121. Divergent Statements Respecting the Time of the Last Supper. (Chapter 2. Machinations of the Enemies of Jesus; Treachery of Judas; last s...) (The Life of Jesus Critically Examined) (Strauss, David Friedrich)

Not only does the fourth evangelist omit all mention of the above arrangements for the paschal meal; he also widely diverges from the Synoptics in relation to the meal itself. Independently of the difference which runs throughout the description of the scene, and which can only be hereafter considered, he appears, in regard to the time of the meal, to represent it as occurring before the pass-over, as decidedly as it is represented by the Synoptics to be the paschal meal itself.

When we read in the latter, that the day on which the disciples were directed by Jesus to prepare for the meal, was already the first day of unleavened bread when the Passover must be killed (Matt. xxvi. 17 parall.); we cannot suppose the meal in question to have been any other than the paschal; further, when the disciples ask Jesus, "Where do you want us to prepare for you to eat the Passover?" when it is hereupon said of the disciples, that they made ready the Passover, (Matt. v. 19 parall), and of Jesus, that when evening was come, he sat down with the twelve, (v. 20): the meal to which they here sat down appears to be marked ^{P.694} out even to superfluity as the paschal, even if Luke (xxii. 15.) did not make Jesus open the repast with the words: "With desire I have desired to eat this Passover with you."

When, on the other hand, the fourth gospel commences its narrative of the last meal with the statement of time: before the feast of the Passover, (xiii. 1); the supper, which is mentioned immediately after, (v. 2) appears also to happen before the Passover; especially as throughout John's description of this evening, which, especially in relation to the discourses accompanying the meal, is very ample, there is not any notice or even allusion, to indicate that Jesus was on this occasion celebrating the Passover. Further, when Jesus after the meal addresses the traitor with the summons, what you do, do quickly; this is misunderstood by the rest of the disciples to mean, JBuy those things that we have need of against the feast, (v. 29). Now the requirements for the least related chiefly to the paschal meal, and consequently the meal just concluded cannot have been the paschal. Again, it is said, xviii. 28., that on the following morning, the Jews would not enter the Gentile prailorium, lest they should be defiled; but that they might eat the Passover: from which it would seem that the paschal meal was yet in prospect. To this it may be added that this same succeeding day, on which Jesus was crucified, is called the preparation of the Passover, i.e. the day on the evening of which the paschal lamb was to be eaten; moreover, when it is said of the second day after the meal in question, being that which Jesus passed in the grave: that sabbath day was a high day; this peculiar solemnity appears to have proceeded from the circumstance, that on that sabbath fell the iirst day of the Passover, so that the paschal lamb was not eaten on the evening on which Jesus was arrested, but on the evening of his burial.

These divergencies are so important, that many expositors, in order to prevent the evangelists from falling into contradiction with each other, have here also tried the old expedient of supposing that they do not speak of the same thing, that John intends to describe an altogether different repast from that of the Synoptics. According to this view, the deipnon of John was an ordinary evening meal, doubtless in Bethany; on this occasion Jesus washed the disciples' i'eet, spoke of the betrayer, and after Judas had left the company, added other discourses of a consoling and admonitory tendency, until at length, on the morning of the 14th of Nisan, he summoned the disciples to depart from Bethany and proceed to Jerusalem in the words: Arise, let us go hence (xiv. 31.). Here the synoptic account may be interposed, since it represents the two disciples as being sent forward to Jerusalem to prepare for the paschal meal, and then records its celebration, concerning which John is silent, and only ^{P.695} takes up the thread of the narrative at the discourses delivered after the paschal meal (xv.1ff.). But this attempt to avoid contradiction by referring the respective narratives to totally different events, is counteracted by the undeniable identity of many features in the two meals. Independently of isolated particulars which are found alike in both accounts, it is plain that John, as well as the Synoptics, intends to describe the last meal of which Jesus partook with his disciples. This is implied in the introduction to John's narrative; for the proof which is there said to be given of Jesus having loved his own to the end, (eij teloj) may be the most suitably referred to his last moments of companionship with them. In like manner, the discourses after the meal point to the prospect of immediate separation; and the meal and discourses are, in John also, immediately followed by the departure to Gethsemane and the arrest of Jesus. It is true that, according to the above opinion, these las-named incidents are connected only with those discourses which were delivered on the occasion of the later meal, omitted by John (xv. 17.); but that between xiv. 31. and xv. 1. the author of the fourth gospel intentionally omitted the whole incident of the paschal meal, is a position which, although it might appear to explain with some plausibility the singular "Arise, let us go hence," no one will now seriously maintain. But even admitting such an ellipsis, there still remains the fact that Jesus (xiii. 38.) foretells to Peter his denial with this determination of time: "the cock shall not crow," which he could only make use of at the last meal, and not, as is here presupposed, at an earlier one. Thus this expedient must be relinquished, and it must be admitted that all the evangelists intend to speak of the same meal, namely, the last of which Jesus partook with his disciples. And in making this admission, the fairness which we owe to every authr, and which was believed to be due in a peculiar degree to the authors of the Bible, appeared to demand an inquiry whether, although they represent one and the same event with great divergencies in several respects, yet nevertheless both sides may not be correct. To obtain an affirmative result of this inquiry it must be shown, as regards the time, either that the three first evangelists, as well as the fourth, do not intend to describe a paschal meal, or that the latter, as well as the former, does so intend.

In an ancient fragment it is sought to solve the problem in the first method by denying that Matthew places the last meal of Jesus at the proper time for the paschal meal, the evening of the 14th of Nisan, and his passion on the first day of the feast of the Passover, the 15th of Nisan; but one does not see how the express indications respecting the Passover in the Synoptics can be neutralized. ^{P.696}

Hence it has been a far more general attempt in recent times, to draw John to the side of the other evangelists. His expression before the feast of the Passover, (xiii. 1), was thought to be divested of its difficulty by the observation that it is not immediately connected with the supper delnvov, but only with the statement that Jesus knew that his hour was come, and that he loved his own to 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 te words npb rrjs soprfjf 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. 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 Pessah, authorize the interpretation of to pasxa in this place of the remaining sacrifices to be offered during the paschal week, and especially of the Chagiga, whicli 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 pasxa it by no means follows that these can be so designated with the exclusion of the paschal lamb. 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 beginning 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 ^{P.697} 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" 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 Parasceve 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.

These difficulties, which resist the reference of the narrative in John to a real paschal meal, appeared to be obviated by a presupposition derived from Lev. xxiii. 5; Numb. ix. 3; and a passage in Joseph us; namely, that the paschal lamb was eaten, not on the evening from the 14th to the 15th, but on that from the 13th to the 14th of Nisan, so that between the paschal meal and the first feast day, the 15th of Nisan, there fell a working day, the 14th. On this supposition, it would be correct that the day following the last paschal meal taken by Jesus, should be called, as in John xix. 14,, the preparation of the Passover, because it was actually a day of preparation for the feast day; it would also be correct that the following sabbafh should be called "great" (xix. 31), since it would coincide with the first day of the feast. But the greatest difficulty, which lies in John xviii. 28. remains unsolved; for on this plan the words, that they might eat the Passover, must since the paschal meal would be already past, be understood of the unleavened bread, which was eaten also during the succeeding feast days: an interpretation which is contrary to all the usages of language. If to this it be added, that the supposition of a working day falling between the Passover and the first feast day, has no foundation in the Pentateuch and Josephus, that it is decidedly opposed to later custom, and is in itself extremely improbable; this expedient cannot but be relinquished.

Perceiving the impossibility of effecting the reconciliation of the Synoptics 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 ^{P.698} 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, so that 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 Synoptics 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. In this case, Mark would be wrong in his statement, that on the day when they killed the Passover, (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 lite 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. 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, 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: wh'ereas 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 contempo-raries 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 estival of the Passover, which was dependent upon it, ^{P.699} differently from the Pharisees; and Jesus, as the opponent of tradition and the friend of scripture, favoured their practice in this matter. But not to insist that the connection of the Caraites with the ancient Sadducees is a mere conjecture; it was a wellfounded 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, 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; so that some have actually conjectured that more probably Jesus followed the astronomical calculation.

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 Synoptics tend to show that Jesus must have celebrated the Passover, all those of John, on the contrary, that he cannot have celebrated it. Thus there stand opposed to each other two differing series of Gospel passages, which are manifestly based on two different views of the fact on the part of the narrators: hence, as Sieffert remarks, to persist in disuting 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 Synoptics. The ancient Fragment attributed to Apollinaris, mentioned above, objects to the opinion that Jesus suffered on the great day of unleavened bread, that this would have been contrary to the law 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, ^{P.700} 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 Sanhedrin 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 synoptic representation of the meal as a paschal one, is a later error, since in the remaining narrative of the synopfists themselves, there is evidence, not easy to be mistaken, of the real fact, that Jesus was crucified before the Passover. 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; 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 rkpa peydri 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 he 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. 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 ranked as sabbaths; and thus we read in the Talmud that Jesus was crucified on the erev pesah, i.e. the evening before the Passover. It would be another ^{P.701} 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.

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 dayearlier. 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. The difficulty arising from the fact, that all the Synoptics, and consequently all those writers who have preserved to us the common Gospel tradition, agree in such an error, may perhaps be removed by the observation, that just as generally as in the Judaso-christian communities, in which the Gospel 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 synoptic 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 fulfiment of the words "Not a bone ^{P.702} of him shall be broken," (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; in which case the meal taken the evening before was not the paschal meal. Tims we can conceive a possible cause of error on both sides, and since the internal difficulty of the synoptic 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 irreconcileable contradiction between the respective accounts, without venturing a decision as to which is the correct one.