First Peter And The Feast Of Tabernacles -- By: Norman Hillyer

Journal: Tyndale Bulletin
Volume: TYNBUL 21:1 (NA 1970)
Article: First Peter And The Feast Of Tabernacles
Author: Norman Hillyer


First Peter And The Feast Of Tabernacles

Norman Hillyer

*The Tyndale New Testament Lecture, 1969

* Delivered At Tyndale House, Cambridge, 9th July, 1969.

*The author’s irregular footnote numbering has been retained at the beginning of each footnote to acknowledge how it appeared in print.

No commentator so much as hints at a possible link between First Peter and the Feast of Tabernacles. The title of this paper, therefore, perches on the height of presumption. But a word of explanation may be offered. A few years ago Jean Danielou published a slender volume on Primitive Christian Symbols.1 One chapter deals with the Feast of Tabernacles, and although First Peter is not explored in this connection, one reader was struck with the number of symbols and themes associated with Tabernacles which also occur in First Peter, and it seemed to him worth while to follow up the clues.

We shall first notice how the Feast of Tabernacles was celebrated in Judaism before AD 70, and something of its significance; next glance at the place the festival occupied in the early Church; and then see what links between the two First Peter may have to suggest.

I. The Feast Of Tabernacles In Judaism

The Feast of Tabernacles2 was the most popular of all the festive occasions in Israel. It was celebrated at the time of year when it was no hardship to obey the injunction attached to

this festival, ‘You shall rejoice in your feast’.3 All the crops had been safely stored, the fruits brought in, and the vintage completed.

But it was far more than merely the harvest thanksgiving, ‘the Feast of Ingathering’.4 The festival had other significant titles. As ‘the Feast of Booths’5 it looked back to Israel’s dwelling in the wilderness in the forty years after the Exodus from Egypt. As emphatically ‘the Feast’ par excellence,6 and ‘the Feast of the Lord’,7 it looked forward to the final joyful harvest, when Israel’s mission on earth should be completed by gathering all the nations of the world to the Lord, as prophesied by Zechariah (14:16). Josephus describes it as ‘the holiest and greatest feast’,<...

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