Following on the heels of yesterday’s post in which I discussed how Passover is mistakenly equated to the smearing of the lamb’s blood on the doorposts, the eating of the lamb, God killing all the Egyptian firstborns AND Israel departing Egypt.
In other words, all of these events are clumped together and labelled as Passover.
But as I pointed out yesterday, technically speaking, the only event that occurred on Passover (the 14th of Nisan) was the slaughtering of the lambs (which took place at twilight).
One of the biggest reasons why the Egyptian Passover has been presented this way is due to a combination of poor gentile scholarship on the matter and to be frank, a good dose of anti-Semitism, as the church in general has held little interest in anything the Jewish sages had to say.
Here are five main points that many scholars (yes, I’m talking about scholars with PHDs) either ignore, overlook, or are just completely ignorant of:
POINT ONE:
There is a DIFFERENCE between how the first Passover in Egypt and all subsequent Passovers were observed.
POINT TWO:
The protocol established in Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers concerning how Passover was to be observed was changed a bit in the Book of Deuteronomy (I’m not kidding) and then modified even further by the Rabbis as tradition became established.
POINT THREE:
Not understanding that how Scripture technically defines Passover and the Feast of Matzah and how Jewish tradition defines these two festivals are quite different.
POINT FOUR:
By Yeshua’s time, there were several different traditions occurring simultaneously about how to observe Passover and the Feast of Matzah. The Jews living in Judea had their traditions. The Jews living in Galilee had another tradition due to the fact that they had to make a long journey to get the Jerusalem Temple. The hated Samaritans who had broken away from the Jerusalem temple altogether and built their own temple had established their own traditions. And finally, the Jews living in the Diaspora (outside of the Holy Lands) had their own traditions that were influenced by being surrounded by a heathen gentile culture and by the fact that in some cases due to extremely long distances, it was literally impossible to travel all the way up to Jerusalem for the celebration.
POINT FIVE:
Not being able to connect EVERYDAY JEWISH TERMINOLOGY used in the Gospel accounts to the TECHNICAL RITUAL TERMINOLOGY found in Torah concerning the Feast days. For example, the synoptic Gospels and the Passover accounts found therein were written from the perspective of Galilean Jews. However, the Book of John and its Passover accounts were written from the Judean perspective (John became a Judean Jew after beginning life as a fisherman in Galilee).
Again, as I said yesterday, all of the above points need to be accounted for if we are to really understand the EXACT TIMING of when Yeshua was crucified.
When you take all of the above points into consideration, you’ll understand why there is much debate and confusion about the timing of Yeshua’s death and even if the famed “last supper” was really a Passover seder or something completely different.
But that’s another lengthy discussion for another time.
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