Annual Festivals in the Hebrew Bible II: Perspective from Ritual Studies

Abstract

From the perspective of biblical studies Pentateuch’s annual festivals (Passover, First Sheaf, Unleavened Bread, Weeks, Blowing of the Shofar, Day of Atonement and Tabernacles) are usually regarded as a more or less artificial collection of heterogeneous cultic occasions. Application of ritual studies findings and methods, however, reveals that there are multiple syntagmatic links between these festivals and that their explicit and implicit dynamics also disclose something of their pre‐biblical origins and significance.