[Dialogue] 3/10/11, Spong: Examining the Story of the Cross; Part 2: Did the Crucifixion of Jesus Occur at Passover?

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Examining the Story of the Cross; Part 2: Did the Crucifixion of Jesus Occur at Passover?
It is a common assumption that the crucifixion of Jesus took place in the context of the Jewish observance of Passover.  That is certainly the point of view developed in each of the four gospels.  Mark portrays the journey of Jesus and his followers to Jerusalem, which eventuated in the crucifixion, to have been for the sole purpose of celebrating the Passover.  Matthew and Luke leaning on this Marcan source repeated that tradition and thus together they tended to set this connection in stone. Mark later portrays Jesus in Jerusalem as making elaborate preparations for eating the Passover with his disciples.  From the time of the Deuteronomic reforms in the latter years of the seventh century BCE to the time of Jesus, Jerusalem has been the setting in which the Passover was traditionally to be observed.  Each of the first three synoptic gospels (Mark, Matthew and Luke) goes to great lengths to identify the last supper with the Passover meal, making this assumption to be an almost unchallenged one in Christian history.  Recent scholarship has, however, begun to loosen this connection and to raise lots of questions about this tradition.
The first biblical detail that raised a challenge was found in the Fourth Gospel.  John separates himself from the conclusions of the earlier gospels by stating quite plainly that the last supper was not a Passover meal.  It was in this gospel alone a Kibburah meal, that is, a fellowship meal observed in anticipation of the Passover.  John suggests that the Passover meal that year came not on the night before the crucifixion, but on the evening of the day in which the crucifixion occurred.  In this way, John was able to identify the death of Jesus more closely with the killing of the Paschal Lamb, since both executions took place on what came to be called Good Friday.  This was only a slight shift in John, but it was the first destabilizing observation.
When we go back and read Paul’s story of the institution of the last supper (I Cor.11), we note that Paul dates this meal only with the words, “On the night in which he was handed over.”  We have read Paul for so long through the lens of the later gospels that we have simply made the assumption that the “handing over” of Jesus was done at the time of the Passover.  Yet nowhere does Paul make that identification.  Perhaps the time has come for us to follow the historical order and to read the gospels through the lens of Paul and not the other way around.
Paul, in this same epistle, does identify Jesus with the Lamb of Passover (I Cor. 5:7) when he says that “Christ, our new Paschal Lamb, has been sacrificed for us.”  That seems, however, to be more of a homiletical device than it was a liturgical practice. It was clear that by the time of Paul the death of Jesus had been identified by the Jewish followers of Jesus in terms of the two lambs that were put to death as important elements in Jewish worship.  One of these lambs was the Paschal Lamb of Passover, whose blood protected the Israelites from death in Egypt when the last plague, the death of the first born in every household, was carried out in God’s plan to free the Hebrews from slavery at the hands of the Egyptians.  The second was the animal (normally a lamb without scratch, bruise or broken bone, i.e. physically perfect) sacrificed to take away the sins of the people in the liturgy they called Yom Kippur or the Day of Atonement.  These theological identifications with the death of Jesus appear to have been made early, but that original interpretive process did not imply or even suggest that the crucifixion occurred in the context of either the Passover celebration or Yom Kippur.  It also doesn’t rule it out, I might add, it only loosens the connection and leads us to search for additional clues.
We look for those clues beginning in Mark’s gospel which was the first place in which the story of the crucifixion was told in the context of the Passover celebration.  In this Marcan narrative a couple of details quickly grab our imagination.  First, Mark suggests that a triumphal procession into Jerusalem occurred on the Sunday before the crucifixion took place on Friday.  As part of that procession, Mark tells us that the crowd waved “leafy branches” as they walked.  Passover, however, was celebrated on the 14th and 15th days of the month of Nissan, which would place it on our calendars somewhere between late March and early April.  This means that if this triumphal procession was historical it would have occurred a week earlier, which would run the date of the procession back deeper into March at the earliest and earlier in April at the latest.  Where at that time of year did these followers get leafy branches?  There are no leafy branches that early in the year in the Middle East where Jerusalem is located, so the date of Jesus’ crucifixion and its connection with the Passover begins to wobble visibly.
When Matthew incorporated Mark’s story into his own gospel about a decade later, he omitted the word “leafy” from his text.  Perhaps Matthew recognized that the presence of leafy branches in late March was a problem, so he has the disciples all wave only branches, not leafy branches.  Sticks, however, don’t wave.  It is only the leaves that give one the wavy sensation.
About a decade after Matthew, Luke wrote his gospel.  Once again, like Matthew, he had Mark in front of him and he too seemed to recognize that leafy branches in late March were a problem.  So he omitted not just the leaves but also the branches, telling the story only of the people laying down their garments on the path in front of Jesus.  Even that detail, however, probably assumes a warmer climate than would be normal in late March in Jerusalem,  People do not shed their outer garments in cold weather.
It is interesting to note that only when we reach John, who wrote his gospel between 95-100, which makes it a late tenth decade piece of writing, do these branches become palm branches with evergreen leaves.  That was John’s way of solving the problem.  So, our first clue is that at least in this detail, the original passion story suggests that the date of the crucifixion might have been different from a Passover setting in the late winter to early spring.
A deeper search of Mark reveals that he gives us yet another clue.  It is found in a strange narrative that Mark places on the day after the triumphal procession of Jesus into Jerusalem.  In Mark’s story this Sunday procession went to the Temple where Jesus only looked around at the money changers and then he and his disciples went to Bethany, a couple of miles outside Jerusalem to spend the night.  Bethany is identified elsewhere in the New Testament as the home of Mary and Martha, so perhaps they spent the night there.  The next morning Mark says that Jesus and his followers returned to Jerusalem.  This was to be, Mark proceeds to tell us, the day of the “Cleansing of the Temple” when Jesus drove out the money changers.  On his way to the city Mark says that Jesus was hungry and, seeing a fig tree in the distance, he went to it in search of fruit.  The fig tree, however, was bare.  Fig trees in the northern hemisphere do not bear fruit in late March.  Disappointed that his hunger was not satisfied Mark says that Jesus laid a curse on the fig tree.  When they returned to Bethany that evening following the cleansing of the Temple episode, they noted that the fig tree had in fact shriveled up and died.  To say the least this is a strange story and for Jesus to lay a curse on the fig tree for not producing fruit in March is quite un-Jesus like.  Is it possible that that this story was originally located in the fall season when figs should appear on fig trees, but as the crucifixion was brought liturgically into being observed at the time of the Passover, this story was dragged along with the crucifixion story creating this strange anomaly?  We file that clue and press on.
Next, we examine a Jewish celebration about which most Christians are uninformed, but which seems to be reflected in the Palm Sunday account in the gospels.  The Jews observed in the fall of the year a festival called Sukkoth or Tabernacles.  It was an eight-day harvest celebration marked by a liturgical procession to and around the Temple.  The people in the procession normally carried in their right hands something called a lulab that they waved as they walked.  This lulab was a group of branches tied together, made of willow, myrtle and palm. These fall branches were leafy and they waved.  As these worshipers marched, they recited Psalm 118 that says “Hosanna – Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord.”  It is clear that the Palm Sunday story, as we have received it, is closely associated with and draws some of its content from Sukkoth, a harvest festival celebrated in the fall of the year when fig trees do bear fruit.
Perhaps these bits of data suggest that the crucifixion of Jesus actually occurred in the fall of the year at the time of the harvest and not at the time of the Passover in the early spring.  When, however, the death of Jesus began to be interpreted in terms of the death of the Paschal Lamb then the two events were slowly drawn together until the crucifixion of Jesus came to be interpreted as having occurred in the context of the observance of the Passover itself. This connection certainly heightened the identification of the crucifixion of Jesus with the slaughter of the Paschal Lamb.  Both deaths were said to have had the power to hurl back death itself.  So we entertain the possibility that the Passover originally might not actually have been the historical setting of the crucifixion, but rather that over time, the Passover became the focus through which the crucifixion was interpreted.  This would mean that the connection between the two was liturgical rather than historical.  This might further suggest that if we wanted to read the passion story properly we should interpret it as liturgy seeking its meaning, rather than as history, which would lead us to speculate on whether or not it actually happened the way it is described.  That opens us to all kinds of new possibilities.  It is a theory worthy of consideration.  We will press this inquiry even deeper as this series continues.
~John Shelby Spong
Read the essay online here.





Question & Answer
Linda Juntgen, from Charlotte, North Carolina, writes:
Question:
I grew up in a small town north of Charlotte, NC. I now live in the Charlotte area. My parents went to the Baptist Church about three times a week. My father was the head deacon….Well, you get the picture. I have read several of your books because I have been “in exile” for years, but I still have strong moments of fear and guilt. I can not find a church in this area where I feel at ease. I feel that I should be raising my children in the church but they really don’t want to go. I was raised to believe that if you accepted Jesus in your heart that you would be saved. I struggle with this daily and I feel extremely alone with my thoughts. What should I do? 

Answer:
Dear Linda, 

I grew up in Charlotte but have not lived there since graduating from high school in 1949. I have, however, made two trips to Charlotte in recent years and one of them was to a Baptist Church – the Myers Park Baptist Church to be specific. It was one of the most exciting weekends of my life. The senior pastor, Dr. Stephen Shoemaker, was open, intelligent, sensitive and caring and he had inaugurated an annual lecture series designed to enable his congregation to interact with current biblical scholarship. The eagerness to learn exhibited by the congregation was amazing. Most of them were raised, as I was, inside a fundamentalist understanding of Christianity. Myers Park Baptist is a large congregation, but its life is vibrant and its welcome to strangers and newcomers is real. 

I’m sure there are other congregations with which you would feel comfortable, but since your background was Baptist I think that is where you should look first. In my tradition St. Peter’s Episcopal Church in downtown Charlotte (North Tryon at West 7th street) would certainly be a place I would be comfortable to worship at regularly. The two national church bodies that seem to me to have escaped the message of sin, guilt and rescue in favor of affirming empowerment to live, emphasizing the freedom to love and the courage to be all that you can be are the Unity Church Movement and the United Church of Christ. I am confident that you can find congregations of both of those traditions in the Charlotte area. Good luck in your search. My sense is the autocratic and fundamentalist churches are not as dominant as their loudness and domination of the media would have us believe. Behind the decibels of negativity are many congregations faithfully living out the Jesus message to bring life abundantly to all. 

~John Shelby Spong





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