Christianity
Passover and the Feast of Unleavened Bread
Abstract
© Dr M D Magee
Contents Updated: Tuesday, January 05, 1999
Passover
Modern Jewish practice is to kill the pascal lamb on 14 Nisan and consume it that same evening which is 15 Nisan, days beginning at sunset. The festivals of Passover and Unleavened Bread thus begin on 15 Nisan. Unleavened bread is eaten at the Passover Seder and for the next week until 22 Nisan, the rule following Leviticus 23:6.
Frank Daniels, in a paper on the Internet, thinks ancient practice was to start the festival of unleavened bread on 14 Nisan and to continue it until the 21 Nisan following Exodus 12:18. He feels some people enjoy casting arbitrary doubt over these matters and seeks to reconcile the differences between the gospels about the timing of the last supper and the crucifixion of Jesus. Here we examine his views.
Exodus 12:4-10;46 says, for each household, a one year old male lamb or kid, without blemish, should be selected on 10 Nisan. On 14 Nisan, “the whole assembly of Israel” will slaughter it “between the two evenings”. That night, the flesh was to be roasted over the fire and eaten with unleavened bread and bitter herbs in one house. None of it could be taken out of the house and no travellers, hired servants, or uncircumcised people could eat the passover lamb. None of its bones could be broken and anything left had to be burnt before morning.
Ambiguity occurs in the phrase “between the two evenings”. The Samaritans thought it meant between sunset and dusk, but the Pharisees thought it meant “during late afternoon” between about 3:00 pm and sunset. The latter is now generally believed. Numbers 9:3 prescribes the “appointed time” of Passover as 14 Nisan at evening. Since each day began at sunset, the pascal lamb was to be eaten during the night which followed—the night of 15 Nisan. The lamb could not have been slaughtered after the meal (the evening of 14 Nisan preceding the afternoon of 14 Nisan).
So, they slaughtered the lamb at the time prescribed in Exodus 12, during late afternoon of 14 Nisan. 2 Chronicles 30:15 and 2 Chronicles 35:1 also indicate that the lamb was killed on the afternoon of 14 Nisan, as does the account in Ezra 6:19-22, indicating that the time for the slaughter had not changed since Ezra’s day (400 BC).
Unleavened Bread
Exodus 12:15-18 prescribes that Jews would eat unleavened bread for seven days and leaven was not to be admitted to the household for seven days. On the first day, they had to purge leaven from their houses to avoid the risk of eating leaven in the seven days of the festival which would cut them off from Israel. The only work allowed during the festival was to prepare food. Eating unleavened bread had to begin on 14 Nisan at “evening” and continue until 21 Nisan at “evening”.
Daniels says here the “evening” is the evening which begins the day, whereas Jewish interpretation is that it is the evening which begins the following day—that evening which succeeds the preceding afternoon. So, for Daniels, from the beginning of 14 Nisan (the evening succeeding the afternoon of 13 Nisan) until the beginning of 21 Nisan, unleavened bread must be eaten. Since all leaven is to be purged from every house on 14 Nisan and this day and not the next was the start of the festival, for Daniels, the first day of the Unleavened Bread is the day that the Passover lamb would be slaughtered.
In the account in Leviticus 23:6, the Unleavened Bread does not start until the day after the lamb is slaughtered, but Daniels says this can be read the traditional way, that it does not begin until after the slaughter of the lamb, or that the feast includes the slaughter. The traditional Jewish interpretation is practical since it allows leaven to be cleared from the house first (on 14 Nisan) before the festival begins on 15 Nisan. Daniels’ interpretation allows the risky day of 14 Nisan, when it is possible to be eating unleavened bread with leavened bread in the house, a risk that would have been unacceptable to pious Jews.
The Festivals in the Gospels
Luke 22:7-13 states that “there came the day of unleavened bread, when the passover must be killed”, and Jesus sent out Peter and John to prepare the Passover meal. Daniels claims this is the evening which began 14 Nisan, not the afternoon which ended 14 Nisan, though he gives no reason except a conjecture that Jesus wanted to eat the Passover early because he knew he would be crucified!
Daniels adds that Matthew 26:17 makes it the evening which began the first day of the Feast of Unleavened Bread, the beginning of Nisan 14 but again he has no evidence, the passage simply saying on that “day”.
Now the first day of the feast of unleavened bread the disciples came to Jesus, saying unto him, Where wilt thou that we prepare for thee to eat the passover?
Mark 14:12 also indicates that the Passover lamb was killed during the first day of the Feast of Unleavened Bread. Certainly, these passages confirm, Daniels’ idea that 14 Nisan was the first day of Unleavened Bread, matching Exodus rather than Leviticus, but otherwise it was the day when the lambs were slaughtered, not the day before! Daniels claims the Nazarenes’ lamb had already been slaughtered (on the afternoon of 13 Nisan) and they would prepare and eat the lamb on the evening of 14 Nisan, one day earlier than normal in anticipation of Jesus’s fate. Except for the desire for gospel harmony, why deny that all this activity took place on the afternoon that the lambs were normally killed—the afternoon of 14 Nisan in preparation for the Seder that same evening (15 Nisan), following standard Jewish practice.
John 13:1 tells us Passover (which Daniels tells us John always uses correctly) had not yet started when Jesus and his companions had their meal, it was the day before the feast (Nisan 14, when the slaughter was to occur). Both John and Luke (Jn 19:14, 31, 42; Lk 23:54) refer to this as the “Day of Preparation” for the sabbath. Jesus’s crucifixion preceded a sabbath, and John says it was a “high day”, because it was also the day of the Passover meal, the Seder (15 Nisan). Mark 15:42 also says Jesus died on the Day of Preparation.
Matthew’s account does not indicate that it was the Day of Preparation during which Jesus was slain, but he does say (Mt 27:62) that the next day, Sabbath/Passover, was after “the preparation” implying that the day of Jesus’s death was the same Day of Preparation mentioned by the others.
We also have the testimony of the Leadership that they wanted to kill him before the feast, because they feared a riot (Mk 14:1; 26:5). Thus, in Matthew and Mark (and by parallel, in Luke), it is also the day before 15 Nisan when Jesus dies—the afternoon of 14 Nisan.
Some have suggested that the trial of Jesus must have lasted more than one day. However, all four accounts indicate that it was the same day (14 Nisan) when Jesus ate his meal as when they took him down from the cross—the Day of Preparation of the Passover, the day that the Passover lambs were slaughtered. John provides the further detail that Jesus was crucified at the time when the Passover lambs were slain by citing Exodus 12:46 at John 19:36:
For these things happened so that the writing might be fulfilled: No bone of his will be broken.
Paul further refers to Jesus as our Passover lamb.
The central point here is that Jesus was seen after his death as an atoning sacrifice. Just as Daniels tries to harmonize the accounts we now have, the early Christians harmonized their own ideas, but they had no written accounts they needed to alter. Jesus swiftly became the Pascal Lamb to his followers and they, years later, wrote as if he had been a sacrificed lamb. Although he was probably hung on the Passover itself, as a dire warning to Jews not to take the Roman authorities lightly, to ameliorate Romans and to fulfil their own ideas of the Lamb of God, Christian writers depicted him as hung on the day when the lambs were slaughtered.
Forever after, this became the tradition but it was not uniform because some tales were already circulating which were closer to the truth. John plainly makes Jesus a pascal lamb. Despite the efforts of Daniels, the others seem to have a different chronology. For this reason Daniels tells us to prefer John’s gospel, though it is likely to be the least accurate.
Hours and Days
Daniels spends time on irrelevant matters which are merely to help his harmonization of the gospels. The only gospel that gives a time for the crucifixion, Mark, Daniels tells us is wrong. The implication of other gospels is that Jesus was hung at noon whereas Mark says it was nine o’clock in the morning. This is, for Daniels a scribal error. In fact, in Luke, Jesus had been hanging up for twelve verses before it got dark at noon. In Matthew, it was only seven verses, but in each case the implication is that Jesus was hung before noon, suggesting that the time given in Mark could be correct, although some scribe could have sought to “improve” Mark at a later date.
Only in John is the time given as after noon, but Daniels has the highest regard for the times given in John and believes them! John is the last of the gospels written and tries to tie up loose ends. It is likely to be the least historically true.
Daniels assures us that all four gospels agree Jesus was hung on the afternoon before the Sabbath—Friday afternoon. In fact, they agree that he died on the Friday afternoon. If the timings were romanticised for the benefit of Romans, he could have been hanging on the cross for days. He also says all four accounts also agree that it was around dawn on the first day of the week, Sunday morning, when the empty tomb was discovered (Mt 28:1; Mk 16:1-2; Lk 24:1; Jn 20:1).
He answers a quibble about the reference in Matthew’s gospel to Jonah and the whale, apparently accepting (believing?) that these were the words of Jesus when there is good reason to think they were added in the second century. Anyway, Daniels has to show with a set of quotations that Jesus was not in the tomb for the same length of time that Jonah was in the whale. We believe him! Jesus expected the righteous to be resurrected on the third day, not after the third day.
Luke clearly confirms, after the fact, that not only was Jesus to resurrect during the third day but also it was the third day since he had been crucified. Luke affirms this timing and provides us with an independent account of the resurrection on Sunday morning, the third day after the crucifixion (death on the cross?). The mention of the third day here is in the context of the deliverance of Israel and plainly this disciple was expecting the general resurrection. The tale seems to contain no recognition that the disappearance of the body was yet seen as the beginning of a general resurrection, but the author writing many decades later will have wanted to suppress the thought, since no general resurrection had happened. As a story added years later and one with no witnesses, it is less reliable than most.
Essene Practices
Daniels does a useful job in trying to explain some of the chronological oddities of the gospel accounts. Perhaps he is correct that the Unleavened Bread started in those days on 14 Nisan, though it seems unlikely in Pharisaic tradition because the Pharisees were keen to stop people from inadvertantly breaking the law, and their interpretation is surely that which we now have.
What Daniels does not examine is how the band of Jesus and his companions counted days. It is all very well saying Jews counted days from sunset to sunset, but not all of them did. It seems that the first Christians did not. Yet if their religion were originally Jewish, why should this be? In Palestine at the time there are reasons for thinking the Essenes counted days from sunrise. If Jesus and his companions were Essenes, is that why the first Christians did the same? And is the apparent problem over 14 Nisan and 15 Nisan simply an artifice of confusion over how days were reckoned?
The Essenes had quite a different solar calendar for their own festivals, but also kept the calendar of the temple priesthood so that they could keep aware of national festivals. What though, if they still kept to their own way of reckoning days, even when they were active among non-Essene Jews who were observing traditional dates? It would have been possible for them to eat the Seder on 14 Nisan in the evening after the lambs had been slaughtered in the afternoon. Passover would have ended at dawn on 15 Nisan, in their way of counting days. Jesus resigns himself to his fate when God does not send Michael and the heavenly hosts that night, so he seems to consider dawn the end of the day.
Essenes did not believe in building walls around the law to protect people from it. When the eating of unleavened bread starts in the evening of the day, the risk of having leaven in the house for the early part of 14 Nisan disappears for the Essenes where evening follows the day.
The Essene way of counting days could explain many of the problems highlighted by Daniels in his interesting article.
Further Reading
- More on Jesus Barabbas, the robber (meaning bandit), and the commital of Jesus before the High Priest
- More on the crucifixion of Jesus, Son of the Father
- More on the death of God and secular Christianity
