In
the chronologically arranged enumeration of Leviticus xxiii.
and Numbers xxviii., xxix., two other feast days are interpolated
between Pentecost and Tabernacles: new year on the first, and the
great day of atonement on the tenth of the seventh month. One
perceives to what an extent the three originally connected
harvest feasts have lost their distinctive character, when it is
observed that these two heterogeneous days make their appearance in
the midst of them;--the _yom kippur_ in the same series with the
old _haggim_, i.e., dances, which were occasions of pure pleasure
and joy, not to be named in the same day with fasts and mournings.
The following points demand notice in detail.
In the period of the kings the change of the year occurred in
autumn. The autumn festival marked the close of the year and of
the festal cycle (Exodus xxiii. 16, xxxiv. 22; 1Samuel i. 21, 21;
Isaiah xxix. 1, xxxii. 10). Deuteronomy was discovered in
the eighteenth year of Josiah, and in the very same year Easter
was observed in accordance with the prescriptions of that
law--which could not have been unless the year had begun in autumn.
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