joelr
Well-Known Member
Back then in Jerusalem Passover was not celebrated on different times.
Bart Ehrman:
Now the only confusing aspect of this celebration involves the
way ancient Jews told time—the same way modern Jews do. Even
today the “Sabbath” is Saturday, but it begins on Friday night, when
it gets dark. That is because in traditional Judaism the new day
begins at nightfall, with the evening. (That’s why, in the book of
Genesis, when God creates the heavens and the earth, we’re told that
“there was evening and morning, the first day”; a day consisted of
night and day, not day and night.) And so the Sabbath begins Friday
night—and in fact every day begins with nightfall.
And so, on the Day of Preparation the lamb was slaughtered and
the meal was prepared in the afternoon. The meal was eaten that
night, which was actually the beginning of the next day: Passover
day. The meal consisted of a number of symbolic foods: the lamb, to
commemorate the original slaughter of the lambs in Exodus; bitter
herbs, to remind the Jews of their bitter slavery in Egypt; unleav¬
ened bread (bread made without yeast) to remind them that the
Israelites had to flee from Egypt without much warning, so that
they could not wait for the bread to rise; and several cups of wine.
The Passover day, then, began with the evening meal and lasted ap¬
proximately twenty-four hours, through the morning and afternoon
of the next day, after which would begin the day after Passover.
Now we can return to Mark’s account of Jesus’ death. Jesus and his
disciples have made a pilgrimage to Jerusalem for the Passover feast.
In Mark 14:12, the disciples ask Jesus where they are to prepare the
Passover meal for that evening. In other words, this is on the Day of
Preparation for Passover. Jesus gives them instructions. They make
the preparations, and when it is evening—the beginning of Passover
day—they have the meal. It is a special meal indeed. Jesus takes
the symbolic foods of the Passover and imbues them with yet more
symbolic meaning. He takes the unleavened bread, breaks it, and
says, “This is my body.” By implication, his body must be broken for
salvation. Then after supper he takes the cup of wine and says, “This
is my blood of the covenant, that is poured out for many” (Mark
14:22—25), meaning that his own blood must be shed.
After the disciples eat the Passover meal they go out to the Garden
of Gethsemane to pray. Judas Iscariot brings the troops and performs
his act of betrayal. Jesus is taken to stand trial before the Jewish au¬
thorities. He spends the night in jail, and the next morning he is put
on trial before the Roman governor, Pontius Pilate, who finds him
guilty and condemns him to death by crucifixion. We are told that
he is crucified that same day, at nine o’clock in the morning (Mark
15:25). Jesus, then, dies on the day of Passover, the morning after the
Passover meal was eaten.
All this is clear and straightforward in Mark’s Gospel, but despite
some basic similarities, it is at odds with the story told in the Gospel
of John, which is also clear and straightforward. Here, too, Jesus goes
to Jerusalem in the last week of his life to celebrate the Passover feast,
and here, too, there is a last meal, a betrayal, a trial before Pilate, and
the crucifixion. But it is striking that in John, at the beginning of the
account, in contrast to Mark, the disciples do not ask Jesus where they
are “to prepare the Passover.” Consequently, he gives them no in¬
structions for preparing the meal. They do eat a final supper together,
but in John, Jesus says nothing about the bread being his body or the
cup representing his blood. Instead he washes the disciples’ feet, a
story found in none of the other Gospels (John 13:1—20).
After the meal they go out. Jesus is betrayed by Judas, appears
before the Jewish authorities, spends the night in jail, and is put on
trial before Pontius Pilate, who finds him guilty and condemns him
to be crucified. And we are told exactly when Pilate pronounces the
sentence: “It was the Day of Preparation for the Passover; and it was
about noon” (John 19:14).
Noon? On the Day of Preparation for the Passover? The day the
lambs were slaughtered? How can that be? In Mark’s Gospel, Jesus
lived through that day, had his disciples prepare the Passover meal,
and ate it with them before being arrested, taken to jail for the
night, tried the next morning, and executed at nine o’clock a.m. on
the Passover day. But not in John. In John, Jesus dies a day earlier, on
the Day of Preparation for the Passover, sometime after noon.
I do not think this is a difference that can be reconciled. People
over the years have tried, of course. Some have pointed out that
Mark also indicates that Jesus died on a day that is called “the Day
of Preparation” (Mark 15:42). That is absolutely true—but what
these readers fail to notice is that Mark tells us what he means by
this phrase: it is the Day of Preparation “for the Sabbath” (not the
Day of Preparation for the Passover). In other words, in Mark, this
is not the day before the Passover meal was eaten but the day before
Sabbath; it is called the day of “preparation” because one had to pre¬
pare the meals for Saturday on Friday afternoon.
And so the contradiction stands: in Mark, Jesus eats the Passover
meal (Thursday night) and is crucified the following morning. In
John, Jesus does not eat the Passover meal but is crucified on the day
before the Passover meal was to be eaten. 4 Moreover, in Mark, Jesus
is nailed to the cross at nine in the morning; in John, he is not con¬
demned until noon, and then he is taken out and crucified.
Some scholars have argued that we have this difference between
the Gospels because different Jews celebrated Passover on different
days of the week. This is one of those explanations that sounds plau¬
sible until you dig a bit and think a bit more. It is true that some sec¬
tarian groups not connected with the Temple in Jerusalem thought
that the Temple authorities followed an incorrect calendar. But in
both Mark and John, Jesus is not outside Jerusalem with some sec¬
tarian group of Jews: he is in Jerusalem, where the lambs are being
slaughtered. And in Jerusalem, there was only one day of Passover
a year. The Jerusalem priests did not accommodate the calendrical
oddities of a few sectarian fringe groups.
