Delphi Complete Works of George Eliot (Illustrated) (829 page)

^*
Vid. Theile, über die letzte Mahlzeit Jesu, in Winer’s and Engelhardt’s neuem krit. Journal, 2, s. 169, Anm., and zur Biographie Jesu, §
31.out even to the superfluity as the paschal, even if Luke (xxii. 15) did not make Jesus open the repast with the words:
With desire I have desired to eat this passover with you,
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. — When, on the other hand, the fourth gospel commences its narrative of the last meal with the statement of time:
before the feast of the passover,
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, (xiii. 1); the
supper.
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vov, which is mentioned immediately after (v.
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appears also to happen before the passover; especially as throughout John’s description of this evening, which, especially in relation to the discourses accompanying the meal, is very ample, there is not any notice or even allusion, to indicate that Jesus was on this occasion celebrating the passover. Further, when Jesus after the meal addresses the traitor with the summons,
what thou doest, do quickly,
this is misunderstood by the rest of the disciples to mean,
Buy those things that we have need of against the feast,
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(v. 29). Now the requirements for the feast related chiefly to the paschal meal, and consequently the meal just concluded cannot have been the paschal. Again, it is said, xviii. 28, that on the following morning, the Jews would not enter the Gentile prætorium,
lest they should be defiled, but that they might eat the passover,
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whence it would seem that the paschal meal was yet in prospect. To this it may be added that this same succeeding day, on which Jesus was crucified, is called the
preparation of the passover,
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, i.e. the day on the evening of which the paschal lamb was to be eaten; moreover, when it is said of the second day after the meal in question, being that which Jesus passed in the grave:
that sabbath day was an high day,
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(xix. 31); this peculiar solemnity appears to have proceeded from the circumstance, that on that sabbath fell the first day of the passover, so that the paschal lamb was not eaten on the evening on which Jesus was arrested, but on the evening of his burial.

These divergencies are so important, that many expositors, in order to prevent the Evangelists from falling into contradiction with each other, have here also tried the old expedient of supposing that they do not speak of the same thing — that John intends to describe an altogether different repast from that of the synoptists. According to this view, the
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of John was an ordinary evening meal, doubtless in Bethany; on this occasion Jesus washed the disciples’ feet, spoke of the betrayer, and after Judas had left the company, added other discourses of a consoling and admonitory tendency, until at length, on the morning of the 14th of Nisan, he summoned the disciples to depart from Bethany and proceed to Jerusalem, in the words:
Arise, let us go hence
(xiv. 31). Here the synoptical account may be interposed, since it represents the two disciples as being sent forward to Jerusalem to prepare for the paschal meal, and then records its celebration, concerning which John is silent, and only takes up the thread of the narrative at the discourses delivered after the paschal meal (xv. 1 ff.).
^*
But this attempt to avoid contradiction by referring the respective narratives to totally different events, is counteracted by the undeniable identity of many features in the two meals. Independeritly of isolated particulars which are found alike in both accounts, it is plain that John, as well as the synoptists, intends to describe the last meal of which Jesus partook with his disciples. This is implied in the introduction to John’s narrative; for the proof which is there said to be given of Jesus having loved his own
unto the end,
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, may be the most suitably referred to his last moments of companionship with them. In like manner, the discourses after the meal point to the prospect of immediate separation; and the meal and discourses are, in John also, immediately followed by the departure to Gethsemane and the arrest of Jesus. It is true that, according to the above opinion, these last-named incidents are connected only with those discourses which were delivered on the occasion of the later meal, omitted by John (xv. 17) : but that between xiv. 31 and xv. 1 the author of the fourth gospel intentionally omitted the whole incident of the paschal meal, is a position which, although it might appear to explain with some plausibility the singular
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, Arise, let us go hence,
no one will now seriously maintain. But even admitting such an ellipsis, there still remains the fact that Jesus (xiii. 38) foretells to Peter his denial with this determination of time:
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, the cock shall not crow,
which he could only make use of at the last meal, and not, as is here presupposed, at an earlier one.†

Thus this expedient must be relinquished, and it must be admitted that all the Evangelists intend to speak of the same meal, namely, the last of which Jesus partook with his disciples. And in making this admission, the fairness which we owe to every author, and which was believed to be due in a peculiar degree to the authors of the Bible, appeared to demand an enquiry whether, although they represent one and the same event with great divergencies in several respects, yet nevertheless both sides may not be correct. To obtain an affirmative result of this inquiry it must be shown, as regards the time, either that the three first Evangelists, as well as the fourth, do not intend to describe a paschal meal, or that the latter, as well as the former, does so intend.

In an ancient Fragment
^‡
it is sought to solve the problem in the first method, by denying that Matthew places the last meal of Jesus at the proper time for the paschal meal, the evening of the 14th of Nisan, and his passion on the first day of the feast of the passover, the 15th of Nisan; but one does not see how the express indications respecting the passover in the synoptists can be neutralized.

^*
Thus Lightfoot, horæ, p. 463 ff.; Hess, Geschichte Jesu, 2, s. 273 ff.; also Venturini 3, s. 634ff.

^†
An insufficient outlet from this difficulty is pointed out by Lightfoot, p. 482 f.

^‡
Fragm. ex Claudii Apollinaris libro de Paschate, in Chron. Paschal. ed. du Fresne.
Paris, 1688, p. 6 f. præf.Hence it has been a far more general attempt in recent times, to draw John to the side of the other Evangelists.* His expression
before the feast of the passover,
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(xiii. 1), was thought to be divested of its difficulty by the observation that it is not immediately connected with the
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, but only with the statement that Jesus knew that his hour was come, and that he loved his own unto the end; it is only in the succeeding verse that there is any mention of the meal, to which therefore that determination of time does not refer. But to what then can it refer? to the knowledge that his hour was come? this is only an incidental remark; or to the love which endured to the end? but to this so special a determination of time can only refer, if an external proof of love be intended, and such an one is presented in his conduct at the meal, which consequently remains the point to which that determination of the day must apply. It is therefore conjectured farther that the words
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were used out of accommodation to the Greeks for whom John wrote: since that people did not, like the Jews, begin their day with the evening, the meal taken at the beginning of the first day of the passover, would appear to them to be taken on the evening before the passover. But what judicious writer, if he supposes a misconstruction possible on the part of the reader, chooses language which can only serve to encourage that misconstruction? A still more formidable difficulty is presented by xviii. 28, where the Jews, on the morning after the
imprisonment of Jesus, will not enter the judgment hall
lest they should be defiled, but that they may eat the passover,
 
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Nevertheless it was supposed that passages such as Deut. xvi. i,
2,
where all the sacrifices to be killed during the time of the passover are denoted by the expression [
Heb. letters
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pesakh
, authorise the interpretation of
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in this place of the remaining sacrifices to be offered during the paschal week, and especially of the Chagiga, which was to be consumed towards the end of the first feast day. But as Mosheim has correctly remarked, from the fact that the paschal lamb, together with the rest of the sacrifices to be offered during the feast of the passover was designated
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it by no means follows that these can be so designated with the exclusion of the paschal lamb.† On the other hand, the friends of the above view have sought to show the necessity of their mode of interpretation, by observing that for the eating of the passover which was celebrated late in the evening, consequently at the commencement of the succeeding day, the entering of a Gentile house in the morning, being a defilement which lasted only through the current day, would have been no disqualification; but that it would have been such for the partaking of the Chagiga, which was eaten in the afternoon, consequently on the same day on which the defilement was contracted; so that only this, and