The primary end of the Passover was to preserve the perpetual memory of that crossing [transitus] of the Lord — by which, while he tortured the Egyptians with the deaths of the firstborn, he leaped over [passed by] all the houses of the Israelites, as [was] expounded above (q. 15). For thus [it] is clearly handed down (Exod. 12 v. 25, 26, 27): “When your sons shall say to you, ‘What is this rite?’, you shall say to them, ‘It is the victim of the crossing of the Lord, when he crossed over the houses of the sons of Israel in Egypt, striking the Egyptians, and freeing our houses.’” A secondary end also was [this]: that at the same time [there] might be a perpetual monument of that so-illustrious and admirable liberation which immediately followed that crossing — as [was] said from Josephus (bk. 17) and Nazianzen (q. 15). (Otherwise, for continually renewing the memory of this liberation, the ceremony of the Unleavened [bread] — of which [more] not long after — was primarily instituted.) But because the whole Passover itself signified the immolation of CHRIST JESUS, and the liberation which he brought forth for us, [there] was assuredly, [as] the aim of both these ends, another [end] more perfect and more principal, of which below. But now certain Rabbis recount other ends. For the author of Exodus Rabba, and from it Ralbag, Lyra, and Burgensis (on Exod. 12), will [have it] [that] the pascha was appointed by God, [so] that they might destroy that superstition of the Egyptians by which [they worshipped] God [as] a Ram—
(col. 539 — left column; printed “546”)
—[they worshipped God as a Ram], as was also treated above (q. 10). For when the Lord had commanded the paschal [victims] to be immolated, and roasted with fire, and devoured whole, was he not openly mocking that vanity, and destroying that empty God with his own arms? But Rabbi Moses of Gerona [Nachmanides], cited also by Paul Burgensis (on Exod. 12, addition 2), and Nehmanus, will [have it] [that] this was intended by the Lord: [so] that this Israelite safety, and the driving-away of servitude, might not be ascribed to the star Aries [the Ram] — which the sun was then entering at that time of year — since, by slaughtering and devouring rams, they would seem to have inflicted an injury on that highest star. And those [views] please Lyra (on Exod. 12) and Burgensis (in the cited place). But I think [it] a Rabbinic fable; because, whereas so many have handed down so much about the gods and superstitions of the Egyptians — Herodotus (bk. 2), Diodorus (bk. 1 ch. 4), Plutarch (On Isis), Strabo (bk. 17), Philostratus (bk. 6 ch. 9) — I see nothing special about Rams; but the same [authors] teach only, in general, [that] sheep were held by them in the number of gods, and likewise goats and he-goats — as I also noted [on] Gen. 46; Exod. 8 v. 26. And Juvenal:
“Every table abstains from woolly animals; [it is] impious there to slaughter the young of a she-goat,” &c. [Juvenal 15.11–12]
Nor indeed did the Hebrews slaughter and eat Rams — as will be expounded below (quaest. 18 [19]) — but paschal lambs. Jupiter Ammon indeed had ram’s horns (whence, in Gellius, bk. 3 ch. 3, “the ram-answer”); but [he] was neither a ram, nor in Egypt. And why would the Lord not rather have waged war, by another rite, against so many other gods of the Egyptians — aquatic, flying, four-footed, but most of all against the bull Apis? Whence, too, [there] is refuted the reproach which Tacitus casts against the Jews (bk. 5 of the Histories) — although, if [it] were true, what evil would [there] be [in it]? — when he says: “Moses, [so] that he might make the nation firm for himself in the future, introduced new rites, contrary to [those of] other mortals. [There] all [things] are profane which among us [are] sacred; again, [things are] permitted among them which to us [are] unclean. The effigy of the animal by whose showing they had driven off [their] wandering and thirst, they consecrated in the sanctuary — a Ram being slain, as [it were] in reproach of Ammon. A bull too is immolated, which the Egyptians worship [as] Apis. From the pig they abstain, in memory of the disaster, because the scab once disfigured them, to which that animal is subject.” But someone might perhaps think [that] the Lord willed to overthrow another superstition of the Egyptians, concerning which Plutarch [speaks] (in the cited place): for on the ninth day of the first month those [Egyptians] kept a very great feast, on which each of them, πρὸ τῆς αὐλείου θύρας [pro tēs auleiou thyras, “before the courtyard door”], ate a roasted fish — except the priests, who did not even taste [it], but before [their] doors burned fishes. But that rite pertains nothing here. For to the Egyptians the first month is not the same as to the Israelites — namely, Nisan, or Abib, from the vernal equinox; but [it begins] from the rising of the Dog-star, when the sun enters Leo; and that first month is called by them Thoth; but that [month] which corresponds to the Israelite [first month] [is] either Phamenoth or Pharmuthi, as is in Josephus (bk. 1 Antiquities ch. 4; bk. 2 ch. 5). But this [thing] does pertain to this institution of the Passover, which is noted by St. Epiphanius (bk. 1, heresy 19): [that] the Egyptians were wont, at the vernal equinox, to anoint sheep, trees, [and] fig-trees — namely, for averting the conflagration by which they hallucinate [that] the world once burned up on that day—
(col. 540 — right column; printed “547”)
—whereas [they] could more wisely remember the plagues with which they were then afflicted. But for what primary and secondary end the Lord chose a lamb, Abulensis asks (quaest. 8); but [it] will be better understood afterward, in the disputation about the material.