The passion story of Christ in the four gospel accounts contains an apparent contradiction—one concerning the day of the week the celebration of Passover was to occur that year.
One important detail to understand before discussing this matter is that for the Jewish people of that time each day began at sunset and ended just prior to the following day’s sunset. As a result, Jesus celebrated Passover with His disciples and was crucified and died on the same Jewish day.
The three synoptic gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke reveal that the celebration of Passover by Jesus and His disciples that year, which we more commonly call the Lord’s Supper, occurred on a Thursday evening. We know this intuitively as Jesus’ crucifixion occurred on a Friday afternoon before the Jewish Sabbath commenced at sunset. However, in John’s Gospel, the day on which Christ’s crucifixion occurred is referred to as “the day of preparation.”
How can the gospels have such an apparent contradiction regarding the timing of Passover? This would seem to be such an important detail for this to occur. In fact, many non-believers challenge the authenticity of the gospels by virtue of the presumed inaccuracy caused by this apparent contradiction!
But what if the gospels are correct? How is this apparent contradiction reconciled? What if certain groups of Jewish people celebrated Passover on different days?
Within Jewish society at that time, there existed five sects or groups of people. The Sadducees and the Pharisees were by far the two largest and most influential of these sects and the ones most relevant to this discussion. To better appreciate the possibility that these groups celebrated Passover on different days, and the role this inevitably played in God’s plan for our salvation, let’s look briefly into their histories and central beliefs.
Both the Sadducees and the Pharisees enter recorded history at approximately the same time. Their respective appearances first occurred shortly after 164 BC with the success of the Maccabean rebellion that overthrew Antiochus IV, the Greek king of Syria, who had previously conquered Judea.
Thus began a two-hundred-year struggle for power between these two influential sects. At the center of this religious dispute was the question of who had the authority to interpret Sacred Scripture. For the Sadducees, that authority rested with the Levitical priesthood; for the Pharisees, that authority resided with the scribes and rabbis, who were members of the Pharisee sect.
For the better part of the first 170 years of their power struggle, the Sadducees were the dominant political party within Jewish religious society. But their dominance ended abruptly when the Romans overthrew the Herodian family’s rule over Jerusalem in 6 AD. After this, the Pharisees succeeded to power.
Now let’s discuss the sects’ central beliefs before analyzing their very different and conflicting Passover practices.
The Sadducees
The Sadducees represented the aristocratic and priestly class within Jewish society. While not all Jewish priests were Sadducees (though most were), virtually all Sadducees were priests. Their religious views were conservative and (generally) not subject to change.
They rigidly adhered to the Law of Moses as revealed in the Torah, or first five books of the Old Testament. Their rigid adherence was, in part, a means to ensure their retention of political power. They believed that by virtue of a literal interpretation of the Torah their status as an aristocracy was protected. They did not consider the contents of any of the other books of the Old Testament as binding.
Their religious practices principally centered around the cultic Temple sacrifices and offerings as well as the observance of the various religious festivals that were prescribed in the Torah.
The Sadducees disappeared from history soon after the destruction of the Temple by the Romans in 70 AD.
The Pharisees
What the Levitical priesthood was to the Sadducees, the scribes (lawyers) and rabbis (teachers) were to the Pharisees. Indeed, from the Torah scholars rose the party of the Pharisees.
The Pharisaic scribes and rabbis taught that their forefathers had imparted an “oral tradition” of the Torah, also referred to as the “tradition of the elders” (terms which are referenced in the gospel accounts). This oral tradition contained 613 precepts of the Law, which all Pharisees studied and rigorously sought to comply with in their daily lives.
Originally, the Pharisees were small in number. But over time their numbers and influence grew to the point that, at the outset of the common era, they became the most politically dominant sect within all Jewish society.
To sum up, the Sadducees were the far more conservative party in their religious practices and consequently far more narrowly focused than the Pharisees, who were very progressive in their religious thought.
Two Distinct Systems of Celebrating the Feasts of Passover and Unleavened Bread
With this background, let’s turn to how the celebrations of the feasts of Passover and Unleavened Bread were observed, their differences, and the implications this had on God’s plan for our salvation.
The Aristocratic Method as practiced by the Sadducees
The Sadducees, as well as Jesus and His disciples, followed the Aristocratic method of celebrating the feasts, as prescribed by God to Moses throughout seven consecutive days. On the first of these days, which corresponded to the 14th day of Nisan, the feast of Passover was celebrated.
Recall that for the Jewish people of that time, the new day commenced at sunset. According to this, it was during the twilight hour of that day that the Passover lambs were to be sacrificed, which is the opening hour of the day. Here are God’s instructions to Moses concerning the Passover sacrifice:
Your lamb must be a year-old male and without blemish. You will keep it until the fourteenth day of this month (Nisan), and then, with the whole community of Israel assembled, it will be slaughtered during the evening twilight. This day will be a day of remembrance for you, which your future generations will celebrate with pilgrimage to the LORD; you will celebrate it as a statute forever. (Ex. 12:5a, 6 and 14)
So, for those that followed the Aristocratic method, the lambs were sacrificed at the beginning of the 14th day of Nisan, from sunset to the end of the evening twilight, when the sunlight disappeared and stars became visible. Once the twilight was over, the Passover Seder (meal) would commence.
The first of the seven days of these two consecutive feasts was Passover, while the feast of Unleavened Bread was celebrated for the following six days. All seven days required that only unleavened bread be eaten, thus comprising seven consecutive days of unleavened bread, as outlined in The Book of Deuteronomy:
You shall offer the Passover sacrifice from your flock and your herd to the LORD, your God, in the place the LORD will choose as the dwelling place of his name. You shall not eat leavened bread with it. For seven days you shall eat with it only unleavened bread, the bread of affliction, so that you remember as long as you live the day you left the land of Egypt; for in hurried flight you left the land of Egypt. (Dt. 16:2-3)
For six days you shall eat unleavened bread, on the seventh day there shall be a solemn assembly for the LORD, your God; on that day you shall not work. (Dt. 16:8)
As we see here, the first of these six days is Passover, and the seventh day, in addition to being a high Sabbath day, was also a day that unleavened bread was eaten—for a total of seven days of consuming only unleavened bread.
According to the Torah, both the day of Passover and the seventh day of these combined feasts were high Sabbath days, where no heavy work was to be done. That Passover was a high Sabbath day is very relevant to understanding its effect on God’s plan for our salvation, which we will revisit later.
With the Pharisee’s ascendancy to power in 6 AD came the suppression of the practice of the Aristocratic method. Jesus followed the Aristocratic method when celebrating the Lord’s Supper, though as a rabbi He was tangentially affiliated with the Pharisaic sect.
Now let’s turn to how the Pharisees celebrated the feasts.
The Hasidic Method as practiced by the Pharisees
Since the first century AD, the Hasidic method of celebrating the Passover and the seven days of Unleavened Bread has been the most prevalent among the Jewish people. To begin its analysis, unlike the Aristocratic method’s seven-day celebration, in the Hasidic method, the celebration is eight days: Passover, which they called the Day of Preparation, followed by seven days of Unleavened Bread.
Under this method, the Passover lamb was sacrificed on the afternoon of the fourteenth day of Nisan, despite the clear wording in Exodus 12:6 calling for a twilight sacrifice. Consequently, this change in the timing of the lamb sacrifices means that their sacrifice would have corresponded to the exact time of our Lord’s crucifixion and death on the cross.
Pursuant to the Hasidic method, the Passover Seder (meal) was to be celebrated on the fifteenth day of Nisan, which corresponded to the first day of the feast of Unleavened Bread—a full 24 hours after the Passover Seder was to be celebrated by those observing the Aristocratic method. In accordance with the Hasidic method, the 15th day of Nisan—not the 14th day—was a holy day in which no heavy work was to be performed. This difference in the holy day observance between the two methods is critically important, as you will soon see.
The issues involved in this dispute are too numerous to fully explore here, but suffice to mention two that are central to this discussion. The first and most significant is the timing of the Passover lamb sacrifice and the subsequent eating of the Passover Seder. These methods varied greatly in their respective interpretations of Sacred Scripture. The second is whether the day of Passover counts as part of (Aristocratic) or in addition to (Hasidic) the seven days of unleavened bread.
How does this controversy enter into God’s plan for our salvation?
I’m sure you’ve heard the expression, “God draws straight with crooked lines.” Well, I can’t think of a better phrase to describe this circumstance.
Consider this: had there not been these competing methods of celebrating the Passover and had the Pharisees not ascended to power during the life of Christ, Jesus could not have been crucified on the Passover. Under the Aristocratic method, the Passover was a holy day—no work and certainly no executions could have been conducted had that method been in anything other than sporadic use. But pursuant to the Hasidic method, the holy day was the 15th day of Nisan not the 14th.
Why does the day of Jesus’ death matter? Well, the Old Testament is filled with “types” that foretell their fulfillment in the New Testament, the study of which is called typology. This is clearly seen in the death of Jesus, who was proclaimed by John the Baptist to be the “Lamb of God.” Jesus, the Lamb of God, is the fulfillment of the Passover lambs which serve as the “type” in the Old Testament.
Jesus’ death fulfills the original prescription for celebrating the Passover sacrifice as well as the meal of the victim as told in the Book of Exodus on the 14th day of Nisan!
The parallels between Christ’s sacrifice and that of the Passover lambs are unmistakable. Now add to this incredible parallel: that Christ’s death on the cross occurred at the very hour that the Passover lambs were being sacrificed in the Temple (according to the Hasidic method). It’s as though the baton was being passed at that very hour!
I can only marvel at the small window of time that all these necessary circumstances were in play in order to enable Jesus’ sacrifice to occur as it did. It couldn’t have happened before 6 AD nor after 70 AD, and only if both methods of celebrating Passover existed, while the Hasidic method needed to be the predominant practice at the time of Christ’s passion and death for this to happen. Talk about a grand design that only God could accomplish using crooked lines to draw straight His plan for our salvation!
Author’s Note: The principal source of information for this article comes from the Yahu Ranger Report. It can be found at Yahuranger.com.
Image from Wikimedia Commons
