8, count as the first day of Easter week; on the contrary, the latter does not begin until the 15th and closes with the 21st (comp.  Leviticus xxiii. 6; Numbers xxviii. 17; Exodus xii. 18).  The beginning of the festival week being thus distinctly indicated, there arises in this way not merely an ordinary but also an extra-ordinary feast day more, the day after the passover, on which already, according to the injunctions of Deuteronomy, the pilgrims were required to set out early in the morning on the return journey to their homes. 1

********************************************* 1.  It is impossible to explain away this discrepancy by the circumstance that in the Priestly Code the day is reckoned from the evening; for (1.) this fact has no practical bearing, as the dating reckons at any rate from the morning, and the evening preceding the 15th is always called the 14th of the month (Leviticus xiii. 27, 32); (2.) the first day of the feast in Deuteronomy is just the day on the evening of which the passover is held, and upon it there follow not seven but six days more, whereas in the Priestly Code the celebration extends from the 14th to the 21st of the month (Exodus xii. 18).  When the MXRT H#BT:  is made to refer, not as in Josh. v. 11 to the 14th, but as in Jewish tradition (LXX on Leviticus xxiii. 11) to the day following the 15th of Nisan, thee 16th of Nisan is added to the 14th and 15th as a special feast day. ***********************************************

Another advance consists in this, that not only the passover, as in Deuteronomy, or the additional first day of the feast besides, but also the seventh (which, according to Deuteronomy xvi. 8, is marked only by rest), must be observed as miqra qodesh in Jerusalem.  In other words, such pilgrims as do not live in the immediate neighbourhood are compelled to pass the whole week there, an exaction which enables us to mark the progress made with centralisation, when the much more moderate demands of Deuteronomy are compared.  The feast of tabernacles is in the latter law also observed from beginning to end at Jerusalem, but the Priestly Code has contrived to add to it an eighth day as an _`acereth_ to the principal feast, which indeed still appears to be wanting in the older portion of Leviticus xxiii.  From all this it is indisputable that the Priestly Code has its nearest relations with Deuteronomy, but goes beyond it in the same direction as that in which Deuteronomy itself goes beyond the Jehovistic legislation.  In any case the intermediate place in the series belongs to Deuteronomy, and if we begin that series with the Priestly Code, we must in consistency close it with the Sinaitic Book of the Covenant (Exodus xx. 23 seq.).