Links with Tabernacles and Hanukkah in the Gospel Accounts of Palm Sunday

Introduction

The Feast of Tabernacles (or Sukkot or Festival of Booths) as celebrated during the late Second Temple era included elements which were not prescribed in Scripture, and some of which ended with the destruction of the Temple. Torah said that everyone should live in booths for a week, and wave branches in celebration. Rabbinic law defined living in a booth as eating and sleeping in it, and prescribed how to construct a booth and a lulav. The lulav is a bunch of palm, myrtle, and willow branches with a citron (m.Suk. 3.1-8), which was waved (or “shaken”) during parts of the Hallel Psalms (m.Suk. 3.9).^[17]  In addition, other ceremonies had become popular during Tabernacles – beating willows, pouring water, and dancing with lights – and references to these ceremonies are found in Gospel accounts.

The Gospel accounts of Palm Sunday have some significant links with activities during Tabernacles, especially the chants from Psalm 118 and waving of branches, but these activities were also part of the early celebration of Hanukkah. Some of the extra activities during Tabernacles in Temple times may also have been inspired by the celebration of Hanukkah, so these festivals were intricately related to each other. The Gospel accounts do not hide the links between the events on Palm Sunday and these festivals, and perhaps they accentuated them. If this is the case, the festival that they are attempting to highlight may give us an insight into the significance of this event for the Gospel writers.

Ceremony of Willow Beating

The ceremony of willow beating is still performed in synagogues during celebration of Tabernacles, though the meaning is as uncertain as its origins. In Temple times, people cut down long willow branches and processed around the altar all day while chanting from Psalm 118.25: “Please Lord, save now!, Please Lord, prosper now!” (m.Suk.4.5). In English this sounds impolite and insufficiently reverential, so it is usually translated as something like “We pray you, Lord, please save us”.

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• ^[1] Some later traditions assumed that only priests carried willows round the altar (first suggested by Johanan b. Nappaha [late 3rd C, PA2] - b.Suk. 44a), but Mishnah implies that ordinary people cut down the willows and processed. ↩
• ^[2] This person may have been Alexander Jannaeus (103-76 BCE) as described by Josephus (Jos. Ant. 13.13.5=372). Mishnah is silent about his identity, though Tosephta says he was a “Boethusian” which the Babylonian Talmud interpreted as “Sadducee”, and the Jerusalem Talmud debates whether he was the same Sadducee who made a mistake with regard to the incense on the Day of Atonement and the Red Heifer (y.Suk. 4.6 II.4). It is possible that the Mishnah recorded an old tradition which was silent on this identity for political reasons and then later versions felt it increasingly necessary to provide some identification. ↩
• ^[3] For detailed discussion of the dating of individual traditions, see my Traditions of the Rabbis in the Era of the New Testament vol.2B (Eerdmans, forthcoming) ↩
• ^[4] For other reasons to doubt that the Sadducees rejected the water pouring ceremony see Jeffrey Rubenstein, “The Sadducees and the Water Libation,” JQR 84 (1994), 417-444. He concludes that although there was a dispute with the Sadducees, it may have concerned the location of the pouring or whether it overrides the Sabbath. ↩
• ^[5] Some commentators think that this refers to the seventh day of the festival, but the addition of the phrase “the great day” indicates that this was the final High Festival Day. ↩
• ^[6] The summary at m.Suk.4.1 can be understood with the commentary throughout the chapter. The water pouring occurred only on the first seven days, and the ceremony of lights (which is referred to in this mishnah by the “flute playing” which accompanied it) could not occur on Sabbaths or High Festival Days, presumably because they involved lighting a fire and dancing. ↩
• ^[7] Although some editions of the Mishnah replace the second half with a repetition of the first half, it is likely that this was a later attempt to show that the crowd followed the Hillelites, because it is unlikely that an editor would change the text in order to show the Shammaites having the upper hand. ↩
• ^[8] According to b.Shab.104a, Hu is one of the names of God, and some commentators thought that when Hillel said “I” (Ani) in the saying “If I am there, all are there…” (etc. – see b.Suk. 53a) he used this as a circumlocution for God. See notes in C.J.G. Montefiore and H. Loewe, A Rabbinic anthology (London : Macmillan 1938): 13. This may explain the pointing in the Kaufmann MS of Mishnah: אֲנִי וְהוּא (“I and he”). ↩
• ^[9] This was argued convincingly by Raphael Lowe in “Salvation” is not of the Jews” (Journal of Theological Studies 32, 1981: 341-368). ↩
• ^[10] See esp. Florilegium=4Q174 f1 2i:7-13; Commentary on Genesis=4Q252 5:2-3; Sepher haMilhanah=4Q285 f7:3-4+11Q14 f1i:7-13; cf. CD 7:16. ↩
• ^[11] A search of Babli and Midrash Rabbah in Davka software found 34 examples of “son of David” used in a messianic sense. ↩
• ^[12] W.R.Farmer “The Palm Branches in John 12.13” (JTS NS 3, 1952: 62-6) “He warns that the coin may have originated from elsewhere because there were several people called ‘Simon’ concerned with the revolt.” ↩
• ^[13] Lowe “Salvation”: 352-53. ↩
• ^[14] Conta Lowe “Salvation” who says that the Gospels tried to underplay it because only John actually calls the branches “palms”. The messianic and regal chants are far more significant than the species of the branches being waved. ↩
• ^[15] It is named as one of the 35 days on which fasting is forbidden in the Megillat Taanit, but we do not know how widely this was followed. ↩
• ^[16] Moshe David Herr, “Ḥanukkah” in Encyclopaedia Judaica, ed. Michael Berenbaum and Fred Skolnik. Vol. 8. 2nd ed. (Detroit: Macmillan Reference USA, 2007): 331-333. ↩
• ^[17] According to m.Suk. 3.9 they also shook them at the first and last verses of Ps. 118, but this detail is not confirmed by an early tradition like the shaking at Ps. 118.25, so we cannot be so certain about this. ↩