The Mystery of the Last Supper by Colin J. Humphreys

Author:Colin J. Humphreys
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Published: 2011-09-21T16:00:00+00:00

Transferring the Passover meal between calendars

We have just shown that, according to Exodus 12, the Passover lambs were both killed and eaten on the fourteenth day of the first month. However, at the time of Christ, the Passover lambs were killed on Nisan 14 and then eaten on the night of Nisan 15, and it was Nisan 15 which was the day of rest called the Sabbath of the Passover. Why is there this apparent discrepancy?

I have already suggested the solution. The pre-exilic calendar had a morning-to-morning day. When the calendar changed to an evening-to-evening day it became necessary to transfer the feasts from the old to the new calendar. In the pre-exilic calendar used in Exodus 12, with its morning-to-morning day, the Passover lambs were slain ‘between the two evenings’ on day 14 and the roasting of the lambs and the eating of the Passover meal followed later that night, which was still part of day 14. But when the same events were transferred to the post-exilic Jewish calendar, with its evening-to-evening day, the Passover meal which was eaten in the evening/night was necessarily held on Nisan 15, because Nisan 15 commenced at sunset. By the time of Jesus, the killing of the lambs had been advanced to 3 p.m., because of the large number to be slain. Thus in the official Jewish calendar at the time of Christ the slaughter was on Nisan 14, and the Passover meal was on Nisan 15, which was also now the first day of the Feast of Unleavened Bread. It is therefore clear how the date of the Passover meal transferred from one calendar to the other and we have a consistent explanation that fits the different dates of the Passover meal, and the first day of the Feast of Unleavened Bread, in the pre-exilic Jewish calendar and in the official Jewish calendar in the first century AD. The table summarises the situation.

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