The following remarks were originally written in response to a writer who used the pseudonym Olias of Sunhillow. It is hoped that they may be of interest to a wider audience.
Olias writes:
Don't take the book of John too seriously. John was the most mystical of all the apostles, and seemed to cook up ideas about Jesus that none of the other apostles had.
Did you know, for example, that the idea of Jesus' mom being a virgin was not believed by the apostles as a group? Oh, John believed it because he picked up somewhere that the buhddas mom was impregnated through means other than sex, and John had a case of "savior rivalry". I think it was Peter or Paul who said "Jesus was the son of Mary and Joseph..." Hmmm...
Also, no serious Bible scholar today believes that Jesus was born in Bethlehem, or even in Nazareth. He was born in the tur- bulent Galilean area. His birth was "moved" to Bethlehem to give people the idea that Jesus was from the house of David, which is silly, since none of David's descendents survived the intertestament period. Jesus didn't think he was from David, either...
Several points here call for comment.
JOHN AND THE VIRGIN BIRTH
Olias seems to say that belief in the Virgin Birth of Jesus origi- nated with John. But John never mentions the Virgin Birth directly. There is a possible indirect reference in John 1:13
But to them who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God, who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God.
Here some manuscripts read, "who was born." If this reading is correct, then the passage may be taken as evidence that John believed in the Virgin Birth. But he could hardly have expected his readers to recognize this as an assertion of the Virgin Birth unless they already knew and believed the doctrine. Thus, if this text is relevant at all, it is as evidence that the belief was already widespread in Christian circles before John wrote.
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Osias says: "I think it was Peter or Paul who said Jesus was the son of Mary and Joseph..."
According to my concordance, Joseph is mentioned by name only in the first two chapters of Matthew and the first three of Luke (where the Virgin Birth is quite clearly asserted) and in John 1:45 and 6:42, both of which have persons who know Jesus slightly referring to him as the son of Joseph. Nothing in Peter or Paul.
JESUS AS DESCENDANT OF DAVID
Osias says that Jesus did not think that he was descended from David. I assume that he bases this on Matthew 22:41-46 (parallels in Mark 12:35-37 and Luke 20:41-44), where Jesus asks the Phari- sees: "What do you think of the Messiah? Whose son is he?" They say: "The son of David." He answers: "But David (in Psalm 110) calls him 'Lord'. "How then can he be David's son?"
Now if we take this passage to refer to literal descent, then the argument would seem to be that David could not refer to one of his own descendents as his Lord, and therefore the Messiah cannot be descended from David. In that case, it would seem even less appro- priate for David to apply the term "Lord" to someone who traced his ancestry to someone inferior to David, and so the conclusion must be that the Messiah is the son of someone greater than David. In fact, this looks like an assertion of the Virgin Birth. How- ever, it is by no means obvious that a man cannot have a descen- dent greater than himself. Accordingly, I suggest that the ques- tion is not, "Whose son is the Messiah?" but, "Whose heir is the Messiah? Whom does he get his royal title from? Who is the source of his authority? Who put him on his throne?" If the answer is "David", then there is a real difficulty about David's calling him Lord. I see no such difficulty about calling one's descendent Lord. So on the one interpretation, the passage is an assertion of the Virgin Birth, while on the other, it has nothing to do with the pedigree of the Messiah at all.
Olias says that none of David's descendents survived the inter- testamental period. I am not sure what he means by this. Does he mean that by New Testament times all descendents of David had been killed off, and that this was a known fact? If so, how does he deal with the fact that the Jews at that time (and orthodox Jews to this day) were expecting a Messiah to be born of the line of David? Clearly they did not believe (and do not believe) that the house of David is extinct. If Olias has proof that they were wrong, I should like to see it.
Perhaps he means only that genealogical records had been lost, so that no one could be sure which Jews were, and which were not, descended from David.
But the Jews after the Exile were very much concerned with their genealogies (see Ezra 9 and 10 and the opening chapters of I Chronicles). For evidence that written genealogical records of the
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priestly families were kept in Jerusalem, see M.C. Johnson, _The Purpose of the Biblical Genealogies with Special Reference to the Setting of the Genealogies of Jesus_ in the New Testament Studies Monograph Series vol 8, Cambridge U, 1969.
Josephus (_Life_, 1:1-6) asserts that his genealogy (he was of a priestly family) can be found in the public registers. Rabbi Hil- lel was said to be descended from David through his mother. The head of the Jewish community in Babylon, well after New Testament times, claimed descent from David. Eusebius (_Ecclesiastical His- tory_, III xii, xix-xx, xxxii 3-4) mentions persecutions of Jews of Davidic descent under Vespasian, Domitian, and Trajan.
According to Julius Africanus (quoted in Eusebius, op. cit., I vii 13), King Herod burned the archives that recorded the genealogies of descendents of David, so that he would not be embarrassed by comparisons with his own dubious royal claims. (If this happened, it is a reasonable assumption that the archivists managed to con- ceal and preserve some copies, and also that individual families had copies of their own pedigrees, based on the official records.)
Thus we see that the hypothesis that Jesus had a family tradition of descent from David, with official temple records to back it up, is a perfectly possible one. A number of considerations render it not only possible but respectable. The Gospel accounts say that people often addressed him as "Son of David" without any protest or disclaimer from him. (See Matthew 9:27; 12:23; 15:22; 20:30-31; 21:9,15; Mark 10:47-48; 11:10; Luke 18:38-39. I note in passing that these quotations are all from the Synoptists -- the "mysti- cal" John never uses the phrase "Son of David".) Paul, writing some time before the Gospels, refers to Jesus as "descended from David according to the flesh" in a passage (Romans 1:3) which, from its style, is thought to be a quotation from an already established Christian creedal formula. Now relatives of Jesus were prominent in the early church (most conspicuously, James, "the brother of the Lord," first head of the Jerusalem community). They must have been aware that the claim of Davidic descent was being made, and have known what evidence, if any, there was for it. If there was none, they might have been expected to protest. Assuming that they were not honest enough to issue a disclaimer, what about the Jewish opponents of Christianity? There are Jewish attacks on his legitimacy, but none, as far as we know, on his Davidic descent. If the archives failed to back the claim, or if there were no archives, one might expect some caustic remarks to that effect.
JESUS THE NAZARENE
Olias writes:
Also, no serious Bible scholar today believes that Jesus was born in Bethlehem, or even in Nazareth. He was born in the tur- bulent Galilean area.
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I am not sure what to make of the last sentence. It sounds almost as if the writer thinks that Nazareth is not in Galilee. But I assume that this is mere awkward phrasing. Similarly, since the Bible nowhere asserts that Jesus was born in Nazareth, I assume that the statement is short-hand for, "Jesus was a Galilean, but not a native of Bethlehem, and not a long-term resident of, or otherwise connected with, Nazareth." Let me comment on the Nazar- eth part.
A generation ago, it was not uncommon for scholars to maintain that there was no such place as Nazareth in New Testament times. Josephus gives a long list of Galilean towns that does not mention Nazareth, and no reference to Nazareth (except in connection with Jesus) was known from before the seventh century. Moreover, it was disputed on linguistic grounds whether the word "Nazarene" (Greek Nazoraios or Nazarenos) could be derived from the word "Nazareth" (Hebrew/Aramaic Natsrath)). Accordingly, it was assumed that the title Jesus the Nazarene (usually translated as Jesus of Nazareth in English) must have been derived from something else.
(a) One guess was that he was first known as Jesus the Nazarite. A Nazarite was a man consecrated to the service of God (Numbers 6:1-21). The best-known Old Testament examples are Samson, with his birth announced by an angel (Judges 13:2-5), and Samuel, born by God's grace to a barren woman (I Samuel 1:11).
(b) Another guess is that he was known as Jesus the Netser (Branch) -- see Isaiah 11:1 and Jeremiah 23:5.
(c) Another guess is that he belonged to a pre-Christian sect associated with the followers of John the Baptist, called the Natsorayya (Observant Ones), for the existence of which sect the chief evidence is Acts 24:5 and some late, vague references in the Church Fathers and some Mandean writings.
In each instance, it was assumed that the original significance of the term had been forgotten and the word assumed to be a reference to his home town -- hence Jesus of Nazareth, even though there was no such place.
However, in 1955, excavations in Nazareth showed that the site had been occupied since pre-Christian times, and in 1962 a portion of a first-century synagogue was excavated in Caesarea bearing what appears to be a list of priestly families and their home towns, with Nazareth on the list. Thus, the scholars who deny the Nazar- eth residence seem to be not so much "serious" as out-of-date.
As for the linguistic difficulties, a number of specialists in Semitic languages -- "serious Bible scholars" -- are prepared to argue that the derivation is a perfectly possible one (see W.F. Albiright, "The Names Nazareth and Nazorean,"' Journal of Biblical Literature 65 (1946) 397-40~; G.F. Moore, "Nazarene and Nazareth" in The Beginnings of Christianity_, ed. F.J. Foakes Jackson and K. Lake (London: Macmillan, 1920-33), I,426-32; H.H. Schaeder,
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"Nazarenos, Nazoraios," _Theological Dictionary of the New Testa- ment , (Kittel and Friedrich) IV 874-79).
There accordingly seems no good reason to dispute the statement (Matthew 4:13; Mark 1:9; Luke 4:16; John 1:46) that Jesus was a resident of Nazareth.
It remains probable, of course, that when Matthew says (2:23) that the prophets said, "He shall be called a Nazoraios," he had in mind some passage that refers to a Nazarite, or a Branch, or what- ever, rather than to the town of Nazareth. Since, most exasperat- ingly, Matthew does not indicate where his citation comes from, and no known passage fits it word for word, we do not know what he had in mind, but it seems clear that he had in mind some quotation about a branch, or a Nazarite, and thought it an impressive coin- cidence that Jesus' home town should be such as to make the quota- tion applicable. But it seems unlikely that this would have occurred to him unless he already believed that Jesus was in fact from Nazareth. And, if, as most scholars believe, Mark is an older document than Matthew, then belief in the Nazareth residence WAS common before Matthew wrote.
As an afterthought, let me mention the Nazareth Inscription.
I copy the translation given in _(Eerdman's) Handbook to the Bible_, (ed. David and Patricia Alexander, 1973, Lion Publishing Company, Berkhamsted, Herts., England and Eerdman's Publishing Company, Grand Rapids, Michigan, USA) p 53.
ORDINANCE OF CAESAR
It is my pleasure that graves and tombs remain undisturbed in perpetuity for those who have made them for the cult of their ancestors, or children, or members of their house. If, however, any man lay information that another has either demolished them, or has in any other way extracted the buried, or has maliciously transferred them to other places in order to wrong them, or has displaced the sealing or other stones, against such a one I order that a trial be instituted, as in respect of the gods, so in regard to the cult of mortals. For it shall be much more obligatory to honor the buried. Let it be absolutely forbidden for anyone to disturb them. In the case of contraven- tion I desire that the offender be sentenced to capital punish- ment on charge of violation of sepulture.
- END OF INSCRIPTION -
The Emperor Claudius, around the year 49-50, expelled the Jews from Rome (Acts 18:2) because (says Suetonius) they were fomenting disorder at the instigation of one Chrestos. It seems plausible that there were disputes in Rome between Jews who believed that the body of Jesus was missing from the tomb because he had risen, and Jews who believed that it had been stolen. When these disputes caused public disorder, Claudius (or his deputy) made inquiries,
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expelled both sides from the city (after the manner of a parent who, when two children are fighting over a toy, takes it away from both of them for the time being), and then ordered a stern decree against grave-robbing to be promulgated at the places where the disturbance had begun. Presumably these would include at least (1) Jerusalem, where the alleged corpse-snatching had taken place, and (2) Nazareth, the home town of the alleged corpse. This is, of course, partly conjecture, but plausible conjecture. It may be that the emperor issued an empire-wide decree for reasons totally unconnected with Christianity, and that the fact that the only surviving copy of the decree turned up in Nazareth is sheer coin- cidence. But, other things being equal, a hypothesis that does not involve coincidence is to be preferred. You will notice that the inscription does not give a year or the name of the emperor. If I remember aright, Jack Finegan and Theodore Blinzler (whose books I have not at hand just now -- sorry!) give reasons for dating it in the reign of Claudius and around 50. Ethelbert Stauffer (Jesus: GESTALT UND GESCHICHTE, Bern 1957; JESUS AND HIS STORY, Knopf, New York, 1960) proposes an earlier date. The history of the stone is a bit peculiar: As I understand the matter, someone rummaging through the attic of the Paris Museum in 1930 found a crate marked "From Nazareth" with the stone in it. The crate seems to have been there since 1878, and it is not known who dug up the stone and sent it back. Is this grounds for suspecting forgery? My judgement is that if we had the names and affidavits of the archaeologists who claimed to have found it _in situ_, there would be a small but non-zero chance of forgery, and that their anonym- ity makes the chance a little larger, but still small. Anyone clever enough to forge an inscription that passes expert inspec- tion would probably be clever enough to fake the finding. But I am no expert. I mention the crate in the attic to be honest, but my impression is that the inscription experts are agreed on the genu- ineness, and increasingly on the date. (I am tempted to say: "No serious Bible scholar today doubts that the inscription is a genu- ine decree of an early emperor -- possibly Tiberius but probably Claudius.")
ON THE HISTORICITY OF THE FOURTH GOSPEL
Olias writes:
Don't take the book of John too seriously. John was the most mystical of all the apostles, and seemed to cook up ideas about Jesus that none of the other apostles had.
THE FOURTH GOSPEL IS PROBABLY FIRST-CENTURY
At one time, it was thought that John's frequent use of (for exam- ple) imagery of light and darkness, and other literary character- istics, proved that he wrote in a late second-century Hellenic setting, probably Gnostic. (I suspect that this is part of what Olias means by "mystical".) However, the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls in 1947 has shown that the style of John and his charac- teristic images are thoroughly consistent with a first-century
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Palestinian milieu. Moreover, the publication in 1935 of the Rylands Papyrus 457, a fragment of John 18:31-33,37-38, drasti- cally altered the state of the question. Most papyrologists date the fragment as AO 135-150, and some considerably earlier -- see K Aland, _New Testament Studies_ 9 (19:2-3) 307.
Before addressing directly the question of historical reliability, I should like to invite the reader to consider some characteris- tics of the four Gospels as they stand, with special reference to differences between John and the other three.
THE FOURTH GOSPEL HAS THE STYLE OF AN EYEWITNESS
John claims to be an eyewitness (John 19:25; 21:24; I John 1:1), while the other three evangelists do not. And this is consistent with their respective styles -- John reads like an eyewitness account, while the others do not. Let me explain:
Jesus was a travelling preacher, who spoke frequently and to many different audiences. Any preacher who had in his repertoire a good story like the Prodigal Son would not be so wasteful as to tell it only once and then forget it. He would use it over and over with various audiences. So presumably Jesus with his parables, probably varying the story slightly, according to the point he wanted to make (the epilogue about the older brother's reaction would be suitable to an audience of Pharisees -- less so to an audience of publicans) until his disciples knew it by heart in all its varia- tions. And this sermon material, which the disciples doubtless remembered and repeated to the congregations of early converts, forms the bulk of the sayings of Jesus as quoted in the Synoptic Gospels. Luke tells us that he interviewed eyewitnesses, and Mark is said by Papias to have been the "interpreter" of Peter, and so their reports are alleged to be something like one step away from eye-witness accounts, and this accords well with their having a fair amount of what I have called stock material, but compara- tively few one-time speeches.
John, on the other hand, reports sayings that would have been said once and only once. He reports dialogues and conversations -- not only what Jesus said to other persons, but what they said to him.
The Synoptists each give us a list of twelve disciples, but most of the twelve are never mentioned except as names on the list. Only Peter, James. John, Matthew (but only in connection with his calling), and Judas Iscariot (but only as the betrayer) are por- trayed as individuals. In John, we have Andrew, Philip, Bartholo- mew (assuming him to be the same as Nathaniel), Thomas, Judas Iscariot and Judas not-Iscariot all making their individual speeches, and most of them enough to have recognizable personali- ties.
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THE FOURTH GOSPEL HAS THE ACCURACY OF AN EYEWITNESS
John has probably been in Jerusalem. He describes the pool of Bethesda as having five porches surrounding it. Excavations bear this out.
In John 6:5, when a crowd has followed Jesus to hear his teaching, he asks Philip, "Where can we buy bread to feed these people?" No indication is given of why the question should be directed at Philip rather than anyone else. But Luke (9:10) tells us that the episode took place near Bethsaida. and John (1:44) tells us that Philip (together with Peter and Andrew) was from Bethsaida. (From other references we learn that Peter and Andrew have apparently left Bethsaida and now reside in Capernaum.) Philip is thus a log- ical -- perhaps the only logical -- person to ask about local places to buy bread. But this is not obvious from John's account. It seems that either (1) he selected a name at random from the list of the twelve and happened to get one that fit the occasion, or (2) he said to himself: "I will name Philip, and hope that my readers have read Luke's account and will know that this is taking place near Bethsaida, and will also remember my statement five chapters back that Philip is from Bethsaida, but of course I won't mention either of these items at this point in my story, since that would be too obvious!" or (3) he mentioned Philip because Philip was in fact the one whom Jesus had asked, and John was sim- ply reporting what he had seen and heard on that day.
Again, John tells us that this episode took place near the time of the Passover (6:4) and that the next day Jesus was confronted by a crowd in the synagogue at Capernaum, and said; "Your fathers ate manna in the wilderness, and they died, but he who eats the bread that I give him will never die." (6:24-59) Now the synagogue at Capernaum has been excavated. What we have is a fourth-century construction, but we know from other sites that when a new syna- gogue replaced an old one in the same town, it normally had the same dedication. (A synagogue was normally dedicated to some theme or event in the Scriptures.) The Capernaum synagogue (in the fourth century, and therefore probably its predecessor in the first) was dedicated to the miracle of the Manna. Its walls were covered with murals illustrating that theme. Again, the Palestin- ian lectionary provided a reading just before Passover of the account of the manna. (See Aileen Guilding, _The Fourth Gospel and Jewish Worship_, Oxford, Clarendon. 1960.) This makes it thor- oughly natural for the subject of manna to come up in a discourse at that time and place. It would seem that either (1) John just happened to assign an appropriate theme to the occasion, or (2) he knew the Palestinian lectionary, or the synagogue at Capernaum, or both, and planned his account of the occasion accordingly, or (3) he reported accurately at least the gist of what Jesus actually said on that occasion.
Again, John says that Jesus, before (10:1-18) and during (10:22-30) the Feast of the Dedication (Hannukah), spoke at length of himself as the Shepherd of his people. The Palestinian
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lectionary (ibid.) provides a reading from Ezekiel 34 for this season, dealing with the Lord as the Shepherd of His people. (Both passages speak pointedly of the rulers as false shepherds.) Of course, John need not have been an eyewitness to know the Pales- tinian lectionary. I merely point out that, if his account is not true, he is being very painstaking about getting the details right so as to make it ring true.
CHRONOLOGY IN THE GOSPELS
Speaking of chronology reminds me that John is the only one of the four Gospel writers that really has one. As for the others, they all put his baptism at the beginning of his public ministry, and those with birth and youth stories put them before the baptism, and they all put the crucifixion and resurrection at the end. But in the middle, there is not much chronology. A few speeches, a miracle here, a parable there -- it is almost true that between the baptism and Palm Sunday, paragraphs are arranged in random order.
And this is what you would expect in a second-hand account. Papias, on the authority of John the Elder, says,
"Mark, having become the interpreter (hermeneutes) of Peter, wrote accurately all that he remembered of the things that were either said or done by Christ; but, however, not in order. For he neither heard the Lord nor followed him, but subsequently, as I said, attached himself to Peter, who used to frame his teaching to meet the immediate wants of his hearers, but not as making a connected narrative of our Lord's discourses. So Mark committed no error in thus writing down particulars just as he remembered them; for he took heed to one thing,to omit none of the things that he had heard, and to state nothing falsely in his narrative of them."
And surely this explanation makes sense. I use the following illustration to make the point to my Sunday School class: Suppose that every time this class meets, I tell you a few stories about my buddy Oscar. There was the first time we went skiing. We were on a ski week together, and the skis were issued after breakfast, but the first lesson wasn't due for ninety minutes. So we were fooling around at the base of the slope, sidestepping up a few feet and scooting down, over and over, until Oscar said: "I'm tired of this. I'm not learning anything, and it hurts my ankles. I am taking the lift up." So he took the lift up, came down an Advanced Slope (not knowing what the trail signs meant) and arrived at the bottom covered with snow from repeated falls but with no broken bones, and grinning from ear to ear. He said, "Hey! that was fun! I'm going to like skiing." Then again, there was the time we were going to an event on the other side of town, and I said, "Let's take Wisconsin Avenue," (which runs straight through the town). He said, "No, No, let's take the Beltway," (which is a high-speed, limited-intersection road (Autobahn) encircling the town). Since it was his car, and he was driving, we took the Belt- way. As we were easing up the access ramp and merging into
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traffic, he casually remarked, "The brakes on this car don't work very well. That's why I prefer to drive on the Beltway, where you don't have to brake so often." Or again, there was the time he went to a costume party dressed as -- well, never mind. At any rate, suppose that each time the class meets, I tell you a few Oscar stories, and if there is someone here who has not heard a particular story before, I tell it again for his benefit, and if I am not sure whether everyone here has heard a particular story before, I tell it again just to make sure. By the end of the year, you would all have a considerable fund of Oscar stories, and would have a pretty good idea of what sort of person Oscar is (in fact, you may have begun to get the idea already). However, you would be a bit vague on the chronology. The stories in which he is still a bachelor would have to come before the stories in which he is a husband and father, but a lot of the stories would come in no par- ticular order. And the same thing is true of the Synoptic Gos- pels. The grouping of the material is topical rather than chrono- logical. For example, all the distinctively Jerusalem material is put together and packed into the last week of Jesus' life, with the impression that his ministry till then was exclusively Gali- lean. But this is implausible, and is contradicted by the Synop- tists themselves. For example, Jesus says to the arresting offi- cers (Matthew 26:55; Mark 14:48-49; Luke 22:52-53), "Have you come out as against a robber, with swords and staves? Day after day I sat in the temple teaching, and you did not seize me." This seems unreasonable if "day after day" means only the previous four days of that week. Again, Jesus says of Jerusalem (Matthew 23:37; Luke 13:34), "O Jerusalem, Jerusalem ...! How often would I have gath- ered your children together, as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you would not!" Surely this implies that Jerusalem has had several opportunities to accept him.
DATING OF THE PASSOVER
John appears to differ from the Synoptists on the date of the Cru- cifixion, and this is often used as an argument against him. The Jews killed the Passover Lamb shortly after noon on the fourteenth day of the month Nisan, and ate the Passover meal after sundown, on the fifteenth (since they counted the day from sunset to sun- set). Now, at least at first reading, the Synoptists say that the Passover was eaten on the evening before the crucifixion, and therefore that Thursday was the fourteenth and Friday the fif- teenth of Nisan (Matthew 26:12-20; Mark 14:12-17; Luke 22:7-15). I shall call this the Synoptist chronology. But John appears to say that Friday is the fourteenth (John 18:28). I shall call this John's chronology. I have encountered several persons who cite this as an example of John's willingness to sacrifice historical accuracy to symbolic appropriateness. They say that John thought of Jesus as the Passover Lamb, and accordingly describes him as killed on the cross at the very time that the lambs were being killed in the Temple. The problem with this is that the calendar backs John. In the years of Pilate's tenure, 26-36 AD, there are several years in which the fourteenth of Nisan falls on Friday (John's chronology), and none in which it falls on Thursday (the
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Synoptist chronology), or even Wednesday. (Wednesday is relevant because the new month began when two witnesses appeared before the high priest and swore that they had seen the crescent of the new moon. A series of days with thick cloud cover over all Judea could throw the calendar off a little, but this does not happen very often. A one-day delay is pretty much the maximum.) Of the years with a Friday the 14th of Nisan, 30 and 33 AD are serious candi- dates for the Year of the Crucifixion. I favor 33 myself, chiefly for three reasons.
(1) Phlegon, a Greek author from Caria writing a chronology soon after 137 AD, reported that in the 4th year of the 202nd Olym- piad (ie. in the year ending with June of 33 AD), there was "the greatest eclipse of the sun," and that "it became night in the sixth hour of the day (noon) so that stars even appeared in the heavens." Eusebius quotes this in _Chronicon_, 2. Otto Keller includes it in his _Rerum Naturalium Scriptores Graeci Minores_, I (Leipzig; Teubner, 1877) p 101. Whether he has a source for it independent of Eusebius, I do not know.
(2) There cannot be a (non-supernatural) solar eclipse at Pass- over time, since Passover occurs at the full moon. However, in 33 AD there was a partial lunar eclipse visible in Jerusalem near sundown at the end of Friday the 14th of Nisan. (see J.K. Fotheringham, "The Evidence of Astronomy and Technical Chronol- ogy for the Date of the Crucifixion," _Journal of Theological Studies_, XXXV (1934) 146-162.) This agrees well with Peter's quotation in Acts 2:20 of Joel 2:31 -- all about how in the Day of the Lord the sun would be darkened and the moon would give no light. (I grant that Peter might very well have quoted the pas- sage even if it were not astronomically appropriate, but the fact that it is is legitimate evidence.)
(3) A date of 33 is preferable to 30, because it is after the fall of Sejanus, which took place in October of 31. Sejanus was anti-Jewish, and Pilate was probably his appointee. Pilate had been dealing harshly with the Jews, and presumably had Sejanus's approval and encouragement -- and protection. In 31, Sejanus, until then virtually the acting emperor with Tiberius in retire- ment on Capri, was executed for plotting against the life of Tiberius, and many prominent officials were executed over the next few months on suspicion of having been too friendly with Sejanus (a difficult suspicion to avoid, since anyone not giving the appearance of friendliness would not have been or remained prominent). This explains why Pilate, in contrast with his ear- lier brusqueness in dealing with the Jews, was in effect walking on eggs, anxious not to offend Herod, or the priests, or the crowd, and collapsing completely at the threat, "If you let this man go, you are not Caesar's friend." All in all, 33 AD seems a very likely date.
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(For a painless introduction to the historical background of the Crucifixion, I recommend the book _Pontius Pilate; a biographical novel_, by Paul L Maier (New York; Doubleday, 1968). For a non- fiction treatment, non-overlapping, see _Who Moved the Stone_ by Frank Morison, published in England in the 1930's.)
But if the Passover meal was scheduled to be eaten on the evening after the Crucifixion, what are we to make of the Synoptic accounts, which seem to state quite clearly that Jesus ate the Passover with his disciples on the evening before the Crucifixion? Are they in error?
The simplest explanation seems that the official Temple calendar, recognized by the chief priests, scheduled the killing of the lambs in the Temple for Friday, with the meal to be eaten that evening. Persons not in Jerusalem for the feast would celebrate the Passover without a lamb (as Jews have done everywhere since the destruction of the Temple in 70 AD), and so would persons not following the Temple calendar, such as the Essenes. Mlle. Annie Jaubert, in _La date de la Cene_ (_The Date of the Last Supper_), presents arguments for the thesis that Jesus followed the Essene calendar and celebrated the Last Supper on Tuesday night (the beginning of Wednesday by Jewish standards). Raymond E. Brown, in his NEW TESTAMENT ESSAYS, summarizes these and presents counter- arguments. (I think he wins.) My opinion is that Jesus proceeded, on his own authority, to eat the Passover with his disciples a day early, knowing that he would not live to celebrate it at the offi- cial time. This would be in accordance with his claims of author- ity as made elsewhere (Matthew 12:8 & Mark 2:28 & Luke 6:5, also Matthew 9:15 & Mark 2:19 & Luke 5:34). Luke (22:14-16) quotes him as saying, "I have greatly desired to eat this Passover with you before I suffer," which can be understood as his giving a reason for celebrating it ahead of schedule. You will note that the account of the meal mentions the unleavened bread, the wine, and the bitter herbs, but not the lamb, which, as aforesaid. would not have been available.
In fact, once we reread the Synoptists with the dating problem in mind, we see evidence in them for the Johannine chronology. Jesus, as already cited, says to the arresting party: "Do you come out against me as against a thief, with swords and clubs?" Now if the Synoptist chronology is correct, that night would be the Pass- over, and therefore a day of Sabbath rest, on which swords might be worn, but clubs could not be carried. Again, as the soldiers were leading Jesus out of the city to be crucified, they met Simon of Cyrene coming in from the country. He would not have been doing this on the Passover. Again, and most significantly, all three Synoptists describe the crowd as assembling on Friday morning to demand the release of the Passover prisoner. Now if it is the annual custom to release one condemned prisoner in honor of the feast, would you expect that prisoner to be released after the feast, or in time for him to celebrate the feast with his family? Surely the Barabbas episode is strong evidence that the official Passover meal had yet to be eaten, and that John's chronology is
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right.
CONCLUSION
There are good, sound reasons for regarding John as reliable on points of fact. </PRE>