How many Lambs slain at Passover?
How many Lambs slain in the Temple?
COMPILED AND WRITTEN by Keith Hunt Those who think that Jesus died on the cross just WHEN they were killing the first Passover lambs in the Temple, and think it was all so "kinda prophetic" (but no OT prophecy ever stated this would be the case), and that this all took place at 3 p.m. in the afternoon of the 14th day.......Wellllllll, they better read carefully the following study. All CAPITAL WORDS are mine throughout for emphasis. FROM DR. SAMUELE BACCHIOCCHI'S book, "God's Festivals - part one - The Spring Festivals" Quote from pp. 42-43 Passover in the Temple Days Passover became most important to the Jews during the intertestament period (c.400 B.C. to A.D. 50), when they experienced persecution and oppression by their Gentile conquerors. These conditions spurred them to renewed spiritual fervor. During the period of the Roman occupation, the Messianic hope flared up and the Jews believed that deliverance from Roman oppression would occur MIRACULOUSLY at PASSOVER as had their past deliverance from Egypt. Hayyin SCHAUSS notes that: 'The Jews began to believe that the Messiah would be a second Moses and would free the Jews the selfsame eve, the eve of Pesach (Passover). So Pesach became the festival of the SECOND as well as the first REDEMPTION; in every part of the world where Jews lived, especially in Palestine, Jewish hearts beat faster on the eve of Pesach, beat with hope that this night the Jews would be freed from the bondage of Rome, just as their ancestors were released from Egyptian slavery (Hayyan Schauss, Guide to Jewish Holy Days: History and Observance - New York, 1962, pp. 46-47). This belief helps us understand WHY Passover BROUGHT MORE PILGRIMS TO JERUSALEM THAN ANY OTHER FEAST. 'Jerusalem was NEVER so CROWDED as DURING Pesach (Passover) holiday. EVERY inn was FILLED to OVERFLOWING, and whoever had a BIT of room in his house made it available to the visiting pilgrims, never accepting any payment. It was customary, however, for the pilgrims to offer their hosts the skins of the animals they had sacrificed in the Temple. Many of the pilgrims set up tents in the squares and open places of town, living there during the entire pilgrimage. Jerusalem was so crowded at this period that the every fact that everybody was able to find accommodation somehow, somewhere, was declared to be on of the miracles of God' (Ibid., pp. 48-49). End Quote I shall now move to Dr. Sam's second chapter in his aforementioned book, pages 64 to 66. He has just stated that there is some evidence (Philo, DeSeptenario 18), that the slaughter of the lambs began SOON AFTER NOON (especially if Nisan 14th fell on a Friday). Then he follows with: Quote: The problem I see with this objection is that it ASSUMES that by anticipating the BEGINNING of the slaughtering of the paschal lambs about TWO HOURS, that is, moving it up from about 3: 30 p.m. to 1: 30 p.m. there would have been AMPLE time to slay all the lambs in the Temple court BEFORE the Sabbath began (Edersheim himself assumes this in his authoritative study on 'The Temple, Its Ministry and Services' - London, 1874, p. 190). Such an ASSUMPTION does not take into consideration the ACTUAL NUMBER of the lambs slaughtered in the Temple court and procedure that was followed there. JOSEPHUS informs us that the syrian Governor Cestius Gallus requested the high priest to take a census of Jerusalem to convince Nero of the importance of the city and of the Jewish nation. The method used by the high priest was to COUNT the NUMBER of lambs SLAIN at Passover, namely, 256,500. Then he multiplied that number by 10, the average number of persons served by each lamb. At the LOWEST computation of TEN person per lamb, this would give a population of 2,565,000 or, as Josephus himself puts it, 2, 700, 200 persons (Josephus, Jewish Wars 6, 9, 3). On an earlier occasion, Josephus computed the number of Jews present in Jerusalem at Passover to be not fewer than 3,000,000 (Ibid., 2, 14, 3). Time Needed to Sacrifice Passover Lambs How long would it take to slaughter a quarter-million lambs in the restricted area of the Temple court? The slaughtering took place in the so-called Court of the Priests and the court of Israel. The COMBINED SURFACE area of the TWO courts was LESS than 10,000 square feet. 'The Court of Israel was 135 cubits long and 11 cubits wide. Next was the Court of the Priests of the SAME SIZE as the Court of Israel ' (W. F. Stinespring, 'The Interpreter's Dictionary of the Bible - Nashville, 1962, vol. 4, p. 554). Since a cubit corresponds to about 20 inches, each court was approximately 225 feet long and 18 feet wide. Allowing 2 1/2 feet per person, the Court of Israel could accommodate at MOST a HUNDRED Jews at a time up shoulder to shoulder with their lambs. To estimate how long it would take for a hundred Jews to sacrifice their paschal lambs in the Temple Court, one must understand the elaborate ritual that was followed. EDERSHEIM offers us an INFORMATIVE description of the ritual. 'Each division (group of Jews allowed in the Temple Court at one time) must consist of not less than thirty persons (3x10, the symbolic number of the Divine and of completeness). Immediately the massive gates were closed behind them. The priests drew a threefold blast from their silver trumpets when the Passover lamb was slain. Altogether the scene was most impressive. All along the Court up to the altar of burnt-offering priests stood in two rows, the one holding the golden, the other, silver bowls. In these the blood of the Paschal lambs, which each Israelite slew for himself (as representative of his company at the Paschal Supper), was caught up by a priest, who handed it to his colleague, receiving back an empty bowl, and so the bowls with the blood were passed up to the priest at the altar, who jerked it in one jet at the base of the altar. while this was going on, a most solemn hymn of praise was raised, the Levites leading in song, and the offerers either repeating after them or merely responding.....This service of song consisted of the so-called Hallel, which comprises Psalms 113 to 118.....Next, the sacrifices were hung up on hooks along the court, or laid on staves which rested on the shoulders of two men (on Sabbath they were not laid on staves), then flayed, the entrails taken out and cleansed, and the inside fat separated, put in a dish, salted, and placed on the fire of the altar of burnt-offering. This completed the sacrifice.....the service being in each case conducted in precisely the same manner' (Alfred Edersheim - The Temple, Its Ministry and Services' - London 1874, pp. 191-193). Assuming that it took ONLY TEN minutes to fulfil this elaborate sacrificial ritual (a rather CONSERVATIVE estimate), means that in one hour ONLY SIX groups of a hundred Jews could be admitted in the Temple court. Thus ONLY SIX HUNDRED lambs could be slain PER HOUR.....the slaying began earlier, at about 1: 30 p.m., and lasted until about 6: 00 p.m., FEWER THAN 3,000 lambs could be SLAIN in the Temple court in FOUR-AND-A-HALF HOURS. If the figure given by Josephus of 256,500 lambs slaughtered as Passover in the Temple Court is correct, IT WOULD TAKE OVER 417 HOURS (OVER 17 DAYS) NONSTOP to slaughter that many lambs. OBVIOUSLY this could NOT be accomplished in ONE AFTERNOON. We have reason to believe that the figures given by Josephus are HIGHLY INFLATED.....SUPPOSING the ACTUAL number of lambs slain at Passover was ONLY ONE TENTH of Josephus' figure, that is, ONLY 25,000, it would STILL TAKE OVER 40 HOURS to slaughter that many lambs in the Temple court at the rate of SIX HUNDRED lambs per HOUR. OBVIOUSLY, again, even 25,000 lambs COULD NOT be slain in ONE AFTERNOON......" End of quote from Dr. Bacciocchi Dr. Sam goes on to say that in the year Jesus died, they could well have started to slay the Passover lambs the day BEFORE the 14th of Nisan, in other words on the 13th day of Nisan. As to Josephus' computations of the population of Jerusalem and surrounding area being as high as 3,000,000 at Passover time, Edersheim has a foot note in his book "The Temple - Its Ministry and Services" that says: "These computations, being derived from official documents, can scarcely have been exaggerated. Indeed, Josephus expressly guards himself against this charge." Well for sure we know there would have been at least a FEW HUNDRED THOUSAND people added to the population of Jerusalem at Passover time, all coming from not only Palestine but from all areas of the Roman Empire where Jews were living. If we go with Dr. Sam's suggestion of about only 25,000 lambs slain in the Temple, we are talking about 250,000 persons (using 10 persons to share one lamb, being the overall average) that would have been in Jerusalem that observed the Pharisees teaching of slaying the lamb in the Temple and eating it at the beginning of the 15th of Nisan. 250,000 is certainly conservative for the number Jews from all parts of the Roman Empire, who were members of the Pharisees sect, and who would have been in Jerusalem for any given Passover. Hence going with Dr. Sam's thought of 25,000 lambs slain in the Temple at Passover time, is very realistic. And with what we have found from Edersheim, on how the Passover lamb was ritually slain in the Temple by the priests, and giving as Dr. Sam says 10 minutes for each lamb, they would have HAD to START slaying the lambs at least by the 13th of Nisan......and remember that would be NONE STOP, day and night, from the 13th day to about 6 p.m. on the 14th day. If we want to try and put the slaying of 25,000 lambs into the time frame of 1 p.m. to 6 p.m. on the afternoon of the 14th day, then they would have ritually slain 5,000 lambs AN HOUR, and you can soon figure how many wound had to have been ritually slain every minute...like running your Video or DVD movie on fast speed, all the way through. Given all these historic facts, we can now see that the idea of saying the slaying of the lambs started at 3 p.m. on the afternoon of the 14th of Nisan, the time that Christ is by many said to have died, is just not founded on any solid foundation at all, and is in truth a misguided idea that has sprung up from misinformed people, who themselves were probably parroting the misguided idea of some misinformed person who was misinformed by not knowing the historical facts of the whole numerics of the 14th Passover day, especially as taught and physically PRACTICED by the Pharisees and the priests in the Temple. All this just simply points out even in more detail, how the traditions of the Pharisees had got to the point where Jesus stated what He did in Mark 7: 1-13. They had first started a tradition of teaching the PRIESTS had to be a part of the ritual of slaying the Passover lamb, then adding to that, the tradition of saying the Passover lamb HAD TO BE SLAIN in the TEMPLE. Neither of the two above can be found to be required laws of the Passover in the books of Moses or the first five books of your Bible. When we understand the Passover lambs were slain in small PRIVATE groups (as Jesus and His 12 disciples did in Jesus' last Passover on earth), at the BEGINNING of the 14th day, in the evening of the 14th day of Nisan, WITHOUT having to go through ANY Temple ritual in the Temple, that included having a priest perform part of the ritual, THEN we could understand that Josephus may have been very correct in stating that the population of Jerusalem on the Passover day (the 14th) had in some years, reached as high as 3,000,000 people. Of course I realize the counter argument could say that most did not bother to go to the Temple and have their Passover lamb slain in a ritual manner, but did it themselves at the beginning of the 15th. This of course would mean they rejected, at least in part, the teaching of the Pharisees. Yet, even allowing for this argument, Edersheim still says in his aforementioned book on the Temple, that they moved up the evening sacrifice to about 1 p.m. and then immediately started the Passover lamb slaying. I guess you could argue that with all the private lambs slain in small groups at the beginning of the 14th and beginning of the 15th day (if you followed the Pharisees teaching) and who ignored anything to do with Temple ritual of slaying those lamds, you could get over 200,000 lambs slain within a 24 hour period, BUT that would not jive with Josephus claiming 256,000 plus lambs were slain in the TEMPLE court ritual itself. Josephus may have just mixed it all together and claimed it was all done in the Temple court, which as Dr. Sam has noted could not possibly be the case as it would have taken over 17 DAYS to kill that number of lambs in the Temple ritual, as outlined by Edersheim. This study is to merely show that the idea that the Passover lamb slaying in the Temple started at 3 p.m. when many state (no specific NT proof can be found - see my study called "How the NT uses 'hours'") Jesus died (just as they killed the first lamb in the Temple), has no basis in fact. Such an idea is a myth....may sound real nice, as if fulfilling some OT prophecy or "typology" type symbol (which is also not found in any part of the OT). But it is still a myth nevertheless. Understanding the killing of the lambs by many many people knew it was a domesrtic family Passover meal, with smaller families joining other smaller families; and done at home at the beginning of the 14th; then those following the Pharisees killing of the lamb in the afternoon of the 14; we have the answer that not anywhere close to the number of lambs killed; but even the Pharasee people could NOT slay enough lambs FOR THEIR FOLLOWERS.
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