Day Five, Life of Jesus – Part 30
If the Lord’s birth explains the Feast of Tabernacles, then 1500+ years of Passover celebrations anticipated His death. At the original Passover, the Israelites marked their doors with a ‘sign’ that caused the angel of death to ‘pass over’ their houses. The Hebrew letter tav was shaped at that time like a ‘t’, similar to a road sign, and the literal meaning of the letter was ‘sign.’[1] We speculate that the first Passover had the Israelites marking their doors with the sign of the cross in lamb’s blood. The final Passover blood sacrifice would be with the blood of the true Lamb of God on a cross.
The purpose of the Lord’s ministry to the people of the first century was to announce that the Kingdom of God was in their midst. His final Passover would ‘cut off’ the Kingdom, but fulfill His other purpose – to provide a way of salvation for the world.[2]
As you will recall, the Lord’s ministry as High Priest began at a Passover when He first cleared the moneychangers from the Temple in Jerusalem.[3] Entering the Temple on the eighth day of His ministry, He established Himself as High Priest. Jesus knew, of course, how short His time was. The years since the first Passover in the ‘second’ Temple at Jerusalem in 405 B.C. had ticked by one by one, fulfilling Daniel’s 70-week Prophecy. At the 434th year, the end of the ‘62 sevens’ of years, something monumental was destined to happen, according to Daniel. “And after the 62 weeks Messiah shall be cut off, but not for Himself.”[4]
To understand the events surrounding the final Passover in Daniel’s prophecy, and to reconcile the supposed discrepancies between the Gospels, it helps to understand the celebration of this feast in first century Judea. On the surface, it appears that there are differences between John’s gospel and the other gospels surrounding the events of the Passover. Again, however, we stress that you must read the gospel attributed to John as the ‘fill in the blanks’ gospel. Written much later than the other gospels, the writer covers missing – but important – events in the ministry of Jesus, while not bothering to repeat what was already part of the record. By marrying up John’s gospel with the others, we have a complete picture of the events that surrounded the crucifixion.
We start with the definition in Leviticus for the two holidays that by the first century had blended into one under the title ‘Passover.’
‘On the fourteenth day of the first month at twilight is the Lord’s Passover. And on the fifteenth day of the same month is the Feast of Unleavened Bread to the Lord; seven days you must eat unleavened bread.
‘On the first day you shall have a holy convocation; you shall do no customary work on it. But you shall offer an offering made by fire to the Lord for seven days. The seventh day shall be a holy convocation; you shall do no customary work on it.’[5]
The Biblical definition of the Feast of Unleavened Bread encompassed seven days, with the first and last day as a ‘holy convocation,’ which is to say a Sabbath.[6] These special Sabbaths could fall on any day of the week, not just Saturday. This is critical to understanding the timing of the events surrounding the crucifixion.
A Sabbath associated with a festival was a “High” Sabbath, and the day before a High Sabbath was the “preparation day” for the High Sabbath, regardless of the day of the week it fell on.[7] This gets confusing because the Hebrews did not have names for their days of the week other than ‘first day,’ ‘second day,’ etc. – that is until you get to Friday and Saturday. They named these days in the normal calendar the Preparation Day and the Sabbath Day. The first century writers knew there were these extra Sabbaths and Preparation Days associated with the holidays; to understand their writings completely, we need to stop thinking that Sabbaths were always on Saturday and the Preparation Day was always a Friday.
The year the crucifixion occurred (30AD) the High Sabbath, the 15th of Nisan, or Feast of Unleavened Bread, fell on a Thursday. Adding to our confusion is the fact that the Hebrew day began the night before at sundown. This means that the Passover ‘High’ Sabbath began at sunset on Wednesday.
The Preparation Day, the 14th of Nisan, the day they slaughtered the Passover lambs, was Wednesday that year; the 14th began on Tuesday evening at sunset. The best way to begin to get a picture of this week in your mind is with a picture. This first chart shows the events that would have been associated with the Passover week in 30AD. Shortly we will update the chart to fill in the Last Supper, Crucifixion, and Resurrection.
