Why a Cracker? Jephthah’s Daughter as the Unleavened Bread of Passover

Abstract

This article presents a new hypothesis regarding the social and ideological functions of the otherwise unknown festival to commemorate Jephthah’s daughter and the meaning of its symbols and occasions. A unique event in the biblical world, this festival is the only time known to us in which Israelite women were expected to appear together in public assembly. Judges 11:39–40 enjoin “the daughters of Israel” to celebrate it annually. The story of Jephthah’s daughter, summarized in Judges 11:34–39, evokes and develops many themes that intersect with the depiction of and the prescriptions for observing two well-known festivals that share a season: the holiday of Passover and the Festival of Unleavened Bread, Maṣṣot. A synthesis of the correlations among the holidays will suggest that the festival dedicated to honoring Jephthah’s daughter was an early, long-lasting folk version of Maṣṣot in which the daughter represented the festival’s ritual staple, unleavened bread.