' The same thing is true of the Chagiga, the meat of a slain thank-ottering, which was wont to be previously brouglit with the Passover Supper.' And we must remember tliat the ritual was prob- aV)ly not written down while it was a ' living rite.' * The earliest wTitten sources are based on an oral tradition of what had been done a century before.
We may reverently conjecture our Lord's medi- tations :xs He saw the lamb sacrificed, and satdown to tlie Keast. The death of the lamb was a figure of His ovra death. The feast shadowed forth His feeding HLs i)eople. Did He as yet know of His destiny? Perhaps it was beginning to unfold itself to His human consciousness (1) by His glow- ing knowledge of His nation's religion, history, and sacred books ; (2) by His mother's telling Him some of the incidents of His birth and infancy ; (3) by the inner unveiling of His Divine nature to His human nature. We can only conjecture. But His answer to Joseph and Mary (Lk 2^) imijlies some self-knowledge, and perliaps a step in the acquirement of that self - knowledge and con- sciousness.
On anotlier point we are on surer ground. At the Paschal feast it was customary for the youngest present to ask, ' Why is this ni<,^ht different from all other nights?' adding a mention of some of the ritual acts. 'What mean ve \ty this service?' (E.\ 12=8 137. 8^ Dt QW) And the head of the house- hold or company replied by a recapitulation of the history of the Exodus, which in later times was called the Eastern Haggada. No doubt our Lord followed this custom, and no doubt also Joseph gave the explanation, either in tlie traditional words as handed down to the modern Jews, or in a freer, perhaps a fuller manner (cf. Ex 12-*' 13*, Dt 6='-25 265-» ; cf. Bickell, Eng. tr. pp. 118-120). Other details of the Passover ritual in the time of Christ, such as the sop, the cups of wine, and the singing of tlie Great (or third or final) llallel, are vouched for by the accounts of tlie Last Supper given by the Evangelists and by St. Paul.f See art. Passover.
* Compare the usual view of the earliest liturgies. We will not therefore dwell on the Jewish accounts of the ecclesiastical amplifications of the Scriptural order, and still less on mwiern Jewish use. But the present Samaritan customs (mode of dressing the lamb, the spit in form of a cross, the mode of roasting, etc.) are very probably similar to the Jewish rites before the destruction of the Temple. Cf. J. E. H. Thomson in PEFSt, 1902, Jan. pp. 82-92, and Expos. Times, xi. [190U1 375 (very interesting), and other accounts by Dean Stanley, Mills, i'etermann, Vartan, in Baedeker's Palestine and Suria, etc.
t Many writers who mention the Great Ilallcl ignore the various accounts as to the Psalms which
' When f/fii h^nl fnlfiUcd the days' (reXeii xds ifixipa^). ( luf I'ii-t impression is undoubtedly tliiit tlie w hull- A. ,-, „ ,lays of the Feast (Ex 23" etc.') are meant. We .--liuuld expect j)ious Jews, like .Joseph and ^lary, to remain the whole time, not because it was a precept, but out of devotion. ' It was more laudable to remain the whole seven days, especially on account of the last day, which was a Feast Day ' (Lightfoot ; cf . Ex 12'«). Eders- Iieim (Life and Times of Jesus the Messiah, i. 247) argues that Joseph and Mary set out for home before the close of the Feast, because the "Talmud says that 'during Feasts' (not after them) 'the members of the Temple Sanhedr'in came out on to the terrace and taught the people, contrary to the usual custom of sitting as a court of appeal,' and he thinks that Christ was there. In dealing with this suggestion we have to notice the expres- sion TeXeiuiaavTav rds Tj/ne/ias instead of the lis (Srf ) (wXriadTjcav ai ruiipai. of Lk 1^ 2* 2='- —, and ivXriadri b xp^vos of Lk 1". The two words are sometimes synonymous in effect, but the distinction between them has been defined as follows : ' TeXaovv is to complete so that notliing remains to be done, but tlie thing or work is TiXewv ; it implies an end or object (reXos) to be looked forward to and fullj' attained. irXypovp looks at the quantity to be done, not at the end to be reached, and so is to fill a thinw fuU, so that it lacks nothing.' St. Luke's words are therefore perhaps compatible witli Joseph and Mary having left on the third day, the so-c!uled half-holiday, when it was lawful to return liome, but we prefer (in spite of Edersheim's Tal- mudical argument) to think tliat they ' stayed to the end' of the Feast. It might be said, however, by those who believe in the earlier return, that our Lord's staying behind was a tacit rebuke, esjiecially if ev toU toO varpos /lov (Lk 2'') be taken in a local sense. St. Luke's use of the sinijjle indveiv in the Gospel and Acts should be noted : the com- pound occurs only here and in Ac 17" in his writ- ings: and in the latter case it is also used in contrast to Paul's departure. St. Luke, however, does nat s,ay that J._-sus remained for any such reason, nor "that .losepli and Maiy lost sight of Him through any faihne of duty. Popular books add much to the narrative.