The Jewish feasts

The calendar that shaped life

Pentecost, Tabernacles, Atonement, Dedication and Purim set the rhythm of the Jewish year. John arranges much of Jesus’ life around these feasts.

A year marked by feasts

The Jewish year was reckoned not by civil months but by the moon and the harvests. Leviticus 23 lists the feasts appointed by God, and three of them were pilgrimage feasts: every Israelite man was to appear at the sanctuary for the feast of Unleavened Bread (Passover), the feast of Weeks and the feast of Tabernacles. Each coincided with a moment in the farming year: barley in spring, wheat in early summer, grapes, olives and fruit in autumn. In the seventh month, Tishri (September or October), came the day of Trumpets and the Day of Atonement. After the exile, two feasts not found in the Law of Moses were added: Purim, tied to the book of Esther, and Dedication, or Hanukkah, born in the Maccabean revolt. For a first-century Galilean the calendar was not abstract: it said when to go up to Jerusalem, when to fast and when to dance.

Pentecost: the feast of Weeks

Seven weeks after Passover, counted from the offering of the first sheaf of barley, came the feast of Weeks, Shavuot. Greek-speaking Jews called it Pentecost, the fiftieth day. In the Temple two loaves of wheat bread were offered, curiously baked with leaven, as firstfruits of the harvest. It was also a pilgrimage feast, and the book of Acts shows Jerusalem full of Jews from Mesopotamia, Egypt, Rome and Crete. Josephus reports that at Pentecost in 4 BC, shortly after Herod’s death, a crowd of pilgrims from Galilee, Idumea, Jericho and Perea surrounded the Roman troops in Jerusalem. In some circles, such as those that produced the Book of Jubilees and the Dead Sea Scrolls, the feast was already linked to covenant renewal; the explicit association with the giving of the Law at Sinai appears in later rabbinic sources.

Tabernacles: water and light

The feast of Tabernacles, Sukkot, began on the 15th of Tishri and lasted seven days, plus a solemn eighth day. Families lived in huts of branches, recalling the years in the wilderness, and brought to the Temple a bundle of palm, myrtle and willow, with a citron in the other hand. Josephus calls it the holiest and greatest of the Hebrew feasts. The Mishnah, written later but describing the Temple, preserves two striking rites. Every morning a priest filled a golden pitcher at the Pool of Siloam and poured the water on the altar, amid trumpet blasts. At night, in the Court of the Women, huge golden lampstands were lit, and the text says there was no courtyard in Jerusalem that did not reflect that light; devout men danced with torches until dawn. It is in this setting that Jesus, during the feast, speaks of living water and calls himself the light of the world.

The Day of Atonement

Five days before Tabernacles, on the 10th of Tishri, came the most solemn day of the year: Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement. It was not a day of feasting but of fasting and repentance; the people afflicted their souls and did no work. It was the only occasion when the high priest entered the Holy of Holies, the empty, dark room at the heart of the Temple, carrying incense and blood. Leviticus 16 describes two goats: one sacrificed, the other sent into the wilderness symbolically bearing the people’s sins. The Mishnah, in tractate Yoma, adds details, such as the priests who kept the high priest awake through the preceding night. The day was so familiar that it served as a calendar marker: in Acts, saying the Fast was already over meant the safe sailing season on the Mediterranean had ended. The Letter to the Hebrews reads Christ’s work in the light of this day.

Hanukkah: the feast of Dedication

In 167 BC the Seleucid king Antiochus IV Epiphanes desecrated the Temple in Jerusalem, installing a pagan cult there. The revolt led by Judas Maccabeus retook the sanctuary, and in 164 BC, on the 25th of the month of Kislev (November–December), the altar was purified and rededicated with eight days of celebration. So says 1 Maccabees, a book not included in the Protestant Bible but a valuable historical source. Josephus says the feast was called Lights. The well-known story of the oil that lasted eight days appears only in the Babylonian Talmud, centuries later. John records that Jesus was in the Temple, in Solomon’s Porch, during the Dedication, in winter. At a feast that recalled a liberator and the consecration of the altar, he is asked whether he is the Christ, and Jesus speaks of himself as the one the Father consecrated and sent into the world.

Purim and the Gospel of the feasts

Purim, on the 14th and 15th of Adar (February or March), celebrates the deliverance of the Jews of Persia told in Esther, with banquets, gifts of food and help for the poor. In 2 Maccabees it already appears as Mordecai’s day. Some scholars suggest that the unnamed feast of John 5 was Purim; others think of Pentecost or Tabernacles, and the text allows no certainty. In fact, it is John who most arranges Jesus’ life by the calendar: he mentions three Passovers, Tabernacles, Dedication and that anonymous feast. The effect is deliberate. Near Passover, Jesus speaks of the temple of his body and of the bread of life; at Tabernacles, of water and light; at Dedication, of his own consecration. Without despising the feasts, the evangelist presents Jesus as the one they pointed to. Knowing the calendar means reading John through the eyes of those who were there.

Did you know?

• The Mishnah says that whoever has not seen the joy of the water-drawing ceremony at the feast of Tabernacles has never seen joy in his life. Mishnah, Sukkah 5.1
• According to the Mishnah, the wicks of the great lampstands lit in the Temple during Tabernacles were made from the priests’ worn-out breeches and sashes. Mishnah, Sukkah 5.3
• Josephus tells how King and high priest Alexander Jannaeus, officiating at Tabernacles, was pelted by the crowd with citrons, the fruit each worshiper held in hand. Josefo, Antiguidades Judaicas 13.372
• In Acts, the Day of Atonement works as a sailing calendar: once the Fast had passed, in autumn, Mediterranean travel became dangerous, and Paul warns the crew. Atos 27:9
• The miracle of oil lasting eight days, central to Hanukkah today, is not in 1 Maccabees or Josephus; it appears only in the Babylonian Talmud, centuries later. 1 Maccabees 4; Josephus, Antiquities 12; Babylonian Talmud, Shabbat 21b

Where this shows up in the Bible

• Atos 2:1-11: Pentecost was a pilgrimage feast, which is why Jerusalem was full of Diaspora Jews from places stretching from Persia to Rome. The list of peoples is not decoration: it describes who was actually in the city. The feast of the harvest’s firstfruits becomes the day of the church’s firstfruits.
• João 7:37-38: On the last and great day of Tabernacles, after days in which water from Siloam was poured on the altar amid singing, Jesus stands up and offers living water to anyone who is thirsty. The setting gives his words their force: he presents himself as the source of what the rite asked of God.
• John 8:12: At Tabernacles, the great lampstands in the Court of the Women lit up the city at night. John places these words near the treasury in the Temple, probably in that same court. When Jesus says he is the light of the world, the image had, for his hearers, an address and a visual memory.
• João 10:22-23: John notes that it was winter and that Jesus was walking in Solomon’s Porch, a covered colonnade, during the Dedication. The feast recalled the purification of the Temple and the liberation won by the Maccabees; no wonder he is asked whether he is the Christ. His answer speaks of sheep, eternal life and oneness with the Father.
• Hebreus 9:7: Once a year, on the Day of Atonement, only the high priest entered the Holy of Holies, and never without blood. The Letter to the Hebrews uses this rite every Jew knew to explain Christ’s work: a priest who enters once for all, not into a sanctuary made by human hands.
• Atos 27:9: Luke dates Paul’s voyage by the Fast, the Day of Atonement, around September or October. Any reader of the time got the message: the good sailing season was over, and pressing on meant risking the shipwreck that did in fact happen off Malta.

To go deeper

• Mishnah, tractates Sukkah and Yoma
• Flavius Josephus, Jewish Antiquities, books 3, 12 and 13
• 1 Maccabees 4 and 2 Maccabees 10 (historical sources)
• Philo of Alexandria, On the Special Laws, book 2
• Gale A. Yee, Jewish Feasts and the Gospel of John (1989)
• E. P. Sanders, Judaism: Practice and Belief, 63 BCE–66 CE (1992)

Where to read in the Bible

• Levítico 23:34
• João 7:2
• João 10:22-23
• Atos 2:1

Connections

• inclui Passover · factual · Levítico 23:5
• celebrated at the The Second Temple · factual · João 7:14
• linked to Pentecost · factual · Atos 2:1
• linked to Jesus of Nazareth · factual · João 7:37

Continue on the site →