Was Jesus’ Last Supper a Passover Seder?

Ask virtually anyone: “Was Jesus’ Last Supper a Passover seder?” and the response is likely to be “Of course!”Yet, Jesus could not have known what a “seder” was, let alone have modeled his Last Supper after one. The elements of even the primitive seder originated decades after he died.

The Gospels date Jesus’ ministry to the period of Pontius Pilate, Roman prefect of Judea from 26 C.E. to early 37 C.E. Jesus’ year of death is unknown; scholars settle on between 30 and 33 C.E.

At that time, the core element of Passover observance had been Jerusalem’s sacrificial cult, from 621 B.C.E. (when the biblical mandate first appeared) up until 70 C.E. (the destruction of the Second Temple). Jewish families brought paschal (Passover) lambs for sacrifice on the Temple altar as biblically prescribed: “Thou shalt sacrifice the Passover offering…in the place which the Lord shall…cause His name to dwell [Jerusalem’s Temple]” (Deuteronomy 16:2, 5-6); and the practice of King Josiah: “In the eighteenth year of King Josiah [621 B.C.E.] was this Passover kept…in Jerusalem” (Second Kings 23:21-23). For the ceremony, the kohanim (priests) conducted the sacrificial rite. Then families retrieved and consumed their meat as the main part of their Passover meal, which also included unleavened bread and bitter herbs (recalling the Hebrews’ enslavement in Egypt).

Passover meals Jesus experienced in his lifetime would have had to be along these Temple-centered lines.

Then, in 70 C.E., approximately 40 years after Jesus’ death, Rome destroyed the Second Jerusalem Temple, thus ending the required central component of Passover observance, as sacrifice of paschal lambs by the Temple priests was no longer  possible.

Instead, the early rabbis eventually introduced an inchoate, rudimentary practice that over the ensuing decades evolved into a new way of observing Passover. Thi  s would become known as a “seder,” Hebrew for “order,” because the ceremony followed a set sequence of liturgical recitations and ritual foods narrating the Passover saga, ultimately to be governed by an instructional guide called thehaggadah. In our oldest reference, the early third century rabbinic compendium, the Mishnah, we read that Gamaliel II, the greatest rabbi of the post-destruction era (likely during the late 80s C.E.), customarily said: “Whoever does not mention [expatiate upon] these three things on Passover does not discharge one’s duty…: the Passover offering [lamb], unleavened bread, and bitter herbs” (Pesahim 10:5). Thus the core Temple-centered observance mutated from sacrificing lambs into drawing upon Passover motifs to retell the Hebrews’ escape from Egypt.

Centuries of further embellishment and refinement produced the full-fledged, mature seders we know today-the kind that many modern churches adopt and adapt in “reenacting” the Last Supper even though no such seder could have been practiced during Jesus’ day.

-----------------------

Virtually all are in agreement that, as a Jew, Jesus would have observed Jewish rituals as they were practiced in his day. But this begs the question somewhat, for there is abundant evidence that the seder has evolved over the centuries and much of what Jews do and say at the seder table in 2002 would have been unknown to Jesus and his fellow Jews in ancient Jerusalem.

The common assumption that the Last Supper was a Passover seder is based upon the "testimony" of the "synoptic" Gospels (Matthew, Mark & Luke). Mark 14:12 tells us that Jesus prepared for the Last Supper on the "first day of Unleavened Bread, when they sacrificed the Passover Lamb." If he and his disciples gathered to eat the Passover sacrifice, what else could that meal have been except a Passover seder?

The problem is, however, that there exists serious doubt in the minds of many New Testament scholars about the accuracy of the Gospel accounts. They may accurately record Jesus's sayings, but very little about what he actually did.

The Gospel According to John stands alone against Matthew, Mark and Luke in recording that the Last Supper took place the night before the festival began and having the crucifixion take place as Jews were preparing to usher in the festival. In this way Jesus becomes, symbolically, the Passover lamb slaughtered for the festival. So whom are we to believe? John or the other Gospels?

Among the many problems of assuming the Last Supper was a Passover seder is the fact that this would place Jesus' trial and execution on the first day of Passover. The Gospel writers may have intended to implicate Jewish officials in the death of Jesus and by having them so involved on one of their most sacred calendar days would have furthered the polemical anti-Jewish ends for which they may have been striving when the Gospels were compiled after the death of Jesus.

In the October issue of Biblical Archeology Review, Jonathan Klowans writes: "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."*

The constraints of my article preclude an exhaustive examination of this question and the controversy to which it gives rise. The curious reader will want to pursue the various threads which comprise this intriguing tapestry-of-a-question. But it is important to make note of another phenomenon: Christian churches offering a seder, in a non-Jewish context, as an act of Christian faith and worship. Many churches do so in the belief that they are bringing worshipers closer to Christianity's Jewish roots, a laudable goal. But to usurp an inherently Jewish ritual and adapt it to fit Christian theology is deeply offensive to many Jews.

Was the Last Supper a Passover seder? The weight of the evidence leads me to conclude that it probably was not. Christian interest in the Passover seder will endure and is best addressed by efforts on the part of Jews to welcome Christians to a seder table or, failing that, to teach about the seder in Christian settings in ways that helps insure the Jewish integrity of that ritual. 

* "Was Jesus' Last Supper a Seder?", Jonathan Klowans, Biblical Archeology Review, October, 2001.

[For further reading, I recommend Passover and Easter: The Symbolic Structuring of Sacred Seasons, Bradshaw and Hoffman, Editors, Two Liturgical Traditions, Vols. 5 & 6, Notre Dame, 1999.]