The literary structure of Ex 1-18 and pericope of law 12:1-13:16, and anticipatory nature of the Passover supper

The present paper is a translation of the third part of the third chapter of the dissertation; it shows three main questions.

The first part crowns the research effort leading to understanding the literary structure of Passover Seder deeply. Namely, Seder, just like the Book of Exodus, has the literary structure of ancient treaties; they both document the fact that God and Israel made the covenant between the halves of the split waters of the Sea of Reeds. What is more, the Passover Seder makes that four-step liturgical and historical process present for the liturgical participants – it means they participate in those past events with their Fathers.

The second part of this paper presents the meaning of the pericope of law to understand the liturgical possibility to make present the events which were or which will be in the time of Israel’s history. Especially, one shows here in-depth biblical analyses to explain the anticipatory nature of the Passover supper. Moreover, one explained in this manner the aim of the complexity of the literary arrangement of particular elements of the law pericope. Namely, what seemed to many biblical scholars as a primitive, unnecessary duplication of the events description, turned out to be the fulfillment of the requirements of Hebrew rhetorical rules, especially of parallelism. Then the parallelism occurred to be the means of communicating the reader the anticipatory possibilities of the Passover liturgy.

The third part of the present paper states as a summary of the whole research process of the third chapter. It serves to point out key elements of the Passover ceremony and underline their proper understanding. Especially noteworthy is the biblical writer’s expectation not to confuse the meaning of the lamb-Passover with the meaning of the bread of going out, i.e., Afikoman. The lamb is the main food of part II of Seder, and its eating serves to fulfill and accept the law of the covenant by the Israelites. Afikoman is the main food-symbol of part III of Seder; it serves as the bread of making the covenant between the divided waters of the Sea of Reeds.

The article summarizes the discovery of the four cups/parts of Seder as subsequent elements of the covenant-making ceremony, which God and Israel performed to enter into the relation of spousal love.