3. Offering of the Firstborn.—This is the view at present most widely accepted, and perhaps best set forth by Wellhausen in the chapter of his Pro- legomena dealing with the whole question of the feasts (4th ed. pp. 82-117; cf. also p. 358 f.).* This holds that, in the main, the Passover was the sacrifice of the firstborn, The simple and naturat meaning and occasion of the feasts is to be found in the statement of Gn 47> ‘And Abel was a keeper of sheep, but Cain was a tiller of the ground. And in the process of time it came to pass, that Cain brought of the fruit of the ground an offering unto the Lorp. And Abel, he also brought of the firstlings of his flock.’ The Pass- over is the shepherd’s offering, given in thankful recognition that the fruitfulness of the herd is from J”. That the firstborn belong to J” is a primitive ordinance, and it is pointed out that in our present accounts such an offering is closely connected with the Passover (Ex 13" ‘Thou shalt set apart unto the Lorp all that openeth the womb. .. the males shall be the Lorp’s,’ Dt 151**- 16). This custom, it is said, can alone explain the remarkable choice made by the plague in smiting the firstborn. Because Pharaoh prevents the bringing of this offering which is due, J” takes the firstborn of the Egyptians. The oft-repeated demand is to let the people go to keep a feast in the wilderness with cattle and sheep (Ex 3% 715 87 et passim). For this purpose they borrow the ornaments from the Egyptians. Thus in reality the feast was the occasion of the Exodus, if only the ostensible one, and not the Exodus of the feast, as would appear from the accounts in Dt and Ex 13. (For Ex 131-16 is held by Well- hausen to belomg in its present form to a Deutero- nomic editing). And he concludes that, while a slight inclination to assign a historical motive to the Passover may possibly be traced earlier, this first actually occurs in Dt. This is apparently due to the fact that in the older fenced the feast explains the occasion and time of the Exodus. Then comes the change that the slaying of the Egyptians is the reason for offering the firstborn ;
* Of. also in this connexion J. Miiller, Kritischer Versuch
tiber den Ursprung und die geschichtliche Entwicklung dea Pesach- und Mazzothfestes, Bonn, 1884.
PASSOVER
and the time is in the spring, because the Exodus took place then. Then in P comes the further change that the connexion of the Passover with the sacrifice of the firstborn is lost to view. It is no longer based on the fact that J” slew the firstborn of the Egyptians, but it was instituted before the Exodus, that He might spare the firstborn of Israel.
4. A Feast of Atonement.—Another line of con- jecture starts from the Piscules ritual appearing in both the accounts of Ex 12. We have seen that the second section there (vv.“-*’) deals almost exclusively with the blood ceremonial. 5 46h Baur (Tiibinger Ztschr. f. Theol. 1832, p. 40 ff.) connects the feast with that celebrated in India, Persia, Asia Minor, and Egypt at the time of the vernal equinox. The Passover sacrifice is offered in place of the firstborn of men, and is thus essen- tially a sacrifice of atonement. Cf. yaya in Ex 134 (JE) with the use of the same word in connexion with the rite of Molech in such passages as Ly 18”, 2K 23”, Jer 32%. Dillmann in his Com. on Ex and Ly (p. 636 and οἵ. 121, ed. by Ryssel, Leipzig, 1897) regards the Passover as an offering of recon- ciliation and purification, introducing the equi- noctial festival. The connexion with the Exodus came from the fact that Israel left Egypt at this season. Contiguity in time also explains the later association with mazzéth.
In the same way Ewald (Antiquities of Israel, p. 352ff.) affirms—‘from the earliest times an atonement offering was an indispensable con- stituent of every Spring festival.’ It comes at a time when there is serious reflexion and anxious care for the unknown future, and so man felt himself impelled to offer ‘sacrifices of purification and reconciliation, not alone on account of par- ticular transgressions of which he knew himself to be guilty, but also to secure the Divine ex- emption and grace generally on the occasion of this uncertain transition, so that, as it were, if, during the new year, his god were to visit him and call him to account, he might not slay him, as he perhaps deserved, but might graciously pass him over.’ The lamb was accordingly ‘unmis- takably an expiatory offering,’ and the streaking of the doorway with blood was ‘to make atone- ment for the whole house and all who were con- tained therein celebrating the festival.’
Schultz in his OT Theol. (Eng. tr. i. p. 364) presents much the same view, although he admits the possibility that it ‘may originally have been the feast of the firstlings of the cattle.
5. A Blood Covenant.—In the OT Theol. of Kayser-Marti we find a somewhat different pre- sentation. Here (2nd ed., Strassburg, 1894, p 37f.) it is maintained that originally the Passover was unconnected with the Spring or the First- born, but was rather a celebration by means of which one secured his house from all harm in times of pestilence. This was effected by the blood ceremonial which brought one into the closest relations with his divinity, and so, as he believed, secured him from all danger. The application of blood to the doorway suggests that the house divinities (Hausgétter) who dwelt there are possibly the ones whose protection was sought. * ἘΠῚ é Trumbull (The Threshold Covenant, p. 2031f.) holds that the Passover goes back to a rite, which he seeks to trace among many peoples, of a cove-