By Shawn Woo. Their arguments can be classified broadly as exegetical and historical. Communion Lord's Supper. Shawn lives in East Cambridge with his wife, Hanna, and his three daughters.
He earned his B. He is a board game enthusiast and a Boston sports fan. Leave a Comment. Contact Us. And he took it down, and wrapped it in a linen cloth, and laid him in a tomb that was hewn in stone, where never man had yet lain.
And it was the day of the Preparation, and the sabbath drew on. In Exodus 16, the Lord, through Moses, instructed the Israelites regarding how and when they should gather the manna that He was sending from heaven.
In verses 4 and 5 of that chapter, the Lord stated:. And it shall come to pass on the sixth day, that they shall prepare that which they bring in, and it shall be twice as much as they gather daily. However, it was not used to describe a day before a festival or feast.
Lenski accurately recorded:. The law provided complete rest from work only on the Sabbath Exodus ; all preparation of food had to be made on the day before; but the law provided nothing of the kind for the great festival days, for on these days save as one might occur on the Sabbath food could be cooked as on any other day. The attempt to show that the festival days also had a paraskeua has failed completely , p. However, that assumption is not correct.
Actually, the text is ambiguous and cannot answer the day of the week by itself. It is from other considerations that we should conclude that this is Friday… , p. It can be shown conclusively, however, that John did not necessarily mean the actual Passover lamb, and that his statement can refer instead to the Feast of Unleavened bread directly following the Passover.
First, it should be noted that John was not nearly as specific as the other the gospel writers. As was discussed earlier, they defined the day of the Last Supper as the first day of unleavened bread on which the passover must be sacrificed. Which law or custom compelled the Jews to sacrifice the Passover lamb on this particular day? The obvious answer is: the law set forth in Exodus In the present connection it is impossible to make the eating of the Passover mean the eating of the Paschal lamb.
For the defilement which these Jews feared would not have debarred them from eating the Paschal lamb if this lamb was to be eaten on Friday evening. Defilement of this type lasted only until sundown and could then be removed by a bath.
The Paschal Lamb was not eaten until some time after sundown , p. From reading Numbers ,13, it seems that, according to the Law of Moses, the only two reasons a man might be unable to keep the feast would be because he had touched a dead body or was away on a journey. It is quite incredible to believe that with an entirely incidental expression, not at all connected with the Passover as such or with the actions of Jesus but solely with the scruples of the Jews, John should wish to overthrow a view of his readers which he has left entirely undisturbed throughout all of his preceding chapters p.
What, then, were the Jewish leaders specifically desiring to eat? In concluding the discussion as to the actual time of the Passover, John needs to be revisited. This time frame often is based on assumptions regarding John and —assumptions that I have shown to be incorrect.
Bryant and Krause further clarified the situation:. John notes the time of the next event as just before the Passover Feast. According to ancient Jewish reckoning, the Passover Feast day would have run from sundown Thursday until sundown on Friday. This cannot be reconciled with the Synoptic accounts, which clearly identify the Last Supper as a Passover meal e.
But this is an easily explained contradiction. Considering all the evidence, John makes reference to only a few minutes before the actual Passover lamb was eaten. Other New Testament verses linking Christ to the Passover lamb often are used in support of this view.
For our passover also hath been sacrificed, even Christ. While it is true that various New Testament writers refer to Christ as our Passover Lamb, it is not true that the power of His atoning blood was conditioned on the actual day that it was shed. As Zahn stated:. The conception of Christ as the Paschal Lamb which is found throughout the N. Furthermore, to suppose that there is a clash between John and the synoptics—based upon what a person assumes John was attempting to symbolize—is a less than desirable conclusion and fails to give John the benefit of the doubt.
In summarizing this view, Carson wrote:. These difficulties have led to a number of suggested resolutions that turn on calendrical disputes in the first century. David Harris. Furthermore, several Judaic studies scholars—Jacob Neusner is a leading example—very much doubt that rabbinic texts can be used in historical reconstructions of the time of Jesus.
But rabbinic literature is our main source of information about what Jews might have done during their Seder meal in ancient times. For reasons that are not entirely clear, other ancient Jewish sources, such as Josephus and Philo, focus on what Jews did in the Temple when the Passover sacrifice was offered, rather than on what they did afterward, when they actually ate the sacrifice. Again, if we cannot know how Jews celebrated Passover at the time of Jesus, then we have to plead ignorance, and we would therefore be unable to answer our question.
There is something to be said for these skeptical positions, but I am not such a skeptic. I want to operate here under the opposite assumptions: that the Gospels can tell us about the historical Jesus, 3 and that rabbinic sources can be used—with caution—to reconstruct what Jews at the time of Jesus might have believed and practiced.
While three of the four canonical Gospels strongly suggest that the Last Supper did occur on Passover, we should not get too comfortable based on that. As anyone who has studied these three Gospels knows, they are closely related. What we have, rather, is one testimony probably Mark , which was then copied twice by Matthew and Luke.
According to John, Jesus died just when the Passover sacrifice was being offered and before the festival began at sundown see the sidebar to this article. Any last meal—which John does not record—would have taken place the night before, or even earlier than that. But it certainly could not have been a Passover meal, for Jesus died before the holiday had formally begun. So are we to follow John or the synoptics? But this is the place to point out that if ancient Jewish authorities had been involved in something that could possibly be construed as a violation of Jewish law, the Gospels—with their hatred of the Jewish authorities—would probably have made the most of it.
The synoptic account stretches credulity, not just because it depicts something unlikely, but because it fails to recognize the unlikely and problematic nature of what it depicts. It is almost as if the synoptic tradition has lost all familiarity with contemporary Jewish practice.
And if they have lost familiarity with that, they have probably lost familiarity with reliable historical information as well. He may well have had theological motivations for claiming that Jesus was executed on the day of preparation when the Passover sacrifice was being offered but before Passover began at sundown. It turns out that under greater scrutiny the parallels are too general to be decisive. That Jesus ate a meal in Jerusalem, at night, with his disciples is not so surprising.
It is also no great coincidence that during this meal the disciples reclined, ate both bread and wine, and sang a hymn. While such behavior may have been characteristic of the Passover meal, it is equally characteristic of practically any Jewish meal. A number of scholars now believe that the ritual context for the Last Supper was not a Seder but a standard Jewish meal. That Christians celebrated the Eucharist on a daily or weekly basis see Acts —47 underscores the fact that it was not viewed exclusively in a Passover context otherwise, it would have been performed, like the Passover meal, on an annual basis.
An ancient Christian church manual called the Didache also suggests that the Last Supper may have been an ordinary Jewish meal. Thus, this too underscores the likelihood that the Last Supper was an everyday Jewish meal. Moreover, while the narrative in the synoptics situates the Last Supper during Passover, the fact remains that the only foods we are told the disciples ate are bread and wine—the basic elements of any formal Jewish meal.
If this was a Passover meal, where is the Passover lamb? Where are the bitter herbs? Where are the four cups of wine? Not a BAS Library member yet? Join today. Is this not a striking parallel to the ways in which Jews celebrating the Seder interpret, for example, the bitter herbs eaten with the Passover sacrifice as representing the bitter life the Israelites experienced as slaves in Egypt?
But this is hardly the case. When Jews today sit down to celebrate the Passover Seder, they use a book known as the Haggadah. The traditional text of the Haggadah as it exists today incorporates a variety of material, starting with the Bible, and running through medieval songs and poems. For many Jews especially non-Orthodox Jews , the process of development continues, and many modern editions of the Haggadah contain contemporary readings of one sort or another.
Even many traditional Jews have, for instance, adapted the Haggadah so that mention can be made of the Holocaust. How much of the Haggadah goes back to ancient times?
In the s and s, the American Talmud scholar Louis Finkelstein — famously claimed that various parts of the Passover Haggadah were very early, stemming in part from the third century B.
What is particularly significant about this consensus is that these scholars are not radical skeptics. These scholars believe that, generally speaking, we can extract historically reliable information from rabbinic sources. But as demonstrated by the late Baruch Bokser in his book The Origins of the Seder , practically everything preserved in the early rabbinic traditions concerning the Passover Seder brings us back to the time immediately following the Roman destruction of the Temple in 70 C.
Rabban Gamaliel used to say: Whoever does not make mention of the following three things on Passover has not fulfilled his obligation: namely, the Passover sacrifice, unleavened bread matzah and bitter herbs.
Because the Holy One, blessed be He, passed over the houses of our ancestors in Egypt. Because the dough of our ancestors had not yet leavened when the King of Kings, the Holy One Blessed be He revealed Himself to them and redeemed them.
Because the Egyptians made the lives of our ancestors bitter in Egypt. Rabban Gamaliel instructs his students in this illumination from the Sarajevo Haggadah. The Haggadah credits Gamaliel with introducing the requirement that the symbolic significance of the food served during the Seder be explained during the meal.
Some scholars who assume the Last Supper was a Seder have suggested that Jesus deliberately explained the significance of the bread and wine in fulfillment of this requirement. But the requirement may not have even been in place in the time of Jesus. There were two leaders of the rabbinic academy called Gamaliel: One lived around the time of Jesus; the other, after the Temple was destroyed in 70 C.
Sarajevo National Museum. Might not Jesus be presenting a competing interpretation of these symbols? But it really depends on when this Rabban Gamaliel lived. The first lived decadesbefore the destruction of the Temple, according to rabbinic tradition.
This Gamaliel served as head of the rabbinic academy sometime after the destruction of the Temple. Virtually all scholars working today believe that the Haggadah tradition attributing the words quoted above to Gamaliel refers to the grandson, Rabban Gamaliel the Younger, who lived long after Jesus had died.
Furthermore, as Baruch Bokser has shown, the bulk of early rabbinic material pertaining to the Passover Haggadah is attributed in the Haggadah itself to figures who lived immediately following the destruction of the Temple and were therefore contemporaries of Gamaliel the Younger. Finally, a tradition preserved in the Tosefta a rabbinic companion volume to the earliest rabbinic lawbook, the Mishnah, edited perhaps in the third or fourth century suggests that Gamaliel the Younger played some role in Passover celebrations soon after the.
Temple was destroyed, when animal sacrifices could for this reason no longer be offered. Thus, the Passover Seder as we know it developed after 70 C.
I wish we could know more about how the Passover meal was celebrated before the Temple was destroyed. But unfortunately, our sources do not answer this question with any certainty. Presumably, Jesus and his disciples would have visited the Temple to slaughter their Passover sacrifice. Then they would have consumed it along with unleavened bread and bitter herbs, as required by the Book of Exodus.
And presumably they would have engaged in conversation pertinent to the occasion. But we cannot know for sure. According to scholar Jonathan Klawans, ancient Jews—including the Pharisees, Sadducees and Essenes—cared as much about matters of Jewish theology as about laws and practices. Having determined that the Last Supper was not a Seder and that it probably did not take place on Passover, I must try to account for why the synoptic Gospels portray the Last Supper as a Passover meal.
The Quartodecimans the ers were Christians who believed that the date of Easter should be calculated so as to coincide with the Jewish celebration of Passover, whether or not that date fell on a Sunday. The Jewish calendar was and is lunar, and therefore there is always a full moon on the night of the Passover Seder, that is, the night following the 14th of Nisan. But that night is not always a Saturday night. The Quartodeciman custom of celebrating Easter beginning on the evening following the 14th day apparently began relatively early in Christian history and persisted at least into the fifth century C.
The alternate view—that Easter must be on a Sunday, regardless of the day on which the Jewish Passover falls—ultimately prevailed. After all, if you wanted to encourage Christians to celebrate Easter on Passover, would it not make sense to emphasize the fact that Jesus celebrated Passover with his disciples just before he died?
Early on, a number of Christians—Quartodecimans and others—felt that the appropriate way to mark the Jewish Passover was not with celebration, but with fasting. On the one hand, this custom reflected an ancient Jewish tradition of fasting during the time immediately preceding the Passover meal as related in Mishnah Pesachim Is it possible to identify the first-century man named Jesus behind the many stories and traditions about him that developed over 2, years in the Gospels and church teachings?
Jesus is the Paschal lamb in the Gospel of John, which associates the crucifixion, rather than the Last Supper, with the Passover festival. To the right of the cross stands a wounded lamb, which carries a cross and bleeds into a chalice. Mary Magdalene kneels at the foot of the cross, her alabaster ointment jar beside her. At right, John the Baptist points to Jesus. New Testament scholar Bruce Chilton recently presented an alternate theory. He argues that the identification of the Last Supper with a Passover Seder originated among Jewish Christians who were attempting to maintain the Jewish character of early Easter celebrations.
Like the Passover sacrifice, the recollection of the Last Supper could only be celebrated in Jerusalem, at Passover time, and by Jews. Other examples of Passoverization can be identified. Therefore let us celebrate the festival, not with the old yeast, the yeast of malice and evil, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth.
Both of these Passoverizations can be placed in the broader context of Exodus typology in general. Davies and N. This process of Passoverization did not end with the New Testament.
Passoverization can even be found in the Middle Ages. Contrary to popular belief, the Catholic custom of using unleavened wafers in the Mass is medieval in origin. The Orthodox churches preserve the earlier custom of using leavened bread. Saldarini as it originally appeared in Bible Review. The article was first republished in Bible History Daily in October Press, , which received the Salo Wittmayer Baron Prize for the best first book in Jewish studies.
Some may also ask, where is the unleavened bread? The Gospels do not specify that Jesus fed his disciples unleavened bread, which is what Jews would eat at Passover. The book first appeared in and was revised and translated various times after that. The 14 parallels are listed in the third edition, which was translated into English in London: SCM Press, , esp.
His 14 parallels may be summarized as follows: 1 The Last Supper took place in Jerusalem, 2 in a room made available to pilgrims for that purpose, and 3 it was held during the night. Finally, 14 Jesus discussed the symbolic significance of the meal, just as Jews do during the Passover Seder.
For brief surveys summarizing the question see Robert F. Garden City, NY: Doubleday, , vol. For a representative statement denying the historicity of the Last Supper traditions, see Robert W.
Knopf, Sanders, Judaism: Practice and Belief 63 B. London: SCM Press, There are those who attempt to harmonize John and the synoptics by supposing that they disagreed not about when the Last Supper occurred, but about whether the date of Passover was supposed to be calculated by following a solar calendar or a lunar one. This view cannot be accepted, however. It is too difficult to conceive of Passover having been celebrated twice in the same place without any contemporary or even later writer referring to such an event.
Surely it would have been remarkable if two Passovers were held in the same week! Moreover, while we do know of solar calendars from the Book of Jubilees and the Temple Scroll, we do not know how any of these calendars really worked. For more on these questions, see James C. A useful version of the traditional text of the Haggadah, with introduction and translation, can be found in the widely available edition of Nahum N.
Paul F. Bradshaw and Lawrence A. This view can be traced back well into the middle ages—it is advocated in a 14th-century Haggadah commentary by Rabbi Simeon ben Zemach Duran. Bokser, Origins of the Seder , pp. Goldschmidt, Tabory and Yuval go even one step further, suggesting that Jeremias had it backwards.
It was not that Jesus was reinterpreting a prior Jewish tradition. Rather, Rabban Gamaliel the Younger required the explanation of the Passover symbols as a way of countering Christian manipulation of these symbols. Tosefta Pesahim ; see Bokser, Origins of the Seder , pp.
Kuhn builds here on work of B. Lohse, published in German and cited in his article. See also Jeremias, Eucharistic Words , pp. Brill, , esp. See especially W. Press, , pp. The oldest copy, from the third or early fourth century, is in Coptic. See James E. Goehring and William W. Goehring, ed. Leuven [Louvain]: Peeters, In the Essene district? Jesus is slain on the Judean Day of Preparation. Jesus takes the Galilean Passover elements and claims this is now a participation in his body and blood; the next day, he also becomes the Judean Passover lamb.
John — Backstory?? Roman Pilate announces the crucifixion of 3 criminals outside of Jerusalem during this Passover pilgrimage to warn the diaspora that Rome rules Judea?
The idea that the Last Supper was a Passover Seder is tantalizing, though historically debatable. But for Jews, this idea may also raise the red flag of supersessionism—the problematic […].
It was the preparation day for the Sabbath during the week of Passover. The Feast of Unleavened Bread also being called Passover at this time. Jesus would have been sacrificed at the time of the sin offering on the first day of Passover not at the time of the slaying of the Passover lambs as a Passover lamb is not a sin sacrifice. Edersheim I think had the proper understanding of this seeming contradiction. Without understanding the Hebrew, biblical calendar and the order of the Spring Holy Days, you will never unravel this.
Study the Appointed times of Father and you will begin to understand. I believe James Walther proposed the same idea in The reason why the synoptic gospels appear to be against John, in terms of when the Passover was kept, is because of a basic misunderstanding of how Passover evolved from its beginnings with Moses, down through to the first century.
The original Passover was a family affair, kept at home. In the time of King Hezekiah and again in the time of King Josiah, when the purity of the Israelites was an issue because of their sins, both Hezekiah and Josiah instituted a national observance. This observance required that the Israelites come to the Temple so that the priests could sacrifice the Passover lambs on their behalf, to avoid the issues with ritually impure people sacrificing their own Passover lambs and eating them at home.
But, there were also many Jews who kept the home-based observance. Jesus and his followers were among them. But Jesus and his followers had already eaten a Passover seder the previous night. I men it sad to see we are still captivated in our traditional ways of trying to be smarter than everybody else.
D bless you shalom. The lambs were slaughtered on the evening beginning the 14th, the Passover. This was the time Jesus instituted the symbols of the new covenant at supper. This was later changed by the Jews to be later in the day so as to accommodate the large number of lambs slaughtered in the temple.
Originally the lambs were to be slaughtered at the dwelling, immediately roasted and eaten and any leftovers burned. The change to the temple was one of the traditions Jesus scolded the religious leaders over placing above the scripture. Jesus and probably other Jews were observing the Passover [not a seder] that had been prepared according to scripture. Jesus was killed according to Jewish traditional passover, which is ironic.
Any Jew will tell you that Preparation Day refers to the weekly day before the Sabbath, except when specifically delineated otherwise, such as the annual Day of Preparation for the Passover. It could be that the synoptic gospels were saying they were sitting down to a meal before Passover began. No discrepancy with John. Those who translated seem to assume it was a Passover meal though it was not.
You are correct, the translators did not correctly translate the scripture. If Jesus had the Passover meal how could He be the Passover lamb that was slaughter? The Jews have another name for Friday. They call it Preparation day, preparing for the Sabbath, and it was the day night that he ate the Passover meal, and died, day. The Jews today celebrate only the remembrance of the Seder meal no lamb.
This would have made him ritually unclean until the sacrifice of blood, His own, for the sins of the world. I have done some research into the traditions of the Passover Seder, although not in great depth.
Considering Judaism was not really codified until the 2nd or 3rd century CE, it is highly possible, as some sources say, that some portions of the Seder may have resulted from the influence of Christians, e.
They suggest this was introduced as symbolic of the death, burial, and resurrection of Christ. Although I do not agree with many of the conclusions and arguments in the article, I thought it was very interesting and appreciate the information contained in it. From a Christian spiritual perspective, if Jesus was slain as our Passover something required for Him to be our Saviour, then He had to be slain at the same time that the Passover Lamb was slain.
The gospel accounts indicate that the lamb was slain around 3pm on the 14th and that Jesus was stabbed to death by a roman soldier at this same time. The seder is certainly the eating of the Passover but the Passover itself is the ritual slaughter of then lamb.
The meal eaten at the start of the 15th is the eating of the nPassover lamb but also the first meal of the Holy Day of the first day of Unleavened Bread.
The fact that Jewish tradition calls the whole 8 day period Passover which confuses things. The Passover is on the 14th the days of Unleavened Bread start on the 15th. Strictly speaking the 15th is not the Passover. There has been a great discussion about this topic — for over a year — in the Hermeneutics.
It would be awesome if contributors and readers here — could help clarify questions, over there. I think, since Jesus and likely a good number of his disciples were firstborn males, that the meal described in the NT was actually the last supper before the fast of the firstborn was to begin, which would have made it, in effect, a part of their Passover experience, though not the Passover seder itself.
Thus, it would be justified from their point of view to call it a Passover meal, a meal eaten as a tradition for the purpose of preparing oneself for the fast that they would experience during preparation day. What do you think?
There seems to be one aspect which has been overlooked, both by the author and the commenters. At least not absolutely precisely. The new moon to commence the month cannot actually be observed and therefore the start of the month is deduced from the first lunar observation. This is not good enough to our western mindset where precision is everything, but although it seems good enough for the observers of a small area Eretz Israel different observers still could not agree on the sightings.
The different religious groups within Israel each followed their own calendar, and it was not unknown for there to be several days difference between groups. Yeshua obviously followed the calendar of the Essenes, because the last supper was celebrated in the Essene quarter of Jerusalem. Why it is called the last supper is beyond me.
It is the penultimate supper, because there is still the marriage feast of the lamb to come. The gospel writers could quite easily be referring to the calendar of the temple groups, who often disagreed between themselves anyway.
Thus all the timing difficulties disappear. I love it when these things come together. Which we feed in by believing. And when He rose from the dead early Sunday, was that just as the priest was out gathering the first fruits? Because He is our Paschal Lamb, our Passover, by whose blood we are spared. And redeemed. He was yearning to share that meal with His disciples; He had this important remembrance to institute. So what are we missing? Likely, I think, there were only minor differences then, and embellishment since.
The Last Supper followed the order of a Seder meal, but it is impossible, according to Sacred Scripture, that is included a lamb that had been sacrificed in the Temple. The verse that makes it impossible is John ,. It was early. They themselves did not enter the praetorium, so that they might not be defiled, but might eat the passover. John and its surrounding context as well as the other Gospels is clear that John occurred early in the morning.
John is clear that the Old Covenant Passover meal had not yet occurred. It follows that the the Old Covenant Passover lambs had not yet been sacrificed in the Temple, as the Old Covenant Passover meal had to be celebrated after sunset and before midnight. No Pastor has ever had a good explanation. Reading the Old Testament, it clearly says a Goat was the Israelite sacrifice for sin.
The lamb sacrifice on Passover was a testament that the Egyptian god represented by the lamb was a false god. Always been very confusing. Where does it say that the goat was the Israelite sacrifice for sin? Please read Ex. Where did the lamb representing a false Egyptian god come from? You lost me at the helpless and feeble attempt to state that the last supper, was not a Passover Seder, by stating that the only thing they ate was wine and bread, just like a normal Jewish supper.
A Jewish supper regardless of economical status, would have been much more elaborate than just wine and bread. They celebrated a formal Seder. Jesus had to in order to fulfill scripture. The writer needs to review the facts, and write as honestly as possible,, failure to do so, shows a blatant disregard for truth, and honesty.
The author says John did not record the Last Supper at all. Thank you very much for your time and effort in sharing this. I think it honest, non proselytizing, sharing of a very complicated subject. This article complicates a subject, that need not be so, by ignoring several pertinent facts about the Passover, the Feast of Unleavened Bread, and daily Temple sacrifice and liturgy.
According to Josephus War , the Passover lambs were sacrificed from 9th 3pm to the 11th 5pm. Third, Josephus also tells us Ant. Now these lambs are entirely burnt, besides the kid of the goats which is added to all the rest, for sins; for it is intended as a feast for the priest on every one of those days. It would have defiled him for this sacrifice. Fourth, there was also the Tamid sacrifice, the perpetual sacrifice commanded in Num ; Exod This sacrifice consisted of an unblemished male lamb and bread and wine.
Sound familiar? As Christians have done for almost 2, years. God Bless! Jesus and His disciples were Jewish believers and worshippers. The Last Supper was absolutely a Passover seder. The only persons which do not believe that are Jewish people and all non believers. Jesus fulfilled what was prophesied about Him in the Old Testament Prophecies describing the Messiah that the Jewish people are still waiting for. He was the fulfillment of the sacrifice of the Passover Lamb. First, for Yeshua to have been the Pascal Lamb, He had to be crucified at twilight of Nisan 14th, just as it is stated in Exodus Thus He could not have participated in the Passover meal that evening, which is the start of Nisan 15th.
I think that is very basic and clear. However, one thing you should research. It was physically impossible for the priest to sacrifice all of the lambs in one day. So back then they had two Passover meals.
One on the evening of Nisan 14th, and the other on the 15th. Please research this! So Yeshua took advantage of this and observed Passover on the night of the 13th, the beginning of the 14th day. Anne Catherine Emmerich the catholic visionary who had visions of the passion, which Mel Gibson took for his movie, said that the reason why Jesus celebrated the passover meal the day before the passover was because the Jewish pilgrims in Jerusalem were so many at the time, that there had been established a custom of making the Galileans go to the temple to do the immolation and eat the passover meal a day before everyone else who came from more respected part of Israel.
Jesus and his disciples, being Galileans, therefore did accordingly. Now a days, however, historians are concluding that the meal Jesus had most likely was not a Passover Seeder, like the ones Jewish […]. Interesting that the words of Jesus, attributed to him in the canon Gospel texts, are taken to be generally accurate, but the actions attributed to him in those same texts are questioned with great skepticism.
I would think it all goes in one direction or the other. As it was written considerably later than the other three canon Gospels, the agenda is clearly different, separating itself from Judaism of the time more clearly, which might easily explain the shift in timing as to when a last supper might have taken place.
The alleged words of Jesus in this instance have to be taken the same way as all others—we can not know whether he spoke any of the words attributed to him in the canon or any other gospels. Unless one is coming from a believing point of view, one must be absolutely skeptical of all that is presented in the myths of all cultures in the absence of absolute archaeological evidence. Jesus Christ remains the most famous figure in the modern world, says the British newspaper The Guardian.
Research on the books in the Library of Congress, in Washington, D. That was almost twice as many as those written about William Shakespeare, who occupied second place with 9, books.
Mary, the mother of Jesus, was in seventh place, with 3, books, and was the only woman in the top Joan of Arc, the next closest woman, had books written about her.
Picasso heads the list of painters, ahead of Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo. Thanks for a thought-provoking article. While I agreed with the following text, I found its implications quite intriguing:. The Gospels generally portray Jesus as equating the bread of the meal to his body and the wine to his to his blood. I have not read of the view that faithful Jewish people would take of such a view.
If so, is this good cause to question the connection between the Last Supper and the Eucharist? Could the words of institution preserved in the Gospels and in a letter of Paul be based on a misunderstanding? Is this the first time you have come to realize that BAR is not rigidly committed to inerrancy or any other ideas, for that matter as ideas not subject to question or discussion?
I have always been aware that the writers of the Greek Testament have, to put it charitably, a poor grasp of the nature of the Judaism of the time of which they are attempting to write. Sorry this comes as a surprise to you, but one must deal with all facts, not just the ones that satisfy our own preconceived notions. The Last Supper is often identified as a Seder, but it appears that we have very little information about how the meal was celebrated back then.
Based on the Christian scriptures, many scholars claim the famous meal was indeed a Passover Seder. And supper being come, the devil already having put [it] into the heart of Judas of Simon, Iscariot, that he may deliver him up, Jesus knowing that all things the Father hath given to him — into [his] hands, and that from God he came forth, and unto God he goeth, doth rise from the supper, and doth lay down his garments, and having taken a towel, he girded himself; afterward he putteth water into the basin, and began to wash the feet of his disciples, and to wipe with the towel with which he was being girded.
There is no discrepancy here. And supper being come, the devil already having put [it] into the heart of Judas of Simon, Iscariot, that he may deliver him up, Jesus knowing that all things the Father hath given to him — into [his] hands, and that from God he came forth, and unto God he goeth,doth rise from the supper, and doth lay down his garments, and having taken a towel, he girded himself; afterward he putteth water into the basin, and began to wash the feet of his disciples, and to wipe with the towel with which he was being girded.
John , YLT. There is an excellent book that addresses the issue of whether the last meal was a Passover meal and when it occurred, and reconciles the apparent discrepanices in the Gospel accounts. Graem Waddington, an Oxford astrophysicist. Humphreys addresses and answers fundamental questions about the last weeks of the life of Jesus, such as the date of the crucifixion, the date of the last supper, whether the last supper was a Passover meal.
In my mind, his book provides compelling evidence that the biblical accounts of that week are factually based, and, upon analysis, are not contradictory. It is a mystery to me why anyone who is researching or writing about this subject does not address this book. The ball is in the court of scholars to either confirm his conclusions or demonstrate why they are wrong. It reminds us that Jesus upheld the sovereignty of his Father, Jehovah.
By partaking of the bread and wine, the latter show that they are fully united with Christ. These are the ones who will reign with Christ in heaven as kings and priests. When should the Memorial be observed? The answer becomes clear when we remember that Jesus chose a particular date to institute this celebration—the Passover.
Clearly, Jesus was directing his followers to use the same date to commemorate the far greater act of salvation that God would make possible through the death of Christ.
Do they do so out of love for ritual? Frankly, that is what appeals to many about celebrating the Eucharist. Such truths are worthy of contemplation and discussion throughout the year. The Witnesses find that observing the Memorial is the best way to keep remembering the profound love of Jehovah God and of his Son, Jesus Christ. Jesus and his immediate disciples, the 12 apostles, were Jewish people who were under the Mosaic Law. So what they did observed that night was the Jewish Passover celebration.
But there was someting greater that happened that night. Jesus took an unlevened bread from their passover meal symbolizing his sinless body, blessed it and had the remaining faithful and loyal apostles partook it.
Then he took a cup of the red wine from their passover drink that symbolized his blood to be poured on their behalf, blessed it and passed it on to each one of them to partook.. Luke , God chosed the Israelites as his Covenant People of all the people on the face of the earth, and by means of the laws and statutes that God gives to the Isralites through the mediatorship of Moses at Mt.
Sinai, they were a different people separated from people of all other nations that surrounded them.. It seems the article aims to separate the Eucharist of the RCC from any connection to the Pesach festival.
The historical Jewish Rabbi, Jesus of Nazareth, must have celebrated pesach, as a faithful observant Jewish man, regardless that it was not a seder as we celebrate it today. The slaying of the Lamb takes place as the sun is setting and then the Lamb is eaten that evening which is the 1st day of Unleavened Bread during Sabbath. Since the 1st day was a Sabbath, the Jews would not have violated the Sabbath.
Remember how the thieves and The Christ were taken down before the Sabbath commenced. Legs were broken to hasten the death, but when they got to The Christ, he was already dead.
I am shocked and disappointed in B. I was always aware that B. R was slightly liberal in their theology, but this absolutely solidifies their thoroughly non-Christian approach to their work. Wonderful article. I remember reading Bargil Pixel spelling?
Zion, had you investigated that possibility and found it wanting? First of all, this article hits upon a lot of excellent historical points, including how the observance of Passover evolved due to the national observances of Passover in the time of Hezekiah and Josiah.
Therefore, Josephus was wrong in his estimates, but why? While many Christian communities today identify it as a Seder, scholars question this assertion in terms of both timing and […]. Pietas, it is important to understand that the Messiah was speaking in parables at the last supper as the scriputre says he almost always did. Would it really make any sense that the Jewish Messiah there being no Roman Catholic church yet would want his orthodox Jewish disciples to remember him while eating unleavened bread that is his body?
The Jewish apostles all understood that this was a parable, and that the leavened pieces of bread represented us, his spiritual body. This was a parable about how God would sustain and spiritually feed the believers in the promised new covenant. The disciples taught that WE are the body of Christ.
The first chapter in my book brings out that all 10 scriptures that speak of what they ate at the last supper use the regular Greek word for daily leavened bread.
Jesus was crucified on the 14th day, therefore the previous night could not possibly have been the eating of the Passover, so there was no legal requirement for unleavened bread at this meal. Thank you for this well reasoned article.
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