"_Christ our passover is sacrificed for us_."
--Paul (1 Cor. v. 7.)
The Passover is the most important and impressive festival of the Jews,
instituted, it is said, by God himself, and a type of the sacrifice of
his only son. Its observance was most rigorously enjoined under penalty
of death, and although the circumstances of the Jews have prevented
their carrying out the sacrificial details, they still, in the custom of
each head of the family assuming _pro tem_, the _rôle_ of high priest,
preserve the most primitive type of priesthood known.
The Bible account of the institution of the Passover is utterly
incredible. After afflicting the Egyptians with nine plagues, God still
hardens Pharaoh's heart (Exodus x. 27), and tells Moses that "about
midnight" he will go into the midst of Egypt and slay all the firstborn.
But in order that he shall make no mistake in carrying out his atrocious
design, he orders that each family of the children of Israel shall take
a lamb and kill it in the evening, and smear the doorposts of the
house with blood, "and when I see the blood I will pass over you." The
omniscient needed this sign, that he might not make a mistake and slay
the very people he meant to deliver. One cannot help wondering what
would have been the result if some Egyptian, like Morgiana in "The
Forty Thieves," had wiped off the blood from the Israelite doorposts and
sprinkled the doorposts of the Egyptians. Moses received this command on
the very day at the close of which the paschal lambs were to be killed.
This was very short notice for communicating with the head of each
family about to start on a hurried flight. As the people were two
million in number and the lambs had to be all males, without blemish, of
one year old, this supposes, on the most moderate computation, a flock
of sheep as numerous as the people. Who can credit this monstrous libel
on the character of God and on the intelligence of those to whom such a
story is proffered?
What, then, is the correct version of the origin of the Passover? Dr.
Hardwicke, in his _Popular Faith Unveiled_, following Sir Wm. Drummond
and Godfrey Higgins, says it meant "nothing more or less than the
pass-over of the sun across the equator, into the constellation Aries,
when the astronomical lamb was consequently obliterated or sacrificed by
the superior effulgence of the sun." It is noticeable that the principal
festivals of the Jews, as of other nations, were in spring and autumn,
at the time of lambing and sowing and when the harvest ripened. But
while allowing that this may have determined the time of the festival, I
cannot think it covers the ground of its significance. The story relates
that when Moses first asked Pharaoh to let the Israelites go, it
was that they might celebrate a feast in the wilderness which was
accompanied by a sacrifice (see Exodus v. i. and iii. 19). This may be
taken as indicating that there was known to be a festival at this season
prior to the days of Pharaoh. And at the festival of the spring increase
of flocks the god must of course have his share.
Epiphanius declares that the Egyptians marked their sheep with red,
because of the general conflagration which once raged at the time when
the sun passed over into the sign of Aries, thereby to symbolise the
fiery death of those animals who were not actually offered up. Von
Bohlen says the ancient Peruvians marked with blood the doors of the
temples, royal residences, and private dwellings, to symbolise the
triumph of the sun over the winter.
The suggestion that owing to peculiarities of diet or of constitution
some pestilence afflicted the Egyptians which passed over and spared the
Jews, is a very plausible one, and deserves more attention than it
has yet received, since it would account for many features in the
institution. But there remains another signification, which seems
indicated in the thirteenth chapter of Exodus in connection with the
institution of the Passover. There we read the order, "Thou shalt set
apart [the margin more properly reads "cause to pass over"] unto the
Lord, all that openeth the matrix" (verse 12). "And every firstling of
an ass thou shalt redeem with a lamb; and if thou will not redeem it,
then thou shalt break his neck: and all the firstborn of man among thy
children shalt thou redeem."* Professor Huxley asks upon this passage:
"Is it possible to avoid the conclusion that immolation of their
firstborn sons would have been incumbent on the worshippers of Jahveh,
had they not been thus specially excused?"** In one of the oldest
portions of the Pentateuch (Exodus xxii. 29) the command stands simply,
"the firstborn of thy sons shalt thou give unto me." In Exodus xii. 27,
xxiii. 18, xxxiv. 25; and Numbers ix. 13, the Passover is spoken of as
particularly the Lord's own sacrifice.
* Why is the ass only mentioned besides man? One cannot but
suspect that his introduction is an interpolation by the
reformed Jews, who had outgrown the custom of human
sacrifice, betrayed by the phrase "thou shalt break his
neck."
** Nineteenth Century, April, 1886.
The law proceeds to enjoin that the father shall tell his son as the
reason for the festival, how the Lord "slew all the firstborn in the
land of Egypt, both the firstborn of man and the firstborn of beasts:
therefore I sacrifice to the Lord all that openeth the matrix being
males; but all the firstborn of my children I redeem." Evidently here is
the notion of a substitutionary offering, although the reason given is
not the true reason. In Exodus xxxiv. 18-20, the festival is brought
into the same connection with immediate reference to the redemption of
the firstborn. In the story of Abraham and Isaac we have the same idea.
God commands the patriarch to offer up his only son as a burnt sacrifice
(Gen. xxii. 2), an order which he receives without astonishment, and
proceeds to execute as if it were the most ordinary business imaginable,
without the slightest sign of reluctance. A messenger from Jahveh,
however, intervenes and a ram is substituted.* I do not doubt that this
story, like similar ones found in Hindu and Greek mythology, indicates
an era when animal sacrifices were substituted for human ones.**
* Observe that Elohim, the old gods, claim the sacrifice and
Jahveh, the new Lord, prevents it.
** It may help us to understand how the sacrifice of an
animal may atone for human life, if we notice how in South
Africa a Zulu will redeem a lost child from the finder by a
bullock.
The legend is of course far older than the record of it which reaches
us. In a notable passage in Ezekiel xx. 25, 26, the Lord declares that
he had given his people "statutes that were not good, and judgments
whereby they should not live." And he continues, "I polluted them in
their own gifts in that they cause to pass through _the fire_ all that
openeth the womb, that I might make them desolate, to the end that they
might know that I am the Lord." The fact that the very same words are
used in Ezekiel which are found in Exodus xiii. 12, at once suggests
that originally the passover was a human sacrifice, and that of the most
abominable kind--the offering of the firstborn--and that the story of
the Lord slaying the firstborn of Egypt was an invention to account for
the relics of the custom. We know that such sacrifices did remain as
part of the Jewish religion. Ezekiel himself says that when they had
slain their children to their idols, they came the same day in the
sanctuary to profane it (xxiii. 39). Micah argues against the barbarous
practice: "Shall I give my firstborn for my transgression, the fruit of
my body for the sin of my soul?" (vi. 6). Two kings of Judah, Ahaz
and Manasseh, are recorded to have offered up their children as burnt
offerings (2 Chron. xxviii. 3, xxxiii. 6), as upon one occasion did the
king of Moab (2 Kings iii. 27). 2 Chron. xxx., in relating how Hezekiah
commanded all Israel to keep the Passover, says that "they had not done
it of a long time in such sort as it was written," and relates how the
Levites were ashamed and many yet did eat the Passover otherwise than
it was written. And in the account of how Josiah broke down the altars
which had been set up by Ahaz and Manasseh one reads "surely there was
not held such a Passover from the days of the judges." In other words,
it had never been kept in the same fashion within human memory. The
keeping of the Passover had been different before this reformation, just
as until the age of Hezekiah the Jews worshipped a brazen serpent, which
they afterwards accounted for by ascribing it to Moses, the law-giver
who had prohibited all idolatry. On the eve of the Passover, to the
present day, the firstborn son among the Jews, who is of full age--i.e.,
thirteen--fasts. This we take to be a rudimentary survival.
If then we interpret the offering of the paschal lamb as being
substituted for a human sacrifice, we shall understand how it is at
once a thank-offering and yet eaten with "the bread of affliction," the
motzahs, or unleavened cakes, and bitter herbs, which are the remaining
features of the festival, and this may help to explain the accusation
which in all ages has been brought against the Jews, viz., that once in
seven years at least they required their Passover to be celebrated with
human blood. It is true the accusation has been often brought without
evidence, but the Jews themselves profess astonishment at the unanimity
with which their opponents have fixed upon this charge. Further, we
shall see that in adopting the paschal lamb as the type of Christ,
the substitutionary sacrifice for our sins, the Christians were simply
reverting to the early savage notion that deities are only to be
appeased with blood, and to this degraded belief they have added the
absurdity that Christ himself was God, thus making God sacrifice himself
in order to appease himself!