Map of New Testament Jerusalem, outlining the Old City walls and subsequent enclosures added by Herod the Great and Agrippa I. Click map to enlarge. Map courtesy James Tabor.

On Wednesday Jesus began to make plans for Passover. He sent two of his disciples into the city to prepare a large second-­story guest room where he could gather secretly and safely with his inner group. He knew someone with such a room available and he had prearranged for its use.

Christian pilgrims today are shown a Crusader site known as the Cenacle or “Upper Room” on the Western Hill of Jerusalem that the Crusaders misnamed “Mount Zion.” This area was part of the “Upper City” where Herod had built his palace. It is topographically higher than even the Temple Mount.

It was the grandest section of ancient Jerusalem with broad streets and plazas and the palatial homes of the wealthy. Bargil Pixner and others have also argued that the southwest edge of Mt Zion contained an “Essene Quarter,” with more modest dwellings and its own “Essene” Gate mentioned by Josephus – see his article “Jerusalem’s Essene Gateway“.

Jesus tells his two disciples to “follow a man carrying a jug of water,” who will enter the city, and then enter a certain house. The only water source was in the southern part of the lower city of Jerusalem, the recently uncovered Pool of Siloam. This mysterious man apparently walked up the slope of Mt Zion and entered the city–likely at the Essene Gate. The house is large enough to have an upper story and likely belonged to a wealthy sympathizer of Jesus, perhaps associated with the Essenes. Later this property became the HQ of the Jesus movement led by James the brother of Jesus – see Pixner’s article “The Church of the Apostles Found on Mt Zion”.

Later Christian tradition put Jesus’ last meal with his disciples on Thursday evening and his crucifixion on Friday. We now know that is one day off. Jesus’ last meal was Wednesday night, and he was crucified on Thursday, the 14th of the Jewish month Nisan. The Passover meal itself was eaten Thursday night, at sundown, as the 15th of Nisan began. Jesus never ate that Passover meal. He had died at 3 p.m. on Thursday.

The confusion arose because all the gospels say that there was a rush to get his body off the cross and buried before sundown because the “Sabbath” was near. Everyone assumed the reference to the Sabbath had to be Saturday—so the crucifixion must have been on a Friday. However, as Jews know, the day of Passover itself is also a “Sabbath” or rest day—no matter what weekday it falls on. In the year a.d. 30, Friday the 15th of the Nisan was also a Sabbath—so two Sabbaths occurred back to back—Friday and Saturday. Matthew seems to know this as he says that the women who visited Jesus’ tomb came early Sunday morning “after the Sabbaths”—the original Greek is plural (Matthew 28:1).

As is often the case, the gospel of John preserves a more accurate chronology of what went on. John specifies that the Wednesday night “last supper” was “before the festival of Passover.” He also notes that when Jesus’ accusers delivered him to be crucified on Thursday morning they would not enter ­Pilate’s courtyard because they would be defiled and would not be able to eat the Passover that evening (John 18:28). John knows that the Jews would be eating their traditional Passover, or Seder meal, Thursday evening.

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Reading Mark, Matthew, and Luke one can get the impression that the “last supper” was the Passover meal. Some have even argued that Jesus might have eaten the Passover meal a day early—knowing ahead of time that he would be dead. But the fact is, Jesus ate no Passover meal in 30 CE. When the Passover meal began at sundown on Thursday, Jesus was dead. He had been hastily put in a tomb until after the festival when a proper funeral could be arranged.

There are some hints outside of ­John’s gospel that such was the case. In Luke, for example, Jesus tells his followers at that last meal: “I earnestly wanted to eat this Passover with you before I suffer but I ­won’t eat it until it is fulfilled in the kingdom of God” (Luke 22:14–16). A later copyist of the manuscript inserted the word “again” to make it say “I ­won’t eat it again,” since the tradition had developed that Jesus did observe Passover that night and changed its observance to the Christian Eucharist or Mass. Another indication that this is not a Passover meal is that all our records report that Jesus shared “a loaf of bread” with his disciples, using the Greek word (artos) that refers to an ordinary loaf—not to the unleavened flatbread or matzos that Jews eat with their Passover meals. Also, when Paul refers to the “last supper” he significantly does not say “on the night of Passover,” but rather “on the night Jesus was betrayed,” and he also mentions the “loaf of bread” (1 Corinthians 11:23). If this meal had been the Passover, Paul would have surely wanted to say that, but he does not.

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As late as Wednesday morning Jesus had still intended to eat the Passover on Thursday night. When he sent his two disciples into the city he instructed them to begin to make the preparations. His enemies had determined not to try to arrest him during the feast “lest there be a riot of the people” (Mark 14:2). That meant he was likely “safe” for the next week, since the “feast” included the seven days of Unleavened Bread that followed the Passover meal. Passover is the most family-­oriented festival in Jewish tradition. As head of his household Jesus would have gathered with his mother, his sisters, the women who had come with him from Galilee, perhaps some of his close supporters in Jerusalem, and his Council of Twelve. It is inconceivable that a Jewish head of a household would eat the Passover segregated from his family with twelve male disciples. This was no Passover meal. Something had gone terribly wrong so that all his Passover plans were changed.

Jesus had planned a special meal Wednesday evening alone with his Council of Twelve in the upper room of the guesthouse in the lower city. The events of the past few days had brought things to a crisis and he knew the confrontation with the authorities was unavoidable. In the coming days he expected to be arrested, delivered to the Romans, and possibly crucified. He had intentionally chosen the time and the place—Passover in Jerusalem—to confront the powers that be. There was much of a private nature to discuss with those upon whom he most depended in the critical days ahead. He firmly believed that if he and his followers offered themselves up, placing their fate in ­God’s hands, that the Kingdom of God would manifest itself. He had intentionally fulfilled two of Zechariah’s prophecies—riding into the city as King on the foal, and symbolically removing the “traders” from the “house of God.”

At some point that day Jesus had learned that Judas Iscariot, one of his trusted Council of Twelve, had struck a deal with his enemies to have Jesus arrested whenever there was an opportunity to get him alone, away from the crowds. How Jesus knew of the plot we are not told but during the meal he said openly, “One of you who is eating with me will betray me” (Mark 14:18). His life seemed to be unfolding according to some scriptural plan. Had not David written in the Psalms, “Even my bosom friend, in whom I trusted, who ate of my bread, has lifted the heel against me” (Psalm 41:9). History has a strange way of repeating itself. Over a hundred years earlier, the Teacher of Righteousness who led the Dead Sea Scroll community had quoted that very Psalm when one of his inner “Council” had betrayed him.

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Ironically our earliest account of that last meal on Wednesday night comes from Paul, not from any of our gospels. In a letter to his followers in the Greek city of Corinth, written around a.d. 54, Paul passes on a tradition that he says he “received” from Jesus: “Jesus on the night he was betrayed took a loaf of bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and said, ‘This is my body that is broken for you. Do this in remembrance of me.’ In the same way he took the cup also, after supper, saying, ‘This cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me’” (1 Corinthians 11:23–25).

These words, which are familiar to Christians as part of the Eucharist or the Mass, are repeated with only slight variations in Mark, Matthew, and Luke. They represent the epitome of Christian faith, the pillar of the Christian Gospel: all humankind is saved from sins by the sacrificed body and blood of Jesus. What is the historical likelihood that this tradition, based on what Paul said he “received” from Jesus, represents what Jesus said at that last meal? As surprising as it might sound, there are some legitimate problems to consider.

Read Andrew McGowan’s article “The Hungry Jesus,” in which he challenges the tradition that Jesus was a welcoming host at meals, in Bible History Daily.

The Catacombs of Santa Priscilla features a fresco in the Greek Chapel of a banquet dating to the 3rd century – possibly referencing the Eucharistic banquet – with seven figures including a young man breaking bread and a veiled woman. Image courtesy James Tabor.

At every Jewish meal, bread is broken, wine is shared, and blessings are said over each—but the idea of eating human flesh and drinking blood, even symbolically, is completely alien to Judaism. The Torah specifically forbids the consuming of blood, not just for Israelites but anyone. Noah and his descendants, as representatives of all humanity, were first given the prohibition against “eating blood” (Genesis 9:4). Moses had warned, “If anyone of the house of Israel or the Gentiles who reside among them eats any blood I will set my face against that person who eats blood and will cut that person off from the people” (Leviticus 17:10). James, the brother of Jesus, later mentions this as one of the “necessary requirements” for non-­Jews to join the Nazarene community—they are not to eat blood (Acts 15:20). These restrictions concern the blood of animals. Consuming human flesh and blood was not forbidden, it was simply inconceivable. This general sensitivity to the very idea of “drinking blood” precludes the likelihood that Jesus would have used such
symbols.

The Essene community at Qumran described in one of its scrolls a “messianic banquet” of the future at which the Priestly Messiah and the Davidic Messiah sit together with the community and bless their sacred meal of bread and wine, passing it to the community of believers, as a celebration of the Kingdom of God. They would surely have been appalled at any symbolism suggesting the bread was human flesh and the wine was blood. Such an idea simply could not have come from Jesus as a Jew.

So where does this language originate? If it first surfaces in Paul, and he did not in fact get it from Jesus, then what was its source? The closest parallels are certain Greco-­Roman magical rites. We have a Greek papyrus that records a love spell in which a male pronounces certain incantations over a cup of wine that represents the blood that the Egyptian god Osiris had given to his consort Isis to make her feel love for him. When his lover drinks the wine, she symbolically unites with her beloved by consuming his blood. In another text the wine is made into the flesh of Osiris. The symbolic eating of “flesh” and drinking of “blood” was a magical rite of union in Greco-­Roman culture.

Read Jonathan Klawans’s Bible Review article Was Jesus’ Last Supper a Seder? and his updated article Jesus’ Last Supper Still Wasn’t a Passover Seder Meal online for free in Bible History Daily.

We have to consider that Paul grew up in the Greco-­Roman culture of the city of Tarsus in Asia Minor, outside the land of Israel. He never met or talked to Jesus. The connection he claims to Jesus is a “visionary” one, not Jesus as a flesh-and-blood human being walking the earth. See my book, Paul and Jesus for a full elaboration of the implications of Paul’s visionary revelations. When the Twelve met to replace Judas, after Jesus had been killed, they insisted that to be part of their group one had to have been with Jesus from the time of John the Baptizer through his crucifixion (Acts 1:21–22). Seeing visions and hearing voices were not accepted as qualifications for an apostle.

Second, and even more telling, the gospel of John recounts the events of that last Wednesday night meal but there is absolutely no reference to these words of Jesus instituting this new ceremony of the Eucharist. If Jesus in fact had inaugurated the practice of eating bread as his body, and drinking wine as his blood at this “last supper” how could John possibly have left it out? What John writes is that Jesus sat down to the supper, by all indications an ordinary Jewish meal. After supper he got up, took a basin of water and a cloth, and began to wash his disciples’ feet as an example of how a Teacher and Master should act as a servant—even to his disciples. Jesus then began to talk about how he was to be betrayed and John tells us that Judas abruptly left the meal.

Mark’s gospel is very close in its theological ideas to those of Paul. It seems likely that Mark, writing a decade after ­Paul’s account of the last supper, inserts this “eat my body” and “drink my blood” tradition into his gospel, influenced by what Paul has claimed to have received. Matthew and Luke both base their narratives wholly upon Mark, and Luke is an unabashed advocate of Paul as well. Everything seems to trace back to Paul. As we will see, there is no evidence that the original Jewish followers of Jesus, led by Jesus’ brother James, headquartered in Jerusalem, ever practiced any rite of this type. Like all Jews they did sanctify wine and bread as part of a sacred meal, and they likely looked back to the “night he was betrayed,” remembering that last meal with Jesus.

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What we really need to resolve this matter is an independent source of some type, one that is Christian but not influenced by Paul, that might shed light on the original practice of Jesus’ followers. Fortunately, in 1873 in a library at Constantinople, just such a text turned up. It is called the Didache and dates to the early 2nd century CE. It had been mentioned by early church writers but had disappeared until a Greek priest, Father Bryennios, discovered it in an archive of old manuscripts quite by accident. The title Didache in Greek means “Teaching” and its full title is “The Teaching of the Twelve Apostles.” It is a type of early Christian “instruction manual” probably written for candidates for Christian baptism to study. It has lots of ethical instructions and exhortations but also sections on baptism and the Eucharist—the sacred meal of bread and wine. And that is where the surprise comes. It offers the following blessings over wine and bread:

With respect to the Eucharist you shall give thanks as follows. First with respect to the cup: “We give you thanks our Father for the holy vine of David, your child which you made known to us through Jesus your child. To you be the glory forever.” And with respect to the bread: “We give you thanks our Father for the life and knowledge that you made known to us through Jesus your child. To you be the glory forever.”

Notice there is no mention of the wine representing blood or the bread representing flesh. And yet this is a record of the early Christian Eucharist meal! This text reminds us very much of the descriptions of the sacred messianic meal in the Dead Sea Scrolls. Here we have a messianic celebration of Jesus as the Davidic Messiah and the life and knowledge that he has brought to the community. Evidently this community of Jesus’ followers knew nothing about the ceremony that Paul advocates. If ­Paul’s practice had truly come from Jesus surely this text would have included it.

There is another important point in this regard. In Jewish tradition it is the cup of wine that is blessed first, then the bread. That is the order we find here in the Didache. But in ­Paul’s account of the ­“Lord’s Supper” he has Jesus bless the bread first, then the cup of wine—just the reverse. It might seem an unimportant detail until one examines ­Luke’s account of the words of Jesus at the meal. Although he basically follows the tradition from Paul, unlike Paul Luke reports first a cup of wine, then the bread, and then another cup of wine! The bread and the second cup of wine he interprets as the “body” and “blood” of Jesus. But with respect to the first cup—in the order one would expect from Jewish tradition—there is nothing said about it representing “blood.” Rather Jesus says, “I tell you that from now on I will not drink of the fruit of the vine until the kingdom comes” (Luke 22:18). This tradition of the first cup, found now only in Luke, is a leftover clue of what must have been the original tradition before the Pauline version was inserted, now confirmed by the Didache.

More by James Tabor in Bible History Daily

That Other “King of the Jews”

Can a Pre-Christian Version of the Book of Revelation be Recovered?

The “Strange” Ending of the Gospel of Mark and Why It Makes All the Difference

The Making of a Messiah

Understood in this light, this last meal makes historical sense. Jesus told his closest followers, gathered in secret in the Upper Room, that he will not share another meal with them until the Kingdom of God comes. He knows that Judas will initiate events that very night, leading to his arrest. His hope and prayer is that the next time they sit down together to eat, giving the traditional Jewish blessing over wine and bread—the Kingdom of God will have come.

Since Jesus met only with his Council of Twelve for that final private meal, then James as well as Jesus’ other three brothers would have been present. This is confirmed in a lost text called the Gospel of the Hebrews that was used by Jewish-­Christians who rejected ­Paul’s teachings and authority. It survives only in a few quotations that were preserved by Christian writers such as Jerome. In one passage we are told that James the brother of Jesus, after drinking from the cup Jesus passed around, pledged that he too would not eat or drink again until he saw the kingdom arrive. So here we have textual evidence of a tradition that remembers James as being present at the last meal.

In the gospel of John there are cryptic references to James. Half a dozen times John mentions a mysterious unnamed figure that he calls “the disciple whom Jesus loved.” The two are very close; in fact this unnamed disciple is seated next to Jesus either at his right or left hand. He leaned back and put his head on Jesus’ breast during the meal (John 13:23). He is the one to whom Jesus whispers that Judas is the betrayer. Even though tradition holds that this is John the fisherman, one of the sons of Zebedee, it makes much better sense that such intimacy was shared between Jesus and his younger brother James. After all, from the few stories we have about John son of Zebedee, he has a fiery and ambitious personality—Jesus had nicknamed him and his brother the “sons of Thunder.” They are the two that had tried to obtain the two chief seats on the Council of Twelve, one asking for the right hand, the other the left. On another occasion they asked Jesus for permission to call down fire from heaven to consume a village that had not accepted their preaching (Luke 9:54). On both occasions Jesus had rebuked them. The image we get of John son of Zebedee is quite opposite from the tender intimacy of the “disciple whom Jesus loved.” No matter how ingrained the image might be in Christian imagination, it makes no sense to imagine John son of Zebedee seated next to Jesus, and leaning on his breast.

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Late that night, after the meal and its conversations, Jesus led his band of eleven disciples outside the lower city, across the Kidron Valley, to a thick secluded grove of olive trees called Gethsemane at the foot of the Mount of Olives. Judas knew the place well because Jesus often used it as a place of solitude and privacy to meet with his disciples (John 18:2). Judas had gone into the city to alert the authorities of this rare opportunity to confront Jesus at night and away from the crowds.

It was getting late and Jesus’ disciples were tired and drowsy. Sleep was the last thing on Jesus’ mind, and he was never to sleep again. His all-­night ordeal was about to begin. He began to feel very distressed, fearful, and deeply grieved. He wanted to pray for strength for the trials that he knew would soon begin. Mark tells us that he prayed that if possible the “cup would be removed from him” (Mark 14:36). Jesus urged his disciples to pray with him but the meal, the wine, and the late hour took their toll. They all fell asleep.

Dr. James Tabor is Chair of the Department of Religious Studies at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte where he is professor of Christian origins and ancient Judaism. Since earning his Ph.D. at the University of Chicago in 1981, Tabor has combined his work on ancient texts with extensive field work in archaeology in Israel and Jordan, including work at Qumran, Sepphoris, Masada, Wadi el-Yabis in Jordan. Over the past decade he has teamed up with with Shimon Gibson to excavate the “John the Baptist” cave at Suba, the “Tomb of the Shroud” discovered in 2000, Mt Zion and, along with Rami Arav, he has been involved in the re-exploration of two tombs in East Talpiot including the controversial “Jesus tomb.” Tabor is the author of the popular Taborblog, and several of his recent posts have been featured in Bible History Daily as well as the Huffington Post. His latest book, Paul and Jesus: How the Apostle Transformed Christianity has become a immediately popular with specialists and non-specialists alike. You can find links to all of Dr. Tabor’s web pages, books, and projects at jamestabor.com.

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Was Jesus’ Last Supper a Seder?

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The post The Last Days of Jesus: A Final “Messianic” Meal appeared first on Biblical Archaeology Society.

“It’s About Time—Easter Time”

by Ben Witherington III

One of the problems in reading ancient texts like the Bible in the 21st century is the danger of anachronism—by which I mean bringing unhelpful modern ideas and expectations to our readings. This problem becomes all the more acute when dealing with ancient texts on which much historical import hinges.

On what day did Jesus rise? After three days or on the third day? Pictured is Henry Osawa Tanner’s moody rendition of the scene, “The Three Marys,” painted in 1910, and on display at the Fisk University Galleries in Nashville. Photo: Fisk University Galleries, Nashville, Tennessee.

Take a few examples from the Gospels that may help us read the stories about Jesus’ last week of life with more insight.

Some texts tell us that Jesus predicted he would rise “after three days.” Others say he would rise “on the third day.” In Matthew 12:40 Jesus mentions, “three days and three nights,” but this is just part of a general analogy with the story of what happened with Jonah and the whale, and as such the time reference shouldn’t be pressed. Jesus is just saying, “It will be like the experience of Jonah.”

On the other hand, in Mark 8:31 Jesus says, “The Son of Man will rise again after three days.” He mentions the same event in John 2:19 as “in three days,” and on various occasions the Gospel writers tell us Jesus used the phrase “on the third day” (see, e.g., Matthew 16:21; 17:23; 20:19; Luke 24:46). On the face of it, this might seem to involve a flat contradiction. While both predictions could be wrong, is it really possible both could be right?

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The problem with this sort of modern reasoning is that it assumes the Gospel writers intended always to write with precision on this matter. In fact the phrase “after three days” in the New Testament can simply mean “after a while” or “after a few days” without any clear specificity beyond suggesting several days, in this case parts of three days, would be involved.

In fact, the Hebrew Bible provides us with some clues about these sorts of differences. Second Chronicles 10:5, 12 clearly says, “Come to me again after three days … So … all the people came to Rehoboam on the third day because the king had said ‘Come to me again the third day.’” Apparently “after three days” means the very same thing as “on the third day” in this text.

Is this just carelessness, or is it in fact an example of typical imprecision when it comes to speaking about time? I would suggest that the phrase “after three days” is a more general or imprecise way of speaking, whereas “on the third day” is somewhat more specific (though it still doesn’t tell us when on the third day). These texts were not written to meet our modern exacting standards when it comes to time.

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One of the keys to interpreting the time references in the New Testament is being aware that most of the time, the time references are not precise, and we must allow the ancient author to be general when he wants to be general and more specific when he wants to be more specific. Especially when you have both sorts of references to the time span between Jesus’ death and resurrection in one book by one author, and indeed sometimes even within close proximity to each other, one should take the hint that these texts were not written according to our modern exacting expectations when it comes to time references.

Isn’t it about time we let these authors use language, including time language, in the way that was customary in their own era? I would suggest it’s high time we showed these ancient authors the respect they deserve and read them with an awareness of the conventions they followed when writing ancient history or ancient biography and not impose our later genre conventions on them.¹

“Biblical Views: It’s About Time—Easter Time” by Ben Witherington III originally appeared in Biblical Archaeology Review, May/June 2016. The article was first republished in Bible History Daily on April 18, 2016.

Ben Witherington III is the Amos Professor of New Testament for Doctoral Studies at Asbury Theological Seminary in Kentucky and on the doctoral faculty at St. Andrews University, Scotland.

Notes

1. For help with understanding how to read the Bible in light of its original contexts, see Ben Witherington III, Reading and Understanding the Bible (Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, 2014).

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The post On What Day Did Jesus Rise? appeared first on Biblical Archaeology Society.

A blanket of snow covers the little town of Bethlehem, in Pieter Bruegel’s oil painting from 1566. Although Jesus’ birth is celebrated every year on December 25, Luke and the other gospel writers offer no hint about the specific time of year he was born. Photo: Scala/Art Resource, NY.

The Bible offers few clues: Celebrations of Jesus’ Nativity are not mentioned in the Gospels or Acts; the date is not given, not even the time of year. The biblical reference to shepherds tending their flocks at night when they hear the news of Jesus’ birth (Luke 2:8) might suggest the spring lambing season; in the cold month of December, on the other hand, sheep might well have been corralled. Yet most scholars would urge caution about extracting such a precise but incidental detail from a narrative whose focus is theological rather than calendrical.

The extrabiblical evidence from the first and second century is equally spare: There is no mention of birth celebrations in the writings of early Christian writers such as Irenaeus (c. 130–200) or Tertullian (c. 160–225). Origen of Alexandria (c. 165–264) goes so far as to mock Roman celebrations of birth anniversaries, dismissing them as “pagan” practices—a strong indication that Jesus’ birth was not marked with similar festivities at that place and time.¹ As far as we can tell, Christmas was not celebrated at all at this point.

This stands in sharp contrast to the very early traditions surrounding Jesus’ last days. Each of the Four Gospels provides detailed information about the time of Jesus’ death. According to John, Jesus is crucified just as the Passover lambs are being sacrificed. This would have occurred on the 14th of the Hebrew month of Nisan, just before the Jewish holiday began at sundown (considered the beginning of the 15th day because in the Hebrew calendar, days begin at sundown). In Matthew, Mark and Luke, however, the Last Supper is held after sundown, on the beginning of the 15th. Jesus is crucified the next morning—still, the 15th.^a

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Easter, a much earlier development than Christmas, was simply the gradual Christian reinterpretation of Passover in terms of Jesus’ Passion. Its observance could even be implied in the New Testament (1 Corinthians 5:7–8: “Our paschal lamb, Christ, has been sacrificed. Therefore let us celebrate the festival…”); it was certainly a distinctively Christian feast by the mid-second century C.E., when the apocryphal text known as the Epistle to the Apostles has Jesus instruct his disciples to “make commemoration of [his] death, that is, the Passover.”

Jesus’ ministry, miracles, Passion and Resurrection were often of most interest to first- and early-second-century C.E. Christian writers. But over time, Jesus’ origins would become of increasing concern. We can begin to see this shift already in the New Testament. The earliest writings—Paul and Mark—make no mention of Jesus’ birth. The Gospels of Matthew and Luke provide well-known but quite different accounts of the event—although neither specifies a date. In the second century C.E., further details of Jesus’ birth and childhood are related in apocryphal writings such as the Infancy Gospel of Thomas and the Proto-Gospel of James.^b These texts provide everything from the names of Jesus’ grandparents to the details of his education—but not the date of his birth.

Finally, in about 200 C.E., a Christian teacher in Egypt makes reference to the date Jesus was born. According to Clement of Alexandria, several different days had been proposed by various Christian groups. Surprising as it may seem, Clement doesn’t mention December 25 at all. Clement writes: “There are those who have determined not only the year of our Lord’s birth, but also the day; and they say that it took place in the 28th year of Augustus, and in the 25th day of [the Egyptian month] Pachon [May 20 in our calendar] … And treating of His Passion, with very great accuracy, some say that it took place in the 16th year of Tiberius, on the 25th of Phamenoth [March 21]; and others on the 25th of Pharmuthi [April 21] and others say that on the 19th of Pharmuthi [April 15] the Savior suffered. Further, others say that He was born on the 24th or 25th of Pharmuthi [April 20 or 21].”²

Clearly there was great uncertainty, but also a considerable amount of interest, in dating Jesus’ birth in the late second century. By the fourth century, however, we find references to two dates that were widely recognized—and now also celebrated—as Jesus’ birthday: December 25 in the western Roman Empire and January 6 in the East (especially in Egypt and Asia Minor). The modern Armenian church continues to celebrate Christmas on January 6; for most Christians, however, December 25 would prevail, while January 6 eventually came to be known as the Feast of the Epiphany, commemorating the arrival of the magi in Bethlehem. The period between became the holiday season later known as the 12 days of Christmas.

The earliest mention of December 25 as Jesus’ birthday comes from a mid-fourth-century Roman almanac that lists the death dates of various Christian bishops and martyrs. The first date listed, December 25, is marked: natus Christus in Betleem Judeae: “Christ was born in Bethlehem of Judea.”³ In about 400 C.E., Augustine of Hippo mentions a local dissident Christian group, the Donatists, who apparently kept Christmas festivals on December 25, but refused to celebrate the Epiphany on January 6, regarding it as an innovation. Since the Donatist group only emerged during the persecution under Diocletian in 312 C.E. and then remained stubbornly attached to the practices of that moment in time, they seem to represent an older North African Christian tradition.

In the East, January 6 was at first not associated with the magi alone, but with the Christmas story as a whole.

So, almost 300 years after Jesus was born, we finally find people observing his birth in mid-winter. But how had they settled on the dates December 25 and January 6?

There are two theories today: one extremely popular, the other less often heard outside scholarly circles (though far more ancient).⁴

The most loudly touted theory about the origins of the Christmas date(s) is that it was borrowed from pagan celebrations. The Romans had their mid-winter Saturnalia festival in late December; barbarian peoples of northern and western Europe kept holidays at similar times. To top it off, in 274 C.E., the Roman emperor Aurelian established a feast of the birth of Sol Invictus (the Unconquered Sun), on December 25. Christmas, the argument goes, is really a spin-off from these pagan solar festivals. According to this theory, early Christians deliberately chose these dates to encourage the spread of Christmas and Christianity throughout the Roman world: If Christmas looked like a pagan holiday, more pagans would be open to both the holiday and the God whose birth it celebrated.

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Despite its popularity today, this theory of Christmas’s origins has its problems. It is not found in any ancient Christian writings, for one thing. Christian authors of the time do note a connection between the solstice and Jesus’ birth: The church father Ambrose (c. 339–397), for example, described Christ as the true sun, who outshone the fallen gods of the old order. But early Christian writers never hint at any recent calendrical engineering; they clearly don’t think the date was chosen by the church. Rather they see the coincidence as a providential sign, as natural proof that God had selected Jesus over the false pagan gods.

It’s not until the 12th century that we find the first suggestion that Jesus’ birth celebration was deliberately set at the time of pagan feasts. A marginal note on a manuscript of the writings of the Syriac biblical commentator Dionysius bar-Salibi states that in ancient times the Christmas holiday was actually shifted from January 6 to December 25 so that it fell on the same date as the pagan Sol Invictus holiday.⁵ In the 18th and 19th centuries, Bible scholars spurred on by the new study of comparative religions latched on to this idea.⁶ They claimed that because the early Christians didn’t know when Jesus was born, they simply assimilated the pagan solstice festival for their own purposes, claiming it as the time of the Messiah’s birth and celebrating it accordingly.

More recent studies have shown that many of the holiday’s modern trappings do reflect pagan customs borrowed much later, as Christianity expanded into northern and western Europe. The Christmas tree, for example, has been linked with late medieval druidic practices. This has only encouraged modern audiences to assume that the date, too, must be pagan.

There are problems with this popular theory, however, as many scholars recognize. Most significantly, the first mention of a date for Christmas (c. 200) and the earliest celebrations that we know about (c. 250–300) come in a period when Christians were not borrowing heavily from pagan traditions of such an obvious character.

Granted, Christian belief and practice were not formed in isolation. Many early elements of Christian worship—including eucharistic meals, meals honoring martyrs and much early Christian funerary art—would have been quite comprehensible to pagan observers. Yet, in the first few centuries C.E., the persecuted Christian minority was greatly concerned with distancing itself from the larger, public pagan religious observances, such as sacrifices, games and holidays. This was still true as late as the violent persecutions of the Christians conducted by the Roman emperor Diocletian between 303 and 312 C.E.

This would change only after Constantine converted to Christianity. From the mid-fourth century on, we do find Christians deliberately adapting and Christianizing pagan festivals. A famous proponent of this practice was Pope Gregory the Great, who, in a letter written in 601 C.E. to a Christian missionary in Britain, recommended that local pagan temples not be destroyed but be converted into churches, and that pagan festivals be celebrated as feasts of Christian martyrs. At this late point, Christmas may well have acquired some pagan trappings. But we don’t have evidence of Christians adopting pagan festivals in the third century, at which point dates for Christmas were established. Thus, it seems unlikely that the date was simply selected to correspond with pagan solar festivals.

The December 25 feast seems to have existed before 312—before Constantine and his conversion, at least. As we have seen, the Donatist Christians in North Africa seem to have known it from before that time. Furthermore, in the mid- to late fourth century, church leaders in the eastern Empire concerned themselves not with introducing a celebration of Jesus’ birthday, but with the addition of the December date to their traditional celebration on January 6.⁷

Read Andrew McGowan’s article “The Hungry Jesus,” in which he challenges the tradition that Jesus was a welcoming host at meals, in Bible History Daily.

There is another way to account for the origins of Christmas on December 25: Strange as it may seem, the key to dating Jesus’ birth may lie in the dating of Jesus’ death at Passover. This view was first suggested to the modern world by French scholar Louis Duchesne in the early 20th century and fully developed by American Thomas Talley in more recent years.⁸ But they were certainly not the first to note a connection between the traditional date of Jesus’ death and his birth.

The baby Jesus flies down from heaven on the back of a cross, in this detail from Master Bertram’s 14th-century Annunciation scene. Jesus’ conception carried with it the promise of salvation through his death. It may be no coincidence, then, that the early church celebrated Jesus’ conception and death on the same calendar day: March 25, exactly nine months before December 25. Kunsthalle, Hamburg/Bridgeman Art Library, NY

Around 200 C.E. Tertullian of Carthage reported the calculation that the 14th of Nisan (the day of the crucifixion according to the Gospel of John) in the year Jesus died^c was equivalent to March 25 in the Roman (solar) calendar.⁹ March 25 is, of course, nine months before December 25; it was later recognized as the Feast of the Annunciation—the commemoration of Jesus’ conception.¹⁰ Thus, Jesus was believed to have been conceived and crucified on the same day of the year. Exactly nine months later, Jesus was born, on December 25.^d

This idea appears in an anonymous Christian treatise titled On Solstices and Equinoxes, which appears to come from fourth-century North Africa. The treatise states: “Therefore our Lord was conceived on the eighth of the kalends of April in the month of March [March 25], which is the day of the passion of the Lord and of his conception. For on that day he was conceived on the same he suffered.”¹¹ Based on this, the treatise dates Jesus’ birth to the winter solstice.

Augustine, too, was familiar with this association. In On the Trinity (c. 399–419) he writes: “For he [Jesus] is believed to have been conceived on the 25th of March, upon which day also he suffered; so the womb of the Virgin, in which he was conceived, where no one of mortals was begotten, corresponds to the new grave in which he was buried, wherein was never man laid, neither before him nor since. But he was born, according to tradition, upon December the 25th.”¹²

Learn about the magi in art and literature in “Witnessing the Divine“ by Robin M. Jensen, originally published in Bible Review and now available for free in Bible History Daily.

In the East, too, the dates of Jesus’ conception and death were linked. But instead of working from the 14th of Nisan in the Hebrew calendar, the easterners used the 14th of the first spring month (Artemisios) in their local Greek calendar—April 6 to us. April 6 is, of course, exactly nine months before January 6—the eastern date for Christmas. In the East, too, we have evidence that April was associated with Jesus’ conception and crucifixion. Bishop Epiphanius of Salamis writes that on April 6, “The lamb was shut up in the spotless womb of the holy virgin, he who took away and takes away in perpetual sacrifice the sins of the world.”¹³ Even today, the Armenian Church celebrates the Annunciation in early April (on the 7th, not the 6th) and Christmas on January 6.^e

Thus, we have Christians in two parts of the world calculating Jesus’ birth on the basis that his death and conception took place on the same day (March 25 or April 6) and coming up with two close but different results (December 25 and January 6).

Connecting Jesus’ conception and death in this way will certainly seem odd to modern readers, but it reflects ancient and medieval understandings of the whole of salvation being bound up together. One of the most poignant expressions of this belief is found in Christian art. In numerous paintings of the angel’s Annunciation to Mary—the moment of Jesus’ conception—the baby Jesus is shown gliding down from heaven on or with a small cross (see photo above of detail from Master Bertram’s Annunciation scene); a visual reminder that the conception brings the promise of salvation through Jesus’ death.

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In the end we are left with a question: How did December 25 become Christmas? We cannot be entirely sure. Elements of the festival that developed from the fourth century until modern times may well derive from pagan traditions. Yet the actual date might really derive more from Judaism—from Jesus’ death at Passover, and from the rabbinic notion that great things might be expected, again and again, at the same time of the year—than from paganism. Then again, in this notion of cycles and the return of God’s redemption, we may perhaps also be touching upon something that the pagan Romans who celebrated Sol Invictus, and many other peoples since, would have understood and claimed for their own, too.¹⁶

Andrew McGowan is Dean and President of the Berkeley Divinity School at Yale and McFaddin Professor of Anglican Studies at Yale Divinity School. Formerly, he was Warden and President of Trinity College at the University of Melbourne, and Joan Munro Professor of Historical Theology in Trinity’s Theological School within the University of Divinity. His work on early Christian thought and history includes Ascetic Eucharists: Food and Drink in Early Christian Ritual Meals (Oxford: Clarendon, 1999) and Ancient Christian Worship: Early Church Practices in Social, Historical, and Theological Perspective (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2014).

Notes

a. See Jonathan Klawans, “Was Jesus’ Last Supper a Seder?” Bible Review, October 2001.

b. See the following Bible Review articles: David R. Cartlidge, “The Christian Apocrypha: Preserved in Art,” Bible Review, June 1997; Ronald F. Hock and David R. Cartlidge, “The Favored One,” Bible Review, June 2001; and Charles W. Hedrick, “The 34 Gospels,” Bible Review, June 2002.

c. For more on dating the year of Jesus’ birth, see Leonora Neville, “Origins: Fixing the Millennium,” Archaeology Odyssey, January/February 2000.

d. The ancients were familiar with the 9-month gestation period based on the observance of women’s menstrual cycles, pregnancies and miscarriages.

e. In the West (and eventually everywhere), the Easter celebration was later shifted from the actual day to the following Sunday. The insistence of the eastern Christians in keeping Easter on the actual 14th day caused a major debate within the church, with the easterners sometimes referred to as the Quartodecimans, or “Fourteenthers.”

1. Origen, Homily on Leviticus 8.

2. Clement, Stromateis 1.21.145. In addition, Christians in Clement’s native Egypt seem to have known a commemoration of Jesus’ baptism—sometimes understood as the moment of his divine choice, and hence as an alternate “incarnation” story—on the same date (Stromateis 1.21.146). See further on this point Thomas J. Talley, Origins of the Liturgical Year, 2nd ed. (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 1991), pp. 118–120, drawing on Roland H. Bainton, “Basilidian Chronology and New Testament Interpretation,” Journal of Biblical Literature 42 (1923), pp. 81–134; and now especially Gabriele Winkler, “The Appearance of the Light at the Baptism of Jesus and the Origins of the Feast of the Epiphany,” in Maxwell Johnson, ed., Between Memory and Hope: Readings on the Liturgical Year (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2000), pp. 291–347.

3. The Philocalian Calendar.

4. Scholars of liturgical history in the English-speaking world are particularly skeptical of the “solstice” connection; see Susan K. Roll, “The Origins of Christmas: The State of the Question,” in Between Memory and Hope: Readings on the Liturgical Year (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2000), pp. 273–290, especially pp. 289–290.

5. A gloss on a manuscript of Dionysius Bar Salibi, d. 1171; see Talley, Origins, pp. 101–102.

6. Prominent among these was Paul Ernst Jablonski; on the history of scholarship, see especially Roll, “The Origins of Christmas,” pp. 277–283.

7. For example, Gregory of Nazianzen, Oratio 38; John Chrysostom, In Diem Natalem.

8. Louis Duchesne, Origines du culte Chrétien, 5th ed. (Paris: Thorin et Fontemoing, 1925), pp. 275–279; and Talley, Origins.

9. Tertullian, Adversus Iudaeos 8.

10. There are other relevant texts for this element of argument, including Hippolytus and the (pseudo-Cyprianic) De pascha computus; see Talley, Origins, pp. 86, 90–91.

11. De solstitia et aequinoctia conceptionis et nativitatis domini nostri iesu christi et iohannis baptistae.

12. Augustine, Sermon 202.

13. Epiphanius is quoted in Talley, Origins, p. 98.

14. b. Rosh Hashanah 10b–11a.

15. Talley, Origins, pp. 81–82.

16. On the two theories as false alternatives, see Roll, “Origins of Christmas.”

“How December 25 Became Christmas” by Andrew McGowan originally appeared in Bible Review, December 2002. The article was first republished in Bible History Daily in December 2012.

Related reading in Bible History Daily

Did Jesus Exist? Searching for Evidence Beyond the Bible

Where Was Jesus Born?

Christmas Stories in Christian Apocrypha

Has the Childhood Home of Jesus Been Found?

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How Early Christians Viewed the Birth of Jesus

Different Ways of Looking at the Birth of Jesus

The Scandal of Jesus’ Birth

The Magi and the Star

O Little Town of…Nazareth?

How Babies Were Made in Jesus’ Time

The post How December 25 Became Christmas appeared first on Biblical Archaeology Society.

While they were eating, Jesus took a loaf of bread, and after blessing it, he broke it, gave it to the disciples, and said, “Take, eat; this is my body.” Then he took a cup, and after giving thanks, he gave it to them, saying, “Drink from it, all of you; for this is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins.”
—Matthew 26:26–28

When was the first communion?

The event described in Matthew 26:26–28 (also in Mark 14:22–25 and Luke 22:14–23) is known as the Last Supper. It was Jesus’ last meal with his disciples before his crucifixion. In that meal, which was a Passover meal, Jesus gave bread and wine—representing his body and blood—to his disciples. These were symbols of his new covenant. Further, he charged his disciples to “do this in remembrance of me” (Luke 22:19), meaning Jesus’ followers were to partake of bread and wine and remember him. Jesus’ Last Supper in the Bible is the foundation for the Christian tradition of taking communion—known as the Lord’s Supper, the Holy Communion and the Eucharist.

Jesus’ Last Supper in the Bible. The Last Supper by Leonardo da Vinci portrays Jesus’ Last Supper with his disciples before his crucifixion.

Early Christians celebrated the Lord’s Supper as a full meal, but by the third century, it had ceased to be a banquet and had become a ritualized small meal instead. Steven Shisley examines how the Lord’s Supper transitioned from a full meal to a ritual in his Biblical Views column “From Supper to Sacrament: How the Last Supper Evolved” published in the March/April 2017 issue of Biblical Archaeology Review.

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Shisley explains that in the first and second centuries C.E., Christians usually gathered in individual homes for a communal evening meal to commemorate the Lord’s Supper. Although these meals generally fostered community, they sometimes led to disagreement, discord and debauchery. Shisley elaborates:

Early Christians participated in meals characterized by inclusivity, care for one another and unity (Acts 2:43–47; cf. Acts 6:1–7). But as Paul’s letters indicate, these idealistic practices at the Lord’s Supper sometimes became abused because Christians either practiced Jewish purity laws at the table (e.g., considering what types of foods were appropriate to consume), or they transformed the meal into a gathering modeled after Greco-Roman banquets by drinking too much wine (Galatians 2:11–14; cf. Romans 14–15; 1 Corinthians 11:17–34).

When was the first communion? The tradition of communion originated with the Last Supper in the Bible, when Jesus gave bread and wine to his disciples as symbols of the “new covenant.” This painting of the Last Supper appears in the cathedral of Sancti Spíritus, Cuba. Photo: “Cathedral of Sancti Spiritus, Cuba” by Anagoria is licensed under CC-by-3.0.

Such misuses of the Lord’s Supper factored into communion becoming more controlled and structured in the Christian Church; communion became less of a meal and more of a ritual. In his column, Shisley explores several additional reasons for this shift, one of which relates to the time of day that Christians gathered to assemble. During the third century, Christians began assembling in the morning:

“[T]he apologist Tertullian [c. 155–240 C.E.] recounts how his community in Carthage began to assemble in the mornings to participate in a separate Eucharistic ritual at an altar (De Corona 3). … According to Cyprian, a third-century bishop, Christians in Carthage regularly gathered as one large assembly in the morning at an altar for a Eucharistic sacrifice in buildings devoted to religious activities (Epistle 62.14–17; Epistle 33.4–5).”

The growing size of the Christian community and the desire for all local Christians to meet together, which often necessitated a formal religious structure larger than a house, also likely contributed to the Lord’s Supper becoming a ritualized meal.

To learn more about the Lord’s Supper and its development from a full meal to a ritual, read Steven Shisley’s Biblical Views column “From Supper to Sacrament: How the Last Supper Evolved” in the March/April 2017 issue of Biblical Archaeology Review.

BAS Library Members: Read the full column “From Supper to Sacrament: How the Last Supper Evolved” by Steven Shisley in the March/April 2017 issue of Biblical Archaeology Review.

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This Bible History Daily feature was originally published on April 10, 2017.

Related reading in Bible History Daily

Was Jesus’ Last Supper a Seder?

The Hungry Jesus

Did Jesus’ Last Supper Take Place Above the Tomb of David?

A Feast for the Senses … and the Soul

All-Access members, read more in the BAS Library

Biblical Views: From Supper to Sacrament: How the Last Supper Evolved

The Eucharist—A Sacrificial Formula Preserved

Da Vinci’s Enigmatic Last Supper

Was The Last Supper a Passover Seder?

The post When Was the First Communion? appeared first on Biblical Archaeology Society.

Traditional Views of Jesus’ Last Supper as a Passover Meal

With his disciples gathered around him, Jesus partakes of his Last Supper. The meal in this late-15th-century painting by the Spanish artist known only as the Master of Perea consists of lamb, unleavened bread and wine—all elements of the Seder feast celebrated on the first night of the Jewish Passover festival. The Gospels of Matthew, Mark and Luke appear to present Jesus’ Last Supper as a Seder. In John, however, the seven-day Passover festival does not begin until after Jesus is crucified. Jonathan Klawans suggests that the Passover Seder as we know it developed only after the time of Jesus. Christie’s Images/Superstock

Many people assume that Jesus’ Last Supper was a Seder, a ritual meal held in celebration of the Jewish holiday of Passover. And indeed, according to the Gospel of Mark 14:12, Jesus prepared for the Last Supper on the “first day of Unleavened Bread, when they sacrificed the Passover lamb.” If Jesus and his disciples gathered together to eat soon after the Passover lamb was sacrificed, what else could they possibly have eaten if not the Passover meal? And if they ate the Passover sacrifice, they must have held a Seder.

Three out of four of the canonical Gospels (Matthew, Mark and Luke) agree that the Last Supper was held only after the Jewish holiday had begun. Moreover, one of the best known and painstakingly detailed studies of the Last Supper—Joachim Jeremias’s book The Eucharistic Words of Jesus—lists no fewer than 14 distinct parallels between the Last Supper tradition and the Passover Seder.¹

The Passover Seder and Sacrifice

The Jewish holiday of Passover commemorates the Exodus from Egypt. The roots of the festival are found in Exodus 12, in which God instructs the Israelites to sacrifice a lamb at twilight on the 14th day of the Jewish month of Nisan, before the sun sets (Exodus 12:18). That night the Israelites are to eat the lamb with unleavened bread and bitter herbs. The lamb’s blood should be swabbed on their doorposts as a sign. God, seeing the sign, will then “pass over” the houses of the Israelites (Exodus 12:13), while smiting the Egyptians with the tenth plague, the killing of the first-born sons.

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A San Francisco seder. California Rabbi Jack Frankel and his family lift the first glass of wine during a Seder meal, held on the first night of Passover (and the second night in the Diaspora). The Seder commemorates the Exodus from Egypt. Throughout the meal, the biblical story is retold; the food is linked symbolically with the Exodus. Photo by Rodger Ressmeyer, San Francisco/Corbis.

Exodus 12 commands the Israelites to repeat this practice every year, performing the sacrifice during the day and then consuming it after the sun has set. (According to Jewish tradition, 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.) Exodus 12 further speaks of a seven-day festival, which begins when the sacrifice is consumed (Exodus 12:15).

Once the Israelites were settled in Israel, and once a Temple was built in Jerusalem, the original sacrifice described in Exodus 12 changed dramatically. Passover became one of the Jewish Pilgrimage festivals, and Israelites were expected to travel to Jerusalem to sacrifice a Passover lamb at the Temple during the afternoon of the 14th day, and then consume the Passover sacrifice once the sun had set, and the festival had formally begun on the 15th. This kind of celebration is described as having taken place during the reigns of Kings Hezekiah and Josiah (2 Chronicles 30 and 35).

As time passed, the practice continued to evolve. Eventually, a number of customs, recorded in rabbinic literature, began to accumulate around the meal, which became so highly ritualized that it was called the Seder, from the Hebrew for “order”: Unleavened bread was broken, wine was served, the diners reclined and hymns were sung. Furthermore, during the meal, the Exodus story was retold and the significance of the unleavened bread, bitter herbs and wine was explained.

The bread and wine, the hymn, the reclining diners—many of these characteristic elements are shared by the Last Supper, as Jeremias pointed out. (Jeremias’s 14 parallels are given in full in endnote 1.) What is more, just as Jews at the Seder discuss the symbolism of the Passover meal, Jesus at his Last Supper discussed the symbolism of the wine and bread in light of his own coming death.

It is not only Jeremias’s long list of parallels that leads many modern Christians and Jews to describe the Last Supper as a Passover Seder. The recent popularity of interfaith Seders (where Christians and Jews celebrate aspects of Passover and the Last Supper together) points to an emotional impulse that is also at work here. The Christian celebration of the Eucharist (Communion)—the Last Supper—is the fundamental ritual for many Christians. And among Jews the Passover Seder is one of the most widely practiced of all observances. In these times of ecumenicism and general good feeling between Christians and Jews, many people seem to find it reassuring to think that Communion (the Eucharist) and the Passover Seder are historically related.

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Historical Doubts about Jesus’ Last Supper as a Passover Seder

History, however, is often more complex and perhaps a little less comforting than we might hope. Although I welcome the current ecumenical climate, I believe we must be careful not to let our emotions get the better of us when we are searching for history. Indeed, even though the association of the Last Supper with a Passover Seder remains entrenched in the popular mind, a growing number of scholars are beginning to express serious doubts about this claim.

Of course a number of New Testament scholars—the Jesus Seminar comes to mind—tend to doubt that the Gospels accurately record very much at all about Jesus, with the exception of some of his sayings. Obviously if the Gospels cannot be trusted, then we have no reason to assume that there ever was a Last Supper at all. And if there was no Last Supper, then it could not have taken place on Passover.²

The sacrifice of the Passover lamb is conducted annually on Mt. Gerizim, in Nablus (ancient Shechem), in the West Bank, by the Samaritans, a religious group that split from Judaism by the second century B.C.E. The Samaritans retained the Torah (the Five Books of Moses) as their Scripture, although with some alterations. The Samaritan Bible refers to Mt. Gerizim, not Jerusalem, as the center of worship. David Harris.

Furthermore, several Judaic studies scholars—Jacob Neusner is a leading example—very much doubt that rabbinic texts can be used in historical reconstructions of the time of Jesus. But rabbinic literature is our main source of information about what Jews might have done during their Seder meal in ancient times. For reasons that are not entirely clear, other ancient Jewish sources, such as Josephus and Philo, focus on what Jews did in the Temple when the Passover sacrifice was offered, rather than on what they did afterward, when they actually ate the sacrifice. Again, if we cannot know how Jews celebrated Passover at the time of Jesus, then we have to plead ignorance, and we would therefore be unable to answer our question.

There is something to be said for these skeptical positions, but I am not such a skeptic. I want to operate here under the opposite assumptions: that the Gospels can tell us about the historical Jesus,³ and that rabbinic sources can be used—with caution—to reconstruct what Jews at the time of Jesus might have believed and practiced.⁴ Even so, I do not think the Last Supper was a Passover Seder.

Read “Did Jesus Exist? Searching for Evidence Beyond the Bible” by Lawrence Mykytiuk from the January/February 2015 issue of BAR >>

Jesus’ Last Supper in the Gospels

While three of the four canonical Gospels strongly suggest that the Last Supper did occur on Passover, we should not get too comfortable based on that. The three Gospels that support this view are the three synoptic Gospels—Matthew, Mark and Luke. As anyone who has studied these three Gospels knows, they are closely related. In fact, the name synoptic refers to the fact that these three texts can be studied most effectively when “seen together” (as implied in the Greek etymology of synoptic). Thus, in fact we don’t really have three independent sources here at all. What we have, rather, is one testimony (probably Mark), which was then copied twice (by Matthew and Luke).

Against the “single” testimony of the synoptics that the Last Supper was a Passover meal stands the lone Gospel of John, which dates the crucifixion to the “day of Preparation for the Passover” (John 19:14). According to John, Jesus died just when the Passover sacrifice was being offered and before the festival began at sundown (see the sidebar to this article). Any last meal—which John does not record—would have taken place the night before, or even earlier than that. But it certainly could not have been a Passover meal, for Jesus died before the holiday had formally begun.

So are we to follow John or the synoptics?⁵ There are a number of problems with the synoptic account. First, if the Last Supper had been a Seder held on the first night of Passover, then that would mean Jesus’ trial and crucifixion took place during the week-long holiday. If indeed Jewish authorities were at all involved in Jesus’ trial and death, then according to the synoptics those authorities would have engaged in activities—holding trials and carrying out executions—that were either forbidden or certainly unseemly to perform on the holiday. This is not the place to consider whether Jewish authorities were involved in Jesus’ death.⁶ Nor is it the place to consider whether such authorities would have been devout practitioners of Jewish law. But this is the place to point out that if ancient Jewish authorities had been involved in something that could possibly be construed as a violation of Jewish law, the Gospels—with their hatred of the Jewish authorities—would probably have made the most of it. The synoptic account stretches credulity, not just because it depicts something unlikely, but because it fails to recognize the unlikely and problematic nature of what it depicts. It is almost as if the synoptic tradition has lost all familiarity with contemporary Jewish practice. And if they have lost familiarity with that, they have probably lost familiarity with reliable historical information as well.

There are, of course, some reasons to doubt John’s account too. He may well have had theological motivations for claiming that Jesus was executed on the day of preparation when the Passover sacrifice was being offered but before Passover began at sundown. John’s timing of events supports the Christian claim that Jesus himself was a sacrifice and that his death heralds a new redemption, just as the Passover offering recalls an old one. Even so, John’s claim that Jesus was killed just before Passover began is more plausible than the synoptics’ claim that Jesus was killed on Passover. And if Jesus wasn’t killed on Passover, but before it (as John claims), then the Last Supper could not in fact have been a Passover Seder.

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A Jewish Last Supper Celebration

What then of Jeremias’s long list of parallels? It turns out that under greater scrutiny the parallels are too general to be decisive. That Jesus ate a meal in Jerusalem, at night, with his disciples is not so surprising. It is also no great coincidence that during this meal the disciples reclined, ate both bread and wine, and sang a hymn. While such behavior may have been characteristic of the Passover meal, it is equally characteristic of practically any Jewish meal.

A number of scholars now believe that the ritual context for the Last Supper was not a Seder but a standard Jewish meal. That Christians celebrated the Eucharist on a daily or weekly basis (see Acts 2:46–47) underscores the fact that it was not viewed exclusively in a Passover context (otherwise, it would have been performed, like the Passover meal, on an annual basis).

An ancient Christian church manual called the Didache also suggests that the Last Supper may have been an ordinary Jewish meal. In Chapters 9 and 10 of the Didache, the eucharistic prayers are remarkably close to the Jewish Grace After Meals (Birkat ha-Mazon).⁷ While these prayers are recited after the Passover meal, they would in fact be recited at any meal at which bread was eaten, holiday or not. Thus, this too underscores the likelihood that the Last Supper was an everyday Jewish meal.

Moreover, while the narrative in the synoptics situates the Last Supper during Passover, the fact remains that the only foods we are told the disciples ate are bread and wine—the basic elements of any formal Jewish meal. If this was a Passover meal, where is the Passover lamb? Where are the bitter herbs? Where are the four cups of wine?^a

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The Symbolic Explanation of the Bread and Wine at Passover and Jesus’ Last Supper

We are left with only one important parallel (Jeremias’s 14th) that can be explained in terms of a Seder: the surprising fact that Jesus at his Last Supper engaged in symbolic explanation of the bread and wine, just as Jews at the Seder engage in symbolic explanations, interpreting aspects of the Passover meal in light of the Exodus from Egypt: “Now as they were eating, Jesus took bread, and blessed, and broke it, and gave it to the disciples and said, ‘Take, eat; this is my body.’ And he took a cup, and when he had given thanks he gave it to them, saying, ‘Drink of it, all of you, for this is my blood of the covenant’” (Matthew 26:26–28=Mark 14:22; see also Luke 22:19–20). Is this not a striking parallel to the ways in which Jews celebrating the Seder interpret, for example, the bitter herbs eaten with the Passover sacrifice as representing the bitter life the Israelites experienced as slaves in Egypt?

However, this last parallel between the Last Supper and the Passover Seder assumes that the Seder ritual we know today was celebrated in Jesus’ day. But this is hardly the case.

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The Development of the Modern Passover Seder

When Jews today sit down to celebrate the Passover Seder, they use a book known as the Haggadah. The Hebrew word haggadah literally means “telling”; the title refers to the book’s purpose: to provide the ordered framework through which the story of Passover is told at the Seder. Telling the story of Passover is, of course, one of the fundamental purposes of the celebration, as stated in Exodus 13:8: “And you shall tell your child on that day, ‘It is because of what the Lord did for me when I went forth from Egypt.’”

The text on this particular page from an illuminated Haggadah created by Zeev Raban (1890–1970) provides rabbinic commentary on a Biblical passage relating to Israel’s sojourn in Egypt. After discussing Jacob’s journey to Egypt, the text continues, “‘And he lived there’—this teaches that our father Jacob did not go to Egypt to settle there permanently, just temporarily, as it is written: ‘And the sons of Jacob said to Pharaoh: “We have come to live in this land temporarily, for there is no pasture for the flocks that belong to your servants, for the famine is harsh in the land of Canaan”’” (quoting Genesis 47:4). From the Raban Haggadah/Courtesy of Mali Doron.

The traditional text of the Haggadah as it exists today incorporates a variety of material, starting with the Bible, and running through medieval songs and poems. For many Jews (especially non-Orthodox Jews), the process of development continues, and many modern editions of the Haggadah contain contemporary readings of one sort or another. Even many traditional Jews have, for instance, adapted the Haggadah so that mention can be made of the Holocaust.⁸

How much of the Haggadah goes back to ancient times? In the 1930s and 1940s, the American Talmud scholar Louis Finkelstein (1895–1991) famously claimed that various parts of the Passover Haggadah were very early, stemming in part from the third century B.C.E.⁹ In 1960, Israeli scholar Daniel Goldschmidt (1895–1972) effectively rebutted practically all of Finkelstein’s claims. It is unfortunate that Goldschmidt’s Hebrew article has not been translated, because it remains, to my mind, the classic work on the early history of the Passover Haggadah.¹⁰ Fortunately, a number of brief and up-to-date treatments of the history of the Haggadah are now available.¹¹ A full generation later, the Goldschmidt-Finkelstein debate seems to have been settled, and in Goldschmidt’s favor. Almost everyone doing serious work on the early history of Passover traditions, including Joseph Tabory, Israel Yuval, Lawrence Hoffman, and the father-son team of Shmuel and Ze’ev Safrai, has rejected Finkelstein’s claims for the great antiquity of the bulk of the Passover Haggadah. What is particularly significant about this consensus is that these scholars are not radical skeptics. These scholars believe that, generally speaking, we can extract historically reliable information from rabbinic sources. But as demonstrated by the late Baruch Bokser in his book The Origins of the Seder, practically everything preserved in the early rabbinic traditions concerning the Passover Seder brings us back to the time immediately following the Roman destruction of the Temple in 70 C.E.¹² It’s not that rabbinic literature cannot be trusted to tell us about history in the first century of the Common Era. It’s that rabbinic literature—in the case of the Seder—does not even claim to be telling us how the Seder was performed before the destruction of the Temple.^b

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Rabban Gamaliel used to say: Whoever does not make mention of the following three things on Passover has not fulfilled his obligation: namely, the Passover sacrifice, unleavened bread (matzah) and bitter herbs.

(1) The Passover sacrifice, which our ancestors used to eat at the time when the Holy Temple stood—what is the reason? Because the Holy One, blessed be He, passed over the houses of our ancestors in Egypt. As it is said, “It is the sacrifice of the Lord’s Passover…” (Exodus 12:27).

(2) The unleavened bread, which we eat—what is the reason? Because the dough of our ancestors had not yet leavened when the King of Kings, the Holy One Blessed be He revealed Himself to them and redeemed them. As it is said, “And they baked unleavened cakes…” (Exodus 12:39).

(3) These bitter herbs, which we eat—what is the reason? Because the Egyptians made the lives of our ancestors bitter in Egypt. As it is said, “And they made their lives bitter…” (Exodus 1:14).

Read Andrew McGowan’s article “The Hungry Jesus,” in which he challenges the tradition that Jesus was a welcoming host at meals, in Bible History Daily.

Rabban Gamaliel instructs his students in this illumination from the Sarajevo Haggadah. The Haggadah credits Gamaliel with introducing the requirement that the symbolic significance of the food served during the Seder be explained during the meal. Some scholars who assume the Last Supper was a Seder have suggested that Jesus deliberately explained the significance of the bread and wine in fulfillment of this requirement. But the requirement may not have even been in place in the time of Jesus. There were two leaders of the rabbinic academy called Gamaliel: One lived around the time of Jesus; the other, after the Temple was destroyed in 70 C.E. Sarajevo National Museum.

On first reading, Jeremias might appear to be correct: Jesus’ explanation of the bread and the wine does seem similar to Rabban Gamaliel’s explanation of the Passover symbols. Might not Jesus be presenting a competing interpretation of these symbols? Possibly. But it really depends on when this Rabban Gamaliel lived. If he lived later than Jesus, then it would make no sense to view Jesus’ words as based on Rabban Gamaliel’s.

Unfortunately for the contemporary historian, there were two rabbis named Gamaliel, both of whom bore the title “rabban” (which means “our master” and was usually applied to the head of the rabbinic academy). The first lived decadesbefore the destruction of the Temple, according to rabbinic tradition.¹³ It is this Gamaliel who is referred to in Acts 22:3, in which Paul is said to have claimed that he was educated “at the feet of Gamaliel.” The second Rabban Gamaliel was, according to rabbinic tradition, the grandson of the elder Gamaliel. This Gamaliel served as head of the rabbinic academy sometime after the destruction of the Temple. Virtually all scholars working today believe that the Haggadah tradition attributing the words quoted above to Gamaliel refers to the grandson, Rabban Gamaliel the Younger, who lived long after Jesus had died.¹⁴ One piece of evidence for this appears in the text quoted above, in which Rabban Gamaliel is said to have spoken of the time “when the Temple was still standing”—as if that time had already passed. Furthermore, as Baruch Bokser has shown, the bulk of early rabbinic material pertaining to the Passover Haggadah is attributed in the Haggadah itself to figures who lived immediately following the destruction of the Temple (and were therefore contemporaries of Gamaliel the Younger). Finally, a tradition preserved in the Tosefta (a rabbinic companion volume to the earliest rabbinic lawbook, the Mishnah, edited perhaps in the third or fourth century) suggests that Gamaliel the Younger played some role in Passover celebrations soon after the Temple was destroyed, when animal sacrifices could for this reason no longer be offered.¹⁵

Thus, the Passover Seder as we know it developed after 70 C.E. I wish we could know more about how the Passover meal was celebrated before the Temple was destroyed. But unfortunately, our sources do not answer this question with any certainty. Presumably, Jesus and his disciples would have visited the Temple to slaughter their Passover sacrifice. Then they would have consumed it along with unleavened bread and bitter herbs, as required by the Book of Exodus. And presumably they would have engaged in conversation pertinent to the occasion. But we cannot know for sure.

According to scholar Jonathan Klawans, ancient Jews—including the Pharisees, Sadducees and Essenes—cared as much about matters of Jewish theology as about laws and practices. Read more >>

Why the Synoptic Gospels Portray the Last Supper as a Passover Meal

Having determined that the Last Supper was not a Seder and that it probably did not take place on Passover, I must try to account for why the synoptic Gospels portray the Last Supper as a Passover meal. Of course, the temporal proximity of Jesus’ crucifixion (and with it, the Last Supper) to the Jewish Passover provides one motive: Surely this historical coincidence could not be dismissed as just that.

Another motive relates to a rather practical question: Within a few years after Jesus’ death, Christian communities (which at first consisted primarily of Jews) began to ask when, how and even whether they should celebrate or commemorate the Jewish Passover.¹⁶ This was a question not only early on, but throughout the time of the so-called Quartodeciman controversy. The Quartodecimans (the 14-ers) were Christians who believed that the date of Easter should be calculated so as to coincide with the Jewish celebration of Passover, whether or not that date fell on a Sunday. The Jewish calendar was (and is) lunar, and therefore there is always a full moon on the night of the Passover Seder, that is, the night following the 14th of Nisan. But that night is not always a Saturday night. The Quartodeciman custom of celebrating Easter beginning on the evening following the 14th day apparently began relatively early in Christian history and persisted at least into the fifth century C.E. The alternate view—that Easter must be on a Sunday, regardless of the day on which the Jewish Passover falls—ultimately prevailed. Possibly the Gospels’ disagreements about the timing of the Last Supper were the result of these early Christian disputes about when Easter should be celebrated. After all, if you wanted to encourage Christians to celebrate Easter on Passover, would it not make sense to emphasize the fact that Jesus celebrated Passover with his disciples just before he died?

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Related to the question of when Christians should recall Jesus’ last days was a question of how they should be recalled. Early on, a number of Christians—Quartodecimans and others—felt that the appropriate way to mark the Jewish Passover was not with celebration, but with fasting. On the one hand, this custom reflected an ancient Jewish tradition of fasting during the time immediately preceding the Passover meal (as related in Mishnah Pesachim 10:1). On the other hand, distinctively Christian motives for this fast can also be identified, from recalling Jesus’ suffering on the cross to praying for the eventual conversion of the Jews.¹⁷

Is it possible to identify the first-century man named Jesus behind the many stories and traditions about him that developed over 2,000 years in the Gospels and church teachings? Visit the Jesus/Historical Jesus study page to read free articles on Jesus in Bible History Daily.

Jesus is the Paschal lamb in the Gospel of John, which associates the crucifixion, rather than the Last Supper, with the Passover festival. According to John, Jesus died on the “day of Preparation for the Passover” (John 19:14), when the Passover sacrifice was being offered but before the festival began at sundown.
In Matthias Gruenewald’s altarpiece (1510–1516) for the monastery of Isenheim, Germany (but now in the Unterlinden Museum, in Colmar), the crucified Jesus is explicitly linked with the Paschal sacrifice. To the right of the cross stands a wounded lamb, which carries a cross and bleeds into a chalice. The disciple whom Jesus loved comforts Jesus’ mother at left. Mary Magdalene kneels at the foot of the cross, her alabaster ointment jar beside her. At right, John the Baptist points to Jesus. His prediction that Jesus will overtake him (“He must increase, but I must decrease,” John 3:30) is inscribed beside him in Latin. Giraudon/Art Resource, NY.

The German New Testament scholar Karl Georg Kuhn has argued that the Gospel of Luke places the Last Supper in a Passover context in order to convince Christians not to celebrate Passover. He notes that the synoptic Last Supper tradition attributes to Jesus a rather curious statement of abstinence: “I have earnestly desired to eat this Paschal lamb with you before I suffer, for I tell you that I shall not eat it until it is fulfilled in the kingdom of God…[and] I shall not drink of the fruit of the vine until the kingdom of God comes” (Luke 22:15–18; cf. Mark 14:25 [“I shall not drink again of the fruit of the vine until that day when I drink it new in the kingdom of God”]=Matthew 26:29). The synoptics’ placement of the Last Supper in a Passover context should be read along with Jesus’ statement on abstinence; in this view, the tradition that the Last Supper was a Passover meal argues that Christians should mark the Passover not by celebrating, but by fasting, because Jesus has already celebrated his last Passover.¹⁸ Thus, until Jesus’ kingdom is fulfilled, Christians should not celebrate at all during Passover.

New Testament scholar Bruce Chilton recently presented an alternate theory. He argues that the identification of the Last Supper with a Passover Seder originated among Jewish Christians who were attempting to maintain the Jewish character of early Easter celebrations.¹⁹ By calling the Last Supper a Passover meal, these Jewish-Christians were trying to limit Christian practice in three ways. Like the Passover sacrifice, the recollection of the Last Supper could only be celebrated in Jerusalem, at Passover time, and by Jews.^c

Without deciding between these two contradictory alternatives (though Kuhn’s is in my mind more convincing), we can at least agree that there are various reasons why the early church would have tried to “Passoverize” the Last Supper tradition.²⁰ Placing the Last Supper in the context of Passover was a literary tool in early Christian debates about whether or not and how Christians should celebrate Passover.

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Both of these Passoverizations can be placed in the broader context of Exodus typology in general. W.D. Davies and N.T. Wright have argued that various New Testament sources depict the events of Jesus’ life as a new Exodus. Early Christians interpreted Jesus’ life and death in light of the ancient Jewish narrative of redemption par excellence, the story of the Exodus from Egypt. Surely the depiction of the Last Supper as a Passover observance could play a part in this larger effort of arguing that Jesus’ death echoes the Exodus from Egypt.²¹

This process of Passoverization did not end with the New Testament. The second-century bishop Melito of Sardis (in Asia Minor) once delivered a widely popular Paschal sermon, which could well be called a “Christian Haggadah,” reflecting at great length on the various connections between the Exodus story and the life of Jesus.²²

Passoverization can even be found in the Middle Ages. Contrary to popular belief, the Catholic custom of using unleavened wafers in the Mass is medieval in origin. The Orthodox churches preserve the earlier custom of using leavened bread.²³ Is it not possible to see the switch from using leavened to unleavened bread as a “Passoverization” of sorts?

Was the Last Supper a Passover Seder? Most likely, it was not.

Interested in Jesus’ Judaism? The Bible History Daily post “Was Jesus a Jew?” includes the full article “What Price the Uniqueness of Jesus?: To wrench Jesus out of his Jewish world destroys Jesus and destroys Christianity.” by Anthony J. Saldarini as it originally appeared in Bible Review.

When Passover Begins: The Synoptics versus John

“Was Jesus’ Last Supper a Seder?” by Jonathan Klawans originally appeared in Bible Review, October 2001. The article was first republished in Bible History Daily in October 2012.

Jonathan Klawans is Professor of Religion at Boston University. He is the author of Josephus and the Theologies of Ancient Judaism (Oxford Univ. Press, 2012), Purity, Sacrifice, and the Temple: Symbolism and Supersessionism in the Study of Ancient Judaism (Oxford Univ. Press, 2005) and Impurity and Sin in Ancient Judaism (Oxford Univ. Press, 2000), which received the Salo Wittmayer Baron Prize for the best first book in Jewish studies.

Notes

a. Some may also ask, where is the unleavened bread? The Gospels do not specify that Jesus fed his disciples unleavened bread, which is what Jews would eat at Passover. This however does not preclude the possibility that Jesus used unleavened bread at the Last Supper, as Jews commonly refer to unleavened bread (called in Hebrew, matzah) as simply “bread.” See, for example, Deuteronomy 16:3 and Nahum N. Glatzer, The Passover Haggadah (New York: Schocken Books, 1981), pp. 24, 64.

b. See Baruch Bokser, “Was the Last Supper a Passover Seder?” Bible Review, Summer 1987.

c. See Bruce Chilton, “The Eucharist—Exploring Its Origins,” Bible Review, December 1994.

1. The book first appeared in 1935 and was revised and translated various times after that. The 14 parallels are listed in the 1960 third edition, which was translated into English in 1966. See Joachim Jeremias, The Eucharistic Words of Jesus, 3rd ed. (London: SCM Press, 1966), esp. pp. 42–61. His 14 parallels may be summarized as follows: (1) The Last Supper took place in Jerusalem, (2) in a room made available to pilgrims for that purpose, and (3) it was held during the night. (4) Jesus celebrated that meal with his “family” of disciples; and (5) while they ate, they reclined. (6) This meal was eaten in a state of ritual purity. (7) Bread was broken during the meal and not just at the beginning. (8) Wine was consumed and (9) this wine was red. (10) There were last-minute preparations for the meal, after which (11) alms were given, and (12) a hymn was sung. (13) Jesus and his disciples then remained in Jerusalem. Finally, (14) Jesus discussed the symbolic significance of the meal, just as Jews do during the Passover Seder. For brief surveys summarizing the question see Robert F. O’Toole, “Last Supper,” in The Anchor Bible Dictionary, 6 vols. (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1992), vol. 4, pp. 235–236 and Gerd Theissen and Annette Merz, The Historical Jesus: A Comprehensive Guide (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1996), pp. 423–427.

2. For a representative statement denying the historicity of the Last Supper traditions, see Robert W. Funk and The Jesus Seminar, The Acts of Jesus: The Search for the Authentic Deeds of Jesus (New York: HarperCollins, 1998), p. 139.

3. For an excellent treatment of what we can and cannot know of the historical Jesus, see the recent book by my colleague Paula Fredriksen, Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews: A Jewish Life and the Emergence of Christianity (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1999).

4. For an excellent summary of Judaism in Jesus’ time—one which makes judicious use of rabbinic evidence—see E.P. Sanders, Judaism: Practice and Belief 63 B.C.E.–66 C.E. (London: SCM Press, 1992). For more on the use of rabbinic sources, see Sanders’s Paul and Palestinian Judaism: A Comparison of Patterns of Religion (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1977), esp. pp. 59–84.

5. There are those who attempt to harmonize John and the synoptics by supposing that they disagreed not about when the Last Supper occurred, but about whether the date of Passover was supposed to be calculated by following a solar calendar or a lunar one. Annie Jaubert presents this theory in her book, The Date of the Last Supper (Staten Island: Alba House, 1965). This view cannot be accepted, however. It is too difficult to conceive of Passover having been celebrated twice in the same place without any contemporary or even later writer referring to such an event. Surely it would have been remarkable if two Passovers were held in the same week! Moreover, while we do know of solar calendars from the Book of Jubilees and the Temple Scroll, we do not know how any of these calendars really worked. Jubilees’s calendar, for instance, explicitly prohibits any form of intercalation (the adding of extra days in a leap year). And without intercalation, by Jesus’ time, Jubilees’s 364-day solar calendar would be off not just by days, but by months. It is only by hypothesizing some manner of intercalation that we can even come up with the possibility that in Jesus’ time the two calendars were both functioning, but off by just a few days. Thus in the end, Jaubert’s book presents a good theory, but it remains just that, a theory. For more on these questions, see James C. VanderKam, Calendars in the Dead Sea Scrolls: Measuring Time (London: Routledge, 1998).

6. On the question of Jewish authorities and their role in Jesus’ death, see John Dominic Crossan, Who Killed Jesus? Exposing the Roots of Anti-Semitism in the Gospel Story of the Death of Jesus (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1995).

7. For more on the parallels between the Didache and the Jewish Birkat ha-Mazon, see Enrico Mazza, The Celebration of the Eucharist: The Origin of the Rite and the Development of Its Interpretation (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 1999), esp. pp. 19–26 (where he discusses these parallels) and pp. 307–309 (where he provides translations of the texts).

8. A useful version of the traditional text of the Haggadah, with introduction and translation, can be found in the widely available edition of Nahum N. Glatzer, The Passover Haggadah (New York: Schocken Books, 1981). Those interested in appreciating how the Haggadah brings together material from various historical periods might look at Jacob Freedman, Polychrome Historical Haggadah for Passover (Springfield, MA: Jacob Freedman Liturgy Research Foundation, 1974).

9. Finkelstein published his theories in three articles: “The Oldest Midrash: Pre-Rabbinic Ideals and Teachings in the Passover Haggadah,” Harvard Theological Review (HTR) 31 (1938), pp. 291–317; “Pre-Maccabean Documents in the Passover Haggadah (Part 1),” HTR 35 (1942), pp. 291–332; and “Pre-Maccabean Documents in the Passover Haggadah (Part 2),” HTR 36 (1943), pp. 1–38. Glatzer summarizes some of Finkelstein’s claims in The Passover Haggadah, pp. 39–42.

10. Goldschmidt, The Passover Haggadah: Its Sources and History (in Hebrew) (Jerusalem: Bialik Institute, 1960). Glatzer’s edition of the Haggadah (cited above) is based in part on Goldschmidt’s research, but the first edition of Glatzer’s Haggadah was published in 1953, years before Goldschmidt’s final 1960 version of his article.

11. See especially the collection of essays, Passover and Easter: Origin and History to Modern Times, ed. Paul F. Bradshaw and Lawrence A. Hoffman (Notre Dame, IN: Univ. of Notre Dame Press, 1999). Those who read Hebrew will want to consult Shmuel Safrai and Ze’ev Safrai, Haggadah of the Sages: The Passover Haggadah (in Hebrew) (Jerusalem: Carta, 1998).

12. Baruch Bokser, The Origins of the Seder (Berkeley: Univ. of California Press, 1984).

13. Babylonian Talmud, Tractate Sabbath, 15a.

14. This view can be traced back well into the middle ages—it is advocated in a 14th-century Haggadah commentary by Rabbi Simeon ben Zemach Duran. This view has also been advocated more recently by, among others, Daniel Goldschmidt, Joseph Tabory, Israel Yuval and Baruch Bokser. Bokser, Origins of the Seder, pp. 41–43, 79–80, and 119 n. 13; Goldschmidt, Passover Haggadah, pp. 51–53. See also the articles by Joseph Tabory and Israel Yuval in Passover and Easter, esp. pp. 68–69 (Tabory) and pp. 106–107 (Yuval). Goldschmidt, Tabory and Yuval go even one step further, suggesting that Jeremias had it backwards. It was not that Jesus was reinterpreting a prior Jewish tradition. Rather, Rabban Gamaliel the Younger required the explanation of the Passover symbols as a way of countering Christian manipulation of these symbols.

15. Tosefta Pesahim 10:12; see Bokser, Origins of the Seder, pp. 41–43, 79–80.

16. Jeremias, Eucharistic Words, pp. 66 and 122–125.

17. On the Quartodecimans and on fasting before Easter, see Bradshaw, “The Origins of Easter” in Bradshaw and Hoffman, Passover and Easter, pp. 81–97.

18. See Karl Georg Kuhn, “The Lord’s Supper and the Communal Meal at Qumran,” in The Scrolls and the New Testament, Krister Stendahl, ed. (New York: Harper & Row, 1957), pp. 65–93. Kuhn builds here on work of B. Lohse, published in German (and cited in his article). See also Jeremias, Eucharistic Words, pp. 216–218.

19. Bruce Chilton, A Feast of Meanings: Eucharistic Theologies from Jesus Through Johannine Circles (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1994), esp. pp. 93–108.

20. The term “Passoverize” is used by Mazza, in his brief treatment of the issue; see Celebration of the Eucharist, pp. 24–26.

21. See especially W.D. Davies, Setting of the Sermon on the Mount (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1964), pp. 25–92.

22. Commonly entitled “On the Passover,” the sermon survives in numerous copies and fragments in Coptic, Greek, Syriac, Latin and Georgian. The oldest copy, from the third or early fourth century, is in Coptic. See James E. Goehring and William W. Willis, “On the Passover by Melito of Sardis,” in The Crosby-Schoyen Codex MS 193, James E. Goehring, ed. (Leuven [Louvain]: Peeters, 1999).

23. On the medieval debate between the Catholic and Orthodox churches on this matter, see Jaroslav Pelikan, The Christian Tradition: A History of the Development of Doctrine, vol. 2, The Spirit of Eastern Christendom (600–1700) (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1971), pp. 177–178. On the archaeological evidence pertaining to this dispute, see George Galavaris, Bread and the Liturgy: The Symbolism of Early Christian and Byzantine Bread Stamps (Madison: Univ. of Wisconsin Press, 1970).

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The Hungry Jesus

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Was Jesus’ Last Supper a Seder?

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Easter and the Death of Jesus

The post Was Jesus’ Last Supper a Seder? appeared first on Biblical Archaeology Society.

Here are 10 of the most notable examples (in no specific order):

• Gold Powder
  When Moses sees the Israelites worshiping the golden calf he grinds the idol into a fine powder, mixes it with water and forces the people to drink (Exodus 32:19–20).
• Scroll of Lamentations
  God gives Ezekiel a two-sided scroll of Lamentations to eat. Ezekiel fills his stomach and finds the scroll to be “as sweet as honey” (Ezekiel 2:8–3:3).
• Bread and Excrement
  God tells Ezekiel to eat bread baked upon human excrement but Ezekiel gets away with bread baked upon animal excrement. Unlike the scroll, we aren’t told how it tastes (Ezekiel 4:10-17).
• The Manna
  The Israelites survive for forty years in the desert on daily provisions of manna (Exodus 16:35). The name manna reportedly comes from the question the Israelites asked, man hu⁾, “What is it?” (Exodus 16:15). Although some commentators prefer a naturalistic answer to this question, e.g., manna is the gum resin of desert shrubs, the Biblical text presents the manna as a miracle food. It falls six days a week but not on the Sabbath, disintegrates when it is stored and stops falling when the Israelites enter the land of Canaan. Manna is even called “the grain of heaven,” “the bread of heaven” or “the bread of angels” in a number of Hebrew Bible, New Testament and apocryphal texts (Psalms 78:24, 105:40; John 6:31; 2 Esdras 1:19).

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• Animal Fodder for a King
  In accordance with Daniel’s prophecy, Nebuchadnezzar the king of Babylon lives in the wilderness for seven years eating grass like an ox (Dan 4:33). A similar story appears in 2 Esdras (9:23-27, 12:51) where Ezra sustains himself on a diet of flowers for seven days. Interestingly, a number of scholars suggest that the story of Nebuchadnezzar is actually based on Nabonidus, the king of Babylon who spent a decade of his life at an oasis in the Arabian wilderness.
• 40-Day Superfoods
  An angel gives Elijah a cake and some water and it is enough to sustain him for a forty-day journey from Beersheba to Mount Horeb/Sinai, where he encounters God in a cave (1 Kings 19:3–9).

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• The Fantastic Fruits of Eden
  There were two supernatural trees in the Garden of Eden, each with its own fruit. The tree of knowledge bestowed a divine knowledge of good and bad, making one like the gods. The tree of life granted immortality (Genesis 3:22).
• Food from Nowhere
  A number of Biblical figures are saved from thirst and starvation in the barrenness of the desert. For example, Hagar and Ishmael are shown a hidden well by God (Genesis 21:14–19), Moses finds water in a desert rock (Numbers 20:11), and Elijah is given bread and meat twice a day by ravens in the desert (1 Kings 17:1–6).
• Human Flesh
  Cannibalism on account of hunger is perhaps the most extreme punishment in the Hebrew Bible. It is at times described in vivid detail, e.g., in the threat of Deuteronomy 28 that fathers and mothers will eat their own children in secrecy so that they do not have to share the meat (Deuteronomy 28:53–57).
• Free Refills
  There are a number of stories about the miracles performed by the prophets Elijah and Elisha. According to the Book of Kings, a hungry woman’s jar of flour and jug of oil refilled themselves until a famine subsided (1 Kings 17:10-16), a poor woman’s single jug of oil was able to fill the many vessels of her neighbors (2 Kings 4:1–7), and a man’s twenty loaves of bread were miraculously able to feed one hundred hungry men with some left over (2 Kings 4:42–44). A similar story appears in John 6, where Jesus feeds five thousand men with five barley loaves and two small fish. Again, there is still food left over.

This Bible History Daily article, “The 10 Strangest Foods in the Bible,” was originally published on May 6, 2014.

David Z. Moster, PhD, is a Research Fellow in Hebrew Bible at Brooklyn College and a Lecturer in Rabbinics at Nyack College. He is the author of the upcoming book Etrog: How a Chinese Fruit Became a Jewish Symbol (Palgrave Macmillan, 2018). He wrote The 10 Strangest Foods in the Bible in 2014.  His websites are www.929chapters.com and brooklyn-cuny.academia.edu/DavidMoster.

More by David Moster in Bible History Daily

Fruit in the Bible

You Are What You Eat: The Israelite Diet and Archaeology

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The post The 10 Strangest Foods in the Bible appeared first on Biblical Archaeology Society.

The evangelist John rests one hand on his gospel book, in this 83-inch-tall marble sculpture carved by Donatello in about 1415 for a niche in the facade of the Cathedral of Florence. Scholars writing Gospel of John commentary often grapple with the question: Who wrote the Gospel of John? Photo: Erich Lessing

The Gospels, the first four books of the New Testament, tell the story of the life of Jesus. Yet only one—the Gospel of John—claims to be an eyewitness account, the testimony of the unnamed “disciple whom Jesus loved.” (“This is the disciple who is testifying to these things and wrote these things, and we know that his testimony is true” [John 21:24]). “Who wrote the Gospel of John?” is a question that remains unanswered, though noted theologians throughout the ages maintain that it was indeed the disciple John who penned the famous Biblical book.

Gospel of John commentary is easy to find—some of the most famous theologians in history have closely examined the text and underscored its importance from as early as the beginning of the third century. It is believed that Origen, an Alexandrian Christian scholar and theologian, wrote his Gospel of John commentary while in Alexandria at some point after 218 A.D. St. Augustine—a famous fourth century church father—contributed no fewer than 124 tractates in his Gospel of John commentary, while St. Thomas’s Gospel of John commentary of the 13th century is still highly regarded today by modern scholars.

We may never know for certain who wrote the Gospel of John, any more than we can know who wrote the books of Matthew, Mark and Luke. We do know that John is a gospel apart, however. Early Matthew, Mark and Luke are so alike in their telling that they are called the Synoptic Gospels, meaning “seen together”—the parallels are clear when they are looked at side by side. Matthew and Luke follow the version of events in Mark, which is thought by scholars to be the earliest and most historically accurate Gospel. John, however, does not include the same incidents or chronology found in the other three Gospels, and the fact that it is so different has spurred a debate over whether John’s Gospel is historical or not, something that has been noted in Gospel of John commentary for hundreds—even thousands—of years.

Several hypotheses have attempted to explain why so much of Jesus’ life not portrayed in the Synoptics is present in John and vice versa. One hypothesis claims that John recorded many of the events that occurred before the arrest of John the Baptist, while the Synoptics all have Jesus’ ministry beginning only after the arrest. Another holds that John was written last, by someone who knew about the other three Gospels, but who wished to write a spiritual gospel instead of an historical one. This would mean that the person who wrote the Gospel of John would not have been a contemporary of Jesus, and therefore would not have been an eyewitness as the author claims. There is also the possibility that the author of John did not know of Mark and hence did not have the same information.

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The author of John also knew Jerusalem well, as is evident from the geographic and place name information throughout the book. He mentions, among others, the Sheep Gate Pool (Bethesda), the Siloam Pool and Jacob’s Well. The geographic specificity lends credence to the John’s account.

Another aspect of John that may be more historically accurate than the Synoptics is the account of the crucifixion and the events that led up to it. The Synoptics say that Jesus’ Last Supper was the Passover meal—held that year on a Thursday evening (Jewish holidays begin at sunset)—and they would have us believe that the Sanhedrin, the high court, gathered at the beginning of a major holiday to interrogate Jesus and hand him over to the Romans. John, in contrast, has Jesus handed over for crucifixion on “the day of Preparation of Passover week, about the sixth hour.” According to John, the Last Supper is not a Passover meal (because the holiday that year did not start until Friday evening), and Jesus is crucified and buried before Passover begins. In John’s account Jesus becomes the Passover sacrificial lamb, which was offered the afternoon before the Passover holiday. Some scholars suggest that John may be more historical regarding the crucifixion than the other three Gospels.

Given John’s familiarity with Jerusalem and its environs, it is very possible that he had visited the Pool of Siloam, which he mentions in connection with the story of the curing of the blind man (a story that appears only in John’s Gospel). It is that pool that has only recently been uncovered, as described in the accompanying article.

For more on the question of John’s historical reliability, see D. Moody Smith, “John: Historian or Theologian?” Bible Review, October 2004.

Based on “How Historical is the Gospel of John?” Biblical Archaeology Review, September/October 2005.

Related reading in Bible History Daily

The Bethesda Pool, Site of One of Jesus’ Miracles

The Canonical Gospels

Machaerus: Beyond the Beheading of John the Baptist

Mark and John: A Wedding at Cana—Whose and Where?

All-Access members, read more in the BAS Library

The Canonical Gospels

The Un-Gospel of John

John the Baptist’s Cave

This Bible History Daily article was originally published in March 2012.

The post Gospel of John Commentary: Who Wrote the Gospel of John and How Historical Is It? appeared first on Biblical Archaeology Society.

Mark Wilson describes a visit to Pella, an ancient city located in the Perean foothills of the Jordan River where Jesus’ followers sought refuge while escaping Jerusalem’s destruction.

Before writing my doctoral thesis two decades ago, the only Pella that I knew about was a small town in south central Iowa famous for its windows and doors. But in the course of my research, I discovered fascinating data about another Pella located in the Perean foothills of the Jordan River. In March [2012] I finally had the opportunity to visit the Pella located in northwestern Jordan.

Jesus, while looking over the temple mount in Jerusalem shortly before his death, prophesied that its beautiful stones would be thrown down within a generation. He warned that the residents should flee Jerusalem to the mountains when they saw the Roman armies surrounding the city.

Jesus’ admonition is found in each of the Synoptic Gospels (Matthew 24:15–22; Mark 13:14–20; Luke 21:20–24). Perhaps Jesus visited Pella during his visit to the Decapolis (Mark 7:31) and Perea (Matthew 19:1; Mark 10:1), and recalling its secure location, cryptically referred to it in this prophecy. Eusebius’s Church History (3.5.3) recounts that the Jewish followers of Jesus heeded his warning and fled to Pella for safety before Jerusalem’s destruction. Birgil Pixner believes that, after the city’s destruction, they returned to Jerusalem to rebuild their Jewish-Christian synagogue on Mount Zion.*

Interested in Pella? Read “Excavating Ancient Pella, Jordan: Archaeology Investigates the Jerusalem Christians’ Escape to Pella” in Bible History Daily.

Today, Pella sits outside Tabaqat Fahl, twenty miles south of the Sea of Galilee. I was eager to see the geographical setting of the site to find out whether it qualified as a mountainous retreat. The University of Sydney has been conducting excavations at Pella since 1979.

Remains from the Natufian through the Islamic period have been discovered – a period spanning over 10,000 years. But my interest was on structures that would have existed in the late first century C.E. However, few Roman buildings from that period remain because massive construction projects in the Byzantine period destroyed them. However, there are remnants of a Roman odeon, bathhouse and necropolis. Roman milestones found in the nearby hills show that roads directly connected Pella was with the important Decapolis city of Gerasa, modern Jerash.

Some scholars believe that the escape of the women’s offspring into the wilderness in Revelation 12:6, 14–17 uses mythological language to describe the flight of the Jerusalem church to Pella. While Revelation 12 is difficult to interpret, there does seem to be a historical basis for the events it describes. The dragon’s attempt to destroy the Jewish Christians, first in Zealot-controlled Jerusalem, and then while crossing the Jordan during the winter floods, came to naught. Instead, the Gentile churches of the Decapolis rescued and aided the Jewish-Christian refugees. With the Jerusalem church safe, the dragon next gave his attention to making war against the rest of the saints (12:17). While a bit fanciful, such a reconstruction must be taken into consideration, since others have little to commend them.

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Although Pella is only in the foothills of the Transjordanian Mountains, the site seems to fulfill Jesus’ prophecy of a city of refuge. Standing in the upper basilica, the view across the Jordan Valley is spectacular. Mount Gilgal rises to the northwest, Beth-Shean/Scythopolis looms on the northeast. It was easy to imagine a weary company of refugees arriving in this city in the late 60s while attempting to survive the chaos falling upon Jerusalem.

Interestingly, the Pella in Iowa was founded in 1847 by 800 Dutch immigrants seeking religious freedom. Their minister Dominie Hendrik P. Scholte knew his church history and decided to name the new city after its Perean counterpart. Pella, old and new, still stands as a symbol of refuge and hope in a time of great crisis.

Read “Church of the Apostles Found on Mt. Zion” as it appeared in Biblical Archaeology Review, May/June 1990.

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Mark Wilson is the director of the Asia Minor Research Center in Antalya, Turkey, and is the host for BAS’s tours of Turkey. Mark received his doctorate in Biblical studies from the University of South Africa (Pretoria), where he serves as a research fellow in Biblical archaeology. He is currently Visiting Professor of Early Christianity at Regent University and Associate Professor Extraordinary of New Testament at Stellenbosch University. He leads field studies in Turkey and the eastern Mediterranean for university, seminary and church groups. He is the author of Biblical Turkey: A Guide to the Jewish and Christian Sites of Asia Minor and Victory through the Lamb: A Guide to Revelation in Plain Language. He is a frequent lecturer at BAS’s Bible Fests.

Notes

* In the article “Church of the Apostles Found on Mt. Zion“, Bargil Pixner writes:

The Judeo-Christian community in Jerusalem escaped this terrible catastrophe by fleeing to Pella in Transjordan and the countryside of Gilean and Bashan in expectation of the Parousia, the second coming of Christ.

When this did not occur and they realized that the time of Jesus’ return was not yet at hand, they decided to go back to Jerusalem to rebuild their sanctuary on the site of the ancient Upper Room—where the Last Supper had been held, where the apostles returned after witnessing Jesus’ ascension on the Mount of Olives and where Peter delivered his Pentecost sermon as recorded in Acts 2. It was this site on which they made their synagogue. They were free to do this because they enjoyed a certain religious freedom from the Romans (religio licita) inasmuch as they were Jews who confessed Jesus as their Messiah, and not gentile converts.”

This post originally appeared in Bible History Daily in July, 2012

Related reading in Bible History Daily

Excavating Ancient Pella, Jordan

Hippos-Sussita: The High Horse of the Decapolis

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The post Pella: A Window on Survival appeared first on Biblical Archaeology Society.

The Upper Room and Tomb of David on Mount Zion, Jerusalem. Photo: David Christian Clausen.

The traditional location of the Upper Room, a site featured in the New Testament Gospels, is today placed on the southern end of Mount Zion in Jerusalem close by the Church of the Dormition and the traditional house of Caiaphas. Thousands of Christian pilgrims visit the site each year, venerating it as the place where Jesus had his last supper with his disciples (Mark 14:14–15), where he reappeared to them after his death (inferred from Luke 24:33, 36; John 20:19, 26), and where the first community of believers gathered together to await the arrival of the Holy Spirit (Acts 1:13).

Historians and archaeologists have debated for more than a century whether the traditional location is historically accurate and exactly what the current building represents.¹ Some suggest that the current Upper Room structure (with the Tomb of David below) is the surviving remnant of the southeast corner of a Byzantine church constructed in the late fourth century specifically to commemorate the events associated with the Upper Room in the New Testament. This church was known as Hagia Sion (Holy Zion), and, throughout its history, featured many Christian relics and commemorative shrines.

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Scholars attempt to decide between these two options by relying on limited archaeological investigations and mostly fourth-century literary accounts. Although artistic representations of this structure also exist, they are nearly universally dismissed. Yet these depictions deserve another look!

A number of early Christian reproductions of Jerusalem reveal a distinct structure beside the Hagia Sion church. There is good reason to identify this as the Upper Room.

Madaba Map. This mosaic map of Jerusalem comes from the Church of St. George in Madaba, Jordan, and dates to the sixth century. The Upper Room is circled. Photo: Public domain.

Perhaps the most important and one of the earliest artistic depictions of the Upper Room appears in the mosaic from the Church of St. George in Madaba, Jordan. Long appreciated for its early (560–565 C.E.) representation of the Holy Land, the mosaic features a detailed map of Jerusalem. The city is shown with the north side facing left. Running across the mid-section is the Cardo Maximus (main street) created by the Romans after the second Jewish revolt in 132 C.E. At the southern end (right side) are two sacred structures identified by their red roofs. The larger building to the left is universally identified as Hagia Sion. The smaller structure with the sloping roof immediately to its right might represent the Upper Room. These two buildings are located exactly where the Upper Room is today: on the southern end of Mount Zion. (Mount Zion was enclosed by Jerusalem’s walls at the time the mosaic was created.)

Some scholars suggest this smaller building is a diaconicon, that is, the right wing of a cruciform basilical church. However, there is no corresponding left wing (prothesis) to form the crucifix shape.² Also, it is clearly disconnected. Another suggestion is that the building is a monastery. Yet, no other monastery on the mosaic is depicted with a red roof, only churches. Further, there is no evidence of a monastery there in the sixth century. The best interpretation is that the structure represents the Upper Room.

Santa Maria Maggiore Mosaic. This mosaic of Jerusalem comes from the Basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore in Rome, Italy, and dates to the sixth century. The Upper Room is circled. Photo: MM/CC by-SA 3.0.

Around the time the Madaba mosaic was being fashioned, another mosaic was completed in the Basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore in Rome. Once again, we can see the Cardo Maximus of Jerusalem, this time extending beyond what is likely the Damascus (or St. Stephen’s) Gate in Jerusalem’s northern city wall. Within the walls are a number of structures. The front buildings, again with red or red-tinged roofs, probably represent the fourth-century Church of the Holy Sepulchre in its two parts: the round rotunda of the Anastasis (Resurrection) and the rectangular Martyrium to its right. Behind these structures, however, stand what is likely the Hagia Sion church and the Upper Room to its right, notable for its sloping red roof—just as it is depicted in the Madaba mosaic. In the Santa Maria Maggiore mosaic, these two buildings stand at the southern end of the city opposite the northern gate, right where they appear in the Madaba mosaic.

Rossano Gospels. This sixth-century illuminated manuscript, Codex Purpureus Rossanensis, from Calabria, Italy, depicts Jesus’s entry into Jerusalem and includes the Upper Room (circled here). Photo: Michele Abastante/CC by-SA 4.0.

Another sixth-century depiction of what is likely the Upper Room can be found in the so-called Rossano Gospels, an illuminated manuscript from Calabria, Italy. In typical fashion, Christ is shown about to enter Jerusalem riding a donkey amid adoring crowds. The gate which Christ approaches appears to be in the southern wall of the city, contrary to a number of other depictions in which the gate is located in the eastern wall near the Temple. Above the wall in this illumination, more well-wishers reach out the windows of a two-story building. The overall effect suggests that the gate is located on Mount Zion and the building (or the lean-to extension on the left) is the Upper Room (note the red roof). Behind this is likely the domed Anastasis of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre toward the north.

Al-Muallaqa Lintel. Dated to the sixth century, this lintel originated in the Hanging Church (al-Muallaqa) of Cairo. It is currently part of the collections of the Coptic Museum of Cairo. It shows Christ as he enters Jerusalem. The Upper Room is circled. Drawing: David Christian Clausen.

A wooden lintel, perhaps carved in the sixth century (though the date is disputed) and found in Egypt, has been identified as originating in the Hanging Church (al-Muallaqa) of Cairo. The carving shows Christ atop a donkey (which looks more like a galloping steed!). The architectural feature on his left suggests Christ has already entered the city. Some scholars have identified this structure as the Hanging Church with the columns to the right indicating the interior aisle.³

Another interpretation posits that the crowds are standing along the colonnaded Cardo Maximus  of Jerusalem. The building to the left of Christ has a slanted roof like that of the Upper Room depicted in the Madaba and Santa Maria Maggiore mosaics. The structure has a door on the bottom floor and a window on the second. Behind the building is a curved arch, possibly representing the gate (Zion Gate) leading to the cardo. Recent archaeological investigations have shown just such a road passing through the walls on Mount Zion.

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The Rossano manuscript and the Al-Muallaqa lintel represent an early stage in the artistic depictions of Christ’s entry into Jerusalem via a southern gate. Later representations from the Middle Ages are more elaborate but keep similar features. An example is Pietro Lorenzetti’s fresco from the 14th century that contains a two-story structure inside the city walls, which I identify as the Upper Room. Birds (perhaps doves) are seen above the gate as well as above and in front of the structure itself, perhaps indicating the place where the Holy Spirit alit upon the early church community.

Behind the Upper Room is an octagonal structure (the Hagia Sion had long been destroyed by this time). If it is meant to be the Dome of the Rock, then the city gate is perhaps meant to be on the east side of Jerusalem near the Temple Mount. The Islamic influence might be responsible for the roundels along the top of the Upper Room. At this time, the Mamluks had appropriated many Christian buildings. If this structure is not meant to represent the Upper Room, it is difficult to surmise what building the artist had in mind.

Sarcophagus Sculpture. This cast of a fourth-century sarcophagus appears in the Vatican Museums, Rome. One of the circled structures may represent the Upper Room. Photo: Sergey Sosnovskiy/CC by-SA 4.0.

Earliest of all of these artistic representations is a sculpture from a fourth-century sarcophagus, once featured in the defunct Lateran Christian Museum in Rome. On the right of this scene, Christ either heals the woman with an issue of blood (Mark 5:25) or comforts Mary Magdalene after his resurrection (Matthew 28:9–10; John 20:17). But it is with the buildings behind them that we are concerned.⁴ It is possible that either the building next to the fig tree (note the lean-to structure on the left side) or the small two-story building in the middle represents the Upper Room. If the scene on the right is, in fact, meant to depict the risen Christ with Mary Magdalene, then its proximity to this latter building may reflect the belief that Christ appeared to his disciples in the Upper Room.

Taken together, these artistic representations give compelling evidence that the Upper Room once stood adjacent to the Byzantine church of Hagia Sion and likely existed before the latter was constructed—and certainly existed afterward. Historians and archaeologists cannot afford to dismiss this evidence. All of the testimonies—archaeological, literary, and artistic—must be taken into account before a complete and compelling history of the Upper Room can be written.

David Christian Clausen is an Adjunct Lecturer in the Department of Religious Studies at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte and teaches courses in early Christianity.

Notes

1. For more on the Upper Room, see David Christian Clausen, The Upper Room and Tomb of David: The History, Art and Archaeology of the Cenacle on Mount Zion (Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2016)

2. The only potential example of such an unbalanced Byzantine church is the Church of the Forty Martyrs of Cappadocia in Nokalakevi (or Nakolakevi, aka Archaeopolis), Georgia.

3. Helen C. Evans and Brandie Ratliff, eds., Byzantium and Islam: Age of Transition, 7th-9th Century (New Haven: Yale University Press/New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2012), p. 71. These authors date the lintel to the eighth century, but the date on the carving is damaged and must be inferred. László Török, Transfigurations of Late Antique Art in Egypt AD 250-700 (Leiden: Brill, 2005), p. 358, considers the sixth century a justifiable date.

4. According to the late scholar John Henry Parker, the buildings depicted in the sarcophagus are the same as those in the background of a fourth-century mosaic at Santa Pudenziana in Rome. See John Henry Parker, Tombs in and Near Rome: Sculpture among the Greeks and Romans, Mythology in Funereal Sculpture and Early Christian Sculpture (Oxford: J. Parker, 1877), p. 310. Other scholars have suggested that the buildings represented at Santa Pudenziana are the churches in Jerusalem. It is my belief, however, that the mosaic at Santa Pudenziana depicts neither the Hagia Sion nor the Upper Room, but rather the three churches built by Constantine.

This post originally appeared in Bible History Daily on April 8, 2020.

Related reading in Bible History Daily

Was Jesus’ Last Supper a Seder?

Jesus’ Last Supper Still Wasn’t a Passover Seder Meal

The Last Days of Jesus: A Final “Messianic” Meal

All-Access members, read more in the BAS Library

Archaeological Views: Mount Zion’s Upper Room and Tomb of David

Church of the Apostles Found on Mt. Zion

The post Hunting for the Upper Room in Jerusalem appeared first on Biblical Archaeology Society.

In addition to its symbolism for the Holy Spirit, the dove was a popular Christian symbol before the cross rose to prominence in the fourth century. The dove continued to be used for various church implements throughout the Byzantine and medieval period, including the form of oil lamps and this 13th-century altar piece for holding the Eucharistic bread. Walters Art Museum, Baltimore

Few symbols have a tradition as long and as rich as the dove. A particular favorite in art and iconography, the dove often represents some aspect of the divine, and its use has been shared, adapted and reinterpreted across cultures and millennia to suit changing belief systems. From the ancient world to modern times, this simple bird developed layer upon layer of meaning and interpretive significance, making it a complex and powerful addition to religious texts and visual representations.

In the Ancient Near East and Mediterranean world, the dove became an iconic symbol of the mother goddess. Small clay shrines from the Iron Age Levant depict doves perched atop the doorways of these mini-temples. On one example from Cyprus, the entire exterior of the goddess’s shrine is covered with dovecotes. The doves represented feminine fertility and procreation, and came to be well-recognized symbols of the Canaanite goddess Asherah and her Phoenician and later Punic embodiment, Tanit. First-century B.C. coins from Ashkelon bore a dove, which represented both the goddess Tyche-Astarte and the city mint. In Rome and throughout the Empire, goddesses such as Venus and Fortunata could be seen depicted in statues with a dove resting in their hand or on their head.

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There is strong evidence in the Hebrew Bible, as well as the archaeological record, that many ancient Israelites believed the goddess Asherah was the consort of their god Yahweh. Perhaps it is not so surprising, then, that the heirs of this Israelite religion incorporated the “feminine” symbol of the dove to represent the spirit of God (the word for “spirit,” ruach, is a feminine word in Hebrew). The Babylonian Talmud likens the hovering of God’s spirit in Genesis 1:2 to the hovering of a dove. Indeed, this same “hovering” language is used to describe God’s spirit in the Dead Sea Scrolls as well as the New Testament.

A dove and two bird-like female figures perch atop this clay house shrine from the Iron Age. The dove was widely recognized throughout the Ancient Near Eastern world as a symbol of the mother goddess Asherah and her counterparts Astarte and Tanit. Ardon Bar Hama

Dovecotes, or niches for doves, dot the exterior of this small clay house shrine from Cyprus, while the goddess beckons to devotees from within. Erich Lessing.

But that is not the only allusion to a dove in the Hebrew Bible. The best-known example comes from the flood story of Genesis 6—9. In Genesis 8:8—12, after the ark has landed on the mountains of Ararat, Noah sends out a dove three times to see how far the flood waters have receded. The first time it found nothing and returned to the ark. The second time it brought back an olive leaf, so Noah could see that God’s punishment was over and life had begun again on the earth. (The image of a dove holding an olive branch continues to be a symbol of peace to this day.) The third time, the dove did not return, and Noah knew that it was safe to leave the ark. A similar flood story is told in parallel passages in the ancient Babylonian Epic of Gilgamesh. There, too, the hero (Utnapishtim) sends out a dove, which returns to the ship unable to find a perch. In fact, from Ancient Near Eastern records to nautical practices as recent as the 19th century, sailors the world over used doves and other birds to help them find and navigate toward land. So, while Noah made use of an ancient sailor’s trick, the dove came to represent a sign from God.

A white dove represents the “spirit of God” that hovered over the face of the deep (Genesis 1:2) in this, the first of the Creation mosaics at the Cathedral of Santa Maria Nuovo in Monreale, Italy. Photo by the Casa Editrice Mistretta, Palermo, Italy

Dove imagery is also utilized in several of the prophetic books of the Hebrew Bible. The low, cooing sound of a dove served as mournful imagery to evoke the suffering of the people of Judah (see Isaiah 38:14, 59:11; Ezekiel 7:16 and others).

A dove returns to Noah’s ark with an olive branch in its beak, a sign that life had returned to the earth after the great flood. Sailors throughout history have used birds to guide them to dry land. Pictured is a detail of a woodcut from the Nuremberg Bible. Credit: Victoria & Albert Picture Library.

The Epic of Gilgamesh, a Babylonian narrative that has several parallels in the early chapters of Genesis, tells the story of Utnapishtim, who (much like Noah) survived a flood that destroyed the earth and sent out a dove to try and find dry land. The British Museum

But doves were more than just a soundtrack for a people who had fallen away from God; they were also an instrument of atonement. Several passages of the Torah (especially Leviticus) specify occasions that require the sacrifice of two doves (or young pigeons)—either as a guilt offering or to purify oneself after a period of ritual impurity (including the birth of a child). Several columbaria, or dovecotes, have been excavated in the City of David and the Jerusalem environs (by crawford). These towers were undoubtedly used to raise doves for sacrificial offerings, as well as for the meat and fertilizer they provided—a popular practice in the Hellenistic and Roman periods that continued into the modern period.

Columbaria, or dovecotes, have been discovered in archaeological excavations in Jerusalem and throughout the Holy Land. The scarce remains of the tower on the left show a few rows of niches still standing in the City of David, whereas the underground dovecotes such as the one on the right, from Luzit, have been remarkably well preserved. Doves and pigeons were raised for their meat, and their droppings were collected for fertilizer, but they also played an important role in Temple sacrifice. Boaz Zissu

The atoning quality of doves led to comparisons in the Talmud and the Targums with Isaac and Israel. According to these extra-Biblical sources, just as a dove stretches out its neck, so too did Isaac prepare to be sacrificed to God, and later Israel took on this stance to atone for the sins of other nations.

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Thus, by the time of Jesus, the dove was already rich with symbolism and many interpretations—as a representation of Israel, atoning sacrifice, suffering, a sign from God, fertility and the spirit of God. All these meanings and more were incorporated into the Christian use of dove iconography.

Doves appear in the New Testament at scenes associated with Jesus’ birth, baptism and just before his death. The Gospel of Luke says that Mary and Joseph sacrificed two doves at the Temple following the birth of Jesus, as was prescribed in the law mentioned above (Luke 2:24). Yet in the Gospel of John, Jesus angrily drives out all of the merchants from the Temple, including “those who sold doves” to worshipers there (John 2:16).

During Benjamin Mazar’s excavations at the southwest corner of Jerusalem’s Temple Mount, he recovered a stone bowl that bore the inscription korban (“sacrifice”), as well as finely scratched drawings of two upside-down (dead) birds. The bowl was probably intended for devout Jews to bring their offering of two doves or pigeons to the Temple for sacrifice, as commanded in the Books of Leviticus and Numbers. Erich Lessing

The Holy Spirit descends on Jesus in the form of a dove during his baptism in the Jordan by John the Baptist. Variations of this scene are told in all four of the Gospels and, as shown here in a 14th-century Byzantine mosaic from the Baptistery in the Church of San Marco in Venice, the dove became the quintessential symbol for the Holy Spirit, especially in representations of the Trinity. Alinari/Art Resource, NY

But perhaps the most familiar dove imagery from the New Testament is recounted in all four of the Gospels (though in varying forms) at the baptism of Jesus by John the Baptist in the Jordan River. After Jesus came up out of the water, the [Holy] Spirit [of God] came from heaven and descended on him “like a dove” (see Matthew 3:16; Mark 1:10; Luke 3:22; John 1:32). The baptism story built on the pre-existing symbol of the dove as God’s spirit (and its many other meanings) and firmly entrenched it as the preferred representation of the Holy Spirit—especially in later artistic depictions of the Trinity.

Learn about the use of pagan imagery in Christian art in “Borrowing from the Neighbors” in Bible History Daily.

In Renaissance art, a dove became a standard element in the formulaic Annunciation scene, representing the Holy Spirit about to merge with the Virgin Mary. Doves were also shown flying into the mouths of prophets in Christian art as a sign of God’s spirit and divine authority. Even contemporary pop artist Andy Warhol used a (much more commercial) image of a Dove to represent the Holy Spirit in his, The Last Supper (Dove).

“The Word” enters Mary via rays of light emanating from a dove (representing the Holy Spirit) in this detail from Fra Filippo Lippi’s Annunciation scene, now in the National Gallery in London. National Gallery, London

This strange juxtaposition of modern brand labels and a classic Last Supper scene in Andy Warhol’s The Last Supper (Dove) nonetheless has hidden religious meaning. The dove hovers over Jesus’ head, representing the Holy Spirit, while the GE logo represents God the Father by recalling their famous slogan, “We bring good things to light.” © 1996 The Andy Warhol Foundation, Inc./Artists Rights Society, NY

Another source associates a dove with the beginning of Jesus’ life. According to the second-century Protoevangelium of James, when the Temple priests were trying to choose a husband for Mary, a dove flew out of Joseph’s rod and landed on his head, marking him as the one selected by God. In fairytales throughout the world, birds have often been used to signify the “chosen one,” the true king or even the divine.

Before the cross gained prominence in the fourth century, the second-century church father Clement of Alexandria urged early Christians to use the dove or a fish as a symbol to identify themselves and each other as followers of Jesus. Archaeologists have recovered oil lamps and Eucharistic vessels in the shape of doves from Christian churches throughout the Holy Land.

Since ancient times the dove was used to identify and represent the divine. It then helped countless peoples to envision and understand the many aspects of a God who could not be embodied by an idol or statue. It continues to be a favorite way to show the hand and presence of God in the world and remains one of our most enduring symbols.

Dorothy Resig Willette, formerly the managing editor of Biblical Archaeology Review, is a contributing editor at the Biblical Archaeology Society.

Related reading in Bible History Daily

Bible Animals: From Hyenas to Hippos

The Animals Went in Two by Two, According to Babylonian Ark Tablet

Camel Domestication History Challenges Biblical Narrative

What Does the Bible Say About Dogs?

This Bible History Daily article was originally published on October 1, 2013.

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