are blended in this pas-
sage, interpreting each other, or standing beside each other like the invective
against those who use only water in the Eucharist. In reconstructing the po-
lemical background of this document, Visona (1988a, 299) sees an 'alternative'
in celebrating the Pascha of the 14th or the perfect one of the 16th.
If this passage should address any real opponents at all, their stance is well
hidden (except for their 'folly' to use only water in the Eucharist, which is ir-
relevant for the present discussion, and presumably also for Eutychius). Refer-
ring to Nicea in the 6th cent., Eutychius grossly simplifies what could be said
about the calculation of the date of Easter in the church. Visona observes that
celebrating Easter Sunday according to a 'Hebrew' or Christian computation is
not the bone of contention. What is more, the 14th and the 16th of Nisan are
likewise only used as embellishments of the meaning of the Pascha. Christians
celebrate Christ's two Paschas within Holy Week. On Maundy Thursday (i. e.
on the evening preceding Good Friday), they celebrate the 'Pascha of the 14th'
98 McGowan 1999 discusses the older attestations that reflect necessarily a different
liturgical setting. As a heresiological topos, the idea is mentioned by Epiphanius
about the Ebionites, 30.16.1 GCS 353.11f and others; and Theodoret; Lampe 1424, Koch
1976, 143 n. 21. 244. Eutychius is Lampe's youngest (Greek) witness. He seems to re-
fer to it as another weird custom of the past, such as Quartodecimanism. McGowan
97 refers to another 6th cent, author of Constantinople, who only mentions artotyritai
(people who use milk for their Eucharist), Timotheus Constantinopolitanus Presbyter.
It cannot be decided here, whether those authors pass on heresiological stereotypes or
whether they encountered real aquarians and artotyritai.
99 Eutychius, no. 4-6 PG 86.2396C-2400A.
156 Easter Sunday
and on Easter Sunday that of the 16th. 'Eating' versus 'dying' the Pascha is not
an alternative any more. Now, both are consecutive stages in the same liturgy,
being transformed into the pair: 'eating (implying Jesus' death)' and 'rising
from the dead'. Interpreting them as consecutive stages of one celebration, this
theological approach has overcome the conflict between the interpretation of
the Christian Pascha as the celebration following the Last Supper or Jesus'
death.
The most remarkable feature of this theology is its replacement of Exod 12
with a highly simplified Halla/Omer symbolism. The typology of Exod 12 -
Christ fulfilling the law of the Pesah and dying as the true Pascha - is erased
from this system. Eutychius integrates Exod 12 into the last supper without
making the last supper a successor of 'the' Jewish Pesah. Jesus' 'death' is al-
ready 'sacramental' and thus anticipated and absorbed into the institution of
the Eucharist. With the marginalization of the 'real' event (of Jesus' death),
Exod 12 becomes meaningless, apart from its likewise minor significance for
the understanding of the structure of Holy Week. The crucial question is,
whether this is an innovation or a survival.
First, Clement of Alexandria's, Origen's, and Cyril of Alexandria's ways of
understanding the Omer as well as Eusebius' different interpretation and
Paul's ignoring the Omer show that the idea that Christ fulfilled the type of the
Omer in his resurrection on Easter Sunday is not an old concept. Second,
Eutychius closely links the 14th with the Christians' celebration of the Last
Supper on Thursday evening (the evening of Friday), which was not yet
known even to Egeria. It is, therefore, clear that his elimination of Exod 12
from the interpretation of the Pascha, which is dependent upon these two
points, does not represent an ancient parallel tradition to the Quartodeciman
Pascha, which was mainly understood through Exod 12. Eutychius expresses
in liturgical theology what has become liturgical reality long ago. Easter cre-
ates its ritual tension from Maundy Thursday to Easter Sunday - two celebra-
tions of the Eucharist and two mystical offerings. In this system, Exod 12 can
be re-used as a marginal embellishment of Maundy Thursday but it must
avoid creating a parallel between the prescriptions of the Pesah and the course
of the Last Supper. Exod 12 is still carrying the type of Jesus' death, not the
liturgical script for his last meal, because the contemporary celebration does
not follow its prescriptions or resemble the situation that it describes: 100
100 PG 86.2392A-C.
(1) We find that the Lord held three meals in the time of the Pascha. They differ
regarding the places (where they were held):
One in Gethsemane, where he had the (foot-) washing101 on the day of the Sabbath,
when the first day, the Sunday, began. Therefore, we, too, perform the pre-illumi-
nation102 at this time.
Another one in Bethania, that he held at the beginning of the second day of the
week when the first (day) ended.103 And it is evident, that this is not the very Pas-
cha. Therefore, Matthew adds: 'On the first of the unleavened breads, the disciples
asked: Where do you want that we prepare for you the Pascha?' (Matth 26.17) Per-
haps, he is calling the 'first of the unleavened breads' the Sunday, being the first of
the week in which the (festival of) Unleavened Breads was celebrated, which John
calls 'Pascha', setting the sixth before the Pascha, saying: 'Six days before the Pas-
cha, Jesus came to Bethania.' (John 12.1) For the sixth before the fourteenth is the
first (of the festival of Unleavened Bread), the meal of which he held beginning the
second day104 and the (day of the) selection of the true lamb. That he would come
this hour in order to leave this world - what else would be evident than the choice
of the Lord, who, according to human standard (thinking), is called a lamb, in or-
der to be able to receive the suffering. And he points out that the elected one
reached another life according to the Ί shall choose you, because you are not from
this world' (cf. John 15.19). Therefore, the day from which this was (or: began) is
called 'Pascha' and 'burial' according to his own utterance. In order that the law
be fulfilled which says that the lamb (must) be taken on the tenth of the first
month, and kept until the fourteenth, he elects as a priest himself as a victim and
was kept until Maundy Thursday (lit.: the fifth day), and was then sacrificed in a
mystic way when the fourteenth began.
T h e last s u p p e r is celebrated o n T h u r s d a y e v e n i n g , w h i c h is the b e g i n n i n g of

F r i d a y 'the 14th'. Christ dies o n the 14 t h a n d rises f r o m t h e d e a d in the n i g h t o f
t h e 16 t h . A s this is at o d d s w i t h w h a t is k n o w n a b o u t the O l d T e s t a m e n t ( a n d
J e w i s h ) Pesah, Christ is said to h a v e d i e d in the course of the L a s t S u p p e r in a
mystical way. This h a s t h e theological a d v a n t a g e that Christ celebrated t h e
first Christian Eucharist rather t h a n the last J e w i s h Pesah. T h e latter drifts
a w a y into irrelevance.
101 John 13: 'before the festival of the Pascha'.

102 Προφωτίσμα Lampe 1198. The corresponding verb is used by Cyril of Jerusalem for
'catechetical instruction preceding admission into mysteries' catecheses 18.32 Rupp
and Reischl 2.336.
103 Mark 14.1-3 'two days' before the Pesah.
104 Monday would be the 6th day before Saturday, the 15th of Nisan, as well as the 10th, on
which the Pesah animals are chosen according to Exod 12. The Saturday must in any
case be the 15th, if Easter Sunday should be interpretable as the 16th.
158 Easter Sunday
Eutychius' reading of the Omer as an Old Testament replacement for Exod

12 fits with his position within the history of interpretation of the Pascha. Af-
ter the fourth century, Exod 12 begins to vanish from the repertoire of source
texts of the paschal sermons.105 Thus, Eutychius is neither original nor innova-
tive on this point for a sixth century writer. This does not mean that his intro-
duction of the Omer ritual into an understanding of Easter Sunday should be a
survival. On the contrary, his interpretation of the Omer presupposes that
Exod 12 had already been ousted from its position as a key for the definition
and interpretation of Easter.
4.2.3 Conclusions
The evidence of Christian authors' discussions of the Omer contributes the

following insights to the study of the history of Easter Sunday.
First, those authors who are allegedly close to larger parts of Jewish popu-
lation do not know anything about a connection between the Omer and Easter
Sunday. It does not come as a surprise that they do not associate 1 Cor 15.20
with the Omer. Everyone who had any understanding of institutions de-
scribed in the Old Testament would not associate the ritual of the Omer when
he read the term απαρχή. Moreover, for the earlier exegetes, Christ fulfilled
the type of the Passover animal, not that of the first sheaf of barley that opened
the season of harvest. As the earliest writers did not celebrate Pentecost, they
had no liturgical precedent in order to look for a typological link to a similar
Old Testament institution such as the beginning of the count of the 50 days
after Pesah.
Second, long after the celebration of Easter Sunday had become a wide-
spread practice and in the absence of any interest in a study of Old Testament
institutions for their own sake, Christian authors connected the day of the of-
105 Cf. Huber 1969, 189-197, Buchinger 2003, 129 n. 8; 2004, 205f. Drobner 1990, 275 ob-
serves that Gregory of Nyssa only quotes Exod 12 once in his homilies on Easter, al-
though he expounds several verses of the chapter in other contexts. Furthermore, Pas-
cha in Exod 12 is only read ethical-anagogic and not referring to Christ in a typologi-
cal way. Drobner 295 suggests that the absence of Exod 12 in Gregory of Nyssa's
homilies on Easter could be coincidental and due to the fact that only two of them sur-
vived. The wider context of the history of the reception of this text as a hermeneutic
key for Easter shows, however, that Exod 12 has already lost this position of im-
portance in Gregory's time.
Fifty Days Easter Sunday 159
fering of the Omer with the day of Christ's resurrection. The combination of
the date of the Omer with Easter Sunday is, therefore, an ephemeral upshot of
the practice of celebrating Easter Sunday. It is not among the causes of its
emergence. It is irrelevant for the early history of Easter Sunday.
Third, the fuller expression of a theology of the Omer emerges after the
fourth century on the basis of Christologies and as part of the interpretation of
Easter, after Exod 12 began to lose its position as the most important herme-
neutical key for the liturgy and theology of Easter.
Fourth, the scarce knowledge about the cultic reality of the offering of the
Omer at the Second Temple and the few traces that the Omer left in the
sources corroborate the conclusion that Easter Sunday is not built upon the
Omer as a Jewish institution in the first century. Further evidence will be dis-
cussed in the following three sections, as Pentecost, the festival of Unleavened
Bread, and the priestly calendar of Qumran must be taken into consideration.
Nevertheless, the total lack of interest in the Omer on the part of the early
Christian exegetes does not only reflect their correct understanding of the cru-
cial passages in the Pauline corpus, but also show that the period in which the
custom of celebrating Easter on a Sunday emerged knew nothing about a con-
nection between this innovation and Judaism - certainly not the Omer ritual.
4.3 Fifty Days Easter Sunday
At first sight, the history of the Christian festival of Pentecost is hardly con-
nected with Easter.106 However, it is often taken for granted that Jews and
Christians always celebrated Pentecost.107 In the wake of this assumption and
because of the complete lack of data, it becomes mere guesswork to reconstruct
106 A draft of this section (4.3) was read by the members of the seminar for Early Liturgi-
cal History at the North American Academy for liturgy. I am grateful for their com-
ments and suggestions.
107 Van Goudoever 1967, 164. 227 is still quoted for the opinion that Pentecost was cele-
brated as a fifty day period of joy 'in the first two centuries' and began with Easter
Sunday. Cabie 1965, 37f refers to a quotation of Irenaeus of Lyon (Pseudo-Justinian;
Rouwhorst 2001a, 312). The passage does not add to what can be read in the texts that
are discussed below. Cable's observation that Irenaeus supported the Roman form of
Easter Sunday increases the plausibility of the quotation as a witness to the 2nd half of
the 2nd cent. Cf. n. 65 p. 144.
160 Easter Sunday
the way that, for example, adherents to a Quartodeciman date of the Pascha
would have established their date of Pentecost as opposed to those who cele-
brated Easter on a Sunday.108 Theoretically, one would have to read an im-
plied 'Pentecostal controversy' into the later attested controversy about the
correct date of Easter.109
Furthermore, Maxwell Johnson suggests in an intriguing contribution
(2004) that Tertullian's remark on Pentecost as laetissimum spatium and as a
highly appropriate time for baptism is in fact a liturgical survival that connects
the Christian Pentecost with the world of the book of Jubilees and Qumran.
Johnson does not conceal the objections against this reconstruction.110 The is-
sue remains an important challenge for scholarship. It suggests that Pentecost
had been appropriated by Christianity in apostolic times and had always been
connected with baptism. Although Paul Bradshaw shows that Paschal bap-
tism was never a globally accepted practice, he does not suggest that one
should replace this non-normative custom, with another, allegedly more nor-
mative one in a reconstruction of the history of baptism. Nevertheless, the
sources that suggest a close connection of baptism and Pentecost require an
explanation.111 Even if continuous Pentecostal baptism should have been a
minority tradition, it raises serious doubts against a theory of the Christian
appropriation of Pesah in the second century. Thus, the following chapter asks
for the origins of Christian Pentecost in the context of the reconstruction of the
emergence of Easter Sunday but also touches some aspects of the history of
baptism.
108 Thomas Talley 1991, 61 thinks that Acta Pauli be a witness to Pentecost in a Quarto-
deciman environment. The passages of Acta Pauli discussed below do not betray any
link to Quartodecimanism.
109 Cf. Boeckh I960,10.
110 Maxwell Johnson emphasizes the lack of sources that should bridge the gap between
Acts 2 and Tertullian, 37f. The argumentum e silentio is even more powerful in the
case of Pentecost as the 50th day instead of 50 days of the festival, because Gerard
Rouwhorst has shown 2001a, 318-321 against Georg Kretschmar 1954/1955 that the
celebration of the 50th day emerged from the Jerusalem liturgy of the 4th cent. Jewish
parallels may arise from contacts with (rabbinic) Judaism where similar structures de-
veloped at the same time. Kretschmar also relies too heavily on (Jewish and Chris-
tian) lectionary systems that are neither old nor unequivocal in the details of their in-
terpretation.
111 Cf. Boeckh 1960, 32: 'Hätte die lukanische Pfingstgeschichte den Anlaß zur allgemei-
nen Feier des Pfingstfestes - und der Pentekoste als Zwischenzeit - gegeben, so wäre
sicher Pfingsten vor Ostern zum Tauftag geworden.'
Any discussion of the early history of Pentecost must be based on Gerard

Rouwhorst's (2001a) seminal paper on the subject. His conclusions are fully
endorsed in the present context. Rouwhorst (311) observes that Pentecost - as
a fifty-day period or as a celebration at the end of the fifty-day period - is un-
known to the relatively well-documented older history of the Syriac churches
in the third and fourth centuries (except for the Teaching of the Apostles). 112
What is more, two points that enforce his conclusions must be added: the first
regarding aspects of Christian texts about Pentecost and the second regarding
the festival of the Therapeutae in Philo's De Vita Contemplativa.
4.3.1 'Hippolytus' and Pentecost
Gerard Rouwhorst reasonably doubts the correctness of the attribution of the

fragment 'About Elkana and Anna' 113 to a third century 'Hippolytus'. Here,
that attribution can be kept on a hypothetical basis, because even a third cen-
tury date of this paragraph is without any consequence for the history of a
Christian liturgy of Pentecost:
And for this reason, three seasons of the year prefigured the Savior Himself, so
that He should fulfill the mysteries prophesied of Him.
In the Pascha, so as to exhibit Himself as one destined to be sacrificed like a sheep,
and to prove Himself to be the true Pascha, as the Apostle says, 'Christ', God, 'our
Pascha was sacrificed for us.' (1 Cor 5.7)
In the Pentecost, so as to presignify the kingdom of heaven as He Himself first as-
cended to heaven and brought man as a gift to God.
Scholars who read the second sentence of the enumeration in isolation create
the impression that Christ ascended into heaven on Pentecost and offered hu-
112 For the Teaching of the Apostles, see also Witakowski 1987. Rouwhorst refers to a
Greek introduction into the Psalms that was attributed to Hippolytus by the compilers
of the first printed editions; Achelis in Bonwetsch and Achelis 1897 II, IVf; Rouwhorst
2001a, 313 and n. 17f incl. further references. The passage that discusses the Pentecost
(departing from an interpretation of the number of 50 in the 150 Psalms) is attributed
to Origen in the mss.; Achelis in Bonwetsch and Achelis 1897II, 138-140.
113 Achelis in Bonwetsch and Achelis 1897 II, 122, transl. based on ANFa 5.238: S.D.F.
Salmond. The date of the Traditio Apostolica is doubtful for the epoch under consid-
eration. Note, however, that its idea of the Pentecost can be understood as corre-
sponding to Tertullian's; see below and for the Traditio ch. 33.3 Bradshaw, Johnson,
and Phillips 2002,172 and 175; Cabie 1965, 42.
162 Easter Sunday
manity as a gift to God.114 In such a truncated version, the text would explain
the contents of the Christian festival of Pentecost. This does not fit even to the
extant context which has already been cut out of a later passage. It is 'in the
(Biblical) Pentecost' that the New Testament 'truth' is prefigured and not 'in a
(liturgical period of) Pentecost' that 'Christ offered man as a gift to God'.
'Hippolytus' explains the relationship between Old Testament types and their
fulfillment in the New Testament. The combination of Pentecost and Christ's
ascension recalls the later Christian understanding of the 50th day as the day of
the ascension. Even if 'Hippolytus' combined Acts 2.1 and Acts 1.9 here,115 the
passage still discusses a typological relationship between the Old and New
Testaments. 'Pentecost', the festival of firstfruits, explains a feature of the
Lord's passion and ascension in a non-liturgical, non-mimetic, and non-his-
toricizing, but theological way. This relationship between the texts is recipro-
cal. The Lord's (passion and) ascension provides a posteriori a raison d'etre
for the Old Testament festival of Shavuot. Just as the Israelites offered gifts to
God, Christ ascended and offered humanity to God by his death. Strictly
speaking, Christ did not 'offer' anything on the 50th day, but the Old Testament
Pentecost prefigures the aspect of 'offering humanity' that is inherent in
Christ's passion, death, resurrection, and ascension. The text announces a
third element that is, unfortunately, not preserved. Whichever festival 'Hip-
polytus' mentioned, it could only have explained another typological nuance
that is inherent in Christ's death and resurrection. Pesah and Pentecost are the
only Old Testament festivals that were taken up in the liturgy of the Christian
churches. A compiler (Theodoret?) abbreviated this short typological state-
ment and created the impression that 'Hippolytus' spoke about Christian
rather than Biblical liturgies. If the third element should have been Sukkot, he
may have skipped it, because it is not part of the Christian festival calendars.
114 Boeckh 1960, 20 '...stieg er selbst in der Pentekoste in den Himmel auf und brachte
den Menschen als Gabe Gott dar'. Boeckh sees an allusion to the Omer in this text.
However, he does not distinguish between the different forms of (priestly or Levitical)
portions that are dedicated to God (referring to 1 Cor 15.20). The Omer is in any case
never brought at Pentecost. It may be argued that the OT festival is called 'festival of
weeks/the harvest' and not '50 th (day)'. However, in the context of Acts If, it is clear
that 'the 50 lh ' refers to this festival. Cabie 1965, 28f notes that it is already referred to
like this in Tobit 2.If and 2 Macc 12.32, as well as by Josephus. It is, however, still ex-
plained or introduced by Λεγομένη (2 Macc) in these sources.
115 'Hippolytus' speaks about an άνάβασις where Acts 1.9 says that Christ was 'lifted
up', έπήρθη; cf. 1.11 (Luke 9.51) άναλημφθήναι.
Whoever reads a Christian Pentecost into this text apparently interprets the
epitomator's theology, but not that of his source, 'Hippolytus'.
In a commentary to Daniel that is attributed to Hippolytus on more reli-
able grounds,116 the author refers to a period of 50 days. He infers from the
numbers in Dan Ulli (1335 - 1290 = 45) that the eschatological change that is
prophesied in that vision reaches a terrible climax during a period of 45 days
after 1290 days. This climax is preceded by the three-and-a-half years ('times'
in Dan 12.7) of tribulations and persecutions according to the commentary (ch.
4.57.8117):
For when the abomination118 comes and makes war upon the saints, whosoever
shall survive his days (viz. the days of the presence of the abomination) and reach
the 45 days while another fiftieth (day; or 'Pentecost') advances, comes to the
kingdom of heaven. The antichrist, indeed, enters into part of the fiftieth (or:
'Pentecost'), because he intends to inherit the kingdom together with Christ.
Based on Is 26.10b and 2 Thess 2.8b, which are quoted after this passage, Christ
is said to destroy the enemy in his second coming, and 'the saints will inherit
the kingdom together with Christ'.
In the following chapters, Hippolytus neither presents his observations
against a consistent background of a festival calendar nor of a coherent inter-
pretation of the history of the world according to the book of Daniel. He sees
allusions to the past destruction of Jerusalem as proof of the abolition of Juda-
ism.119 He insinuates that such a final judgment is still coming and admon-
ishes his readers to lead lives of vigilance and asceticism. He refers to chiliastic
notions that imply that the judgment is still far away and not to be expected in
116 4.54.2f GCS NF 7.320.16-322.4 = 4.55.2f SC 14.374, transl. based on S. D. F. Salmond

ANFa 5.184f and Lefevre and Bardy SC 14; Τοϋ γάρ βδελύγματος παραγινομένου
και πολεμοϋντος τούς άγιους, ος άν ύπερβή τάς ήμέρας αύτοϋ και έγγιση εις ημέ-
ρας τεσσαράκοντα πέντε ετέρας έγγιζούσης πεντηκοστής (SC 14.375: 'de maniere a
atteindre la fin d'une periode de cinquante jours'), έφθασεν εις |3ασιΛείαν ούρανών.
Έρχεται γάρ ό αντίχριστος εις μέρος πεντηκοστής (Lefevre and Bardy: 'une partie
de cette periode de cinquante jours') ώς την βασιΛείαν άμα Χριστώ κληρονομεϊν
μέλλων. 'Die Echtheit des Kommentars bedarf keines Beweises', Bonwetsch and
Richard 2000, XXXVIf for a short discussion of the authorship of the Commentary on
Daniel.
117 The three-and-a-half times are defined by Rev 11.3; 13.5: 42 months = 3.5 years ä 12
months; 1260 days = 42 months ä 30 days.
118 Cf. the contexts of Matth 24.15, Mark 13.14; different in Luke 21.
119 No. 58 SC 14.380; no. 57 GCS N. S. 7.328ff.
164 Easter Sunday
his readers' life-time. 120 Moreover, as the three and a half years of the anti-
christ imply great pain and troubles, Hippolytus even advises his readers to
pray that one should not be forced to endure those days. 521 Both tendencies
imply that it would be very strange for Hippolytus to have expected the sec-
ond Parousia of Christ during the celebration of the Pascha or the Pentecost.
As it is presumably still far away, one could only think about it as a terrible
threat. In times of persecution, apocalyptic texts could comfort their readers
by promising an end to their present state. Whoever used them to learn
something about the future would never look forward to those events - not to
mention a kind of anticipatory ('eschatological') celebration.
Did Hippolytus hint in this text to an expectation of Christ's second
Parousia within an unspecified period of 50 days - more accurately, between a
45 th and a 50 th day? While this cannot be ruled out, two further points suggest
that this text does not provide a solid basis for reconstructions of any liturgies
or their meaning.
First, the transmission of the text is disturbed. Thus, two Greek witnesses
and the Slavonic version read: 'The antichrist does not enter into part of the
fiftieth (or: 'Pentecost')...'. 122 It is imaginable that the Epistula Apostolorum
(17/28), which definitely excludes the coming of Christ within the 50+X days,123
presupposes a similar concept. If it should avoid the coming of Christ and
therefore all the troubles that precede it during the time between the Pascha
and Pentecost, it would implicitly create a period of time that was safe from
any intrusion of the eschaton. This is, however, built upon a variant of the text
that breaks its alignment with the Biblical source. In Daniel 12, that period of
45 days is beyond doubt a time of troubles. One may attribute the addition of
'not' to a scribe who wanted to save the joyous character of Christian Pente-
cost. This variant, then, elucidates neither Hippolytus' commentary nor Daniel
12. It would support what can be known about the Pentecost in the 3 rd and
early 4 th centuries.
120 Dating Christ's Parousia to the year 6000 - 500 years after his birth and thus some
centuries after Hippolytus' own life - stops any immediate expectation; cf. Dunbar
1983 and Irshai 2000.
121 Cf. Bonwetsch 1897, 44-53, quoting the Commentary on Daniel 4.12.2 GCS N.S.
7.220ff.
122 GCS N. S. 7.323.3f 'Denn nicht kommt der Antichrist in einem Teil der Pentekoste'.
123 Rouwhorst 2005, 339. 341f; referring also to Talley 1991, 84.
Second, the text of ms. J, that seems to be an epitome of parts of the Com-
mentary to Daniel124 which was combined with chapters of De Antichristo,
raises another numerical problem in this context:125
The words, 'Blessed is he that waits and comes to the thousand three hundred and
thirty five days/ 126 have also their value, as the Lord said:127 'But he that shall
endure unto the end, the same shall be saved.' Wherefore let us by no means
admit the falling away, lest iniquity abound, and the 'abomination of desolation'
(Dan 12.11; Mark 13.14) - that is, the adversary - overtake us. And He said to him,
'unto evening' (8.14) - that is, unto the 'consummation' (12.13) - 'and morning'.
What is 'morning'? The day of resurrection (cf. 12.13). For that is the beginning of
another128 age, as the morning is the beginning of the day. And the 'thousand and
four hundred 129 days' are the light of the world. For on the appearing of the light
in the world - as He says, Ί am the light of the world' - the 'sanctuary shall be
purged' (8.14), as he said, (of) the adversary. For it cannot by any means be
purged but by his destruction.
Unlike the number of 45, 50 (the 50th day) cannot be inferred from the numbers
in Daniel 12.11f (and 8.14). The formulation of ms. J (as well as the discussion
in De Antichristo) does not use the number of 50. Thus, it does not know
anything about (a) Pentecost. Georg Bonwetsch and Marcel Richard quote this
manuscript in the apparatus, but only accept as true variants what roughly
corresponds to the main tradition of the commentary as it is attested in the
main witnesses and the Slavonic translation. Within the scope of the present
study, it is not possible to assess the literary relationship between these redac-
124 The problem is summarized by Bonwetsch and Richard 2000, XXVI. Angelo Mai ed-
ited this text apparently from ms. J (ms. Chigi gr. 36, R. VII. 45; Bonwetsch and Ri-
chard 2000, XVI) = PG 10.641-669 (with an introduction to the problems of the text
633-636); Engl, transl. Salmond ANFa 5.178-185. Ziegler 1952 does not discuss the
text of J, because he presupposes the edited text of the commentary. Bonwetsch and
Richard: 'J ist eine Verbindung von De Antichristo 24-28 und den Kapiteln IV 23-56
des Daniel-Kommentars.' However, also the last paragraph of the scholia in ms. J
echo the end of the tractate De Antichristo.
125 Transl. based on Salmond's; ANFa 5.185 no. 44; text PG 10.668f.
126 Cf. Dan 12.12 Theodotion.
127 Cf. Mark 13.13; Matth 10.22; 24.13.
128 Note in the preceding text the enigmatic phrase: 'another Pentecosf. The 'other Pente-
cost' is the new age of Christ here.
129 This may be a quotation of Dan 8.14. According to Ziegler's apparatus (Greek Daniel),
there is, however, only one minuscule ms. (26 = 10th cent., Rome Vat. gr. 556) that
reads 1400 instead of 2300 there. The textual tradition of Dan 12.11f does not support
this number.
166 Easter Sunday
tions of Hippolytus' works. However, even if the text of ms. J is nothing but
the result of an epitomator's attempt to understand Hippolytus' commentary
within the context of his works (hence the comparison with De Antichristo), it
shows that the difficult text became clearer as soon as someone deleted the
reference to 'Pentecost' and replaced it with another numerical speculation.
Instead of the 50th day, the text refers to the resurrection (apparently at the end
of times). This much easier text is likewise unrelated to the liturgy.
To be sure, the above translated text of Hippolytus' commentary remains a
lectio difficilior. As such, it is hardly understandable and the reconstruction of
a liturgical background of the text creates more problems than it solves. If
Hippolytus read Daniel 12 into the scenario of the coming of Christ and 'the
Pentecost' he moved 'Pentecost' far away from any parallel to what can be en-
countered in Judaism or in Tertullian's writings. If this Pentecost should be a
period of time, it would bring the most terrible troubles to the Christians, even
if there was some consolation at the end.
In their attempts to expound Daniel 12, Hippolytus and his epitomator
discover a link between the final coming of Christ and the eschatological ap-
pearance of the antichrist, who will come at the time when Christ's return is
expected, in order to take that last opportunity to grasp the power over the
universe. He enters the scene in the first 'part (the 45 days) of the 50' - a pe-
riod that is implied in the Biblical text as the last climax of troubles. Hippoly-
tus' texts do not reflect their author's opinion about the shape and meaning of
a Christian liturgy of Pentecost.
4.3.2 A Jewish Background for the Christian Pentecost?
Gerard Rouwhorst's (2001a, 322) observations imply that the successor of Sha-
vuot as a festival of Second Temple times was not yet fully recovered in Juda-
ism. It is, after all, the Syriac church (which was more closely in touch with
Judaism than many others) that is the last one to have appropriated Pentecost
(and hence Shavuot) for Christianity. The rabbinic texts suggest, moreover,
that Shavuot was not as important in tannaitic times as it should become
later.130 Unlike its treatment of the other festivals, the Mishna does not devote
a tractate to Shavuot. Joseph Tabory (2000, 147) suggests that this be due to the
130 Pentecost is, however, mentioned in the inscription of Hierapolis, cf. p. 53. It is of
lesser importance than Pesah according to that inscription.
fact that Shavuot did not entail halakhot regarding the individual as long as
the liturgy at the Temple was alive.131 Rabbinic texts mainly concern the offer-
ings of the day, which are also discussed with regard to the other festivals.
Except for the faint chronological hint at Exod 19.1,132 its being the date for the
offering of the firstfruits (Numb 28.26133), and the two breads of Lev 23,16-20,
Shavuot does not have any 'contents' in the Bible.134 Exod 19.1 can be under-
stood as the result of the cautious attempt to create mimetic links between the
pilgrim festivals and the Exodus narrative in the canonical text of the Hebrew
Bible. The development of the text of the Pentateuch was apparently frozen
before this tendency could fully integrate Shavuot and Sukkot after having
appropriated Pesah.135
According to the book of Jubilees, the festive renewal of the covenant is
connected with Shavuot.136 In analogy to the Biblical remarks on the periods of
time when no Pesah was celebrated,137 Jub 6.18f enumerates epochs in which a
celebration of Shavuot was not observed. While Shavuot was understood in
131 In this argument, cause and effect may be exchanged. It is likewise possible that the
rabbis did not create halakhot regarding the individual for Shavuot, because the festi-
val hardly had any meaning after the destruction of the Temple.
132 Tabory 2000, 151: also 2 Chron 15.8-15. The latter passage describes a festival in the
third month that includes the offering of 700 (mxn E3E5·) pieces of cattle and 7000 sheep
and goats and involves oaths (nsntff and the verbal root). The allusions to Exod 19 are
as clear as the interest of the text to find an etymology for the festival of msin®, that is
not referred to by its name.
133 This is only made explicit in tBik 1.1 286.
134 Emphasizing that the date of the festival of the translation of the Tora into Greek
which is attested by Philo (VitMos 2.41 CW 4.209) is unknown, Tabory 2000, 151 sug-
gests that it be connected with Shavuot. It could also have been associated with Pe-
sah. Hacham 2005 compares the story of the letter of Aristeas about the release of
Jewish slaves in Egypt under Ptolemy I with the Exodus. The liberation is fully ac-
complished within 7 days although the 3rd day is also mentioned. The translation of
the Tora is described as a transformation of the giving of the Law to the Jews of Egypt.
The religious identity of Egypt's Jewry would thus rather come to the fore in an an-
nual celebration of the translation of the LXX than in a celebration of Pesah, the anti-
Egyptian festival par excellence.
135 Noack 1962, 79.
136 'For this reason it has been ordained and written on the heavenly tablets that they
should celebrate the festival of weeks during this month - once a year - to renew the
covenant each and every year', Jub 6.17 CSCO 511.39f.
137 The question has been discussed above. Cf. Joshua 5.4-8; 2 Kings 23.22 par. 2 Chron
30.5, 26; 35.18; Ezra 6.19ff.
168 Easter Sunday
the context of the idea of the covenant (of Noah) which would also apply to the
events at Sinai at large, the specific meaning of the giving of the Tora was not
yet associated with it in Jubilees.138 This may, however, be due to the fact that
the narrative of Jubilees ends with the Egyptian Pesah. Shavuot was also not
the anniversary of the giving of the Tora according to tannaitic sources.139 Ta-
bory quotes Seder Olam (Rabba) as the first clear attestation from the end of
the tannaitic time - a dating which may be up for revision. As Tabory ob-
serves, the Babylonian Talmud gives different opinions about the date of the
giving of the Tora, which may be due to the character of the calendar.140
mMeg 3.5 and tMeg 3.5 354 still refer to Deut 16.9 as the Biblical reading
for the festival. However, tMeg 3.5 adds 'and there are some who say (viz.,
that one should read) Exod 19.1ff'. Thus, rabbinic Shavuot resembles the de-
velopment of Pesah with regard to the expansion of its contents. The older
texts suggest that one study the 'laws of the festival'. At the end of the
tannaitic time, the Biblical beginnings of a gradual historicization of the festi-
vals are taken up again. While this shows that the tannaim did not skip Sha-
vuot, that festival is of lesser importance than Pesah or the Day of Atonement -
as inferred from the number of tractates that were written (or transmitted) re-
138 In Jub 1.1, Moses is called up to the Mountain by God in order to receive 'the two
stone tablets of the law and the commandments which I have written so that you may
teach them' CSCO 511.1 on the date of 16 III. A similar scenario seems to have been
envisaged by the Temple Scroll, Brin 1993. The Biblical text of Exod 19.1-14.28 tells
that Moses went up and down the mountain more than one time. Several scenarios
can be derived from it in order to create a meaning for Shavuot.
139 Tabory 2000, 152. Origen was still not aware of - or not interested in this connection;
cf. Buchinger 2005, 133 η. 701. Although Schreiber 2002, (cf. 69) 74 observes that there
is no positive reason to assume that Luke knew Jubilees, he suggests that he had ac-
cess to a 'tradition' that associated Shavuot and covenants. He bases this assumption
on the motif of fire used in Acts 2.3. This may, however, also be interpreted as a
stereotype image connected with theophanies. It is hardly a reliable indication for the
reconstruction of a theological tradition.
140 The count of the days within each month was connected with the observation of the
moon, being numerically standardized only in part before the end of the Talmudic
time. As long as the length of the months that are covered by the 50 days of the count
of the Omer were not fully standardized, Shavuot could fall on different dates after
the beginning of Sivan, even if the beginning of the count of the Omer was set on a
fixed day in Nisan. While it would not be difficult to see that the events at Sinai
somehow fell into the time of Shavuot, the idea of Shavuot as 'the time of the giving of
our Tora' is the result of the creative restoration and expansion of the Biblical festival
cycle in rabbinic times.
garding its laws and customs. If there were groups of Jews who did not yet
hold this festival in high esteem, 141 this may be a reason why early Christian
writers did not bother to speak about it, even if they were somehow versed in
Jewish customs and beliefs. It explains the character of Christian Pentecost as
independent from Judaism and the Old Testament. Emerging towards the end
of the second century, the Christian Pentecost hardly enacted Biblical texts and
neither emulated nor counteracted a widespread Jewish custom.
Sometimes, Philo is regarded as a witness to the interest of Diaspora Juda-
ism in Shavuot. The following observation must be taken into account in
background of the discussion of Philo's text. Although his texts were pre-
served in Egypt, the destruction of Alexandrian Jewry in the Diaspora uprising
in 117 put an end to any tradition or liturgical continuity there. In general, it is
not clear how representative Philo's thinking was for North African Judaism
even before the destruction of Egyptian Jewry. When Egyptian Judaism was
rebuilt much later, it did not continue Philo's approach. Apart from his texts,
there is no indication that Egyptian Christians should have been able to ob-
serve any Jewish practice that would represent Philo's tradition after the early
second century. Philo's works were preserved by Christians as texts. They
were read from the end of the second century. Not all Christians who read
Philo, were aware that they had the text of a Jewish writer in front of them.142
Philo's description of the Therapeutae (VitCont 65) must be considered in this
context.
One of the most conspicuous features of the Therapeutae's religious exis-
tence seems to have been their high estimation of Pentecost. Apart from the
parallel of the number of 50 days between the festival of the Therapeutae and
the period of the Omer and Pentecost, the term προέορτος occurs in exactly
those two discussions (the Omer and Pentecost) in Philo's works. 143 Coming
141 Note however that Pentecost is mentioned together with the festival of Unleavened
bread on the sarcophagus of Hierapolis, cf. p. 53.
142 Even as late as 1896, Wendland 756ff had to defend the authenticity of VitCont against
the assumption that this should be a Christian text. Philo seems to have astonished
his Christian readers already in antiquity, cf. Runia 2002 for an assessment of the
question based among others on the sensational find of a ms. of Philo in Egypt.
143 It may also have been used in the Greek source of Quaestiones in Exodum 1.9 LCL 17.
There, the 14th of Nisan is 'pre-festive, as though (it were) a road leading to festive re-
joicings, during which it is incumbent upon us to meditate.'
170 Easter Sunday
from a long description of depraved, pagan forms of symposia, Philo turns

towards the Therapeutae's gatherings:144
I shall set in opposition (to the others) the (Symposia) of (those) who dedicated
their own life and themselves to the understanding and contemplation of the
things of nature according to the most holy directions of Moses, the prophet. They
gather together every seventh week,145 firstly, not only admiring the simple week
(viz., of 7 days),146 but also (its) square (7x7). For they know it (viz., the number 7
and hence its square 7x7) as pure and (as remaining) in everlasting virginity147.
It (viz., the square, 7x7 days) is, secondly148, preliminary to a greater festival (like
49 comes before 50), which the number fifty has obtained; (the number of fifty)
being the holiest number which is also most appropriately corresponding to
nature and composed out of the square of the rectangular triangle, that is the
principle of the origin of all things.
Philo does not allude to the Jewish cycle of festivals here. However, he brings
two arguments for the liturgy of the Therapeutae. 'First', the Therapeutae are
said to have gathered every 49th day in honor of the square of 7. Such an in-
stitution is not attested in other Jewish sources. It is the celebration of the
structure of nature as such.
This does not seem to be sufficient, as Philo goes on to find as a second rea-
son for this celebration that the number of 49 is close to 50. Philo's mentioning
of the number 50 has its own reason. In the Pythagorean system, as it is at-
tested by Philo, the number 49 is not known to carry a special dignity. There-
fore, the number of 50 is needed in order to increase the importance of 49 by
the proximity of 49 to 50. As any celebration that takes place every 7x7th day
falls on the 49th day - and hence before the 50th - the 49th day is important by
virtue of its being 'preliminary', προεόρτιος149, to the 50th. This being
144 VitCont 64f CW 6.63. Cf. n. 221 p. 195.

145 Διά, Kühner and Gerth 1898, 482: 'So auch von einer nach bestimmten Zeitabschnitten
wiederkehrenden Handlung'.
146 VitCont 30-33 CW 6.54: the Therapeutae's Sabbatical gatherings.
147 Liddell and Scott 26f referring to Philo All 1.15 CW 1.64: 'in Pythag. language, of the
number 7 (as being neither factor nor multiple of any number up to 10)'; Staehle 1931,
36. Philo himself mentions the Pythagorean provenance of this concept here (correct-
ly, cf. Staehle's parallels). The sum of the squares of the triangle 32+42+52 is 50; Dau-
mas and Miquel 1963,124f n. 3; Staehle 1931, 67.
148 Liddell and Scott 1535 on πρώτον: 'freq[ently] answered only by δε'.
149 A small minority of three mss. reads προέορτος against προεόρτιος in the rest of the
tradition. The editors regard προέορτος as the better text, CW 5.129 (here: Cohn).
Philo seems, however, to continue the praise of the number of 49 and not to empha-
προεόρτίος is not disturbed by the fact that the 50th day is not celebrated at
all.150 Philo's Therapeutae are not interested in Shavuot or Pentecost, and do
not celebrate every 50th day. The only parallel to the Jewish cycle of festivals,
the 50 days of the Omer, is likewise not hinted at here. Philo knows very well
that every 49th day is as irrelevant as every 50th in actual Jewish practice. Philo
does not discuss rabbinism or ideas of a priestly elite such as it is attested in
the scrolls of Qumran, but the only real, philosophic branch of Judaism: Py-
thagorean Judaism.151
Therefore, any reference to Shavuot or Pentecost misses the point in an ex-
planation of the Therapeutae. In this description of the Therapeutae's customs,
Philo does not argue that the Mosaic law is also built on the numerical princi-
ples of the universe. The Therapeutae are living in perfect harmony with the
principles of nature. As good Pythagoreans, they base their practice on their
philosophic vision of important numbers. If the important numbers are not
important enough by themselves within the Pythagorean system, they are at
least said to be adjacent to other important numbers (50), if they are thus rec-
size its lesser importance in comparison with the number of 50. In SpecLeg, 'the festi-
val that is celebrated because of the sheaf' is said to be only 'a pre-festival of another,
greater feast - if it is necessary to say the truth' ή έπί τω δράγματι πανήγυρις προ-
έορτός εστίν, ει δει τάΛηθές ειπείν, έτέρας εορτής μείζονος... SpecLeg explains the
lower status of the ritual of the Omer with respect to Pentecost on the basis of what is
evident from the Biblical text. He supports it by means of realia: the lower status of
barley in comparison with wheat. VitCont speculates about the importance of num-
bers. By its proximity to 50, the number 49 participates in the eminence of the latter.
This meaning is better expressed by the majority reading προεόρτίος as an adjective.
One must not read SpecLeg 2.176 CW 5.129 into VitCont 65 CW 6.63. Notwith-
standing the accuracy of the rest of Bergmeier's 2002 observations, his identification of
the 49th day with the Omer should be corrected, 54. The two προέορτα are less similar
than the word would suggest. While the 'sheaf' is celebrated as the first day in a
series of 50, the festival of the Therapeutae is the last day in a series of 49 preceding
the 50th.
150 A continuous application of circles of 50 days whose 1st day is identical with the 50th of
the preceding cycle may be derived from the structure of the jubilees; cf . Talley 1986 =
1991, 59. Although this was the approach of the book of Jubilees; Maier 1996, HOf;
Gleßmer 1999, 236; it was only one theoretical possibility to calculate it, yQid 1.2 59a.
It was also suggested there that the 50th year be added to the 49 and that it was not
identical with each 49th. Maier assumes that the 49th year was actually kept in several
instances, or at least calculated in order to be kept.
151 McGowan 1999 refers to the Therapeutae's diet as 'typical of Graeco-Roman asceti-
cism', 80.
172 Easter Sunday
oncilable with the basic structure of the week (representing 7 as an important

number).
VitCont 64f is neither a witness to the celebration of the day of the cutting
of the Omer, nor for an interest in the festival of weeks, nor for an otherwise
unknown festival. The fictional liturgy of the Therapeutae is unrelated to the
priestly calendars of the Qumran scrolls as well as to Christian liturgies.152
4.3.3 Tertullian and the Emergence of the Christian Pentecost
The first authors who speak about a Christian celebration of Pentecost live in
the late second century and represent a remarkably consistent as well as a non-
Biblical understanding of the festival. Tertullian is the most important among
them:153
152 The question of alleged parallels to periods of 49/50 days in the priestly calendar of
the scrolls of Qumran as well as the East Syrian calendar will be discussed in ch. 4.6.
Drawing due attention to the difficulties of such an approach, Leonhardt 2001, 48-50
suggests, that the festival of the Therapeutae be an otherwise unknown 'festival of a
highly ascetic group'. This cannot be substantiated. It is, likewise, revealing to recall
that Klinghardt 1996 reconstructs two 'types' of meals in the context of ancient Chris-
tiantiy and Judaism. The first is represented by virtually all sources and implies the
course of a normal Hellenistic banquet. It begins with a meal and reaches a period of
discussion and deliberation afterwards. The alleged second type is only represented
in Philo's Therapeutae and Justin's Sunday celebration. Yet this type should be the
archetype of all synagogue liturgies before 70 C.E. As Philo's description of the
Therapeutae is no reliable witness to 'the' synagogue in Antiquity and as Justin's cele-
bration must be explained in other ways, because it is not related in any way to the
(rabbinic) synagogue liturgy, Klinghardt's 'second type' must be dismissed. The
fourth century sequence of the Christian liturgy of the word with a celebration of the
Eucharist following it requires another interpretation.
153 De Baptismo 19 1.293f; cf. Boeckh 1960, 12ff. Jerome remarks that the Montariists at-
tached a fast of 40 days to the 'Pentecost'. Commentary to Matthew 1.9 SC 242.172.92-
174.111; Rouwhorst 2001a, 314 n. 26 and Boeckh 1960, 2 observe that Jerome presup-
poses the Quadragesima (Lent) and applies this to the Montanist practice in an anach-
ronism: '(1) Some people think, therefore (viz., because of the logion about the bride-
groom's absence), that one must fast after forty days of the passion (i.e., after the forti-
eth day), although the Holy Spirit, who is coming immediately afterwards on the day
of the Pentecost, requires us (to hold) a festival (and not to fast). (2) Based on the op-
portunity provided by this text, Montanus, Prisca, and Maximilla also make a (fast of)
forty (days) after Pentecost, because the bridegroom's sons would be obliged to fast as
The Pascha provides a more solemn day for baptism, (coinciding with the occa-
sion) when also the passion of the Lord, in which we are immersed,154 was ful-
filled. It is, likewise, not unfitting that, what the Lord said, when he was going to
celebrate the last Pascha, to the disciples being sent to prepare (it), is interpreted
figuratively: 'You will meet a person who is carrying water'155 he indicates the
place where the Pascha must be celebrated by means of the sign of the water.
Furthermore, Pentecost is a most joyful period for baths (i.e. baptisms) that must
be administered when the Lord's resurrection was made (known) frequently156
among the disciples and (when) the grace of the Holy Spirit was given and when
the hope for the coming of the Lord was indirectly shown.157 For having been re-
ceived back in heaven, angels said to the Apostles: 'Like he ascended into heaven,
thus he will come (again)' - in any case in the (period of) Pentecost. For when
Jeremiah says: 'And I shall gather them together from the ends of the earth on the
soon as the bridegroom is absent.' The first remark (1) already foreshadows (rather
for Jerome's than for Montanus' time) the celebration of the ascension on the 40lh day
after Easter. While Jerome's terminology of no. 2 presupposes the pre-Paschal Quad-
ragesima, one could still maintain that the custom described in no. 1 be derived from
Acts 1.3 and hence totally independent from the later Quadragesima. The second re-
mark (2) may be another early attestation for Pentecost, if Jerome indeed preserves
some old knowledge about Montanus here.
154 Favoring Paschal baptism, Tertullian is among the first ones who allude to the im-
agery of Rom 6.3 in the context of baptism, cf. Bradshaw 1993, 43-45. Pascha is a sol-
emn occasion, because the Lord's passion happened (adimplere) on it - cf. the following
remark on Pentecost. This does not imply that it is solemn, because his passion is cele-
brated in it. Note that Tertullian must bring two scriptural allusions as a support for
his idea that one should baptize at Easter.
155 Cf. Mark 14.13, Luke 22.10.
156 Boeckh 1960, 14 emphasizes that the resurrection/ascension 'happened frequently' -
'In dieser Zeit hat sich die Auferstehung des Herrn unter den Jüngern häufig wieder-
holt.' Tertullian does not speak about a kind of liturgy among the apostles but refers
to the apparitions of Christ by means of these words, 45 and n. 319.
157 Kretschmar 1954/55, 212 derives the Pentecost from the 40 days of the 'bridegroom's
presence' after the resurrection; cf. Boeckh 1960, 2 and 45 for a more nuanced view.
As Tertullian says, the Pentecost indeed emerged as a series of days to which all the
elements of Easter Sunday are applied: resurrection, ascension, and the giving of the
Spirit. Only if one begins to derive exact liturgical structures from Acts If instead of
broad theological schemes, Tertullian's 50 days actually resemble the 40 days that are
implied in Acts 1.3. The delimitation of these days to 40 and even more the creation of
a liturgy for that occasion are, however, developments of the fourth century, Boeckh
33, and not the sources and predecessors for the 50 days, as assumed by Kretschmar.
174 Easter Sunday
festive day of the Pascha' 158 - he also refers to the day of Pentecost which is actu-
ally a 'festive day'.159
Moreover, every day is the Lord's; every hour, every time is fit for baptism. Even
if there is a difference regarding the (degree of) solemnity, it does not matter re-
garding the grace.
As it emerges from Paul Bradshaw's observations (1993), Tertullian's last re-

mark on the possibility of performing baptism at any time does not need Bibli-
cal support, because it is the only obvious regulation of the paragraph. The
following remarks will, therefore, concentrate on Tertullian's two innovative
points preceding this last paragraph. Those required support from the Bible.
Tertullian interprets the eschatological gathering of the people that is ex-
pressed in Jer 38.8 LXX 'on the day of the Pascha' as an image for baptism. The
quotation of Jer 38.8 LXX is the only reason for his remark that Christ would
come 'in any case in the Pentecost'. At first glance, it is astonishing that Ter-
tullian does not use the verse in order to support his idea that one should bap-
tize on the date of the Pascha, but on Pentecost.
Several scriptural passages could be collected in order to support a close
connection of baptism, Pascha, and Pentecost. The Lord's gathering of the
158 Και συνάξω αυτούς άτι' έσχατου της γης έν έορτη φασεκ:, Jer 38.8 LXX - but not MT
where Π031 Πϊ is understood as 'the blind and the lame'. This is a fine, literal
interpretation of a Hebrew Vorlage of the LXX and not a 'targumic gloss'; thus Can-
talamessa 1981, 145 n. 2 referring to Le Deaut 1963, 121. J. Borleffs CChr.SL 1 cuts
'paschae' from the Biblical verse in: 'Et congregabo illos ab extremis terrae in diefesto pas-
chae diem significat et pentecostes qui est proprie dies festus', 1.14f. 'Paschae' should,
however, be part of the quotation, Cantalamessa 1981, 145 (no. 93) n. 2. Ziegler 1958,
350 suggests that the original text read '...in die festo paschae. <Paschae> diem signifi-
cat...' and that one of the two 'paschae' was dropped because of haplography. Zieg-
ler is right. Tertullian interprets the element 'day' within this text. Sabatier 1751 II,
697 and n. to v. 8 apparently shaped the modern understanding of the passage: '&
congregabo illos ab extremis terrae in die festo'. He quotes Jerome's interpretation
about the differences between the 'Hebrew' and the LXX. It is curious that Sabatier
did not follow the LXX but the Vulgate - in a volume that attempts to reconstruct the
Vetus Latina! - in order to understand Tertullian's translation. As there is no reason
to assume that Tertullian knew any other than a Greek text of this verse, one would
ask, how he should have translated έν έορτη φασεκ in another way than 'in die festo
paschae'.
159 Buchinger 2005, 813 n. 2297 points to the interpretation of 'festive day' as determined:
'Pentecost ... which is actually the festive day'. This understanding cannot be ruled
out. It is more easily understood like that, if the last day and not the 'spatium' is
meant.
people is, for instance, equated with Christ's second coming. Why must both
happen at Pentecost? The disciples ask in Acts 1.6 whether Christ would 're-
store the kingdom to Israel'. He answers them in 1.8 with a reference to what
will happen (throughout the book of Acts and especially) on the following fes-
tival of Pentecost.160 At Pentecost, baptism of the peoples begins. 'Angels'
(Tertullian) promise his coming in Acts 1.11. The quotation of Joel in Acts 2
(esp. v. 20) emphasizes the Lord's 'day' that may also be read into the casual
remark 'on that day' in Acts 2.41. At the end of his speech, Acts 2.38f, Peter
likewise equates the ingathering of Israel with baptism. After this, 3000 per-
sons are actually baptized - as many as were killed after their involvement in
the affair of the golden calf (Exod 32.28). The question must remain open
whether the newly baptized Christians replace that number of lost Israelites or
whether Luke randomly refers to the number of half a legion.161 Inasmuch as
Tertullian's scriptural proofs for Paschal baptism are Rom 6.3 and Mark 14.13
par., he presupposes Acts 1 and 2 and quotes Jer 38.8 LXX as support for what
seems to be Pentecostal baptism.
Despite any close association of Acts 1 and 2 with Tertullian's reasoning,
Jer 38.8 LXX explicitly mentions φασεκ and not Pentecost. Did Tertullian in-
vent Pentecostal baptism in order to be able to use Acts If as support for Pas-
160 Note that the disciples will be his 'witnesses' εως έσχατου της γης that might have
reminded him of Jer 38,8 LXX.
161 'Philo does not refer to the interpretation of the festival as a celebration of the giving
of the Law, which was sometimes used in first century CE (he links the giving of the
Law with the New Year)', J. Leonhardt 2001, 40. Heinemann 1932, 128f emphasizes
Philo's silence about the meaning of Shavuot as festival of the giving of the Law
against Acts 2 and Jub, which he sees as proof that 'die Begehung des Wochenfestes
als Offenbarungsfest zu Philons Zeit volkstümlich war.' The 1st of Tishri is not the
festival of the New Year according to Philo. He even polemizes against the beginning
of the Egyptian calendar in autumn; SpecLeg 2.153 CW 5.122f; Heinemann 1932, 130.
Lev 23.24 and Exod 19.3,16, 19; 20.18 mention σάλπιγγες. Thus, Philo infers from the
Pentateuch, that the 1st of Tishri is connected with the events at Sinai. Because of its
widely attested connection with firstfruits (from the Land of Israel), Shavuot was in
any case irrelevant for the Diaspora. Philo discusses almost exclusively rituals and
customs as performed in Jerusalem. There is no trace in SpecLeg 2.162-187 that Alex-
andrian Jewry as such took any interest in a 50 day period after Passover. Neverthe-
less, the number of 3000 people baptized and similar elements of Acts 2 may be inter-
preted as allusions to the events at Sinai in a very broad sense (or a narrative refor-
mulation of the 500 of 1 Cor 15.6; Barrett 1994, 109). Barrett's 1994, l l l f observations
must be taken seriously as a warning against the construction of anachronistic analo-
gies between rabbinic and New Testament concepts. Cf. n. 139 p. 168.
176 Easter Sunday
chal baptism? While this can be inferred from the above observations, the
question must be posed in another way first: Did Tertullian at all refer to Pen-
tecostal baptism?
The first three volumes of Biblia Patristica, that cover the second and third
centuries of Christian literature, 162 show that Jer 38.8 LXX was not a coined
proof-text for the understanding of the Christian Pascha (or Pentecost) among
the early writers. Nevertheless, it seems that Tertullian does not link this text
with 'Pentecostal baptism' in a weird association between 'the festival of
φασεκ' and Pentecost. On the contrary, he explains his ideas quite clearly. It
is Tertullian's basic understanding that the 50 days of Pentecost are nothing
else but the Pascha. In fact, Tertullian does not apply Jer 38.8 LXX to Pentecost
but to the Pascha.
Furthermore, Tertullian thinks that the 50 days as a period and not the 50 th
day as a date are fit for baptism. This is an important distinction, as it can be
shown that the 50th day did not yet exist as a special occasion in Tertullian's
opinion and in what can be known about the liturgies of his time. Tertullian
seems to be the first to allude to the Biblical text of Acts If and to read into it
the idea that one should baptize in the Pentecost period. This is independent
from the Biblical and Jewish understanding of Pentecost as a celebration of one
day. 163 Why does Tertullian equate the Pascha and Pentecost in their relation
to baptism?
Tertullian refers to a concept that defined the Christian Pentecost for al-
most a century after his time. According to Tertullian, Pentecost is an un-
structured period of time after and including Easter Sunday, in fact extending
the one (theological) Easter Sunday to over 50 (astronomical) 'days'. This
162 Except for Tertullian as quoted above. The reference to Cyprian's Testimonia (Ad
Quirinum) 1.13 CChr.SL 3.15.12 in Biblia Patristica is a mistake for Jer 37.8f LXX. Ori-
gen only quotes it once and only for linguistic reasons.
163 The term rnxy, 'assembly' (being used for the festival of Shavuot by the rabbis), does
not imply that the 50 days after Pesah were understood as a period in any sense; cf.
Schreiber 2002, 63ff for further references. It refers to the 7th day of the festival of
Unleavened Bread which is truly understood as festival period; Deut 16.8, see n. 214 p.
193. The term rnss does not indicate that Shavuot was understood as a conclusion of
Pesah or of the period between Pesah and Shavuot; against Noack 87. There is no
indication of an understanding of Pentecost as a period instead of the 50th day in Acts
If. When Josephus remarks that Ant 3.252 LCL 438 άσαρθά means '50 th ', he does not
convey a liturgical interpretation of the term but betrays his ignorance of Hebrew and
Aramaic; Noack 1962, 77. Josephus is unable to imagine that the name of the festival
could mean something else than the customary Greek designation, 78.
Pentecost period does not have a liturgical or theological (viz. commemora-

tive) character of its own, as it is Easter Sunday. This is expressed in its joyous
character164 and especially in the prohibition of kneeling165 that is also incum-
bent upon (Easter) Sunday.
This reading of Tertullian opposes arguments like those proposed by Carl
Schmidt,166 who thinks that the Christians changed the mood of their celebra-
tion of the Easter vigil from the mournful 'Passah' to the joyful celebration of
Pentecost 'at the time of the resurrection'167. This resembles in a superficial
way the (presumable) change of the mood of the Quartodeciman celebration.
The latter was, however, not linked to a mimetic representation of the chronol-
ogy of the gospels.168 For if the Quartodeciman celebration should have been
interested in the timing of 'the resurrection', the discovery of the empty tomb,
or Christ's appearance to Mary, it would not have been possible to celebrate
this in the very night after the day of Christ's death. The coherence of the
Quartodeciman celebration breaks apart as soon as mimetic elements that al-
lude to the Gospel chronology are introduced into its celebration. Its timing
was probably linked to the end of the celebration of the Jews. It is true that a
similar structure can be found in the fourth century celebration of Easter.
There, it is already shifted to the night between Holy Saturday and Easter
Sunday. The Quartodeciman celebration may resemble that later one structur-
ally. It was not understood in the same mimetic or commemorative way.
Before this transposition of 'the Pascha' into the night between Saturday
and Sunday, scholars like Tertullian could never have understood this change
of mood as a transition into a longer period of joy that is connected with 'Pen-
tecost' in any way. For the Quartodeciman predecessors of Tertullian could
never have attached any period of a 'Pentecost' to their celebration, as it would
be very strange to count the 50 days from the 15th of Nisan, especially if one
164 De Oratione 23.2 1.272.9f: 'Tantundem et spatio pentecostes, quae eadem exultationis
sollemnitate dispungitur'; cf. also De Ieiunio 14.2f 2.1273.2-7 and Buchinger 2005, 813
η. 2297.
165 Tertullian Cor. 3.4 2.1043.23-25. During a period of Pentecost, it is impossible to keep
an even short period of fasting immediately before baptism. This also suggests that
Pentecostal baptism is designed for an overflow from Easter and not a baptismal sea-
son in its own right; cf. Bradshaw 1993.
166 Schmidt and Wajnberg 1919, 605.
167 '...mit dem Moment der Auferstehung den Vigiliengottesdienst des Passah in das
Freudenfest der Pentekoste übergehen ließen'.
168 Cf. n. 43 p. 137 and ch. 4.5.
178 Easter Sunday
emphasizes the importance of the date as a Jewish one. A period of Pentecost

that directly continues a second, joyful phase of an Easter vigil must by defini-
tion be connected with Easter Sunday. Any community that celebrated a vigil
in the night preceding the 15th of Nisan would have to wait at least a day until
they could 'continue' the joyful period of Easter.
'Pentecost' did not exist in Judaism as a period of time with a character of its
own. Tertullian's 'Pentecost' presupposes Easter Sunday. The celebration of
Easter beginning with the night preceding a Sunday does not presuppose a
liturgy but a period of fasting.169 A liturgy of Good Friday emerges later. If
Christians of Tertullian's time celebrated Christ's passion, death, and resurrec-
tion in an Easter vigil, the following period of Pentecost emerges as an inven-
tion of a period of liturgical time that is independent from the Jewish and New
Testament ways of understanding Pentecost as the 50th day (at least) after the
16th of Nisan.
Returning to Carl Schmidt, this state of affairs explains the 'terminological
inconsistencies' that he observes within Tertullian's works regarding 'Pascha'
and 'Pentecost'. The thesis that such inconsistencies in Tertullian's terminol-
169 Cf. De Ieiunio 14.2f 2.1272f. Tertullian first mentions (the Montanists', not the Catho-
lics', cf. De Ieiunio 2.2 2.1258.17-20, 26f; 10.1 2.1267.9f) 'stationes' on Wednesday and
Friday in general and 'the fast of "parasceve" (viz. the day of the crucifixion - in the
NT only Matth 27.62; Mark 15.24; Luke 23.54; John 19.14, 31, 42; Dekkers 1947, 150 n.
2)'. Thus, the Montanists fast on (Wednesdays and) Fridays, especially on the Friday
before Easter Sunday. Tertullian continues (3) adding a detail regarding the Pascha:
'Although you sometimes continue (the fast) even on a / the Saturday - as one must
not fast (on a Saturday) except on the Pascha according to a reason that is given else-
where...' He polemizes against the non-Montanists' breaking of his rule that one
should not fast on Saturdays except for the Pascha, cf. De Ieiunio 15.2 CChr.SL
2.1273.19. It may be derived from Tertullian's words, that if they had some fast days
that were fixed in the calendar, they would also keep them on a Saturday - contrary to
the Montanists, who either do not know such fasts or who would not keep them on a
Sabbath; cf. Stökl Ben Ezra's interpretation of the passage 2003, 307. Tertullian does
not yet refer to the Roman solemn fasts that emerge after the fourth century and that
there may be other occasions imaginable where a day of fasting could fall on a Satur-
day - 'sometimes and because of some reason of ecclesiastical need' De Ieiunio 13.3
CChr.SL 2.1272.29f as ordered by the bishop. Moreover, the whole tractate is directed
against the 'Psychics' who 'hate fasts' 1.1 CChr.SL 2.1257.5 - except for the two days
before Easter Sunday, and except for practices that are determined by the individual
freely. If one may derive any information about his adversaries from Tertullian's in-
vectives, they seem to shun fasting rather than keep four special occasions each year
even on Saturdays.
ogy 'already' mark the transition towards a much later terminology must be
rejected.170 Thus, a text that is quoted as a proof-text that Tertullian began to
view Pentecost as the day at the end of that period, De Corona 3.4, may be
read in another way:171
We consider fasting as well as praying by means of genuflexion as unlawful on the
Lord's day. We rejoice in the same freedom always from the day of the Pascha
into172 (the period of) Pentecost.
Tertullian describes exactly the same custom as in De Baptismo 19.173 There is

no uncertainty in his terminology. This is all the more astonishing, as Tertul-
lian applies Biblical terminology174 (in the context of the quotation given
above) to an institution that was not known in Biblical times at all. This Bibli-
cal background of 'the day of Pentecost' fits, however, with the idea that the
period of the 50 days was in fact a 'dies paschae'. In this chapter of De Corona,
Tertullian discusses the importance of ecclesiastical customs that cannot be
supported with scriptural proofs but that emerged from the likewise norma-
tive tradition of Christianity.175 Tertullian implies that his readers know that
170 Schmidt and Wajnberg 1919, 604: 'Ursprünglich hat man den Ostersonntag nicht zum
Passah gerechnet, vielmehr zur Pentekoste, aber schon frühzeitig muß sich der Begriff
"Passah" zugunsten des Ostersonntages verschoben haben, da die Nacht von
Charsamstag zu Sonntag beiden Teilen angehörte, dem Passah und der Pentekoste.
Bereits bei Tertullian bemerken wir diese Unsicherheit...'. Buchinger 2005, 80f. 813 n.
2297 accepts the thesis; cf. η. 177 p. 180 and η. 197 p. 186. Auf der Maur 1983, 80 § c
(correctly) dates the change from a joyous period of 50 days to the celebration of the
50th day into the 4th cent.
171 CChr.SL 2.1043.24-27.
172 'Eadem immunitate a die Paschae in Pentecosten usque gaudemus'. Boeckh 1960, 13
n. 87 referring to Casel 1938, 17 and n. 34: (1) '...in Pentecosten usque heißt nicht etwa
"bis zum Pfingstfest'" (2) 'hebt aber doch schon etwas den 50. Tag als Abschluß her-
vor...' Casel's first observation is correct (Cabie 1965, 41), his tentative second one
must be rejected. 'In noctem' does not mean 'until the night' but '(late) into the night'.
Tertullian did not say '(usque) ad Pentecosten'.
173 Note also De Oratione 23.2 1.272.9f: 'The same (applies) also to the time of Pentecost
(spatio pentecostes), which is passed through (dispungitur) in the same festal charac-
ter of rejoicing.'
174 Τήν ήμέραν της πεντηκοστής Acts 2.1; 20.16; without 'day' in 1 Cor 16.8. Buchinger
2005, 816f n. 2311 and 2312 highlights the problem in a similar way regarding Origen,
whose interpretation of Acts 2 does not support the idea that Origen knew Pentecost
as a celebration of the 50lh day rather than the period of 50 days.
175 'If you should demand a scriptural law for these and other, similar rules, you will find
none', De Corona 4.1 2.1043.1f.
180 Easter Sunday
the joyous character of the 50 days of Pentecost (resulting in the prohibition of

kneeling) was not inherited from Biblical times, but emerged much later.
Tertullian explains and justifies the relatively recent custom of a period of
50 days after Easter. His explanation of these 50 days as 'a festival day' would
be awkward, if Christians should have celebrated the 50 days as a joyous pe-
riod from apostolic times or if they should even have been used to counting 50
days in a more or less ritual manner after Easter Sunday. It is not Pentecost
that makes this period joyful, but the Pascha.176 Paschal baptism within the
period of the 50 days remains Paschal baptism, because the 50 days of the Pen-
tecost are in fact one long Easter Sunday. There is no trace of Pentecostal bap-
tism, as the Pentecost only exists in its being 'paschae dies'.177
Furthermore, Origen still reflects an understanding of the Pentecost178 as a
joyous period including Easter Sunday. If Tertullian should be the witness of a
transition from the period of the 50 days to the time before the 50th day, it
176 The Epistula Apostolorum creates a special period of revelations after the resurrection
based on the appearances of the risen Lord. It is significant that Tertullian, who
agrees with his non-Montanist adversaries about the presence of the bridegroom as an
image for the regulation of fasting (De Ieiunio 13.1f 2.1271), also depicts the Pentecost
as a joyous period of time - an idea that continues to function as a principle for the
creation and understanding of liturgies and fasting; Cabie 1965, 82; for the Byzantine
liturgies, cf. Taft 1990. Tertullian's polemics against the Psychics also shows limits of
this principle. They are said to use this imagery to limit statutory fasting to the two
days before Easter Sunday; De Ieiunio 2.2 2.1258.17-20 although they keep other fasts
13.1 2.1271.16-19. When should the 'bridegroom' be absent? After Christ's burial, as-
cension, or Pentecost? Tertullian does not apply the idea everywhere, as he defends a
practice of breaking the fast on the station days late - after the time of the Lord's bur-
ial, De Ieiunio 10.8 2.1268.27ff.
177 Cf. Bradshaw 1993; 43, 48 for Pentecostal baptism as an 'overflow from Easter'. One
can imagine such causes as illness or menstruation for a deferment of baptism into the
time after Easter. As soon as the Pentecost is understood as 'paschae dies' in Tertul-
lian's writings, the widely held thesis (supported documented by Buchinger 2005,
414f) that the term 'pascha' should only denote the first part of mourning and fasting
in Tertullian's time and that only later (in Cyprian's time) 'pascha' include the joyful
celebration is not correct.
178 Buchinger 2005, 812-817. esp. 813. In his discussion of the number of 50, Origen refers
to the Biblical Pentecost as a festival day but does not link it with a Christian festival;
Buchinger 2005, 123f. Pentecost can only have been a kind of extension of Easter, 'the
only festival that was held on a yearly basis in Origen's time', Buchinger 2005, 146 and
esp. 353-356. Such as Tertullian, Origen alludes to Acts If, although this does appar-
ently not determine the shape and meaning of a liturgy that he knew; Boeckh 1960,
23ff.
would be strange that Origen still adheres to the 'older' system after Tertullian.
While Origen makes great efforts to discuss the relationship between the Old
Testament Pesah and the Christian Pascha, the Biblical Shavuot and the Chris-
tian Pentecost are apparently still different enough and do not to require such
an explanation.
Schmidt's assertion that 'Pentecost comprises Easter Sunday, the festival
of Pentecost, and Ascension' is, therefore, an anachronism.179 Only from the
point of view of the fifth century onwards, the 50 days 'comprise' contents of
other festivals. In developments that began in the fourth century, the 50 days
of Pentecost were split up into a sequence of separate festivals such as Ascen-
sion and the day of Pentecost. For Tertullian, the 'spatium' is not yet struc-
tured. It is still in the stage of requiring legitimation by means of Biblical im-
agery. Furthermore, Tertullian's own remarks at the beginning of De Ieiunio
14'80 must be taken seriously. In that chapter, Tertullian struggles with Paul's
argument against festivals and appointed times (Gal 4) that is leveled against
him by the Catholics - 'we Galaticize (galaticamur)' in Tertullian's words; all
the more so, if Christian customs resemble the 'Jewish' (viz. Old Testament)
ones. Thus, he refers to the Pascha, and the ensuing 50 days (not the 50th day)
of joy and emphasizes that they are 'new' after the Apostle (Paul) has abol-
ished Old Testament liturgies.181
This fits to a reconstruction of the development of the festival of Easter it-
self and also of the expansions of the Quartodeciman celebration into several
directions. Tertullian's texts mark its expansion at its end and its embellish-
ment (and apologetic support) with New Testament imagery and terminology.
Dionysius of Alexandria, the Syriac Didascalia, and similar texts show the ex-
tension of that nucleus - the celebration of a single vigil - to a celebration over
a whole week with a solemn character that was designed as a commemoration
of events of the passion narratives.182 Later, an even longer period of fasting
was added. Thus, the emergence of Pentecost as well as the younger devel-

180 'Quod si noua conditio in Christo (2 Cor 5.17), noua et solemnia esse debebunt...'
CChr.SL 2.1272,29f; Cabie 39 n. 3.
181 De Ieiunio 14.2 2.1272f. Tertullian interprets this 'newness' in the first place in a theo-
logical way and does not convey historical information in a modern sense. It is, nev-
ertheless, obvious that he does not regard the Christian Pascha and Pentecost as litur-
gical heritage that was kept continuously throughout the generations after Christ.
182 The observations of Thomas Talley 1973 and Robert Taft 1982/1997 (cf. Casel 1938, 34f)
show that 'historicism' is not a feature of the 4th cent, only, but begins much earlier.
182 Easter Sunday
opment of the Quadragesima (and a Septuagesima still much later) follow a

more general tendency through which the shaping of liturgical time in Juda-
ism and Christianity occurred: once an important festival is established, it be-
gins to exert its influence on the time surrounding it. The festival may accrue
associations to texts - such as the Christian Pentecost to the Biblical Pentecost.
Thus, numerous pseudo-parallels between communities who regard a similar
corpus of texts as normative for their identity are amassed. Likewise, several
extensions of festival times may spread over the whole year resulting in the
impression that they divide the calendar into periods of appointed time.
This explains why there are no indications in Judaism that the 50 days of
the Pentecost were regarded as a continuous period of joy and festivity.183
While their interpretation as a more solemn period or even a time of mourning
is a rabbinic concept that did not exist before Tertullian,184 there is no reason to
183 The explanations of the period of the Omer that are preserved in the Babylonian Tal-
mud are recent legends that try to find commemorative contents for a period that was
commanded in the Bible but the liturgical time of which is devoid of historical memo-
ries in their sources. A scenario of interdependence between Christianity and rabbinic
Judaism is less plausible than one of entirely independent developments of the under-
standing of the fifty days after Easter.
184 'But all of this' (viz. the association of the period of the Omer with mourning) 'is post-
Talmudic'; Zarren-Zohar 1999, 78ff. The sages of the Bavli quote what they regard as
Megilat Taanit (the title of which is referred to in the corresponding Mishna); bTaan
17b(f) ms. Jerusalem Yad R. Herzog (Maagarim) 'from the beginning of the month of
Nisan and until the 8th day in it, the tamid was established (viz. after the completion of
the 8 days of Aaron's and his sons' introduction into their office). No fasting. From
the 8th in it until the end of the appointed time, the festival of weeks was established.
No mourning.' The text apparently forbids mourning between the 1st and 21 s ' of Ni-
san (insio); Zarren-Zohar 79. This is to be expected. The reason given ('the festival of
weeks was established') would make more sense in the context without Χ'ϊΠϋΠ, and
hence implying that the prohibition to mourn is established because of the general
festival season. Even without a comprehensive discussion of the tradition of Megilat
Taanit and as a minimal conclusion from this passage, one can assume that the sages
did not regard the whole period of the Omer as a continuous time of mourning. Ta-
bory 2000, 143ff refers to a part of (!) the textual tradition of Seder Olam Rabba 3 (see
n. 236 p. 199) that states that the judgment of the sinners in Gehinnom lasts from
Pesah to Shavuot; the duration of Abel's life, BerR 22.4 TA 207; several sources about
the death of (12000 of) R. Aqiva's disciples during this period. BerR 61.3 TA 660.5 re-
ports their death 'in one period (of time)' 7ΠΝ fnsn. KohR 11.6 Maagarim replaces this
phrase with ΓΠϊΛ nos 1Ό. geonic sources testify to the period of the Omer as a time to
mourn their deaths, Tabory.
assume that the 50 days (or 7 weeks) that were counted after the offering of the
Omer should have had a special character.
In Second Temple times, Pentecost was celebrated as the fiftieth day after
the day of the Omer ritual and not as the period of 50 days leading to that day.
In Christianity, a similar state of affairs only re-emerged during the fourth
century in a process of fragmentation of the 50 days into a sequence of separate
festivals beginning with the understanding of the 50th day as the 'seal' of the 50
day period.185 Thus, a fifth or sixth century celebration of Pentecost resembles
the structure of the Biblical celebration much more than one of the end of the
second century. Nevertheless, there is no connection based on continuous
practice between this sixth century celebration and the celebration at the Sec-
ond Temple. The Christian festival was increasingly charged with contents
that were derived from Acts If, which itself reworks Old Testament imagery
but is not based on any 'New Testament' liturgy.
4.3.4 Ά Kind of Festival' According to the Acta Pauli
The second ancient witness to the custom of keeping some form of Christian
Pentecost is found in two passages of Acta Pauli.186 Its author rewrites Biblical
texts here. Thus in (the canonical) Acts 9.7, Paul has a vision and audition, of
185 Cf. Rouwhorst's observation about Egeria's account of the celebration of the
Ascension in Jerusalem: '...the fiftieth day is viewed as the conclusion of a period in
which the presence of the Risen Lord was celebrated. The commemoration of the As-
cension at the very end of that period might then have the character of a kind of fare-
well ceremony' 2001a, 320. Even in the 5th cent., one could still commemorate the as-
cension (Acts 1.1-14, Monday: 2.22-41, Tuesday 2.42-3.21, etc.) on Easter Sunday in
the Armenian Lectionary of Jerusalem; Renoux 1971, 173-177/311-315 (and the Bobbio
Missal); Boeckh 1960, 5. Patrick Regan 1981 summarizes the development in a similar
way. He does not ask why 2 nd cent. Christians re-invented Pentecost as a period in-
stead of a festival day according to the OT and Acts 2.
186 Rouwhorst 2001a, 314; 1996, 167 n. 75. Unlike Cabie and Rouwhorst, Auf der Maur
1994, 17 accepts Epistula Apostolorum 17/28 as the oldest witness to the Christian fes-
tival of Pentecost. The Epistula promises the disciples that Jesus would not come in
the time between the Pascha and the Pentecost. This can be read as a guarantee that
the 50+X days between the Pascha and the Pentecost remain a joyful period where one
would not fear the troubles of the 'birth pangs' of the messianic age. The editio prin-
ceps of the Coptic text of this passage of Acta Pauli did not yet appear. Rudolphe Kas-
ser 1960 summarizes the text. Cf. his German translation in ΝΤΑρο II 5 1989, 241-243.
184 Easter Sunday
which his companions share only the audition. The fragment of Acta Pauli
reverses this. Differing from Acts 19, where Paul is dissuaded from going to
the theatre in Ephesus, he joins the crowd there in Acta Pauli. In Acta Pauli,
the goldsmiths (χρυσοχόοι) demand Paul's death replacing the silversmith
(άργυροκόπος) of Acts.187 As the text of the canonical Acts only vaguely indi-
cates when this event happened,188 one wonders why Acta Pauli put so much
emphasis on Pentecost. Should it be one of the objectives of the text to spread
information about Pentecost?189 This cannot be ruled out. Apart from such a
motive, there is a literary reason to mention the festival. It is one of the very
rare references to a festival as a date by Paul himself (1 Cor 16.8190) which is
followed by a general remark about Paul's adversaries (και αντικείμενοι
πολλοί) in Ephesus. The angel's speech at the beginning of the Coptic frag-
ment responds to the situation in which Paul writes 1 Cor: it is before Shavuot
and he is expecting troubles at this very date in Ephesus. Likewise, Paul's
'fight' with wild beasts is obvious from 1 Cor 15.32.191 The passage in Acta
Pauli is, therefore, built upon the material of the Pauline letters and the ca-
nonical Acts. As an important detail of one of these vorlagen of Acta Pauli,
Pentecost must be integrated into the new narrative. The author may have
observed the contradiction between the more recent liturgical custom of con-
sidering the 50 days after Easter as 'Pentecost' against the Pauline letter (and
the Bible in general) that only knows the 50th day as 'Pentecost'. Therefore,
Acta Pauli refers to the contemporary understanding of 'Pentecost' whenever
187 Schmidt and Schubart 1936, 87 and 108-119. Frangois Bovon 2003,190 concludes from
the differences in the 'organization of the stories' that 'the use here of the canonical
acts by the author of the Acts of Paul seems out of question'. It may be assumed that
the author of the Acta Pauli took the same liberties to rewrite canonical texts as to fab-
ricate his own stories.
188 The references to the time-frame in Acts 20 do not indicate that the incidents of ch. 19
happened at Pentecost. In any case, Paul does not want to be in Ephesus at Pentecost:
20.16.
189 The story of the lion's baptism is told on Pentecost and takes up motifs of Ezek 37.
Paul baptizes also in the context of Pentecost before entering the stadium to face the
lion, cf. Drijvers 1990. The imagery explains Pentecostal baptism not because the Acta
emphasize the gift of the Holy Spirit (Drijvers), but because it is actually an extension
of Paschal baptism.
190 Schmidt and Schubart 1936, 88.
191 Cf. for 1 Cor 15.32; 16.8 (2 Tim 4.17) Schmidt and Schubart 1936, 86; Cabie 1965, 38;
Kasser 1960, 50 n. 53.
it touches on the subject in the sources. Pentecost is explained in two remarks

in Acta Pauli:
Paulus konnte nun aber nicht schwermütig (?) sein wegen Pfingsten, denn es war
eine Art von Fest für (?) die, die an Christus glauben, die Katechumenen192 sowohl
wie die Gläubigen; vielmehr gab es große Freude und eifrige Liebe und Psalmen
und das Lob für Christus, und um die Hörer zu bestärken.193
In the G r e e k H a m b u r g Papyrus, parts of this Statement are taken u p again at

the end of the story. 1 9 4 T h e 50 (days) are not self evident, but again require an
explanation. 1 9 5 T h e contents of this ' k i n d of a festival' correspond to Tertul-
lian's laetissimum spatium that is prope dies festus. Robert Cabie observes
that since the r e m a r k about the genuflexion in Acta Pauli surpasses w h a t could
b e found in the N e w Testament texts that are r e w o r k e d here (and since the
remark is entirely unnecessary for the context of the narrative), that
information mirrors the customs of the author's time. This is a plausible sce-
nario for the e n d of the second century, w h e n Tertullian brings the s a m e ar-
guments. 1 9 6
192 In the Coptic papyrus, 'catechumens' (which may reflect a Greek original
κατηχούμενοί) are mentioned and contrasted with the 'believers'. Both are taken to-
gether as 'those who believe in Christ'. As the Traditio Apostolica cannot be counted
among the ancient works, Lampe's (7321) list of attestations of κατεχεΐν as technical
term is significant. The (Greek translation of the) Martyrium (of the two candidates
for baptism) Perpetua et Felicitas (Latin original after 203) is Lampe's first attestation
before Origen, in whose time the institution only faintly resembles what seems to have
been the norm in the 4th and 5th cent.; Auf der Maur and Waldram 1981, 47-52. One
may add Clement of Alexandria to the list (Metzger in Brakmann, Drews, and Metz-
ger 2003, 510). In Acta Pauli, it fits to the end of the 2nd cent, as an attestation of an
ecclesiastical institution; cf. Metzger in Brakmann, Drews, and Metzger 2003, 517.
193 Kasser in ΝΤΑρο II 5 1989, 241f.
194 Schmidt and Schubart 1936, 26.
195 Boeckh 1960, 27 reaches the opposite conclusion, that the custom was so evident that
the author of the Acta 'could date it back into apostolic times without explaining it'.
One may wonder about the character of these remarks if they should not be regarded
as explanations.
196 See above as well as Schmidt and Schubart 1936, 88 n. 6 and 127-130; Cabie 1965, 38-
41. It must be added to Schmidt and Schubert's reference 1936, 89 n. 1 to Justin Dial.
90 PTS 47.226 that Justin does not speak about standing in prayer during Pentecost,
but expounds Moses' posture during the battle against Amalek.
186 Easter Sunday
4.3.5 The Emergence of the Christian Pentecost
These observations have far-reaching consequences for the understanding of

the structure of the Early Christian celebration of Easter. The celebration of
Easter is sometimes seen as nothing but the hinge between a shorter or longer
period of fasting (that is called 'Pascha') and the joyous period of the Pente-
cost.197 This chapter shows that this is untenable. The Christian celebration of
Pascha is not attached to a pre-existing Pentecost on which it eventually trans-
ferred its own meaning, but the Christian Pentecost was invented as an exten-
sion of Easter Sunday.198 Pentecost cannot have been celebrated continuously
throughout the first and second centuries, because Easter Sunday itself cannot
be traced back beyond the second half of the second century. The fact that the
Christian Pentecost is by definition celebrated on a Sunday has other reasons
than the Sadducees' exegesis of Lev 23.10. Jan van Goudoever exchanges
cause and effect: Pentecost is celebrated on a Sunday, because it happens to fall
on the 50th day after Easter Sunday. It is not the Easter vigil that requires to be
celebrated on a Sunday, because the Omer ritual and Pentecost were required
to fall on a Sunday in the (alleged) Sadducees' exegesis of Lev 23.10. The
Christian Pentecost neither superseded nor imitated any Jewish institution
when it came into being.
Why was Pentecost invented? After the emergence of Easter Sunday had
opened the door to the ensuing process of alignment of the liturgy with texts
of the New Testament, Pentecost happened to be the next candidate for imita-
197 Visonä 1995, 518 represents a broad consensus quoting Van Goudoever: 'Was wir
"Ostern" nennen, ist tatsächlich der Beginn der Pfingstzeit' adding 'Das christliche
Ostern kommt demnach im Verlauf des 2. Jh. zu seiner vollen Ausformung durch das
Aufgehen des judenchristlichen Passafestes in den christlichen Sonntag und die Ver-
einigung des Sachgehaltes von Passa und Pfingstzeit (πεντηκοστή)'. Auf der Maur
1983, 77 remarks, however, that Ambrose and Augustine 'bezeichnen dieses Triduum
nie als Pascha; Pascha ist für sie ausschließlich die Osternachtfeier (zusammen mit
dem Sonntag). Der eigentliche Angelpunkt des Triduums bleibt die Ostvigil.' This is
an important terminological survival that is shared by Tertullian and reflects the
memory that the Easter vigil retains parts of the structure of the Quartodeciman Pas-
cha. The Quartodeciman 'Pascha' comprised both phases of the celebration such as
the Easter vigil that was never divided up into a mournful 'Pascha' and a joyful 'Pen-
tecost'.
198 Cf. Boeckh 1960, 29. The late emergence of the popular etymology of Pascha as
'transitus' also suggests that the old celebration of the Pascha was not understood as
'transition' from mourning to joy.
tion - hence its Biblical name 'the fiftieth'. Even if Diaspora Jews should have
adapted a festival of Pentecost to their way (and place) of living, there is no
basis for the assumption that the Christian Pentecost emerged as an imitation
of, or out of opposition against, a form of Jewish Pentecost. This distinguishes
Pentecost from Easter.
Why was it developed as a period of 50 days, opposed to the Biblical (and
rabbinic) understanding as the 50th day? Although the real motives that set the
beginning of these developments cannot be reconstructed, a tentative answer
can be given. The Biblical Pentecost did not have any meaning for late second
century Christians. Acts If connected concepts with Shavuot that were rather
thought to be associated with Easter. Thus, a second century reader of Acts
discovers that baptism actually starts with the festival of Shavuot or 'Pente-
cost', which does not exist in reality. The easiest integration of these topics
into the liturgical theory and practice seems to have been the creation of a new
'Pentecost' and the simultaneous declaration of its basic identity with Easter.
In practice, the mere Greek name of the festival is ritualized without recourse
to its Old Testament cultic function and calendrical shape. It is impossible to
assign a clear date and place to this innovation. As it presupposes the emer-
gence of Easter Sunday, it should have happened during the second half of the
second century.
In the fourth century, the idea of a 'Sunday' of 50 days came under pres-
sure from at least three directions. First, the powerful tendency to align the
liturgies with structures of the Biblical texts supported the historicizing frag-
mentation of this period and a celebration of the 50th day rather than the 50
days.199 Second, Tertullian argues against pagans that the Christians have
more festival days than any other religion. They are accumulated after
Easter.200 The second century churches did not have a yearly cycle of festivals.
199 At the beginning of the 4lh cent., can. 43 of the Council of Elvira forbids the neglect of
dies pentecostes. It supports its rulings with a reference to the authority of the Bible.
A custom (to keep the dies pentecostes) that people could be tempted to ignore cannot
have been known from time immemorial in their province. Boeckh 1960, 17f and
Cabie 1965, 181ff do not interpret the passage as implying that the Spanish church
should only have celebrated the 50th day instead of the 50 days of the season of Easter.
The council enforces the celebration of the concluding day of the period of 50. Its ref-
erence to the Bible (obviously Acts If) points to future developments. Anyone who
resorts to Acts as a Biblical proof-text or a model for the celebration of Pentecost must
eventually emphasize the 50th day and forget about the period of 50 days.
200 Cabie 1965, 39 referring to De Idolatria 14.7 CChr.SL 1115.
188 Easter Sunday
In the fourth century, there were enough Christian festivals that made at least
Tertullian's apologetic remark meaningless. Third, the introduction of the pro-
hibition against work on Sundays could have made seven full weeks of 'Sun-
days' simply impracticable.201
4.4 The Seventh Day of the Festival of Unleavened Bread
The preceding sections have shown that the emergence of Easter Sunday is not
dependent upon the Biblical and rabbinic understanding of the ritual of the
Omer or a Jewish celebration of Shavuot. Now, a third element of Jewish lit-
urgy that is often connected with the emergence of the Christian festival must
be discussed: the seventh day of the festival of Unleavened Bread as the day of
the commemoration of the Israelites' crossing the Red Sea.
According to Jan Van Goudoever, Jews celebrated 'since very early
times' 202 - in any case before the emergence of Christianity - the passage
through the Red Sea on the seventh day of the festival of Unleavened Bread.
While some of his observations may be dismissed as based on late203 or spuri-
ous204 attestations, his approach is still influential and worthy of a more de-
tailed discussion in the present context.
201 This is not corroborated by the sources. In the time when documents begin to regulate
the prohibition of work on festival days, the Pentecost period has already been abol-
ished. In Tertullian's time, it was not unreasonable to interpret a period of days quasi
as a sequence of Sundays, because Christians would only interrupt their work for the
liturgy, cf. Steinmetzer 1950.
202 Van Goudoever ch. 15; 1967,177-184 quotation: 177.
203 As a work of the 5th cent. - cf. Stemberger 1996, 295f - Pesiqta de-Rav Kahana is not a
reliable witness to traditions of the first two centuries.
204 Traditions of the Beta Esrael are irrelevant for the reconstruction of Jewish institu-
tions, see p. 41. Liturgical sources of the Samaritans and the Karaites may contribute
bits of circumstantial evidence but cannot be regarded as reliable witnesses for early
first millennium Judaism.
The Seventh Day of the Festival of Unleavened Bread 189
4.4.1 The Third Day
It is a widely known concept that the Israelites crossed the Red Sea (as the
Septuagint calls the 'Sea of Reeds') seven days after Pesah - and not three
days, as suggested by the Biblical text. Before advancing in the discussion of
the seventh day, Van Goudoever's reference to the crossing of the Sea at the
third day after the celebration of the Pesah deserves some consideration.
Numb 33.5-8 provides details:
The Israelites traveled from Ramses and encamped in Sukkot (spending the night
of the 16lh of Nisan there). They traveled from Sukkot and encamped in Etam that
is on the edge of the desert (staying there during the night of the 17lh). They trav-
eled from Etam. He was sitting on Pi Hahirot which is in front of Baal Tsefon.
They encamped in front of Migdol (in order to spend the night of the 18th there).
They traveled from Hahirot and passed through the sea towards the desert.
At this point, one can continue to quote Exod 14.2, 9 in order to add further
information: The Israelites put up their third camp in Pi Hachirot which is
close to the Red Sea. Van Goudoever (1967, 184 cf. 235) remarks that the an-
cient sources already note that the Israelites arrived at the sea on the third day
after Pesah.205 What he regards as a tradition of a 'liturgical' commemoration
of the passage through the Red Sea is, however, the consequence of the ancient
authors' careful reading of the Bible. Their remarks as such do not imply that
there should have been a celebration of the passage through the Red Sea three
days after Pesah. Moreover, as they did not feel the need to harmonize their
reading with a tradition that placed the crossing of the Red Sea on the seventh
day of the festival of Unleavened Breads, it may be supposed that the tradition
of celebrating the crossing on the seventh day after Pesah was not known to
them or regarded as unimportant.
As a celebration of the crossing of the Red Sea on the third day is not
known to rabbinic Judaism, one may still turn to Christianity. There, the 'third
day' plays an important role. Yet, is this role of the 'third day' in Christianity
dependent upon the calculation of the crossing of the Red Sea?
A first argument against such an assumption comes from the Quartodeci-
man Pascha which has no interest in an additional commemoration of the
crossing of the Red Sea after the single-day celebration of the Pascha. Thus, a
205 Josephus Ant 2.315/2.15.1 LCL 302, Artapanus as quoted by Eusebius Praeparatio
Evangelica 9.27.34 GCS 523.27, Philo VitMos 1.163-180 esp. 163 CW 4.159. Cf. n. 134
p. 167 for Aristeas.
190 Easter Sunday
link to the crossing of the Red Sea on the 'third day' must be dependent upon
Easter Sunday.
This implies that there should be parallels in traditions about Easter Sun-
day. Is the transition of the people of Israel important for the understanding of
Easter Sunday - especially as having taken place on the third day after the
celebration of the Egyptian Pesah?
Origen expounds the people's passage from Egypt in his Homily 5 on
Exodus.206 He refers to Israel's encampments after the 14th of Nisan (5.1 SC
321.148.14-150.20) and quotes 1 Cor 10.1^1 as a hermeneutic principle for the
understanding of the crossing of the Red Sea. In 5.2 (152), he begins to ex-
pound Exod 12.37 and 13.20 as the passage of the soul away from the darkness
of the errors. Passing through Sochoth, the human being must reach Othon:207
Pharaoh did not allow the Israelites to come to the place of the signs. He did not al-
low them to advance so far in order that they be able to make use of the mysteries
of the third day.
The connection with the 'third day' is obvious from Exod 3.18; 5.3; 8.23; 12-14
(and Hosea 6.2), as Origen observes. Thus, Christ's death, descent into hell,
and resurrection are associated with such passages. Having quoted 1 Cor 10 in
the beginning, Origen now comes back to baptismal imagery. Yet, he does not
infer from these texts that one must be baptized in the Paschal vigil.208 Evok-
ing Rom 6.3 and Eph 2.6, Origen says that the Christians received the mystery
of the third day209 (not saying on which day they received it) that leads to
God's guidance and salvation (5.2 156.51-53). They need it, as the following
way in the wilderness is arduous enough (5.3). Marcel Borret refers to Ori-
206 No. If.; see Buchinger 2005, 4 0 1 ^ 0 3 for Origen's use of ύπέρβασις and its sources as
well as the other etymological observations in ch. 3 9 8 ^ 0 6 and 790-796 for the magis-
terial discussion of hom. 5 in Ex.
207 154.37-40. Origen (or rather his source) apparently understands this as Aramaic
('äthön 'their sign' or the like) rendering it 'signa iis' (5.2 154.28 lit. 'signs for them').
Cf. however n. 281 p. 409 for Origen's inability to read Hebrew.
208 Origen's community did apparently not baptize in the Easter vigil; Buchinger 2005,
137, 488, 807ff, 818, 868f.
209 Borret 1985 'le mystere du troisieme jour'. Danielou 1946, 413 translates 'cum ergo tibi
tertii diei mysterium fuerit susceptum, incipiet te deducere Deus et ipse tibi viam
salutis ostendere' as 'c'est pourquoi lorsque tu auras re5u le sacrement (mysterium) au
troisieme jour Dieu commencera ä te conduire et ä te montrer la voie du salut'.
Danielou's biased translation creates an instance of Paschal baptism here.
gen's homily on Genesis 8.4210 where Origen - interpreting Abraham's and

Isaac's journey of three days to Mt. Moria in Gen 22.3 - enumerates instances
of important 'three days' in the Bible.211 Origen did not invent a liturgy of a
triduum paschale, but applied Old Testament tridua to the Period between
Jesus' death and resurrection - a New Testament concept (Matth 12.40; 27.63;
Mark 8.31; 9.31; 10.34; John 2.18-22) that was widely known long before any
trace of a celebration of Holy Week emerged in Christianity.
Jean Danielou tries to explain why some authors (Barnabas 11, Justin,
Clement of Alexandria, even Origen) do not use the crossing of the Red Sea as
important imagery for baptism - a tradition that only begins with Tertullian.
Just 'I'enseignement catechetique officiel donne par l'Eglise et par le magistere'
(1946, 405) and those preachers who teach typology which 'rentre dans la foi
des πολλοί' (417) should have been using this image. This thesis presupposes
structures and institutions of the church that were hardly emerging in pre-
Constantinian times and assumes that everywhere and at any time Christians
understood 'Pesah/Pascha' as 'transitus'. A chronological solution is more
plausible. It is obvious that the earlier authors do not follow the clues given by
Paul (1 Cor 10.If). Before Origen, who introduces the notion hesitatingly, Pas-
cha is not understood as 'transitus'. Harald Buchinger suggests that Origen
'be something in the nature of a theological-historical middleman between the
Biblical foundation of baptismal theology and the liturgical practice of the
post-Constantinian Church'.212 Furthermore, as Paschal baptism becomes en
vogue only later, 1 Cor lO.lf and Rom 6.3f rise in importance to explain it at
that time. The crossing of the Red Sea (or the Jordan) is used in order to em-
210 Borret 1985, 156 n. 5. Origen on Genesis: Doutreleau 1976, 220.

211 It is noteworthy that he does not quote 2 Kings 2.17, the three-day search for Elijah's
body, here. Hippolytus' reference to that verse is as telling as its non-quotation in the
first volume of Biblia Patristica. Hippolytus tells the story of a προεστώς of a church,
who leads a crowd of people into the desert in order to meet Christ (in his second
coming) there. Hippolytus gives 2 Kings 2.17 as a Biblical precedent for their stupid-
ity. He does not even hint at the period between Christ's death and resurrection; Dan.
4.18.4 SC 14.298.2-5 GCS NF 7.234-236. Origen, Eusebius of Caesarea, Cyril of Jeru-
salem, Epiphanius of Salamis, Basil of Caesarea, Gregory of Nazianzus, Gregory of
Nyssa, Amphilochius of Iconium, and Didymus of Alexandria do not quote this verse
according to Biblia Patristica vol. 3-5 and 7. The lesson as attested in the Armenian
lectionary of Jerusalem was not part of an old repertoire of the understanding of a
triduum paschale.
212 In n. 66 to a paper read at the NAAL conference, New York 2004. The paper will be
published.
192 Easter Sunday
bellish the grand schemes of an increasingly historicized Holy Week in an ex-

panding dialogue between texts and rituals. Thus, it cannot be substantiated
that the crossing of the Red Sea was an important element of the commemora-
tion of Easter Sunday even in Origen's church.213 If it should have been held in
high esteem as a lecture, it was not read because of a mimetic ritualization of
Exod 12-15 placing the crossing of the Red Sea on the third day after Jesus'
death. This presupposes a liturgical situation - Good Friday as separate cele-
bration before Easter Sunday - that did not yet exist in Origen's time.
Thus, the concept of the crossing of the Red Sea at the third day was not
among the formative ideas for the creation of Easter Sunday. It emerges as an
interpretive device after Easter Sunday was already widely celebrated.
4.4.2 The Seventh Day
The medieval Jewish liturgies interpret the last day of the festival of Unleav-
ened Bread as the commemoration of the crossing of the Red Sea, the final con-
firmation and establishment of the Exodus. This has not always been obvious.
213 For the concept of the 'crossing of the Red Sea as an image of Christian baptism', Döl-
ger 1930 refers to authors from the 4th cent, on - except for Tertullian. In the passage
quoted (De Baptismo 20.4 CChr.SL 1.294f; Dölger 64 η. 3), Tertullian equates the 40
days of Christ's fast with the 40 years' journey of the people in the wilderness after the
question whether Christ's fasting after his baptism should lead to a mimetic fast of the
neophytes after theirs. Christ's baptism is only incidentally linked with the crossing
of the Red Sea, because of the ensuing practices of Jesus' fasting versus the Israelite's
eating (the Manna). Both are contrasted for the benefit of the readers' motivation to
lead a (more) ascetic life. In De Baptismo 9 CChr.SL 1.283f (referred to by Van Gou-
doever 1967, 235), Tertullian expands the number of types from 1 Cor 10.1-4. Thus, he
also compares the passage through the Red Sea with baptism - likewise without refer-
ence to a date in the calendar. If the combination of baptism and the crossing of the
Red Sea should have calendrical implications in De Baptismo 9, one could also read
dates into Tertullian's allusions to Exod 15.23-25 and 1 Cor 10.4 referring to Exod 17
and numerous incidents where Jesus handles water. On the contrary, while Tertul-
lian's use of 1 Cor 10 and hence the crossing of the Red Sea is important from a theo-
logical point of view in the context of baptism, no liturgy is implied in those texts.
Philo and the Poet Ezekiel
Looking back into older Jewish literature, it is significant that Philo does not
know of a celebration of the crossing of the Red Sea on the seventh day of the
festival of Unleavened Bread. 2 1 4 It is thus astonishing that Philo counts the
Omer as a distinct 'festival' while he completely ignores the seventh day of
Pesah. However, Philo does not understand Pesah as the festival of the
exemption or salvation of the Israelite firstborn males from death as does Ju-
bilees, but rather explains Pesah as διαβατήρια 2 1 5 - in analogy to Hellenistic
customs and as an offering of thanksgiving for the liberation in the context of
the history Judaism. Philo does not distinguish between the stages of redemp-
tion from the plagues and the crossing of the Red Sea. The latter event is more
important with regard to the allegorical interpretation of Pesah. It is under-
stood as the crossing over of the soul away from the desires. The soul does not
imitate God's 'passing over' the houses of the Israelites (Exod 12.13, 23, 27),
because the Septuagint renders the verb nDD only in v. 23 (και παρελεύσεται
κύριος την θύραν) b y means of παρέρχεσθαι which comes close to the
meaning of διαβαίνειν. Therefore, Philo cannot explain the Pesah as God's
'passing over', but must see it as the people's. 2 1 6
The soul is supposed to perform the same movement away from the de-
sires as the people went forth in the Exodus from idolatrous Egypt (SpecLeg
2.146f C W 5.121). The 'passage' and hence the crossing of the Red Sea is, there-
fore, the most important content of Pesah, 2 1 7 rather than of the festival of
214 It will be asked below, p. 238, whether or not a celebration of the seventh day of Pe-
sah is attested in Jubilees. Tabory 2000, 453 n. to p. 147 observes that the LXX inter-
pret rnxs (see n.163 p. 176) as referring to the last days of Sukkot and of Pesah as
έξόδιον, because they understand it as end of a festival period. Liddell's and Scott's
596 suggestion of a special meaning 'among the Jews a feast to commemorate the exodus'
is less likely, because Sukkot also has an έξόδιον and because Sukkot was only very
loosely connected with the Exodus in the Tora. Lampe 498 quotes Theodoret who
interprets the 8lh day of Sukkot as commemoration of the Exodus, but also Cyril of Al-
exandria who explains it in the context of the end of the harvest. The term έξόδιον
implies 'end of a (festival) period' here and is no reason to postulate that the transla-
tors of the LXX thought that this was a 'commemoration of the Exodus', not to men-
tion the passage through the Red Sea.
215 Migr 25 CW 2.273. Leonhardt 2001, 35: διάβασις.
216 Cf. for the name of 'Hebrews' n. 55 p. 35 above.
217 Philo's understanding corresponds to Deut 16.6 where the time of the celebration of
Pesah is interpreted as a mimetic commemoration of the Exodus: '...slaughter the
194 Easter Sunday
Unleavened Bread and hence also not of its seventh day. Philo's interpretation
of the latter (including its seventh day) does not, consequently, show any
awareness of a liturgy that historicizes Exod 12-15. This festival is thought of
more in terms of its perfect correspondence to nature rather than to the history
of the Jewish people. SpecLeg 2.157 CW 123f explains the seventh day without
recourse to the passage through the Red Sea. Philo does not explain a special
commemoration of the event or any distinct contents of the seventh day of the
festival of Unleavened Bread.
Even if Philo's De Specialibus Legibus does not yield the desired attesta-
tions of a celebration of the crossing of the Red Sea, Jan Van Goudoever (1967,
180-184) again refers to the Therapeutae who allegedly celebrated the Omer
festival on the 21sl of Nisan as a celebration of the passage through the Red Sea
which should have been taken over by the Christians, who were used to per-
forming baptism at this time of the year. For in the symposia of the Thera-
peutae, men and women are singing in two choirs imitating the people of Is-
rael after the passage through the Red Sea.
Although Bokser (1977) assumes that the Therapeutae existed as a Jewish
sect, he tries to substantiate parts of their description by comparisons with
other groups that sought to define their religious stance towards the Temple in
Jerusalem in a similar social situation such as the Pharisees and the Christians.
The meals of the Therapeutae are, however, not comparable to the rabbinic
seder. Bokser does not claim that the meals were presented by Philo as a re-
placement for an element of the Temple cult or a meal that was related to it
like the meal of the Pesah animals. Nevertheless, even the assumption of some
accuracy in Philo's description is detrimental to Van Goudoever's thesis about
the Therapeutae's celebration of the crossing of the Red Sea. For Philo only
mentions the passage through the Red Sea in order to find a precedent for the
way of singing hymns.218 According to Bokser (1977, 8), the situation of Exod
14f is evoked in the description, because it justifies the imitation of Temple
Pesah in the evening, at sunset, at the time of your going out from Egypt!' If one takes
Q'isaa IIINÜTOI»not as a reference to the day in the calendar, but only to the time dur-
ing the day, it could correspond to the time when the Israelites entered the Red Sea.
This is borne out by the fact that Deut 16.1-6 only mentions the month (if win means
'month' rather than 'new moon' here) but not the day. Hence, the festival should take
place at the time (of the day) of the Exodus, not necessarily on the 14th of Nisan. Ex-
cept for the interpretation of this text, there are no traces that such an understanding
ever shaped actual liturgies.
218 Nikiprowetzky in his note to Bokser 1977, there 17f.
m u s i c without Levitical specialists and musicians. T h e Therapeutae did not

c o m m e m o r a t e the r e d e m p t i o n at the R e d Sea, b u t Philo refers to that event in
order to explain a musical pattern. Philo's description of the Therapeutae does
not include bits of specific information about a J e w i s h celebration in the con-
text of Pesah, 2 1 9 Pentecost, or any vigil that should have b e e n held for the sake
of the c o m m e m o r a t i o n of the passage through the Red Sea.
In addition, R o l a n d B e r g m e i e r (2002, 59) s h o w s b y m e a n s of a comparison
of VitCont 83f C W 6.68f w i t h V i t M o s 2.256 C W 4.261 (and other passages) that
VitCont r e w o r k s the text of V i t M o s that describes the singing at the Red Sea.
T h e liturgy of VitCont is, therefore, hardly derived from actual symposia, b u t
from the Biblical text only. In his description of the Therapeutae, Philo creates
a philosophic vision of the ideal J e w w h o is a philosopher and an ascetic - a
Pythagorean. 2 2 0 According to Bergmeier's conclusions, f r o m Philo's discussion
of the Therapeutae there is no reason to assume that they existed at all - at
least not in the w a y they are described b y Philo. 2 2 1
219 Apart from the fact that there is no allusion to Pesah in the description, the Therapeu-
tae eat leavened bread (VitCont 81 CW 6.68) and refrain from drinking wine (37 CW
6.55f and 73 CW 6.65).
220 VitCont 63f CW 6.62f. Bergmeier 1993, 42f; 2002, 56. Having and keeping one's
'ancestral laws' is a Hellenistic topos and not typical for 'Judeans' (Cohen's terminol-
ogy), cf. Cohen 1999, 92.
221 Wendland 1896, esp. 716-737 concludes a long discussion of the Therapeutae: 'fassen
wir die wenigen geschichtlichen Tatsachen zusammen, die sich uns aus der bisherigen
Betrachtung der Darstellung Philos ergeben haben: die Therapeuten sind ein nicht
eben bedeutender Verein von Juden, die unter Verzicht auf ihren Besitz sich zu ge-
meinsamer Gottesverehrung zusammengethan haben' 737. If the Therapeutae existed
at all, Philo's description cannot be accepted as accurate representation of their cus-
toms and beliefs, 736. After having shown that Philo's text about the Therapeutae is
literary and philosophic fiction, the affirmation of their actual existence helps to save
Philo from being accused of fabricating them ex nihilo. If Christians should have been
in a position to inherit those customs, any link to actual practice must be postulated.
Klinghardt's 1996, 183 η. 1 criticism of Bergmeier 1993 is up for revision after the
appearance of Bergmeier's article 2002. The Therapeutae are literary fiction. The
historical background is real as far as it is general. Klinghardt understands Philo's
negative descriptions of pagan meal customs as 'Topoi der Kynikerschilderung', 188.
'...Philo ... is more indebted to ethnographic topoi than truth' Slater 1990, 215; cf.
Harland 2003, 74f; McGowanl999, 57. The positive description of the Therapeutae's
vigils is not more reliable? In his concluding remarks, Klinghardt observes that the
historical background of the Therapeutae is doubtful vis-ä-vis the long list of literary
cliches that Philo uses: 'Wie weit ein historisch verläßlicher Rückschluß auf die tat-
196 Easter Sunday
Therefore, Van Goudoever's conclusions (1967, 182f) do not find any sup-
port in Philo's works: first, that the Therapeutae celebrated a vigil on the 21st of
Nisan commemorating the passage through the Red Sea and the Omer; sec-
ond, that this was preceded by a 50 day period 'of a kind of preparation' (be-
ginning with the 1st of Adar) and likewise followed by a period of 50 days.222
Two conclusions vitiate this approach. On the one hand, the Therapeutae did
not exist. On the other hand, the fictional Therapeutae are not described as
celebrating the festivals that are imputed to them by modern scholars.
Van Goudoever is likewise reading too much liturgy into the 'Exagoge' of
another Hellenistic Jewish writer, Ezekiel223. The Exagoge paraphrases the
commandment to celebrate the festival of Unleavened Bread according to Exod
12.224 Ezekiel adds a reason for the number of days of the festival's duration.
These seven days correspond to the seven days' march on which the Israelites
ate unleavened bread. The conclusion is not far-fetched, as several passages
suggest that the festival of Unleavened Bread carries the mimetic element of
the food eaten 'during the Exodus' (Exod 13.3, 6ff). Thus, knowing that the
Israelites ate unleavened bread for seven days which corresponds to 'my going
out of Egypt' (Exod 13.8), one may conclude that they had left Egypt by the
seventh day. This does not imply that anybody celebrated the crossing of the
Red Sea on the seventh day of the festival. That event is at least not mentioned
in the fragments of the Exagoge that were preserved by Eusebius. Ezekiel does
not give an etiology for the seventh day of the festival of Unleavened Bread,
but paraphrases the Biblical etiology for its duration of seven days. Although
sächliche Praxis der Therapeuten möglich ist, muß angesichts dieser Topik offenblei-
ben' 1996, 216.
222 The role of the Christian terminology of 'week of Unleavened Bread' for Holy Week
will be discussed in the next chapter (4.5).
223 Vogt 1983, 117: between the (second half of the 3rd or rather) the 2nd cent, (because of
the Phoenix, that emerges under Ptolemaios III Euergetes according to Tacitus, An-
nates 6.28 Heller 1992, 418ff) and the 1» cent. B.C.E.
224 Exagoge 167-174, dated 2"d cent. BCE (Van Goudoever 1967, 178; Eusebius
Praeparatio Evangelica 9.29.12.41^8 SC 298) 'After you have entered your own coun-
try (which echoes Exod 12.25 implying that 'your own country' means the promised
land and not the wilderness beyond the Red Sea); (reckoning) from the time you fled
from Egypt, from this very morning on, marching for a journey of seven days, you
will eat unleavened (bread) all that same days each year and you will worship God in
slaughtering for God the first-fashioned animals such young ones which the virgins
are bringing forth firstly - the male ones which are opening (their) mothers' wombs.'
it is remarkable that Ezekiel knows that Israel left Egypt in seven (instead of
three) days, there is no trace of a liturgy in his explanations.
The Mekhilta and Seder Olam Rabba about the Chronology of the Exodus
Van Goudoever briefly remarks that the Mekhilta proposes a different chronol-
ogy. The passage through the Red Sea should have happened in the night
following the 21sl of Nisan (actually in the night of the 22nd). This is not sup-
ported by the texts. Moreover, the relationship between Biblical and liturgical
exegesis is more complex than Van Goudoever leads his readers to believe.
Exegesis of the Bible is far more important for the Mekhilta than explana-
tions of liturgies. Thus, MekhY pisha 14 L 1.107.8 states that the Israelites trav-
eled from Ramses to Sukkot225 in an instant in order to confirm that Ί carried
you on wings of eagles (Exod 19.4)'. This is not part of a liturgical commemo-
ration. MekhY pisha 14 L 1.110.44f states 'There was a big miracle done for
them with the cake. For they were eating from it thirty days until the Manna
descended for them' (based on Exod 16.1).226 Anyone who follows Van
Goudoever's approach of finding hints to liturgies in the text would have to
infer from this remark that there was a tradition according to which the festi-
val of unleavened bread actually lasted for 30 days in 'official Judaism'. For
Van Goudoever (1967, 242) remarks that 'official Judaism' should have re-
duced the festival of unleavened bread to one day. Rabbi Jose the Galilean
takes avn of Exod 13.4 to the preceding verse:227 'Leaven must not be eaten on this
day. This means that Israel only ate unleavened bread in Egypt for one single
day.' R. Jose speaks about the positive commandment to eat unleavened
bread, not about the negative one that leaven must not be seen in Israel. This
is in accord with the widespread tendency to reduce the amount of unleavened
bread that must be eaten at all. Furthermore, R. Jose refers to the 15th and not
the 21st of Nisan. On the 21st of Nisan, Israel had already left 'Egypt'. 228 Eating
225 In Exod 13.20 "They traveled from Sukkot...', Sukkot is said to be a geographical name
rather than the reference to booths; MekhY besallah 1 L 1.182.172f. Rabbi Aqiva inter-
prets it allegorically: 'clouds of glory'.
226 Par. Seder Olam Rabba 5 Minkowski 248.41f.
227 MekhY pisha 16 L 1.139.151-153 par. 8 L 1.61f.l6-23. Cf. n. 8 p. 18.
228 See also MekhY 17 L 1.144.34-39.
198 Easter Sunday
unleavened bread is only compulsory on the first day of the seven days.229
MekhY does not reduce the Biblical festival of Unleavened Bread to one day,
as Van Goudoever assumes, but restricts the obligation to actually eat unleav-
ened Bread to the 15th of Nisan.
In addition, MekhY emphasizes three times that Israel and Moses praised
God on the day before entering the Red Sea. At that time, they had not yet
seen God perform the wonders that would eventually save them.230 This is
apparently not an etiology for some prayer in the afternoon of the 20lh of Ni-
san, but theology: Israel already praises God before having seen the reason for
such praise.231 MekhY deemphasizes the description of the Israelites' lack of
faith according to the Biblical narrative (Exod 14.11f).
Despite interpretative statements that do not account for any liturgy,
MekhY also finds a consistent chronology of the exodus in the Biblical text.
The end of the itinerary before the crossing of the Red Sea (Exod 14.2), is ex-
plained in MekhY besallah 2 L 1.188-190.20-36: in accordance with Numb 33.3,
the Israelites are said to have left on the day after the Pesah, which is a Friday
(15th of Nisan).232 Thus, they encamped 'before Pi-Hahirot' on Sunday evening
(the following night being that preceding the daylight of Monday, 18th of Ni-
229 MekhY explicitly excludes the 7th day as a date where unleavened bread must be
eaten. The same result is reached in a long paragraph on Deut 16.8 (where only '6
days' are mentioned); MekhY pisha 17 L 1.145-149.40-95 (7 L 1.59f.l05-126, 8 L
1.62f.24—37). This long discussion of the 7th day does not contain any hint to a com-
memorative meaning of that day and only refers to unleavened bread and the festal
offerings. In MekhY pisha 9 L 1.68, the first and last day of the festival should be
'honored by food and drink and clean clothes' and abstention from work (apart from
not eating leavened bread).
230 MekhY besallah 2 L 1.203.227f, 3 L 1.215.143-149, 4 L 1.223.95ff. In MekhY besallah 3
L 1.210.82, the Holy Spirit rests upon Israel (said on the day before they enter the Sea).
The terms of praise used here are no direct quotation of mPes 10.5.
231 Cf. Israel's acceptance to 'do' the precepts of the Tora before having 'heard' it; Exod
24.7 MekhY bahodes 5 L 2.234f.63-81. In the future, Israel's dispersed will only be
gathered because of their faith etc. MekhY besallah 7 L 1.252-255.124-164.
232 MekhY pisha 5 L 1.42f.ll3-128 (7 L 1.58.96-104, 9 L 1.74.90f) shows the problem of
harmonizing Deut 16.6 with the itinerary of Exod 12-15. Exod 12 is incompatible with
the idea that the Pesah should take place at the time of Israel's Exodus from Egypt.
After MekhY stated that Israel left Egypt after the 6lh hour of the day, Shim'on Ben
Yohay explains the verse as a Chiasm between the times given and the ritual events:
(1) Slaughtering: 'the time of your going out' - after midday, (2) at sunset: 'to roast it',
(3) in the evening: 'to eat it'.
san) and are commanded by Moses to 'return 233 backwards, in order that Phar-
aoh should not be able to say that you are fleeing' (L 1.189.31f). This happens
on the fourth day of their journey. God prevents them from proceeding in or-
der to prepare Pharaoh for his own destruction meanwhile. There must be
enough time to let the Egyptian guards who accompanied Israel (with the task
to make sure that the people returns after three days, MekhY besallah 2 L
1.189.25f = Exod 8.23) reach Pharaoh.234 Chronology again comes to the fore in
MekhY besallah 3 L 1.205.15-18. The guards return in a day and a half
whereas Pharaoh needs a day to reach the Israelites' camp. Thus, the guards
reach Pharaoh in the early afternoon of Tuesday, the 19th of Nisan. One must
assume that Pharaoh set out and reached the Red Sea in the afternoon of
Wednesday, the 20th of Nisan - just in time to perish in the night preceding the
daylight of the 21sl of Nisan.235 Apparently after nightfall (the Egyptians being
in darkness and the Israelites in light), the Egyptians watch the Israelites at a
festive meal before they enter the Red Sea, MekhY besallah 5 L 1.227.45f.
MekhY besallah 6 L 1.237-9.75-94 then interprets the 'morning watch' of Exod
14.24 as 'sunrise' and hence the time of the morning prayer. Thus, the Israel-
ites sang the song of Exod 15 at the time of the morning prayer of the 7th day of
Pesah.
While the Bible proposes a loose link between the giving of the Tora and
Shavuot (Exod 19.1), the correspondence between the festival of Unleavened
Bread and the events of the Exodus is even less evident. Thus, it may be as-
sumed that the Mekhilta had some interest in setting the crossing of the Red
Sea within the night of the 21st of Nisan, although it does not make the connec-
tion explicit. This is done in Seder Olam Rabba:236
233 This is a fragmentizing interpretation of Exod 14.2 13m ini!L"l 'They encamped again' =
literally: 'they returned and encamped'.
234 Van Goudoever's remark 1967, 184 (note add.) that the three day's journey to the Red
Sea in some of the sources could reflect Exod 5.3 can also be found here and in MekhY
besallah 1 L 1.170.19f. There is no Jewish tradition that celebrates the passage through
the Red Sea on the third day of the festival of Unleavened Bread. Other exegetes
could solve the problem in a different way. Thus, Philo (VitMos 1.167 CW 4.160)
makes the Pharaoh rethink his policy shortly after Israel left Ramses.
235 Lauterbach interprets the reference to leaven and dough in MekhY besallah 3 L
1.209.67 as metaphor. It is only attested here in early rabbinic literature.
236 Text: Milikowski 243-245. The text is preceded by a passage that gives the same list of
events that happened on the 15th of Nisan as MekhY pisha 14.78-84 L 112f. Seder
Olam Rabba seems to be dependent upon MekhY, even if it preserves another
200 Easter Sunday
And on the fourteenth of it, the Israelites slaughtered their Passover animals on
the Thursday. It was in the same night that the firstborn were slain. From the
following Friday 'they traveled from Ramses in the first month on the fifteenth day
of the first month on the day after the Pesah (the Israelites went forth with a raised
hand in front of all of Egypt.)' 'The Egyptians buried [what Y' had hit among
them...]' (Numb 33.3f). From Ramses to Sukkot. From Sukkot to Etam. From
Etam to Pi Hachirot (cf. Numb 33.5-7): these are three (days). On the fourth (day)
'it was told to the king of Egypt' (Exod 14.5). On the fifth and the sixth 'the Egyp-
tians pursued after them' (Exod 14.9). On the evening preceding the seventh (day)
they descended into the sea. 'There was the cloud and the darkness' (Exod 14.20).
In the morning they recited the song: 'then Moses and the Israelites sing' (Exod
15.1). It was the seventh day and it was the last festival day of Pesah.
Seder O l a m R a b b a m a k e s the c o m m e m o r a t i v e content of the night before the

seventh day of the festival of U n l e a v e n e d Bread explicit b y combining the itin-
eraries of N u m b 3 3 . 5 - 8 and E x o d 14.2, 9.
Bet Hillel and Bet S h a m m a i about (Non-) M i m e t i c Liturgy
R e g a r d i n g all pilgrim festivals, the rabbinic texts continue and e x p a n d on a

strategy that b e g a n in the Biblical text itself: to anchor these festivals in the
e x o d u s narrative. This w a s already achieved for the evening of Pesah and the
festival of U n l e a v e n e d Bread in general. N o w , the 21 s t of Nisan is connected
w i t h the events of Exod 14f. T h e Mekhilta of Rabbi Y i s h m a e l and Seder O l a m
R a b b a do not create liturgies out of Biblical texts, but establish m e a n i n g s for
Biblically prescribed liturgies. A special celebration of the seventh day of
sequence of the enumerated events. SOR ends the passage such as MekhY with
'There was one date designated for all of them.' This does not make sense in the
context of SOR. In MekhY, this concludes a paragraph that began with a quotation of
'η n,tff1?tff rpa vn. Thus, SOR skipped the beginning of the paragraph that had no
connection with its new context, but retained the end. This instance shows that SOR
reworks a piece of midrash in this passage. Milikowski 1981 I, 12-17 accepts a
tannaitic date that is suggested in the Babylonian Talmud; bYev 82b, bNid 46b). On
the basis of a supposed quotation of the bT in SOR, Wacholder 1974, 109 assumed that
SOR be a 'postTalmudic publication'. The discussion is summarized by Stemberger
1996, 326f. For the present context, it would be important to have a reliable date for
SOR. This cannot be given on the basis of the state of research. If SOR can be shown
to rework more pieces of MekhY like this one (and not vice versa), at least a post-
tannaitic date of the whole composition will be accurate. SOR reworks passages of
MekhSh (not MekhY), Milikowsky 1995.
Unleavened Bread is rather an innovation in Seder Olam Rabba, as the tan-

naitic lists of readings do not yet know anything about a special reading for
the seventh day of Pesah.237 In accordance with the Tosefta (tPes 10.12) and the
prescribed readings (mMeg 3.5), the rabbis can be assumed to have chosen
texts that formed a basis for halakhic discussions. Neither the shape of the
liturgy nor its contents suggest a tendency to historicize at that stage. 'Telling
the story of the Exodus' is not yet an important point of Pesah. One source
even tries to argue against historicization:
(1.1) Until which (verse) does he (viz. the President of the seder) recite (the Hallel
Psalms)? (1.2) The house of Shammai say: until 'the joyful mother of sons' (Ps
113.9). (1.3) The house of Hillel say: until 'flint to a fountain of water' (Ps 114.8).
(1.4) And he (viz. the president of the seder) concludes with the (blessing of the)
redemption238.
(2) The house of Shammai said to the house of Hillel: did they already go out that
they are mentioning the Exodus of Egypt? The house of Hillel said to them: even
if he should wait until cockcrow (with the recitation of Ps 114, this would not align
the Biblical narrative with the liturgy)! For behold, if they did not go out until the
sixth hour of the day (what they actually did not do - there is no reason to say Ps
114 before the middle of the next day).239
(3) How should he recite the (benediction of the) redemption before they were lib-
erated?
Even without deciding whether the two positions (1.1, 1.2) represent actual
liturgical practice or a theoretical discussion about the relationship of narrated
time and liturgical time, the text finally (3) sides with the Hillelites and accuses
the Shammaites of supporting an inconsistent position. In the context of the
Tosefta, one may assume that the two 'houses' argue about the part of the
Hallel that should be recited before the meal, although this is not stated here.
Shamma Friedman (2002, 456f) suggests dividing the text not only into the
presentation of the different positions (no. 1) and the discussion between the
Hillelites and the Shammaites, but also to separate no. 3 from the discussion.
The second part of the refutation of the Shammaites may not be another ap-
proach of the Hillelites but ΊΠΚ ~Q7 - another argument. This gives especially
237 tMeg 3.5 354 'In the rest of all the days of Pesah, one jumps from passage to passage
concerning the Pesah that are written in the Tora.' The 'days of Pesah' are not men-
tioned in mMeg 3.5.
238 Cf. for the situation of the mss., the discussion in Friedman 2002, 448f.
239 The division of the paragraph here reflects Friedman's thesis 2002, 456 that is ex-
plained below.
202 Easter Sunday
the sentence no. 1.4 a coherent position in the whole discussion. For no. 3 pre-
supposes that the Shammaites and the Hillelites share the custom of reciting a
benediction of the redemption after the respective Psalm. This (no. 3) reveals
an internal contradiction within the Shammaites' position, because they would
not want to recite Ps 114, because it contains a reference to the redemption, but
would keep at the same time a piece of prayer that mentions the redemption
anyway. If only the paragraphs 1 and 2 are read, 1.4 only qualifies the Hille-
lites' position. Thus, the Shammaites read Ps 113 without that benediction and
the Hillelites read Ps 113 and 114 and add the benediction. In no. 2, they ex-
change some reasons for this.
In no. 2, both Shammaites and Hillelites interpret liturgical time as repre-
senting narrated time of the Bible. The Shammaites do not want to mention
the redemption before a certain point during the night - which can be inferred
from the Hillelite's polemic about cockcrow.240 They do not want to recite Ps
114 because of its strong allusions to the Exodus and the crossing of the Red
Sea.241 Against this, the Hillelites argue with another Biblical attempt to fix
'the' Exodus within the narrated time: the middle of the next day. Thus, even
if one should extend the celebration of Pesah until cockcrow, this would not
yet provide a proper commemorative context for the Exodus Psalm 114, be-
cause the real Exodus only began on the following day. (The crossing of the
Red Sea is not mentioned.) According to the Shammaite position - as argued
by the Hillelites - it would have been impossible to recite Ps 114 at all during
the night of the seder.
But finally (no. 3), the Hillelites (or the anonymous composer of the To-
sefta) argue against any mimesis on the basis of the established liturgy. The
Shammaites mention the Exodus in the benediction of the redemption in their
240 Friedman 2002, 451-156 points out that the Biblical texts about 'the Exodus' make any
time in the night and the day fit for mimetic representation. He summarizes rabbinic
opinions to this point. Thus, one understands why the discussion of the date of the
Exodus is important at all: it may be crucial in the determination of the structure of
the night. The study of the halakhot of Pesah or the seder may run until midnight and
end with the recitation of Ps 114 - at the time of the Exodus - after which one would
start to eat the meal, 457. The other paradigm is also expressed: the rabbis' studying
of halakhot of Pesah until the morning. One could eat the meat of the sacrifices at
least during one whole night. Different mimetic paradigms require different liturgies.
In this passage, the Shammaites do not say explicitly that they would not want to re-
cite Ps 114 before midnight.
241 It cannot be inferred from the Mishna and the later attested contents of the Hallel that
the Shammaites propose an innovation.
own liturgy immediately after Ps 113. They can, therefore, as well recite Ps 114.
In other words, if the Shammaites would take their own practice seriously,
they would have to delete the benediction from their liturgies (which they pre-
sumably do not want to do), or go on with the recitation of Ps 114 anyway.
This opinion presupposes that both recite the benediction of the redemption,
which does not fit to the preceding two paragraphs. Those can be understood
more easily, if the Shammaites did not say the benediction of the redemption
after Ps 113.
The celebration of Pesah was concentrated on the night of the seder and
the subsequent reading of the appropriate passage of the Tora in the syna-
gogue. While the celebration of the crossing of the Red Sea on the 21st of Nisan
has (probably) not been invented yet, the principle that led to its creation is
already visible in the first and second paragraphs. It is rejected in the third.
This text is important, because it shows that tannaites would already in a
proto-Mishnaic setting understand parts of the ritual time in the liturgies not
only as a representation of (or replacement for) the Temple cult, but also as a
reenactment of Biblical narratives. If this would occur in a section of midrash,
whose purpose it is to explain the Biblical text, it would be less compelling.
One must, however, also see the final opinion of the Tosefta which rejects that
reasoning and presupposes a type of liturgy that is not dependent upon it. For
no. 3 does not begin the argument all over again asking when one would recite
the benediction of the redemption. No. 3 takes the benediction and its non-
mimetic implications for granted and concludes the discussion with that. The
tannaim may have been well aware of the theological and liturgical 'dangers'
for the ritual of Pesah, if it is understood as a mimesis of the Egyptian Pesah in
any way.242
242 The final rejection of this approach by the Tosefta also shows that one cannot read a
Quartodeciman-like Pesah into the Shammaite's position: with a first, mournful phase
and the celebration of the redemption after midnight. The text tacitly acknowledges
the possibility of a multiform liturgy. Friedman's ingenious analysis of the text solves
many problems. Yet, the positions that are expressed there rather reflect theoretical
discussions than liturgical customs. Turetsky 1963, LXXXV observes the close rela-
tionship between Karaite and Rabbanite liturgies. Thus, the Karaites took over the
reading of the crossing of the Red Sea on the 7th day of Pesah.
204 Easter Sunday
4.4.3 Conclusions
Some historians of Christian liturgies infer from the assumption of the ubiq-
uity of Paschal baptism and the fact that Philo understands the Pesah as
διαβατήρια243 (supported by Josephus' ύπερβάσια 244 ) in the first century, that
the meaning of the Christian Pascha always contained an element of transitus
(comprising baptism and Christ's resurrection) and that Paul's typological link
between the Pascha and the crossing of the Red Sea (1 Cor 10) always defined
the Christian understanding of the Pascha. As most premises of this conclu-
sion are not valid before the later third century at the earliest, the silence of the
sources about the crossing of the Red Sea in the context of Easter (after Paul)
must be taken seriously.
Furthermore, the establishment of the seventh day of the festival of
Unleavened Bread as commemoration of the crossing of the Red Sea in Juda-
ism does not precede the Christian introduction of 1 Cor 10 into the repertoire
of the understanding of Easter. Both are parts of the expansion of the ritual,
meaning, and duration of the festivals of Pesah and Easter in both religions in
late Antiquity.
The commemoration of the Israelites' crossing of the Red Sea in Judaism is
not connected with the history of Easter Sunday. The glaring lack of interest in
the 'transitus' imagery of the early church reveals a basic weakness of the the-
sis that Easter Sunday should have emerged out of a celebration of the crossing
of the Red Sea - be it the third or the seventh day after the Pesah. Moreover,
the fact that Judaism did not celebrate the third day after the Egyptian Pesah
243 Van Goudoever 1967, 183. He infers (234f) from Rom 6.3 (Col 2.12) and Pastor Her-
mae 93.4 Sim 9.16 GCS 90, both of whom use the resurrection as a metaphor in their
explanation of baptism, that baptism was celebrated on the occasion of the commemo-
ration of the resurrection. This is unwarranted. Especially if Paul and Hermas draw
their images from the shape of the ritual (that was not confined to a day in the year),
this does not have any calendrical implications. Rordorf 1980 infers from the Pauline
comparison of baptism with the Israelites' passage through the Red Sea in 1 Cor lO.lf
that Christians used to baptize in the night when Jews 'celebrated' that historical
event, 181. Thus, he even dismisses the imagery of Rom 6 as pertaining to the liturgi-
cal context of baptism (182 n. 57). Otherwise, one could have inferred from Rom 6
that Christians baptized when they remembered Christ's death and resurrection -
without any connection to the passage through the Sea. Huber 1969, 45-47 already
said that that neither Christians nor Jews 'celebrated' the crossing of the Red Sea in
apostolic times.
244 Ant 2.313/3.14.6 LCL 300f.
A Christianized Festival of Unleavened Bread 205
although this may be inferred from the Bible also indicates that 'celebrating the
crossing of the Red Sea' was not yet among the mimetic ingredients of the
Pesah in pre-rabbinic times.
The Bible begins to furnish Israel's festivals with historical etiologies. This
process is interrupted before the mimetic potential of the seventh day of the
festival of Unleavened Bread was realized - hence the imprecise narratives
about the Exodus on the one hand and the absence of these topics from the
liturgies on the other. This Biblical approach to the liturgies is only taken up
again in late Antiquity in Judaism and Christianity, although no direction of
influence can be substantiated. Christians and Jews expand the ritual and
meaning of the Pesah and the Pascha in this time on the basis of Biblical sto-
ries. Both remain within the frameworks that had been developed in their
own liturgies independently of these Biblical stories. Thus, it is not astonish-
ing that Christians turn to three-day-periods in the context of Easter Sunday,
nor does it reveal any interest on the part of Christians in contemporary Juda-
ism. Likewise, the rabbis find additional meanings for the pre-existing festival
of Unleavened Bread.
4.5 A Christianized Festival of Unleavened Bread
As some Christian sources call Holy Week 'the week of Azyma (or Unleavened
Bread)', Jan Van Goudoever identifies the Easter vigil at the end of Holy Week
with the 21st of Nisan - the end of 'the week of Azyma' with his supposed
celebration of the passage through the Red Sea. On the basis of the foregoing
discussion, this can be dismissed. Yet, Gerard Rouwhorst raises a similar
question in the context of the Syriac tradition. He asks whether a Christian-
ized celebration of the festival of Unleavened Bread could be substantiated as
an old tradition going back to Second Temple Judaism when the festival of
Unleavened Bread could still be celebrated at the Sanctuary.245 It is indeed
curious that second-century Christians celebrated forms of the Pascha that
were more or less dependent upon the Jewish Pesah, whereas the festival of
245 Rouwhorst 1989 I, 30f n. 16 and 155 n. 20; also Rouwhorst 1982 referring to Van
Goudoever 1967, 243-244. It may have persisted very long in Syriac Christianity as
Ephrem polemizes against it. However, the following observations rather suppose
that Ephrem opposes a quite recent idea and not a custom of apostolic times.
206 Easter Sunday
Unleavened Bread does not seem to have left any trace on the Christian calen-
dar. The Syriac expression 'säbö'tä dpa Ihre' could, however, preserve an old
memory about a Christian custom in the marginalized groups of Eastern
Christianity. Moreover, the Gospel of Peter is often interpreted as witness to
an ancient, Quartodeciman celebration of the Pascha that was followed by a
Christian 'festival of Unleavened Bread'. 246
As another argument for this assumption, it may be mentioned that Syriac
Christianity did not know a celebration of Pentecost as late as the fourth cen-
tury.247 Thus, the liturgical space after the Pascha - either the Quartodeciman
Pascha or one celebrated on a Sunday - was not occupied by this period of 50
days and hence free for other customs. As Western Christianity adopted the
celebration of the Pentecost first as a period of time that was later split up into a
sequence of single festivals, a festival of Unleavened Bread could not be
adopted any more. The Syriac tradition of a week of Unleavened Bread could
either have helped to prevent the innovation of the Christian Pentecost to
spread into its churches or could at least have been adopted earlier or later,
because the Pentecost was actually not celebrated.248
4.5.1 The Expositio Officiorum Ecclesiae
Gerard Rouwhorst collects attestations where 'week of the pattire' is a techni-

cal term for Holy Week in Syriac sources. Thus, a homily (wrongly) attributed
to Ephrem begins: 'Before the days of unleavened breads (pattire) - not ours,
but those of the (Jewish) people - it happened that Jesus came to Bethania'.249
The text emphasizes the difference between the Christian technical terminol-
ogy and the institution in Second Temple Judaism. Similarly, the so-called
Burkitt Lectionary uses 'week of pattire' as designation for Holy Week.250 The
246 Rouwhorst 2004 including references to recent studies.

247 Rouwhorst 2001a.
248 One has to be wary of circular argumentation here. The open space of a 'missing'
Pentecost could support an innovative introduction of a festival of Unleavened Bread.
Conversely, an old custom to keep such a festival would preclude a church from tak-
ing over a period of 50 days as Pentecost from another church.
249 No. 2; CSCO 412.7, tr. CSCO 413.24.
250 Burkitt 1921-1923, 307; 7th cent, according to lenner 2001.
s a m e definition is also found in other texts. 2 5 1 T h e problematic character of the

discussion b e c o m e s apparent, however, in a m o r e recent text that explains the
East Syrian Liturgy, the Expositio Officiorum Ecclesiae: 2 5 2
Thirteenth Chapter. When did our Lord fast - in which time of the year and in
which month and how much did he wait from (the time when) he was baptized
until (the time) when he fasted?
As these three Evangelists are showing, he went into the desert immediately in or-
der to fast after he had been baptized, although also John, who waited after his
baptism one year and more, was immediately delivered into the prison, they say
(Matth 4.12; Mark 1.14; Luke 3.20f)...
T h e w h o l e chapter is designed to solve s o m e of the manifold p r o b l e m s that

arise f r o m the fundamental approach of the Expositio to explain each detail of
the liturgies in a m i m e t i c - c o m m e m o r a t i v e way, even suggesting changes to the
ritual o n the basis of parallels b e t w e e n the ritual and the Bible. T h e chapter
raises the question of w h y Christians do not fast at the time w h e n Jesus fasted
- after his baptism, w h i c h implies: after Epiphany. (The question is even m o r e
complicated, as only the synoptic Gospels tell that Jesus w e n t to the desert in
order to fast.) The text goes on to discuss M o s e s ' fasts 2 5 3 that took place in
s u m m e r , w h i c h increases their ascetic value:
It is known that Jesus ascended at the end of Pentecost in order to fast, as he as-
cended at the time when Moses ascended. For the days of the summer are difficult
to fast because of the force of the sun and the heat of the air. Regarding Moses, the
two times that he fasted his fast was also in the summer. And if he (Jesus) should
have fasted in autumn, Satan could have said: this (weak) one! Had he fasted in
the summer such as Moses, he would not have been able to endure it. Because of
this, he (Jesus) kept his fast until the time in which Moses had fasted, which is (the
time) of intense heat.
251 Rouwhorst refers to Martyrium Beati Simeonis Bar Sabba'e: Martyrium 33 Kmosko
758. Par. Narratio 64 Kmosko 887; Nau 1974, 15 'Hermas, martyr, on the Friday after
the week of the pattlre (i.e. Holy Week)'.
252 The Text is extant in mss. from the 13th cent. The attribution to the 10th cent, bishop
George of Arbela cannot be corroborated. I tried to show in which way the text re-
works material from the middle of the first millennium in its fifth chapter on baptism,
Leonhard 2002. The author may, however, have reworked many other sources in the
other chapters.
253 Exod 34.28 and the mentioning of 40 days in 24.18. See also p. 264 for SOR 5. Regan
1981, 213 refers to Leo the Great who instituted a 40 day period of fasting after Pente-
cost.
208 Easter Sunday
Others of those who are inspired by God are saying that he fasted from Nisan on -
the day on which those of the house of Adam erred. This is, however, not true.
For he was baptized on the twentieth of Känön after the moon, and he remained
one month in Kana and also in Galilee until those disciples, who followed him,
learned about him - those, who had heard from John (the Baptist) about him. In
the month of Nisan, he ascended to Jerusalem before the festival, as he also over-
turned the chairs of those who were selling doves and sheep254 - those that were
used to be sold for the festival of the Pascha. But how can it be that he began to
fast in Nisan, while the evangelist shows that he was in the sanctuary and re-
mained there until the end of the pattlre? On the contrary, he ordered his fast to-
gether with the fast of Moses, in order that fast should be like fast and covenant
like covenant. For that one broke the tablets which he brought, because Satan had
been victorious and the people had fallen (into sin). This one, however, broke Sa-
tan and the calf and established the tablets of the Spirit.255
Pattire refers to the Jewish festival of U n l e a v e n e d Bread. T h e author of the

Expositio infers from the activities that are related in the gospel that Jesus w a s
not fasting at that time. Jesus is said to have fasted at the same time (in the
year) as M o s e s did - in s u m m e r and after Pentecost. Moses, w h o descends
from the m o u n t a i n and b r e a k s the tablets, should b e m a t c h e d b y Christ, w h o
'broke Satan ... and established the tablets of the Spirit'. This creates a h u g e
p r o b l e m for the liturgy, b e c a u s e n o w , there is no reason in the narratives of the
Gospels to assume that Jesus used to fast before the Pascha although it is an
old ecclesiastical custom to do so:
Somebody asks: why are we anticipating our Lord's fast (viz. fasting before the
Pascha), not fasting together with him, as he fasted in those days? (Why) do we
not fulfill everything that our Lord did on the days on which he did it?
Seeing that three Evangelists mentioned the fast immediately when he was bap-
tized - he began with his mission (on earth) then - they commanded to fast even
while keeping (the festival of) Epiphany.
They celebrated the week of the passion in the days256 of the fourteenth, keeping
the days of the passion in different ways.
254 'Sheep' are only mentioned in John 2.14, not in the parallel account in the synoptic
gospels.
255 Connolly 1911 text I, 60.13-61.7.
256 Säbö'tä den dhassä byäwmätä barba'srä 'äbdln (h)wäw. kad baznayyä msahlpe nätrin
(h)wäw lhön lyäwmätä dhassä. Connolly emends the text by adding 'post' in
'Hebdomadam vero passionis diebus post quartam decimam observabant...': 'they
held the week of the passion in the days after the fourteenth...'. Holy Week may in
some cases (not every year) fall after the 14th of the lunar month. The exact meaning of
the sentence remains unclear. Yäwmätä dhassä refers to Good Friday and Holy Satur-
(I) Some of them used to fast the first day of the pattire, and the second one, and
ended the fast on the third one. Those did not care about the Sunday.
(II) Others used to fast the whole week of the pattire and ended the fast on the
Sunday.
(III) Others fasted on those days on which our Lord suffered - 1 am speaking about
Friday and Saturday - and ended the fast on Sunday.
When the Synod at Nikaia was assembled, at that very assembly, they decreed that
the fast should be close to the Passion, that means the Pesah, in order that our Sav-
ior's resurrection be at the very end of the fast.
The fast is (kept) forty days, not more and not less... 15?
The Expositio speaks about ante-Nicene customs of fasting and keeping the
Pascha. Is this an old tradition? As soon as one tries to contextualize the cus-
toms, the problems abound. Thus, a 'week of the Passion' was theoretically
discussed before the fourth century in an attempt to establish a chronology of
the events of the passion of Christ. However, Holy Week as an elaborate se-
quence of rituals is a phenomenon of the fourth century. The Expositio must
at least be suspected to employ late terminology to speak about early customs.
Supposing that the 'week of the Passion' was indeed kept after the fourteenth,
is this a Christianized week of Unleavened Bread?
The first allegedly ante-Nicene custom of fasting is as enigmatic as the in-
troduction. If pattire means a Christian festival of Unleavened Bread, why is
the fast held only on the first three days of that week? Pattire cannot yet mean
Holy Week, because that is dependent upon the Sunday. This custom is like-
wise not related to the Quartodeciman Pascha, that was only kept for one vigil
and would never have been followed by two days of fasting, because it is said
to have ended in a joyful celebration of the Eucharist.
The passage can be explained in another way. The author of the Expositio
tries to reconstruct ante-Nicene customs on his own. His foregoing discussion
of Biblical precedents for the Christian fast before Easter Sunday did not yield
day, the days of the Paschal fast. If säbö'tä dhassä means 'Holy Week' here, the whole
sentence may imply what Epiphanius and the Syriac Didascalia observe: that Holy
Week would fall close to the days around the 14th of Nisan (see below).
257 Connolly 1911 text I, 61.7-61.26. The types of fasts do not resemble the types of fasts
that Irenaeus refers to in Eusebius Ecclesiastical History 5.24.12 Syriac Wright,
McLean, Merx 307. The fast is computed as: 6 weeks of 6 days of fasting each (includ-
ing fasts on Saturdays): 36 days plus the first 4 days of Holy Week. The fast is inter-
rupted briefly for the commemoration of the last supper. It is taken up again on Good
Friday and Holy Saturday which do not add 2 days to the number of 40, but are of a
different quality; until Connolly 1911 text I, 62.8.
210 Easter Sunday
unequivocal parallels in the Gospel on which he could build a system of mi-

metic representation in the liturgy. Thus, he changes his strategy and explains
the existing liturgy as the result of ecclesiastical legislation.258 As he (or his
source) does not have access to information about ante-Nicene customs, not to
mention about Quartodecimanism, he reconstructs them freely. The result is a
kind of triduum paschale that is bound to the 14th of Nisan, characterized by
fasting and thus violating the commandment not to fast on Sundays in certain
cases. Three conclusions must be drawn from this passage: First, that such a
fast was never kept in reality; second, that pat fire is characterized by fasting;
and third, that there is no trace of the Jewish festival of Unleavened Bread
here.
This becomes even more obvious in the next 'custom' (II) that is related in
the Expositio. Pattire is again a time of fasting. Quartodecimanism is again
ruled out, as those people are keeping a kind of Holy Week. They keep fasting
somewhat longer before Easter Sunday.
The third group (III) is keeping their fast on Good Friday and Holy Satur-
day - a kind of practice that is accepted by the fathers of Nicea.
4.5.2 Aphrahat
While the Expositio is now excluded from the discussion of ancient traditions
in Syriac sources, two further texts of high importance must be mentioned:
Aphrahat's Demonstratio on the Pascha and the passage from the Syriac
Didascalia on which many reconstructions of the Quartodeciman liturgy of the
Pascha rely. Aphrahat says:259
In order that you be persuaded yourself and that you also persuade the brothers
who are members of your church and who are troubled by this timing of the Pas-
cha - for people with a healthy mind, these (things) are not difficult to understand:
(1) If the day of the Pascha of our Savior's passion (viz. the 15th of Nisan, the first
day of the festival of Unleavened Bread) falls on the day of the Sunday, it is con-
venient that we keep the second day (viz. the second day of the week of the Old
Testament festival of Unleavened Bread) according to the (Old Testament) law,260
in order that its whole week be kept as his Passion as well as his Unleavened
258 Similar strategies can also be observed in the chapter on baptism, Leonhard 2002.
259 Rouwhorst 1982,1377f. Aphrahat Dem 12.12 Parisot 533ff. The magisterial interpreta-
tion is given by Rouwhorst 1989 1,150-152.
260 Explained by Rouwhorst 1982.
(Bread). For the seven days of Unleavened (Bread) follow the Pesah (running) un-
til the twenty-first.
(2) If the passion falls on another day of the days of the week, we are not troubled
by them261 (viz. these days - i.e. we do not keep the days of the festival of Unleav-
ened Bread). Our great day is a Friday.
(3) I f -
This part of the text s e e m s to b e structured along three conditions: en - wen -

wen.262 A l t h o u g h the text after 1. 536.8 is translatable, it seems to be disturbed,
as it is not clear h o w the following observations fit into this sequence of condi-
tions. Thus, R o u w h o r s t (1989 II, 120) deletes the last en ('if') and starts a n e w
topic.
T h e following sentences 2 6 3 are, likewise, best u n d e r s t o o d in accordance
w i t h R o u w h o r s t ' s observations. A p h r a h a t explains the concept of 'day' (1989
I, 140 and 145) as one 'day' comprising the time from the Last Supper to the
Resurrection. This is one important concept of the w h o l e Demonstratio 12 that
c o m e s to the fore w i t h the question about 'this great day of the festival' (12.5
Parisot 516.7). According to R o u w h o r s t , A p h r a h a t answers this question first
in 12.6, developing the c o m m e m o r a t i o n of the passion within the interval be-
261 A crucial term is '-s-q in this context. Brockelmann 1928, 536f does not indicate that it
be understood as 'to keep a festival day'. Nevertheless, both attestations in the para-
graph (533.22, 536.6) must be translated with the same concept. This is done here by
means of the term 'trouble'.
262 Parisot 533.24, 536.4 and 8.
263 'If - according to the count of the month the day of the crucifixion on which our Sav-
ior suffered and was among the dead its night and its day being the fifteenth - from
the sixth hour of the Friday until the beginning of the Sunday.' The 15th is thus de-
scribed as comprising the Passion and the descent into hell. Aphrahat continues: 'On
Sunday, the sixteenth, he rose (from the dead), because he ate the Pesah with his disci-
ples according to Israel's law on the beginning of the fourteenth (viz. in the evening
preceding it). On the same day, Friday, the fourteenth, he was judged until the sixth
hour and crucified for three hours and he descended to the dead in the night that be-
gan the fifteenth. On the day of the Sabbath, which is the fifteenth, he was among the
dead and the night that began the Sunday which is the sixteenth he rose and appeared
to Mary, the Magdalene, and to the two of his disciples when they were walking on
their way.' The following passage concludes the section: 'Someone who happens to
be troubled by these days should consider the following: On the beginning of the
fourteenth (i. e. on the night preceding the fourteenth), our Lord accomplished the
Pesah and ate and drank with his disciples. But from the time of cockcrow on, he did
not eat or drink any more, because they took him prisoner and began to judge him.
As I have shown you above, the fifteenth, its night and day, he was among the dead.'
212 Easter Sunday
tween the Eucharist in the night preceding the Friday (14th) and the resurrec-
tion: 12.6 Parisot 520.3-5 'In the night in which the Sunday begins, at the time
when he gave his body and his blood to his disciples, he rose from the dead'.
12.7 explains how 'three days and three nights' (Matth 12.40) fit into this inter-
val.
However, in Dem 12.6 (Parisot 521.8-15) Aphrahat states:
The Pesah of the Jews is the day of the fourteenth, its night and its day; and our
day of the Passion is the great day of the Friday, the day of the fifteenth, its night
and its day. Thus, Israel eats after the Pesah the pattlre for seven days until the
twenty-first in the (lunar) month. We keep the pattlre as the festival of our Savior.
Those eat the pattlre in bitterness (or: with a bitter substance; mrärä). Our Savior
rejected that chalice of bitterness (mrärä) and took the whole bitterness (marrirütä)
of the peoples when he tried it, but did not want to drink it.
Rouwhorst (1989 I, 143-147) discusses the problems of this passage, the most
important of which are: (1) the wrong remark that the Jews celebrate the Pe-
sah on the 14lh of Nisan and (2) the contradictions between the chronology of
the passion that is developed in 12.6f and 12.12 with this paragraph (12.8).
One may assume with Rouwhorst that Aphrahat actually referred to the day of
the Jewish Pesah. For this reference, he used the day of preparation of the Pe-
sah, in the evening of which the meal is celebrated. This line shows Aphra-
haf s inexperienced approach towards Judaism.
Regarding the contradictions between the types of chronology evoked
here, Rouwhorst observes that the Jewish celebration on the 14th is set in con-
trast with the Christian Friday - incidentally also the 15th. Nevertheless, these
Christians are said to keep the pattlre on the one day on which Christ 'non-
celebrated' it in rejecting their bitterness and removing the 'bitterness of the
peoples' at the time of his death. All of this implies a thoroughly 'synoptic'
chronology, as the Jews indeed celebrate patfire (the 15th of Nisan) on the day
of Jesus' passion. The pat tire of the Biblical Israel as well as of the 'Jews' of
Jesus' time foreshadow or accompany in their bitterness Jesus' passion. It is,
therefore, reasonable to assume that the 'day of the Pascha on which our Sav-
ior suffered' (Dem 12.12 Parisot 533.24f), is likewise a reference to the 15th of
Nisan.
The aberrant brothers of 12.12 apparently want to keep a week of Unleav-
ened Bread after the 14th of Nisan. Aphrahat ends the paragraph with another
remark:264 Christ did not keep a week of Unleavened Bread, as he did not eat
264 Rouwhorst 1989 1, 151f.

anything any more after the Last Supper (being already 'dead', 12.6 Parisot
517.9f). Why does Aphrahat allow to keep the week of unleavened bread in
exactly this case? The answer may be imposed upon Aphrahat by means of
two concepts that can be introduced as underlying his reasoning: first, that
Christians must not fast on Sundays and second, that the festival of Unleav-
ened Bread (pattire) implies a kind of fast.
If this is the case, Aphrahat's allowance of the week of the pattire is an at-
tempt to keep Easter Sunday free from any fast. Only if the Monday of Holy
Week is kept and understood as the second day of the week of Unleavened
Bread, there is no danger that one should fast on Easter Sunday, because the
seventh day of the festival of Unleavened Bread is the Saturday of Holy Week.
Aphrahat's allowance reduces his adversaries' proposition to an absurdity.
They may only keep it from the second day in the rare case when the 14th of the
lunar month falls on a Saturday. In this situation, no discussion is necessary
and the specialty of the ritual is dissolved, because it coincides with Holy
Week in which adherents of the Dominical Pascha would also keep some kind
of fast.
The chronological contradictions of the Demonstratio cannot be solved, but
there may be a reason why they exist side by side. Rouwhorst provides a key
to the problem in his interpretation of this text as a dispute that also involves
Quartodecimans. In addition, Aphrahat's liturgy of Pascha is irrevocably
linked to the days between Friday and Sunday of Holy Week. This is not any
more open do discussion in his time. The problems arise in the reconnection of
this scheme to the Biblical texts. The same is true for Aphrahat's adversaries,
who likewise suggest the construction of liturgies out of the Biblical text - in
this case the reconstruction of a festival of Unleavened Bread. It is likely that
those people stood in a Quartodeciman tradition, which is an easier assump-
tion than to postulate that they should have re-invented Quartodecimanism.
However, their wish to keep the festival of Unleavened Bread cannot be re-
garded as an old heritage, as they apparently understand it as a custom of
fasting. Otherwise, Aphrahat's 'allowance' would not make sense, because he
should not be assumed to suggest that they celebrate a joyous week of pattire
exactly when the other party was keeping a fast of Holy Week.
As a true adherent of a developed form of Easter Sunday, Aphrahat felt
free to make polemical use of both the Synoptic and the Johannine chronolo-
gies whenever they supported his arguments. Thus, in the two cases (12.8 and
12.12) when he touches the subject of the pattire he bases his discussion on a
Synoptic chronology. In his discussion of the details of the chronology of the
Passion, he remains in line with John. These arguments (12.6f) are not only
214 Easter Sunday
directed against Quartodecimans who would have to learn that the three days'
celebration is in fact nothing but their own 'great day of the passion'. Mem-
bers of Aphrahat's party in particular would ask how Matthew 12.40 and the
actual liturgy fit together. The only stable factor in this manifold dispute is
Easter Sunday and the days preceding it. So far, these observations are in-
debted to Rouwhorst (cf. 1989 I, 154). Unlike his assessment of Aphrahat's
adversaries in 12.12, it is suggested here that they ask for a celebration of a
week of pattire that is not an old custom but a 'bookish' innovation. Departing
from their Christian understanding of pattire, they want to add a week of fast-
ing after the 14th of Nisan. As the Quartodeciman Pascha is said to have ended
in a joyous celebration in the older sources, it would hardly have been linked
to a week of fasting. Those Quartodecimans must not only have been inde-
pendent from Judaism but also far removed from the roots of 'their' tradition.
While Aphrahat did not yet use 'week of the patfire' for Holy Week as a
technical term, it is understood as a fast and as such only admitted if it coin-
cides with Holy Week. It is astonishing that it is the only characteristic feature
of that 'week of paltire' to be a time of fasting. This cannot be inherited from
Judaism, as it is not reconcilable with what can be known about the festival of
Unleavened Bread. That festival was not understood as a time of fasting, al-
though similar discourses were also recorded in the name of tannaitic sages.
Thus, Joseph Tabory refers to the discussion about the meaning of 'bread of
affliction' (Deut 16.3) in the context of the commandment to eat unleavened
bread in MekhY pisha 10 L 80f.265 There, the quality of the unleavened bread
and the question whether it may be made of the second tithe (that must be
eaten in Jerusalem and in a joyous atmosphere) is discussed. Eventually, the
sages allow all kinds of additions to the unleavened bread (which apparently
improve its taste) including that it be made of the second tithe. Going on to
265 Tabory 2000, 112. 452 refers to several passages that exploit Deut 16.3 as an (obvious)
interpretation of the unleavened bread, such as SifDev 130 Finkelstein 187: 'bread of
affliction' not because it is the bread of the poor (a"]!)), but because of the 'affliction
('Ό1!?) that they were maltreated with (uyni) in Egypt'. Bread of a bad quality may be
used for Pesah, because of the Biblical phrase 'bread of affliction' according to bBer
38a. mHal 1.8 does not elucidate the meaning of the unleavened bread but sets a
minimum standard ('if the shepherds eat it') for the halakhic status that qualify low
quality food as 'bread'. As soon as the liturgy is discussed, the sages seem to avoid
associations of bad quality bread. bPes 115b interprets 'bread of affliction (TIB)' by
means of a pun (against its etymology): 'because they answer (]'TO) about it many
things' - perhaps halakhic as well as narrative.
find a way to make the unleavened bread a true 'bread of affliction', R. Eliezer
rules that the production of the unleavened bread should be done in the way
in which poor people bake bread throughout the year: 'His wife kneads while
he heats the oven'.266 Thus, whatever the quality of the bread, the process of its
production, not the mood at the time of its consumption fulfills the com-
mandment. This implies that the eating of the 'bread of affliction' during the
meal(s) of the festival is not designed to create an atmosphere of fasting and
mourning. It also implies that whatever subject was discussed at the table and
whatever period of the peoples' history was 'commemorated', eating unleav-
ened bread does not imply a mimetic reenactment of the situation of slavery
before the Exodus. Nevertheless, the whole paragraph of MekhY ends in
Rabbi Jose's words that contradict the sages' opinion:
Rabbi Jose the Galilean says: behold (Scripture) says: 'do not eat leavened (bread)
on it for seven days' etc. From this, I could infer that also the (bread made of the)
second tithe be implied in the meaning. (This is not so, because there is) a passage
(in Scripture) saying: 'bread of affliction'. This excludes (bread made of the) sec-
ond tithe, which can only be eaten in joy.267
The unleavened bread is here on the brink of becoming a mimetic piece of

food. Such mimesis was not intended to shape the whole celebration of Pesah,
for unleavened bread must be eaten 'such as (the quantity of) an olive (ΓΡΤ3)'268.
Even if it must be emphasized that the rabbis mainly wanted to establish
minimal standards for the commandments (as they are accustomed to do in
many cases), the practical consequence of such a measure regarding the
unleavened bread is that its consumption does not become a burdensome obli-
gation on a festival day. Ascetic (or simply unpleasant) associations with the
whole of the festival based on its symbolic foodstuffs are avoided. For the sake
of comparisons with Christian texts, it may be concluded that rabbinic Israel is
not obliged to reenact the time of slavery on Pesah for any more time than it
takes to eat unleavened bread in the size of an olive.
This does not mean that Greek-speaking Jews who lived in close contact
with the Christians (whose texts survived) followed these principles. However
the Christian texts are remarkably independent of any known Jewish practice.
Thus, Christian exegetes infer from the 'bread of poverty' (Deut 16.3) and the
'bitter herbs' that should be eaten with it (Exod 12.8) that unleavened bread
266 MekhY pisha 10 L 81.71, ms. Oxford 151 Maagarim.

267 MekhY pisha 10 L 81.72-76, ms. Oxford 151 Maagarim.
268 mHal 1.2, tPes 2.20 149.
216 Easter Sunday
imply a rite of fasting or ascetics that can b e interpreted as referring to an ethi-

cally m o r e advanced lifestyle. T h e interpretation is supported b y 1 Cor 5.7f. 2 6 9
O r i g e n ' s i m a g e of the J e w i s h customs corresponds to that of the other
Christian texts to b e discussed here. H e observes that J e w s are used to
slaughtering the Pesah animal first and to eat unleavened bread afterwards. 2 7 0
Origen k n o w s about the J e w i s h custom of the r e m o v a l of leaven. 2 7 1 H e polem-
izes against m e m b e r s of his c o m m u n i t y w h o k e e p (the festival of) U n l e a v e n e d
Bread, although h e does not explain details. 2 7 2 A s in m a n y other instances, the
hermeneutic k e y is Biblical Israel. Thus, Origen w a r n s not to fall into Ebion-
ism thereby defining this heresy as the inclination to argue in favor of keeping
Old T e s t a m e n t customs b e c a u s e Jesus also kept them. 2 7 3 Such 'Ebionites' cre-
ate their theology f r o m the text of the Old (and N e w ) Testament(s). T h e y do
not n e e d any contacts to Jews. ' U n d e r s t a n d i n g the Old Testament in a Jewish
269 Έορτάζειν in 1 Cor 5.7 does not imply that Christians should celebrate a festival. It
evokes the Biblical image that is explained subsequently: 'feasting' implies leading a
good life as a community after Christ's death which implies to cast out the fornicator.
The only remark about unleavened bread in Meli to's homily combines it with the bit-
ter herbs; Peri Pascha 93 Hall 50.679f. Buchinger 2005, 495-198 (cf. 102, 130) observes
that Origen interprets the bitter herbs allegorically as attitude of grief and sorrow (2
Cor 2.9f) and the difficulties that wait for the Christian who wants to attain to the vi-
sion of the truth. He does not betray any knowledge of a 'Jewish' custom to eat bitter
herbs at the seder.
270 Buchinger 2005, 670f translating Jenkins 1909, 365.16f. Origen also knows about the
dedication of the Pesah animals, Buchinger 2005, 58. 204. 675 and 2003b, 573ff.
Buchinger concludes that Origen's works do not betray an intimate knowledge of rab-
binic Judaism. Even if one admits that in his time, Judaism was thriving in Palestine,
one must not overemphasize the number and influence of the rabbis in the 3rd cent., cf.
Buchinger 2005, 154f. His remark that the Jews (of his time) continue to slaughter
Pesah animals is a cliche or a mistake, 174.
271 Buchinger 2005, 673ff.
272 Buchinger 2005, 693ff. Polycrates (in Eusebius Ecclesiastical History 5.24.6 GCS 2/1,
492.6-12) also refers to the removal of leaven when he wants to indicate the Jewish
date of Pesah, see p. 271 below and Stern 2001, 222f. It is highly significant for the
reconstruction of what those Christians actually knew about Judaism, if they can only
refer to the single custom that is somehow visible in public
273 Buchinger 2005, 694 quoting Origen's Commentariorum Series on Matthew 26.17-19
no. 79 GCS 189.15-18; cf. also 2000 for Origen's understanding of 1 Cor 5.7. In this
definition, Ebionism is not Judaism, but a Christian inclination to restore Christian
liturgies to their pristine state by imitating Jesus who kept the laws of the Old Testa-
ment. There is no room for a mimetic interpretation of the Christian liturgies in Ori-
gen's thinking - not to mention re-shaping rituals as imitation of OT texts.
way' is likewise only part of an invective against Christians who do not follow
Origen's allegorical exegesis. It is derived from the Bible and not dependent
upon contemporary Jewish customs or rabbinic exegesis, if Origen associates
unleavened bread with fasting. An association of the Day of Atonement in this
context corroborates this point:
It would be very much, if we should say now why the festivals according to God's
law are teaching to eat 'bread of affliction' or 'unleavened (bread) with bitter
(herbs)', or why (Scripture) says: 'humble your souls' (Lev 16.29 and 31) or what is
like these.274
While Origen does not imply in this context that the Jews of his time are
keeping their festivals in exactly this way. He derives from these Old Testa-
ment texts rules for the understanding of the festivals. Yet, it is obvious that
he was did not perceive the festival of Unleavened Bread as a joyous occa-
sion.275
4.5.3 Diataxis and Didascalia
The discussion of an ancient Christian celebration of the festival of Unleavened

Bread must take into account two observations. First, as soon as it is attested,
it is without exception understood as a rite of fasting. Second, because of this
character, it cannot have been inherited from Second Temple times or from
rabbinic Judaism, in which the festival was not understood as such. At this
point, a passage in the 'Diataxis' as quoted by Epiphanius and the Syriac Di-
dascalia must be discussed. There, Jews are said to have begun a mournful
ritual after Pesah:276
274 Cels. 8.23 VigChr.S 54.540.15-17. Buchinger 2005, 767 emphasizes that this combina-
tion of the Day of Atonement with the Pascha is unique in the oeuvre of Origen. Yet,
Origen has also a marked interest in an ascetic character of Christian festivals.
275 Drobner 1990, 278 likewise observes that Gregory of Nyssa interprets the food
(unleavened bread and bitter herbs) and implements (Exod 12.11) of the Pesah of
Exod 12 as ascetic customs. Such explanations are different from studies of the second
century, when Christians were admonished to fast against the Jewish/esfroa/ of Pesah.
Aphrahat knows the same cliche, cf. above p. 212.
276 The Diataxis is quoted in Epiphanius' Panarion according to 70.11.3 GCS 3.244.10-13
tr. Williams 1994, 413; the passage in the Syriac Didascalia according to Vööbus 1979
text, 218.3-8.
218 Easter Sunday
'Diataxis' (Epiphanius) Syriac Didascalia

(...the same Apostles say) Whenever the fourteenth of the Pascha
falls, then you should keep it. For nei-
ther the month nor the day fits to the
same time each year, but it is movable.
2 that when those (viz. the Jews) are cele- Thus, you should be fasting when that
brating (their festival), you keep mourning, people makes the Pascha.
fasting for them, because they crucified
Christ on the day of the festival,
3 and that you celebrate (your festival), as
soon as they are mourning and eating
unleavened (bread) with bitter herbs 277 .
4 You should be careful to celebrate your
vigil within their paffire.
Epiphanius' 'Diataxis' is not only preserved in a more symmetric structure, it

also explains more details of the Christian liturgies. While the Jews are feast-
ing, the Christians are mourning and fasting for them - a notion that is also
known to the Didascalia.278 Conversely, when the Jews are fasting, the Chris-
277 Note that the Syriac Didascalia does not refer to the bitter herbs in this context.
Epiphanius' quotation of the Diataxis could be regarded as one of the rare references
to a Jewish custom to eat bitter herbs at Pesah. If the following thesis about the ori-
gins of this text is taken into account, Epiphanius introduced the reference to the bitter
herbs into the 'Diataxis' rather on the basis of Exod 12 or Numb 9 (cf. also ba-mrärä,
Aphrahat Demonstrationes 12.8 Parisot 521.16) than because of an intimate knowl-
edge of Jewish customs. The argument (such as Melito's, see p. 51) seeks to present
the festival of Unleavened Bread as a custom of mourning. The bitter herbs are, there-
fore, welcome as a Biblical proof for the ironic 'fact' that the Jews actually keep an
anti-Jewish observance (i. e. fasting and mourning while the Christians celebrate the
most joyous time of the year) that is provided by their own Scriptures. As the argu-
ment itself does not reflect a reality in (rabbinic) Judaism, the reference to the bitter
(herbs) must also be dismissed as 'bookish'. For if rabbinic customs are read into the
background of these Christian texts, bitter herbs are eaten during the Pesah meal and
not afterwards. They are only mentioned in the Mishna (not in the Tosefta) and may
hence be the result of a mimetic alignment of the seder with Exod 12. Rabban Gama-
liel interprets them (mPes 10.5) allegorically as symbol for the life of the people in
Egypt. Unless Hellenistic Jews kept (non-rabbinic) customs that were as weird as
Christian anti-Jewish polemics, there is no 'parallel' in Epiphanius' Diataxis.
278 Rouwhorst 1989 1,166-171; 1989 Π, 128 referring to the Syriac Didaskalia, Vööbus 1979
text 206.3ff and Vööbus 211.23ff: Rouwhorst 1989 II, 130. Melito transposes this situa-
tians celebrate in a joyous way. This latter idea is not mentioned in the 21st
chapter of the Didascalia. However, that text has a long passage that explains
why the Jewish Sabbath is in fact a custom of mourning.279
This corresponds to the (undisputed) classic description of the structure of
the Quartodeciman Pascha that began with a more solemn phase of prayer,
later changing its mood and ending in the festal celebration of the Eucharist.
Epiphanius assumes that the Christians kept a joyful celebration against - and
at the same time of - a Jewish ritual of mourning. Is it justified to read the
much less smoothly worded text of the Syriac Didascalia in light of the
'Diataxis' according to Epiphanius?
The understanding of the paragraph largely depends upon the interpreta-
tion of the last rule of the Didascalia (line 4) in the table above. Vööbus trans-
lates (1979 tr., 202): 'And be careful to complete your vigil within their (feast
of) unleavened bread.' Three aspects are problematic in this understanding of
the line. First, 'complete' 280 may indeed be the meaning of the term. Does it
make sense in a liturgical context? Even if pattlre should refer to the first day
of the Jewish festival of Unleavened Bread, it is curious that the text should
admonish the Christians to finish their celebration before the evening preced-
ing the 16th of Nisan or even before the 21st of Nisan, if 'Unleavened Bread'
refers to the whole festival and not its first day. This leads to the second
problem. 'Vigil' as well as 'pattire' refers to the whole celebration. This does
not correspond to the 'Diataxis' which implies that the Christians should begin
the joyous part of the celebration when the Jews change to a mournful part.
tion into the past: 'But you, Israel... you were making merry while he was starving...'
no. 77 and 80.545, 565. The idea is expanded in a long description.
279 Vööbus 216 and Rouwhorst 1989 II, 137, cf. Schmidt and Wajnberg 1919, 671 who re-
ject the historicity of the Didascalia at all because of this bizarre idea. Cf. Doering
1999, 105-107 and Rouwhorst 2001, 241 for this concept. Doering collects Jewish evi-
dence for ascetic customs kept on Sabbaths. They must, however, be regarded as mar-
ginal and do not elucidate the problem that arises from the outsiders' perspective on
this Jewish custom. Pompeius Tragus is, for example, quoted: 'Thus Moses ... for all
time consecrated the seventh day, which used to be called Sabbath by the custom of
the nation, for a fast-day, because that day had ended at once their hunger and their
wanderings' Stern 1974, no. 137 p. 335, 337f at the turn of the C.E., quoted by Iustinus,
Historiae Philippicae, Libri XXXVI Epitoma, 2.14; cf. Stern's note p. 341 for further
references and no. 195 p. 444 there.
280 Most mss. read tsallmün/taslmün instead of Vööbus' main text tsamlön. Thus, Vöö-
bus translates the entry in his apparatus 'complete!' instead of his own main text,
which may mean 'celebrate!'; Brockelmann 1928, 389 mng. 5 celebravit (diem festum).
220 Easter Sunday
T h e provision of the Didascalia does not, actually, recognize anything about

segments of celebrations here. Third, there is n o Jewish precedent for such a
s e g m e n t either. T h e J e w s can b e a s s u m e d to eat unleavened bread (and to re-
frain f r o m eating leavened b r e a d ) also during their Pesah. A t least the rabbinic
Pesah does n o t imply any hiatus w h e n the celebrants should begin to eat
unleavened bread 'after' the seder. Rabbis do not understand the eating of
unleavened b r e a d as a rite of m o u r n i n g during or after the celebration of the
seder. 2 8 1
Against this, there is a m u c h easier understanding of this line in the Didas-
calia. It must b e detached from its i m m e d i a t e context (although it can still b e
attached to the r e m a r k in line 1 of the table). Then, it can b e read as a simple
rule that the D o m i n i c a l Pascha should b e held within the w e e k following the
14 t h of Nisan. 2 8 2 Moreover, Epiphanius s e e m s to h a v e k n o w n that rule as well,
as he attributes another statement to the ' A u d i a n s ' (who are his adversaries in
that section and w h o are said to b a s e themselves on the 'Diataxis'). T h e y k e e p
281 According to Rouwhorst 1989 I, 182 n. 73; it can be either understood as a polemic
description of the Jewish rite or as a reflection of the solemn character of the period of
the Omer. This understanding of the Omer is a recent development in rabbinic Juda-
ism and was hardly accessible to the presumed author of the 'Diataxis'. The first as-
sumption is plausible, although it can also reflect the normal Christian understanding
of unleavened bread according to the OT and be hence independent of Judaism. One
can best maintain Rouwhorst's 1989 I, 182 attribution of this passage of the Didascalia
to its oldest layer, if it did not contain a close parallel to 1. 3 of the 'Diataxis'. It is then
also immune against Schmidt's (Schmidt and Wajnberg 1919, 670) and Holl's doubts
regarding its historical reliability. Moreover, only the contents of 1. 2 are repeated in a
redundant way in the 21st chapter of the Didascalia. L. 3 is not repeated. Tertullian's
remark in Ad Nationes 1.13.4 CChr.SL 1.32.21-24; tr. Holmes, ANFa 3.123: 'By resort-
ing to these customs, you deliberately deviate from your own religious rites to those
of strangers. For the Jewish feasts and the Sabbath and "the Purification", and Jewish
also are the ceremonies of the lamps, and the fasts of unleavened bread (ieiunia cum azy-
mis), and the "littoral prayers"...' confirms that the idea of azyma as a rite of fasting
was part and parcel of the Christian perception of Jewish customs and associated with
Yom Kippur at the same time: 'orationes litorales'; cf. 'per omne litus' De Ieiunio 16.6
CChr.SL 2.1275.5, see n. 33 p. 133 and Origen's opinion given on p. 217 and n. 270 p.
216. Note that Melito of Sardis Peri Pascha 93/678-692 also implies that the Jewish
festival of Unleavened Bread be 'bitter'. He does not draw the conclusion that the
Jewish festival begins after Pesah and that the Christians joyfully celebrate 'against' it.
282 Cf. Huber 1969, 46 for Hippolytus' rule that Easter Sunday should be celebrated be-
tween the 16th and 22nd of the lunar month. This has been observed by Gerlach 1998,
287.
the vigil 'in the middle of the Azyma'. 283 Epiphanius rejects that, as it does not
fit to the calendar. However, if one does not take μεσάζειν in too narrow a
sense, it could mean 'within' and represent a reasonable rule for the placement
of Easter Sunday after the 14th of Nisan and hence within the week of Unleav-
ened Bread according to the lunar months. Adopting this interpretation of line
4 has the advantage that a second and joyous part of the Christian celebration
of the Pascha is not dependent upon a Jewish custom that never existed. It has
the disadvantage that one must detach it from its context and destroy the
symmetry of the statement in the Syriac Didascalia. This is, however, not
problematic for this chapter, which has been described by Rouwhorst (1989) as
highly complex and multi-layered. The remaining lines 1 and 2 of the Didas-
calia according to the table above provide thus a historically more reliable rule
than the version of the 'Diataxis'. Moreover, this is not astonishing with re-
gard to the literary character of its context in the 'Diataxis'. Epiphanius is not
reliable in his details.284 The symmetry of the 'Diataxis' may therefore have
been the result of Epiphanius' feeling that something was missing in the origi-
nal.285 He could, however, have read it in another Christian source. After all, it
reflects a Christian bias towards Judaism.
283 ...φάσκουσι γαρ την άγρυπνίαν φέρειν μεσαζόντων των Αζύμων. Cf. also Vööbus
1979, 208.23f: Christ is crucified 'within their (festival) of Unleavened Bread
(dpattirayhön)'; έν αύτη γαρ αυτών τή έορτή, Apostolic Constitutions 5.14.21 SC
329.258.122. As Christ is not crucified on the 15th according to the passion chronology
of the Didascalia, έορτή cannot refer to the day of the festival (the 15lh), but must indi-
cate the period of 7 days.
284 Note that he mixes up Polycrates and Polycarp in his paraphrase of Eusebius'
Ecclesiastical History in the same context. Cf. also Stemberger 2000, 71-81 for the
historical reliability of the story about the Comes Joseph. Holl 1927, 212 remarks in
his observations on the parallels between the chronology of the Passion according to
Epiphanius and the Didascalia (not yet being able to read it in Vööbus's edition) that
Epiphanius did not read the Didascalia in a more pristine (Greek) form, although he
may have had a better text than that which is extant today. Based on the observations
of this section, it is probable that Epiphanius himself 'improved' his text. Although
Epiphanius is not dependent upon Jubilees 49.5f or the Mekhilta (see above p. 199),
the idea, that Israel was feasting while the Egyptians were watching them from out-
side, may suggest that it was not farfetched to express a conflict in terms of diametri-
cally opposed behavior at festivals. Festivals create a heightened awareness of 'iden-
tity'.
285 In his refutation of the Ebionites, Epiphanius likewise remarks that he sees a temporal
sequence in the Old Testament that prescribes the slaughtering of the lambs and the
subsequent (λοιπόν) eating of unleavened bread; 30.32.4 GCS 1.378, cf. n. 270 p. 216.
222 Easter Sunday
As mentioned, Epiphanius is not reliable in preserving and interpreting his

sources accurately. As Epiphanius' testimony is often taken at its face value, a
brief excursus must discuss Epiphanius' general approach to 'movements' like
the Audians.
Although the Audians were apparently not real Quartodecimans286, they
kept at least practices which they allegedly supported with reference to a
Quartodeciman church order. Did they actually do that? Epiphanius' work is
an encyclopedia of 'human doctrines from Adam to 375 C. E.'287. It is shaped as
a history of errant groups and persons. Herve Inglebert (2001) describes the
development that led to the inclusion of 'Jewish sects' into heresiological trea-
tises. Scholars of the second century (Justin, Irenaeus) create a genealogy of
errors beginning after the emergence of Christianity from Simon Magus on.
After 200 C.E. and together with the beginning reception of Josephus Flavius'
works, the latter's construction of Jewish 'philosophies' leads to the inclusion
of 'Jewish heresies' of Jesus' time. Because many details of the history, the way
of life, and the beliefs of Josephus' Jewish philosophies are literary fiction,
Christian authors cannot be credited with having composed accurate chro-
nologies of Jewish beliefs.288 Authors of the late fourth century like Epiphanius
greatly expand the number of pre-Christian heresies by exploiting Biblical and
patristic texts.289 Epiphanius also describes Judaizing heresies for his own
time. Thus, opinions that Christians attribute to Judaism emerge among the
repertoire of the heresies after 200 C.E., mainly based on written sources.
The more recent heresies which may be interpreted as succumbing to the
influence of Jewish ideas, such as the Quartodecimans and the Audians, are
not understood as genuinely Jewish, but Christian. In her analysis of Epi-
phanius' discussion of the 'sect' of the Nazoreens, Aline Pourkier (1992, 415-
175) shows in many and important instances how Epiphanius fabricated infor-
mation from sources which he did not quote accurately and into which he
introduced errors wildly conflating bits of information. In many cases, he does
He could have had this idea in mind when he fabricated the text of the Diataxis. Bu-
chinger 2005, 671f observes that Origen refers in several passages to a similar notion of
a festival of unleavened bread as beginning after the Jewish Pesah. The relationship
between Epiphanius and Origen cannot be assessed here.
286 Cf. Huber's observations 1968, 79. Epiphanius devotes a separate section to Quarto-
decimanism.
287 Inglebert 2001,121.
288 This suggestion is based on Bergmeier's studies, cf. 2003. Cf. also Stemberger 1991.
289 For the understanding of Jews as heretics in legal sources, cf. also Stemberger 2002.
not show his readers which parts of the text are his additions and which are
copied from his sources. 2 9 0 Epiphanius' treatise is the oldest source for this
'sect'. While it is impossible to prove that such a 'sect' did not exist, Epi-
phanius does not provide a reliable discussion of their history and beliefs. 2 9 1
As later authors (like Jerome, cf. Pourkier 471) are dependent upon Epi-
phanius, the Nazoreens must be removed from the repertoire of 'groups' that
are 'attested' in patristic sources. Pourkier's assumption that 'a Judeo-Chris-
tian Group' existed under this name (at least in the regions where the addres-
sees of the whole work were living, 462f) is, therefore, irrelevant. For if most
of the details about their beliefs and about the regions where they were living
are fabricated, there remains the vague image of a group of Christians w h o m
Epiphanius accuses of keeping some laws of the Old Testament. Glen Alan
Koch's (1976) observations about Ephiphanius' discussion of the Ebionites are
likewise revealing. 'Epiphanius was the recipient of this confused stream of
information and helped in his own way to further the confusion' (229). 292
This is of paramount importance for the analysis of Epiphanius' refutation
of the Audians. Epiphanius describes the life of Audius at length. A good
person himself, Audius was somehow driven from the unity of the Church,
because he raised his voice against truly deplorable circumstances. He and his
followers were perfectly orthodox. Epiphanius goes on to compose a tractate
about the interpretation of Gen 1.26, where the Audians differ in some points
290 See Pourkier's 1992 conclusions as well as her discussion of the details, such as the
analysis of the passage on the Nazoreens in ch. 13. Pourkier shows that Epiphanius
uses a well known technique of marking digressions 25. His discussion of the Na-
zoreens seems, however, to indicate that he did not regard this a strict standard for
treating sources. Cf. Pourkier's discouraging summary: 'D'autres fois, il veut ajouter
un argument qu'il a lui-meme mis sur pied (generalement reconnaissable par son
manque de clarte quand il s'agit d'un argument logique) ou bien, enfin, il peut ne pas
y avoir d'intention du tout: Epiphane cede seulement au plaisir de parier, de faire des
comparaisons ou d'apostropher l'adversaire' 484.
291 In her general conclusion, Pourkier contradicts her own observations within her
discussion of the detailed material, cf. her judgment about Kimelman's theses on p.
479 and 471.
292 Bauckham 2003 (similarly Verheyden 2003) tries to describe the literature, beliefs, and
history of the Ebionites. His conclusions cannot be substantiated. He appropriates
texts that are discussed under the label 'Judeo-Christian' for the Ebionites and accepts
many bits of information from heresiological texts at face value. It is, for example, dif-
ficult to reconstruct 'the' Ebionites' theological inclinations from traditions that are not
included in the 'Gospel of the Ebionites' - a text, that only exists in reconstructions.
224 Easter Sunday
from orthodoxy. Furthermore, they want to keep a wrong date of the Pascha
and quote the Diataxis in support of that. From the length of the respective
treatments and the doctrinal 'errors' involved, it is clear that Epiphanius wants
to discuss 'the' interpretation of Gen 1.26 and the Diataxis. He also wants to
publish his opinion about the computation of the date of Easter. At the end of
these two theological treatises, Epiphanius appends a short history of the
movement of the Audians. They passed from an initially overwhelming suc-
cess among the Goths towards their total marginalization and retreat 'in the
Chalkis near Antioch' and somewhere at the Euphrates. He claims to have
spoken with Audian refugees from the territories of the Goths, but emphasizes
that they had already continued to travel into the East. This implies that no-
body in Cyprus would ever be able to test Epiphanius' claims in a meeting
with a 'real' Audian. The Audians serve only as a narrative framework for
two otherwise totally unrelated theological questions that Epiphanius wants to
discuss. The account is important for the assessment of Epiphanius' opinions
in these matters and, to a rather limited extent, for his quotations of the
Diataxis. The above evaluation of the Diataxis must be read against this back-
ground information about Epiphanius.
To sum up, the character of the Quartodeciman Pascha can be found in the
oldest form of the Didascalia, which shows that second century Christians
could fast against a Jewish celebration of Pesah, but which does not state that
they celebrated in a joyful way against a mournful Jewish 'fast' of Unleavened
Bread.293
Pattire refers only to the Biblical (or Jewish) and not to a Christian festival.
Its main assumption about that Jewish festival, that it should imply fasting and
mourning, is not corroborated by sources about Judaism.
4.5.4 The Gospel of Peter
The oldest witness that seems to support the Christian celebration of a week of
Unleavened Bread after the celebration of the Pascha on the evening of (viz.
preceding) the 15th of Nisan is the Gospel of Peter. It refers to the first and the
293 Gerlach 1998, 286-289 denies the 'Diataxis' any historical value ('The Diataxis is Epi-
phanius' Trypho.' 289) but assumes that Epiphanius' remarks about the Audians re-
flect collections of shorthand notes of actual discussions. Gerlach's analysis must be
reversed: parts of the Diataxis may reflect some knowledge of an ecclesiastical source,
but the situation of the whole discourse is fictitious.
'last day of Unleavened Bread'. 294 It depicts the twelve (!) apostles (59 GCS
11.48.9ff) as mourning Jesus' death during the Jewish festival of Unleavened
Bread. Gerard Rouwhorst's suspicion that such an addition - or even
contradiction - to the narrative of the Bible should serve some polemic end -
for example to support a Christian festival of Unleavened Bread by giving it an
apostolic pedigree - must not be ignored. It is in any case justified to claim
that if not Quartodecimanism in general, than at least a group within it, ex-
panded the Quartodeciman Pascha on the basis of the Old Testament or be-
cause of their acquaintance with contemporary Jewish customs, and celebrated
a kind of festival of Unleavened Bread that they reinterpreted as a rite of
mourning for Jesus' death. As shown above, Aphrahat's opponents may have
held a very similar opinion.295 In this way, one can explain the alleged apos-
tles' keeping of the festival of Unleavened Bread as a reference to the liturgies.
In its second century setting, such a rite of mourning could even be another
instance of opposition to a contemporary Jewish understanding of the festival
as a more joyous event. If it is related to a liturgy, it must be understood as a
positive or negative imitation of Judaism (or the Old Testament), as it cannot
be derived from the canonical gospels.296 What is more, the Quartodeciman
Pascha is not interested in the reenactment of the chronology of the Passion
within the liturgy of the Pascha. Only a form of the Pascha that did not cele-
brate the proclamation of the resurrection at the time when it was described in
the canonical Gospels could add a week of mourning to the 14th of Nisan. The
Quartodeciman Pascha seems to be the only possible background for such a
custom. This understanding raises, however, several objections.
A period of mourning that should have been kept after the night of the
Pascha cannot be added to what is known (as inferred from other sources)
about the Quartodeciman liturgy of the night of the Pascha. That ritual seems
to have ended in a joyful celebration of the Eucharist. Although Epiphanius'
etiology for this change of mood is rejected above, he joins the sources which
attest this change of mood of the celebration and which do not refer to a week
294 Translations of the Gospel of Peter follow Kraus and Nicklas 2004, 50-53. No. 5 GCS
11.32.13f: '(And he delivered him to the people) before the first day of unleavened bread,
their feast' - 58 GCS 11.48.6-9: 'But it was the last day of the unleavened bread, and
many went away and returned to their homes, because the feast was over.'
295 Cf. p. 214.
296 The assumption that those Christians kept a week of Unleavened Bread as a joyous
festival cannot be reconciled with the Gospel of Peter, which emphasizes the apostles'
sadness during this period of time.
226 Easter Sunday
of Unleavened Bread as following after it. Moreover, this basic structure of the
Quartodeciman Pascha is also its sole, though powerful, link to the later at-
tested structure of the Easter Vigil. Thus, it is hard to reconstruct a liturgical
background of Christians w h o kept a mournful week of Unleavened Bread
and celebrated Christ's resurrection afterwards within Quartodecimanism. 2 9 7
The text of the (fragmentary) Gospel does not hint at the Quartodeciman
Pascha, except for its being based on John's chronology of the Passion. 2 9 8 On
the contrary, it emphasizes Mary Magdalene's visit to the grave on (Easter)
Sunday. That Sunday is even called ή κυριακή - neither ή μία των σαββάτων
as one could expect from a more Jewish (as well as N e w Testament 2 9 9 ) back-
ground, nor ή ημέρα ή κυριακή. In no. 30 (GCS 11.38.15^10.3), Pilate is asked
for soldiers w h o should guard the grave for three days. If the author should
be interested in bolstering the idea of a Christian festival of Unleavened Bread,
one might ask why he introduces these three days here. The resurrection oc-
curs 'in the night in which the Lord's (day) dawned' 3 0 0 . Ή κυριακή again re-
fers to 'the Sunday' as a technical term. The text presupposes (rather than rec-
ommends 3 0 1 ) Easter Sunday. It would b e strange if such a Christian variant of
the festival of Unleavened Bread should have been supported as part of a
Quartodeciaman Pascha by means of the chronology of the Passion in the sec-
297 As the end of the Gospel of Peter is not extant, it cannot be known whether or not that
text should reflect a celebration at the end of that week of Unleavened Bread as the
celebration of the resurrection. A week-long fast ending in a celebration of the resur-
rection can, however, only be understood as an etiology for Holy Week. Such an
ending would not support any parallel between the Easter Vigil and the seventh day
of the Jewish festival of Unleavened Bread, but a 3rd cent, date for the Gospel of Peter
that aligns it with other attempts to rewrite the Gospel chronologies to make them fit
to support the liturgies. Vaganay 1930, 337 even interprets the omission of 'fasting' in
the description of the apostles' sadness in no. 58 on a liturgical background: nobody
was allowed to fast in the week after Easter Sunday.
298 This is evident from no. 5: the festival of Unleavened Bread begins after Christ was
handed over to 'the people'.
299 Matth 28.1; Mark 16.2; Luke 24.1; John 20.1.
300 Τή δε νυκτί ή έπέφωσκεν ή κυριακή, 35 GCS 11.40.14ff; cf. this terminology in no. 50
GCS 11.44.16. Gerlach 1998, 192 suggests to interpret the gathering of the Jews (and
Romans) in front of the grave as a 'shadow paschal vigil'. This is, however, a far-
fetched association, because they are said to have assembled in the morning, πρωίας
δε έπιφώσκοντος τοϋ σαββάτου, no. 34.
301 The Gospel of Peter neither recommends an imitatio Christi (to keep a triduum and to
celebrate Easter Sunday) nor an imitatio apostolorum (to keep mourning during a
week after Christ's death).
ond century. The liturgical mimesis of what one thinks to be the chronology of
the Passion leads to Easter Sunday and later Holy Week.
The literary use of the (Jewish) festival of Unleavened Bread can be read as
an answer to questions that are raised by the Biblical text with regard to Peter,
the hero of the fragment.302 Contrary to the canonical Gospels, the women flee
from the grave without telling anybody about their findings. The text may
have an interest in deemphasizing that the first ones to announce the resurrec-
tion were women. In the Gospel of John (19.2-9), the Lord's beloved disciple
'believes' in the resurrection. This is not said about Peter there. After all, 'they
had not yet learned that (passages of) Scripture (that prove) that he (Jesus)
must rise from the dead' (v. 9).303 Thus, the disciples 'return home' according
to the Gospel of Peter, no. 59 (GCS 11.48.11) as well as John 19.10, before the
description of Christ's appearances (in Jerusalem) and before any explicit nar-
rative that Peter learned about the resurrection. Peter is only mentioned again
by name in the Gospel of John before Christ's appearance at the Sea of Galilee
(John 21). Should Peter have been absent from the group of disciples like
Thomas (but present in Jerusalem)? This could have been an exegetical motive
for the Gospel of Peter to introduce the apostle's ignorance of the resurrection
until Christ's appearance at the Sea of Galilee. The festival of Unleavened
Bread would then be an important part of this rewriting of the Gospel of John.
The Gospel of Peter is not interested in a Christianized form of the Jewish
festival of Unleavened Bread. The latter is referred to as their festival - the
Jewish people's, who are about to murder Jesus (no. 5 ό Λαός) and to 'rejoice'
302 T. Nicklas 2002 refers to new approaches to the Gospel of Peter (esp. J. D. Crossan's)
that try to exploit that source as an independent witness to 'texts' that were also used
by the canonical Gospels. Nicklas indicates that the textual situation of the Gospel of
Peter - as extant in a single 6 th cent, copy and an older but tiny fragment that does not
support the younger form of the text - do not encourage comparisons of its details
with the reconstructed text of the canonical Gospels (Nestle-Alland). Furthermore, his
observations 268-271 that the extant text is hardly understood without decoding
many persons and events on the basis of the canonical Gospels imply that it is very
likely that it was also composed as a reformulation of the Gospels.
303 This is corroborated by Nicklas 2001, who observes that the 'Jewish people' repents
after Jesus' death in contrast to their leaders whom they obeyed to kill Jesus in the first
place and by whom they were willfully misled regarding the tidings of the resurrec-
tion. Notwithstanding their guilt, the Gospel of Peter has a strong interest in showing
that the Jews followed a divine plan.
228 Easter Sunday
about this later.304 It is mentioned at the beginning (no. 5) and as a reason for
the apostles' leaving Jerusalem together with the rest of the pilgrims - on a
Sabbath! Therefore, the Gospel of Peter poorly reconstructs a Second Temple
situation as a background for its rewritten Biblical text. It does not know very
much about Judaism.305 It is also not designed to strengthen a Christian iden-
tity against Judaism. This also suggests that it originated far from the sources
of a Quartodeciman anti-Pesah that was anxious to provide Christians with a
reason for their celebration.
In this context, it is easier to align the enigmatic passage no. 27 with a Do-
minical Pascha than to reconstruct a liturgical background on it: 'Because of all
these things we fasted and sat mourning and weeping night and day until the
Sabbath' (εως τοϋ σαββάτου, GCS 11.38.7-9). Here, έως (τοϋ σαββάτου) has
been interpreted as 'until (and including) the Sabbath.306 Rouwhorst and oth-
ers are right in pointing out that it would be an awkwardly short fast if 'until
the Sabbath' should be understood as ending the fast at sunset on Friday.
Such a fast would neither fit to Quartodeciman nor Dominical forms of the
Pascha.307 An understanding of Easter as consisting essentially of a fast on Fri-
day and Saturday is, nevertheless, well attested for (the Dominical) Easter at
304 No. 23 GCS 11.36.12. They understand their transgression shortly afterwards, no. 25
GCS 11.3617-38.3: "Then, as the Jews and the elders and the priests perceived what
evil they had done to themselves, they began to lament and to say: "Woe on our sins!
Judgment has come close and the end of Jerusalem.'"
305 The method of reconstructing the apostles' behavior on the basis of the fact that they
were Jews, was also used by Epiphanius; Rouwhorst 2004, 84.
306 Cf. Vaganay 1930, 274f n. 3 and Exod 12.18 LXX. As a relative particle, Liddell and
Scott 751f interpret it as 'expressing the point of time up to which an action goes, with
reference to the end of the action, until, till·, or to its continuance, while'. The preposi-
tion seems to be less determined in this respect, cf. however the entry 'ε. τινός for a
time', 752.
307 This could, however, be a trace of the idea of the three-hour 'fast' of the Quartodeci-
mans according to the Syriac Didascalia Apostolorum; Rouwhorst 1989 I, 162f; II, 139
sect. VII Vööbus 1979 text 218.13 and par. 217.16f. The three-hour fast only makes
sense if it is held against the simultaneous Jewish celebration of the Pesah. If the Gos-
pel of Peter should at all echo this idea, it is nevertheless either dated back into Bibli-
cal times or (more likely) already adapted to a kind of triduum paschale. Except for
its end at dusk, there is no parallel to the fast according to (m and) tPes 10.1 196. No.
27 'night and day' also implies that the fast did not last a few hours on Friday, but at
least more than one day. Gerlach 1998,193 quotes 2 Sam 12.15-23 (David breaking the
'fast' after his child's death) as an association to the passage. This does not contribute
to the understanding of the Gospel of Peter.
the end of the second century. 3 0 8 'The Sabbath' is also mentioned in no. 34
(GCS 11.40.11) definitely referring to the Sabbath after Christ's death. 3 0 9
Based on the liturgical background of the early Dominical Pascha, the
Gospel of Peter apparently rewrites the canonical Gospel of John, adding some
narrative details and leaving out others. It does not presuppose a Christian
liturgy of a week of Unleavened Bread. As ideas about Holy Week only
emerge later, it was not influenced b y them. This narrative could have influ-
enced the later Syriac terminology of the 'week of patfire', or even the idea of
Holy Week as a period of seven days, only if it reflects a widespread liturgical
custom. This is not likely. The Gospel of Peter suggests narrative solutions for
problems of the Biblical text. It does not fight for the acceptance of a piece of
Jewish liturgy in Christianity.
4.5.5 Conclusions
To sum up, the Syriac liturgical designation 'week of (the) pattire' presupposes
the existence of Holy Week as a liturgical reality that implies fasting. It is the
application of an Old Testament term to a feature of the liturgy that did not
exist in pre-Constantinian times. It does not have Christian or Jewish precur-
sors. There are no sources that indicate that Christians ever appropriated the
Biblical festival of Unleavened Bread. The Gospel of Peter presupposes a form
of the Dominical Easter as it is attested towards the end of the second century.
Its idea of a festival of Unleavened Bread cannot refer to a liturgical back-
ground within Quartodecimanism as well as Easter Sunday. While the cycle of
festivals was only beginning to develop in second century Christianity, the
invention of the Christian Pentecost in the West excluded forever any later
attempt to reinvent the festival of Unleavened Bread as a week-long fast.
While Syriac Christianity shared this widespread understanding of the festival
of Unleavened Bread, the missing Pentecost made it possible that adherents to
an especially Biblicist approach to liturgical development could experiment
with this institution. Attested only as suggestion b y Aphrahat's adversaries,
308 The wording that is chosen to describe Jesus' death in no. 19 GCS 11.36.5ff,
άνελήφθη, corresponds to Acts 1.11. The Gospel of Peter is not interested in the As-
cension as separated from Jesus' death.
309 The Sabbath after the end of 'their festival of Unleavened Bread' is not referred to as
'the Sabbath' no. 58.
230 Easter Sunday
this idea could not have had a wider impact on the liturgies or their interpre-
tation.
4.6 Qumran Calendars and Commemorations at Festivals
Ever since Annie Jaubert310 published her seminal study on the date of the Last
Supper, scholars have tried to exploit aspects of the Qumran texts311 and al-
leged features of the society that inhabited the buildings of the site near the
caves where the scrolls were found in order to shed light upon the beginnings
of Christianity. It is difficult to use the Qumran finds for such purposes, be-
cause the exact social background of these texts has not been established by a
reliable consensus. Nevertheless, all known texts are published now in mostly
excellent editions and supported by additional scientific tools. With its abun-
dance of material as well as its methodological openness, the corpus of the
scrolls extends an invitation to students of Ancient Christianity that must not
be neglected, although the scope of the following investigations only allows
the discussion of a small set of questions.
As the following investigation must eventually lead to the evaluation of
alleged parallels between Qumran texts and Christianity, a short statement
about the presumed and presupposed context of the Qumran material is nec-
essary. Basically, any 'parallels' must be treated with utmost care, especially
because among the few reliable findings regarding the scrolls is the fact that
that they are not 'Christian' texts.312 There is no reason to presuppose that Je-
sus, his disciples, and the later authors of the New Testament texts had closer
contacts to the people who wrote the scrolls or lived according to some of their
precepts than to any other group that shaped and interpreted Second Temple
Judaism.
310 I am grateful to Jonathan Ben Dov who referred me to the important studies in the
context of Qumran calendars. Matthias Albani 1997,79-81 gives a survey over the his-
tory of modern (dis-) interest into the 364-day calendar(s) before Jaubert's publica-
tions. Shemaryahu Talmon and Dominique Barthelemy must, however, be mentioned
as pioneers of the research on the Qumran calendars.
311 In the following discussion, the concepts of 'the scrolls' and 'the Qumran texts' in-
clude related literature like Jubilees (that is not fully preserved in the libraries of
Qumran, but only in its Ethiopic translation).
312 Cf. Samuel Sandmel's programmatic essay 1962.
Qumran Calendars and Commemorations at Festivals 231
The liturgies that appear in the background of some of the scrolls have
been interpreted as 'sectarian'. This implies that they cannot be generalized as
relevant for a large section of Second Temple Judaism. Yet, there are authors
who regard them as representative of such a large section of Judaism. Natu-
rally, the latter approach yields more 'parallels' to contemporary and later
phenomena and a higher degree of 'continuity' with the Jewish liturgy
throughout the ages.
The following observations are to a large extent based upon Johann
Maier's analysis of the liturgical texts of Qumran.313 Maier's studies314 show
that the liturgy that appears in those texts must not be interpreted as marginal.
Many of the features of those liturgies represent what actually happened in the
Temple in Jerusalem. The texts reflect the knowledge of people who were in-
volved in those performances or at least had a profound opinion about how it
should actually be done.315 Therefore, the scrolls that are important for the pre-
sent study are not regarded as detached from 'mainstream Judaism' 316 or as
particularly 'sectarian' but as pertaining to the very center of Judaism, al-
though they contain the knowledge of highly trained specialists for matters of
the cult. Their knowledge cannot be regarded as representative of an average
approach to Jewish practice and belief. Thus, certain features of Qumran litur-
gies that might resemble what emerged as rabbinic institutions after the period
of the Talmud do not show that the rabbis and the geonim handed down what
was always done or how people always prayed in 'Judaism', but that they
eventually succeeded in popularizing small bits of what was formerly of high
importance but hardly accessible to many persons.
313 Stefan Reif 2003 could not yet consider Maier's 2003 paper. His magisterial survey
over the question of a continuity between the Qumran and rabbinic liturgies indirectly
supports Maier's methods, although Reif does not reach the same conclusions regard-
ing the relation of the scrolls to the Temple liturgy. Reif's observations are of para-
mount importance for the reconstruction of what early Christians could or could not
have 'inherited' from Judaism: '... we may conclude that there was no standard set of
common compositions widely employed by Jewry. There were, however, at the same
time, texts that were undoubtedly used in certain Jewish circles as standard liturgy for
specific occasions' 149. The burden of proof rests with everyone who claims the exis-
tence of any 'parallel' between the scrolls, the rabbis, and early Christianity.
314 Maier 1990,1996, 2003.
315 Maier 1990; 2003; Falk 1998. The age of certain institutions such as the Mishmarot-
cycles (Albani 1997; 88 n. 39,115-122) need not be assessed for the present purpose.
316 Starnberger 2001.
232 Easter Sunday
The present section is designed to take up and combine some topics that
were left open in the preceding ones. It addresses four questions that are
closely related to each other: first, what meaning(s) or commemoration(s) can
be detected in the festivals according to the scrolls? Second, does the alleged
link between the Essenes and Christianity help to reconstruct the channels of
traditions between Second Temple Judaism and Christianity? Third, to what
extent did the priestly calendars that are attested in the scrolls shape actual
liturgical practice and could, therefore, influence groups that were not versed
in priestly matters? Fourth, what do the Christian traditions about Jesus' cele-
bration of the Pesah in the night of (a) Wednesday mean in the context of the
Qumran calendars? This cursory survey also assesses the possible impact of
the priestly calendars of Qumran on the Christian cycle of festivals, especially
the celebration and understanding of Easter.
4.6.1 The Meaning of Time and the 364-Day Calendar
Qumran calendars are extant in roughly two sorts of texts that must be distin-
guished carefully: first, technical texts that regulate limited aspects of the cult
and the needs of its personnel, including scrolls that contain texts designed for
the recital in the wider context of the cult and by certain groups of functionar-
ies, texts that contain tabular calculations of time, as well as texts that describe
or regulate the offerings to be made on certain occasions;317 second, narrative
texts, especially the book of Jubilees, but also Christian sources and literature
of Second Temple times including (parts of) Biblical books. Jubilees is based
on a certain stage in the development of the Qumran calendars and uses this
calendar as a system to organize the people's memory of the past. The central
question is: can these two groups of sources be combined to form one large
narrative and calendrical - implying liturgical - tradition? The rather technical
sources are often seen as providing a Sitz im Leben for the reality of the cult
for the narrative material. In other words, the dates of Biblical events accord-
ing to the narrative sources are aligned with the sequence of days in the calen-
dar and combine thus that technical skeleton with a wealth of theological and
narrative meaning.
317 Gleßmer 1999 gives a concise description of the sources. For his remarks on 4QOtot,
see the literature quoted in n. 369 p. 252.
Such an accumulating synthesis of the two groups of sources is acceptable

as long as it describes how the narrative material is restructured and reordered
by means of the calendars. It must, however, be asked how the reality of the
cult (including the issue of how its participants were supposed to understand
it) was affected by this structuring of the narrative material. Any answer to
these questions has far reaching consequences. For if the Qumran cultic calen-
dar comprised a sequence of commemorations of Biblical events, one may in-
quire about the reception history of this system and its impact on later, similar
cycles like the earliest Christian lectionaries. Were Jewish (and later Christian)
communities used to remembering and celebrating certain Biblical events on
specified days throughout the year, thus aligning the rhythms of their lives
with the Tora by means of the liturgy and within a calendrical structure?
This question will be answered in the present section. Before entering the
discussion, a brief remark about the basic structure of the 364-day calendar
may be useful. The most important feature of one group of calendrical sys-
tems that was found among the scrolls is a (somehow) solar year that com-
prises exactly 52 weeks. All festivals are fixed on certain dates within this cal-
endar which implies that they never change their weekday. They also never
fall on a Sabbath. The beginning of the year as well as the 15th of the first
month are fixed on a Wednesday. Thus, scholars used to see 'parallels' be-
tween Christian traditions that Jesus should have celebrated a Pesah on a
Wednesday and the calendrical system of the scrolls. Ignoring what has been
stated above about the origins of the Christian Pentecost, one may observe that
the date of Shavuot according to the scrolls comes even closer to Christianity.
For Shavuot is always held on a Sunday and there is no Christian text extant
that indicates that Pentecost should have been celebrated on any other day
than a Sunday. Moreover, the pristine beauty of this structure becomes appar-
ent when one compares it with the many rules and discussions in rabbinic Ju-
daism about the determination of the beginning of the months as well as the
solution for problems that arise from certain activities that are typical for festi-
vals but should be avoided on Sabbaths. It is tempting to see this calendar as
an achievement of a Jewish 'sect' that was partly preserved by ancient Christi-
anity, but rejected by mainstream Judaism. Thus, another question joins that
of the preceding paragraph: is Christianity the heir of a form of Judaism that
was already marginalized in Second Temple times?
234 Easter Sunday
Pesach and the Binding of Isaac in Jubilees
Beginning with questions regarding Pesah, it is evident that the book of Jubi-
lees expands the tendency of the Tora to assign certain dates to Biblical
events.318 Jubilees alludes thus to the festival of Unleavened Bread in the con-
text of its re-narrations of the Binding of Isaac (Jub 17.15-18.19). The only date
given is 12 I (the 12th day of the first month), the day on which Israel's heav-
enly adversary, Mastema, slanders Abraham in the angelic assembly in front of
God. It is not said that this is the day when Abraham and Isaac depart from
home. If one assumes that Abraham leaves immediately on Sunday 12 I, the
Aqeda takes place on Tuesday 14 I. This would make the day of return a Sab-
bath, which is almost inconceivable in the ideological framework of Jubilees.
Nevertheless, it would assume that the Aqeda took place on the Tuesday, on
which the Pesah animals are slaughtered according to the 364-day calendar.
If Jub 18.3 is taken more seriously,319 Abraham and Isaac would leave the
next morning and the Aqeda would be set on Wednesday 15 I. This would
make 15 I the festival day of Pesah as well as the anniversary of the Binding of
Isaac. The Aqeda would not, then, fall on the same time as the Pesah animals
were slaughtered in the Temple, but on the main festival day of Pesah. Was
the Aqeda among the 'contents' of the festival of Pesah?
These interpretations of Jubilees have the disadvantage of placing Pesah in
the middle of what seems to prefigure the later festival of Unleavened Bread. If
this parallel to the festival of Unleavened Bread is taken into consideration and
318 Cf. B.Z. and Sh. Wacholder 1995, 38. They list approaches to the interpretation of the
date of the Aqeda according to Jubilees, 3 8 ^ 0 . Β. Z. and Sh. Wacholder accept Van
Goudoever's chronology of the Aqeda (Abraham departing on the 12 I) arguing that
the festival of Unleavened Bread would then 'not only commemorate the Exodus from
Egypt but also the binding of Isaac', 40. Apart from the question of why the Aqeda as
happening in the middle of the seven days of the festival should be better suited to be
'commemorated' in the celebration than if it should have fallen on its beginning (coin-
ciding with Pesah), is not discussed there. This makes the festival of Unleavened
Bread and not the Pesah the commemoration of the Aqeda. What is more, the schol-
ars' preoccupation with 'commemorations' (especially of the Aqeda at Pesah) assumes
as premise what it should prove as conclusion, that certain events of the Bible were
celebrated on their days of occurrence in the calendar.
319 'So he got up early in the morning, loaded his donkey, and took with him two servants
as well as his son Isaac...' CSCO 511.106 cf. Gen 22.3.
if the bias that Pesah must be associated with the Aqeda is given up,320 Abra-
ham and Isaac can also be thought to set out on the first day of the festival of
Unleavened Bread, to travel three days to Mt. Moriah, to rest on the Sabbath 18
I, and to return on 21 I. In that case, the association of the Aqeda with Pe-
sah would be much looser, because it would neither happen on 14 I nor on 15
I. Nevertheless, with only this explanation, the remark of Jub 18.18f makes any
sense in the context of what is said about the festival of Unleavened Bread
elsewhere, stating that Abraham321
used to celebrate this festival joyfully for seven days during all the years. He
named it the festival of the Lord in accord with the seven days during which he
went and returned safely. This is the way it is ordained and written on the heav-
enly tablets regarding Israel and his descendants: (they are) to celebrate this festi-
val for seven days with festal happiness.
Jub 17f alludes to the festival of Unleavened Bread alone. If one wants to read
allusions to Pesah, too, the are veiled and contradictory. From such
inconsistencies, it must be inferred that the Aqeda was neither connected
firmly with the commemorative background of Pesah nor thought to require
an unambiguous connection with the calendar. Jubilees reflects a state of ex-
perimentation with the meanings of festivals and the Biblical narratives - in
this case with the festival of Unleavened Bread. A 'festival of the binding of
Isaac' is not required in the context of Jubilees. On the last of Abraham's jour-
ney of seven days, he reaches home. Jubilees itself does not say that Abraham
went on to keep the day of the Aqeda as a festival or a day of remembrance,
but rather the seven days of the whole journey. Jubilees definitely wants to
teach something about the festival of Unleavened Bread and definitely not
about Pesah here.
What is the ritual meaning of the Aqeda? For which ritual is the Aqeda a
good etiology? Jubilees clearly does not share the later rabbinic liturgical con-
cept that the Aqeda must be associated with New Year. Its connection of that
narrative with Pesah is loose. Although the Mishna is a much later composi-
tion, it may be observed that it only uses the root 7pi' in the context of the
tamid offering, mTam 4.1 (non-sacrificial in mShab 5.3). It cannot be substan-
tiated, whether or not Jubilees already understood the Aqeda as a liturgical
etiology of the tamid, because Jubilees is interested in the yearly festivals and
320 VanderKam 1979, 394 referring also to J. Baumgarten. Cf. Ravid 2003, 374 for a more
recent survey, and n. 388 p. 259.
321 CSCO 511.109.
236 Easter Sunday
not in the daily cult when it discusses the Aqeda. If such ideas about the tamid
circulated, this would provide an explanation both for the importance of the
Aqeda as such (being paraphrased at length) as well as its lack of a fixed place
in the calendar. Jub 50.11 seems to imply that the tamid has an atoning
function. Later midrashim322 express the idea that the Tmidim atoned for the
nightly and daily sins.323 Chilton and Davies (1978, 520) quote Philo's De
Abrahamo (198 CW 4.44) where it is evident that Philo understands the Aqeda
as reference to the tamid, stating that 'he would have dismembered his son
and offered him limb by limb' - a procedure that is definitely forbidden re-
garding the Pesah animal. Nevertheless, neither the Greek nor the Hebrew
terms for 'lamb' and 'ram' in Gen 22 create a verbal bridge to the tamid. The
more recent idea of the 'ashes of Isaac' also precludes any association with the
Pesah animal.324 If the Aqeda is understood as an etiological narrative for the
tamid offering, it may be suggested - of course in a purely speculative way -
that it is assumed to have happened on Sabbath 18 I and thus legitimizing the
offering of the tamid on the Sabbath, one of the most obvious exemptions from
the prohibition of quite hard work on the Sabbaths.
Jan Van Goudoever's claim that Acts 12 should reflect the chronology that
is allegedly presupposed by the account of the Aqeda in Jubilees cannot be
substantiated.325 Three objections must be raised against such an assumption.
First, only if any remark on the Aqeda was necessarily decoded as an un-
equivocal reference to 'the Pesah meal',326 its position within the 'historical'
predecessor of the festival of Unleavened Bread would have been understood
as the Pesah meal within this seven-day festival. As this cannot be substanti-
ated for the second century B.C.E., Jub 17f does not imply that Pesah was
thought to be celebrated within the week of Unleavened Bread. Second, texts
like Exod 12.6, 18; Lev 23.5f and, less explicitly, Deut 16.4, 8 can hardly be in-
terpreted as placing Pesah into the middle of the seven days of Unleavened
Bread. If this is true, why should some opaque, narrative references in Jubilees
322 E. g. PesK 5.17 Μ 106f and more often, Urbach 54 η. 26.

323 The idea was also known to Diodorus; Leonhard 2001.
324 Cf. also Stemberger 1974 = 1990 for several younger texts that associate the Aqeda
with the Tmidim.
325 The thesis was accepted and expanded by Walter Ray 2000, 216-224.
326 As an additional problem, it must be asked whether the Aqeda should 'prefigure' the
slaughtering of the Pesah animals on the 14th or the celebration of the festival on the
evening (and day?) of the 15th of Nisan. Unsolvable questions like this were appar-
ently not asked in Antiquity.
and a text from a marginal author of the late first century (Acts) replace the
plethora of attestations of the tradition that fits to the commandments of the
Tora? Third, from the calendrical texts of Q u m r a n and the Temple scroll
(11Q19 xvii 6 - 1 2 Yadin 1983 II, 73ff), it is clear that the festival of Unleavened
Bread follows the celebration of Pesah. Whatever the original opinion of the
author of Jubilees, the persons who allegedly put the corresponding calendar
into practice did not understand Jubilees as Van Goudoever does. According
to Van Goudoever's proposal, Jubilees and Acts could, therefore, only repre-
sent a fictional and purely literary liturgy and calendar. W h y then should
'Luke' refer to the book of Jubilees in order to describe the development of
early Christianity ignoring (or tacitly opposing) everything that could be
k n o w n about the liturgical practice, including the precepts of the Tora? Van
Goudoever's interpretation of Acts 12 must, therefore, be dismissed as an
example of fantastic eisegesis of liturgical elements into 'intentionally vague'
narratives. 3 2 7 There is no reason to assume that Pesah was ever celebrated in
the middle of the week of Unleavened Bread.
Pesah is treated extensively and without any hint to the Aqeda at the end
of Jubilees. There, the text (49.2-5, 7, 15) explains the salvific power of the fes-
tival as based on a metaphoric representation of the Pesah animal (49.13f). 328
As has been remarked above, Jubilees also explains the content of the Pesah,
which is understood as an apotropaic ritual and not as a commemoration of
the Exodus. 3 2 9
327 If the 7th day should have been the 'focus of the Jubilees festival of unleavened bread'
(Ray 2000, 218) it could not have been the 19lh of Nisan. On the one hand, Walter Ray
combines the Biblical narrative of the Exodus and the Abraham narrative of Jub. The
crossing of the Red Sea on a Sunday (19th of Nisan) may be read into the Abraham
narrative of Jub. In that case, it cannot be the 7th day of Unleavened Bread according
to Exod 12-15, because that begins on the 15lh of Nisan. In this blend of Jub and Exod,
the crossing of the Red Sea on a Sunday or on the 7th day of Unleavened Bread are
mutually exclusive. On the other hand, Ray does not take into account that the Qum-
ran calendars make the count of the 50 days before Shavuot begin on the Sunday after
and not within the 7 days of Unleavened Bread. Jub either presupposes fictional lit-
urgies or does not refer to liturgical realities in a precise way. The second alternative
is preferable. This is the only, albeit formal, parallel between Jub and Acts.
328 "There will be no breaking of any bone in it because no bone of the Israelites will be
broken' CSCO 511.320. The Ethiopic text is problematic.
329 Jub 49.15 CSCO 511.321. The text has been quoted and discussed above, p. 29.
238 Easter Sunday
The Seventh Day of the Festival of Unleavened Bread
Although the seventh day of the festival of Unleavened Bread does not receive
a special commemorative content in the time when Abraham instituted it, Ju-
bilees implies that the Israelites were eventually redeemed from Egypt on its
seventh day (49.23). Thus, Van Goudoever (1967, 178f) remarks that Jacob
crosses a river on the seventh day of this festival. This seems to be a strong
argument that Jubilees knows a commemoration of the crossing of the Red Sea
on this day:330
After he had crossed the river, he reached the land of Gilead. But Jacob had con-
cealed his plan from Laban and had not told him. During the seventh year of the
fourth week Jacob returned to Gilead on the twenty-first331 day of the first month.
Laban pu[r]sued him and found Jacob on the mountain of Gilead on the thirteenth
(day) in the third month.
Jub 29.7 reports that Jacob and Laban held their banquet on the festival of the
wheat harvest, 15 III Shavuot332. This is relevant for Jub 49.22f which correlates
the commemoration with the festival:333
Now you, Moses, order the Israelites to keep the statute of the Passover as it was
commanded to you ... so that they may eat unleavened bread for seven days to
celebrate its festival, to bring its sacrifice before the Lord on the altar of your God
each day during those seven joyful days. For you celebrated this festival hastily334
when you were leaving Egypt until the time you crossed the sea into the wilder-
ness of Sur, because you completed it on the seashore.
Jubilees does not date the event. It does not state, whether the seven days
were concluded with 211 or 22 I. It reconstructs the crossing of the Red Sea on
the seventh day of the festival of Unleavened Bread. The Qumran calendar
may have understood 22 I as the true seventh day of the festival of Unleavened
330 CSCO 511.185.

331 The old and important ms. 21 (CSCO 511.XXf) reads 'its twenty-2»d day' - '2' given as
a numeral instead of ('esrähü) wa'amirü. This may be due to a misread numeral, be-
cause 5 other mss. read Ί ' here. Nevertheless, a reading '22' would be a lectio
difficilior. Thus, one ms. of Jub could imply that the seventh day of the festival of
Unleavened Bread was celebrated on 22 I.
332 As Abra(ha)m in Jub 15.1, implicitly dated in 44.1-5. Gleßmerl999, 270 η. 174.
333 CSCO 511.324f.
334 Here, Jub does not distinguish between Pesah ('haste' Exod 12.11 and Deut 16.3) and
the festival of Unleavened Bread.
Bread. 3 3 5 Apart from a r e m a r k in Al-Qirqisani's description of the Sadducees

f r o m the e n d of the first m i l l e n n i u m (the reliability of w h i c h is doubtful), 3 3 6 the
thesis about the Sabbaths within the festival periods is built o n the observation
that n o other than the Sabbath sacrifices can b e offered on Sabbaths according
to C D 11.17f: 3 3 7
No man on the Sabbath shall offer anything on the altar except the Sabbath burnt-
offering; for it is written thus: Except your Sabbath offerings.
This thesis w a s not accepted b y a b r o a d consensus in m o d e r n research. 3 3 8 N e v -

ertheless, J o h a n n M a i e r reconstructs the last days of the t w o long festivals on
22 I and 23 VII respectively. Consequently, the liturgical reality reflected in the
technical, calendrical texts does not fit w i t h the calendar b e h i n d the theological
concept of Jubilees. H e n c e Jacob's crossing the river m a y b e an exegetical
bridge b e t w e e n t w o Biblical festivals b u t lacking a liturgical b a c k g r o u n d .
E x o d 12.18 ('until the twenty-first day') m a y still b e less important than L e v
335 The custom to skip the Sabbaths in the count of the intermediary days of the festivals
is discussed by Y. Yadin 1983 I, esp. 130. Josephus' addition of one day to the festival
of Unleavened Bread in Ant 3.249/3.10.5 LCL 436 may be due to his calculation (or
that of his source) of the 14lh of Nisan as part of the Festival; Colautti 2002, 31. It is not
related to the second day of the festivals in later Jewish Diaspora - a custom that is
'specific to rabbinic Judaism and totally unknown outside i f Stern 2001, 115, cf. 243-
247. The oldest text to mention the two festival days of the Diaspora is tEr 4.3 105 par.
bEr 39b, bBeza 4b. It is (of course) unrelated to the Qumran calendars whose authors
were in any case writing in Palestine. 'In the documents of the Qumran community,
only the first days of the week-long festivals of Passover and Sukkot are recorded.
There is no mention of the last day designated throughout the Hebrew Scriptures...'
Talmon 2000, 110. In 11Q19 xi 13 Yadin 1983 II, 45f the 7th day of Sukkot is referred to
as mxs.
336 nvnss1?« Yadin referring to Nemoy 1930, 363: 'They exclude the Sabbath from the
number of the days of the feast of Passover, and observe the feast for seven days in
addition to the Sabbath; likewise, in regard to the feast of Tabernacles.' Cf. Gleßmer
1999, 221-224 for the role of the 'Magharians' in the early stages of Qumran research
and Fossum 1987 for the history of their attestation. There is no chance of any
continuous tradition between 'the Saduccees' and the Karaites; cf. Stern 2001, 19f.
Note that the structure of the festival of the wood-offering apparently presupposes the
same principle - leaving out the Sabbath and continuing the festival afterwards; cf. the
notes to the festival of the wood offering in Talmon, Ben Dov, and Gleßmer 2001, 166
and n. 25 for another Karaite 'parallel'.
337 Yadin 1983 1,131. Text: Broshi 31.
338 Cf. the introduction of Talmon, Ben Dov, and Gleßmer 2001, 5 where the thesis is not
mentioned.
240 Easter Sunday
23.8 ('seven days'). A principle that the Sabbath not only overrides the lesser
days of the festivals but leads to their postponement, did not in any case pre-
vail in the later history of Jewish festivals. The seventh day of this festival is a
pivotal point, because it shows the limits of the links between the system of the
narratives and a reconstructed feature of the calendar. If Jubilees alluded to
the crossing of the Red Sea by its dating of Jacob's crossing of the river, this
does not indicate that Jubilees intended to speak about liturgical commemora-
tions in the context of the priestly calendar of Qumran. It simply expounded
the Bible.
'Commemoration', 'Memorial', and the Contents of Festivals
Returning to the question of the 'commemoration' of festival contents in the

Qumran scrolls, Jubilees offers a formidable set of data to put to the test the
assumption about the alleged 'accumulation' of such contents. Jubilees dis-
cusses this phenomenon explicitly. One may begin to assess its position with
an examination of the notion of 'memorial' within Jubilees. For Pesah is a 'me-
morial'.
Yet the object of the 'memorial' is as important as its subject. Human be-
ings (especially men over the age of 20) are supposed to keep the rules and
perform the rites of the festival. They are not supposed to commemorate
anything. The concept of 'memorial' in Jubilees does not correspond to what
would later become an anniversary in the Christian calendars (or synaxaria).
Thus, the tamid is an atoning 'memorial' (tazkär) according to Jub 50.11 (6.14).
Nevertheless, one could be tempted to infer from 49.15 that Pesah be a
'memorial' of the Exodus that implies that the celebrating community should
commemorate (even tell?) the story of the Exodus. However, it is not the cele-
brating community who remembers anything, but rather God, who does the
remembering. Even if Exod 12.14339 provided the textual basis for tazkär here,
the context moves it into the sphere of sacrifices: '(and) a memorial which is
pleasing will come before God' (wayemasse' tazkära 'emqedma 'egzi'abeher
zayesammer). James C. VanderKam refers to Jub 32.4 and 49.9 where qwerbän
semür and qwerbän zayesammer qedma 'egzi'abeher respectively imply sacri-
339 CSCO 511.321 note; quoting 'This day will be a memorial for you', DD1? ΠΠ avn Π'ΠΙ
inarY Jub clearly interprets this passage as God being the only one to remember any-
thing on Pesah.
fices that are 'pleasing' God. The people is not required to remember a histori-
cal event.
However, Jubilees refers to the commemoration by a human being re-
garding the four 'days of memorial' in its account of the flood. There, the first
days of each quarter of the 364-day year, are 'days of memorial' (Jub 6.23),
'eska 'ama köna löttü böttön tazkära 'with the result that through them he (viz.
Noah) had a reminder'. 340 Noah is supposed to remember four events of the
year of the flood.
Why should Noah remember those events? Does this prove that Jubilees
provides the 'contents' of the liturgical calendar of which other texts only de-
scribe its bare numerical skeleton? Two observations suggest that the answer
is negative. First, it is unlikely (and not attested elsewhere) that adherents to
such a calendar were supposed to 'celebrate' for example once every year (1
VII, Jub 5.29; 6.26) the 'opening of the openings of the earth's depths and the
beginning of the receding of the water of the flood'. There are likewise no fes-
tival offerings prescribed for the anniversary of the 'opening of the open-
ings ...'. That indicates that the very contents of Noah's 'days of remembrance'
are of glaring irrelevance for everybody else and throughout the ages. Second,
the figure of Noah and the context of the flood also point to the significance of
those 'days of memorial'. In other concepts of the 364-day calendar (that differ
from that of Jubilees), the four epagomenal341 days, which make up for the
difference between 360 days of 12 30-day 'months' and the 364-day year, are
the last days in each quarter. Gleßmer (1997,144) notes, however, that the four
days are 'not counted in the calculation' according to a passage in the book of
Enoch (although they are inserted after the last month of the quarter in the
schematic reckoning there). The 'memorial' days in Jubilees could have be-
come the first days of each quarter on the basis of an older understanding
where they were not (yet) counted at all. Furthermore, as the narrative 'con-
tents' of the 'memorial days' are an idiosyncrasy of Jubilees (not being men-
tioned elsewhere),342 it stands to reason that they be identified with the epago-
menal days in the other systems. This may be a hint as to why it is Noah in
340 Jub 6.24 CSCO 511.41.

341 Maier 2003, 90f suggests (together with VanderKam) that the four 'song(s) to be re-
cited on the D'SUD' in 11Q5 XXVII.2-11 'David's Compositions' DJD 4.48.91-93 are in
fact the songs for the epagomenal days and that B'SIUS may be an attempt to transfer
the Greek of 'epagomenal' (έπαγόμεναι) into Hebrew.
342 Albani 1997, 85; cf. also Gleßmer 1997,153f.
242 Easter Sunday
particular who must 'remember' them.343 The Biblical account of the flood al-
ready required careful exegeses by proponents of a 364-day calendar.344 Thus,
Jub 5.27 interprets the sequence of Gen 7.11 - 7.24 - 8.4 as a reference to a du-
ration of 5 months consisting of 30 days each. Gen 7.11 - 8.14 (LXX) makes the
duration of the flood a year. It is, therefore, Noah, who needs explicit calen-
drical guidance in this problematic textual environment. The protagonist of
the only story from which one could infer that 5 months comprised 150 days
institutes 'for himself' the epagomenal days as 'memorials' in order to remem-
ber the Biblical narrative always together with the proper correction of its cal-
endrical aberrations. Noah marks four days of the year and combines them
with outstanding events of the year of the flood, in order not to forget that the
correct year has 364 days instead of 360. Even if one wanted to infer from this,
that Biblical events were 'commemorated' at certain days of the year, the 'days
of memorial' were not celebrations of such events but simple work-days that
were marked in the rewritten narrative of the flood in which the traces of a
Biblical calendar are updated to more 'modern' theological standards. In the
context of the search for festival contents, it is ironic that the narrative in which
a 'memorial' day requires someone to remember anything refers to a com-
memoration that is totally irrelevant for the history of Jewish liturgy.
Jub 6.21 implies, moreover, that the author of Jubilees was aware of what
one could call 'accumulation of contents of a festival':345
... because it is the festival of weeks and it is the festival of firstfruits. This festival
is twofold and of two kinds. Celebrate it as it is written and inscribed regarding it.
Thus, Shavuot was celebrated as the festival of the firstfruits of grain (wheat)
and, in addition to that, as the festival of the renewal of the covenant (6.17).
The narrative of Jubilees ends before the description of the covenant at Mount
343 Maier 1992, 548 emphasizes that it is the quarter and not the memorial day that is
instituted for the future. He refers to Jub 6.29: 'äsrü waseläs sanbatät ahata ahata
emennehön emzättJ westa zätfi tazkärön emqadämit eska käl'et we'mkäl'et eska sälest
wa'emsälest eska räb'et, 'Thirteen weeks each of them. From this one in that one is
their memorial. From the first to the second and from the second to the third and
from the third to the fourth.' Tazkärön 'their memorial' equals tazkär in 'memorial
days' above. While Noah dedicates the memorial (days), the heavenly tablets under-
stand them as memorial seasons. This could be another indication that the position of
the memorial day in the quarter was not evident.
344 Cf. Gleßmer 1999, 258 for 4Q252 = 4QCommentary on Genesis A DJD 22.185-207 that
explains the text of the flood with different figures than Jub.
345 CSCO 511.40.
Sinai. Jubilees is, therefore, not a witness to the tradition that makes Shavuot
the festival of the giving of the Tora. Although it is one of the purposes of this
text to find precedents for the festivals in the Biblical history before the Exodus
from Egypt, it m a y be assumed that the covenant at Mout Sinai was included
in this topic of 'covenant(s)'. Several other instances of a covenant are also set
on Shavuot in Jubilees. After the covenant with Abra(ha)m that takes place on
the day of Shavuot itself (Jub 14.10), this covenant is compared with Noah's.
Jub 14.20 adds: ' A b r a m renewed the festival and the ordinance for himself for-
ever'. Shavuot does not become threefold or polyvalent after this event, but
'Abram renewed it' (haddasä) only. Shavuot does also not become a
'commemoration' of Isaac's birth on this day - 'on the festival of the firstfruits
of the harvest'. 3 4 6 The following verse Jub 16.14 can be read as an explanation
for the connection of Isaac's birth with Shavuot: 'He was the first to be circum-
cised according to the covenant which was ordained forever.' 3 4 7 Although
Isaac could not be circumcised on Shavuot, Isaac conforms to the second
meaning of Shavuot, the covenant of the circumcision, which was also granted
on Shavuot (15.11-14 and then combined with the prophecy of Isaac's birth,
15.15-21). In its addition of dated events to the Biblical narratives, Jubilees
also associates Judah's (28.15) birth and Abraham's death (22.1-23.7) with Sha-
vuot. 3 4 8 God's prophecies to Abraham, w h o builds an altar at M a m r e (14.10)
and offers the sacrifices that were commanded in the preceding apparition
(partly on the 15 III?), are closely connected with the dates of 1 III and 15 III.
Jacob prepares a banquet for Laban in 29.7f: 349
That day Jacob swore to Laban and Laban to Jacob that neither would commit an
offense against the other on the mountain of Gilead with bad intentions. There he
made a mound of testimony (seme', not tazkär); for this reason, that place is
named the mound of testimony after this mound.
The banquet is held on 15 III, apparently because this is a fitting date for a
covenant and not because Jubilees wants to add another meaning to the con-
tents of Shavuot. Jubilees remains thus faithful to its o w n rule of two themes
for Shavuot: firstfruits and covenant(s). 3 5 0
346 16.13 CSCO 511.96. Cf. Schreiber 2002, 66-69.

347 CSCO 511.96f. Cf. Β. Z. and Sh. Wacholder 1995,16ff for a list of dated events in Jub.
348 The latter is mourned for 40 days associating Moses' staying 40 days on Mount Sinai
1.4.
349 Tr. CSCO 511.185f.
350 Jub is not structured along an 'Isaac-saga', as assumed by Ray 2000, 134. Note the
curious description of Abraham's death and blessing of Jacob in Isaac's absence: 'Then
244 Easter Sunday
The Temple Scroll351 likewise interprets Shavuot as having a double mean-

ing: 'the Feast of Weeks' and 'the New Wheat Festival'. The scroll does not
refer to the same 'second' meaning that can be found in Jubilees - the Cove-
nant Renewal Festival.352 Both texts agree on its basic and original meaning of
'firstfruits' and add another one. Like Jubilees, the scroll is explicit about the
addition of a 'meaning' to the festival. The Qumran liturgies did not burden
each festival with lots of 'commemorations' without indicating this anywhere,
except for Jubilees. The function of Shavuot as a festival of the renewal of the
covenant is not a 'commemoration' of God's covenant with Noah (and other
covenants throughout the history of the patriarchs) but rather the climax of the
year in the organization of the collegium353 that can be reconstructed in the
background of some of the scrolls. Thus, Gleßmer (1999, 270 esp. n. 171)
emphasizes that 'this festival was not combined everywhere in the same way
with the theme of covenant'. The differences between the Temple Scroll and
Jubilees points to an independent origin of these two attempts to find a two-
fold meaning for the festival. Both attempts rationalize the Biblical source that
refers to Shavuot thus: 'The feast of the harvest - the firstfruits of your work that
you sew' (Exod 23.16) and 'Make the feast of weeks (or oaths) - the firstfruits of
the harvest of wheat' (Exod 34.22).
Although such an argument is prone to circular reasoning, it seems that
Jubilees collects associations to covenants in order to associate them with the
middle of the third month as Biblical support of the important festival of the
he blessed Jacob: "My son (!), with whom I am exceedingly happy with all my mind
and feelings - may your grace and mercy continue on him and his descendants for all
time..."', 22.28 CSCO 511.134f. The 'Binding of Isaac' is, likewise, retold without
emphasis on Isaac beyond the story of Gen 22. Abraham even 'named it the festival of
the Lord in accord with the seven days during which he' - Abraham - 'went and re-
turned safely', 18.18 CSCO 511.109. Abraham had been in danger to fail in the test, not
Isaac to die. Note that Syriac 'sons / daughters of the covenant' are not 'the true be-
lievers' of 'Syriac covenantal Christianity'; Ray 2000, 153; but nuns, monks, or clerics;
Brockelmann 1928, 653 qyämä no. 11 is a technical term based on much more limited
theological concept than that of 'covenant' in the OT: 'testamentum inter monachum
et deum', cf. also no. 12 there.
351 Callaway 1993, 26:11Q19 xviii 10-xix 9: .[n]?17i?s'7 iiidt1? D'ira sm κιπ ii?i?s?m [...] xix 9
Maagarim.
352 One may speculate about the double reading of siaw 'week/oath' as it is suggested
frequently; Gleßmer 1999, 270 also referring to 2 Chron 15.10ff (see n. 132 p. 167); Ra-
vid 2003, 379f.
353 Cf. n. 361 p. 249.
renewal of the covenant. It is not a (fictitious) primordial 'meaning' of Shavuot

that attracts this festival. Those who invented the festival of the renewal of the
covenant had to make a choice about its date. Shavuot suggests itself for sev-
eral reasons. Apart from the celebration of the theologically important concept
of the 'weeks' or an understanding of the same consonants as 'oaths', it was an
attractive date for additional meanings, because it was still quite 'empty' ac-
cording to the Bible (and as still reflected by the Mishna).354 In other words, it
was not the fact that Shavuot was already charged with meanings that made it
a good candidate for bearing yet another significance, but the opposite. Pe-
sah had already been linked with the Exodus narrative. Shavuot was not yet
connected to this tradition as successfully as Pesah. Although Pesah is des-
cribed at length in Jubilees, it is not indicated that it should even carry one ad-
ditional meaning, as did Shavuot. Festival contents are not accumulated ac-
cording to the evidence of the scrolls and related literature.
Conclusions
Jubilees does not provide the narrative background of any Jewish liturgical
year, especially not the structure of the year as it appears in the 364-day calen-
dar and as it is attested in the scrolls. It expands the tendency of the Tora to
assign dates to Biblical events. This does not imply that the events that were
dated were commemorated - not to mention 'celebrated' - on those dates
throughout the liturgical year. Furthermore, Jubilees and the Temple Scroll
show a high awareness of the process of an 'accumulation of contents' for a
festival. This is only stated in the case of Shavuot (where Jubilees and the
Temple Scroll even differ in the details given). This awareness and the para-
phrase of the Aqeda in Jubilees shows, that the Aqeda was not 'commemo-
rated' on Pesah.355 The celebration of Pesah is compared with the Egyptian
Pesah and hence interpreted as an apotropaic ritual. The priestly calendar(s)
from Qumran do not, likewise, show any awareness of a celebration or com-
memoration of the crossing of the Red Sea on the seventh day of the week of
354 Note that this may even be the result of the relatively recent introduction of Shavuot
into the priestly festival calendar. Wagenaar 2005, 233-239. 250 argues that Shavuot is
a post-priestly addition to this calendar. This question and its relationship to the other
festivals of 'firstfruits' in the scrolls cannot be answered here.
355 Cf. the conclusions of Chilton and Davies 1978, 519.
246 Easter Sunday
Unleavened Bread. Festivals have certain very clear contents and do not at-
tract additional meanings from Biblical narratives.
4.6.2 Essenes and Christians
The preceding section has specified the place of Jubilees within the repertoire
of sources that describe the understanding of the liturgy of the Second Temple
Pesah. Anyone who really understood this world of thought or had even con-
tact to people that should be living in it, would not know anything about a
'commemoration' of the Aqeda at Pesah or an accumulation of Biblical con-
tents of festivals, because these concepts did not exist in that system. Yet, the
impact of the 364-day calendar on later generations remains open. There are,
indeed, a few seeming parallels to Christianity. Even if a reasonable under-
standing of the world of the scrolls excluded that Jubilees filled the Qum-
ranites' calendar with meanings, a subsequent misunderstanding may still lead
to an interpretation of this literature as a kind of synaxarion for later genera-
tions.
Thus, it must be asked when, where, and to what extent the calendar as it
is attested in the scrolls was actually applied in practice. For Christianity
could only have 'inherited' concepts from this calendar if it was used publicly.
If it had been an idealized concept or only of practical importance for a short
time or in a marginal place, Christians would have had to learn about it
through texts only. Then, one would have to prove that the Christian commu-
nities of Antiquity based themselves on texts (Jubilees) when they created their
liturgical calendars. Whatever the original meaning of these calendars, their
application in practice is crucial for the reconstruction of their impact. This
question will be discussed in the subsequent section (4.6.3).
It has often been claimed that the bridge between concepts that were at-
tested in the scrolls and Christianity are the early Christians contacts with
Essenes. It is, however, difficult to substantiate this link. This question must
be addressed at this point.
Even after enough texts from Qumran had been published to refute the as-
sumption that the scrolls could only be another witness to the background
from which Christianity emerged, more sophisticated versions of the thesis
that 'the Essenes' are the most important theoretical link between Qumran and
early Christianity continue to be defended. If the Yahad was a typically Essene
g r o u p , a n d if t h e E s s e n e s h a d settled also i n J e r u s a l e m , C h r i s t i a n i t y c o u l d h a v e
i n h e r i t e d their t h e o l o g y a n d c u s t o m s there. 3 5 6
R e g a r d i n g J e r u s a l e m , J o s e p h u s is t h e o n l y a u t h o r w h o m e n t i o n s a ' g a t e ' o f
t h e E s s e n e s i n J e r u s a l e m , a n d t h e t h e o r y of an E s s e n e / C h r i s t i a n q u a r t e r n e a r
( t o d a y ' s ) Z i o n g a t e is o b s o l e t e o n a r c h e o l o g i c a l a n d h i s t o r i c a l g r o u n d s . 3 5 7 In
addition, Roland Bergmeier demonstrates that Philo and Josephus regard the
E s s e n e s as a ' p h i l o s o p h i c m o v e m e n t ' i n P a l e s t i n e w i t h o u t a n y l o c a t i o n or cen-
ter, w h e r e a s P l i n y a n d D i o C h r y s o s t o m s p e a k a b o u t a r e m a r k a b l e c o m m u n i t y
n e a r t h e s h o r e of t h e D e a d S e a w i t h m u c h less i n f o r m a t i o n a b o u t them. 3 5 8
356 Cf. Hartmut Stegemann 1992 for a thorough assessment of the history of the Essene
hypothesis. Resembling Wendland's attempt to find historical Therapeutae by
depriving them of one differentia specifica after the other according to Philo's de-
scription (cf. n. 221 p. 195 and preceding the publication of Bergmeier 1993), Stege-
mann 1992, 138f describes the Essenes as 'the main Jewish union in late Second Tem-
ple times' and remarks that 'the Essenes had very few specific teachings of their own',
160. One must, therefore, dispense with the 'Essenes' as specific factor in Second
Temple Judaism. If the 'Essenes' are what one would now regard as mainstream
Jews, it suffices to say that the 'covenanters' of the scrolls were basically 'Jews', per-
haps as 'covenanters' members of certain kinds of collegia.
357 Bell 5.145/5.4.2 LCL 242; Roland Bergmeier 1993, 117 leaves the question open (more
skeptic in 56 n. 48). Joan E. Taylor 1993, 208 and 219: 'This examination (sc. of the ar-
cheological remains of the area) therefore finds no evidence that would prove that a
Jewish-Christian community existed on Mount Zion at any time'.
358 Bergmeier 2002, 24 and n. 12 and cf. Tigchelaar 2003 for a balanced assessment of a
special issue. Cf. for a similar observation Stern 1974, 479 (no. 204 on Pliny the Elder's
Natural History 5.73 LCL 276), who follows the consensus in confounding extant bits
of information about 'Essenes'. (In accordance with Marcel Simon,) Roland Bergmeier
2002, 65 notes the parallel of 'ab occidente litora Esseni fugiunt usque qua nocent ...
infra hos Engada oppidum fuit...': 'westlich des Toten Meeres, von dessen Küsten zu-
rückweichend, soweit diese ungesund seien' as quoted by Stern no. 204 less literal
'One the west side of the Dead Sea, but out of range of the noxious exhalations of the
coast ... Situated below the Essenes was formerly the town of Engeda...') with the
geographical situation of Philo's Therapeutae as a literary topos. In this context, infra
hos as 'below them' (in height) makes more sense than 'further south' as the Essenes
would then have settled further away from the Dead Sea than En Gedi in an allegedly
more favorable climate. A quotation that is attributed to Dio Chrysostom (Stem 1974,
539 no. 251) mentions the Έσσηνοί in a single sentence that adds nothing to what
Pliny is saying. Dio's remark that they are living in a πόλις (against Josephus who
claims that μία δ' οϋκ εστίν αϋτών πόλις αλλ' έν έκαστη μετοικούσαν πολλοί Bell
2.124/2.8.4 LCL 370) does not add any information, as πόλις can be understood as
'community of citizens' etc. Cf. Stern for a different opinion. Solinus (3rd cent.?)
248 Easter Sunday
Bergmeier shows that most of the 'parallels' between what he establishes as a

Jewish-Hellenistic '£ssaer-Quelle' and the Qumran texts are highly general and
superficial and belong to the tendency of the source to present an ideal image
of the Έσσαΐοι.359 Bergmeier collects characteristics especially of Josephus'
Collectanea Rerum Memorabilium 35.9-11 paraphrases Pliny; Stern 1980, 419 no. 449.
The same material is also briefly referred to by Martianus Capeila (ca. 400) De Nuptiis
Philologiae et Mercurii 4.679; Stern 1980, 651f no. 536. Porphyry (died at the begin-
ning of the 4th cent.) quotes Bell in De Abstinentia 4.11-14; Stern 1980, 435^143 no. 455.
In his earlier work 1993, 43, Bergmeier supposes that Philo's Egyptian center of the
Therapeutae, who are living all over the world, too, is a confusion with the settlement
of the Essenes near En Gedi. VitCont 1 CW 6.46 mentions the Έσσαΐοι. Bergmeier's
1993, 48 assumption that Philo reworked the same source when he created his account
of the Therapeutae is plausible. It is not, however, necessarily supported by VitCont
1, as Έσσαίων περί διαλεχθείς ... is rather a link to a preceding treatise than the as-
sertion that the following description touches another kind of Essenes.
359 Bergmeier 1993, 79 'Ausgeprägte Liebe untereinander und Gemeinschaft, Güter- und
Mahlgemeinschaft, besondere Verpflichtung zu Frömmigkeit und Gerechtigkeit, all
dies weist zwar erkennbare Beziehungen zu den Qumrantexten auf, allerdings nicht,
ohne sich zugleich der Idealisierung der Essäer zuordnen zu lassen.' The source of
the Έσσαΐοι. was used by Philo and Josephus. The first two sources, that of anecdotes
of the Έσσαΐοι, 52-55, that might be quoted from Nikolaos of Damascus, and the
source on the three philosophic schools (55-66) likewise do not show parallels to what
is significant for the Qumran-Yahad; also Bergmeier 2003a, 21. Moreover, the latter's
approach to determinism and similar concepts in Qumran would only be significant,
if it could be shown that 'the Pharisees' and 'the Sadducees' differed markedly from
the 'Qumran-Essenes' (a designation that must be avoided; Bergmeier 2003a, 22) in
this respect. Cf. Stemberger 1991, 65-67 for what can be known about the Pharisees
and Sadducees. Josephus does not confound Essenes and Έσσαΐοι - an argument that
is still accepted by Frey 2003; 28, 38, 51 - but distinguishes neatly between them.
While the former ones are a philosophic 'school' of Judaism, the Έσσαΐοι are persons
related to practices of mantic and said to originate from Gerasa/Essa; Bergmeier
2003a, 16f. Jörg Frey 2003 criticizes Bergmeier's optimism about the possibility of a
detailed reconstruction of 'sources' on the basis of the extant material. Regarding the
assessment of historical Essenes, his criticism misses the point. Even if Josephus' role
as an author vs. his activity as a compiler is emphasized against Bergmeier, this does
not make his Pythagorean Essenes more 'historical'. Frey's 2003, 50ff assumption that
the Qumran community called themselves 'Essenes' (as ΠΌΠ is attested in the Aramaic
Levi Document 4Q213a 3—4 6) uses a less powerful argument than that with which one
could claim that they understood themselves as Sadducees. This could also be sup-
ported by references to their halakha, cf. Stegemann 1992, 104—107 and by the remark
of Al-Qirqisani, cf. n. 336 p. 239. More evidence would be necessary in order to prove
that an appellation 'the pious ones' implies a distinct αϊρησις with its own purity ha-
Pythagorizing 'Essener-Quelle', the longest of the four reconstructed sources,

and refers to remarkable but mostly ambivalent parallels to the rules of the
Yahad.360 Most of the details are designed to describe the Essenes as an ideal
community of Pythagoreans.
Nevertheless, Bergmeier keeps wondering how some details found their
way into the rules governing the life in the Yahad. Keeping in mind the dan-
ger of circular argumentation,361 one may suggest a common background for
1QS and the Pythagorizing sources that Bergmeier describes. Beyond Berg-
meier's analysis, the 'parallels' between the sources about the Yahad and
Josephus' Essenes do not prove that the tradition of the Greek texts reflects
insider information about the Yahad. For the Pythagorizing source about the
Essenes does not stand out as the only text that was composed in a Hellenistic
environment. The Qumran material also exhibits traits of this culture. One
must, therefore, take into account that parallels between the two may also be
attributed to the impact of their common cultural background both on the
rules that govern the Yahad and on the source about the Essenes. Hellenistic
features of Jewish groups are historically plausible. Cultural 'parallels' be-
tween the constitutions of the Yahad and even the most fanciful account of the
Essenes reflect real circumstances and customs.362 New Testament texts like-
lakha, festival calendar, geographical center, etc. It is an inadmissible instance oi cir-

cular argumentation to learn from Josephus that the Qumranites actually were the real
'Essenes' (bequeathing to us 'primary sources' of Essenism) about whom Josephus did
incidentally not tell the whole truth (being a 'secondary source' that is tainted with
Greek philosophical biases); cf. Frey 2003, 53f. Frey 2003, 55 η. 142 also dismisses
Berndt Schaller's 1999 doubtless correct observation on the numbers 4000 and 6000 in
Josephus as Hellenistic literary stereotypes.
360 Bergmeier 1993, 94-107; p. 105 n. 300 'Je abstrakter der Vergleich geführt wird, desto
"vergleichbarer" wird auch historisch Unvergleichbares.'
361 Klinghardt 1996, 227-244 finds some of the parallels from which he infers that the
Serek ha-Yahad is composed in analogy to the statutes of Hellenistic associations in
Philo's and Josephus' description of the Essenes. However, he refers to many sources
that prove his point beyond his references to Philo and Josephus.
362 At this point, (J. Maier's and others') assessment of the priestly character of the Qum-
ran texts must be emphasized. Someone who was raised in touch with a priestly
blend of Hellenism and Judaism (such as Josephus) may have known a lot about
structures such as the rules governing the Yahad without any knowledge of Qumran.
An attribution of a Qumran text to the Essenes in the literature must be studied care-
fully; cf. Lange 2003, 61: 'Daß in der Bibliothek von Qumran zwischen essenischen
und nichtessenischen Texten bzw., Englisch ausgedrückt, zwischen sectarian und
non-sectarian texts zu unterscheiden ist, darf ... als eine opinio communis gelten.' The
250 Easter Sunday
wise share this background. 'Parallels' between descriptions of Jesus' life and
the community of the first Christians to descriptions of the Essenes363 do not
prove that the Christians were 'Essenes', but rather that different authors use
similar but widespread cliches of the surrounding culture. While this does not
exclude contacts between Essenes and Jews who came to believe in Christ, it
shows that the sparse parallels between ancient descriptions of the Essenes
and the scrolls do not make Christianity an heir of Essenism.
4.6.3 Liturgical Realities Behind the 364-Day Calendar(s)
Were the traditions of the 364-day calendars experienced by visitors to the

Second Temple as a living ritual, or could people who were not members of
the priestly establishment only learn about them via highly sophisticated liter-
ary compositions? Was the calendar 'kepf exclusively in Qumran or was is
more or less the backbone of mainstream Judaism in Second Temple times? If
the 364-day calendars had an impact on later liturgies, it must be asked
whether these priestly calendars were applied in practice at all and if yes,
where and how. In addition, the more a given reconstruction fits with what
can be assumed about the structure of the festivals on the basis of the Biblical
text and other sources, the less one is forced to assume a 'sectarian' character of
such a system. Scholars who generally think that Qumran was inhabited by a
highly idiosyncratic and isolated group will be prepared to reconstruct more
weird customs and rites than scholars who try to find a reasonable place of the
Qumran texts within or near 'mainstream' Judaism.
label 'Essene' has become almost synonymous with 'belonging to Qumran' without
detailed implications regarding the relationship of Qumran to Josephus' Jewish phi-
losophic school, etc. Charlotte Hempel 2003 casts considerable doubt on the accuracy
of this terminology and suggests to drop it. Criteria for the establishment of a text as
'sectarian', 'Essene', or 'typical for the Yahad' (or 'non-sectarian', 'proto-sectarian',
etc.) must be revised on the background of Maier 2003. Note also Martone's 2003 sug-
gestion to see a reflection of the time when the people of the Yahad adopted their
reverence for Zadokites and even referred to themselves as Zadokites - the only self
reference at all. This is a more elucidating hermeneutic key for the understanding of
the scrolls than Essenism.
363 Bergmeier 1993, 121 refers in passing to Josephus' description of his great wisdom in
his youth (Vita 9/2 LCL 4) and Luke 2.46f and that of the primitive Christians in Acts
2.42—45; 4.32-35.
Intercalation
Any thesis about the practical use of these calendars depends upon how one is
prepared to fill the absolute silence of all sources about intercalation.364 A
schematic year of 364 days accrues a difference of approximately one day and
a quarter per year. Thus, the calendar requires a cycle of between 292 and 294
years in order that the seasonally bound festivals would again fall appropri-
ately. After a little more than a century, Pesah would have to be celebrated in
the winter season. Anyone who assumes that the calendar was applied as
such presupposes that certain Jews ignored the seasonal implications of the
festivals for centuries. This is highly unlikely both because of the silence of the
sources about such a custom and because of the strong seasonal links of these
festivals.365
Uwe Gleßmer (1996, 157 η. 127) refers to August Strobel (1977, 446-449)
who takes the 84-year Easter cycle as an indication of its being borrowed from
the Essenes into Christianity.366 As the Christian cycle is actually attested from
the fourth century on (Stern 2001, 225) and as there are no indications that the
364-day calendar was intercalated by means of the system of 84 years from the
Qumran material, any parallel between Christianity and Judaism must be at-
tributed to the independent calculation of the same natural phenomena or at
most a contact between Jewish and Christian scholars after the fourth century.
The 84-year Easter cycle is, therefore, no indication that Christianity borrowed
anything from 'Qumran'.
Some additional suggestions of possible intercalations of the 364-day cal-
endar have been made. As there is no hint to intercalation in any of the texts,
such reconstructions remain highly problematic. It is generally agreed that the
seven-day week is the most important element of this calendar. Therefore,
only intercalations of full weeks are theoretically possible.367 But even such an
364 Albani 1997; 82, 103-110.

365 Albani 1997, 105 'Wandeljahrmodell'. In a derived form, this model can be held by
everyone who wants to demonstrate that the 364-day calendar could not have been
kept in practice for a long time; Maier 1996,125-127.
366 Strobel quotes late Jewish sources in order to support the idea that the Qumran
calendar was handed down in Judaism and Christianity. Cf. for PRE (Strobel 447) and
bBer 59b, Stern 2001, 260-262. What could be a Babylonian amoraic innovation with
an echo in a post-Talmudic work is hardly a reliable witness to 1st cent. 'Essenism'.
367 Albani 1994, 292f; B.Z. and Sh. Wacholder 1995, 29-37; Maier 1996,123f. B.Z. and Sh.
Wacholder unjustifiably emphasize the sectarian character of the calendar; cf. the sur-
252 Easter Sunday
intercalation violates the sophisticated structure of the system in general. It is

o n e of the m o s t important long-time functions of the calendar to assign each
w e e k since creation to the correct priestly Mishmar. 3 6 8 A s the system of
M i s h m a r o t is designed to provide the priestly families with a hierarchical b u t
equal access to the sacrifices that are offered in the T e m p l e (parts of w h i c h be-
long to the officiating priests), any intercalation w o u l d severely disturb that
delicate cycle of six years. Moreover, the texts that deal with the M i s h m a r o t do
not only fail to allude to intercalations b u t their long-term and systematic ap-
plication in practice excludes any intercalation b y definition. 3 6 9
T h e 364-day calendars could also h a v e b e e n purely theological (protologi-
cal and eschatological), never applied in practice, and therefore without any
n e e d to o v e r c o m e p r o b l e m s of an application in practice. Thus, they w e r e
awaiting the appropriate time to b e applied in a general re-organization of the
cult of the T e m p l e in Jerusalem. A s the astronomical situation of the solar
years (of ca. 365.25 days) is interpreted as a consequence of the corruption of
veys in Stern 2001,16-18 and Albani 1997; 97, 110-115. The ritual of the cutting of the
Omer (tMen 10.23 Zuckermandel 528; mMen 10.3) against the Boethusians is no argu-
ment for the sectarian character of the priestly calendar of Qumran - as it is assumed
by Wacholder 2001, 216f.
368 The Qumran calendar also shows that Pesah can hardly have been a day for the com-
memoration of the creation. Wednesday was the beginning of the run of the count-
able time with the creation of the sun etc. Furthermore, if this should have been an
indication that 'the creation' was 'commemorated' on Pesah, the creation would have
to be commemorated on each Wednesday. 'The creation' must have begun on a kind
of Sunday before the beginning of the countable time and apparently before the
possibility to recognize weekdays. 15 I could never be understood as the anniversary
of the creation in this system.
369 Talmon, Ben Dov, and Gleßmer 2001, 6 suppose that the priestly calendar of Qumran
was intercalated by a full week every 7th year and an additional week every 28th year.
If Jellinek is right, Jub 6.31 forbids intercalation; CSCO 511.42 n. to 6.31. B.Z. and Sh.
Wacholder list 5 arguments against intercalation in 1995, 36. Surveys over supposed
systems of intercalation are given in the literature, cf. B.Z. and Sh. Wacholder 1995,
28f. Gleßmer 1996 (cf. 1991) suggests a scheme of intercalation of the Mishmarot-Sys-
tem on the basis of 4Q319 (4QOtot); accepted by Albani 1997, 105; cf. however, Maier
1996, 114. 116-123. As Ben Dov observes, this is unwarranted, DID 21, 210f. More-
over, correcting the 364-day solar year 'will cause serious disruption to this elaborate
cycle, considered at Qumran to be one of the fundamentals of time-reckoning, hence
of world order itself' 211. This has also been emphasized by Maier 1996,123f.
humankind, the calendar would wait for Messianic times to re-appear after
having been instituted at the time of the creation.370
The extant calendars may also be the result of a general need to simplify
the system in order to explain the basic structure of the solar year. Jonathan
Ben Dov's (2003) observations on comparative calendrical lists may be referred
to in support of the idea that there was no intercalation of the 364-day calen-
dar: 'The developments described above suggest that the coercive force of the
364-day year caused a simplification of the cosmological knowledge already
available to the specialists in Qumran, who instead dedicated many efforts to
the holy mathematics of the 364-day year' (133). This implies that the calendar
would have been an educational or scholastic tool, but not of practical rele-
vance according to all its details.
Other texts such as the calendrical data in Jubilees can be seen as the result
of the same approach. Biblical narratives (and lunar pseudo-phenomena371)
are aligned with the schematic calendar. Arithmetic aesthetics and not a litur-
gical scheme (such as a 'lectionary') were increasingly used to systematize the
understanding of the Bible. Thus, Jubilees only gives an allusion to the festi-
vals of firstfruits (32.12) that are well attested in several scrolls, but not in the
Bible. Some Calendrical Documents (4Q320-330) do not mention them.372 This
does not prove that the festivals were not yet celebrated (or not celebrated by
the creators of Jubilees). It shows that Jubilees is more interested in aligning
the Biblical narratives with the priestly calendar than in introducing a se-
quence of commemorations into the calendar.373
370 B.Z. and Sh. Wacholder 1995, 37 referring to Enoch 80.2ff; Albani 1997, 104
"Theoriemodeir.
371 The movements of the moon are increasingly understood as schematic (such as the
364-day year). Qumran texts that compare forms of a 364-day year with 'months' are,
therefore, no indication that a calendar as attested by Saadya Gaon was already in use.
Cf. also Albani 1997, 99-103.
372 Gleßmer 1999, 240. 4Q320-330 are lists for the synchronization of the a lunar and the
364-day year; Maier 1996, 54. Cf. 4Q320 4 iii and the following cols = 4QCalendrical
Document/Mishmarot A DJD 21.37-63 esp. 54-60. Gleßmer remarks that the lack of
dating (or mentioning explicitly) is 'remarkable in view of Jubilees' clear interest in the
dating of festivals'. Festivals do also not play a role in the Astronomical Book of
Enoch; Enoch 72-82, 4QEnastr» b = 4Q208-211 cf. DJD 36.95-171 according to Albani
1997, 89f.
373 According to Maier 1996,126, Jubilees belongs to an epoch of a beginning propaganda
for the inclusion of the seasonally relevant festivals into the schematic calendar. It
254 Easter Sunday
Many problems of these approaches are solved in Maier's reconstruction of

the history and application of the priestly calendars that are attested in the
scrolls. Summarizing Maier's 374 analysis, the calendrical systems should be
seen as representations of a development that began early in Second Temple
times with the elaboration of the 6-year Mishmarot cycle based on the 364-day
calendar. This Mishmarot calendar was synchronized with a lunar calendar
that was intercalated.375 The synchronization between a lunar calendar and the
schematic calendar of 364-days culminated in calculable points of contact of
the two cycles within the longer periods of multiples of 49 (364-day-) years.376
The synchronization between the two calendars created a system that distrib-
uted the priestly portions of the offerings and their service in important sea-
sons more or less evenly between the priestly families. As such, the double-sys-
tem had an economic basis in the long-time support of the personnel of the
Temple cult. Especially this function of that calendars presupposes that the
364-day calendar, or the Mishmarot-system, must not be intercalated because
any intercalation would disturb its economic raison d'etre.
The system became eventually more elaborate and sophisticated. It came
to be understood as a means to the establishment of a coherent world chronol-
ogy that was compatible with the basic chronology of the cult.377 As such,
there was no need to adapt it to astronomical realities beyond its own return to
its point of departure after ca. 294 years.378 It was after all still synchronized
with an intercalated 'year' based on the course of the moon. The theological
attractiveness of the system as a world-chronology was great. It allowed the
creation of periods and epochs for the past as well as the future. The beauty of
the system apparently enticed theologians to add elements into the 364-day
calendar that defied such systematization.
started with Pesah, the festival of Unleavened Bread, and the festival of the firstlings
of the wheat harvest.
374 Maier 1996; with its implications for the liturgy: Maier 2003. Albani 1997, 114f sum-
marizes the approach.
375 Maier 1996, 52-54.
376 Maier 1996,104f.
377 Neighboring cultures also knew similar schematic calendars such as the Babylonian
MUL.APIN. Albani 1997, 117 suggests that the 364-day calendar was invented as
theoretical construction in imitation of MUL.APIN and not used in practice for a long
time. Thus, the need to intercalate it would not have arisen early.
378 Maier 1996,113. He assumes that this period was established in the years 489/8 to 197
B.C.E., 115.
Relatively late, the seasonal festivals were introduced into the calendar,379
without providing for the necessity of frequent intercalation that was neither
important before this change nor possible afterwards. This system could not
have been kept for a long time.380 It was not any more in use before the middle
of the second century B.C.E. Matthias Albani (1997, 115) points out that this
does not explain in what way the priests actually determined the dates of the
festivals while they ordered the people's history and their own services ac-
cording to the schematic calendar.381 Nevertheless, Maier's model allows the
integration of all features of the priestly calendars, including its close connec-
tion with the Second Temple, the lack of intercalation of the 364-day calendars,
and its problematic inclusion of the seasonally determined festivals of
firstfruits. At the same time, Maier is able to explain how parts of this elabo-
rate system were applied in practice: via the long-time synchronization with a
lunar-type calendar.
As the most plausible reconstruction, Maier's approach is of paramount
importance for the assessment of the alleged parallels between Christian cal-
endars and systems that are attested in the scrolls. For the 364-day calendar
was only practiced by, known to, and relevant for priests during the epoch in
which it was applied. It did not have any impact on the lives of Israelites and
the liturgies in the Second Temple. It did not function as a system of interpre-
379 Maier 1996, 125 assumes that this combination represents the addition of an old,
agrarian calendar of cycles of 50 days between the Omer and the Oil Festival (22 VI) to
the priestly calendar of Mishmarot. This means that the festivals of firstfruits that are
not attested in the Bible may be an ancient cultic and social reality. While this is ac-
ceptable, there is no parallel to the Therapeutae in this system, although both must as-
sume that the first day of the 50 days is identical with the last one of the preceding cy-
cle. The cycles contain thus only 49 days each. Furthermore, the importance of the
system would have been limited, as it does, for example, not include Pesah.
380 Cf. Maier 1996, 127-130 for a possible historical background. A first radical, Zadokite
reform inserted all seasonally bound festivals into the 364-day calendar. As this did
not work after a short time, the calendar was reformed again and the two parties re-
mained in conflict. The extreme Zadokite reform produced the extant texts that pre-
serve the calculation of any aspect of the system as the only valid world chronology.
381 Biblical (Deut 16, Bin as 'month') as well as rabbinic texts (cf. Stern 2001, 160-162) can
be quoted in order to suggest that the date of Pesah (and mutatis mutandis the other
festivals) was not only determined by a calendar that was based on astronomical ob-
servations. The close association of Pesah (and even more all festivals whose sole con-
tent it was to surround firstfruits and their handing over to the priests with appropri-
ate rituals) with agricultural and meteorological facts must be taken into considera-
tion.
256 Easter Sunday
tation for a yearly cycle of commemorations of Biblical events. In its combined

form with the seasonal festivals, it could not have been in use for a long time
and not among many people. The introduction of the festivals into the calen-
dar did not only violate their ritual contexts but was also done in order to align
them with the structure of the calendar and not with the contents of the Bible,
which supported their seasonal and not their calendrical coherence.
The 'Sectarian' Character of the Qumran Calendar
This requires a remark about the 'sectarian' character of this calendar. 4Q394
1-2 was identified in different ways during the publication history of the
Qumran scrolls. John Strugnell and Elisha Qimron placed it in front of the first
fragment of Miqsat Ma'ase ha-Tora 4QMMT in DJD 10, although Strugnell
summarized the evidence against this reconstruction already in Appendix 3 of
the editio princeps (p. 203).382 As the calendar does not precede MMT in an-
other copy of the same text, the initial note in 4Q394 1-2 may have been joined
to the text without sharing the polemical intentions of the rest of the composi-
tion. Was the Omer ritual as performed on the Sunday after the Sabbath
following the end of the festival of Unleavened Bread (reconstructed in the
missing parts of 4Q394 on the basis of its correspondence to the date of Sha-
vuot) part of the polemic that is reflected in 4QMMT? It corresponds in any
case to the other attestations of the most elaborate form of this calendar. Seen
from Maier's reconstruction of the history and the practical application of the
364-day calendars, this combined form, which includes the seasonal festivals,
would in any case not likely represent what could have been practiced in the
Temple for a long time. Only in the form that includes the seasonal festivals
382 The reconstruction of DJD 10 was revised by Talmon and Ben Dov in their re-edition
of the text in DJD 21 (157-166). The text received a new label as '4QCalendrical
Document D'. The anti-Boethusian liturgy of tMen 10.23 Zuckermandel 528 (mMen
10.3) could represent the rabbinic idea about how it should have been done in Second
Temple times (and how it should be done provided that the Temple be rebuilt), while
the Boethusian opinion comes a little closer to the actually performed calendar. Nev-
ertheless, the rabbis do not seem to have envisaged that even the Boethusians should
want to perform the ritual of the Omer on 26 I (not to mention Nisan 26). The differ-
ence between the Boethusian and the Qumran method shows that the data do not al-
low to reconstruct, how the ritual was actually performed (if it ever was - although
this is at least much more probable than before the discovery of the scrolls).
could the calendar have been a subject of dispute with the priests who are
running the service in the Temple. Without the seasonal festivals, it was more
likely supported by a broad consensus among priests.
An important test case for the assessment of the practical application of
this calendar and its relationship to other Jewish groups is the struggle for the
correct interpretation of the Biblical laws regarding the ritual of the Omer. The
Boethusians' objection against the rabbinic interpretation of the halakhot of the
Omer should not be read into the Qumran evidence without careful circum-
spection. In general, the principle stated in tMen 10.23 (Zuckermandel 528), 'If
the day of the waving of the Omer falls on a Sabbath, it overrides the Sabbath
with respect to the cutting of the Omer', reflects what should be avoided by
the 364-day calendars, namely that a part of a festival or an appointed time
override the Sabbath. The Tosefta shows the rabbis' opinion to take the Bibli-
cal term mti>n mnaa as referring to the 16lh of Nisan. Thus, the harvest of the
first sheaf is commanded by law to take place after the beginning of the 16th of
Nisan even if it happens to be a Sabbath.383 In the rabbinic solution of the
problem of harvesting grain on the Sabbath, the latter is guarded against sim-
ple profanation by a special ritual that raises the degree of awareness of all
those who are present during its fulfillment.
The rabbis' reference to the Boethusians does not presuppose the calendri-
cal system of the scrolls. The Boethusians claim that 'there is no harvesting of
the Omer after the end of the festival day'384. According to the context, they
prohibit the cutting of the Omer on a Sabbath: the 16th of Nisan if it should be a
Sabbath. The Boethusians do not provide a solution for that case. If their pro-
hibition is turned into a positive commandment, they would require the cut-
ting of the Omer after such a Sabbath, not saying whether this should be the
Sabbath within the week of Unleavened Bread or after it (according to the cal-
endar of the scrolls). They may have been content with the performance of the
rite of waving the Omer after the first Sabbath after the 15th of Nisan, including
the latter or after any Sabbath that fell near the beginning of the harvest of
barley.
383 Joshua 5.11f Masoretic Text (not LXX) may reflect ritual practice or exegesis of mnaa
ΓΟΙΡΠ of the other sources. The MT seems to fix the eating of the first grain noan mnaa:
apparently on the 15th of Nisan, when the eating of unleavened bread begins. The
Sunday after the end of the seven days of Unleavened Bread is excluded.
384 Ms. Kaufmann, Maagarim.
258 Easter Sunday
If the Qumran evidence may be adduced in order to understand the

Boethusians' opinion in t/mMen,385 this adds to the improbability of the alleged
Qumran-Christianity connection via the 364-day calendars. The Qumran cal-
endar has the Omer ritual performed on Sunday 26 I, long after 16 I and 21/22
j 386 Hence, all hypotheses that try to link the Omer with Easter Sunday via a
Qumran-Christianity connection are obsolete. Such Christians would, appar-
ently, have to celebrate some form of the Pascha close to the 14th of Nisan and
wait then for more than a week in order to celebrate Easter Sunday.
Thus, the date of the festival of Weeks, that is well established in the texts
of Qumran, implies that the distance between the Sunday after Pesah and Sha-
vuot is in any case much more than 50 days. If this feature, which is the neces-
sary result of an application of the 364-day calendar in practice, reflects the
liturgical customs at the Second Temple, then Christian concepts of the Omer
and the Sunday of the resurrection are incompatible with it.
Conversely, if the Qumran calendar - in its form as containing the seasonal
festivals - is not regarded as representative of the Temple cult, but as a special
development by priestly specialists in Qumran, the chances that Christians
might have known about it are even smaller, including the probability that a
Christian Easter Sunday was devised according to this calendar.
Furthermore, according to the 364-day calendars and against its rabbinic
understanding, the ritual of the Omer and hence Shavuot are always held on a
Sunday, because the count of the Omer begins 'after the Sabbath' - necessarily
on a Sunday.387 The establishment of this 'Sunday' is not an expression of a
385 Note Stemberger's 1991, 81f arguments in favor of an association of the Boethusians
and Qumran.
386 The sources for the date of Shavuot (in close connection with that of the Omer) are
summarized in Talmon, Ben Dov, and Gleßmer 2001, 163 comm. to 11. 13-15 of 4Q394
1-2 i. Cf. for the Omer 4Q325 1 3 and the commentary to this line there 128. In the
Temple Scroll 11Q19 xi 8-17 Yadin 1983 Π, 45 (cf. 11Q19 xviii 11-13), Pesah, the Omer,
and Shavuot are mentioned together with the festival of the New Oil and the six days
of the festival (apparently the festival of the Wood Offering). In the list of the periods
in which grain, etc. may be eaten, Shavuot is likewise hinted at, 11Q19 xliii 6f. In these
texts, Shavuot is, however, only linked with the day of the offering of the Omer (like it
is done in the Biblical text). It is not set on a specific date in a calendar.
387 Van Goudoever 1967, 239 interprets the celebration of Easter Sunday as a continuation
of the Jewish priestly calendar in Christianity. Easter Sunday would thus have been
continuously celebrated on the day on which the Sadducees (hence the 'sect' of Qum-
ran) cut the Omer. As the Jews at large did not count the Omer like that, the Chris-
tians of the second century (Victor of Rome) would not have been able to identify their
high estimation of the first day of the week. On the contrary, Sunday is chosen
- and this is one of the principles of the introduction of the movable festivals
into this calendar388 - in order to avoid that a festival should fall on a Sabbath,
the most important holiday.389 Choosing Sunday as a day for these festivals
tradition as an old one. However, the Quartodecimans would see parallels of their
tradition to Judaism and regard it as ancient. By the identification of Sunday and
Easter Sunday, by reading Philo through the eyes of Eusebius, and based on the as-
sumption that the Qumran calendar was 'kept' by the Qumran 'sect' and hence by
Christianity, Van Goudoever arrives at the conclusion that Easter Sunday was cele-
brated by the Christians from the very beginning of Christianity. All premises of this
reconstruction are wrong. I am grateful to Günter Stemberger for pointing out the
thoroughly agrarian Character of the count of the Omer that linked it with Palestine.
When Jews in the Diaspora determined the date of Shavuot, they need not have
'counted'. It is, therefore, unlikely that Roman Christians could have been able to ob-
serve Jews 'counting' the Omer - even if they should have celebrated Shavuot.
388 This has recently been rejected by Ravid, who emphasizes 2003, 379 that this cannot be
derived from Jubilees - together with (Jaubert's) assumption that Shavuot always falls
on a Sunday, and hence that the year did not begin on a Wednesday. The Sabbatical
structure of the calendar can be established on the basis of other texts such as 4Q394
DJD 21 (as acknowledged 392). The question whether this calendrical structure may
be read into the silence of Jubilees is much more important than speculations about
the system of Jubilees if read in isolation from its literary context. Two further weak
points of this analysis are that Ravid fails to emphasize that the computation of 5
months = 150 days are a piece of exegesis of the Biblical text. In Gen 7.11, the water
begins to rise on 17 II and to fall again after 150 days in Gen 8.3. The Ark hits the
ground on 17 VII. Gen 8.4 does not necessarily imply that the beginning of the de-
crease of the water fell on the same day as the Ark touched Mt. Ararat. Jub disagrees
with this figure although it was taken over from the Bible. Secondly, she readily as-
sumes that the calendar of Jubilees was intercalated (either like in the Egyptian sche-
matic calendar or even in the post-rabbinic system, 391). This begs the most important
open question of the schematic calendar of Qumran.
389 According to rabbinic sources, the members of the Maamad are supposed to fast (in
addition to the liturgy of the Maamad) from Monday to Thursday in the week of their
turn. Thus, one may refer to another Christian pseudo-parallel of a prohibition to fast
on Sundays. This idea is also discussed in the context of the Quartodeciman Pascha
that requires fasting if the 14th of the lunar month falls on the (night before) the Sun-
day. bTaan 27b tries to find reasons for this custom. A similar passage entered the
printed versions of the Mishna after mTaan 4.2, although it is not attested in the
manuscripts. R. Yohanan (b. Nappaha) explains it 'because of the Christians' (attested
in ms. Vat. 134; enough space in a lacuna in BM Harley 5508, 'Lieberman'-Database
checked by Günter Stemberger for me). It is not clear in which way this should have
been related to Christianity in late Antiquity. Rashi (cf. Sofrim 17.4 301) seems to un-
260 Easter Sunday
depends upon the interpretation of the Biblical text of Lev 23.11, 15 and the
low dignity of that day.390 A Christian choice of Sundays as the most impor-
tant days of the week cannot be a positive imitation of the festival system ac-
cording to the calendar of the scrolls.
Creating Meaningful Time
The structural features of the different forms of the 364-day calendar also
prove its total independence of two calendrical systems that are sometimes
said to correspond to it: the festival of the Therapeutae as celebrated every 49th
day and the East Syrian way of dividing the year into festival seasons.
From the point of view of the 364-day calendar, no structure like it can be
composed of cycles of 7 Sabbaths. For 3 additional weeks must be added to
343 days in order to make up the 364 days of the year.391 Maier's observation392
that every 7th Sabbath is of higher importance in the priestly calendar of Qum-
ran is in no respect related to the alleged 'festival' of the Therapeutae. These
four Sabbaths mark the structural centers of the quarters of the year each of
which contains 13 Weeks. Maier (1992) observes that the 'Songs for the Sab-
bath sacrifice' were composed for the priestly cult (possibly also used within
the Qumran community in an unknown way) covering a quarter of a year and
were thus recited four times each schematic year. They are not connected in
any way with the seasonal festivals that are the only instances where a short
sequence of periods of 50 days has some relevance. A 'celebration' of every
50th Sunday (as the l s l and last day of a cycle of 50 days) cannot be combined
derstand the remark as such that the Christians could be offended by Jewish fasting
on their holy day. The whole discussion is not relevant for Second Temple times. It
shows that the sages did not have a plausible tradition at their disposal why the peo-
ple of the Maamad did not fast on Sundays. The custom does not imply that they at-
tributed a special meaning to the Sunday. Apart from the Babylonian reconstruction
of the laws of the Maamad, fasting on Sundays is not prohibited in general, cf. tTaan
2.6 331f against the discussion in yAZ 1.1 39b-c.
390 VanderKam 1979, 399-410: Jaubert's 'hypothesis that emphasis on three liturgical
weekdays' (viz. Sunday, Wednesday, and Friday) 'lies at the heart of the calendar fails
to explain the evidence', 410. A special character of the Sunday is not visible in the
Qumran calendar.
391 As 364 may neither be divided by 49 nor by 50, it is irrelevant whether or not one
counts each 1st day of such a cycle as being the actual 50lh day of the preceding one.
392 Maier 1996, 52 and 1992, 546; Gleßmer 1999, 256f.
with any Jewish calendrical system. Maier does not assume that such a
rhythm of 50-day periods once covered a solar year, but that it provided a ba-
sic means to give that half of the year a ritual frame which had a strong link to
agriculture. Such an archaic chain of 50-day periods may be reconstructed as
the basic idea for the distances between the festivals of firstfruits of the calen-
dars of the scrolls. In its attested form, it does not even cover the time between
Pesah and Sukkot in exact periods of 50 (or 49) days. The differences between
the traditions of the Septuagint, the Masoretic text, the scrolls of Qumran, and
the systems attested in the Mishna and the Tosefta preclude one from an-
swering the question of how Shavuot was actually determined in Second
Temple times. The Christian system of the third century Pentecost shares the
day of the week with the scrolls and the distance to the 'successor' of Pesah,
Good Friday, with the rabbis. At the same time, it finds its own ways to deter-
mine the date of the Pascha. As shown above, the 'parallels' between the Jew-
ish sources about Shavuot and Christian Pentecost are 'bookish'. They are not
the result of the continuous performance of rituals. On the contrary, a long
period of discontinuity is a necessary prerequisite for the Christian Pentecost
of the late second century.
Furthermore, it is too facile to compare the 364-day calendars with other
systems, such as Christian calendars from the 4th century or by claiming that
there are 'parallels' within the structure of the months and the commemora-
tions that are included in them. A calendar whose connection with the course
of the sun is adjusted frequently can be brought into correlation with others.
The Islamic calendar may illustrate the problem. As it is built upon the course
of the moon, nobody can claim that a certain month of the year corresponds
even roughly to a 'month' in the Julian calendar. 14 I of the scrolls falls a few
times within ca. 294 years on the 14th of a lunar Nisan. Without the two pos-
tulates of (1) intercalation and (2) long-time application in practice, the overall
system of the scrolls cannot be compared to the other Jewish or Christian cal-
endars.
One structural principle in the development of the Christian calendars is
the creation of a narrative layer within parts of the cycle of a solar year. In ad-
dition, other principles are operative besides that. Thus, Walter Ray (2000, 31)
applies methods of literary criticism to the calendar of the Armenian Lection-
ary of Jerusalem. He looks for cases of a disturbed coherence within the calen-
dar in order to establish its pre-history. It is, however, difficult to prove that a
modern scholar's concept about the wellformedness of a calendrical structure
corresponds to the principles of the construction or development of that calen-
dar in antiquity. It is true that elements of the calendar receive their meaning
262 Easter Sunday
from their position within the network of the structure of that calendar. Yet,
the analogy of structures of narrative texts and calendars is misleading, for the
study of ancient texts can often rely on groups of texts from which one can in-
fer rules that govern the structures. It is, however, doubtful whether it will be
possible to describe such rules on the basis of the paucity of extant data about
calendars. A calendrical structure may be much more tolerant towards even
'clearly' deviant elements than a narrative text. The study of the synchronic
structure of the calendar does not indicate whether a deviant point is a 'sur-
vival' or an 'innovation', as it is a purpose of rituals to 'give an illusion of per-
manence which lets the community use them to navigate through the flux of
time and changing fortune' (Ray 31). Moreover, it is not evident that the fifth
century Armenian Lectionary of Jerusalem is not itself multi-layered, as are
later calendrical systems where the sequence of commemorations of saints is
unrelated to the festivals of the Lord.393 Thus, a structure that proceeds from a
'commemoration' of Jeremiah and runs to that of James and John, is hardly
what one would understand as 'Heilsgeschichte' (Ray 103-106), if that concept
may be applied to similar structures at all.394 It is true, that the Christian calen-
dar begins with the attempt to imitate Biblical time in liturgical time. It is,
however, the New Testament which provides these structures. This explains
why the Armenian Lectionary does not contain a period of time that follows
any Old Testament history or a concept of a canonical sequence of Old Testa-
ment texts. As Ray is interested in the history of the calendar and not the
lectionary (35) it is inadmissible to accept certain features of the Armenian
Lectionary as 'the calendar' and to insinuate that the later stages of its devel-
opment (such as represented by the Georgian Lectionary) are not based on a
careful structural principle like the one assumed for the Armenian Lection-
393 Augustin's calendar hardly commemorates saints during the Quadragesima and the
beginning of the time after Easter; Klöckener 2002, 1284f. Thus, the festival season of
Easter overrides the sanctorale. If this does not imply that martyrs happened not to be
killed around Easter, it shows that the church still avoided to add 'contents' to festi-
vals, even to festival seasons.
394 Ray 2000, 108 refers to Eusebius as initiator of this approach. It may, however, be
noted that Eusebius wrote at least his Ecclesiastical History as stated in its beginning
as an account of the apostolic succession. It begins with Christ and is prefaced with a
short survey over God's guidance of humanity towards Christ. These beginnings are,
however, not (yet) worked out in the form of a narrative that follows the history of Is-
rael (as later chronicles would do when they begin with the creation of the world).
The first chapters of the Ecclesiastical History contain scattered paradigms, types, pre-
cursors, etc. for Christ, but not a re-narrated 'Heilsgeschichte'.
ar y 395 ff o n e gives U p the presupposition of a succinct correspondence be-

t w e e n a concept of a history of salvation from the creation of the world to the
church and the calendar, then the A r m e n i a n Lectionary can b e read as a testi-
m o n y to an intermediary stage of the development of the calendar that slowly
covers the w h o l e year w i t h ' m e a n i n g ' .
A s indicated above, two e x a m p l e s of similar d e v e l o p m e n t s m a y b e given
here. First, the East Syrian year is divided into 9 ' w e e k s ' , säbö'e, most of
w h i c h consist of ca. 7 weeks. 3 9 6 This division cannot b e based on J e w i s h prede-
cessors, b e c a u s e J e w i s h predecessors never existed. 3 9 7 T h e 9 (not even 7, w h i c h
w o u l d s o m e h o w approach the n u m b e r of d a y s of a year) säbö'e must, there-
fore, b e regarded as an innovative extension of the system of the older festival
395 'By the Georgian lectionary, however, commemorations are strewn throughout the
year, and the term "commemoration" has no particular significance'; Ray 2000, 108.
Although the Armenian Lectionary has less 'commemorations' than the Georgian,
some of their raisons d'etre and their terminology likewise escape one's power to read
a system in their arrangement. The 'exceptions' to the structural rules of the Arme-
nian Lectionary may betray the tendency to scatter meaningful items over the calen-
dar, even if they do not exclude the possibility to be survivals at the same time.
396 Auf der Maur 1994, 221-224 and 356f, and MacLean's survey 1969 (= 1894), 264-281.
Ephrem Carr's paper 1993 is not documented and does not solve the problems that
have been indicated above. See Mateos 1959, 14-16 and 4 6 1 ^ 6 4 for a description of
this structure.
397 As indicated above, any custom of a concatenation of periods of 49 or 50 days would
grossly disturb a system that is otherwise based on a form of the solar year. Konrad
Jenner's papers on the Syriac lectionaries must be mentioned here. Jenner 1997 and
2001 refutes especially P. Kannookadan's thesis about a linear development of 'the'
lectionary system based on BL Add. 14528 (discussed by Francis C. Burkitt 1923) and
often claimed to be a 'blueprint' for the following tradition. The system of pericopes
represented in that 7lh cent. ms. (Jenner 2001, 377), the alleged 'Early Syriac Lection-
ary', 'is a compilation of the different sets of lessons taken from several volumes of the
same Biblical book', 1997, 22. The fact that the 'Burkitt-Lectionary' adds several differ-
ent systems of pericopes to its compilation, makes it unusable for the purpose of the
reconstruction of a tradition of readings, because the chance that a certain incipit
would be found in it is much greater than in a ms. that is used as a liturgical text for a
single system, from which one could infer actually common elements of different tra-
ditions or customs. It also shows that the later Syriac lectionary systems are a reduc-
tion of a greater variety and were not developed from a prototype. The variety of the
old Syriac sources strengthens the argumentum e silentio for the situation preceding
their time: the silence of the ancient sources about a fixed cycle of readings indicates
that such cycles did not exist.
264 Easter Sunday
periods surrounding Easter and Epiphany over the whole year and not as an
element of the liturgies of Antiquity.
Second, Seder Olam Rabba 5f creates an elaborate allegory on the structure
of the liturgical time between the 7th of Sivan and Yom Kippur. On the l s l of
Sivan, the people reaches Mount Sinai. There, Moses commutes between the
people and God for 5 days. On the 6th of Sivan,398 the Ten Commandments are
given. After that, Moses ascends and remains on the mountain for 40 days and
nights (cf. Dtn 10.10). He descends again on the 17th (the fast) of Tammuz and
breaks the tablets. He ascends again on the following day in order to ask for-
giveness for the sin of the people. After another 40 days, on the 28th of Av,
Moses descends, makes new tablets, and ascends on the 29th of Av. After ca.
40 days, Moses descends again on Yom Kippur bringing the good tidings of
God's forgiveness. He brings the Tora and the people keeps a day of fasting.399
After that, the people starts building the tabernacle. Seder Olam Rabba 7 skips
Sukkot and jumps to the introduction of Aaron and his sons into their office at
the end of Adar. This allegory explains selected aspects of the liturgy. It at-
tempts to cover the time between Shavuot and the festivals of autumn. This
approach does not know anything about periods of 50 days, which would also
not fit into the already fixed structure in which Shavuot and Yom Kippur are
separated by ca. 120 days. It is, likewise, independent from later, but similar
tendencies such as the addition of (half) a month of nin^D preceding New
Year 400 or the earlier custom of extending the topics of Tisha' be-Av to sermons
surrounding this fast day.401
There are also older phenomena that may be referred to here. Thus, the
'four Sabbaths' are a very old indication of a fixed form of readings in Juda-
ism 402 They also appear as an attempt to extend the solemnity of Pesah into
398 This suggests a date of the text when the rabbinic calendar was not any more deter-
mined by the observation of the moon only, but contained already at least a fixed se-
quence of days between Pesah and Shavuot, cf. n. 140 p. 168.
399 This provides an interpretation of mW1? (Lev 16.29, 31) by means of ηΐϊ1?, by quoting
Exod 34.32 as an etiology for Yom Kippur. A similar sequence of ca. 120 (3 χ 40) days,
but with Moses remaining outside of the camp instead of on Mount Sinai after the in-
cident of the golden calf is also given in SEZ 4 Friedmann 178-181.
400 Beginning around the year 1000; Elbogen 1931,148 = 1993,124.
401 Stemberger 1996, 294. PesK (5th cent.) provides special sermons for the 3 Sabbaths
before the Ninth of Av and 7 after it. As these texts are based on haftarot that are not
yet known to the Palestinian Talmud, the structure is probably not much older than
PesK.
402 Their relationship to the parallel in the Tosefta cannot be discussed here.
the weeks preceding it. These structures are, however, diverse. The attempt of
Seder Olam Rabba to bridge the time between Shavuot and Yom Kippur aligns
a piece of Biblical narrative with parts of liturgical structures. This is not the
reason for the shape of the liturgy and did not influence it. Presumably, no-
body gave up the observation of Tisha' be-Av or New Year, because Moses
was absent at those appointed times or because they could not be integrated
into the system of 3 χ 40 days. The different forms of extensions of fast days to
longer preparatory periods are not designed to imitate Biblical time. Likewise,
the Sabbaths preceding Pesah have their own halakhic rationale each. Their
relations to the festivals (Purim and Pesah) are diverse. There is no original
narrative background of a calendar which determines the choice of those les-
sons.403 Shabbat Zakhor is connected with Purim, as Haman, 'the Agagite'
(Esth 1.3 etc.), is a descendant of Amalek whose memory must be blotted out
according to this passage. Purim may, hence, be regarded as the fulfillment of
the commandment of this passage of the Tora.
yMeg 3.4 74a interprets Sheqalim in a narrative context of Purim:
R. Levi says in the name of R. Shim'on ben Laqish: The Holy One - may he be
blessed (i.e. God) - observed that the wicked Haman would weigh his money
against Israel (Esther 3.9; 4.7) in the future. He (viz. God) said: 'It is better that the
money of my children obviate the money of that wicked one.' Therefore, they read
the pericope of Sheqalim first (viz. before Purim and before the commemoration of
Haman's crimes).
The interpretation creates a narrative link between Purim and the reading of
Sheqalim. This clearly allegorizes an older custom which puts into practice
mSheq 1.1: 'On the first of Adar they announce about the Sheqalim (the half-
sheqel tax that is paid by each person to the sanctuary in Jerusalem).. .'404 Only
after it had become an established tradition, this could have been re-inter-
preted as responding to the Biblical term ('weigh', 'pay') in the book of
Esther. At a certain stage, the reading of Sheqalim was part of a narrative sub-
structure of the calendar - its relation to Purim. At a presumed earlier stage of
the development, it was part of a halakhic tradition.
403 Exod 30.11-16, Sheqalim: Elbogen 1931, 163 - 1993, 135 thinks that Rav's opinion in
bMeg 29b that Numb 28.1-8 be the lesson that the Mishna calls 'Sheqalim' does not
represent a liturgical tradition but is a learned construction. Zakhor: Deut 25.17-19.
Parah: Numb 19.1-22. Ha-Hodes Exod 12,1-20 is not connected with a 'narrative'
structure of the festivals. It is the etiology for the meaning of the first of Nisan.
404 It may also be based on memories of such customs in Second Temple times as de-
scribed in mSheq.
266 Easter Sunday
These observations are too cursory to explain the structure of the Jewish
liturgical year. Nevertheless, they indicate how the space of the rabbinic cal-
endar was slowly recovered after the loss of the Temple. The destruction of
the city of Jerusalem and the Temple removed, for instance, the infrastructure
for the celebration of the agrarian festivals. The observations about the Chris-
tian Pascha and Pentecost suggest that independent, but very similar forces
were operative in the creation of the Christian calendar. It is, therefore, true
that narratives play a role in the process of the creation of the calendars. Yet,
they may also emerge as secondary explanations of existing structures. Many
causes and customs contributed to different layers and sub-structures of the
calendars. The most important tool for distinguishing between causes and
effects is still the attempt to date the traditions.
Conclusions
The 364-day calendars that have been reconstructed on the basis of Jubilees
and the scrolls of Qumran did not have any impact on later Jewish or Christian
calendars. Sacha Stern concludes that 'no trace of it (viz. the schematic calen-
dars of Qumran) is ever found in post-Qumranic Jewish sources'.405 In its
older form, that did not yet contain the seasonally determined festivals, it may
have served to structure the priestly service at the Second Temple, to provide
this structure with primordial dignity, and eventually to encompass the his-
tory of the world within one calendrical system. While the events of Biblical
times were located within this system, it was expanded to include the festivals
405 Stern 2001,18. He also observes that an interest in schematic calendars does not prove
that they were put into practice as such. The scrolls are also the only sources for this
calendar for Second Temple times. Thus, the famous story about the apparent differ-
ences in the computations of the Day of Atonement in Pesher Habakuk could also re-
flect different observations of the new moon and need not imply an opposition of a
lunar versus a schematic calendar, Stern 17. On the one hand, Stökl Ben Ezra 2003,
97-100 suggests that the group's persecution could have started on a Yom Kippur. On
the other hand, he describes the highly mythic character of this and related concepts.
lQPesher Habakkuk XI 2-8 Burrows 1950, LX is, therefore, an unreliable witness to
any calendrical practice. Against these skeptical approaches, one must always take
into account the possibility that at least parts of the system were applied in practice in
Second Temple times according to Maier's analysis. In any case, one would have to
prove that the predecessors of the later Christians could have known such technical
details of the cult.
as well. As a living calendar, this cannot have been practiced for a long time
and among many people, because its lack of intercalation destroyed its appli-
cability to the cycle of festivals. When Christians began to construct a liturgi-
cal calendar in the late second century, the book of Jubilees was presumably
the last available repository of information about the old schematic calendars.
Neither Christianity nor Judaism put these structures of Jubilees into practice.
People who were not versed in Second Temple customs would have had no
motive to open exactly that version of a rewritten Bible and to create a calendar
out of it. Others, who may have had concise memories of old traditions,
would have known that Jubilees did not supply the calendar with meaning but
employed certain structures of the calendars in order to re-organize Biblical
narratives. The narrative coherence of Jubilees is a consequence of the fact that
it rewrites the Biblical text. It did not inherit that coherence from any pre-ex-
isting calendar nor did any other calendar imitate this narrative structure of
Jubilees.
Later Jewish and Christian calendars were not built upon a coherent 'nar-
rative', although some sections of the calendars that emerged from the liturgies
of fourth century Jerusalem came very close to that ideal. These developments
are part of a process of gradual covering and re-covering of ritual time with
different elements of meaning.
4.6.4 Jesus' Pesach in the Night of Wednesday
The 21st chapter of the Syriac Didascalia Apostolorum is quoted in order to

support the idea that the Qumran calendar influenced especially eastern
Christianity.406 It is told that Jesus held one of the last meals on the evening
preceding the Wednesday (of Holy Week). This seems to point to the celebra-
tion of Pesah on the same evening of Wednesday, 15 I, within some of the
calendars of the scrolls. What is more, this tradition was handed down within
a text that presupposes a celebration of Easter on Easter Sunday. Although
Karl Holl suggested that this may have been created as an etiology for the nor-
mal station fast on Wednesday, Jesus' meal itself in the evening preceding
Wednesday did not correspond to a commemorative celebration in that church
and would, hence, not be invented to support it. Did this tradition survive
within the theory of Pesah that was ousted from practice long ago?
406 Jaubert 1957, 79-102.

268 Easter Sunday
Historicization
An answer to this question requires the analysis of the reasons and precondi-
tions for a paradigm shift in (supposedly) late second-century Christianity.
For in that time, some Christians abandoned the Jewish date of the Pesah for
the celebration of their Pascha and began to take into account the fact that all
Gospels agree that the empty tomb was discovered and the resurrection pro-
claimed for the first time on a Sunday morning after the Jewish Pesah. Two
important factors must be mentioned in the assessment of this change. First,
this shift would not have necessitated the abandonment of 'a lunar (or luni-
solar) calendar'. In fact, the question of the determination of the correct Sun-
day remained open. Nevertheless, it marks the Christians' turning their backs
to the Jewish celebration. Second, as it has been remarked above, this required
a strong change in the understanding of the meaning of the festival, that
emerged as a celebration that should be held against the Jewish Pesah and
hence at the same time as the latter. It lent strong support to another element
of the celebration, the commemoration of the passion of Christ, that was al-
ready connected with it. As this shift let a New Testament text instead of a
Jewish celebration determine the date of the Christian celebration, it set off
what would later be discernible as the histroicization of the Christian festival,
which led eventually to a Christian cycle of festivals that was basically an en-
actment of Luke's Gospel and Acts.
The discussion of the historicization of the Christian Pascha must take the
seminal observations by Thomas Talley (1973) and Robert Taft (1997/1982) as
its point of departure. Talley's basic conclusion that 'for the first century we
see overt evidence of no annual celebrations at all' (1973, 213) is corroborated
by the data assembled in the present study. An assumption of an early (sec-
ond-century) predominance of the (weekly) Sunday can be supported. That
this weekly Sunday might have been centered around the commemoration of
Christ's resurrection is, however, true for the fourth century, but cannot be
ascertained for the early second.407 The innovation of Christian celebrations on
Sundays must not be confused with Easter Sunday. Christ's resurrection on
407 See p. 136ff. Conclusions built upon the assumption of the ubiquity of Paschal bap-
tism and / or the alleged eschatological character of either the Eucharist(s) or the early
Pascha are obsolete; cf. Bradshaw 1993 and Rouwhorst 2005. After recent studies on
the history of the Eucharist, esp. by Paul Bradshaw and Andrew McGowan, the multi-
formity of customs and beliefs in Early Christianity precludes one from assigning nar-
row theological meanings to 'the' Eucharist.
that day is used as an apology for the practice early. This does not imply that
the 'idea' of Christ's resurrection is 'celebrated' on that day. Talley rightly con-
firms the theory that the 'Christian observance of the Pascha had its begin-
nings in the Quartodeciman form' and 'that it was a Christian response to the
Jewish celebration of the pascha' (217).
The Paschal Eucharist did not, however, replace the Jewish Pesah meal as
assumed by Talley. This requires a higher degree of precision in the discus-
sion, expressed in the following three points: first, the joyful celebration of the
Eucharist within what can be assumed to have been the Quartodeciman cele-
bration of the Pascha did not introduce 'the resurrection' as a commemoration
after that of the Lord's passion and death. It began, second, after the Jews had
finished the Pesah meal. After all, its date and purpose was to fast 'for' (or
against) the Jews. The early paschal Eucharist is neither the successor of a
Jewish Pesah banquet nor a celebration of 'the resurrection'. Third, the Sunday
does not attract the Christain Pascha, because both share the theme of the res-
urrection,408 but Easter Sunday emerges out of the historicization of the Pascha.
The assumption of the opposite introduces an anachronism into the Quarto-
deciman Pascha and regards it as the already historicizing one-night celebra-
tion of what can be seen in fifth-century Holy Week. In other words, 'the'
Quartodecimans do not break the fast because it is time for the commemora-
tion of the resurrection, but because the Jews are supposed to have ended their
symposium.
Robert Taft's observations further clarify the matter, although his assump-
tions about early Christian eschatologies, that are indebted to Strobel's study,
cannot be accepted along with the argument.409 Taft also quotes Polycrates'
statement about the Quartodecimans' accuracy in their observance of the Pas-
cha. This is not due to an idea about the historical accuracy of representing
Christ's death within the Jewish calendar according to Polycrates, but depend-
ent upon the Jewish Pesah as such. Norbert Brox's (1972) distinction between
408 Huber 1968, 47 n. 11 as quoted at the beginning of this chapter (4).

409 It must be taken into account that it was Strobel's 1977 aim to use the history of Chris-
tian Easter in order to establish the date of Christ's death. Many of Strobel's premises
(especially his appeal to Jewish and Christian calendars) do not support his conclu-
sions. Early Christians were not 'intensely concerned to establish the exact chronology
of Jesus' death', Taft 34 summarizing Strobel. When they started to become interested
in it, accurate information was not available any more.
270 Easter Sunday
Eusebius' biased introductions to his sources makes clear that it is Eusebius'

world which is reflected in the following paragraph:410
A question of no small importance arose at that time. For the parishes 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 be observed as the feast of
the Saviour's Pascha. It was, therefore, necessary to end their fast on that day,
whatever day of the week it should happen to be. But it was not the custom of the
churches in the rest of the world to end it at this time, 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 Saviour. 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 the resurrection of the Lord should be celebrated on no other but the Lord's day,
and that we should observe the close of the Paschal fast on this day only.
The Asian churches 'held (the opinion)...' (ώοντο), whereas the majority of the
churches followed an apostolic tradition (to celebrate Easter on a Sunday).411
Eusebius does not bother to present the case of the Quartodecimans in great
detail. However, he alludes to Exod 12 as the source for their choice of the
date. This is a bit of accurate information concerning his epoch. Eusebius pre-
sents the Quartodeciman Pascha as a 'bookish', Christian approach to the fes-
tival. While this is not bad by itself, it is erroneous, because Exod 12 is for the
determination of many aspects not the right 'book'. Eusebius has no interest in
the fact that 'the Jews' ceased sacrificing animals a long time ago, although the
date remained the same. For Quartodeciman Christianity, the slaughtering of
Christ, 'the true Pascha', continued to be of paramount importance for the un-
derstanding of the festival. If Eusebius had paraphrased Polycrates' letter
accurately, he would have referred to the removal of leaven instead of the
slaughtering of the Pesah animals. While 'the feast of the Savior's Pascha' (ή
τοϋ σωτηρίου πάσχα έορτή) of the Quartodecimans follows the Old Testa-
ment, the appropriate (non-Quartodeciman) Christian Easter is based on 'the
resurrection of our Savior'. Eusebius was not the only one who felt that
Quartodecimanism was too heavily indebted to the Old Testament. When
Pseudo-Tertullian accuses an otherwise unknown 'Blastus' and Origen the
410 Ecclesiastical History 5.23.1f GCS 488 tr. based on ANFa 24. The same is true for
Ecclesiastical History 5.24.11 where Irenaeus is paraphrased as 'he explained (to Vic-
tor) that it was necessary to celebrate the mystery of the Lord's resurrection only on
the Sunday'; cf. also Mohrmann 1962,159 to this passage.
411 Brox 1972, 309.
Ebionites, 4 1 2 b o t h of them reprimand their adversaries for following Old Testa-

m e n t laws, not for joining the Jews.
It is Polycrates' o w n opinion, that ' . . . m y colleagues a l w a y s u s e d to keep
the day (of the Pascha) w h e n the (Jewish) people r e m o v e d the leaven' 4 1 3 . The
discussion that evolved around the question w h e t h e r or not the term οί
(τυγγενείς μου should imply Polycrates' and his ' k i n s m e n ' s ' J e w i s h descent
obscures the problem. There is neither reason nor n e e d for the reconstruction
of a kind of Judeo-Christianity in this context a n d the question is irrelevant for
Polycrates' point. T h e fact that Polycrates' colleagues (including himself) have
only access to behavior of J e w s that can b e observed in the streets, b u t n o idea
about the J e w i s h m e t h o d s u s e d to determine the date of Pesah, s h o w s that they
are not insiders in matters of J e w i s h festivals - w h a t e v e r their and their an-
cestors' opinion about ethnical affiliation m i g h t be. 4 1 4 Polycrates does not him-
412 See for Origen n. 273 p. 216. Ps.-Tertullian: 'In addition to all these, there is likewise
Blastus, who would latently introduce Judaism (latenter Judaismum vult introducere).
For he says the Passover is not to be kept otherwise than according to the law of
Moses, on the fourteenth of the month. But who would fail to see that evangelical
grace is escheated if he recalls Christ to the Law?' Adversus Omnes Haereses 8 CSEL
47.225 tr. S. Thelwall ANFa 3.654, Brox 1972, 313f. The text is attributed to Zephyrinus
of Rome (198/199-217 C.E.), cf. Schmidt 1999.
413 ...πάντοτε την ήμέραν ήγαγον οί συγγενείς μου όταν ό λαός ήρνυεν τήν ζύμην,
Ecclesiastical History 5.24.6 GCS 492.11f. It is, therefore, no indication of a deep eru-
dition in matters of Jewish festivals that Origen also knows about this custom, see n.
281 p. 409 and Stern 2001, 222f. The festival is also called τα άζυμα in the Asian
inscription quoted above, p. 53.
414 Stern 2001, 49 emphasizes that the methods to determine the calendars were highly
diverse in late antique Judaism. The rabbinic empirical method and the sending of
messengers (3Γά-5Λ cent., cf. Stern 140) was not in use among many Jews in the Dias-
pora and communities had their own ways to determine their calendars; 83ff, 115.
Even the Jews of Zoar (5,h and 6th cent.!) used an empirical calendar that differed from
the Palestinian rabbis. Stern observes: 'This challenges the common assumption that
by the later Roman period, the rabbis and rabbinic Judaism had become a dominant
force in Jewish Palestinian society' 97, cf. 153, 239ff. It is difficult to distinguish be-
tween fiction and reality regarding the Mishnaic calendar, cf. 157 and ff. Palestinian
amoraim discuss the introduction of rules into the calendar still as a problem, because
it disturbs the ideal of the empirical determination of the beginning of the months.
Nevertheless, at least among rabbis, calendars become increasingly calculated by spe-
cialists rather than determined by courts, 172. Stern describes the development of the
calculated calendar as it is in use today as a gradual process that only came to its con-
clusion at the end of the first millennium. It is, therefore, clear, that Polycrates' obser-
vations of Jews in his vicinity would not mean that Jews in the next city should have
272 Easter Sunday
self r e m o v e leaven and h e does not have sufficient contacts with Jews to k n o w
at least s o m e days in advance w h e n the Pesah w o u l d b e held. T h e custom of
the r e m o v a l of the leaven is the only indication that the J e w i s h Pesah is i m m i -
nent. Polycrates broadly evokes the dignity of his church, past and present.
H e also claims to have read the w h o l e Bible. 4 1 5 In this context, his assertion
that ' w e do not observe the d a y carelessly, since w e neither add nor subtract' 4 1 6
and that 'all' the luminaries of his church 'used to keep the fourteenth d a y of
the P a s c h a according to the Gospel' 4 1 7 fits to their Q u a r t o d e c i m a n Pascha,
w h i c h is tied to the J e w i s h Pesah and supported b y scriptural texts. Polycrates
does not say that the Q u a r t o d e c i m a n s keep the P a s c h a on the day w h e n the
Lord held the last supper, b u t w h e n the (contemporary) J e w s celebrate
Pesah. 4 1 8
also kept the Pesah in these days. He would have had to be quite deeply involved in
their community in order to know either their own method of intercalation or to be in-
formed about the most recent empirical data.
415 Ecclesiastical History 5.24.7 GCS 492.14.
416 Ecclesiastical History 5.24.2 GCS 490.12f tr. Taft 35. Polycrates emphasizes accuracy in
order to support his case. From a more neutral point of view, Irenaeus observes that
the ancestors, who are responsible for the creation of the original diversity (especially
that of the tradition of keeping Easter on a Sunday) were not accurate, cf. Brox 1972,
300f. Gerlach 1998, 276 (cf. 199f) adds that the introduction of the equinox was a (late)
move towards a kind of accuracy (that would also not have fitted to Polycrates).
417 Ecclesiastical History 5.24.6 GCS 492.6f.
418 This corresponds to the text of the Diataxis as quoted by Epiphanius Panarion 70.10.2
GCS 3.243.2f: ύμεΐς μή ψηφίζητε, άλλα ποιείτε οταν οί άδελφο'ι ύμών οι έκ
περιτομής, μετ' αυτών άμα ποιείτε 'You should not count (the date of the Pascha),
but do it when your brothers from the circumcision (are doing it) - do it together with
them'. If Epiphanius would be a more reliable author, one could regard his μή
ψηφίζητε as one of the principles of the oldest Quartodeciman way to determine the
date of the Pascha. This would also fit to the organizational structure of churches and
synagogues in this epoch, cf. n. 119 p. 55. Nobody could make all Christian collegia of
a certain area celebrate a banquet at Pesah against the Jews (or for the commemora-
tion of Christ's death), let alone determine a common date for it. Yet, if some of them
accepted exactly this custom, they needed the Jewish members of their polis together
with (in the date) and against (in the structure) whom they could do it. The more suc-
cessful the custom the higher would be the pressure on it to become independent of
citizens who were 'Jewish' enough to remove leaven at Pesah.
D i o n y s i u s of A l e x a n d r i a a b o u t t h e T i m e of t h e R e s u r r e c t i o n
R o b e r t T a f t refers to D i o n y s i u s of A l e x a n d r i a ' s (ca. 2 6 0 ) letter to B a s i l i d e s as a n

i m p o r t a n t e x a m p l e o f h i s t o r i c i z i n g t e n d e n c i e s b e f o r e a n y s e g m e n t a t i o n of t h e
liturgies t h a t m a i n l y o c c u r f r o m t h e f o u r t h c e n t u r y on. 4 1 9 D i o n y s i u s clearly
o b s e r v e s the c o n t r a d i c t i o n s b e t w e e n t h e G o s p e l n a r r a t i v e s a b o u t t h e d i s c o v e r y
of the empty tomb.420 H e cannot any m o r e dispense with the basic and wide-
s p r e a d i d e a - t h a t is also i n c l u d e d i n t h e q u e s t i o n t h a t B a s i l i d e s p o s e d - t h a t
t h e fast is b r o k e n at t h e t i m e of C h r i s t ' s r e s u r r e c t i o n . D i o n y s i u s b r i e f l y a l l u d e s
to J e s u s ' w a l k i n g o n t h e sea in t h e last m o r n i n g w a t c h a c c o r d i n g to M a t t h
14.26. H e m e n t i o n s a c u s t o m of b r e a k i n g t h e fast at m i d n i g h t , b u t d o e s n o t
refer to t h e a p p e a r a n c e o f t h e b r i d e g r o o m , M a t t h 25: 4 2 1
As matters stand, we declare the (following things) for (the benefit of) those who
are asking for an accurate determination at which hour, or at which half-hour, or
quarter of an hour, it befits to begin with the joy about our Lord's rising from the
dead: We blame those as being negligent and intemperate who hasten very much
and give up (the fast) already before the middle of the night approaches; (we re-
gard them) as (people) who drop out of the race before the end. A wise man says
(about this): 'a miss is as good as a mile' 422 .
419 It is tempting to refer to the 41st ch. of Traditio Apostolica as an early (i.e. pre 3rd cent.)
interpretation of the liturgy of the hours according to the Passion narrative in Mark
(cf. Taft 1997 = 1982, 42f) against other authors, who tend to refer to precedents of
praying in the Scriptures instead of a mystical meaning of the hours; cf. Bradshaw,
Johnson, and Phillips 2002, 213ff. The latter authors do not rule out that this may be
an instance of a relatively young and marginal interpretation of the hours.
420 The eastern churches from whose area the Syriac Didascalia Apostolorum emerged
tended to use the Diatessaron instead of the four Gospels. Therefore, the contradic-
tions between the Gospels in the chronology of the passion narratives were hidden
from them.
421 Cf. n. 153 p. 172 and n. 176 p. 180. Tertullian had already used the motif of the ab-
sence of the bridegroom to indicate the correct duration of the fast. The following
paragraph is a translation of Feltoe 100.8-13. Buchinger 2005, 802-805 interprets
Dionysius as a witness to the general change of the liturgy from mourning to joy.
422 Feltoe's 101 n. 2 rendering into an English idiom for 'that which is within a little is no
little'. It is likely that Dionysius learned the saying from the Sententiae Sexti that were
widely used by Christians in the 3 rd cent.; Cf. Chadwick 1959, X and Kany 1998. It is
contained in the sent. Pythagorici (no. 10) and the sent. Clitarchi (no. 66); Elter 1892, V
no. 10 and Chadwick.
274 Easter Sunday
We accept those as noble and industrious who end (the fast) later and wait for the
longest (time) and persist steadfastly until the fourth watch, at which (occasion)
also our savior appeared to the (disciples) in the ship as walking on the sea.
We shall not bother at all those who stop (the fast at some time) in between,
(keeping it to the extent to which) they are motivated or (to which) they are able,
seeing that not all keep the six days of the fasts equally and similarly, but some
continue423 (this period of fasting) and accomplish to stay all (six days) without
food, some two, some three, some four, some none at all.
And for those, who wear themselves out in the extension (of the fast), and then
draw back and almost break down, there is leniency (that allows them) a quicker
tasting (of food).
If there are, however, some who are not like this, who do not continue (this period
in fasting), but do not fast at all and nourish themselves during the initial four
(days of Holy Week), and come then to spend the last two only keeping (the fast)
on Friday and Saturday, and think that they do something great and brilliant, if
they persist (in fasting) until the morning (of Easter Sunday), I do not think that
they should have accomplished an equal struggle like those who have practiced it
also during the foregoing days.
Giving my advice about these (issues), I have written this, such as I think (about
it).
Different people keep the fast in different w a y s and also disagree about the
time w h e n they w e r e allowed to end it. 424 T h e tradition regarding the duration
of the fast is at least as multiform as it w a s in Irenaeus' time at the end of the
second century. 4 2 5 T w o or three generations later, the fasts are longer and
D i o n y s i u s already k n o w s people w h o keep a precursor of H o l y W e e k - 'six
days of fasting' 4 2 6 .
Irenaeus m e n t i o n s the fast in order to s h o w that the question of the S u n d a y
versus the 14 t h of the lunar m o n t h is trivial c o m p a r e d w i t h the peace b e t w e e n
the churches - as is the duration of the fast, w h i c h is also multiform and ac-
cepted as such. H e m e n t i o n s the fast in order to s h o w that the plurality of dif-
ferent c u s t o m s b e t w e e n various churches cannot b e reduced to uniformity. 4 2 7
D i o n y s i u s of Alexandria follows a similar line of reasoning. In the end, h e
423 Feltoe 102 η. 1 ύπερτιθένοα 'to exceed' or 'to delay' is the technical term for continu-
ing the fast until cockcrow, whereas the ordinary fast ended at 6 p. m. and that of the
station days (Wednesdays and Fridays) at 3 p.m....'
424 Feltoe 1904, 94; tr. Bienert 1972, 54-58.
425 Gerlach 1998,195-203; Ecclesiastical History 5.24.13 GCS 494.
426 Feltoe 101.9.
427 Brox 1972, 297; Huber 1969, 56.
even pushes aside the question of the correct mimesis of the Biblical text. Be-
cause the Bible is inconclusive about this issue, he makes the time of breaking
the fast dependent upon the situation of the individuals. The more seriously
one fasted, the earlier one may break the fast.
This recalls Paul Bradshaw's (2004, 2005) and Andrew McGowan's (2004)
studies.428 Based on their findings, it may be asked whether 'breaking the fast'
must always mean 'taking part in the communal Eucharistie banquet' or 'cele-
brating a joyful Eucharist after a more earnest first phase of the Paschal vigil'.
While such an interpretation would be fitting for late second century Christian
groups, 'breaking the Paschal fast' could have meant nothing other than the
end of an individually determined period of fasting or its culmination in the
'private' or at least not 'official' and communal consumption of the holy food -
elements that had been kept from an earlier Eucharistie celebration. This ex-
plains Dionysius' ruling very well. A larger group of Christians had to some-
how decide when a celebration would take place and it is reasonable to as-
sume that both Basilides and Dionysius had found ways to determine the
structure of the official celebrations of their communities. Yet this does not
seem to be Basilides' problem.429 The understanding of these processes be-
tween Irenaeus and Dionysius seems to have changed significantly. Irenaeus
could not have referred to the practice of the fasting of individuals. This
would have made his argument ridiculous, because he could not compare an
ascetic practice that was left to the discretion of the individual (or family, etc.)
with the question of the date of the Pascha that Victor wanted to unify even
between different churches.
It may be inferred from 102.5: (for those who cannot continue to keep the
fast) 'there is leniency (that allows them) a quicker tasting (of food)' that the
practice of individuals is at stake.430 'Breaking the fast' implies in this context
428 See n. 46 p. 138.

429 Dionysius mentions the 'brethren in Rome', which points to a broader perspective
than Basilides' church. However, the Romans may only have been mentioned as an-
other proof for the problem that uniformity is a fiction at the time of writing.
430 Apart from all problems of dating this document, a similar stance may also be read in
the Traditio Apostolica 33 Bradshaw, Johnson, and Phillips 2002, 172-175, although
only the Latin translation mentions the 'oblation' as point when the fast may end. In
33.2, the pregnant and the sick should 'fast' on Saturday yet restrict the necessary con-
sumption to bread, (salt), and water. Here again, the practice of individuals is at
stake. Nevertheless, the text does not indicate that breaking the fast imply an indi-
vidually determined consumption of the holy communion.
276 Easter Sunday
receiving the Easter Communion (94 n. 4). It leads to the 'beginning of the joy
about the resurrection of our Lord from the dead' (100, lOf). The following
discussion of menstruating women, sexual intercourse among married cou-
ples, and men who had a nightly emission of semen supports this interpreta-
tion. Thus, the rest of the letter regulates the behavior of individuals who are
responsible for their status within the community - a status that is determined
by factors that could not even be known, let alone regulated by the commu-
nity. This can be understood as a side-effect of what Bradshaw and McGowan
analyze as the Christians' use and understanding of the Eucharistie element(s).
If the mimetic parallel between Christ's resurrection and the end of the fast is
'acknowledged by everybody in similar fashion' (95.7), and if the reception of
the Eucharistie elements is largely determined by each person's sincerity in
fasting, the liturgical practice of the community as a whole does not any more
reflect the unity of the Biblical narrative: one resurrection during the night. If
Dionysius should have issued a decree about a precise time of the resurrection,
Basilides would have been able to quench intra-communal multiformity.
However, the paradigm of a representation of the Biblical narrative in the
structure of the liturgies (as well as Dionysius' sincerity as a scholar) totally
vitiate Basilides' attempt at unification.
This illustrates a feature of the dialogue between Scripture and liturgy in
Antiquity. In the present study, it is suggested that Easter Sunday is the result
of liturgical reforms of the Quartodeciman Pascha on the basis of New Testa-
ment texts. The dialogue between Scripture and liturgy has its own sophisti-
cated dynamics, however. Dionysius' letter indicates another factor in the de-
velopment of the Christian liturgies. The people who are scorned by Diony-
sius for breaking the Paschal fast before midnight did not of course open the
New Testament and ask when the resurrection happened. Their practice fol-
lows other, much more mundane considerations. The Bible is consulted only a
posteriori in order to find a standard of reference for unification. It failed.
The diversity of the traditions regarding the duration of the fast as well as
the problems that arise when churchmen try to find precedents in the New
Testament to support or to refute certain customs indicate the complexity of
the dialogue between Biblical texts and the details of beginning liturgical prac-
tice that would be going on for a long time. The liturgical 'hiatus' of the fourth
century is, therefore, well prepared by two centuries of theological thinking
and purportedly also by tentative practice. The dimension of space in the lit-
urgy of Jerusalem as well as the imperial interests (joining some ecclesiastical
ones) to unify the liturgies played important roles in this process. If elaborate
liturgies should, furthermore, be held instead of fasting, and masses of pil-
grims (or citizens in other places) must be provided with spiritual nourishment
during lengthy services, the churches had to make decisions for and against
conflicting theories. In the wake of these developments, the power over han-
dling of the Eucharistie elements is largely withdrawn from the individual.
Although the invention of the medieval tabernacle is still far away, one would
store the bread near the church rather than in the homes of the people. At that
time, the splendor of public liturgies and their power to narrate the contents of
the Bible in their own way had rendered their structure superior over the
Scriptures. Later texts (like Eutychius' homily quoted above) show that the
Bible is only pillaged for images that embellish the unalterable structure of the
liturgy.
As the period after the fourth century led to a certain degree of conver-
gence among different practices and even initiated the later alignment of
whole families of rites towards each other, the liturgy was interpreted rather
than shaped. It is a logical consequence of this development that theologians
like Theodore of Mopsuestia who cannot change the ritual and who do not
have to account for highly divergent customs between individuals or churches
open a new approach to the Biblical interpretation of the liturgy. In their ep-
och, etiologies and apologies do not discover the causes of a ritual but attach a
mystical meaning to them. Pilgrim liturgies of Jerusalem could be created out
of perceived correspondences between liturgical time and space and New
Testament time and space. A given reading actually represents the cause (of
the invention of the liturgy in reality) and the mystical meaning of a com-
memorative station. Regarding the late second and third centuries, this rela-
tionship is highly ambiguous. In some cases, a given custom whose roots are
lost in the silence of the sources or should rather be found in a common feature
of Greco-Roman culture than in Judaism or Christianity is supported a poste-
riori with a Biblical text. Once such a relationship is established, the custom or
rite may be subjected to an alignment with the Biblical text. Theodore of Mop-
suestia loosens the ties between causes and meanings of liturgies in a hitherto
unprecedented way. Medieval commentators are increasingly free to accu-
mulate arbitrary meanings of rituals.
From this, two conclusions can be drawn. First, one can deconstruct with
Karl Gerlach all textual witnesses about the origins of Easter Sunday as histori-
cally unreliable and biased ('rhetoric'). Gerlach is, consequently, forced to
reconstruct the creation of Easter Sunday within an epoch that is by definition
undocumented and hence not to be suspected of rhetorical distortions of real-
278 Easter Sunday
ity.431 While some of Geralch's points of criticism reveal important aspects of

the understanding of the ancient sources, his answer to the question about
Easter Sunday only tries to fill the silence of the sources.
There is, however, another possibility to account for this situation. It must,
in any case, be acknowledged that it will not be possible to entangle all the
threads of 'causes' and 'meanings' within the early history of the Christian
Pascha. Nevertheless, sources like Dionysius of Alexandria's letter may be
taken seriously, for example, in his claim of the general acceptance that the fast
is broken at the time of the Lord's resurrection:432
For it is acknowledged by everyone in similar fashion that one must make a be-
ginning of the festival and the joy after the time of our Lord's resurrection, while
up to that point the souls humble themselves by means of fasts.
This explains at the same time why traditions exist and why they contradict
each other. Several groups apparently celebrate a vigil whose most salient
structural feature was a change of mood at some point during the night. They
decide to reform their liturgies, enrich their meaning, and integrate the vigil
into a mimetic scheme of Christ's death and resurrection. At a certain point in
the development, each of these groups apparently thought it to be appropriate
to align the time of this change of mood with the time of the resurrection.
Pluriformity is inevitable, because indeterminacy is part of the textual tradition
that at that time was enjoying increasing authority.433 This pertains even more
to individuals or small sub-groups who break their fast at a certain time dur-
431 See the introduction to ch. 4.1 p. 121.

432 Feltoe 95.4-7 possibly alluding to Lev 16.29 and Ps 34(35).13.
433 There is no reason why Jerusalem should not have been among the places that intro-
duced a celebration of Easter Sunday. Eusebius Ecclesiastical History 5.23.2f GCS
488ff preserves the memory that several synods (among them one in Jerusalem) op-
posed the Asian practice of Quartodecimanism and supported the celebration of
Easter Sunday. Even if Eusebius' formulation cannot be trusted to represent the
opinion of these synods, there is no prove in this text that Easter Sunday should have
emerged in one these places and spread to the others. These synods represent at-
tempts at unification of a recent and variegated custom. Epiphanius tries to twist the
meaning of the 'Diataxis'. Οί αδελφοί ύμών oi έκ περιτομής certainly refers to the
Jews and not to Judeo-Christian bishops. He does not want to declare it a forgery and
must, therefore, interpret it. His opinion neither supports nor refutes the idea that the
first bishops of Jerusalem were the inventors of Easter Sunday, Panarion 70.10 GCS
3.242f. According to Panarion 70.10 GCS 3.242, the Diataxis is 'of a doubtful character
for many people, but not worthless (or discredited)'. He praises its orthodoxy in the
following paragraph.
ing the night and the leaders of their church who try to unify the process and
guarantee some basic ascetic approach to fasting by opening the New Testa-
ment. An appeal to the time of the resurrection does not solve the problem.
Easter Sunday emerged as a by-product of such an alignment of a certain
liturgy with the narrative structure of the Gospels. This liturgy is the Quarto-
deciman Pascha that entered into a formative dialogue with the New Testa-
ment. The dialog led to the disappearance of the Quartodeciman Pascha.
The Syriac Didascalia and the Quartodeciman Pascha
Gerard Rouwhorst's analysis of the text of the Syriac Didascalia answers the
question of how the predecessors of Easter Sunday underwent this change.434
Rouwhorst not only finds different layers within the text that reflect different
liturgical backgrounds. He also shows that the development from a Quarto-
deciman kernel towards a broad argument in the framework of the Dominical
Easter left its traces in the text. Rouwhorst presents the text divided into two
families of witnesses.435 Although the scribe of the prototype of the group 'B'
abbreviated his text (which implies that certain passages of group Ά ' reflect a
longer, but a more original state of the text), the prototype of Ά ' was also ex-
panded after the division of the groups.436 The following observations are im-
portant for the question of this chapter.
Soon after the beginning of the text, the Didascalia explains: 'On this ac-
count, when you fast, pray and intercede for those who are lost, as we also did
when our Savior suffered'437. Later, it adds: 'Therefore, it is required of you,
434 See ch. 4.5.3 for a discussion of the key element of the reconstruction of the shape of
the Quartodeciman Pascha. Rouwhorst 2004, 77ff rejects Gerlach's 1998, 207-230 ap-
proach to ch. 21 of the Didascalia. Gerlach does not take into account Rouwhorst's
magisterial study 1989 I, 157-193 which is based on a thorough analysis of the manu-
script tradition as well as literary parallels.
435 Rouwhorst 1989 II, 125-139.
436 In section V Rowhorst 1989 II, 136-139 see I, 178ff; the mss. of group Β represent a
more pristine state of the text than that of the - in other instances - more unabbrevi-
ated version of group A. Mss. Β in section V reflect an older stage of the development
of the understanding of Holy Week than section IV.
437 Rouwhorst 1989 I, 166f; II128; text CSCO 407.206.3f; tr. CSCO 408.188. The idea of the
fast as supplication and prayer 'for' the Jews is repeated several times in ch. 21, also
within the long addition to group A, Holl 1927, 159 quoted by Vööbus 1979 tr., 196 n.
193; Rouwhorst 1989 II, 129-132; CSCO 407.206.11-211.22. Again Rouwhorst 1989 II,
280 Easter Sunday
brethren, in the days of the Pascha, to follow closely with (all) diligence and to
perform your fast with all care. And begin when your brethren who are of the
people perform the Passover'438. This is the basic idea of the time and the
meaning of the Quartodeciman Pascha.439 The subsequent layers of the text
first add scriptural proof-texts to this doctrine and adapt it to the changing
realities of the liturgy of Holy Week. Rouwhorst observes that these additions
of proof-texts show the interest of the author of the Didascalia in finding ap-
ostolic support for existing liturgies. The procedure leads to many internal
contradictions. This implies that the simple, initial statement about the Quar-
todeciman Pascha may be taken seriously. It was preserved and interpreted,
but apparently not fabricated.
As soon as the original Pascha, which is neither a reenactment of the New
Testament nor an apostolic tradition, but an anti-Pesah440, is set in relation to
the passion chronologies, its coherence of time and meaning breaks apart. The
long (and apparently also multilayered) passage that was added to the manu-
scripts of group A441 quotes Zech 8.19442 as an excuse for the fact that the text of
135 section IV; CSCO 407.214.16-22 and Rouwhorst II, 138f section V; CSCO
407.215.5-10 and 217.16-218.2.
438 CSCO 407.211.23-27; tr. CSCO 408.196.
439 Rouwhorst 1989 1, 169ff.
440 The question whether or not Aniket might have claimed apostolic authority for his
opinion according to Eusebius - but not in Viktor's own words - cannot be solved.
Norbert Brox 1972, 293ff thinks that Viktor's claim can even be inferred from Poly-
crates' and that the whole conflict is based upon contradictory claims of apostolic ori-
gins. As Eusebius would probably have quoted such a passage if it was written in his
sources, his silence argues in favor of the position that the Romans were well aware
that the Pascha had been introduced at all only recently in their community and that
nobody would believe such a claim; Rouwhorst 2004, esp. 75. This suggests that the
scholars who hold that 'Rome' did not know a Pascha at all before Soter are right -
esp. Karl Holl and Marcel Richard 1961, 184; approvingly Huber 1968, 58ff; but cf.
Brox 1972, 305f. Irenaeus even implies that as long as the Romans did not celebrate a
Pascha themselves, they did also not have any problems with those who did in
whichever way they wanted, Richard. Brox 306 (Richard 199) admits that τηρεϊν is no
technical term. It would be absurd to regard a simple and frequently used word such
as 'to keep' as a technical term implying exactly the following sophisticated issue: 'to
keep the 14th of the lunar month as a date for the Pascha instead of a Sunday related to
it'.
441 Rouwhorst 1989 I, 183-186 esp. 185.
442 Text CSCO 407.208.7ff 'The fourth fast, the fifth fast, the seventh fast, and the tenth
fast are for those of the house of Israel'.
its Vorlage or the prevailing interpretation of the liturgy provides a fast 'for the
Jews'. In the subsequent passage, the author declares the weekly stations of
Wednesday and Friday commemorations of events of the passion according to
his chronology. Rouwhorst observes that the author wants to find an apology
for the fast of Holy Week. As this fast is an expanded form of the Quartodeci-
man non-festival, it inherited its anti-Jewish character from Quartodeciman-
ism.443 The anti-Jewish character is, however, endangered, because the connec-
tion to Judaism has been weakened. The new paradigm of the understanding
of Holy Week is already visible: the chronology of the Passion, not the antipa-
thy against a Jewish Pesah.
The following section III (according to Rouwhorst) contains a fantastic the-
ory about the congruence of Christ's passion and the fast of Holy Week.444 The
custom to keep Holy Week as an unstructured time of fasting is hinted at ear-
lier (Dionysius of Alexandria). In the 'system' of the Didascalia, Wednesday as
the day of the Last Supper emerges from the creation of the narrative and not
as a remnant of an old tradition. The narrative is, nevertheless, not perfectly
coherent. Thus, the Jewish leadership decides to make the people in Jerusalem
celebrate the Pesah earlier, before the arrival of the pilgrims in order to avoid
troubles when they have Jesus arrested (Mark 14.2). However, they also de-
cide to kill him in front of a great audience, when all the pilgrims had arrived.
The idea that the Sanhedrin should have been able to order the anticipa-
tion of the Pesah on the spot also shows that the author of these lines had no
idea about how the date of the Pesah was determined in any epoch. If some-
thing like a 'Judeo-Christian' source could be identified by some kind of in-
sight into a feature of any branch of Judaism, this text is definitely not 'Judeo-
Christian'. The section is designed to find an etiology for the already presup-
posed custom of fasting throughout Holy Week.445 That fast is interrupted on
Maundy Thursday and changes its quality and meaning for Friday and Satur-
443 Rouwhorst 1989 I, 186. This fast of Holy Week is rather the result of an expansion of
the older and shorter Paschal fast than the application of a weekly structure (such as a
Christianized form of the festival of Unleavened Bread). In his letter to Viktor,
Irenaeus does not yet refer to a week-long fast, Ecclesiastical History 5.24.12 GCS 494.
Dionysius of Alexandria already knows a similar custom.
444 Rouwhorst 1989 1,171-173; section III in 1989 II, 132-135 text CSCO 407.211.23-214.8.
445 'On this account you shall fast in the days of the Pascha from the tenth, which is the
second day of the week. And you shall be sustained only by bread and salt and water,
at the ninth hour, until the fifth day of the week' Rouwhorst 1989 II, 134f; text CSCO
407.214.5-8; tr. CSCO 408.198f.
282 Easter Sunday
day. This asks for a Biblical explanation. The Bible must be rewritten for that
purpose.
Regarding Friday and Saturday, the post-Quartodeciman layers describe
prayers, readings, fasts, and vigils.446 Celebrating on the night between Friday
and Saturday may have been one of the intermediate stages in the develop-
ment from the Quartodeciman Pascha to Holy Week 447 While the text of the
Syriac Didascalia in Rouwhorst's analysis reveals certain stages of this
development, its causes as well as the time when this development happened
remain vague.448
The text does not bother to explain which prayers are said and which Bib-
lical passages are read. One looks in vain for the structure of a precursor of
Easter vigil in the night between Holy Saturday and Easter Sunday. The ties of
the fast to the chronology of the Gospel prior to Good Friday cannot, likewise,
be related to actual commemorative services. In the same way, all those
chronological explanations of the events of Christ's passion that precede the
fourth century are not witnesses for a daily thematic liturgy of Holy Week.
John F. Baldovin (1987) shows that the possibility of using the whole urban
space of late antique Jerusalem in the fourth century provided the background
for the development of what became fully historicized liturgical time. In its
character of being an anti-Pesah, the Quartodeciman single-night celebration
would contain a period of 'fasting' in opposition to (and hence in lamentation
for) the Jews (who celebrated their Pesah simultaneously) as well as in com-
memoration of Jesus' death. When this event becomes linked to the days of
the week its structure of 3 hours of mourning followed by a joyful celebration
of the Eucharist loses its anti-Jewish focus with the missing parallel Jewish
celebration. The curious instance of a 'fast' of 3 hours is only understandable
as long as it is directed against the simultaneous Jewish feast. As soon as
Christians establish their own calendars, they ask when it is appropriate to cele-
brate the Pascha (from various points of view) and stop wondering when the
Jews actually celebrate Pesah.
In the third century, preachers could still expound Exod 12 as the basis for
the Passion of Christ. No compulsory repertoire of readings or themes is at-
tested apart from this. The clumsiness of the attempts at a historicization of
446 Section IV and V in Rouwhorst 1989 II, 135-139 text CSCO 407.214.8-215.5, 215.5-
218.2. The original layer of V precedes IV, see n. 436 p. 279.
447 Rouwhorst 1989 I, 179f and 191ff.
448 Some features of the typologically younger stages of its liturgy can be compared with
data from Tertullian's time. Cf. n. 169 p. 178.
Holy Week show that this transformation is in process.449 Although this need
not be representative of other churches in all its details, it reveals important
factors that seem to have been operative in many places.
Gerard Rouwhorst suggests that the development from an older, Quarto-
deciman Pascha towards a Dominical Easter be the result of the expansion of
the doctrines of the council of Nicea. This implies that the present form of the
chapter of the Syriac Didascalia was shaped in the fourth century.450 While this
date is acceptable, the process that is reflected in this multi-layered document
could have begun in the third century. The Didascalia also tries to preserve
certain elements of Quartodecimanism that were getting lost in the unavoid-
able transition towards Dominical Easter. Not all of this must be the result of
external pressure (viz. the impact of Nicea). The structure of Holy Week is
only integrated into this theological system at the cost of common sense in the
interpretation of the liturgies, the fast, and the Bible. Nevertheless, the dia-
logue between an interpretation of Biblical texts as etiologies for a liturgy and
a liturgy that did not originate as ritualization of Biblical texts may already
have been going on for some time.
During this process and its continuation, Christian meanings were added
to the Pascha, which became the anniversary of Christ's death and resurrec-
tion 451 This was supported by those elements of the New Testament that
could be used, such as the idea of Christ as 'our' Pesah (animal) or the allusion
to Exod 12 in John's Gospel. In general, the Jewish celebration of the Pesah is
not replaced or reshaped by a Christian festival. The Christian Pascha never was
a rabbinic seder. It began as a non-banquet perhaps including a banquet af-
terwards. This basic idea about the day when 'the people' celebrated Pe-
sah and Christ had suffered survives for a long time in Christianity. The Pas-
cha remains closely associated with fasting.
449 A stereotype cliche of this alignment of text and liturgy is the apology for the three
days' interval between Jesus' death and resurrection; cf. Rouwhorst 1989 I, 184. The
structure of the liturgy was already set and the idea of the three days was irrelevant
before the establishment of the actual biduum paschale (from Friday afternoon to
Sunday night).
450 Rouwhorst 1989 I, 189-193.
451 This was not part of the Quartodeciman Pascha. Rouwhorst 2005, 345 concludes that
'... two principal themes of that festival were, on the one hand, the slaughtering of the
paschal lamb, the paschal meal, and the liberation of the Jewish people from slavery in
Egypt and, on the other hand, the passion and death of Christ and his descent into
Sheol, Hades.'
284 Easter Sunday
The opposition between the Quartodeciman Pascha and the Dominical

Easter mirrors, therefore, a Synoptic versus Johannine chronology of the Pas-
sion only because of the vicissitudes of history, not because of internal reasons.
Likewise, there is no opposition between eschatological and historical under-
standings of the Pascha. The Quartodeciman Pascha was as non-eschatological
as the Dominical.452 Furthermore, the original Quartodecimanism is not la-
beled as 'Judaizing'. The contexts make it clear that 'Judaizers' want to follow
the Old Testament rather than real Jews, or seem to adhere to a wrong com-
putation of the date of Easter Sunday. Broad allegations of 'Judaizing' or
'celebrating with the Jews' appear late - at a time when Quartodecimanism
was on the decline.453 Everyone who had an idea about real Quartodeciman-
ism knew that they did not celebrate the Pascha out of sympathy for - and in
positive imitation of - Judaism. On the contrary, it seems that the Pascha be-
came less anti-Jewish with its distance to Judaism. It is thus inadmissible to
infer from late polemics that the Quartodeciman Pascha was 'Jewish' (in the
sense of representing a continuous tradition from apostolic times). In the third
century, Firmilianus of Caesarea (in Cappadocia) refers to the dispute about
the date of Easter of the second century as an example for the alleged Roman
tendency to deviate from apostolic practice. While this indicates that some
theologians of Antiquity (especially Quartodecimans) thought or knew that the
Dominical Easter was a later tradition than the Quartodeciman Pascha, this
does not support the idea that the Quartodeciman Pascha was kept by Chris-
tians from apostolic times. Polycrates is not more reliable in this claim about
apostolicity than he is in regards to the tradition that Jesus' beloved disciple
was high priest.454
Eventually, the rabbis succeeded in their attempt to popularize the Biblical

festivals after and despite the destruction of the Temple. This does not mean
that the laws of the Mishna were kept by every Jew throughout the world. The
presupposition that Jews kept all festivals everywhere and at all times can
hardly integrate the naivety with which Christianity created her own festival
calendar out of the New Testament in the fourth century.455 If Jews and gen-
452 Cf. Rouwhorst 2005.

453 Huber 1968, 70-73.
454 He 'carried τό πέταλον' Ecclesiastical History 5.24.3 GCS 490.20 such as James accord-
ing to Epiphanius, Lampe 1078 mng. 2c; Stökl Ben Ezra 2003, 218 and 246-250, esp.
250.
455 One may add a speculation about geography in this context. The Quartodeciman anti-
Pesah emerges in the East - in a region that was considerably closer to the small area
tiles who came to believe in Christ after the destruction of the Temple - in the
Diaspora presumably also before that event - did not keep the Biblical festi-
vals, including the Pesah, they were probably not different from most Jews in
this respect.
The Epistula Apostolorum
At this point, a serious objection must be raised. It is claimed that the Epistula
Apostolorum should suggest an old celebration of Pascha and Pentecost, that it
should not know anything about an opposition to Judaism, and that it should
connect the Pascha with a profound eschatological message. Is the Epistula
Apostolorum the missing link between the Jewish Pesah and the Christian Pas-
cha?
To begin with the last point, the Epistula Apostolorum does not reflect an
eschatological understanding of the Pascha. The eschatological remark in
17/28 has no connection with the Pascha that was mentioned before. Julian
Hills (1995, 112) quotes Hippolytus' commentary to Daniel (4.10.4) that eluci-
dates the Ethiopic text of 15/26: 'When he comes he shall come with his wounds,
and will render to each according to his works.' 456 If one continues to read in
the commentary to Daniel, the latter records seemingly much more accurate
computations of Christ's coming than the Epistula. However, with regard to
the date of Christ's second Parousia, Hippolytus remains as inexplicit as
Daniel - and as the Epistula.457 It is misleading to infer the date of composition
of the Epistula Apostolorum from the Coptic number of 'the hundredth part
and the twentieth part'. If the Coptic is taken as a more original text, the au-
thor indicates a fraction of another number. That other number is of course not
of influence of the rabbis. When it is transferred towards the West, it becomes aligned
with the New Testament and hence less dependent upon Judaism. Christians in Rome
and Egypt were apparently less interested in an anti-Pesah than Christians in the East.
This could be due to the (also Greek speaking) Roman Jews' missing or less important
celebration of Pesah that one could oppose. The tradition about Theudas/Todos is no
argument in this context at all, cf. n. 21 p. 22.
456 Hills 1995, 112ff shows that both the Coptic and the Ethiopic text can be explained on
the basis of a very similar Greek text. Hills does not conclude from this that the Ethio-
pic be a more faithful rendering of the Greek, but continues to interpret the Coptic,
because it has a parallel in the Ethiopic (!) of 38.1.
457 Hills 1995,117 end of n. 73. He does not draw the above given conclusion.
286 Easter Sunday
mentioned. This precludes one from reading the text as providing any kind of
speculation about a definite date for Christ's coming.458 On the contrary, the
cryptic reference discourages readers to engage in computations at all.459 This
is in perfect accordance with the context, as Hills notes (1995, 117): '...what is
of concern is not so much the date as the nature of the coming'. Authors like
the person who composed the Epistula do not attempt to make fools of their
readers by telling them that Christ would come in the following year, because
they would know from more than a century of Christian experience that their
ecclesiastical career would end that very year (cf. Acts 1.7). Their strategy is
much more subtle and makes sure that they can never be blamed for having
erred. They describe the birth-pangs of the Messianic age which fit many
times and places. As remarked above, Hippolytus' commentary on Daniel is
transmitted in two versions, implying either that the antichrist 'enters into part
of the fiftieth (or: 'Pentecost'), because he intends to inherit the kingdom to-
gether with Christ' - or that he does not 'enter...'. Hills assumes that the au-
thor of the Epistula pushes the question of the date into the realm of the cult,
away from the calendar. One may add some precision: not even 'the cult', but
if this should be his strategy at all, he pushes the question to the non-cult: out-
side of Pentecost and Pascha.
Does the community of the Epistula celebrate Pentecost? It cannot be
ruled out. However, the Epistula does not support this claim. The setting of
the whole discussion is a meeting between the risen Christ and the apostles
before the events of Pentecost in Acts 2. The Epistula also reworked Acts 12 in
ch. 15/26 and remains faithful to its fictitious, apostolic setting in which Pente-
cost plays an important role. Thus, Pentecost already plays a role in the narra-
tive frame of the text.
As the cryptic reference to numbers goes on to puzzle its interpreters, it
was considered appropriate to add a bit of numerical speculation here. Thus,
458 This is Duensing's opinion 14 n. 7 referred to as no. '5' in Hills's repertoire of solutions
for the problem 1995,116 n. 73.
459 If the Ethiopic is taken as a point of departure, the text seems to speak about Christ's
return, but in 150 years. If the update to the 180s for Christ's second Parousia repre-
sents a misunderstanding, a date of the original after the middle of the 2nd cent, would
be acceptable. The misunderstanding would concern a change from 6/100 to 150, not
from 120 to 150. Such a misunderstanding could, however, have occurred at any time,
even during the transmission as an Ethiopic text. After the 2nd cent, nobody who
shared this (mis-) understanding would bother to pay attention to such a number.
the Latin version of the Epistula could make some sense in light of Hippolytus'
commentary quoted above:460
quia misit me i'[n]ta. An
no implente inter
pentecosten et az
yma erit adventus
patris mei.
Schmidt suggests reading 'misit me (qu oder ou)i[ri]ta. an-...', where Italics indi-
cate that the reading is uncertain. With extensive emendations, this text may
be read as:
quia misit me quinto anno implente inter pentecosten et azyma erit adventus
patris mei
'... that he sent me when a fifth year is completed. My father's advent will happen
between Pentecost and Azyma...'
What is a 'fifth year'? After Daniel asks about the meaning of the parables and
implicitly about the time of the end of the world461, he receives the numbers
1335-1290, in which 5 (days) are missing to make up 50. Hippolytus as well as
the Epistula cannot resist the temptation to make a fuller number out of the
meaningless 45. Yet, some change is going to happen after roughly 45 'days'.
After the crucial 5th day, Christ may come and one can learn from Daniel's 45
days that he will not come during the time preceding the 'Pentecost'. The
Epistula hardly wants to transfer the qualification of the 50 days as time of
tribulations and death to a period of Pentecost as it was described by Tertullian.
If this comes somehow close to the author's reasoning (that is admittedly only
based on the Latin text) this is a bit of exegesis that tries to avoid chiliastic
speculations, but does also not engage in liturgical theology.
Julian Hills collects and describes allusions of the text to many New Testa-
ment sayings but hesitates to conclude that the author and his audience know
these New Testament texts. It is, however, very likely that they knew this
material, because this is a prerequisite for the functioning of the literary fiction
of this kind of text.
2 Thess 2.2 warns its readers about forgeries that might pretend to be an
apostolic text and which, above all, could defend an imminent eschatology.

461 Daniel 12.8 is not verbally reflected in the Epistula: Κύριε τι τά έσχατα τούτων
(Theodotion) or Κύριε τις ή λΰσις τοΰ λόγου τούτου και τίνος αί παραβολαί αύται
(LXX). Cf. also Acts 1.6.
288 Easter Sunday
This does not m e a n that the Epistula b e from the e p o c h of 2 Thess. T h e Epis-
tula uses 'Bible-speak' in order to b e read at all. This is n o t a question of pri-
mordial oral traditions, b u t of the attempt of this text to s o u n d familiar to per-
sons w h o k n o w the style and topics of the N e w Testament. In order to func-
tion, this m e t h o d presupposes an already high degree of canonicity of N e w
Testament texts. This assumption h a s the great advantage of explaining the
large n u m b e r of unclear parallels to different N e w T e s t a m e n t texts. T h e Epis-
tula uses i m a g e s and alludes to coined sayings e n o u g h to b e recognized as Je-
sus' speech and not too m u c h so as to betray that it is nothing but a compila-
tion of quotations, w h i c h w o u l d m a k e it lose its appeal as an original text.
Charles E. Hill ( 1 9 9 9 , 1 8 ) observes that signs of Q u a r t o d e c i m a n i s m are pre-
sent in the text, b u t that 'the Q u a r t o d e c i m a n controversy of the 190s is not yet
o n the horizon'. It w o u l d thus b e nice to c o m p a r e the Epistula with Quarto-
decimanism, as it seems to antedate this controversy b y a short time and as it
does not indicate that it k n o w s of Easter Sunday. 4 6 2 T h e search for Quartodeci-
m a n i s m in the Epistula A p o s t o l o r u m does not, however, yield tangible results.
Thus, Paul B r a d s h a w (2004, 67) emphasizes that ' r e m e m b r a n c e ' and 'agape'
462 While Charles Hill's arguments for an Asian provenance of the document are convinc-
ing (supported by Stewart-Sykes 1997), those about an early 2nd cent, date are not.
Thus, he admits that the social background which is comparable to Smyrna could be
found in another place as well, 1999, 29-33. References to natural and social disasters
are very plausible for a second century setting in Asia, but do not indicate any specific
time. Hill 1999 refers to an attested epidemic of smallpox in the wake of the return of
Verus' army. Yet, he does not infer from this a date in the 60s of that century, but con-
cludes that 'the possibility then of an earlier epidemic in Smyrna or its vicinity earlier
in the century is not at all remote', 40. Similarly, he mentions earthquakes attested for
Smyrna, where he wants to locate the Epistula, in the second half of the century and
other, earlier ones for other places of Asia Minor, 39-47. Hill rejects the Smyrna earth-
quakes of 177-78 because of his presupposition that the cryptic reference to the 6/100th
part of a period of time must be interpreted as 120 years after some point in Jesus' life
(or afterwards, in the situation of the risen Lord who speaks in that passage). All the
assembled evidence shows that the text cannot be dated on the basis of such argu-
ments. Any connection with Jewish dates of the end of the world in 119 C.E. are
hardly possible vis-ä-vis Hill's acceptance of 120 years from the time of the discussion
between Jesus and his disciples, cf. 49f. Hill admits that the document is not 'ablaze
with imminent anticipation'. It is, therefore, reasonable to dismiss the numbers as in-
dication for a concrete chiliasm. The use of texts from several parts of the NT rather
points to a later date than one preceding 120 C.E., cf. 51. Moreover, Julian Hills 1995
quotes many texts with parallels to the Epistula that were composed in the second half
of the 2nd cent. C.E. (and even somewhat later).
refer to the same event in 15/46. The remark about 'my agape and my remem-
brance' is not a reflection of a twofold structure of the Quartodeciman Pascha
that can be found in other sources. In the passage that rewrites Acts 12, allu-
sions to such a two-fold celebration are fallacious. It is true that 'the disciple'
in prison is sad about his absence from the community meal. He is then happy
to join them for the time until cockcrow. It is hard to see an allegory on the
two phases of the Quartodeciman Pascha here, because the disciple is initially
alone and mournful about his absence from the Christian celebration - not
weeping together with his fellow Christians about the Jews. After the night
celebration, he returns to prison apparently as miraculously as he was 'liber-
ated' from there, although he does not seem to be executed, because he goes on
preaching later. Thus, this passage is not a Paschal liberation story.463 What
may possibly be learned about the Pascha from this text is, on the one hand,
that it comprises a banquet ('agape') which ends at cockcrow (and does not,
consequently, last until the morning) and that it is, on the other hand, devoted
to the memory of Christ's death.464 There is no trace of the Exodus or the
Egyptian Pesah in this text and nobody fasts 'for' the Jews.
However, there is another passage in this text, in which a group of people
definitely prays for their 'sisters'. This is part of the rewritten story of Mat-
thew 25. In the Epistula, the five foolish virgins fall asleep and cannot go into
the house together with the bridegroom. The text clearly defines two moods of
a group of symposiasts: sadness for the 'sisters' (the 5 virgins who remain out-
side) and joy because of the feast with the bridegroom in the triclinium465
463 Cf. the Acts of Thomas, where the apostle leaves the prison in order to baptize
Mygdonia and returns while the watchmen are sleeping 118-122 NTApo 51989, 349-
351 AAAp 2.2.228-232 NT.S 5.128-131; similarly 155-159 NTApo 51989, 362-364
AAAp 2.2.264-269 NT.S 5.147-150. The Epistula Apostolorum may be read in the
context of a similar motif. In the Acts of Thomas, the apostle had to leave the prison,
because there were no facilities for baptism inside. He goes back to continue his 'mis-
sion' there.
464 The reference to the 'chalice' ('of the Pascha': only in the Ethiopic) is not necessarily
liturgical. It may refer to the fate of suffering that Jesus endured and that is in stake
for his disciples, Hills 1995, 114f n. 69. Even if the commemorations of martyrs began
in the second century (Polycarp), it would require that the institution be already well
established, in order that the Epistula could have been composed to stylize the Pascha
as 'a martyr's festival'.
465 This reads the Epistula from the point of view of Matth 25. The Epistula rather im-
plies that the five watchful virgins enter as brides with the bridegroom into the bridal
chamber; Staats 1969,100.
290 Easter Sunday
(43/54-45/56). The lucky five virgins are sad and happy within the same situa-
tion. This would be a more appropriate allegory on the Quartodeciman Pascha
than 15/26, because the five watchful virgins entreat the bridegroom to let their
sisters join them (which he refuses). The text goes on, interpreting the first five
virgins in an allegorical way as five virtues that 'slept' within those who could
not enter the house with the bridegroom. On the first glance, one could read
an invective against Judaism into the allusions to people who are doomed to
stay outside.466 However, Hills (1995, 162-167) observes that the outsiders are
certainly Christians, as the Epistula 43/54 identifies them: 'These (the virtues in
the allegorical interpretation given by the Epistula) have slept in those (who
had to stay outside of the banquet) who have believed and acknowledged467 me.'
The rewritten chapter Matth 25 does not exploit the time of the coming of
the bridegroom in order to provide a theological reason for a hiatus in the
celebration. It is true that the banquet begins with the coming of the bride-
groom, although the Epistula deemphasizes the sympotic allusions of Matth
25. Moreover, the watchful virgins can only begin to 'pray' for their sisters
after they entered the bridal chamber.468 Any such speculations about allusions
to a liturgical background neither add to the understanding of the Epistula nor
to that of the Quartodeciman Pascha.
As there is no positive reason to doubt the Quartodecimanism of the
Epistula Apostolorum,469 the rewritten parable of the 10 virgins might,
466 Note the repertoire of settings suggested for the 5 foolish virgins in secondary litera-
ture, Hills 1995,147.
467 The Coptic text uses as Greek loan όμολογεϊν. Julian Hills infers from this that they
were baptized. They are at least not identified as Jews. This supports Reinhart
Staats's 1969 analysis. He interprets the foolish virgins as belonging to the author's
anti-Gnostic polemics. The foolish virgins represent the virtues that are held in high-
est esteem by the Gnostics. They are not admitted into the bridal chamber.
468 Thus Strobel's 1977, 38f remark that the sleeping virgins might allude to the rabbinic
regulations regarding the validity of a Pesah when part of the symposiasts fell asleep
is misleading. The virgins sleep before the banquet and in Matth 25, all of them sleep
quite legitimately and also before the event begins. The clever ones bring along a refill
of oil for their lamps and do not refrain from sleeping.
469 Stewart-Sykes 1997, 417 and others show that there is not very much Quartodeciman-
ism to be found in the Epistula. As it is not easy to prove that the Montanists were
Quartodecimans, Stewart-Sykes's claim of parallels between the Epistula and the
Montanists on these grounds remains a moot question. Stewart-Sykes also reads
Epiphanius' idea that virgins carry torches in Montanist worship into the Epistula's
reworking of Matth 25. He apparently identifies customs about which the Epistula
nevertheless, add a bit of background information about the origins of the

Quartodeciman Pascha. Apparently, it was not an uncommon feature to make
the grief about divisions in the community as well as intellectual attacks from
outside a topic of the discourse in the context of the liturgies - in whatever
form: as prayer, discussion, a narrative such as the Epistula itself, or a lamen-
tation. In addition, the Epistula works with New Testament imagery. A simi-
lar process will later lead to the institution of Easter Sunday and away from
Quartodecimanism.
Conclusion: Wednesday and the Last Supper
Returning to the point of departure of this chapter on the Christian Easter,

Christian reconstructions of Jesus' celebration of a Pesah meal in the evening
preceding a Wednesday are not traces of the 364-day calendars of the scrolls.
They are a by-product of the discussion about the relationship of the emerging
liturgies of the Pascha to the New Testament Passion accounts.
Annie Jaubert took a text that cannot have been composed before the third
century, which was in any case reworked in the fourth, and which put one of
the dates of the meals that Jesus is said to have celebrated before his death on a
Wednesday as an echo of a schematic calendar with a yearly number of days
that was divisible by seven. She does not take into account that this meal is
actually claimed by the source itself not to have been held on the correct Jewish
date of the Pesah. She ignores the general aim of the text, which harmonizes
the conflicting Gospel accounts by means of a concatenation of their contents.
The conclusion is obsolete. For in the third century, most Christians - and
among them the authors of that passage in the Didascalia - had fixed the ac-
tual practice of the celebration of Easter on a Sunday, while the exact determi-
nation of which Sunday would have to be taken did not lead to a consensus
(until today, and also because of much later developments). Scholars in An-
tiquity took the only common 'date' of the Gospels, the discovery of the empty
tomb on a Sunday, and reconstructed the events of the Passion with reference
to it. Jesus' Pesah would necessarily fall on a certain Weekday and not on a
certain day of the lunar month. This is the consequence of the shift in the sys-
does not speak (or is only claimed to allude to) should be assumed as 'normal praxis',
cf. 424. His reference to Huber 1969, 211f misrepresents the latter's much more careful
interpretation of this passage of the Epistula.
292 Easter Sunday
tem to regarding the days of the week as important and worthy to be emulated
in the rituals and neither the days of the month, as in rabbinic Judaism, nor the
days of the solar year, linked to the Julian or an earlier, regional calendar. This
date does not betray any Jewish or Christian tradition beyond the text of the
Gospels, the development of Easter Sunday, and its author's imagination.
4.6.5 Conclusions
The four premises for any liturgical impact of the schematic calendars of the
scrolls upon Christianity are invalid.
First, it cannot be inferred from the scrolls (including texts like Enoch and
Jubilees) that anybody regarded the priestly 364-day calendar as a yearly cycle
of commemorations of Biblical events.
Second, those parts of the calendar that can be assumed to have been put
into practice for a considerable time - the priestly Mishmarot system - are
irrelevant for the meaning of the festivals, because the exclusion of the festivals
is one of the preconditions for their long term applicability. Conversely, the
forms of the calendar that contain the festivals hardly influenced liturgical
practice for a long time or among many people, if they were kept at all.
Third, with or without intercalation, the schematic 'months' and hence the
dates of the calendar do not correspond even to the non-lunar 'months' of
other calendars. Thus, '14 Τ could only rarely be perceived as 'the 14th of Ni-
san', if the calendar was applied in practice. Except for greater festivals like
the Day of Atonement and Pesah, which may have had a wider impact, its
structure (and alleged commemorations) could not be perceived as parallel to
other systems that were used simultaneously.
Fourth, Essenes may have come to believe in Christ, and Jews who be-
lieved in Christ may have had contacts with Essenes. However, the extant
sources do not provide reliable information about the character and conse-
quences of such encounters. Much of what is reported as the Essenes' features
are philosophic cliches and ancient ethnographic fiction. There is no descrip-
tion of the components of the Jewish group's identity. This is supported by the
observation that the 364-day calendars of the scrolls did not have any impact
on later rabbinic Judaism and Christianity.
Why is this Night Different From the Rest of Holy Week? 293
4.7 Why is this Night Different From the Rest of Holy Week?
In the observations given above, Easter Sunday appears as a relatively recent

development - no earlier than the emergence of the Quartodeciman Pascha.470
Within celebrations of Holy Week from the fifth century on, Easter Sunday
seems to be the climax of a survival from ancient times: the Easter vigil. Thus,
a discussion of Easter Sunday requires also the perspective from the end of
Antiquity, when the abundant liturgical documentation shows its function
within the celebration of Easter.
The data vitiate the assumption that Pesah should have 'accumulated'
festival contents before the rise of Christianity. And yet, the Easter vigil seems
to provide evidence for exactly that development. The evidence from the
scrolls must, therefore, be confronted with the question about the provenance
of the structure and meaning of the Easter vigil.
A community that celebrates Easter in a form that resembles the contem-
porary Roman Catholic rite471 may discern several levels of structure and
meaning in their liturgy. Thus it is easily understandable that Holy Week and
the Triduum Paschale somehow reflect the Gospel narratives of Christ's pas-
sion. The liturgical celebrations do not correspond exactly to the Biblical sto-
ries. Some inconsistencies can be explained as the inevitable consequence of
the fact that the Gospels are not unequivocal in their chronology and in their
description of what the Biblical canon makes the readers believe to be the same
events. However, any chronology breaks down at the beginning of the Easter
vigil when the congregation is invited to listen to a collection of Old Testament
readings beginning with the creation of the world. This lengthy celebration
takes place on Holy Saturday, in the night preceding Easter Sunday, for which
the narratives about the Passion provide almost no details about what is to
commemorated.472 The Gospels do not describe the time and circumstances of
470 A draft of this section (4.7) was read by the members of the seminar for Early Liturgi-
cal History at the North American Academy for liturgy. I am grateful for their com-
ments and suggestions. My interest in the subject was created by the discussions
about the liturgy of Easter that were held in preparation of Easter 2003 for the church
of St. Ruprecht in Vienna.
471 The Catholic perspective serves as a point of departure only. For the following
historical discussion, it is not relevant. Cf. for a broader, ecumenical view: Auf der
Maur 1987.
472 The evangelists did probably not assume that the disciples actually mourned Jesus'
death on the Sabbath. Matth 27.62(ff) that was read in the morning of Holy Saturday
294 Easter Sunday
the resurrection. Liturgies can only resume a kind of historicizing commemo-

ration at the time of the discovery of the empty tomb and the first proclama-
tion of the resurrection on Sunday morning. The celebration of 'the resurrec-
tion' itself forever escapes any historicizing ritualization. Yet, this is not a suf-
ficient reason for a 'commemoration' of the whole history of salvation begin-
ning with the creation of the world. It is, therefore, clear that the structure of
the Easter vigil follows different principles which deviate from those that de-
termine the shape of Holy Week. Only in its ending, it is again connected with
the course of the Gospel narrative of the discovery of the resurrection in the
morning of Easter Sunday.
The structural hiatus between the Easter Vigil and the concept of the Holy
Week can be explained diachronically.473 The Easter vigil and Holy Week may
be understood as the results of two stages in the development of the liturgies.
Holy Week would be the result of a relatively recent tendency to historicize.
The Easter Vigil is then thought to have survived from ancient times within
this environment of a ritualization of the narratives about the Passion. As
Ambrose and Augustine never call the Triduum Paschale but only the Easter
vigil 'Pascha', that vigil seems still to be known as the historical kernel of the
whole liturgy.474 The form and meaning of the Easter Vigil could thus be an
example for Anton Baumstark's observation about 'the preservation of older
usages in the more solemn liturgical seasons'.475 Moreover, if somebody
should have intended to invent a historicizing commemoration of a full vigil,
in Jerusalem according to the Armenian Lectionary belongs to the commemorative

system of the town; cf. Zerfass 1968, 89. Except for this piece of narrative, no special
events can be commemorated on Holy Saturday according to the Gospels.
473 This hiatus is greatly emphasized in modern celebrations in which there is only one
vigil (in the Triduum Paschale) in the night between Saturday and Sunday. In Ege-
ria's Jerusalem, one would not have felt such a big difference. Egeria describes a vigil
in the night between Maundy Thursday (not as a re-enactment of the Last Supper)
and Good Friday and a more optional vigil on the night preceding Holy Saturday.
From the readings and the structure of the services, the vigil preceding Good Friday is
commemorative and hence not related to the Easter vigil according to the Armenian
Lectionary. Only a careful observer of the fifth century Jerusalem liturgies would,
therefore, have reached the same conclusions, as the differences were less obvious
than in other places and especially in comparison with celebrations after the liturgical
reforms in catholicism in the wake of Vaticanum II.
474 Auf der Maur 1983, 77.
475 Taft 2001, 200 'law' no. 9. Baumstark enumerates more subtle examples than the
whole Easter vigil in his seminal study 1927.
he would rather have created it for the night preceding Good Friday in order
to contain the commemoration of something like Jesus' the Last Supper and his
prayer on the Mount of Olives. The position of the Easter vigil within the his-
toricizing framework of the Holy Week suggests, therefore, that it is older than
its liturgical environment.
However, the mere fact that the Easter vigil is almost entirely not a com-
memorative service does not prove that its contents are older than its liturgical
context. Moreover, even Holy Week of fourth century Jerusalem is not a re-
enactment of the Gospels, but a much more sophisticated network of liturgies.
For not every mimetic element of later celebrations of Easter were already pre-
sent in the fourth century there. Thus, Egeria does not yet describe the
Eucharistie celebrations on Maundy Thursday as commemorative services in
their 'time and place' in Jerusalem.476 This shows that the liturgies of fourth
century Jerusalem also contained recent innovations that were not purely
commemorative. The set of meanings that the Easter vigil has can also be,
hence, an innovation without a tendency to historicize.
As shown above, discussions about the correspondences between the week
before the Pascha and the Passion narratives can be found prior to the fourth
century. Historicization of time is also one of the most important of the im-
plicit or explicit categories in the disputes about the correct date of the cele-
bration of the Pascha in the course of the solar year, although the structure of
the week before the celebration of the Pascha was discussed in the context of
the establishment of the proper times of fasting in this week and fasting does
not yet imply commemorative liturgies to be held at certain times.
The late antique Easter Vigil was soon bound to disappear. One of the rea-
sons for its demise as a nightly celebration was certainly its loose connection to
the historicizing understanding of Holy Week. The more each liturgy was per-
ceived as corresponding to an element of the Passion narratives, the less a
celebration like the lengthy Old Testament readings of the Easter vigil was un-
derstood as self-evident in its position within the week.477 Its character as a
true vigil was, therefore, not understood as one of its essential features.
476 Baldovin 1987, 87f.

477 It was entirely marginalized when it was celebrated on the morning of Holy Saturday
and its only connection to the concept of Holy Week, the discovery of the empty grave
on Sunday morning, was re-invented in the west by the expanding tradition of Quem
Quaeritis dialogues and Visitatio Sepulchri and Inventio Crucis vel Hostiae celebra-
tions. Being independent of the Easter vigil (that was celebrated on the Saturday af-
ternoon), the text of the Quem Quaeritis dialogue was a paraphrase of the Gospel that
296 Easter Sunday
The discussion of an additional aspect of the structure of the Easter vigil

must be postponed until chapter 5 below. The sequence of readings of the Old
Testament in the Easter vigil is said to provide a link to an alleged pre-rabbinic
Jewish understanding and celebration of Pesah. It is the purpose of the present
section to show that this presumption must be revised - from the perspective
of the Christian sources. This will be done in two sections comparing (4.7.1)
the Easter vigil with the Jerusalem 'service of the resurrection' and asking
(4.7.2) for antecedents of the structure and meaning of the Easter vigil. The last
section (4.7.3) proposes a description of the origins of the Old Testament read-
ings in the Easter vigil.
4.7.1 The 'Service of the Resurrection'
One of the most important parallels to the Easter vigil in the stational system
of the liturgies of Jerusalem in the fourth and the following centuries is the
'service of the resurrection'. The liturgy of Jerusalem in Egeria's time contains
nightly services preceding the matins of every day of the week. On Sundays,
these services contain a reading of 'the Lord's resurrection' by the bishop.478
From a remark describing the reaction of the people to that reading, it can be
inferred that the bishop used to read a whole or at least some parts of a pas-
sion narrative and not only one of the pericopes of the discovery of the empty
tomb.479 This 'service of the resurrection'480 was preceded by a less official and
probably began as an embellishment of the Easter Sunday introitus. It became highly

dramatized when it was detached from the mass and became a more independent
celebration, held, e.g., after the terce; cf. Berger 1976,145-156.
478 24.9-12 SC 296.242-246. Mateos 1961, paragraph p; cf. Zerfass commenting on this
structure: 'The morning service on Sundays is a highly enigmatic construction' 1968,
15.
479 Mateos 1961, 290 par. q: 24.10 SC 296.244 (referring to ch. 34 p. 278 where the same
reaction of the people is reported to the lesson of Judas negotiating the price for the
betrayal of the Lord): Quod cum coeperit legi, tantus rugitus et mugitus fit omnium
hominum et tantae lacrimae, ut quamvis durissimus possit moveri in lacrimis
Dominum pro nobis tanta sustinuisse. Mateos 1961, 291 emphasizes that this liturgy
did not break up the unity of passion and resurrection.
480 'Office de la resurrection' is explained by Mateos 1961, 291f. The bishop leaves the
church after this liturgy. This is a clear indication of the beginning of a new segment
of the liturgy. 'Gospel of the resurrection' was understood broadly in later Byzantine
and Armenian lists of readings; cf. Zerfass 1968; 118 n. 370,119 n. 372.
standardized gathering in front of the doors of the church of the Holy Sepul-
cher. T h e 'service of the resurrection' b e g a n 'at c o c k c r o w ' w i t h the opening of
the doors of the church and ended s o m e time before daybreak. A s on w e e k -
days, the m o n k s and s o m e lay m e n and w o m e n w e n t o n to recite 'psalms',
'antiphons', and 'prayers' after the 'service of the resurrection' until the
morning, 4 8 1 w h e n the matins began.
J u a n M a t e o s c o m p a r e s the 'service of the resurrection' w i t h the Byzantine
and A r m e n i a n services of the M y r o p h o r e s on Sundays. 4 8 2 This implies that the
J e r u s a l e m 'service of the resurrection' w a s held 'at the appropriate time and
place'. 4 8 3 It w a s a c o m m e m o r a t i o n of the discovery of the empty tomb
481 This is the only service that precedes the morning office on weekdays; Egeria 24.1f SC
296.234-236; cf. Zerfass 1968, 8-10.
482 Mateos 1961, 302f - accepted by Robert Taft 1986, 50. Zerfass 1968; 119-121, 156f Syr-
ian office. Mateos 1961, 292 interprets the burning of incense in the Anastasis as mi-
metic representation of the spices that were brought by the women (according to
Mark and Luke). On the basis of the index in Maraval and Diaz y Diaz 1982, 368, this
is the only instance where Egeria mentions the thiamataria. Is such a crudely repre-
sentational element to be expected in Egeria's time? Cf. Bradshaw 1981, 87 for a more
skeptical position. The time of the 'service of the resurrection' seems to presuppose
John's chronology according to which the women did not carry spices, whereas the
Synoptic chronology (where the women's walk to the tomb is even motivated by their
intention to embalm Jesus' body) would place the event in the early morning at dawn
- later than the 'service of the resurrection'. The original reason of the use of incense
should probably not be seen in a mimetic representation of a detail of the Gospels.
Later spectators could have interpreted it as such. Once the story of the women visit-
ing the grave was chosen, its mimetic dimensions could grow, both in the interpreta-
tion and the ritualization of details.
483 The assumption that the resurrection took place in the night from Saturday to Sunday
was also known to Syriac sources that preserved Quartodeciman elements; Rouwhorst
1989 1,184. The passages say that the recitation of hymns and antiphons (etc.) follows
after the 'service of the resurrection' ended (and the bishop retired to his rooms). It
continues until morning: Mox autem recipit se episcopus in domum suam, et iam ex
ilia hora revertuntur omnes monazontes ad Anastasim et psalmi dicuntur et
antiphonae usque ad lucem ... De laicis etiam ... si qui volunt, usque ad lucem loco
sunt, si qui nolunt, revertuntur in domos suas et reponent se dormito. Cum luce
autem, quia dominica dies est..., 24.12-25.1 SC 296.244. This implies that the 'service
of the resurrection' ends long before daybreak; cf. Zerfass 1968, 16-18; Egeria 27.2f SC
296.258 apparently presupposes ch. 24. Ch. 44.2 SC 296.304 corroborates 24 ... primum
leget de pullo primo episcopus evangelium ... et postmodum ymni seu antiphone
usque ad lucem dicuntur in Anastase. Mateos 1961, 296-302 interprets a passage in
the Apostolic Constitutions 2.59.2-A SC 320.324ff as reference to the same nightly 'ser-
298 Easter Sunday
culminating in the proclamation of the resurrection. In the search for a Biblical

m o d e l for that service, too neat a distinction b e t w e e n the resurrection and that
of the discovery of the e m p t y t o m b could not b e drawn. A s the resurrection is
not described in the Gospels, the narrative about the discovery of the e m p t y
t o m b is the logical choice for a reading during the stational system of Jerusa-
lem. W a s the w e e k l y 'service of the resurrection' an ancient echo of the yearly
celebration of the Pascha? This service could b e regarded as a survival within
the J e r u s a l e m celebration of the Sundays. T h e c o m m e m o r a t i o n of the passion
- to a lesser extent also the resurrection - w a s the content of the celebration of
the Pascha.
A l t h o u g h the Q u a r t o d e c i m a n P a s c h a m a y h a v e contained the c o m m e m o -
ration of the passion (and at s o m e time also the resurrection), it w a s not h e l d at
the time (within the day) or the day (within the w e e k ) of the discovery of the
e m p t y tomb. A t cockcrow - the time of the Gospel reading in Jerusalem -
s o m e Q u a r t o d e c i m a n s b e g a n their celebration of A g a p e (Eucharist). T h e 'ser-
vice of the resurrection' of Jerusalem did not comprise the celebration of a
vice of the resurrection'. Does this text imply a vigil? The Apostolic Constitutions
mention the commemoration of Christ's resurrection on Sundays: ό μή συνερχόμενος
έν τήδε τή ήμέρα άκοΰείν τοΰ σωτηρίου περί της αναστάσεως λόγου. It does not
connect it with a 'service of the resurrection'. The Apostolic Constitutions do not state
that a passion narrative is read on Sundays. The text only mentions God's acceptance
of the passion as an epithet: συνγχωρήσας παθείν. The Apostolic Constitutions in-
vert the sequence of the elements of the liturgy first mentioning the 'word of the res-
urrection' and then the three 'prayers'. Bradshaw 1981, 87 infers from this that the
'word of the resurrection' belongs 'to the eucharistic rite which follows and not to the
vigil itself'. Zerfass 1968, 44-46 follows Mateos's analysis of the Apostolic Constitu-
tions. He shows how the Apostolic Constitutions expanded the basic text of the
(Greek Vorlage of the) Syriac Didascalia (13 CSCO 407.148f that admonishes the read-
ers to take part in the Sunday Eucharist) by applying it to the office of hours. The key
expression is an expansion of (the Greek text behind) Imesma' melltä dhayye 13 CSCO
407.149.15 which does not refer to the resurrection. Zerfass's analysis shows that the
'service of the resurrection' is the product of a development between the Greek Vor-
lage of the Syriac Didascalia and the Apostolic Constitutions. If the Apostolic Con-
stitutions should at all refer to the Jerusalem 'service of the resurrection', it does not
suggest that such a liturgy existed before the late fourth century. It could have spread
to Antioch as an innovation from Jerusalem. This does not vitiate a Paschal character
of the Sunday in the ancient church. On the contrary, the Jerusalem 'service of the
resurrection' may be the local and thus most appropriate materialization of that very
Paschal character of the Sunday. Its liturgical details are, however, innovations.
Eucharist. There is no reason to assume that the 'service of the resurrection'

was dependent upon a form of the Quartodeciman Pascha.
The time and the weekday of the resurrection was important for adherents
to a non-Quartodeciman Pascha. Thus, Aphrahat presupposes this time as the
time of the resurrection. He supports this assumption by means of the com-
putation of the three days that Christ was among the dead. He does not em-
phasize the proclamation of the Gospel. For him, this time was that of the
Eucharist corresponding to the Last Supper, which was held exactly three full
days before Christ's resurrection on Easter morning.
Likewise, the 'service of the resurrection' cannot be shown to be dependent
upon the Jerusalem Easter vigil. Egeria's description of the reaction of the
people to the reading of 'the resurrection' in the 'service of the resurrection' is
not repeated in her description of the second reading of 'the resurrection' in
the Anastasis within the Easter vigil.484 The Easter vigil does not contain a
reading of the passion according to the Armenian Lectionary.485 This is aston-
ishing. If the allegedly all-encompassing theological contents of the Easter
vigil should be understood as a survival within Holy Week (and against the
constantly diversifying historicizing details of the latter), it needs to be ex-
plained why the Easter vigil left out a reading of the passion narrative that was
such a common element of all Sunday vigils and the topic of commemoration
(if not the reading) of very old forms of the (yearly) celebration of Easter.
484 38.2 SC 296.290. One might argue that it is not repeated, because it is presupposed
from the preceding general description of the Sunday vigil. This is, however, a case of
circular argumentation, because it presupposes that Egeria regarded the Easter vigil as
a special case of the more general Sunday vigils. Moreover, Egeria remarks that time
is pressing and that people want do be dismissed (sed totum ad momentum fit
propter populum, ne diutius tardetur, et sic iam dimittetur populus). A whole pas-
sion narrative was not likely read at this occasion. The scarcity of the time available
might rather be the consequence of the system of readings than vice versa. It seems
unlikely that the organizers of the Jerusalem liturgy would have abbreviated the Gos-
pel reading on the Easter morning because there was no time left, especially after they
seem to have read lengthy texts from the Old Testament throughout the night. See,
however, the following note.
485 Rexnoux 1971, 171/309. The Armenian Lectionary does not necessarily reflect the
liturgies of Egeria's time. Egeria herself does not state explicitly that a passion narra-
tive is read in the 'service of the resurrection' (nor does she say that it is not read in the
Easter vigil). Information of the Armenian Lectionary is often combined with Egeria's
travel account.
300 Easter Sunday
W h i l e it is unlikely that the 'service of the resurrection' w a s influenced b y

an old Paschal vigil, four observations help to understand its development.
First, Rolf Zerfass e m p h a s i z e s that the Jerusalem cycle of annual festivals only
h a d a marginal impact on the cathedral office of h o u r s in Egeria's time. Sec-
ond, it is evident that for Egeria the cathedral office is identical on S u n d a y s
and w e e k d a y s . Third, the structure of the vigils on S u n d a y s s h o w that the
elements of even the semi-official services preceding the m a t i n s are present on
Sundays, too. T h e 'service of the resurrection' is interpolated into t h e m and is
thus n o t part of the older office of hours. 4 8 6 Finally, the 'service of the resurrec-
tion' is held in its appropriate place and w a s apparently also understood as
being h e l d at its appropriate time. This supports the assumption that the 'ser-
vice of the resurrection' w a s an innovation of the stational liturgy of Jerusa-
lem. 4 8 7 Therefore, it does not reflect pre-Constantinian liturgies and it w a s
m o r e d e p e n d e n t u p o n the special situation in J e r u s a l e m than u p o n any yearly
celebration of Easter. 4 8 8
486 Cf. Bradshaw 1981, 85. As another proof for an interpolation, one may refer to
Zerfass's observation that the office of the hours never includes scriptural lessons.
Moreover, Zerfass 1968, 19 shows that the 'service of the resurrection' is not part of
the office of hours. By its very structure it is a local commemoration of Jerusalem.
While it may have influenced the liturgies of other churches, it was only secondarily
inserted into the system of the divine office on Sundays.
487 Thus, Bradshaw 1981, 86 suggests that the 'service of the resurrection' be 'an imitation
of the Paschal vigil in shortened form, originating in Jerusalem as a weekly com-
memoration of the resurrection in the very place in which it had happened' (as an al-
ternative to the assumption of a longer tradition in early Christianity). While a de-
pendence upon the Easter vigil cannot be ruled out entirely, the observations given
above suggest that it can be understood as an independent, Hagiopolite creation.
488 Baumstark's claim that the Syriac Didascalia Apostolorum contain a reference to the
reading of one of the accounts of the resurrection (or rather the discovery of the empty
tomb) can only be inferred from the remark that the Christians were waiting for
Christ's resurrection. Baumstark assumes that this conclusion could be drawn 'with
coercive necessity'; Baumstark 1957, 37f. He 1957, 35 refers to ch. 21 (CSCO 407.215.6-
14 section V recension A according to Rouwhorst 1989 II, 136) as proof for the reading
of the Gospel of the resurrection. The Syriac Didascalia Apostolorum mentions un-
specified 'prayers, intercessions, readings of the Prophets, the Gospel, and Psalms'
(slawwätä, bäVätä, qeryäne danblye, ewangelyön, mazmöre) in ch. 21 (CSCO 407.12f
section IV according to Rouwhorst 1989). This former section IV must not be con-
founded with section V from which Baumstark quoted the reference to Christ's
resurrection. According to Rouwhorst's observations, the different readings of the
manuscript traditions and the comparisons of those readings with the rest of the
Another aspect of the 'service of the resurrection' also points to other ori-
gins than the imitation of an Easter vigil. As Taft notes,489 the Egyptian and
Cappadocian vigils, that begin at cockcrow or at midnight respectively, 'have
their origins in private prayer'. The oldest form of the Easter vigil, the Quar-
todeciman celebration, began in the evening parallel to the Jewish celebration
of Pesah. It reached its climax and turning point at some time during the night
(in some places perhaps at cockcrow). A service that would be structurally
dependent upon the Easter vigil in general should be expected to begin much
earlier in the night. Furthermore, monastic and individual customs may differ
from the official cathedral form of daily prayer.
The Easter vigil began to be celebrated earlier and earlier on Holy Satur-
day. This may indicate that it was less associated with the morning of Easter
Sunday than with the evening preceding it.490 The Easter vigil and the 'service
of the resurrection' share the reading of a topic from the Gospels that exploited
the circumstances of Jerusalem and the mimetic power of historicized time.
This is, however, the result of a recent convergence of two rituals that have
different roots.
4.7.2 The Easter Vigil and the Quartodeciman Pascha
Being different from - and genetically unrelated to - the regular Sunday vigils
('services of the resurrection'), the Easter vigil also does not correspond to the
commemorative services of the rest of Holy Week. Its structure and contents
are consistent, however, with another vigil on the evening before a festival -
chapter indicate that the remark about the 'vigil' of the 'waiting and hope' for Christ's
resurrection belongs to the youngest layer of this text; Rouwhorst 1989 I, 178f. There
is no reason to assume that it antedates the fourth century. This text is no argument
for a liturgical Gospel reading about the resurrection prior to the fourth century.
489 Taft 1986, 166f. Cf. also Taft's reference to 'a pre-Eucharistic vigil' that was 'kept be-
fore Sunday Eucharist by both monks and laity in much of the ancient world' 1986;
167, cf. 189 as generally pre-Eucharistic celebrations. Should this be connected with
the Jerusalem 'service of the resurrection'? The distinction between monastic and ca-
thedral services is useful in this case, because it allows to separate elements pertaining
to each of the categories within the Jerusalem liturgy and to assume that the important
elements of the 'service of the resurrection' belong the cathedral office of Jerusalem.
490 This is indicated by Jerome's exhortation of the ministers not to dismiss the people
before midnight. The text is discussed below, p. 395.
302 Easter Sunday
the vigil before Epiphany.491 Not Holy Week, but the festive vigil could, there-
fore, be the paradigm for the long nightly celebration of Easter. While this
does not rule out that the vigil of Epiphany was modeled upon the Easter vigil,
it shows that the latter was a structure that was independent enough from
Easter Sunday in order to be doubled and to receive the function of introduc-
ing another festival.
In the Armenian Lectionary,492 the readings in the vigil of Epiphany begin
with Gen 1-3.20, include Exod 14 and lead to Dan 3493 via a sequence of lessons
especially from Isaiah. It includes (such as the Easter vigil contains the com-
memoration of the discovery of the empty tomb) the reading of the Gospel of
Matthew 2.1-12 as the appropriate piece of commemoration of the day.
Zerfass shows that from the Armenian Lectionary on, the Jerusalem liturgy
tends to combine the older cathedral office (that is not connected with the
commemoration of the day and that does not include readings from Scripture)
with the topic of the day and the place that would have been celebrated in
separate services with a different structure earlier. The vigils of Easter and
Epiphany fit into this system.494 They contain a set of lessons some of which
are connected with the day (in a broader sense than a piece of the Gospel that
is read in the time and at the place of the events described). They culminate in
a Gospel reading that corresponds to the appropriate time and place. As Exod
14 (in the Georgian Lectionary even Exod 12495) is read on Epiphany, it cannot
be regarded as exclusively typical for Easter. Exod 14 may be read, because it
represents an important step in a concept of the Biblical history in general.496
Even if the vigil of Epiphany simply imitated the Easter vigil, this is only pos-
sible if the themes of the Easter vigil are not regarded as exclusively character-
istic of Easter. They are, therefore, applicable to another vigil.
491 Baumstark 1957, 61f; Zerfass 1968,102.

492 Renoux 1971, 72/210-77/215.
493 Cf. Kulczak-Rudiger, Terbuyken, Perkams, and Brakmann 2001. The text was inter-
preted in the context of Christ's resurrection very early (Hippolytus). From the 4th
cent, on, it was recited in morning services in different rites. There are several reasons
why a 4th cent, bishop would include Dan 3 in a sequence of lessons within the Easter
vigil.
494 Zerfass 1968, conclusion on the 'Festoffizium': 104ff.
495 No. 724 tr. Tarchnischvili HOf.
496 The historicizing potential of God's decisive looking down on the scene at the time of
the morning watch in Exod 14.24 was apparently not exploited in the Easter liturgy.
A s the closest parallel, the vigil of E p i p h a n y is not the only service that re-
sembles the Easter vigil. Zerfass observes that the daily office (matins and ves-
pers) w a s originally free of Scriptural readings. H o w e v e r , he also discusses
reading offices of Lent 4 9 7 w h i c h contain O l d T e s t a m e n t lessons that w e r e fol-
lowed b y P s a l m s and could b e concluded b y a Gospel pericope. 4 9 8 T h e y w e r e
conducted in order that 'the people should learn the law' 4 9 9 and w e r e h e n c e not
associated w i t h a special time or place. T h e vigils of Easter and E p i p h a n y par-
ticipate in this 'genre', too, while s o m e of their features are also c o m m e m o r a -
tions of the d a y and thus governed b y the 'genre' of the c o m m e m o r a t i v e
('kerygmatic') services. In the context of the (lack of) c o m m e m o r a t i o n s of
saints in the old divine office, Zerfass describes the character of those ser-
vices: 5 0 0
It is evident, that this supported the 'spirituality' of the divine office of hours
which could be devoted in its festal scheme to the broad anamnesis of salvation far
from any impact of the soon overwhelming diversity of commemorations of saints.
Thus it could retain its own basic intention as praise of God turned towards the
middle and origin of the total of salvation history.
497 'Fastenlesegottesdienste': Zerfass 1968, 62; in more detail and supported by Baum-
stark's observations: Zerfass 1968,127-142.
498 Zerfass 1968, 62. The readings of the Easter vigil are (of course) not entirely independ-
ent from the festive occasion.
499 Egeria 27.6 SC 296.262 Egeria does not refer to lessons here. In the description of the
vigils between Fridays and Saturdays in the season of lent, she mentions 27.8 SC
296.262 'lectiones diversae'. They were obviously not related to time or place.
500 Paraphrase of 'Daß dies der "Spiritualität" des Offiziums zugute kam, liegt auf der
Hand; unbelastet von der alsbald erdrückenden Mannigfaltigkeit der Heiligenge-
dächtnisse konnte es sich in seinem Festschema der großen heilsgeschichtlichen
Anamnese überlassen und so seine eigene latreutische Grundintention ungebrochen
der Mitte und dem Ursprung aller Heilsgeschichte zugewandt halten' Zerfass 1968,
104. Zerfass's analysis of eastern rites that preserved ferial services of the divine office
without readings might require further specifications. He remarks that the hymnody
marginalized even the recitation of Psalms, 109. As Christian hymnody began in the
fourth century but developed essentially after it, the expanded use of hymns may
have (re-) marginalized the readings and created situations that are similar but geneti-
cally unrelated to the earlier forms without scriptural readings. 'Rätselhaft ist freilich,
warum die im altarmenischen Lektionar von Jerusalem nach Armenien verpflanzte
Offiziumslesung untergegangen ist' 111 n. 343.
304 Easter Sunday
This applies mutatis mutandis also to the vigils of Easter Sunday and Epiph-
any. They combine a lot of the 'spirituality of the divine office' with some
elements pertaining to the commemoration of the day.
Furthermore, Robert Taft suggests that the length of the vigils was also de-
termined by the administration of baptism, in order to 'occupy the people
while the bishop was baptizing in the baptistery'.501 This influence would not
have been operative before the fourth century, because Paul Bradshaw (1993)
has shown that Paschal baptism must not be assumed to have been the stan-
dard in many churches and hardly preceded the fourth century. The length of
the readings was thus not only the result of the drive to represent as many as-
pects as possible of a concept of 'history of salvation', but also of the need to
spend an increasingly longer period of time with an edifying activity. As soon
as the number of catechumens declined, both the length and the time of the
Easter vigil became more flexible again.
It may still be maintained that the vigil of Epiphany originated as an imi-
tation of the Easter vigil. Easter comprised a nightly celebration long before
the fourth century. Nevertheless, no antecedents of the structure of the Easter
vigil as it emerges in 5th century Jerusalem are attested.502 It certainly did not
require much time after the institution of the Easter vigil to emulate it within
the same liturgical system. Thus, the Easter vigil may be an innovation of the
fourth century and the model for similar customs at the same time.
Aphrahat knows a short vigil and a Eucharist in the night between Holy
Saturday and Easter Sunday. In his brief resume about its contents, he men-
tions 'fasting in purity, continuous prayer, eager praise, the sound of Psalms as
it is fitting, giving the sign, and baptism as it should (be done), the holy bless-
ings at their (appropriate) time, and fulfilling all the elements of the estab-
lished custom'. 503 It is striking that Aphrahat does not mention readings of the
Old Testament in the Easter vigil. Thus, the basic outline is known. Never-
theless, not long before the middle of the fourth century, certainly after Nicea,
clearly representing a non-Quartodeciman liturgy, and within a dispute about
the proper celebration of Easter, an author does not yet describe what one
would expect to be the precursor of the fifth century Easter vigil.
501 Taft 1986,189 item 8.

502 Baumstark's 1957, 35-61 study indirectly supports the observation that antecedents of
the Jerusalem liturgy of the Easter Vigil are lacking.
503 Aphrahat, Demonstratio 12.13 Parisot 537.10-15, Rouwhorst 1989 1,152-154.
Noting that the priests in H e r o d ' s T e m p l e w o u l d not c o n d u c t nightly ser-

vices, 5 0 4 A n t o n B a u m s t a r k sees the origins and m o d e l s of the Christian celebra-
tion of Easter in p a g a n rites. The vigil as such w a s not Christianity's invention.
Furthermore, the Q u a r t o d e c i m a n celebration of Pascha e m e r g e d within its
culture. H o w e v e r , s o m e structural parallels b e t w e e n these p a g a n celebrations
and the Christian Easter do not in themselves prove that the latter w a s created
b y giving a Christian m e a n i n g to s o m e selected features from a p a g a n struc-
ture. 5 0 5
A s s h o w n above, there is no indication that the liturgical f o r m or theologi-
cal contents of the Q u a r t o d e c i m a n Pascha continued a f o r m of the Jewish
P e s a h as it is built structurally against a celebration of the P e s a h that lasts s o m e
time into the night. T h e Q u a r t o d e c i m a n s ' liturgies require fasting, praying,
and m o u r n i n g 'for' the Jews. Therefore, their relationship to the J e w i s h Pe-
sah is characterized b y t w o elements that are of p a r a m o u n t importance for the
Easter vigil in Jerusalem: first, an opposition - f r o m an outsiders' perspective -
against the J e w i s h celebration (which implies that the Q u a r t o d e c i m a n Pascha
504 While he is basically right, Baumstark 1957, 21 does not discuss the impressive nightly
celebrations in the Temple at Sukkot (Simhat bet ha-Shoava).
505 Baumstark 1957, 28f. Some 'parallels' between the Roman Hilaria on March 25 and
ideas connected with Easter do not prove that the Hilaria were the models of the Jeru-
salem Easter vigil in the fourth century. The reference to the mystic cult that Firmicus
Maternus (first half of the 4lh cent.; De errore profanarum religionum '23' = no. 22.1
Pastorino 222-224) describes is important on a phenomenological level. Thus, one
should assess the importance and elementary structures of the use of light in these lit-
urgies - and many others, cf. Gage 1966. It is much more difficult to refer to details
and prove actual influences. The similarities between Christian and pagan celebra-
tions that challenged apologists in Antiquity may be taken as a guideline. However,
the liturgical elements under discussion in the present context can probably be ex-
plained without recourse to pagan rites. Better than Baumstark's reference to pagan
customs, the Quartodeciman Pascha explains both features of the Christian celebra-
tion, the vigil and the element of fasting. Thus, Baumstark does not discuss the iden-
tity of 'those who have sinned' in the texts that he quotes from the Didascalia Apos-
tolorum. As Rouwhorst shows, this refers unequivocally to the Jews 1989 I; 167-171,
176 for the passage quoted by Baumstark. Baumstark's theory misses the point of the
text by hair's breadth. The oldest Christian Pascha was held as an anti-Jewish cele-
bration and not as a Christianized pagan pannychis. His claim of pagan models for
the vigil is however not far-fetched. The Syriac Didascalia Apostolorum forbids, for
example, Christians to utter pagan songs and the names of deities on festivals exactly
in the context of ch. 21 (esp. CSCO 407.203.17-204.2 Rouwhorst 1989 I, 164 discussion)
- a text that is transmitted close to the discussion of the Christian Pascha.
306 Easter Sunday
is not a caricature of the minutiae of Jewish theology); second, a lack of the-

matic details that was, however, soon filled with very specific texts and con-
tents for commemoration (Exodus 12 and the Passion).
What can be seen as the Quartodeciman vigils shows that the fourth-cen-
tury celebration of the Easter vigil was the result of a more sophisticated de-
velopment rather than a simple transposition of 'the Paschal vigil' from the 14th
of Nisan to the night between Holy Saturday and Easter Sunday. In addition,
it was not evident that the Quartodeciman vigil must last until dawn. From its
origins, it may be assumed that it lasted longer than a Jewish banquet in the
evening. Several reasons - like the long administration of baptism or the wish
to read the Gospel of the resurrection at its appropriate time at cockcrow or
close to the morning - but not the 'heritage' of a Tosefta-type Pesah made the
Easter vigil of Jerusalem a night-long celebration.
The Quartodeciman Pascha was not devised as a transposition of the Gos-
pel narratives into liturgical time and ritual. At its origins, it is not histori-
cizing. Easter probably only survived in Christianity because it entered that
process of dialogue with tradition that may be described as 'historicization'
and thereby became more and more independent from its anti-Jewish roots.
Independence from Judaism - such as the creation of a Christian way to cal-
culate the date of Easter - was of paramount importance for theologians in late
Antiquity. Historicization prevailed. The Pascha was expanded into a histori-
cizing celebration of a whole week, which ended within the night before Easter
Sunday. Does the Easter vigil represent a faint echo of the Quartodeciman
celebration of two phases? It is true that its ending in a festive celebration of
Christ's resurrection could at first glance be understood as a reflection of the
Quartodeciman joyous, second phase. However, the Easter vigil lacks a
mournful first part.506 The reading of Old Testament lessons and the baptisms
506 Brakmann (expert's opinion) interprets the genuflexions that accompany the prayers
between the lessons as a vestige of that phase. The genuflexions are taken up again in
the context of the ending of the 50 days of Easter; Renoux 1971, 343. No genuflexions
are recorded for the vigil of epiphany. A genuflexion is also mentioned as part of the
service in the night preceding Good Friday; Renoux 271, likewise (also implicit) in 285,
287, 289 ms. P, 293 ms. J. While the Armenian Lectionary apparently ritualizes the
prohibition to kneel during the 50 days of Easter, genuflexions may have been part of
a larger liturgical repertoire. They do not necessarily signal to the congregation that
there be a difference between the Easter vigil and liturgies of Good Friday or that the
sequence of OT readings of the Easter vigil should have a different status or history
than other sequences of lessons.
that were administered simultaneously by the bishop (and his entourage) in

Jerusalem can be understood as a 'mournful' event.507 The ending in the
celebration of the resurrection in the morning because of the mimetic liturgy of
the women's visit of the empty tomb is a feature of the liturgy of Jerusalem
and not of the Quartodeciman Pascha. Only the fasting prior to the morning
Eucharist may be interpreted as a remnant of the Quartodeciman Pascha.
A highly illuminating aspect of the Easter vigil has already been hinted at
above: it does not contain the reading of a Passion narrative, despite of the fact
that the 'service of the resurrection' of Jerusalem apparently contained such a
reading every Sunday morning.508 One could argue that the missing Passion
narrative be a survival from ancient times (like Melito's), when Exod 12 was
read and considered the scriptural center of the celebration. The Easter vigil
contains, however, a piece of the passion narrative - its ending with the dis-
covery of the empty tomb, which fits to the time and the place in Jerusalem.
The part of that narrative that was evoked the people's response of grief every
Sunday was not present in the Easter vigil.509
Furthermore, the structure if the Easter vigil also fits perfectly into the
system of the Jerusalem liturgy. This requires a brief digression into traces of
the liturgies of the third century. In its present shape, Pseudo-Hippolytus'
homily is designed to be delivered in the early morning. It begins with: 'the
507 Thus, Asterius' homily 11.1 and 4 Kinzig 2002, 224f Richard 75.14f. '(The church) was
mourning over the suffering one. May (the church) be joyful about the risen one!'
First, the church is mourning for Jesus, not 'for' the Jews. Second, this rather applies
to the passion on Good Friday than to the Easter vigil. In 11.4, Asterius changes to a
more pathetic style in his speech and praises the Easter vigil: Ό night, brighter than a
day, ... clearer than torches': λαμπάδων διαυγεστέρα, Lampe 362 gives a passage of a
homily by Basil as an example for διαυγής, which implies that the soul is made 'clear'
by means of fasting. This is, however, hardly Asterius' association here. For he con-
tinues: ώ νύξ παραδείσου τερπνότερα - 'more pleasant than Paradise'. As Asterius
preaches in the time (not the place) which precedes the state of affairs that is reflected
in the Armenian lectionary, he may be taken as an example for the Christians' appre-
ciation of the Easter vigil, saying 'νΰξ' - not the 'morning' of Easter Sunday. Based on
the general assumption of a much earlier date of the whole collection, Auf der Maur
1967, 16 interpreted homily 15.1 Richard 108.3 χθες ('yesterday') as reference to the
first, sad part of the vigil. This is not necessary. The early 5th cent. Asterius does not
know a mournful phase of the Easter vigil.
508 As the Quartodeciman Pascha concentrates on the explanation of Exod 12 and because
this text is also among the readings of the Easter vigil, a discussion of this (only
seeming) 'parallel' must be postponed for a moment.
509 See p. 296 and n. 479.
308 Easter Sunday
holy rays of the light of Christ are already shining' (1.1 Visonä 230). As soon
as the Easter vigil was celebrated in the night before Easter Sunday, its ending
in the morning could be exploited by preachers. Thus, one would speak about
the difference between artificial and natural light and associate the time of the
resurrection in the morning with the rising of the sun. On the basis of Pseudo-
Hippolytus' homily, one may suggest two reasons why some sources attest that
the Easter vigil ended in the early morning instead of some time during the
night like the Quartodeciman Pascha. On the basis of Andrew McGowan's
and Paul Bradshaw's observations,510 it appears that Sunday mornings first
had a special significance for especially large early third century communities
which would gather for some kind of service and receive the element(s) of a
Eucharistie celebration (on the evening) before. Later in third century North
Africa (Cyprian), the offering of the bread and wine that should be distributed
to the people was performed in the morning celebrations themselves. Thus,
Pseudo-Hippolytus' might have wished to connect the celebration of the Easter
vigil with an already existing custom to meet on Sunday mornings. If this is
the reason why some511 fourth century celebrations of the Easter vigil end in
the morning, they must be survivals from the third century, while the sur-
rounding liturgies had changed drastically. Within the system of the Jerusa-
lem liturgies, the end of the vigil had a natural position in celebrating the res-
urrection 'at the fitting day and place'. Its existence does not require an earlier
Sunday morning celebration as an antecedent, although several factors can
have been operative in the process of the shaping of the Easter vigil. Impor-
tant among them were the special situation of liturgies in Jerusalem, which
supported its ending in the morning, and attempts to find a Biblical precedent
for the determination of the moment when to break the fast. The time when
the fast was to be broken could not be supported by unambiguous Biblical
proof-texts. It could thus lead to the establishment of different scriptural, li-
turgical, and ascetic divisions of the night.512
Preceding the fourth-century Jerusalem liturgy, the vigil was a night of

commemoration of Christ's passion. In the Jerusalem system, it was deprived
of that commemoration which was spread over many events that made up the
characteristic elements of Holy Week. Out of the topics of the passion narra-
510 See n. 46 p. 138.

511 Cf. Jerome's invectives against an early end of the Easter vigil, p. 416. 'Dismissing the
people' before midnight obviously meant not only that they would break the fast then,
but also that they would not take part in a continuing vigil until the morning.
512 See p. 273-279 for Dionysius and 416-^20 for Jerome.
tives, the Easter vigil only 'kept' what it acquired after its transformation from
the Quartodeciman Pascha to the Dominical Easter: the account of the discov-
ery of the empty grave in the morning of Easter Sunday. In the historicizing
system of Holy Week, the Easter vigil was, therefore, devoid of meaning. The
Gospels only remark that the women cannot visit the grave (cf. Luke 23.56)
and must wait until the Sabbath. Matthew has the grave guarded by Roman
soldiers who miss the only relevant event of the night: the angels' descent and
opening of the tomb. Thus, there was nothing to be 'commemorated'.
The Easter vigil is, however, full of meanings, contents, readings, and
songs at the beginning of the fifth century. They were not derived from the
accounts of Christ's passion and do not belong to the topics of the Quarto-
deciman Pascha (except for Exod 12). They are also not designed to create an
atmosphere of mourning. Where did these readings come from?
It has been suggested that the kernel of these readings should continue a
Jewish tradition. If this should be true, the Easter vigil would contain a re-
markable survival of an ancient pre-Christian tradition.513 That allegedly 'Jew-
ish' tradition is not, however, verifiable in the extant data. The synagogue
readings developed out of the Mishna pericope on the festival readings which
were taken from Lev 23. This exact text is not, however, read in the Easter
vigil. Furthermore, it is presumably read in the tannaitic system, because the
commemoration of the laws that governed the festivals at the Temple allows
the post-destruction celebration to participate in the dignity of the festival of
its pre-destruction - or rather a 'post-rebuilding' - setting. As Christians were
only marginally in contact with rabbinic Judaism before the Middle Ages and
had already developed other theological constructions to express the dignity of
Easter, a lesson that 'commemorated' the laws of the Temple was not included
in the Easter vigil.
Parts of the imagery of the Old Testament cult were already used for the
elucidation of Christian liturgies. This did not lead to the readings about the
Old Testament Pesah. One reason for this is that the Easter vigil could hardly
have been seen as the theological (or historical) successor of any Pesah. In
Egeria's time, not even the evening preceding Good Friday was regarded as
such. In the older Christian tradition, Easter was likewise not understood as
the Christian replacement for a Jewish celebration according to Exod 12. The
latter was a key element of the understanding of Christ's death. This was,
however, commemorated on Good Friday and not in the Easter vigil of the 5th
513 Cf. Talley 1991, 49ff.

310 Easter Sunday
century. The Tosefta and the Babylonian Talmud expand the readings but do
not suggest the lessons of the Easter vigil according to the Armenian Lection-
ary. The readings that emerged in what became normative Judaism in the
high Middle Ages and its precursors in Antiquity did not influence the Easter
vigil (and were also not influenced by it).514
This is what should be expected. The system of readings in the Easter vigil
is a purely Christian invention of the late fourth and early fifth centuries. It is
not even anti-Jewish, not to mention a remnant of a Jewish liturgy. The crea-
tion of Holy Week, which absorbed whatever could be meditated during a
one-night celebration of Easter, set free the commemorative time of the night
preceding the morning of Easter Sunday. Now, Christians had the opportu-
nity to forego this time and leave it to some enthusiasts and monks to fill it
with fasting and private prayers. This would not, however, work any longer
in Jerusalem in the fourth century, where the intensive celebration of Holy
Week was drawn towards its climax in the morning of Easter Sunday. With
baptisms to be administered and pilgrims to be entertained, the cathedral sys-
tem could not ignore this night.
Thus, the Easter vigil that was bereft of any contents (viz. the Passion nar-
ratives) was filled anew with fresh contents (Old Testament texts). As there
was no honorable tradition on which the bishops who created the system of
readings could base their innovative measures, different associations and ideas
regarding the choice of readings can be reconstructed. While some musical
considerations may have played a part in the choices,515 other readings reflect
wild associations516 or deep, but very general theological observations517. One
514 In the wake of Roger Le Deaut's study on what he calls 'the poem of the four nights'
in targum Neofiti to Exod 12.42, it became customary to assume that the first readings
of the Easter vigil according to the Armenian Lectionary were an echo of the ancient
Jewish understanding (and apparently also liturgy) of Pesah. As the next chapter will
discuss this passage in the targum, it can be ignored for the moment.
515 I am grateful to Peter Jeffery for his suggestion that the OT texts which contained
cantica could have been especially welcome for such an occasion, because they were
most naturally connected with a song that had otherwise to be chosen from other cor-
pora for the other texts of the vigil. Ending the vigil with a reading from Daniel 3 may
rather have musical than theological reasons. This is an important correction for the
assumption that Dan 3 should have been chosen to represent something like an 'es-
chatological' ending of the vigil, cf. n. 493 p. 302. Exod 14f also suggests itself in this
context.
516 Jonah's emergence from the fish after three days and the NT reference to him as well as
the Elijah's ascension and the three day search for his body that was conducted after
may also discern a crude idea of Biblical history in the sequence of the read-
ings.
This does not imply that Gen 1 was read in order to represent the begin-
ning of a representation of 'salvation history', a concept of a Biblical canon, or
Easter as a celebration of an 'idea' of 'creation'. Most of the readings of the
Easter vigil do not introduce n e w ideas into the celebration of Easter, but
rather interpret Easter from a Biblical point of view or adduce a 'parallel' to
one of its aspects. Thus, Exod 12 and 14f can be regarded as (still) important
texts for Easter. In the same way, Gen 22 interprets the passion as well as the
resurrection. Easter did not suddenly become the day of the 'commemoration'
of Abraham's offering, but Abraham's offering is a worthy w a y to illuminate
the mystery of Christ's death and resurrection. Ezek 37, Jonah, and Elijah's
ascension 5 1 8 show an interest in the resurrection.
If Gen 1 would have been read, in order to 'commemorate' the creation of
the world or in order to initiate a broad survey over the whole of Biblical his-
tory, one should wonder w h y it ends with Gen 3.24 (LXX tr. Brenton): ' A n d he
cast out A d a m and caused h i m to dwell over against the garden of Delight,
and stationed the cherubs and the fiery sword that turns about to keep the w a y
of the tree of life.' This reading that ends with the expulsion from Paradise
and the exclusion of mankind from the 'tree of life' is not centered upon the
creation but upon the day of the resurrection.
The Armenian lectionary is interested in the theological bridge between
the first and the second ' A d a m ' . It answers the question of w h y Christ had to
come at all and what is the position of the day of the resurrection within the
Biblical mythology. Thus, Asterius 5 1 9 describes the fall of Adam, w h o was
his ascension were possibly chosen for the Easter vigil because of superficial associa-
tions to details of the passion and resurrection. The Binding of Isaac also takes place
after the third day of the journey of Abraham's caravan, v. 4. If Elijah's ascension is
read again in another vigil, this points to a borrowing from Easter. Was Job 38.2-28
chosen because of v. 17?
517 Gen 22 is not important for the old concept of Easter Sunday. Pseudo-Hippolytus
does not expound it. In the 4th cent., it acquired a high dignity among the (Biblical)
typologies for Christ; cf. Lerch 1950, who discusses only a few fragments (Melito) that
precede Origen's interpretation of Gen 22.
518 See n. 211 p. 191.
519 Asterius hom. 22.1 Richard 172f cf. Kinzig 2002, 247f n. 11; cf. hom. 29.16 Richard 236
(about the 'night' in Ps 19.3), mentioning the 'fiery sword' of Gen 3.24 and jumping to
Dan 3.24f in hom. 29.17 236. Asterius hom. 31.3 Richard 243 is ambiguous in this re-
spect, as Adam's expulsion from Paradise (not his sin, as it would be expected) is
312 Easter Sunday
created on the sixth day, sinned at noon, spent the Sabbath in laziness, and 'cut
himself away' 5 2 0 f r o m Paradise o n the eighth day. H e observes that A d a m ' s
creator was, therefore, crucified on the sixth day, rested o n the seventh in the
grave, and 'raised the sons (viz. children) of the dead A d a m (from the dead)
on the eighth (day) m a k i n g t h e m sons of the resurrection'. T h e expulsion from
Paradise is read at its theologically and historically 'appropriate time' in the
Easter vigil. 5 2 1
This topic has b e e n connected w i t h its theology m u c h earlier - in contrast
to the idea of 'creation', w h i c h w a s irrelevant. It is true that Melito mentions
the creation in a participial clause (47/311). 5 2 2 H o w e v e r , h e goes on to describe
in several paragraphs the b r o k e n state of h u m a n i t y b e c a u s e of A d a m ' s sin con-
compared to Christ's death on the cross in a homily on Good Friday. The subsequent
paragraphs suggest by the enumeration of other precedents that are not associated
with a Friday that the passage does not strictly imply that Adam and Eve left Paradise
on Friday.
520 Lit. 'was circumcised' - because boys must be circumcised on the 8th day. A similar
anti-Jewish point is made about Adam's spending the Sabbath 'in a bad way', namely
not doing anything any more - also not keeping God's commandment. Asterius can-
not imagine the Sabbath as something positive. Furthermore, it may be an ironic fea-
ture of the text that Adam becomes a Jew (keeping the Sabbath and circumcision) by
means of the transgression of God's commandment.
521 Rabbinic sources differ in their assessment of the day on which Adam and Eve left
Paradise. bSanh 38b (also ARN.B 42 Schechter 116 that emphasizes that Adam was
created and driven out of Paradise on the same day) describes for each hour of the
sixth day what happened. Adam 'transgressed in the 10th, was judged in the 11th, and
was driven out in the 12th hour' - before the beginning of the first Sabbath; similarly
PRE 19 Maagarim. BerR 11.1 TA 88 (cf. 21.5 TA 201) gives this opinion as R. Assi's but
adds that the majority thinks that Adam spent the night and the Sabbath in Paradise
and was only deprived of his glory and driven out in the evening after the Sabbath
(based on Job 14.20). This does not suggest any contact between Asterius and the rab-
bis (who did not need a decision about one of the alternatives). Asterius derives his
dating, first, from the liturgy that is a given fact and must be interpreted, and second,
from the number 'eighf in the heading of Ps 12. Buchinger 1996, 286 remarks that the
Psalm heading containing the reference to 'eighf was connected with the idea of the
resurrection already early in the 3rd cent.
522 Cohick 2000, 80. 114f; cf. Visonä 1988, 52. For Ps.-Hippolytus, the ideas of Passion,
Exod 12, and redemption are interconnected - not the topic of resurrection. The latter
combination is more obvious for Asterius, for whom Easter Sunday is already the
celebration of the resurrection. This is not expressed in this emphasis by the Arme-
nian Lectionary that also suggests Exod 12. Resurrection does not play any role in
Origen's paschal theology; Buchinger 2005, 779ff.
eluding: 'This, then, is the reason why the mystery of the Pascha has been ful-
filled in the body of the Lord' (56/396f). In a similar way, Pseudo-Hippolytus
emphasizes that Christ reverses Adam's and Eve's sin in his passion and res-
urrection (50 Visona 298; 53 Visona 304).523 There is no reason to assume that
Gen X.Y-3.24 was actually read in the earlier celebrations of the Christian Pas-
cha, and those also do not interpret the Sunday in this way. Unlike the latter
readings (such as Jonah and the ascension of Elijah), Gen 1-3 ritualizes an old
piece of Paschal theology in the Easter vigil of Jerusalem.
The 'eighth' and not the first day of creation is, therefore, the reason why
Gen 1-3 was read in Jerusalem. The concept is based on a Christian invention
of the later second century. It came to be expressed by means of a liturgical
reading in the fourth century. Its later abbreviation to the account of the crea-
tion of the world in Gen 1 cut away its essential part after the fifth century.
The need for short lessons made Easter a festival of 'the creation of the world'
in the Middle Ages.
4.7.3 Conclusions
The Easter vigil in Jerusalem seems to be largely independent of the 'service of

the resurrection' that was held on each Sunday morning. This suggests that
the Easter vigil may in general be a survival from the past even if some of its
features came to resemble that celebration.
The Quartodeciman Pascha began with very little theological content but
with a certain idea about its structure that was negatively dependent upon the
celebration of a (Jewish) banquet (for Pesah). It soon acquired the function of
commemorating Christ's passion (probably not excluding the resurrection)
and Exod 12 as a scriptural basis for the discussion of the former. It ceded its
themes and meaning first to Good Friday and eventually to Holy Week. As
the surrounding liturgical system of the stational liturgy in Jerusalem favored
lengthy services and vigils, and certainly also because the Paschal vigil had
acquired the dignity of an old custom, it remained visible in the system. How-
523 Such as Eve brought the sin into the world, the women are the first ones who see him
risen from the dead, 59 Visona 1988, 312. This theological structure is also the reason
why the Easter vigil was so easily applicable to Epiphany. Ps.-Hipplolytus begins af-
ter his exposition of the Pesah of Exod 12 the description of the drama of salvation
with a long paragraph on incarnation; 45^18 Visona 286-298, 61 Visona 314; cf. Melito
100/748-752.
314 Easter Sunday
ever, it had to be 'replenished' with new material that would not repeat those
topics that had already been celebrated 'at the appropriate places and times'
during the past week. Within that system, only the discovery of the empty
tomb was 'naturally' situated at the end of the Easter vigil. When the vigil was
thus re-structured by Biblical readings (and songs), the persons who created
the sequence of readings proceeded from associations to this 'end' of the vigil
as well as other theological topics. Gen 1-3 was probably chosen, because it
ended with the fall of the human beings and their expulsion from Paradise - a
situation that was healed in Christ's (passion and) resurrection. Despite its
having been invented for the Easter vigil, this reading was on the one hand
'general' enough and on the other hand very well suited to the topic of incar-
nation to be also applicable to the vigil of Epiphany.
If the resulting structure of the Easter vigil may at all be interpreted as
containing a broader vision of 'salvation history', this is at best an accidental
by-product of the consequent historicization of the Pascha. It is not its prede-
cessor. The still widespread understanding of Holy Week as consisting of a
sequence of historicizing celebrations in which an ancient Easter vigil survived
more or less unchanged has been seriously undermined by several studies. It
is clear that the Easter vigil is much less outstanding from its liturgical context
in fourth and fifth century Jerusalem than might be the case in celebrations
today. Furthermore, the presumption that the Old Testament readings of the
Easter vigil continue in a core of its passages and by its overall understanding
a pre-Christian (and non-rabbinic) Jewish tradition is not corroborated by the
extant sources.
4.8 Easter Sunday
The celebration of the Christian Sunday (or the regular celebration of the
Eucharist on Sundays) did not emerge before the second century. Eusebius is
the first one to mention the idea that the Sunday be a weekly Easter Sunday.
This corresponds to the early data about the emergence of the Sunday that
precedes the emergence of Easter Sunday. Regarding its contents, the celebra-
tion of the Sunday is legitimized with several motifs in the early texts. Being
the day of Christ's resurrection is one among others.
The emergence of the Sunday and of Easter Sunday is likewise not de-
pendent upon the Second Temple ritual (and later Jewish customs) of the
Omer. Paul's metaphorical use of the concept of firstfruits is not based on the
Easter Sunday 315
imagery of the Omer, but rather the portion of the dough, Halla, that is sepa-
rated during the process of baking bread.
The Christian Pentecost emerges in the late second century and is first un-
derstood as an expansion of Easter Sunday. Only from that time on, the idea
that the Christian Pascha represented a transition from the solemn Pascha itself
towards the joyous period of the Pentecost could emerge. The Christian Pen-
tecost is only a posteriori and relatively late connected with Acts If. There are
no links to the Therapeutae as described by Philo. The Christian Pentecost is
irrelevant for the question of the emergence of Sunday and Easter Sunday.
Likewise, the Jewish celebration of the seventh day of the festival of
Unleavened Bread as the day of the crossing of the Red Sea emerges late
enough that it was not to be able to influence the development of the Christian
liturgy at least in the first two centuries. The interpretation of the Pascha as
'transitus' is introduced by Origen into the understanding of the Christian
Easter. This 'transitus', the crossing of the Red Sea did not influence the ritual
and meaning of Easter in Early Christianity. The understanding of the 21sl of
Nisan is unrelated to the emergence of Easter Sunday.
The festival of Unleavened Bread was never appropriated in Christianity.
The Syriac designation 'Week of Unleavened Bread' for Holy Week is a late
development (at least after the fourth century) that applies a Biblical term to an
ecclesiastical institution that has nothing to do with the Biblical institution or
concept. Christian Sources that interpret the Jewish festival of Unleavened
Bread as a custom of fasting cannot be shown to represent an authentic Jewish
custom and are a Christian bias based on a theological reading of the Old Tes-
tament. The Syriac Didascalia does not command Christians to celebrate the
joyful second part of the Pascha against a (fictitious) Jewish festival of Unleav-
ened Bread as a rite of fasting.
The schematic 364-day calendar, as it is attested in the Qumran scrolls and
related literature, did not have any influence on Christianity. It is irrelevant
for the history of Easter, and especially Easter Sunday, that Pesah is always
celebrated on the Night of a Wednesday and Shavuot on a Sunday in an elabo-
rate form of that calendar. Moreover, the relationship of this calendar to the
liturgies excludes the assumption of an 'accumulation of contents' for the fes-
tivals. The Temple Scroll and Jubilees explicitly refer to a 'double-meaning' of
one festival only - Shavuot. They do not use that terminology for Pesah. This
shows that the meanings of festivals were not determined by their calendrical
location in the vicinity of anniversaries of Biblical events or texts that were
theologically related to them. No Tora reading cycles are attested in the
scrolls. It would be an anachronism to determine the 'contents' of a festival by
316 Easter Sunday
means of Biblical texts that are read in its liturgies in later liturgical systems.
'The Aqeda' or 'the creation' are not part of the 'contents' of Pesah in Qumran.
The examination of alleged parallels between the Christian institutions of
the weekly Sunday and the celebration of Easter on a Sunday and several tra-
ditions of Judaism shows that these Christian customs do not have Jewish
precedents, did not emerge in the first century, and were not developed in
close contact with Judaism. The 'Dominical' Easter is not older than the
Quartodeciman Pascha. It developed out of the latter.
Finally, it has been shown that the structure and meaning as inferred from
the readings of the Easter vigil at the beginning of the fifth century (and with
some elements also at the end of the fourth) did not survive from ancient
times, or even first-century Judaism, but emerged in the fourth century as a
total innovation. It was created to fill the ritual space of the vigil that was
emptied when most of is commemorative elements were moved into the his-
toricizing celebrations of Holy Week.
This last observation closely connects this chapter with the following one,
because it is exactly the targum expansion of the 'four nights' that is its point
of departure and, at the same time, the only remaining text that is quoted as
the reason for the assumption that the meaning of the Easter vigil is a survival
from ancient Judaism.
5 The Targum Expansion of the Four Nights
When Alejandro Diez Macho discovered in 1956 that the 16th century Vatican
manuscript Neofiti 1 contained a version of the Palestinian targum, against its
identification on the first leaf (as well as in the catalogue) as a copy of targum
Onqelos, great expectations were justified. A few years after the discovery of
the 'new' targum, Roger Le Deaut wrote a seminal study on the night of Pesah
that concentrated on an expansion of Exod 12.42 referring to four nights in the
Biblical history as a context for the 'night' of the Egyptian Pesah (Exod 12).
This text had already been available to everyone as part of any edition of the
Yerushalmi targum, and Le Deaut simply brought it to the attention of a wider
public. Le Deaut's study became widely used as a standard reference work on
the subject and its manifold ramifications, especially in rabbinic texts. Diez
Macho proposed a very early date of the text. Le Deaut supported this thesis.
On the basis of the assumption of its pre-Christian origins, the whole literature
of early Christianity and the New Testament could, consequently, be searched
for testimonies to the history of reception of this text. Le Deaut assumed that
the targum had absorbed an ancient 'hymn' that expressed the most important
elements of the meaning of the Jewish Pesah. This 'hymn' should, therefore,
reflect the development of the various elements pertaining to the Jewish and
Christian understanding of Easter.
Even if discussions of the history of Easter reach the inevitable conclusion
that certain elements under discussion are either not at all or hardly attested in
the ancient sources, they are nevertheless often assumed to be present among
the contents of Easter since the beginnings of Christianity as soon as they are
attested in the alleged 'hymn of the four nights'. This widespread
argumentum ex silentio demands a fresh look at the text and its parallels in
order to assess its date and influence on other texts. Moreover, any examina-
tion of the relationship of the Jewish Pesah to the Christian Easter must assess
the often claimed impact of the Palestinian targums, and especially the 'hymn
of the four nights', on Christianity.
This discussion continues the preceding chapter, because the topics of the
'nights' of this targum expansion are claimed to be the most ancient kernel of
the readings of the Easter vigil according to the Armenian Lectionary of

Jerusalem. Although an alternative model for the origins of the sequence of
readings has been proposed in that chapter, the targum expansion must still be
investigated thoroughly, as it seems to provide the only argument against the
reconstruction and late date of the development as proposed above.
A survey of Le Deaut's study of this text quickly shows that several basic
assumptions are invalid from a methodological point of view.1 Nevertheless,
the hypothesis about the high age of the targum expansion demands attention
because of its wide-ranging presumptions concerning the development of
Jewish and Christian liturgies and literatures. The following two sets of ques-
tions challenge Le Deaut's theses. First, is it likely that the literary context of
the enumeration of the 'four nights' - the Palestinian targum tradition - would
preserve a pre-Christian 'hymn'? Does the form of the text suggest a liturgical
background? If yes, in which liturgies would such a text have been used?
Second, do parallels to this text and other witnesses suggest that these four
topics were basic constituents of the meaning of Pesah and Easter from the
beginning of the Common Era?
The following four sections will propose answers to these comprehensive
questions. After the reading of the text, the literary and liturgical background
of the targums will be discussed. This provides a first answer to the question
of the date of this text. As Le Deaut identified the expansion as a 'hymn', its
form must be examined and compared to similar literary phenomena. The
'four nights' allude to a wealth of Jewish and Christian 'parallels' that cannot
be treated exhaustively here. Nevertheless, the last section of this chapter will
discuss a sample of topics from the 'four nights' and establish their wider
context within the traditions of rabbinic Judaism and Christianity.
5.1 The Text of the Targum Expansion
The 'hymn of the four nights' is only extant as an expansion of some witnesses
of the Palestinian targum tradition. It must be referred to as a 'targum expan-
sion', before its literary character as a 'hymn' is substantiated. The text is acces-
1 The following problematic presuppositions are not discussed here: (1) Le Deaut's early
dating of the liturgies of the synagogue; (2) his assumption of oral tradition in order
to claim continuity of traditions in cases of the absence of any evidence.
The Text of the Targum Expansion 319
sible in the published witnesses of the Palestinian targum tradition and the so
called targum Pseudo-Jonathan.2
The expansion is not included in all witnesses of the Palestinian targum
tradition. Ms. AA may be an abbreviation of the expansion and thus an indi-
rect witness to the following longer text:3
(Hebrew) Night of. (Aramaic) A night that is remembered and ready for deliver-
ance before Y' 4 in the time of the Israelites' going out (as liberated ones5) from the
land of Egypt. This night is (dedicated) to Y's name. It is preserved and prepared
for deliverance for all Israelites throughout their generations. (Arabic) The targum
of Pesah. First day.6 (Space) Keep (?).
2 Apart from the printed rabbinic Bibles that contain the TPsJ and the 'Jerushalmi' tar-
gum, see (1) Ms. FF T-S NS 182.69 Klein 1986 I, 220f; cf. Gleßmer 1995, 172-174; (2)
Ms. Vat = Ms. Vatican Ebr. 440,13 th cent.; Klein 1980 1,167; Diez Macho 1980, 78-80; cf.
Gleßmer 1995,123f; (3) Ms. Neofiti 1 Diez Macho 1970, 77-79; 1980, 78-80; cf. Gleßmer
1995, 110-115; (4) TPsJ Ms. British Museum Add. 27031 Clarke 1984, 80; cf. Gleßmer
1995, 181-196; (5) Machsor Vitry Hurwitz 1923, 308f; Ms. 264 Sassoon, Letch-
worth/England, 17th cent.; Diez Macho 1980, 78-80; cf. Gleßmer 1995, 125f. Being a
manuscript copy of the (printed) rabbinic Bible, ms. 264 Sassoon is no witness to an
independent version of the text. Gleßmer 1995, 111 n. 420 remarks that Ms. 240 hebr.
Hamburg refers to the expansion. This seems to be an error, cf. p. 163. He apparently
mixes up νη'3 smx with ll·?'1? m « .
3 Ms. AA cf. Gleßmer 1995, 146-148, T-S Β 13.4 Klein 1986 I, 217ff + T-S NS 218.61
unpublished, Klein 1992, no. 706 + Or. 1080 B18.1 Klein 1986 I, 216. T-S NS 218.61 is
hardly readable; Jewish National and University Library, Jerusalem: Microfilm collec-
tion of Hebrew mss. The space on the fragment that should have contained an expan-
sion to Exod 12.42 is only sufficient for a much smaller expansion.
4 The different ways to abbreviate mrp are rendered by the corresponding number of
'Y's for ν etc.
5 Sokoloff 2002, 450 does not refer to the interpretation of ΓΡ1_Ι9 as redundant part of the
translation of Hebrew ΝΓ by Le Deaut 1963, 278 and Klein 1986 II, 55. The term is,
therefore, retained in brackets above.
6 This Arabic remark leaves open questions regarding the liturgical position of this text.
Gleßmer 1995,147 interprets it as a heading for the following text Exod 12.21 etc. This
would make Exod 12.21ff the reading of the 'first day' of Pesah. In that case, the posi-
tion of the text before it (up to Exod 12.42) cannot be explained easily, because this text
would not be read on the Sabbath before Pesah. Both texts are apparently festival
readings and are not cut according to the sedarim in the St. Petersburg codex. How-
ever, Exod 12.21 is the beginning of the reading of the 'first day' of Pesah in the
Babylonian system of readings. This may indicate that ms. AA could be designed for
a liturgical situation of amalgamation of the Babylonian reading cycle with Palestinian
liturgies. Similar phenomena are discussed by Fleischer 1988, ch. 7. In that case, the
As translations, the targums begin with a proposal to solve a philological

problem. The Hebrew term D'lB't; can be understood in several ways. None
of them is obvious from the point of view of the root or the context of the
lemma. A translation of the targums into English adds another layer of ambi-
guity. In the present study, pitai -pm is rendered as 'remembered an ready'
(Sokoloff 2002, 348).7 The terms have the function of interpreting the meaning
of D'-natff, implying remembered and kept (TBJ) in memory, 8 by Israel who keep
the observance of Pesah according God's precepts. Furthermore, God remem-
bers the night. He recalls his action in the course of Israel's redemption (as
implied in Exod 12.42) when he protected Israel and kept all harm away from
them. God remembers the second Exodus in the messianic age in order to keep
Israel alive and free. The Hebrew rnw is translated here as 'night of re-
membrances'. Further nuances must be discussed and supported by other
sources. One meaning of •maii» T7 cannot be emphasized against the others
without references to the context.
The following translation of the expansion is based on the Vatican manu-
script Ebr. 440 that has been published and translated by M. Klein (1980 I).
None of the extant witnesses contain what seems to be a 'complete' text of the
expansion. From ms. FF, longer passages are missing. Ms. Vat. Ebr. 440 has a
better text in several places, such as the reference to the 'second' night (no. 7).
As scholarly discussions often quote the version of targum Pseudo-Jonathan,
this is also given in translation.
Ms. Vatican Ebr. 440 TPsJ

1 (Hebrew) A night of remembrances.
2 (Aramaic) Ά night that is remembered'
and ready 'before Y' (viz. by Y') in the'
Isr(aelite's) 'going out' (as liberated ones')
'from the land of Egypf,
3 because four nights are inscribed in the 3 Four nights are inscribed in the book of
book of memories10. memories before the Lord of the world.
position of Exod 12.42 before 12.21 is likewise not explained, but the missing targum
expansion of the four nights is understandable, as it would not fit to the Babylonian
ritual of the reading.
7 Klein 1986 1218,1980 II126 translates pirai TB3 as 'preserved and prepared'.
8 Cf. the 'book of memories' N^ran "BO in the expansion, no. 2 in the following table.
9 See n. 5 p. 319.
10 Klein (1986 U, 61) refers to Mai 3.16 and Exod 17.14. Le Deaut (1963, 149) refers to the
king finding records that save Israel according to Est 6.1 (see bMeg 19a). One could
4 It was the first night, when Y's word re- 4 It was the first night, when he revealed
vealed 11 itself over the world creating it. himself creating the world.
5 The world was desolate and void and
darkness was sprea[d] over the abyss. 12 Y's
word was bright 13 and illuminating. 6 He
called it the first night.
7 It was the second night when Y's word 7 It was the second (one), when he re-
revealed itself over Abram between the vealed himself over Abraham.
pieces.
8 Abram was one-hundred years old and
Sara was ninety years old 9 in order to fulfill
what scripture says: 'Can Abram, being one-
hundred years old beget? Can Sara, being
ninety years old, give birth?' 14
also quote other contexts where heavenly books are mentioned. It seems, however,
impossible to give a narrower and more detailed explanation of the background of
'book of memories'. The 'book of memories' rather refers to a mythical concept than a
communal institution. In the wake of bRHSh 16b, 'three books' belong to the standard
repertoire of the Yamim Noraim. The mention of 'a book of memories' in texts like
ηριη ΠίΠίΐ Goldschmidt 1970, 404.5 that imply that such a book contains lists of persons
or refers to Mai 3.16 (like Jose ben Jose 'otbs inss Mirski 101.39) is insignificant for the
understanding of the concept here.
11 In poems as well as other targumic texts, the topic of God's revelation is mentioned in
this context; Klein 1986 I, 195 1. 12-16; SYAP 34.4f 'In the middle of the night, Kyrios
revealed himself - his right hand outstretched over Israel'; SYAP 35.2; ms. M M Klein
1986 I, 235f.
12 The translation of Gen 1.2 is not influenced by TO, although some witnesses read
(= O'lD). Ms. FF and Vatican 440 and the marginal glosses to TN read 'mi 'nil instead of
lmi inn of TN.
13 τ η : (shining) is read as ΤΓΠ (light) in TN. There is apparently no connection with Tru
according to 2# im (Sokoloff 2002, 343) 'to remember, recall' (passive participle in ac-
tive sense). The reference to the 'redeemed ones of their exile' as 'constantly radiating
light' (Tin Till I'TUn) in the targum fragment to Lam 4.21f Kasher 2000, 23 does not
seem to be connected to this targum expansion.
14 The ms. FF omits the paraphrase of Gen 17.17 (no. 9). Klein translates nos. 8-10:
'Abram was one-hundred years old, and Sarah was ninety years old; to fulfill that
which Scripture says: "Behold, it is possible for Abram, at one-hundred years, to beget
(a child), and it is possible for Sarah at ninety years to give birth." Was not Isaac our
father thirty-seven years old, at the time that he was offered up upon the altar; the
heavens bent low and descended; and Isaac saw their perfection, and his eyes were
dimmed from (what he had beheld) of the heights.'
10 Certainly, our father Isaac was thirty-

seven years at the time when he was offered
(as a sacrifice) upon the altar. The heaven
was low and went down. 15 Isaac saw its
forms. His eyes grew faint from the exalted
ones 16 . 11 He called it the second night.
12 It was the third night when Y's word re- 12 It was the third (one), when he revealed
vealed itself over the Egyptians at midnight. himself in Egypt. 13 His hand was killing
13 His left hand was killing the firstborn sons all the firstborn of Egypt and his right
of <the Egyptians. His right hand was saving (hand) was saving the firstborn of Israel.
the firstborn sons of>17 Israel, 14 in order to
fulfill what scripture says: 'Israel is my first-
born son'. 18 15 He called it the third night.
16 It (will be) the fourth night when the (de- 16 It was the fourth (one), when he re-
15 Kasher 2000, 40 refers to the bending down of the sky in the targums and in messianic
contexts. The parallel is not obvious (beyond the very general idea - Ps 144.5), as the
expansions of Exod 12.42 use the roots 1DÖ and nru whereas Kasher only quotes
sources that use Ν1»® Γ3ΊΝ etc.
16 Sokoloff (2002, 329) only quotes SYAP 4.19 which does not refer to angels but to 'the
three old men' (17-22): Ί redeem my children from the enslavement of the bricks. I
remembered the prayer of the three old men. I shall raise up their horn for the exalted
ones (i.e. make them prevail). They are my beloved ones from the beginning on. The
oath (i.e. the promised time) came to an end. The times arrived. I shall make a great
praise together with the [childrjen.' Thus, «"oonn is not known as a coined expression
for 'angels' in JPA. However, as the construction of means'? η'ρτ ΤΠ» Π]Ν ΙΙΓΠίρ does
not seem to indicate a genitive ('the horn of the exalted ones' which would rather have
been worded as rr'aanai τιππρ), Klein 1986 I, 192 translates it as 'heights' in Ί will
raise their glory to the heights'. The 'heights' may be supposed to have the same ef-
fect on Isaac's eyesight. A similar notion may lie behind TN that reads iTrVtow in-
stead of N'aana.
17 This part of the text was left out accidentally (homoioteleuton) and is preserved in the
other sources. Ms. Vat. 440 reads 'his left hand' and leaves out the obvious opposition
'his right hand' against TN: 'His hand killed the firstborn of the Egyptians and his right
hand protected the firstborn of Israel.' TN probably skips 'left' as a scribal error.
Yannay's piyyut V (53.49f Rabinovitz 1985, 301) to Exod 12.29ff: 'your hand' vs. 'the
right (hand) of your power' does not resemble TN. Yannay chooses his words care-
fully to build a network of implications between them. Thus, God's 'hand' and 'righf
are engaged in killing the enemies, whereas his 'holy arm' redeems Israel.
18 Exod 4.22. TN, Ms. Vatican 440, and Ms. FF have slightly different versions of the
stichos neither of which corresponds exactly to TO. TN and Ms. FF read Ή instead of
•na, which may be the Hebrew form of the word or a plural. Vat. 440 is ungrammati-
cal: 'my first-born son are Isr(ael)'.
creed period of) the world will come to its vealed himself redeeming the people, the
end in order that it be redeemed. The evil- house of Israel, from among the peoples.
doers will be destroyed. The iron yokes will
be broken.' 9 Moses will come out20 from the
midst of the desert and the king Messiah
from the midst of Rome. This one will lead
at the head of the flock21 and this one at the
head of the flock. Y's word will be between
the two of them - I22 and they will walk to-
gether.
18 He called each of them 'a remembered
night'.
19 TN has a slightly different wording and changes the sequence of the two statements
(on the yokes and the evildoers). The marginal note refers to the sequence attested in
Vat. 440.
20 Ms. FF reads po11 'he will ascend' (= TN ριο1) instead of pis' 'he will come out' as the
Vatican ms.; cf. also Mahzor Vitry p'DJ. The form with -o- is well attested for this verb,
Fassberg 1990, 239 η. 85 to § 131c and § 152b; Golomb 1985, 160. There is no reason to
assume that it is a conflation with pis'. The problem of the idea that the Messiah
should 'ascend' from heaven does not occur to the readers of TN and ms. FF, as both
leave out the phrase, in which the Messiah is mentioned. Thus, one could as well add
pis1 in the reconstructions of the Vorlagen of those two texts. A reference to a messi-
anic figure 'ascending from the midst of (!) the height (ms. Vat 'nn u ]n)' can be ruled
out. 'From the midst of Rome' is the better text that fits to pis' and j?lo\ Ms. PP (Klein
19861, 229 1. 24) shows that 'from the heights' would be expressed as snnaa. That God
may be called 'Rider-Upon-Clouds' (Is 19.1; Klein 1986 I, 197 1., 3f SYAP 35.4 Grelot
2002, 43 referring to Ps 68.5; 18.10-11) shows that the imagery (including Dan 7) could
be used elsewhere. There (1. 4f) God also orders Moses (?) to gather for him a 'flock'
(S3S). N]jy 'cloud' and ioy 'sheep and goats' is also combined in the short Aramaic
poem to Exod 12.2, SYAP 35.4f (Klein 1986 I, 197 Grelot 2002, 43). The metaphor of
the shepherd for Moses (cf. Exod 3.1) is also expressed in SYAP 38.13; ms. PP Klein
1986 I, 233 1. l l f , 22. Cf. for God as leading Israel 'like small cattle' from Egypt,
Yannay; Rabinovitz 1987,189 1.189.
21 Ms. FF reads KM? instead of ras. A reading 'clouds' (K]]S) is not attested in reliable
sources.
22 Note that MekhY pisha 14 1. I l l L 115 paraphrases Song of Songs 4.8 as if said by God:
Ί and you - we were exiled from Lebanon. I and you - we will ascend to Lebanon.' It
may be based on MekhY pisha 14.5 L 1.114: 'R. Aqiva said: If it would not have been
written, it would not be possible to say it. (It is) as if Israel said before the Holy One,
may he be blessed: you redeemed yourself!'
17 "This is the night' of Pesah 'before Y' - (it 19 Therefore, Moses expounded23 (it) say-
is) being remembered (TO])' and ready 'for ing: Ά night that is preserved (TO]) for
all the children of Israel throughout their redemption from before Y' (when he will)
generations.' bring out' the Name24 - the children of
Israel - 'from the land of Egypt. This night
is protected (TO])25' from the destroying
angel26 'on behalf of all the children of
Israel' who are in Egypt and in the same
manner to redeem 'their generations' from
their exiles.
23 As seems to be a Pael (Perfect), it is dependent upon Babylonian Aramaic, as

Palestinian Aramaic does not contain this stem; Sokoloff 2002, 452f.
24 Diez Macho 1980, 81 suggests to emend 'name' to 'people' - 'the children of Israel'.
TN mentions the 'name of Y " which is emended in a marginal gloss to 'before Y " and
as such attested in ms. Vat. 440 as translated above. In TPsJ, 'name' is probably a
scribal error and could have been remotely influenced by the other versions.
25 Following Klein 1986 1,189 1.14 in the interpretation of Emm® V1? as 'protected night'.
26 TPsJ goes further in the alignment of Pesah to Exod 12 than the PTT. This can be seen
in its expansion of the Biblical verse: 'This night is protected "from the destroying an-
gel"'. The PTT emphasizes eschatology in the interpretation of the Biblical verse, be-
cause the eschatological redemption is the last and most important element of the
targumic expansion. TPsJ increases the historicization of Pesah. As such an
interpretation is one of the logical conclusions that can be drawn from a comparison
between the Biblical text and the date of the liturgy, TPsJ need not be influenced by
texts of Second Temple Judaism (Jubilees, Wisdom of Solomon). The tendency to
historicize the liturgies of Pesah leads to the commemoration of the liberation from
the destroying angel in the night of the seder, which is the raison d'etre of the ritual of
the Egyptian Pesah (Exod 12). The commemoration of the liberation from Egypt only
follows on the seventh day of the festival of Unleavened Bread. The PTT is thus much
closer to the intention of Exod 12.42 in its Biblical context than TPsJ. The topic of the
'night of remembrance' is the liberation from Egypt and not the protection from the
destroyer.
Contexts of the Palestinian Targum Tradition 325
5.2 Contexts of the Palestinian Targum Tradition
5.2.1 Forgotten Traditions?
The origins of the Palestinian targum tradition must be reconstructed on the

basis of observations about the character and the age of the manuscripts and
what can be known about the use of the targums in the earlier stages of the
liturgy. Two other features of the texts can only provide marginal support for
otherwise better established findings. First, there are parallels to dated Ara-
maic isoglosses. These are inconclusive. If the date of a text is determined
based on typical phenomena of its language only, this does not sufficiently
take into account the fact that the language could have been used as a literary
register long after it died out as a spoken dialect. Furthermore, a low degree of
standardization is one of the most conspicuous features of the Palestinian tar-
gum tradition. Such a flexible tradition could have preserved features of an
old literary idiom as well as having been adapted to any other source of lin-
guistic influence. Second, the comparison of targumic texts with literary par-
allels is an important tool in describing the development and spread of motifs
and exegetical methods. It has, however, to be used with caution. Finding a
particular exegetical idea in the targums and in midrashim does not by itself
imply that the targum antedates the midrash or vice versa. A parallel does not
by itself indicate the direction of borrowing. Nevertheless, hypotheses about
the development of certain ideas shared by similar texts are helpful.
One of the most important questions in this context is the relationship of
targum Onqelos to the Palestinian targum tradition. Onqelos does not contain
the targum expansion of the four nights. If the targum tradition in general
began with a 'Proto-Onqelos' targum, this expansion can be regarded as an
addition to an older and more concise translation. Its inclusion in the Pales-
tinian targum tradition (only) would then not support an assumption about a
particularly high age of the text. Unfortunately, this argument is weak - de-
spite the fact that a broad consensus27 sees 'Proto Onqelos' as a product of the
27 Flesher 2001 (cf. Gleßmer 1995, 94) emphasizes that TO remained in Palestine and
influenced 'the PTT' there. It was not moved to Babylonia and did not fall into obliv-
ion in Palestine. Flesher's arguments are based on linguistic observations and
comparisons with TPsJ. The latter do not, however, support such a thesis, because of
the literary character and provenance of TPsJ. If there are parallels between a text tra-
dition (TO) that had acquired some authority late in geonic times and a text that was
second century (at the latest) and as written in a dialect that died out in Pales-
tine in the middle of the third century.
It is not implausible that someone translated the Pentateuch into Aramaic
at that time. After all, the Psittä of the Pentateuch is likewise assumed to ante-
date most of the Syriac literature. In contrast to the targums, the manuscript
tradition of the Psittä goes back to the fifth century. Thus, the gap between the
manuscript evidence and the assumed time(s) of its translation is much smaller
in the case of the Psittä.
Expanding theses by Edward Y. Kutscher, Abraham Tal (2001) proposes an
even earlier date for Onqelos. He calls attention to some points that must also
be clarified in an approach to the targums of the Palestinian targum tradition.
Tal argues that targum Onqelos was composed in order to provide a succinct
interpretation of the Tora as an exegetical and halakhic tool for persons who
understood Aramaic and Hebrew rather than as a translation for people who
did not know enough Hebrew to understand the original of the Tora.28 It
should have functioned in this way already in Second Temple times. Being
forgotten in Palestine, where it originated, it was later replaced by texts of the
Palestinian targum tradition there. It was, however, handed down and used in
the liturgy in Babylon only to become eventually recognized as canonical
translation of the Tora everywhere. In short, targum Onqelos is the oldest
targum and played the role of an authoritative translation of the Tora for many
centuries, before this very role became the object of scholarly discussions.
Targum Onqelos is more standardized than the targums of the Palestinian
targum tradition. Its text is even carefully preserved by a Masora (Klein 1997).
Regarding rabbinic times, the existence of a translation that is used to guide
the minds of the readers of the original in difficult or controversial cases is
conceivable. It is likewise true that Babylonian rabbis occasionally quote an
Aramaic translation of a Biblical text that resembles Onqelos, although the
phrase 'and we translate' (...irannai) does not prove that the Babylonian acad-
emies already had targum Onqelos at their disposal and read it as an authori-
tative source for the understanding of the Bible.29 Any translation reflects the
composed at that time, this does not prove that the former was redacted 700 years
earlier.
28 Fraade 1992 understands the raison d'etre of the targums in a similar way. The
discussion is taken up below.
29 Rabbi Yona and Rabbi Yirmeya make a translator repeat a translation of 'unleavened
bread and bitter herbs', yMeg 4.1 74d. They require a translation that does not corre-
spond to TO. Thus, neither the erring translator nor the sages who corrected him
translator's understanding and can thus be used as a condensed form of ex-

planation. Except for observations on the basis of dialectology, there are no
sources that would support the assumption of tannaitic origins of targum
Onqelos and the thesis of its having been fallen into oblivion in Palestine.
It is true that there are no reliable sources about liturgies in Syriac prior to
the fourth century. Nevertheless, as soon as the Pslttä was used in any form of
liturgy, it stands to reason (and there is no argument against it) that it did not
accompany the Hebrew text, but rather replaced it. Likewise there are no indi-
cations that the Septuagint should have been read together with the Hebrew
text in Greek-speaking, Christian environments.30 It is a totally different point
of departure for the history of the transmission of a text if it was read in public
gatherings or if the liturgical tradition explicitly forbade the use of texts of its
genre. Did Jews who did not follow the lead of the nascent rabbinic movement
read an Aramaic text as a replacement for the Hebrew Tora in their gatherings -
as in the case of the later attested Christian liturgies? There are no sources that
answer this question. It is not likely that such a (hypothetical) non-rabbinic
translation that was only used in definitely non-rabbinic contexts eventually
become the paragon of rabbinic translations. Even the often made claim that
the Psittä is actually a 'Jewish' translation does not prove that second century
Jews would have used it in the same way as fifth century Christians.
As soon as it became customary to read or recite extant targums in the
course of the liturgy, it is reasonable to suppose that people collected older
material and compiled notes for this purpose. Such scraps of text could fulfill
the many requirements in terms of style and content that can be expected of
publicly used text. This process may lead to the establishment of a widespread
version, which may later be used for other purposes, too. The Geniza manu-
scripts of the targums allow for the reconstruction of customs of translation
and the preparation of the translator for his performance in public at the turn
of the millennium. It is, however, not clear when these particular processes
based themselves on TO. Fraade 1992, 259 n. 13 and 260 collects other instances of
'unacceptable translations', especially in a sexually problematic context.
30 It has been demonstrated that the beginning of Melito's homily 'On the Pascha' does
not point to the recitation of a portion of Scripture in Hebrew. Buchinger refers to Ori-
gen, who tries to dissuade his listeners from hearing God's word in the Jewish syna-
gogues; 2005, 93 n. 468: In Exodum Excerpta PG 12.285 D 7 - 288 A 4. This implies
that there must have been Jewish communities in 3rd cent. Caesarea who read and
studied Tora in Greek.
began and they hardly support the understanding of early rabbinic customs
pertaining to the translation of the Tora.
For the time being, the position of Onqelos vis-ä-vis the Palestinian targum
tradition remains unclear. Onqelos could have been a tannaitic translation that
did not yet contain the expansion of Exod 12.42. It could also have been a col-
lection of other material that was unified and standardized only in geonic
times (and later) when this expansion was dropped on stylistic grounds and in
order to create a concise translation. Both cases do not support an early date of
the expansion, although the second one does not rule out that it existed before
the epoch of the geonim.
The history of targum Onqelos as portrayed by Tal's (and similar) ap-
proaches) resembles Le Deaut's description of the development of the Pales-
tinian targums that contain the expansion to Exod 12.42. These texts should
have been used, known, and recited in liturgies for a long time before the
emergence of Christianity. After having influenced the latter, they should
have been marginalized by the rabbis in order to squelch what they under-
stood as a deviant way of interpreting the Bible.
Stefan Reif's31 criticism of theories of early standardization and later rejec-
tion of liturgical texts may be generalized as a warning against arguments that
use similar patterns. For the Babylonian sages should have preserved the oldest
and most important tradition according to Tal. The assumption that the
greater the authority and reputation of a text the higher its age, is inadmissi-
ble.32 Furthermore, the brief remarks about targum Onqelos show that this
translation does not provide a clue to the dating or understanding of the Pal-
estinian expansion to Exod 12.42. Nevertheless, other arguments have been
brought forward to support the high age of this expansion. Le Deaut thinks
that Christianity kept alive the primordial understanding of Pesah. He claims
that this is corroborated by the Palestinian targums.33 The targum expansion
of Exod 12.42 is quoted as a witness to this second process.
31 Reif 1993,146 in that case Ezra Fleischer's.

32 Cf. Joseph Heinemann's 1977 approach.
33 The claim that many concepts of the targums reflect pre-Christian Jewish doctrines and
liturgies may be motivated by a supercessionist stance. Roger Le Deaut 1963, 338 says
in the context of his general conclusions: 'Ainsi la mort et la resurrection de Jesus re-
pondaient veritablement ä Yattente de l'A. Τ., ä celle du monde juif du Ier siecle: mal-
heureusement, urie grande partie du peuple elu n'a pas su reconnaitre cette heure de
l'accomplissement des Ecritures.'
5.2.2 The Oldest Aramaic Translations of the Bible
While it is true that scholars translated texts from Hebrew into Aramaic and
vice versa, literary works like the Temple Scroll and Jubilees show that at that
time there were many more means of reworking and updating Hebrew Biblical
text (with both legal and narrative contents) at that time than composing a suc-
cinct Aramaic translation.34 What is more, the extant Aramaic translations of
Biblical books do not support theses about a strong continuity between Second
Temple and rabbinic translations of the Bible. Among the scrolls from the
Judean Desert, two 'targums' are extant: fragments of two scrolls of a transla-
tion of Job (llQtargumJob, 4QtgJob35) and a small fragment of a translation
containing Lev 16.12-15,18-21 (4QtgLev).36
Despite some parallels in the methodologcial approaches to the translation
that can be detected between rabbinic targums and the Qumran Job targum,37
the rabbinic targum of Job is a very late attempt to translate this Biblical book.
It is, furthermore, not based on the Qumran text.38 The tradition about Rabban
34 Cf. Fraade 1992, 284 n. 68.

35 11Q10 Van der Ploeg and Van der Woude 1971; reed. DJD 23.79-180. 4QtgJob = 4Q157
and 4QtgLev = 4Q256 DJD 6.86-90.
36 Cf. Klein 1986 I, XX: Except for the sources mentioned here, the Aramaic targum
fragments from the Geniza are the earliest witnesses for the targum in general. Milik
1992 assumes that the aramaic fragments 4Q550 are not a targum of Esther, but rather
the precursors of that book. 'Court-stories' are a widely known genre on the
background of which these texts and the book of Esther emerged. The Aramaic Tobit
seems to be the original of the book that was translated into Hebrew. The Aramaic
Tobit is not a targum of an originally Hebrew text, Fitzmyer 2003.
37 Gold 2001. These observations do not support Tal's attempt to date TO into Second
Temple times. Many learned people translated Biblical texts into Aramaic independ-
ently, although they had similar methods of translation. Avigdor Shinan 1992, 15 ob-
serves regarding a much narrower range of time and space: Ί am far removed from
the naive assumption that the targumic texts which we have should reflect accurately
the literary activity of the translators in the rabbinic period or at the beginning of the
geonic times. It is sufficient for us to state that there is some remnant of that activity
in their basic structures.'
38 Van der Ploeg and Van der Woude 1971, 6-7; Shepherd 2000; Wilson 2000. Cf.
especially Fitzmyer's analysis 1974. After the critical edition of the rabbinic targum of
Job, Stec 1994, the comparisons can be built on a more reliabe textual basis. It may be
noted that the Syriac translation of Job in the Pslttä is likewise not dependent upon the
Qumran texts.
Gamaliel II,39 who reads a scroll of a translation of this Biblical book, does not
add any information about the history of the Aramaic targums. For Rabban
Gamaliel did not necessarily read an Aramaic translation. He could have read
a Greek one (which is implied by the context; cf. also mShab 16.1). Moreover,
it is not said why Rabban Gamaliel I and (based on his ruling) Rabbi Halafta
opposed the use of this scroll. There is nothing in this text that points to the
rabbis' awareness of the existence of a Qumran translation of Job.
Fitzmyer's (1978) analysis of the Qumran 'targum' to Lev 16 proves that
there is, likewise, no connection between the later rabbinic targums (the
Palestinian targum tradition, Onqelos, Pseudo-Jonathan) and this Qumran
text. His most important observation is the translation of Hebrew m m While
all rabbinic targums avoid translating the term and prefer to give what looks
like an Aramaic cognate40, 4QtgLev actually translates S'DS. Thus, the only sig-
nificant term in the short fragments points to the independence of the text of
4QtgLev. The rest of the text is too simple to allow any conclusion.41
Furthermore, there are no indications that a targum of Lev 16 played a role in a
Qumran (or a Temple) liturgy for the Day of Atonement.42
The fragments of Lev 16 also do not prove that the whole text of this book,
not to mention the five books of the Tora, were translated into Aramaic. As
Job was not important for the rabbinic liturgy, even the anachronistic postulate
of a Second Temple date for most of that liturgy does not provide a raison
d'etre for a translation of the book of Job.43 The conclusion that if Job was
extant in Aramaic, the Tora and the Prophets certainly were available too
(Gleßmer 1995, 77) is built on the tacit assumption that everyone would start to
39 tShab 13.2 57; yShab 16.1 16c; bShab 115a; Sof 5.15; Sokoloff 1974, 4-5. Note that tShab
13.2 introduces the discussion with: 'If they write a "targum" - in any language ( tarn
•ρϊΛ) - they save it and store it away'. The relationship to mShab 16.1 requires further
study.
40 Cf. Sokoloff 2002, 268 'The forms m i E D , n r n i S D are influenced by the H[ebrew] original'.
41 Cf. Gleßmer 1995, 79.
42 Based on a join of two fragments, Menahem Kister 2001 suggests that the later seder
Avoda may have had precursors in Qumran. The reconstruction leads to a short list
of notable events in the history of the world and Israel. It is, however, not necessarily
connected with a liturgy.
43 mYom 1.6 lists Job among the books that are read to the high priest during the night
preceding Yom Kippur in order to prevent him from falling asleep. As the context
mentions that this is especially done for an uneducated high priest, it may be specu-
lated that an Aramaic translation of this text could have a Sitz im Leben in such an oc-
casion.
translate liturgically important books first and procede to less 'important' ones
later. The existence of the latter would then imply that of the former. But who
can prove that scholars did not start to translate linguistically difficult books
first?44 Joseph A. Fitzmyer (1974, 506 cf. also p. 511) attributes the preservation
(not the translation) of the Aramaic text of Job to the 'esteem that the commu-
nity had for this ancient paragon of righteousness' - cf. the figures of Noah,
Daniel, and Job in Ezek 14.14. This suggestion allows us to dispense with a
liturgical background as the reason for the translation.
To sum up, even if texts in Biblical Hebrew were translated into Aramaic
in Second Temple times, these translations did not influence the later rabbinic
targums. There is, furthermore, no indication of the purpose for which these
translations were composed. The question of which epoch would be best
suited for the creation of the rabbinic targums has to seek after their functions
in the liturgy and other institutions of rabbinic society.
5.2.3 Remarks on the Liturgical Background of the Translations
The lack of pre-rabbinic translations that have a demonstrable link to the rab-
binic targums reflects the fact that the liturgical and social institutions from
which the later targums emerged did not yet exist. This background of the
targums, that is important for the understanding of the possible impact of
these texts on Christianity, must be reviewed.
The translation of the Tora (into the vernacular) emerges in tannaitic texts
as ritualized (or 'regulated') rendering of Tora verses within the liturgy.45
44 In this case, the Qumran targum to Job would have fulfilled what Tal claims for TO:
expounding a difficult Hebrew text to people who understood Hebrew by means of
an Aramaic translation. This would still not imply the existence of a translation of the
Tora because most of its text does not resemble the style and complexity of Job.
45 Zeev Safrai infers from the sages who are mentioned in this context that these rules
were created in the Period of Usha, thus after the Bar Kochba revolt. He interprets (as
it is accepted here) BerR 36.8 TA 342 and the parallel in yMeg 4.1 74d not as a descrip-
tion of the process of recitation and translation of the Tora in the liturgy but as an eti-
ology for the existence and the relationship of Tora, (Greek) translation, reading
marks, and the oral tradition of interpretation. The Biblical text of Neh 8.8 does also
not mention a translation. Notwithstanding the historical Ezra's knowledge of Ara-
maic and presumable activities of translation in his time, Neh 8.8 is no reason to as-
sume that (1) the Tora was translated when read in public, that (2) such a procedure
should have resembled rabbinic liturgies, and that (3) there existed an Aramaic trans-
With regard to this, the following three questions must be asked: first, is there
an indication that normal members of the congregations would have under-
stood Hebrew as well as Aramaic (Greek, etc.)? Second, what is the relation-
ship of the ritual of the translation of the Tora to the activities of the study
house? Third, what can be learned about the procedures of translation from
the allegorical interpretations of the reading of the Tora from amoraic times
on?
Languages
Steven D. Fraade (1992) assumes a continuous bilingualism in the Galilee from

the Bar Kochba revolt d o w n to geonic times. Congregations listening to the
Tora in Hebrew and the targum in Aramaic should have understood both and
would have been able to profit from the nuances of interpretation in the latter.
Fraade overestimates, however, the influence of the rabbis on Palestinian Jews
before geonic times. The thesis that the translation in the liturgy was intended
to provide access to the text of the Hebrew Tora for those w h o did not under-
stand it in Hebrew 4 6 is still plausible. H o w should it be proven, for instance,
that the prohibition to translate certain verses of the Tora was not intended to
prevent the listeners from understanding the offending Hebrew original, but
rather that these passages 'better ... be read without either the literal enuncia-
tion or apologetic elucidation of translation' 4 7 ? Fraade is, nevertheless, right in
pointing out the correlation between the reading of the Tora in the liturgy and
the procedures of its study in the academy. Before a discussion of this issue,
lation of the Tora. Fraade 1992, 271 n. 45 remarks that the association of Neh 8.8 (and
thus Ezra) with the beginning of the tradition of the targum is post-tannaitic. None of
the sources that refer to the reading and interpretation of Scripture in Second Temple
times 'mentions the rendering of Hebrew Scripture into Aramaic as a way of convey-
ing its meaning or interpretation to a synagogue audience'; Fraade 1992, 254. yMeg
4.1 74d shows the awareness of the Yerushalmi Talmud (as a Baraita) that the targum
is an innovation. In order to prove the lesser status of the targum vis-a-vis the Tora,
yMeg 4.1 74d infers from the fact that the liturgy of public fast days does not comprise
a translation that the translation is a rabbinic innovation, added to an earlier, more
pristine status, in which no translation was read.
46 Fraade 1992, 255 dismisses this idea as (M. Klein's) 'conventional view'.
47 Fraade 1992, 261 against e.g. Shinan 1983, 42. The targumic manuscripts and
Masoretic notes show an amplification of these passages over the contents of the rab-
binic lists; cf. Klein 1988.
two observations must be emphasized: the role of the Greek language and the
meaning of the term 'targum'.
The sources for any reconstruction of the early stages of the Jewish liturgy
are rabbinic and post-rabbinic texts. These texts do not become representative
of what a large group of Jews thinks to be a hallmark of Judaism before the
post-Talmudic era. It is, unfortunately, almost unknown how Greek-speaking
Jewish communities practiced the reading of the Tora and understood its
theological significance. Even rabbinic texts that prefer the reading of the Tora
in Hebrew accept the reading of translations instead of the Hebrew text.
This corresponds to the linguistic reality within Judaism in the first mil-
lennium. Thus, Vittore Colorni (1964) shows that the end of the production of
Jewish literature in Greek - or rather the end of the transmission of any Jewish
literature in Greek - after the second century (31f) does not mean that the
Aramaic language or even the rabbinic approach to Judaism prevailed in Jew-
ish communities who spoke (prayed, and read) Greek before.48 'Greek' Juda-
ism seems to have been thriving even after the 10th century.49 Jews in the
Greek (Latin) speaking world increased the use of Hebrew in sporadic at-
tempts beginning with the 5"76 Λ cent. In inscriptions of 5lh/6lh cent. Venosa
(and other locations), the use of Hebrew (still paralleled by Greek and Latin)
begins to go beyond brief acclamations such as 'Peace!'. 50 Familiarity with rab-
binic thinking emerges in 9th cent, inscriptions (39f). The reasons for the use of
Hebrew may not be the same for each inscription. In general, one may still
wonder whether the rejection and exclusion of the Jews by the surrounding
48 Cf. for the role of Greek, Van der Horst 2002.

49 The presence of Greek texts (10th—12th cent.) in the Geniza as well as Greek texts (or
words) in Hebrew characters, including commentaries (in various forms) on the Bible
show the strong influence of Hebrew (both as a scholarly language and as the lan-
guage of the Bible that is interpreted in Greek glossaries) as well as the presence of
highly educated Jews who also used Greek in order to understand the Biblical text (or
the Mishna as documented by a glossary of difficult words from that text), ed. Nicho-
las de Lange 1996.
50 Colorni 1964, 36-38. The dates of the inscriptions are changed against Colorni follow-
ing Margaret Williams 1999, 39. Personal Names are still mostly Latin in Venosa. The
use of Hebrew in epitaphs of Faustinus' family vanishes again in later epitaphs. It
does not display a gradual Hebraization of the population, not even of this particular
family; Williams 50ff. Compared with the number of Greek inscriptions of the syna-
gogue at Sardis (Kroll 2001), the six fragments with Hebrew characters show the
marginality of that language, Cross 2002, 16 'second half of the third or ... forth cen-
tury'. The dating may require an adjustment, cf. Ameling in n. 87 p. 44.
societies p r o m o t e d their interest in H e b r e w and the preservation of their con-

tacts to the g e o n i m of Palestine (and Babylon). 5 1
Treu (1973, 1 4 0 - 1 4 4 ) refers to the lack of information regarding a possible
J e w i s h p r o v e n a n c e of G r e e k Biblical texts. 5 2 If every fragment of a G r e e k Bibli-
cal text is automatically ascribed to a Christian copyist and understood as pro-
d u c e d for Christian use, material evidence for Jewish, Biblical texts in Greek is
'lacking'.
According to Colorni 5 3 , the G r e e k speaking communities w e r e u r g e d to ac-
cept the reading of the Tora in H e b r e w in the context of Justinian's novella 146.
T h e novella w o u l d then b e a testimony to the increasing influence of J e w s w h o
p r o m o t e d the reading in H e b r e w as an innovation in the liturgy. Leonard
Rutgers's analysis of the Novella is, h o w e v e r , m o r e plausible with regard to
s o m e of its arguments, avoiding m a n y c o m m o n pitfalls in its interpretation. 5 4
A c c o r d i n g to Rutgers, Justinian neither k n o w s any details about the syna-
g o g u e liturgy nor regulates it in front of actually quarreling J e w i s h parties. 5 5
51 Colorni 1964, 64f. Stemberger 1998, 143 also asks whether or not the Christian behav-
ior towards Jews prompted the latter to turn away from Greek culture.
52 Note also Treu's 1973, 129ff observations about the difficulty to classify Greek papyri
as 'Jewish'. Greek speaking Jews used the same law and language as the surrounding
culture. Folker Siegert 1999 also assumes a Greek liturgy for Jews of the Diaspora be-
fore the Diaspora uprising. While this basic assumption is accepted here, he tends to
read too many institutions from rabbinic liturgy into the Egyptian Diaspora.
53 Colorni 1964, 70-74. Cf. Treu 1973, 136; Stemberger 2002, 209 n. 11. Bij de Vate and
van Henten 1996 show that the attribution of many inscriptions on the basis of a spe-
cial terminology is highly doubtful. The assumption of Pagan-Jewish-Christian items
of terminology implies that inscriptions which are regarded as Christian should be re-
evaluated. They could also be Jewish.
54 Rutgers 2003 attributes too much knowledge of Hebrew to Jerome - see Stemberger
1993 and Schwartz 2002, 61-65 who likewise argues that Jerome did not know rab-
binic Judaism.
55 Justinian tries in a hidden way to abolish 'the Jews' knowledge of Hebrew in general
and their access to the Hebrew Bible in particular. It was this knowledge - not the
Jews' preference for a literal interpretation of Scripture - that was the root of the
problem', Rutgers 393. Stemberger 2002, 209 observes regarding a much older law
(referring to Codex Iustinianus 1.9.7, 393 C. E.) that apparently forbids the marriage of
the childless widow with the deceased person's brother that rabbinic law itself already
preferred to avoid this Biblical commandment. While this is no evidence for Justin-
ian's knowledge of Judaism, it shows in general that legal sources need not be accu-
rate regarding actual Jewish customs and might replace the observation of real cus-
toms with scraps of knowledge from the OT. Stemberger also remarks that it is not
T h e d e t a i l s that are g i v e n b y J u s t i n i a n are literary t o p o i 5 6 a n d p o l e m i c a l fiction.

T h u s , t h e n o v e l l a tries to a b o l i s h t h e a d v a n t a g e o f J e w s w h o k n e w H e b r e w
o v e r C h r i s t i a n s - ' H e b r e w ' i n this c a s e i n c l u d i n g ' t h e M i s h n a ' (identified w i t h
t h e t a n n a i t i c c o r p u s b u t a s s u m e d to refer to an oral ' t e x t ' b y R u t g e r s 3 9 6 f ) a n d
magic. M a g i c e s p e c i a l l y t o u c h e s a v e r y i m p o r t a n t part of c o m m u n a l life,
w h e r e ( m o r e c l a i m e d t h a n real) k n o w l e d g e of H e b r e w p l a y e d a n i m p o r t a n t
role. 5 7 R u t g e r s l o c a t e s t h e p r o m u l g a t i o n of t h e n o v e l l a i n t h e t h e o l o g i c a l strife
l e a d i n g u p to the c o u n c i l of 553, w h e r e t h e literalist a p p r o a c h to e x e g e s i s w a s
outlawed. W h i l e this d o e s n o t rule out a c o n t e m p o r a r y r e e m e r g e n c e o f t h e
k n o w l e d g e of H e b r e w a m o n g J e w s , t h e n o v e l l a s i m p l y d o e s n o t p r o v i d e evi-
d e n c e f o r it. 5 8 S e t h S c h w a r t z (2002) rejects R u t g e r s ' thesis a n d a s s u m e s t h a t t h e
l a w i n d e e d r e g u l a t e s m a t t e r s of J e w i s h liturgy. H e e m p h a s i z e s that it d o e s n o t
f o r b i d t h e u s e of H e b r e w . 5 9
A p p r o a c h i n g J u s t i n i a n ' s n o v e l l a , o n e m u s t resist t h e t e m p t a t i o n to i d e n t i f y
his ' d e u t e r o s i s ' w i t h a c o n c r e t e c o r p u s o r g e n r e of text. 6 0 S c h w a r t z ' s p o i n t (68)
that t h i s t e r m m a y s i m p l y b e ' l i f t e d f r o m patristic t r a d i t i o n ' is w e l l taken. 6 1
unthinkable that Jews should apply to a gentile court in a basically internally Jewish
case; cf. Schwartz 2001, 193 on the Theodosian Code 16.8.8, ca. 390 C. E. Schwartz also
mentions an episode in the story of the (Christian) 'heretic' Callistus. There, the Jew-
ish community appeals to the Roman prefect against that person's attempt at dis-
turbing their (lawful and peaceful) reading of their 'ancestral laws'; 89 n. 28 referring
to Hippolytus' Refutatio 9.12.8 PTS 12.351.
56 Also observed by Veltri 1994,118 and 123.
57 Emphasized by Treu 1973, 137f.
58 Rutgers's observations are corroborated by the activities of Jerome. Being a pretender,
he praises himself for his ability to read the Hebrew text. Eventually, he moved
Christianity still further away from it by publishing another translation instead of the
'Biblia Hebraica'.
59 It is, however, one of Rutgers's arguments for Justinian's rhetorical strategy, not to
forbid Hebrew explicitly.
60 According to Stemberger 2002, 209 n. 11: any kind of tradition.
61 Schwartz has already shown that Jerome's reference to the δευτέρωσις does not imply
that he had an idea about the Mishna. One may add a few occurrences of this term in
another text that may have been much more familiar to legislators of the 6 th cent, than
the rabbinic tradition: the Apostolic Constitutions; cf. Synek 1997 for the concept of
'law' in this corpus. In ch. 6.22.4 SC 329.368.51, Christ is described as having fulfilled
the full Mosaic law. This does not imply that he abrogated the φυσικός νόμος, but he
stopped the δευτερώσεως έπείσακτα, the 'additional (in the sense of alien) things of
the secondary (law)' (such as circumcision, purity laws, and sacrifices). Cf. Bietenhard
1956, 844f. Δευτέρωσις comprises Biblical legislation in this context - also such that
A n y other assumption (a 'paraphrastic targum', 6 2 'qrovot', etc.) presupposes a

k n o w l e d g e of details of the rabbinic liturgy that can hardly b e attributed to
Justinian - especially if Schwartz's o w n thesis about the b e g i n n i n g of the Rab-
binization of J u d a i s m in the 6 t h cent, is taken seriously. For in the 6 t h century,
the 'cultural shifts' that help p r o m o t e the rabbis' influence are 'still e m b r y o n i c '
(69). Furthermore, attempts to explain 'deuterosis' as certain distinct elements
of rabbinic liturgy or literature must end u p in u n w a r r a n t e d generalizations or
anachronisms. It is also not likely that reading the Tora in H e b r e w h a d be-
come a practice that w a s w i d e s p r e a d e n o u g h in order for Justinian to have felt
threatened b y it. 63 It is thus easier to u n d e r s t a n d Justinian as striving to re-
solve a polemical issue of Christian theology rather than as trying to end a
quarrel that e n g a g e d t w o groups of a small minority of the population and as
forbidding and sanctioning with draconic punishments the execution of s o m e
minutiae of the liturgy of one of the t w o parties.
remained of a certain value in Judaism. Lampe 340 also refers to Eusebius Ecclesiasti-
cal History 12.4.2 SC 307.44 that understands δευτέρωσίς as esoteric Jewish traditions
for the more advanced students. The term does not imply a known corpus of text
there. In 12.1.4 SC 307.36 the 'Hebrews' call the exegetes δευτερωταί. It is doubtful
whether this should be a translation of 'Tanna'; as assumed by Bietenhard 1956, 843;
because the terminology of rabbinic Judaism was not widespread enough in Eusebius'
time.
62 Veltri 1994, 117 enters the discussion with the presupposition that 'der im Gottes-
dienst vorgelesene Text dem Volk unverständlich war und daher von einer Uberset-
zung/Erklärung in der Landessprache gefolgt wurde'. This is not ascertained for the
Greek speaking communities. It makes the rabbinic custom of a reading of the He-
brew text with following translation ubiquitous for Judaism. It postulates a back-
ground for the novella that did not exist. Likewise, the targum is not 'eine Art Pre-
digt', 127. Justinian does not fear that the subtleties of targumic expansions (by
Aquila as well as Aramaic targums) should teach the people Jewish Biblical theology,
but implies interpretation in any form including homilies or other forms of teaching.
Veltri's 129 acceptance of a geonic 'persecution-theory' for the invention of piyyut
does not substantiate any impact of the novella on real life. After all, it did not pro-
hibit the reading of the Tora, but promoted readings in Greek. Persecution theories
may be literary topoi; Langer 1998, 122f: 'Jews have, throughout history, resorted to
such pseudo-historical claims to explain the development of customs that, from a
halakhic and logical perspective, ought not to exist.'
63 If the reading of the Tora in Hebrew was only performed to be able to listen to the
sound of the holy text, but not to understand it, Justinian's injunction would also miss
the point.
Thus, Hellenistic Jews never translated the Tora in the liturgy nor recited
Hebrew liturgical poetry. The novella helps to understand neither the linguis-
tic situation of Judaism in Justinian's time nor the customs of reading and
translating the Tora in the liturgy. Even if one assumes that the legislation re-
acts to an actual appeal by two Jewish parties to the emperor, the details that
are given about their positions are tainted with Christian interests and anach-
ronistic information about Judaism.
According to rabbinic sources, the Tora could be read in a language other
than Hebrew. yMeg 4.3 75a states that '...the Greek speaking (communities)
do not act like that (viz., the distribution of the verses of the Tora on several
readers), but one (person) reads the whole passage'.64 Already tMeg 3.13 356
implies that the Tora was read in the vernacular in communities which did not
understand Hebrew.65 The Tosefta emphasizes, nevertheless, that at least the
beginning and the end of the passage should be read in Hebrew. This is an
important indication for the ritualization of the reading of the Tora - a system
in which the reading of the sacred text becomes more important than the con-
gregants' understanding. From amoraic times on, the developing ritualization
increases the gap between the appropriation of the text during the perform-
ance of the liturgy and its ritualized proclamation. Eventually, it creates a
custom that could not have been widespread among Jews in Rabbinic times:
64 Hüttenmeister 1987, 145 η. 105 refers to a possible quotation of Philo in Eusebius

Praeparatio Evangelica 8.7.13 GCS 431f classified as 'Hypothetica sive Apologia pro
Judaeis' in the corpus of Philo's works cf. LCL 432. One may infer from πλην ει TL
προσεπευφημήσαι τοις άναγινωσκομένοίς νομίζεται 'but it is customary that some
eulogies may be uttered besides that which has been read (viz. the Law)' that bene-
dictions were said to the reading. One of the priests or elders 'explains' έξηγεϊσθαι
the laws. While it is true that this description most probably excludes the reading of a
Hebrew text and some translation activity, it does not give a more specific description
of the ritual or the portioning of the text to be studied in this way. The purpose of the
reading of the Tora according to Philo seems to be the distribution of its knowledge
and not its ritual proclamation. Colson understands προσεπευφημήσαι as referring
to a discussion about the reading (and hence not a blessing): 'And indeed they do al-
ways assemble and sit together, most of them in silence except when it is the practice
to add something to signify approval of what is read' 433.
65 This applies to the whole western Diaspora; Colorni 1964, 64 (a knowledge of Hebrew
is 'quasi inexistent'). Cf. Treu 1973, 125 for Palestine. 'Greek wisdom' was studied in
Palestine; Lieberman 1942. Lieberman also assumes a high degree of the use of Greek
esp. in prayers, the Shma', and as basis for sermons also 'sometimes' in 'midland Pal-
estinian synagogues'; 30 and in general, 29-67.
the 'private' study of the text apart from its reading in the liturgy.66 The To-
sefta implies, in any case, that where there is nobody present who knows some
Hebrew, the Tora is of course read in the vernacular (Greek).
The Tora could be written in another language according to mMeg 1.8.67
The Septuagint is likewise praised in yMeg 1.11 71c.68 In this context, an
66 Fraade 1992, 262 interprets tBM 2.21 70 as interpretation of mBM 2.8. This would im-
ply that the Tosefta alleviated the Mishna by allowing two persons to read in the book
instead of one. If tBM reflects an older state of the law than mBM, the Mishna abbre-
viates and aggravates the law. tBM rules: 'If someone found scrolls, he reads in them
once every thirty days. He must not read in them the given paragraph and repeat
(reading) it. He must not read in them the given paragraph and translate (it). Three
persons must not read in a single volume. He must not open in a scroll more than
three columns. Symmachus says: only in new (scrolls) may he read once every thirty
days; in old ones only once every 12 months.' The point of the Tosefta is to restrict
'private' study for the sake of the longevity of the scroll, which does, after all, not be-
long to the person who found it. Günter Stemberger observes that the concern of the
paragraph remains governed by the situation that is described at its beginning - 'if
someone found scrolls' - and cannot be generalized to contain rules for private read-
ing in other situations. There is no indication that this should or should not be done
in front of an audience. The text does not speak about the weekly portion of a public
reading cycle (ΠΕΠΒΠ), but the very paragraph that the person who found the scroll has
opened; against Fraade 1992, 262. This is evident from the fact that he may only study
once a month. 'The (weekly) portion' would only make sense if he was allowed to
study every week. Moreover, it would be absurd, if the Tosefta forbade someone to
read and repeat the weekly portion, but to allow him to read and to repeat any other
text. Even the more general statement 'twice the Scripture, once the "targum"' (bBer
8a-b) does not imply that everyone was supposed to read the passages of a reading
cycle each week. This statement rules that different forms of study should neverthe-
less lead to a common completion of the text. If some academy should go over the
Tora twice and the targum once during a year, they should nevertheless end on a spe-
cific day. The point of reference is the year and not the week. As such it is still under-
stood by Rav Bebay Bar Abaye (of the 5 th gen. of Bab. amoraim), who specifies that
date as the Day of Atonement - before the invention of Simhat Tora. The scenario im-
plies that Rabbi Ammi (quoted by Rav Huna bar Yehuda; Rabbi Yohanan: Maagarim)
suggests to read the Tora twice and once the targum (in Aramaic and where Numb
32.3 is missing - Rashi) in any form, unless one finishes the whole task together with
the congregation; against Fraade 1992, 264f. This material does not imply that every-
one knew Biblical Hebrew and targumic Aramaic.
67 Cf. yMeg 2.1 73a, bMeg 8b-9b that gives one of the forms of the legend of the transla-
tion of the LXX.
68 Cf. also Colorni 1964, 50 n. 148 yMeg 1.8 71c: Ά tannaitic teaching: Rabban Shim'on
Ben Gamaliel sa(id): Also in the scrolls, they only allowed that they be written in
important difference between Bereshit Rabba and yMeg must be mentioned as

it may be an indication of a situation where rabbinic aspirations clashed with
the reality that prevailed among the people.
BerR 36.8 TA 342 gives the statement of Bar Qappara (to Gen 9.27) that 'the
words of the Tora are said in the language of Yaphet in the tents of Shem'. yMeg
1.11 71b expresses apparently the same tradition in a different way: 'Said Bar
Qappara ... that they should speak in the language of Yaphet in the tent of
Shem'. While BerR makes Bar Qappara speak about matters pertaining to the
Tora,69 yMeg presupposes that he alludes to the language used for ordinary
purposes. In the context of yMeg, Rabbi Yudan connects this statement with
'the targum' (after the identification of the posterity of the Biblical Yaphet with
places in Greece) in a short statement the exact meaning of which remains un-
clear: ninn1? p"25. If this refers to the Septuagint (that is 'said in the tents of
Shem'), the version of yMeg presupposes that of BerR (or a common Vorlage
that is preserved in BerR more faithfully), because only BerR speaks about the
Tora in this context. This is corroborated by the fact that yMeg goes on to re-
strict the power of Greek - as being 'spoken in the tent of Shem' according to
Bar Qappara - in the famous paragraph on the four languages. This passage
shows that yMeg is much less sympathetic to Greek than Bar Qappara: '(The)
foreign tongue (i.e., Greek, T3J1?) for poetry, Latin70 for war, Syriac (i.e., Ara-
maic) for dirges, Hebrew for speaking.' The statement is introduced as a wish
Greek. They examined (the matter) and found out, that the Tora can only be trans-
lated adequately into Greek.' The text continues with a difficult statement: ins m a
m i r "pna rraiN an1? Xfl]1^ Ά watchman (or merely: a Roman soldier) "took out" (or
rather falsified, cf. tMeg 3.41 364.131f) for them the Latin (implying 'an instead of 'ans)
from the Greek. R. Jeremiah in the name of R. Hiyya b. Abba said: Aquila the Prose-
lyte presented his translation of the Tora before R. Eliezer and R. Joshua and they
praised him, and said to him: Thou art fairer than the children of men. (Ps 45.3)'
translated by Lieberman 1942, 17f. 'Thou art fairer' ii'D'S1 creates a pun to Yaphet n3\
The 'watchman' paraphrased the Greek Tora 'in contradistinction to a literal transla-
tion' according to Lieberman 17 n. 16. It is doubtful whether this statement describes
the origins of the Vetus Latina as suggested by Lieberman, n. 15. In the same vague-
ness, one could retain 'BIN and read the passage as an expression of contempt for the
Pslttä. Nevertheless, it may be an echo of rabbinic knowledge about a Latin transla-
tion of the LXX.
69 Günter Stemberger points out that onaw should not imply the Tora reading (rather
D'XIpa) in a strict sense.
70 Note that Latin does not play a role in the inscriptions of Palestine; Van der Horst
2002,13.
rather than a fact: 'Four languages are nice, in order that the world m a y use
t h e m (tfra p n i r a w w ) ' . ' H e b r e w for speaking (TITT1? nnns)' contradicts Bar
Q a p p a r a ' s statement according to y M e g rs" ηηττη against B e r R ή:π
nD,17tti ιηιΛη π'Ίΰω mm. y M e g introduces t w o important changes into this tradi-
tion (as represented in BerR): first, it does not even hint at the possibility that
the Tora b e (read and) discussed in Greek; second, it pushes G r e e k (ry1?) aside
(against Bar Q a p p a r a ' s rewritten statement) and prescribes ' H e b r e w for
speaking'. 7 1 T h e m y t h of the 'four languages' in y M e g is, therefore, nothing
other than a quite tendentious statement against G r e e k and a plea for the ac-
tual and w i d e s p r e a d u s e of Hebrew. 7 2 (Greek, and h e n c e pagan) 'Poetry (1ÖT)'
m u s t b e seen in the s a m e light as ' w a r ' and 'dirges'. Therefore, n o n e of the
three languages except for H e b r e w serves a neutral or even positive purpose.
This cannot b e read as a mirror of the linguistic landscape of late Antique Pal-
estine. 7 3 W h e r e v e r the H e b r e w Tora w a s read and e x p o u n d e d in an environ-
71 The Babylonian sages could be interpreted as advancing beyond this when they scorn
'ΊΠΝ' for uttering Greek songs all the time (γγβιβ» pos χ1? 'jiv int), bHag 15b. Although
this must not be read into the passage in yMeg, it is an additional warning against the
premature assumption that yMeg should have expressed the rabbis' deep estimation
for Greek poetry here. Lieberman 1942, 21 n. 37 does not take into account the nega-
tive value judgment that is expressed in this passage and especially in its context.
Contemporary (Greek speaking) Christians likewise distrusted pagan songs, because
they included the invocation of the names of the idols; Didascalia Apostolorum 21
Vööbus 203f.
72 The merits of speaking Hebrew are also mentioned elsewhere. In yShab 1.3 3c, a
Baraita in the name of Rabbi Meir promises the person who (among other virtues)
speaks Hebrew (in the Land of Israel) access to the 'world to come'.
73 Cf. for the opposite stance, Fraade 1992. Fraade 272f admits that the sources show the
rabbis' awareness that Biblical Hebrew did not equal rabbinic Hebrew. Who should
have been those listeners to the Tora who could enjoy the subtle differences in mean-
ing between the Tora and its translation during a live performance? Whoever infers
(with Fraade 273-276) from the bilingual character of rabbinic literature that the lit-
urgy implies the same openness between the two languages, restricts the relevance of
this liturgy to the rabbinic circles. The situation with regard to a wider knowledge of
the Tora and the prayers in Hebrew (not necessarily with an active competence in He-
brew) seems to change in the epoch of the geonim. Inscriptions are not available for
earlier epochs; cf. Fraade 1992, 277-282. If the piyyutim are read as indications that a
larger audience was well trained in the knowledge of the Bible (and did not know a
limited repertoire of testimonia and bits of midrash) this could be applied already to
the 6th cent. In these epochs, the custom to translate the Tora was already more than
400 years old. Such sources hardly illuminate the origins of that custom. Hebrew is
not used 'still' in the sixth century, but 'again' - not as a survival, but as an innova-
ment that did not only consist of rabbinic scholars, any translation - whether
Greek or Aramaic - would have greatly aided the congregation. Whatever the
origins of certain translations, they at least acquired the function of a means to
support the understanding of the Tora as soon as they were pronounced in
front of a wider audience.
The Meaning of 'Targum' and the Task of the Translator
In addition, a brief remark about the meaning of 'targum' must be added. For,
'targum' does not everywhere imply 'Aramaic translation', not even 'transla-
tion' in all cases.74 Thus, the 'meturgeman' who accompanied a sage would act
as a middleman between him and the audience, rather than translating the
sage's words into another language. It was his task to proclaim the sage's
words loudly. His office was derived from the repertoire of the public display
of power and dignity, rather than from the genuine procedures of the school.75
However, the existence of such an office with such a designation makes the
liturgy in which the Tora is 'translated' highly ambiguous. Asked from a
theological point of view: does the 'translator' increase the loudness of the
proclamation, or does he actually transform the words of the Tora? With this
question, the next subject to be discussed has been introduced: the develop-
ment of the allegorical interpretation of the liturgy.
tion. Treu 1973, 125 observes that the Polemic against Judaism never complains about
linguistic idiosyncrasies.
74 Sokoloff 2002b; 719, 1231f has more entries for the meaning 'explain' than for 'trans-
late'. Sokoloff 2002, 336 refers to ιοηιη» as 'translator' (in the Vat. ms. of FT) rendering
Π3 (Aaron being 'Moses' mouth') in Exod 4.16. It is less likely that this reflects a tradi-
tion that Moses did not speak Hebrew than the attempt of the targum to project the
ritual of the reading of the Tora into the relationship between Moses and Aaron. One
could, likewise, doubt the meaning 'translate' for all attestations for ann in Palestinian
Aramaic, p. 591. Why should 'lanp mm pnv ' n m i a x imply the use of a second lan-
guage rather than the proclamation of the sage's words in the same language? As
several passages emphasize that all languages were fit for translation, especially
Greek, the tannaim did not envisage the recitation of a standardized Aramaic transla-
tion.
75 Fraade 1992, 267 n. 35.
T h e Allegorical Interpretation of the R e a d i n g of the Tora
In order to understand the use of ' t a r g u m ' in the synagogue, one m u s t distin-
guish b e t w e e n the m o d e l s and reasons for a certain ritual on the o n e h a n d and
its interpretation after it had b e c o m e an established custom on the other. For
the ' m e a n i n g ' of a s e g m e n t of a ritual in an amoraic source m u s t not b e con-
fused with the motive for its invention in tannaitic times. 7 6 Several texts in
y M e g illustrate this point. Thus, S h m u e l B a r R a v Yitshaq reproaches ' s o m e o n e
w h o translates (the Tora, not the Megila) close to a pillar' (yMeg 4.1 74d). As
this passage follows a M i s h n a (and G e m a r a ) w h i c h allows the reading of M e -
gilat Esther (standing or) sitting, the person m a y b e envisaged as leaning
against the pillar. T h e sage gives a reason for his rejection of this behavior: 'as
(the Tora) w a s given in terror and fear, w e m u s t also b e h a v e towards it in ter-
ror and fear' 7 7 - w h i c h implies, standing freely, like the people stood at Sinai.
In the following story, the same sage encounters a !π:τπ,78 w h o reads the Tora
and translates it himself. Again, the imagery of Sinai is e v o k e d in his admoni-
tion: 'as it w a s given b y m e a n s of a m i d d l e m a n , w e must also b e h a v e towards
it e m p l o y i n g a middleman'. 7 9 T h e argument for the essentially oral procedure
76 Fraade 1992, 266 remarks that such 'narrative traditions' are not attested before
amoraic times.
77 Cf. Exod 19.16; Sifra smini Weiss 45d (# 37).
78 Corrected from ruin, Maagarim. Günter Stemberger refers to Syr58 (CIJ 805 Frey 2.57)
in Noy and Bloedhorn 2004, 98-100, reading: έπΐ Νεμία άζζάνα I και τοΰ διάκονος I
έψηφώθη ή πρόθεσις I τοϋ ναοϋ, etc. He suggests to keep the well known interpre-
tation of διάκων as explanation of άζζάνα, cf. Yahalom 1999, 38. Noy and Bloedhorn
seem to favor another interpretation that does not equate the two titles. Although
they refer to Epiphanius Panarion 30.11.4 GCS 1.346.16f, they do not tell the reader the
continuation of the text there: ...και άζανιτών (των παρ' αύτοίς διακόνων έρμη-
νευομένων ή υπηρετών). It is true that the story of Comes Joseph is by itself of hard-
ly any historical value. Yet, this is a marginal note in Epiphanius' treatise and does
not belong to the narrative. It may well be a scrap of linguistic and social knowledge.
This is marginally supported by the observation that Ephrem was 'only' a deacon and
is at the same time the most important composer of Syriac hymns. Thus, one should
not emphasize the Hazzan's 'low standing in the synagogue hierarchy', Noy and
Bloedhorn 99, but allow that he may have had an increasingly important function -
joining the Archisynagogoi, Priests, and Elders according to Epiphanius' enumeration.
79 The combination of the Sinai imagery with the reading of the Tora is powerful enough
to push aside a rabbinic principle that is visible in many other texts: to avoid the no-
tion that Moses received the Tora and passed it on to Israel; cf. Stemberger 2003a.
yMeg continues with the quotation of scriptural proof-texts for this notion.
of the translation is also traced back to the events at Sinai. It w o u l d b e an

anachronism to assume that the rabbis invented the translation of the Tora in
order to create a m i m e t i c representation of the situation of the giving of the
L a w at Sinai. These texts encounter a given liturgical situation and explain its
m e a n i n g . W h e r e did the original ritual c o m e from? To w h i c h social setting did
it b e l o n g before it w a s interpreted and even reshaped b y allegorical interpre-
tations?
M e t h o d s of Study and Liturgical R e a d i n g
T h e rules for the reading of the Tora that are given in the M i s h n a (esp. m M e g
4 . 4 - 1 0 ) do not yet introduce the m i m e t i c allusions of the surrounding ritual
that e m e r g e in the amoraic commentaries to them. T h e ritualization of the
reading introduces subtle differences b e t w e e n study and liturgy. 8 0 T h e rab-
binic sources emphasize, for example, the improvised character of the transla-
tion. T h e non-standardized translations should, apparently, never reach a de-
gree of ritualization that w o u l d m a k e t h e m a replacement of the Tora. 8 1 An
80 Langer 1998a. The amoraic remarks that reflect the rabbis' construction of meaning
around the ritual of the reading of the Tora precede the actual emergence of prayer
texts that imply a similar approach to these liturgies by centuries. The rabbinic idea
that the study of the Tora can be understood as a substitute for liturgies at the Temple
coexists with the notion that the statutory prayers have such a function - cf. bBer 26b
on the times of prayer: Qllpn p'sn "mn m'jsn. This reflects complicated social and theo-
logical relationships of rabbis and priests towards their cultural and religious heritage.
That the activity of 'study' and the discussion of Biblical texts, for example during a
symposium at a festival, is considered to represent the lost ritual at the Temple, does
not imply that this would have been conducted along the lines of the public reading of
the Tora. One may wonder whether or not a Tora scroll should be used in a triclin-
ium, which is not impossible; cf. Lukinovich 1990, 271 and Klinghardt 1996, 69. 74 as
well as p. 248f about the regulation of the nightly reading in Qumran; 1QS VI 7 Gracia
Martinez and Tigchelaar 1997, 82. Fraade 1992, 263-265 reviews the (Babylonian) evi-
dence for the study of Scripture and 'targum'. It is unlikely that many persons pos-
sessed a complete set of the Tora together with the appropriate targum in order to
study it 'privately' in amoraic or even tannaitic times. The reference to 'targum' may
still imply a spontaneous exercise of translating the text. Moreover, such an activity
presupposed a high level of scholarly training that could not be expected from every
member of a given congregation.
81 Z. Safrai 1990,189 quoting tMeg 4.41 (= 3.41 364): 'He who translates a verse in a literal
(ΊΓΙΎΙΧ3) manner lies [see n. 68 p . 338], and h e who adds [in his translation] bias-
interpretative translation that accompanies the reading of the Tora should,

therefore, not be conducted from a text that was written (like the Tora). Al-
though this is not explicitly ruled out, the translator should certainly not recite
a memorized text, but translate what he actually heard in the liturgy.82 The
rendering of each single verse of the text of the Tora makes an accurate live
translation possible.
One may argue that these rules reflect mimetic allusions to the Sinai sce-
nario. However, the oral character of the translation is already emphasized in
the tannaitic texts that are not built upon the amoraic allegorical interpretation
of the ritual. The roots of this orality may, therefore, be interpreted in a differ-
ent way. While the tannaitic prescriptions impose certain rules on the reading
of the Tora, they do not emulate a piece of Biblical narrative, but rather adapt
the customs of the study house to the synagogue liturgy.
Fraade (1992, 265f n. 32) refers to attestations of bilingualism in the aca-
demic approach to classical Latin and Greek texts. Academic procedures re-
sembled each other in Antiquity. In a Latin speaking scholarly environment,
the translation of Greek texts would be more important than in a Greek acad-
emy. Thus, the seemingly obvious must be turned into a question: the targum
may have been very useful in helping to bring the Hebrew Tora to people who
hardly understood it in the synagogue, but why is a targum read (consulted, or
created spontaneously) in the study house, the very place where the Hebrew
Tora is understood best?
Sifre to Deuteronomy (161 Finkelstein 212, Fraade 263) enumerates what
can be read as a sequence of procedures in the study of the Bible: miqra,
targum, Mishna, Talmud, ma'ase, yir'a - from Scripture to good actions and
the fear of God. The easiest understanding of this enumeration is not the in-
tellectual path of the individual who passes through certain stages in his edu-
phemes'. The following sentence apparently adds as a reason for this injunction that
the same applies to the prm in the context of the school, if the ιοπη is of a lower rank
than the person whose words he renders for the public. (The translator in the liturgy
is of course lower in rank than the Tora.)
82 Fraade 1992, 259f (cf. also Shinan 1983, 42) assumes that the meturgeman 'memorized'
the targum. yBer 5.3 9c quotes a passage of a targum that is highly different from TO.
The translation is not the point in this instance, but the theological rationalization of
the laws. There was no single text that would be expected to be heard in the liturgy.
According to Shinan, this refers to a distinct group with a common tradition. While
this can never be ruled out, it reads too much into a statement that does not polemize
against particular persons but gives examples for different opinions.
cation but rather the procedure of the group in the study house that is de-
signed to appropriate the traditions of (rabbinic) Judaism. One therefore ad-
vances from Scripture to a targum as one of the steps of this scholarly proce-
dure. After all, this line interprets Deut 17.19, the phrase that explains why the
king must possess his own scroll of the Law, which he has to study by day and
night (derived by ribbui): 'in order that he should learn to fear Y' your [sic]
God'. Each day, the Biblical king (and later, the rabbinic sage) passes from
miqra to yir'a through targum and mishna ('translation and repetition').83
The sequence may reflect a widespread and ancient procedure of studying
literary texts in the schools of rhetoric.84 One would first read a line, for exam-
ple from a poet, establish its text, explain difficult lexemes, etc.85 This basic but
thorough understanding culminates in the paraphrase of the line under discus-
sion. Ethical interpretations (ma'ase, yir'a) would follow as the κηίσις
ποιημάτων in Greek rhetoric. Before embarking on such higher criticism,
however, the paraphrase was the most succinct expression of the teacher's and
the group's full understanding of the text. When such study sessions were
committed to writing and reworked, they led to the composition of whole
commentaries that quoted a line, added explanations and ended each para-
graph of explanation with a paraphrase. In Christianity, later scholars trans-
lated, for example, such Greek commentaries into Syriac or Latin or created
epitomes out of them. In the latter case, an epitomator had the choice of
copying items out of the lexical explanations or out of the paraphrases.
Copying the complete paraphrases was a very promising procedure, because
they provided the fastest access to the commentator's understanding of the
source and spared the reader the tedious process of understanding the basics
83 'Mishna' and 'Talmud' are not yet technical terms for certain rabbinic texts. If
'Mishna' is understood from its root, it could also mean 'repetition' and hence 'para-
phrase'. Hebrew halakhot are not regularly translated into Aramaic. The tradition
does not blur the border between what would today be regarded as secondary litera-
ture and primary source ('Miqra'). The transposition of the procedure of the reading
of Tora into the liturgy takes place in a time when the activity of the school is not yet
centered around texts like the (canonical) Mishna. WayR 2.1 Margulies 35 is a differ-
ent case (and a later text; Stemberger 1996, 291). There, Scripture - Mishna - Talmud
refers to a sequence of traditional texts that the rabbis' disciples must master.
84 Lieberman begins his book 1942 (and later, p. 20) with a rabbinic remark about the
academy for the study of 'Greek wisdom' in Palestine under Rabban Gamaliel.
85 Schäublin 1974; 34f as a method in Antiquity, 141ff regarding Theodore of Mopsues-
tia: the paraphrase as 'indispensable backbone' of the commentary - further surveys
in 1988 and 1992. Young 1997.
of the source on his own. If the Aramaic targums emerged from such a schol-
arly context, both their role as a means of expressing scholarly interpretation as
well as their relatively great variety and late standardization are readily un-
derstandable. Unlike the Septuagint and the Psittä, these translations were not
copied and preserved as full replacements for the Tora for liturgical purposes.
This also explains why targums exist to verses or texts that were not to be
translated in the liturgy. Moreover, the non-standardized and essentially oral
character of the procedure within the academy is of paramount importance.86 As
long as the scholarly institution laying at its root is functioning,87 the study
houses produce paraphrases - and probably 'targums' - continuously as a re-
sult of the work with the text and its parallels. In rabbinc literature in its writ-
ten form, Aramaic and Hebrew were used in order to identify strata of tradi-
tions and to elucidate structures of the discourse. The recitation of a canonical
translation would not make sense in such an environment, although one may
collect notes and measure one's own achievements against those of important
predecessors. If this is the case, theological deliberations about 'oral' and
'written' Tora are secondary embellishments and apologies for well known
and widespread procedures and customs employed in the study of texts.
A possible counter-argument against this approach must be pointed out.
The tannaitic midrashim do not reflect this procedure, which, on the other
hand, is well attested in Greek (as well as Christian Syriac and Latin) exegetical
sources. In this regard, the tannaitic midrashim could only have functioned as
a repository of interpretive knowledge (that supported the discussion) but not
as a 'full' commentary that recorded the whole process. There may be several
reasons for this fact, and it requires a separate discussion. One of the reasons
could be that the midrashim were at first intended for a well initiated audience
only and could be eclectic in their mode of presentation.
It is imaginable that this situation was transferred to the liturgy of the
synagogue by the tannaim. Such a transfer illustrates the early rabbis' idea of
the public reading of the Tora as a popularized study session. As in the acad-
86 Shinan 1992,13 other opinions in n. 12 there.

87 Cf. Reif 1993, 143 (and 146): 'It is only towards the end of that period [viz. the geonic
period] and perhaps in the century or two following it, that authoritative and stan-
dard versions may justifiably be recognised.' Elbogen 1931, 190f = 1993, 153 observes
already that the standardization of the targums rose at the same time as the transla-
tion of the Biblical readings into Aramaic in the liturgies was on the decline. Drazin
1999 concludes a lexical study of TO with the observation that TO uses the tannaitic
midrashim and must, therefore, be younger than those.
emy, the source text is read and rendered verse by verse. A preacher may add
ethical and theological observations afterwards. As the primary aim of the
study session is the appropriation of the traditional text, the Greek or Aramaic
paraphrases acquired an additional meaning as soon as the procedure spread
beyond the innermost rabbinic circles. There, the listeners could understand
neither the Tora in Hebrew nor the structure of the whole procedure. From
amoraic times on - together with the slow spread of the rabbinic form of the
liturgy beyond the circles of rabbinism - the details of this liturgy are inter-
preted in an allegorical way. Over the centuries, the ritualized and public
study of the Tora is transformed into the reenactment of the giving of the Tora
at Sinai. 88 While it becomes more and more ritualized and understood as
carrying mimetic meanings, it functions less and less as a means of teaching
the text. As an early by-product of this process, the Aramaic targum is well
integrated into the narrative that comes to be enacted in the liturgy. This is
probably the reason why it remained in use for a long time and in places
where Aramaic was as foreign a language for the congregation as Hebrew.
Even if the Sinai myth m a y have helped to preserve the custom of the transla-
tion, this was not the reason for its invention in the first place. The rabbinic
discussions that imply the ritualization of the reading and translation indicate
the penetration of the institution into wider circles after the epoch of the tan-
naim. People w h o did not understand the Hebrew text could thus participate
in the liturgy b y means of the translation and accept the time-consuming ritual
as their symbolic, but awesome, access to the source of the Law and hence to
their identity as Jews. 8 9
88 This is indirectly corroborated by Stemberger's 2003a observations that the 'giving' of

the Tora to Moses was not an important theologumenon in Talmudic times, cf. n. 79 p.
342.
89 For some time and at a certain stage of the ritualization, one may assume that the
understanding of the translation by the listeners was part of the reenactment of the
myth. This would even align the (assumed) ritualization of the listening to the holy
'sound' by Greek speaking Jews with the allegorization and ritualization of the read-
ing of the Tora by amoraic rabbis. Both may also be independent developments. Cf.
Colorni 1964, 40: 'secondo ebraismo' of Greco-Latin Judaism as the expansion of the
use of Hebrew becoming visible in inscriptions of the 9th cent. The spread of the
reading of the Tora in Hebrew without any translation and the recitation of the
Prayers and the Shma' in Hebrew was certainly promoted by different factors like
changes of the role of the Hebrew language in the definition of the character of Juda-
ism, as well as the spread of a different reading cycle with longer pericopes. Regard-
ing the latter factor, it is difficult to assess whether the decline of the ritual translation
Rabbinic texts seem to imply the existence of written collections of Ara-

maic translations. Thus, Shmuel Bar Rav Yitshaq rebukes someone who 'trans-
lates (Olffia) from a scroll' (yMeg 4.1 74d). This translator could have been read-
ing the Septuagint, which would in any case have been available in the form of
translations of complete books (although it would rather have been a codex
than a scroll). Yet, the text does not necessarily imply that much. The trans-
lator could have been looking into the Tora scroll during the process of trans-
lation.90 Thus, the ritualization of the Tora reading would convey the message
that the translation be written in the Tora scroll. As the improvised character
of the translation is part of the symbolism of the ritual, this must be avoided.
Fraade (1992, 256) refers to the enigmatic text of mYad 4.5 as a reference to
written targumim:
'Targum' whose script is Hebrew and Hebrew whose script is 'targum' and He-
brew script does not defile the hands (implying that it does not have the canonical
status of a Tora scroll). It only defiles the hands if it is written 'Assyrian' (i.e.,
Aramaic and not Old Hebrew script) in ink on vellum.
Fraade interprets Dinn as Aramaic translation of the Tora.91 In the discussion of

this text, it is worthwhile to refer to the second column of Origen's Hexapla.
As Origen was hardly able to transcribe a Hebrew text into Greek,92 the
'Secunda' could have been a copy of a phonetic transcription of parts of the
was a cause or an effect of the changed customs to define weekly portions. Ezra
Fleischer 1991/92 suggests that the yearly reading cycle was already in use in tannaitic
times. This is not corroborated by the data, cf. Stemberger 1999b. The reconstruction
of a double-cycle by Naeh 1997/98 is likewise only probable for the time of the geonic
sources that contain clear references to pericopes.
90 Stemberger 1996, 33.
91 Cf. Colorni 1964, 48 n. 141. In this context, one could also understand Dinn as the Ara-
maic portions of Ezra and Daniel. In that case, the Mishna would only discuss prob-
lems of writing and language within the Bible and not presuppose a written Aramaic
translation of it. Cf. Fraade 1992, 258 n. 12 for further texts that indicate the lower
status of the translation vis-ä-vis the text of the Tora.
92 Buchinger 2005, 398 and η. 8. The Hebrew text of the Secunda was apparently not the
Masoretic Text, cf. Flint's observations in the same vol. 1998. On the basis of a
sophisticated analysis of the Cambridge Palimpsest (ms. Rahlfs 2005) Jenkins 1998b re-
jects Pierre Nautin's assumption that the Hexapla never contained a column in He-
brew script (although no traces of this column are preserved in any fragment of the
Hexapla). This does not explain, how Origen used that Hebrew column and who
wrote it for him from which source.
Hebrew Bible into Greek letters.93 In the situation of the school as well as the
liturgy, one could teach an audience who could read Greek to pronounce the
Hebrew text, whether or not they could understand it. As next to nothing is
known about the liturgy in Hellenistic synagogues, any conclusion about a
ritualized reading of an incomprehensible text in 'Hebrew' is difficult to prove.
Matthew Martin (2004) attributes the inclusion of the Hebrew consonants as
well as a transcription into Greek characters to Origen's interest in the pronun-
ciation of the self-efficacious divine text.94 As such opinions can also be found
in Judaism (Martin), it may be supposed that the transcription of the Tora was
used in this way in some Hellenistic synagogues.95 The Mishna could thus
want to determine the status of such texts, saying (in an interpretive para-
phrase): Ά translation (Aramaic or Greek) in Old Hebrew characters and the
Hebrew text phonetically transcribed into Greek characters, and any text (also
the Hebrew text) in Old Hebrew characters does not defile the hands.' This
explains the most problematic element of the short text: 'Hebrew whose script
is "targum"', for Hebrew text in 'Aramaic' (= 'Assyrian') characters is exactly
what defiles the hands. Origen's Secunda may thus help to understand this
sentence.
In the Middle Ages, Aramaic translations of selected verses were copied on
single sheets (as they are preserved in the Geniza). They seem to be adapted to
the immediate needs of the preparation of the performance of the translation in
the liturgy. This does not rule out that larger collections were already avail-
able quite early. Complete Palestinian translations of the Tora are, however,
not attested and cannot be reconstructed from the extant fragments.96
93 Cf. also Colorni 1964, 271

94 Martin accepts the theory that the Secunda contained a transcription of the first col-
umn rather than any Hebrew text. This can hardly be proven without an actual frag-
ment of a copy of the Hexapla with preserved first and second columns. Such a frag-
ment does not exist.
95 tMeg 3.13 356, see p. 337. It is difficult to reconstruct a coherent scenario on the basis
of the short text of the Tosefta. Was such a community supposed to possess the Tora
in Hebrew as well as in Greek? The phrase 'someone who reads Hebrew' ( ΚΊρ1® 'a
m a s ) neither implies nor excludes that he is thought to read it from a transcription
into Greek characters.
96 Cf. Gleßmer 1995, 105-119 esp. ms. Ε for the reconstruction of longer collections of
targums to the Tora. It cannot be proven that fragments of a scroll that contains
targums of Exod (ms. A) should have been part of a complete Pentateuch. A highly
standardized form of TO is, likewise, a scholarly myth that ignores the wealth of
available texts, cf. Reif's remark quoted in n. 87 p. 346.
T h e Palestinian t a r g u m tradition with its A r a m a i c piyyutim, its longer and

shorter expansions, its fragments f r o m the Cairo Geniza that provide transla-
tions for selected verses only, is, therefore, n o t a reliable basis for the recon-
struction of texts b e l o n g i n g to the time preceding the late phases of the epoch
of the geonim. 9 7 T h e shape of the Palestinian t a r g u m fragments suggests that
even at the b e g i n n i n g of the second m i l l e n n i u m the tradition w a s still 'living
literature' to s o m e extent and enjoyed a low degree of standardization. 9 8 It is
precisely b e c a u s e the formal character of this institution is a r e m n a n t within
the liturgy dating b a c k to m u c h earlier times, one cannot expect for old texts to
b e preserved in it.
A s the t a r g u m expansion to E x o d 12.42 is well attested in the fragments, it
s e e m s to b e l o n g to an early p h a s e of the creation of the Palestinian targumim.
W i t h respect to the origins of the rabbinic liturgy in general, this 'early' phase
is, nevertheless quite 'late'.
97 Kaufman 1973,173 n. 19 refers to the date (300-500 CE.) of two magic bowls that con-
tain what can be understood as a translation of Jer 2.2, 1 (or Ezek 2.3) in a version that
is almost identical to targum Jonathan to the Prophets. This may imply that the
translation existed by that time although these two verses do not contain difficult text,
that would point to a specific tradition of a translation. Even if one accepts this as
evidence for the existence of the targum Jonathan, this does not imply that there
should have been one authoritative translation of the Tora. That the whole Bible was
provided with Aramaic translations, had only been achieved in the late Middle ages.
Thus, Rashi says in his commentary to bMeg 21b where the Talmud defines the num-
bers of readers and translators for Tora, the Haftara 'and the Hallel and the scroll (of
Esther): even ten read and ten translate': '"and ten translate" - we do not have that in
our version, because there is no targum of the Hagiographa'. Stemberger notes 2003,
273 n. 26 that the targum of Ruth is not attested before the 11th cent. Rashi's ignorance
of it shows that it could not have been very old and widespread by that time. Recon-
structions of targumic text (of the Tora) that should be preserved from amoraic times
remain highly uncertain. Cf. also Hezser 2001, 248 n. 164 referring among others to
Shinan 1992b, 245: 'The core of the targum texts may therefore be dated between the
fourth and eighth centuries' the terminus a quo being given by the sources that the
targums use, the terminus ad quem by the replacement of Aramaic by Arabic as ver-
nacular of the populace in the 7th and 8th centuries'.
98 The use of the texts of the PTT was already very restricted in the time when these frag-
ments were written. After all, most of the targumic fragments of the Geniza contain
the text of TO and not that of the Palestinian targums and the Palestinian rite in the
liturgy was rapidly decreasing in importance.
Targum Neofiti and Pseudo-Jonathan
These observations about the flexibility and the non-standardized character of

the targums and their use in congregations that followed the Palestinian rite of
the liturgy seem to be contradicted by the fact that two large collections of
targumic material are extant. They also contain forms of the expansion of
Exod 12.42. Do targum Neofiti and Pseudo-Jonathan point to a comprehen-
sive, old basis for the Palestinian targum tradition?
Answers to that question must take into account the date of these texts."
Based on the colophon of targum Neofiti and combined with his observations
on the targums of Esther, Moshe Goshen-Gottstein (1975) reminds the histo-
rian that this manuscript is a Renaissance collection of the Palestinian targum
tradition for scholarly purposes. It is not and never was a text for liturgical
performances. This is corroborated by many detailed observations. The com-
pilers of targum Neofiti apparently had collections of targumim (of an un-
known length in each case) at their disposal. The marginal notes also show ten
scribes' awareness100 of differences with regard to other fragments or
independent observations on problems in the text. This suggests the use of
different fragments and/or some activity of revision of the translation.
Goshen-Gottstein's comparison with the targums to Esther makes it plausible
that the compilers of targum Neofiti may also have 'corrected' the main text.
Moreover, Colette Sirat characterizes a group of manuscripts that were copied
in an Italian workshop for Christian Hebraists with the following observa-
tion:101
Accuracy was not part of their [viz. the scribes'] job: the texts were not corrected ...
the head of the workshop knew that these scientific, philosophical and kabbalistic
texts were intended for Christians, who could hardly tell the difference: some
texts, surely copied to order, have the title of one work and the text of another.
While these observations do not explain the provenance and nature of the
manuscript of targum Neofiti, they provide targum Neofiti with a historical
background and imply a great warning concerning the accuracy of the minu-
99 Gleßmer 1995,110-115.
100 The different hands can be discerned in the marginalia; Gleßmer 1995, 111.
101 Quotation: 211. Sirat 2002, 210-211, 290. Note that even the only complete ms. of the
Palestinian Talmud was, according to the colophon (and a test-case of a folio that was
copied twice), likewise corrected by the scribe; Sirat 286f.
tiae of its text.102 As a complete 'Yerushalmi' targum to the Pentateuch, the

Neofiti manuscript stands out as an otherwise unattested composition that
may provide a very old tradition. As a Renaissance manuscript written for a
Christian patron, it may well share some of the features of that 'genre'. The
text may be heavily corrected, even made up at the time of the writing of the
manuscript for the purpose of creating the appearance of a completeness that
is not warranted by the sources. This signals a huge disadvantage of targum
Neofiti vis-ä-vis the Geniza fragments of the targums. The Geniza fragments
are preferable because they allow scholars to 'touch' the sources behind the
real liturgy. Yet, they were also not critical or Masoretic editions of an old and
venerable text and contain errors (and improvements, if the translator decided
to interfere with his text) similar to those of Neofiti.
Even if Diez Macho tries to present the text as a continuous translation of
the Pentateuch,103 critics have shown that it was put together from different
sources.104 It cannot be excluded that the Christian patron who commissioned
the translation ordered a 'complete Yerushalmi targum to the Pentateuch'. 105 If
he did, his wish was fulfilled. Yet, this does not mean that the workshop had a
Vorlage for such a text at its disposal. In any case, compilers made some effort
to collect what could be known about the Palestinian targum. One may, there-
fore, compare the text of targum Neofiti with the fragments of the Geniza.
Targum Pseudo-Jonathan has to be distinguished from the Palestinian tar-
gum tradition. It is the work of a compiler who shaped the text according to
his own theology.106 The text is quoted at the end of the 13th or the beginning
of the 14th century.107 In the 16th century, two manuscripts are mentioned, one
of which (now lost) served as the basis for the editio princeps. The other and
102 The latter has been supported already by Rieder 1968/69, 86 who warns scholars 'who
want to use Ms. Neofiti ... For many things are disturbed in it and it is difficult to dis-
tinguish between correct and incorrect (readings).'
103 This activity includes a high infidelity towards the source, as Diez Macho deletes, for
example, the Hebrew lemmata. He wants to make the readers of his edition feel to
have a text like the LXX in front of them while the original comes much closer to a
collection of fragmentary targums as attested in the Geniza. Cf. also Wernberg-M0ller
1962 for a refutation of the text critical arguments that Diez Macho compiled in order
to support a pre-Christian date for the translation.
104 Gleßmer 1995,112f.
105 Elbogen 1931, 190 = 1993, 153 remarks that the extant targums also contain passages
in translation that were forbidden to be translated in the liturgy.
106 Shinan 1992,193-198.
107 Shinan 1995/96.
The Form and the Genre of the Text 353
only extant one is kept in the British Museum. As the text mentions an Islamic
tradition (Ishmael's wives, Gen 21.21b) as well as a high-priest 'Yohanan', it
provides hints for any date between the Maccabees and the Caliphs. Avigdor
Shinan (1992, 196ff) assumes Islamic times as the earliest imaginable terminus
a quo. He suggests the middle of the 8th cent, as a possible date. Like targum
Neofiti, Pseudo-Jonathan is a unique creation that did not gain wider attention
before it was printed and did not have any relevance for liturgy.108
Conclusions
These observations on the historical background of the extant manuscript

sources as well as their complicated relationship to what can be known about
the liturgies in which their texts may have been employed, show that the liter-
ary context of the expansion of Exod 12.42 does not allow us to propose a date
for it. It may be an ancient text. It is only found in later sources and the char-
acter of the tradition suggests that it could not have been transmitted faith-
fully, if it does antedate the manuscripts by many centuries.
5.3 The Form and the Genre of the Text
As nothing is known about 'poetic' texts that should have been recited in a
first century Christian 'liturgy', the text of the expansion itself is the only piece
of evidence for the assessment of its genre and liturgical use in that epoch.109
108 Shinan's study updates Gleßmer's summary 1995, 181-196, who could not yet use it.
Cf. Flesher's references 1995, 61 to the long discussion between Hayward and Shinan.
As suggested above, Shinan's analyses provide a better background for the descrip-
tion of the relationship of this targum to the rest of the PTT than an earlier dating.
109 Ralph Brucker 1997 has shown that the presumed quotations from 'liturgical hymns'
within the Pauline epistles are a rhetoric feature of the genre of the letter and are not
portions of liturgical texts. Especially arguments from the theological positions that
they contain are circular because the modern critics hat purged texts that were alleg-
edly composed for a 'pre-Pauline' liturgical setting of what they thought to be Pauline
accretions beforehand. As next to nothing is known about liturgies in first century
Christian communities, it is difficult to refute even wild reconstructions of ancient
'hymns' on the basis of the text of the NT. Brucker's magisterial study is decisive in
The question of 'poetry' versus 'prose' cannot be dealt with exhaustively here.
It will however be necessary, first, to refer to specimens of the same literary
form as the expansion to Exod 12.42; second, to ask in which liturgical and lit-
erary environment such texts actually functioned; and third, to ask what is the
form and liturgical function of truly poetic texts, which are formally different
from the expansion.
Before we embark on a discussion of the genre, the version that comes
closest to the original shape of the expansion must be determined, as the ex-
pansion is extant in a shorter (targum Pseudo-Jonathan) and a longer form.
Based on the assumption that the list in the targums was created as a simple
enumeration of four nights, the version of Pseudo-Jonathan could have pre-
served the earliest form which was expanded later, especially with Biblical
quotations.110 The literary character of Pseudo-Jonathan indicates, however,
that its author rather abbreviated the longer expansion than that he had access
to an older tradition.
Moreover, it is unlikely that the extant text of targum Pseudo-Jonathan is
the most pristine form of the expansion, because, unlike the other 'nights', the
'third night' (no. 12 in the table) contains the explanation of the longer version.
Why should this 'night' need an explanation whereas Abraham's [sic] 'night'
should be identified more easily? If targum Pseudo-Jonathan should have had
Gen 15 in mind like the other targums one would expect to read 'Abram'.
Targum Pseudo-Jonathan could refer to the Aqeda as 'Abraham's night'. This
would mean, that it presupposes the longer form of the expansion, as the con-
nection between the idea of 'night' and the Aqeda cannot be derived from the
Bible and rabbinic literature.111 In any case, the version of Pseudo-Jonathan is
this context, because he shows that the criteria for an isolation of such material within
the sources violate the character of the genre.
110 Davies 1979, 65.
111 Obviously, some texts which happen to contain the requisite Stichwort must still un-
dergo a good deal of interpretation, if not distortion, before becoming convincing en-
tries on their respective lists'; Towner 1973,154. Except for the last 'night', all 'nights'
(including the Aqeda) are likely parts of an 'enumeration of scriptural examples'. The
last night would better fit into a 'proverbial' list. The Aqeda does not, however, con-
tain the catch-word 'night'. Its inclusion in the list is dependent upon its 'distortion'
and the inclusion of God's promise of Isaac's (Ishma'el's) birth as included in
Abra(ha)m's vision 'between the pieces'. A formally less obvious list is MekhY besal-
lah 5 L 1.229f.80-104, which enumerates instances of punishment meted out by God
through the east wind. It also ends in an eschatological view referring to 'the wanton
government' (of Rome, 98) followed only by Hell - in a similar way and likewise not
The Form and the Genie of the Text 355
hardly understandable without knowledge of the longer texts, where the Bibli-
cal verses that recall those 'nights' are quoted. Therefore, the list of Pseudo-
Jonathan is an abbreviation of the longer lists.112
The expansion of the 'four nights' is not referred to in rabbinic literature.
Nevertheless the conclusions of Wayne Towner's analysis of the rhetorical
form - 'enumeration of scriptural examples' - may be applied. 'Enumerations
of scriptural examples' or similar lists are contained in rabbinic texts and were
sometimes quoted or imitated in the targums. In this context, the enumeration
of the 'four nights' is a passage hat is immediately recognized as a specimen of
a rhetoric device that has many formal parallels. The Biblical quotations of its
longer version are one of its most important features and not a later embel-
lishment.
One may, for example, refer to the various versions of the list of the 'three
(four) keys (i.e., acts of opening)': 113
'And he opened her womb' (Gen 30.22). R. Menahma said in the name of R. Be-
hay: Three keys (i.e. acts of opening) are (done) by the Holy One, may he be
blessed: The 'opening' of grave (burial), rains, and womb. [The 'opening' (or
'key') of a grave: 'behold, I am opening your graves' (Ezek 37.12). The 'opening' of
rains: Ύ will open for you his treasury' etc. (Deut 28.12). The 'opening' of the
womb: 'and he opened her womb'. And there are some who are saying: also the
'opening' of sustenance: '(you are) opening your hand' etc. (Ps 145.16).]
Texts of the Palestinian targum tradition contain a similar list of the four
groups of Israelites at the Red Sea. There, the explanation of the Israelites'
words at the Red Sea is developed into a narrative. Avigdor Shinan notes that
constructed regularly: MekhY besallah 6 L 1.237-239.75-93 on the Patriarchs' morning

prayers.
112 Le Deaut 1963, 136. The past tense of ' " J U T S (if it does not mean Ί shall reveal myself')
of the last night does not correspond to the subsequent paraphrase and explanation of
Exod 12.42aa that points to the future redemption. It corresponds however to ' Μ Γ Ι Ν in
1 ,
the other three 'nights'. Thus, it standardizes the fourth night against its contents.
Towner 1973; 26, 248f also describes standardization as a trajectory of the develop-
ment of the older, tannaitic lists. The compiler of TPsJ also purged the 'fourth night'
from its personal Messiah and only left the image of the gathering of the exiles (no.
16), that is implied in the longer versions. The verse itself (Exod 12.42) is paraphrased
with short expansions afterwards, no. 19. There, the compiler connects the topic of the
'fourth night' with the 'third', the Egyptian Pesah.
113 Quoted from BerR 73 TA 848. The tradition was studied by Mauro Pesce 1979. For
parallels that found their way into the targum, cf. TN, mss. Par Klein 1980 I, 58, and
Vat 440; Klein 19801,145; to Gen 30.22.
this expansion also seems to mark the end of a seder of the Palestinian cycle of
the Tora reading.114 Similar expansions as introductions into the topic to be
read afterwards are also found at the beginning of the targum of Ruth and the
targum of Song of Songs. The targum of Ruth enumerates ten famines in the
context of the famine that leads to the unfolding of the plot of the book.115 At
the beginning of the targum of Song of Songs, ten other 'songs' that are con-
tained in the Bible are enumerated and combined with Biblical proof-texts.116
Whether those texts have rabbinic parallels or not, they are handed down
within the tradition of the targum. Nothing indicates that they should be an-
cient 'hymns'. Regarding their contents, these texts are a by-product of the
attempt to systematize the narrative portions of the Bible. As such, they are
comparable to many lists that collect similar motifs.
Nevertheless, such texts play an additional role besides their purpose to
teach stories to their listeners. Some of them have liturgical functions.
The mss. FF and Vat 440 show that the expansion to Exod 12.42 was also
handed down independent from a complete Aramaic translation of a large
passage of the Biblical text. As a targum expansion, the liturgical function of
the enumeration of the 'four nights' is not clear at first sight.117 The expansion
is, however, given after the Hebrew lemma of Exod 12.42 (nmaw T7) and
embedded in the translation of its verse. Manuscripts such as Vat 440 record
only selected verses with Hebrew lemmata and Aramaic translations. Thus,
ms. FF only indicates that a scribe or precentor regarded the expansion of the
114 Shinan 1992, 66.

115 Cf. Nachman Levine's 1999 study of the structure of the Biblical book and the opening
list of the ten famines. The tenth famine is likewise pointing to the messianic future.
116 Towner 1973; 164, 236f. Sperber 1968 IVa, 127: '...the song that Adam sang when his
sins were forgiven ... Moses said the second song together with the children of Israel
when the Lord of heavens split for them the Sea of Reeds. ... said the children of Israel
when the fountain of water was given to them ... when his (Moses') time came to de-
part from the world ... said Joshua Ben Nun when he waged war in Gibeon and the
sun and the moon stood for him 36 hours ... Barak and Deborah ... said Hannah when
a son was given her from before Y' ... said David, the king of Israel about every won-
der that Y' did for him ... said Solomon, the king of Israel by means of the Holy Spirit
before the Lord of the whole world, Y' (i.e. the Song of Songs) ... The children of Israel
will say the tenth song when they will go forth from their exiles...'.
117 Gleßmer 1995, 165f. The liturgical function may explain the form of the FT. The haz-
zan or meturgeman, who would be able to translate most of the Biblical text easily,
committed to writing only what he needed in his preparation for the service.
The Form and the Genie of the Text 357
'four nights' as an important part of the targum, but not as an independent

literary unit.
The Mss. FF and Vat 440 are not the only attestations of the text as inde-
pendent from a complete Aramaic translation of the chapter of Exod 12. In
Mahzor Vitry, it is inserted between the lemmata and targum of the verses
Exod 15.17 and 19 and after the lemma of verse 18 replacing the translation of
that verse. Its messianic ending is adjusted in order to fit to the context of
Exod 15.18 ( Ύ will reign forever'). By this placing of the expansion, Mahzor
Vitry shows that the piece as such was regarded as a textual unit that could b e
moved to another place in the context. Even there, it is firmly connected
within its targumic context and not discernible as an independent segment of
the liturgy. In the mss. FF and Vat 440, the expansion of the four nights is in-
serted into the Aramaic translation of the verse. 1 1 8 Targum Pseudo-Jonathan
adds it in front of its translation of the verse. 1 1 9 Compilers apparently distin-
guished between explicative expansions of the translations and longer addi-
tions. The longer addition of the 'four nights' could be moved and abbrevi-
ated. This is still no indication that it was ever regarded as a liturgical unit and
independent of the targum.
Avigdor Shinan provides the key for the understanding of the function of
this text in his observation that the longer expansions, the subjects of which are
more general than the explicative notes within the translation, tend to be in-
serted at the beginning or the end of a given seder in the Palestinian systems of
division of the Tora. 1 2 0 In fact, the tradition of the long aggadic expansions of
the Palestinian targum tradition was created for liturgical purposes - to lead
into and out of the recitation of the targum. This fits to the expansion in Exod
12.42 which m a y have been regarded as the end of the seder that began with
118 See ms. Vatican 440 translated in the table: no. 2+17 (slightly expanded translation) no.
3-16 (expansion of the four nights + no. 18 as a concluding line to the enumeration; cf.
Shinan 1992, 62). The Aramaic equivalents to the Hebrew verse are printed in Italics.
119 No. 19 in the table.
120 Shinan 1987, esp. 104-107; 1992, 26-35, 65-69. He also describes numerical expansions
that seem to have been composed with didactic rather than rhetorical and structural
purposes. Aggadic expansions in general are not necessarily markers of liturgical
segmentation, but may also be attracted by a textual problem or by literary considera-
tions such as the narrative structure of a Biblical story; 23-26.
E x o d 12.29. Jacob M a n n records the next seder as b e g i n n i n g w i t h E x o d

12.43. 1 2 1
Following Leopold Zunz, M o s e s Ginsburger refers to the four nights as a
'prose introduction' to the recital of the targum. 1 2 2 This description fits to its
style and to its liturgical function as a m a r k e r of segmentation. For the seventh
day of Pesah, s o m e E u r o p e a n rites preserved the reading of the t a r g u m to-
gether w i t h poetic and prose introductions. 1 2 3 T h e poetic introductions w e r e
copied in m a h z o r s and recited even after the reading of the t a r g u m at those
festivals h a d b e e n given up. 1 2 4 T h e liturgical function of the p o e m s and the
'prose' passages in the t a r g u m s is identical. 1 2 5
T h e poetry of the piyyutim and prose texts can b e distinguished b y ele-
m e n t s of their literary character. T h e t a r g u m expansion(s) do not share those
features, i.e., they are n o piyyutim. T a r g u m Pseudo-Jonathan and t a r g u m
Neofiti do not quote the truly poetic texts. This m a y b e due to the fact that the
t w o collections are functionally r e m o v e d too far f r o m the situation of the per-
121 Mann 1940 I, 41 Iff, 418, 422. Shinan 1992, 66f and n. 72f accepts this division. The
endings of the Sedarim are rarely known and they could probably be extended ac-
cording to the spontaneous needs of the liturgy even in later times than the Tosefta.
In any case, tMeg 4.18 (3.18) 356f implies that the length of the portions could change
during the liturgical performance against a quantum that was planned before. Com-
bined with tMeg 4.10 (3.10) 355, that prescribes a strict lectio continua, the Tosefta im-
plicitly rules out that any standardized list of sedarim could exist. The liturgy that is
described here postdates the Tosefta by several centuries in which the degree of stan-
dardization was raised significantly. Fleischer 1974, 35 found beginnings of the se-
darim to Exodus: no. 9 at 12.29 and no. 10 at 13.1.
122 Ginsburger 1900, esp. 123 no. XIII.
123 Ginsburger 1895. Elbogen 1931, 191 = 1993, 154. Ashkenazi mahzors preserve a few
introductions.
124 It may have been a motive of the compilers to copy the expansion of the four nights
into the text of the song at the sea that was still recited. Otherwise, it would have been
left in a corpus of texts for exclusively academic use. The collected material empha-
sizes the importance of the song at the Sea; Shinan 1992, 61 n. 45.
125 Leopold Zunz 1865, 21f lists among 'Stücke in aramäischer Sprache' which 'sind ...
unmittelbar aus Midrasch und Targum, d. i. aus den Vorträgen in die Synagogenpoe-
sie übergegangen' iny? m s as No. 10. He enumerates these pieces in his chapter on
pre-Qaliric poetry. In his discussion of anonymous Aramaic piyyutim for Pesah (79f),
he does not list the targumic expansions such as Γ1Γ3 5OTN and lll17,17 Β3ΊΧ. The differ-
ence between pieces in poetry and prose that were inserted into the targum was obvi-
ous for Zunz and Ginsburger although they do not emphasize it.
The Form and the Genre of the Text 359
formance in the synagogue.126 Their compilers apparently distinguished be-

tween the genres and did not copy the poems. This shows that the targum
expansions were not regarded as poetry by the Medieval compilers. The Geni-
za manuscripts that are listed by Klein127 as containing targumic poems some-
times indicate their place in the liturgy by means of Biblical catch-words.
Some of them give the poems as attached to a few lines of the Aramaic trans-
lation. In later sources that were composed for the preparation of the service
or the use in the synagogue (such as mahzors), targumic poems were still cop-
ied with the text of the translation. From this it has to be inferred that longer
targumic expansions and Aramaic piyyutim were regarded as similar with
regard to their liturgical function within documents that were used in the con-
text of liturgical performance. As soon as the targumic material was collected
for other purposes, the poetic pieces were separated from the prose expan-
sions. The latter were retained or abbreviated.
Targum expansions and introductory poems were designed to convey ag-
gadic traditions. Although poets like Yannay128 apparently composed qrovot
for the whole lectionary cycle and the festivals, the sources do not indicate that
the readings of the targum on every Sabbath could be embellished to the same
extent as the recitation of the Amida. Thus, the precentors (who might have
been responsible for the translation, too129) would have preferred to compose
more modest aggadic expansions for the regular Sabbaths instead of fully de-
veloped poetry.
Similar liturgical functions - signaling the segmentation of the liturgy -
are, however, no reason to ignore the difference of the form. Targum expan-
sions never were 'hymns' or - even erroneously - regarded as such. If similar
enumerations are also found in rabbinic texts, this does not show that both
traditions absorbed ancient 'songs' independently from each other. On the
126 Shinan 1992,199.

127 Klein 1986 I, L (mss. KK, HH, Τ, X, GG, PP, JJ, G, MM) and see his discussion on p.
XXVIIIf.
128 6th cent. cf. also Shim'on Bar Megas. Other poets of the period of classical piyyut such
as Elazar bi-Rabbi Qa/illir wrote piyyutim to the Amida and other parts of the liturgy
of the festivals.
129 Yahalom 1999, 215. Fraade 1992, 262 n. 20 opposes the opinion that 'one of the regular
functions of the Hazan official in amoraic times was to translate Scripture in the syna-
gogue'. Fraade does not discuss the creation of poetic introductions. It is, however,
plausible that the hazzan was the best candidate for the creation and recitation of
introductions and poems.
contrary, such aggadic traditions may move from rabbinic texts to the targums
or emerge in both without a direct literary dependence or relation between
them.
Some of the Aramaic introductory piyyutim belong to the oldest strata of
Palestinian liturgical poetry. Thus, SYAP 2 is extant on an Egyptian papyrus
from the (fourth or) fifth century.130 The emergence of Aramaic introductory
piyyutim participates in a broad cultural development at the end of Antiquity
that was shared by Syriac (and later, Greek) Christians, Samaritans, and Pales-
tinian Jews and resulted in many volumes of liturgical poetry. Such as the
targum expansions, they cannot be traced back into the first century.
Responding to the questions at the beginning of this section, first, a huge
corpus of similar texts as the expansion of the 'four nights' exists in rabbinic
literature and the Palestinian targum tradition. They were composed for di-
dactic and exegetical reasons. Second, as soon as they are included in the
targums, they may function as markers of the segments of the liturgy. They
share this function with actually poetic texts. The latter do not emerge earlier
than in late amoraic times. Third, while the targum expansions were only
handed down within the Aramaic translations, the Aramaic introductory po-
ems could be copied on separate sheets and preserved in mahzors even after
the reading of the targum vanished from the liturgies. Only the expansions
were preserved within the text of the Aramaic translations in volumes that
attempted to collect broad sectors of the Palestinian targum tradition such as
targum Neofiti.
From their form and function, there is no reason to assume that the expan-
sions preceded the poems in their date of composition and there is no indica-
130 Cf. Ms. Τ Klein 1986 I, 239 SYAP 2, as well as SYAP 9 that is extant on a papyrus. Jo-
seph Heinemann's 1973 dating of these compositions as pre-Christian is based on the
general presumption that Jewish sources which contain concepts (or even terms) that
were also used by Christians, such as 'kiris' (κύριος, cf. SYAP 40 tr. Klein 1984, 98 for
the poem 'Kiris said to Moses') as an appellation for God, must antedate Christianity,
because it should be inconceivable that they be used afterwards. The variants and
younger elements of the text are then being attributed to its development within an
oral tradition. It is not clear why in such a process of extensive reformulation exactly
those features were preserved that would be unacceptable in a new composition of the
same time. An Aramaic prose expansion (elaborating the motif of the dialogue be-
tween Pharaoh and Moses that is also attested in poetic form) which was published
M. Ginsburger 1900, 121.6 reads: 'like a dog in front of his master' as o'Tp mp> unto
ΓΡΤ7. Thus, CTj? was a rather common expression like κύριος and not a theologically
laden reference to God.
The 'Four Nights' and Their Parallels 361
tion that the expansions were ever regarded as independent segments of any
liturgy. The alleged 'hymn of the four nights' was never regarded as a poetic
text and should therefore be designated as 'targum expansion'.
5.4 The 'Four Nights' and Their Parallels
The targum expansion is an exegetical device that is connected with the Ara-
maic translation of the text. It is, therefore, 'heard' in the liturgy only as part of
a translation. For its understanding as an elucidation of the liturgy of Pesah, it
must be asked when Exod 12.42 was read in the liturgy. As the position of
Exod 12 in the system of synagogue readings has been discussed above, a short
reference to an important aspect of this discussion is sufficient here. The To-
sefta suggests to select passages that are connected with Pesah for readings on
the lesser holidays of Pesah. It does not mention Exod 12 (but it also does not
exclude it explicitly). The Mishna does not prescribe the lesson of Exod 12, but
a passage from Leviticus for Pesah. The beginning of the chapter is read
around the beginning of Nisan as one of the readings for the 'four Sabbaths'.
There, it is not connected with Pesah. Only in the Babylonian Talmud, some
verses of Exod 12 are mentioned as a lesson for Pesah. Babylon celebrated two
'first' holidays and had thus the need for another lesson. The targum expan-
sions of the Palestinian targum tradition were not read in Babylonian syna-
gogues and likewise not in synagogues that followed the Babylonian rite out-
side of the Persian or Abbasid empires. The targum expansion of the 'four
nights' may have been recited in synagogues which adhered to the Palestinian
rite on a Sabbath on which the text happened to be read during the ca. 3.5
years of the Palestinian cycle of readings. The liturgical position of the reading
of this text excludes that it be a solemn expression of the contents of the cele-
bration of Pesah.
5.4.1 Important Nights
Apart from its position in the liturgies, the targum expansion of the 'four
nights' is said to contain what should be regarded as the meaning of the Jewish
Pesah and the Christian Easter. Other texts should also allude to the sequence
of these topics or attest their importance for Pesah.
Tannaitic texts do not, however, enumerate four nights of salvation. A list

that is given in Bereshit Rabba, that was composed long after the time of the
tannaim, is instructive.131 It is less a list of four nights, than part of an
enumeration of benefits that were granted to Rachel's and Lea's descendants.
The list ends in:
To this one (viz. Lea), he gave two nights and to that one (viz. Rachel), he gave two
nights - Pharaoh's and Sennacherib's nights to Lea - Gideon's night to Rachel and
Mordechai's night to Rachel, such as it is said: 'In that night, the king's sleep was
wandering (i. e., he could not sleep).'132
Thus, Exod 14.2; Kgs 19.35; Jdg 7; and Est 6.1 are 'four nights' that the rabbis
associate with salvation. The same enumeration is taken up in Pesikta de Rav
Kahana.133 There are no further collections of 'nights' attested. The enumera-
tion of the 'four nights' in the Palestinian targum tradition is non-rabbinic.
Le Deaut assumes that it was rejected and deliberately ignored by the rab-
bis, although it was a well known pre-Christian 'hymn'. Nevertheless, it sur-
vived in the targums. The assumption of the high antiquity of the text is based
on two false axioms: first, that 'non-rabbinic' ideas point their 'pre-rabbinic'
origins;134 second, that the targums preserve pre-rabbinic texts and bits of
interpretation of the Scriptures. If Le Deaut should be right, one would expect
to find the great impact of the list of the targum expansion at some other point,
for example on Christian texts and on later Jewish traditions. After all, many
of the extant Palestinian targums of the passage contain the expansion and it
was copied several times by scribes who flourished centuries after the close of
131 BerR 70.16 TA 815 to Gen 29.16.

132 The protagonists of 'Pharaoh's night' are Moses and Aaron - both of the tribe of Levi
(Lea). Sennacherib's defeat strengthened Hezekiah (Gen 29.35, Juda). Mordehai be-
longs to the tribe of Benjamin (Rachel), Gideon to Manasseh (cf. Jdg 6.15; son of Joseph
- Rachel).
133 Rabinovitz 1985, 302 n. to 1. 53 emphasizes that Est 6.1 was also quoted in the ms.
tradition of PesK 17.1 Μ 281, textual note. The sermon on Is 49.14 (the second Sabbath
following the Ninth of Av, Braude and Kapstein 204) is opened by Ps 77.7 that men-
tions singing by night. To this, PesK associates three 'nights': Pharaoh, Gideon, Sen-
nacherib. Except for Pharaoh's night, the context does not evoke topics that are by
themselves connected with Pesah.
134 Cf. York 1974. Similarly, alleged targumic parallels to Christian beliefs are often
thought to imply that the targumic material must be pre-rabbinic. This presupposes
rabbinic Judaism as standard for Judaism everywhere and throughout the ages. His-
torical realities before the 6th cent, were different, Schwartz 2001 and 2002; cf. also
Stemberger 1999.
the era of the Talmudim and the rabbis. This suggests that it is more logical
that the non-rabbinic expansion is actually post-rabbinic.
While some Christian 'parallels' will be discussed in the following subsec-
tions, it is worthwhile to examine examples of the older poetic tradition of Ju-
daism, in order to assess the influence of the concept of the four nights: first,
some of the piyyutim that are composed in Jewish Palestinian Aramaic like the
targum itself and that are connected with Pesah; second, the poetry of the 6th
century poet Yannay. The former have the advantage of a high proximity to
the expansion of the 'four nights' not only in their language, but also in their
presumable liturgical application in combination with the recitation of the
targum. These Aramaic poems seem to have enjoyed a great popularity, as
two of them are extant on papyrus and were also preserved in the mahzors of
the later Middle Ages. Moreover, some of them belong to the earliest stages of
the development of piyyut (in the forth or fifth century). Yannay's poetry pre-
supposes a highly developed liturgy and a well educated audience. From the
time of the classical piyyutim, he seems to be among the earliest poets who
composed piyyutim for the Sabbaths of the whole reading cycle and the festi-
vals, many of which are extant. Yannay's poetry (almost) fell into oblivion
with the disappearance of the Palestinian rite of the Jewish liturgy. Many of
his works were recovered among the treasures of the Cairo Geniza. If the tar-
gum expansion reflects important theological concepts, they will also be found
in texts like Yannay's poetry.
Aramaic Piyyutim
Among the Aramaic piyyutim, SYAP 5.8 refers to the second night, 'when Y's
word revealed itself over Abram between the pieces' (Gen 15.13).135 Only in an
allusion to the salvation at the Red Sea, but not to the Abraham narratives, the
poem mentions darkness and light.136 In the dispute poem SYAP 37, Nisan
135 Ms. KK, Klein 1986 I, 195.5 π SYAP 5.8. Yahalom and Sokoloff remark that the poet
alludes to the last sentence of the divine promise stating that God will judge the peo-
ple that enslaved Israel.
136 Stanza 3: Klein 1986 I, 195.7 SYAP 5.1 If 'The morning star looked (down) like light'
referring to Exod 14.24. The poet inserts the morning star at the place where the Bible
mentions God. The targums do not support this interpretation, although it is not far-
fetched because the verse refers to the morning watch at its beginning. The reference
to the imagery of the Song of Songs in the following line f?) does not connect the no-
rebukes Tishri stating that it is superior b e c a u s e the people are only fasting in
Tishri while N i s a n is used to provide 'roasted (meat)' and unleavened bread. 1 3 7
In the last stanza of the acrostic, N i s a n says: 1 3 8 ' T h e Powerful O n e (viz. God)
m a d e m e the r e d e e m e r of his people. H e will r e d e e m t h e m in m e . ' T h e p o e m
is connected w i t h Exod 12.2, the lesson at the beginning of Nisan and thus one
of the 'four Sabbaths' (t/mMeg 3.5) before Pesah. This does not m a k e the night
of Pesah m o r e significant than any other night in Nisan. T h e liturgical context
likewise does not evoke the notion of Pesah b u t Nisan. T h e expectation that a
reference to futures salvation c o m e s at the e n d of a p o e m seems to b e m o r e
powerful than the w i s h to u s e the text in order to e x p o u n d only the theological
m e a n i n g of the day (SYAP 37 and 38). A s it is built on the e n u m e r a t i o n of the
twelve tribes and the twelve months, it ends w i t h a reference to A d a r and Be-
j a m i n as precedents of salvation, although it is connected with the t a r g u m to
E x o d 12.2 and thus the b e g i n n i n g of Nisan. 1 3 9 S Y A P 39 is a fragment of a dis-
pute p o e m in w h i c h all the m o n t h s claim that the people of Israel w a s and will
b e liberated or r e n e w e d in each of them. 1 4 0
tion to Cant 6.10, because it is the bride who is compared to the beauty of the morn-
ing. The evidence is too slim to support the assumption that the almost rationalizing
exchange of God with the morning star should be a reaction to Christian readings of
Christ into the context of Exod 14. The passage of the Exsultet ('Flammas eius lucifer
matutinus inveniat; ille, inquam, lucifer, qui nescit occasum' Zweck 1986, 34.31f) can-
not be explained as Jewish heritage (cf. Rev 2.28; 22.16) and the Exsultet, that emerged
in the Latin West in the 5th (perhaps late 4lh, Zweck 374), can hardly have influenced
the Aramaic poems. It must be concluded that both groups of texts use the same im-
agery independently.
137 Ms. HH Klein 1986 I, 203.9-10 stanza SYAP 37.24-27. Based on the character of the
corrections of the text, Grelot 1999, 54. 64f suggests that it may be the author's origi-
nal which shows traces of the process of composition. The extant copy from the
Geniza is probably too late to be a Byzantine text.
138 π Klein 1986 I, 205.3f SYAP 37.44f Grelot 1999, 51-58. Cf. Klein 1984 for a discussion
of the dispute poems of this kind.
139 Ms. HH to Exod 12.2 Klein 1986 I, 207 fol. 7r SYAP 38.44f. Mordechai belongs to the
tribe of Benjamin; cf. Grelot 1999, 58-63.
140 SYAP 39 = Ms. MM Klein 1986 I, 191. Cf. ms. Ms. T-S NS 186.21r 1. 21f Klein 1986 I,
187-189 ms. GG. God selects Nisan because of Exod 12.2 without special explanation.
In 1. 20-23, Tishri claims to be fit for the salvation of the people (from Egypt), because
'the beloved one(s) will be delivered - in me [they] shall be saved ( lipnarp Nairn
•parDB), For in me is the Day of Atonement for sinners, and the day of good will for the
forgiveness of sins', tr. Klein. The month refers to the yearly Day of Atonement, but
this may be the cause for the complete redemption in the future (llpnsn1).
Not all poems can however be taken as direct proof-texts for the exact
systems of belief of their authors and listeners. Thus, Michael Klein published
a poem141 which is connected with Exod 12.2, but ends in a quotation of Exod
12.42. It states that the Red Sea 'finished all of their (viz., the Egyptians') first-
born', which is unlikely after Exod 12 that implies that there should not be a
living firstborn in Egypt when the army was drowned in the Sea.
An acrostic poem to Exod 14.29-31 that is interrupted by prose-expansions
of the Biblical narrative142 begins with the creation of the world and refers to
God's promise to Abraham (not mentioning Isaac's birth and the Aqeda) be-
fore telling the story of the passage through the Red Sea leading up to Exod
15.143 It mentions the aggada of the twelve paths within the Red Sea (that pro-
vided for each tribe a separate path and prevented an intermingling of the
tribes) and alludes to a few other Biblical events. Yahalom and Sokoloff did
not consider it as an example of a pure Jewish Palestinian Aramaic text. This
suggests that it be a later text than the others. Such a date fits to its tendency to
accumulate aggadic motifs and to its reference to a messianic figure (such as it
is also implied in bSanh 98a): 'May the deliverance of the aged Messiah come
(?) quickly! May His people, the holy people, be delivered as in the beginning'
(tr. Klein).
From a superficial point of view, topics of the 'second' and 'fourth' nights
of the targum expansion are present in the Aramaic piyyutim. There is no rea-
son to assume that any of these texts was influenced by the expansion to Exod
12.42. Moreover, the combination of Gen 15 with the Exodus is explicit
enough (v. 13f) in order not to require a secondary source besides the Bible.
Yannay's Poetry
After having shown the utter unimportance of the topics and their arrange-
ment according to the targum expansion of the 'four nights' for Aramaic po-
etry, Yannay's poetry may be read.
141 Ms. GG Klein 1986 1, 189. L. 8 refers to the merit of the ancestors (irnxo m3t) but not to
the Aqeda.
142 Ms. PP Klein 1986 I, 227-235.
143 Creation: 227.18, the prophecy to Abraham: 227.22-229.1; the Messiah: 229.12-14.
233.16f also refers to the relationship between the salvation at the beginning and in the
future. As it is attached to Exod 14, it does not mention the 'night' of the celebration
of the first Pesah, Exod 12.
It could be argued that the Aqeda was generally associated with the inter-
pretation of Gen 15, Abraham's 'night' according to the targum expansion.
Thus, one should expect some associations of this connection in Yannay's un-
derstanding of the texts. Yannay does not, however, express any connection
between Gen 15 and 22, although it must be admitted that his piyyutim to Gen
22 are not extant.144 In his qrova for the Shabbat of Gen 15, he quotes and al-
ludes to many Biblical texts following the major outline of arguments as ex-
pressed in Bereshit Rabba. In one instance, he alludes to Gen 22.16f, God's
oath to Abraham.145 There, he follows Abraham's life and collects allusions to
some of his deeds. The passage does not express a closer connection between
Gen 15 and Gen 22 than between Gen 15 and for example Gen 14. In the series
of piyyutim on Gen 15, Yannay does not refer to the topic of the 'night'. Even
in piyyut IV (12.37-45) where he alludes to Abraham's vision, he does not
mention that it implies darkness or occurred in the evening.146 This does not
prove that the targum is a witness to another strand of ancient aggada, but it
suggests that it was the idea of the author of the targum expansion to distort
the story of the Aqeda in order to make it fit for a list of important Biblical
'nights'. It was apparently not a well established bit interpretation of that text.
Although Yannay had much more ritual time at his disposal than the transla-
tor of the targum, he did not allude to the Aqeda, to Pesah, or to the topic of
144 The qrova to Gen 19.1 no. 16, Rabinovitz 1985,157-160 does (as it should be expected)
not deal with the Aqeda. In the epoch of the Qalliri, the Jews of Palestine kept two
days of New Year. They probably read the same text on both days (as both days had
the same status). Fleischer 1982/83, 251ff argues that these communities read Gen 21
together with the Aqeda on both days.
145 'VIP ...Your reward for the kings that you vanquished (Gen 14) is very much through
the conversation that you answered' Rabinovitz: Gen 18.20-33; Bronznick 2000: Gen
14.22-24. 'Your reward for the criminals that you justified (BerR 49.9 esp. TA 511f ex-
pounding Ps 45.8) is very much in the truth (Btfflp hap. leg., cf. BerR 55.1 TA 585 on
Gen 22.1) that you multiplied. Your reward in the oath which you heard (Gen 22.16f)
is very much because of the stipulations that you demanded (Gen 18.20-33?).' 'VIII:
[Your reward] in justice (cf. n. to 12.47 Rabinovitz 1985, 138: DevR pnnto 2.7 Lieber-
mann 46f, Aramaic in 47) is very much in mercy; For Elohim is justice and Y' is mercy.
In him you sanctified your name in justice. In him you were sanctified in mercy, like
the sanctity of the sublime ones - such as it is wr(itten): and (one) calls (Is 6.3)...'
12.96-98 Rabinovitz 1985,142.
146 Cf. also piyyut VI 12.71f Rabinovitz 140: God showing the stars to Abram.
the 'night'. 1 4 7 In the p i y y u t i m for the 'four Sabbaths' before Pesah, as far as
they are extant, Y a n n a y does also not s h o w any interest in the topics of the
t a r g u m expansion. 1 4 8
A m o n g Y a n n a y ' s piyyutim, a qrova for the Sabbath of E x o d 12.29ff is pre-
served. It contains m a n y references to topics of the killing of the first-born
Egyptians and the Exodus. T h e motif of the 'night' is already contained in the
basic Biblical text. Especially the piyyut III w h i c h compares Egypt and R o m e
creates a powerful connection b e t w e e n the redemption of the past and the lib-
eration that is looked forward to in the (near) future:
May there be heard regarding Edom (the same) as the tidings over Egypt:
May the burden of Duma14' be like the burden of Egypt!
You retaliated Patros (Egypt) in the destruction of the tenth plague.
Retaliate Edom in the destruction of the tenth horn!150
May bulls descend with them (Is 34.7)151 -
The firstborn of the kingdom of their people.
Despoil them of their crown!
Ban them in anger!
A protected redemption
147 The same is true for his qrova for the Sabbath of Gen 17.1ff no. 14 Rabinovitz 1985,
151-156.
148 Aser Te'aser Deut 14.22: Rabinovitz 1987, 290-292. Deut 14.22 was also read on the
lesser holidays of Pesah and Sukkot in the Palestinian system of readings. Sheqalim
(Exod 30.11ff): Rabinovitz 1987, 244-246, referring to Gen 15.5 (1. 23, incomplete con-
text). Zakhor (Deut 25.17): Rabinovitz 1987, 247-250.
149 Is 21.11 is a difficult text (nan as nan or nnx) that recommends itself to exegetes and
preachers. 'Edom' = Byzantium according to Rabinovitz 1985, 298 n. to piyyut III.
150 Rabinovitz 1985, 299 n. to 1. 27 refers to MTeh 75.5 Buber 340 Ps 75.10 and par.
Reworking the topic of Dan 7, the midrash enumerates 10 'horns' the last of which is
the horn of David/the Messiah, Ps 132.17: '...As Israel sinned, they (the 10 horns)
were taken from them and given to the nations of the world, such as it is said: and it
had 10 horns (Dan 7.7). This teaches that the nations of the world are compared with
those animals. For during the whole time, as long as the horns of the wicked are
standing, the horns of Israel are cut off, such as it is said: he cut off in his anger every
horn of Israel (Lam 3.2). In the time when he will raise the horns of the righteous
ones, he will cut of the horns of the wicked, such as it is said: I shall cut off all the
horns of the wicked (Ps 75.11a). Immediately (afterwards): the horns of the righteous
one will be raised (Ps 75.11b) - his horn which the righteous one of the world has cut
off'.
151 'Bulls' Π'ΰΚΊ is (esp. as a rare word) a reference to 'Romans' D"an etc. Cf. PesK 7.11 Μ
134.1f 'R. Meir said: and the Romans will descend with them'.
Is the night of the protection (ΊΊ0Β V7).

The watchman said: the end of the watch (viz. of the exile) has arrived.152
The typology of the text resembles the targum expansion in its comparison of
the 'third' and 'fourth' nights. Yannay's piyyutim contain eschatological inter-
cessions, although they do not refer to a messiah in a straightforward way.
The references to Rome are evident, but hidden in Biblical and rabbinic allu-
sions like all hints to the troubles of his time. Unlike the targum expansion, the
'eschatological' passages are worded as prayer and not as information about
the future.
The following piyyut VII is famous, because it was included in the
Pesah Haggada and has been well known even before the wealth of Yannay's
poetry was found among the fragments of the Geniza. This piyyut was added
to the basic form of the Palestinian Haggada in the course of its expansion
within the Babylonian rite. Thus, the piyyut became attached to the festival of
Pesah only several centuries after it was written and outside of its original
liturgical setting, even outside of the general framework of the Palestinian rite
in which it originated. Its inclusion in the Haggada reinterprets the piyyut.
The original text is misunderstood, if it is read in the context of the Haggada.
At that time you accomplished many miracles in a wonderful way in the
night.
Β Among all watches, this is the night.
G You made the righteous proselyte (Abraham) victorious when a night was di-
vided for him (i. e. in the middle of the night).153
D You judged the King of Gerar (Abimelekh) in a dream of the night.154
Η You frightened an Aramean (Laban) 'a day earlier' at night.155
152 Rabinovitz 1985, 300 refers to piyyut IV 53.37f that emphasizes the same point: '(In)
the night in which the first ones were redeemed. You said: protections (D'naw) will be
for the last ones. Such as it was in the beginning, thus it will be in the end. You will
announce about the Tyrians such as the tidings of Egypt.' 53.42 uses a coined refer-
ence to Israel that implies the Aqeda: 'the children of the tenth trial', as Abraham was
examined 10 times the last of which is the binding of Isaac - for an allusion to 'trials'
in general, cf. qrova for Pesah 1.56 Rabinovitz 1987, 257. 53.49f alludes to a more
sophisticated division of actions to parts of God's 'body' than the targum expansion
(no. 13).
153 Gen 14.15. BerR 42 (43) .3 TA 417 connects 'the night was divided upon them' (Abra-
ham's victory) with Exod 12.29; 11.4. For Abraham, the proselyte, cf. bHag 3a.
154 Gen 20.6.
155 Cf. Laban's dream in Gen 31.24 and esp. v. 29 (ras). Ά day earlier' is contextualized
here for the original 'yesterday' of the Biblical source.
156
W And Israel fought against the angel and overcame him in the night.
Ζ You crushed the offspring of the firstborn of Patros (Egypt) in the middle of
the night. 157
Η You terrified Midian and his peers by means of the loaf of bread in a dream of
the night. 158
Τ You trod d o w n the rush of the prince of Haroset (Sisera) by means of the stars
of the night. 159
Y The scoffer (Sennacherib) decided to waive (his hand in a threatening gesture)
against the beloved one (Israel). You made his dead bodies dry in the night. 160
Κ (The statue of) Bel and that one, who erected it, go to the wall in the middle of
the night. 161
L The secret of the vision of the night was revealed to the handsome man
(Daniel).162
Μ That one w h o got drunk by (using) the holy vessels was killed in the same
night. 163
Ν That one w h o explains the (meaning of) dreams of the night (Daniel) was
saved from the pit of the lions.164
S The Agagite (Haman) kept hatred (against the Jews) and wrote letters in the
night. 165
156 Jacob's dream according to Hos 12.5 (interpreting Gen 28).

157 The night of Pesah, Exod 12. For 'Patros', cf. Gen 10.14; Jer 44.1,15.
158 The hapax legomenon D'-isw Qn1? Wü in Judg 7.13 is hardly translatable. WayR 28.6
Margulies 660f gives an etymological interpretation apparently on the basis of the root
^iu thus connecting the an1? Vfrx with 'liberation'. The victory of Gideon took place in
the night of Pesah; PesK 17.1 Μ 281.9.
159 The movement of Sisera is compared with 'the eagle that flies swiftly (rushes) to the
prey', Job 9.26. The choice of rfto Pi recalls Lam 1.15 which uses the imagery of Is
63.Iff to describe the fate of Jerusalem. Judg 5.20 where the stars are fighting from
their mVoa.
160 The hints to Sennacherib's expedition are based on Is 10.32 and 2 Kings 19.35 - which
is said to have taken place in the night of Pesah; Rabinovitz: ShirR 1.3 = 1.12/1.57
Dunsky 45 and Maagarim; cf. Stemberger 1974, 69 = 1990; PesK 17.1 Μ 281.10. The
'beloved one' refers to Zion, Ps 132.13.
161 Rabinovitz 1985, 303 n. to 1. 63 sees an allusion to Dan 14 (Bel). He also refers to BerR
58.13 TA 789f where the 'ladder' of Gen 28.10ff is interpreted as Nebuchadnezzar's
statue (Dan 3) identified as 'Bel' by means of the quotation of Jer 51.44.
162 Combining Dan 2.19 and 10.11.
163 Dan 2.5, 30.
164 Dan 6.
165 Est 3.12f. Goldschmidt 1937, 94 remarks that there is no tradition extant, that H a m a n
h a d the letters written by night.
' You stirred up your victory against him when the sleep of the king fled in the
night.166
Ρ You will tread the wine-press according to the (appointed time expressed in)
'Watchman what is (still left of) the night?'167
S He called like a watchman: 'The morning is coming and also the night'.168
Q The day is coming which is neither day nor night.169
R An exalted one announced: 'Yours is the day and also the night'.170
S Appoint watchmen for your city (for) the whole day and the whole night!171
Τ Illuminate like daylight the darkness of the night.172
Like the targum expansion (and like many other lists of analogous events),
Yannay ends his long acrostic with an eschatological allusion, again without
referring to 'the Messiah'. As the whole piyyut was written as an interpreta-
tion of the 'night' of the first Pesah in Egypt, the killing of the firstborn is men-
tioned. Otherwise, Yannay seems to have encountered some problems to fill
the whole alphabet with Biblical 'nights'. Thus, he exploits the stories of
Daniel and Esther in more than one line each. It is astonishing that he refers to
Gen 14 regarding Abraham, but ignores Gen 15. He also does not know a
'night' of creation. As the Aqeda is neither connected to any 'night' nor to
Pesah, he does not refer to it. Yannay interprets the ambiguous term EPnatt? of
the Biblical text as 'protection' throughout his Poem. He does not imply a
meaning 'remembrance' and he does not mention a 'book of remembrances'.
This is important for the assessment of its relation to the liturgy of Pesah.
Yannay interprets the Biblical text rather than the liturgy of Pesah here. After
all, these piyyutim are not designed for the recitation in the context of Pesah,
but for the Sabbath within a cycle of ca. 3.5 years (if this can be supposed as a
background for Yannay's poetry) on which the seder Exod 12.29ff is read. This
implies, however, that Yannay's poems could theoretically have been heard
within the same liturgy in which also the targum expansion of the 'four nights'
would have been recited. The differences between Yannay's piyyutim on Exod
12.29ff and the targum expansion can be interpreted in two ways.
166 Est 6.1. God's 'stirring up' or 'waking up' (Ps 80.3) the victory corresponds to the king
who cannot sleep. This night was the night of Pesah; PesK 5.17 Μ 106.8f. Cf. Yuval
2000, 242 for the tradition of the 2nd targum to Esther and the chronology of Pesah.
167 Is 63.1 and 21.11 (nnn iron) refer to Edom (i.e. Rome).
168 Is 42.13; Ps 121.5 and quoting Is 21.12.
169 Zech 14.7, cf. Huber 1969, 7 for references to ecclesiastical authors.
170 Ps 74.16.
171 Is 62.6.
172 Ps 139.12.
First, as Yannay does not expound Pesah, but Exod 12, he does not include
'contents' of the meaning of the liturgy that were not important for the under-
standing of the text. All of Yannay's 'nights' are better connected with the
topic of 'a night of protections' than that of the targum expansion. They in-
clude 'nights' that marked a critical situation for Israel such as the night of
Exod 12 and the Exodus in general. 'The creation' and Abra(ha)m's vision of
the covenant 'between the pieces' do not fit to that concept of a crucial 'night'.
The Aqeda would somehow fit to the concept of a crucial situation. It could
not, however, be connected with any 'night'. As it was only marginally associ-
ated with Pesah in Yannay's time, nobody missed it in his poem. If it was
loosely associated with the tamid, it was by definition a daytime performance
and hence a daytime event in the Bible.
The second interpretation does not exclude the first, but increases its mo-
mentum. The targum expansion was too recent and unimportant. It could not
shape the actual meaning of the liturgy of Pesah and that of the text of Exod
12. The conceptual differences between Yannay's enumeration of 'nights' and
that of the targum expansion are not due to an opposition of ancient versus
recent aggada or of exegesis versus the interpretation of liturgy. They are due
to a difference in hermeneutical quality. Unlike Yannay, the targum expansion
is not interested in a refined collection of allusions also to less known Biblical
texts but to a list of 'important' - one might hesitate to say 'commonplace' -
events.
These observations are supported by the piyyutim that Yannay composed
for the festival days of Pesah. Even in texts which are intimately connected
with the liturgy of the festival (and not only with one of the texts associated
with the festival), Yannay does not show any interest in, or awareness of the
'four nights' of the targum expansion.
The liturgical context appears in many details of the texts. Thus, the first
qrova to Pesah (Lev 22.23) begins:173 Ί shall keep this watch forever' and ends
173 Qrova ara IN 11® Lev 22.23, 1 Rabinovitz 1987, 251-263. Cf. also 1. 17, 25 (253), 131f
(262), and 139 (263). The vigil is only expanded as one among other motifs here. This
may be due to the liturgical context of these piyyutim on the 15 th of Nisan. The seder
has already been celebrated at the time of these liturgies. The actual time recalls the
first day of the festival (of Unleavened Bread, cf. 1. 38). Therefore, the emphasis on the
'day' associates Ps 118.24. It refers to the 'redemption' in the middle of the night (i.e.
the killing of the Egyptian firstborn) and the actual Exodus by day: 'Such as we were
redeemed in the middle of the night, we went out (of Egypt) in the middle of the day.'
Nevertheless, Yannay refers a few times to the seder liturgy: 1. 40-44 Rabinovitz 1987,
with a reference to the Hallel.174 Yannay draws Exod 12.42 into the interpreta-
tion of Lev 22.23. Exod 12.42 is present in many allusions that exploit the
meanings of the derivates of the root naw. Of much lesser importance, the ac-
tual lesson of Pesah (Lev 22.23) is expounded by the reworked rabbinic discus-
sion whether it be allowed to slaughter the mother animal and its young on the
same day - as it happened with the Egyptian firstborn (and their firstborn fa-
thers).175 In the rest of the qrova, the motifs of Exod 12 are much more impor-
tant than those of Lev 22.23.
Yannay also interprets the eschatological potential of Pesah: 'The watch
(or: protection, na'w) of the first ones is kept (or: preserved, na©) for the last
ones.'176 While such statements may imply that Israel is justified in their expec-
tation of a new redemption, the text mainly refers to the observation of the
liturgies: such as the generation of the Exodus kept a vigil, thus a vigil is also
kept now. The eschatological perspective is not absent, but less evident than in
the qrova to Exod 12.29: "The first liberation was in haste. The last liberation is
not in haste (Is 52.12); but save us in tranquility, silence, and safety!'177 Here,
the plea for redemption is dissociated from the night of Pesah. This is also due
to the relationship between Exod 12 and the liturgies of Pesah. Rabbinic texts
(and even the Babylonian recension of the Haggada) did not make Exod 12 the
mimetic model for the seder. Nevertheless, Yannay remarks that the final re-
demption will fall on Pesah:
He redeems his people on this appointed time (or: festival).
He established for them its observation (na , w).
The sprouting of the redemption is yet to be established on it (ISITTI1? 13 IIS).
An appointed time of appointed times will be an (the) appointed time. 178
255 on Rabban Gamaliel's three things to be mentioned on Pesah, mPes 10.5. The
night of the seder is 'different' from all other nights; 1. 50, Rabinovitz 1987, 256. L. 67f
Rabinovitz 1987, 258 may be an allusion to the Palestinian Haggada: 'In every Genera-
tion...' ms. CJS 8r9-12 Goldschmidt 1960, 81. Cups: 1. 82 Rabinovitz 1987, 259. Ex-
cept for 'In every Generation...', these allusions refer to the Mishna and not necessar-
ily to 'the Haggada'.
174 L. 11 Rabinovitz 1987, 252. Ps 116:1. 83, Rabinovitz 1987, 259.
175 The second qrova to Lev 22.27 Rabinovitz 1987, 263f contains more references to the
offerings.
176 Cf. also 1.1 Rabinovitz 1987, 251,1.131f Rabinovitz 262, and 1. 67f Rabinovitz 1987, 258;
in an allusion to a concept that is also referred to in the Haggada; fol. 5v Goldschmidt
1960, 78; 'Exalt that one (God, Is 46.10), who tells the end in the beginning.'
177 L. 36f Rabinovitz 1987, 254.
178 L. 65f Rabinovitz 1987, 258.
Y a n n a y also c o m p o s e d t w o long series of p i y y u t i m on the Song of Songs. As

Günter Stemberger has s h o w n that the reading of the Song of Songs in the
synagogues on Pesah cannot be substantiated for the first m i l l e n n i u m and that
the reconstruction of such a custom is unlikely for several reasons, 1 7 9 the posi-
tion of these piyyutim b e t w e e n the synagogue liturgy, the h o u s e of study, and
the text of the Song of Songs has to b e re-evaluated. For the present purpose, it
is sufficient that they w e r e connected with Pesah in a theoretical w a y and m a y
hence b e read as pertaining to the interpretation of the festival. 1 8 0
Especially Y a n n a y ' s long Shiv'ata on the Song of Songs refers to m a n y
topics pertaining to Pesah, the seder according to the Mishna, and E x o d 12. A t
the beginning and after an acrostic p o e m that reworks motifs of the Egyptian
Pesah (Exod 12), Y a n n a y passes from the P e s a h of the past to the needs of the
present: 'In E g y p t y o u sent signs and miracles. Send columns of s m o k e and
miracles into Edom!' 1 8 1 T h e same p o e m begins:
A I shall wait for 'watchman, "what is (left) of the night" (Is 21.11)'.
179 Stemberger 2003.

180 The connection of the Shiv'ata with Pesah is hardly visible within the piyyut itself.
The end of piyyut IV (Rabinovitz 1987, 270.51) refers to the reading of Lev 23 on the
first day of Pesah: 'in order to keep the time - these are her (the woman's, i.e. Israel's)
appointed times (festivals)'. The piyyut IV2 apparently uses imagery of pilgrimage
(sandals: 1. 53; 1. 64 and the verse Deut 16.16) and festivals (1. 55). The connection of
the qrova with Pesah (Rabinovitz 1987, 272-289) is evident from several details: refer-
ences to Egypt (1. 5f, 9, 24f, 39 pressing the success i. e. hurrying to accomplish the
exodus, 54, 63 exodus in brightness - by day?, 64, 81f), midnight (1. 29, 61 and 'night of
watching' also 122f, 184ff), dew (1. 36 compared with the blood of circumcision accord-
ing to Ezek 16.6, cf. 1. 41), festivals (1. 128f, 143: first-fruits). This sequence of piyyutim
is the only one among Yannay's piyyutim for Pesah that alludes to mPes and thus to
the Mishnaic seder: 1. 21 the double dipping, four cups 1. 27, the recitation of the Hallel
1. 10, bitter herbs 1. 43 (cf. 1. 101), 'from slavery to freedom' 1. 63, unleavened bread 1.
76, Pesah (animals or meals) and wine 1. 79, the sequence Pesahim - unleavened bread
- bitter herbs 1. 174—176 at a liturgically very prominent position in the qrova (in an-
other sequence because of the rhyme: 195). The 'redemption of the ends' (1. 26) may
even be a faint echo of the Haggada: 'he calculates the end' ms. CJS 5v3f Goldschmidt
1960, 79. Rabinovitz refers to Ezek 3 for the 'taste of the scroll' in 1. 80. If the 'scroll'
should allude to the text of Cant, it would refer to a conversation about it. A loose al-
lusion to Esther 9.2 may be found in 1. 90 ΠΗΠ TiNxn 'jwa instead of nna®1? ]irn. Cant
was, however, not yet read in the liturgy of Pesah in Yannay's time, Stemberger 2003;
cf. Fleischer 1982/83, 227f for (fragments of) a Qedushta by the Qalliri that combines
verses of Cant with Lamentations but belongs to the Sabbath of the latter.
181 Rabinovitz 1987, 289.196f.
Β In all watches, this is the night.

G The redemption of 'neither day nor night' (Zech 14.7).
D As a remission of debts in 'the morning came and also the night' (Is 21.12).
Η It is the day (not Ps 118.24), and protections (or: remembrances, watches) for
generations.
W And for their children to make (them) clever and to teach (them).
Ζ That one who (hovered?) p-s-h over the fathers
Η Is protecting them like flying (birds).
Τ You brought out the pure ones from among the impure...
The Biblical references clearly imply eschatological, if not messianic concepts.

The person who accepts the Ύ of the piyyut as his voice confesses that he
hopes for redemption. 'Night' is taken in its Biblical sense as a metaphor for
'the afflictions of the present' and not for the liturgy of the seder. These
piyyutim are by definition recited by day and it would not make sense to ex-
press one's hope that the 'night of protections' should 'end'. Yannay does not
imply here that the future redemption should happen at a certain date in the
calendar or that it would be expected during the night. The essence of what
has to be done in the 'night of watching (or protections)' is not to wait for the
Messiah, but to teach the children, to drink four cups of wine, to recite the Hal-
lel, etc. With many liturgical allusions to the Temple cult, but also to the ritu-
als of the seder, the present of the poet is represented in the liturgy that looks
back into Biblical times. There, he receives consolation and hope for the future
that enables him to pray for the liberation from 'Edom'.
In his piyyutim to Pesah, Yannay does not allude to the Aqeda,182 the cove-
nant 'between the pieces', or the birth of Isaac. Only in farfetched allusions,
182 Regarding the mention of Myrrh (1. 19), Rabinovitz refers to ShirR 1.12f where the
smoke of the Aqeda removes the smoke of the golden calf. Yannay says: " Ά bundle
of myrrh" (Shir 1.13) - Making (it) flow (like wind), I let a smell evaporate. The "bun-
dle" of my crimes has been filled up, but I was granted relief from it.' ShirR 1.13/1.58
Dunsky 46 and 3.6/3.5 Dunsky 86 both Maagarim 'What is a "bundle of myrrh"? R.
Azaryah expounded the verse as referring to our father Abraham. Such as that myrrh
is the head of all the sorts of perfumes, thus Abraham is the head of all righteous ones.
Like this myrrh only makes evaporate its smell in the light, thus the deeds of Abra-
ham were not made known before he had been thrown into the fiery furnace. And
such as this myrrh makes bitter the hands of those who pluck it, thus Abraham makes
himself bitter and afflicts himself in troubles - "he will pass the night between my
breasts" that means that he is placed between the Shekhina and an angel, as it is said:
"he saw and ran towards them" (Gen 18.2): "he saw" the Shekhina. "He ran" like an
angel.'
one may find the topic of creation.183 Prayers for future redemption are infre-
quent and rather emphasized in the poetry for the Sabbath on which the text of
Exod 12.42 is read than to the piyyutim for the festival of Pesah.
Conclusions
The great abundance of texts that accompany the statutory prayers and the
reading and translation of the Tora in the Palestinian rite make it plausible that
texts such as Yannay's qrova and the targum expansion were read in the same
liturgy. Both may have provided a preacher with material to create enlight-
ening observations about Pesah and its relationship to the law, the aggada, and
the present state of the community. It seems that a greater number of associa-
tions to Pesah would not only show the more developed erudition of the poet
or preacher but also contribute to the intellectual satisfaction of the listeners.
Thus, the absence of elements of another tradition is significant. The survey
over the poetic texts gives a clear answer to the question of this section: the
targum expansion of the 'four nights' and its topics are irrelevant for the
meaning of Pesah.
5.4.2 Remarks on Abra(ha)m's Night(s)
The paragraph on the 'second night' combines three elements of Biblical his-
tory: first, the 'covenant between the pieces' according to Gen 15; second and
connected with it, the announcement of Isaac's birth in Gen 17; third, the
'binding of Isaac', the Aqeda, in Gen 22. Before any discussion of the literary
structure of this passage and the parallels in rabbinic sources, it may be ob-
served that the three Biblical texts share many elements, like the connection
with God's prophecies of a future for Abraham's family. Only the first ele-
ment (of Gen 15) has a Biblical association with the Exodus and 'darkness'
(and hence a 'night'): Gen 15.12 mentions darkness ('...behold, a great darkness
falling upon him') and God had also asked Abram to count the stars earlier (v.
5 - ignoring the time mentioned at the beginning of v. 12). The first element of
183 Thus, in piyyut VII3, that enumerates many associations to 'water', one may find refer-
ences to the creation; Rabinovitz 1987, 261 n. to 1.109: 'Everything is from water'.
the 'second night' (no. 7) is, therefore, the most important one in the list of
'four nights'.
Remarks on the Biblical Background of the 'Second Night'
The interest in the patriarchs' and the matriarch's ages is well known from the
midrash. The covenant 'between the pieces' must have been concluded before
Ishmael's birth, which took place before Abraham reached the age of 86 (Gen
16.16). This date is used in the Mekhilta in order to explain the difference of
400 (Gen 15.13) and 430 (Exod 12.40f) years in the computation of the exile.184
As Israel's servitude in Egypt is included in God's prophecy and promise (Gen
15.13f), this 'night' was appropriate to be included in a targum to Exod 12.42.
Next (no. 10), the expansion refers to the announcement of Isaac's birth.
The reflection of Gen 17.17 within the expansion can be translated in two ways.
First, ΝΠ can be understood as interrogative particle rendering the Hebrew "Π:
'Can Abraham...?' 185 Second, it can also be an interjection: 'Behold, Abraham
can...'. It seems more likely that the translator would not have changed the
mood of the Biblical text and hence wanted his translation to be understood in
accordance with the source as: 'Can Abram, being one-hundred years old, be-
get?' As Michael Sokoloff does not refer to an Aramaic question-marker "Π, Ν7Π
in the following sentence must be understood as 'affirmative particle'186: 'Cer-
tainly, our father Isaac was...'. 187 It is important that Gen 17.17 ('Can
Abram...? Can Sara...?') is phrased as a question, for Gen 17.17 (Gen 21.6;
probably 26.8 as well) gives an etymological etiology of Isaac's name: Abra-
ham's (and Sara's) 'laughter'. 188 There is no association of a 'night' in Gen 17.
184 MekhY pisha 14.5 L 111.

185 This seems to be implied by Sokoloff 2002, 158 referring to 'FTVGen 18:17' [sic]; Fass-
berg 1990 § 158d. Golomb 1985, 42 gives a less convincing analysis of these particles.
186 Sokoloff 2002, 165. Fassberg 1990 § 157b. Dalman 1905, 224 observes that the
interrogative particle "Π does not occur in yT and midrashim.
187 This combination of a question in the quotation of Gen 17.17 and the following
affirmation is absent from ms. FF (1. 3vl4-lr3 Klein 221). FF could be understood as a
preferable lectio brevior that notes the ages of Abraham, Sara, and Isaac 'at that time'.
Λπ is missing in TN.
188 The verbs derived from the root ρπϋ in Gen 17.17 and 18.12 are both translated as
έγέλασεν in the LXX. This is also present in lexical collections; Wutz 1914, 83 Ισαακ
γέλως καΐ χαρά. Günter Stemberger points out that a Greek 'Gelasios' might call
himself 'Isaac' in the Hebrew, cf. the remark in Noy and Bloedhorn 2004, 9. Cf. for the
T h e compiler of the expansion did not explain that the covenant 'between
the pieces' (Gen 15) did not h a p p e n w h e n A b r a h a m w a s 100 years old. It w a s
the covenant of G e n 17 (not that of G e n 15), that w a s granted to A b r a h a m
w h e n h e w a s 99 years old. T h e expansion begins thus with a reference to G e n
15 that provides the 'night' a n d the link to the E x o d u s f r o m Egypt. 1 8 9 It pro-
ceeds to G e n 17 that creates the allusion to Isaac in a general w a y .
T h e first (no. 5) and the third (no. 14) 'nights' are concluded b y a scriptural
quotation. O n e m a y a s s u m e that this w a s also the case here (no. 9) and that
the reference to the A q e d a w a s inserted. T h e rest of the expansion does not,
however, follow a strict pattern that w o u l d allow to pass a j u d g m e n t about its
constituents b a s e d o n the wellformedness of its elements. 1 9 0 T h e position of
combination of Abraham's 'joy' (i. e. Gen 17.17), the Aqeda, and John 8.56; Kundert
1998 I, 216-227. The reasons for the combinations of the texts are different in the ex-
pansion and in the NT. Neither text was influenced by the other. The mss. of the PTT
(TN, ms. Par Klein 1980, 52; ms. Vat Klein 136 and 137 for Gen 18.12 ra"n is due to the
influence of Talmudic Babylonian Aramaic, Sokoloff 2002, 190 - one instance that
speaks against the assumption of a pristine tannaitic wording of TO; ms. Nur, Klein
1980) render ρππ by nam 'he was astonished' (or: 'he wondered'). Ms. Lips (Klein 136
n.) adds in the sense of TO nam nnawi. This translation of the PTT fits better to the
Biblical context. TO may be understood from Rashi's point of view: 'Onqelos trans-
lates this: "and he rejoiced" (ρπιπ = ήπι, Gen 17.17), in the meaning of "joy" and that
(statement) of Sara in the meaning of laughter (pnxm = η3"Πΐ). From this, you learn
that Abraham believed and rejoiced whereas Sara did not believe and scorned. There-
fore, the holy one, may he be blessed, was angry about Sara and he was not angry
about Abraham.' TO avoids to express Abraham's doubt in Gen 17.17 and interprets
his laughter, that explains Isaac's name, as 'joy'. Note that the Ethiopic Epistula
Apostolorum 14/25 Schmidt and Wajnberg 1919, 50ff and n. 5 apparently transfers
Sarah's laughter to Mary at the time of Christ's conception.
189 On the first glance, TN has the easier reading, because it skips 'between the pieces' (in
no. 7). This is, however, best explained as a scribal error because of the
homoioteleuton of 'Abram': '...revealed itself over (Abram between the pieces) Abram
was one-hundred...' The reference to Isaac's birth is by itself not connected with the
topic of the 'night' and likewise not with the Exodus.
190 Davies 1979, 66. Gen 15 (v. 6) is combined with Gen 22.9 in Jam 2.21ff. Αναφέρείν is
not a technical term implying the slaughtering of the offering here. It is true, that Gen
22.2 and 13 use άναφέρειν in this sense. Αναφέρείν έπί τό θυσιαστήριον is a normal
expression for indicating the offering by (at least partly) destruction. However, άνα-
φέρειν is also used in a much broader sense; cf. Gen 40.10; Exod 18.19, 22, 26; 19.8;
Deut 9.17. In Lev 6.19, the priest eats what he 'offered', which could not have been
burnt, likewise Lev 23.11. The LXX and the Masoretic text avoid this association: kn-
έθηκεν ("pin) τά ξύλα ... έπέθηκεν (ntt"1) αυτόν έπί τό θυσιαςτηριον. Kundert 1998
the scriptural quotation in the paragraph of the ' s e c o n d night' is, therefore, not
an indication that the reference to the A q e d a is a later addition to it.
The Aqeda
Isaac's age at the time of the A q e d a can b e derived from Bereshit Rabba, w h i c h
asks: ' f r o m w h e r e did (Abraham) c o m e ? ' (in G e n 23.2) ' A b r a h a m c a m e in order
to m o u r n for Sarah and to w e e p for her.' R. Y o s e answers: ' f r o m M o u n t
Moria'. 1 9 1 If Sarah's death occurred at the age of 127 (Gen 23.1) and this w a s
the date of the A q e d a according to the midrash, Isaac w a s 37 years old at that
time, b e c a u s e he w a s b o r n w h e n Sarah w a s 90 years old (Gen 17.17). 1 9 2
Bereshit R a b b a (44.22 T A 444f) also provides the rest of the midrashic m a -
terial for the t a r g u m expansion. It records an argument b e t w e e n R a b b a n
I, 206 assumes that the change of the term in Jam may indicate the understanding of
the Aqeda implying Isaac's death. However, as the Biblical background tells the story
otherwise, one has to expect more explicit explanations (such as they appear in the
rabbinic texts) if Jam should have thought that Isaac was killed. Jam 2.21 is perfectly
understandable as a simple allusion to Gen 22: 'Abraham was declared righteous by
putting (or even: 'offering') Isaac, his son, on the Altar.' This is, what he actually does
in the narrative. Αναφέρειν έτι! τό θυσιαστήριον often implies the destruction of the
offering as a metonymy based on the description of the first part of the action for the
whole action. Gen 22 describes the interruption of that action. Kundert 1998 1,174 em-
phasizes that LAB 18.5 Kisch 159 SC 229.150 regards the Aqeda as performed sacrifice:
...ego autem reddidi eum patri suo, et quia non contradixit, facta est oblatio in
conspectu meo acceptabilis, et pro sanguine eius elegi istos; cf. Stemberger 1974, 67 =
1990. LAB is not, however, a pre-Christian text and one may observe that the 'blood'
is mentioned as an expression of the same thought as the previous clause: 'the
sacrifice was made acceptable in my eyes' because of Abraham's compliance. LAB
does not speak about the 'ashes of Isaac'. The Aqeda is also not an atoning offering
here, but the basis for Israel's election.
191 BerR 58.5 AT 623, cf. Klein 1986 II, 61.
192 Stemberger 1974, 56 = 1990, 144 observes that Isaac is depicted as a child in the cata-
combs of the Via Latina and almost all other images. He suggests that this could sup-
port a low age for the idea that Isaac should have been 37 years. See Stemberger 1974,
50-77 = 1990, 136-174 for a classified survey of pre-rabbinic and rabbinic interpreta-
tions of the Aqeda. Whatever one reconstructs as a background of the narrative, Isaac
should be old enough to carry the wood. Thus, the age of 37 is certainly based on a
tradition. Yet, the Biblical narrative restricts the possibilities. This implies that differ-
ent exegetes could reach similar 'ages' independently.
Yohanan Ben Zakkai and Rabbi Aqiva. The latter thinks that God revealed to
Abra(ha)m the world to come on the occasion of the conclusion of the covenant
'between the pieces'. Such an interpretation expands God's prophecy to
Abra(ha)m, that only includes his descendants' slavery in Egypt and the
Exodus according to the Bible. This tradition may have been reworked in the
expansion of the 'four nights'. As such, it shifts the narrative of the vision
from Abram to Isaac. BerR 44 does not, however, describe a damaging effect
on Abram's eyesight as effect of the vision. It is, likewise, not interested in the
motif of the 'night' or the darkness, but reworks the Biblical prophecies given
to Abram in Gen 15. Isaac's vision combines Gen 22.14 with 27.1 explaining
why Isaac's eyes became 'dark' or 'faint' 193 . Isaac's vision of the iT'mra 194 may
have been inspired by Abra(ha)m's contemplation of the stars. This is men-
tioned among one of several reasons for Isaac's blindness in his old age (Gen
27.1) in BerR.195 Moreover, the idea that a Biblical figure who escaped death is
credited with having died for the hallowing of God's name is not confined to
Isaac. Thus, the 'pleasing smell' of Abraham (according to the aggada) and the
three men of Dan 3 in the fiery furnace rises in front of God like the smell of
the 'generation of the destruction' in the time of the martyrs around the Bar
Kochba revolt.196 Events which occurred to Abraham were applied to Isaac in
the targum expansion.197 This corresponds to several aspects of the Aqeda
there and in general. In the early texts (Gen 22 and Philo; Chilton and Davies
1978, 519ff), it is Abraham - not Isaac - who is tested and who receives the re-
ward for his faith and obedience.
The evidence of BerR 44.22 is not the cause for the combination of the
Aqeda and Exod 12.42 in the targum expansion. It provides the material, but
not the structure. Le Deaut (1963,137f) observes that the mention of the Aqeda
is not connected well with its context. He remarks: '...la seule raison qui ex-
plique sa presence est le rapport entre Päque et sacrifice d'Isaac ä date an-
193 ΠΠ3: Deut 34.7 refers to Moses' eyesight that was not diminished.
194 This parallel is drawn in Yannay's qrova on Gen 15; 12.71 Rabinovitz 1985, 140: 'To
the beauty of the heights, you brought him out. I You let him behold the host of the
stars...' According to LAB 18.5 Kisch 159 SC 229.150 Chilton and Davies 527, Abra-
ham was lifted above the firmament in order to see the stars.
195 BerR 65.10 TA 719f, Chilton and Davies 1978, 537. The presence of the Shekhina on
the mountain is already hinted at in answers to the question how Abraham would
have recognized the correct mountain, cf. Stemberger 1974, 58ff = 1990,147ff.
196 BerR 34.9 TA 319 (Gen 8.21); Urbach 1960/1961 = 2002, 59f.
197 This procedure was already operative in the Bible, cf. Gen 26.6-11.
cienne' (138). Does the presence of the Aqeda in the targum expansion point to
the high antiquity of the concept in Judaism?
The importance of the Aqeda for the understanding of the Jewish Pe-
sah has been grossly exaggerated in the history of research.198 The most recent
monographic discussion of the Biblical and post-Biblical history of the Aqeda
is Lukas Kundert's study (1998). His conclusion strongly supports Le Deaut's
opinion (as quoted above). Some questions have to be asked, however, con-
cerning this approach in order to show the applicability of its results to the
discussion of the targum expansion.199
The key to Kundert's understanding of the meaning of the Aqeda in Sec-
ond Temple times and beyond is his attempt to interpret the Septuagint ren-
dering of TTP as αγαπητός in Gen 22.2 not as 'beloved', but as 'preferred be-
cause of (his) obedience' ('bevorzugt weil ergeben'). From this, he infers that
Isaac was seen as consenting to the procedure and cooperating in it long before
this is explicitly stated in the (more recent) sources.200 While this interpretation
of the passage in the Septuagint cannot be excluded, Kundert's interpretations
of alleged or clear references to this concept of the Aqeda are based on his sec-
ond assumption that αγαπητός is used everywhere in the context of the Aqeda
as a technical term with this narrow theological interpretation. Among others,
the following three arguments must be raised against this presumption.
First, Kundert exaggerates the character of the Septuagint as a translation
that is designed to convey 'exegesis'. Of course, any translation reflects the
translator's interpretation of the source. While there is no doubt that the
translators of the Septuagint expressed their understanding of the Biblical text,
there are numerous examples where they apparently translate what they do
not understand or are simply forced to decide which of several nuances of the
Hebrew source should be reflected in the Greek text.201 Any such choice may
198 Cf. J. Fitzmyer's 2002 survey.

199 Kundert excludes the targum from the discussion because of its problematic dating.
200 Kundert 1998 I, 67f.
201 Kundert's opposition against Harl's interpretation of the LXX to create a pun (deviat-
ing from the Hebrew text) in τον υίόν σου τον άγαπητόν, δν ήγάπησας misses the
point. Why should the readers not understand αγαπητός from ov ήγάπησας? Fur-
thermore, the rendering of man fix 'JN in v. 2 (εις τήν γην την ύψηλήν) suggests that
the translators did not understand the pun that the Hebrew text wants to read in(to)
the place name in v. 14. In the first case, the LXX created a pun against the Hebrew.
In the second case, it did not reflect a pun of the Hebrew. The rendering of "p03 as έν
φυτω σαβεκ likewise suggests that certain features of the translation emanated from
misunderstandings rather than sublime interpretations of the narrative. According to
The 'Four Nights' a n d Their Parallels 381
or may not indicate far-reaching considerations in its background. In order to

establish a tradition of exegesis, it is not sufficient to point out that one could
have translated a text also in another way. Thus, even if the translators of the
Septuagint should have had Kundert's interpretation as a meaning of ΤΓΡ in
mind, this does not imply that everyone else who read it, likewise understood
it as such, not to mention that most readers should have shared all its theologi-
cal consequences.202 Texts like Dan 3.35203 and Sir 44.22f,204 which Kundert un-
derstands as references to the Aqeda in this sense, are too inexplicit to count as
proof-texts for such a subtle case.
Second, it is significant that Kundert excludes the discussion of the Aqeda
in bSanh 89b from the treatment in the first volume of his work because it falls
beyond the boundaries of 'ancient' texts that are being discussed. However, he
quotes it frequently even as a background for the understanding of the Sep-
tuagint. 205 This shows that the older documents are read in light of the more
Kundert, the different translation of ΠΠ1 in v. 6, 19 (οί δύο άμα) a n d v. 8 ( α μ φ ό τ ε ρ ο ι

ά μ α ) should express that Isaac consented to the p r o c e d u r e after the short discussion
in v. 7f. This should be an exegetical device of the LXX; K u n d e r t 67f. Here, the
translator could h a v e intended to avoid the repetition of the s a m e term or rendered it
unconsciously. K u n d e r t b u r d e n s the opposition of οί δύο a n d α μ φ ό τ ε ρ ο ι with too
m u c h meaning.
202 TIT poses an exegetical problem to any reader, because Isaac is, in fact, not A b r a h a m ' s
only son. Several solutions h a v e b e e n proposed. One can refer to the fact, that
Ishmael w a s cast out or try to find another reason for Isaac's special role. The LXX
reads one of t h e m in ΓΟΠΝ Α γ α π η τ ό ς can lead to far-reaching theological specula-
tions, b u t it does not indicate that they w e r e already present in the translator's mind.
203 If the translator gives one epithet for each patriarch, the fact that A b r a h a m a n d Jacob
are not called π α ι ς , too, is h a r d l y relevant; cf. K u n d e r t 1998 I, 78. It is anachronistic to
quote the rabbinic t a r g u m o n Job in order to explain the Greek text of Judith. Fur-
thermore, it is an example of circular a r g u m e n t a t i o n to reconstruct a ' b a c k g r o u n d ' to a
very short piece of text a n d to refer to that text as a witness to the existence of that
b a c k g r o u n d later. The same is true for Judith 8.26 w h i c h m a y or m a y not be a witness
to an interpretation of the A q e d a as temptation of Isaac.
204 K u n d e r t 1998 I, 74 n. 136 quotes S m e n d ' s suggestion that έν in Sir often translates "•?.
If this should be a stereotype translation, n o theological nuances m a y be inferred f r o m
έν.
205 K u n d e r t 1998 I, 55. K u n d e r t ' s interpretation of Philo's De Somniis 1.163 C W 3.239
does, for example, not s u p p o r t his conclusions regarding the m e a n i n g of α γ α π η τ ό ς .
Philo reads G o d ' s features into the n a m e s 'Kyrios' a n d 'Theos'. While A b r a h a m came
over f r o m another l a n g u a g e and culture, h e symbolizes the τ ρ ό π ο ς of one w h o needs
a p o w e r to g u i d e h i m a n d grace to p r o m o t e him; w h e r e a s Isaac only needed grace,
representing a τ ρ ό π ο ς that w a s already perfect f r o m the beginning. Philo alludes to
recent ones and that this process is covered up by the presentation of the
analysis as a seeming development from the older to the later attestations.
Third, a tendency of the Septuagint to expand the sacrificial implications of
the text of Gen 22, that Kundert describes,206 is not supported by the data.
Thus, the translation of rfofr® by means of μάχαιρα does not imply such a ten-
dency, because a Biblical technical term for 'sacrificial knife' is not attested.207
In the same manner, the translation of ipi' as συμποδίζω cannot be interpreted
as increasing the sacrificial terminology, because the alleged technical use of
the hapax legomenon TpS? cannot be analyzed on the basis of its contexts. A
terminus technicus can, however, only be detected if it is used repeatedly. The
story of Gen 22 is highly charged with sacrificial allusions from the beginning
(cf. rto1? DW irtom). The very course of the narrative implies that any hapax
legomenon in such a text must be interpreted as carrying sacrificial meanings.
The same is true for the rendering of mm as θυσιαστήριον. This term in Gen
22 is evident, because it is a neologism and the stereotype translation in the
Septuagint for rnra.208 Sacrificial aspects of the Hebrew text are obvious. Their
rendering in the Septuagint does not support any conclusion about a special
theology of the narrative.
Jacob's alleged 'prayer' in Gen 28.21: 'then shall the Lord be my God'. Thus, Jacob
implied that he would 'honor' God 'in a loving way' as against 'fearing' him like a
'ruler (is feared)'. The concepts of 'Liebe' and 'Furcht' are not 'parallelisiert' (Kundert)
here, but set in contrast. Why would Jacob 'pray' to be changed from being someone
who revered a ruler to someone who was 'ergeben' to God? The contrast between the
reverence for the ruler and the love for God vitiates Kundert's reading. Kundert him-
self is not consistent in his interpretations of this passage. On p. 138, he interprets the
opposition between 'fear' and 'love' quite differently.
206 Kundert 1998 I, 67-70.
207 TOO is not attested in Biblical Hebrew. It cannot be substantiated that the root
should exclude a cultic use of that knife rtoxs. Furthermore, the eating of the meat is
in many contexts no less 'cultic' than the slaughtering, mats in 1 Kgs 7.50, 2 Kgs 12.14;
25.14, Jer 52.18, and 2 Chr 4.22 refers to knifes in a cultic context. Yet, one could argue
from the context of the root Ί0Τ 'trim, prune' (Lev 25.3f; Is 5.6) that it should be very
unlikely that these knives should be utensils for slaughtering animals. Kunderf s ap-
proach to the analysis of the meanings of lexemes is inadmissible. He also reads
midrash into Biblical lexicography, cf. 1998 II, 146f. While it interprets n^DNQ on the
basis of its root, not even BerR 56.3 TA 598 compares V30 and rfaNO.
208 ΓΠΤ» referring to an altar that is disqualified as place of true worship in the text is not
rendered by θυσιαστήριον. Note that Liddell and Scott 812 have only attestations for
θυσιαστήριον that are dependent upon the LXX.
Although Kundert collects many important observations on the texts that

he discusses, his reading of the Septuagint and the dependent texts does not
prove that the Aqeda was already read with the theological implications that
were developed from the second century of the Common Era on. The inten-
sive debate about the relative age of this interpretation of Isaac as consenting
to his offering and its broad theological implications, is not yet resolved, for
every reader of the Biblical narrative of the Aqeda, must ask himself about
Isaac's role in this exciting story and must try to fill in what is missing in the
narrative according to his own understanding. Thus, the question remains
open when such an exegetical tradition - as opposed to independent readings
of an ambiguous text - actually began.
For the assessment of a date of the Aqeda theologies, Joseph A. Fitzmyer's
(2002) magisterial discussion of the Qumran evidence must be taken as point
of departure. Fitzmyer implicitly supports the observations of Chilton and
Davies (1978, 518). The latter two scholars observed that 'only the quite
illegitimate appeal to the Palestinian targums makes the case for a pre-Chris-
tian Aqeda even conceivable.' They indicate that the absolute silence of the
Qumran texts on the subject of the interpretation of the Aqeda as an atoning
sacrifice fits to the rest of the pre-Christian documents.
Only one of Fitzmyer's observations cannot be accepted in the present con-
text. 4Q225 is often referred to as the long desired proof-text that breaks the
silence of Qumran on this matter. Fitzmyer also accepts the broad consensus
about the restoration of 4Q225 i 4 as 'bind me fast!' on the basis of the Pales-
tinian targum tradition and targum Pseudo-Jonathan. This reconstruction
reads a statement of Isaac that appears as expansion in the Palestinian targums
into a lacuna in 4Q225. The statement expresses Isaac's readiness to be sacri-
ficed.209 Similarly, Kundert reads almost the whole theological repertoire of
later rabbinic texts into these fragments: 'Nach den Informationen des Textes
(viz. 4Q225) muss Isaak als geopfert gelten'.210 While Kundert reconstructs
elaborate 'backgrounds' for very short texts, he treats 4Q225 as a full re-narra-
tion of Gen 22 rather than a selection of exegetical notes. This implies, that
missing information would have been left out purposefully. Whatever its pre-
history in the development of the Hebrew Bible, the Biblical text of Gen 22 in
the form in which it was available to Qumran scribes is unequivocal in the fact
209 Chilton and Davies 1978, 541 show that this element of the Aqeda legend emerges in
the latter part of the first century.
210 Kundert 1998 1,104.
that Isaac survived the Aqeda. Someone who wants to draw theological con-
clusions from his 'death' must state this explicitly, as it is done in the rabbinic
sources. Otherwise, the Biblical text of the Aqeda as it is written has to be un-
derstood as the 'background' of the statement and must be used to replenish
narrative gaps of the Qumran text.211 Fitzmyer refers to an argument against
the reconstruction that he accepts. For the Hebrew verb that is inserted into
the lacuna at the beginning of Isaac's speech (mDD'^) is neither attested in Qum-
ran nor in Biblical Hebrew. Moreover, the fragments mention the verb UCK? in
the same context, probably for the 'binding' of prince Mastema. It requires an
explanation why the author of this fragment should have chosen two different
terms for 'binding' in the same text. Furthermore, there is no reason why the
Hebrew text should paraphrase nptf1? exactly with the Hebrew cognate of the
Aramaic mas'? that is used in the Medieval targums. The retroversion of the
Aramaic text of the targums does also not fill the line in the Qumran fragment.
The line could have contained a longer statement of Isaac as well. Finally,
hardly more than a vertical stroke is visible of the first letter of the line.212 A
stroke does not corroborate the reconstruction of a whole line. The restoration
is a reasonable proposal that helps the uninitiated reader to imagine how an
author in Antiquity could have composed a meaningful text by expanding the
Biblical narrative. However, the argument must not be used in the recon-
struction of the history of the theology of the Aqeda. A line of the targum that
is translated into Hebrew by modern scholars and inserted into the lacuna of a
Qumran fragment and that establishes the first attestation of a much younger
theological motif is no reliable evidence for the pre-history of that same motif
in the targums.
Apart from the hypothetical character of the restoration of the lacuna in the
fragment, 'bind me fast' indicates Isaac's consent to the events of the Aqeda. It
does not yet make the Aqeda an atoning sacrifice. While the later doctrine of
Isaac's atoning death in the Aqeda could have been prepared by older narrative
expansions of the short Biblical text speculating about his active consent and
cooperation in the preparation of the offering, it did not appear before amoraic
times in rabbinic theologies. In this respect, Kundert's conclusions are
211 PRE (8th or 9lh cent. Stemberger 1996, 329) is not a 'background' for the understanding
of Hebr 11.19 - Genesis 22 is.
212 Garcia Martinez 2002, 52f is convinced that the traces point to 3 and sees the text as a
forerunner of the later theological interpretation of the Aqeda.
anachronistic. 4Q225 does not vitiate the theses of Chilton and Davis (1978),
who could not yet know this text.
This raises a fundamental point in the approach to the history of the Aqeda
as an example for ancient exegesis. Jubilees 17 (that has already been dis-
cussed above213) vaguely hints at the Aqeda as a background for the feast of
Unleavened Bread. If Jubilees would have been interested in stylizing Pesah
as a reenactment of the Aqeda, or to forge a close connection of the slaying of
the Pesah animals with Isaac, it would not have been sufficient to allow the
reader to guess that the Aqeda may (or may not) have happened around the
first day of the festival, but state this explicitly. Jub 17 does not make the
Aqeda a background or 'meaning' of the slaughtering of the animals or of the
Pesah meal. In its marked interest on weeks and their contribution to the crea-
tion of the calendar, Jubilees sacrificed the historical reconstruction of a prece-
dent for Pesah for the sake of the description of the origins of the feast of
Unleavened Bread. This is fully borne out by the broad description of the
meaning of Pesah in Jubilees 49f, where several reasons are given for the festi-
val and where Isaac is conspicuously absent. Pre-Christian Judaism was not
interested in a connection of Pesah with the Aqeda, although innovative
sources such as Jubilees started some tentative experiments.
Rabbinic sources state that Isaac was born on Pesah.214 R. Eliezer and R.
Joshua are not referring to the Aqeda in that context.215 As soon as the Bible
contains an important person's life-time in 'years', it is reasonable to assume
213 See p. 234.

214 Jub assumes that Isaac's birth was announced on 15 VII (Jub 16.12f, Sukkot, the festi-
val of 'joy' - the reflection of an etymology for Isaac's name) and born on Shavuot, 15
III. Jub does not know a tradition that Isaac should have died on Pesah, cf. Gen 35.28f.
BerR 48.12 TA 490 identifies Sarah's cake of Gen 18.6 as (rrn) nosn 0Ί3, 'It was the piece
of bread of Pesah'. (As there was no time to let the dough leaven,) Sarah obviously
made Matsot for the guest(s) - an understanding that lead to the inclusion of this text
in the best attested form of the expanded Grace after Meals of Pesah according to the
Palestinian rite. As Isaac was born a year after this event (vv. 10, 14), he was born on
Pesah. BerR 53.6 TA 561 sets Isaac's birth on midday. The statement is supported
with Deut 16.6 creating a gzera shava via TOia in Gen 21.2. This method ignores the
context of Deut 16.6 (that puts the Exodus on the evening of the 14th of Nisan) and as-
sociates the scenario of Exod 12 and Numb 33.3 where Israel leaves Egypt on the day
after the Pesah; cf. also n. 173 p. 371.
215 bRHSh 1 0 b - l l a . The text is discussed on p. 398.
that those were full years.216 Consequently, important persons died on the
anniversaries of their birthdays. It is, therefore, not astonishing that 'the fa-
thers were born in Tishri/Nisan and ... died in Tishri/Nisan.' This suggests
yet another reason for the insertion of the Aqeda in the targum expansion.
Whether Isaac 'died' in Tishri or in Nisan is secondary. As soon as the Aqeda
is perceived as Isaac's (atoning) death, its placement on his birthday becomes
reasonable on the basis of those principles. As the day of the Aqeda cannot be
calculated on the basis of the Biblical data, one must ask for Isaac's birthday.
Thus, the great amount of evidence against a strong and an old connection
between the Aqeda and Pesah poses the question of why and when the Aqeda
would have been associated with it at all.
The first association of the Aqeda and Pesah can be found in the Mekhilta.
Kundert also reads connections of Pesah and the Aqeda into a text of MekhY
that does not contain them. Thus, MekhY217 alludes to God's promise to Abra-
ham, to 'redeem his sons'. It is true that God's promise is called an 'oath' only
in Gen 22.16-18. However, there and in Gen 17.6-8, God does not promise to
redeem Abraham's descendants - unlike Gen 15.13f. MekhY may thus be read
as an association of all three instances of a promise to Abraham, but putting a
strong emphasis on Gen 15 and 17 and leaving aside Gen 22. In this passage,
MekhY blends concepts of Ezek 16 and the commandment of the circumcision
in Gen 17. It does not reflect the doctrine of 'the fathers' merit' n m mat here.
For God provides Pesah and the circumcision as two commandments to be ful-
filled by Israel as a remedy for their lack of a record of fulfilled obligations.
The Aqeda is irrelevant for this discourse.218
216 bRHSh IIa Maagarim: 'The (sage) who says (that) the (patriarchs) were born in Nisan
(also implies) that they died in Nisan. The (sage) who says (that) the (patriarchs) were
born in Tishri (also implies) that they died in Tishri. For it is said: "He said to them: I
am one-hundred-and-twenty years old today" (Deut 31.2). Why does Scripture say
"today"? Today, his days were fulfilled. (This is) in order to teach you that the Holy
One, may he be blessed, is sitting and completing the years of the righteous ones from
day to day and from month to month. For it is said: "I shall complete the number of
your days'", Exod 23.26.
217 MekhY pisha 5; Kundert 1998 II, 7-10.
218 Yalqut Shim'oni must be referred to more cautiously, if it is quoted in order to inter-
pret MekhY, Kundert 1998 II, 9. The reading 'Abraham' instead of 'Abram' (Gen 15) is
no indication that MekhY implies the Aqeda, because MekhY hardly ever uses
'Abram' in order to refer to the person (except for direct quotations and the reference
to the changing of the name). This may be due to the prohibition to call Abraham
'Abram' (or the commandment to call him 'Abraham'), yBer 1.6 3d.
There is, however, another text in MekhY that refers explicitly to the
Aqeda.219 It is one of the interpretations of Exod 12.13 Ί shall see the blood' (as
well as v. 23). One interpretation before that which refers to the Aqeda tries to
cut the link between God's seeing the blood and his sparing the firstborn of
Israel. The blood is a sign for Israel, not for God. In another interpretation,
MekhY refers to the fulfillment of a commandment: 'on account of the merit of
(the fulfillment of) one220 commandment that you accomplish'221 - God has
mercy upon the people. The ΠΠΧ mm is the performance of Pesah that is
proven by the blood on the doorposts. There is still no trace of n m mat yet.
In the last approach to the text, MekhY still attempts to solve the same
problem of understanding regarding the application of the blood in Exod 12
that troubled also Melito of Sardis. This time however, both of them solve it in
a very similar way:
Ί shall see the blood.' I see the blood of the binding of Isaac. For it is said: 'Abra-
ham called the place, (Y' sees)' etc. and at another place, (Scripture) says: 'During
the destruction (that was brought upon Israel), Y' saw and was moved by pity,'
etc. What did he see? He saw the blood of the binding of Isaac. For it is said:
'God will see for him the lamb,' etc.222
Ο strange and inexpressible mystery! (...) The blood won the angel's respect. Tell
me, angel, what did you respect? The slaughter of the sheep or the life of the
Lord?223
Although both Exod 12.13 and 1 Chron 21.15 are quoted as two proof-texts for
one argument, the text asks a second time 'what did he see?' - viz. God in 1
Chron 21.15, where the 'seeing' is not followed by an object. One can supply
'the destruction' wrought by God's angel against Israel. The answer implies
that God sees the binding of Isaac also when he stops the pestilence that he has
brought upon Israel as a punishment for David's census. Therefore, the text
does not express a unique relationship between Pesah and the Aqeda. On the
219 Kundert 1998 II, 17f quotes 'a Geniza text' that resembles MekhY but deviates in some
points from it. As Günter Stemberger pointed out, this is not a witness of MekhY, but
of MekhSh 12.13 by EM 16.11-18. Thus, it may be noted as a significant point re-
garding this passage of MekhSh that it does not refer to the Aqeda where MekhY does.
220 O n e ' is missing in the parallel MekhY pisha 11 ms. München 117 Maagarim.
221 a'Wl» αΠΝϋ ΠΠΝ niSB ms. Oxford 151, Maagarim.
222 MekhY pisha 7 ms. Oxford 151, Maagarim; par. pisha 11 ms. München 117 Maagarim.
223 Peri Pascha 31f/199-204.
contrary, it seems that in every case where God spares or saves224 the people,
he may be motivated to do so by the binding of Isaac. Although it is 'the bind-
ing of Isaac' and not Isaac's (atoning) death, Kundert is right to assume this
because it explains the blood of the lamb on the doorposts. In the context of
MekhY, the 'binding of Isaac' helps the interpreter to do away with the plain
sense of the text, namely that God skips the houses on whose doorposts he
sees the blood. Perhaps this ritual was too close to a magical manipulation of
the godhead.
In this sense, Melito emphasizes that the mere application of the blood in
this ritual could not have saved the people from the destroyer's activity. Me-
lito has no reason to hold Israel's offerings in high esteem. On the contrary, he
needs every argument to belittle the Old Testament Pesah as a mere model for
what was to come in Christ. Thus, the destroyer 'saw' Christ's passion
through the blood of the lamb. In a closer reading of the Biblical text, MekhY
assumes that God saw the 'binding of Isaac' through the blood. While it
would be naive to suppose that MekhY reacts to Melito's homily, the evidence
that Chilton and Davies (1978) collect shows a very general tendency that such
parallels may indeed go back to a competitive discourse between Christianity
and Judaism.
According to Chilton and Davies, pre-Christian sources (Jubilees, not in a
chronological sense, also Philo) do not portray Isaac's atoning death as the cli-
max of the narrative. Still in close contact to the Biblical text, Philo is interested
in Abraham's role, not in Isaac's. Probably under the influence of the destruc-
tion of the Temple and the continuing disastrous political reality, the image of
Isaac becomes aligned with that of the perfect martyr who readily accepts his
fate (Josephus, LAB, 4 Macc). In this respect, Isaac's behavior is exemplary,
but not unique. The New Testament does not yet exploit the story of Gen 22,
except for a veiled allusion in Rom 8.32. If this latter text creates a typological
parallel between Isaac and Christ, it is, nevertheless, still interested in Abra-
ham's (or, in the sense of the typology) God's function within the events.
224 Stemberger 1974,168f = 1990,162f refers to MekhY besallah 4 L 222f where Mt. Moriah
is moved to the Red Sea in order to support Israel's safety. This implies the great
power of Isaac's or Abraham's (!) merit. It is not connected to the Pesah offering and
it does not imply an expiatory effect of the Aqeda.
In the J e w i s h liturgy, the A q e d a is only important in the N e w Y e a r ser-

vice. 2 2 5 A s the above discussed evidence shows, the function of the A q e d a in
defining the m e a n i n g of N e w Y e a r is a post-destruction innovation. 2 2 6 In the
(more recent) N e w Y e a r liturgy, the c o m m e m o r a t i o n of G e n 22 replaces the
n o w defunct T e m p l e liturgy par excellence, the tamid offering. The ' b i n d i n g '
of Isaac b e c a m e the etiology for the b i n d i n g of the tamid animal. This is also
evident from the amoraic notion of the 'ashes of Isaac', that cannot imply the
P e s a h animal, but recall a burnt offering, the tamid. 2 2 7 Only in the passage of
M e k h Y that is quoted above, the A q e d a is connected with Pesah.
225 Cf. Chilton and Davies 1978, 533 as well as Stemberger 1974 = 1990 for summaries of
the available data. The targum expansion to Exod 12.42 is no exception to this rule, as
it was never recited on Pesah as long as the Palestinian system of readings was intact.
226 This is neither an ubiquitous nor a primordial concept. In the end of tSot 15.11ff 243f,
R. Joshua refutes ascetics who refuse to eat meat and to drink wine after the destruc-
tion of the Temple, because both made up the daily tamid offering; Urbach 1960/61 =
2002, 53f/442f. R. Joshua first demonstrates the impossibility to refrain from eating
everything that was formerly used in the Temple cult. Yet, he acknowledges the im-
possibility to continue to live as if nothing had happened. Thus, he suggests that a
person who whitewashes his house leave out a spot as a 'sign of remembrance for Je-
rusalem' etc. He does not (yet) propose a replacement for the liturgy of the tamid in
this passage.
227 The 'binding' of Polycarp (MartPol 14.1 Buschmann 1998, 29) is an allusion to burnt-
offerings (and the Aqeda) and not to the Pesah, unless one wants to assume that the
Christian authors had already no idea about the Old Testament background of the im-
ages that they use. Buschmann 269 η. 85 infers the Paschal context from 8.1. It is
reasonable to see a parallel between John 19.31 and the term 'great Sabbath' in Mart-
Pol 8.1. (ActPion 2.1 refers to this text and does not represent a separate tradition.)
Buschmann's 168 reference to the allegedly Quartodeciman provenance of MartPol
show the aporetic character of this argument. It is a necessary feature of Quartodeci-
manism to ignore the days of the week in the determination of the date of the Pascha.
Any liturgical importance of a 'Sabbath' implies a kind of Dominical Pascha in the
background. There, the Saturday was characterized by fasting only. A technical term
'great Sabbath' does not exist in Judaism in the first millennium; cf. Stern 2001, 80; Ta-
bory 2000, 127f; esp. Yuval 2000, 223-241. In Christian texts, a similar term appears in
the 4th cent, and refers to the Saturday of Holy Week. Buschmann's remark about
'schiefe Parallelen' elucidates the method of MartPol that plays with subtle allusions
to the Biblical text, but avoids imitation. 'Holy Saturday' would make sense in the 4th
cent, and does not help to explain the text. (Robert, Bowersock, and Jones 1994, 50
suggest 'la saison du careme' for ActPion.) Rordorf 1980c tries to explain the date
with a pagan fast day on Feb. 23, which is acceptable, but does also not explain the
'Sabbath'. Note that MartPol uses a similar terminology as Melito (cf. above p. 50) im-
Christianity does not full-heartedly, quickly, and unambiguously adopt

the Aqeda as a standard for the understanding of Christ's death. To the many
factors that have been mentioned in the course of the foregoing discussion, one
may add another one. As soon as the Pesah animal was used to provide a
metaphor to speak about Christ (1 Cor 5 which was taken up a century later by
the Quartodecimans), the Aqeda would be less easily associated. For the
Aqeda implied a burnt-offering and was otherwise not linked to Pesah. Yet,
the theological implications that could be derived from it, apparently con-
vinced Christians to start 'experimenting' with the Aqeda. Only after the
knowledge of - and interest in - Old Testament institutions faded, the Aqeda
became free to attract more bits of theological speculation.
In amoraic sources, Isaac becomes 'less the steadfast zealot, more an intel-
ligent victim'228 who asks to be bound in order not to become a blemished
sacrifice (or to act irreverently towards his father).229 Christians begin to build
theologies on the Christ-Isaac-typology in the second century, as attested for
the first time in Barn 7.3. Chilton and Davies read this as a reaction to Jewish
attempts to establish the 'binding' of Isaac as the commemorative replacement
of the sacrifices of the Temple.230 In the following centuries, both religions con-
tinue to develop the Aqeda in a polemic discourse that leaves many traces in
the texts.231 The imagery of the Aqeda becomes influenced by concepts of
Christ's passion. Thereby, it's power to interpret aspects of Pesah is increased.
Thus, the Aqeda-Pesah connection of amoraic and post-amoraic sources is
not a faint trace of such a pre-Christian Aqeda-Pesah connection in Judaism. It
is plausible that it emerged from a discourse with Christianity. At the same
time, the motif was established as the etiology for the new year festival. Even
plying a similar chronological error but substituting a weekday (Sabbath) for Melito's
'festival'.
228 Chilton and Davies 1978, 538.
229 Stemberger 1974, 62f = 1990,153f.
230 Stemberger 1974, 53 = 1990, 138f notes that the shift of interest from Isaac to Abraham
took place in the early rabbinic period.
231 Kundert's attempt 1998 II, 141-146 to make the dictum of BerR 56.3 TA 598 '"Abra-
ham took the wood of the burnt offering and put it upon Isaac, his son" - like some-
one who carries his cross on his shoulders' a pre-Christian proverb is less convincing
than to see this as a witness to the Jewish-Christian discourse about the theological
meanings of Christ and Isaac in late Antiquity.
as associations of the Aqeda with Pesah came up, the connection to New Year
proved to be stronger.232
Conclusions
The contribution of the study of the Aqeda to the understanding of the targum
expansion of the four nights corroborates the dating of the 'second night' in its
elaborate form in amoraic or later times. It supports the observation that the
targum expansion does not express a strong theological or traditional link
between the meanings of Pesah and the Aqeda. The 'second night' is a skillful
blend of bits of midrash to Gen 15; 17; and 22 that is dependent upon the only
solid scriptural ground of the 'darkness' in which Abra(ha)m receives the
prophecy of multiple descendants as well as the foreknowledge of time of Is-
rael's enslavement in Egypt and the Exodus, that is the topic of the seder in
general. In this respect, the Aqeda may be among the original components of
this 'night' within the text of the expansion, composed by a geonic payyetan
who hoped that his audience would enjoy the richness of his daring allusions
to the Bible and the midrash.
5.4.3 The Nights of Creation, the Exodus, and the Messiah
In his elaborate index to the first edition (1903) of his book 'Jüdische Eschato-
logie von Daniel bis Akiba', Paul Volz did not include a lemma 'Pesah'. The
expanded second edition (1934) has two references to this entry. One men-
tions the cup of Elijah, the other the Taeb of the Samaritans. Both traditions
postdate the historical scope of Volz's book by many centuries. In the earlier
part of the 20th century, the Jewish Pesah of New Testament and early tannaitic
times could still be understood as non-eschatological.233
232 The association of the Aqeda with the tamid was never forgotten in Judaism. Thus,
the Biblical text of the Aqeda is recited in the Birkoth ha-shahar-section of the daily lit-
urgy - among the very young additions to the Siddur. Cf. Stemberger 2004, 94 for the
image of the Aqeda in the mosaics of Sepphoris (and Bet Alpha) where this scene pro-
vides the foundation of the Temple cult.
233 Cf. for the issue, the first part of Rouwhorst 2005. Cf. Gutmann 1974 for a 15th cent,
date of the rite of opening the doors for the recitation of: 'Pour out your wrath over
the nations that do not know your name'. Many elements of a popular messi-
The Jewish festivals that are developed out of Biblical institutions differ
markedly from Christian festivals. The latter were created to commemorate
certain data of the history of the New Testament, the martyrs of the church,
and later other events and theological ideas. As the concepts surrounding the
creation of the world became a noteworthy element of Jewish and Christian
systems of faith, one might expect a festival that is dedicated to its commemo-
ration. However, it does not exist.
The three pilgrim festivals were at some time and in an unknown manner
connected with cosmic - agricultural and astronomical - phenomena as well as
anchored in the economic needs of the Sanctuary. In the Old Testament, they
were already loosely associated with events of the Exodus - in the case of Pe-
sah in an elaborated and coherent system, in the case of Sukkot only by a
popular etymology of a geographical name. Nobody ever felt the need to cre-
ate a festival to celebrate 'the creation' in ancient Judaism. As it has been
shown above, this is also true for the 364-day calendar as it is attested in the
scrolls. Many events of the history of the people of Israel did not find a place
in that system. Megilat Taanit may be read as an attempt to insert noteworthy
events of the more recent history of the people into the commemorative system
of a calendar. Yet, even that text does not command to celebrate anything, but
only forbids to fast and to keep rites of mourning on these days. It did not
have a lasting effect on the festal calendar. In hindsight, the liturgical
irrelevance of Megilat Taanit shows that the idea of a yearly cycle of
anniversaries perceived as a representative selection of important events of the
people was not important in Judaism in Antiquity. Except for Hanukka, the
Jewish festivals are likewise not anniversaries of historical events despite
attempts of the Bible and texts like Jubilees to provide etiological narratives for
them. Thus, the sages make sure that Pesah is not the annual reenactment of
the Egyptian Pesah. If they speculate about dates - like the position of the
creation of the world within the calendar - they record alternative approaches.
The narrative coherence of the Christian yearly cycle of festivals is based
on the New Testament history of the life of Jesus, leading from the annuncia-
tion of his birth, baptism, and salvific death towards Pentecost. The Bible does
not give a calendar date for the creation and the landscape of fourth century
anic/eschatological understanding of the evening of the seder (and the Haggada) are
more recent. Sober readings of sources continued to find similar structures: cf. Visonä
1988, 352 about an 'eschatological perspective' in Pseudo-Hippolytus' In Sanctum
Pascha:'...dimensione che si conferma perciö estranea a IP'.
Jerusalem does not provide a place on which one would assemble 'apte diei et
loco' and recall 'the creation'. One should, therefore, be rather astonished to
find it as one of the few essential elements in the contents and meaning of
Pesah.234
In analogy to the observations about the 364-day calendar of the Qumran
scrolls, two ways of an application in practice can be envisaged for a theoreti-
cal system of representation of 'history' in a yearly cycle. First, it makes time
meaningful and provides a point of departure for the definition of a commu-
nity's identity if it is represented in ritual time. It has been observed above,235
that this does not apply to the targum expansion of the 'four nights', because
this text was not heard in the liturgy of Pesah but at other times of the year.
Second, a calendrical system is a means to manage Biblical information for
exegetical reasons and without consequences for the liturgy.236 The parallels
between calendar and history eventually lead to a flexible repertoire of stan-
dard motifs that could later be evoked together with the basic interpretation of
the festivals. The Exodus from Egypt has been discussed at length above. It
must now be asked, whether the contents of 'the creation' and 'the Eschaton'
were part of a kind of basic interpretation of Pesah, and not one of many ele-
ments that would be recalled in an attempt to anchor the festival with as many
associations as possible in Biblical texts.
This requires a heightened awareness towards the question of what makes
a liturgy 'eschatological'. Three heuristic answers may be given. First, as a
Christian approach to life is based on the remembrance of the past and the
hope for an individual and a collective future, liturgies express this remem-
brance and this hope in different ways. This category is not relevant for the
present investigation. If a remark that implies hope for the future, like an in-
234 Buchinger observes that an association between Easter and the idea of 'creation' was
unknown to Origen: 'it is unclear when this (association) was introduced into Chris-
tian literature at all' (my tr.) 2005, 460.
235 See p. 361.
236 To this set belong rabbinic texts like bRHSh 10b-lla, that will be discussed below.
Another example can be seen in bSot 12b, quoted by Stemberger 2003a, 293. Moses
was saved from the basket in the Nile on the 21st of Nisan or on the 6th of Sivan. This
is not an ancient liturgical tradition that makes the 7th day of Unleavened Bread or
Shavuot the anniversary and day of remembrance of Moses' rescue as a child. It does
not interpret the liturgy. It is an attempt to derive more narrative precision from be-
low the surface of the Biblical text by means of sophisticated ways of exegesis.
tercession, makes a liturgy 'eschatological' it will be hard to find any non-es-

chatological celebration. The label 'eschatological' becomes meaningless.
Second, the persons who take part in the rites may understand themselves
as already living in a new age. This need not imply that they abandoned all
expectations for their future. Giuseppe Visonä describes Ps.-Hippolytus' 'real-
ized eschatology' in this way. It is based on a twofold historico-exegetical
scheme of 'imago-veritas' instead of a threefold 'umbra-imago-Veritas'.237 Ps.-
Hippolytus sees the liturgy of the Eucharist as the 'cultic epiphany' of Christ
and reinterprets even 1 Thess 5.6 as referring to the preparation for the Eucha-
rist.238 This 'eschatology' is of some interest here, because it represents a
church's approach to her position within a history of salvation. If an author or
a community takes such a position seriously, this excludes their adherence to
the following type.
Third, certain liturgies may be understood as (the only) possible points of
contact of the cyclic (yearly) and cosmic time. This could intensify the general
awareness of an imminent and all encompassing change of the world within a
certain liturgical celebration - for example that Christ or a messianic figure
should come in a night of Easter or Pesah. Such an approach to eschatology
should be expected to tremendously increase the awareness of a community's
existence within different systems of coordinates of times in this particular
celebration. This type of understanding the liturgies is important here, be-
cause it was claimed to be the original Jewish and Christian way of under-
standing Pesah and Easter.
While bits of an eschatological understanding of Pesah emerge in the high
Middle Ages,239 it is striking that they are absent from times of persecution and
unrest in late Antiquity. A few indications of the 'eschatological' understand-
ing of the Christian Easter appear in the fourth century. Willy Rodorf's obser-
vation that the (partial) realization of the Eschaton in the liturgy should evoke
the hope for the full realization in the future is too general to be of any rele-
vance for the understanding of the early celebration of Easter. It is, neverthe-
237 Cf. also Visonä's comments on § 6; 1988, 86ff. The Old Testament ('imago') repro-
duces, however, the πρωτότυπος that Moses saw before committing the Tora to
writing. Thus, Ps.-Hippolytus' exegesis also presupposes a doubly twofold scheme.
This is important for the question how the Old Testament (and liturgies described
therein) could be able to foreshadow Christ's 'Veritas' but not for the contemporary
liturgy that is already taking place within that 'veritas'.
238 Visonä 1988, 63-66.
239 Cf. Israel Yuval's 2000 book that provides ample documentation.
less, r e m a r k a b l e t h a t t h e f o u r t h c e n t u r y g e n e r a t e d t h a t b a s i s for t h e finer dis-

t i n c t i o n s of t h e partial f u l f i l l m e n t a n d its f u t u r e c o m p l e t i o n r e g a r d i n g the u n -
d e r s t a n d i n g of Easter. It m a y b e s u g g e s t e d t h a t t h e g a p b e t w e e n p r o p a g a n d a
a n d reality m a y h a v e b e e n m o r e p a i n f u l i n t h e t i m e of t h e i m p e r i a l c h u r c h t h a n
t h e p r e c a r i o u s e x i s t e n c e in t h e e p o c h s p r e c e d i n g it. 2 4 0 A c c o r d i n g l y , R o u w h o r s t
s u r v e y s t h e h i s t o r y of r e s e a r c h a n d t h e t e x t u a l e v i d e n c e . H e c o n c l u d e s t h a t t h e
o l d C h r i s t i a n P a s c h a w a s n o t eschatological. 2 4 1
T h e d i s c u s s i o n o f t h e d a t e a n d literary c h a r a c t e r of the t a r g u m e x p a n s i o n
to E x o d 12.42 h a s s h o w n t h a t this text is n o w i t n e s s to t h e u n d e r s t a n d i n g of
c e l e b r a t i o n s of P e s a h b e f o r e t h e e n d of A n t i q u i t y . D o e s it reflect earlier
e s c h a t o l o g i c a l a p p r o a c h e s to P e s a h i n spite o f its d a t e ?
Wolfgang Huber refers to three proof-texts for an ancient Jewish
e s c h a t o l o g i c a l u n d e r s t a n d i n g of t h e n i g h t of t h e 15 l h of N i s a n : t h e t a r g u m ex-
p a n s i o n of t h e ' f o u r n i g h t s ' , M e k h Y (pisha 14.5 L 115f) to E x o d 12.42 a n d a pas-
s a g e in J e r o m e ' s c o m m e n t a r y o n M a t t h e w (4.25.6). J e r o m e ' s t e s t i m o n y is in-
240 Rordorf's 1980 proof-texts for the assumption that 'encore au debut du IIIe siecle, on
attendait done avec ferveur le retour du Christ' are mainly from the fourth century
and do not show that exactly the liturgies were the means of expression for this ex-
pectation. Praying to the East may be interpreted as referring to the direction from
which one would expect Christ to come, Matth 24.27. However, when does that mean
that people who prayed facing East expected Christ's coming within the celebration in
which they prayed?
241 Cf. Rouwhorst 2005. I am grateful to the author for allowing me to use his paper be-
fore its publication. Note that the oldest (extant) Christian lectionary, the Armenian
Lectionary of Jerusalem, does not provide a lesson that refers to Christ's second com-
ing at the end of days or the like. Is 60, Jer 31, and Ezek 37 can be interpreted as 'real-
ized' eschatology or as referring to a future event. Rouwhorst likewise shows that
there is no justification for an emendation of the Epistula Apostolorum that excludes
the festival of unleavened bread and Pentecost as time when Christ would come
again. For Tertullian De Baptismo 19.2 CChr.SL 1.294.13, see p. 173 and n. 156.
Tertullian only seems to imply the opposite. G. Racle 1966, 296 sees in Peri Pascha the
tendency 'd'une certaine deseschatologisation' on the basis of his observations about
Melito's Christology. Christ is seen as king and lord. The soteriological turning point
in the history of the world was his death and resurrection. He formulates the redemp-
tion of mankind in future and present terms; 102-103. Peri Pascha 66/451 (86/625) re-
fers to Christ as 'coming from heaven (άφικόμενος) to the earth on behalf of the suf-
fering one'. (Cf. 16/98, 18/115 where Christ is not the subject.) There is no connection
to the iiavBN of mPes 10.8, which is not understood in a messianic way in the rabbinic
literature; cf. Hall 1971, 30f no. i; Cohick 2000, 28 n. 55.
teresting, b u t worthless for tannaitic times. 2 4 2 The reference to M e k h Y is mis-

leading. For M e k h Y closely connects the 'night of r e m e m b r a n c e s ' and the
p r o p h e c y to A b r a m ' b e t w e e n the pieces': 2 4 3
"The dwelling of the children of Israel' etc. One verse says: 'four hundred and
thirty years' and one verse says: "They shall serve them as slaves. They will afflict
them four hundred years.' How can these two verses exist without contradiction?
The decree was given between the pieces 30 years before Isaac's birth. (...)
'And it was at the end of (four hundred) and thirty years' etc. This teaches, that
when the end came, 'the place' (viz. God) did not delay them even an instant.
On the fifteenth of Nisan, he was speaking with Abraham our father between the
pieces. On the fifteenth of Nisan came the ministering angels to Abraham our fa-
ther in order to announce him (the birth of Isaac). On the fifteenth of Nisan, Isaac
was born.244
On the fifteenth of Nisan the covenant between the pieces was decreed, as it is
said: 'and it was at the end' - there is one 'end' for all of them.245
Lauterbach r e m a r k s that the assumption that Isaac w a s b o r n on the 15 t h of Ni-

san follows logically from the above given solution of the p r o b l e m of the t w o
different dates in Gen 15.13 and E x o d 12.40f. 2 4 6 This computation presupposes
Isaac's birth 30 years after the covenant ' b e t w e e n the pieces'. A s the covenant
speaks about (presumably full) 'years' and as G o d is punctilious in his c o m -
putation, the covenant and Isaac's birth must have taken place on the 15 th of
242 Huber 1969, 3. Stemberger 1993 shows that Jerome exaggerates his own and his infor-
mants' knowledge of Judaism, the Hebrew language, and the Jewish liturgy. He was
hardly able to read a Hebrew text, has never visited a synagogue, and was not famil-
iar with the rabbinic interpretation of the law. Jerome was a knowledgeable compiler.
His works are no reliable source for the Judaism of his time.
243 MekhY pisha 14 L 111.54-58.
244 The reference to Isaac's birth is missing in ms. Oxford 151 (Maagarim). It may be a
secondary addition, although it does not disturb the context. Being a reflection of the
Biblical text, 'the birth of Isaac' is the most logical continuation and implication of the
lectio brevior: ntra1? dxdn WIN "jxn mwn 'DS^a ixa ρ Ή uro n»»m. Lauterbach refers to a
variant that adds the future redemption on the 15th of Nisan in this passage.
245 MekhY 14 L 112f.78-84; taken up in SOR 5 Milikowski.
246 This interpretation was not universally acknowledged. Thus, LAB 23.8 Kisch 176 SC
229.186 implies that Isaac was born in the 7th month as a premature child, Kundert
1998 I, 174. The calculation is also presupposed in the aggada on the Ephraimites,
who erroneously calculate the exodus 30 years too early and leave Egypt, but perish
before reaching the Holy Land; cf. Heinemann 1975; Ginsburger 1895, 102 quoting Ra-
schi to bSanh 92b; cf. PesK 11.10 Μ 186.
Nisan being the date of the exodus - the fulfillment of the prophecy. Since
Isaac's birth was announced (again) a year before (Gen 17.21; 18.14), both of
these events also took place on the 15th of Nisan. Thus, purely exegetical needs
to harmonize conflicting traditions in the Bible can lead to the assumption that
certain historical events occurred on the same date in the calendar.
The topic of the liberation of the people of Israel is taken up again in the
interpretation of Exod 12.42. There, the Biblical text contains the motif of the
night. The combination of Exod 12 and Gen 15 has, however, been established
in the Mekhilta without any reference to the 'night'. For the Mekhilta, the link
between the prophecy and its fulfillment was decisive for the inclusion of the
text here. An occurrence by night was irrelevant. The Mekhilta is neither con-
cerned with liturgy nor with the meaning of Pesah:
'It is a night of protections (remembrances, watches, observances) for Y " (Exod
12.42aba). They were liberated in it and they will be liberated in it. These are the
words of R. Joshua, as it is said: 'This is the night for (of) Y".
R. Eliezer says: They were liberated in it. In the future they will only be liberated in
Tishri, as it is said: 'Blow the horn at the new moon,'247 etc. Why? 'Because it is a
law for Israel' etc. (Ps 81.5). What does the Biblical text say? 'This is the night for
(of) Y". (It is not like R. Joshua's opinion) but it is the night (in) which the Holy
One, may he be blessed, said to Abraham, our father: Abraham, in this night, I am
liberating your son. When the end approached, the Holy One, may he be blessed,
did not delay them even an instant.
[Exod 12.42bp] 'Remembrances (or: observances) for all generations of the children
of Israel' teaches that all Israelites must be careful in it (viz. in order to observe the
laws and perform the ritual).
R. Joshua and R. Eliezer understand DTitttz? in Exod 12.42 as implying 'protec-

tion (from evil)'. For R. Joshua, this refers to a future event from the point of
view of the present. His opinion is based on an exegesis of Exod 12.42b 'pro-
tections (cmOT) for all generations of the children of Israel'.
As a reference to Gen 15.13, it has already been fulfilled in the past Exodus
from Egypt according R. Eliezer (obviously on the 15th of Nisan). Thus, the
future redemption is not any more bound to this date but will happen on a
more appropriate point in the calendar.
247 Ps 81.4 refers to the Exodus. However, the reference to the 'horn' and the absolute use
of 'festival' (in) imply the festivals of Tishri and not Pesah for post-Biblical interpret-
ers. If the liberation of the future is connected with the blowing of a horn on a New
Moon, it must refer to the New Year festival.
The anonymous interpretation of Exod 12.42bß interprets it as reference to

the customs and rituals that have to be 'observed' in this night every year.
Thus, the passages in the Mekhilta are concerned with inner-Biblical ten-
sions and the understanding of an ambiguous term (DTiatff) to which it gives
three explanations two of which rule out an eschatological interpretation of the
night of the 15lh of Nisan. R. Joshua's statement is an eschatological interpre-
tation of the Biblical text. He does not, however, draw any conclusion re-
garding the understanding of a liturgy and he does not point out that the fu-
ture redemption will happen in the night (of the seder). The whole passage
does not imply that the rabbis considered a part of a liturgy of the evening of
Pesah as 'eschatological'. Nevertheless, Rabbi Joshua infers from the Bible that
the future redemption will take place on a 15th of Nisan.
The structure of the discussion follows traditional lines. As a prophecy,
Exod 12.42 may refer to the future. It may also have been fulfilled in the
past.248 As an exhortation to keep the law of the ritual, it refers to the future
but as such it is devoid of eschatological implications for the ritual.249
The traditions of R. Joshua and R. Eliezer are expanded in bRHSh 1 0 b - l l a
referring to broader implications for the understanding of the calendar:250
It is a tannaitic teaching. R. Eliezer says: The world was created in Tishri. The fa-
thers were born in Tishri. The fathers died in Tishri. Isaac was born on Pesah.
Sarah, Rachel, and Hannah were visited on New Year. Josef went out of the prison
on New Year.251 The slave-labor was abolished on behalf of our fathers in Egypt
on New Year.252 In Nisan, Israel was liberated. They will be liberated in Tishri. 253
R. Joshua says: The world was created in Nisan. The fathers were born in Nisan.
The fathers died in Nisan. Isaac was born on Pesah. Sarah, Rachel, and Hannah
248 bSanh 98b: 'Israel does not have a messiah, for they consumed "him" already in Heze-
kiah's time.'
249 The following verse Exod 12.43 may have supported this interpretation: '...this is the
law of Pesah...'.
250 The mss. of the Lieberman database do not contain significant variants. The transla-
tion follows the ms. Oxford.
251 This is supported by Ps 81.4-6 in the following explanations.
252 The following collection of proof-texts derives this from a combination of Exod 6.6
andPs 81.7.
253 The Talmud explains the liberation in Tishri by a combination of Ps 81.4 and Is 27.13.
The difference between R. Joshua and R. Eliezer regarding this point is explained by
their understanding of O'HSIS W R. Joshua understands it as 'a night that is kept and
coming from the six days of creation' (apparently in Egypt and in the Eschaton) and R.
Eliezer thinks that it is a 'night that is protected from the harmful (spirits)'.
were visited on New Year. Josef went out of the prison on New Year. The slave-
labor was abolished on behalf of our fathers in Egypt on New Year. They were
liberated in Nisan. They will be liberated in Nisan. (The passage is followed by
proof-texts.)
The text of the Babylonian Talmud reverses the sequence of the statements of
R. Joshua and R. Eliezer (as it is given in the Mekhilta) in a list of nine Biblical
events that are allocated to the two major festival seasons of the year. Roger le
Deaut emphasizes that both traditions assume that Isaac's birth be on the 15th
of Nisan. As soon as one accepted the interpretation of the Mekhilta, that is
reworked here, this is exegetically obvious and does not even imply a second
thought of the sages.
Already the first element of the two lists of events, the creation, shows that
the text is not interested in the theological contents of Pesah. First, it would be
strange that two rabbis should disagree on the place of the creation of the
world within the commemorations of the calendar if there should have been a
generally acknowledged tradition that it was connected with Pesah. Second,
the texts only refer to the months of creation. One may assume that the world
was created on the beginning of Tishri - being the New Year festival. The be-
ginning of Nisan was not, however, emphasized liturgically as being a festival,
although the preceding Sabbath contained a special reading.254
A late remark of the Talmud testifies that the sages were not interested in
adding contents to festivals. After the story of the invention of the eight days
(implicitly: of Hanukka) as a festival, the text continues to apply this to the
question of the creation of the world:
This is in accordance with the person who says: The world was created in Tishri.
For (the first Adam) had not yet seen short days. But for that one who says: The
world was created in Nisan? Has he not (already) seen short and long days? (No.
For,) he had not yet seen (days) that were short to such an extent.255
If Adam had been created in Nisan, around the spring equinox, he would have
seen shorter days than those of the summer, but after the vernal equinox, he
would have realized that the days became shorter than those at the time of his
creation. It is irrelevant when the world was 'actually' created in the year. The
text shows that both Rabbi Joshua's and Rabbi Eliezer's opinions can be rea-
sonably applied to the aggada that was told before. A 'real' date of the crea-
254 ETinn mMeg 3.5, etc.

255 bAZ 8a ms. Paris 1337 (Maagarim). I am grateful to Daniel Stökl Ben Ezra for refer-
ring me to this reference.
tion of the world is - among other reasons - irrelevant, because it is not an im-
portant content of any festival.
Exegetes preceding those of the Mekhilta and the Talmud (in the passages
quoted here) already realized that the world could not have been created on
the 15th of Nisan. In the 364-day calendar of the scrolls, the world was not cre-
ated on Pesah. Emphasizing the creation in perfect harmony, Philo remarks
that it is fittingly linked to the spring equinox.256 Unlike his interpretation of
Pesah, he finds many parallels to natural phenomena pertaining to spring and
the renewal of life in the festival of Unleavened Bread. Because of those phe-
nomena of nature, the festival is connected with the remembrance of 'creation'.
The festival itself lacks any 'content' on the basis of which Philo could explain
its rationale to his readers. He makes it a 'celebration' of its seasonal context.
Philo is also not interested in a 'night' of creation. Philo's interpretation is not
related to the expansion of the 'four nights'. Such as the rabbis, Philo connects
the creation of the world with the 'beginning' of the year according to the Bib-
lical text, (the first of) Nisan, and not with Pesah.
On the background of these texts, it becomes clear that many modern
readers of the targum expansion read it through the eyes of the Armenian
Lectionary of Jerusalem that provides the reading of Gen 1 (to 3) in the Easter
vigil. The targum expansion itself is only interested in the fact that the creation
began in darkness - hence by 'night'. It does not even state that the time of the
world began on the 15th of Nisan. Although the 'second' and 'third' nights are
well connected with the 15th of Nisan, this is not true for the first. The targum
expansion does not define Pesah as a celebration of the anniversary of the crea-
tion.
256 See Leonhardt 2001, 34 for references. In his Questions and Answers on Exodus 1.1
LCL 2-6, Philo says: 'For He wishes this season in which the world was created to be
(the beginning) of creation for the world, and the beginning of months and years for
the (human) race. Now the season in which the world was created, as anyone will as-
certain in truth who uses a proper method of inquiry (and) deliberation, was the sea-
son of spring, since it is at this time that all things in common blossom and grow, and
the earth produces its perfected fruits. ... Wherefore He thought it proper that the
same season (should be) a memorial both of the creation of the world and of that
which is kin to it, again that the spring might be the beginning of every time, for time
came into being together with the creation of the world.' Philo interprets Exod 12.1,
the beginning of the months, and not the date of the Pesah. Furthermore, he thinks
that the month is special because the spring equinox is contained in it. He does of
course not give a lunar date. All of this indicates the honor of Nisan based on Spring,
but does not indicate that the world was created on Pesah.
The same is true for the Eschaton: 'It (will be) the fourth night when the
(decreed period of) the world will come to its end in order that it be re-
deemed...' Nothing implies a date in this paragraph. However, the text con-
tinues: 'this is the night of Pesah before Y'...' This immediate context seems to
identify the fourth, the eschatological 'night' with the celebration of the Pesah.
While this reading is possible, and would apparently also be acceptable for
medieval listeners, it ignores the greater context of the expansion - the targum
as a translation of Biblical text. If the text of the expansion itself is removed
from the targum, the simple paraphrase of Exod 12.42 remains:
A night that is remembered and ready before Y' in the Isr(aelite's) going out (as
liberated ones) from the land of Egypt.
{Expansion}
This is the night of Pesah before Y' - (it is) being remembered and ready for all
children of Israel throughout their generations.
The compiler of targum Pseudo-Jonathan apparently saw the problem and 're-
ordered' the text by placing the long expansion in front of the whole verse and
connecting it with: 'He called each of them "a remembered night'". For a well
educated reader (and even more for the listeners who could be guided by the
voice of the translator), 'this is the night...' does not interpret the eschatologi-
cal night as the night of Pesah, but resumes the translation of the Biblical text
after the expansion. As the expansion was not recited at Pesah, but on its Sab-
bath in the cycle of readings, it would have been rather farfetched to infer from
this, that the Messiah would come on a 15th of Nisan.
Why was the coming of the Messiah and Moses connected with the con-
cept of a 'night'? First, the insertion of the Aqeda into the 'second night' al-
ready shows that the author requires his readers to accept audacious construc-
tions in order to understand the rationale behind his list of nights. Second, the
stanzas 'P' to 'T' of Yannay's piyyut257 D,D13 31Ί TN provide a hint to the character
of that 'night'. Ending in an allusion to Ps 139.12, the troubles of the present
age make it comparable with the darkness of the night. In the 'night' of this
age, the Messiah and Moses will start their mission of the gathering of the
people.
The eschatological ending of the targum expansion alludes to the Exodus,
which is represented by the passage through the Red Sea rather than the first
Pesah. The idea that Moses should come from the desert and the Messiah from
257 Translation beginning p. 368 above.

Rome forming a procession together with the Shekhina is, apparently, only
attested here, although its elements are known from elsewhere. The Mekhilta
says that 'it is as if the Shekhina was lead away with' Israel into all their ex-
iles.258 The Shekhina was also exiled with Israel to 'Edom' (Rome) and will
return with them in the future ('Who is this one, coming from Edom...', Is
63.1). It is also a famous tradition of the Babylonian Talmud that the Messiah
is waiting for his time among the sick and poor in front of the doors of
'Rome'. 259 As he had to expect the beginning of his mission at any moment, he
never opened all his bandages at once for fear that it would take him too much
time to bind them again, if he was taken by surprise at a moment when all of
them were unbound. This detail proves - from a Babylonian point of view -
that the Messiah does not know that he will have to act on the evening of
Pesah. Had he known that, he would have been relieved from his constant
existence under high alert.260 It would have been sufficient to be prepared once
a year. This way of constantly tending his wounds is typical for him. It helps
Joshua ben Levi to recognize him among the other poor people there. The
Talmudic tradition may have originated in the third century.261 The notion is
taken up again in Sefer Zerubbabel that seems to have been composed in the
7th century.262 It is thus not unlikely that the 'fourth night' of the targum like-
wise came into being in this time.263
258 MekhY de-pisha 14 L 113ff.

259 Only as a Babylonian tradition, bSanh 98a. The Talmud does not determine whether
this should be Rome (in Italy) or Constantinople. In Kasher's 2000, 23 fragment, 'Italy'
is mentioned together with Constantinople. The fragment envisages the destruction
of Constantinople and the redemption of the 'congregation of Italy'. Although Kasher
suggests some 'ancient' Palestinian traditions as background of this text (38), it is evi-
dent that its composition postdates the fourth century (27). The use of Greek loan-
words suggests its Palestinian (rather than Babylonian) origins (38). It does not, how-
ever, require a date of composition before the end of the Talmudic time. If it is a
product of the heightened messianic expectations around the 7th cent., one may also
expect the expansion to Exod 12.42 to refer to 'Rome' in Italy. 'Edom' as Rome (in It-
aly) has lost its menacing power being replaced by Byzantium but retaining its place
within the generally conservative understanding of the world's basic structure. In
WayR 9.6 Margulies 184, Cant 4.16 is interpreted with a Messiah coming from the
'North' in order to rebuild the Temple in the South.
260 Kasher's 2000 traditions likewise do not refer to Pesah.
261 Stemberger 1983,120.
262 The book emerged from the historical situation of Heraklius' war against Persia and
was reworked and adapted several times, Stemberger 1983, 138ff. Israel Yuval 2000,
According to the translation adopted above (no. 16), Moses and the Mes-
siah, lead the people that is compared to a 'flock' (of sheep and goats). Le
Deaut (1963, 270) opts for this understanding, but quotes many texts that sup-
port a reading 'cloud'. 264 Klein (1978) shows, however, that the associations to
the 'cloud' on which the 'son of man' comes according to Daniel are based on a
wrong interpretation of an abbreviation - '2V for ius instead of the wrong N33V -
in the first printing of the Biblia Rabbinica. The Palestinian targum tradition
does not refer to a 'cloud' (Klus). The lack of a reference to 'clouds' also sup-
ports the interpretation of 'from the midst of Rome' ('an η ρ ) instead of 'from
the heights'.
Le Deaut indicates that the return of Moses is hinted at in the Palestinian
targum tradition to Deut 33.21.265 To this enigmatic verse, a similar vision is
recorded in Sifre to Deuteronomy:266
('For there is hidden the portion of the lawgiver,') 'and he will come (at) the
head(s) of the people', because he fulfilled (the laws of) the Tora by the letter. An-
other interpretation. It teaches that Moses will enter at the head of each group: at
the head of the group of those who know the Scriptures, at the head of the group
of those who know the Mishna, at the head of the group of those who know the
Talmud. He will take his reward together with each of them. Thus, (Scripture)
says: 'Therefore, I shall apportion him (his part) among the multitude and he will
divide up the spoil together with the strong ones' (Is 53.12).
The text fits to its context of the interpretation of Moses' death at the end of the
Tora. The targum expansion consequently makes Moses continue his journey
252 shows how the term 'hidden' (TBX) was taken up later, in order to assign a messi-
anic quality to the aphikoman.
263 R. Kasher 2000 collects targumic material that illustrates the repertoire from which a
scribe could choose motifs and recombine them according to his predilections; cf. n.
259 p. 402.
264 tSot 4.2 168f mentions seven clouds accompanying Israel at the passage through the
Red Sea. The sixth is 'for the Shekhina which is among them'. The motif of the clouds
is used in similar contexts. They help Israel in the Exodus and the journey in the wil-
derness. In SYAP 34.18, clouds are carrying all of Israel's possessions (and the more
recent acquisitions). If one should like to retain the notion of 'cloud' in the expansion
of the four nights, one should refrain from quoting Dan 7.14 too quickly.
265 Le Deaut and Robert 1979, 99 n. 49. Cf. texts of the PTT on Deut 33.21.
266 SifDev 355 Finkelstein 418.
into the l a n d of Israel w h e r e it e n d e d w i t h his death: in the desert o n the other

side of the Jordan. 2 6 7
T h e idea that M o s e s w o u l d c o m e in the last days also e m e r g e s from a plain
reading of D e u t 18.15 and 18. In this context and c o m p a r e d w i t h medieval
concepts of Pesah, it is astonishing that Elijah (Mai 3.23f) is not mentioned.
Furthermore, that it is Moses, w h o leads the people into the world to come,
could b e inferred from a general statement that is attributed to R. Elazar in
b S a n h 92a. 2 6 8 T h e proof-text that is quoted for this opinion is Is 49.10. A m o n g
267 For the coming of Moses and Elijah, cf. DevR aps = 3.17 Liebermann 91 '...The holy
one, may he be blessed, said to him (viz. to Moses): Such as you gave yourself for
them in this world, the two of them will likewise come together in the future when I
shall bring them the prophet Elijah. What is the proof-text? Thus, it is written: "The
way of Y' is in the whirlwind (nsiD) and in the storm" (Nahum 1.3). "In the whirl-
wind" this is Moses, as it is written: "She (Miriam) put (the basket with Moses inside)
into the reeds (ηιο) on the shore of the Nile" (Exod 2.3). "In the storm" this is Elijah, as
it is written: "Elijah ascended to heaven in a storm" (2 Kgs 2.11). In that very hour, he
comes and comforts you (pi.), as it is said: "Behold, I am sending the prophet Elijah to
you" (before the coming of Y's great and terrible day; Mai 3.23).' For another midrash
which connects Moses and the Messiah (a text that may postdate the targum expan-
sion and is certainly dependent upon bSanh 98b), cf. ShemR 1.26; Stemberger 1983,
120 n. 232: '"They brought him to Pharaoh's daughter and he became her son" (Exod
2.10). Pharaoh's daughter used to kiss and embrace him as if he was her son. She did
not bring him out of the king's palace ... And Pharaoh took him and embraced him
and he took Pharaoh's crown from his head and put it on his own head, such as he
would do to him in the future when he would be grown up. Thus, the holy one, may
he be blessed, says to Hiram: "I shall bring out fire from your midst. It will devour
you" (Ezek 28.18). Thus, Pharaoh's daughter (was) raising someone who would re-
taliate upon her father. It is the same with the king Messiah, who will retaliate upon
Edom, sitting among them in (their) city, such as it is said: "There, a calf will graze.
There, he will lie down and finish off its branches" (Is 27.9).' That the Israelites should
retire into the wilderness and return from there as a flock (quoting Cant 1.8) under
messianic guidance, was also assumed by the Karaite Jefet ben Eli; Eißler 2003, 168-
170.
268 'R. Elazar says: every administrator who leads the community in peace in this world
will be granted to lead them also into the world to come, as it is said: For he who has
mercy on them, leads them and guides them to sources of water', Maagarim. bYoma
5b likewise records a short statement about the future coming of Aaron, together with
Moses in the context of the discussion of a sequence of actions of the investiture of the
priests. Shinan 1990/91, 174 remarks in a short discussion of the absence of the Moses'
name from the Haggada: 'On this background, it is - by the way - evident, why Moses
does not have any Messianic function in the rabbis' understanding of the future at all.
the images that are evoked to describe the new Exodus, the preceding verse
mentions 'darkness' and 'light' - a possible link to the eschatological 'night'.
Thus, the elements that make up the messianic 'night' of the targum ex-
pansion are present in the margins of rabbinic literature and could have been
gleaned from there at any time. Their composite structure in the targum ex-
pansion is, nevertheless, not rabbinic.
Myths about messiahs were common knowledge in Antiquity. They be-
come important only from the fifth century on and predominantly in homiletic
midrashim (PesK). In tannaitic times, the 'fourth night' of the targum expan-
sion would not be expected. If one accepts a greater plurality of opinions
within Judaism and gives up the postulate of 'non-mishnaic ergo pre-mish-
naic', targumic expansions may draw some of their topics from rabbinic texts
and develop others themselves - especially within the framework of the lit-
urgy of the Palestinian rite that encouraged scholars for centuries to contribute
new compositions and ideas. In the sixth and the following centuries when a
'Rabbinization' of Judaism became powerful,269 one need not postulate particu-
larly non-rabbinic influences on the targums, but may regard the targums as
an expression of the contemporary development of the understanding of the
Scriptures and the liturgy that was shaped by elements of rabbinic thinking,
but that could also go beyond it.
He redeemed the people in the past. By this, his function ended and he stepped down
from the historical stage. The liberators of the future will be from the house of David
(or from the house of Joseph). Elijah, the prophet, will announce their coming, not
Moses. Finally, Moses is not destined for any function in the future redemption.'
While it is true that Moses played an important role in Hellenistic Judaism of Second
Temple times (Shinan; also Stemberger 2003a), his importance increases greatly in
post Talmudic texts. This argument corroborates the assumption that the 'fourth
night' fits well into post-Talmudic theology and a post-Talmudic date of the whole
expansion of the 'four nights'. The liturgical commemoration of Moses' death seems
to have been connected with the endings of the reading cycles of the Palestinian lit-
urgy; cf. Fleischer 1965/66 on the piyyutim that treat Moses' death as well as
Fleischer's remarks on the origins of Midrash Petirat Moshe. It is also reasonable that
at least part of the eschatological people come through the desert, because the bones
of Ezekiel's (ch. 37) vision - the Ephraimites according to the aggada - must be given
the opportunity to join the people again.
269 Stemberger 1999, Schwartz 2002. One may add, that this does not mean that all Jews
became Rabbanite at that time. On the contrary, the emergence of Karaism signifi-
cantly decreased the speed of the expansion of rabbinism.
In one way to approach messianism, the rabbis made Israel responsible for
the coming (or rather the not-coming) of the Messiah. There, the coming of the
Messiah was subordinated to stipulations (such as the keeping of a single Sab-
bath in Israel). These stipulations made it entirely impossible to calculate the
absolute or relative date of his coming. They made it very unlikely that he
would come 'now'. The targum expansion does, likewise, not betray an inter-
est in chiliastic speculations about the era of the Messiah. It does not imply
that its author was sure that the Messiah would come soon. Even if one
should believe that the Messiah could come by night - or in a similarly naive
reading of the expansion: also the night of Pesah - this does not imply that the
liturgies of Pesah were charged with the feeling that he might come at any mo-
ment (or during the 'the next' celebration of the seder). If Jacob Neusner (1984,
177) assumes (regarding the theological system as expressed in bSanh 96b-99a)
that it was 'meant to endure but ready, to be sure, to reach climax and conclu-
sion at any moment', this applies to any moment of the year and is independ-
ent of festivals and liturgies. The imperative that one should better follow the
rabbis' precepts in order to make the coming of the Messiah more likely is also
not connected to Pesah. Note also Neusner's reference to bPes 118a that inter-
prets the beginning of the Hallel Ps 115 'not unto us, ο Lord' as a plea to spare
the people who are praying 'the anguish attendant upon the Messiah's com-
ing' (178). It does not seem that the people could hardly await it during a lit-
urgy in which the Hallel was recited. R. Yohanan (and others) seems to have
seen the problem and suggested that 'not unto us' be a reference to the en-
slavement in the kingdoms - the state of affairs that makes the messianic age
desirable. However, a statement that deplores the present does not make the
liturgical context more 'eschatological' either.
Neusner (1984, 178ff) describes three rabbinic 'traditions on the date of the
coming of the Messiah': first, in the seventh year of the seven-year cycle (bMeg
17b); second, in Nisan;270 third, on a weekday but not on a Sabbath or festival
day.271 In addition, one may speculate about the liberation in Tishri. Beyond
270 Cf. also bAZ 9b that implies that the messiah comes 400 years after the destruction of
the temple according to the duration of the Egyptian bondage. At least one should
not buy a field before that day.
271 bPes 13a (par. bEr 43b) shows that Elijah at least respects the preparations that are
necessary for a festival: 'It has already been promised to Israel that Elijah will not
come on the day before a Sabbath and not on the day before a festival day, because of
the trouble.' The Messiah may, however, come on a Sabbath, because all peoples are
Israel's slaves when the Messiah comes.
Neusner's analysis of these texts within the development of the meaning of

messianism in rabbinic texts, these suggestions avoid giving a certain date
such as the precise millennium anno mundi. The 'fourth night' of the targum
expansion fits into this mindset better than Neusner suggests.272
If the forms of messianic expectation are compared, the Mishnaic absti-
nence (Neusner: 'sanctification instead of salvation') falls on one side of the
spectrum while calculations of the very date or the appearance of actual pre-
tenders fall on the other. Between those two extremes, one finds the texts re-
ferred to above. They know more or less details about the Messiah, rarely in-
cluding hints to dates of his coming or appointed times, when he would not
come. Elements of the seder liturgy in the later Middle Ages included ritual
representations of an imminent expectation of the Messiah (or Elijah) by means
of symbolic items, illustrations, liturgical actions or mimetic enactments of his
coming. There, the ritual expression of the general hope for a liberator could
influence the understanding of the liturgical time when the heightened aware-
ness would intensify the expectation in that particular night in the year. While
it does not reject it, the targum expansion also does not confirm this back-
ground. The 'fourth night' stands closer to the system of the Mishna than to
the opposite point.273 Furthermore, 'messianic' 274 elements in a liturgy do not
presuppose that it was highly 'eschatological', if 'eschatological' implies that
the liturgical text be an expression that the community expects the coming of
the Messiah (or the beginning of another age) during this particular liturgy.
Numerous prayers that entreat God to bring about change and redemption
soon or to restore national and religious structures immediately are not 'es-
272 Neusner 1984, 244: 'The substance of this passage, with its invocation of Moses as part
of the eschatological drama, carries us far away from the ideas we have seen up to this
point. Why thought about the Messiah should have taken this turn is not difficult to
suggest, given the New Testament Gospel's identification of Jesus and Moses...' It
does not seem necessary to postulate a connection to the NT. If the text is (1) suffi-
ciently late and (2) read as suggested above, it may be located at the margins of Neus-
ner's system.
273 Even if the statement that the night of the Messiah is inscribed in the 'book of remem-
brances' implies that God already knows the date of the coming of the Messiah, this
does not make a difference for the community that listens to the text and who do not
know more than that it is planned by God. The same sentiment is expressed in the
Haggada, ms. CJS 5vlf.
274 J. Neusner's 1984, 235 sweeping observation that 'the Siddur ... very simply is a messi-
anic liturgy' is too facile to be useful here; cf. also Langer 2003,149.
chatological' in this sense as they do not intend to change or express such an

awareness of the community who is convened in prayer.
5.4.4 Observations on the 'Four Nights' in Christianity
The 'night' of the Egyptian Pesah (Exod 12) is an old part of the interpretive
repertoire of Easter. The idea that Jesus Christ be τό πάσχα ήμών antedates
the targum expansion by centuries. The list of the four nights emerges long
after Judaism and Christianity had determined the relationship of Exod 12 to
Pesah and Pascha.
As the oldest homily on Easter, Melito's 'Peri Pascha' should be expected
to contain some parallels to the expansion of the 'four nights', if the latter
would have been an expression of the basic and oldest Jewish and Christian
meanings of Pesah and Easter. However, Exod 12.42 is irrelevant in that
text.275 Melito mentions the creation after the introduction:276
Learn therefore who is the suffering one, and who shares the suffering of the suf-
fering one, and why the Lord is present on the earth to clothe himself with the suf-
fering one and carry him off to the heights of heaven.
The creation of the world is not referred to because of its association with the
idea of 'night', but because Melito summarizes the fall of mankind into sin and
death from 'the beginning'.277 In other passages,278 he accuses Israel to have
killed the Lord, 'who formed you, who made you' and who fashioned the
whole creation. Christ is referred to as creator (liberator, benefactor, etc.)
275 Hall 1971, 46 n. 1 suggests to study Melito's homily in the context of the targum
expansion of the 'four nights'. A few possible parallels may be referred to. In 30/196
(cf. 15/91, 16/101), Israel is 'guarded (φρουρούμενος) by the slaughter of the sheep'.
Exod 12.42 uses the term προφυλακή 'nightly watch (precaution)'. The stem of
φυλακ- is used in 34/215, 84/614 but not as an allusion to Exod 12.42. In two brief
enumerations of scriptural types (59/416^120 and 69/481^88), Melito mentions the
Aqeda among other events through which one could see the 'mystery of the Lord'.
Thus, the Aqeda plays a marginal role in the homily. If these two remarks should
make the Aqeda a topic to be remembered in the Easter vigil, David's persecution
would be as important and would have to be reckoned as major paschal theme in Me-
lito's church.
276 46/306-310 tr. Hall.
277 47/311ff.
278 81/585f, 82/594-607, 87/637, 96/711ff, 104/781f, 791.
mainly in order to emphasize the contrast between his conduct towards man-
kind and Israel's treatment of him. Neither the covenant with Abraham, nor
Isaac's birth, nor a second coming of Christ are mentioned. According to Peri
Pascha, Easter is not carrying the motifs of the 'four nights' as repertoire of its
contents and meaning.
Pseudo-Hippolytus
Giuseppe Visonä observes, that the discussion of this topic by the author of the
anonymous paschal homily, referred to as 'Pseudo-Hippolytus', does not fol-
low the well established cliches in Christian tractates from the fourth century
on. After a stylistically emphasized introduction, the homily enumerates
questions that the preacher wants to ask of the Biblical text. It goes on to quote
the text of Exod 12 with some changes.279 Visonä observes that Ps.-Hippolytus
skips verses some of which later exegetes used to interpret in an eschatological
way and misses many opportunities to associate an eschatological meaning of
Easter when he expounds Exod 12.280 Pseudo-Hippolytus does not refer to
Exod 12.42.281 Visonä (1988, 377) concludes his discussion of the paragraph of
279 1-4:, v. 5 (not expounding the properties of 'male' and 'from the kids'; no. 19 interprets
the verse in an astronomical and not in an eschatological way), 6-15, 43-47, 48c-^19;
no. 5 Visonä 242-246, cf. 372-377. V. 10c (about the leftovers of sacrificial meat after
the morning) is quoted but not interpreted by Ps.-Hippolytus.
280 Cf. commentaries to no. 23, no. 26 Visonä 1988; 33-66, 390, 398 Apollinarius and others
reading eschatology into Exod 12.9b against IP no. 29, and no. 30 Visonä 401.
281 Like Melito, Origen, who explains the Biblical text with utmost care and erudition, is
not interested in Exod 12.42; Buchinger 2005, 564. For Origen expounds the LXX and
compares it with its revisions. There, the verse is understood easier than in the
Masoretic Text, which contains an ambiguous hapax legomenon nmaw: Νυκτός
προφυλακή (Liddell and Scott 1540: 'watch, vigil' only for the LXX). 'It is the watch
of a night for the Lord, that he may bring them out of the land of Egypt. That very
night is a watch for the Lord in order that it be (like that) for all Israelites according to
their generations.' Origen neither knows rabbinic traditions nor has access to the He-
brew text and its nuances. Origen did not know Hebrew and could not distinguish
between Hebrew and Aramaic; Buchinger 2005, 170 n. 964. 180. 398. 405 n. 61. 521 n.
839. Thus, Origen does not know about an etymological relationship between the
verb and noun of the root(s) nos; 2005, 405 n. 61, further details in ch. 2.4.1.3. The rite
of the search for leaven may reflect some observations of Jewish customs, 673-675.
Unfortunately, next to nothing is known about the liturgy of Hellenistic Jews in
Caesarea. Origen uses Philo as a 'Jewish' source. Neither observations of customs nor
the homily (no. 17) that is often interpreted on the b a c k g r o u n d of the 'first
night' of the t a r g u m expansion, that this p a r a g r a p h ' b e l o n g s to a stage w h e n
the C h u r c h h a d not yet acquired the topics from J u d a i s m that w e r e provided
there and w h e n it h a d not yet charged the Christian mystery w i t h n e w values.'
H e collects a m p l e evidence that supports the conclusion, that there is n o con-
nection at all b e t w e e n the J e w i s h t a r g u m and Pseudo-Hipolytus' homily. Be-
cause of the w i d e l y h e l d bias t o w a r d s the high antiquity and importance of the
t a r g u m expansion, V i s o n ä does not draw the obvious conclusion from his o w n
data - that there is n o parallel b e t w e e n the t a r g u m expansion and the h o m -
ily. 2 8 2 This conclusion m u s t b e supported b y a quotation of the passage of the
h o m i l y that is crucial for the present discourse:
Taking up the first explanation from the beginning, let us now say, what is this
month as 'beginning of months' and why is the month of the Pascha (ed. p. 266)
'the first among the months of the year'.
The doctrine of the Hebrews, that is said in an esoteric way (έν άπορρήτοις), says
that it is this time in which 'God, the craftsman and creator'283 of all, created the
universe and that this one is the first blossom of the creation, the beauty of the
world, as the creator saw the richly carved284 image moving in a harmonious way
according to his own mind.285
They (i. e. the Hebrews) certainly infer
from the well (established) orders of heaven
and the well (established) mixtures of the climate (as determined by its seasons)
and the rule-abiding (movements) of the sun
contemporary informants must be assumed in Origen's references to Judaism, as Bu-

chinger shows in many instances how Origen was able to acquire his knowledge in his
library. His acquaintance with contemporary Judaism does not surpass a general
cultural knowledge; 'ging ... nicht über ein gewisses Kulturwissen hinaus' Buchinger
2005, 686 and cf. 667-708.
282 Visonä assumes that the 'esoteric Jewish' tradition which Ps.-Hippolytus alludes to
was always widespread within Jewish catechesis; 1988, 372, referring to Le Deaut
1963, 64f. However, the targum expansion of the 'four nights' and Philo are his only
proof-texts for this assumption. His observation that Ps.-Hippolytus himself does not
see 'theological links between Christ's Pascha and the creation or spring' is decisive in
this context, 377.
283 Cf. Hebr 11.10.
284 Πανδαίδαλος is only used by Pindar and Dionysius of Halicarnassus who quotes
Pindar.
285 This is not a reference to Gen 1.26, but rather evokes the notion of God as the prime
mover of the creation. 'Image', άγαλμα, refers to pagan idols in 2 Macc 2.2; Is 19.3;
21.9, not to man as 'God's image'.
and the risings of an undiminished light

and, in fact, also the sprouting of fruits
and the onsets of plants
and the blooming shootings up of trees
and the births of the just born flocks,
when the whole earth is just issuing young shoots,
also (when) the trees are, likewise, covering themselves with blossoms pushing
forward into the casting out and bringing forth of fruits,
when the farmer stops the rattling cart and sets free the pair of animals from the
plough (p. 268)
and while he (viz. the farmer) throws the summer fruits286 on the earth, he awaits
the heavenly sources from above (from on high)
(while) the shepherd just milks the white milk from the sheep, and the bee-keepers
take the sweet wax of the (little) beehives out of the combs,
(while) the sailor just confronts the bluish grey sea
and he attacks (boldly) the bluish green waves by means of (his) greedy arts;
(from all of this, the Hebrews infer that) the good arrangement of them all
and the good order of everything
and - such as somebody should say - this good fortune
is the first beginning (viz. of creation?)
the beginning of the year
the sweet pleasure of spring.
I, myself, I am not unbelieving in these things. I think, however, what I believe
very much, that, by means of the spiritual feast of the Pascha, the month of the
Pascha was established as the beginning and head and first leadership of the
whole time and epoch (p. 270), (the month) in which this great mystery was ac-
complished and celebrated, in order that, in the same manner as the Lord of all
intelligible and also invisible (beings) is the first-begotten and the firstborn from
the beginning, in the same way, the month that held the sacred festival in high es-
teem also became the first one of the year and the beginning of the whole epoch.
The year is this one that the divine scripture proclaims: 'to announce an acceptable
year of the Lord' (Luke 4.19; Is 61.2).
What is Ps.-Hippolytus' 'esoteric Hebrew' tradition? As Gerard Rouwhorst
has shown, Ps.-Hippolytus uses typically Hellenistic imagery in his elaborate
description of spring.287 It is thus curious that one of Ps.-Hippolytus' para-
286 I.e. the fruits that are sown in spring and are supposed to be harvested in summer,
Visonä.
287 Cf. Visonä. Rouwhorst 1987 shows that even Ephrem uses an established set of liter-
ary cliches for the description of spring. Michels's 1926 attempt to assert Ephrem's
independence is inaccurate.
graphs that are the most indebted to Greek literary cliches should be the prime
witness to the very Jewish character of his opinion about the connection of
spring and Pesah.288
Apart from the Hellenistic imagery, the combination of spring and Pesah is
of course evident from the Biblical setting of the festival. Ps.-Hippolytus real-
izes this. Thus, έν άτιορρήτοις may refer to hidden traditions. Sometimes, it
indicates the spiritual meaning of an Old Testament text.289 Here, the term can
be understood as a hermeneutic expression referring to the text of Exod 12.2,
that was revealed to 'the Hebrews' as έν άπορρήτοις λεγόμενος ... λόγος:
containing the truth, but said 'in a yet unclear manner' and requiring (a Chris-
tian) explanation.
Ps.-Hippolytus enters the discussion of this paragraph because of an exe-
getical problem - the strange phenomenon that the Bible calls Nisan (ύμΐν)
άρχή μηνών and πρώτος (ύμΐν) έν τοϊς μησίν τοϋ ένιαυτοϋ - which it is not,
as a matter of fact. What does the Bible want to convey with άρχή? Scripture
infers from the revival of the creation in spring that Nisan be the first month of
the year (and probably also the beginning in general). In the first place, Ps.-
Hippolytus does not assemble the bucolic imagery in order to embellish the
concept of Easter, but as an apology for the queer statement in Exod 12.2. 'The
Hebrews' are the ones who inferred from spring that it should contain the first
month. 'The Hebrews' are, therefore, nobody but the authors of the text of the
Old Testament.
After this elaborate apology for the 'first month', Ps.-Hippolytus distances
himself from this interpretation and replaces it with a Christological one. The
288 Visonä 1988, 375 (as observed by Bonner), as well as 369ff , 377ff referring to Plato's
Timaeus (and Philo) for several Christian authors' access to and use of a vulgar form
of Platonism. Aphrahat does not know anything about an importance of spring im-
agery for the Jewish understanding of Pesah. Aphrahat briefly remarks that Nisan is
called 'yarhä dhabbäbe', 'the month of the flowers', Demonstratio 12.1 Parisot 508.5f.
Being composed 343/344 C.E., Aphrahat's Demonstrationes do not antedate the fourth
century. Except for Exod 9.31 and Lev 2.14, all attestations of ϊακ are rendered as
'habbäbe' in the Pslttä. Aphrahat's rendering does not express a tradition of exegesis.
289 Lampe 206: 'esoteric, mysterious, Jewish and pre-Christian' but also 'esp. of spiritual
meaning of scripture'; as well as 'ineffable ... of certain doctrines as beyond knowledge
or as mystically revealed'. Gerlach 1998, 378 renders the phrase as 'the explanation
which circulates privately' and understands it as Philo. There are no data to support
that claim. Visonä 1988, 42-47 describes in detail how Ps.-Hippolytus finds compro-
mises between conflicting exegetical positions. It is impossible to date the homily on
the basis of polemic stances in Paschal disputes.
beauty of spring and character of the first month as the beginning of the year
was preconceived to adorn the month of Christ's salvific death and resurrec-
tion. The image of the first month of the calendar 'year' refers the Christian
reader to the 'year' of the eschaton that has begun with Christ's proclamation
(Luk 4.19 as quoted). Ps.-Hippolytus suggests to reverse cause and effect in
the course of the history of the world. Christ's resurrection did not happen in
spring, because it is a beautiful time, but spring is a time of revival and natural
beauty, because it was pre-designed to contain Christ's resurrection.
There is no trace in this chain of arguments that Ps.-Hippolytus should
have been aware of the rabbinic discussion about the month in which the
world was created. It is clear that Ps.-Hippolytus was not interested in Nisan
as an anniversary of creation. The first month of the Old Testament text is a
prefiguration of the beginning of the epoch of the salvation. The Easter vigil is
not a celebration or commemoration of the creation of the world for Ps-Hip-
polytus. The Easter vigil is, likewise, not 'eschatological'. For the beginning of
Jesus' messianic 'year' already happened and its end is not envisaged.
Ps.-Hippolytus seems to have been the first one who broadly exploited the
link between Easter and spring (and creation, to a lesser extent). This is espe-
cially corroborated by the fact that he seems to be the last one to reject this link.
His rejection is, however, explicitly given as his personal opinion. This sug-
gests that the idea already emerged but it did not yet reach the status of a
standard cliche that every preacher was expected to elaborate in an Easter
homily.
In his discussion of this association of motifs, Anscar Chupungco finds the
first link between spring and Easter in Origen's Commentary on the Song of
Songs.290 Only with the broad reception of Philo's opinion on this topic (and
Origen's work) by Christian authors of the fourth century, the connection of
the three elements becomes ubiquitous.291 The topic of the first 'night' (Gen
1.2) of the targum expansion, the absence of the yet inexistent light, is irrele-
vant here.
The examples from Christian texts that Visonä (1988, 373ff) summarizes
contain further important differences to the concept of the 'first night' in the
targum expansion. Thus, a Ps.-Chrysostomic homily (likewise mentioned by
290 Chupungco 1977, 26. Buchinger 2005, 461. 691 shows that Origen did not know any-
thing about a closer connection of Easter with the Song of Songs than with other texts.
For the reading of the scroll, cf. p. 373 and n. 179.
291 Chupungco 1977, 27.
Gaudentius of Brescia as such) speaks about Christ's resurrection as recapitu-

lating the creation of man. The 'first night' of the targum expansion is by defi-
nition not interested in the creation of man, but concerned with the darkness
before the creation of (the 'diffuse') light.
Another passage of that text makes the resurrection correspond to the light
that is created on the first day. This comes closer to the themes of the targum
expansion, although the Christians are more interested in the first day of the
week than in the preceding night. Christian theologians who celebrated Easter
on a Sunday could use the beginning of the creation much better than Jews,
because of the correspondence of the creation and the discovery of the empty
tomb that resulted in the proclamation of the resurrection on the first day of
the week. In perceiving the creation in terms of a week, Jews would emphasize
the Sabbath in accordance with the intention of the Biblical text. Christians
would, therefore, start to be interested in the first day of creation after the
spread of the Dominical Pascha. Quartodecimans have no reason to empha-
size the Sunday of the creation week. As the targum expansion does not imply
that the 15th of Nisan was the first day of creation, there is simply no tertium
comparationis regarding the expansion and Ps.-Hippolyt's paragraph about
spring.
In general, the concept of 'creation' became an important topic in the
Christian interpretation of Easter not earlier than the end of the third century.
The development of the topic was promoted by the reception of Philo's works
among Christians. It cannot be excluded that Ps.-Hippolytus already partici-
pated in this movement.
The 'Second Night' in Christian Sources
Likewise, the Christian Easter was not regarded as anniversary of the events of
the 'second night'. Nevertheless, Gen 15 (esp. v. 5 and 6, which are referred to
in the NT) is sometimes alluded to in Christian sources. The reasons for this
are the discussions in John 8.56; Rom 4, and Gal 3.292
Thus, Clement of Rome (1 Cor 10.6f) remarks about Gen 15.5f: Ά son was
given to him in (his) old age because of faith and hospitality, and because of
obedience, he brought him as a sacrifice for God to one of the mountains that
292 The following survey is based on the first, second, and fourth volumes of Biblia
Patristica. Note Buchinger 2005, 561f for Origen's interpretation and interests.
he s h o w e d him.' This puts the p r o p h e c y to A b r a h a m , the birth of Isaac and

the A q e d a into a sequence that corresponds to the ' s e c o n d night' in the text of
the expansion. This 'parallel' can h o w e v e r not b e s h o w n to b e dependent
u p o n a third text, b e c a u s e anyone reflecting on the promise of descendants in
G e n 15.5; 17.5ff could associate the events in A b r a h a m ' s live that are told af-
terwards, including the same promise in G e n 22.17. Moreover, Clement does
not refer to these texts as pertaining to the understanding of the Easter vigil or
as b e i n g connected via the idea of the 'night'. T h e p r o p h e c y to A b r a ( h a ) m is
quoted in the b a c k g r o u n d of the claim that the multitude of gentile Christians
has to b e seen as its fulfillment. 2 9 3
Irenaeus of L y o n connects the p r o p h e c y of G e n 15 w i t h the chronology of
the Exodus. 2 9 4 This is part of a brief recapitulation of the Biblical history. As
Irenaeus neither remarks that the events of G e n 15 h a p p e n e d at Pesah n o r de-
scribes t h e m as nightly, there are n o sings of any d e p e n d e n c e u p o n a text like
the targum expansion.
293 Cf. Barn 13.7. Clement of Alexandria, Stromata 2.28.4 SC 38.56: Abraham believed the
word. This has to be imitated by his descendants, the Christians. Irenaeus of Lyon,
Epideixis 35 SC 62.88f. In Adversus haereses 3.9.1 SC 211.98-102, he alludes to the
prophecy to Abraham in the context of an apology for the belief in the one and only
God, in 4.8.1 SC 1002.464-467 against Marcion and for the Church as proof of the truth
of the prophecy to Abraham; similarly Tertullian Adversus Marcionem 4.34.14 SC
456.424ff. Gen 5.18ff is, likewise, expounded and applied to the Christians, Adversus
Haereses 5.32.2 SC 153.398-105. In 4.5.3 SC 1002.432f; Irenaeus mentions Abraham's
faith in God as creator and the multitude of Abraham's descendants; quoted after
Rom 4.3, Gal 3.6. He does not mention the time of slavery in Egypt, that is not
important in this context. In the following paragraph, Irenaeus makes the Aqeda a
reason for Christ's offering himself for the redemption of mankind, 4.5.4 ed. SC
1002.434.71-74. Abra(ha)m's observation of the stars may directly be connected with
his vision according to John 8.56, Irenaeus Adversus Haereses 4.7.1 SC 1002.454-459
(The reference to the shepherds, 'vigilantibus nocte pastoribus', is not dependent
upon a text like the targum expansion.) and similarly 4.5.5 SC 1002.434-437. Justin
Martyr only refers to Gen 15.6 and is only interested in decreasing the importance of
the circumcision; Dialogue 23.4 PTS 47.108, 92.3 229; and increasing that of faith; 92.3
229, 119.6 276. Tertullian rejects the opposite objection: such as Abraham did not need
baptism, because he believed, thus baptism should be unimportant, De Baptismo 13.1
SC 35.85. Cyprian's letter 63.4 CSEL 3.2.703f refers to Gen 15.6 via Gal 3.6f (likewise in
the Testimonia 1.5 CSEL 3.1.43f; 3.42 CSEL 3.1.150f) and Abraham's role in the
justification of the gentiles.
294 Epideixis 24f SC 62.67-73. Tertullian Adversus Iudaeos 2.7 CChr.SL 2.1342 refers to
Abraham's faith within his argument for the unimportance of the Law.
R e w o r k i n g Philo, C l e m e n t of A l e x a n d r i a s e e s A b r a ( h a ) m as b e g i n n i n g to
e n g a g e i n a s t r o n o m y . I n o b s e r v i n g t h e u n i v e r s e , h e r e a c h e s w i s d o m (Philo) o r
d i v i n e faith a n d j u s t i c e ( C l e m e n t o f A l e x a n d r i a ) . 2 9 5 T h e v e r s e s h a t are n o t
q u o t e d i n t h e N e w T e s t a m e n t are h a r d l y r e f e r r e d to at all b y later authors. 2 9 6
T o s u m u p , a p a r t f r o m t h e A q e d a t h a t is n o t c o n n e c t e d w i t h E a s t e r v i a t h e
c o v e n a n t a n d p r o p h e c y o f G e n 15, t h a t latter c h a p t e r h a s n o t b e e n r e f e r r e d to
i n t h e c o n t e x t of t h e u n d e r s t a n d i n g of E a s t e r a m o n g e a r l y C h r i s t i a n t h e o l o g i -
ans. 2 9 7 T h i s s i l e n c e s h o w s that t h e ' s e c o n d n i g h t ' o f t h e t a r g u m e x p a n s i o n w a s
n o t a m o n g t h e f o r m a t i v e i d e a s in a n c i e n t Christianity.
T h e C o m i n g of the Bridegroom in Jerome's C o m m e n t a r y on M a t t h e w 25
T w o p r o o f - t e x t s for t h e a l l e g e d e s c h a t o l o g i c a l i n t e r p r e t a t i o n o f t h e early C h r i s -
t i a n c e l e b r a t i o n of t h e P a s c h a h a v e to b e r e f e r r e d to here: 2 9 8 a p a s s a g e i n
Jerome's commentary on Matthew and a remark in Lactantius' Divinae
Institutiones. N e i t h e r of t h e m s u p p o r t s w h a t is c l a i m e d to b e their m e s s a g e .
E x p o u n d i n g t h e c o m i n g o f t h e g r o o m at m i d n i g h t , J e r o m e says:
295 Quaestiones in Genesim 3.43 Mercier and Petit 94-102. Clement of Alexandria Stro-
mata 1.31.2 SC 30.68: μετιών εις τήν κατά θεόν πίστιν τε καΐ δικαιοσΰνην.
Stromata 6.80.3 SC 446.222: Abraham attains to the knowledge of the creator via as-
tronomy, cf. Stromata 6.84.1 SC 446.228. Philo's (Greek) etymology of Abraham's
name is summarized in Stromata 5.8.5-7 SC 278.36-38. Cf. also Ps.-Clementine Rec-
ognitions 1.32-34 GCS 24f for this concept. In his vision, Abra(ha)m is taught to un-
derstand the creator and the universe.
296 Thus, Victorinus of Pettau in Jerome's recension ch. 21 CSEL 49.146-148 uses
Abra(ha)m's view over the country that is going to be given to his descendants (15.18)
together with Ps 72.6, 8 for the creation of a geographical background of heavenly Je-
rusalem in Rev 20. In his 5th homily against the Jews, John Chrysostom refers to Gen
15 in order to prove that the time of oppression and slavery in Egypt was announced
beforehand, 5.5 PG 48.890-892.
297 Even a text like De Pascha Computus (ch. 10 and 12 CSEL 3.3.256-260 tr. Strobel 1984,
49-51), that is concerned with Easter and its chronology and refers to Gen 15.5f, does
not connect these events with a 'night' or with the remembrance for the liturgies of
Pascha, but discusses typological issues. Buchinger 2005, 768f esp. n. 2084 observes
that neither Origen, nor Ps.-Hippolytus, nor the LAB connect the Aqeda with the Pas-
cha.
298 Buchinger 2005, 708 observes that Origen does not mention Christ's second coming in
the context of the Pascha. For Origen, many aspects of eschatology are connected with
the Pascha, cf. 716. Yet, it is not understood as the day of Christ's return.
'Media autem nocte clamor factus est: ecce sponsus venit, exite obviam ei'. Sud-
denly, such as in the deepest night and while everyone is unconcerned when the
sleep is deepest, the coming of Christ will resound by means of the angels' shout-
ing and the trumpets of the preceding mighty actions.
Let us say something that is probably useful for the reader: it is a tradition of the
Jews that the Christ will come in the middle of the night like (it was) in the time of
Egypt when the Pascha was celebrated, the destroyer299 came, the Lord passed
over the tents, and the door-posts of our fa5ades were consecrated by means of the
blood of the lamb.
Thus, I think that the apostolic tradition remains (normative) that it is not allowed
to dismiss the people who are expecting the coming of Christ on the day of the
paschal vigil before midnight and that after that time passed,300 one may assume
that everything is safe (securitate praesumpta) while everyone is celebrating the
festive day. Thus, the Psalmist says: Ί shall get up in the middle of the night in
order to confess you on behalf of the judgments of your justice (Ps 119.62).'301
T h e personal p r o n o u n 'our fagades' m a k e s the quotation a direct speech of the

'Jews'. A s 'venit' is apparently read as a past tense, the allegedly Jewish tradi-
tion states that the M e s s i a h will come in the m i d d l e of the night, like he c a m e
at that time in Egypt. It does not say that h e will c o m e in a future night of the
Pascha. Nevertheless, J e r o m e u n d e r s t o o d the argument as such. For him, it
explains a rule pertaining to the liturgy of the Easter vigil.
T h e festivities of Easter begin before midnight. Until midnight, 'securitas'
is not ' p r a e s u m p t a ' - o n e cannot yet b e at ease, b e c a u s e of the (theoretical)
possibility of Christ's c o m i n g in those very hours. 3 0 2 In accordance with the
Biblical text of M a t t h 2 5 . 1 - 1 3 , J e r o m e understands the coming of Christ as a
threat that provides an apology for the duration of the liturgical pre-midnight
299 Jerome speaks about an 'exterminator' and not of the 'percussor' as the Vulgate. This
is hardly an allusion to 1 Cor 10.10. Jerome did apparently not quote Exod 12 but al-
luded to it.
300 This 'dismissal' of the people could also refer to their allowance to break the Paschal
fast, as it has been suggested above regarding Dionysius of Alexandria, see p. 275. In
a fourth century setting, it would rather be expected to imply the 'ending of (or in) the
Paschal Eucharist' as a culmination of the Easter vigil.
301 Jerome, comm. in. Matth. 4.25.6 SC 259.214-216 CChr.SL 77.236f.
302 Cf. Casel's 1938, 35 n. 69 observations about Dionysius of Alexandria (see p. 273
above) who likewise opposes the ending of the fast before midnight and speaks about
a relaxed and joyful attitude during the celebration. Dionysius does not say anything
about an eschatological expectation.
activities.303 If these activities should include fasting and prayer, it could be

suggested that such a tradition could superficially be acceptable to the Quar-
todecimans. They broke their fast when the Jews had completed their celebra-
tion. Jerome's apology for the duration of this liturgy is, however, independ-
ent from the rule of the Didascalia to keep fasting and praying while the Jews
are holding their celebration of Pesah. His Biblical proof is independent from
the old traditions about Easter. Moreover, Jerome uses the Biblical text of
Matth 25 against its intention. For that text admonishes its readers to be al-
ways prepared for the coming of the 'bridegroom', whereas Jerome infers from
what he understands as the incidental time of his actual coming - midnight - a
fixed time that is meaningful for the yearly ritual.304
Jerome draws the ambiguity between 'YHWH' (Exod 12.11-13, 23, 27) and
'the destroyer' (v. 23 Vulgate) from the Biblical text into the liturgy via the sce-
nario of Matth 25. This blend is dangerous, because it identifies the theoretical
aim of the Christians' hope as actual source of their fear. This cannot be an old
rabbinic tradition, because the rabbinic sources try for a long time to avoid
seeing the celebration of the seder as a reenactment of the Egyptian Pesah.
Moreover, the Quartodecimans were rather attracted to Exod 12 by the typol-
ogy of Christ, 'our Pascha'. In Jerome's time, this is not any more applicable to
the Easter vigil that has become part of a celebration of several days. For
Jerome's interpretation, any Christological content of this typology is lost, and
it becomes a cheap apology for the vanishing liturgical custom of celebrating
an all-night vigil.
An eschatological approach to the Easter vigil like Jerome's is not attested
in other sources. Thus, also Jerome's text should not be interpreted as imply-
ing that Christians in his time would come together and spend some time in
303 Cf. Huber 1969, 222 and for the tendency in general Jungmann 1951, who quotes
Jerome, p. 49. The idea may well have been an excuse for the Easter vigil as such. If
texts like the Testamentum Domini mention this point, they may have been trying to
make their communities abide by liturgical customs the reason of which was not any
more evident from the course of the liturgy itself.
304 Thus, Hans-Joachim Schulz 1993 misses the point when he reads reflections of a lit-
urgy of an alleged Pascha of New Testament times into this text. One of the points of
Matth 25 is, that nobody knows when the bridegroom will come, esp. v. 13. A frag-
ment that is attributed to Origen likewise contains the notion that Christ's resurrection
occurred at midnight; cf. Buchinger 2005, 549 and n. 992. Origen does not associate an
element of a liturgy with this information. All his other interpretations of the idea of
'night' in the context of the Pascha lack a reference to something like an Easter vigil;
cf. Buchinger 2005, 239. 243. 276f. 301. 410. 485. 494. 505ff.
fear of Christ's imminent (second) coming, in order to disperse after midnight

- when the community would be sure that he did (fortunately) not come that
year. Jerome uses Matth 25 as a Biblical proof-text that one should not end the
celebration of the Easter vigil too early. He does not understand it as a herme-
neutic key for the meaning and structure of the Paschal vigil. Huber correctly
interprets the comparably attentive feeling in the Easter vigil according to the
Syriac Didascalia as waiting for the celebration of Christ's resurrection that is
commemorated in the liturgy and not his second coming that is awaited in the
future.305
Jerome uses groups of New Testament texts to create a Biblical proof for
the structure of the Easter vigil.306 Yet, midnight was not significant for the
older system of the Jerusalem liturgy that seemed rather to be interested in the
time of sunrise or 'cockcrow'. The combination of Exod 11.4; 12.29 and Matth
25.6 that is centered around 'midnight' only becomes important when a cele-
bration throughout the whole night had become pastorally impossible.
Changed liturgical customs call for new Biblical, apostolic, and even Jew-
ish backgrounds. Jerome testifies thus indirectly that the Easter vigil is already
becoming shorter and its end moving away from the morning of Easter Sun-
day. The synchronization of the transition from the vigil of readings and
prayers to the celebration of the Eucharist with the moment of (the discovery
and proclamation of) Christ's resurrection in the morning is apparently not any
more powerful enough in order to motivate the community to continue the
celebration into the early morning. In his commentary, Jerome abandons the
commemoration of the resurrection as model for the shape of the ritual and
adduces the Matthean image of the bridegroom's coming - understood as
Christ's second Parousia - at midnight.
If this should be a specific 'tradition', it is in any case marginal. It creates a
strange content for a festival. Although it is imaginable that the (in any case
non-rabbinic) 'traditio Iudaeorum' was known to Jews in the fourth century,307
there is no reason to deny that Jerome extrapolated it himself from Exod l l f .
305 Huber 1969, 220.

306 By combining Mt 9.15 (Mark 2.20; Luke 5.34f) with Matth 25.6 (against v. 13), the
Gospel provides a scriptural basis for the end of the Paschal fast.
307 Hayward's 1987 suggestion that targumic traditions could yield more information on
the background of Jerome's idea of Judaism is based on the problematic assumption
that the texts of the PTT were widespread and generally known in Antiquity.
Jerome's knowledge that the coming of Christ would be ushered in by dread-

ful and terrible events is, of course, an old and widespread tradition.308
An Eschatological Easter Vigil in Lactantius' Divinae Institutiones
The assumption that the Easter vigil be eschatological may be supported by

means of a quotation of Lactantius' Divinae Institutiones that antedates
Jerome's testimony by roughly a century (written between 304 and 311). The
chapter that contains the remark under discussion is part of a long description
of the eschatological troubles that will befall the earth before the coming of the
messianic age. Eschatology is thus powerfully present in the context. Lactan-
tius outlines the scheme of 7000 years of world history (7.14.7-17 Brandt 629f).
After the detailed description of such messianic birth pangs, he returns to the
question of chronology. Leaving open the possibility of an earlier date because
of unforeseeable evil (7.25.8 Brandt 664f), he quotes 'those who wrote on the
times, gathering material from the sacred books and from various historians'
and accepts their computation of approximately 200 years until the beginning
of these terrible events (7.25.5 Brandt 664).309 The emphasis on the others' com-
putations and the lack of any exact chronology in this case shows that Lactan-
tius thinks that these days are still far away.310 Within his collection of various
kinds of descriptions of the time preceding the Messiah's coming, he refers to
traditions that this will be at night.
After a quotation of the Sibyl 'When he will come, there will be fire in the
middle of a dark, black night', Lactantius refers to the Easter vigil:311
308 Cf. Rouwhorst 2005, 339-342: the Epistula Apostolorum excludes Christ's second com-
ing between the Pascha and the Pentecost.
309 Cf. for Lactantius' chronologies Nicholson 1985, 308.
310 Similar numbers were given more frequently at that time, cf. Irshai 2000, 140. Irshai
observes that 'the Biblical model of the Exodus was not at the heart of Christian es-
chatological speculation'.
311 7.19.3 Brandt 645. I am grateful to Stefan Freund, who allowed me to use a prelimi-
nary version of his text, translation, and commentary to this passage of Lactantius.
The text is read according to Freund (ad loc.): 'οπόταν έλθη, πϋρ έσται σκοτόεντί μέ-
ση ένί νυκτί μελαίνη. Haec est nox quae a nobis propter adventum regis ac dei nostri
pervigilio celebratur: cuius noctis duplex ratio est, quod in ea et vitam tum recepit,
cum passus est, et postea regnum orbis terrae recepturus est.' The following para-
This is a night which is celebrated by us with a vigil on account of the coming of

our King and God. This night has a twofold meaning. For in it, he received life at
that time, when he suffered; and afterwards, he will receive the kingdom of the
world.
The Christians are thus celebrating a vigil, the reason and cause of which (Lat.
ratio) is Christ's resurrection in the past (tum) and his future (postea) acquisi-
tion of the power over the earth. The Easter vigil is thus 'eschatological' as far
as it celebrates Christ's resurrection with an awareness that the world still
awaits the completion of this process that may likewise be bound to this night.
Lactantius is, however, absolutely sure that the events which he describes
will not come during his lifetime and the lives of his foreseeable readers.312
Thus, the 'liberator's' coming 'at night' is important inasmuch as it provides an
etiology for the meaning of the Easter vigil as a nightly celebration, which is
not structured into two different parts. It is the purpose of the vigil to refer to
two events, one in the distant past and one in the likewise distant future. No
participant of such a liturgy can be envisaged to expect Christ's advent during
the (upcoming) celebration. Lactantius' statement is no proof-text for the
Christians' expectation of Christ's coming within the (next) Easter vigil, even if
they may have thought that he would come in an Easter vigil in the future.
Furthermore, Lactantius' remark that the night has a 'duplex ratio' has to
be taken seriously. The Easter vigil comprises two commemorations; Christ's
(passion, death, and) resurrection on the one hand and the expectation of this
future coming on the other. It has no 'triplex' or 'quadruplex ratio' - incorpo-
rating other Biblical motifs as its 'meaning'. Thus, Lactantius is a representa-
tive of a 'normal' understanding of Easter and would have been supported by
a broad consensus of contemporary and later Christians.
Conclusions
The Christian understanding of the Easter vigil and of Easter in general does
not show that the text of the targum expansion of the 'four nights' was known
to any author within the corpora of texts that were discussed in this study.
Moreover, the motifs of the expansion were unimportant for Christian expla-
graph identifies the liberator as Christ. Freund accepts the masc. form of the adjective
σκοτόεντί as modifying νυκτί.
312 Cf. 7.25.6 Brandt 664, where Lactantius emphasizes that the destruction of Rome is not
to be feared.
nations of Easter. This shows that the text and contents of the targum expan-
sion were certainly not part of a 'common heritage' of Judaism and Christian-
ity from Second Temple times and that the targum expansion (and its contents)
did not play any role in contacts between Jews and Christians in the first four
centuries. The Christian texts are, therefore, circumstantial evidence for what
emerges from the consideration of the Jewish sources above: that the targum
expansion of the 'four nights' was either not yet composed or unimportant.
5.5 Conclusions
In this chapter, the targum expansion on the 'four nights' was taken as a point
of departure for the discussion of several seeming or alleged 'parallels' be-
tween the Christian understanding of Easter and the Jewish understanding of
Pesah.
The targum expansion is both late (probably from geonic times) and un-
important in Judaism. The parallels to rabbinic texts suggest, that it was com-
posed after the epoch of the amoraim. Its messianic vision points to an even
later date, presumably near the Islamic conquest of Palestine. Therefore, it did
not have any impact on Christianity. It is part of the targum, a text that came
to be recited in the Palestinian rite of the Jewish liturgy quite late, although the
practice to translate the Tora in an improvised form is much older. The tar-
gum expansion of the 'four nights' is linked to a Biblical passage that was not
read in the liturgy of the festival of Pesah in the Palestinian rite before the
amalgamation of this rite with the Babylonian one towards the end of the tenth
century. The expansion reflects a rhetorical device that is often attested in rab-
binic and post-rabbinic texts: the enumeration of scriptural examples. As such
and as part of the targum, it is not - and never was - an independent liturgical
unit. It was no 'hymn' and it was never perceived as a poetical text.
The theological contents of the targum expansion are grouped around the
Exodus and the topic of the 'night'. They do not express the fundamental
theological principles of the Jewish Pesah and the Christian Easter at any time.
Thus, Pesah and Easter were not understood as celebrations of 'the creation' or
the promise of descendants to Abraham, not even the 'binding of Isaac'. The
last, eschatological item of the 'four nights' does not interpret the celebrants'
approach to the liturgy in Judaism or Christianity; that means, that there is no
indication that the coming of the Messiah was expected in the actual celebra-
tion of the seder or the early Easter vigil. The wording of the expansion itself
Conclusions 423
and the parallel texts prove that neither Pesah nor Easter were 'eschatological'
in that sense.
6 General Conclusions
6.1 The Egyptian Pesach as Interpretation of Pesach and Easter
The laws regarding the first Pesah in the Biblical history are an etiological
interpretation of the Pesah as it was celebrated at the Second Temple in Jerusa-
lem. The text does not support the reconstruction of a primordial nomadic
ritual. It does not reflect a kind of domestic celebration of the Pesah that
should have been independent of the Temple in lerusalem. Exodus 12 is a
marginal witness to the liturgical shape of the rituals of Pesah. It is, however,
important for the understanding of its meaning.
The interpretation that can be found in the book of Jubilees indicates a pos-
sible reason why Exodus 12 did not play an important role in the early rabbinic
re-establishment of Pesah. Whoever understands the Egyptian Pesah (as de-
scribed in Exodus 12) as the narrative of institution or the law that regulates the
later celebrations of Pesah looses the commemoration of the Exodus as basic
content of the whole festival. The Exodus happened after the Egyptian Pesah.
In the epoch of Jubilees, this was not problematic, because the festival still had
an independent and much more important cultic and social raison d'etre and
could be understood as one important node in a network of rituals centered at
the Temple in Jerusalem. Any ritual that imitates Exodus 12 or is interpreted
as doing so leads inevitably either to the qualification of the Pesah as a re-
enactment of the time before the liberation or as the commemoration of the
sparing of the firstborn Israelites from the last plague (that was caused by
God) - instead of the redemption of the whole people from slavery and op-
pression in Egypt. Jubilees understands it in this way. The book of Wisdom
uses a daring construction to avoid this understanding. Many classical rab-
binic texts preclude the adherents of their movement from understanding the
seder as a re-enactment of pre-Exodus times. This also explains how the seder
and the festival of Pesah could be understood as a festival of liberation and why
the last day of the festival of Unleavened Bread emerged late as linked to the
crossing of the Red Sea. As soon as the seventh day of Pesah is regarded as the
celebration of Exodus 14f (the crossing of the Red Sea), the seder inevitably
drifts towards representing or even re-enacting Exodus 12. In spite of that, the
seventh day of Pesah never challenged the evening of the seder in its impor-
tance and in its basic function as festival of liberation.
Even centuries later, but still within the first millennium, the Palestinian
Haggada makes this understanding explicit. It adds a sentence to the quota-
tions of the older text of the Mishna (a line that even entered the later versions
of the Mishna): 'In every generation everyone has to regard himself as if he
(himself) had left Egypt'. Being aware of the danger of misrepresentations,
one m a y try to translate this understanding into Christian theological termi-
nology. The celebration of Pesah is an expression of 'realized eschatology' -
'realized' since the time of Moses. Rabban Gamaliel says: ' " M a t s a " , because
they were liberated'. At the seder-banquet, the liberated ones celebrate libera-
tion, the liberated ones do not symbolically or in a mimetic w a y re-enact the
liberation of the past. There are also no 'slaves' foreshadowing future re-
demption, although the history of liberation may be told from a point in time
on w h e n the symposiasts' ancestors 'were slaves'. There was only one Pe-
sah ever, that was celebrated before the liberation, namely the Egyptian Pesah.
Every other Pesah is a post-liberation celebration and hence theologically and
liturgically different from that first one. Even if apocalypticism quite power-
fully reemerges in Judaism, especially after the Arab conquest of Palestine,
only the high Middle Ages will exploit the long marginalized possibility of the
alignment of the ritual and understanding of the seder with Exodus 12 and re-
create the celebration of the Pesah as charged with the intensive hope for (fu-
ture) redemption. By that time, the core of the liturgy of the seder had b e c o m e
standardized and could not be changed any more.
It is a curious observation that Christianity basically shares this under-

standing of the Pascha with rabbinic Judaism despite all glaring differences,
and even despite the fact that Exodus 12 played an important role in the early
interpretation of the Christian Pascha. The Christian Pascha was, likewise, an
expression of 'realized eschatology'. It did not contain a symbolic, not to men-
tion mimetic, representation of any passage from one state into another, and
no commemoration of the Egyptian Pesah. Only in the fourth century, a few
hints to an eschatological understanding of the liturgy of Easter emerge. In
those times and places where paschal baptism was practiced, the imagery of a
'passage' increased in theological importance. This is not the expression of an
inherent 'meaning' of Pesah or Easter, but a hermeneutic by-product of the
vast ritual and social enrichments of the celebrations of Easter in the fourth
century. Despite its power as a fascinating narrative, Exodus 12 could neither
entice early Christianity and early Judaism into celebrating a past (or present)
General Conclusions 427
pre-redemption status nor into using it in a ritualized or symbolic transition

from slavery into freedom.
Written as an interpretation of the Pesah at the Second Temple, one should
expect that it be totally forgotten after the destruction of Jerusalem. Exodus 12
was, however, soon re-applied in its function as an interpretation, at first of the
Christian Pascha and later of the Jewish Pesah. For many centuries after it was
written, the Jewish and Christian traditions kept the Biblical meaning of Exo-
dus 12 as a hermeneutic key and not as a set of rubrics for a ritual.
6.2 The Geonic Haggada
Until the sensational discovery and publication of the texts from the Geniza of
Cairo, an attempt to assess the origins or the development of the Haggada
could only rely on comparisons with rabbinic texts and analyses of its contents.
Since the early 20lh century, the publication of Haggadot of the Palestinian rite
allows the analysis of the development of that text based on manuscript evi-
dence. These Haggadot are much shorter than the Haggadot of the Babylonian
rite and quote the Mishna in a more pristine form than the latter. It must be
inferred from such comparisons that the additions of the Babylonian Haggadot
over those of the Palestinian rite are later accretions that enlarged the text of
the older and shorter texts from Palestine. The Haggada is a text that was cre-
ated in geonic (post-Talmudic) Palestine. It emerges as an expanded form of
the Qiddush for the meal on the evening of Pesah, into which a few passages
of the Mishna (mPeslO) and some verses of the Bible are inserted, apart form
benedictions over food and the first part of the Hallel. It can be regarded as a
short study session that was ritualized for the evening of Pesah and popular-
ized with tremendous success.
This analysis removes the Haggada from the repertoire of sources for late
Antique Judaism and Christianity. It liberates the reconstructions of the de-
velopment of the seder and the Christian Pascha and Easter from the need to
integrate a text into their structures that does not fit into it. As the Haggada is
a text (that is extant in two recensions) but not a genre, any claim that a text
dating from Antiquity be 'a Haggada' is void. The older sources can now be
interpreted in a more authentic way within their cultural environment. Rab-
binic celebrations of the seder adapted customs of Hellenistic banquets to their
needs. Amoraic sources make it clear that the Haggada could not have had
any function there.
It was necessary for the present investigation to assess the place of the
Haggada within the history of the Jewish and Christian liturgies, although this
implies the study of relatively late sources of the Jewish liturgy. As it emerges
from this study, the creation and spread of the Haggada is part of what Seth
Schwartz describes as 'Rabbinization' in the early post-Talmudic period. This
does not rule out a thriving discourse between Judaism and Christianity - in-
cluding others like Polytheists, Gnostics, and Zoroastrians - about the struc-
ture and meaning of the Pesah in earlier periods. On the contrary, groups of
Jews and Christians (including all of those with 'intermediate' stances) could
strive to find their identities and create differences between them and the oth-
ers by means of festivals and texts. It is almost totally unknown to which ex-
tent and in which way Jews who lived in the Greek cities of the East, especially
of the second and third centuries, took part in that development. Neverthe-
less, even the rabbinic seder becomes much more compatible with customs of
its environment without the assumption that the recitation of the Haggada
must have been its defining characteristic throughout the centuries. Jews who
celebrated a 'totally' Hellenistic banquet at Pesah would not have felt them-
selves to be strangers if they happened to take part in a rabbinic celebration.
The same is true for Christians. Melito's homily shows that there was no easy
way to differentiate Christianity from Judaism. In the question of the Pascha,
he could resort to Christ's passion and death and to an anti-Jewish interpreta-
tion of Exodus 12. He did not have a single and straightforward text like the
Haggada that he could appropriate or from which he could create a caricature.
These observations are of paramount importance for further studies from a
methodological point of view. The finds of the Geniza of Cairo and the use of
these treasures for the reconstruction of early Christian and Jewish liturgical
development make it clear that investigations must proceed from a nuanced
and well documented understanding of the epoch of the geonim and probably
even that of the rishonim. After this stage, the discussion must turn to the rab-
binic texts and assess which parts of that later traditions are already present
and which are not. This leads to a description of what can be known about
liturgies in rabbinic times. Only the explicit and conscious search for later tra-
ditions in earlier sources avoids the unconscious and anachronistic interpreta-
tion of the earlier material in light of the later sources. This procedure helps
also to create bits of a relative chronology of liturgical developments in Juda-
ism. Thus, it is possible to find dates for stages of the development and to
compare Jewish liturgies with Christian traditions.
6.3 The Sunday
Its being the 'day of the resurrection' is one of the first arguments brought
forward by second century Christian authors in order to bolster up the inno-
vation of emphasizing the Sunday against the other days of the week, espe-
cially against the Sabbath. This is a necessary precondition for the fourth cen-
tury celebration of the Sunday as the day of the resurrection. The Sunday
emerges earlier than Easter Sunday. While the creation of both Pascha and
Sunday perceive the relation to Judaism in a negative way and share this as a
basic principle, the reasons for the emergence of both are different. Like the
Quartodeciman Pascha, the Sunday may have been a means of creating and
expressing a Christian identity as a non-Jewish one by convening assemblies
on that day. Unlike the Dominical Easter, the Sunday did not emerge as a
weekly reenactment of a bit of New Testament chronology. As soon as the
Dominical Easter caused the Pascha to coalesce with a Sunday, they started to
influence each other, although the final synthesis of this process of a 'weekly
Easter' and a 'yearly Sunday' only emerged in the fourth century.
6.4 The Omer
As the Gospels agree on the fact that the Lord's resurrection was discovered
and proclaimed for the first time on a Sunday morning, and as this coincides
with the 16th of Nisan according to the Johannine chronology of the Passion, it
has been claimed that Easter Sunday is a continuation of the day of the waving
of the Omer as 'celebrated' in 'Judaism'. Turned into an instance of typology,
this idea is also expressed by Christian authors from the fourth century on. As
the waving of the first sheaf of barley in the Temple had no significance for
New Testament authors and was hardly taken into account by later Christian
interpreters, it is very unlikely that Easter Sunday should have ever been con-
nected with this event, which never was a 'festival'. The Pauline proof-texts
which later Christian authors quote in order to support this typology rather
refer to the portion of the dough that must be removed in each process of the
production of bread in order to make the rest of the dough fit for consumption.
The day of the waving of the Omer is, therefore, irrelevant for the emergence
of Easter Sunday. It is, likewise, no indication for a liturgical continuity of this
element between Second Temple Judaism and Christianity and no argument in
the discussion of a terminus a quo of Easter Sunday.
6.5 Pentecost
The reason for the emergence of Easter Sunday as well as for its character and
meaning is not the attachment of the Quartodeciman Pascha to a preexisting
Pentecost. On the contrary, the earliest Christian sources that describe Pente-
cost show that it was perceived as a continuous period of 50 days each of
which had the character of an Easter Sunday. The Christian Pentecost only
received its name from Luke's narrative but is otherwise independent from the
Biblical celebration. It emerged as an extension of Easter Sunday. Although
Tertullian was presumably not the inventor of Pentecost, one must take his
characterization seriously. This Pentecost does not have parallels in Judaism.
The meaning and character of the period is so obviously derived from Easter
Sunday, that even a 'Pentecostal Baptism' that is suggested by Tertullian is
nothing but Paschal Baptism. This is important for the history of the Christian
Pascha, for the Quartodeciman celebration cannot any more be regarded as a
kind of hinge between a Paschal fast and the joyous Pentecost (that it did not
yet know). Even if the reconstructed change of mood within the Quartodeci-
man celebration can be maintained as reflection of a liturgical reality, it is not
connected with the time (not to mention the date) of 'the resurrection' and en-
tirely independent from Shavuot. The Easter vigil that leads to the morning of
Easter Sunday reinterpreted that change of mood in accordance with the gen-
eral raison d'etre of Easter Sunday as the consequence of the Biblicization of
the Quartodeciman Pascha.
6.6 The Seventh Day of the Festival of Unleavened Bread
Christian authors of late Antiquity associated Easter Sunday with the idea of
the crossing of the Red Sea or even imagined that event to have taken place
three days after the celebration of the Egyptian Pesah. This is not, however,
based on a first (and presumably also second) century celebration - neither in
Judaism nor in Christianity. The idea that the passage through the Red Sea is
the commemoration of the seventh day of the festival of Unleavened Bread
may for the first time be found in the background of Seder Olam Rabba, which
still requires a fresh assessment of its date. Before the fourth century, the Pas-
cha was hardly understood as 'transitus' in Christianity. This imagery be-
comes more important in the wake of the spread of Paschal baptism in that
time. The Quartodeciman Pascha as well as Easter Sunday are not related to
what became a commemoration of the crossing of the Red Sea in Judaism

much later.
6.7 The Week of Unleavened Bread in Christianity
Although it is clear from the preceding observations that the seventh day of
the Jewish festival of Unleavened Bread did not influence the development of
Easter Sunday, the Syriac churches call Holy Week the 'week of unleavened
bread'. Thus, it was suggested that there could have been Christians who kept
a festival of Unleavened Bread. It can, however, be demonstrated that the
Syriac sources apply this concept to their liturgy as a recent appropriation of
Biblical terminology. It does not reflect a survival from Second Temple times.
Such a 'bookish' approach can even be found among Aphrahat's adversaries
who tried to re-invent a period of fasting after the Pascha on the basis of the
Biblical week of Unleavened Bread. This is also not contradicted by an enig-
matic remark of the Gospel of Peter, which presupposes Easter Sunday and
reconstructs the way of life in the apostolic church in a quite superficial and
badly informed way.
Furthermore, Christian authors understand the Jewish festival of Unleav-
ened Bread as a time of fasting which is not corroborated by Jewish sources.
This requires the re-assessment of the relation between an often quoted pas-
sage in the Syriac Didascalia Apostolorum and fragments of a Quartodeciman
church order that Epiphanius knows under the designation 'Diataxis'. While
that Diataxis constructs the twofold Quartodeciman celebration of the Pascha
as neatly corresponding to two phases of a kind of Jewish Pesah, the Syriac
Didascalia only knows about such an inverted correspondence of the first part
of the Quartodeciman celebration with the Jewish Pesah. Thus, the Syriac
Didascalia fits to what can be known about historical circumstances of the Pas-
cha and the Pesah, whereas parts of the Diataxis were probably made up by
Epiphanius. This is corroborated by Epiphanius' careless and intrusive use of
sources and information in general.
6.8 Calendars of Qumran and Christianity
The non-Biblical texts that were found in the Judean Desert and related litera-
ture are correctly analyzed as 'Jewish'. Their time of composition precedes the
emergence of Christianity. That they had no impact on what emerges as
Christianity in the second century. Nevertheless, they are an important contri-
bution to the (highly controversial) understanding of certain elements of the
cultural environment in which many important processes that led to the crea-
tion of Christianity were launched. It is, therefore, not implausible per se that
the scrolls could attest a form of a calendar that continued to influence the li-
turgical organization of a Christian liturgical year.
The 364-day calendars of the scrolls had, however, no impact at all on any
phenomenon of Christian liturgies. This is due to the fact that 'the' Qumran
calendars - including the book of Jubilees - did not contain what they are
sometimes claimed to have been: a sequence of commemorations of Biblical
events and themes.
The calendars of the scrolls teach, however, an important lesson about the
creation and meaning of the later Christian and Jewish calendars. Commemo-
rations became already meaningful for the calendars in Second Temple times,
a fact which is documented by the attempt of the Bible to link some of the
agrarian festivals with the history of the Exodus and the attempt of Jubilees to
create precedents for them in the Biblical history before the Exodus. The reality
of the cult was, however, hardly affected by these theoretical endeavors. Even
after the destruction of the material basis for that cult, it took a century before
Christians and Jews began to create sections of calendars that took into account
Biblical narratives. Except for Pesah, Early Christianity was not interested in
the Old Testament festivals, although their non-celebration was sometimes
regarded as a characteristic feature of Christianity. The interest in Pesah did
not emerge from the Christians' wish to re-create the Second Temple calendar,
but to support their Christian identity as a non-Jewish one. The broad impact
of Pesah in Christianity only began when Christians interpreted and even
shaped the Pascha as a New Testament festival. Towards the end of the sec-
ond century, narrative elements slowly became important for the Christian
and, to a much lesser degree, the rabbinic ways of understanding the Pascha
and the Pesah.
The Easter vigil as it emerges in late fourth and fifth century Jerusalem is
not only unattested for the preceding centuries but also does not fit with the
extant documentation. This is corroborated by an analysis of its Old Testa-
ment readings. In the late second and third centuries, the Quartodeciman vigil
and mutatis mutandis also the Easter vigil in the night of Easter Sunday con-
tained the commemoration of Christ's passion. In theory in the third century
and in practice in the later fourth century Jerusalem, these contents of the vigil
were distributed over Holy Week and became a sequence of commemorations
that left the vigil devoid of its former meaning. Instead of withdrawing it from
the cathedral system of celebrations (and leaving it to be filled with more pri-
vate observations), the church of Jerusalem filled it with Old Testament read-
ings that were mostly chosen because of a more or less ancient theological or
superficial association with Easter. The most important one is the first reading
of the book of Genesis covering the narrative of the creation and running until
the expulsion from Paradise. Thus, the first reading of the night provided with
the fall of the old Adam the theological background for his redemption
through the mission of the new Adam, Christ. Only the later reduction of that
reading to the first chapter made 'the creation' a 'content' of the Easter vigil.
6.9 Easter Sunday
Easter Sunday emerged from the Quartodeciman celebration of the Pascha.

The Quartodeciman Pascha already contained a commemoration of Christ's
passion. According to Melito of Sardis, this commemoration provided the
background for the anti-Jewish character of the Pascha. As this celebration
spread to other churches, exactly this content became more important and the
anti-Jewish resentment of the celebration was deemphasized. With the rise of
the importance of the New Testament, its texts became available as basis for
the interpretation and the creation of liturgies. At the same time, one could
begin to determine the temporal aspects of the rituals independently from Ju-
daism. The emergence of Easter Sunday is a consequence of the alignment of
the Quartodeciman Pascha with the New Testament.
6.10 The Targum Expansion of the 'Four Nights'
The Palestinian targum tradition contains an expansion of its translation of

Exodus 12.42 which enumerates four 'nights' as elucidation of the 'night of
watching' that is mentioned in the Biblical verse. A close reading of the text in
the context of its literary and liturgical parallels establishes its position within
the history of Pesah and Easter.
The text is not - and never was - a poetic text, not to mention a 'hymn'. Its
genre does not betray any connection to a liturgy except for the liturgical reci-
tation of a targum. It was never an independent segment of a liturgy before it
was attached to the targums. Within the targum, it probably functioned as a
marker of the end of the pericope that is translated. The genre of the text is a
(prose) rabbinic 'enumeration of scriptural examples' that is frequently used in
rabbinic texts and also sometimes entered targumic material. It is a witness to
a didactic means to systematize the knowledge of the Tora.
The fact that this sequence of 'nights' is not attested in rabbinic literature
does not provide an argument for its date. As the original custom of translat-
ing the Tora in the liturgy implied a high degree of improvisation, standard-
ized targums are a very late, mostly post-Talmudic phenomenon.
None of the texts evoked in the expansion are read in the liturgies at Pesah.
Moreover, the expansion itself is attached to a Tora passage that is not read in
the Palestinian reading system at Pesah. The Babylonian reading system
would normally not use the typically Palestinian targums. The emergence of
the 'binding of Isaac' within the targum expansion does not, therefore, say
anything about the relation of that narrative to the meaning of Pesah.
An emphasis on eschatology (the 'fourth night') is a late phenomenon in
the understanding of Pesah. The idea of the Messiah coming from Rome is
first attested in the Babylonian Talmud and expanded in 7th century literature
such as the Sefer Zerubbabel. This and similar traditions do not assume that
the Messiah should come at Pesah. The use of this imagery points to a late
date of the 'fourth night'.
While Genesis 15, God's Covenant with Abra(ha)m, is not associated with
the Pascha in early Christian texts, the re-creation of nature in the season of
spring may be read as a certain interest in the topic of 'creation' from the third
century on. As shown above, the inclusion of the 'night' of creation in the tar-
gum expansion is in any case unrelated to the reading of Gen 1-3 in the Easter
vigil according to the Armenian lectionary.
The four 'nights' are not only marginal regarding the Christian Easter, but
also regarding the Jewish Pesah. Even in Yannay's liturgical poetry (6th cent.?)
which absorbs a broad spectrum of themes and Biblical quotations, the texts of
the targum expansion are not among the basic elements of the contents of
Pesah. They are even absent from his (truly poetic) poem on the 'night' that
was composed for the Sabbath in which Exod 12.42 is actually read and that
even entered the Babylonian recension of the Haggada. Especially a compari-
son with Yannai's poem reveals the low literary and exegetical quality of the
targum expansion as well as its irrelevance for the definition of the topic.
6.11 Towards a History of Pesach and Easter
This is a preparatory study for a more comprehensive description of the ori-

gins and early history of Pesah and Easter. The latter could roughly be struc-
tured along the following lines.
It cannot be established with certainty when Palestinian Jews began to
celebrate Pesah after the destruction of the Temple and in what form and to
which extent this celebration spread into the Diaspora. Towards the middle of
the second century, it had gained some popularity among Greek Jews in West-
ern Asia. The Christian Pascha emerges from contacts with the Pesah in that
time. The Quartodeciman Pascha begins thus as an anti-Pesah that is synchro-
nized with the Jewish celebration and consists basically of a mournful or ear-
nest first part occurring at the time when the Jews celebrate a (Pesah) banquet.
The Pascha is part of the second-century movement to establish bits of a
Christian identity as a non-Jewish one. The Quartodeciman Pascha com-
memorates Christ's passion on the basis of Exodus 12. The typological inter-
pretation of this text may be a Christian innovation. This cannot be proven,
because next to nothing is known about contemporary Greek Jewish customs.
Given the meaning of the Biblical text of Exodus 12, it is not astonishing that it
was irrelevant for the rabbis. Although one cannot generalize the customs of
the seder according to the Tosefta or the Mishna, it is, nevertheless, significant
that the seder is deeply indebted to Greco-Roman sympotic customs.
As the Christian Pascha is already connected with Christ's passion from its
earliest attestations on, this element is emphasized in its further development
while the anti-Jewish aspect becomes less important. The commemoration of
Christ's Passion draws the New Testament narratives into the liturgy, which
begins to acquire a greater dignity also in other respects of Christian life. The
Dominical Pascha is thus the result of the alignment of the Quartodeciman
celebration with the Gospel accounts. The combination of the Jewish date with
the Christian meaning had thus created the first anniversary of the Christian
cycle of festivals that was soon expanded. Heavily mimetic reenactments (ex-
cept for the determination of date) were still avoided. Thus, the Pentecost is
reinvented independently from Old Testament institutions and even from the
New Tesatment narrative of Acts If. As it emerges towards the end of the sec-
ond century, it is dependent upon Easter Sunday in its form and its meaning.
The following development is defined by a gradual expansion of mimetic ele-
ments first in theory and in the course of the enlargement of the liturgies in
fourth-century Jerusalem also in practice.
From the Perspective of Jewish-Christian relations in Antiquity, it is ar-
gued in this study that the creation of the Christian Pascha is one part of a lar-
ger process of differentiation in which Christianity is established as non- or
even anti-Judaism. Soon after this stage in the development of Easter Sunday,
this aspect becomes less important and Easter emerges as the first element of a
Christian understanding of liturgical time that is based on the New Testament.
Easter retains a strong link to the Old Testament, which is constantly under-
stood as a witness to an ambivalent relationship towards Judaism. Easter was
not 'inherited' from Judaism and did not 'supersede' or 'replace' the Jewish
Pesah. It became a thoroughly Christian festival that was almost totally inde-
pendent from Judaism both in the calculation of its date as well as in its ritual
shape and theological meanings. At the same time, the Jewish Pesah devel-
oped with the seder and the Haggada, as well as the liturgies of the synagogue
into a set of rituals that are also highly different from everything that could be
imagined as a successor of the Pesah of Biblical and Second Temple times. In
the second century, hardly any mutual influences could be detected, which
may be due to the situation of the sources, because reactions of Hellenistic Ju-
daism to the emerging Christian approach to Pesah are not preserved. The
early history of Pesah and Easter emerges as two histories of mostly independ-
ent festivals.
6.12 Perspectives for Further Research
Regarding the history of Pesah and Easter, the fourth and fifth century sources
require a new assessment on the basis of the results of this study. With the loss
of Exodus 12 as a main topic of Easter sermons, the latter seem to become less
concerned with the relationship between Christianity and Judaism. Yet, John
Chrysostom's homilies show that Christian-Jewish relations about liturgies
became a controversial subject again. As it has already been shown with re-
gard to the Syrian terminology of a 'week of unleavened bread', fourth century
Christianity begins to adapt and appropriate Old Testament terminology and
imagery for elements of Christian liturgies. This is paralleled by a tendency of
the amoraim to find 'parallels' between the Temple and the synagogue. The
later history of Pesah and Easter and the respective understanding of the festi-
vals in Judaism and Christianity must be re-evaluated on that broader back-
ground.
Having suggested a reconstruction for the origins of Easter, the investiga-
tion should be expanded to include the whole Christian and rabbinic cycles of
festivals, as well as other phenomena of the liturgies. It must be based on at-
tempts to find (at least relative) dates for the extant sources and to study them
within their contexts, apart from the necessary 'hermeneutics of suspicion' that
takes into account the interests and tendencies of the sources. In particular, the
way in which Geniza texts can be used in this discourse requires further meth-
odological refinement and a facilitated access to the sources.
7 Bibliography
7.1 Abbreviations
DSD Dead Sea Discoveries

FT Fragment targums
JECS Journal of Early Christian Studies
JTS The Jewish Theological Seminary of America
LXX Septuagint
PTT Palestinian targum tradition
StJC Studien zu Judentum und Christentum
SYAP Sokoloff and Yahalom 1999
TLT Two Liturgical Traditions
TN Targum Neofiti (Diez Macho)
TO Targum Onkelos (Sperber)
TPsJ Targum Pseudo-Jonathan (Clarke)
ZAC Zeitschrift für Antikes Christentum
Other abbreviations are standardized according to: Schwertner, Siegfried M.

1992. IATG2. Internationales AbkürzungsOerzeichnis fiir Theologie und Grenzgebiete.
International Glossary of Abbreviations for Theology and Related Subjects ... [2 nd
ed.]. Berlin - N e w York: Walter de Gruyter.
7.2 Sources
In order to facilitate the reference to the sources, m o r e accessible editions are

only quoted w i t h the abbreviation of the series in w h i c h they appeared. The
following list converts these short quotations into authors' n a m e s to b e found
in the bibliography:
Acts of Thomas: Bonnet, Klijn - Apostolic Constitutions: Metzger - Athanasius of

Alexandria: Szymusiak - Babylonian Talmud, Talmud Bavli: Responsa, Maagarim, se-
lected searches in the transcribed mss. of the 'Lieberman' database - Bereshit Rabba:
TA = Theodor and Albeck - Chrysostom: De Montfaucon - Clement of Alexandria:
440 Bibliography
Camelot, Descourtieux, Le Boulluec, Mondesert, (Voulet) - Cyprian·. Härtel, Weber

- Didascalia Apostolorum: Vööbus - D/D 4: Sanders, 6: Milik, 7: Baillet, 10: Qimron,
12: Talmon, 14: Ulrich, 22: Brooke, 23: Garcia Martinez a.o., 35: Baumgarten; 36:
Alexander - Egeria: (Diaz y Diaz), Maraval - Ephrem: Beck - Epiphanius: (Dummer),
Holl - Eusebius: Des Places, Mai, Mras, Schröder, Schwartz - Eutychius: Mai -
Expositio Officiorum Ecclesiae: Connolly - Gospel of Peter: Kraus, (Nicklas) - Gregory
of Nazianzus: (Gallay), Moreschini - Hippolytus: (Bardy), Bonwetsch, Lefevre, Mai,
Marcovich - lrenaeus: (Doutreleau), Froidevaux, (Mercier), Rousseau - Jerome:
(Adriaen), Bonnard, Hurst - Josephus: Feldman, Marcus, Thackeray - Jubilees: Van-
derKam - Justin: Marcovich - Lactantius: Brandt - Eiber Antiquitatum Biblicarum:
(Cazeaux), Harrington, Kisch - Mekhilta, MekhY: L = Lauterbach; MekhSh: EM =
Epstein and Melamed - Melito: Hall - Mishna: if indicated, ms. Kaufmann as tran-
scribed in Maagarim; Responsa - NTApo: Hennecke, (Schneemelcher) - Origen:
Baehrens, Blanc, Borret, Delarue, Doutreleau, Klostermann, Marcovich, Preuschen
- Palestinian Talmud, Talmud Yerushalmi: ms. Leiden as transcribed in Maagarim,
Responsa - Pesiqta de-Rav Kahana, PesK: Μ = Mandelbaum - Phlio: CW = Cohn and
Wendland eds, Cohn, (Reiter), Colson, Daumas, Marcus, Mercier, (Petit), Wend-
land - Ps.-Clement: Rehm - Pliny: Radice - Shepherd of Hermas: Whittaker - Sofrim:
Higger - Sulpicius: De Senneville-Grave - Targum Neofiti: Diez Macho - Targum
Onkelos: Sperber - Tertullianus: Borleffs, (Braun), Diercks, (Drouzy), Kroymann,
Moreschini, Refoule, Reifferscheid, (Wissowa) - Tosefta: Lieberman, otherwise
Zuckermandel - Victorinus of Pettau: Haussleiter.
T h e f o l l o w i n g d a t a b a s e s w e r e u s e d to f i n d a n d a c c e s s s o u r c e s :
Maagarim: T h e H e b r e w L a n g u a g e H i s t o r i c a l D i c t i o n a r y P r o j e c t at: T h e A c a d -
e m y of t h e H e b r e w L a n g u a g e ( J e r u s a l e m ) ; c o n t a i n i n g f o r e a c h H e b r e w text
a l e m m a t i z e d a n d s e a r c h a b l e t r a n s c r i p t i o n of a s e l e c t e d m a n u s c r i p t . The
d a t a b a s e c o m p r i s e s texts of ca. t h e first m i l l e n n i u m C . E. i n c l u d i n g Q u m -
r a n scrolls a n d s o m e y o u n g e r m a t e r i a l . U p d a t e u s e d : 11/2003.
Responsa: T h e R e s p o n s a P r o j e c t of B a r - I l a n U n i v e r s i t y ( R a m a t G a n ) , V e r s i o n 12;
n o n - l e m m a t i z e d s e a r c h a b l e H e b r e w a n d A r a m a i c t e x t s f r o m all e p o c h s ,
c o n c e n t r a t i n g o n h a l a k h i c a l l y i m p o r t a n t material, m a i n l y t r a n s c r i b e d f r o m
editions.
Thesaurus Linguae Graecae: N o n - l e m m a t i z e d D a t a b a s e o f G r e e k texts tran-
s c r i b e d f r o m e d i t i o n s . M o s t direct q u o t a t i o n s of G r e e k m a t e r i a l ( i n c l u d i n g
L X X ) i n t h i s s t u d y a r e c o p i e d f r o m T L G C D - R O M E.
Bibliography 441
7.3 Studies and Editions
Abrahams, Israel 1898. 'Some Egyptian Fragments of the Passover Hagada' In:
JQR 10, 41-51.
Albani, Matthias 1994. Astronomie und Schöpunfsglaube. Untersuchungen zum
astronomischen Henochbuch. Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener Verlag
(WMANT 68).
1997. 'Zur Rekonstruktion eines verdrängten Konzepts: Der 364-Tage-
Kalender in der gegenwärtigen Forschung' In: Matthias Albani, Jörg Frey,
and Armin Lange (eds), Studies in the Book of Jubilees. Tübingen: Mohr Sieb-
eck (TSAJ 65), 79-125.
Alexander, Philip et al. 2000. Qumran Cave 4. XXVI. Cryptic Texts. Miscellanea,
Part 1. Oxford: Clarendon Press (DJD 36).
Ameling, Walter (ed.) 2004. Inscriptiones Judaicae Orientis. Band II. Kleinasien.
Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck (TSAJ 99).
Aptowitzer, V[iktor] 1912. 'Fragment d'un rituel de päque. Originaire de Pa-
lestine et anterieur au Talmud' In: RE] 63,124-128.
Auf der Maur, Hansjörg 1967. Die Osterhomilien des Asterios Sophistes als Quelle
für die Geschichte der Osterfeier. Trier: Paulinus-Verlag (TThSt 19).
1983. Feiern im Rhythmus der Zeit I. Herrenfeste in Woche und Jahr. Regens-
burg: Pustet (GDK 5,1).
1987. 'Die Wiederentdeckung der Osternachtfeier in den abendländischen
Kirchen des 20. Jahrhunderts. Ein noch nicht ganz ernstgenommener Bei-
trag zum ökumenischen Dialog' In: BiLi 60, 2-25.
and Joop Waldram 1981. 'Illuminatio Verbi Divini - Confessio Fidei -
Gratia Baptismi. Wort, Glaube und Sakrament in Katechumenat und Tauf-
liturgie bei Origenes' In: Hans Jörg Auf der Maur, Leo Bakker, Annewies
van de Bunt, and Joop Waldram (eds), Fides Sacramenti Sacramentum Fidei
[FS Pieter Smulders]. Assen, the Netherlands: Van Gorcum, 41-95.
Bacchiocchi, Samuele 1977. From Sabbath to Sunday. A Historical Investigation of
the Rise of Sunday Observance in Early Christianity. Rome: The Pontifical
Gregorian University Press [repr. 1979].
Baehrens, Wilhelm Adolf 1920. Origenes Werke. Sechster Band. Homilien zum
Hexateuch in Rufins Ubersetzung. Erster Teil. Die Homilien zu Genesis, Exodus
und Leviticus. Leipzig: J.C. Hinrichs'sche Buchhandlung
(GCS 29 Origenes 6).
Baillet, Maurice 1982. Qumran Grotte 4. III. (4Q482-AQ520). Oxford: Clarendon
Press (DJD 7).
442 Bibliography
Baldovin, John F. 1987. The Urban Character of Christian Worship. The Origins,
Development, and Meaning of Stational Liturgy. Roma: Pont. Institutum
Studiorum Orientalium (OCA 228).
Bar-On, Shimon 1995. 'Zur literarkritischen Analyse von Ex 12,21-27' In:
ZAW107,18-30.
Barrett, Qcharles] K[ingsley] 1994. A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on The
Acts of the Apostles. Volume I. Prelimiary Introduction and Commentary on Acts
1-XIV. Edinburgh: T&T Clark (ICC [18,]1).
Bauckham, Richard 2003. 'The Origin of the Ebionites' In: Peter J. Tomson and
Doris Lambers-Petry (eds), The Image of the Judaeo-Christians in the Ancient
Jewish and Christian Literature. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck (WUNT 158), 162-
181.
Baumann, Arnulf H. 1993. 'Fasttage in der Darstellung des Josephus' In: Diet-
rich-Alex Koch and Hermann Lichtenberger (eds), Begegnungen zwischen
Christentum und Judentum in Antike und Mittelalter. Pestschrift ßr Heinz
Schreckenberg. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht (Schriften des Institu-
tum Judaicum Delitzschianum 1), 41 —49.
Baumgarten, Joseph M. et al. 1999. Qumran Cave 4. XXV. Halakhic Texts. Ox-
ford: Clarendon Press (DJD 35).
Baumstark, Anton 1927. 'Das Gesetz der Erhaltung des Alten in liturgisch
hochwertiger Zeit' In: JLW 2,1-23.
1957. Nocturna Laus. Typen frühchristlicher Vigilienfeier und ihr Fortleben vor
allem im römischen und monastischen Ritus. Aus dem Nachlass herausgege-
ben von Dr. P. Odilo Heiming. Münster Westfalen: Aschendorffsche Ver-
lagsbuchhandlung (LQF 32).
Beck, Edmund 1979. Ephraem Syrus. Sermones in Hebdomadam Sanctam. Louvain:
Secretariat du CorpusSCO (text CSCO 412 = CSCO.S 181; transl. CSCO 413
= CSCO.S 182).
Ben Dov, Jonathan 2003. 'The Initial Stages of Lunar Theory at Qumran' In:
JJS 54,125-141.
Ben-Shammai, Haggai 1996. 'The Karaites' In: Joshua Prawer and Haggai Ben-
Shammai (eds), The History of Jerusalem. The Early Muslim Period 638-1099.
Jerusalem: Yad Izhak Ben-Zvi - New York: New York University Press
201-224 [English tr.; Hebrew ed. 1987],
Berger, Blandine-Dominique 1976. Le drame liturgique de päques du Xe au Xlle
siecle. Liturgie et thiatre. Paris: Beauchesne (ThH 37).
Bergmeier, Roland 1993. Die Essener-Berichte des Flavius Josephus. Quellenstudien
zu den Essenertexten im Werk des jüdischen Historiographen. Kampen/the
Netherlands: Kok Pharos Publishing House.
Bibliography 443
2002. 'Der Stand der Gottesfreunde. Zu Philos Schrift "Über die Kontem-
plative Lebensform'" In: Bijdr. 63, 46-70.
2003. 'Die drei jüdischen Schulrichtungen nach Josephus und Hippolyt
von Rom. Zu den Paralleltexten Josephus, B.J. 2,119-166 und Hippolyt,
Huer. IX 18,2-29,4' In: JSJ 34, 4 4 3 ^ 7 0 .
2003a. 'Zum historischen Wert der Essenerberichte von Philo und Jo-
sephus' In: Jörg Frey and Hartmut Stegemann (eds), Qumran kontrovers.
Beiträge zu den Textfunden vom Toten Meer. Paderborn: Bonifatius (Einblicke.
Ergebnisse - Berichte - Reflexionen aus Tagungen der Katholischen Aka-
demie Schwerte 6), 11-22.
Bergren, Theodore A. 1999. '5 Ezra, Dayyenu and Improperia. The Tradition
History of the Exodus-Review in 5 Ezra 1' In: Benjamin G. Wright (ed.), A
Multiform Heritage [FS Robert A. Kraft], Atlanta, Georgia: Scholars Press
(Scholars Press homage series 24), 109-122.
Biblia Patristica. Index des citations et allusions bibliques dans la litterature patristi-
que. [1, 1975] Des origines ä Clement d'Alexandrie et Tertullien. [2, 1977] Le
troisieme siede (Origene excepte). [3, 1980] Origene. [4, 1987] Eusebe de Cisarie,
Cyrille de Jerusalem, Epiphane de Salamine. [5, 1991] Basile de Cisarie, Gregoire
de Nazianze, Gregoire de Nysse, Amphiloque d'Iconium. [6, 1995] Hilaire de Poi-
tiers, Ambroise de Milan, Ambrosiaster. [7, 2000] Didyme d'Alexandrie. Paris:
CNRS editions.
Bienert, Wolfgang A. 1972. Dionysius von Alexandrien. Das erhaltene Werk.
Διονυσίου λείψανα. Stuttgart: Anton Hiersemann (BGrL 2).
Bietenhard, H[ans] 1956. 'Deuterosis' In: RAC 3, 842-849.
Bij de Vaate, Alice and Jan Willem van Henten 1996. 'Jewish or Non-Jewish?
Some Remarks on the Identification of Jewish Inscriptions from Asia Mi-
nor' In: BiOr 53,16-28.
Blanc, Cecile 1966. Origene. Commentaire sur Saint Jean. Tome I (Livres I-V). Paris:
Les editions du cerf (SC 120).
Blank, Debra Reed 1999/2000. 'It's Time to Take Another Look at "Our Little
Sister" Sofrim: A Bibliographical Essay' In: JQR 90,1-26.
Boeckh, Jürgen 1960. 'Die Entwicklung der altkirchlichen Pentekoste' In:
/LH 5,1-45.
Böhl, Felix 1987. 'Das Fasten an Montagen und Donnerstagen. Zur Geschichte
einer pharisäischen Praxis (Lk 18.12)' In: BZ 31, 247-150.
Bokser, Baruch M. 1977. Philo's Description of Jewish Practices. Berkeley: The
Center for Hermeneutical Studies in Hellenistic and Modern Culture
(Protocol Series of the Colloquies of the Center..., Protocol of the Thirtieth
Colloquy, 5 June 1977).
444 Bibliography
1984. The Origins of the Seder. The Passover Rite and Early Rabbinic Judaism.
Berkeley - Los Angeles - London: University of California Press.
1990. 'Todos and Rabbinic Authority in Rome' In: Jacob Neusner, Peder
Borgen, Ernest S. Frerichs, and Richard Horsley (eds), New Perspectives on
Ancient Judaism. Vol. 1. Religion, Literature, and Society in Ancient Israel, For-
mative Christianity and Judaism. Second Printing. Atlanta, Georgia: Scholars
Press (BJSt 206), 117-130.
Bonnard, Emile 1977. Saint Jirdme. Commentate sur S. Matthieu. Tome I. (Livres
I-II). Paris: Les editions du cerf (SC 242).
1979. Saint Jerome. Commentaire sur S. Matthieu. Tome II. (Livres III-TV). Pa-
ris: Les editions du cerf (SC 259).
Bonnet, Maximilianus 1903. Acta Philippi et Acta Thomae. Accedunt Acta
Barnabae. [repr. 1959:] Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft
(AAAp 2.2).
Bonwetsch, Georg Nathanael and Hans Achelis 1897. Hippolytus Werke. Erster
Band. Exegetische und Homiletische Schriften. Erste Hälfte. Die Kommentare zu
Daniel und zum Hohenliede. Zweite Hälfte. Kleinere exegetische und homiletische
Schriften. Leipzig: J. C. Hinrichs'sche Buchhandlung (GCS Hippolytus 1).
and Marcel Richard 2000. Hippolyt Werke. Erster Band. Erster Teil. Kommen-
tar zu Daniel. Herausgegeben von Georg Nathanael Bonwetsch. Zweite, vollstän-
dig veränderte Auflage von Marcel Richard. (GCS NF 7).
Bonz, Marianne 1990. 'The Jewish Community of Ancient Sardis: A Reassess-
ment of Its Rise to Prominence' In: HSCP 93, 343-359.
1993. 'Differing Approaches to Religious Benefaction: The Late Third-
Century Acquisition of the Sardis Synagogue' In: HThR 86,139-54.
Borleffs, Jan W. Ph. (ed.) 1954. 'Tertullianus, De Baptismo' In: Quinti Septimi
Florentis Tertulliani Opera. Pars I. Opera catholica. Adversus Marcionem. Turn-
hout: Brepols (CChr.SL 1), 275-295.
Borret, Marcel 1981. Origene. Homelies sur le Leviticjue. Tome I. (Homilies I-VII).
Paris: Les editions du cerf (SC 286).
1985. Origene. Homelies sur VExode. Paris: Les editions du cerf (SC 321).
Botermann, Helga 1990. 'Die Synagoge von Sardes: Eine Synagoge aus dem 4.
Jahrhundert?' In: ZNW 81,103-121.
Bovon, Frangois 2003. 'Canonical and Apocryphal Acts of Apostles' In:
JECS 11,165-194.
Boyarin, Daniel 1999. Dying for God. Martyrdom and the Making of Christianity
and Judaism. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford Univ. Press.
Bibliography 445
2004. Border Lines. The Partition of Judaeo-Christianity. Philadelphia: Uni-

versity of Pennsylvania Press (Divinations: Reading Late Ancient Relig-
ion).
Bradshaw, Paul F. 1981. Daily Prayer in the Early Church. A Study of the Origin
and Early Development of the Divine Office. London: Alcuin Club/SPCK
(ACC 63).
1993. '"Diem Baptismo Sollemniorem": Initiation and Easter in Christian
Antiquity' In: Ephrem Carr, Stefano Parenti, Andreas-A. Thiermeyer, and
Elena Velkovska (eds), Εύλόγημα. Studies in Honor of Robert Taft, S.J. Roma:
Pontificio Ateneo S. Anselmo (StAns 110 = ALit 17), 41-51.
1993a. 'The Offering of the Firstfruits of Creation: An Historical Study' In:
Ralph N. McMichael Jr. (ed), Creation and Liturgy [FS H. Boone Porter],
Washington, DC: The Pastoral Press, 29-41.
2004. Eucharistie Origins. Oxford: University Press (An Alcuin Club Publi-
cation).
2005. 'The Eucharistie Sayings of Jesus' In: StLi 35,1-11.
; Maxwell E. Johnson, and L. Edward Phillips 2002. The Apostolic Tradition.
A Commentary. Minneapolis, Minn.: Fortress Press (Hermeneia).
Brakmann, Heinzgerd 1994. To παρά τοις βαρβάροις έργον θείον. Die Einwur-
zelung der Kirche im spätantiken Reich von Aksum. Bonn: Borengässer.
1997. 'Der christlichen Bibel erster Teil in den gottesdienstlichen Traditio-
nen des Ostens und Westens. Liturgiehistorische Anmerkungen zum sog.
Stellenwert des Alten/Ersten Testaments im Christentum' In: Ansgar
Franz (ed.), Streit am Tisch des Wortes? Zur Deutung und Bedeutung des Alten
Testaments und seiner Verwendung in der Liturgie. St. Ottilien: EOS Verlag
(PiLi 8), 565-604.
, Wolfram Drews, Marcel Metzger 2003. 'Katechumenat' In: RAC 20, 497-
574.
Brandt, Samuel 1890. L. Caeli Firmiani Lactanti Opera Omnia. Accedunt Carmina
eius quae ferunteur et L. Caecilii qui inscriptus es de mortibus persecutorum Uber
recensuerunt Samuel Brandt et Gerogius Laubmann. Pars I. Divinae institutiones
et epitome divinarum institutionum. Prag - Vienna: F. Tempsky - Leipzig: G.
Frey tag (CSEL 19).
Braude, William Gershon Zev and Israel J. Kapstein 1975. Pesikta de-Rab Ka-
häna. R. Kahana's Compilation of Discourses for Sabbaths and Festal Days.
Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society of America.
Braulik, Georg 1981. 'Leidensgedächtnisfeier und Freudenfest. "Volksliturgie"
nach dem deuteronomischen Festkalender (Dtn 16,1-17)' In: ThPh 56, 335-
446 Bibliography
357 = 1988. Studien zur Theologie des Deuteronomiums. Stuttgart: Katholisches

Bibelwerk (SB AB 2), 95-121.
Brin, Gershon 1993. 'Regarding the Connection Between the Temple Scroll and
the Book of Jubilees' In: JBL 112,108f.
Brockelmann, Karl 1928. Lexicon Syriacum [2nd ed.]. Halle/Saale: Max Niemeyer
[repr. 1966 Hildesheim: Olms].
Bronznick, Nachum M. 2000. The Liturgical Poetry of Yannai. Explanations and
Interpretations with Suggestions for Textual Emendations and Completions of La-
cunae. Jerusalem: Rubin Mass.
Brooke, George et al. 1996. Qumran Cave 4. XVII. ParaBiblical Texts, Part 3. Ox-
Broshi, Magen 1992. The Damascus Document Reconsidered. Jerusalem: The Israel
Exploration Society. The Shrine of the Book, Israel Museum.
Brox, Norbert 1972. 'Tendenzen und Parteilichkeiten im Osterfeststreit des
zweiten Jahrhunderts' In: ZKG 83, 291-324.
Brucker, Ralph 1997. 'Christushymnen' oder 'epideiktische Passagen'? Studien zum
Stilwechsel im Neuen Testament und seiner Umwelt. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck
& Ruprecht (FRLANT 176).
Buber, Salomon 1891. Midrash Tehillim. Called Shocher Του. Wilna: Romm [repr.
Jerusalem 1966 Hebrew].
Buchinger, Harald 2000. Ί Kor 5,7 als Schlüssel der Paschatheologie des Ori-
genes. Das Pascha der Juden, das Opfer Christi und das Pascha der Chris-
ten - eine Aporie?' In: ZAW 91, 238-264.
2003. 'Zur Nachwirkung der Paschatheologie des Origenes: Sondierungen
in der lateinischen Paschahomiletik bis zu Gregor dem Großen' In: Ada-
mantius 9,128-169.
2003a. 'Gebet und Identität bei Origenes. Das Vaterunser im Horizont der
Auseinandersetzung um Liturgie und Exegese' In: Albert Gerhards, An-
drea Doeker, and Peter Ebenbauer (eds), Identität durch Gebet. Zur gemein-
schaftsbildenden Funktion institutionalisierten Betens in Judentum und Christen-
tum. Paderborn - München - Wien - Zürich: Schöningh (StJC), 307-334.
2003b. 'Zur Entfaltung des Origenischen Paschaverständnisses. Caesaren-
sischer Kontext und Alexandrinischer Hintergrund' In: Lorenzo Perrone
(ed.), Origeniana Octava. Origen and the Alexandrian Tradition. Papers of the 8th
International Origen Congress. Pisa, 27-31 August 2001. Volume I. Leuven:
University Press - Peeters (BEThL 164), 567-578.
2004. 'Jüdische Feste als Herausforderung christlicher Theologie und Li-
turgie. Eine Spurensuche in der Paschatheologie palästinischer Autoren'
In: Albert Gerhards and Hans Hermann Henrix (ed.), Dialog oder Monolog?
Bibliography 447
Zur liturgischen Beziehung in Judentum und Christentum. Freiburg - Basel -

Wien: Herder (QD 208), 184-207.
2005. Pascha bei Origenes. [Vol. 1:] Diachrone Präsentation. [Vol. 2:] Systema-
tische Aspekte. Innsbruck - Wien: Tyrolia (IThS 64).
Burkitt, Francis Crawford 1921-1923. 'The Early Syriac Lectionary System' In:
PBA 10, 301-338 [submitted 1923],
Burrows, Millar 1950. The Dead Sea Scrolls of St. Mark's Monastery. Volume I. The
Isaiah Manuscript and the Habakkuk Commentary. New Haven: The American
Schools of Oriental Research.
Buschmann, Gerd 1998. Das Martyrium des Polykarp. Übersetzt und erklärt von
Gerd Buschmann. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht (KAV 6).
Cabie, Robert 1965. La Pentecote. L'evolution de la Cinquantaine pascale au cours
des cinq premiers siecles. Tournai: Desclee (Bibliotheque de Liturgie).
Callaway, Phillip R. 1993. 'The 364-Day Calendar Traditions at Qumran' In:
Zdzislaw J. Kapera (ed.), Mogilany 1989. Papers on the Dead Sea Scrolls Of-
fered in Memory of Jean Carmginac. Part I: General Research on the Dead Sea
Scrolls, Qumran and the New Testament. The Present State of Qumranology.
Krakow: The Enigma Press (Qumranica Mogilanensia 2), 19-29.
Camelot, Pierre Thomas and Claude Mondesert 1954. Clement d'Alexandrie. Les
Stromates. Stromate II. Paris: Les editions du cerf (SC 38).
Cantalamessa, Raniero 1981. Ostern in der Alten Kirche. Bern - Frankfurt am
Main - Las Vegas: Peter Lang (TC 4) [Ital. orig. 1978].
Carr, Ephrem 1993. 'The Liturgical Year in the Syriac Churches: Adaptation to
Different Ecclesial-Liturgical Ambients' In: Ildebrando Scicolone (ed.),
L'adattamento culturale della liturgia. Metodi e modelli. Atti del IV congresso in-
ternazionale di liturgia. Roma, Pontificio Istituto Liturgico, 6-10 Maggio 1991.
Roma: Pontificio Ateneo S. Anselmo (StAns 113 = ALit 19), 47-59.
Casel, Odo 1938. 'Art und Sinn der ältesten christlichen Osterfeier' In:
/LW14,1-78.
Chadwick, Henry 1959. The Sentences of Sextus. A Contribution to the History of
Early Christian Ethics. Cambridge: University Press (TaS N.S. 5).
Chazon, Esther G. 2000. 'The Function of the Qumran Prayer Texts: An Analy-
sis of the Daily Prayers (4Q503)' In: Lawrence H. Schiffman, Emmanuel
Τον, and James C. VanderKam (eds), The Dead Sea Scrolls. Fifty Years After
Their Discovery. Proceedings of the Jerusalem Congress, July 20-25, 1997. Jeru-
salem: Israel Exploration Society in cooperation with The Shrine of the
Book, Israel Museum, 217-225.
Chilton, Bruce 2002. 'Festivals and Lectionaries. Correspondence and Distinc-
tions' In: Christopher A. Rollston (ed.), The Gospels According to Michael
448 Bibliography
Goulder. A North-American Response. Harrisburg, Pennsylvania: Trinity

Press, 12-28.
Chupungco, Anscar J. 1977. The Cosmic Elements of Christian Passover. Roma:
Editrice Anselmiana (StAns 72 = ALit 3).
Clarke, Ernest G. 1984. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan of the Pentateuch. Text and Con-
cordance. Hoboken, NJ: Ktav.
Cohen, Shaye J.D. 1999. The Beginnings of Jewishness. Boundaries, Varieties, Un-
certainties. Berkeley - Los Angeles - London: University of Califormia
Press (Hellenistic Culture and Society 31 = S. Mark Taper Foundation im-
print in Jewish Studies) [repr. 2000].
Cohick, Lynn H. 2000. The Peri Pascha Attributed to Melito ofSardis. Setting Pur-
pose, and Sources. Providence, RI: Brown Judaic Studies (BJSt 327).
Cohn, Leopold 1896. Philonis Alexandrini Opera Quae Supersunt [Vol. I]. Berlin:
Georg Reimer [repr. Walter de Gruyter 1962].
1902. Philonis Alexandrini Opera Quae Supersunt [Vol. IV] ... [repr. 1962].
1906. Philonis Alexandrini Opera Quae Supersunt [Vol. V] ... [repr. 1962],
and Siegfried Reiter 1915. Philonis Alexandrini Opera Quae Supersunt [Vol.
VI] ... [repr. 1962],
Colautti, Federico M. 2002. Passover in the Works of ]osephus. Leiden - Boston -
Köln: Brill (JSJ.S 75).
Colorni, Vittore 1964. 'L'uso del greco nella liturgia del giudaismo ellenistico e
la novella 146 di Giustiniano' In: ASD 8,19-80.
Colson, Francis H. 1937. Philo. [Vol.] VII. London: William Heinemann, Cam-
bridge Massachusetts: Harvard University Press (LCL 320) [repr. 1958].
1941. Philo. [Vol.] /X. ... (LCL 363) [repr. I960].
Connolly, Richard Hugh 1911-1915. Anonymi Auctoris Expositio Officiorum
Ecclesiae Georgio Arbelensi Vulgo Adscripta [vol. 72 + Accedit Abrahae Bar
LJphem Interpretatio Officiorum], Paris: Typographeum Reipublicae - Leip-
zig: Otto Harrassowitz [Repr. Louvain: Secretariat du CorpusSCO
1961/1971] (text CSCO 64 and 72 = CSCO.S 25 and 29, transl. CSCO 71 and
76 = CSCO.S 91 and 32).
Cross, Frank Moore 2002. 'The Hebrew Inscriptions from Sardis' In:
HThR 95, 3-19.
Crown, Alan D. 1991. 'Redating the Schism Between the Judaeans and the Sa-
maritans' In: JQR 82,17-50.
Dahm, Ulrike 2003. Opferkult und Priestertum in Alt-Israel. Ein kultur- und religi-
onswissenschaftlicher Beitrag. Berlin - New York: Walter de Gruyter
(BZAW 327).
Bibliography 449
Dalman, Gustav 1905. Grammatik des Jüdisch-Palästinischen Aramäisch nach den

Idiomen des palästinischen Talmud, des Onkelostargum und Prophetentargum
und der Jerusalemischen Targume [2nd ed.]. Aramäische Dialektproben [2nd ed.
1927], [repr. I960:] Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft.
1938. Aramäisch-neuhebräisches Handwörterbuch zu Targum, Talmud und
Midrasch. Mit Lexikon der Abbreviaturen von G.H. Händler und einem Ver-
zeichnis der Mischna-Abschnitte. [Göttingen: Vandenhock und Ruprecht,
repr. 1967:] Hildesheim: Olms [I st ed. 1901],
Danielou, Jean 1946. 'Traversee de la Mer Rouge et bapteme aux premiers sie-
cles' In: RSR 33, 402-130.
Daumas, Frangois and Pierre Miquel 1963. [Philo] De Vita Contemplativa. Paris:
Les edition du cerf (Les oeuvres de Philon d'Aleandrie 29).
Davidson, Israel 1924-1933. Thesaurus of Medieval Hebrew Poetry [ΤΜΗΡ 4 vols].
New York: JTS.
; Simcha Assaf, and B. Issachar Joel 1941. Siddur R. Saadja Gaon. Kitäb gämi'
as-salawät wat-tasäblh. Jerusalem: Mekize Nirdamim [Hebrew; repr. 1970].
Davies, Philip R. 1979. 'Passover and the Dating of the Aqedah' In: JJS 30, 59-
67.
and Bruce D. Chilton 1978. 'The Aqedah: A Revised Tradition History' In:
CBQ 40, 514-546.
De Lange, Nicholas 1996. Greek Jewish Texts from the Cairo Genizah. Tübingen:
J. C. B. Mohr/Paul Siebeck (TSAJ 51).
[De Montfaucon, Bernard 1718-1738. Sancti Patris Nostri Joannis Chrysostomi
Opera Omnia Quae Exstant vel eius Nomine Circumferentur. Paris, reprinted in
PG. Adversus Iudaeos orationes no. 5: PG 48, 883-904 CPG 4327; Ad illu-
minandos catecheses no. 2: PG 49, 231-240 CPG 4464.]
De Senneville-Grave, Ghislaine 1999. Sulpice Severe. Chroniques. Paris: Les edi-
tions du cerf (SC 441).
Dekkers, Eligius 1947. Tertullianus en de geschiedenis der liturgie. Brüssel - Am-
sterdam: De Kinkhoren (Catholica VI-2).
Del Verme, Marcello 2003. 'Who Are the People Labelled as "Hypocrites" in
Didache 8? A Propos of Fasting and Tithing of the "Hypocrites": Did 8:l(-2);
Matt 23:23 (par. Luke 11:42); and Luke 18:11-12' In: Henoch 25, 321-360.
[Delarue, Carolus and Carolus Vincentius Delarue (no year). Origenis Opera
Omnia... In Exodum Excerpta: PG 12, 263-298 CPG 1413.]
Delcor, Matthias 1984. 'L'interdiction de briser les os de la victime pascale
d'apres la tradition juive' In: Philippe Borgeaud, Yves Christe, and Ivanka
Urio (eds), L'animal, I'homme, le dieu dans le proche-orient ancien. Actes du
450 Bibliography
Collocjue de Cartigny 1981. Centre d'Etude du Proche-Orient Ancien (CEPOA).

Universite de Geneve. Leuven: Peeters (Les Cahiers du CEPOA 2), 71-81.
Des Places, Edouard 1983. Eusebe de Cesaree. La preparation evangelique. Lwres
XII-XIII. Paris: Les editions du cerf (SC 307).
Descourtieux, Patrick 1999. Clement d'Alexandrie. Les Stromates. Stromate VI. Pa-
ris: Les editions du cerf (SC 446).
Diercks, Gerard Frederik (ed.) 1954, 'Tertullianus, De Oratione' In: Quinti
Septimi Florentis Tertulliani Opera. Pars I. Opera catholica. Adversus
Marcionem. Turnhout: Brepols (CChr.SL 1), 255-274.
Diez Macho, Alejandro 1968. Neophyti 1. Targum Palestinense. Ms de la Bibliteca
Vaticana. Tomo I. Genesis. Madrid - Barcelona: Consejo superior de investi-
gaciones cientificas [incl. transl. by Roger Le Deaut, Martin McNamara,
and Michael Mäher] (TECC 7).
1970. Neophyti 1. ... Tomo 11. Exodo (TECC 8).
1971. Neophyti 1. ... Tomo III. Levitico (TECC 9).
1974. Neophyti 1.... Tomo IV. Nümeros (TECC 10).
1978. Neophyti 1. ... Tomo V. Deuteronomio (TECC 11).
1980. Targum Palaestinense in Pentateuchum. Additur Targum Pseudojonatan
ejusque hispanica versio [2nd ed.; vol. 2:] Exodus. Madrid: Consejo superior de
investigaciones cientificas (BPM 4.2).
Dindorf, Ludwig [August] 1832. Chronicon Paschale [Vol. 1]. Bonn: Weber
(CSHB 4.1) [repr. PG 92],
Dölger, Franz Joseph 1930. 'Der Durchzug durch das Rote Meer als Sinnbild
der christlichen Taufe' In: AuC 2, 63-69 [repr. 1974],
1930a. 'Vorbeter und Zeremoniar. Zu monitor und praeire. Ein Beitrag zu
Tertullians Apologeticum XXX, 4' In: AuC 2, 241-251 [repr. 1974],
Doering, Lutz 1999. Schabbat. Sabbathalacha und -praxis im antiken Judentum und
Urchristentum. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck (TSAJ 78).
Doutreleau, Louis (and Henri de Lubac) 1976. Origene. Homilies sur la Genese.
Paris: Les editions du cerf (SC 7bis).
1999. Origene. Homilies sur les Nombres. II. Homilies XI - XIX. Paris: Les
editions du cerf (SC 442).
Draper, Jonathan A. 1996. 'Christian Self-Definition Against the "Hypocrites"
in Didache VIII' In: idem (ed.), The Didache in Modern Research. Leiden -
New York - Köln: E. J. Brill (AGJU 37), 223-244 [first publ. 1992],
Drazin, Israel 1999. 'Dating Targum Onkelos by means of the Tannaitic
Midrashim' In: JJS 50, 246-258.
Drijvers, Han J. W. 1990. 'Der getaufte Löwe und die Theologie der Acta Pauli'
In: Peter Nagel (ed.), Carl-Schmidt-Kolloquium an der Martin-Luther-Universi-
Bibliography 451
tät 1988. Halle an der Saale: Abt. Wissenschaftspublizistik der Martin-Lu-

ther-Universität Halle-Wittenberg, DDR (Kongreß- und Tagungsberichte
der Martin-Luther-Universität Halle-Wittenberg; Wissenschaftliche Bei-
träge/Martin-Luther-Univ. Halle-Wittenberg 1990, 23 = K9), 181-189.
Drobner, Hubertus R. 1990. 'Die Deutung des alttestamentlichen Pascha (Ex
12) bei Gregor von Nyssa im Lichte der Auslegungstradition der griechi-
schen Kirche' In: idem and Christoph Klock (eds), Studien zu Gregor von
Nyssa und der christlichen Spätantike. Leiden - New York - Kabenhavn -
Köln: E.J. Brill (VigChr.S 12), 273-296.
Dugmore, Clifford W. 1962. 'Lord's Day and Easter' In: Neotestamentica et
Patristica [FS Oscar Cullmann], Leiden: E.J. Brill (VT.S 6), 272-281.
Dunbar, David G. 1983. "The Delay of the Parousia in Hippolytus' In:
VigChr 37, 313-327.
Dunsky, Shimshon 1980. Midrash Rabba. Shir ha-Shirim. Jerusalem-Tel Aviv:
Dvir.
Edwards, Mark J. 1998. 'Ignatius and the Second Century: An Answer to R.
Hübner' In: ZAC 2, 214-226.
Eißler, Friedmann 2003. 'Maskilim und Messias: Endzeiterwartung bei den
Karäern. Ein Beitrag zur mittelalterlichen jüdischen Bibelauslegung' In: Ju-
daica 59,164-181 and 242-255.
Elbogen, Ismar 1993. Jewish Liturgy. A Comprehensive History. Philadelphia -
Jerusalem: The Jewish Publication Society. New York - Jerusalem: JTS.
[Transl. by Raymond P. Scheindlin. Based on the original 1913 German
edition and the 1972 Hebrew edition ed. by Joseph Heinemann, et al. The
page numbers of the third German edition 1931 repr. Hildesheim: Georg
Olms 1962 are added.]
Elter, Anton (ed.) 1892. Sexti Pythagorici Clitarchi Evagrii Pontici Sententiae.
Leipzig: Teubner (Gnomica 1).
Epstein, Jacob Nahum and Ezra Zion Melamed 1955. Mekhilta d'Rabbi Sim'on b.
Jochai. Jerusalem: Mekize Nirdamim.
Falk, Daniel K. 1998. Daily, Sabbath, and Festival Prayers in the Dead Sea Scrolls.
Leiden - Boston - Köln: Brill (AtTDJ 27).
Fassberg, Stephen E. 1990. A Grammar of the Palestinian Targum Fragments from
the Cairo Genizah. Atlanta, Georgia: Scholars Press (HSSt 38).
Feldman, Louis 1965. Josephus. IX. Jewish Antiquities, Books XVIII-XX. London:
William Heinemann, Cambridge Massachusetts: Harvard University Press
(LCL433) [repr. 1969].
Feltoe, Charles Lett 1904. Διονυσίου λείψανα. The Letters and Other Remains of
Dionysius of Alexandria. Cambridge: University Press.
452 Bibliography
Finkelstein, Louis 1938. 'The Oldest Midrash: Pre-Rabbinic Ideals and Teach-
ings in the Passover Haggadah' In: HThR 31, 291-317.
1942, 1943. 'Pre-Maccabean Documents in the Passover Haggadah' [2
parts] In: HThR 35, 291-352 and 36,1-38.
1939. Siphre ad Deuteronomium. Berlin: Jüdischer Kulturbund in Deutsch-
land e.V./Gesellschaft zur Förderung der Wissenschaft des Judentums
(Corpus Tannaiticum 3.3.2) [repr. as Sifre on Deuteronomy by JTS, New
York 1969].
Fitzmyer, Joseph A. 1974. 'Some Observations on the Targum of Job from
Qumran Cave 11' In: CBQ 36, 503-524.
1978. 'The Targum of Leviticus from Qumran Cave 4' In: Maarav 1, 5-23.
2002. 'The Sacrifice of Isaac in Qumran Literature' In: Bib. 83, 211-229.
2003. Tobit. Berlin - New York: Walter de Gruyter (Commentaries on
Early Jewish Literature).
Fleischer, Ezra 1965/66. '[The Israelites' Simhat Tora, i.e. Simhat Tora in the
Palestinian Festival Cycle]' In: Sinai 59, 209-227 [Hebrew],
1974. The Pizmonim of the Anonymous. Jerusalem: I ASH (Publications of the
I ASH) [Hebrew],
1982/83. Ά List of Yearly Holidays in a Piyyut by Qiliri' In: Tarb. 52, 223-
272 [Hebrew],
1988. Eretz-Israel Prayer and Prayer Rituals as Portrayed in the Geniza Docu-
ments. Jerusalem: The Magnes Press, the Hebrew University (Publications
of the Perry Foundation in the Hebrew University of Jerusalem) [Hebrew].
1991/92. 'Annual and Triennial Reading of the Bible in the Old Syna-
gogue' In: Tarb. 61, 25-43 [Hebrew].
Flesher, Paul V.M. 1995. 'The Targumim' In: Jacob Neusner (ed.), Judaism in Late
Antiquity. Part One. The Literary and Archaeological Sources. Leiden - New
York - Köln: E.J. Brill (HO I, Der Nahe und Mittlere Osten, 16.1), 40-63.
2001. 'The Translation of Proto-Onqelos and the Palestinian Targums' In:
Journal for the Aramaic Bible 3, 75-100.
Flint, Peter W. 1998. 'Columns I and II of the Hexapla: The Evidence of the
Milan Palimpsest (Rahlfs 1098)' In: Alison Salvesen (ed.), Origen's Hexapla
and Fragments. Papers Presented at the Rich Seminar on the Hexapla, Oxford
Centre for Hebrew and Jewish Studies, 25"· \July] - 3rd August 1994. Tübingen:
Mohr Siebeck (TSAJ 58), 125-132.
Flusser, David 1966. 'Qumran and Jewish "Apotropaic" Prayer' In: IEJ 16, 194-
205 [repr. in Judaism and the Origins of Christianity. Jerusalem 1988, 214^-
225].
1974. 'Hebrew Improperia' In: Irnm. 4, 51-54.
Bibliography 453
1977. 'Les Tensions entre le Shabbat et le Dimanche' In: SIDIC 1 0 , 1 3 - 1 5 .

Fossum, Jarl 1987. 'The Magharians: A Pre-Christian Jewish Sect and its Sig-
nificance for the Study of Gnosticism and Christianity' In: Henoch 9, 3 0 3 -
344.
Fraade, Steven D. 1992. 'Rabbinic Views on the Practice of Targum, and Multi-
lingualism in the Jewish Galilee of the Third-Sixth Centuries' In: Lee I. Le-
vine (ed.), The Galilee in Late Antiquity. N e w York - Jerusalem: JTS; Cam-
bridge, Massachusetts - London: Harvard University Press, 253-286.
Frey, Jean-Baptiste 1952. Corpus Inscriptionum Iudaicarum. Recueil des inscriptions
juives qui vont du IIIe siecle avant Jesus-Christ au VIl· siecle de notre ere. Vol. II.
Asie - Afrique. Cittä del Vaticano: Pontificio Istituto di Archeologia Cri-
stiana.
Frey, Jörg 2003. 'Zur historischen Auswertung der antiken Essenerberichte. Ein
Beitrag zum Gespräch mit Roland Bergmeier' In: see Bergmeier, 23-56.
Friedheim, Emmanuel 2004. 'Sur les relations judeo-samaritaines en Palestine
du I er au IV i m e siecle p . C . entre accomodement et eviction' In: ThZ 6 0 , 1 9 3 -
213.
Friedman, S h a m m a 1999. 'The Primacy of Tosefta to Mishna in Synoptic Paral-
lels' In: Harry Fox (leBeit Yoreh) and Tirzah Meacham (leBeit Yoreh; eds),
Introducing Tosefta. Textual, Intratextual and Intertextual Studies. Hoboken,
NJ: Ktav, 99-121.
2002. Tosefta Atiqta. Pesah rishon. Synoptic Parallels of Mishna and Tosefta
Analyzed with a Methodological Introduction. Ramat-Gan: Bar-Ilan University
Press [Hebrew].
Friedmann, Meir 1902. Seder Eilahu rabba und Seder Elia.hu zuta (Tanna d'be
Eliahu). Vienna: Ahiasaf.
Froidevaux, Leon Marie 1959. Irene de Lyon. Demonstration de la predication apos-
tolique. Paris: Les editions du cerf (SC 62).
Gage, Jean 1966. 'Fackel (Kerze)' In: RAC 7 , 1 5 4 - 2 1 7 .
Gahbauer, Ferdinand R. 1998. 'Eutychius von Konstantinopel' In: Siegmar
Döpp and Wilhelm Geerlings (eds), Lexikon der antiken christlichen Litera-
tur. Freiburg - Basel - Wien: Herder, 223.
Garcia Martinez, Florentino 2002. 'The Sacrifice of Isaac in 4Q225' In: Ed Noort
and Eibert Tigchelaar (eds), The Sacrifice of Isaac. The Aqedah (Genesis 22) and
its Interpretation. Leiden - Boston - Köln: Brill (Themes in Biblical Narra-
tive. Jewish and Christian Traditions 4).
and Eibert J.C. Tigchelaar 1997. The Dead Sea Scrolls Study Edition [Vol. 1].
Leiden - N e w York - Köln: Brill.
454 Bibliography
; Eibert J.C. Tigchelaar, and Adam S. Van der Woude 1998. Qumran Cave
11. [Vol.] II. UQ2-18, 11Q20-31. Oxford: Clarendon Press (DJD 23).
Gaß, Erasmus 1999. 'Der Passa-Papyrus (Cowl 21) - Mythos oder Realität?' In:
BN 99, 55-67.
Gerhards, Albert 1996. 'Improperia' In: RAC 17,1198-1212.
2005. 'Geschichtskonstruktionen in liturgischen Texten des Judentums
und Christentums' In: idem and Stephan Wahle (eds), Kontinuität und Un-
terbrechung. Gottesdienst und Gebet in Judentum und Christentum. Schöningh
(StJC), 123-139.
Gerlach, Karl 1998. The Antenicene Pascha. A Rhetorical History. Leuven: Peeters
(Liturgia condenda 7).
(Gesenius, Wilhelm and) Frants Buhl 1915. Wilhelm Gesenius' hebräisches und
aramäisches Handwörterbuch über das Alte Testament [15lh ed.]. Berlin - Göt-
tingen-Heidelberg: Springer-Verlag [repr. 1962],
Ginsburger, Moses 1895. 'Die Thargumim zur Thorahlection am 7. Pesach- und
1. Schabuoth-Tage' In: MGWJ 39 = NF. 3; 97-105,167-175,193-206.
1900. 'Aramäische Introduktionen zum Thargumvortrag an Festtagen' In:
ZDMG 54,113-124.
Gleßmer, Uwe 1995. Einleitung in die Targume zum Pentateuch. Tübingen: J.C.B.
Mohr/Paul Siebeck (TSAJ 48).
1996. 'The Otot-Texts (4Q319) and the Problem of Intercalations in the
Context of the 364-Day Calendar' In: Heinz-Josef Fabry, Armin Lange, and
Hermann Lichtenberger (eds), Qumranstudien. Vorträge und Beiträge der
Teilnehmer des Qumranseminars auf dem internationalen Treffen der Society of
Biblical Literature, Münster, 25.-26. Juli 1993. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck &
Ruprecht (SIJD 4), 125-164.
1997. 'Explizite Aussagen über kalendarische Konflikte im Jubiläenbuch:
Jub 6,22-32.33-38' In: Matthias Albani, Jörg Frey, and Armin Lange (eds),
Studies in the Book of Jubilees. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck (TSAJ 65), 127-164.
1999. 'Calendars in the Qumran Scrolls' In: Peter W. Flint and James C.
Vanderkam (eds), The Dead Sea Scrolls After Fifty Years. A Comprehensive As-
sessment. Volume Two. Leiden - Boston - Köln: Brill, 213-278.
Gold, Sally L. 2001. 'Targum or Translation. New Light on the Character of
Qumran Job (11Q10) from a Synoptic Approach' In: Journal for the Aramaic
Bible 3,101-120.
Goldberg, P. Selvin 1957. Karaite Liturgy and Its Relation to Synagogue Worship.
Manchester: University Press.
Goldschmidt, Ernst Daniel 1937. Die Pessachhaggada. Berlin: Schocken Verlag
(Bücherei des Schocken Verlags 54).
Bibliography 455
1960. The Passover Haggadah. Its Sources and History. With the Complete Text
of the Traditional Haggadah, the Most Ancient Haggadah from the Cairo Geniza
and Sample Pages of Manuscript and Printed Haggadot in Reproduction. Jeru-
salem: Bialik institute [Hebrew].
1968. [The Order of the Lamentations (Slihot)for the 9th of Av According to the
Rite of Poland and the Ashkenazic Communities in Israel], Jerusalem: Mosad
Ha-Rav Quq [Hebrew].
1970. [Mahsor for the Days of Awe According to the Ashcenazic Rite in all its
Branches including the Rite of Ashkenaz (of the West), the Rite of Poland and the
Former Rite of France. Vol. 2. Day of Atonement], Jerusalem: Koren; New
York: Leo Baeck Institute [Hebrew],
1971. Seder Rav Amram Gaon. Jerusalem: Mossad Harav Kook [Hebrew].
Golomb, David M. 1985. A Grammar of Targum Neofiti. Chico, California: Schol-
ars Press (HSM 34).
Goshen-Gottstein, Moshe Henry 1975. 'The "Third Targum" on Esther and Ms.
Neofiti V In: Bib. 56, 301-329.
Goudoever, Jan van 1967. Fetes et calendriers bibliques. Troisieme edition revue et
augmentee. Traduit de l'anglais par Marie-Luc Kerremans. Preface par C. A. Rijk.
Paris: Beauchesne [l sl ed. 1961].
Greenstone, Julius H. 1911. Ά Fragment of the Passover Hagadah' In:
ZHB 15,122-123.
Grelot, Pierre 2002. 'Trois poemes acrostiches sur Exode 12,2' In: RB 106, 41-65.
Grünwaldt, Klaus 1992. Exil und Identität. Beschneidung, Passa und Sabbat in der
Priesterschrift. Frankfurt am Main: Hain (AM.T = BBB 85).
Gutmann, Joseph 1974. 'The Messiah at the Seder. A Fifteenth-Century Motif
in Jewish Art' In: Sh[muel] Yeivin (ed.), Studies in Jewish History [FS Rapha-
el Mahler], Merhavia: Sifriat Poalim and Tel-Aviv University, 28-38.
Haag, Herbert 1971. Vom alten zum neuen Pascha. Geschichte und Theologie des
Osterfestes. Stuttgart: KBW Verlag (SBS 49).
Habermann, Abraham Meir 1939. 'Poetical Blessings after Meals' In: Studies of
the Research Institute for Hebrew Poetry in Jerusalem 5, 43-105 [Hebrew],
Hadas-Lebel, Mireille 1979. 'Le paganisme ä travers les sources rabbiniques
des He et Hie siecles. Contribution ä Γ etude du syncretisme dans 1'empire
romain' In: Wolfgang Haase (ed.), Principat. 19.2. Religion (Judentum: Paläs-
tinisches Judentum [Forts.]). Berlin - New York: Walter de Gruyter (ANRW
2.19.2), 397-485.
Hall, Stuart G. 1970. 'Melito Περί Πάσχα 1 and 2. Text and Interpretation' In:
Patrick Granfield and Josef A. Jungmann (eds), Kyriakon [FS Johannes
Quasten], Vol. I. Münster Westfalen: Aschendorff, 236-248.
456 Bibliography
1971. 'Melito in the Light of the Passover Haggadah' In: JThS N.S. 22, 29-
46.
1979. Melito of Sardes On Pascha and Fragments. Oxford: Clarendon Press
(OECT).
Haran, Menahem 1985. Temples and Temple-Service in Ancient Israel. An Inquiry
into Biblical Cult Phenomena and the Historical Setting of the Priestly School.
Winona Lake, Indiana: Eisenbrauns [repr. 1995, first ed. Oxford: Clarendon
Press 1978],
Harrington, Daniel J. and Jacques Cazeaux 1976. Pseudo-Philon. Les Antiquites
Bibliques. Tome I. Paris: Les editions du cerf (SC 229).
Härtel, Willhelm (ed.) 1868. S. Thasci Caecili Cypriani Opera Omnia [part I]. Vi-
enna: Gerold (CSEL 3.1).
(ed.) 1871. ... [parts II and III], Vienna: Gerold (CSEL 3.2/3.3).
Harvey, W. Wigan 1857. Sancti Irensei Episcopi Lugdunensis Libros quinque
adversus Haereses [vol. II]. Cantabrigiae: Typis Academicis.
Hauptman, Judith 2000. 'Mishnah as a response to "Tosefta"' In: Shaye J.D.
Cohen (ed.), The Synoptic Problem in Rabbinic Literature. Providence, RI:
Brown University (BJSt 326), 13-34.
2002. 'How Old is the Haggadah?' In: Judaism 51, 5-18.
Haussleiter, Johannes 1916. Victorini Episcopi Petavionensis Opera. Vienna:
Tempsky, Leipzig: Freytag (CSEL 49).
Hayward, Robert 1987. 'Saint Jerome and the Aramaic Targumim' In:
JSSt 32,105-123.
Heinemann, Isaak 1932. Philons griechische und jüdische Bildung. Kulturverglei-
chende Untersuchungen zu Philons Darstellung der jüdischen Gesetze. Breslau:
Marcus [repr. Hildesheim: Olms 1962].
Heinemann, Joseph 1973. '[Remnants of Compositions of the Translators (in
the Liturgy) in Antiquity]' In: Hasifrut 4, 362-375 [Hebrew],
1975. 'The Messiah of Ephraim and the Premature Exodus of the Tribe of
Ephraim' In: HThR 8,1-15.
1977. Prayer in the Talmud. Forms and Patterns. Berlin - New York: Walter
de Gruyter (SJ 9).
Heller, Erich (ed.) 1992. P. Cornelius Tacitus. Annalen. Lateinisch und deutsch [2nd
ed.]. Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft (and: Tusculum).
Hempel, Charlotte 2003. 'Kriterien zur Bestimmung "essenischer Verfasser-
schaft" von Qumrantexten' In: see Bergmeier 2003a, 71-85.
Hennecke, Edgar and Wilhelm Schneemelcher (eds) 1989. Neutestamentliche
Apokryphen in deutscher Ubersetzung. Vol II. Apostolisches, Apokalypsen und
Verwandtes [5lh ed.]. Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr/Paul Siebeck.
Bibliography 457
H e n n i n g e r , J o s e p h 1975. Les fetes de printemps chez les semites et la päque Israelite.

Paris : Librairie Lecoffre - J. Gabalda et Cie, Editeurs (EtB).
Henshke, David 1988/89. 'The Midrash of the Passover Haggada' In: Sidra 4, 33-
52 [Hebrew],
Hezser, Catherine 2001. Jewish Literacy in Roman Palestine. Tübingen: Mohr
Siebeck (TSAJ 81).
2003. 'Slaves and Slavery in Rabbinic and Roman Law' In: eadem (ed.),
Rabbinic Law in its Roman and Near Eastern Context. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck
(TSAJ 97), 133-176.
Higger, Michael 1937. [Masekhet Sofrim — the Tractate of the Scribes], New York:
Devey Rabbanan.
Hill, Charles F. 1999. 'The Epistula Apostolorum: An Asian Tract from the Time
of Polycarp' In: JECS 7,1-53.
Hills, Julian 1990. Tradition and Composition in the Epistula Apostolorum. Min-
neapolis: Fortress Press (HRD 24).
Hoffmann, David Zvi 1891. 'Zur Peßach-Haggadah' In: IsrMschr No. 4 = JüdPr
no. 17/18 vol. 22,13f.
1909. Midrasch Tanaim zum Deuteronomium [2 fascicles with consecutive
page numbering]. Berlin: Itzkowski.
Holl, Karl 1915. [Epiphanius I]. Epiphanius (Ancoratus und Panarion). Erster
Band. Ancoratus und Panarion Haer. 1-33. Berlin: Akademie-Verlag (GCS
Epiphanius 1).
1927. 'Ein Bruchstück aus einem bisher unbekannten Brief des Epipha-
nius' In: idem, Gesammelte Aufsätze zur Kirchengeschichte. Band II. Der Osten.
Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 204-224 [first in FS Jülicher
159-189; repr. 1964 of Tübingen 1928, J.C.B Mohr (Paul Siebeck)].
and Jürgen Dummer 1985. Epiphanius III. Panarion haer. 65-80. De fide. 2.
bearbeitete Auflage herausgegeben von Jürgen Dummer. Berlin: Akademie-
Verlag (GCS Epiphanius 3).
Huber, Wolfgang 1969. Passa und Ostern. Untersuchungen zur Osterfeier der alten
Kirche. Berlin: Alfred Töpelmann (BZNW 35).
Hübner, Reinhard M. 1997. 'Thesen zur Echtheit und Datierung der sieben
Briefe des Ignatius von Antiochien' In: ZAC 1, 44-72.
Hüttenmeister, Frowald G. 1987. Megilla. Schriftrolle. Tübingen: J.C.B.
Mohr/Paul Siebeck (ÜTY 11/10).
Hurst, D. and M. Adriaen 1969. S. Hieronymi Presbyteri Commentariorum in Ma-
theum libri TV. Turnhout: Brepols (CChr.SL 77).
458 Bibliography
[Hurwitz, Shim'on Ha-Levi 1923. Mahsor Vitry of our Teacher Simha, One of the
Pupils of Rashi, of Blessed Memory. Nürnberg: J. Bulka, repr. Jerusalem:
Alef 1963. Hebrew]
Inglebert, Herve 2001. 'L'histoire des heresies chez les heresiologues' In: Ber-
nard Pouderon and Yves-Marie Duval (eds), L'historiographie de l'eglise des
premiers siecles. Paris: Beauchesne (ThH 114), 105-125.
Irshai, Oded 2000. 'Dating the Eschaton: Jewish and Christian Apocalyptic
Calculations in late Antiquity' In: Albert I. Baumgarten (ed.), Apocalyptic
Time. Leiden - Boston - Köln: Brill (Numen.S SHR 86), 113-153.
Jaubert, Annie 1957. La date de la Cene. Calendrier biblicjue et liturgie chretienne.
Paris: Librairie Lecoffre, J. Gabalda (EtB).
Janeras, Sebastiä 1988. Le Vendredi-Saint dans la tradition liturgique Byzantine.
Structure et histoire de ses offices. Roma: Pontificio Ateneno S. Anselmo
(StAns 99 = ALit 13).
Jenkins, Claude 1908-1909. 'Origen on 1 Corinthians' In: JThS 9, 231-247.353-
372.500-514; 10, 29-51.
Jenkins, R.G. 1998. 'The First Column of the Hexapla: The Evidence of the Mi-
lan Codex (Rahlfs 1098) and the Cairo Genizah Fragment (Rahlfs 2005)' In:
see Flint, 88-102.
Jenner, Konrad D. 1997. 'The Development of Syriac Lectionary Systems. A
Discussion of the Opinion of P. Kannookadan' In: The Harp 10, 9-24.
2001. 'The Relation between Biblical Text and Lectionary Systems in the
Eastern Church' In: Ada Rapoport-Albert and Gillian Greenberg (eds),
Biblical Hebrews, Biblical Texts [Memorial volume Michael P. Weitzman].
Sheffield: Academic Press (JSOT.S 333, The Hebrew Bible and Its Ver-
sions 2), 376-411.
Jeremias, Joachim 1932. Die Passahfeier der Samaritaner und ihre Bedeutung für das
Verständnis der alttestamentlichen Passahüberlieferung. Glessen: Alfred Tö-
pelmann (BZAW 59).
Johnson, Maxwell E. 2004. 'Tertullian's "Diem Baptismo Sollemniorem" Revis-
ited: A Tentative Hypothesis on Baptism at Pentecost' In: idem and L. Ed-
ward Phillips (eds), Studia Liturgica Diversa [FS Paul F. Bradshaw]. Port-
land, Oregon: Pastoral Press (Studies in Church Music and Liturgy), 31-43.
Jungmann, Josef A. 1951. 'Die Vorverlegung der Ostervigil seit dem christli-
chen Altertum' In: L] 1, 48-54.
Kadari, Adiel 2003. "The Father and the Rabbi on the First Night of Passover —
the Study House Character of the Haggada in Tannaitic sources' In: Sidra
18, 53-71 [Hebrew],
Bibliography 459
Kahana, Menahem I. 2002. Sifre Zuta on Deuteronomy. Citations from a New Tan-
naitic Midrash. Jerusalem: The Hebrew University Magnes Press (The Rabbi
David Moses and Amalia Rosen Foundation) [Hebrew],
Kaiser, Otto 2003. 'Die Bindung Isaaks. Untersuchungen zur Eigenart und Be-
deutung von Genesis 22' In: idem, Zwischen Athen und Jerusalem. Studien
zur griechischen und biblischen Theologie, ihrer Eigenart und ihrem Verhältnis.
Berlin - New York: Walter de Gruyter (BZAW 320), 198-224.
Kany, Roland 1998. 'Sextus (Sententiae Sexti)' In: see Gahbauer, 557.
Kaplan, Steven 1992. The Beta Israel (Falasha) in Ethiopia. From the Earlest Times
to the Twentieth Century. New York - London: New York University Press.
Kasher, Menachem M. and Shmuel Ashknage 1967 [1st ed. 1954/55]. Hagadah
Shelemah. The Complete Passover Hagadah. ... Third ed. Jerusalem: Torah
Shelema Institute [Hebrew],
Kasher, Rimon 2000. 'On the Portrayal of Messiahs in Light of an Unknown
Targum to Lam 4:21-22' In: JSQ 7, 22-11.
Kasser, Rudolphe 1960. 'Acta Pauli 1959' In: RHPhR 40, 45-57.
Kaufman, Stephen A. 1973. Ά Unique Magic Bowl from Nippur' In:
JNES 32,170-174.
Kinzig, Wolfram 2002. Asterius. Psalmenhomilien. Eingeleitet, übersetzt und kom-
mentiert von Wolfram Kinzig. [2 Vols]. Stuttgart: Anton Hiersemann (BGrL
56 and 57).
Kisch, Guido 1949. Pseudo-Philo's Liber Antiquitatum Biblicarum. Notre Dame,
Indiana (PMS 10).
Kister, Menahem 2001. '5Q13 and the "Avodah: A Historical Survey and Its Sig-
nificance' In: DSD 8,136-148.
Klauser, Theodor 1967. 'Fest' In: RAC 7, 747-766.
Klein, Michael L. 1978. 'The Messiah "That Leadeth upon a Cloud", in the
Fragment-Targum to the Pentateuch?' In: JThS 29,137-139.
1980. The Fragment-Targums of the Pentateuch. According to their Extant
Sources. [2 vols; Vol. I. Texts, Indices and Introductory Essays and Vol. II.
Translation]. Rome: Biblical Institute Press (AnBib 76).
1984. 'Targumic Poems from the Cairo Geniza' In: Ruben Aharoni (ed.),
Biblical and Other Studies in Honor of Sheldon H. Blank. Columbia, Ohio:
Dept. of Judaic and Near Eastern Languages and Liteartures. The Ohio
State University - Winona Lake, Indiana: Eisenbrauns (HAR 8), 89-99.
1986. Genizah Manuscripts of Palestinian Targum to the Pentateuch [2 vols].
Cincinnati: Hebrew Union College Press.
1988. 'Not to be Translated in Public - i c n r r n mma xV In: JJS 39, 80-91.
460 Bibliography
1992. Targumic Manuscripts in the Cambridge Genizah Collections. Cam-

bridge: University Press (CULGS 8).
1997. "The Masorah to Onqelos: A Reflection of Targumic Consciousness'
In: HUCA 68, 63-75.
Klijn, Albertus Frederik Johannes 1962. The Acts of Thomas. Introduction - Text
[i.e. translation] - Commentary. Leiden: E.J. Brill (NT.S 5).
Klinghardt, Matthias 1991. "'...auf daß du den Feiertag heiligest". Sabbat und
Sonntag im antiken Judentum und frühen Christentum' In: Jan Assmann
and Theo Sundermeier (eds), Das Fest und das Heilige. Religiöse Kontrapunkte
zur Alltagswelt. Gütersloh: Gütersloher Verlagshaus Gerd Mohn (Studien
zum Verstehen fremder Religionen 1), 206-233.
1996. Gemeinschaftsmahl und Mahlgemeinschaft. Soziologie und Liturgie früh-
christlicher Mahlfeiern. Tübingen - Basel: A. Francke Verlag (TANZ 13).
Klöckener, Martin 2002. 'Festa sanctorum et martyrum' In: AugL 2 (fasc.
7/8), 1281-1305.
Klostermann, Erich 1933. Origenes Werke. Elßer Band. Origenes Matthäuserklä-
rung. II. Die lateinische Übersetzung der Commentariorum Series. Leipzig: J.C.
Hinrichs'sche Buchhandlung (GCS 38 = Origenes 11).
Kmosko, Michael 1907. 'S. Simeon Bar Sabba'e' In: PS [ed. Rene Graffin]
1.2, 659-1055.
Koch, Glen Alan 1976. A Critical Investigation of Epiphanius' Knowledge of the
Ebionites: A Translation and Critical Discussion of Panarion 30. [Dissertation],
Ann Arbor, Michigan USA - London, England: University Microfilms In-
ternational.
Koehler, Ludwig and Walter Baumgartner 1974. Hebräisches und Aramäisches
Lexikon zum Alten Testament. Lieferung II. rno-om [3rd ed.]. Leiden: E. J. Brill
(HALAT 2).
Kohler, Kaufman 1910. 'Verbot des Knochenzerbrechens' In: ARW13,153f.
Kraus, Thomas J. and Tobias Nicklas (eds) 2004. Das Petrusevangelium und die
Petrusapokalypse. Berlin - New York: Walter de Gruyter (GCS N.S. 11.
Neutestamentliche Apokryphen I).
Kretschmar, Georg 1954/55. 'Himmelfahrt und Pfingsten' In: ZKG 66, 209-253.
1986/87. 'Early Christian Liturgy in the Light of Contemporary Historical
Research' In: StLi 16, 31-51.
Kroll, John H. 2001. 'The Greek Inscriptions of the Sardis Synagogue' In:
HThR 94, 5-55.
Kroymann, Emil (ed.) 1906, Quinti Septimi Florentis Tertulliani Opera. Pars III.
Leipzig: Frey tag - Wien: Tempsky (CSEL 47).
Bibliography 461
(ed.) 1954, 'Tertullianus, De Corona' In: Quinti Septimi Florentis Tertulliani

Opera. Pars II. Opera montanistica. Turnhout: Brepols (CChr.SL 2), 1037-
1065.
(ed.) 1954a, 'Tertullianus, Adversus Ivdaeos' In: see 1954,1337-1396.
Kühner, Raphael and Bernhard Gerth 1898. Ausführliche Grammatik der griechi-
schen Sprache. Zweiter Teil: Satzlehre. Erster Band. Hannover - Leipzig:
Hahnsche Buchhandlung [repr. Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesell-
schaft 1963],
Kulczak-Rudiger, Friederike Maria; Peri Terbuyken, Matthias Perkams,
Heinzgerd Brakmann 2001. 'Jünglinge im Feuerofen' In: RAC 19, 346-388.
Kundert, Lukas 1998. Die Opferung/Bindung Isaaks. [Vol. 1:] Gen 22,1-19 im Al-
ten Testament, im Frühjudentum und im Neuen Testament. [Vol. 2:] Gen 22,1-
19 in frühen rabbinischen Texten. Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener Verlag
(WMANT 78 and 79).
Laaf, Peter 1970. Die Pascha-Feier Israels. Eine literarkritische und überlieferungs-
geschichtliche Studie. Bonn: Peter Hanstein (BBB 36).
Lampe, Geoffrey W.H. 1961. A Partistic Greek Lexicon. Oxford: Clarendon Press
[repr. 2003],
Lange, Armin 2003. 'Kriterien essenischer Texte' In: see Bergmeier 2003a, 59-
69.
Langer, Ruth 1998. To Worship God Properly. Tensions Between Liturgical Customs
and Halakhah in Judaism. Cincinnati: Hebrew Union College Press
(MHUC 22).
1998a. 'From Study of Scripture to a Reenactment of Sinai: The Emergence
of the Synagogue Torah Service' In: Worship 72, 43-67.
2003. 'The 'Amida as Formative Rabbinic Prayer' In: see Buchinger
2003a, 127-156.
Lapin, Hayim 1996. 'Rabbis and Public Prayers for Rain in Later Roman Pales-
tine' In: Adele Berlin (ed.), Religion and Politics in the Ancient near East. Be-
thesda, MD: University Press of Maryland (Studies and Texts in Jewish
History and Culture), 105-129.
Lauterbach, Jacob Z. 1933. Mekilta de-Rabbi Ishmael [3 vols], Philadelphia: the
Jewish Publication Society of America [repr. 1976].
Le Boulluec, Alain and Pierre Voulet 1981. Clement d'Alexandrie. Les Stromates.
Stromate V. Tome I. Paris: Les editions du cerf (SC 278).
Le Deaut, Roger 1963. La nuit pascale. Essai sur la signification de la Päque juwe ä
partir du Targum d'Exode XII 42. Rome: Institut Biblique Pontifical (An-
Bib 22).
462 Bibliography
and Jacques Robert 1979. Targum du Pentateuque. Traduction des deux recen-
sions palestiniennes completes ... Tome II. Exode et Levitique. Paris: Les editions
du cerf (SC 256).
Lefevre, Maurice and Gustave Bardy 1947. Hippolyte. Commentaire sur Daniel.
Lehnardt, Andreas 2002. 'The Samaritans (Kutim) in the Talmud Yerushalmi.
Constructs of "Rabbinic Mind" or Reflections of Social Reality?' In: Peter
Schäfer (ed.), The Talmud Yerushalmi and Graeco-Roman Culture III. Tübin-
gen: Mohr Siebeck (TSAJ 93), 139-160.
2004. Pesahim. Pesachopfer. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck (ÜTY II/3).
Leonhard, Clemens 2001. 'Ishodad's Commentary on Psalm 141,2: Α Quotation
from Theodore of Mopsuestia's Lost Commentary' In: Maurice Frank Wi-
les and Edward J. Yarnold (eds), Papers Presented at the Thirteenth Internati-
onal Conference on Patristic Studies held in Oxford 1999. Ascetica, Gnostica, Li-
turgica, Orientalia. Leuven: Peeters (StPatr 35), 449^157.
2002. 'Die Initiation nach der Expositio Officiorum Ecclesiae' In: Martin
Tamcke (ed.), Syriaca. Zur Geschichte, Theologie, Liturgie und Gegenwartslage
der syrischen Kirchen. 2. Deutsches Syrologen-Symposium (Juli 2000, Witten-
berg). Münster - Hamburg - London: Lit (Studien zur Orientalischen Kir-
chengeschichte 17), 321-354.
2003a. 'Die älteste Haggada. Übersetzung der Pesachhaggada nach dem
palästinischen Ritus und Vorschläge zu ihrem Ursprung und ihrer Be-
deutung für die Geschichte der christlichen Liturgie' In: ALW 45, 201-231.
2003b. 'Die Erzählung Ex 12 als Festlegende für das Pesachfest am Jeru-
salemer Tempel' In: Martin Ebner et al. (eds), Das Fest jenseits des Alltags.
Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener Verlag (JBTh 18), 233-260.
2003c. 'The Lord's Prayer Between Christian Ethics and Liturgy. Its Inter-
pretation in Theodore of Mopsuestia's Catechetical Homilies and the Re-
ception by later East-Syrian Authors' In: see Buchinger 2003a, 335-367.
2005a. '"Als ob sie vor mir ein Opfer dargebracht hätten". Erinnerungen
an den Tempel in der Liturgie der Synagoge' In: see Gerhards, 107-122
2005b. 'Die Pesachhaggada als Spiegel religiöser Konflikte' In: 2005a, 143-
171.
Leonhardt, Jutta 2001. Jewish Worship in Philo of Alexandria. Tübingen: Mohr
Siebeck (TSAJ 84).
Lerch, David 1950. Isaaks Opferung christlich gedeutet. Eine auslegungsgeschichtli-
che Untersuchung. Tübingen: Verlag J.C.B. Mohr/Paul Siebeck (BHTh 12).
Levine, Nachman 1999. 'Ten Hungers/Six Barleys: Structure and Redemption
in the Targum to Ruth' In: JSJ 30, 312-324.
Bibliography 463
Liddell, Henry George and Robert Scott 1940. A Greek-English Lexicon. A New
Edition Revised and Augmented Throughout by Sir Henry Stuart Jones. Oxford:
Clarendon Press [repr. 1961].
Lieberman, Saul 1942. Greek in Jewish Palestine. Studies in the Life and Manners of
Jewish Palestine in the II - IV centuries C. E. New York: JTS.
1955. The Tosefta [Seder Zeraim], New York: JTS.
1962. The Tosefta [Seder Moed], New York: JTS.
1962. The Tosefta [Seder Nezikin: Bava Kamma, Bava Mezi'a, Bava Batra].
New York: JTS.
Liebermann [sic], Saul 1964. Midrash Debarim Rabbah [2nd ed.]. Jerusalem: Wahr-
mann Books.
Lieberman, Saul 1967. The Tosefta [Seder Nasim: Yebamoth, Kethubuth, Ne-
darim, Nazir], New York: JTS.
1973. The Tosefta [Seder Nasim: Sotah, Gittin, Kiddushin], New York: JTS.
Lindemann, Andreas 2002. Review of: Thomas Lechner 1999. Ignatius adver-
sus Valentinianos? Chronologische und theologiegeschichtliche Studien zu
den Briefen des Ignatius von Antiochien. Leiden - Boston - Köln: Brill
(VigChr.S 47), In: ZAC 6,157-161.
Llewelyn, Stephen R. 2001. 'The Use of Sunday for Meetings of Believers in the
New Testament' In: NT 43, 205-223.
Lukinovich, Alessandra 1990. 'The Play of Reflections between Literary Form
and the Sympotic Theme in the Deipnosophistae of Athenaeus' In: Oswyn
Murray (ed.), Sympotica. A Symposium on the Symposion. Oxford: Claren-
don Press, 263-271.
Maas, Paul 1909. 'Das Karfreitagsalphabet Άρχοντες Εβραίων' In:
ByZ 18, 353-356.
MacLean, Arthur John 1894. East Syrian Daily Offices. London: Rivington, Per-
cival & Co. [repr. 1969].
[Mai, Angelo (ed.): repr.] 1857. Eusebius Caesariensis, De solemnitate paschali. ].-
P. Migne (ed.), PG 24, 693-706 [CPG 3479].
[repr.] 1857. S. Hippolyti ... Opera et Fragmenta. Pars I. - Exegetica. Frag-
menta in Danielem. J.-P. Migne (ed.), PG 10, 633-670 [CPG 1873].
[repr.] 1865. Eutychius Patriarchus Constantinopolitanus, Sermo de Pas-
chate et de Sacrosancta Eucharistia. J.-P. Migne (ed.), PG 86 II, 2391-2402
[CPG 6939].
Maier, Johann 1990. 'Zu Kult und Liturgie der Qumrangemeinde' In:
RdQ 14, 543-586.
1992. 'Shire 'Ölat hash-Shabbat. Some Observations on their Calendric
Implications and on their Style' In: Julio Trebolle Barrera and Luis Vegas
464 Bibliography
Montaner (eds), The Madrid Qumran Congress. Proceedings of the International

Congress on the Dead Sea Scrolls. Madrid 18-21 March, 1991. Volume Two.
Leiden - New York - Köln: E.J. Brill, Madrid: Editorial Complutense
(StTDJ 9.2), 543-560.
1996. Die Qumran-Essener: Die Texte vom Toten Meer. Band III. Einführung,
Zeitrechnung, Register und Bibliographie. München - Basel: Ernst Reinhardt
Verlag (UTB.W 1916).
1997. Die Tempelrolle vom Toten Meer und das 'Neue Jerusalem'. 11Q10 und
11Q20; 1Q32, 2Q24, 4Q554-555, 5Q15 und 11Q18. Übersetzung und Erläute-
rung. Mit Grundrissen der Tempelhofanlage und Skizzen zur Stadtplanung [3rd
ed.], München - Basel: Ernst Reinhardt Verlag (UTB.W 829).
2003. 'Liturgische Funktionen der Gebete in den Qumrantexten' In: see
Buchinger 2003a, 59-112.
Mandelbaum, Bernard 1962. Pesikta de Rav Kahana [2 vols]. New York: JTS.
Mann, Jacob 1940. The Bible as Read and Preached in the Old Synagogue. A Study
in the Cycles of the Readings from Torah and Prophets, as well as from Psalms,
and in the Structure of the Midrashic Homilies. Volume I. The Palestinian Trien-
nial Cycle: Genesis and Exodus. With a Hebrew Section Containing Manuscript
Material of Midrashim to these Books. Prolegomenon by Ben Zion Wacholder.
[Cincinnaty, Ohio: HUC; Repr. 1971:] New York: Ktav (The Library of Bib-
lical Studies).
Maraval, Pierre and Manuel C. Diaz y Diaz 1982. Εgegrie. Journal de Voyage (Iti-
neraire) ... Valerius du Bierzo. Lettre sur la Bse Egirie. ... Paris: Les editions du
cerf (SC 296).
Marcovich, Miroslav 1994. Iustini Martyris Apologiae pro Christianis. Berlin -
New York: Walter de Gruyter (PTS 38).
1986. Hippolytus. Refutatio Omnium Haeresium. Berlin - New York: Walter
de Gruyter (PTS 25).
1997. Iustini Maryris Dialogus com Tryphone. Berlin - New York: Walter de
Gruyter (PTS 47).
2001. Origenes. Contra Celsum Libri VIII. Leiden - Boston - Köln: Brill
(VigChr.S 54).
Marcus, Ralph 1934. Josephus. V. Jewish Antiquities, Books V-VIII. London: Wil-
liam Heinemann, Cambridge Massachusetts: Harvard University Press
(LCL 281) [repr. 1966],
1937. Josephus. VI. Jewish Antiquities, Books IX-XI... (LCL 326) [repr. 1966].
1943. Josephus. VII. Jewish Antiquities, Books XII-XIV ... (LCL 365)
[repr. 1966],
Bibliography 465
1953. Philo. Supplement II. Questions and Answers on Exodus ... (LCL 401)
[repr. 1961].
1963. Josephus. VIII. Jewish Antiquities, Books XV-XVII ... (LCL 410)
[repr. 1969],
Margulies, Mordecai 1953, 1954, 1956, 1958, 1960. Midrash Wayyikra Rabbah [4
Vols and an introductory Vol.]. Jerusalem - London: Ararat Publishing So-
ciety.
Martin, J. 1956. 'Deipnonliteratur' In: RAC 3, 658-666.
Martin, Matthew J. 2004. Origen's Theory of Language and the First Two Col-
umns of the Hexapla' In: HThR 97, 99-106.
Martola, Nils 1998. 'Eating the Passover Lamb in House-temples at Alexandria:
Some Notes on Passover in Philo' In: Ulf Haxen, Hanne Trautner-Kro-
mann, and Karen Lisa Goldschmidt Salamon (eds.), Jewish Studies in a New
Europe. Proceedings of the Fifth Congress of Jewish Studies in Copenhagen 1994
under the auspices of the European Association for Jewish Studies. Copenhagen:
C. A. Ritzel A/S International Publishers, Det Kongelige Bibliotek, 521-531.
Martone, Corrado 2003. 'Beyond Beyond the Essene Hypothesis? Some Observa-
tions on the Qumran Zadokite Priesthood' In: Henoch 25, 267-275.
Mateos, Juan 1959. Lelya - Sapra. Essai d'interpretation des matines chaldeennes.
Roma: Pont. Institutum Orientalium Studiorum (OCA 156).
1961. 'La vigile cathedrale chez Egerie' In: OCP 27, 281-312.
McGowan, Andrew 1999. Ascetic Eucharists. Food and Drink in Early Christian
Ritual Meals. Oxford: Clarendon Press (Oxford Early Christian Studies).
2004. 'Rethinking Agape and Eucharist in Early North African Christian-
ity' In: StLi 34,165-176.
Mercier, Charles and Frangoise Petit 1984. Quxstiones et Solutiones in Genesim.
Livres III-VI. Paris: Les editions du cerf (Les CEuvres de Philon
d'Alexandrie 34B).
Meshorer, Yaakov 1989. 'On Three Interesting Cults at Neapolis in Samaria' In:
Georges Le Rider (ed.), Kraay-Mßrkholm Essays [Memorial Volume Colin M.
Kraay and Otto Morkholm]. Louvain-la-Neuve: Institut Superieur
d'Archeologie et d'Histoire de l'Art, Seminaire de Numismatique Marcel
Hoc. (Publications d'histoire de Γ art et d'archeologie de l'Universite catho-
lique de Louvain 59 = Numismatica Lovaniensia 10), 173-177 + PI. LXXII.
2002. Ά Samaritan Syncretistic Passover Sacrifice on a Coin of Neapolis'
In: INJ 14, 194-195 +PL 21.
Metzger, Marcel 1985. Les Constitutions Apostoliques. Tome I. Livres I et II. Paris:
1986. Les Constitutions Apostoliques. Tome II. Livres III-VI... (SC 329).
466 Bibliography
1987. Les Constitutions Apostoliques. Tome III. Livres VII et VIII... (SC 336).
Michels, Thomas 1926. 'Das Frühjahrssymbol in österlicher Liturgie, Rede und
Dichtung des christlichen Altertums' In: JEW 6,1-15.
Milik, Joseph T. [and Roland de Vaux] 1977. Qumrän Grotte 4. [Vol.] II. I.
Archeologie par R. de Vaux. II. Tefillin, Mezuzot et Targums (4Q128^Q157).
Oxford: Clarendon Press (DJD 6).
1992. 'Les modeles arameens du livre d'Esther dans la grotte 4 du Qum-
rän' In: RdQ 15, 321^06.
Milikowski, Chaim Joseph 1981. Seder Olam. A Rabbinic Chronography. [Vol. 1:]
Introduction. [Vol. 2:] Text and Translation. Unpubl. Dissertation, Yale.
1995. 'On Parallels and Primacy. Seder Olam and Mekhilta d'Rabbi Shimon
ben Yohai on the Israelites in Egypt' In: Bar-Ilan 26/27, 221-225 [Hebrew],
Mirkin, Moshe Arye 1959. [Shemot Rabba. Part 7], Tel Aviv: Yavne ([Midrash
Rabba]) [Hebrew],
Mirski, Aharon 1977. Yosse Ben Yosse. Poems. Jerusalem: Bialik Institute [He-
brew].
Mohrmann, Christine 1962. 'Le conflit pascal au IIe Siecle. Note philologique'
In: VigChr 16,154-171.
Mondesert, Claude and Marcel Caster 1951. Clement d'Alexandrie Stromate I.
Mor, Sagit 2003. 'The Laws of Sacrifice or Telling the Story of the Exodus?' In:
Ζ ion 58, 297-311 [Hebrew],
Moreschini, Claudio and Rene Braun 2001. Tertullien. Centre Marcion Tome IV
(Livre IV). Paris: Les editions du cerf (SC 456).
and Paul Gallay 1990. Gregoire de Nazianze. Discours 38-41. Paris: Les edi-
tions du cerf (SC 358).
Mras, Karl 1954. Eusebius Werke. Achter Band. Die Praeparatio Evangelica. Erster
Teil. Einleitung. Die Bücher I bis X. Berlin: Akademie-Verlag (GCS Euse-
bius 8.1).
Naeh, Shlomo 1997/1998. 'The Torah Reading Cycle in Early Palestine: A Re-
Examination' In: Tarb. 67,167-187 [Hebrew],
Nau, Frangois Nicolas 1974. Martyrologues et menologues orientaux. I-XIII. Un
martyrologue et douze menologues syriaques. Turhout/Belgique: Editions
Brepols (PO 10.1 = no. 46).
Nemoy, Leon 1930. 'Al-Qirqisänl's Account of the Jewish Sects and Christian-
ity' In: HUCA 7, 317-397.
Neusner, Jacob 1978. The Tosefta. Translated from the Hebrew. Second Division.
Moed. The Order of Appointed Times. Atlanta, Georgia: Scholars Press (SFSHJ
214) [repr. 1999],
Bibliography 467
1984. Messiah in Context. Israel's History and Destiny in Formative Judaism.

Philadelphia: Fortress Press (The Foundations of Judaism: Method, Teleol-
ogy, Doctrine. Part Two: Teleology).
Nicholson, Oliver P. 1985. 'The Source of the Dates in Lactantius' Divine Insti-
tutes' In: JThS 36, 291-310.
Nicklas, Tobias 2001. 'Die "Juden" im Petrusevanglium (PCair 10759): Ein
Testfall' In: NTS 47, 206-221.
2002. 'Ein "neutestamentliches Apokryphon"? Zum umstrittenen Kanon-
bezug des sog. "Petrusevangeliums'" In: VigChr 56, 260-272.
Niederwimmer, Kurt 1998. The Didache. A Commentary. Translation by Linda Μ.
Maloney. Edited by Harold W. Attridge. Minneapolis: Fortress Press (Herme-
neia).
Noack, Bent 1962. 'The Day of Pentecost in Jubilees, Qumran, and Acts' In:
ASTI1, 73-95.
Noy, David and Hanswulf Bloedhorn (eds) 2004. Inscriptiones Judaicae Orientis.
Volume III. Syria und Cyprus. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck (TSAJ 102).
Otto, Eckart 1989. 'noD päsah' In: ThWAT 6, 659-682.
Parisot, Ioannes 1894. 'Aphraatis Sapientis Persae Demonstrationes' In: PS [ed.
Rene Graffin] 1.1 and 1.2,1-489.
Pastorino, Agostino 1956. [Firmicus Maternus.] De Errore Profanarum
Religionum. Firenze: 'La Nuova Italia' Editrice (BStS 27).
Pesce, Mauro 1979. Dio senza mediatori. Una tradizione teologica dal giudaismo al
cristianesimo. Brescia: Paideia Editrice (TRSR 16).
Porten, Bezalel and Ada Yardeni 1986, 1989, 1993, 1999. Textbook of Aramaic
Documents from Ancient Egypt [4 vols: 1, Letters; 2, Contracts; 3, Literature,
Accounts, Lists; 4, Ostraca and Assorted Inscriptions]. Jerusalem: Hebrew
University, Department of the History of the Jewish People.
Pourkier, Aline 1992. L'hiresiologie chez Epiphane de Salamine. Paris: Beauchesne
(CAnt 4).
Preuschen, Erwin 1903. Origenes Werke. Vierter Band. Der Johanneskommentar.
Leipzig: J.C. Hinrichs'sche Buchhandlung (GCS Origenes 4).
Prostmeier, Ferdinand R. 1999. Der Barnabasbrief. Übersetzt und erklärt von Fer-
dinand R. Prostmeier. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht (KAV 8).
Pummer, Reinhard 1979. 'The Book of Jubilees and the Samaritans' In:
EeT(O) 10,147-178.
Pusey, Philip Edward 1872. Sancti patris nostri Cyrilli Archiepiscopi Alexandrini
in D. Joannis Evangelium [3 vols]. Oxford: Clarendon Press [repr. 1965],
Qimron, Elisha and John Strugnell 1994. Qumran Cave 4. V. Miqsat Ma'ase ha-
Tora. Oxford: Clarendon Press (DJD 10).
468 Bibliography
Rabello, Alfredo Mordecha'i 1984. 'L'observance des fetes juives dans l'empire
remain' In: Wolfgang Haase (ed.), Principat. Religion (Hellenistisches Juden-
tum in römischer Zeit: Philon und Josephus [Forts.]). Berlin - New York: Wal-
ter de Gruyter (ANRW 11,21,2), 1288-1312.
Rabinovitz, Zvi Meir 1985. The Liturgical Poems of Rabbi Yannai According to the
Triennial Cycle of the Pentateuch and the Holidays. Volume I: Introduction. Li-
turgical Poems to Genesis, Exodus & Leviticus. Jerusalem: Bialik Institute [He-
brew],
1987. The Liturgical Poems of Rabbi Yannai According to the Triennial Cycle of
the Pentateuch and the Holidays. Volume II: Liturgical Poems to Numeri, Deuter-
onomium & Holidays. Indexes. Jerusalem: Bialik Institute [Hebrew],
Racle, G. 1966. 'Perspectives christologiques de l'homelie pascale de Meliton
de Sardes' In: Frank Leslie Cross (ed.), Papers presented to the Fourth Interna-
tional Confernce on Patristic Studies Held at Christ Church, Oxford, 1963. Part
III. Classica, Philosophica et Etica, Theologica, Augustiniana, Post-Patristica.
Berlin: Akademie-Verlag (StPatr 9 = TU 94), 263-269.
Radice, Betty 1969. Pliny. Letters, Books VIII-X. Panegyricus. Cambridge, Massa-
chusetts, London: Harvard University Press (LCL 59) [repr. 1992],
Radl, Walter 1983. 'Befreiung aus dem Gefängnis. Die Darstellung eines bibli-
schen Grundthemas in Apg 12' In: BZ N.S. 27, 81-96.
Ravid, Liora 2003. 'The Book of Jubilees and Its Calendar — A Reexamination'
In: DSD 10, 371-394.
Ray, Walter Dean 2000. August 15 and the Development of the Jerusalem Calendar.
Dissertation: Notre Dame, Indiana.
Refoule, Frangois and Martin Drouzy [1952]. Tertullien. Traite du bapteme. Paris:
Regan, Patrick 1981. 'The Fifty Days and the Fiftieth Day' In: Worship 55,194-
218.
Rehm, Bernhard 1965. Die Pseudoklementinen. II. Rekognitionen in Rufins Über-
setzung. Berlin: Akademie-Verlag (GCS).
Reif, Stefan C. 1993. Judaism and Hebrew Prayer. New Perspectives on Jewish Litur-
gical History. Cambridge: University Press.
2003. 'The Second Temple Period, Qumran Research, and Rabbinic Lit-
urgy: Some Contextual and Linguistic Comparisons' In: Esther G. Chazon
(ed.), Liturgical Perspectives: Prayer and Poetry in Light of the Dead Sea Scrolls.
Proceedings of the Fifth International Symposium of the Orion Center for the
Study of the Dead Sea Scrolls and Associated Literature, 19-23 January, 2000.
Leiden - Boston: Brill (StTDJ 48), 133-149.
Bibliography 469
Reifferscheid, August and Georg Wissowa (ed.) 1954, 'Tertullianus, De Ieiunio

Adversus Psychicos' In: Quinti Septimi Florentis Tertulliani Opera. Pars II.
Opera montanistica. Turnhout: Brepols (CChr.SL 2), 1255-1277.
Renoux, Athanase 1971. Le Codex Armenien Jerusalem 121. II. Turhout/Belgique:
Brepols (PO 36/2 = 168).
Richard, Marcel (ed.) 1956. Asterii Sophistae commentariorum in psalmos quae
supersunt accedunt aliquot homiliae anonymae. Oslo: A. W. Bragger (SO.S 6).
1961. 'La question pascale au IIe siecle' In: OrSyr 6,179-212.
Rieder, David 1968/69. O n the Targum Yerushalmi Ms Neofiti I' In: Tarb. 38,
81-86 [Hebrew].
Robert, Louis; Glen Warren Bowersock, and Christopher Prestige Jones 1940.
Le martyre de Pionios, pretre des Smyrne. Washington, DC: Dumbarton Oaks
Research Library and Collection.
Rofe, Alexander 1994. 'The Editing of the Book of Joshua in the Light of
4QJosh a ' In: George J. Brooke and Florentino Garcia Martinez (eds), New
Qumran Texts and Studies. Proceedings of the First Meeting of the international
Organization for Qumran Studies, Paris 1992. Leiden - New York - Köln:
Brill (StTDJ 15), 73-80.
Rordorf, Willy 1962. Der Sonntag. Geschichte des Ruhe- und Gottesdiensttages im
ältesten Christentum. Zürich: Zwingli Verlag (AThANT 43).
1980. 'Zum Ursprung des Osterfestes am Sonntag' In: ThZ 18, 167-189 =
1993. Lex Orandi Lex Credendi. Gesammelte Aufsätze zum 60. Geburtstag. Frei-
burg/Schweiz: Universitätsverlag (Par. 36), 29-51.
1980b. Review of Bacchiocchi 1977. In: ZKG 91,112-116.
1980c. 'Zum Problem des "Großen Sabbats" im Polykarp- und Pionius-
martyrium' In: Ernst Dassmann and K. Suso Frank (eds), Pietas [FS Bern-
hard Kötting]. Münster: Aschendorffsche Verlagsbuchhandlung
(JAC.E 8), 245-249 = 1993. Lex Orandi... 52-56.
Rousseau, Adelin; Louis Doutreleau, and Charles Mercier 1969. Irenee de Lyon.
Contre les herisies. Livre V. Paris: Les editions du cerf (SC 153).
and Louis Doutreleau 1974. Irenee ... Livre III. Tome II. ... (SC 211).
; Bertrand Hemmerdinger, Louis Doutreleau, and Chrales Mercier 1965.
Mme ... Livre IV. ... (SC 1002).
Rouwhorst, Gerard A.M. 1982. 'The Date of Easter in the Twelfth Demonstra-
tion of Aphraates' In: Elizabeth A. Livingstone (ed.), StPatr 17/3. Oxford -
New York - Toronto - Sydney - Paris - Frankfurt: Pergamon Press, 1374-
1380.
1987. 'L'evocation du mois de Nisan dans les Hymnes Sur la Resurrection
d'Ephrem de Nisibe' In: Han J.W. Drijvers, Rene Lavenant, Corrie Molen-
470 Bibliography
berg, and Gerrit Jan Reinink (eds), IV Symposium Syriacum. 1984. Literary
Genres in Syriac Literature. Groningen - Oosterhesselen 10 - 12 September.
Roma: Pont. Institutum Studiorum Orientalium (OCA 229), 101-110.
1989. Les Hymnes Pascales d'Ephrem de Nisibe. Analyse theologique et recher-
che sur Γevolution de la fete pascale chritienne ä Nisibe et ä Edesse et dans quel-
ques Eglises voisines au quatrieme siecle [2 vols]. Leiden - New York -
Kobenhavn - Köln: Ε. J. Brill (VigChr.S 7,1 and 2).
1996. 'The Quartodeciman Passover and the Jewish Pesach' In:
QuLi 77,152-173.
2001. 'The Reception of the Jewish Sabbath in Early Christianity' In: P.
Post, G. Rouwhorst, L. van Tongeren & A. Scheer (eds), Christian Feast and
Festival. The Dynamics of Western Liturgy and Culture. Leuven - Paris -
Sterming, Virginia: Peeters (Liturgia condenda 12), 223-266.
2001a. 'The Origins and Evolution of Early Christian Pentecost' In: see
Leonhard, 309-322.
2004. 'Liturgy on the Authority of the Apostles' In: Antonius Hilhorst
(ed.), The Apostolic Age in Patristic Thought. Leiden - Boston: Brill
(VigChr.S 70), 63-85.
2005. 'How Eschatological Was Early Christian Liturgy?' In: [in press]
StPatr 48, 335-349.
Rovner, Jay 2000. 'An Early Passover Haggadah According to the Palestinian
Rite' In: JQR 90, 337-396.
2001. 'An Early Passover Haggadah: Corrigenda' In: JQR 91, 429.
2002. Ά New Version of the Eres Israel Haggadah Liturgy and the Evolu-
tion of the Eres Israel Miqra' Bikkurim Midrash' In: JQR 92, 4 2 1 ^ 5 3 .
Runia, David T. 2002. O n e of Us or One of Them? Christian Reception of Philo
the Jew in Egypt' In: James L. Kugel (ed.), Shem in the Tents of Japhet. Essays
on the Encounter of Judaism and Hellenism. Leiden - Boston - Köln: Brill
(JSJ.S 74), 203-222.
Rupp, Joseph and Wilhelm Karl Reischl 1860. Cyrilli Hierolosymarum
archiepiscopi opera quae supersunt omnia [Vol. II]. [München, Repr. 1967:]
Hildesheim: Georg Olms Verlagsbuchhandlung.
Rutgers, Leonard Victor 2003. 'Justinian's Novella 146 Between Jews and
Christians' In: Richard Kalmin and Seth Schwartz (eds), Jewish Culture and
Society Under the Christian Roman Empire. Leuven: Peeters (Interdisciplinary
Studies in Ancient Culture and Religion 3), 385-407.
Sabatier, Petrus (ed.) 1751. Bibliorum Sacrorum Latinx versiones antiquse, seu Ve-
tus ltalica, et Cseterx quxcunque in Codicibus Mss. & antiquorum libris reperiri
Bibliography 471
potuerunt: Quse cum Vulgata Latina, & cum Textu Graeco comparantur... [vol.
II] Parisiis: Franciscus Didot and others.
Safrai, Shmuel and Ze'ev Safrai 1998. Haggadah of the Sages. The Passover
Haggadah. Jerusalem: Karta [Hebrew].
Safrai, Ze'ev 1990. 'The Origins of Reading the Aramaic Targum in Synagogue'
In: 7mm. 24/25,187-193.
Sanders, James Alvin 1965. The Psalms Scroll of Qumrän Cave 11. (llQPs"). Ox-
Sandmel, Samuel 1962. 'Parallelomania' In: JBL 81,1-13.
Satran, David 1996. 'Anti-Jewish Polemic in the Peri Pascha of Melito of Sardis:
The Problem of Social Context' In: Guy G. Stroumsa and Ora Limor (eds),
Contra Iudaeos. Ancient and Medieval Polemics Between Christians and Jews.
Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr/Paul Siebeck (TSMJ 10), 49-58.
Schäublin, Christoph 1974. Untersuchungen zu Methode und Herkunft der antio-
chenischen Exegese. Köln - Bonn: Peter Hanstein (Theoph. 23).
1988. 'Die Antiochenische Exegese des Alten Testaments' In: [D. Papan-
dreou (ed.)], UAnden Testament dans l'eglise. Chambesy - Geneve: Editions
du centre orthodoxe du patriarcat oecumenique (ETC 8), 115-128.
1992. 'Zur paganen Prägung der christlichen Exegese' In: Johannes van
Oort and Ulrich Wickert (eds), Christliche Exegese zwischen Nicaea und Chal-
cedon. Kampen, Netherlands: Kok Pharos, 148-173.
Schaller, Berndt 1999. '4000 Essener - 6000 Pharisäer. Zum Hintergrund und
Wert antiker Zahlenangaben' In: Bernd Kollmann, Wolfgang Reinbold,
and Annette Steudel (eds), Antikes Judentum und Frühes Christentum [FS
Hartmut Stegemann]. Berlin - New York: Walter de Gruyter
(BZNW 97), 172-182.
Schechter, Solomon 1887. Aboth de Rabbi Nathan, [repr. newly corrected edition
1967 by:] New York: Philipp Feldheim.
Schmidt, Carl and Isaak Wajnberg 1919. Gespräche Jesu mit seinen Jüngern nach
der Auferstehung. Ein katholisch-apostolisches Sendschreiben des 2. Jahrhunderts.
Leipzig: J.C. Hinrichs'sche Buchhandlung (TU 43).
and Wilhelm Schubart 1936. Πράξεις Παύλου. Acta Pauli. Nach dem Papy-
rus der Hamburger Staats- und Universitäts-Bibliothek. Glückstadt and Ham-
burg: J.J. Augustin (Veröffentlichungen aus der Hamburger Staats- und
Universitätsbibliothek. Neue Folge der Veröffentlichungen aus der Ham-
burger Stadtbibliothek. Band II).
Schmidt, Christiane 1999. 'Zephyrinus von Rom' In: see Gahbauer, 636.
Schoedel, William R. 1985. Ignatius of Antioch. A Commentary on the Letters of
Ignatius of Antioch. Piladelphia: Fortress Press (Hermeneia).
472 Bibliography
Schöllgen, Georg 1986. 'Die Didache als Kirchenordnung' In: JBAC 29, 5-26.
1998. 'Die Ignatianen als pseudepigraphisches Briefcorpus. Anmerkungen
zu den Thesen von Reinhard M. Hübner' In: ΖAC 2,10-19.
Schreiber, Stefan 2002. 'Aktualisierung göttlichen Handelns am Pfingsttag. Das
frühjüdische Fest in Apg 2,1' In: ZNW 93, 58-77.
Schröder, Guy and Edouard des Places 1991. Eusebe de Cesarie. La Preparation
evangelique. Livres VIII-IX-X. Paris: Les editions du cerf (SC 369).
Schulz, Hans-Joachim 1993. '"Seht, der Bräutigam kommt!" (Mt 25,6). Die ur-
kirchliche Passafeier und die Formung der ältesten Traditionsschicht im
Markus- und im Johannesevangelium' In: see Bradshaw, 453-472.
Schwartz, Eduard 1903. [Eusebius:] Die Kirchengeschichte [Vol. 1, books 1-5,
Rufinus' Latin Translation, ed. by Theodor Mommsen]. Leipzig: J. C.
Hinrichs'sche Buchhandlung (GCS Eusebius 2.1 [sie]).
Schwartz, Seth 2001. Imperialism and Jewish Society, 200 B.C.E. to 640 C.E.
Princeton - Oxford: Princeton University Press (Jews, Christians, and
Muslims from the Ancient to the Modern World) [repr. 2004],
2002. 'Rabbinization in the Sixth Century' In: see Lehnardt, 55-69.
Segal, Judah Ben-Zion 1963. The Hebrew Passover. From the Earliest Times to A. D.
70. London: Oxford University Press (LOS 12).
Shelemay, Kay Kaufman 1989. Music, Ritual, and Falasha History. East Lansing,
Michigan: Michigan State University Press (Ethiopian Series No. 17)
[repr. 1986],
Shepherd, David 2000. 'Will the Real Targum Please Stand Up? Translation
and Coordination in the Ancient Aramaic Versions of Job' In: JJS 51, 88-
116.
Shinan, Avigdor 1983. 'Live Translation: On the Nature of the Aramaic Tar-
gums to the Pentateuch' In: Prooftexts 3, 41—49.
1987. 'Sermons, Targums, and the Reading from Scriptures in the Ancient
Synagogue' In: Lee I. Levine (ed.), The Synagogue in Late Antiquity. Phila-
delphia: American Schools of Oriental Research, 97-110.
1990/91. '[Why is the Name of Moses, our Master, not mentioned in the
Haggada of Pesah?]' In: Amudim 39,172ff [Hebrew],
1992. The Embroidered Targum. The Aggadah in Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on
the Pentateuch. Jerusalem: The Magnes Press, The Hebrew University (Pub-
lication of the Perry Foundation for Biblical Research in the Hebrew Uni-
versity of Jerusalem) [Hebrew].
1992b. 'The Aramaic Targum as a Mirror of Galilean Jewry' In: Lee I. Le-
vine (ed.), The Galilee in Late Antiquity. New York - Jerusalem: JTS; Cam-
bridge, Massachusetts - London: Harvard University Press, 241-251.
Bibliography 473
1995/96. 'An Early Quotation from Targum Pseudo-Jonathan?' In: Tarb.

65, 331f [Hebrew],
Siegert, Folker 1999. 'Der antike Synagogengottesdienst als multikulturelles
Ereignis' In: FJB 26, 99-109.
Sirat, Colette 2002. Hebrew Manuscripts of the Middle Ages. Cambridge: Univer-
sity Press [original Hebr. 1992, French 1994],
Slater, William J. 1990. 'Sympotic Ethics in the Odyssey' In: see Lukino-
vich, 213-220.
Smith, Dennis E. 2003. From Symposium to Eucharist. The Banquet in the Early
Christian World. Minneapolis: Fortress.
Sokoloff, Michael 1974. The Targum to Job from Qumran Cave XI. Ramat-Gan:
Bar-Ilan University.
2002. A Dictionary of Jewish Palestinian Aramaic of the Byzantine Period. Sec-
ond Edition. Ramat-Gan: Bar Ilan University Press - Baltimore/London:
The Johns Hopkins University Press [together with] 2002. Offprint from: A
Dictionary of Jewish Palestinian Aramaic of the Byzantine Period. Second Edi-
tion, 823-847.
2002b. A Dictionary of Jewish Babylonian Aramaic of the Talmudic and Geonic
Periods. Ramat-Gan: Bar Ilan University Press, Baltimore and London: The
Johns Hopkins University Press (Dictionaries of Talmud, Midrash and
Targum III & Publications of The Comprehensive Aramaic Lexicon Project).
and Joseph Yahalom 1999. Jewish Palestinian Poetry with Introduction and
Commentary. Jerusalem: IASH (Publications of the IASH, Section of Hu-
manities) [Hebrew],
Sperber, Alexander 1959. The Bible in Aramaic based on Old Manuscripts and
Printed Texts. Volume I. The Pentateuch According to Targum Onkelos. Leiden:
E.J. Brill.
1959. The Bible in Aramaic ... Volume II. The Former Prophets According to
Targum Jonathan. Leiden: E.J. Brill.
1962. The Bible in Aramaic ... Volume III. The Latter Prophets According to
Targum Jonathan. Leiden: E.J. Brill.
1968. The Bible in Aramaic ... Volume IV A. The Hagiographa. Transition from
Translation to Midrash. Leiden: E.J. Brill.
Staats, Reinhart 1969. 'Die törichten Jungfrauen von Mt 25 in gnostischer und
antignostischer Literatur' In: Walther Eltester (ed.), Christentum und Gnosis.
Berlin: Alfred Töpelmann (BZNW 37), 99-115.
Staehle, Karl 1931. Die Zahlenmystik bei Philon von Alexandria. Leipzig - Berlin:
B.G. Teubner.
474 Bibliography
Stec, David M. 1994. The Text of the Targum of Job. An Introduction and Critical
Edition. Leiden - New York - Köln: E.J. Brill (AGJU 20).
Stegemann, Hartmut 1992. 'The Qumran Essenes - Local Members of the Main
Jewish Union in Late Second Temple Times' In: Julio Trebolle Barrera and
Luis Vegas Montaner (eds), The Madrid Qumran Congress. Proceedings of the
International Congress on the Dead Sea Scrolls. Madrid 18-21 March, 1991. Lei-
den - New York - Köln: E.J. Brill - Madrid: Editorial Complutense
(StTDJ 11.1), 83-166.
Stein, Siegfried 1957. 'The Influence of Symposia Literature on the Literary
Form of the Pesah Haggadah' In: JJS 8,13-44.
Steiner, Richard C. 1997. 'The "Aramean" of Deuteronomy 26:5: Peshat and
Derash' In: Mordechai Cogan, Barry L. Eichler, and Jeffrey H. Tigay (eds),
Tehillah le-Moshe. Biblical and Judaic Studies [FS Moshe Greenberg], Winona
Lake, Indiana: Eisenbrauns, 127-138.
Steinmetzer, F. 1950. 'Arbeitsruhe' In: RAC 1, 590-595.
Stemberger, Günter 1974. 'Die Patriarchenbilder der Katakombe in der Via
Latina im Lichte der jüdischen Tradition' In: Kairos 16, 19-78 = 1990. Stu-
dien zum rabbinischen Judentum. Stuttgart: Kath. Bibelwerk (SBAB 10), 89-
176.
1983. Die römische Herrschaft im Urteil der Juden. Darmstadt: Wissenschaft-
liche Buchgesellschaft (EdF 195).
1987. 'Pesachhaggada und Abendmahlsberichte des Neuen Testaments'
In: Kairos 29, 147-158 = 1990. Studien zum rabbinischen Judentum. Stuttgart:
Kath. Bibelwerk (SBAB 10), 357-374.
1991. Pharisäer, Sadduzäer, Essener. Stuttgart: Katholisches Bibelwerk
(SBS 144).
1993. 'Hieronymus und die Juden seiner Zeit' In: see Baumann, 347-364.
1996. Introduction to the Talmud and Midrash [2nd ed.]. Edinburgh: T&T
Clark.
1998. 'Jewish-Christian Contacts in Galilee (Fifth to Seventh Centuries)'
In: Arieh Kofsky and Guy G. Stroumsa (eds), Sharing the Sacred. Religious
Contacts and Conflicts in the Holy Land. First-Fifteenth Centuries CE. Jerusa-
lem: Yad Izhak Ben Zvi, 131-146.
1998a. 'Juden' In: RAC 19 [vol. pbl.: 2001], 161-245.
1999. 'Die Umformung des palästinischen Judentums nach 70: Der Auf-
stieg der Rabbinen' In: Aharon Oppenheimer (ed.), Jüdische Geschichte in
hellenistisch-römischer Zeit. Wege der Forschung: Vom alten zum neuen Schürer.
München: Oldenburg (Schriften des Historischen Kollegs. Kolloquien
44), 85-99.
Bibliography 475
1999a. 'Qumran, die Pharisäer und das Rabbinat' In: see Schaller, 210-224.
1999b. 'Schriftlesung II. Judentum' In: TRE 30, 558-563.
2001. 'Was there a "Mainstream Judaism" in the Late Second Temple Pe-
riod?' In: The Review of Rabbinic Judaism 4,189-208.
2002. 'Die Verbindung von Juden mit Häretikern in der spätantiken römi-
schen Gesetzgebung' In: Manfred Hutter, Wassilios Klein, and Ulrich
Vollmer (eds), Hairesis [FS Karl Hoheisel], Münster Westfalen: Aschendorff
Verlag (JAC.E 34), 203-214.
2002b. 'Einführung in die Tora. Pflichten eines Vaters aus Sicht der Rab-
binen' In: Renate Brandscheidt and Theresia Mende (eds), Schöpfungsplan
und Heilsgeschichte [FS Ernst Haag]. Trier: Paulinus Verlag, 299-317.
2003. 'Die Megillot als Festlesungen der jüdischen Liturgie' In: see Leon-
hard 2003b, 261-276.
2003a. '"Moses Received Tora..." (M. Avot 1.1). Rabbinic Conceptions of
Revelation' In: Jerusalem, Alexandria, Rome. Studies in Ancient Cultural Inter-
action [FS A. Hilhorst], Leiden: Brill (JSJ.S 82), 285-299.
2004. '"Himmlische" und "Irdische" Liturgie in der rabbinischen Zeit' In:
see Buchinger, 92-102.
Stendebach, Franz Josef 1973. 'Das Verbot des Knochenzerbrechens bei den
Semiten' In: BZ 17, 29-38.
Stern, Menahem 1974. Greek and Latin Authors on Jews and Judaism [Vol. 1]. From
Herodotus to Plutarch. Jerusalem: The Israel Academy of Sciences and Hu-
manities (Publications of the I ASH, Section of Humanities).
1980. Greek and Latin Authors on Jews and Judaism [Vol. 2], From Tacitus to
Simplicius. Jerusalem: ...
Stern, Sacha 2001. Calendar and Community. A History of the Jewish Calendar. Sec-
ond Century BCE - Tenth Century CE. Oxford: University Press.
Stewart-Sykes, Alistair 1997. "The Asian Context of the New Prophecy and of
Epistula Apostolorum' In: VigChr 51, 416^438.
1998. The Lamb's High Feast. Melito, Peri Pascha and the Quartodeciman Pas-
chal Liturgy at Sardis. Leiden - Boston - Köln: Brill (VigChr.S 42).
Stökl [Ben Ezra], Daniel 2001. 'The Biblical Yom Kippur, the Jewish Fast of the
Day of Atonement and the Curch Fathers' In: see Leonhard, 493-502.
2003. The Impact of Yom Kippur on Early Christianity. The Day of Atonement
from Second Temple Judaism to the Fifth Century. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck
(WUNT 163).
Strobel, August 1977. Ursprung und Geschichte des frühchristlichen Osterkalenders.
Berlin: Akademieverlag (TU 121).
476 Bibliography
1984. Texte zur Geschichte des frühchristlichen Osterkalenders. Münster West-

falen: Aschendorffsche Verlagsbuchhandlung (LQF 64).
Synek, Eva 1997. 'Dieses Gesetz ist gut, heilig, es zwingt nicht...' Zum Gesetzesbe-
griff der Apostolischen Konstitutionen. Wien: Plöchl (KuR 21).
Szymusiak, Jan-M. 1987. Athanase d'Alexandrie. Deux Apologies. Ä l'empereur
Constance. Pour safuite. Paris: Les editions du cerf (SC 56bis).
Tabory, Joseph 1977/78. '[About the Text of the Haggada in the Time of the
Temple]' In: Sinai 82, 97-108 [Hebrew],
1996. The Passover Ritual Throughout the Generations. [Tel-Aviv:] Hakibuts
hameuhad ('Hillel Ben-Chayyim' Library) [Hebrew].
1996a. 'The Crucifixion of the Paschal Lamb' In: ]QR 86, 395-406.
2000. Jewish Festivals in the Time of the Mishnah and Talmud. Jerusalem: The
Hebrew University Magnes Press [3rd ed., 1st ed. 1995],
Taft, Robert F. 1986. The Liturgy of the Hours in East and West. Collegeville: The
Liturgical Press.
1990. 'In the Bridegroom's Absence. The Paschal Triduum in the Byzan-
tine Church' In: Ildebrando Scicolone (ed.), La celebrazione del Triduo Pa-
squale. Anamnesis e Mimesis. Atti del III Congresso Internazionale di Liturgia.
Roma, Pontificio Istituto Liturgico, 9-13 Maggio 1988. Rome: Pontificio
Ateneo S. Anselmo (StAns 102 = ALit 14), 71-97.
1997. 'Historicism Revisited' In: idem, Beyond East and West. Problems in
Liturgical Understanding [2nd ed.]. Rome: Edizioni Orientalia Christiana
Pontifical Oriental Institute, 31-49 [repr. of 1982],
2001. 'Anton Baumstark's comparative Liturgy Revisited' In: idem and
Gabriele Winkler (eds), Acts of the International Congress Comparative Lit-
urgy. Fifty Years After Anton Baumstark (1872-1948). Rome, 25-29 September
1998. Roma: Pontificio Istituto Orientale (OCA 265), 191-232.
Tal, Abraham 2001. 'Is There a Raison d'etre for and Aramaic Targum in a He-
brew-Speaking Society?' In: REJ 160, 357-378.
Talley, Thomas J. 1973. 'History and Eschatology in the Primitive Pascha' In:
Worship 47, 212-221.
1991. The Origins of the Liturgical Year. Second, Emended Edition. College-
ville, Minnesota: The Liturgical Press (A Pueblo Book) [1st ed. 1986],
Talmon, Shemaryahu 2000. 'Calendars and Mishmarot' In: Lawrence H.
Schiffman and James C. VanderKam (eds), Encyclopedia of the Dead Sea
Scrolls. Oxford: Oxford University Press, Vol. 1,108-117.
; Jonathan Ben-Dov, and Uwe Gleßmer 2001. Qumran Cave 4. XVI. Calen-
drical Texts. Oxford: Clarendon Press (DJD 21).
Bibliography 477
Tarchnischvili, Michel 1959. Le Grand Lectionnaire de l'eglise de Jerusalem [1st vol.,

tr.]. Louvain: Secretariat du CorpusSCO (transl. CSCO 189 = CSCO.110).
Taylor, Joan E. 1993, Christians and the Holy Places. The Myth of Jewish-Christian
Origins, Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Thackeray, Henry St. J. 1926. Josephus. I. The Life. Against Apion. London: Wil-
liam Heinemann, Cambridge Massachusetts: Harvard University Press
(LCL 186) [repr. 1961].
1927. Josephus. II. The Jewish War, Books I-III... (LCL 203) [repr. 1967],
1928. Josephus. III. The Jewish War, Books IV-VII... (LCL 210) [repr. 1968].
1930. Josephus. IV. Jewish Antiquities, Books I-IV... (LCL 242) [repr. 1967],
Theodor, Jehuda and Chanokh Albeck 1912-1936. Midrash Bereshit Rabba. Sec-
ond Printing with Additional Corrections by Ch. Albeck [3 vols], [repr. 1996:]
Jerusalem: Shalem Books.
Thornton, Timothy C. G. 1989. 'Problematic Passovers. Difficulties for Diaspora
Jews and Early Christians in determining Passover Dates during the First
Three Centuries A.D.' In: Elisabeth A. Livingstone (ed.), Studia Patristica.
Vol. XX. Papers presented to the Tenth International Conference on Patristic
Studies held in Oxford 1987. Critica, Classica, Orientalia, Ascetica, Liturgica.
Leuven: Peeters Press (StPatr 20), 402-408.
Thraede, Klaus 2004. 'Noch einmal: Plinius d. J. und die Christen' In:
ZNW 95,102-128.
Tidwell, Nevill L.A. 1999. 'Didache XIV:1 (κατά κυριακήν δέ κυρίου) Revis-
ited' In: VigChr 53,197-207.
Tigchelaar, Eibert J.C. 2003. 'The White Dress of the Essenes and the Pythago-
reans' In: Florentino Garcia Martinez and Gerard P. Luttikhuizen (eds); Je-
rusalem, Alexandria, Rome [FS A. Hilhorst]. Leiden - Boston: Brill (JSJ.S 82),
301-321.
Towner, Wayne Sibley 1973. The Rabbinic 'Enumeration of Scriptural Examples'. A
Study of a Rabbinic Pattern of Discourse with Special Reference to Mekhilta d'R.
Ishmael. Leiden: E.J. Brill (StPB 22).
Treu, Kurt 1973. 'Die Bedeutung des Griechischen für die Juden im römischen
Reich' In: Kairos 15, 123-144.
Turetsky, Morris 1963. A Critical Edition and Translation of the Karaite Liturgy for
Passover and a Comparison of it with the Corresponding Rabbanite and Samari-
tan Liturgies. Leeds: Ph. D. Thesis unpubl.
Turner, C.H. 1909. 'Notes on the Text of Origen's Commentary on I Corin-
thians' In: JThS 10, 270-276.
Ulrich, Eugene 1994. '4QJosh a and Joshua's First Altar in the Promised Land'
In: George J. Brooke and Florentino Garcia Martinez (eds), New Qumran
478 Bibliography
Texts and Studies. Proceedings of the First Meeting of the International Organi-
zation for Qumran Studies. Paris 1992. Leiden - New York - Köln: E.J. Brill
(StTDJ 15), 89-104.
1995. Qumran Cave 4. IX. Deuteronomy, Joshua, Judges, Kings. Oxford: Clar-
endon Press (DJD 14).
Urbach, Ephraim Ε. 1978. Sefer Pitron Torah. A Collection ofMidrashim and Inter-
pretations. Jerusalem: The Magness Press, The Hebrew University, The
Jewish National and University Library [Hebrew].
2002. '[Askesis and Suffering in the Law of the Sages]' In: [1st publication
1960/61 in FS Yitzhak Baer. 48-68] = [The World of the Sages. Collected
Studies. 1st ed. 1988, 2nd ed. 2002, Jerusalem: The Hebrew University Mag-
nes Press, 437-457; Hebrew],
Vaganay, Leon 1930. L'Evangile de Pierre. Preface par le R.P. M.-J. Lagrange [2nd
ed.]. Paris : Librairie Lecoffre, J. Gabalda et Fils (EtB).
Van de Sandt, Huub and David Flusser 2002. The Didache. Its Jewish Sources and
its Place in Early Judaism and Christianity. Assen: Royal Van Gorcum, Min-
neapolis: Fortress Press (CRI 3.5).
Van der Horst, Pieter W. 2002 [2001], 'Greek in Jewish Palestine in the Light of
Jewish Epigraphy' In: Japheth in the Tents of Shem. Studies on Jewish Hellen-
ism in Antiquity. Leuven - Paris - Sterling, Virginia: Peeters (Contributions
to Biblical exegesis and theology 32), 9-26.
Van der Ploeg, J.P.M.; A.S. Van der Woude, and B. Jongeling 1971. Le Targum
de Job de la Grotte XI de Qumran. Leiden: E.J. Brill (Koninklijke Nederlandse
Akadmie von Wetenschappen).
Van Seters, John 1983. 'The Place of the Yahwist in the History of Passover and
Massot' In: ZAW 95,167-182.
VanderKam, James C. 1979. 'The Origin, Character, and Early History of the
364-Day Calendar: A Reassessment of Jaubert's Hypotheses' In:
CBQ 41, 390-411.
1989. The Book of Jubilees. A Critical Text [2 vols]. Louvain: Peeters (text
CSCO 510 = CSCO.Ae 87, transl. CSCO 511 = CSCO.Ae 88).
Veijola, Timo 2000. Moses Erben. Studien zum Dekalog, zum Deuteronomismus und
zum Schriflgelehrtentum. Stuttgart - Berlin - Köln: W. Kohlhammer.
Veltri, Giuseppe 1994. 'Die Novelle 146 περί Εβραίων. Das Verbot des Tar-
gumvortrags in Justinians Politik' In: Martin Hengel and Anna Maria
Schwemer (eds), Die Septuaginta zwischen Judentum und Christentum.
Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr/Paul Siebeck (WUNT 72), 116-130.
Verheyden, Joseph 2003. 'Epiphanius on the Ebionites' In: see Bauckham, 182-
208.
Bibliography 479
Visonä, Giuseppe 1988. Pseudo Ippolito. In sanctum Pascha. Milano: Universitä

Cattolica del Sacro Cuore (SPMed 15).
1988a. 'Pasqua quartodecimana e cronologia evangelica della passione'
In: EL 102, 259-315.
1995. Ostern/Osterfest/Osterpredigt. I. Geschichte, Theologie, Liturgie'
In: TRE 25, 517-530.
Vööbus, Arthur 1979. The Didascalia Apostolorum in Syriac. II. Chapters XI-XXVI
[2 vols], Louvain: Secretariat du CorpusSCO (text CSCO 407 = CSCO.S 179,
transl. CSCO 408 = CSCO.S 180).
Vogt, Enrst 1983. 'Tragiker Ezechiel' In: idem and Nikolaus Walter (eds), Poeti-
sche Schriften. Gütersloh: Gütersloher Verlagshaus Gerd Mohn
(JESHRZ4), 113-133.
Volz, Paul 1934. Die Eschatologie der jüdischen Gemeinde im neutestamentlichen
Zeitalter. Tübingen: Verlag von J.C.B. Mohr (Paul Siebeck) [I st ed. 1903, Jü-
dische Eschatologie von Daniel bis Akiba],
Wacholder, Ben Zion 1974. Eupolemus. Α Study of Judaeo-Greek Literature. Cin-
cinnati - New York - Los Angeles - Jerusalem: Hebrew Union Col-
lege/Jewish Institute of Religion (MHUC 3).
2001. 'Calendar Wars Between the 364 and the 365-Day Year' In: RdQ 20
vol. 77, 207-222.
and Sholom Wacholder 1995. 'Patterns of Biblical Dates and Qumran's
Calendar: the Fallacy of Jaubert's Hypothesis' In: HUCA 6 6 , 1 ^ 0 .
Wagenaar, Jan A. 2000. 'The Cessation of the Manna. Editorial Frames for the
Wilderness Wandering in Exodus 16,35 and Joshua 5,10-12' In:
ZAW112,192-209.
2005. 'The Priestly Festival Calendar and the Babylonian New Year Festi-
vals. Origin and Transformation of the Ancient Israelite Festival Year' In:
Robert P. Gordon and Johannes C. de Moor (eds), The Old Testament in Its
World. Papers Read at the Winter Meeting, January 2003. The Society for Old
Testament Study and at the Joint Meeting, July 2003 The Society for Old Testa-
ment Study and Het Oudtestamentisch Werkgezelschap in Nederland en Belgie.
Leiden - Boston: Brill (OTS 52), 218-252.
Wallraff, Martin 2001. Christus Verus Sol. Sonnenverehrung und Christentum in
der Spätantike. Münster Westfalen: Aschendorff (JAC.S 32).
Wambacq, Benjamin N. 1976. 'Les origines de la Pesah Israelite' In: Bib. 57, 206-
224. 301-326.
1980. 'Les Massot' In: Bib. 61, 31-54.
1981. 'Pesah - Massot' In: Bib. 62, 499-518.
480 Bibliography
Weber, Robert (ed.) 1977. Ad Quirinum. Turnhout: Brepols (Sancti Cypriani

Episcopi Opera 1 = CChr.SL 3), 1-179.
Weimar, Peter 1995. 'Zum Problem der Entstehungsgeschichte von Ex 12,1-14'
In: ZÄW107,1-17.
Weiser, Alfons 1981. Die Apostelgeschichte. Kapitel 1-12. Gütersloh: Gütersloher
Verlagshaus (ÖTBK 5/1 = GTB.S 507).
Weiss, Isaak Hirsch 1862. Sifra. Commentar zu Leviticus aus dem Anfange des III.
Jahrhunderts. ... Wien: Jacob Schlossberg's Buchhandlung.
Weissenstern, Nachum 1983. The Piyyutim of Johanan ha-Kohen Birabbi Jehoshua.
Critical Edition with an Introduction. Jerusalem: unpubl. PhD Dissertation.
Weitzman, Steven 1999. 'From Feasts into Mourning: The Violence of Early
Jewish Festivals' In: JR 79, 545-565.
Wellhausen, Julius 1927. Prolegomena zur Geschichte Israels [6th ed.]. Berlin a.o.:
de Gruyter [repr. 1981],
Wendland, Paul 1896. 'Die Therapeuten und die Philonische Schrift vom Be-
schaulichen Leben' In: Alfred Fleckeisen (ed.), JCPh.S 22. Leipzig: B.G.
Teubner, 693-771.
1897. Philonis Alexandrini Opera Quae Supersunt. Vol. II. Berlin: Georg
Reimer [repr. Walter de Gruyter 1962].
- - 1898. ... Vol. III. [repr. 1962],
Wernberg-Meller, Preben 1962. 'An Inquiry into the Validity of the Text-Criti-
cal Argument for an Early Dating of the Recently Discovered Palestinian
Targum' In: VT12, 312-330.
West, Fritz 2001. 'Baumstark's Tree and Thoughts after Harvest' In: Robert F.
Taft and Gabriele Winkler (eds), Acts of the International Congress.
Comparative Liturgy Fifty Years After Anton Baumstark (1872-1948). Rome,
25-29 September 1998. Roma: Pontificio Istituto Orientale (OCA 265), 163-
189.
Whittaker, Molly (ed.) 1956. Die Apostolischen Väter. I. Der Hirt des Hermas. Ber-
lin: Akademie-Verlag (GCS).
Williams, Frank 1994. The Panarion of Epiphanius of Salamis. Books II and III (Sects
47-80, De Fide). Leiden - New York - Köln: E. J. Brill (NHS 36).
Williams, Margaret 1999. 'The Jews of Byzantine Venusia: The Family of
Faustinus I, the Father' In: JJS 50, 38-52.
Wilson, E. Jan 2000. 'llQtgJob and the Peshitta Job' In: Lawrence H. Schiffman,
Emanuel Τον, and James C. VanderKam (eds), The Dead Sea Scrolls. Fifty
Years After Their Discovery. Proceedings of the Jerusalem Congress, July 20-25,
1997. Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society and The Shrine of the Book, Is-
rael Museum, 411-417.
Bibliography 481
Witakowski, Witold 1987. 'The Origin of the "Teaching of the Apostels'" In:
see Rouwhorst, 161-171.
Wright, William; Norman McLean, and Adalbert Merx 1898. The Ecclesiastical
History of Eusebius in Syriac [and the collation of the Armenian version].
Cambridge: University Press.
Wutz, Franz 1914. Onomastica Sacra. Untersuchungen zum Liber Interpretationis
Nominum Hebraicorum des Hl. Hieronymus [3 parts]. Leipzig: J.C.
Hinrichs'sche Buchhandlung (TU 91 = 3.11).
Yadin, Yigael 1983. The Temple Scroll. [Vol. 1:] Introduction. [Vol. 2:] Text and
Commentary. Jerusalem: The Israel Exploration Society - The Institute of
Archeology of the Hebrew Universiy of Jerusalem - The Shrine of the
Book.
Yahalom, Joseph 1999. Poetry and Society in Jewish Galilee of Late Antiquity. Tel
Aviv: Hakibbutz Hameuchad [Hebrew].
York, Anthony D. 1974. 'The Dating of Targumic Literature' In: JSJ 5, 49-62.
Young, F[rances M.] 1997. 'The Fourth Century Reaction against Allegory' In:
Elisabeth A. Livingstone (ed.), Papers Presented at the Twelfth International
Conference on Patristic Studies Held in Oxford 1995. Biblica et Apocrypha, As-
cetica, Liturgica. Leuven: Peeters (StPatr 30), 120-125.
Young, Norman H. 2003. '"The Use of Sunday for Meetings of Believers in the
New Testament": A Response' In: NT 45, 111-122.
Yuval, Israel Jacob 1995/96. 'The Haggadah of Passover and Easter' In: Tarb. 95,
5-28 [Hebrew],
1999. 'Easter and Passover As Early Jewish-Christian Dialogue' In: Paul F.
Bradshaw and Lawrence A. Hoffman (eds), Passover and Easter. Origin and
History to Modern Times. Notre Dame, Indiana: University of Notre Dame
Press (TLT 5), 98-124.
2000. 'Two Nations in Your Womb'. Perceptions of Jews and Christians. Tel
Aviv: Am Oved [Hebrew].
Zarren-Zohar, Efrat 1999. 'From Passover to Shavuot' In: Paul F. Bradshaw and
Lawrence A. Hoffman (eds) 1999, Passover and Easter. The Symbolic Struc-
turing of Sacred Seasons. Notre Dame, Indiana: University of Notre Dame
Press (TLT 6), 71-93.
Zerfass, Rolf 1968. Die Schriftlesung im Kathedraloffizium Jerusalems. Münster
Westfalen: Aschendorffsche Verlagsbuchhandlung (LQF 48).
Ziegler, Joseph 1952. 'Der Bibeltext im Daniel-Kommentar des Hippolyt von
Rom' In: NAWG. I. Philologisch-historische Klasse 8,163-199.
482 Bibliography
(ed.) 1954. Susanna - Daniel - Bel et Draco. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck &

Ruprecht (Septuaginta. Vetus Testamentum Graecum auctoritate Societatis
Litterarum Gottingensis editum 16.2).
1958. 'Jeremias-Zitate in Väter-Schriften. Zugleich grundsätzliche Be-
trachtungen über Schrift-Zitate in Väter-Ausgaben' In: HJ 77, 347-361.
Zuckermandel, Moses Samuel 1899. Tosephta. [repr. of the ed. Berlin 1899; Jeru-
salem: Wahrmann Books 1963].
Zunz, Leopold 1865. Literaturgeschichte der synagogalen Poesie. Berlin: Louis
Gerschel Verlagsbuchhandlung.
Zweck, Heinrich 1986. Osterlobpreis und Taufe. Studien zu Struktur und Theologie
des Εxsultet und anderer Osterpraeconien unter besonderer Berücksichtigung der
Taufmotive. Frankfurt am Main - Bern - New York: Verlag Peter Lang
(RSTh 32).
8 Indices
Authors
Abrahams 80, 89, 90 Bergmeier 146,171,195, Brakmann 42, 47,153,

Achelis 161 222, 247, 248, 249, 250 185, 302, 306
Adriaen 440 Bergren 106 Brandt 420, 421, 440
Albani 230, 231, 241, 251, Bienert 274 Braude 362
252, 253, 254, 255 Bietenhard 335, 336 Braulik 62
Albeck 439 Bij de Vate 334 Braun 440
Alexander 440 Blanc 440 Brin 168
Ameling 44, 53, 54, 333 Blank 131 Brockelmann 211, 219,
Aptowitzer 90,101 Bloedhorn 342, 376 244
Assaf 103 Boeckh 139,144,160, Bronznick 366
Auf der Maur 179,183, 162,172,173,179,180, Brooke 440
185,186, 263, 293, 294, 183,185, 186, 187 Broshi 239
307 Böhl 132 Brox 140, 269, 270, 271,
Bacchiocchi 123,125,127 Bokser 21, 22, 37, 46, 78, 272, 274, 280
Baehrens 440 147,194 Brucker 48,123, 353, 446
Baillet 440 Bonnard 440 Buber 367
Baldovin 282, 295 Bonnet 439 Buchinger 5,11,12,13,
Bardy 163, 440 Bonwetsch 161, 163,164, 20, 22, 23, 29, 32, 47,
Bar-On 60 165, 440 52, 63,107, 116,131,
Barrett 144,175 Bonz 44 135,138,144,158,168,
Bauckham 223 Borleffs 174, 440 174,177,179,180,190,
Baumann 133 Borret 190,191, 440 191, 216, 222, 273, 312,
Baumgarten 235, 440 Botermann 44, 45 327, 348, 393, 409, 410,
Baumgartner 58 Boulluec, le 440 413,414,416,418
Baumstark 5,139, 294, Bovon 184 Buhl 58
300, 302, 303, 304, 305 Bowersock 389 Burkitt 206, 263
Beck 440 Boyarin 46,104 Burrows 266
Ben Dov 230, 239, 252, Bradshaw 138,140,160, Buschmann 389
253, 256, 258 161, 173, 174, 177,180, Cabie 159,161,162,179,
Ben-Shammai 41 268, 273, 275, 276, 288, 181,183,184,185,187
Bergant 59 297, 298, 300, 304, 308 Callaway 244
Berger 296 Camelot 440
484 Indices
Cantalamessa 174 Dölger 91,192 Gahbauer 140

Carr 263 Doutreleau 191, 440 Gallay 440
Casel 179,181, 417 Draper 130 Garcia Martinez 384, 440
Cazeaux 440 Drazin 346 Gaß 38
Chadwick 273 Drijvers 184 Gerhards 29,48
Chazon 30 Drobner 158, 217 Gerlach 6, 8, 9,10,11, 43,
Chilton 33, 236, 245, 379, Drouzy 440 47,120,121,122,140,
383, 385, 388, 389, 390 Dugmore 129, 451 220, 224, 226, 228, 272,
Chupungco 413 Dummer 440 274, 277, 279, 412
Clarke 319, 439 Dunbar 164 Gerth 170
Cohen 8,195 Dunsky 369, 374 Ginsburger 358, 360, 396
Cohick 42, 44, 46, 49, 50, Edwards 126 Gleßmer 171, 232, 238,
312, 395 Eißler 404 239, 241, 242, 244, 251,
Cohn 170, 440 Elbogen 101,131,132, 252, 253, 258, 260, 319,
Colautti 34, 37, 38, 63, 264, 265, 346, 352, 358 325, 330, 349, 351, 352,
64, 239 Elter 273 353, 356
Colorni 333, 334, 337, Epstein 440 Gold 329
338, 347, 348, 349 Falk 30, 231 Goldberg 41
Colson 34, 337, 440 Fassberg 323, 376 Goldschmidt 19, 73, 74,
Connolly 208, 209, 440 Feldman 440 80, 90, 95,100,101,
Cross 44, 333 Feltoe 273, 274, 278 102,104,106,107,113,
Crown 40 Finkelstein 73, 74, 75, 76, 115,132, 321, 369, 372,
Dahm 3, 21, 56, 59 89,105,106,110,112, 373
Dalman 65, 376 116, 214, 344, 403 Golomb 323, 376
Danielou 29,190,191 Fitzmyer 329, 330, 331, Goshen-Gottstein 351
Daumas 170, 440 380, 383, 384 Goudoever 4, 5,120,151,
Davidson 103,106 Fleischer 141, 319, 348, 159,186,188,189,192,
Davies 236, 245, 354, 358, 366, 373, 405 194,196,197,198,199,
377, 379, 383, 388, 389, Flesher 325, 353 204, 205,234, 236, 237,
390 Flint 348 238, 258, 259
De Lange 90,107, 333 Flusser 106,107,132, Gracia Martinez 343
De Montfaucon 439 133,135 Greenstone 89
De Senneville-Grave 2, Fossum 239 Grelot 323, 364
440 Fraade 326, 327, 329, Griinwaldt 58, 61
Dekkers 178 332, 338, 340, 341, 342, Gutmann 391
Del Verme 130,131 343, 344, 348, 359 Haag 56, 57
Delarue 440 Frey, J. 248, 249 Habermann 101
Delcor 28, 31 Frey, J.-B. 53 Hacham 167
Des Places 440 Friedheim 39, 40 Hadas-Lebel 54
Descourtieux 440 Friedman 15, 80, 81, 84, Hall 42, 49, 50, 216, 395,
Diaz y Diaz 297, 440 86, 96,100, 201, 202, 408, 440
Diercks 440 203, 453 Haran 56, 62, 65
Diez Macho 317, 319, Friedmann 264 Harland 124
324, 352, 439, 440, 450 Froidevaux 440 Harrington 440
Doering 219 Gage 305 Härtel 440
Indices 485
Harvey 151 Johnson 160,161, 273, Lampe 135,137,142,

Hauptman 15, 25, 86, 275 146,151,153,155, 157,
104 Jones 389 185,193, 284, 307, 336,
Haussleiter 440 Jungmann 418 412
Hayward 353, 419 Kadari 28, 86, 87 Lange, A. 249
Heinemann, I. 34, 35, Kahana 109,112,113, Langer 98, 336, 343, 407
175 114 Lapin 133
Heinemann, J. 97, 328, Kaiser 58 Lauterbach 199, 396, 440
360, 396 Kany 273 Le Deaut 174, 310, 317,
Heller 196 Kaplan 42 318, 319, 320, 328, 355,
Hempel 250 Kapstein 362 362, 379, 380, 399, 403,
Hennecke 440 Kasher, M.M. 90,102, 410, 450
Henninger 28, 57, 58 103, 105,113 Lefevre 163, 440
Henshke 110, 111, 112 Kasher, R. 321, 322, 402, Lehnardt 18, 20, 40
Hezser 18, 350 403 Leonhard 15, 43, 73, 75,
Higger 440 Kasser 183,184,185 88,101,102,103,106,
Hill 288 Kaufman 350 107,108,135, 207, 210,
Hills 285, 286, 287, 288, Kinzig 307, 311 236
289, 290 Kisch 378, 379, 396,440 Leonhardt 34, 35, 36,
Hoffmann 108,109,110, Kister 330 146,172,175,193, 400
112,114 Klauser 124 Lerch 311
Holl 220, 221, 267, 279, Klein 319, 320, 321, 322, Levine 356
280, 440 323, 324, 326, 329, 332, Liddell 64,126,135,142,
Huber 9,10, 32, 37, 42, 355, 359, 360, 363, 364, 144,146,170,193, 228,
43, 49, 50, 53,119,121, 365, 376, 377, 378, 403 382, 409
158, 204, 220, 222, 269, Klijn 439 Lieberman 78, 79, 337,
274, 280, 284, 291, 370, Klinghardt 51, 77,137, 339, 340, 345, 366, 398,
395, 396, 418, 419 143,172,195, 249 404, 439, 440
Hübner 125,126 Klöckener 262 Lindemann 125,126
Hurst 440 Klostermann 440 Llewelyn 123
Hurwitz 319 Kmosko 207 Lukinovich 343
Hüttenmeister 337 Koch 155, 223 Maas 48
Inglebert 222 Koehler 58 MacLean 263
Irshai 86,164, 420 Kohler 28 Mai 165,440
Isaac, Gelasios, joy 376, Kraus 225, 440 Maier 28, 30, 64,171,
385 Kretschmar 160,173 231, 239, 241, 242, 249,
Janeras 48, 49 Kroll 44, 333 250, 251, 252, 253, 254,
Jaubert 131, 230, 259, Kroymann 440 255, 256, 260, 261, 266
260, 267, 291 Kühner 170 Mandelbaum 440
Jeffery (suggestion) 310 Kulczak-Rudiger 302 Mann 358
Jenkins, C. 148, 216 Kundert 377, 378, 380, Maraval 297, 440
Jenkins, R.G. 348 381, 382, 383, 384, 386, Marcovich 440
Jenner 206, 263 387, 388, 390, 396 Marcus 440
Jeremias 39, 40 Laaf 57, 58, 68 Margulies 369, 402
Joel 103 Martin 349
486 Indices
Martin, J. 77, 81 Pummer 40 Safrai, Sh. 89, 90, 94, 97,

Martola 34 Pusey 151 101,102,103,105,106
Martone 250 Qimron 256, 440 Safrai, Z. 89, 90, 94, 97,
Mateos 263, 296, 297, 298 Rabinovitz 322, 323, 362, 101,102,103,105,106,
McGowan 23,138,139, 366, 367, 368, 369, 371, 331, 343
155,171,195, 268, 275, 372, 373, 374, 375, 379 Sanders 440
276, 308, 465 Racle 395 Sandmel 230
McLean 209 Radice 123, 440 Satran 44, 45, 50
Melamed 440 Radl36 Schaller 249
Mercier 416, 440 Ravid 235, 244, 259 Schäublin 345
Merx 209 Ray 144, 236, 237, 243, Schechter 312
Meshorer 40 244, 261, 262, 263 Schmidt, Carl 177,178,
Metzger 153,185, 439 Refoule 440 179,181,184,185, 219,
Michels 411 Regan 183, 207 220, 287, 377
Milik 329, 440 Rehm 440 Schmidt, Chr. 271
Minkowski 197,199, Reif 31, 231, 328, 346, Schneemelcher 440
200, 396 349 Schoedel 125,127,128
Miquel 170 Reifferscheid 440 Schöllgen 126,130,132
Mirski 321 Reischl 157 Schreiber 144,168,176,
Mohrmann 270 Reiter 440 243
Mondesert 440 Renoux 183, 302, 306 Schröder 440
Mor 104,115 Richard 163,165, 280, Schulz 418
Moreschini 440 307, 311 Schwartz, Ε. 440
Mras 440 Rieder 352 Schwartz, S. 50,147, 334,
Naeh 141, 348 Robert 389, 403 335, 336, 362, 405, 428
Nau 207 Rofe 38 Scott 64,126,135,142,
Nemoy 239 Rordorf 120,125,127, 144,146,170,193, 228,
Neusner 16,17, 406, 407 128, 204, 389, 395 382, 409
Nicholson 420 Rousseau 440 Segal 35, 64, 67
Nicklas 225, 227, 440 Rouwhorst 9,10, 24, 37, Shelemay 42
Niederwimmer 129,130 49,120,123,124, 127, Shepherd 329
Noack 167,176 136,159,160,161,164, Shinan 329, 332, 344,
Noy 342, 376 166,172,183, 205, 206, 346, 350, 352, 353, 355,
Otto 21 207, 210, 211, 212, 213, 356, 357, 358, 359, 404,
Parisot 210, 211, 212, 214, 218, 219, 220, 221, 405
213, 218, 304, 412 225, 228, 268, 279, 280, Siegert 334
Pastorino 305 281, 282, 283, 284, 297, Sirat 351
Perkams 302 300, 301, 304, 305, 391, Slater 195
Pesce 108, 355 395, 411, 420 Smith 77
Petit 416, 440 Rovner 80, 89, 90, 91, 94, Sokoloff 319, 320, 321,
Phillips 161, 273, 275 108,109 322, 324, 330, 341, 363,
Porten 38 Runia 169 365, 376, 377, 439
Pourkier 222, 223 Rupp 157 Sperber 356, 439,440
Preuschen 440 Rutgers 334, 335 Staats 289, 290
Prostmeier 136 Sabatier 174 Staehle 170
Indices 487
Stec 329 Tarchnischvili 302 Wajnberg 177,179,181,

Stegemann 247, 248 Taylor 247 219, 220, 287, 377
Stein 22, 25, 46, 77, 88 Terbuyken 302 Waldram 185
Steiner 82,113 Thackeray 440 Wallraff 125,126,127,
Steinmetzer 188 Theodor 439 138
Stemberger 22, 45, 50, Thornton 9 Wambacq 2, 57, 58, 59,
73, 83, 90, 93, 97, 100, Thraede 123 60, 64, 66
103,104,105,106,110, Tidwell 129 Weber 440
131,134,147,188, 200, Tigchelaar 247, 343, 440 Weimar 60
221, 222, 231, 236, 248, Towner 354, 355, 356 Weiser 36
258, 259, 264, 334, 335, Treu 334, 335, 337, 341 Weiss 342
338, 339, 342, 347, 348, Turetsky 16, 40, 41, 92, Weissenstern 101
350, 362, 369, 373, 376, 203 Weitzman 72
378, 379, 384, 387, 388, Turner 148 Wellhausen 2
389, 390, 391, 393, 396, Ulrich 38, 440 Wendland 169,195, 247,
402, 404, 405 Urbach 112,131,132, 440
Stendebach 28 236, 379, 389 Wernberg-Moller 352
Stern, Μ. 1, 2, 69, 219, Vaganay 226, 228 West 5
247, 248 Van de Sandt 132,133, Whittaker 440
Stern, S. 9, 54, 63, 216, 135 Williams, F. 217
239, 251, 252, 255, 266, Van der Horst 333, 339 Williams, M. 333
271, 389 Van der Ploeg 329 Wilson 329
Stewart-Sykes 45, 46, 47, Van der Woude 329, Wissowa 440, 469
48, 49, 288, 290 440, 478 Witakowski 161
Stökl Ben Ezra 116,129, Van Henten 334 Wright 209
133,134,178, 266, 284, Van Seters 57, 58, 59, 66 Wutz 376
399 VanderKam 131, 235, Yadin 145, 237, 239, 258
Strobel 9, 36, 251, 269, 240, 241, 260, 440 Yahalom 342, 359, 363,
290, 416 Veijola 62 365, 439
Strugnell 256 Veltri 335, 336 York 362
Sukkot 20 Verheyden 223 Young, F. 345
Synek 335 Visonä 52, 66, 69,140, Young, N.H. 123,124
Szymusiak 439 149,152,155,186, 308, Yuval 11, 36, 43, 75, 86,
Tabory 11, 22, 23, 28, 77, 312, 313, 392, 394, 409, 87,102,103,104, 370,
81, 83, 88, 92,110, 111, 410, 411, 412, 413 389, 394, 402
166, 167,168,182,193, Vogt 196 Zarren-Zohar 182
214, 389 Volz 391 Zerfass 294, 296, 297,
Taft 180,181, 268, 269, Vööbus 217, 218, 219, 298, 300, 302, 303
272, 273, 294, 297, 301, 221, 228, 279, 340, 440 Ziegler 165,174
304 Voulet 440 Zuckermandel 68,149,
Tal 326, 328, 331 Wacholder, B.Z. 200, 252, 256, 257, 440
Talley 160,164,171,181, 234, 243, 251, 252, 253 Zunz 358
268, 269, 309 Wacholder, Sh. 234, 243, Zweck 364
Talmon 230, 239, 252, 251, 252, 253
256, 258, 440 Wagenaar 59, 63, 66, 245
488 Indices
Subjects
Al-Qirqisani 239, 248 Enumeration of scriptural examples 354,

Anti-Judaism 44, 50 355, 356
Aphikoman 25, 395, 403 Ephrem 342
Aqeda see Binding of Isaac Eschatology 98, 324, 368, 370, 372,
Ascension 229 379, 391, 393-99, 395, 401, 407, 409,
Athenaeus 77 413, 416-21
Audians 222-24 Essenes 131, 246-50
Banquet see Symposium Eucharist: Maundy Thursday 153;
Baptism 192, 268; 1 Cor 10 191, 192; Water-drinkers 155
Rom 6 173, 190, 204 Exsultet 364
Beta Esrael see Pesach - Beta Esrael Falasha see Pesach - Beta Esrael
Binding of Isaac 58, 244, 354, 365, 366, Fast days 130-35, 332; Before
368, 370, 371, 374, 378-91, 408; baptism 177; General (pagan,
Jubilees 234-37 Christian) 133, 220; Maamad 259;
Birkat ha-geula 95, 98, 201 Montanists 178; Paschal fast for the
Birkat ha-mazon 83, 84, 88, 101, 103 Jews 279
Birkat ha-shir 101 Festivals: Abolition of OT festivals 124;
Bitter herbs 21, 24, 33, 37, 51, 57, 68, Calendar and festivals 392-93;
79, 82, 83, 94, 95, 212, 216, 217, Commemoration 392-93;
218, 220, 373; Mourning 219-21 Contents 2 4 0 ^ 5 , 399, 421;
Blastus 270 Identity 221
Blessing at enterig a town 97 Fifty-day periods (dividing solar
Boethusians 252, 256, 257-58 years) 260
Burkitt lectionary 263 Firstfruits 57, 68, 71, 109, 115, 116,
Calendar 271, 393, 398, 399 141-59, 162, 175, 2 4 2 ^ 3 , 245, 254,
Challa 141-59, 143, 145, 151, 152 255, 258, 261, 373; Eucharist 151
Chanukka 57 Fourty-day periods 264
Chiliasm 286, 287 God-fearers 45, 54
Circumcision 18, 38, 243, 373 Great Sabbath 389
Cloud 197, 323, 403 Greenstone (manuscript) see Haggada
Day of Atonement 71, 129, 217, 220, CJS Halper 211
264, 266, 321, 330, 338, 364 Haggada 29, 73-118, 78, 372, 373, 391,
Diataxis 217-24, 272, 278 404, 407; Babylonian rite 74, 90, 93,
Dropsie College (manuscript) see 102-7; Christian parallels 73, 90, 103,
Haggada CJS Halper 211 118; CJS Halper 211 89, 90, 91;
Easter see Pascha Dayyenu 74, 89, 106; Features 91;
Ebionites 216, 221, 223, 271 Four sons 105; Midrash to Deut
Egeria 295 26.5ff 74, 87, 89, 92, 107-17;
Elephantine 34, 38 Palestinian rite 74, 75, 80;
Elvira, Council of 187 Piyyutim 102; Polemics 75, 88; Seder
in Bne Brak 104; Standardization 78;
Indices 489
Telling the story of the Exodus 25, 87, Meturgeman 341

105, 114, 201 Mimesis 19, 20, 21, 69, 85, 86, 140,
Hallel 18, 24, 28, 86, 91, 100, 116, 177, 192, 196, 200-203, 207, 216,
200-203, 373 218, 276, 278, 280, 295, 343, 344,
Hanukka 115 347
Haroset 24, 79, 94 Mishmarot 252, 254, 255, 292
Hazzan see Precentor Mishna: Four Sabbaths (Tora
Hexapla, second column 348 reading) 264, 265; Palestinian
Holy Week 293-314 recension 74, 93
Hymn, as a genre 48, 100, 123 Morning benedictions (blessings) 101
Hypocrites - Jews? 130-35 Moses 401-5, 404, 405, 407
Improperia 48, 106 Myrophores 297
Improvisation 47, 77, 79, 81, 82, 85, NatronayGaon 92, 102, 109
91, 343 Nazoreens 222
Jerusalem, liturgy of 261, 277, 282, 295, Neofiti, Targum 317
296-301; Armenian Lectionary 191, New Year, festival 175, 235
261, 263, 299, 302, 306, 318, 395, Numbers: Pythagorean symbolism
400 of 170, 171
Jubilee year, count of 171 Omer 38, 57, 141-59, 252, 256, 257-58,
Justinian, Novella 146 334-37 259; Rabbinic interpretation 182, 220
Kalends, celebration of 53 Onqelos, Targum 317; Relation to
Karaites 92 PTT 325-28
Kyrios, in Jewish poetry 321, 360 Paean 83, 100
Lamb, sheep (terminology) 32-33 Pascha: Easter vigil 293-314; Easter vigil
Leontopolis 34 and Sunday 186; Eschatology 164,
Liturgical year, East Syrian 263 285; Fast 273-76; Period of
Liturgy: Created out of text 3 9 ^ 2 , 68, mourning 180; Quartodeciman 46,
98, 99; Historicization 181, 299, 301; 49, 177, 219-21, 225-27, 259, 269,
Reform 98; Relation to the Bible 276; 279-85, 283, 288-91;
Structuring of liturgical time 181-82 Resurrection 136-37; Transition from
Lord's Prayer 135 mourning to joy 186; Vigil 289;
Ma Nishtana 23, 51, 73, 79, 80, 81, 82, Weekly Pascha (Eusebius) 138
85, 94, 99, 105, 111 Passover see Pesach
Maamadot 131, 259 Pentecost 53, 70, 72, 136, 139, 144,
MachzorVitry 357 146, 148, 149, 159-88, 258, 261; Acta
Magharians 239 Pauli 183-85; Ascension 183;
Maimonides 81 Baptism 160; Boethusians/Rabbis 149;
Manna 37, 64 Chiliasm 163; Date 258; Epistula
Meal see Symposium Apostolorum 286; Eschatology 183;
Melito 73; Not of Jewish descent 46; Etymology/meaning 162, 167, 176,
Relation to Pesach and Exod 12 50-53 193; Giving of the Law 175, 243;
Memorial 2 4 0 ^ 5 , 242 Innovation in sec. cent. 181;
Memory 320 Jubilees 242-45; Montanism 173;
Messiah 355, 365, 367, 370, 398, 401-8, Renewal of the covenant 167, 2 4 2 ^ 5 ;
402, 417, 420
490 Indices
Temple Scroll 244; Unknown to the Sadducees 239, 248, 258

ancient Syriac churches 161 Sardis, Jews of 44
Pesach: Atonement 33, 63, 236; Beta Seder 29, 76-89, 371, 373, 374, 391,
Esrael 4 1 ^ 2 ; Chavura 17; Creation of 407; Amoraic 17, 77, 78, 79, 80, 86,
the world 252; Etymology 21, 69; 88, 98, 111; Children 81, 82, 86;
Firstborn sons 29; Haftara 26; Midrash to Deut 26.5ff see Haggada -
Introducing children into the cultural Midrash to Deut 26.5ff; Responsa 92;
heritage 25, 28; Karaite 16, 40, 92, Realization 78-86, 79, 81, 85;
188, 239; Karaites 203; Lamb 32; Symposium 77, 88; Telling the story
Memorial 29, 34; Motif of darkness of the Exodus see Haggada - Telling
and light 37, 107, 363, 405, 413, 414;
New Testament 33; Not celebrated in Seder Olam Rabba: Reworking
the Diaspora 32, 33; Of the (later) MekhY 200
generations 16-20, 25; Pagan Septuagint 338, 339, 346, 380, 382
sacrifices 23; Participants in the Shavuot see Pentecost
meal 28; Pilgrimage 17, 34, 35, 62, Sukkot 20, 63, 67, 71, 115, 264, 392
64; Prohibition to break the bones of Sunday 414; Christ's appearance to the
the animal 28, 31; Purity 28, 34, 63, apostles 138; Day of creation 137;
66, 67; Sacrifice 19; Sacrifice after 70 Eucharist 137; NT 123; Number of
C.E. 22, 36; Samaritans 23, 39-40; eight 137; Qumran 258; Roman
Season of spring 35, 400, 412-14; planetary week 138
Second Temple 86; Studying halakhot Symposium 18, 22, 24, 26, 35, 51, 77,
as substitution of sacrifices 25, 86, 87, 80, 82, 83, 85, 86, 88, 99, 100, 138
104, 105; Thanksgiving (Philo) 34, Sympotic Literature see Symposium
193; Tora readings 24-27, 42, 87 Syriac translation of the Bible 326, 346
Pharisees 104, 130, 135, 248 Tamid 33, 36, 38, 182, 235, 236, 389,
Pilgrimage 373 391; Atonement 236, 240
Plutarch 81 Tanernacles see Sukkot
Poetry 353-54, 358 Targum 82, 325-53, 341; Dating 350;
Polycarp 221 Liturgical functions of
Polycrates 45, 216, 221, 269, 270, 280, expansions 355-58, 359
284; Removal of leaven 271 Targum Neofiti 351-53
Pompeius Trogus 219 Targum Pseudo-Jonathan 351-53
Precentor 342, 356, 359 Therapeutae 169-72, 194-96
Purim 265 Tishabe-Av 134, 264, 362
Qiddush 101, 102 Tithes 109, 114, 151
Qumran: Calendar 230-46; Prayer 30 Todos of Rome 22
Rashi 80 Tora reading 338, 358, 405;
Rewritten Bible 329 Blessings 337; Exod 12 361;
Rhetoric, schools of 344-^49 Greek 327, 336, 348; Language 334-
SaadyaGaon 103, 105, 107, 253 41; Palestinian systems 319, 357;
Sabbath 124, 127, 128; Fasting on Ritualization 337; Theological
(?) 219; Mentioned in blessing 84; Of interpretation 3 4 2 ^ 3
lesser holidays 239, 240 Tosefta: Older halakhot than the
Sacrifices, OT 64, 65, 66, 67, 68, 241 Mishna 19, 86
Indices 491
Troparia idiomela 48 Venosa 333

Truma 143, 151 Wine 24, 28, 51, 84, 373
Unleavened bread 21, 32, 36, 41, 57, Yohanan Hakohen Birabi Yehoshua 100
68, 79, 82, 83, 94, 95, 214, 216, 373; Zadokites 250, 255
Christian festival 205-30; Festival 53,
57, 69, 192-200, 197
Greek Terms
Αγαπητός 380, 381 Εΰχαί 35

Άζανίτης 342 Νηστεία 133
Άζζάνα 342 Προαναμέλπειν 30
Αναφέρειν 377 Προεόρτιος 146, 170
Απαρχή 142^15 Προσεπευφημήσαι 337
Ασαρθά 176 Πρωτογεννήμα 144, 145
Δευτέρωσις 335, 336 Τηρειν 280
Διαβατήρια 34, 193, 204 Ύπερβάσια, ύπέρβασις 190, 204
Διάκων 123, 342 Υποκριτής 130-35
Εν άπορρήτοις 410, 412 Φατρία 64
Έξόδιον 193
Hebrew Terms and Phrases
106 πρ-ΐϊπ " ι1? 385 Π003 TN

340 ,339 T!rt> 368 cpdm a n ix
135 mra BTa 145 a n p p
116 ,115 ,109 ,87 ,25 n'-nra >opa 86 ,22 DVipa'u
58 irnwa 103 N'JSf ΝΒΠ1? κπ
66 ηο 321 ipinnmi
239 ,193 ,176 rray 342 irn
382 ipy 96 na'nn
21 nos 381 ,380 ,134 ,133 rrr
83 msns 97 p
372 naw 330 miss
35-130 rnsrn ,371 ,370 ,368 ,356 ,324 ,320 o n e W
409 ,398 ,397 ,396 ,373
492 Indices
Sources
Old Testament 21.2 385

22 236, 311, 366, 375
Genesis
378-391
1 311
22.2 377
1.2 321
22.3 191
1.1-3.20 302
22.9,13 377
1.1-3.24 311-313
22.16f 366
1.26 223f, 410
22.17 415
5.18 415
23.1f 378
4.4 66
26,6-11 379
7.11 242, 259
27.1 379
7.24 242
28.10ff 369
8.3 259
28.21 382
8.4 191, 242, 259
29.16, 35 362
8.14 242
30.22 355
8.21 379
31.24 368
10.14 369
33.17 67
14 366
35.28f 385
14.15 368
40.10 377
14.22ff 366
46.4 30
15 366, 370, 375, 379, 397,
50.24 30
414, 416
15.5 367, 414ff Exodus
15.6 377, 415 1.14 21
15.13f 30, 363, 376, 386, 396 2.3,10 404
16.16 376 3.5 66
17 375 3.7,9 112
17.1ff 367 3.18 (and par.) 56,191
17.5ff 415 4.22 322
17.6-8 386 6.6 398
17.17 321, 376f 9.31 412
17.21 397 11.4 368, 419
18.2 374 12 15-72,122,156,158f,
18.6 385 310ff
18.12 376f 12.1 400
18.14 397 12.1-20 265
18.17 376 12.2 35, 364f, 412
18.20-33 366 12.3 19
19.1 366 12.4 16
20.6 368 12.5 18,32
21 366 12.6 236
Indices 493
12.7 17,19 17.14 320

12.8-10 28 18.19, 22, 26 377
12.8 22, 36, 52, 215 19.1(ff) 167f, 199
12.10 18 19.4 197
12.11 19f, 27, 35, 40, 66, 69, 238 19.8 377
12.11-13 418 22.24 27,141
12.12 36 22.29 57
12.13 21, 58, 67,193, 387 23.16 144f
12.14 240 23.18 64
12.18 236 23.19 144
12.21 27, 319f 23.26 386
12.22 17,19, 64 24.7 198
12.23 21, 57f, 67,193, 387, 418 28.18 404
12.25 195 29.38 32
12.26 24 30.11-16 265
12.27 21, 30,193, 418 33.3 198
12.29 322, 358, 368, 370, 419 34.1 27
12.37 190 34.22 145
12.39 68f 34.32 264
12.40f 396
Leviticus
12.42 310, 3 1 7 ^ 2 3
1.3 (and par.) 62
12.43 141, 398
1.5 34
12.46 64
2.4f (and. par.) 68
12.48 33
2.13 68
13.2 27
2.14 412
13.3 18
4 66
13.4 197
4.6 19
13.8 24
4.7 19
13.14 24,110
6.1^ 64
13.17 27,141
6.19 377
13.20 67,190, 197 68
7.13
14f 311 64
7.15-18
14.2 189, 198f, 362 32
9.3
14.5 200
16 329ff
14.9 189, 200
16.29 71, 217, 264, 278
14.11f 198
16.23f 64
14.20 200
16.31 129, 217, 264
14.24 302, 363
22.23 371 f
14.29ff 365
22.26f 26
15 365
22.27 27,141, 372
15.1 200
23 26, 30, 63, 373
15.17ff 357
23.5 40
15.23ff 192
23.7 (and par.) 149
16.1 197
23.8 240
17 192
23.9 141
494 Indices
23.10f 148,186 16.16 373

23.11 141,143ff, 149, 260, 377 17.19 345
23.14 57 18.15 404
23.15 142,148, 260 18.18 404
23.16-21 145,167 25.17ff 265, 367
23.17, 20 68 26.3 112
23.14 153 26.5-8(, 9) 25, 43, 74, 78f, 82f, 87, 89,
23.24 (and par/1175 92,107-117
23.42f 71 26.5-8(, 9), see also Haggada - Midrash to
23.43 67 Deut 26.5ff (Subject Index)
25.4f 382 26,13 109
28.12 355
Numbers
31.2 386
9.1 27,141
33.21 403
9.7 29, 59
34.7 379
9.10f 63
9.13 29,59 Joshua
15.17-21 151 5 38f, 151
15.20f 143,151 5.4-8 59
19 66, 265 5.11 12, 257
27.18 151 5.15 66
28f 32 24.2ff 25, 76, 79,105, 107-117
28.1-8 265
Judges
28.3 32
5.20 369
28.26 167
6.15 362
33.5 67
7 362
33.3 385
33.5-8 189, 200 2 Samuel
2.13-16 65
Deuteronomy
12.15-23 228
6.20 24f, 105,110
6.21 25, 76,103,105,107-117 1 Kings
9.17 377 7.50 382
10.10 264 8.If 115
14.22 141, 367 18.26 21
14.22-16.17 27 2 Kings
15.19 27 2.11 404
16.1-8 62,194 2.17 191
16.1 12, 65 12.14 382
16.2 18 25.14 382
16.3 20-22, 68f, 214f, 238 19.35 362, 369
16.4 236 22f 26
16.6 30, 65,193, 385 23.22 59f
16.7 28
16.8 176,198, 236 1 Chronicles
16.9 148,150,168 21.15 387
Indices 495
2 Chronicles 81.4-7 397f

4.22 382 113-118, see Hallel (Subject Index)
15.8-15 167 113f 91f, 96, 202f
30.5 60,68 113.9 201
30.16,18 68 114.4, 6 32
30.26 60 114.8 201
35.7 32 115 406
35.12 65 116 372
35.13 67 118.24 371, 374
35.15 18 119.62 417
35.18 60 121.5 370
132.17 367
Nehemia
132.13 369
8.8 331f
136 102
8.17 59
139.12 370, 401
Tobit 144.5 322
2.1f 162 145.16 355
Esther Proverbs
1.3 265 27.11 17
3.9 265
Song of Songs
3.12 369
1.8 404
4.7 265
4.8 323
6.1 320, 362, 370
6.10 364
9.2 373
Wisdom
2 Maccabees
18 69
2.2 410
18.3f 37
12.32 162
18.9,10-19,
Job 21,24 30
9.26 369 19.9 32
14.2 312
Sirach
38.2-28 311
44.22f 381
Psalms
Isaiah
1.9 66
1.13 124
12 312
5.6 382
34.13 278
6.3 366
45.3 339
10.32 369
45.8 366
19.3 410
72.6, 8 416
21.9 410
74.16 370
21.11f 367, 370, 373f
75.11 367
26.10 163
77.7 362
27.9 404
78.51 143
27.13 398
80.3 370
31.5 21f
496 Indices
42.13 370 14 369

46.10 372
Hosea
49.10 404
6.2 190
49.14 362
12.5 369
52.12 372
53.7 33 Nahum
53.12 403 1.3 404
53.13 369 Zechariah
52.12 20 14.7 370, 374
61.2 411
62.6 370 Maleachi
60 393 1.11 129
63.1 370 3.16 320f
3.23 404
Jeremiah
38.8 174ff New Testament
44.1,15 369 Matthew
51.44 369 2.1-12
52.18 382 4.12 207
Lamentations 9.15 419
1.15 369 10.22 165
3.2 367 12.40 191, 212,
4.21f 321 13.33 32
14.26 273
Ezekiel
16.5-12 32
19f 66
16.6-12 127
31 393
24.13 165
37 311, 393
24.15 163
37.12 355
24.27 393
40.1 12
25 273, 289-
45.18-20 63,66
25.6 419
46 32
26.17 157
Daniel 26.30 33
2.5,19, 30 369 27.62(ff) 191, 293
3 310 28.1 137
3.35 381
Mark
6 369
1.14 207
7.7 367
2.20 419
7.14 403
8.15 32
8.14 165
8.31 191
10.11 369
9.31 191
12.7 163
10.34 191
12.8 287
13.13 165
12.11 163,165
13.14 163,165
12.12 165
14.1-3 157
Indices 497
14.13 173,175 2.3 168

14.26 33 2.38 (and par.) 144, 175
16.2 137 2.41 173
2.42ff 250
Luke
4.32ff 250
2.46f 250
5.19 36
3.20f 207
8.32 33
4.19 411
11.26 122
9.51 162
12 36f, 47, 288ff
12.1 32
12.3, 5 36
13.20f 32
19 184
18.12 131f
19.8-21.18 124
22.1 36
20.7 124,137
22.10 173
20.16 179, 184
22.15 52
22.16 153f Romans
22.37 154 4 414
23.56 309 4.3 415
24.1 137 6.3 173,175,190f, 204
6.3-10 153
John
8.23 143ff
1.29 32f
11.16 143
1.36 32
14.5f 124
2.14f 33, 208
16.5 143
1.18-22 191
7 12 1 Corinthians
8.56 377, 414 5 390
11.55 63 5.7 32, 47,127,143,152,161,
12.1 157 216
13 157 5.9-13 32
15.9 157 10 190ff, 204
18.28 63 10.1^1 190
19.2-9 227 10.6f 414
19.31 50 10.10 417
19.36 47 15.20 142-159,162
20.1 137 15.20f 143
21 227 15.23 142f
15.28 151
Acts
15.32 184
1.3 173
9R7 16.2 123
16 iO/
16.5 143
1.6-9 136, 175
16.8 32,179, 184
1.7 286
1.9 162 2 Corinthians
1.11 162,175, 229 2.9 216
2 148
2.1 162,179
498 Indices
Galatians 6.21 242

3 414 6.23, 24, 26 241
3.6 415 6.29 242
4 181 6.31 252
4.8-11 124,127 14.10, 20 243
4.9 124 15.1,11-21 238
5.9 32 16.12f 385
16.13 243
Ephesians
16.14 243
2.6 190
17f 236, 385
Colossians 17.15-18.19 234f
1.18 142 18.3 234
2.12 204 18.18 235
2.15f 32 22.1-23.7 243
2.16f 124 29.7 243
32.4 240
2 Thessalonians
38-40 234
2.2 288
44.1-5 238
2.8 163
49.2-5 29, 237
2.13 143
49.2 21
Hebrews 49.7 29, 237f
7.14 126 49.9 29, 240
11.10 410 49.13f 28, 237
11.19 384 49.15 29, 237, 240
James 49.16f, 20f 28
1.18 143 49.23 27, 238
2.21ff 377f 50.11 236, 240
1 Peter Liber Antiquitatum Biblicarum

1.19 32 18.5 378f
2 Peter 23.8 396
1.19 126 Ezekiel
Revelation Exagoge (in: Praeparatio Evangelica)
1.10 124 9.29.12 196
2.28 364
Philo
11.3 163
13.5 163 De Abrahamo
14.4 143 198 236
22.16 364
De Specialibus Legibus
Jubilees 2.145f 21
2.146f 34,193
1.1 168
2.148 28,34
5.27 242
2.153 175
5.29 241
2.157 194
6.17-19 167, 242
Indices 499
2.162 146,149 2.315 189

2.168 146 3.31 37
2.171 146 3.248 38
2.173 146 3.249 239
2.175 146f 5.22 39
2.176 171 10.267 37
2.216 116 14.188 37
14.260 36
De Migratione Abrahami
17.254 72
20 35s
20.106 72
25 35,193
Bellum Judaicum
De Somniis
2.10 72
1.163 381
2.124 247
2.75 146
2.289f 22
De Vita Contemplativa 5.145 247
1 248 6.290 63
30-33 170
Vita
37 195
9 250
63f 195
290-303 133
64f 146,169-172
73 195 Qumran
81 195
lQPesher Habakkuk
83f 195
266
De Vita Mosis 4Qjosh' 38
1.163-180 189 4QMMT 64, 256
1.167 199 4QOtot 232
2.41 167 1QS 249, 343
2.210 137 4QtgJob 329ff
2.222-224 35 4QtgLev 329ff
2.256 195 CD 239
Temple Scroll 28, 237, 239, 258
Legum Allegoriae
1.15 170 4Q208-211 253
4Q213a 248
Quaestiones in Exodum 4Q225 383ff
1.1 400 4Q252 242f
1.9 169 4Q320-330 253
Quaestiones in Genesim 4Q321 145
3.43 416 4Q325 258
4Q326 145
Josephus
4Q365 145
Antiquitates Judaicae 4Q394 256, 258f
2.145-149 35 4Q503 30
2.312 34, 38, 66 4Q513 145
2.313 21, 37, 204 4Q550 329
500 Indices
11Q5 241 1.7 132

2.9 131
Rabbinic and Post-Rabbinic Texts
3.8 68
Mishna 4.2 259
Meg
Ber
1.8 338
1.5 105
3.5 168,
9.4 97
3.6 132
MSh
Ket
5.10-13 114
1.1 132
Hal
Sot
1.2 215
5.4 91
Bik
7.3 116
1.6 115
BM
3.6 108
2.8 338
3.7 116
Sanh
Shab
5.2 104
5.3 235
AZ
16.1 330
1.2 54
Pes
Zeb
2.6 95
6.1 64
4.4 36
Men
5.3 65
10.2f 149,
5.7 18
Tam
7.10 28
4.1 235
9.3 68
9.5 19 Tosefta
10 43, 48, 77f, 109
Ber
10.1 33
1.10 105
10.3 23
4.8 84
10.4 23, 81-85, 87, 95,108 i η o4
ΩΛ
10.5 21, 218, 372
5.4, 5, 30 84
10.6 18
6.1f 84
10.8 395
6.16 97f
Sheq
6.24 135
1.1 265
MSh
Suk
5.23-29 114,
4.9 71
Bik
5 71
1.1 167
5.4 42
Shab
Beza
13.2 330
2.7 36
Er
RHSh
4.3 239
1.1 12
Pes
Taan
2.20 215
1.4-7 133
Indices 501
4.11 18 14 197, 323, 376, 393, 396,

4.12 66 402
8.10-22 16ff 15 17, 28, 64
8.14 20 16 197
10. and 10.1 84 17 20,197f
10.4 24, 51, 86 18 25,105
10.5 24, 26, 52 besallah 1 199
10.6-8 116 2-A 198
10.6-9 24 3 199
10.9 26,91 4 388
10.7 18 5 199, 354
10.9 96 6 199, 355
10.10 26 7 106,198
10.11 24, 86,104 sirata 3 91
10.12 17, 25f, 87,104, 201 bahodes 5 198
Taan
MekhSh
1.3,7 133f
12.11 20
2.4 131,133
12.13 387
2.6 260
13.5 18
2.15f 13
13.14 110
Meg
3.5 26,168, 201, 364 Sifre Devarim
3.13 337, 349
37 112
3.41 339
130 20, 214
4.10,18 358
161 344
4.41 343
301 105,110,116
BM
316 112
2.21 338
355 403
Sanh
2.12 68 Yerushalmi
Men
Ber
10.23 149, 252, 256f 1.6 3d 386
Sifra 5.3 9c 344
Shab
smini 45d 342
1.3 3c 340
Mekhilta 16.1 16c 330
Pes
MekhY
9.4 36d-37a 20
pisha 3 19
9.5 37a 18
5 19, 38,198
c 10.4 37d 105
υ 20
10.5 37d 25
7 20,198, 387
Suk
8 197f
4.3 54c 38
9 198
Meg
11 387
1.8 71c 338
502 Indices
1.11 71b 339f Er

1.11 71c 338 39b 239
2.1 73a 338 43b 406
3.4 74a 265 Pes
4.1 74d 326, 331f, 342, 348 13a 406
4.3 75a 337f 65b 66
Qid 92b 18
1.2 59a 171 96a 20
AZ 115b 79, 214
1.1 39b 54 116a 25, 78
1.1 39b-c 260 117a-118a 100
Yoma
Seder Olam Rabba
5b 404
182,197,199f, 207 Beza
4b 239
Bereshit Rabba
RHSh
11.1 312 10b-lla 385f, 393,
21.5 312 16b 321
22.4 182 Taan
34.9 378 10a-12a 134
36.8 331, 339f 17b 182
42.3 368 20b-21a 103
44.22 378f 27b 259
48.12 385 Meg
49.9 366 8b-9b 338
53.6 385 19a 320
56.3 382, 390 21b 350
58.5 378 29b 265
58.13 369 31a 26
65.10 379 Hag
70.16 362 3a 368
73 355 15b 340
76.3 131 Yev
82b 200
Wayikra Rabba
Nid
2.1 345 46b 200
9.6 402 Sanh
28.6 369 11a 68
38b 312
Bavli
92a 404
Ber 92b 396
59b 251 98a 365, 402
Shab Sot
115a 330 12b 393
32b 108
Indices 503
AZ Patristic Sources and Texts of Classical

8a 399 Antiquity
9b 406
Acts of Paul
Avot de-Rabbi Natan 9 183-185
Acts of Thomas
Β 42 312
289
Devarim Rabba Aphrahat
Demostratio 12
2.7 366
210-218, 304, 412
3.17 404
Apostolic Constitutions
Pesiqta de-Rav Kahana 2.59.2-4 297
5.17 236, 370 5.6.8 153
7.11 367 5.14.21 221
11.10 396 6.22.4 335
17.1 362, 369 Asterius
Homilies (312)
Pirqe de-Rabbi Eliezer 11 and 15 307
19 312 22, 29, and 31 311
Athanasius
Shir ha-Shirim Rabba Apologia ad Constantium
1.3 369 15 146
1.12f 374 Barnabas
7.3 390
Kohelet Rabba
13.7 415
11.6 182 15 136-139
Chronicon Paschale
Seder Eliahu Zuta
149
4 264 Clement of Rome
1 Clement
Massekhet Sofrim
24.1 143
5.15 330 42.4 143
21.1 131f Clement of Alexandria
Midrash Tehillim Stromata
1.31 416
75.5 367 2.28 415
Shemot Rabba 5.8 416
6.80, 84 416
1.26 404 Council of Elvira
15.12 63 43 187
Pitron Tora Cyprian
Letter 63
109-117
16 139
4 415
Testimonia 1
5 415
504 Indices
13 176 Eutychius
Cyrill of Alexandria Sermo de Paschate...
Commentarii in Joannem 152-158
4.2 151 Firmicus Maternus
Cyrill of Jerusalem De Errore Profanarum Religionum
Catecheses 23 305
18.32 157 Gospel of Peter
Didache 224-229
8.2f 135 Gregory ofNazianzus
14.1 126,129-135 Oratio 41.2 147
(Syriac) Didascalia Hippolytus
13 298 In Reg., quae de Helcana et Samuele
21 217-224, 228, 267, 279- 161
285, 300, 305 Commentarii in Danielem
Dionysius of Alexandria 4 163f, 191, 285
Letter to Basilides De Antichristo (?)
273-279 165
Egeria Refutatio Omnium Haeresium
Itinerarium Egeriae 9.12 335
24 296-313 Ignatius
27 297,303 Letter to the Magnesians
38 299 8 127f
Epistula Apostolorum 9 124-129
14/25 377 10 127f
15/26-17/28 37,164,183, 285-291 Irenaeus
43/54-45/56 289ff Adversus Haereses
Epiphanius 3.9 415
Panarion Omnium Haeresium 3.17 148
30 155, 221, 342 3.19 149
70 217-224, 272, 278 4.5, 7, 8 415
Eusebius of Caesarea 4.17 151
Church History 4.28f 53
5.23 140, 279, 278 5.32 415
5.24 45,140, 209, 216, 270ff, Epideixis
281, 284 24f 415
12 336 35 415
Praeparatio Evangelica (Ps.-Irenaeus)
8.7 337 Catena Fragment (Numb.)
9.27 189 151
9.28ff 30 Jerome
Demonstratio Evangelica Commentary on Matthew
1.3.2,22 150 1.9 172
De Sollemnitate Paschali 4.25 395, 417
4 146,150
Indices 505
John Chrysostom 81f, 84, 87 406

Ad Illuminandos Catecheses 79f 50f, 219
2.4 (PG 49.238) 134 93f 50f, 216, 220
Adversus Iudaeos 96 406
5.5 416 99 53
Justin 100 313
Dialogue with Trypho 104 406
23.4 415 Origen
24.1 137 Commentariorum Series on Matthew
41.1-4 137 26.17ff 217
67 137 Contra Celsum
90 185 8.23 217
92.3 415 Fragments on Exodus
119.6 415 327
138.1 137 Homily 5 on Exodus
Justinian 5 190f
Novella 146 334ff Homilies on Numbers
Lactantius 17.4 20
Divinae Institutiones Homilies on Leviticus
7.14 420 2.2 148
7.19 420 Fragments 148
7.25 420f De Pascha Computus
Pastor Hermae 10 and 12 416
93.4 204 Pliny the Elder
Martyrium Beati Simeonis Bar Sabba'e and Natural History
par. 5.73 247
33 207 Pliny the Younger
Martyrium Polycarpi Letter 10 122-124
8.1,14.1 389 Ps.-Clementine Recognitiones
Melito ofSardis 1.32-34 416
Peri Pascha 42-55 Ps.-Hippolytus/Ps.-Chrysostom
15f 406 Translation ed. p. 265-270, see
16 50f, 395 1.1 308
18 395 6 394
30 406 32-35 69
31f 387 34 66
34 406 45-48, 50 313
34-45 47 Sextus, Sententiae
46 406 Sexti 273
47 312, 405 Sulpicius Severus
56 313 Chronicle 1
66 395 Tacitus
71 50 Annales
72 47,50 6.28 196
77 219
506 Indices
Historiae Later Liturgical Texts and Explanations

5.4.3 69 of Liturgies
Tertullian
Άρχοντες 'Εβραίων'
Ad Nationes
48f
1.13 220
Adversus Iudaeos Exsultet 364
2.7 415 Karaite Liturgies
Adversus Marcionem 16, 40f
4.34 415
De Baptismo Haggada
9 172 CJS211 89-91, 94-107
13.1 415 lvl 101
19 172ff, 179, 393 4v4f 99
20 192 5v(3f) 372f
De Corona 8r9f 19, 372
3.4 177ff 9v8-10r9 95ff
4.1 179 10v8 101
De Idolatria JTS 9560 90f, 94, 99,107f
14.7 187 T-S H2.108 90
De Ieiunio T-S NS 122.126 107
2.2 178,180 Seder Rcm Amram Gaon
10.1,8 178 49 132
13.1 180
13.3 178 Piyyut
14 181 Qalliri
14.2f 177f, 181 npisn " i1? 106
15.2 178
16.5 133 Anonymous:
Π0Π 'WD 101
16.6 134,220
De Oratione Yohanan Hakohen Birabi Yehoshua
23.2 177,179 lOOf
Ps.-Tertullian/Zephyrinus
Aramaic Piyyutim of SYAP
Adversus Omnes Haereses
2 360
8 271
4 322
Traditio Apostolica
5 363
33 161,275
9 360
41 273
34 321
Victorinus ofPetiau
35 321, 323
De Fabrica Mundi
37 363f
8 148
38 323f, 364
21 416
39 364
40 360
Indices 507
Targums, see p. 319 nn. 2 and 3 Inscriptions/Papyrus
(Syriac) Expositio Officiorum Ecclesiae Elephantine 38

206-210 CIJ 777 53f, 166
CIJ 805 342
Yannay 322,365-375
Transl. of n'O'i an tx
Partial transl. of Piyyutim from
Rabinovitz I, 298f. 300. 302f; Π, 258, 289

(Studia Judaica 35) Clemens Leonhard - Jewish Pesach and The Origins of The Christian Easter - Open Questions in Current Research-Walter de Gruyter (2006)

Uploaded by

Document Information

Original Title

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

(Studia Judaica 35) Clemens Leonhard - Jewish Pesach and The Origins of The Christian Easter - Open Questions in Current Research-Walter de Gruyter (2006)

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

CLEMENS LEONHARD

THE JEWISH PESACH

OPEN QUESTIONS IN CURRENT RESEARCH

Bibliographic information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek

Die Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie;

© Copyright 2006 by Walter de Gruytcr G m b H & Co. KG, D-10785 Berlin

3.2.7 The'Midrash'to Deut 26.5-8 107

5 The Targum Expansion of the Four Nights 317

a Habilitationsschrift and me as a member of the faculty. Albert Gerhards and

Münster, October 2006

1.1 The Origins of Pesach and Easter

19th century Palestine as well as in customs of Berbers in Morocco.3 It seems

1.2 'The Creation of a New Festival is Almost Unimaginable'

8 Karl Gerlach's approach is commented upon below, p. 277.

continuity should not be replaced by another one of an 'a-liturgical' character

anachronistic interpretations of the older sources in support of the younger

1.3 Sources and Approaches

contains many insightful analyses of the sources. He assumes, nevertheless,

18 His approach will partly be discussed below, 73.

Jewish-Christian discourse on the subject in his time. 24 In general, Origen's

aut's (1963) understanding of the targum expansion. It revises the position of

2.1 Exodus 12 and the Origins of Pesach

2.1.1 O u r Fathers Had Three Altars in Egypt'

1 This chapter is an expanded and updated version of Leonhard 2003b.

Concerning the Pesah (observed) in Egypt, it is said: Ά lamb which is perfect, a

The Mishna enumerates four points of difference:10

This is supported by the halakhot regarding the seder in mPes 10.5:

After the destruction of the Temple, no Pesah-offering is available any more.

that Rabban Gamaliel requires to be mentioned during the seder. Thus,

2.1.2 Reading Exodus 12 in the Liturgies

From the observations in the preceding section, it hardly comes as a surprise

2.1.3 Pesach Without Exodus

cle, the p o u r i n g of t h e b l o o d o n the b a s i s of the altar, as w e l l as the b u r n i n g of

Jubilees interprets the festival of P e s a h as G o d r e m e m b e r i n g t h e E g y p t i a n Pe-

36 CSCO 511.317. Cf. Numb 9.7,13 and n. 132 p. 59.

2.1.4 Exodus 12 and Domestic Liturgies in the First Century

54 I. Heinemann 1932, 33. According to Segal 1963, 30-32, Philo distinguishes in

63 Barrett 1994, 583f; cf. Huber 1968, 46.

Septuagint in his identification of these days as 'festival days' (Ant. 5.22/1.5

2.1.5 Samaritans and Beta Esrael: Reconstruction of Liturgies

73 Friedheim 2004, 206-212.

2.1.6 Melito's Peri Pascha

84 See ch. 4.6.4 p. 267.

93 Stewart-Sykes's invectives against Bokser ('a dissenting voice', not to be enumerated

this text afterwards, it would remain the presentation of another person's

a tendency to establish elements of a Christian identity at the expense of

102 See Seth Schwartz's studies 2002, and Stemberger 1999.

unleavened bread, as it is written for you'. This is no allusion to Rabban Ga-

119 Cf. n. 418 p. 272.

2.2 An Optical Illusion'

Menahem Haran describes the Pesah of Exod 12 as an 'optical' illusion,120

2.2.1 A Nomadic Ritual

unacceptable interpretation of the Binding of Isaac in the context of presumed offer-

2.2.3 Layers in the Text of Exodus 12

A broad consensus analyses Exod 12 as a multilayered text. This is based on

2.2.4 The Liturgy of Exodus 12

can n e i t h e r b e e x p l a i n e d f r o m the necessities of t h e cult at t h e T e m p l e n o r f r o m

families or of a household.143 In Second Temple times, it became customary

lation of an i m p o r t a n t law. 1 4 8 R e g a r d i n g the b l o o d , G e n 9.4 h a d already b e e n

Exod 12 is an allegorical interpretation of the liturgy at the Temple in Jerusa-

Excursus: The Impact of the Ήanatme of Exodus 12

ever, not immediately understood as a festival of the giving of the Tora.159

'anti-Haggadot' composed as replacements of the 'Jewish' Haggada. They