* Toy (‘The Meaning of Pesach,’in JBL, 1898, p. 178 ff.) thinks otherwise, holding that the pesah was originally a ritual dance, accompanied by the sacrifice of a lamb, and that it was only afterwards that the name was transferred to the sacrifice,
+ Of. on the most recent explanations of the term (including its comparison with the Assyr. pagéhu, ‘calm oneself,’ so that pesah would=‘ calming or appeasing [the anger of the Deity])’ Riedel in ZATW, 1900, p. 319ff. He holds pesah to be the Egyp. poseh, ‘harvest.’ Schiifer, again (Das Passah-Mazzoth- Fest nach seinem Ursprunge, seiner Bedeutung, und seiner innerpentateuchischen Entwickelung, Giitersloh, 1900), holds the Passover to have been a purificatory offering of very early origin, common to all the Semites, and designed to appease the Deity. At the same time he denies the pre-Mosaic origin of the OT Passover, declaring it to have been, along with its pendant the Mazg6th feast (which was meant to recall the haste of the Exodus), from first to last a historic-theocratic festival. His argument is manifestly under the spell of tradition.
t The view that the Passover and the offering of firstlings were not originally connected (so Volz in Theol. Ltztg. 1901, col. 635 f.) appears to the present writer to be at least incapable of demonstration.
baked from the new corn (and thus implied an agrarian festival) is held to be contradicted, espe- cially by their use in connexion with sacrifices all the year through, and no less by their being used as common food. The only objection to Beer’s explanation is the difficulty of supposing that the memory of an obsolete manner of life was solemnly celebrated by a return to it, and that for a period of six days. Moreover, the agrarian character of the spring festival appears to be assured by Dt 16° and by the presentation of the so-called wave- sheaf (Lv 231°),
The festal character of the Sheep-shearing is still witnessed to by 1S 25" and 28 13% (ef, also Gn 311° 384), It is, however, quite intelli- gible that this festival, so important for nomads, afterwards fell more into the background as com- pared with the agrarian festivals that were cele- brated in common.
7. As to the course of procedure at a festival we have information in Ex 32° which no doubt applies also to the pre-Mosaic period : sacrifice, sacrificial meals, amusements [aeeys in all probability, dancing). Many a practice, which afterwards aroused the righteous indignation of the prophets, may have had its roots in the ritual customs of pre-Mosaic times instead of being derived from the evil example of the Canaanites.
8. A religious character belongs, finally, to other two customs whose origin in like manner goes, without doubt, back to the pre-Mosaic era : cireum- cision and blood-revenge.
Circumcision.*— All attempts to explain this practice as due to purely sanitary considerations are now rightly regarded as exploded. As little weight can be attached to such explanations as that it is a milder symbolic form of the once prevalent sacrifice of children, or of self-emascula- tion in honour of a deity. On the contrary, circumcision has, amongst numerous (including Semitic) tribes, an evident connexion with a boy’s reaching puberty ; it is the sign of maturity, and thus of full admittance to the number of capable warriors of the tribe. But, since it has at the same time a religious meaning (for ‘arél ‘uncir- cumcised’ is equivalent to ‘[religiously] unclean,’ and hence a strongly disparaging word), it can be viewed only as an act of consecration for the benefit of a tribal god or some particular demon. It thus serves at once as a tribal mark + and as a defence against the harmful influence of other demons. Even for Jahwism circumcision is primarily a sign that a man belongs to the people and the worship of Jahweh, although the specifically theological interpretation of it as a sign of the covenant (Gn 171°") belongs only to the latest stage (P).
The oldest tradition as to the origin of child circumcision meets us in Ex 4“ (J), In this now mutilated passage it is implied that Moses aroused the indignation of the Deity (here of course already Jahweh) because at the time of his marriage with Zipporah he was not circumcised as religious custom required (cf. also Gn 34" [J]). Zipporah
* Of., on this subject, H. Ploss, ‘Geschichtliches und Ethnoio- gisches tiber Knabenbeschneidung’ in Deutsches Archiv Sir Geschichte der Medicin und medicinischen Geographie, viii. 3, Pp. 312 ff. ; P. Lafargue, ‘La circoncision, sa signification sociale et religieuse’ in Bulletins de la soc. @’ Anthropologie de Paris, ser, iii. tome x. 8, p. 420ff. ; P. C. Remondino, History of Cir- cumcision from the Earliest Times to the Present, Philadelphia, 1891; A. Glassberg, Die Beschneidung, etc., Berlin, 1896; S. Kohn, Die Geschichte der Beschneidung bei den Juden von den altesten Zeiten bis auf die Gegenwart, Frankfurt a. M., 1902 (Hebrew).
t+ As such, it appears to go back to a time when the men still went naked ; cf. Gunkel, ‘Ueber die Beschneidung im AT’? in Archiv fiir Papyrusforschung, ii. 1, p. 18 ff. (against Reitzen- stein, Zwei religionsgeschichtliche Fragen, Strassburg, 1901, according to whom Israel borrowed circumcision from the priestly aristocracy of Egypt, whereas Gunkel holds correctly that al? Egyptians were circumcised).
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