Was Jesus' Last Supper a Seder? Read Jonathan Klawans’s article “Was Jesus’ Last Supper a Seder?” as it originally appeared in Bible Review, October 2. The article was first republished in Bible History Daily in October 2. In 2. 01. 6, Klawans wrote a follow- up article, “Jesus’ Last Supper Still Wasn’t a Passover Seder Meal.”—Ed. 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- 1. 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 1. 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 1. Last Supper tradition and the Passover Seder. The Passover Seder and Sacrifice.
Pinechas, Pinchas, Pinhas, or Pin'has (פִּינְחָס — Hebrew for 'Phinehas,' a name, the sixth word and the first distinctive word in the parashah) is the. Jewish Magazine Archives containing more than 3,000 articles of Jewish interest, Israel News, Jewish humor, mysticism, torah, Jewish history, holocaust, and Jewish. Shavuot is a biblical festival known in English as the Feast of Weeks or Pentecost. Shavuot is a pilgrimage-feast, in Hebrew chag. As a chag, Shavuot is one of the.
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. Since before the days of Christ Jesus, on High Holy Days (On Annual High Sabbaths), Hebrew males were commanded to make a 'Pilgrimage' to the Tabernacle (At Jerusalem.
The Jewish holiday of Passover commemorates the Exodus from Egypt. The roots of the festival are found in Exodus 1.
- Creating Lively Passover Seders by David Arnow is a great resource the Passover Seder.
- The Pesach HEBREW ONLY Haggadah With Stories, Parables, and Sayings of Our Master, the Ben Ish Chai.
- Behaalotecha, Beha'alotecha, Beha'alothekha, or Behaaloscha (בְּהַעֲלֹתְךָ — Hebrew for 'when you step up,' the 11th word, and the first distinctive.
God instructs the Israelites to sacrifice a lamb at twilight on the 1. Jewish month of Nisan, before the sun sets (Exodus 1. 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 1. Egyptians with the tenth plague, the killing of the first- born sons. 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 1. 2 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 1. Passover and the meal are actually on the 1. Exodus.) Exodus 1. Exodus 1. 2: 1. 5). Once the Israelites were settled in Israel, and once a Temple was built in Jerusalem, the original sacrifice described in Exodus 1.
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 1. Passover sacrifice once the sun had set, and the festival had formally begun on the 1. This kind of celebration is described as having taken place during the reigns of Kings Hezekiah and Josiah (2 Chronicles 3. Passover is the celebration of the exodus from Egypt.
What can archaeology tell us about the historicity of the Biblical account? The FREE e. Book Ancient Israel in Egypt and the Exodusconsiders texts and archaeological evidence from the second millennium B.
C. E. that describe Israel in Egypt and the Exodus. 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 1. 4 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. 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. 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. 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 2. 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 1. 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? 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.