John 19:41-42

“ Now there was in the place where he was crucified a garden, and in the garden a new sepulchre wherein no one had ever yet been laid. 42. It was there that they laid Jesus, because of the Preparation of the Jews; for the sepulchre was near. ”

According to Matthew, the sepulchre belonged to Joseph himself, and this was the reason of the use which was made of it. According to John, this sepulchre was chosen because of its proximity to Golgotha, since the Sabbath was about to begin. These two reasons, far from contradicting, complete each other. What purpose would the proximity of the sepulchre have served, if it had not belonged to one of the Lord's friends? And it was certainly the circumstance that Joseph owned this sepulchre near the place of crucifixion, which suggested to him the idea of asking for the body of Jesus.

John and Luke (Luke 23:53) remark that the sepulchre was new. Comp. Luke 19:30: “ You shall find a colt tied whereon yet never man sat. ” These are providential facts, which belong to the royal glory of Jesus. When a king is received, objects which have not yet been used are consecrated to his service.

The expression. the Preparation of the Jews, signifies, according to those who hold that the death of Jesus took place, not on the 14th, but on the 15th: the Friday of the Jews. But what would be the object of so singular an expression? It was designed, answers Rotermund, to give us to understand how it happened that the day following a Sabbatic day (the 15th) was again a Sabbath (Saturday). By this means the first Sabbath became, as it were, the preparation for the second. But if the first of the two days was Sabbatic, like the following one, the carrying away of the body, which they did not wish to do on the next day, could not any more have been done on this day. The quite simple meaning is that it was the hour when the Jews (thus is the complement the Jews explained) prepared their great national and religious feast by sacrificing the lamb. They were obliged to hasten because, with the setting of the sun, this day of preparation, the 14th, a non-Sabbatic day, came to its close, and because the following day, the 15th, was in that year a doubly Sabbatic day (John 19:31); comp. Luke 23:56.

On the Day of Jesus' Death.

Respecting the day of the week on which the death of Jesus took place, the agreement of the four evangelists is manifest; it was a Friday (Matthew 27:62; Mark 15:42; Luke 23:54, John 19:31). But they appear to differ as to the question whether this Friday was the 14th or the 15th of the month Nisan an apparently insignificant difference, but yet one which implies a more considerable one. For on this depends the question whether Jesus had celebrated on the preceding evening the Paschal supper with all the rest of the Jewish people, in that case Jesus would have died on the 15th, or whether the people were to celebrate this supper later, on the evening of the day of His death, in this case the day of His death was the 14th. For the Paschal supper was celebrated on the evening which formed the transition from the 14th to the 15th.

I. The View of John.

According to John 13:1, Jesus celebrated His last supper before the feast of the Passover. Rotermund (in the article which is cited above) affirms, no doubt, with Langen, that the Passover feast began only on the 15th, and that, as a consequence, this supper, which took place before the feast, must be placed on the evening of the 14th, and must therefore be identified with the Paschal supper. But see on John 13:1. John would not have designated this supper simply by the words: “ A supper,” or even, if one will have it so, “ the supper.” For the benefit of his Greek readers, he could not have refrained from designating this supper as that of the Passover.

The passage John 18:28, notwithstanding all the efforts of some scholars (comp. also Kirchner, Die judische Passahfeier, 1870), plainly declares that the Jewish Paschal supper was not yet celebrated on the morning when Jesus was condemned, and consequently that Jesus was put to death on the 14th, and not on the 15th. The passages John 19:14; John 19:31; John 19:42 lead to the same result. Neither Kirchner nor Rotermund has succeeded in proving that expressions such as these: the Passover Friday, the Friday of the Jews, are natural. That it was a Friday is certain; that the word παρασκευή (preparation) may designate Friday, as the preparation for the Sabbath, is unquestionable. But that in John's context this term paraskeue8, preparation, can have the technical sense of Friday, is inadmissible.

After the observations of Kirchner and Luthardt, I give up alleging John 13:19 as decisive, although one still asks oneself how a purchase could have been made during the Passover night, all families, whether rich or poor, being at that time gathered around the Paschal table, and all the shops being consequently closed.

II. The Apparent View of the Synoptics.

This view seems to follow evidently from the three parallels, Matthew 26:17: “The first day of unleavened bread (the 14th of Nisan), the disciples of Jesus came to him saying, Where wilt thou that we prepare for thee the Passover supper?” Mark 14:12: “And on the first day of unleavened bread, when they sacrificed the Passover, the disciples said to him;” Luke 22:7: “The day of unleavened bread came, when the Passover must be sacrificed, and he sent Peter and John.” It seems altogether natural to place this question of the disciples, or (according to Luke) this commission which Jesus gives to two of them, on the morning of the 14th, when the preparations of the Paschal supper were made for the evening. And from this fact precisely it is that the apparent contradiction to the narrative of John arises; for, if Jesus gave this order on the 14th in the morning, the supper which the disciples were to prepare for the evening could only be the Paschal supper, from which it would follow that His last supper coincided with the Paschal supper of that year.

Now, according to John, as we have just proved, the Jewish Paschal supper must have taken place only on the evening which followed that of the last supper of Jesus, on the evening of the day of His death.

Here is one of the greatest differences between the Synoptics and John. Since the earliest times it has attracted the notice of all those who have closely studied the Scriptures. And already in the second century, as we shall see, we encounter numerous traces of the discussions which it has raised.

III. The Attempts at Solution.

From the time of St. Jerome, the view of the Synoptic narrative became prevalent in the Church; it continued so even until the Reformation: Jesus had celebrated the Passover with the whole people before He died. But at that epoch the revival of Biblical studies caused the need to be felt of giving a more exact account of the Gospel narratives; their apparent disagreement was obvious, and the attempt was made to resolve it. Calvin and Theodore Beza, then Scaliger and Casaubon, brought out the idea, already expressed by Eusebius and Chrysostom (see Tholuck, p. 41), that the Jews, in order that they might not have to celebrate two successive Sabbatic days (Friday, the 15th of Nisan, as the first day of the feast, and the next day, the 16th, which fell in this year on Saturday), had exceptionally delayed by one day the great day of the feast, while Jesus had, for Himself, kept the legal day. Thus would the fact be explained that He, at this time, celebrated the Passover a day sooner than the rest of the people. It appears that, at the present day also, when the 15th of Nisan falls on a Friday, the Jews transfer the feast from this day to Saturday. This solution is very simple and natural. Only we do not find either in the New Testament, or in Josephus, or in the Talmud, any trace of such a transposition, which would constitute a grave derogation from the law. Other reasons have been sought which might lead Jesus in this circumstance to deviate from the generally-received usage. Stier has thought that He attached Himself to the mode of action of some sects, like that of the Karaites, who had the custom of celebrating the Paschal supper, not on the evening of the 14th-15th, but on that of the 13th-14th. Ebrard has supposed that because of the great number of lambs to be slain in the temple (sometimes more than 250,000, according to Josephus) from three to six o'clock in the afternoon, the Galileans had been authorized to sacrifice and eat the lamb on the 13th instead of the 14th. Serno applies the same supposition to all the Jews of the dispersion. But these hypotheses have no historical basis, and are, in any case, much less probable than that of the Reformers. Rauch has affirmed that the Israelites in general celebrated the Paschal supper, legally and habitually, on the evening of the 13th-14th, and not that of the 14th-15th. But this opinion, which, even if adopted, would yet not resolve the difficulty, strikes against all the known Biblical and historical data.

Lutteroth, in his pamphlet, Le jour de la preparation, 1855, and in his Essai d' interpretation de l' Evangile de saint Matthieu, 1876, places the day of the conversation of Jesus with His disciples much earlier, on the 10th of Nisan, when the Jews set apart the lamb which was to be sacrificed on the 14th. It was, according to him, on the same 10th day that Jesus was crucified; He remained in the tomb on the 11th, 12th, and 13th; the 14th was the day of

His resurrection. This entirely new chronology is shattered by the first word of the conversation. How is it possible that the 10th of Nisan should be called by the evangelists the first day of unleavened bread, especially when this determination of the time is made still more precise, as it is in Mark, by the words: “ when the Passover is sacrificed. ” It is true that Lutteroth tries to make this when refer only to the idea of unleavened bread: “the unleavened bread which is to be eaten when the Passover is sacrificed” (!). The words of Luke 22:7: “The day of unleavened bread came, when the Passover must be sacrificed,” are still more rudely handled: it is not an historical fact which Luke relates, it is a moral reflection by means of which the evangelist announces at the beginning that the Passion will have an end (!) (Essai, pp. 410, 411). After all these fruitless attempts, one can understand how a large number of critics limit themselves at the present day to establishing the disagreement and declaring it insoluble; this is what is done by Lucke, Neander, Bleek, de Wette, Steitz, J. Muller, Weiss, de Pressense, etc.

IV. The Truth of John's Narrative.

But if the contradiction exists, it remains to determine which of the two narratives deserves the preference. Then it must be explained how so grave a difference can have arisen in the Gospel narrative.

The critics of the Tubingen school Baur, Hilgenfeld, Keim are not embarrassed: it is the Synoptics that have preserved the true historical tradition. As to John's narrative, it is a deliberate alteration of the real history, intended, on the one hand, to make the death of Jesus, as the true Paschal lamb, coincide with the time of the sacrificing of the lamb in the temple, and, on the other hand, to throw into the shade the Jewish Paschal supper by making the last supper of Jesus a simple farewell meal. But neither the one nor the other of these ends required a means so compromising as that which is thus ascribed to pseudo-John. Such a disagreement with the first three Gospels, which were already received throughout the whole Church, and with the apostolic tradition, of which these writings were known to be the depositaries, exposed the work of the fourth evangelist to the danger of being greatly suspected, and that in a very useless way for him. For to present Jesus as the true Paschal lamb, there was no need of such a desperate expedient as that of misplacing the well-known day of His death; it was enough that this event should be placed in the Paschal week; there was, therefore, nothing to be changed in the tradition of the Church; comp. the words of Paul in 1 Corinthians 5:7: “Christ, our Passover, has been sacrificed for us;” those of Peter, 1 Peter 1:19, and all the passages of the Apocalypse where Christ is called the Lamb. As to the Jewish Passover, there was no need in the second century to depreciate it; it was already replaced everywhere, both in the Church and in the sects, by the Christian supper (Schurer, pp. 29-34).

A second class of critics, as we have seen, try to interpret the texts of John so as to put them in accord with what they think to be the meaning of the Synoptic narrative. They are, for example, Lightfoot, Tholuck, Olshausen, Hengstenberg, Wieseler, Luthardt, Wichelhaus, Hofmann, Lichtenstein, Lange, Riggenbach, Ebrard, Baumlein, Langen, Keil. But all their efforts have been unsuccessful in bringing out from John's text a sense contrary to that which is obvious on reading it.

As to the third class, which concedes a real difference between our Gospel narratives, the greater part give the preference to that of John; thus, among the moderns, Weiss, Pressense (see note on p. 400), Reuss himself (Theol . joh. pp. 59, 60). And, in fact, if the conflict is real, the choice cannot be doubtful. The witnesses in favor of the historical exactness of John's narrative are the following:

1. The Synoptics themselves. These writings contain a series of facts, and a certain number of words, which are in complete accord with John's narrative and in no less evident disagreement with the view which is attributed to them. If there was an hour sacred to the Jewish conscience, it was that of the Paschal supper; and yet it was at this hour that a multitude of officers and servants of the chief priests and elders had left their houses and their families, assembled around the Passover table, to go and arrest Jesus in Gethsemane! Still more, we know that everything which was reprehensible on the Sabbath, as, e.g., to climb a tree, to ride on horseback, to hold a session of a court, was also prohibited on the festival day (Traite Beza, 5.2); and yet there were held, on that Sabbatic night of the 14th-15th, at least two sessions of the court, in one of which the sentence of death for Jesus was pronounced; and then all those long negotiations with Pilate, as well as the sending to Herod, took place; all this, notwithstanding the festival and Sabbatic character of the 15th of Nisan! It is answered that a session of the court was nermitted on the festival day, provided that the sentence was not put in writing, and that, in general, the rule of the festival days was less rigorous than that of the Sabbaths properly so called. But, at the foundation, all the difference between these two kinds of days is limited to the authorization to prepare the necessary articles of food on the festival day, if even we are allowed to draw a general conclusion from Exodus 12:16. Now would so slight a difference be sufficient to justify the use of such a day which is here implied?

That Simon of Cyrene, who is returning from the fields (Matthew 27:32); that Joseph of Arimathea, who is going to purchase a linen cloth (Mark 15:46); those women who give up embalming the body, because the Sabbath is drawing near (Luke 23:56) is all this explicable on the supposition that the day when these things happened thus was itself a Sabbatic day, the 15th of Nisan? No doubt it is answered that Simon was returning from a simple walk in the country, or that he was a countryman who was going to the city; then, that purchases might be made on a festival day, provided they were not paid for on the same day. It is nevertheless true that the impression made by the narrative of the Synoptics is that the day of Jesus' death was a working day, entirely different from the Sabbatic day which was to follow; that it was, consequently, the 14th, and not the 15th of Nisan.

This is what appears also from a certain number of expressions scattered throughout the Synoptic narrative. Thus Matthew 26:18: “My time is at hand; let me keep the Passover at thy house with my disciples.” What is the logical connection which unites the two propositions of this message? The only satisfactory relation to be established between them is this: “It is necessary for me to hasten; for to-morrow it will be too late; I shall be no longer here; act, then, so that I may be able to eat the Passover at thy house immediately with my disciples (ποιῶ, the present).”

Matthew 27:62: The evangelist calls the Saturday during which the body of Jesus reposed in the tomb: “ the morrow which is after the preparation. ” In this phrase it is impossible that the word preparation should have the sense of Friday, as if Matthew had meant to say that the Sabbath during which Jesus was in the tomb was the next day after a Friday! We do not designate the more solemn day by that which is less so, but the reverse. If the day of the 15th is designated here from its relation to the less solemn day of the preparation which had preceded it, it is because this day of preparation had become much more important, as the day of Jesus' death. From this singular phrase, therefore, it follows that Jesus was crucified on the 14th.

The same conclusion must be drawn from Mark 15:42: “Seeing it was the Preparation, that is, the day before the Sabbath. ” It is of the day of Jesus' death that Mark thus speaks. Now, it is impossible that Mark, a Jew by birth, should have characterized a day like the 15th of Nisan as a simple Friday, preceding the Sabbath (Saturday), this 15th day being itself a Sabbath of the first rank. And if the expression: preparation, that is, the day before the Sabbath, can in the ordinary usage designate a Friday, this technical sense is inapplicable in a context where the reason is explained why a work was allowed which could not be done on the following day. The term preparation has here its general sense according to which it is applied to any day of the week preceding a Sabbath. Mark explains thereby the act of Joseph of Arimathea in burying Jesus, after having bought a linen cloth. “All this was possible,” he says, “because it was the preparation, the day before the Sabbath and not the Sabbath. This is what the expression in Luke 23:54 also signifies: “That day was the preparation, and the Sabbath was about to dawn.”

All these facts and words, no doubt, do not imply that the redactors of the Synoptic narratives fully understood the conclusion to be drawn from them as to the day of Jesus' death. But they are indications, which are so much the more significant since they seem to be unconscious, of the real tradition relative to the day of this death and of the complete conformity of this tradition with the narrative of John.

2. The Talmud. Some passages of this monument of the Jewish memorials and usages declare expressly that Jesus was suspended on the cross on the evening of the Passover (beerev happesach), that is to say, in the Jewish language, the evening before the Passover. The erroneous details which are sometimes mingled in these passages with this fundamental statement do not at all diminish the value of the latter, because it is reproduced several times and identically a fact which indicates an established tradition. If it is objected that the Jewish scholars derived this statement, not from their own tradition, but from our Gospels, this is to acknowledge that they understood the latter as we ourselves understand them.

3. St. Paul. Keim cites this apostle as a convincing witness in favor of the Synoptic view. We recognize, he says, in the institution of the Holy Supper (1 Corinthians 11), all the forms of the Jewish Paschal supper a fact which can be explained only if this last supper of Jesus coincided with the Passover, and if it consequently took place on the evening of the 14th-15th, and not on the evening of the 13th-14th. But Jesus may very well have used the forms of the Paschal supper on an evening before that on which that supper was celebrated; for, as He says Himself, “his time was at hand,” and He was forced to anticipate. From the expression of Paul in 1 Corinthians 11:23: “The Lord Jesus in the night in which he was betrayed,” it follows rather that that night was not the night of the Paschal supper; otherwise Paul would have characterized it in another way than by the betrayal of Judas.

All the witnesses whom we are able to consult, even the Synoptics, who are set in opposition to John, do homage, therefore, to the accuracy of his narrative.

V. The real Meaning of the Synoptic Narrative.

But, I would ask, is it indeed certain that the Synoptics really say what they are made to say? They say expressly that “the first day of unleavened bread” (Matt., Mark, Luke), “when the Passover was sacrificed” (Mark), “came” (Luke), and that “the disciples asked Jesus” (Matt., Mark), or that Jesus Himself, taking the initiative, sent John and Peter from Bethany to Jerusalem (Luke), with a view to seeking a place for celebrating the Passover. This conversation is unhesitatingly placed on the morning of the 14th of Nisan for the very simple reason that the days are reckoned, as we ourselves reckon them, making the official day coincide with the natural day. But, in calculating thus, it is forgotten that among the Jews the official day began at six o'clock in the evening, and that thus, when it is said: “The day of unleavened bread came,” this indication, properly understood, places us, not in the morning of the 14th, but in the evening of the 13th-14th. Taking the Synoptics literally, we are obliged to hold that the conversation between Jesus and the disciples of which they tell us took place, not on the 14th in the morning, but late in the afternoon of the 13th, between the two evenings, according to the customary expression that is, between the moment when the sun sinks to the horizon and that when it disappears, a moment which is the transition point between the civil day and the day following.

Rotermund asserts, no doubt, that, notwithstanding this official way of reckoning the days, it was always the beginning and the end of the natural day which determined the popular language. But the contrary follows from Luke 23:54, which designates the last moment of Friday evening by the words: “It was the preparation, and the Sabbath was about to dawn,” as well as from the phrase which was customary among the Jews, according to which erev haschabbath, evening of the Sabbath, denotes the evening, not of Saturday, but of Friday. Moreover, we can cite a telling fact taken from Jewish life at the time of Jesus. On the 16th of Nisan, in the morning, the sacred sheaf was offered as the first-fruits of the entire harvest of the year. This sheaf was cut in a field near to Jerusalem, on the preceding day at evening, or, as we should say, on the 15th at evening. The messengers of the Sanhedrim arrived in the field followed by the people: “Has the sun set?” they asked. “It has,” answered the people. “Am I to cut?” “Yes, cut.” “With this sickle?” “Yes.” “Into this basket?” “Yes.” And why all these formalities? Because the 15th was a Sabbatic day, and because manual labor, like that of the reaper, must not be done until after it was established that the 15th was ended, and until the 16th, a working day, had begun. We see from this how deeply the way of reckoning days, which we attribute here to the Synoptics (from evening to evening, and not from morning to morning), had penetrated into the Jewish social life. There is also a circumstance which comes to the support of what we are here saying.

It was already alleged by Clement of Alexandria, and its importance has been acknowledged by Strauss. The crowd of pilgrims was so great in Jerusalem at the Passover feast, that no one waited until the morning of the 14th to secure for himself the place where he might celebrate the Paschal supper with his family in the evening. It was on the 13th that this search for a place was attended to. So Clement of Alexandria calls the 13th the προετοιμασία, the pro-preparation; for the preparation itself was the day of the 14th. It was certainly, therefore, on the day of the 13th, and not that of the 14th, that the disciples spoke to the Lord, or He to them, with the purpose of procuring the place which they needed for the next day at evening. The conversation reported by the Synoptics must have taken place, therefore, at the latest, about five or six o'clock in the afternoon of the 13th, according to our mode of reckoning the days. Jesus, at that time, sent to Jerusalem the two disciples in whom He felt most confidence, charging them to secure a room. In the thought of all the disciples, it was for the next day at evening; but Jesus gives His two messengers to understand that it was for that same evening. This is what the terms of the message imply which He intrusted to them for the host whom He had in view: “ My time is at hand: I must hasten.” And why this course of action, which was full of mystery? The reason for it is simple. Judas must not know in advance the house where Jesus would spend this last evening with His disciples.

From six to eight or nine o'clock, the disciples would have time enough for preparing the supper, even for killing and preparing the lamb, which was already set apart since the 10th of Nisan. Undoubtedly they did not sacrifice it in the temple. But could they have done this, even on the official day and at the official hour they who must have been excommunicated as adherents of Jesus (John 9:22)? However this may be, according to the primitive institution of the Passover (Exo 12:6-7), it belonged to every Israelite to sacrifice his lamb in his own house; the sacrificing in the temple was a matter of human tradition. And at that time, when the Israelitish Passover was about to come to an end, to be replaced by the sacramental supper of the new covenant, it was altogether natural to return to the simplicity of the starting point. The priestly sacrificing was useless when the typical lamb had no longer any other part to fill than that of serving as the inauguration of the new supper which was to replace the old. It has been objected (Keim, Luthardt) that Jesus did not have the right to change the legal day of the Passover. But if He was the Lord of the Sabbath, the corner-stone of the whole ceremonial law (Mark 2:28), He was certainly the same also with respect to the Passover. The legal Paschal supper was no longer for Him, at that moment, anything but the calyx, withered henceforth, from the bosom of which the commemorative supper of the perfect Redemption was about to blossom.

Let us also observe an interesting coincidence between the well-known Jewish usages and the narrative of the Synoptics, as we have just explained it. On the evening of the 13th, about six o'clock, the lamps were lighted in order to search the most obscure corners of the houses and to remove every particle of leaven. Then, before the stars appeared, a man went from every house to draw the pure water with which the unleavened bread must be kneaded. Does not this usage very naturally explain the sign given to Peter and John when Jesus said to them: “On entering the city, you will meet a man bearing a pitcher of water; follow him into the house where he shall enter” (Luke 22:10)?

The solution which we here present is not new; it is at the foundation the same which was already set forth in the second century by the two writers who were especially occupied with this question at the time when it seems to have deeply engaged the attention of the Church, Apollinaris of Hierapolis and Clement of Alexandria. The first expresses himself thus: “The day of the 14th is the true Passover of the Lord, the great sacrifice, in which the Son of God, put in the place of the lamb, was delivered up to be crucified.” The second says, with still more precision: “In the preceding years, Jesus had celebrated the feast by eating the Paschal lamb according as [on the day when] the Jews sacrificed it. But on the 13th, the day on which the disciples interrogated Him, He taught them the mystery [of the type of the lamb]....It was on this day (the 13th) that the consecration of the unleavened bread and the pro-preparation of the Passover took place;...and our Saviour suffered on the day following (the 14th): for He was Himself the true Passover....And this is the reason why the chief priests and scribes, when leading Him to Pilate, did not enter into the Praetorium, that they might not be defiled and might eat the Passover in the evening without any hindrance.”

In reality, therefore, we have only reproduced Clement's solution in the most violent of the Paschal disputes of the second century, of which we shall soon speak. Weiss, who rejects every solution, yet acknowledges that, strictly speaking, Mark 14:12 is the only passage which is opposed to what we have just set forth. What seems to him incompatible with it is the remark: “The first day of unleavened bread, when the Passover was sacrificed. ” But why could not these last words be applied to the evening of the 13th, if this evening, according to the Jewish manner of reckoning, belonged already to the 14th, on the afternoon of which the lamb was sacrificed? Weiss cannot himself refrain from adding that, in any case, the question of the disciples, if placed in the morning of the 14th, is improbable, for the people did not ever expect to occupy themselves at that time with the place of the supper. De Pressense has nothing else to object except the words of Matthew 26:20: “And when the evening was come, he reclined at table with the Twelve,” which implies, he says, that the preparations for the supper were made, not a few moments earlier in the evening, but during the course of the day. This remark would perhaps be well founded if the evangelist had had in view, in writing these lines, the question which occupies us. But Matthew does not seem, any more than the other two Synoptics, to have accounted for the problem which is raised by the traditional account; he simply meant to say that this last supper of Jesus took place, not in the daytime, but in the evening.

It is probable that two circumstances contributed to the want of clearness which prevails in the Synoptical narration: first, the very easy confounding of the civil and natural day, and then the fact that the institution of the Holy Supper had impressed on this last supper a character very similar to that of the Paschal feast.

Finally, let us recall to memory the lights which exegesis has asked from astronomy with respect to this question. The question being to determine whether, in the year of Jesus' death, the great Sabbatic day of the 15th of Nisan fell on Friday, as the Synoptic narrative, or on Saturday, as the narrative of John implies, the calculation of the lunar phases might serve, it was thought, to decide the question. Two astronomers set themselves to the work, Wurm, of Gottingen (Bengel's Archiv., 1816, II.), and Oudemann, Professor at Utrecht (Revue de theologie, 1863, p. 221).

But it is necessary to begin by determining the year of Jesus' death, and scholars still differ on this point. Ideler and Zumpt place it in 29; Winer, Wieseler, Lichtens'ein, Caspari, Pressense, etc., in 30; Ewald, Renan, in 33; Keim, in 35; Hitzig, in 36. In this state of things, the two astronomers have extended their calculation to the whole series of years 29-36 of our era. The result, as to the year 30, which we think, with most of the critics, to be the year of the death, is the following: In this year, the 15th of Nisan fell on a Friday. This result would condemn our explanation; but Caspari, taking up anew the calculation of Wurm, starting from the same data as this astronomer, has arrived at the opposite result. According to him, in the year 30 the 15th of Nisan was Saturday, as it must be according to our explanation. The fact is, that we find ourselves here face to face with the incalculable uncertainties and subtleties of the Jewish calendar. Wurm himself declares that one can speak here only of probabilities, that there will ever remain an uncertainty of one or two days. Now, everything depends on a single day (Keim, III., p. 490-500). It is safer to work upon positive texts than upon such unsettled foundations. And as for ourselves, everything being carefully weighed, we think that the most probable date of Jesus' death may be stated thus: Friday, the 14 th of Nisan (7 th of April), in the year 30.

We are happy to agree, on the question of the relation between John and the Synoptics, with some modern scholars: Krummel, Darmstadt Litteraturblatt, Feb., 1858; Baggesen, Der Apostel Johannes, 1869; Andreae, in the Beweis des Glaubens, Der Todestag Jesu, July to September, 1870. On the consequences of the historical superiority of John's narrative, with reference to the authenticity of the Fourth Gospel, see Introd., Vol. I., pp. 77-79.

VI. Glance at the History of the Paschal Controversies.

The fact which lies at the foundation of that long disagreement between the primitive churches is the following: The churches of Asia Minor celebrated the Paschal feast by fasting during the whole of the 14th of Nisan and by communicating on the evening of this day, at the time when the Jews were eating the lamb. The other churches of Christendom, Rome at their head, fasted, on the contrary, during the days which preceded the Passover Sunday, which was always the Sunday that followed the 14th; then they received the sacrament in the morning of this Passover Sunday. In both cases the communion terminated the fast.

First phase of the discussion. About 155, Polycarp, in a visit which he makes to Rome, has a conversation on this subject with Anicetus, the bishop of Rome. Each defends the rite of his own church in the name of an apostolic tradition of which it claimed to be the depositary (originating at Ephesus from John and Philip, at Rome from Paul and Peter). There is no proof that on this occasion they entered within the exegetical and dogmatic domain of the question. The ecclesiastical peace remained undisturbed. “The diversity in the rite served rather,” as Irenaeus says, “to establish agreement in faith.”

Second phase. Fifteen years later, in 170, there breaks out in the midst even of the churches of Asia, at Laodicea, a disagreement on the subject of the Passover. There are persons there who are they? we shall have to examine this point who, like the Asiatics, celebrate the 14th in the evening, but resting upon this fact: that it was on the 14th in the evening that Jesus instituted the Supper, in conformity with the time prescribed by the law for the Paschal supper, and they rest upon the narrative of Matthew, according to which the Lord was crucified on the 15th. We see that from the domain of tradition the question is carried to that of exegesis. Melito is the first who writes on this subject, with what view we do not know. Then, on occasion (ἐξ αἰτίας) of his book not against him, as Schurer still claims Apollinaris and Clement of Alexandria also take up the pen. Both, according to the fragments quoted in the Chronicon Paschale, prove that Jesus celebrated His last supper on the 13th, and that He died on the 14th. They specially allege John's narrative in favor of this view.

But who are the Laodicean adversaries whom these two writers oppose? Baur, Hilgenfeld, Schurer, Luthardt, answer: They are the churches of Asia themselves, with their celebration of the 14th. Apollinaris was even in Asia the adversary of the Asiatic rite. It is difficult to believe this. For, 1. Eusebius presents the churches of Asia before us as unanimous: “The churches of the whole of Asia thought, according to an ancient tradition, that they must observe the 14th by the celebration of the Holy Supper.” If this consensus of all the churches of Asia had been broken by so considerable a bishop and doctor as Apollinaris of Hierapolis, Eusebius, the pronounced adversary of the Asiatic rite, would not have failed to notice it. Baur alleges that a little later Polycrates, when enumerating in his letter to Victor, a bishop of Rome, all the illustrious personages who practised the Asiatic rite, does not mention Apollinaris. But he names only the dead. Apollinaris might also be found among the numerous bishops of whom Polycrates speaks without naming them, who surrounded him at the time when he was writing his letter, and who gave their assent to it. 2. If Apollinaris had made a division as related to his colleagues in Asia, the dispute would, no doubt, have broken out in his home, at Hierapolis, rather than at Laodicea. 3. The polemic of Apollinaris by no means implies opposition to the Asiatic rite and adhesion to the occidental rite. The adversaries justified their observance of the 14th by resting upon the fact that this was the evening on which Jesus had instituted the Supper. Apollinaris remarks that this view puts the first three Gospels in contradiction to that of John. But this does not prevent him from celebrating the 14th also only for another reason. In any case, it is impossible to understand how this view of Apollinaris, according to which Jesus died on the 14th, not the 15th, could have favored the Roman observance, according to which the Holy Passover Supper was celebrated on the following Sunday. 4. Schurer is embarrassed here by a manifest contradiction: According to him, the Asiatic rite did not rest on any fact of the Gospel history, neither on the time of the institution of the Supper nor on the day of Jesus' death. It arose only from the fact that the 14th was the day of the Jewish Paschal supper, which had been simply transformed, in Asia, into the Christian Supper. But, on the other hand, in the presence of the polemics of Apollinaris, he is forced to acknowledge that his adversaries fixed the Supper on the 14th, in remembrance of the day of the institution of the Supper. These two grounds of the same observance not coinciding, he ought not to maintain that the Laodiceans combated by Apollinaris are no others than the churches of Asia in general.

It is with reason, therefore, that Weitzel and Steitz, with whom are associated Ritschl, Meyer, Reville, etc., have been led to see in the Laodiceans, contended against by Apollinaris, a Judaizing party which arose in the Church of Asia, and which had as its aim to preserve for the Holy Supper the character of a complete Jewish Passover supper, as they imagined that the Lord also had celebrated that supper before He died. Then the polemic of Apollinaris and Clement takes effect. These people said: “We wish to do as the Lord did [celebrate the Paschal supper on the 14th], and this by eating the Paschal lamb as He did.” The two Fathers answer: “The Lord did not do this. He carried back the Paschal supper of the 14th to the 13th in the evening, and this by instituting the Supper.” This opinion evidently did not prevent Apollinaris from remaining faithful to the rite of his Church, since, as Schurer himself acknowledges, if the churches of Asia celebrated the 14th, as did the Laodiceans, it was not as having been the day of the institution of the Supper.

I would differ in opinion from Weitzel and Steitz only on two points: 1. The Laodicean adversaries, against whom Apollinaris contends, do not seem to me to have been an Ebionite sect properly so called, but only a branch of the Church of Asia, with a more pronounced Judaizing tendency. 2. The rite of the churches of Asia did not arise, probably, as these scholars think, from the fact that, in their view, Jesus died on the 14th, but quite simply from the fact that in these churches the day of the Israelitish Paschal supper was maintained. This is what results from the following words of Eusebius: “The churches of Asia thought they must celebrate the 14th, the day on which the Jews were commanded to sacrifice the lamb; ” then more clearly still from those of Polycrates: “And all my relatives (bishops before me) celebrated the day when the people removed the leaven. ” The Asiatic rite is expressly placed in connection with the day of Christ's death only in two passages of the fourth and fifth centuries one in Epiphanius, the other in Theodoret (see Schurer, pp. 57, 58) a fact which shows clearly that this point of view was not the prevailing one at the beginning of the discussion.

Third phase. Between 180 and 190 a certain Blastus (comp. the Adv. Haer. of the pseudo-Tertullian, c. 22) attempted to transplant the Asiatic rite to Rome. It was probably this circumstance which reawakened the dispute between the Churches of Rome and Asia, represented at this epoch, the one by Victor, the other by Polycrates. The latter, in his letter to Victor, no longer defends his cause by the traditional arguments, as Polycarp had done thirty years before. “He went through all the Holy Scriptures before writing (πᾶσαν ἁγίαν γραφὴν διεληλυθώς).” And he declares that “his predecessors also observed the 14th according to the Gospel (κατὰ τὸ εὐαγγέλιον).” These words give rise to reflection. It has been sought to get rid of them by means of subtleties (see the embarrassment ofSchurer, p. 35).

They evidently prove, as do those which precede, that Polycrates and the bishops of Asia had succeeded in establishing an agreement between the Gospels, by means of which these writings not only did not contradict one another (τὸ εὐαγγέλιον, the one Gospel in the four), but also were in accord with the law itself (all the Scriptures). Such expressions imply that Polycrates and his bishops had found the Asiatic rite confirmed first by the law (the question is of the Paschal institution, Exodus 12, fixing the Paschal supper on the 14th), then by the unanimity of the canonical Gospels, which has no meaning unless Polycrates harmonized the Synoptics with John by interpreting them as we ourselves have done. There is, therefore, a perfect equivalency between these words of Polycrates and that which Apollinaris had maintained against the Laodiceans, when he said: “Not only is their opinion contrary to the law, which requires that the lamb should be sacrificed on the 14th (and consequently that Christ also should die on the 14th), but also there would be [according to the opinion which they defend] disagreement between the Gospels [since, according to them, Matthew fixed the death of Christ on the 15th, while John places it on the 14th].” This dispute was quieted by the efforts of Irenaeus and many others, who interposed with Victor and arrested him as he was proceeding to violent measures.

Fourth phase. It is marked by the decision of the Council of Nice, in 325, which enjoined upon the Orientals to fall in with the Occidental rite, which was now generally adopted. “At the end of the matter,” says Eusebius (in his περὶ τῆς τοῦ πάσχα ἑορτῆς, Schurer, p. 40), “the Orientals yielded;” “and thus,” adds the same historian, “they broke finally with the murderers of the Lord, and united with their co-religionists (ὁμοδόξοις).” In fact, the practical consequence of the Asiatic rite was that the Christians of Asia found themselves to be celebrating the Holy Paschal Supper at the same time as the Jews were celebrating their Passover supper, thus separating themselves from all the other Christians who celebrated the Supper on the following Sunday. This rite became in the view of the other Churches, as it were, the sign of a secret sympathy for the unbelieving Jews. This was what determined its defeat. There were, nevertheless, Christians who, like the Judaizers of Laodicea, persisted in the observance of the 14th for the reason that Jesus had instituted the Supper on that day at evening. They figure under the names of Audians, Quarto-decimans, in the lists of later heresies. Athanasius frankly confesses that they are not easily to be refuted when they allege these words of the Synoptics: “ On the first day of unleavened bread, the disciples came to Jesus ” (Schurer, p. 45). We here come upon the first symptom of the preponderance which the Synoptical narrative finally gained in the Church over that of John, and which it maintained through the middle ages and even to modern times. The Synoptics, more popular than John and apparently more clear, forming besides a group of three against one, and especially no longer encountering in the way of counterpoise the fear of a mingling of the Christian Supper and the Jewish Passover, carried the day in the general feeling. Jerome is the one of the Fathers who contributed most to this victory.

But how are we to explain the origin of the two observances the Asiatic and the Roman in the second century? Paul had no fear of bringing into the Church the celebration of the Jewish Passover feast (Acts 20:6; comp. 1 Corinthians 5:7-8 with John 16:8). He transformed and spiritualized its rites this is beyond doubt; the Holy Supper was substituted for the Paschal supper of the lamb and unleavened bread; but the time of the celebration was the same; this seems to follow from Acts 20:6. John certainly did not do otherwise; it was thus that the celebration of the Holy Supper on the evening of the 14th of Nisan was quite naturally introduced into Asia.

But the churches of the West, more estranged from Judaism, felt a certain repugnance to this unity in point of time which was established between the Jewish and the Christian feast, and to the kind of dependence in which the simultaneousness placed the second with relation to the first. They therefore threw off the yoke; and, instead of celebrating the Holy Passover Supper on the 14th at evening, as they already had the institution of the weekly Sunday, distinct from that of the Jewish Sabbath, they fixed this ceremony for the morning of the Sunday which in each year followed the 14th of Nisan, or, to speak more properly, the full moon of March. Thus, no doubt, the occidental observance grew up, which finally carried the day over the primitive observance. The Church is free in these matters.

The result of this long and complicated history, so far as relates to the subject which occupies our attention, seems to us to be this: From the time when the Church occupied itself with the exegetical side of the question, it attached itself to the Johannean narrative. It made use of it, on the one hand, to refute by the pen of Apollinaris the exegetical basis on which the Laodicean party rested the observance of the 14th (by making that day, according to Matthew, the day of the institution of the Supper); on the other hand, to defend against Rome, by the pen of Polycrates, the Asiatic celebration of the 14th, by presenting the Supper as the Jewish Passover spiritualized that is to say, as the feast of the Christian redemption, the counterpart of the deliverance from Egypt.

The matter in question, therefore, for the Church of Asia, was not that of celebrating the 14th of Nisan as the day of the institution of the Supper, nor even, properly speaking, as the day of Jesus' death (against Steitz). It simply Christianized the Jewish Passover. The Asiatic observance, therefore, does not furnish, as Baur has claimed, an argument against the Johannean origin of the Fourth Gospel; quite the contrary, the polemic of Apollinaris against the Laodiceans, and that of Polycrates against Victor, are a striking testimony given to the narrative of the Fourth Gospel.

To sum up, the difference between John and the Synoptics may be stated and explained as follows:

In drawing up the oral tradition, the Synoptical writers contented themselves, as he did, with placing the last supper of Christ on the 14th of Nisan, the first day of unleavened bread, without expressly distinguishing between the first and the second evening of that day. Now, as Jesus had given to this last supper, celebrated on the evening of the 13th-14th, the forms of the Paschal supper, which took place on the evening of the 14th-15th, in order to substitute the Holy Supper for the Paschal feast for the future, a misunderstanding might easily arise; it might be imagined that this supper was itself the Paschal feast of the 14th, which necessarily had the effect of carrying over the day of the death of Jesus to the 15th. John (as he had done so many times in his work) desired to dissipate the sort of obscurity which prevailed in the Synoptics, and to rectify the misunderstanding to which their narrative might easily lead. He therefore intentionally and clearly re- established the real course of things to which, moreover, the Synoptic narrative bore testimony at all points.