Note 55 — Chapter II · MACHINATIONS OF THE ENEMIES OF JESUS; TREACHERY OF JUDAS; LAST SUPPER WITH HIS DISCIPLES.

Perceiving the impossibility of effecting the reconciliation of the synoptists with John by this simple method, other expositors have resorted to a more artificial expedient. The appearance of the Evangelists having placed the last meal of Jesus on different days, is alleged to have its truth in the fact, that either the Jews or Jesus celebrated the passover on another than the usual day. The Jews, say some, in order to avoid the inconvenience arising from the circumstance, that in that year the first day of the passover fell on a Friday, so that two consecutive days must have been solemnized as a sabbath, deferred the paschal meal until the Friday evening, whence on the day of the crucifixion they had still to beware of defilement; Jesus, however, adhering strictly to the law, celebrated it at the prescribed time, on the Thursday evening: so that the synoptists are right when they describe the last meal of Jesus as an actual celebration of the passover; and John also is right when he represents the Jews as, the day after, still looking forward to the eating of the paschal lamb.55 In this case, Mark would be wrong in his statement, that on the day when they killed the passover, ὅτε τὸ πάσχα ἔθυον (v. 12), Jesus also caused it to be prepared; but the main point is, that though in certain cases the passover was celebrated in a later month, it was still on the 15th day; there is nowhere any trace of a transference to a later day of the same month.—It has therefore been a more favourite supposition that Jesus anticipated the usual time of eating the passover. From purely personal motives, some have thought, foreseeing that at the proper time of the paschal supper he should be already lying in the grave, or at least not sure of life until that period, he, like those Jews who were prevented from journeying to the feast, and like all the Jews of the present day, without a sacrificed lamb, and with mere substitutes for it, celebrated a commemorative passover, πάσχα μνημονευτικὸν.56 But in the first place, Jesus would not then, as Luke says, have kept the passover on the day on which the passover must be killed, ἐν ᾗ εἴδει τύεσθαι τὸ πάσχα; and secondly, in the merely commemorative celebration of the passover, though the prescribed locality (Jerusalem) is dispensed with, the regular time (the evening from the 14th to the 15th Nisan) is inviolably observed: whereas in the case of Jesus the reverse would hold, and he would have celebrated the passover at the usual place, but at an unusual time, which is without example. To shield the alleged transposition of the passover by Jesus from the charge of being unprecedented and arbitrary, it has been maintained that an entire party of his cotemporaries joined in celebrating the passover earlier than the great body of the nation. It is known that the Jewish sect of the Caraites or Scripturalists differed from the Rabbinites or Traditionalists especially in the determination of the new moon, maintaining that the practice of the latter in fixing the new moon according to astronomical calculation was an innovation, whereas they, true to the ancient, legal practice, determined it according to an empirical observation of the phase of the new luminary. Now in the time of Jesus, we are told, the Sadducees, from whom the Caraites are said to have sprung, determined the time of the new moon, and with it that of the festival of the passover, which was dependent upon it, differently from the Pharisees; and Jesus, as the opponent of tradition and the friend of scripture, favoured their practice in this matter.57 But not to insist that the connexion of the Caraites with the ancient Sadducees is a mere conjecture; it was a well-founded objection put forth by the Caraites, that the determination of the new moon by calculation did not arise until after the destruction of the temple by the Romans; so that at the time of Jesus such a difference cannot have existed; nor is there besides any indication to be discovered that at that time the passover was celebrated on different days by different parties.58 Supposing, however, that the above difference as to the determining of the new moon already prevailed in the time of Jesus, the settling of it according to the phase, which Jesus is supposed to have followed, would rather have resulted in a later than an earlier celebration of the passover; whence some have actually conjectured that more probably Jesus followed the astronomical calculation.59