Another look at easter week and whether there was another day between the “high” sabbath and the normal weekly sabbath

An alternative explanation

I was very interested in the article “The Problems of Easter Week” by Brother Arthur Mander (Testimony, March 1980, p. 72), as for a number of years I have cherished an explanation of the problems involved. But let me first put forward one or two points which I believe make Brother Mander’s theory un­sound.

He suggests that there was a day in between the “high” sabbath and the normal weekly sabbath, but if this was so why did not the women use that day to anoint the body of Jesus? It would certainly have given them plenty of opportunity!

The keeping up of the passover lamb

Brother Mander suggests that the “keeping up” of the passover lamb from 10th-14th Abib typifies the retirement of Jesus from his public ministry, but I do not believe this idea can be sustained. The “keeping up” of the lamb at passover was that it might be associat­ed with the household for which it was to die. If the lamb proved too much for one house­hold it was to be shared with the neighbouring household. It was to be kept thus for three days and part of a day, i.e. from 10th Abib to “between the two evenings” or the 9th hour of 14th Abib (Ex. 12:3-6).

Jesus was provided as the Passover Lamb for the household of Israel. But he was more than sufficient for them, because it was intended that the neighbours of the Jews, the Gentiles, should also share in the protection which his death has afforded from the “angel of death”. Jesus was “kept” or shut up within the house­hold of Israel for the three and a half years of his ministry, before being sacrificed for the salvation of his people. And just as the house­hold had three days and part of a day in which to get to know the lamb, so the household of Israel had three years and part of a year to get to know the one who was to die for them.

The preparation

Another suggestion Brother Mander makes is that the “preparation” mentioned in the Gospels refers to the period 10th-14th Abib and not to one day, but the various contexts in which this word is found belie this assump­tion. Mark 15:42 equates the “preparation” with “the day before the sabbath” (Gk. prosabbaton or “sabbath-eve”). The sabbath here was evidently 15th Abib, and therefore the “high day” or special sabbath. Luke 23:54 distinctly says: “That day (Gk. hemera) was the preparation”.

Matthew tells us:

“Now the first day of the feast of unleavened bread the disciples came to Jesus, saying unto him, Where wilt thou that we prepare for thee to eat the pass-over?” (Mt. 26:17).

On the evening of 13th Abib it was the custom to search the house and remove all leaven. Thus the 14th Abib was the first day of unleavened bread. Luke 22:7 confirms this:

“Then came the day of unleavened bread, when the passover must be killed”.

So we are drawn to the inescapable conclu­sion that the “preparation” was in fact one day, the 14th Abib. From the disciples pre­paring the Last Supper to the crucifixion was therefore a period of but 15 hours, i.e. from six in the evening until the 3rd hour, or 9 a.m. next morning. And all the various details of the trial of Christ must have occurred within that period.

The reference in John 19:14 to “the sixth hour” is followed immediately in verse 16 by Jesus being led away to Golgotha. It strains the imagination, to say the least, to suggest that this took from midday on 13th Abib until 9 a.m. the following morning. Obviously John was not referring to midday on the day of crucifixion, for the other Gospel writers tell us that Jesus was crucified at the 3rd hour, or 9 a.m. I believe John was using the Roman civil way of reckoning which counts from mid­night. Thus the sixth hour would be 6 a.m., and would allow 3 hours for the walk to Golgotha and the subsequent preparations for the three crucifixions which took place there.

Six days before the passover

A further consideration is that Jesus came from Jericho to Bethany “six days before the passover” (Jno. 12:1). This would be on the 8th Abib, and would involve a gruelling uphill journey of around twelve miles. A crowd had followed Jesus out of Jericho, and he had stopped to heal the two blind men. We must surely allow at least five hours for these events, and Jesus could not have arrived at Bethany until late in the day. And so into six days we have to squeeze the supper at the house of Simon the Leper, the triumphal entry, the cursing of the fig-tree and the casting out of the money-changers, the withering of the fig-tree by the next day, the Jews put to silence, the Mount Olivet prophecy, and the fact that Jesus commuted from Bethany to Jerusalem during the days before his arrest (Lk. 20:1; 21:37). So his last public appearance must have been later than 9th Abib as Brother Mander has suggested, and the fact that the passover lamb was “kept up” from 10th-14th Abib has no bearing on the last few days of Jesus.

An alternative explanation

My own theory is that the 14th Abib com­menced at 6 p.m. on the Wednesday and con­tinued until 6 p.m. on the Thursday. This would make Friday the “high day” of John 19:31, and Saturday the normal sabbath. Jesus said: “As Jonas was three days and three nights in the whale’s belly; so shall the Son of man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth” (Mt. 12:40). Jewish days began with evening, and the record of creation is that “the evening and the morning were the first day” and so on. I believe that Jesus puts the days first because that is the order in which they should be counted for his time in the tomb. And so, according to the Jewish custom of counting part of a day as a full day, what remained of Thursday afternoon was the first day, and so on.

If we count the days through we find that Jesus rose very early in the morning of the 17th Abib. This is a remarkable date in Scripture history. It was the day on which the Ark rested on Mount Ararat (Gen. 8:4). It was three days after the passover that the Israelites crossed the Red Sea, on the 17th Abib. On all three occasions that day has seen the birth of a new age in the purpose of God. As the children of Israel were in Egypt until they crossed the Red Sea it can also be argued from Exodus 12:40, 41 that it was the 17th Abib when God made the covenant with Abraham as recorded in Genesis 15:12-21. Alternatively, if these verses refer to the 14th Abib when the passover was killed, then the “horror of great darkness” came upon Abra­ham at exactly the time that Jesus died on the cross (cp. Deut. 16:6).

From the chart it will be seen that my suggestions differ considerably from those of Brother Mander. The one problem with my working out is that it puts the casting out of the money-changers on the sabbath, a day when they would normally not be trading. But as the 10th Abib (when the lambs had to be purchased for the passover) commenced that evening it is possible that the ruling concern­ing the sabbath would be overruled, in order that the provisions of the law of passover might be kept. It was Jesus himself who referred to this principle when he said, “The priests in the temple profane the sabbath, and are blameless” (Mt. 12:5). It is possible, therefore, that the money-changers and traders were there osten­sibly for providing the people with the lambs for passover.

There are certain references in the Gospels which inexorably place the order and timing of some of the events leading up to the Last Supper. John 12:12 tells us that the triumphal entry took place on the “next day” after the supper at the house of Simon the Leper. Mark 11:12-19 tells us that the cursing of the fig-tree and the casting out of the money-changers took place “on the morrow” after the trium­phal entry. Mark 11:20-33 tells us that it was “in the morning” of the next day that the fig-tree was observed to be withered away, and that Jesus put the Pharisees, and other Jewish groups, to silence. It was probably as he went out of the temple that evening (Mk. 13:1) that the question of his disciples prompted Jesus to utter the Mount Olivet prophecy. Then Mark 14:1 tells us that two days before the passover the Jewish leaders were still seeking how they could put Jesus to death. Our chart therefore is based upon all these considerations.


Responses

G. Arthur Mander responded in The Testimony, Vol 51, No. 3 (same issue), March, 1981

  • I have to thank Brother Chandler for his comments, and find some of his suggestions interesting, particularly the thought that the instruction in Exodus that the lamb should be kept from 10th-14th Abib is a prophecy (on the “day-for-a-year” principle) that Jesus would be with his people for 3 1/2 years. This is the first such explanation that I have heard, though it does not prohibit a second fulfilment of the prophecy in the way I suggest. Simi­larly his emphasis that the 17th Abib is a remarkable day in Scripture is worth consider­ing.

    In connection with the “preparation”, each passage would need a separate explanation, but they are by no means as definite as Brother Chandler suggests. Take Mark 15:42, where the preparation is referred to, as an example. The reference is to a time after the crucifixion, whereas a previous day, when the disciples first began to prepare the Last Supper, is referred to in Mark 14:12 as “the first day of unleavened bread, when they killed the passover”. Evidently the “preparation” and the “passover” were spread over a number of days.

    The real difficulty, which was the main theme of my article, still, however, remains. Brother Chandler says, as do many others, “From the disciples preparing the Last Supper to the crucifixion was therefore a period of but 15 hours”, but we know that 12 of those hours were taken up with the last supper itself, the three hours in the Garden of Gethsemane, and the “trial” in the high priest’s house which lasted till cockcrow. Brother Chandler then suggests that Pilate was on the Judgement seat (Jno. 19:14) at 6 a.m., which really does seem incredible, as it would require so many things (e.g. the trial before Herod, the scourging and the crown of thorns) to have all happened between cockcrow and 6 a.m. on the same morning.

    Brother Chandler’s comments are in line with all the other comments I have received, being concerned only with the period before Christ’s arrest, or the length of time he was in the tomb. No one has so much as referred to, let alone offered any explanation of, the problem of how the eighteen or so events re­corded between the “in the morning. . .” of Mark 15:1 and the “it was the third hour, and they crucified him” of verse 25 could possibly have taken place at the rate of ten minutes each. It was when I realised that these events needed at least a full day that I found they fitted into the overall period of a week. The overall period however is not the main problem, which remains: “How long did the trials really take?”.