3. The manner in which this Festival was cele to confound the practices which ob tained in the course of time, and which were called forth by the ever-shifting circumstances of the Jewish nation, we shall divide the description of the manner in which this festival was and still is celebrated into three sections, viz.—A, The Pen tatcuchal ordinances as to how it is to be cele brated. B, The post-exile mode in which it was ob served ; and C, How it is kept to the present day.
A. The Pentateuchal ordinances. — The Mo saic enactments about the manner in which this festival is to be celebrated are as follows : On the day of Pentecost there is to be a holy convocation ; no manner of work is to be done on this festival (Lev. xxiii. 21 ; Num. xxviii. 26) ; all the able-bodied male members of the con gregation, who are not legally precluded from it, are to appear in the place of the national sanctuary, as on Passover and Tabernacles (Exod. xxiii. 14, r 7 ; xxxiv. 23), where a new meat-offering' (rimn arm) of the new Palestine* crop (Lev. xxiii. 16 ; Num. xxviii. 26; Dent. xvi. to), consisting of two unleavened loaves, made respectively of the tenth of an ephah (= about 34 quarts) of the finest wheaten flour (Exod. xxxiv. ; Lev. xxiii. i7), is to be offered before the Lord as firstlings Exod. xxxiv. 17), whence this festival derived its name, the day of firstlings (D'11= Cr, Num. xxviii. 26). With the two loaves were to be offered as a burnt offering seven lambs of the first year and without blemish, one young bullock, and two lambs, with the usual meat and drink offerings ; whilst a goat is to be offered as a sin-offering, and two lambs of the first year are to be offered as a thanksgiving or peace-offering (Lev. xxiii. 18-2o). The peace offering, consisting of the two lambs with the two firstling loaves, are to be waved before the Lord by the priests. These are to be additions to the
two loaves, and must not be confounded with the proper festival sacrifice appointed for Pentecost, which is given in Num. xxviii. 27, and which is to be a burnt-offering, consisting of two bullocks, one ram, and seven lambs. That these two pas sages are not contradictory, as is maintained by Knobel (Comment. On Lev. xxiii. 15-22) ; Var hinger (Herzog's Real-Encyklop. s. v. Pfingstfest, p. 480), and others, but refer to two distinct sacri fices, viz., one to accompany the wave-loaves an9m, Lev. xxiii. 18), and the other the properly appointed sacrifice for the festival (Num. xxviii. 27), is evident from the context and design of the enact ments in the respective passages, as well as from the practice of the Jews in the temple, where both prescriptions were obeyed. Hence Josephus, in summing up the number of animal sacrifices on this festival, says that there were fourteen lambs, three young bullocks, and three goats ; the number two, instead of three goats, being manifestly a tran scriber's error, as Vaihinger himself admits ("Intiq.
iii. to. 6). When Vaihinger characterises this state ment of Josephus as one of the many exegetical and historical blunders of the Jewish historian,' and maintains that it does not follow from Menachoth, iv. 2 ; we can only say that—r. Josephus simply describes what he himself saw in the temple, and what every ancient Jewish document on the same subject declares ; 2. The third section of the very Mishna (Menachoth, iv. 3) which Vaihinger quotes distinctly declares—' The kind of sacrifice pre scribed in Numbers [xxviii. 27] was offered in the wilderness, and the kind of sacrifice enjoined in Leviticus [xxiii. 18] was not offered in the wilder ness; but when they [i. e., the Israelites] entered the promised land they sacrificed both kinds' -onNn t111 -onnz wvrtm