Was the Last Supper a Passover Meal?

Pascal Meal vis-à-vis Lord’s Supper

The first Passover is described in Exodus chapter 12: one lamb was slain for every household and the blood painted onto the lintels and doorposts. This was done in order that the angel of Death would not slay the first-born son of the Jewish households, but only those of Pharaoh’s people, whom God had warned He would judge. "When I see the blood, I will pass over you" the Lord told the children of Israel (Exodus 12:13). They were to eat the lamb, with unleavened bread and bitter herbs, in haste prior to their departure from Egypt. The eating of unleavened bread was to continue for seven days, as their sustenance to exit Egypt and escape Pharaoh’s slavery.

Outstanding among the possible typologies or correlates—“shadows,” if you prefer—is that of the Passover or Seder meal which commemorates[i] the deliverance and exodus of the children of Israel from the dominion of Pharaoh as slaves in Egypt, around 1450 BC.

The First Passover

The setting of the Lord's Supper is in my opinion a correlate of the Passover meal; but Jesus was not hosting a proper Seder in the sense that there was no lamb since He was and is the Lamb slain from the foundations of the world. Jesus Christ is Himself the Passover lamb, offered up for the redemption and deliverance of His people (I Corinthians 5:7), the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world (John 1:29). The bread and wine speak of His death, and of the new covenant it ratifies, reconciling God and man. Jesus says "Do this in remembrance of Me" (Luke 22:19; I Corinthians 11:24-25), telling His disciples that the Passover is fulfilled in Him. Until He comes again (Luke 22:18; I Corinthians 11:26), we are to remember the significance of what He has done for us.

This position is further collaborated by an ancient Christian church manual called the Didache which also suggests that the Last Supper may have been an ordinary Jewish meal. In Chapters 9 and 10 of the Didache, the Eucharistic prayers are remarkably close to the Jewish Grace After Meals (Birkat ha-Mazon).[ii] While these prayers are recited after the Passover meal, they would in fact be recited at any meal at which bread was eaten, holiday or not. Thus, this too underscores the likelihood that the Last Supper was an everyday Jewish meal.

Moreover, while the narrative in the Synoptics situates the Last Supper during Passover week, the fact remains that the only foods we are told the disciples ate are bread and wine—the basic elements of any formal Jewish meal. If this was a Passover meal, where is the Passover lamb? Where are the bitter herbs? Where are the four cups of wine?

Last Supper and the Passover (Seder) Meal Compared 

However, there are striking parallels between the Last Supper and the Passover (Seder) Meal as can be easily seen in the following comparison: (1) The Last Supper took place in Jerusalem, (2) in a room made available to pilgrims for that purpose, and (3) it was held during the night. (4) Jesus celebrated that meal with his “family” of disciples; and (5) while they ate, they reclined. (6) This meal was eaten in a state of ritual purity. (7) Bread was broken during the meal and not just at the beginning. (8) Wine was consumed and (9) this wine was red. (10) There were last-minute preparations for the meal, after which (11) alms were given, and (12) a hymn was sung. (13) Jesus and his disciples then remained in Jerusalem. Finally, (14) Jesus discussed the symbolic significance of the meal, just as Jews do during the Passover Seder.

Why do the Synoptic Gospels Portray the Last Supper as a Passover Meal?

Having determined that the Last Supper was not a Seder and that it probably did not take place on Passover, I must try to account for why the synoptic Gospels portray the Last Supper as a Passover meal. Of course, the temporal proximity of Jesus’ crucifixion (and with it, the Last Supper) to the Jewish Passover provides one motive: Surely this historical coincidence could not be dismissed as just that.

Other examples of Passoverization can be identified. The Gospel of John, as previously noted, and Paul (1 Corinthians 5:7–8) equate Jesus’ crucifixion with the Passover sacrifice: “Our Paschal lamb, Christ has been sacrificed. Therefore let us celebrate the festival, not with the old yeast, the yeast of malice and evil, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth.” This too is a Passoverization of the Jesus tradition, but it is one that contradicts the identification of the Last Supper with the Seder or Passover meal.

Still others assert that there is no contradiction at all between the events of the Last Supper as shared by John and his less reliable disciple-friends. According to this theory, put forth in the 1960s by French biblical scholar Annie Jaubert and cited in 2007 by Pope Benedict XVI, Jesus and his disciples were adhering to the calendar of the rebellious Pharisee sect, which celebrated the start of Passover a day earlier than the rest of the Jews.

Passover Meal Challenge^[iii][iv]

Now, to continue this line of argument, let’s consider Mark 14:12-26, since Matthew and Luke are in general agreement with him on the events surrounding the Last Supper:

Jesus Celebrates the Passover with His Disciples

12 Now on the first day of Unleavened Bread, when they killed the Passover lamb, His disciples said to Him, “Where do You want us to go and prepare, that You may eat the Passover?”

13 And He sent out two of His disciples and said to them, “Go into the city, and a man will meet you carrying a pitcher of water; follow him. 14 Wherever he goes in, say to the master of the house, ‘The Teacher says, “Where is the guest room in which I may eat the Passover with My disciples?”’ 15 Then he will show you a large upper room, furnished and prepared; there make ready for us.”

16 So His disciples went out, and came into the city, and found it just as He had said to them; and they prepared the Passover.

17 In the evening He came with the twelve. 18 Now as they sat and ate, Jesus said, “Assuredly, I say to you, one of you who eats with Me will betray Me.”

19 And they began to be sorrowful, and to say to Him one by one, “Is it I?” And another said, “Is it I?”

20 He answered and said to them, “It is one of the twelve, who dips with Me in the dish. 21 The Son of Man indeed goes just as it is written of Him, but woe to that man by whom the Son of Man is betrayed! It would have been good for that man if he had never been born.”

Jesus Institutes the New Covenant

22 And as they were eating, Jesus took bread, blessed and broke it, and gave it to them and said, “Take, eat; this is My body.”

23 Then He took the cup, and when He had given thanks He gave it to them, and they all drank from it. 24 And He said to them, “This is My blood of the new covenant, which is shed for many. 25 Assuredly, I say to you, I will no longer drink of the fruit of the vine until that day when I drink it new in the kingdom of God.”

26 And when they had sung a hymn, they went out to the Mount of Olives. (Mark 14:12-26 (NKJV)

And now with these verse in John’s Gospel that seems to conflict with the Synoptics:

Now before the Feast of the Passover, when Jesus knew that His hour had come that He should depart from this world to the Father, having loved His own who were in the world, He loved them to the end. (John 17:1); and,

2 And supper being ended, the devil having already put it into the heart of Judas Iscariot, Simon’s son, to betray Him.

With the verse that seems to conflict with the Synoptics:

Therefore, because it was the Preparation Day, that the bodies should not remain on the cross on the Sabbath (for that Sabbath was a high day), the Jews asked Pilate that their legs might be broken, and that they might be taken away…” (John 19:31)

Problem Observed:
Do you see the problem here? The problem is best presented in the form of a question: “How could Jesus eat the Passover meal with his disciples, then be crucified and the Jews ask that he be taken down off the cross before the Passover meal they were to eat later that day?” (John 19:31)

The answer is, obviously if one accepts that the Last Supper was the Passover meal, followed by yet another Passover meal after he was crucified, then there is definitely a contradiction.

The Choice is Yours:
At this point, the choice is yours. Either the Bible is the inerrant, infallible word of God or it is simply a good book full of advice, some good perhaps, and some bad; but, nonetheless, errant in its narratives and with an archaic prescientific worldview. It cannot be both.

As for me, I would find it very hard to place my confidence in a book riddled with such apparent errors and prescientific mythologies. Yet, some continue to hang onto this straw and proudly proclaim that they are Christians.

I say, foolishness.

Possibilities Considered:
With this clearly in mind, let us allow our thoughts to run down an imaginative trail of possibilities. What if those New Testament authors living in time and space only had one option? Now, what if that option was that they could only declare in space and time what originated in the mind of the Eternal One? Is this not precisely what Peter said, when he wrote:

For prophecy never had its origin in the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit. (2 Peter 1:21)

Does not the scripture also say?

From the east I summon a bird of prey; from a far-off land, a man to fulfill my purpose. What I have said, that will I bring about; what I have planned, that will I do. (Isaiah 46:11)

We cannot have both. God is eternal, He changes not. He cannot, and does not lie. (Hebrews 6:18; Titus 1:2; Numbers 23:19; 1 Samuel 15:29)

The Inauguration of a New Covenant:
Firstly, the Lord’s Supper mentioned was not a Seder or Passover meal at all but the inauguration of a new covenant. This conviction is based on the fact that there is no mention of eating the sacrificial lamb—since He was, indeed, the sacrificial lamb. And, he clearly states that:

"This cup is the new covenant in My blood; do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of Me. For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until He comes." (1 Corinthians 11:25, 26)

So, instead of celebrating the Passover, since he knew that he would be the Passover lamb the next day, he clearly is saying the old Seder meal is therefore null and void and is no longer necessary. I am the bread, I am the lamb, I am the wine in ways that these old symbolisms never were. For, as the scripture says,

Hebrews 8: 7-13

⁽⁷⁾ For if that first covenant had been faultless, there would have been no occasion sought for a second. For finding fault with them, He says, ⁽⁸⁾ “Behold, days are coming, says the Lord, I will effect a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah; ⁽⁹⁾ not like the covenant which I made with their fathers on the day when I took them by the hand to lead them out of the land of Egypt; for they did not continue in my covenant, And I did not care for them, says the Lord. ⁽¹⁰⁾ “For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the Lord: I will put my laws into their minds, And I will write them on their hearts. And I will be their god, and they shall be my people. ⁽¹¹⁾ “and they shall not teach everyone his fellow citizen, and everyone his brother, saying, ‘know the Lord,’ for all will know me, from the least to the greatest of them.  ⁽¹²⁾ “for I will be merciful to their iniquities, and I will remember their sins no more.”

⁽¹³⁾ When He said, “A new covenant,” He has made the first obsolete. But whatever is becoming obsolete and growing old is ready to disappear.

And, disappear it did!

Therefore, if this position is taken—and I believe it is the correct one—one of our major problems is solved; that is, that Christ was crucified and died precisely during the time the Passover lamb was sacrificed that the High Priest would eat later that night at the traditional Seder meal.

Regardless of one’s view of history, we must agree with Wilhelm Herrmann a liberal theologian, who readily admits the flaws in depending on history for a final judgment call on Biblical doctrine,

“[It] is a fatal drawback that no historical judgment, however certain it may appear, ever attains anything more than probability. But what sort of religion would that be which accepted a basis for its convictions with the consciousness that it was only probably safe?

It is a fatal error to attempt to establish the basis of faith by means of historical investigation. The basis of faith must be something fixed; the results of historical inquiry are continually changing.”^[v]

May God give us the wisdom to see the difference!

JimR/