Source: Microsoft Word - 9,7 April 2007.doc (focusonthekingdom.org)
The Events of Passover Week
It is wise in Bible study related to the life and teaching of Jesus to start with the Synoptic accounts. John, who no doubt had access to the Synoptic records, gives us supplementary information, which of course does not contradict Matthew, Mark and Luke. According to the first three gospels Jesus ate the Passover supper at the statutory time (see Matt. 26:17; Mark 14:12, 14; Luke 22:11). Matthew 26:19 says explicitly, “they prepared the Passover.” After nightfall on Thursday evening (it was now 15th Nisan) Jesus and his disciples ate the Passover. The Synoptics agree on this basic information. This plain evidence is for us to accept and believe.How then does John’s gospel fit the sequence of events provided by Matthew, Mark and Luke? In John 13:27-29 the disciples thought Jesus was telling Judas to buy items for the feast. Some think that the killing and eating of the lamb must not yet have taken place. But John refers to the remaining days of the whole of the festival (John elsewhere refers to Passover and means the complete eight days, including the initial eating of the lamb).
The day on which Jesus and his disciples were celebrating the Passover, and Jesus was instituting the Lord’s supper, was the 15th Nisan, itself a High Day. The Jews still observe the same day and eat the Passover lamb on the night following the end of the 14th day.
Jesus ate the Passover at the same time as the Jewish nation. The weekly Sabbath (Saturday) was the next day. Because that important weekly Sabbath (Saturday) was the Sabbath which fell in Passover week (see below), it was essential to obtain what was needed for the festival season, in view of that approaching Sabbath (Saturday).
John 18:28 reports that the Jews in the early morning of Friday (15th Nisan) did not want to enter the palace. Their desire was to be “clean” and able to “eat the Passover.” But this does not have to refer to the eating of the lamb (which had occurred the evening before) but eating the continuing festival meals. John refers to the whole feast as Passover, not just the first day. Deuteronomy 16:3 mentions eating the Passover festival food for the whole period of seven days.
John 19:14 refers to the day of Jesus’ crucifixion as “the Preparation of the Passover” (as the Greek reads and several translation render correctly). There is strong evidence to suggest that “Preparation” is the standard word for Friday, and we do not find it being used for the eve of a festal day other than the weekly Sabbath. Another word for the day before an annual festival occurs in Jewish literature. This is proeortos. The standard word for the day before Saturday Sabbath is paraskeue (preparation), and Mark 15:42 and Judith 8:6 call this prosabbaton, i.e., Friday.2 The NIV thus correctly renders John 19:14 as “the day of Preparation [Friday] of Passover week.” William Tyndale in 1534 translated: “It was the Sabbath even [eve, evening before Saturday]
which falls in the Easter feast.” John 19:31 then describes the following day (Saturday): “the day of that Sabbath [Saturday] was a special day.” The reference is not to an annual feast day, but to the weekly Sabbath falling in Passover week. By “Sabbath” John means Saturday. John nowhere refers to annual festival days as Sabbaths and in the New Testament “Sabbath” means Saturday (see for example Col. 2:16, 17).
Some have wondered how the crucifixion could have occurred on an annual holy day (the 15th Nisan). The Mishnah (Sanhedrin 11:4) insists that the execution of a rebellious false teacher, as Jesus was taken to be, should be carried out on one of the three principal feasts. The point was that “all the people should hear and fear” (Deut. 17:13). In his celebrated Eucharistic Words, Jeremias states that “the passion narratives of the New Testament portray no incident which could not have taken place on Nisan 15th [the Friday on which Jesus died]” (p. 79).
The Lord’s supper was instituted by Jesus, with the emblems of wine and bread, on the exact occasion of the Passover meal given as a type in Exodus 12. The Lord’s supper is the New Covenant memorial of the death of the Savior and a “rehearsal” of the future Messianic banquet to be celebrated when Jesus returns. Bread represents the body of Jesus broken for us all, and wine the intoxicating joy of the spirit and of the Messianic Kingdom to come, “wine to rejoice the heart of man” (Ps. 104:15). The New Testament church followed Jesus’ instructions to continue the fellowship meal which he instituted, breaking the bread in memory of him and drinking a little wine to recall his shed blood and the coming banquet at his return to establish the Kingdom on a renewed earth (see 1 Cor. 11:17-34). Paul had to correct the unruly celebration which occurred when the Corinthian church met together. They were not eating “the Lord’s supper” as they should have done, following Jesus’ command.
The details we have given from John’s Gospel and its harmonizing with the clear statement of Matthew, Mark and Luke, that Jesus celebrated the Passover at the same time as the Jewish nation may be further examined in
A.T. Robertson’s Harmony of the Gospels, pp. 279-284. This view was held also by Andrews, Bochart, Davidson, Fairburn, Gardiner, Hengstenberg, Lange, Lewin, Lightfoot, Milligan, Norton, Olshausen, Robinson, Schoettgen, Tholuck and Wiesler. An easily accessible explanation along the lines above is found in D.A. Carson on Matthew in the Expositor’s Bible Commentary.◊