Mark,

I'm sorry to not agree with your conclusion. It makes no difference whether you use Julian or Gregorian dates. If you consider Friday as April 25, you have to consider the date of the conjunction as April 8 – which still gives a 17-day difference between the date of the conjunction and the Friday Christ died. No astronomer in the world would accept the position that that Friday could be considered a Nisan 14.

Besides, the Passover lamb was eaten together with unleavened bread (Ex 12:8) and, thus, on the first day of unleavened bread – Nisan 15. If Ellen White says that Christ should be sacrificed on the day the Passover was eaten, she is necessarily saying that Christ should be sacrificed on a Nisan 15. If she wished to refer to Nisan 14, she would have said that Christ should be sacrificed on the day the Passover lamb was sacrificed. In fact, this is the parallelism most used by theologians in relation to Passover – that Christ died on the same day and at the same hour the Passover lamb was sacrificed; but this is not what Ellen White says.

I'll also be leaving on vacation today and will only be able to visit the forum occasionally.

Is there any chance of getting some input from Juarez Rosangela?

Your statement that no astonomer would make Friday the Passover is misleading. It assumes that the astronomer would use the rabbinical or Karaite reckoning. I would be surprized though if all astronomers and even Juarez did not agree that the AB calendar allows Friday to be Nisan 14 in 31AD as I explained above.

Regarding Ellen White's statements, please have a second look at what I wrote above, especially regarding her statement that the sheaf was offered on the second day. Regarding the Passover being eaten with unleavened bread, I would recommend Alfred Edersheim on when leaven was customarily removed from Jewish homes - by noon of the 14th if I remember correctly. But for scripture on the point, I've cited the provision above regarding the Passover meal - that it was begun on the 14th. Eating unleavened bread with it did not over-rule the requirement that Passover was kept before sundown.

Rosangela, I would be open to interpreting Ellen White's statement that the Christ was slain the day the Passover was eaten in the way that you suggest, but it would need to be clear from the context that this is what she meant. You will need to present solid evidence to convince me though because her other statements that I've reviewed so far show that her intention is the same as other theologians. The majority, as you point out, believe that Christ was slain on the day the Passover was offered. The evidence supports that interpretation much better than the idea that Thursday was the Passover.

Look, if it wasn’t for the fact that we have a problem here with the Karaite reckoning, do you honestly think any Adventist would not be on board with the rest of Christianity that Christ was slain as the Passover lamb on the Passover. The main reason we haven’t accepted that reasonable conclusion is that we have a problem with the impossibility of having a Friday Passover under the Karaite reckoning. We need to be honest with ourselves here.

That Christ could celebrate the Passover one day early with his disciples makes sense too. If Christ is Lord of the Sabbath He is Lord of the Passover as well. He can celebrate it with His disciples early so that He can offer Himself on the actual day. And there is a scriptural precedent. Those who could not keep the Passover anciently on the first date could keep it one month later. The same is not true regarding the Day of Atonement or the other Feasts.

Before touching on another point I should add a comment on the appropriateness of Christ celebrating the Passover one day early: We should bear in mind that the final Passover of Christ with the disciples was not merely the Passover, but was the first Lord’s Supper. Christ was taking the symbol of the Passover and replacing it in the church with a new institution that was to be celebrated ‘as often as ye eat this bread and drink this cup’. One could say that it is actually more in harmony with the Spirit of the Lord’s Supper that the first celebration of it should not be at the Passover to reinforce the point that, unlike the Passover, it could be celebrated any day.

Rosangela, going back to the statement by Ellen White that Christ was slain on the day the Passover was eaten, that statement is taken almost word for word from John 18:28:

quote:

---

18:28 Then led they Jesus from Caiaphas unto the hall of judgment: and it was early; and they themselves went not into the judgment hall, lest they should be defiled; but that they might eat the Passover.

---

Your interpretation not only makes Ellen White contradict herself, something you call ‘tension’, it also contradicts the statement of John. If the Passover meal was eaten Thursday in this year by all Jews, John’s statement here is false. Instead it should read that the Jews did not want to defile themselves so they could participate in the Feast of Unleavened Bread.

What could be more clear? That Christ was crucified on the Passover is also confirmed a few verses afterwards in the same chapter and also in Luke:

quote:

---

18:39 But ye have a custom, that I should release unto you one at the passover: will ye therefore that I release unto you the King of the Jews? John

23:17 (For of necessity he must release one unto them at the feast.) Luke

---

To summarize the last several posts, most Adventists theologians support the idea that the true Passover was Thursday in 31 AD, and that Christ was crucified one day later on Friday. Most who have studied the issue apparently feel that Ellen White makes one or more statements that do not harmonize with a Thursday Passover at the crucifixion, but they believe, due to the Karaite method of reckoning that she must be mistaken. As Rosangela has said, most other, non-Adventist theologians who are not concerned with Karaite reckoning believe that Christ was slain as the Passover lamb on the Passover. And it seems clear to me that Ellen White also believed this.

This is an example in my view of theologians reaching out the hand to steady the ark. And to be honest, I’ve supported the Karaite reckoning until recently myself. I think we could all be more careful at reading more into the text than is there in order to support our positions. As long as we ignore the other calendrical statements of scripture the world will take note of our selectivity and it will cost us in terms of credibility. We have enough objections to meet on issues like the Sabbath and the non-immortality of the soul. Before striking out on our own where we have no scriptural mandate to do so, we should have a careful, unbiased look at scripture on this. So my appeal to our theologians is, please, for the sake of the truth, reconsider our position that Christ was not slain at the Passover. Adventists of all people should be pointing to the validity of the types, to Christ as our Passover, and in the Spirit of John the Baptist, saying, "Behold the Lamb of God that taketh away the sin of the world."

There is one more text that I did not quote above in the Gospel of John that supports the common belief among most Christians – our Adventist theologians excepted – that Christ was slain at the time the Passover sacrifices were offered:

quote:

---

And it was the preparation of the Passover, and about the sixth hour: and he saith unto the Jews, Behold your King! John 19:14

---

Again, what could be plainer? What day answers to the phrase ‘preparation of the Passover’ other than Nisan 14? The conclusion must be that Nisan 14 was a Friday, the day of the crucifixion of our Lord.

Note: There were many Passover sacrifices offered on the day of the Passover – enough to feed all the families that celebrated it. All of these were required to be presented and ceremonially slain at the temple by the priests. In addition there were also corporate offerings that were required that day.

In reading some of the material produced by the pioneers of Adventism that is cited in the Daniel and Revelation Committee’s ‘Doctrine of the Sanctuary’ I found that the general belief among them was the same as among most Christians – that Christ was crucified as our Passover on the day of the Passover. One of the texts relied on by Elder Snow in support of this position is I Cor 5:7.

It seems clear that a change in our position on this point is the result of our attempts to reconcile the Karaite calendar with the gospel accounts and bend the gospels to fit the Karaite reckoning rather than looking for a reckoning that fits the gospel accounts.

quote:

---

5:7 Purge out therefore the old leaven, that ye may be a new lump, as ye are unleavened. For even Christ our Passover is sacrificed for us:
5:8 Therefore let us keep the feast, not with old leaven, neither with the leaven of malice and wickedness; but with the unleavened [bread] of sincerity and truth.

---

Before the disappointment and afterwards, the pioneers unanimously held that Oct 22, 1844 was the correct date because they noted that the spring feasts had been fulfilled on the exact days, and therefore they held that fall feasts would be fulfilled in the same way. As a result of this reasoning, it was central to their belief that Christ fulfilled the Passover type on the day of the Passover.

Mark,

I’m writing from a cyber café, so I'll have to be brief.

There are only two methods that can be used to determine the beginning of a lunar month – either to calculate the day of conjunction or to use the observational method (which allows the difference of one day), and neither would give that Friday in 31 AD as the 14th day of the lunar month. For that Friday to be considered the 14th day of the month, the preceding month would have had 31 days, something inconceivable for a lunar calendar.

As to the tension I mentioned, it also exists between John and the synoptics:

“Now on the first day of the Feast of the Unleavened Bread the disciples came to Jesus, saying to Him, ‘Where do You want us to prepare for You to eat the Passover?’” (Matt. 26:17).

“Now on the first day of Unleavened Bread, when they killed the Passover lamb, His disciples said to Him, ‘Where do You want us to go and prepare, that You may eat the Passover?’” (Mark 14:12)

“Then came the Day of Unleavened Bread, when the Passover must be killed. And He sent Peter and John, saying, ‘Go and prepare the Passover for us, that we may eat’” (Luke 22:7,8).

quote:

---

That Christ could celebrate the Passover one day early with his disciples makes sense too. If Christ is Lord of the Sabbath He is Lord of the Passover as well.

---

I don’t think this is a good argument. Since He is the Lord of the Passover, He could transgress the Passover law; then our opponents are right when they say that since He was the Lord of the Sabbath, He could transgress the Sabbath, and thus abolish it.

“The Saviour had been obedient to the Jewish law, and observed all its divinely appointed ordinances. He had just identified himself with the paschal lamb as its great antitype, by connecting the Lord's supper with the passover. What a bitter mockery then was the ceremony about to be observed by the priestly persecutors of Jesus!” {3SP 128.1}

As to John 18:28, both the Talmud and the Bible (2 Chron. 30:22) confirm that they used the expression “eat the Passover” referring to the seven days of the feast.

As to the Passover lamb being an antitype of Christ, it is obvious that not only Ellen White but all theologians believe this. But for Christ to fulfill the sacrificial aspect of the Passover, or of the Day of Atonement, it was not necessary that He died on a Nisan 14, or on a Tishri 10.

These and all other objections you raised (or not) are analyzed in chapter three (III) of Juarez’s book. Take a look at it.

I’ve sent this page to Juarez, and I hope he sees it, if he is not traveling.