Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 9.djvu/55

FASTING 45 Livy (xxxvi. 37) was intended to be general or sacerdotal merely. Jewish f tsts. While remarkable for tlie cheerful, non- ascetic character of their worship, the Jews were no less distinguished from all the nations of antiquity by their annual solemn fast appointed to be observed on the 10th day of the 7th month (Tisri), the penalty of disobedience being death. The rules, as laid down in Lev. xvi. 29-34, xxiii. 27-32, and Numb. xxix. 7-11, include a special in junction of strict abstinence ("ye shall afflict your souls" 1 ) from evening to evening. This fast was intimately asso ciated with the chief feast of the year. Before that feast could be entered upon, the sins of the people had to be confessed and (sacramentally) expiated. The fast was a suitable concomitant of that contrition which befitted the occasion. The practice of stated fasting was not in any other case enjoined by the law ; and it is generally understood to have been forbidden on Sabbath. 2 At the same time, private and occasional fasting, being regarded as a natural and legitimate instinct, was regulated rather than repressed. The only other provision about fasting in the Pentateuch is of a regulative nature, Numb. xxx. 14 (13), to the effect that a vow made by a woman " to afflict the soul " may in certain circumstances be cancelled by her hus band. The history of Israel from Moses to Ezra furnishes a large number of instances in which the fasting instinct was obeyed both publicly and privately, locally and nationally, under the influence of sorrow, or fear, or passionate desire. See, for example, Judg. xx. 26 ; 1 Sam. vii. G (where the national fast was conjoined with the ceremony of pouring out water before the Lord) ; Jer. xxxvi. C, 9 ; and 2 Sam. xii. 1C. 3 Sometimes the observance of such fasts extended over a considerable period of time, during which, of course, the stricter jejuniitm was conjoined with olstinentia (Dan. x. 2). Sometimes they lasted only for a day. In Jonah iii. 6, 7, we have an illustrative example of the rigour with which a strict fast might be observed ; and such passages as Joel ii. and Isa. Iviii. 5 enable us to picture with some vividness the outward accompaniments of a Jewish fast day before the exile. During the exile many occasional fasts were doubtless observed by the scattered communities, in sorrowful commemoration of the various sad events which had issued in the downfall of the kingdom of Judah. Of these, four appear to have passed into general use the fasts of the 10th, 4th, 5th, and 7th months commemorating the beginning of the siege of Jerusalem, the capture of the city, the destruction of the temple, the assassination of Gedaliah. As time rolled on they became invested with increasing sanctity ; and though the prophet Zechariah, when con sulted about them at the close of the exile (Zech. viii. 19), had by no means encouraged the observance of them, the rebuilding of the temple does not appear to have been considered an achievement of sufficient importance to warrant their discontinuance. It is worthy of remark that 1 K 53. is here to be taken as substantially equivalent to "desire," " appetite." 2 See Judith viii. 6. "And yet it may be a question whether they (the Jews) did not always fast upon Sabbath," says Hooker (E. P., v. 72, 7), who gives a curious array of evidence pointing in this direction. He even makes use of Neh. viii. 9-12, which might be thought to tell the other way. Justinian s phrase " Sabbata Judajoram a Mose in omne scvum jejunio dicata " (1. xxxvi. c. 2; comp. Suetonius in Octav. c. 76) may be accounted for by the fact that the day of atone- n.ent is called Sabbat Sabbaton ("a perfect Sabbath"). There is. as Graf (Gesch. Biicher dcs A. T. t p. 41) has pointed out, no direct evidence that the fast on the 10th of the 7th month was ever observed before the exile. But the inference which he draws from this silence of the historical books is manifestly a precarious one at best. Bleek calls Lev. xvi. " ein deutliches Beispiel Mosaischer Abfassung " (Einlfituny, p. 31, ed. 1878). Ezekiel s prophetic legislation contains no reference to any fast day; the book of Esther (ix. 31), on the other hand, records the institution of a new fast on the 13th of the 12th month. In the post-exile period private fasting was much practised by the pious, and encouraged by the religious sentiment of the time (see Judith viii. G ; Tob. xii. 8, and context; Sirach xxxiv. 2G; Luke ii. 37, and xviii. 12). The last reference contains an allusion to the weekly fasts which were observed on the 2d and 5th days of each week, in commemoration, it was said, of the ascent and descent of Moses at Sinai. The real origin of these fasts and the date of their introduction are alike uncertain ; it is mani fest, however, that the observance of them was voluntary, and never made a matter of universal obligation. It is probable that the Sadducees, if not also the Essenes, wholly neglected them. The second book (Seder Moed} of the Mishna contains two tractates bearing upon the subject of fasting. One (Yoma, "the day") deals exclusively with the rites which were to be observed on the great day of expiation or atonement ; the other (Taanitk, " fast ") is devoted to the other fasts, and deals especially with the manner in which occasional fasting is to be gone about if no rain shall have fallen on or before the 17th day of Marcheschwan. It is enacted that in such a case the rabbis shall begin with a light fast of three days (Monday, Thursday, Monday), i.e., a fast during which it is lawful to work, and also to wash and anoint the person. Then, hi the event of a continued drought, fasts of increasing intensity are ordered ; and as a last resort the ark is to be brought into the street and sprinkled with ashes, the heads of the Nasi and Ab-beth-din being at the same time similarly sprinkled. 4 In no case was any fast to be allowed to interfere with new-moon or other fixed festival. Another institution treated with considerable fulness in the treatise Taanitli is that of tho 1CUD ^3S (viri stalionis), who are represented as having been laymen severally representing the twenty-four classes or families into which the whole commonwealth of the laity was divided. They used to attend the temple in rotation, and be present at the sacrifices ; and as this duty fell to each in his turji, the men of the class or family which he represented were expected in their several cities and places of abode to engage themselves in religious exercises, and especially in fasting. Tho suggestion will readily occur that here may be the origin of the Christian stationes. But neither Tertullian nor any other of the fathers seem to have been aware of the existence of any such institution among the Jews; and very probably the story about it may have been a comparatively late invention. It ought to be borne in mind that the Aramaic portion of the Meyillath 2ianilh (a document considerably older than the treatises in the Mishna) gives a catalogue only of the days on which fast ing was forbidden. The Hebrew part (commented on by Maimonides) in which numerous fasts are recommended is of considerably later date. See Reland, Atitiq. Hebr., p. iv. c. 10; Derenbourg, Hist, de Palestine, p. 439. Practice of the Early Christian Church. Jesus himself did not inculcate asceticism in His teaching, and the absence of that distinctive element from His practice was sometimes a subject of hostile remark (Matt. xi. 19). We read, indeed, that on one occasion He fasted forty days and forty nights ; but the expression, which is an obscure one, possibly means nothing more than that He endured the privations ordinarily involved in a stay in the wilderness. While we have no reason to doubt that He observed the reat national fast prescribed in the written law of one 4 The allusion to the avk warns us to be cautious in assuming the laws of tho Mishna to have been ever in force.