The Passover Lambs

Farrell Till (jftill@midwest.net)
Sun, 27 Apr 1997 22:49:56 -0500 (CDT)

Each year, every man, "according to their fathers' houses," was to take a
year-old male lamb without blemish and prepare it for the Passover
celebration (Exodus 12:3). The "whole assembly of the congregation of
Israel" was to kill it at even on the 14th day of the first month" (v:6).
Now if we imagine that the average family consisted of 10 people, this would
have required the slaughter of 300,000 lambs "at even" on this day. The
intended meaning of "at even" seems to be a sundown or at least the approach
of nightfall, so we have to wonder how the "whole assembly of the
congregation" was able to kill 300,000 lambs at the designated time. After
all, "at even" just didn't last long enough to imagine a scenario where so
many lambs could have been slaughtered in such a brief period of time with
the whole assembly of the congregation participating in the honors. Also,
we must wonder how that "the whole assembly of the congregation" could even
have killed a lamb. If we suppose that this merely meant that the whole
congregation was to be assembled together to witness the killing ceremony,
that would still pose a problem, because we have already noticed that if all
3 million of the chosen ones stood together like packed sardines, they would
have occupied a space of about 275 acres.

So let's just assume that the killing was done simultaneously "at even" by a
group designated to do the dirty work. This scenario would have
necessitated a group of sheep killers numbering 75,000 if we should allow
that each person could kill four lambs over a span of time tghat could be
called "at even." The other 2.25 million would have just stood around
watching, I suppose, except that those in the back of the assembly wouldn't
have had a very good view if we could even imagine that a slaughter like
this was something that the people would even have wanted to watch.

But maybe 300,000 lambs wouldn't have been necessary to satisfy the
blood-thirsty Yahweh, because he was considerate enough to allow a small
family to go together with a neighboring family and kill just one lamb
between them. Now a family of 10 could not have been considered a small
family, but to give inerrantists every benefit of the doubt, let's just
imagine that the chosen ones killed only one Passover lamb for every 20
people. This would still have necessitated the slaughter of 150,000
year-old lambs without blemish. Over the entire 40-year journey of the
Israelites, they would have killed 6 million lambs just to meet Yahweh's
demands for the Passover ceremony. The lambs necessitated by all the other
sacrifices would have been in addition to the 6 million Passover lambs.

So where did the Israelites obtain all of these lambs in the desert region
they were wandering in. That the Israelites observed the Passover while
they were in the wilderness is indicated in Numbers 9:1-14 and 28:16-25. So
what size flocks of sheep would they have had to have with them to meet the
demands of the Passover ceremony? We could reasonably assume that the ewes
who gave birth would have had approximately the same number of females as
males, so we have to imagine a flock of sheep large enough to produce
300,000 lambs per year, even if we assume that all of the males were without
blemish and somehow survived the ordeals of the desert for a full year. How
much grazing area would have been necessary to accommodate a flock this large?

And doesn't anyone besides me ever wonder about any of these things? Tony?
Jeff? Jerry? Aubrey? Dave? Please show me how that there is no problem
here. I'm a bit confused.

Farrell Till
Skepticism, Inc.
jftill@midwest.net