The Rabbis of Bene Brak – Passover Haggadah, Add. 18724, f.6v Berlin 1740. British Library
The Haggadah: A New Telling of the Exodus Story
In the Second Temple period, the core ritual of Pesach was eating the sacrificial meal and praising God. With the destruction of the Temple, the seder, with its focus on telling the story of the exodus, took the place of the paschal sacrifice as the core ritual.
In the Second Temple period, the core ritual of Pesach was eating the sacrificial meal and praising God. With the destruction of the Temple, the seder, with its focus on telling the story of the exodus, took the place of the paschal sacrifice as the core ritual.
Published: April 1, 2015
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Last Updated: September 7, 2026
In Greek tradition, a symposium is a meal characterized by festive drinking that often featured a sharing of ideas between friends on a particular subject.
וְהָיָ֕ה כִּֽי־יֹאמְר֥וּ אֲלֵיכֶ֖ם בְּנֵיכֶ֑ם מָ֛ה הָעֲבֹדָ֥ה הַזֹּ֖את לָכֶֽם: וַאֲמַרְתֶּ֡ם זֶֽבַח־פֶּ֨סַח ה֜וּא לַֽי-הֹוָ֗ה אֲשֶׁ֣ר פָּ֠סַח עַל־בָּתֵּ֤י בְנֵֽי־יִשְׂרָאֵל֙ בְּמִצְרַ֔יִם בְּנָגְפּ֥וֹ אֶת־מִצְרַ֖יִם וְאֶת־בָּתֵּ֣ינוּ הִצִּ֑יל…
Cf. Numbers 9:11: In the second month on the fourteenth day, at twilight, they shall keep it; they shall eat it with unleavened bread and bitter herbs. (NRSV). For more about the distinction between Passover and the Festival of Matzot in Second Temple sources, see my TABS essay, “Passover Becomes about Matzah when the Paschal Lamb Becomes Associated with Jesus” For an engagement with the biblical material on this subject, see Michael Satlow’s TABS essay, “Passover and the Festival of Matzot: Synthesizing Two Holidays.”
It differs radically from Genesis, however. One of the most striking ways in which the book of Jubilees departs from Genesis— Jubilees retells the stories in Genesis and the beginning of Exodus, up to the Sinai theophany—is in the author’s insistence that the holidays, particularly the Passover, the Pentecost, and Tabernacles festivals, were scrupulously observed by the patriarchs, and should therefore be scrupulously observed by the author’s Jewish contemporaries.
Mastema, etymologically related to Satan, is an angelic being that is mentioned in a number of non-canonical Jewish texts dated to the late Second Temple period and the centuries following it. In Jubilees, Mastema is the head of the evil angels who want to cause humans to stray from God.
Jubilees 49:1-3 in James H. Charlesworth, ed., The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson Press, 1983), 2:140.
It is unclear if Jubilees intended particular passages of praise, and if so, what they were.
Although Jubilees mentions praising God implying that the passover participants know the general story, this does not indicate that there is any mitzvah to discuss the story in the way that the rabbis later envisioned it.
He continues here: And this festival is instituted in remembrance of, and as giving thanks for, their great migration which they made from Egypt, with many myriads of people, in accordance with the commands of God given to them; leaving then, as it seems, a country full of all inhumanity and practicing every king of inhospitality, and (what was worst of all) giving the honour due to God to brute beasts; and, therefore, they sacrificed at that time themselves out of their exceeding joy, without waiting for priests.
Philo, The Special Laws, 2.145-148 in Charles D. Yonge, trans., The Works of Philo: Complete and Unabridged (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson Press, 1993), 582.
Antiquities 2.14.6 311-317 in William Whiston, trans., The Works of Josephus: Complete and Unabridged (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson Press, 1987), 96.
Matthew 26:26-30 (NRSV). Cf. Mark 14:26.
For more on this topic, see Baruch M. Bokser, The Origins of the Seder: The Passover Rite and Early Rabbinic Judaism (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984).
