How do JW's interpret this? (Luke 22)
"The day of the unfermented cakes now arrived, on which the passover [victim] must be sacrificed; and he dispatched Peter and John, saying: “Go and get the passover ready for us to eat.” ..... At length when the hour came, he reclined at the table, and the apostles with him."
Do they believe it means what it says or do they apply an esoteric JW spin to it?
The same edition of the WT, previous article, has a section on that - http://wol.jw.org/en/wol/d/r1/lp-e/2013925#p14
(Now the indents don't work! LOL.)
----[QUOTE]----
"The Pentateuch and Haftorahs points out that Exodus 12:6 says that the lamb was to be slaughtered 'between the two evenings.' Some Bible versions use exactly that expression. Others, including the Jewish Tanakh, translate it 'at twilight.' Still others, 'at dusk,' 'during the evening twilight,' or 'around sundown.' So the lamb was to be slaughtered after the sun had set but while there was still light, at the start of Nisan 14.
"In later times, some Jews thought that it would have taken hours to slaughter all the lambs brought to the temple. So Exodus 12:6 was understood to refer to the end of Nisan 14, between the time when the sun started to decline (after noon) and the end of the day at sunset. But if that were the meaning, when would the meal have been eaten? Professor Jonathan Klawans, a specialist in ancient Judaism, noted: 'The new day begins with the setting of the sun, so the sacrifice is made on the 14th but the beginning of Passover and the meal are actually on the 15th, although this sequence of dates is not specified in Exodus.' He also wrote: 'Rabbinic literature . . . does not even claim to be telling us how the Seder [Passover meal] was performed before the destruction of the Temple' in 70 C.E.—Italics ours."
----[UNQUOTE]----
The WT's quotes from Professor Klawans, the "specialist in ancient Judaism," are used to cast doubt on the Jews' later interpretation about 'the two evenings' when the lambs were killed, i.e. the afternoon of Nisan 14 before the Passover meal at sundown Nisan 15 - 1) Exodus doesn't specify that order and 2) Rabbinic literature is silent on the matter. The JW application must be the right one, correct?
When we check Klawans' article ...
http://www.biblicalarchaeology.org/daily/people-cultures-in-the-bible/jesus-historical-jesus/was-jesus-last-supper-a-seder/
... after discussing ALL the available evidence, he actually concludes:
"Was the Last Supper a Passover Seder? Most likely, it was not."
There was a thread on it a few weeks ago.
