**8. Festivals as Commemorations**

Multiple parallel processes seem to have been at work in the reinterpretation of the festivals from what was surveyed above, to what the Bible and later Jewish tradition present as their main themes.

Calendar—We noted already that as the calendar moves from cyclical time to linear time, bipodal festival pairs such as *H. odeš ¯* and *Šabbat¯* /*Kese ¯ <sup>ʾ</sup>*, or *Qa¯s.îr* and *<sup>ʾ</sup>Asîp ¯* , lose their meaning or even become problematic. As they could no longer express the yin-yang of moon and season, they needed to be reinterpreted or cancelled. Thus, *H. odeš ¯* became nothing more than a priestly sacrificial rite, in honor of the new month, and *Šabbat¯* /*Kese ¯ <sup>ʾ</sup>* as such disappeared entirely. *Qa¯s.îr* was split into a simple sheave offering (*ʿomer*) and a festival celebrated at the end of the wheat harvest season, *Šabu¯ʿôt*, even though it still ostensibly brought the first produce (*bîkkûrîm*). *ʾAsîp ¯* keeps its place, though it becomes known for the branches and booths as opposed to the ingathering. Moreover, it stops being the marker of the new year, at least officially. Even the spin off festival of the horn blasts, which was almost certainly meant to mark the new year on *H. odeš ¯* instead of *Šabbat¯* /*Kese ¯ <sup>ʾ</sup>* is reinterpreted as simply the festival of the seventh month. In this case, though, the subterfuge ultimately fails, since rabbinic Judaism reintroduces this festival as the new year celebration, despite the fact that this contradicts the Pentateuch directly and explicitly.

Communal—It may be that the agricultural achievements celebrated in the *Qa¯s.îr* and *<sup>ʾ</sup>Asîp ¯* festivals were once not festivals at all, but rather, offerings required from each individual family. This would make the produce offerings parallel to the system we find for firstborn animals, which are not tied to a festival, but are required to be brought forth immediately. Perhaps this has to do with the coalescing of Israelite and Judahite worship places over time, or perhaps these two approaches existed simultaneously in competing groups. Whatever the case, eventually the produce requirements became part of the festivals and tied to specific dates, whereas the firstborn offerings remain unbound to a specific date, at least officially.

Mnemohistorical—Finally, the greatest conceptual change that the festivals undergo is their integration into Israel's emerging narrative about itself, specifically, the connection to the exodus story (Schmidt [1968] 1983, pp. 117–26). *Pesah.* stops being about protecting Israel's babies or firstborn sons, but about how YHWH protected Israel's firstborn sons in Egypt. The same is true about the redemption of the firstborn; YHWH owns all firstborn Israelite males because he saved Israel's firstborn males in Egypt. Even firstborn animals are explained this way, and the exodus story is redacted to include the death of firstborn Egyptian animals. *Mas.s. ôt* stops being about protecting the wheat harvest with an apotropaic deprivation ritual and becomes about commemorating Israel's rushed escape from Egypt without bread. Even *Sukkôt*, in the very latest stage of textual revision, is described as commemorating

the booths that the Israelites lived in when dwelling in the wilderness (Lev 23:43), something which does not even appear in any biblical narratives, and may have its origins in the post-exilic period (Weyde 2004, p. 128). The one harvest festival that is not reinterpreted in the Bible, that of *Šabu¯ʿôt*, is interpreted in Second Temple and Rabbinic literature as commemorating the revelation of the Decalogue at Mount Sinai.

Perhaps the most interesting example of historical reinterpretation is that which began not as a festival at all: the ancient law requiring Israelites to rest, and let their workers and slaves rest, every seven days. We noted above how this was first regularized to be every day seven, as part of the new division of time into weeks, and how it took over the term *Šabbat¯* from the defunct full-moon festival.

The next step was to interpret this law in light of the exodus, and say that Israel must allow its slaves to rest since they were not given this privilege when they were slaves in Egypt. Eventually, in the Priestly or Holiness version of the Decalogue, and other Priestly or Holiness passages, this was reinterpreted again to commemorate, not the exodus, but the creation of the world. God rests on the seventh day, and thus Israel should imitate God and do the same.

This is the only festival in the Pentateuch that is reinterpreted in light of a Genesis story and not an Exodus story. In fact, the Genesis story was written, or at least heavily revised, to explain the practice, just as many of the exodus details were written to explain the *Pesah.* , *Mas.s. ôt*, and the firstborn laws.
