Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 18.djvu/537

PENTATEUCH 511 I igions f.its. sin-offerings and guilt-offerings, the greater part of the cereal accompaniments of sacrifices, the skin of the burnt-offering, the breast and shoulder of thank-offerings. Further, they receive the male firstlings and the tithe of cattle, as also the firstfruits and tithes of the fruits of the land. Yet with all this they are not even obliged to support at their own cost the stated services and offerings of the temple, which are provided for by a poll-tax. The poll-tax is not ordained in the main body of the Code, but such a tax, of the amount of one-third of a shekel, began to be paid in the time of Nehemiah (Xeh. x. 32), and in a novel of the law (Exod. xxx. 15) it is demanded at the higher rate of half a shekel per head. That these exorbitant taxes were paid to or claimed by the priests in the wilderness, or during the anarchy of the period of the judges, is inconceivable. Nor in the period of the kingship is it conceivable that the priests laid claim to contributions much in excess of what the king himself received from his subjects ; certainly no such claim would have been supported by the royal author ity. In 1 Sam. viii. 1 5 the tithes appear as paid to the king, and are viewed as an oppressive exaction, yet they form but a single element in the multiplicity of dues which the priests claim under the Priestly Code. But, above all, the fundamental principles of the system of priestly dues in the Code are absolutely irreconcilable with the fact that as long as Solomon s temple stood the king had the power to dispose of its revenues as he pleased. The sacred taxes are the financial expression of the hierocratic system ; they accord with the condition of the Jews after the exile, and under the second temple they were actually paid accord ing to the Code, or with only minor departures from its provisions. Before the exile the sacred gifts were not paid to the priests at all but to Jehovah ; they had no resemblance to taxes, and their religious meaning, which in the later system is hardly recognizable, was quite plainly marked. They were in fact identical with the great public festal offerings which the offerers consumed in solemn sacrificial meals before Jehovah, that is, at the sanctuary. The change of these offerings into a kind of tax was connected with an entire transformation of the old character of Israel s worship, which resulted from its centralization at Jerusalem. In the old days the public worship of the nation consisted essentially in the celebration of the yearly feasts ; that this was so can be plainly seen from the pro phets, from Amos, but especially from Hosea. And accord ingly the laws of worship are confined to this one point in the Jehovist, and even in Deuteronomy. After the exile the festal observances became much less important than the tdmld, the regular daily and weekly offerings and services ; and so we find it in the Priestly Code. But, apart from this, the feasts underwent a qualitative change, a sort of de generation, which claims our special attention. Originally they were thanksgiving feasts in acknowledgment of Jehovah s goodness in the seasons of the year. The ex pression of thanks lay in the presentation of the firstlings and firstfruits, and these constituted the festal offerings. The chief feast, at the close of the old Hebrew year, was the autumn feast of ingathering (Feast of Tabernacles), a thanksgiving for the whole produce of the winepress and the corn-flour, but especially for the vintage and the olive harvest. Then, at the beginning of the summer half-year, came the feast of unleavened bread (Macbeth, Easter), which in turn was followed by the harvest feast (Pente cost). Between the two last there was a definite interval of seven weeks ; hence the name " Feast of Weeks " (Exod. xxxiv.). In Deut. xvi. 9 the seven weeks are explained as " seven weeks from such time as thou beginnest to put the sickle to the corn." The Easter feast, therefore, is the commencement of the corn harvest, and this throws light on its fixed relation to Pentecost. The one is the end of the harvest, the other its commencement in A bib (the month of " corn-ears") ; between them lie the " determined weeks of harvest " (Jer. v. 24). The whole of this tejiipus clausum is one great time of gladness (Isa. ix. 3), bounded by the two feasts. According to Lev. xxiii. 9-22 the dis tinguishing ceremony at Easter is the presentation of a sheaf of barley, before which no one is allowed to taste the new corn ; the corresponding rule at Pentecost is the pre sentation of leavened wheaten bread. The barley of course is the first and the wheat the last grain ripe ; at the be ginning of harvest the firstfruits are presented in the sheaf, and men also partake of the new growth in the shape of parched ears of corn (Lev. xxiii. 14 ; Josh. v. 11); at the end of harvest the firstfruits take the form of ordinary bread. We now see the meaning of the " unleavened bread." Unleavened cakes are quickly prepared, and were used when bread had to be furnished suddenly (1 Sam. xxviii. 24) ; here it is the new meal of the year which is hastily baked into a sort of bannock without waiting for the tedious process of leavening. The unleavened bread contrasts with the Pentecostal cake in the same way as the barley sheaf and the parched ears do, and so, as AVC see from Josh. v. 11, parched corn maybe eaten instead of unleavened bread, a point worthy of notice. Thus the three feasts are all originally thanksgivings The for the fruits of the ground, and in all of them the offering Passover, of firstfruits is the characteristic feature. Quite similarly the Passover, which was celebrated at the same season as the Easter feast of unleavened bread, is also a thanks giving feast ; but here the offerings are not taken from the fruits of the ground but from the male firstlings of the cattle (sheep and oxen). The Jehovistic tradition in Exodus still exhibits this original character of the Pass over with perfect clearness. Jehovah demands that His people shall go forth and celebrate His feast in the wilder ness with sacrifices of sheep and oxen ; and, because Pharaoh refuses to allow the Hebrews to serve their God by offer ing the firstlings of cattle that are His due, He takes from the king the firstborn of his subjects. The feast, therefore, is older than the exodus, and the former is the occasion of the latter, not vice versa. In the Priestly Code the true significance of the feasts appears only dimly in particular details of ritual ; their general character is entirely changed. They no longer rest on the seasons and the fruits of the season, and indeed have no basis in the nature of things. They are simply statutory ordinances resting on a positive divine command, which at most was issued in commemoration of some historical event. Their relation to the firstfruits and firstlings is quite gone; indeed these offerings have no longer any place in acts of worship, being transformed into a mere tax, which is holy only in name. This degeneration of the old feasts is carried furthest in the case of the Passover. An historical reason is assigned to the Passover as early as Deuteronomy and the Deuteronomic redaction of the Jehovist, but in these writings the real character of the feast remains so far unchanged that it is still celebrated by the sacrifice of the firstlings of oxen and of sheep. But in the Priestly Code the paschal sacrifice has quite lost its old character, and consists of a yearling sheep or goat, while the firstlings have no more connexion with the Passover, but are a mere due to the priests without any properly religious character. The other feasts have also lost their individuality by being divorced from the firstfruits and celebrated instead by stated sacrifices, which are merely the tdmld on a larger scale, and have no individuality of meaning. All this is a consequence of the centralizing process which took the observances of worship away from their natural soil, spiritualized them, and gave them a stereotyped reference to