When visitors to Jerusalem are shown a large cave called "Gethsemane" on the lower slopes of the Mount of Olives, they usually give a perfunctory look and hurry on to the famous Garden of Gethsemane, the small garden of olive trees adjacent to the Church of All Nations. Here pilgrims can sit and reflect on the momentous events of Jesus' arrest in what seems a more appropriate, if less authentic, environment.

 

Most of these pilgrims are never told that the New Testament does not mention a "Garden of Gethsemane." The Cave of Gethsemane, on the other hand, is very probably a genuine Biblical site-the location of Jesus' arrest-unlike so many of the "traditional" holy sites of Christianity that have little or no claim to authenticity.

 

The cave, within a property now owned by the Franciscan Custody of the Holy Land, certainly looks unimpressive. Enclosed in a flat-roofed, semicircular building, the cave is reached by a long corridor to the right of the courtyard leading to the traditional Tomb of the Virgin. Its placement makes it seem an afterthought, though in fact it was a Christian holy site long before anyone thought to place the Tomb of the Virgin Mary beside it. The interior of the rather spartan cave has traces of two levels of Byzantine (fourth-sixth-century) mosaics, intriguing medieval ceiling and wall decorations, and modern altars on a modern stone floor. These features, however, do not seem too inspiring to most visitors and testify only to the fact that the cave has been modified many times over the course of its long history.

 

In the first century, the cave was not tucked behind a large building, as it is today. Excavations conducted by the Franciscans in 1956-1957 revealed that the natural mouth of the cave, lying to the north, was over 16 feet wide. The cave itself had been much extended long before the Byzantine period and has been used for agricultural purposes.

 

The earliest gospel, Mark, describes Jesus and his disciples going out to the Mount of Olives after the Last Supper (Mark 14:26) and specifically identifies their stopping place: "They went to a place called Gethsemane" (Mark 14:32). Mark does not call it a garden but simply a "place" or "property," in Greek chōrion. Jesus asks his disciples to sit down "here" (hōde) while he prays. He then "takes to himself" (paralambanei) Peter, James and John. The Greek word implies that he invites them to one side with him, not that he goes away with them anywhere. Distressed, he asks the three to remain "here" (hōde) and keep awake. The other disciples are presumably permitted to slumber, but not the special three. Jesus goes "forward a little" (proelthōn mikron), where he throws himself on the ground and asks that he might avoid his fate. To "go forward" is perhaps a rather curious way of referring to Jesus' departure. A little later, Mark makes it clear that Jesus actually went away: "And again he went away (apelthōn) and prayed, saying the same thing" (Mark 14:39). Jesus does this three times and on returning always finds Peter, James and John asleep, and asks them again to keep awake and pray. The last time he announces that the hour of his betrayal has come. Then Judas arrives with an ar

med crowd sent by the chief priests, scribes and elders of Jerusalem and identifies his master by greeting him with the customary kiss.
Mark implies that, at the moment of betrayal, Jesus is not simply with Peter, James and John but with all the disciples who came with him across the Kidron Valley to Gethsemane. The armed crowd, carrying swords and clubs, seizes Jesus. One of the disciples standing near Jesus draws his sword and cuts off the ear of a servant of the high priest. A young man in the gathering, who seems to have been asleep in nothing more than a linen cloth or undergarment, a sindōn, attempts to follow Jesus as they take him away. The group sent by the chief priests and scribes grabs hold of the young man who manages to tear away, but unfortunately without his clothing (Mark 14:51); he flees nude. Mark specifically notes that "everyone deserted him [Jesus] and fled" (Mark 14:50). Jesus was therefore not simply with Peter, James and John, but with the whole group of disciples.

Luke and Matthew, basing their accounts of the arrest on Mark, have similar stories. Luke mentions that Jesus spent his nights "on the Mount of Olives" (Luke 21:37) during the time he was in Jerusalem, but at first does not say exactly where. Matthew also refers to him sitting and teaching his disciples somewhere at a place on the Mount of Olives (Matthew 24:3). As in Mark, both Luke and Matthew refer to Jesus and his disciples going to the Mount of Olives after the Last Supper (Matthew 26:30; Luke 22:39). According to Matthew, Jesus goes with them to "a place named Gethsemane" (Matthew 26:36), but there is no mention of a garden. Luke never bothers to record the name of the place, but simply indicates it was where Jesus regularly slept: "He came out and went, as was his custom, to the Mount of Olives; and the disciples followed him. When he reached the place, he said to them, ‘Pray that you may not come into the time of trial'" (Luke 22:39-40). Luke's account does not single out Peter, James and John. Jesus goes away from all his disciples "about a stone's throw" and prays. He returns only once, to find them all fast asleep, and asks them to get up and pray. Judas arrives, and the scene is the same as in Mark, apart from a few details: for example, Jesus heals the ear of the high priest's servant, the poor young man who lost his clothes is not mentioned and there is no direct reference to Jesus' disciples all running away. Matthew's story (Matthew 26:36-56) is very close to that of Mark, almost word for word, apart from a few minor changes and the subtraction of the tale of the naked man. Clearly both Luke and Matthew thought this detail anecdotal and irrelevant.

 

Neither Mark, Matthew nor Luke speak of a garden. Gethsemane is simply a "place" or "property" on the Mount of Olives.
The Gospel of John, however, mentions something called a kēpos. Kēpos can be translated as "garden," but it is really a general term, more accurately translated as "a cultivated tract of land." It can refer to anything from a large orchard or plantation to a small plot. More importantly, John never calls this cultivated area (kēpos) Gethsemane. Only by conflating this account with the stories in Mark, Matthew and Luke did later Christians formulate such an idea.

 

John's account goes like this: "After Jesus had spoken these words, he went out [from Jerusalem] with his disciples across the Kidron Valley to where there was a garden/cultivated area (kēpos), into which he and his disciples entered. Now Judas, who betrayed him, also knew the place, because Jesus met there often with his disciples" (John 18:1-2). John, like Luke, describes a place that Jesus frequented. Since it is nighttime, the implication is that he intended, as usual, to sleep there. John's gospel contains no story of Jesus' prayer. Judas simply arrives all of a sudden with soldiers and Temple police. In John, Judas does not kiss Jesus. Peter is identified as the disciple who cut off the ear of the high priest's servant, now named Malchus. Nothing is said about the disciples running away, but certainly they are absent as Jesus is tied and bound (John 18:12).

In John, Jesus and his disciples enter "into" (eis) the cultivated area, which implies that some kind of wall surrounded it. There was at least a clearly demarcated outside and inside. No details are given about the nature of the cultivation. That was not crucial to the story. Perhaps it was a small market garden. There is nothing said in any of the gospel accounts about the existence of a cave. Again, this was not necessary for the story.

 

Some very good reasons lead us to believe, however, that a cave was located in this walled, cultivated area, and that Jesus and his disciples slept in this cave rather than out in the open.

 

Looking closely at the text of John's gospel, we see that Jesus "went out" (exēlthen) of something within the garden to meet the soldiers (John 18:4). We know he did not go out of the garden enclosure itself, because the arrest is sited there: Later on, when Peter is questioned by witnesses, one of them says, "Didn't I see you in the garden (kēpos)?" (John 18:26).

 

The Greek word Gethsemane comes from an Aramaic or Hebrew term that most likely means "oil-press." The word gat on its own in Aramaic and Hebrew frequently means "wine-press." But its meaning is actually broader. In rabbinic literature, gat refers to a place for the preparation of oil.3 The broadest meaning of the word would encompass any pit or cave used for a particular purpose.4 The Hebrew word shemanim, a plural form, is used for different kinds of oil,5 gifts of oil6 and oil stores.7 So we can assume the Hebrew name of the place was Gat-shemanim, literally "press of oils." Since different grades of olive oil were made, the plural form may reflect the various distinctions or types.

The possible name of the cave in Aramaic, Gat-shemanin, presumably sounded very much like Greek Gethsēmani (Mark 14:32) in the Aramaic Jerusalem dialect of the day. The final t of gat would have been pronounced as a soft th. In Greek the sh sounds of Aramaic and Hebrew were usually rendered simply by sigma, the Greek letter s. The a sound of gat seems to have been pronounced as an e, and the Aramaic plural ending -in seems to have lost its final letter in the local vocalization.
Archaeological evidence tends to support this cave as the site of Gethsemane. Excavations indicate that the present Gethsemane cave was indeed once used for olive-oil pressing.

 

The interior of the Gethsemane cave has greatly changed over the centuries, and only vestiges of its original use remain (see the sidebar "A Welcome Refuge: Inside the Cave of Gethsemane"). The present floor is about 40 inches above the level of the original floor. The cave is extremely large, measuring approximately 36 by 60 feet (11 by 18 meters). The cave roof was supported by four rock-cut pillars, three of which still exist. As noted above, the remains of the wide original entrance can be seen on the north side. An oil-press probably stood in a roughly square artificial cave extension in the eastern wall. The evidence for this is a hole cut into the south wall of this recess. A hole may not seem much proof, but it was most likely cut to hold the wooden horizontal bar of the press.9 This beam held weights that would ensure heavy pressure on the olives, so that the oil would be squeezed out. It is hard to imagine any other reason why someone would cut a hole in the wall here. We can be sure that the press was for olives and not for grapes, because wine-presses are never found underground. Caves were often used for oil-presses, however, because their warmth helped the process.

 

The recent discovery of a number of olive-oil installations at ancient Maresha (Tell Sandahanna) provides useful information about olive-presses in the centuries just before the time of Jesus. So does an olive-pressing installation in Jerusalem, not yet published.11
The presses were located in caves. A beam was secured at one end between two rock-cut ledges in a deep recess in the cave wall, as was, no doubt, the beam of the Gethsemane press. Three stone weights were usually hung by a rope on the wooden beam. At Maresha, these stones weighed between 300 and 1,100 pounds.12 A pit, into which the weights slowly descended, was cut in the floor. The mashed olives, stacked in baskets, were piled in a deep circular shaft between the rock ledges; the oil was collected in a vat below.

 

In eleven of the underground olive-pressing installations at Maresha, the presses were accompanied by circular crushing basins, almost 6.5 feet wide, with lens-shaped crushing stones. There are no remains of a crushing basin or stone in the Gethsemane cave today. In the ninth century, a monk named Bernard recorded that he saw four "round" or "curved" tables where Jesus and the apostles had supper.13 This would fit well with the remnants of a circular crushing basin.

 

There is some reason to believe that the Gethsemane cave held not one, but two olive-presses. The evidence for this appears in pilgrim accounts, dating from the sixth century to the Middle Ages, which testify to the existence of four rock ledges in the cave. Each recess for an olive-press requires two rock ledges to support the press's beam. If the pilgrims saw four, then there may have been two presses. None of the pilgrims, however, suggests that the ledges have anything to do with olive pressing. Early in the sixth century, a pilgrim named Theodosius wrote that he saw four "couches" for the 12 apostles; he notes that "each couch holds three people."14 The two ledges cut into recesses for the olive baskets and collecting vat in the presses at Maresha measure about 40 inches wide by 40 inches high and are therefore wide enough for three (slim) people to sit on, side by side. It seems quite possible that what Theodosius really saw were the remains of two recesses for olive-presses, with two ledges per recess.

 

One of these ledges appears to have disintegrated by the end of the sixth century; an anonymous pilgrim from Piacenza, in about 570, mentions only three "couches."16 Pilgrims wishing to take home mementos may have chipped the ledge away, or the rock may have simply fallen apart.17 The pressure of the heavy beam on the oil baskets created lateral pressure on the rock into which the ledges were cut. Also, pilgrims would climb on these ledges to gain a spiritual reward. The Piacenza Pilgrim writes that he and his party reclined on the "couches" to gain their blessing. In time, if the rock was not strong, these ledges would have cracked.

 

The curved tables noted by Bernard in the ninth century also may have been the remnants of the ledges, which had a concave arc cut out of them to fit around the baskets of olive pulp. With wear and tear and the edges chipped away, the ledges would have come to look much like facing semicircles. That only three ledges remained seems clear from a 12th-century pilgrimage account by Saewulf, who describes the three "beds" where the disciples Peter, James and John fell asleep.18 Some time between the Middle Ages and today, these rocky ledges and the remains of the crushing basin were completely chipped away.
A pilgrim named Arculf reported to the abbot Adomnan of Iona (c. 680) that he saw a cistern "in the floor of the cave ... [and] it has a huge shaft sunk deep, which goes down straight." The remains of this cistern have been discovered below an ancient hole in the cave ceiling, which was to let in air, light and (periodically) rainwater. Adomnan tells us in fact that there were two cisterns, one cut into the floor, and another that "goes down to an untold depth below the mountain."19
That there were two cisterns in the ancient olive-pressing works is not surprising. Water was useful for cleaning the olives and the equipment, as well as for washing hands.

All this evidence leads to the conclusion that this cave was clearly used for olive pressing and had a crushing basin near its mouth, as well as two cisterns.
Even for an olive-oil-press, the cave would have been unusually large and impressive. As possibly the largest olive-oil processing site on the Mount of Olives, it would have been well known.

The spacious cave would have been a useful storage area as well. Oil-presses were only used in the autumn and winter,20 after the olive harvest; by spring, when the festival of Passover took place, caves that held olive-presses were used only for storage. Therefore, when Jesus and his disciples were in Jerusalem for Passover, the cave would not have been used for oil pressing. However, it would have been an excellent place to spend the night: warm, dry and roomy, with a cistern inside for water. The owner of the property may have been sensible enough to rent it out as accommodation. At festival times, thousands of people came to Jerusalem,21 and every lodging in the city and surrounding villages was taken. Any kind of shelter would have been considered as a lodging place. This cave was close to Jerusalem and probably securely located in a pleasant, cultivated enclosure.

 

It is extremely improbable that Jesus and his disciples would have spent the night out in the open sleeping amid olive trees. As anyone knows who has camped in the Judean hills in spring, the nights are cold and the dew is heavy. One simply cannot camp out without shelter at this time of year without becoming extremely cold and damp. The Gospel of John explicitly states that Jesus was arrested on a chilly night: Peter stands warming himself by the fire in the courtyard of the high priest "because it was cold" (John 18:18). The story of the young man who was dressed only in a sindōn suggests that the disciples were protected from the weather. In the stuffy warmth of the cave, amid a slumbering mass of people, such attire would have been fine. But not out in an olive grove in the freezing night!

 

That Jesus was arrested in or just outside a cave also fits well with what we read in the gospel stories. We cannot know exactly what took place in every detail because the Gospels differ, but the basic story remains constant. It seems fairly clear that Jesus crossed over the Kidron Valley (in this part known as the Valley of Jehoshaphat) with a group of disciples and went a little way up the Mount of Olives to a cultivated enclosure. The group went inside, as they often did. They had been camping there for several days prior to the Passover festival. They either rented the property, or else the owner had offered it to them out of respect for Jesus. We can imagine them entering the warm cave, lighting little lamps and taking off their coats to sleep on as they prepared for bed. Perhaps Jesus was restless, and called Peter, James and John over to him, asking them to stay alert. He went forward from the cave entrance, still within the cultivated enclosure but alone, praying in the darkness. In the close coziness of the cave, and with heads befuddled with wine, Peter, James and John fell asleep with everyone else. Jesus returned to find them all blissfully unaware of what was about to happen. Then Judas arrived with a group sent by the Roman and chief priestly authorities of Jerusalem to arrest Jesus. Jesus came out of the cave entrance and was greeted by Judas. The disciples awoke and realized what was happening. A scuffle broke out. Some disciples tried to defend Jesus; then, realizing it was hopeless, and perhaps admonished by Jesus, they rapidly escaped. One young man lost his clothes in a struggle with a guard and then fled. Everyone ran away, and they were allowed to do so, for the authorities wanted only Jesus. They tied him up and marched him out to Jerusalem, leaving the cave of Gat-shemanin, and the enclosed garden around it, empty.

 

Three hundred years later, Christians began to visit this cave to recall the arrest of Jesus, which they believed had taken place there. It was one of the earliest sites to be venerated by Christian pilgrims. Because the name of the place probably remained the same over the centuries, people had little difficulty in identifying it. The people of Jerusalem still spoke a dialect of Aramaic, now known as Syriac. The Jerusalem church may have kept alive the memory of the site of Jesus' betrayal. But, like the gospel writers before them, none of the earliest pilgrims mentions that Gethsemane was a cave, even though they are quite specific about its location.

 

The nun Egeria, for example, who made a famous tour of the Holy Land in about 382, describes the path followed by pilgrims on Good Friday. They go "into Gethsemane," where they are provided with candles "so that they can all see."22 Clearly, they are going into some place that is darker than outside; but Egeria does not bother to note that it was a cave.

 

Only in the early sixth-century account by Theodosius do we find explicit mention of Gethsemane as a large cave.23 He writes: "This place is in a cave, and now two hundred monks go down there." But even after this date writers failed to note this feature.24 Gethsemane was Gethsemane; somehow everyone knew it was a cave.

 

It was not until the 12th century that anyone thought of a Garden of Gethsemane, located adjacent to the cave. But the cave was never entirely abandoned even when Christian imagination, aided by the depictions of European art, sited the arrest in an olive grove. Western pilgrims began to associate the site with the place of Jesus' anxious prayer, called "the Agony." Eventually, even this identification became little known, but the cave remained a peculiar stop on the pilgrim trail-and remains so to this day-one that people often go into and out of without a second thought, presuming it to be nothing much, a mere invention. However, of all the traditional Christian holy sites in and around Jerusalem, the Cave of Gethsemane is one of the most likely to be authentic.

 

Since archaeology shows that the cave held an olive-oil-press, and the Gospels refer to a place known as Gethsemane, which most likely meant "oil-press," we are justified in considering the cave and Gethsemane to be one and the same. The cave is located just across the Kidron Valley, precisely where the Gospels suggest that Gethsemane was located. There is no other competing cave in the vicinity. Furthermore, Jesus and his disciples most likely did not lie down under the stars, but took shelter here during the cool spring nights. The evidence suggests that the cave of Gethsemane was the place they used as sleeping quarters, and here-or just outside-Judas caught them unawares.

Author: Joan E. Taylor, for Biblical Archaeology Review

Tags: garden of gethsemene jesus jerusalem holy sites 

Jean Freyne is director of Mediterranean and Near Eastern Studies, as well as emeritus professor of theology, at Trinity College Dublin. His research focuses on the integration of literary and archaeological sources for understanding the social and religious world of Galilee in Hellenistic and Roman times. Editor Hershel Shanks sat down with Professor Freyne in New Orleans to discuss what archaeology and Biblical studies can tell us about the historical Jesus.

 

Hershel Shanks: Sean, I take it you've come to New Orleans for the annual meeting of the Society of Biblical Literature [SBL]?

 

Sean Freyne: That's true, Hershel, but also I'm retracing my footsteps of 30 years ago and more, when I taught here in New Orleans at Loyola University. My first daughter, Bridget, was born here. So I have very special memories of New Orleans.
I'm glad to be able to talk to you. My only fear is that our typist won't be able to understand your thick Irish brogue.

 

No, no, I speak very clearly. I speak slowly and clearly in my best Americanese. [laughter]

You're a senior scholar. What do you get out of these meetings of the Society of Biblical Literature?

 

Well, I found coming to the SBL was a very stimulating experience even as a young scholar. I had been trained in Europe, of course, in Rome and Jerusalem and then subsequently in Germany. And when I came to teach in the States, I found that the discipline [of Biblical studies] here was different from Europe. While I don't always agree with everything I hear from the United States in the field of Biblical studies, nonetheless I always find it very challenging and very stimulating. And so I see myself as kind of bridging a European, more theological, approach with a more secular one, particularly in regard to historical Jesus studies. In America there is a greater emphasis on sociological methods, which can be very helpful, but which also can be quite restrictive.

 

You are an expert in historical Jesus studies. I have always wondered about that name. Are there nonhistorical Jesus studies, or unhistorical Jesus studies?

 

[Laughing] That's a good question. Some people confuse the notion of the historical Jesus with the notion of the actual or the real Jesus. I think the historical Jesus is a construct, a theological construct, really. It's the figure of Jesus as he is represented in the documents of Christian faith as a historical person.

 

I thought it was just the opposite, that the historical Jesus was opposed to the theological Jesus.

 

What we're trying to do, I think, in this quest for the historical Jesus is to find the figure who stands behind the gospel narratives as a historical figure. If we look at the Gospels, all we have, in the case of the Synoptics [Matthew, Mark and Luke], is one year of his public ministry. If we include John, we make it three years. It's a bird's-eye view of this figure who walked the roads of Galilee. We have no record whatever of Jesus' early life. We have the infancy gospel stories, which of course are highly theological and highly literary, made up later. So we really can't build anything historical on those narratives.

 

Shanks: In Hebrew Bible studies, there's a big question about whether Solomon and David lived. Archaeologists have now found an inscription that actually refers to David's dynasty. So that's settled. But Solomon is still an open question and of course there is no archaeological evidence of Moses. Yet you never hear about historical Moses studies or historical Solomon studies or even historical David studies. Why the contrast? You have it only with Jesus.

Someone has said that if Moses didn't exist, we'd have to invent him. He stands behind a whole tradition. We know very little about him. So little in fact, that as an historical person he is virtually lost to history too. But I think the Israelite tradition as it developed, as well as later Jewish tradition, weren't as dependent on one figure as the Christian tradition was on this figure of Jesus of Nazareth. I think that's why the historical Jesus becomes a real battleground theologically and historically, because so much is at stake in terms of the Christian proclamation.

 

If we say Jesus is purely a construct, without any historical roots, then Christianity itself would be in danger of collapsing. The same is true for the traditions of Israelite origin. If we can't somehow put some trust in the early traditions-the legal traditions, the Exodus tradition, the origins in Egypt and so on-if we can't put some trust in those, then it seems to me the whole story, as a religious expression, would be in danger of collapsing also.

So I think, in other words, something of the historical roots of the tradition, both the Israelite tradition and the early Christian tradition, are important for the kind of theological religious claims that are invested in those figures and those histories. But I think we have to recognize that our ancient sources cannot be judged by the standards of modern historiography. We have to try to work with historical methods and try at the same time to recognize the literary creations, be it about Jesus or about Israel.

 

Shanks:I thought there was a more intense debate and acrimony among those who are arguing over whether there was a United Monarchy ruled by David and Solomon than there is in New Testament studies about the historical Jesus.

 

No, no. There is quite an intense debate in the historical Jesus studies as well.

 

Shanks:Some New Testament scholars say Jesus was a magician.

They use that term. But a lot depends on how you use the word "magician". Is it a pejorative term? Some people have said Jesus was a shaman, others say he was a Hasid [a very religious Jew]. We have a whole range of images of Jesus floating around. "Magician" is used as a way of discrediting somebody in antiquity. According to Celsus [a second-century C.E. Greek philosopher], Jesus went to Egypt and learned magic there, and came back and deceived the people. I think we have to try to balance a negative account with what we can establish historically. And I think that "magician," for me, is not the appropriate title.

 

Shanks:Another characterization of Jesus is as a Greek-style philosopher, who is a Cynic.

 

Yes. The Cynics were traveling popular philosophers that were to some degree counter-cultural figures. When some scholars say that Jesus was a Cynic, there is often the implication that he wasn't Jewish, or only marginally so, since the Cynics were a phenomenon of the Greco-Roman urban environment. That is where I think the archaeology of Galilee can help. When I wrote my first book on Galilee, I came across a book published in German in 1941 by Walter Grundmann, a professor of New Testament. The title was Jesus der Galiläer-Jesus the Galilean-which claimed that because Galilee in Jesus' time was heathen, with great probability, "Jesus kein Jude war," "Jesus was not a Jew." Although it was published in Germany in 1941 at the height of the Nazi period, there had been that scholarly tradition going back to the 19th century, and to some extent it is still with us, as in the Cynic Jesus hypothesis: The Greek world was enlightened; the Jewish world, the Semitic world, was backward and outdated. In a sense, making Jesus Greek was a way of saying Jesus is not tied to the particularities of his Jewish tradition. It was making him a figure of universal significance-that was the dominant trend of 19th-century Jesus studies.

Shanks:Has archaeology helped to counter that view?

 

Absolutely, very clearly.

 

Shanks:How?

 

In a number of ways. First and foremost it has shown that the reception of Greek influences in the Near East from the time of Alexander the Great [fourth century B.C.E.] was not a hostile clash of civilizations, as has often been asserted. The question is at what point, or to what extent, were the unique claims of the Jewish tradition, for instance that of Yahweh as the only God, abandoned in favor of a polytheistic understanding of the divine? Archaeology has shown that the Jewish identity maintained itself despite the dangers of total assimilation, but Jews also benefited from the advantages of the Greek world. The Jewish diaspora was Greek, and the Hebrew Scriptures were translated into Greek in the third century B.C.E. already. Philo of Alexandria, one of the great Jewish philosophers, was heavily influenced by Greek philosophy in first-century C.E. Alexandria. So Greek culture was not necessarily hostile to the Jewish tradition, which came under the impact of Hellenism in various ways. But it also vigorously resisted abandoning its own distinctive world view. It accommodated itself to Hellenism while at the same time it retained its own distinctive identity. That, to me, is crucial to the understanding of Jesus also.
Archaeology, I think, has shown us that there was indeed a strong element of Hellenization in terms of trade, language, military and administrative strategies, etc. It was to some extent a case of acting Greek without becoming Greek, as somebody has put it.

 

Shanks:You seem to be saying that Galilee was Jewish but absorbed Hellenistic culture at the time of Jesus and yet was not overcome or overrun by it.

 

It didn't lose its distinctive Jewish identity. In the interior of Galilee, for instance, you do not find any of the things that we associate with a Greek or Roman city in terms of monumental buildings or statues of the gods.

 

Shanks:You feel that Jesus was imbued with Jewish culture?

 

Absolutely. To my mind there's no question about that. Locating him more precisely within that culture is another question. Jewish culture at the time was not monochromic. There were different varieties of Judaism-diaspora, or Greek-speaking Jews, the Sadducees, proto-rabbinic Jews such as the Essenes and the Pharisaic movement, etc. Where we locate the Jesus movement in this matrix is the big question historically.

 

Shanks:What are the alternatives?

 

Well, for me, one of the important things is to start with Jesus' relationship with John the Baptist. We know from John's gospel that, later, the Jesus and the Baptist movements were in opposition, since their disciples were in competition for members (John 3:26). In this gospel the Baptist is apologetically presented as being the first witness to the Christian gospel (John 1:29-34). In the much-earlier synoptic account, Jesus says that "nobody born of women is greater than John the Baptist" (Matthew 11:11; Luke 7:28). These are the words of an admirer of John. Jesus has left his Galilean village culture of Nazareth and joins the Baptist movement in the desert, it would seem.

 

Now how do we understand the Baptist movement in the desert? I see it as one movement among various strands in Judaism that are beginning to be disaffected, not just politically but religiously. Herod changed the high priesthood. He got rid of the Hasmoneans [the previous Jewish rulers] and brought in replacement high priests from outside, from Egypt and from Mesopotamia.

 

I think we can see some disaffection here; the symbolic system of the Temple was not functioning as well as it might have in terms of being the religious center for the whole people. Luke presents the Baptist as the son of a country priest (Luke 1:5-8). Now, if John's the son of a country priest, what's he doing in the desert, preaching forgiveness of sins? He should be in Jerusalem talking about how people should come there on Yom Kippur. Instead, he's undermining the system that is functioning in Jerusalem, just as the Qumran people [where the Dead Sea Scrolls were found] are as well, by claiming that they are an alternative temple. We have to see that kind of movement in the first century in this larger context. I would want to locate Jesus as well within that general environment.

 

Shanks: Where within that context?

 

All the Gospels say that once John was arrested, Jesus moved into Galilee. Now that move is very important. He's going back to Galilee, going back to his own roots, but he's not going back to settle in Nazareth.

 

There's a famous story in Mark where Jesus is in a house with people gathered around him, and they say to him, "Your mother and brothers are outside waiting for you and calling for you [Mark 3:32]." Mark had made a very unexpected assertion that [his family] thought that Jesus was out of his mind [Mark 3:21-22]. But Jesus does not go out to meet them. Instead he makes this amazing statement, asking "Who are my mother and my brothers?" Those who do the will of my father, he says, are my brothers and sisters and mother [Mark 3:33-35]. In other words, he's establishing a new kind of family that is based not on kinship, but on following his way of understanding what God's will is. For me, those are some of the core moments in trying to reconstruct the way I see Jesus developing a new vision within the contemporary varieties of Judaism in Galilee. The prophet Isaiah was very important for Jesus, as he was for all these renewal movements, including the people at Qumran. The remains of several different Isaiah scrolls have been found in the caves there, including one complete scroll and another nearly complete.

 

In Isaiah you have a clear sense of the remaking of Israel after the Babylonian Exile and the hopes that that engendered. The servant figure will bring light to the nations as well as restore Israel. There's a sense of the universal in Isaiah. I tend to see John the Baptist more focused on Israel, and Jesus as adopting a more open and inclusive approach to renewal. They are both building their visions of what Israel's role is, even when the emphasis is different. The Jesus movement is thus a renewal group built around the figure of the servant of God, as depicted in Isaiah, who is not militantly opposed to foreigners. Yet he addresses his message to Israel. The servant figure is deeply embedded in a tradition of Jewish piety associated with the anavim or "pious poor" whom we meet in the Prophets and Psalms [Isaiah 3:14-15; Ezekiel 18:12; Psalms 9:13, 10:12, 25:9, 34:3]. They are often depicted in Isaiah as suffering at the hands of the ruling elite associated with the temple, yet especially dear to God (Isaiah 58:1-14, 61:1-3, 65:13-14).

 

Shanks:Did Jesus initiate his own unique renewal movement or was he part of another renewal movement?

 

I think Jesus began within the renewal movement that was associated with the desert and with John the Baptist, as I have been saying. And then his strategy changes from John's. John's world vision is of an imminent judgment, that God is going to come and separate the good from the wicked, a highly apocalyptic world view. He remains in the desert summoning people to come out and prepare themselves through repentance and baptism. Jesus seems to be less influenced by the apocalyptic view of history. He retains it, but he's not as influenced by it. So when he goes into Galilee, he attempts to wed the apocalyptic world view with a "wisdom" one, as he moves around the villages preaching and healing. In other words, he recognizes that this world is essentially good. You can examine many of his parables, for example, where he talks about nature reflecting God's ways with the world, as in the parables of growth [Mark 4]: seeds falling into different kinds of soil. It's not a vision of God coming in thunder and lightning. God is in the world already. So I think Jesus operates out of what I would call a creation tradition, where true wisdom is about understanding the ways of the world and recognizing God's active presence in its processes. I think Jesus puts more emphasis on the wisdom tradition than the purely apocalyptic one. In that sense he is less a John the Baptist figure, more a prophetic one who is able to extend his calling not merely to Israel but to the nations also, accepting that the nations, too, can share with Israel's blessings.

 

Was this unique to Jesus or was this part of another Jewish movement?

 

That was already in Isaiah. In Isaiah 49:6 [in so-called Deutero-Isaiah or Second Isaiah], for example. Yahweh [Israel's God] is addressing the servant. "It is too little a thing," he says, "for you to restore the tribes of Israel. You must be a light for the nations that my salvation may reach to the ends of the earth." So the servant figure, when Israel is restored, will be a light unto the nations. That is Isaiah's vision of "all peoples" coming from the various points of the compass to the great banquet described in Isaiah 25:6. In the latter part of the book (Trito-Isaiah, i.e., Isaiah 56-66), this same universal perspective is retained alongside the special role of Israel-long before Jesus.

 

Shanks:Was Jesus alone in this, or was he part of a larger Jewish movement?

 

The Isaiah tradition kept being reworked in one way or another. We see it in the Book of Daniel, as well as in 1 Enoch and in the Testament of the Twelve Patriarchs [both in the Apocrypha]. There's a lot of reworking of the tradition going on. We have no evidence, however, of another movement quite like the Jesus movement. I use the term "Jesus movement" because it's very difficult to distinguish between Jesus as a historical figure and the movement that emerges in his name in Galilee. I think that Jesus' first followers continued to imitate his lifestyle, a wandering, charismatic figure. We don't have any parallels to this.

 

That brings us back to the archaeology of Galilee, to try to understand why such a movement happened at that particular juncture of Jewish history and the role that the social and cultural context might have played. It's a historical fact that in the first century this group emerged in Galilee. We don't know of any other movement in Galilee like it. We know of certain prophetic movements in Judea, but not within Galilean Judaism of the same period. So the question, as a historian, would be: What were the circumstances in Galilee that provide a context to this? And can the historian say anything about that? There archaeology can help us greatly.

 

Recently archaeologists have been discussing the social conditions in Galilee. Some say Galilee was impoverished by the Herodians, and Jesus is standing up for the peasants against the new ruling class. Other scholars say Galilee wasn't like that at all, and that Antipas's reign brought prosperity to the peasants; there was much intervillage trading and a lot of commercial activity. Villages like Cana, Yotapata, Bethsaida and Capernaum weren't on the decline; they were prosperous villages. So if Galilee was doing well, why would the Jesus movement emerge just then? Where is Jesus coming from? How is he going to fit into this context? Are there any niches, if you like, that we as historians might fit him into?

 

All this is reconstruction of course. But it is clear from the material remains that you had different economic and social strata in these villages: Some people are doing better, and others are suffering as a result. The Jesus movement, it seems to me, is addressing the wealthy as well as the poor, and saying that the blessings of Israel are for all Israel. That is the inclusive vision that is at the heart of the Jesus movement. And its message was not very acceptable to those who were better off. "Woe to you, Chorazin, woe to you Bethsaida, woe to you Capernaum" [Matthew 11:21, 23; Luke 10:13, 15]. These villages in Galilee that we associate with the Jesus movement are condemned because they didn't follow his message, it would seem. It is no coincidence that they are all located close to the lake and bordering the Plain of Ginnosar, whose fertility the Jewish historian Josephus praises highly, suggesting their prosperity. The rejection suggested in the woes addressed to these villages suggests that the Jesus movement gradually moves out of the region of lower Galilee and begins to move up toward Syria, as we can discern from the Gospels of Matthew and Mark, written after 70 C.E. [when the Romans destroyed the Temple at Jerusalem].

 

Shanks:Let me go back to something you referred to earlier about the birth narratives. It sounded to me as if you had reached a negative conclusion as to their historicity.

 

Well, yes and no! Luke [1-2] and Matthew [1-2], the only Gospels with birth narratives, are so different in the ways they tell the story. Maybe the fact that they are so different, and yet agree on some elements of the story, might give the historian pause, to say, "Wait a minute, hold on. There is some historical reality here!" I think that may well be the case.

 

But I think you have to recognize that once you get into the public ministry of Jesus, that is, from John's baptism of Jesus to the Passion, the gospel writers do not deal quite as freely with the traditions about Jesus as they do in the birth narratives. The birth narratives were trying to fill in the gaps in the narrative by providing a theological introduction in story form. Matthew has the flight to Egypt; Luke knows nothing about that. Luke has the whole story of Mary going down to Elizabeth and visiting her; Matthew doesn't. The two accounts are so very different, it seems to me that we have to be very careful in trying to collapse them into one and claim we know the details of that part of Jesus' life.

 

Shanks:Was Jesus born in Bethlehem?

 

My sense would be no. He was born in Nazareth, I believe. He's never called "Jesus of Bethlehem"; he is called "Jesus of Nazareth."

Now, that said, what I would want to add is that he comes from parents who may well have roots in Bethlehem. From the second century B.C. onward, we know that émigrés from Judea settled in Galilee. And therefore there are strong links between Galilean Judaism and Jerusalem. There's a lot of archaeological evidence that points to continuity between Galilean and Jerusalem practices. So I would say Jesus' family may well be a Judean family who moved to Galilee. Therefore one can't dismiss entirely the possibility of links with Bethlehem [just 5 mi south of Jerusalem]. Of course, for the Christian evangelist later, the links to Bethlehem are particularly important because King David was from Bethlehem. And Jesus is called a son [a scion] of David [Matthew 1:6; Luke 1:27]. For the early Christians, that was clearly a part of the reason to say he is the Messiah. The Messiah was to come from the house of David; he's the son of David, and he, like David, was born in Bethlehem. Jesus is made to fill all the categories. But Nazareth is the more likely place in purely historical terms.

 

I think your question is a good one because it points to the problem we have of trying to distinguish between what is theological reflection and its development, on the one hand, and historical realities, on the other. Instead of splitting them apart and saying that's theology and that's history, I think the Bible as a whole gives us theologically interpreted history. It's the same with the origins-of-Israel question that we talked about earlier. There is an ongoing kind of reflection on historical events and rethinking them and reframing them and reinterpreting them, constantly reworking Biblical tradition itself in the process. That's why it's so hard to pull out the historical Jesus or the historical Israel and say there they are.

 

Shanks: Where Jesus was born doesn't really affect theology, but the virgin birth comes closer ...

 

It does.

 

Shanks: And resurrection is really right there.

 

At the heart of it.

 

Shanks:What are the "historical Jesus" views of these?

 

Do you want me to have a go at answering this? Okay! Okay! People will tell me that as a historian I can't touch these questions. But I like to think that I'm a theologian as well, so I'm going to make an effort.

 

I think the virgin birth is the easier of the two because, although we don't quite have parallels, we do have some stories very like it. The idea of the birth of a hero like Heracles and Dionysus and the various myths of the newer gods within the Greek pantheon-the newer gods as distinct from the old Zeus and the nature gods. You have this idea of the mingling of the mortal and the immortal going on. So I think there's a tradition there in Hellenistic religious history where the story of the virgin birth would fit in very well, once people sought to attribute divine status to Jesus.

 

As to the Resurrection story: The tradition is very early. In 1 Corinthians [15:3-8] Paul, writing before 50 A.D., says "I handed on to you what I received," that is, a very early tradition had been established. Paul then recounts Jesus' post-Resurrection appearances. But Paul's account doesn't match the stories in the Gospels, where we have the empty tomb stories as well as the appearances to women and men [Matthew 28; Mark 16; Luke 24; John 20-21]. Eventually, the two types of stories get combined into a single narrative. You have to trace the traditions back and see-can you separate out the lines of these developments?

 

Now what lies behind them is something that no historian can verify. That's for sure. We are dealing with a religious claim that somehow God has approved of this man's life, approved of him in such a way that the language of "resurrection from the dead," as this was understood in Jewish circles then, was deemed to be entirely appropriate. The Book of Daniel (12:2-3) envisions that the maskilim [12:3], the pious [or wise] ones who have been persecuted, will shine like the stars forever. Within a Jewish framework, we see the ultimate triumph of goodness, and this can be affirmed of one man in the expectation that all the just would share in this victory.

 

That would be the background against which I would see the development of the post-Resurrection stories. There's an experience or claim that certainly can't be verified historically, in which somehow or other the belief arose that God has approved in this way of this man Jesus. What can be established historically is the transformative effect of the claim on Jesus' first followers.

 

If you look at Paul-and Paul is a Jewish figure, however much he may be seen to be on the margins of Judaism for later Christian readers-Paul cannot conceive of the resurrection of one individual without the resurrection of the whole group. Read 1 Corinthians 15, and you see that Paul is doing his damnedest to try to get at the notion of the whole people about to share in the resurrection experience. And he uses the examples of the seed, the stars, whatever. He's struggling, struggling, struggling. In the end he says, I will tell you a mysterion, that is, a hidden message of the divine plan for humankind. On the one hand, he shows his Jewishness that there isn't a resurrection of an individual but of a group. But secondly, that the manner of this triumph has ultimately to be left in the hands of God.

 

So I think that theologically we shouldn't shy away from these issues. And historically we shouldn't just dismiss them all as later developments that appear totally irrational to the modern mind. I think we can see them within the context of different forms of renewal Judaism at a very early stage, where apocalyptic hopes and wisdom traditions are intermingling and developing. The hopes associated with these expressions are all brought to bear on understanding the figure of Jesus, his life and death.

 

Shanks:Do you envisage a physical resurrection?

 

No, absolutely not. Resurrection from the dead should not be confused with resuscitation of a corpse, even when some of the appearance stories give that impression as part of their narrative realism.

 

Shanks:What do you do with the story after the resurrected Jesus returns from Emmaus [Luke 24:36-42]? And they give Jesus some broiled fish to eat to demonstrate that he's physically resurrected, not just an apparition or a spirit. What do you do with that?

 

There's no question about it, as stories develop-I could tell you some really good stories in Irish folklore about filling out the details of some wondrous deed or some experience that's deemed to be supernatural or preternatural. It's been vividly told, with all the details. You have to allow an oral culture to develop stories in that way. They don't create any problem for me. What we have is a tradition trying to develop that sense of the reality, the identity, that the earthly Jesus whom they knew had triumphed over death.

 

Shanks:Thank you very much, Sean.

 

Republished from Biblical Archaeology Review, November 2010. To receive a special PDF download of Holy Land articles and sites subscribe to Biblical Archaeology Review's newsletter.

 

Tags: biblical archaeology review galilee jesus 

By Jonathan Klawans, for Biblical Archaeology Review

Many people assume that Jesus' Last Supper was a Seder, a ritual meal held in celebration of the Jewish holiday of Passover. And indeed, according to the Gospel of Mark 14:12, Jesus prepared for the Last Supper on the "first day of Unleavened Bread, when they sacrificed the Passover lamb." If Jesus and his disciples gathered together to eat soon after the Passover lamb was sacrificed, what else could they possibly have eaten if not the Passover meal? And if they ate the Passover sacrifice, they must have held a Seder.

Three out of four of the canonical Gospels (Matthew, Mark and Luke) agree that the Last Supper was held only after the Jewish holiday had begun. Moreover, one of the best known and painstakingly detailed studies of the Last Supper-Joachim Jeremias's book The Eucharistic Words of Jesus-lists no fewer than 14 distinct parallels between the Last Supper tradition and the Passover Seder.¹

The Jewish holiday of Passover commemorates the Exodus from Egypt. The roots of the festival are found in Exodus 12, in which God instructs the Israelites to sacrifice a lamb at twilight on the 14th day of the Jewish month of Nisan, before the sun sets (Exodus 12:18). That night the Israelites are to eat the lamb with unleavened bread and bitter herbs. The lamb's blood should be swabbed on their doorposts as a sign. God, seeing the sign, will then "pass over" the houses of the Israelites (Exodus 12:13), while smiting the Egyptians with the tenth plague, the killing of the first-born sons.

Exodus 12 commands the Israelites to repeat this practice every year, performing the sacrifice during the day and then consuming it after the sun has set. (According to Jewish tradition, the new day begins with the setting of the sun, so the sacrifice is made on the 14th but the beginning of Passover and the meal are actually on the 15th, although this sequence of dates is not specified in Exodus.) Exodus 12 further speaks of a seven-day festival, which begins when the sacrifice is consumed (Exodus 12:15).

Once the Israelites were settled in Israel, and once a Temple was built in Jerusalem, the original sacrifice described in Exodus 12 changed dramatically. Passover became one of the Jewish Pilgrimage festivals, and Israelites were expected to travel to Jerusalem to sacrifice a Passover lamb at the Temple during the afternoon of the 14th day, and then consume the Passover sacrifice once the sun had set, and the festival had formally begun on the 15th. This kind of celebration is described as having taken place during the reigns of Kings Hezekiah and Josiah (2 Chronicles 30 and 35).

As time passed, the practice continued to evolve. Eventually, a number of customs, recorded in rabbinic literature, began to accumulate around the meal, which became so highly ritualized that it was called the Seder, from the Hebrew for "order": Unleavened bread was broken, wine was served, the diners reclined and hymns were sung. Furthermore, during the meal, the Exodus story was retold and the significance of the unleavened bread, bitter herbs and wine was explained.

The bread and wine, the hymn, the reclining diners-many of these characteristic elements are shared by the Last Supper, as Jeremias pointed out. (Jeremias's 14 parallels are given in full in endnote 1.) What is more, just as Jews at the Seder discuss the symbolism of the Passover meal, Jesus at his Last Supper discussed the symbolism of the wine and bread in light of his own coming death.

It is not only Jeremias's long list of parallels that leads many modern Christians and Jews to describe the Last Supper as a Passover Seder. The recent popularity of interfaith Seders (where Christians and Jews celebrate aspects of Passover and the Last Supper together) points to an emotional impulse that is also at work here. The Christian celebration of the Eucharist (Communion)-the Last Supper-is the fundamental ritual for many Christians. And among Jews the Passover Seder is one of the most widely practiced of all observances. In these times of ecumenicism and general good feeling between Christians and Jews, many people seem to find it reassuring to think that Communion (the Eucharist) and the Passover Seder are historically related.

History, however, is often more complex and perhaps a little less comforting than we might hope. Although I welcome the current ecumenical climate, I believe we must be careful not to let our emotions get the better of us when we are searching for history. Indeed, even though the association of the Last Supper with a Passover Seder remains entrenched in the popular mind, a growing number of scholars are beginning to express serious doubts about this claim.

Of course a number of New Testament scholars-the Jesus Seminar comes to mind-tend to doubt that the Gospels accurately record very much at all about Jesus, with the exception of some of his sayings. Obviously if the Gospels cannot be trusted, then we have no reason to assume that there ever was a Last Supper at all. And if there was no Last Supper, then it could not have taken place on Passover.²

Furthermore, several Judaic studies scholars-Jacob Neusner is a leading example-very much doubt that rabbinic texts can be used in historical reconstructions of the time of Jesus. But rabbinic literature is our main source of information about what Jews might have done during their Seder meal in ancient times. For reasons that are not entirely clear, other ancient Jewish sources, such as Josephus and Philo, focus on what Jews did in the Temple when the Passover sacrifice was offered, rather than on what they did afterward, when they actually ate the sacrifice. Again, if we cannot know how Jews celebrated Passover at the time of Jesus, then we have to plead ignorance, and we would therefore be unable to answer our question.

There is something to be said for these skeptical positions, but I am not such a skeptic. I want to operate here under the opposite assumptions: that the Gospels can tell us about the historical Jesus,³ and that rabbinic sources can be used-with caution-to reconstruct what Jews at the time of Jesus might have believed and practiced.⁴ Even so, I do not think the Last Supper was a Passover Seder.

While three of the four canonical Gospels strongly suggest that the Last Supper did occur on Passover, we should not get too comfortable based on that. The three Gospels that support this view are the three synoptic Gospels-Matthew, Mark and Luke. As anyone who has studied these three Gospels knows, they are closely related. In fact, the name synoptic refers to the fact that these three texts can be studied most effectively when "seen together" (as implied in the Greek etymology of synoptic). Thus, in fact we don't really have three independent sources here at all. What we have, rather, is one testimony (probably Mark), which was then copied twice (by Matthew and Luke).

Against the "single" testimony of the synoptics that the Last Supper was a Passover meal stands the lone Gospel of John, which dates the crucifixion to the "day of Preparation for the Passover" (John 19:14). According to John, Jesus died just when the Passover sacrifice was being offered and before the festival began at sundown (see the sidebar to this article). Any last meal-which John does not record-would have taken place the night before, or even earlier than that. But it certainly could not have been a Passover meal, for Jesus died before the holiday had formally begun.

So are we to follow John or the synoptics?⁵ There are a number of problems with the synoptic account. First, if the Last Supper had been a Seder held on the first night of Passover, then that would mean Jesus' trial and crucifixion took place during the week-long holiday. If indeed Jewish authorities were at all involved in Jesus' trial and death, then according to the synoptics those authorities would have engaged in activities-holding trials and carrying out executions-that were either forbidden or certainly unseemly to perform on the holiday. This is not the place to consider whether Jewish authorities were involved in Jesus' death.⁶ Nor is it the place to consider whether such authorities would have been devout practitioners of Jewish law. But this is the place to point out that if ancient Jewish authorities had been involved in something that could possibly be construed as a violation of Jewish law, the Gospels-with their hatred of the Jewish authorities-would probably have made the most of it. The synoptic account stretches credulity, not just because it depicts something unlikely, but because it fails to recognize the unlikely and problematic nature of what it depicts. It is almost as if the synoptic tradition has lost all familiarity with contemporary Jewish practice. And if they have lost familiarity with that, they have probably lost familiarity with reliable historical information as well.

There are, of course, some reasons to doubt John's account too. He may well have had theological motivations for claiming that Jesus was executed on the day of preparation when the Passover sacrifice was being offered but before Passover began at sundown. John's timing of events supports the Christian claim that Jesus himself was a sacrifice and that his death heralds a new redemption, just as the Passover offering recalls an old one. Even so, John's claim that Jesus was killed just before Passover began is more plausible than the synoptics' claim that Jesus was killed on Passover. And if Jesus wasn't killed on Passover, but before it (as John claims), then the Last Supper could not in fact have been a Passover Seder.

What then of Jeremias's long list of parallels? It turns out that under greater scrutiny the parallels are too general to be decisive. That Jesus ate a meal in Jerusalem, at night, with his disciples is not so surprising. It is also no great coincidence that during this meal the disciples reclined, ate both bread and wine, and sang a hymn. While such behavior may have been characteristic of the Passover meal, it is equally characteristic of practically any Jewish meal.

A number of scholars now believe that the ritual context for the Last Supper was not a Seder but a standard Jewish meal. That Christians celebrated the Eucharist on a daily or weekly basis (see Acts 2:46-47) underscores the fact that it was not viewed exclusively in a Passover context (otherwise, it would have been performed, like the Passover meal, on an annual basis).

An ancient Christian church manual called the Didache 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).⁷ 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, 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?^a

We are left with only one important parallel (Jeremias's 14th) that can be explained in terms of a Seder: the surprising fact that Jesus at his Last Supper engaged in symbolic explanation of the bread and wine, just as Jews at the Seder engage in symbolic explanations, interpreting aspects of the Passover meal in light of the Exodus from Egypt: "Now as they were eating, Jesus took bread, and blessed, and broke it, and gave it to the disciples and said, ‘Take, eat; this is my body.' And he took a cup, and when he had given thanks he gave it to them, saying, ‘Drink of it, all of you, for this is my blood of the covenant'" (Matthew 26:26-28=Mark 14:22; see also Luke 22:19-20). Is this not a striking parallel to the ways in which Jews celebrating the Seder interpret, for example, the bitter herbs eaten with the Passover sacrifice as representing the bitter life the Israelites experienced as slaves in Egypt?

However, this last parallel between the Last Supper and the Passover Seder assumes that the Seder ritual we know today was celebrated in Jesus' day. But this is hardly the case.

When Jews today sit down to celebrate the Passover Seder, they use a book known as the Haggadah. The Hebrew word haggadah literally means "telling"; the title refers to the book's purpose: to provide the ordered framework through which the story of Passover is told at the Seder. Telling the story of Passover is, of course, one of the fundamental purposes of the celebration, as stated in Exodus 13:8: "And you shall tell your child on that day, ‘It is because of what the Lord did for me when I went forth from Egypt.'"

The traditional text of the Haggadah as it exists today incorporates a variety of material, starting with the Bible, and running through medieval songs and poems. For many Jews (especially non-Orthodox Jews), the process of development continues, and many modern editions of the Haggadah contain contemporary readings of one sort or another. Even many traditional Jews have, for instance, adapted the Haggadah so that mention can be made of the Holocaust.⁸

How much of the Haggadah goes back to ancient times? In the 1930s and 1940s, the American Talmud scholar Louis Finkelstein (1895-1991) famously claimed that various parts of the Passover Haggadah were very early, stemming in part from the third century B.C.E.⁹ In 1960, Israeli scholar Daniel Goldschmidt (1895-1972) effectively rebutted practically all of Finkelstein's claims. It is unfortunate that Goldschmidt's Hebrew article has not been translated, because it remains, to my mind, the classic work on the early history of the Passover Haggadah.¹⁰ Fortunately, a number of brief and up-to-date treatments of the history of the Haggadah are now available.¹¹ A full generation later, the Goldschmidt-Finkelstein debate seems to have been settled, and in Goldschmidt's favor. Almost everyone doing serious work on the early history of Passover traditions, including Joseph Tabory, Israel Yuval, Lawrence Hoffman, and the father-son team of Shmuel and Ze'ev Safrai, has rejected Finkelstein's claims for the great antiquity of the bulk of the Passover Haggadah. What is particularly significant about this consensus is that these scholars are not radical skeptics. These scholars believe that, generally speaking, we can extract historically reliable information from rabbinic sources. But as demonstrated by the late Baruch Bokser in his book The Origins of the Seder, practically everything preserved in the early rabbinic traditions concerning the Passover Seder brings us back to the time immediately following the Roman destruction of the Temple in 70 C.E.¹² It's not that rabbinic literature cannot be trusted to tell us about history in the first century of the Common Era. It's that rabbinic literature-in the case of the Seder-does not even claim to be telling us how the Seder was performed before the destruction of the Temple.^b

Let me elaborate on this proposition by examining the Haggadah's requirement of explaining the Passover symbols:

Rabban Gamaliel used to say: Whoever does not make mention of the following three things on Passover has not fulfilled his obligation: namely, the Passover sacrifice, unleavened bread (matzah) and bitter herbs.

(1) The Passover sacrifice, which our ancestors used to eat at the time when the Holy Temple stood-what is the reason? Because the Holy One, blessed be He, passed over the houses of our ancestors in Egypt. As it is said, "It is the sacrifice of the Lord's Passover..." (Exodus 12:27).

(2) The unleavened bread, which we eat-what is the reason? Because the dough of our ancestors had not yet leavened when the King of Kings, the Holy One Blessed be He revealed Himself to them and redeemed them. As it is said, "And they baked unleavened cakes..." (Exodus 12:39).

(3) These bitter herbs, which we eat-what is the reason? Because the Egyptians made the lives of our ancestors bitter in Egypt. As it is said, "And they made their lives bitter..." (Exodus 1:14).

On first reading, Jeremias might appear to be correct: Jesus' explanation of the bread and the wine does seem similar to Rabban Gamaliel's explanation of the Passover symbols. Might not Jesus be presenting a competing interpretation of these symbols? Possibly. But it really depends on when this Rabban Gamaliel lived. If he lived later than Jesus, then it would make no sense to view Jesus' words as based on Rabban Gamaliel's.

Unfortunately for the contemporary historian, there were two rabbis named Gamaliel, both of whom bore the title "rabban" (which means "our master" and was usually applied to the head of the rabbinic academy). The first lived decadesbefore the destruction of the Temple, according to rabbinic tradition.¹³ It is this Gamaliel who is referred to in Acts 22:3, in which Paul is said to have claimed that he was educated "at the feet of Gamaliel." The second Rabban Gamaliel was, according to rabbinic tradition, the grandson of the elder Gamaliel. This Gamaliel served as head of the rabbinic academy sometime after the destruction of the Temple. Virtually all scholars working today believe that the Haggadah tradition attributing the words quoted above to Gamaliel refers to the grandson, Rabban Gamaliel the Younger, who lived long after Jesus had died.¹⁴ One piece of evidence for this appears in the text quoted above, in which Rabban Gamaliel is said to have spoken of the time "when the Temple was still standing"-as if that time had already passed. Furthermore, as Baruch Bokser has shown, the bulk of early rabbinic material pertaining to the Passover Haggadah is attributed in the Haggadah itself to figures who lived immediately following the destruction of the Temple (and were therefore contemporaries of Gamaliel the Younger). Finally, a tradition preserved in the Tosefta (a rabbinic companion volume to the earliest rabbinic lawbook, the Mishnah, edited perhaps in the third or fourth century) suggests that Gamaliel the Younger played some role in Passover celebrations soon after the Temple was destroyed, when animal sacrifices could for this reason no longer be offered.¹⁵

Thus, the Passover Seder as we know it developed after 70 C.E. I wish we could know more about how the Passover meal was celebrated before the Temple was destroyed. But unfortunately, our sources do not answer this question with any certainty. Presumably, Jesus and his disciples would have visited the Temple to slaughter their Passover sacrifice. Then they would have consumed it along with unleavened bread and bitter herbs, as required by the Book of Exodus. And presumably they would have engaged in conversation pertinent to the occasion. But we cannot know for sure.

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.

Another motive relates to a rather practical question: Within a few years after Jesus' death, Christian communities (which at first consisted primarily of Jews) began to ask when, how and even whether they should celebrate or commemorate the Jewish Passover.¹⁶ This was a question not only early on, but throughout the time of the so-called Quartodeciman controversy. The Quartodecimans (the 14-ers) were Christians who believed that the date of Easter should be calculated so as to coincide with the Jewish celebration of Passover, whether or not that date fell on a Sunday. The Jewish calendar was (and is) lunar, and therefore there is always a full moon on the night of the Passover Seder, that is, the night following the 14th of Nisan. But that night is not always a Saturday night. The Quartodeciman custom of celebrating Easter beginning on the evening following the 14th day apparently began relatively early in Christian history and persisted at least into the fifth century C.E. The alternate view-that Easter must be on a Sunday, regardless of the day on which the Jewish Passover falls-ultimately prevailed. Possibly the Gospels' disagreements about the timing of the Last Supper were the result of these early Christian disputes about when Easter should be celebrated. After all, if you wanted to encourage Christians to celebrate Easter on Passover, would it not make sense to emphasize the fact that Jesus celebrated Passover with his disciples just before he died?

Related to the question of when Christians should recall Jesus' last days was a question of how they should be recalled. Early on, a number of Christians-Quartodecimans and others-felt that the appropriate way to mark the Jewish Passover was not with celebration, but with fasting. On the one hand, this custom reflected an ancient Jewish tradition of fasting during the time immediately preceding the Passover meal (as related in Mishnah Pesachim 10:1). On the other hand, distinctively Christian motives for this fast can also be identified, from recalling Jesus' suffering on the cross to praying for the eventual conversion of the Jews.¹⁷

The German New Testament scholar Karl Georg Kuhn has argued that the Gospel of Luke places the Last Supper in a Passover context in order to convince Christians not to celebrate Passover. He notes that the synoptic Last Supper tradition attributes to Jesus a rather curious statement of abstinence: "I have earnestly desired to eat this Paschal lamb with you before I suffer, for I tell you that I shall not eat it until it is fulfilled in the kingdom of God...[and] I shall not drink of the fruit of the vine until the kingdom of God comes" (Luke 22:15-18; cf. Mark 14:25 ["I shall not drink again of the fruit of the vine until that day when I drink it new in the kingdom of God"]=Matthew 26:29). The synoptics' placement of the Last Supper in a Passover context should be read along with Jesus' statement on abstinence; in this view, the tradition that the Last Supper was a Passover meal argues that Christians should mark the Passover not by celebrating, but by fasting, because Jesus has already celebrated his last Passover.¹⁸ Thus, until Jesus' kingdom is fulfilled, Christians should not celebrate at all during Passover.

New Testament scholar Bruce Chilton recently presented an alternate theory. He argues that the identification of the Last Supper with a Passover Seder originated among Jewish Christians who were attempting to maintain the Jewish character of early Easter celebrations.¹⁹ By calling the Last Supper a Passover meal, these Jewish-Christians were trying to limit Christian practice in three ways. Like the Passover sacrifice, the recollection of the Last Supper could only be celebrated in Jerusalem, at Passover time, and by Jews.^c

Without deciding between these two contradictory alternatives (though Kuhn's is in my mind more convincing), we can at least agree that there are various reasons why the early church would have tried to "Passoverize" the Last Supper tradition.²⁰ Placing the Last Supper in the context of Passover was a literary tool in early Christian debates about whether or not and how Christians should celebrate Passover.

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.

Both of these Passoverizations can be placed in the broader context of Exodus typology in general. W.D. Davies and N.T. Wright have argued that various New Testament sources depict the events of Jesus' life as a new Exodus. Early Christians interpreted Jesus' life and death in light of the ancient Jewish narrative of redemption par excellence, the story of the Exodus from Egypt. Surely the depiction of the Last Supper as a Passover observance could play a part in this larger effort of arguing that Jesus' death echoes the Exodus from Egypt.²¹

This process of Passoverization did not end with the New Testament. The second-century bishop Melito of Sardis (in Asia Minor) once delivered a widely popular Paschal sermon, which could well be called a "Christian Haggadah," reflecting at great length on the various connections between the Exodus story and the life of Jesus.²²

Passoverization can even be found in the Middle Ages. Contrary to popular belief, the Catholic custom of using unleavened wafers in the Mass is medieval in origin. The Orthodox churches preserve the earlier custom of using leavened bread.²³ Is it not possible to see the switch from using leavened to unleavened bread as a "Passoverization" of sorts?

Was the Last Supper a Passover Seder? Most likely, it was not.

 

When Passover Begins: The Synoptics versus John

	14th of Nisan (Ending at Sundown)	15th of Nisan (Beginning at Sundown)
	Day of Preparation for Passover. Passover lamb sacrificed in late afternoon.	Passover holiday begins and a festive Seder meal is held at night. Passover lamb is consumed.
Matthew 26-27, Mark 14-15 and Luke 22-23	Jesus and his disciples prepare for Passover.	Jesus and his disciples hold a Last Supper at the time of the Passover Seder. Jesus is arrested that night. He is killed the next morning, which is the day of the 15th of Nisan.
John 19	Jesus crucified while the Passover lambs are being sacrificed. (The Last Supper is not mentioned by John, but it would have taken place the night before the crucifixion or even earlier.)

 

Notes

^1. The book first appeared in 1935 and was revised and translated various times after that. The 14 parallels are listed in the 1960 third edition, which was translated into English in 1966. See Joachim Jeremias, The Eucharistic Words of Jesus, 3rd ed. (London: SCM Press, 1966), esp. pp. 42-61. His 14 parallels may be summarized as follows: (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. For brief surveys summarizing the question see Robert F. O'Toole, "Last Supper," in The Anchor Bible Dictionary, 6 vols. (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1992), vol. 4, pp. 235-236 and Gerd Theissen and Annette Merz, The Historical Jesus: A Comprehensive Guide (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1996), pp. 423-427.

^2. For a representative statement denying the historicity of the Last Supper traditions, see Robert W. Funk and The Jesus Seminar, The Acts of Jesus: The Search for the Authentic Deeds of Jesus (New York: HarperCollins, 1998), p. 139.

^3. For an excellent treatment of what we can and cannot know of the historical Jesus, see the recent book by my colleague Paula Fredriksen, Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews: A Jewish Life and the Emergence of Christianity (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1999).

^4. For an excellent summary of Judaism in Jesus' time-one which makes judicious use of rabbinic evidence-see E.P. Sanders, Judaism: Practice and Belief 63 B.C.E.-66 C.E. (London: SCM Press, 1992). For more on the use of rabbinic sources, see Sanders's Paul and Palestinian Judaism: A Comparison of Patterns of Religion (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1977), esp. pp. 59-84.

^5. There are those who attempt to harmonize John and the synoptics by supposing that they disagreed not about when the Last Supper occurred, but about whether the date of Passover was supposed to be calculated by following a solar calendar or a lunar one. Annie Jaubert presents this theory in her book, The Date of the Last Supper (Staten Island: Alba House, 1965). This view cannot be accepted, however. It is too difficult to conceive of Passover having been celebrated twice in the same place without any contemporary or even later writer referring to such an event. Surely it would have been remarkable if two Passovers were held in the same week! Moreover, while we do know of solar calendars from the Book of Jubilees and the Temple Scroll, we do not know how any of these calendars really worked. Jubilees's calendar, for instance, explicitly prohibits any form of intercalation (the adding of extra days in a leap year). And without intercalation, by Jesus' time, Jubilees's 364-day solar calendar would be off not just by days, but by months. It is only by hypothesizing some manner of intercalation that we can even come up with the possibility that in Jesus' time the two calendars were both functioning, but off by just a few days. Thus in the end, Jaubert's book presents a good theory, but it remains just that, a theory. For more on these questions, see James C. VanderKam, Calendars in the Dead Sea Scrolls: Measuring Time (London: Routledge, 1998).

^6. On the question of Jewish authorities and their role in Jesus' death, see John Dominic Crossan, Who Killed Jesus? Exposing the Roots of Anti-Semitism in the Gospel Story of the Death of Jesus (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1995).

^7. For more on the parallels between the Didache and the Jewish Birkat ha-Mazon, see Enrico Mazza, The Celebration of the Eucharist: The Origin of the Rite and the Development of Its Interpretation (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 1999), esp. pp. 19-26 (where he discusses these parallels) and pp. 307-309 (where he provides translations of the texts).

^8. A useful version of the traditional text of the Haggadah, with introduction and translation, can be found in the widely available edition of Nahum N. Glatzer, The Passover Haggadah (New York: Schocken Books, 1981). Those interested in appreciating how the Haggadah brings together material from various historical periods might look at Jacob Freedman, Polychrome Historical Haggadah for Passover (Springfield, MA: Jacob Freedman Liturgy Research Foundation, 1974).

^9. Finkelstein published his theories in three articles: "The Oldest Midrash: Pre-Rabbinic Ideals and Teachings in the Passover Haggadah," Harvard Theological Review (HTR) 31 (1938), pp. 291-317; "Pre-Maccabean Documents in the Passover Haggadah (Part 1)," HTR 35 (1942), pp. 291-332; and "Pre-Maccabean Documents in the Passover Haggadah (Part 2)," HTR 36 (1943), pp. 1-38. Glatzer summarizes some of Finkelstein's claims in The Passover Haggadah, pp. 39-42.

^10. Goldschmidt, The Passover Haggadah: Its Sources and History (in Hebrew) (Jerusalem: Bialik Institute, 1960). Glatzer's edition of the Haggadah (cited above) is based in part on Goldschmidt's research, but the first edition of Glatzer's Haggadah was published in 1953, years before Goldschmidt's final 1960 version of his article.

^11. See especially the collection of essays, Passover and Easter: Origin and History to Modern Times, ed. Paul F. Bradshaw and Lawrence A. Hoffman (Notre Dame, IN: Univ. of Notre Dame Press, 1999). Those who read Hebrew will want to consult Shmuel Safrai and Ze'ev Safrai, Haggadah of the Sages: The Passover Haggadah (in Hebrew) (Jerusalem: Carta, 1998).

^12. Baruch Bokser, The Origins of the Seder (Berkeley: Univ. of California Press, 1984).

^13. Babylonian Talmud, Tractate Sabbath, 15a.

^14. This view can be traced back well into the middle ages-it is advocated in a 14th-century Haggadah commentary by Rabbi Simeon ben Zemach Duran. This view has also been advocated more recently by, among others, Daniel Goldschmidt, Joseph Tabory, Israel Yuval and Baruch Bokser. Bokser, Origins of the Seder, pp. 41-43, 79-80, and 119 n. 13; Goldschmidt, Passover Haggadah, pp. 51-53. See also the articles by Joseph Tabory and Israel Yuval in Passover and Easter, esp. pp. 68-69 (T

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