Note 70 — Chapter II · MACHINATIONS OF THE ENEMIES OF JESUS; TREACHERY OF JUDAS; LAST SUPPER WITH HIS DISCIPLES.

But it is equally easy, presupposing the correctness of the synoptical determination of time, to conceive how John might be led erroneously to place the death of Jesus on the afternoon of the 14th of Nisan, and his last meal on the previous evening. If, namely, this Evangelist found in the circumstance that the legs of the crucified Christ were not broken, a fulfilment of the words Not a bone of him shall be broken, ὀστοῦν οὐ συντριβήσεται αὐτῷ (Exod. xii. 46): this supposed relation between the death of Jesus and the paschal lamb might suggest to him the idea, that at the same time in which the paschal lambs were killed, on the afternoon of the 14th of Nisan, Jesus suffered on the cross and gave up the ghost;70 in which case the meal taken the evening before was not the paschal meal.71