He said, “Go into the city to a certain man, and say to him, ‘The Teacher says, My time is near; I will keep the Passover at your house with my disciples.’”
On the first day of Unleavened Bread, when the Passover lamb is sacrificed, his disciples said to him, “Where do you want us to go and make the preparations for you to eat the Passover ?”
So the disciples set out and went to the city, and found everything as he had told them; and they prepared the Passover meal.
I could quote Luke, too, but that would be piling on.
Yet John makes it clear Jesus was in custody before the Passover meal. It looks to me like John was making that point intentionally, with three references, like he had read the synoptic gospels and was seeking to correct the error.
I have had the same thought many times in this forum.
Actually, numbers are rarely the problem except when it comes to the various census’ in the OT. And they aren’t really wrong. They are mis-translated and computed incorrectly. It’s a shame that the Hebrew speakers never corrected it, since Numbers 1:2-3 tells how they are to be done, but they do it differently right away. I should probably give the solution here, but I want to see if anyone would look for the answer on their own.
No, it wasn’t Passover, as it was a day early and the bread they ate had leaven in it. You don’t dip unleavened bread. He longed to spend the feast with his disciples, but he knew that was impossible.
Matthew 26:23, John 13:26
Rabbis commonly held practice meals for Passover, to teach their disciples privately. Jesus died on the eve of Passover, at about the time the last lambs were being slaughtered for the meal.
Luke 23:54, John 19:31-42
In German we have a nice saying that goes :
“Eifersucht ist eine Leidenschaft
die mit Eifer sucht was Leiden schafft”
Similarly you can spend all day searching for “errors” in the bible to satisfy your need for proving the bible wrong. That is what every pubertarian does to justify their rejection of parental authority over their self. In other words it’s the activity of plucking apples from a tree to make a point. Instead if indulging myself in the stupidity of those primitive goat herders to make myself look clever I prefer to indulge myself in the wisdom held by those primitive goat herders like the explanation of genetically inheritable traits, the use of bar codes for stock control and the impact of mineral supplementation in successful animal breeding - instead of accusing them of stupid superstition for thinking sheep got speckled when showing them striped sticks. But then, the book is divinely inspired, and therefore a good diagnostic tool to reveal the “chronological snobbery” (thanks for @Marshall to give me my word of the year and sending me down a rabbit hole there) of its readers.
Klax
(The only thing that matters is faith expressed in love.)
50
There is no error. Jesus kept the Passover, with lamb of course, 24 hours before the Jews’ Passover. He authoritatively played fast and lose with scripture all the time. He then went on to fulfil, to be, the Passover. On the preparation day of the Passover, being slaughtered while the lambs were being slaughtered all day. His blood was on the door posts and lintels of of the world.
Appreciate the thoughts… but i think this may have given me some insight into what is going on here.
Thinking about your response, it occurs to me that this whole “contradiction” between what day Jesus died on is essentially like an urban legend. someone told the story, it caught on, took on a life of its own, to the point that people believe it by default, and assume its veracity to the idea that it is no longer fact checked, and have difficulty questioning it.
As mentioned above, passover lasted for 7 days, so the reference to the Jews keeping themselves kosher so they could eat passover the night of the crucifixion has nothing to do with whether passover would have also been eaten the night before.
As it is, both the synoptics and John agree explicitly that Jesus died the day before the Sabbath of passover week. Nonetheless, perhaps this urban legend that they record him dying on different days is simply so pervasive that people “see” a conflict when they read it regardless, and miss or reinterpret all the clues that should make that clear.
Perhaps i’ll give Ehrman that much credit, then… that he didn’t necessarily invent this idea, but he inherited this urban legend and recycled it without giving due diligence to fact checking it, or, maybe even fact checking it, his understanding that this was an established truism kept him from noticing what should have been obvious facts that would have corrected this theory.
The festival did last more than one day, yet the Passover meal itself was very specifically set to one night by the Law.
Leviticus 23:4-6
New Revised Standard Version
4 These are the appointed festivals of the Lord, the holy convocations, which you shall celebrate at the time appointed for them. 5 In the first month, on the fourteenth day of the month, at twilight,[a] there shall be a passover offering to the Lord, 6 and on the fifteenth day of the same month is the festival of unleavened bread to the Lord; seven days you shall eat unleavened bread.
Numbers 28:16-17
New Revised Standard Version
Offerings at Passover
16 On the fourteenth day of the first month there shall be a passover offering to the Lord. 17 And on the fifteenth day of this month is a festival; seven days shall unleavened bread be eaten.
I was raised in churches that taught inerrancy of the scriptures, then I saw errors that were undeniable.
There are errors more obvious than the dating of the Passover. One of the simplest to see involves the instructions Jesus gave the disciples when He sent them on a missionary journey. In one gospel they were instructed not to take a staff, in another they were told they could take a staff, and in another they were instructed not to acquire a staff.
I like Bruce Metzger’s view on this (and Metzger was quite the scholar who had a very high view of scripture). Metzger believed that we should not make claims for the Bible that it does not make for itself. I will see if I can locate and post Daniel Wallace’s comment on that.
“In 1992, when Bruce Metzger was on campus at Dallas Seminary for a week, delivering the Griffith Thomas lectures, students would often ask him whether he embraced inerrancy. Frankly, I thought their question was a bit uncharitable since they already knew the answer (he does not). But as one who, like Warfield before him, taught at Princeton Seminary, and as a generally Reformed scholar, Metzger certainly had earned the right to be heard on this issue. His response was simply that he did not believe in inerrancy because he felt it unwise to hold to any doctrines that are not affirmed in the Bible, and he didn’t see inerrancy being affirmed in the Bible. In other words, he denied Warfield’s first argument (viz., that inerrancy was held by the biblical writers). “
Right, but they would have eaten special food with special requirements for that whole week… which would certainly have explained why they didn’t want to get defiled in any way so that they could still eat on the days following the main Passover feast itself, no? Point is, even if it were the day after they ate the Passover lamb, they still would have refrained from entering the governors court “so that they would not be defiled, but could eat the Passover”, no?
Klax
(The only thing that matters is faith expressed in love.)
55
Jesus’ Passover was around dusk at the end of Nisan 13, the beginning of Nisan 14 - Tuesday April 24th 31 AD
He was murdered the following day time, on the same Jewish day, a high day preparation day, the next Roman day.
wiki …the Paschal lamb, eaten during the Passover Seder on the 15th of Nisan. Every family large enough to completely consume a young lamb or wild goat was required to offer one for sacrifice at the Jewish Temple on the afternoon of the 14th day of Nisan (Numbers 9:11), and eat it that night, which was the 15th of Nisan (Exodus 12:6). If the family was too small to finish eating the entire offering in one sitting, an offering was made for a group of families. …One had to be careful not to break any bones from the offering (Exodus 12:46), and none of the meat could be left over by morning (Exodus 12:10Exodus 23:18).
Jesus had already been crucified for three hours by noon. He remained so for another three, until roughly three hours before the commencement of the First Day of Unleavened Bread with the (Jews’) Passover, that evening, the 15th of Nisan - Wednesday April 25th 31 AD
That timing is all terribly poignant and flawlessly segues on to the Thursday (1) high day sabbath, the Friday (2) sabbath preparation day, Saturday (3) sabbath. YMMV.
I see your point but don’t agree that it makes sense to read “eat the Passover” as anything other than the special meal of Lamb eaten in a special way.
John 18:28
Jesus before Pilate
Then they took Jesus from Caiaphas to Pilate’s headquarters. It was early in the morning. They themselves did not enter the headquarters, so as to avoid ritual defilement and to be able to eat the Passover.
This is why that potential error is not early in the list of those errors which I typically bring up in discussions with people who believe in inerrancy.
That simple error about the staffs is one I discuss with inerrancy believers first.
After all, it only takes one error to disprove inerrancy.
In his recorded conversation with Peter Williams, Ehrman brought up the familiar discrepancy between the two stories of the death of Judas Iscariot. Now, since the later chapters of Matthew’s gospel seem to have a lot of detail indicating a source in the priestly circles, I go along with Matthew and take the Acts account to be Luke repeating a tale he was told, with an element of truth (about a purchase of a field) but also some inaccuracies. It’s a matter of judgement, and concerns what is certainly a peripheral topic of no great importance to the Gospel message.