Re: Passover + the KJV
Helen Willis (hhiwater@BRIGHT.NET)
Sun, 06 Jul 1997 22:32:40 -0700
Farrell Till wrote:
>
> CARR
> Certain complaints have been made recently that Luke and John thought
> that Passover followed the days of unleavened bread, when it was the
> other way around and that no person knowing Judaism would make that
> mistake.
>
> To be fair to the Bible writers, Josephus in Antiq. 14.2.1 also says
> that the whole feast of unleavened bread was known as the Passover.
>
> TILL
> Yes, Exodus 12:15-19 indicates this too. However, if you will read this
> text carefully, you will notice that it can't be reconciled with the claim
> that on the first day of unleavened bread, the disciples asked Jesus where
> they should make preparations to eat the Passover (Matt. 26:17). Exodus
> 12:6 states that the Passover lamb was to be killed "at even." Some
> translations say "at twilight." Since the Jewish day began at sunset, the
> Passover lamb would have been killed right at the beginning of the 14th day
> of the first month, so the "preparations" for the Passover obviously began
> at that time. If the "first day of unleavened bread" began on the "day" of
> the Passover, then the first day of unleavened bread would have also begun
> at sunset on the 14th day of the month. In other words, the first day of
> unleavened bread would have begun at the very time the Passover lamb was
> being killed. How then could the disciples of Jesus have ask where they
> should make preparations to eat the Passover, because the preparations would
> have necessarily started already at the time they were asking the question?
> Besides this, there is the problem of reconciling Exodus 12:15-19 with
> Leviticus 23:1-8, which states that the 14th was a "set feast" for the
> Passover and that the 15th day is the "feast of the unleavened bread to Yahweh."
>
> There are other problems in reconciling Exodus 12:15-19 with Matthew 26:17,
> but I will reserve further comment until inerrantists on the list have
> addressed this problem.
>
> Farrell Till
> Skepticism, Inc.
> jftill@midwest.net
I don't know the answer to when they kill the lamb, but I think if you check
with Yoel in modern Judaism the Day of Preparation is the day before the
first Seder (Feast of Unleaven Bread) and is the careful cleaning of
the house of all leavening and includes the children hiding some leaven bread
in the house so that the father has to search and find it in order to make
sure that Exodus 12:15 is obeyed. I would think it would be at the beginning
of this day, i.e. just after sunset on the day before the sunset of the
eating of the Seder that the lamb got swacked. A good biography of Hillel
might give some insight into this. He was appointed head of the Sanhedrin
after solving a problem of what to do if the "eve of Passover fell on
Sabbath". To quote Samuel N. Hoenig, "The Essence of Talmudic Law and
Thought:
In the year 31 B.C.E., the eve of Passover fell on the Sabbath. Inasmuch
as the Passover sacrifice must be slaughtered on the eve of Passover, the
Sons of Betayra, who headed the Sanhedrin, had forgotten the Halakhah as to
whether or not the slaughter of the Pashal lamb overrides the Sabbath. Hillel
was summoned and.........Hillel proved that the Passover sacrifice does
indeed take precedence over the Sabbath.
By "the eve of Passover" I presume, that Hoenig means the eve before
Passover just as Christmas eve is the evening before Christmas. Christmas
begins at midnight that night, but by Jewish figuring Passover would begin at
sunset the next afternoon. Some other author telling the story of Hillel's
appointment might make the timing more obvious to folks who have not grown up
in the Jewish culture. I think that the dating of this ruling shows that the
Jewish record seemed to have a pretty solid agreement of the dating of
Passover, by the supposed time of Jesus. I seen some Christians claim there
was confusion of this.
Helen Willis
hhiwater@bright.net