Great — and truly great — in the servant of the Lord, Moses, was [his] modesty and lowliness of mind. For this question, when [it] had been proposed to him by certain [men] defiled by the laying-out [pollinctus] and touching of a dead man (Num. ch. 9), [he] does not at once, nor off-hand — and, as [it] is wont to be said, “standing on one foot” — answer, but (v. 8): “Stand, that I may consult what the Lord may command concerning you.” [He] consulted the Lord, therefore, and the Lord answered [that] he granted the power, that [he] who had been prohibited [from keeping] the Passover of the first month by some similar death [funeral], or by some more distant journey, might keep it, with the same and accustomed ceremonies, in the next following month — that is, in the second.
For thus [the Lord] spoke to Moses (same [chapter], v. 10): “Speak to the sons of Israel: A man who shall be unclean over a soul [through a corpse], or on a journey afar off in your nation, let him keep the phase [Passover] in the second month, on the fourteenth day of the month at evening; with unleavened [bread] and wild lettuces [bitter herbs] they shall eat it.” But what [it] is to “be unclean over a soul” is explained (Num. 19 v. 11 & following) as regards all the Israelites; but as regards the priests (Lev. 21 vv. 1, 2, 3, 4); and finally as regards the greatest [High Priest, pontifex maximus] (same [ch.], vv. 10 & 11). And the reason is taken from Leviticus 7 (v. 20), where [it is] thus: “The soul [person] polluted, who shall eat of the flesh of the peace-offerings [pacific victims]—”
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—of the peace-offerings, “which is offered to the Lord, shall perish from among its peoples.” For [that] the lamb is referred to this kind of sacrifice appears from [the fact] that [it] was [instituted] in memory of a benefit received, as [was] shown above (quaest. 17). But because a time could fall out [in which], although no one were unclean, [someone] nevertheless could not keep the Passover — as if, for example, someone were journeying in some remote region — therefore the Lord willed [it] to be provided for these [cases] too, even though the doubt [raised] had been stirred up only concerning the former [the unclean]. But [as to] what our translator says, “or on a journey afar off in your nation,” [it] has in the Hebrew and Greek two members: Hebrew, “On a road remote from you, or [in] your generations”; Greek, ἢ ὁδῷ μακρὰν ὑμῖν, ἢ ἐν ταῖς γενεαῖς ὑμῶν [ē hodōi makran humin, ē en tais geneais humōn, “or on a road far off for you, or in your generations”]. [One] might think, therefore, [there is] some distinction. For [one] could understand the Latin as [if] the road ought to be far off, yet still within the Jewish nation, not in the dominions of the Gentiles. But in the region of the Jewish tribes, what road [is] so far off as ever to excuse anyone from the Jerusalem pilgrimage [ascent] and the ordinary keeping of the Passover? [It] must be said, therefore, [that] the Latin has signified by one clause what the Hebrew and Greek signify by two: [that] the road is to be understood [as one] which was far off — not to these or those Jews, at this or that time, but to all, and always, both among those present and [their] posterity. And Tremellius too expressed this same [thing], but [rendered] what in the Hebrew and Greek is connected with the word of “length [distance],” referring [it] back to the Jews themselves, in this manner: “If any of you shall be unclean because of a corpse, or [if] any of you, or of your generations, shall be on a remote road, yet Joshua kept the Passover in the second month.” These, then — the two causes for deferring the Passover into another month — were delivered by the Lord himself. But, besides, someone could ask seven [more questions].
1. Since these causes fall only upon certain [particular] men, could [it] be done that, for some causes likewise, the whole people should put off its Passover into the other month? For example, if the Temple were profaned, and were in the meantime being expiated and renewed; if war and siege [held] the whole city of Jerusalem; or if plague, certainly, or some other contagious disease seized [it]. 2. Whether, just as [one] polluted by the contagion of a dead [body] had [the] right, [as] already set forth, of postponing the Passover into the other month, another too, unclean by any other uncleanness whatever, had [the same] — e.g. if a leper (Lev. 13; Deut. 23 v. 10); if one with a [seminal] flux (Lev. 15); if a woman defiled by [her] months [menstruation] (same place); if [one] had touched the carcasses of forbidden animals (Deut. 14; Lev. 11). 3. Whether, if someone were staying among the Gentiles [it would count]. 4. If someone fell more gravely ill in the first month, but before the second — or at its beginning — recovered, so that [he] could now go to Jerusalem[?]. 5. Finally, whether [there] are any other causes for which the same deferral, or a change of the appointed month, would be right [proper]. 6. Whether, if someone had a cause for deferring in the second month too, [he] could defer even into the third month or the fourth. 7. Whether [those] who in this way deferred the Passover deferred also Pentecost by the same right and manner; or whether [it] was necessary to begin this [Pentecost] from the common feast of the Passover [and count from there].
That first question really arose in the first year of King Ezechias [Hezekiah] (2 Chron. 30), when his parent, the impious King Achaz [Ahaz], had destroyed all the religion of God [and] had wickedly defiled all the holiness of the Temple. And the pious King Ezechias referred this question—
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—to the counsel of his princes, and of the whole assembly [the Church] — that [counsel], as indeed I reckon, [being] the council of the Sanhedrin — and [it was] firmly decreed [that] that delay seemed just. First, because not enough priests had yet been consecrated. For what in the Hebrew there is lemaddai (v. 3) means “to sufficiency” — as both the Seventy and our [translator], and the Rabbis themselves, show — [taken] otherwise, namely, than [in] Judges 3 (v. 16). Second, because out of all the tribes of Israel, the people that had survived the Assyrian disasters had not yet been gathered to Jerusalem. For at the very first, in the first month of that first Ezechian year, [it] could not — as [it] otherwise ought — [that] the reborn piety of King and city toward God should be free for keeping the Passover; because, although the purging and expiating of the Lord’s Temple had been begun by the priests and Levites on the first day of the first, already-named month, [they] could not nevertheless come to its completion before the 16th day of the same month (2 Chron. 29). But by that time the prescribed day of the Passover (concerning which below) had already passed; nor could either the consecration of enough priests, or the summoning of the people about to come from every side, conveniently be done before the other [second] month. A like reasoning seems [to hold] concerning plague, war, and the like: although religion, and reverence for the laws themselves, would persuade [one] first to attempt all else — as Hyrcanus did with Antiochus Pius [Sidetes] at the feast of Tabernacles [scenopegia], in Josephus (bk. 13, ch. 16) — yet because, in laws [once] laid down, when for some certain cause some loosing of them, or dispensation, is made, [it] is not lawful to transfer this to similar cases: [whereas], when an explication [interpretation] of them is made [it is lawful], it may be asked whether here a dispensation, or an interpretation, was employed. And to me, indeed, [it] seems rather [to be] a dispensation. Because if [it] had been an interpretation, [it] would have been lawful to defer the Passover not into this or that defined month and day, but into whatever [month], as soon as the causes had ceased which had hindered [it] from the first and lawful month and day. But now the Lord delivered only two causes of paschal deferral, and afterward defined a fixed time in which the omitted [duty of] religion might be made up: and this same [course] the Ezechian Senate afterward followed, [as spoken of] earlier in this very question. And hence, to the first and second questions, [the] answer is given negatively.
But to the third [it] is said [that] someone can be staying among the Gentiles in such a way that, though [he] could rightly [do so], [he] does not give himself to the Jerusalem journey; or [that he] does indeed rightly give himself [to it], but so that, on account of some crosswise [hindrance] which perchance intervenes, [he] cannot be present in time — [being] far off. The Lord’s dispensation touches the former [case] not at all, but [only] the latter.
To the fourth. I would not dare, by private authority, to publish abroad to all [what] has been given by God as a benefit to certain [persons] — even if a not-dissimilar cause seem to have delayed them. [As to that] which the Lord restricted to certain causes, is it lawful to snatch or transfer [it] to others? But these [causes] are similar to those. Granted; yet [they] are not the very same.
To the fifth. [The Rabbis] answer, in the Talmudic tractate Sanhedrin, [that] even in the most ancient times of the sanctuary, or of the former Temple, their forefathers were accustomed sometimes to interpose one month before Nisan itself, so that [the month] which would [otherwise] be Nisan was called by another name — Adar Sheni [the second Adar] — and—
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—[the month] which is afterward called Nisan would be, as [it] were, after the ordinary Nisan, a second month. And thus the ordinary month — Nisan, namely — is kept indeed in the word itself; but in the thing itself, unless, with a repetition of the name, a month “Adar” had been interposed, that very time was [what] is called Adar Sheni [the second Adar]. And an interposition of this kind the Rabbis call ha-ʿibbur; the Greeks, ἐμβολιμαῖον [embolimaion, “intercalary”]; we Latins, “to intercalate the month,” and as [it] were “to split it in,” or, imitating these [Greeks], “to make the year embolic [intercalated].” And they give in the same place three causes of this their intercalation, namely על האביב ועל פירות האילן ועל התקופה [ʿal ha-abib ve-ʿal pirot ha-ilan ve-ʿal ha-tekufah] — that is: 1. on account of the month Abib (of which above, q. 26), or rather on account of the ears, or crops; 2. on account of the fruit of the trees; and 3. on account of the tekufah [the season-turn]. Of which causes this is the explanation. I. [It] was commanded by the Lord (Exod. 13:4 &c.; 34:17; Deut. 16:1) that the Passover be celebrated in the month Abib — when, namely, the ears of the crops are green and ripening, as [was] indicated above (q. 26). But [it] can sometimes happen that, according to the common course of the years, Abib — which is the same as Nisan — is present, and yet the ears are not yet green nor ripe; and for that cause, neither on the day after the Passover (that is, on the sixteenth of the same month) could the prescribed sheaf of ears be offered, of which below. So that, therefore, that ripening might be had in Nisan, [one] had to wait some little time. But because the previous year had already gone out, and was closed with its last month, which is Adar, before the new year should be begun and the first month be called Nisan — as many days, as I said, were allowed to elapse as would seem enough for one month; and it was called Adar Sheni, or “intercalated” and “embolic.” And when that was finished, [and] there was now as much ripeness of the crops as [was] necessary, the new year was begun — and the month which [is] Abib, or Nisan. II. At the Passover, the fruits of the trees too are wont to appear, and some of them to be ripe. If, therefore, [it] ever happened that of these there was nothing in the ordinary Nisan, [one] had to wait meanwhile, and that month, as [was] said, [had to be] intercalated. III. The Jews divide the whole solar year into four quarters, as we too [do]; and these they call tekufot — that is, “revolutions.” Any one of them, as R. Samuel explains in the cited Talmudic place, and from him the Book of New Moons (fol. 59), consists of three months; and between each [there] is a time of not less than 91 days and 7½ hours. The first tekufah is from the Sun’s entry into Libra up to Capricorn; the second, from Capricorn to Aries; the third, from Aries to Cancer; the fourth, thence to Libra. Concerning which the Rabbis [have] many things — trifling and superstitious too. But for now [it] suffices [to note] that the first is wont to be called tekufat choref (or “of Autumn”), by Abenezra [Ibn Ezra] on Exod. 12 — or tekufat Tishri, which was on the seventh day of October; the second, tekufat Tevet, which [was] on the seventh of January; the third, tekufat Nisan, which [was] on the 8th of April; the last, tekufat kayitz [of summer], or Tammuz, which [was] on the 8th of July. Because, therefore, [it] could happen that, according to the Moon’s course — from its conjunction with the Sun — [it] was the 16th day of Nisan, and yet either then for the first time, or not long before, that spring tekufah would begin and the Sun would enter Aries (whence the disadvantages of unripeness, of which [it was] spoken) — therefore, so that before the paschal—
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—day this first tekufah might begin sooner, one month was interposed; after which Nisan at last came forth, cast down from its rank — in word now indeed the first month, but in fact the second; yet a month lawful for keeping the Passover, and by decree simply the first. All these same [things], after the Talmud, Rambam pursues in his “Hand” [Yad, the Mishneh Torah] (bk. 3, which is called Zemanim, or “of the times,” chapter Kiddush ha-chodesh), where in the third paragraph other necessities of intercalating are brought forward: for example, on account of storms [ἐπομβρίας, epombrias] — that is, on account of tempests; on account of broken bridges; on account of floods and rains; on account of the ovens (which were built for roasting the lamb) [being] pulled down; on account of the too-tender young of doves, not yet grown enough — [those doves] which [were needed] for the Passover, [when] lambs or kids [were] to be slaughtered. And hence [it] is plain [that] what I said above (q. 26) [is true]: [that] the Passover seems always to have been proclaimed from the settled calculation of the Moon, not from a chance sighting of it — which [sighting], at the ordinary time otherwise, could be impeded not only by clouds, but also by other causes, on account of which an intercalation, by no means provided and set down beforehand, was sometimes necessary. But when such an unforeseen intercalation was made, the ordinary course of the Moon was easily restored in the reckonings [epilogismoi] of the following years — although sometimes, on account of the same necessity of time, [it] behooved [them] to make several years even embolic, as Abenezra notes [that] two were once made consecutively (on Lev. 22). But as confirmation of these [things], Scaliger (bk. 3 of the Isagoge, p. 278) brings forward the very ancient letters of the Jerusalem Sanhedrin to the Galilean, Babylonian, and Median Jews — which [letters] he once complained [had been] left behind by him in France, when [he] was writing the second book On the emendation of times (p. 101). Certainly the most illustrious Duke of Olyka [Radziwiłł] (epist. 2, p. 106): “All the fruits and crops,” he says, “come forth at Jericho two weeks before [they do] at Jerusalem.” Nor [is it] a wonder. For here [at Jericho] are such immense heats that, to those going hence to Jerusalem, the sky seems far colder — where the air [is] likewise more healthful, and the nights free of excessive heat.
To the sixth question, I deny [that it] was lawful to defer the Passover into the third month — calling “third,” I say, that [month] which would fall third from the month Nisan. For [there is] no first law of this deferral, [and] no example anywhere.
To the seventh. If [it] was not lawful for these [men] to defer Pentecost — since from the 16th day of the second month, on which they themselves kept their own Passover, [there] remained to that [Pentecost] only 20 days — what would they do? Would they wait for it at Jerusalem? But [it is] a great inconvenience to be so long away from home, to drag out delay elsewhere, especially with the harvest at hand and altogether in full heat. Would they go home [and come back]? But not much afterward [they] would have had to return. For Pentecost was of those three feasts at which [one] had to come to the Lord’s sanctuary at Jerusalem (Exod. 23:17). [It] could indeed be answered [that those] who had been excused from the Passover seemed [to be] excused also from the sacred [rites] and first-fruits of Pentecost, which [were] commanded (Lev. 23:16 & 17): yet, because I find nowhere any word of a “deferred Pentecost” — but rather, [that] this [Passover] might be kept [so], I see, on great and dangerous journeys, [there was] rest, and that [rest]—
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—and that a two-day [rest] (employed in Josephus, bk. 13, ch. 16), I would more willingly reckon [that] all procrastination [of Pentecost] was excluded in that [rest]. Whence [it] also appears how great was the audacity of the Sebuaeans [a sect], and how impudent a heresy, who dared — against the express precept of the law — to change the times of the most celebrated feasts among the Jews: the Passover, Pentecost, and Tabernacles. For, as St. Epiphanius relates (bk. 1, heresy 11), [they] celebrated the Passover in Tishri, or September; Pentecost in Autumn; Tabernacles in the spring month, Nisan. [It is] granted [that] other [things], and still more absurd than these, about them, Josephus Scaliger has absurdly handed down in [his] Elenchus against Serarius — as I showed (bk. 3 of the Minerval, ch. 6) — and [that] he himself afterward tacitly confessed [it], when [he] deserted that opinion of his (bk. 3 of the Isagoge, p. 218) and devised another new [one], as I indicated (scruple 22) [as being] of a later Rabbi.