Cultural Functions of the Paschal Offering in Tannaitic Sources

• In Event: Examining Ritual: Passover, Prayer, and the Meaning of Intention

Abstract

In conversation with recent work on Tannaitic Temple texts (especially that of Ishay Rosen-Zvi and Naftali Cohn), this paper examines Tannaitic discourse about the paschal offering.

Most scholars who have examined rabbinic Passover texts, hold that the Tannaim deliberately (and successfully) undertook to replace the paschal sacrifice with a ritual meal, what we now call the SEDER. The tenth chapter of Mishnah Pesahim, these scholars argue, outlines this ritual meal. This paper, as well as my dissertation from which it is drawn, begins with the observation that the Tannaim did not intentionally invent a SEDER ritual to replace the paschal offering. Indeed, the Tannaim hoped very much that the Temple would be rebuilt, and Tannaitic texts on Passover are devoted to describing (and, in their own way, reimagining) Temple practice, rather than inventing practices to replace the Temple cult. If we read these texts NOT as the invention of a temple-less ritual, but as a rabbinic conversation about temple-based practice, we find that they open a door onto Tannaitic Temple discourse.

My method will be to examine the biblical sources on one particular aspect of the ritual, the requirement that all who participate be circumcised, to determine its possible cultural functions, and then compare the biblical material to Tannaitic material on the same subject, highlighting point of similarity and difference to throw Tannaitic ideas into relief. This comparison will be illuminated by Second Temple Jewish texts, early Christian texts, and Greco-Roman sources where relevant. My paper will employ contemporary theories of sacrifice, as well, to highlight the many cultural functions of the paschal offering, both in Biblical and rabbinic sources. The result will shed light on the early rabbinic development of Passover as well as Tannaitic Temple texts, and may be of interest not only to scholars of rabbinic texts, but also those interested in Biblical interpretation and Early Christianity.

author

• Rachel Scheinerman, Yale University