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 [[618]]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]

Besides what may thus be separately urged against every attempt at an amicable adjustment of the differences between the Evangelists, as to the time of the last supper; there is one circumstance which is decisive against all, and which only the most recent criticism has adequately exposed. With respect, namely, to this contradiction, the case is not so that among passages for the most part harmonious, there appear only one or two statements of an apparently inconsistent sense, of which it might be said that the author had here used an inaccurate expression, to be explained from the remaining passages: but, that all the chronological statements of the synoptists tend to show that Jesus must have celebrated the passover, all those of John, on the contrary, that he cannot have celebrated it.[60] Thus there stand opposed to each other two differing series of evangelical passages, which are manifestly based on two different views of the fact on the part of the narrators: hence, as Sieffert remarks, [[619]]to persist in disputing the existence of a divergency between the Evangelists, can no longer be regarded as scientific exposition, but only as unscientific arbitrariness and obstinacy.

Modern criticism is therefore constrained to admit, that on one side or the other there is an error; and, setting aside the current prejudices in favour of the fourth gospel, it was really an important reason which appeared to necessitate the imputation of this error to the synoptists. The ancient Fragment attributed to Apollinaris, mentioned above, objects to the opinion that Jesus suffered on the great day of unleavened bread, τῇ μεγάλῃ ἡμέρᾳ τῶν ἀζύμων ἔπαθεν, that this would have been contrary to the law ἀσύμφωνος τῷ νόμῳ; and in recent times also it has been observed, that the day following the last meal of Jesus is treated on all sides so entirely as a working day, that it cannot be supposed the first day of the passover, nor, consequently, the meal of the previous evening, the paschal meal. Jesus does not solemnize the day, for he goes out of the city, an act which was forbidden on the night of the passover; nor do his friends, for they begin the preparations for his burial, and only leave them unfinished on account of the arrival of the next day, the sabbath; still less do the members of the Sanhedrim keep it sacred, for they not only send their servants out of the city to arrest Jesus, but also personally undertake judicial proceedings, a trial, sentence, and accusation before the Procurator; in general, there appears, throughout, only the fear of desecrating the following day, which commenced on the evening of the crucifixion, and nowhere any solicitude about the current one: clear signs that the synoptical representation of the meal as a paschal one, is a later error, since in the remaining narrative of the synoptists themselves, there is evidence, not easy to be mistaken, of the real fact, that Jesus was crucified before the passover.[61] These observations are certainly of weight. It is true that the first, relative to the conduct of Jesus, might perhaps be invalidated by the contradiction existing between the Jewish decisions as to the law cited;[62] while the last and strongest may be opposed by the fact, that trying and giving sentence on the sabbaths and feast days was not only permitted among the Jews, but there was even a larger place for the administration of justice on such days, on account of the greater concourse of people; so, also, according to the New Testament itself, the Jews sent out officers to seize Jesus on the great day ἡμέρα μεγάλη of the Feast of Tabernacles ([John vii. 44 f.]), and at the Feast of Dedication they were about to stone him ([John x. 31]), while Herod caused Peter to be imprisoned during the days of unleavened bread; though indeed he intended to defer the public sentencing and execution until after the passover ([Acts xii. 2 f.]). In proof that the crucifixion of Jesus might take place on the feast of the passover, it is urged that the execution was performed by Roman soldiers; and that moreover, even according to Jewish custom, it was usual to reserve the execution of important criminals for a feast time, in order to make an impression on a greater multitude.[63] But only thus much is to be proved: that during the feast time, and thus during the passover, on the five intermediate and less solemn days, criminals were tried and executed,—not that this was admissible also on the first and last days of the passover, which [[620]]ranked as sabbaths;[64] and thus we read in the Talmud that Jesus was crucified on the ‏ערב פסה‎, i.e. the evening before the passover.[65] It would be another thing if, as Dr. Baur strives to prove, the execution of criminals, as a sanguinary expiation for the people, belonged to the essential significance of the passover, as a feast of expiation, and hence the custom, noticed by the Evangelists, of liberating a prisoner at the feast had been only the reverse side to the execution of another, presenting the same relation as that between the two goats and the two sparrows in the Jewish offerings of atonement and purification.[66]

It is certainly very possible that the primitive Christian tradition might be led even unhistorically to associate the last supper of Jesus with the paschal lamb, and the day of his death with the feast of the passover. As the Christian supper represented in its form, the passover, and in its import, the death of Jesus: it was natural enough to unite these two points—to place the execution of Jesus on the first day of the passover, and to regard his last meal, at which he was held to have founded the Christian supper, as the paschal meal. It is true that presupposing the author of the first gospel to have been an apostle and a participator in the last meal of Jesus, it is difficult to explain how he could fall into such a mistake. At least it is not enough to say, with Theile, that the more the last meal partaken with their master transcended all paschal meals in interest to the disciples, the less would they concern themselves as to the time of it, whether it occurred on the evening of the passover, or a day earlier.[67] For the first Evangelist does not leave this undetermined, but speaks expressly of a paschal meal, and to this degree a real participator, however long he might write after that evening, could not possibly deceive himself. Thus on the above view, the supposition that the first Evangelist was an eye-witness must be renounced, and he must be held, in common with the two intermediate ones, to have drawn his materials from tradition.[68] The difficulty arising from the fact, that all the synoptists, and consequently all those writers who have preserved to us the common evangelical tradition, agree in such an error,[69] may perhaps be removed by the observation, that just as generally as in the Judæo-Christian communities, in which the evangelical tradition was originally formed, the Jewish passover was still celebrated, so generally must the effort present itself to give that feast a Christian import, by referring it to the death and the last meal of Jesus.

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 [[621]]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]

Thus we can conceive a possible cause of error on both sides, and since the internal difficulty of the synoptical determination of time, namely, the manifold violations of the first day of the passover, is in some degree removed by the observations above cited, and is counterpoised by the agreement of three Evangelists: our only course is to acknowledge an irreconcilable contradiction between the respective accounts, without venturing a decision as to which is the correct one.

[[Contents]]

§ 122.

DIVERGENCIES IN RELATION TO THE OCCURRENCES AT THE LAST MEAL OF JESUS.

Not only in relation to the time of the last meal of Jesus, but also in relation to what passed on that occasion, there is a divergency between the Evangelists. The chief difference lies between the synoptists and the fourth gospel: but, on a stricter comparison, it is found that only Matthew and Mark closely agree, and that Luke diverges from them considerably, though on the whole he is more accordant with his predecessors than with his successor.