Note 49 — Chapter II · MACHINATIONS OF THE ENEMIES OF JESUS; TREACHERY OF JUDAS; LAST SUPPER WITH HIS DISCIPLES.

Hence it has been a far more general attempt in recent times, to draw John to the side of the other Evangelists.49 His expression before the feast of the passover, πρὸ τῆς ἑορτῆς τοῦ πάσχα (xiii. 1), was thought to be divested of its difficulty by the observation that it is not immediately connected with the supper δεῖπνον, but only with the statement that Jesus knew that his hour was come, and that he loved his own unto the end; it is only in the succeeding verse that there is any mention of the meal, to which therefore that determination of time does not refer. But to what then can it refer? to the knowledge that his hour was come? this is only an incidental remark; or to the love which endured to the end? but to this so special a determination of time can only refer, if an external proof of love be intended, and such an one is presented in his conduct at the meal, which consequently remains the point to which that determination of the day must apply. It is therefore conjectured further that the words πρὸ τῆς ἑορτῆς were used out of accommodation to the Greeks for whom John wrote: since that people did not, like the Jews, begin their day with the evening, the meal taken at the beginning of the first day of the passover, would appear to them to be taken on the evening before the passover. But what judicious writer, if he supposes a misconstruction possible on the part of the reader, chooses language which can only serve to encourage that misconstruction? A still more formidable difficulty is presented by xviii. 28, where the Jews, on the morning after the imprisonment of Jesus, will not enter the judgment hall lest they should be defiled, but that they may eat the passover, ἀλλ’ ἵνα φάγωσι τὸ πάσχα. Nevertheless it was supposed that passages such as Deut. xvi. 1, 2, where all the sacrifices to be killed during the time of the passover are denoted by the expression ‏פֶּסַח‎, authorise the interpretation of τὸ πάσχα in this place of the remaining sacrifices to be offered during the paschal week, and especially of the Chagiga, which was to be consumed towards the end of the first feast day. But as Mosheim has correctly remarked, from the fact that the paschal lamb, together with the rest of the sacrifices to be offered during the feast of the passover was designated πάσχα, it by no means follows that these can be so designated with the exclusion of the paschal lamb.50 On the other hand, the friends of the above view have sought to show the necessity of their mode of interpretation, by observing that for the eating of the passover which was celebrated late in the evening, consequently at the commencement of the succeeding day, the entering of a Gentile house in the morning, being a defilement which lasted only through the current day, would have been no disqualification; but that it would have been such for the partaking of the Chagiga, which was eaten in the afternoon, consequently on the same day on which the defilement was contracted; so that only this, and not the passover, can have been intended. But first, we do not know whether entrance into a Gentile house was a defilement for the day merely; secondly, if such were the case, the Jews, by a defilement contracted in the morning, would still have disqualified themselves from participating in the preparatory proceedings, which fell on the afternoon of the 14th of Nisan; as, for example, the slaying of the lamb in the outer court of the temple. Lastly, in order to interpret the passage xix. 14 in consistency with their own view, the harmonists understand the preparation of the passover, παρασκευὴ τοῦ πάσχα, to mean the day of preparation for the sabbath in the Easter week; a violence of interpretation which at least finds no countenance in xix. 31, where the παρασκευὴ is said to be the preparation for the sabbath, since from this passage it only appears, that the Evangelist conceived the first day of the passover as occurring that year on the sabbath.51