140 PENTECOST
ἡμέρᾳ τῶν νέων) ; while the later Jews also denom- inated it myy, Aram. xmsy, (Jos. Ant, mI. x. 6 ἴα: ἀσαρθά) ; Mishna, Arach. il. 3, Chag. ii. 4, Rosh
A. i. 2; Targ. on Nu 28%), a term meaning ‘solemn see (2 Καὶ 10”, Is 10”, Jer 9? etc.), but applied in OT to the closing day of the feasts of unleavened bread and tabernacles (Ly 23”, Nu 29", Dt 168, 2 Ch 7°, Neh 8%; RVm ‘closing festival,’ not as AVm ‘restraint’), and hence sppllee also to Pentecost as the closing festival of the harvest season. Jos, inaccurately says (Ant. ΠῚ. x. 6) that nyyy, signifies (σημαίνει) Pentecost.
In the Heb. legislation, the titles ‘feast of har- vest’ and ‘day of first-fruits’ indicate that this festival was fundamentally an agricultural one, expressing gratitude to God for the returns from the labours of the field. It celebrated specificall the wheat harvest (Ex 34%), the last of the cereals to ripen in Palestine. It marked, therefore, the closing of the grain harvest, as the feast of tabernacles (or ingathering) celebrated especially the return from oliveyards and vineyards as well as the close of the husbandman’s labours as a whole (Dt 164), This of itself implies that the feast fell in the late spring or early summer; and, since the Israelites became agricultural only after entering Canaan, it could not have been pre-Mosaic, but was established with a view to the settlement in the promised land (Ex 34 [JE], Lv 23 [Η] etc.). On the other hand, the title ‘feast of weeks’ already aren it in Ex 34” [JE], as well as the general
escription of the time of its observance in Dt 16° (‘Seven weeks shalt thou number unto thee: from the time thou beginnest to put the sickle to the standing corn shalt thou begin to number seven weeks,’ RV), find their definite explanation in Ly 23°31, From the latter we learn (1) that the acer 9 of the harvest season was celebrated during the feast of unleavened bread by the cere- mony of waving before the Lord ‘a sheaf (1>¥) of the first-fruits (ΠΝ) of harvest,’* together with the waving of a he-lamb and the rendering of Bppcinted meal- and drink-offerings ; and that none of the new crop could be eaten until this had been done. Since the barley ripened first, the sheaf was understood to be of that grain (Philo, de Septen. § 20; Jos. Ant. m1. x. 5), though it is not one in OT. The ‘feast of weeks’ came on the fiftieth day after the barley-sheaf was waved (vy.1® 18, i.e. the day after the completion of seven weeks). Hence we read (Jer 5%) of ‘ the appointed weeks of harvest’ ; and Philo (de Septen. §21) says that the sheaf-waving προέορτός ἐστιν ἑτέρας ἑορτῆς μείζονος.
(2) We learn also from Lv 23 that the barley-sheaf was waved on ‘the morrow after the Sabbath’ (vv.4-1* novin AID). The meaning of this phrase, on which the computation of Pentecost depends, has been much ἀιδουϊοῦς The Jews of Christ’s time understood it to designate Nisan 16th, without re- gard to the day of the week; ‘the Sabbath’ bein Hh ls as the first day of the feast of cleaved bread (Nisan 15th) on the basis of v.7 [see Jos.
Ant. mm. x. 5; LXX at Ly 23" (τῇ ἐπαύριον τῆς πρώτης) ; Targums (3p xpi 555); Mishna, Chag. il. 4, Menach. x. 1-3]. There was dissent, however,
from this interpretation even at that time. The ‘Baithusians’ (Sadducees) are said to have held that ‘the morrow after the Sabbath’ meant the day following the weekly Sabbath which occurred during the feast of unleavened bread (see Lightfoot, Hor. Heb. on Lk 61; Adler, ‘Phar. ἃ. Sad. ἃ. ihre
* In the second temple, barley was cut the previous evenin to the amount of an ephah (10 omers), brotight to the ἘΣΣῚ thrashed, parched, and ground. Then one omer, mixed with oil and frankincense, was ‘ waved’ and a handful burned on the altar (Jos. Ant. mL. x. 5; Mishna, Menach. x. 4; Edersheim, The Temple, ete. p. 224). Kurtz (Sacr. Worship of OT, p. 374) thinks the sheaf iteelf should have been waved according to Ly.
PENTECOST
differirende Ausleg. ἃ. nawa ninco,’ in Monatschr. f. Gesch. u. Wissensch. d. Judenth, 1878, p. 522 ff, 568 ff., 1879, p. 29 ff. ; Montet, Hssat sur les orig. des partis Sad. et Phar. 1883), and the Karaites of the 8th cent. A.D. followed the same view (see Trigland, Diatribe de secta Kar. 1703, ch. 4). There are also traces in antiquity of the view that the yhrase in question designated the last, not the first, day of the paschal festival (see Dillmann in Schenkel’s Bib.-Lex. under ‘ Pfingsten’). Some modern scholars likewise contend that the tradi- tional interpretation was wrong, chiefly because πὶ elsewhere means the weekly Sabbath, and because, it is said, ninz¢ νον (Lv 23") can only mean weeks which ended with Sabbaths. Hence George (Die alter. Jiid. Feste, 1835) understood the ‘Sabbath’? in question to be the weekly Sabbath which fell immediately before harvest, holding the harvest festivals to have had originally no connexion with the Passover. Hitzig (Ostern u. Pfingsten, 1837, Ost. u. Pf. im zweit. Dekalog, 1838) went so far as to maintain that in the Heb. Calendar Nisan 14 and 21 were always Sabbaths, so that the year must always haveteran (Nisan 1) with a Sunday ; and that ‘the morrow after the Sabbath’ was the day following the weekly Sabbath of the feast of un- leavened bread, and therefore always fell on Sun- day, Nisan 22. With him agreed Knobel (Com. on Lev.) and Kurtz (Sacr. Worshi; oF OT, Eng. tr. p- 356), except that they identified the ‘Sabbath’ in question with Nisan 14, and the day of the sheaf-waving with Nisan 15. Against this unsup- ported conception of the calendar, however, is the well-known custom of beginning each month by the new moon, as well as the fact that in such a calendar there would be an incomplete week at the end of the year, which would conflict with the sanctity of the seventh day. Hitzig’s theory, more- over, would place the sheaf-waving after the feast of unleavened bread had ended. Hence more writers have followed the Sadducean interpretation, although this also might, when Nis. 15 fell on Sun- day, throw the ceremony of sheaf-waving outside the feast of unleavened bread (Saalschiitz, Das Mos. Recht*, 1853, p. 418; Fiirst, Heb. τι. Chald. Worterb. 1863, under ποῦ; Wellhausen, Jahrb. f. deutsch. Theol. xxii. ; Proleg. p. 86; von Orelli in Herzog’s RE’, art. ‘ Pfingstfest’). The traditional inter- retation, however, may be successfully defended. here is no sufficient proof that the connexion of the sheaf-waving with the feast of unleavened bread was not original, nor can Lv 23°” be separated from the surrounding legislation, since otherwise no directions concerning the feast of weeks would be giveninitatall. If, however, the two were thus connected, the sheaf-waving may most naturally be supposed to have occurred during, not after, the feast. This is also made probable by Jos 5'4, where it is stated that, after having kept the Pass- over on the 14th day of the month in Gilgal, ‘the did eat of the produce (RVm, not ‘old corn’ as A and RV; "ay means simply produce) of the land on the morrow after the passover, unleavened cakes and parched corn in the self-same day.’ The latter clause shows that the feast of unleavened bread was notover, and ‘the morrow after the passover,’ while it may mean (as in Nu 33°) Nis. 15, may also mean Nis. 16, since the paschal meal was celebrated on Nis 15, in the evening following the 14th when the lamb was slain; but at any rate the phraseology shows that the sheaf-waving, without which the new corn could not be eaten, was regulated by the date of the Passover itself, not by any ae Sabbath. Finally, the application of nzv¥ to the first day of unleavened bread may be justified by the language used (v.**) of the day of atonement (‘In the ninth day of the month. . . shall ye keep your sabbath’), and by the application of the term to the sabbatical]