Are the gospel accounts about the crucifixion trustworthy? Some have answered:
“It depends upon which gospel one chooses to believe. They are in contrast to each other on what day he died, was buried, and was supposedly resurrected. They also differ on who went to the tomb after his body had been secreted away and on what day that was.
The misteachings From the pulpit, the inconsistencies of man’s writings in the Roman testament, especially in contrast to G-d’s Word in His Tanakh [the Old Testament] are all key reasons that I, and many others like me, have left the church to pursue a conversion to Judaism.”
GN Harris
His comment does raise some important issues that I believe need to be addressed, and I will seek to demonstrate that:
- The Gospels are consistent with each other, especially in regards to when the crucifixion and resurrection happened;
- There have been mis-teachings from the church, but that does not mean that the word of God is inaccurate and untrue.
Indeed, the concern which GN raises is exactly the same concern I had, and it is what has caused me to look more deeply into the crucifixion and to try to sort out the apparent discrepancies in the accounts. On the surface there do seem to be some problems, but this is not a new accusation and in spite of what he says, similar accusations are frequently leveled against the Old Testament. There are hundreds of so-called inconsistencies in the Old Testament and skeptics say these inconsistencies lead them to distrust the Tanakh and the God of the Bible. I believe that all of those so-called inconsistencies in the Tanakh can be resolved, just as I believe the one GN points to in the New Testament can be resolved. However, GN has gone the route of abandoning the New Testament because he believes the accounts are too inconsistent to be credible, and I have gone the route that the so-called inconsistencies actually point to God’s divine inspiration. Ironically, I believe going back to a more Jewish understanding of the Passover will help resolve the so-called inconsistencies which GN says are driving him back to Judaism. Maybe he will reconsider? I have found that staying close to christianity’s Jewish roots helps us to understand that Jesus is the Messiah, and it is sad to me that the early church chose to move away from our Jewish roots. I think that was a big mistake, but back to the major topic.
Come, let us reason together.
The Four Gospels
{Note: If you are interested in researching the reliability of scripture further, I would like to direct you to two books: Christian Apologetics by Norman Geisler, and New Testament Books: Are They Reliable? by F. F. Bruce.}
Here are the four accounts about the Last Supper which give rise to some misunderstandings (I am using the New King James Version):
Matthew 26:17 “Now on the first day of the Feast of the Unleavened Bread the disciples came to Jesus, saying to Him, “Where do You want us to prepare for You to eat the Passover?”
Mark 14:12 “Now on the first day of Unleavened Bread, when they killed the Passover lamb, His disciples said to Him, “Where do You want us to go and prepare, that You may eat the Passover?”
Luke 22:7 “Then came the Day of Unleavened Bread, when the Passover must be killed. And He sent Peter and John, saying, “Go and prepare the Passover for us, that we may eat.”
As one can read, the three synoptic gospels are almost identical in their wording about when the Last Supper was to take place: “The first day of Unleavened Bread.” In Leviticus 23, God commanded the Israelites to celebrate three spring feasts: Passover (Abib 14), the feast of Unleavened Bread (Abib 15-21), and the feast of Firstfruits (Abib 16 or 17). However, what is confusing is that the first day of Unleavened Bread is on the 15th, not the 14th, but Matthew, Mark, and Luke are calling Passover “the first day of Unleavened Bread.”
This reveals an important truth, not a mistake. For the Hebrews, Chabad.org explains that, “In a certain sense, the celebration of the 15th is considered to be an extension of the 14th…. Therefore, when it comes to the celebration of the Passover sacrifice, while it was eaten on the 15th, it was considered to be the same day as the 14th.” (For a full explanation, click here).
So, the phrase “the first day of Unleavened Bread,” refers to Passover (Abib 14) when the Passover lamb was prepared. I will further confirm this interpretation a little later in this essay.
The Gospel of John
John, however, throws a little wrench into the uniformity of these accounts:
John 13:1-4 “Now before the Feast of the Passover, when Jesus knew that His hour had come that He should depart from this world to the Father, having loved His own who were in the world, He loved them to the end.
“And supper being ended, the devil having already put it into the heart of Judas Iscariot, Simon’s son, to betray Him, Jesus, knowing that the Father had given all things into His hands, and that He had come from God and was going to God, rose from supper and laid aside His garments, took a towel and girded Himself.”
John states that the Last Supper with his disciples was before the Feast of Passover, meaning that the Last Supper was at the beginning of Abib 14 and was NOT the Passover meal which was eaten at the end of the 14th. However, the synoptics call the Last Supper the pascha, or the Passover meal.
The Passover Meal
Jewish practice sacrificed the Passover lamb at 3 pm on Abib 14, or at 2 pm if Abib 14 fell on a Friday. According to the Jewish Encyclopedia,
“The animal was slain on the eve of the Passover, on the afternoon of the 14th of Nisan, after the Tamid sacrifice had been killed, i.e., at three o’clock, or, in case the eve of the Passover fell on Friday, at two.” (Jewish Encyclopedia)
Then the Passover meal would begin after sunset on Abib 15. The lamb would be prepared on Abib 14, but the pascha, or Seder, would not begin until after sunset which is when Abib 15 began (remember, a Jewish day begins at sunset). It would also have to be consumed before dawn and no bones were to be broken. For a more detailed account, click here.
Timeline of Events
To see that all four gospels are consistent with each other, let’s look more closely at John’s account which gives the most thoroughly detailed timeline of the final day of Jesus (Abib 14). One could argue that this is the primary focus of John’s gospel. His account of the last week of Jesus covers a whopping ten chapters, beginning in chapter 12, at six days before Passover (12:1). His account continues until the end of his gospel when the resurrected Jesus restores Peter and implies the destiny of John. By comparison, the other gospels spend only three chapters on the death and resurrection of Jesus. John’s account also aligns with the way Passover was practiced by the Hebrews in the first century, although this doesn’t mean the other accounts are wrong, but we’ll get to that later.
From John’s gospel we get the following timeline of events:
John 13 – 17: The Last Supper. (Sunset to about midnight.) Beginning on the day of Passover (which begins at sunset), Jesus washes the disciples feet, Judas Iscariot leaves, and Jesus promises the Spirit and persecution. He also teaches them to abide in Him, he shares his final words of encouragement, and then he concludes with the high priestly prayer.
John 18-19: Betrayal, Trial, and Crucifixion. (Midnight to Jesus’ death by 3 pm the next day). Gethsemane; prayer; betrayal; trial before the high priest; Peter’s denial at dawn; Praetorium; Herod Antipas; Jews demand Pilate release Barabbas; scourging; on the cross by noon (the sixth hour); dead by 3 pm (the ninth hour).
John 20-21: Resurrection and post-resurrection appearances.
John clearly puts all of these events from sunset to sunset on the day of Passover which is Abib 14.
John’s Timeline
So, on Abib 13, Jesus tells the disciples to get the upper room prepared for the day of Passover, which is called the first day of Unleavened Bread as we have seen.
In Exodus 12, where the original Passover was implemented to protect the Israelites from the tenth plague, the Passover Lamb was to be sacrificed at twilight at the end of Abib 14. So, John’s account reflects that tradition. The last supper was in the evening which began Abib 14, and he was in the tomb by the end of Abib 14.
But, what’s going on with the synoptics and their apparent contradiction with John’s account? They refer to the last supper as the seder, or pascha meal, which would have happened at the beginning on Abib 15 after sunset. This would mean Jesus was crucified by the end of the 15th, not the 14th, according to the synoptics.
The Synoptic Accounts
Since John lays out a clear timeline and his account aligns with Old Testament practice, now we need to address the apparent problem with the synoptic accounts in which they refer to the Last Supper as the Passover meal, or seder.
First of all, we might conclude that Matthew, Mark, and Luke were confused and didn’t understand what they were saying, or that some later writers who weren’t actually Matthew, Mark, and Luke got it all wrong.
In regards to the first theory, that would seem unlikely since Matthew and Mark were Jewish and were close associates of Jesus, although it appears that Mark was pretty young and only tagged along with the group (Mark 14:51). Luke was a Greek, but he served with Paul who was a “Hebrew of Hebrews,” and because of his close ties to Paul he would have had access to the leaders of the church and would have caught any such careless error. But his account patterned itself after Matthew and Mark’s earlier accounts, without any correction.
Regarding the idea that later writers pretended to be Matthew, Mark, and Luke, begs the question why such an easily identifiable mistake would not have been corrected by the church fathers, or why not correct John? If the early Church was trying to deceive people, as some claim they were, why not cheat and line everything up with John (or vice versa) when these accounts were canonized? The world’s elite academics were pouring over these texts, so why didn’t they conform them with each other? The fact that they left alone this apparent contradiction, indicates to me that they were faithful to the text and they weren’t trying to make them align with what they thought would make more sense. That is integrity.
The other solution might be that there is no discrepancy at all. There is nothing to correct and all the accounts line up perfectly. Here’s how.
The Last Seder
The problem with saying the synoptics give an inconsistent account is refuted in the last part of all four narratives by the fact that all four gospels put the death of Christ at about 3:00 in the afternoon and that he was in the tomb before sunset on the day of Passover, which is Abib 14. It isn’t just John who teaches this; it’s all four. They all refer to the day he was crucified as “the Day of Preparation.” And every account about when Jesus was taken off the cross is consistent:
Matthew 27:62-63 “On the next day, which followed the Day of Preparation, the chief priests and Pharisees gathered together to Pilate, saying, “Sir, we remember, while He was still alive, how that deceiver said, ‘After three days I will rise.’ (The “next day” was in the evening of Abib 15 after the crucifixion).
Mark 15:42 “Now when evening had come, because it was the Preparation Day (Abib 14), that is, the day before the Sabbath, Joseph of Arimathea, a prominent council member, who was himself waiting for the kingdom of God, coming and taking courage, went in to Pilate and asked for the body of Jesus.”
Luke 23:50-54 “Now behold, there was a man named Joseph, a council member, a good and just man. He had not consented to their decision and deed. He was from Arimathea, a city of the Jews, who himself was also waiting for the kingdom of God. This man went to Pilate and asked for the body of Jesus. Then he took it down, wrapped it in linen, and laid it in a tomb that was hewn out of the rock, where no one had ever lain before. That day was the Preparation (Abib 14), and the Sabbath (Abib 15) drew near.
John 19:13-14 “When Pilate therefore heard that saying, he brought Jesus out and sat down in the judgment seat in a place that is called The Pavement, but in Hebrew, Gabbatha. Now it was the Preparation Day of the Passover, and about the sixth hour. And he said to the Jews, “Behold your King!”
All four accounts consistently refer to the day he was crucified as the Day of Preparation, which is Abib 14. Furthermore, every single account has Christ dead by 3 pm, which is when the normal Passover lamb was to be sacrificed in the temple! That is why he had to buried before sunset, because Abib 15 started right after sunset and that was a special sabbath, or, as John calls it, a “high day” (John 19:31).
So, this eliminates the accusation that the four gospels contradict each other on the day that Christ was crucified. They all say it was in the afternoon of Abib 14.
Why, even early Talmudic writings agree:
“The Jewish Talmud (Completed by AD 500). The Babylonian Talmud (Sanhedrin 43a, “Eve of Passover”) contains the following explicit reference to Jesus: “On the eve of Passover they hanged Yeshu (of Nazareth) and the herald went before him for forty days saying (Yeshu of Nazareth) is going to be stoned in that he hath practiced sorcery and beguiled and led astray Israel. Let everyone knowing aught in his defense come and plead for him. But they found naught in his defense and hanged him on the eve of Passover.” (Geisler, Norman L.. Christian Apologetics (p. 362). Baker Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.)
So, really the only apparent discrepancy that is left to be accounted for is that the synoptics refer to the Last Supper as pascha, or the Passover feast. Why would they apparently mis-label the Last Supper which happened at the beginning of Abib 14 and call it the seder which was supposed to happen at the end of Abib 14?
Communion
Quite sensibly, it is clear now that Jesus was establishing the tradition of communion on the night that he was betrayed. This was indeed the Last Seder because he was going to be the Passover lamb before the regular seder would be practiced on the next night. Jesus was making a symbolic connection between himself and the Passover lamb during the last opportunity he had to be with his disciples and he was transforming the practice into what we now call communion. It was the seder because Jesus is the seder.
What we see here is divine, sublime revelation; a divine wisdom which transcends and transforms human understanding. The synoptics reveal the transformation of the ancient, Jewish tradition into a new, similar, sacred tradition that continues to this day: Communion. And yet, Jesus–the Messiah–wasn’t replacing the Passover, but rather he was fulfilling it and transforming the celebration into the event to remember his sacrifice. Jesus is the true paschal, which is why the synoptics refer to the Last Supper as the paschal.
Infallibility, NOT Inconsistency
So, are the gospel accounts about the crucifixion trustworthy? Absolutely yes! All the accounts tell a consistent story about the central tenet of Christianity: the death and resurrection of Christ. Sure, the accounts mention differing amounts of women who saw the resurrected Christ first, and each of the gospels contain some details that others do not, but collectively they all point to one truth and together they give us the full picture of what happened when Christ was crucified and rose from the dead.
As Norman Geisler says, “The law of noncontradiction can show only that a system is wrong if it has contradictions in its central tenets.” (Geisler, Norman L.. Christian Apologetics (p. 116). Baker Publishing Group. Kindle Edition).
And the tradition Jesus established on the night he was betrayed, was taught by all four gospel writers, and continues to this day:
I Corinthians 11:23-26 “For I [Paul] received from the Lord that which I also delivered to you: that the Lord Jesus on the same night in which He was betrayed took bread; and when He had given thanks, He broke it and said, “Take, eat; this is My body which is broken for you; do this in remembrance of Me.” In the same manner He also took the cup after supper, saying, “This cup is the new covenant in My blood. This do, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of Me.” For as often as you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death till He comes.”
Blessings.
My next post will be on the birth of the Church on Pentecost on the 50th day after the Feast of Firstfruits when Christ rose from the dead.
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