WAS THE LAST SUPPER REALLY AT PASSOVER?

by Mary 17 Replies latest jw friends

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  Mary

  With the Memorial coming up (and all of you attending of course, haha) I wanted to post a topic that's been bugging me for quite a while:

  OK, we were all taught that the Last Supper coincided with the Passover, which was required by Jews to celebrate annually. However, I've got a couple of questions on this:

  We all know that the Passover was to commemorate the Exodus out of Egypt in which God instructs the Israelites to sacrifice a lamb on Nissan 14th before sunset. Yet there is no mention of Jesus and his disciples eating a sacrificial lamb or eating the bitter herbs at the Last Supper----there's only bread and wine there. Why wouldn't they have prepared a lamb and eaten the bitter herbs as required by their law? Especially as Jesus is spoken of a "the Lamb who takes away the sin of the world."

  And if the Last Supper had been held on the first night of Passover (which lasted 8 days), that would mean Jesus’ trial and execution took place during the Jewish holidays. And if the Scribes and Pharisees did play a part in his arrest, trial and death, it meant that they were engaging in activities that were forbidden by their own laws during Passover. If Jesus was the thorn in their side that the NT says he was, why, after 3 years did they suddenly decided to get rid of him during Passover? Wouldn't it have been easier if they had waited another week?

  Your thoughts?
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  SickofLies

  Interesting theory, but roman documents support that Jesus was excuted on the date Bible scholars claim (every religion is in agreement on this fact not just JW's).
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  minimus

  Doesn't the Passover Plot address these same questions??
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  Finally-Free

  Yet there is no mention of Jesus and his disciples eating a sacrificial lamb or eating the bitter herbs at the Last Supper----there's only bread and wine there.

  I could be mistaken, but didn't the cult teach that the bread and wine were passed after the traditional passover meal was eaten? Of course, that would be speculation on their part, but that's nothing new.

  W
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  Mary

  Min, what's the Passover Plot?
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  greendawn

  It may also be that not everything done or eaten that night was recorded in the gospels, they are not by any means an exhaustive account of Jesus's activities, as John says only a tiny part of them were recorded by him.
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  XJW4EVR

  The reason why the Gospel writers make no mention of the Seder meal is simple: they assume that you know certain things about the Jewish customs of the day. Why do they make that assumption? Because for the most part the early Christian church was comprised of Jews, and they assumed that the Gntile believers would have been schooled in the Jewish traditions during their discipleship in Christianity.
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  Tea4Two

  Matthew 26 explains the Passover meal of Jesus and his Aposcles. A place was provided by someone and Jesus Aposcles prepared the table with the Passover meal.
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  minimus

  Hugh J. Schonfield wrote in around 1970. It was a book that suggested that Christ really was betrayed and the whole thing was a fix. I think some of your points re brought up in that book.
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  Narkissos

  To the Synoptics this is definitely a Passover meal (most explicitly in Luke 22:15). In the phrase "to eat the Passover" (phagein to paskha, Matthew 26:17ff etc.), the "Passover" actually is the lamb, by a metonymy reflective of the Hebrew expression; this is even more obvious in Mark 14:12//Luke 22:7, literally "to kill the Passover" (thuesthai to paskha).

  On the other hand the meal in John 13 is not a Passover meal: it is before Passover (13:1); and the next day Jesus' accusers have not yet "eaten the Passover" (18:28); it is the "Preparation of the Passover" (19:14).

  Interestingly, according to Epiphanius the Gospel of the Ebionites reverses the saying in Luke 22:15, precisely on the issue of meat, probably due to a vegetarian and anti-sacrificial concern in this Jewish-Christian community:

  But they (the Ebionites) abandon the proper sequence of the words and pervert the saying,
  as is plain to all from the readings attached, and have let the disciples say:

  "Where will you have us prepare the passover?"
  And him to answer to that:
  "Do I desire with desire at this Passover to eat flesh with you?"
  (Epiphanius, Panarion 30.22.4)