(c) For the three regular annual festivals—apart, perhaps, from the Harvest festival—we have no real testimony for this period except the legal prescriptions in the Book of the Covenant (Ex 2348.) and the almost identical text of Ex 34!8#., According to these, all males are to appear three times a year before Jahweh (7.¢. at some sanctuary) with gifts. (a) The first of these is the Feast of Unleavened Bread (Mazzéth), which is to be held for seven days in the month Abib, the month when the grain passes into the ear. Here, then. the Pesah day is included in the Mazzéth festival (cf., on the original significance of each of these, above, p. 622") ; but the prescription of 341% regard- ing the presenting of the firstlings of cattle shows that in this code there must have been at one time mention of the Pesah as well.* The emphasis laid upon the month Abib as the month of the Exodus from Egypt is the first approach to a theocratic motive, 2.¢. one derived from the religious history of the people. —(8) The second occasion is the Feast of Weeks (7.c., as follows from Dt 16°, seven weeks after the beginning of the [barley] harvest), as the feast of firstfruits of the wheat harvest.— (y) Thirdly, there is the Feast of Harvest, of the fruit and vintage, at the close of the year.
The Feast of Weeks and that of Harvest, as being purely harvest-thanksgiving festivals, were not possible till after Israel’s entrance into Canaan. A trace of their having been borrowed from the Canaanites is found in Jg 9°’, where the vintage festival, under the name Aillilim (‘jubilant re- joicing ’) is celebrated by the [heathen] Shechem- ites. For Israel itself the Feast of Harvest is the only one for which we have historical testi- mony (Jg 21", where it is celebrated by the maidens of Shiloh with dances in the vineyards; and in all probability also 1S 13). Hence it is often called simply the Feast, and that not only in
* There is afurther interpolated mention of the Pesah in Ex 3425, in the direction that the Pesah offering is not to be kent till the following morning. It is not clear, however, whether this refers to the flesh of the Paschal lamb,
RELIGION OF ISRAEL
early passages like Jg 21 and 1K 8 ©, but even as late as Ezk 45. f
There is as yet no fixed date for the festivals (apart from the general assignment of the spring festival to the month Abib).* People were guided, as is natural in the case of harvest festivals, by considerations of weather and climate, and in consequence held the feasts at different dates in different places. ‘This view is supported by the frequently recurring expression ‘ proclaim a feast,’ i.e. invite to the keeping of it by intimating its date. The self-evident terms of Sabbath and New Moon needed no such intimation.
That the festivals in ancient times were, with- out exception, occasions of rejoicing is shown by a great many expressions: to celebrate a festival and to rejoice before Jahweh are_ practically identical notions. The suspicion of Eli (18 1) and the stern denunciation of Isaiah (Is 28%) prove that the sacrificial meals which (along with the dances, Ex 32°, Jg 21%; the religious dance, with musical accompaniment, of 2S 6° belongs to a different category) formed the culminating point of the festival, readily led to excesses. It was a still worse feature that immoral ritual practices were taken over from the Canaanites. In Hos 4. fornication and adultery are evidently con- nected with the sacrificial meals at the high place cult under every green tree; and Am 2? (like Hos 4"4) refers to the evil of the niwap hkéedéshéth, or ‘sacred [girls],’ who, in accordance with a wide- spread practice of the heathen Semites, prosti- tuted themselves in honour of the Deity. No less frequent is the mention of male Aierodouloi (kéde- shim). It cannot, unfortunately, be denied that, in spite of the energetic protests of the prophets and the prohibitions of the Law, the notion that such practices were reconcilable even with Jahwism must have been pretty widely prevalent in Israel. It is indeed mentioned to the honour of king Asa (in 1 K 15”) that he expelled the kédéshim (whose presence is witnessed to as early as the reign of Rehoboam, 1 K 14") from Judah; yet not only do we hear of remnants of them under Jehoshaphat (1 K 224°), but it is recorded of Josiah that (in the year B.C. 623) he broke down the houses of the kédéshim which were situated by the temple of Jahweh (2 K 237). The latter statement permits of no other explanation than that this abuse was connected with the cult of Jahweh. The prohibition contained in Dt 23!8 (7) might, if need be, be referred to kédéshim and kédéshéth in the service of a heathen deity, but v. (®) shows clearly that it was nothing uncommon to bring the earnings of these male [here called ‘ dog’] and female hierodouloi as a votive offering into the temple of Jahweh. This would, however, be quite inconsistent if we were intended to think of them as in the service of another god.
4, Outside the cultus proper stands communion with the Deity by seeking and obtaining oracles. We have repeatedly spoken already (¢.g. p. 641 ff.) of the connexion of Divine images such as the ’éphéd and ¢érdphim with the consulting of oracles. It is a question whether there was even then an inseparable connexion between the *éphéd and the Urim and Thummim (such as in Ex 289, where the latter have their place in the oracle- pocket attached to the ephod of the high priest). The meaning of the names “rim and tummim (o9n) OWN) Is as much disputed as the nature of the lots for which they stand. All that is