Sorting Out the Passion Chronology of the Gospel of Peter

The Passover week is a week: it has seven days. Its correct name is the Feast of Unleavened Bread. There are two days in the category Mikra Kodesh, “sacred assembly”. The 15th, the first day, is the Passover in Jewish terminology.

The Samaritans call the night when the meat is eaten the Passover and the daylight following is called the Yom Tov, meaning simply “Festival”. The Yom Tov [Samaritan pronunciation Yom T.ob] is in Aramaic Yoma Tava [Sam. pronunciation Yûma T.âba]. (It was on the morning of the Yûma T.âba that Dositheos was killed).

The second Mikra Kodesh is the seventh day. On a Samaritan calendar the seventh day will be labelled “Unleavened Bread”, and the first day will be labelled “Passover”, but the whole seven days are “Unleavened Bread” as well. The days between the first and the seventh are semi-sacred, that is, there are no restrictions on what activities are permitted.

The Gospel of Peter if read naturally follows the same tradition as John, against the Synoptics, in setting the death of Jesus on the 14th of the first month, on the day before Passover, which is the 15th. The “Unleavened Bread, their feast” seems to me to be the normal Pagan designation of the Passover. If the context allowed, it could be the Sabbath coinciding with the Mikra Kodesh on the 21st. In this instance, however, the 21st is clearly later on.

The words “the Unleavened Bread, their feast” can mean (a) one or the other Mikra Kodesh, or (b) the whole week, but the words can’t mean an intermediate or profane day between the 15th and the 21st. In this case they mean the 15th. I agree that the passage Luke XXIV:13-16 shows people leaving Jerusalem after a festival, but I can’t see why they might not have been leaving on the 16th. Understanding it as being on Sunday the 22nd seems more natural by itself, but the dates won’t work.

In this case, he would have been killed on Friday 20th, and the Sabbath on the 21st would have been a Great Day, being the Sabbath during the Passover week. The difficulty then is that this would put the Last Supper on the night of the Sabbath starting the 14th, which would not be the night of Passover. In short, you can’t have both the Passover night, the 15th, and the second Mikra Kodesh, the 21st, both on a Sabbath. The Passover week is a week. If you suppose a Friday night during the Passover week, then the death of Jesus could not have been on a Friday.

I think you could have been misled in reading the Synoptics by the layout of the printed Samaritan calendar. First, to clear away one possible difficulty, when the Synoptics call the day of preparation for the Passover “the day of unleavened bread”, they follow Jewish usage in giving this name to the 14th. This usage has nothing to do with the Samaritan terminology.

Also, the words “Unleavened Bread” on a Samaritan calendar marking the 21st are the result of the terminology needed to have a name to put on the calendar page, instead of “last day of the seven days of unleavened bread and second Mikra Kodesh”. The 14th by definition is not part of the Passover week, but the day when all leavened foodstuff is cleaned out or stored away day. Traditionally this is completed by midday or an hour earlier. The Samaritans do the same, but use a more precise name, the day of preparation for the Passover. The 14th is also obviously when the lambs are killed. This is done after midday. The Gospel of Peter follows the same tradition as all the Gospels in making it a Friday. John confirms that the Sabbath the next day was “a great day”, meaning it was the first Mikra Kodesh, the first day of the seven days of unleavened bread in Samaritan terminology or the first day of the Passover week in Jewish terminology.

What is different in the Gospel of Peter is that the manifestation of the risen Jesus is double: once as he ascends after sunset on the first day of the week (on Saturday night) and then on Friday the 21st. Neither time matches the specification of the morning of Sunday 17th in the canonical four. The first matches the Anglican liturgy and the demands of logic.

Now, as to Solomon Zeitlin’s belief that the word ΠΑΡΑΣΚΕΥΗ in John XIX:30 could refer to the Friday of the Passover week, this is impossible, since Jesus was killed according to John on the day the Passover lambs were killed, that is, the 14th. Or are we to suppose that this bit of information is to be deleted as an interpolation? Three notes on Solomon Zeitlin. First, he did more to damage scholarship in Jewish studies than could be imagined. He destroyed forever the quality of the once illustrious Jewish Quarterly Review. More could be added here. Second, he and his offsiders published articles interminable in number and stupefying in the amount of irrelevancy packed in, as well as startling in their absence of logic. One wonders if he had all his marbles, and I say this seriously. Third, he was an arrogant pain in the bum, worse if possible than Jacob Neusner. I can say this from experience, but so can a lot of others. I had to wait till he died before I could get access to some mss. I needed to use, because he denied they existed. They existed all right, and I used them.

The Diatessaron agrees with John in setting the death of Jesus on the 14th, on the afternoon of the day before the Sabbath of the first day of the Passover week. It follows the Jewish terminology in calling the 14th the day of unleavened bread. (XLIV:2, 10, 34; LII:14).

Putting the 21st on a Sabbath means putting the 15th on a Sunday which means putting the Passover on Saturday night which can’t happen in any calendar because the preparation day on the 14th can’t be on a Sabbath.

Putting the 21st on a Sunday will work because then the preparation day, the 14th, will be on a Sunday with the Passover on Sunday night, the second day of the week. This puts the resurrection day on Sunday 21st, in agreement with the Gospel of Peter. The expression “the Unleavened Bread, their feast” then seems possible in the context, since we know it was a Sabbath. In that case my objection to the terminology was unfounded. This would mean the Last Supper would have been on the 15th on Sunday night and the arrest could have been the next night. This would put the “two days before the Passover” on a Sabbath.

The date of execution in the Synoptics is difficult, and here I suggest to you the first definite evidence for compression of the chronology. Would the Romans have executed anyone on the 15th, the day of Passover? Think of the stupidity of the Americans in executing Saddam Hussein at the holiest hour of the holiest day, turning him into a saint and martyr. The Romans were a bit cleverer than that. I don’t mean Pilate might not have thought of it in this case. He couldn’t have done this because it could never have been policy. See the next paragraph.

John puts the death of Jesus on the afternoon of Friday 14th. You can’t make the following “Great Day” the Sabbath of the Passover week and no more: the next day must be the 15th because of the datum that the day of Jesus’s death was the day of slaughtering the lambs. This is probable in itself, if Pilate wanted to have Jesus die at a critically important time without arousing suspicion. The slaughtering of the lambs is not part of the Passover except as preparation and the day and time have no holiness in themselves. The religious ceremony is the eating of them. Only after the event did the timing become loaded with meaning. Perhaps Pilate had a cunning plan. As for the compression of the chronology, consider this. There is no Passover meal in John. The washing of the hands and feet could have been a week before the execution.

I think it highly likely that the Gospel of Peter has an older version of what is now in the Synoptics. I think you could then make the date of execution in the Gospel of Peter Friday 19th and the resurrection the 21st. In that case I was wrong. The real difficulty is reconciling Peter with John. Does that phrase sound familiar? And if you can’t reconcile them, which one is historically true? Here is a simple suggestion. The Synoptics as they stand have Friday 15th, with Passover on Thursday night. Peter according to your suggestion has Friday 19th, with Passover on Sunday night. John has Friday 14th, with Passover on Friday night. If we reduce this to the difference between Peter and John, we are left with a difference of five days in the dating, on the same day of the week. So the same day had two dates five days apart. From memory this sounds like the possible difference between Samaritan and Rabbinic dating. If this is the answer, then here is a reconciliation of the dates together with the necessary expansion of the chronology in both cases, with no assumptions to be inserted in the case of John and only the assumption of the originality of Peter in the case of the Synoptics. I will have to look at the Samaritan calendar system to make sure.

The Diatessaron at XLIV:34 puts the 14th on a Sunday, as I proposed for the Gospel of Peter.