Passion Week

There Is No “Good Friday”

DID YOU KNOW…

• • There is always a Last Supper… every year?

• • There are some weeks with more than one Sabbath due to High Holy Days?

• • The Hebrew (biblical) “twilight” is not the same as in the western society?

• • That not only was the modern calendar messed up, but that even the Days Of The Week were changed?

Here are some key passages to note:

• • Exodus 12: Passover and Unleavened Bread

• • Leviticus 23: Dates and regulations for same. God says Passover is the 14th!!

• • Exodus 16:23 Gives “preparation day” is the day before a Sabbath

• • Numbers 9:2, 3 says the lamb was to be eaten Nisan 14. Nisan 14 begins at sunset, so the lamb was prepared at the very end of Nisan 14.

• • John 19:31 “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. [note: not the Sabbath day of rest as Unleavened Bread is always a High Holy Sabbath.]

As the Lord’s Supper (or Last Supper) was after sunset, it was Passover! Nisan 14. Sundown marks a new day. So Christ’s disciples prepared a lamb which they ate right after Nisan 13, but at sunset, making the Last Supper Nisan 14. Christ died next morning, still Passover, Nisan 14! Two lambs…

Note that today’s Jewish calendar has a 19-year cycle, in which the years 0, 3, 6, 8, 11, 14, and 17 all have an extra month of Adar (30 days) which occurs in Feb or March. This convention was not introduced until the fifth century in a limited way, and broadly in the tenth century. Until that time, they adjusted as needed. We notice that the 0th year of one of these cycles is the year 02 (which is 3762), so we can see why some years Passover is considerably later than others.

Nisan was to be “the first month of the year to you” (Exodus 12:2), corresponding to March/April (just as the vernal equinox on March 25 was the beginning of the new year in the early Roman calendar). The equinox is when the sunset crosses for the next half year over the equator, relatively speaking. Passover was to be the first New Moon following the vernal (Spring) equinox. There was to be a Passover feast of unleavened bread and bitter herbs to commemorate the exodus of the Israelites from Egypt, who had marked their doorposts with the blood of a lamb so God would pass over them. And so a lamb was to be kept “until the fourteenth day of the same month” (12:6, Leviticus 23:5, Numbers 28:16), when it was slain that afternoon (Nisan 14) in anticipation of the evening Passover meal.

“On the fifteenth day of the same month was the beginning of the feast of unleavened bread” (Leviticus 23:6, Exodus 12:18), when the meal that had been prepared several hours before was eaten after sundown (with the rising of the full moon) on what then was the beginning of the passing over that night (15 Nisan because on the Hebrew calendar, sunset begins the new day). So the meal prepared for mass exodus on the 14th (no time to let the bread rise), the Passover meal just after sunset, blood is applied to the door posts so the angel of death would pass over in the middle of the night, then the exodus at sunrise.

To verify these dates and how Israel did it and what the understanding is was also a simple matter of consulting Rabbis. I am amazed at how few people do this but will argue and argue about how this is done. Of course, the thing not to do is consult with the liberal rabbis who are more like the Sadducees of old. One wonders why they bother with the profession at all, other than perhaps the money is good, for they deny most things biblical. Other than these, ask or email a rabbi.

So we can have a Full Moon on Friday the 15th which is Unleavened Bread. Jews celebrate Passover and Unleavened Bread together, but it is Unleavened Bread on the 15th that is a Holy Convocation (Sabbath). In the gospels Jesus also paired the two days (see Mk. 14:12; also Matthew 26:17; Luke 22:15). He was crucified the 14th of Nisan morning at “the third hour” (9 a.m.) on Passover day (Mark 15:25). It is significant to note that Pesach was not considered a Sabbath (Lev. 23) but only the first and last day of the week long Unleavened Bread. Leviticus 23, the 14th was the Lord’s Passover, and the 15th was the Passover Feast during Unleavened Bread.

What is the Last Supper (seudah ha’mafseket)? It is the last meal before the fast, eaten after midday. This was particularly a Galilean tradition. It was common to fast on Preparation Day (Nisan 14) until sundown whereupon the Passover Feast was eaten (by then a fresh new Nisan 15). The Passover Lambs would be slaughtered at “twilight” which is about 3 pm and about the time Jesus would be saying “It is finished.” At about the moment Jesus expires (around 3 pm in the afternoon on Passover Day) the slaughter of the Passover Lambs begins in the Temple grounds. Somewhere around ¼ million sheep will be killed and their blood collected between the hours of 3 pm and 6 pm. It is still Passover Day because the sun has not yet set.

The Passion Year and NASA data

What messes with looking at the NASA data and other calendar sites as far as days of the week (today’s Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, etc.) was that in 1582 Pope Gregory (not entirely on his own) altered our calendar away from the Julian Calendar that had begun to drift. The calendars were growing more and more out of sync, so they arbitrarily expunged ten days from the calendar! It worked like this: The removed ten days, and a week is seven days, so now we have three days of the week that are shifted forward on the calendar. Now we are off during the week from Jesus’ day by 3 days! In other words, if you want to worship Sabbath as the same day of the week Jesus did, you would have to do so on Tuesday because the original Seventh Day was shifted forward by three days.

This is huge because very, very few account for this. When you go to most websites or databases to look for the new moon or a full moon, you will find the day, but mathematically it will extrapolate the days of the week, backward, as though that three-day shift never happened. Using a process of elimination, one will dismiss 32 A.D. as a viable year to examine as the Passion Week because it looks like, on the database, that Preparation Day, Nisan 14, (Julian April 13) was on a Sunday. However, when we account for the slide back that is being filtered via the Gregorian calendar by three days, we adjust Sunday into Thursday!

This explains a bit more how great minds in the past got the Passion Year wrong as well when doing math from Gabriel’s Prophecy to Daniel, etc. Plus, Israelology until recently was not a Systematic Theology taught in seminary. It mostly still is not. Therefore, these Jewish traditions and particulars are usually misunderstood and ignored. Thus, one would read “Sabbath” and think “seventh day” and count backward, thinking our Friday akin to Preparation Day as the only way to work the calendar.

Matthew 12:39-41 reads:

39 But he answered them, “An evil and adulterous generation seeks for a sign, but no sign will be given to it except the sign of the prophet Jonah. 40 For just as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the great fish, so will the Son of Man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth.

There is no possible way to get the days of the week in 33 A.D. to fit three days and three nights from Friday to Sunday morning, no matter how clever, slippery and pretzel-like the contortions to make it so.

The Chart herein corresponds with a Thursday crucifixion Nisan 14 as preparation day, in 32 A.D. in a corrected calendar week. We can verify Nisan 15 via NASA calculations. We can extrapolate the days of the week to their original first century reckoning prior to the Gregorian calendar removal of ten days and arrive at an exact match.