The meaning of the original division of the Passover Seder into four main parts

The main goal of this paper is to show the method of discovering the fundamental division of the Passover Seder into four parts, each of them connected with one cup of wine. It is not an easy task to properly understand where ends the first group of liturgical acts of the Passover Seder and begins the second group and so on. To perform this task, one analyzed each liturgical sign of fourteen points of Seder. The fruit of such research is that the logic of their arrangement emerges from behind the whole ritual layer and helps to understand this whole deeply. One performed this task based on The Hebrew Bible and Hebrew/Aramaic text of The Passover Haggadah and The Talmud, especially The Treatise Pesachim; one took into account explanations and observations of famous their commentators of the people of God until now. To discover the connection between significant events described in The Hebrew Bible and customs of Passover Seder, one found common Hebrew words linking them. In particularly significant moments of Seder, one showed the unique Jews’ understanding of the liturgical possibility to make the past events present. What is more – one proved that there is the four-element sequence of making present four main events – stages of the history of the salvation of Israel by God. These four steps are simultaneously the four elements of the covenant-making ceremony, which God and Israel performed to enter in a relation of spousal love. The covenant in concern – it is the covenant between the parts of the Sea of Reeds. The comprehensive fulfillment of the goal of the research task could not be possible without the knowledge of the literary structure of the Book of Exodus 1-18 as the ancient treatise describing the ceremony of the covenant-making, performed by God and Israel simultaneously with the four-stages process of liberating Israel by God; the same concerns the literary structure of the pericope of law (Ex 13:17-14:31). The first two chapters of the dissertation to which belong the present paper (as the first part of the third chapter) allowed to understand both these structures, their logic, and the dependence of the four-element ancient Hittite treaties from the XVI-XII century before Christ. The middle part of this chapter has already been published – see on Academia.edu The Passover Afikoman in light of its Hebrew origin. It was especially important to discover the liturgical signs (acts, words) of the Passover seder, which are connected with the possibility given by God to make the Passover community present in the past events of God and the Fathers of Israel in Egypt. Thanks to successively realized four main parts of Seder, they all participate in four fundamental stages of the process, performed by God for the sake of Israel, leading to liberate them from Egypt and to make the covenant with them simultaneously. The Passover seder comes out to be the liturgical means to successively make-present that process of liberating and covenant-making. The research proved the Seder origins from the time of the First Temple. The Seder reveals its symmetry of the arrangement of its four cups and parts connected with each of them when one gets to know that it has the logic of Hittite ancient treaties from the XVI-XII century before Christ.The English translation published first on Academia.edu on April 2, 2020 https://www.academia.edu/42563255/The_meaning_of_the_original_division_of_the_Passover_Seder_into_four_main_parts Subsequent versions will be published on the website: https://www.adoracja.bielsko.opoka.org.pl/praca_doktorska/PassoverDivisionMUS.htm