The Last Supper

• We note that there is a serious discrepancy in the dating of the last supper. John said that the last supper was a normal meal before the night of the passover meal while the synoptics says the last supper was a passover meal.
• As both the synoptic and Johanine chronologies fulfil separate theological imperatives which cannot be fitted together gives us reason to believe that the whole relationship between the last supper and the passover meal was a later creation and is not historical.

Many of the passover observations and indeed the name of the festival itself can be traced to this story in second book of the Pentateuch. When the pharaoh refused to allow Moses and the Israelites to leave Egypt, ten plagues were sent by God to force the Egyptian monarch to change his mind. The last of this ten plagues was the slaughter of all the first born children of the Egyptians. To ensure that the angel of death does not mistake the Israelite households for the Egyptian ones, Moses ordered his people to slaughter a lamb. With the blood of this lamb, they were told to daub their doorposts. seeing these sign will ensure that the angel of death would passover the household. Later in their hurried escape from Egypt, the Israelites had no time to let their bread rise, so they ate unleavened bread. [2]

On the first evening of the passover on the 14th of Nisan (technically it is the 15th of Nisan for by Jewish reckoning the new day starts after 6pm) the celebration of the Seder takes place. The seder is a special domestic religious service which includes a ritual meal. This meal contains food which symbolizes the events during the exodus: the paschal lamb which was slain earlier in the evening and the matzoth or unleavened bread. [3]

The rules governing the celebration of the passover are very explicit. They are laid down in the Torah with additional details being codified in the Talmudic tractate Pesachim. Given below are some of the rules:

On the length of the festival

Numbers 28:16-17 (Exodus 12:18) On the fourteenth day of the first month is the Lord's passover. And on the fifteenth day of this month is a feast, seven days shall unleavened days be eaten.

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The Chronological Discrepancy Between John and the Synoptics

Mark 14:12-17 (Matthew 26:17-20; Luke 22:7-14) And on the first day of the unleavened bread, when they sacrificed the passover lamb, his disciples...went to the city...and they prepared the passover. And when it was evening he came with the twelve and they were at the table eating.

John 13:1-2 It was just before passover feast...the evening meal was served.

The discrepancy is also seen in the actual date of Jesus� death. As Jesus was crucified the day after the last supper, this made his death fall on the 15th of Nisan according to the synoptics and the 14th of Nisan according to John. [c]

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The Theological Underpinnings of the Chronologies of Synoptics and John

For John, Jesus was the new paschal lamb (the lamb of God) and it was fitting that he was sacrificed at the precise moment of the slaughter of the passover lamb. We will study John's reasons in greater detail later. The synoptics' idea was to connect the passover meal to the institution of the Eucharist: [d]

Mark 14:22-25 (Matthew 26:26-29; Luke 22:17-20) While they were eating, Jesus took bread, gave thanks and broke it, and gave it to his disciples saying, "Take it; this is my body." Then he took the cup, gave thanks and offered it to them, and they all drank from it. "This is my blood of the new covenant which is poured out for many." he said. "I tell you the truth, I will not drink again from the fruit of the vine until the day I drink it anew in the kingdom of God."

The synoptics add that after the passover meal Jesus and his disciples left the house and went to the Mount of Olives (Mark 14:26 (Matthew 26:30, Luke 22:39). This is in direct violation of Exodus 12:22 which specifically prohibits leaving the house on a passover night! [9] This makes the whole episode even less believable. For if Jesus and his disciples had wanted to celebrate the passover, as doubtless the synoptic gospels tell us that they did (Mark 14:12-15; Matthew 26:17-19; Luke 22:7-11), it would have been pointless for them to cavalierly observe some rules and ignore others.

In short the whole relationship of the last supper to the Passover meal, as depicted in the synoptics, is historically suspect. John's chronology for the last supper is also not without its problems, for he obviously wanted to portray Jesus as the new sacrificial lamb, and by moving the last supper a day back (compared to the synoptics) he could then have Jesus' death coincide exactly with the slaughter of the Passover lamb (see the next chapter). Thus, while John's chronology actually gives less problems than the synoptics', its blatantly theological base makes it historicity extremely doubtful.

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Notes

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References

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