On the Samaritan Passover during the Passion

When I said there could have been two Samaritan dates for Passover in 37 A.D., one starting on Wednesday night and one starting on Friday night, I was only putting a suggestion, since we don’t know enough about the Samaritan calendars at that time. This is what is known. The Dositheans started the new year on the first day of the seventh month, the same as the Jews. (Source. Confused statement in Epiphanius’s list and description of Samaritan sects, so far not understood, explained for the first time by me. Explanation not published yet. Epiphanius seems not to have known the Rabbinic new year is on the first of the seventh). Other Samaritans counted and still count the new year from the first day of the first month. The first day of the seventh month is a Mikra Kodesh, but it is only what it is in the Torah, the start of a period leading up to the Day of Atonement. It is called by its name in the Torah, the Remembrance Day. The Dositheans had a calendar different to the calendar of other Samaritans. (Abu ‘l-Fateh.). The Dositheans made every month thirty days. (A.F.). In this respect they agreed with the Montanists. If the Dositheans made every month thirty days, they must never have delayed the start of a month by one day if the New Moon could not be seen. (Me). In this respect they agreed with what is now Rabbinic practice. (Me). We can say it is highly likely that in a given year the Dosithean Passover was on the same date as the Pharisaic one. I don’t know if the Sadducean date of Passover could be different. I will have to look this up. I seem to remember the question doesn’t come up in the records of disagreement, so I assume there was no difference. I can’t prove there could have been a Samaritan (non-Dosithean) Passover two days later than the Jewish and Dosithean one, I can only suggest it. A difference of one day could easily happen if one party only counted the start of the month from the actual sighting of the new moon and another party used the date calculated. If the sky was overcast, the new moon would not be seen. As I remember, the maximum delay of counting the first day of the month was two days. This was when Pharisaic and then Rabbinic Judaism required an actual sighting. Later on (well after 37 A.D.) they used a calculated date.

I think the wording of the Synoptics as they stand is compatible with an arrest of Jesus on Wednesday night and then events on Thursday and execution on Friday. In fact I think this the natural reading. I suggest the narrative is only read as if everything happened from Thursday night to Friday afternoon because everyone thinks the narrative says this before they read it. This is what I call “a false tradition” of reading, whereby the text is not changed but the text is misread, at first deliberately, and later by habit.