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→The Dialogue of Judaism and Hellenism
The ''Pesach seder'' or Passover meal had, and has, many practices that one does not find so readily in Scripture of any canon. One must first note that many items of the Israelite and Jewish religion were provided and handed down through a robust teaching tradition (e.g., how to tie the ''tzitzit'' or "fringes" of Numbers 15). The veracity of oral tradition in Judaism as well as in other traditions has more merit than most moderns will allow. Nonetheless, more than one curious similarity among a few Passover meal traditions are simply not found in the Ancient Near East records but are so among the Hellenistic banquet symposiums.
Following customs current among their Gentile contemporaries at the Hellenistic symposium, the ''seder'' follows the order of these banquets along with the various customs. Nonetheless, not only the outline of the meal but also particulars as well follow. Reclining at times throughout the meal is well known. The recounting of the plagues with the dropping out of the wine on a plate is alike to the tossing of wine into a center bowl of the Hellenistic banquet. Even the use of wine, not required according to the Exodus account, does not occur in the known literature until the Book of Jubilees, chapter 49, which book is usually dated to the second century BC when the Jewish community was in the thick of the late Hellenistic world. Questions and discussions about the menu itself, in the philosophical manner, were a part of the symposium ritual. That the earliest Jewish reference to the ''afikoman'' (Mishnaic tractate ''Pesahim'' 10.8) noted that one should not conclude the celebratory meal with it. Why so?
While later tradition took this to mean quite the opposite, the context of the Hellenistic symposium ''afikoman'' shows why it was rejected by the earlier Jewish communities. The ''afikoman'' or "dessert" of the banquet was a time for carousing and drunkenness. That it was later introduced into the ''seder'', and even used by some Christians in modern times as a "proof" of messianic significance about Jesus, only becomes an intellectual and historical twist.
