John’s First Time Markers

The early church remembered the Gospel of John as the last of the four, written when the other three were already known. Again and again, John adds what the others left unsaid. On the question of the days and hours of the last week, he does this with special care. At several points he sets down plainly when things happened. This chapter looks at the first two of his markers, and Chapter 24 at the third.

The first three Gospels tell how the disciples went to prepare the Passover, and a reader who has only those accounts could easily take the supper that followed for the Passover meal itself. John, writing after them, did not leave the matter there. Without contradicting a word of what they wrote, he set down plainly when the supper took place and where the Passover stood in relation to it.

Before the Feast

John begins his account of the last night with a sentence that dates it.

John 13:1-2 Now before the Feast of the Passover, Yeshua knowing that His hora ὥρα ho'-rah(that-hour) had come that He would depart out of this world to the Father, having agapao ἀγαπάω ag-ap-ah'-o(loved) His own who were in the world, He agapao(loved) them to the end. During supper, the diabolos διάβολος dee-ab'-ol-os(devil, accuser, slanderer) having already put into the kardia καρδία kar-dee'-ah(heart, soul-domain) of Judas Iscariot, the son of Simon, to betray Him,

The first words are “Now before the Feast of the Passover.” In Greek, pro de tes heortes tou pascha πάσχα pas'-khah. The word pro means “before,” and it governs the whole phrase: before the feast of the Passover. Then the very next verse places us at the table: “During supper.” The supper John is about to describe, with the washing of the disciples’ feet and His long farewell, is marked from its first line as taking place before the Passover.

There is nothing vague about this. John does not say “at the Passover” or “during the feast.” He says “before.” He opens the story of the supper with a time marker, and its plain sense is that the supper came before the feast.

What the Disciples Thought

A little later in the same supper, John gives a detail that shows the feast was still ahead. When Yeshua spoke to Judas and Judas went out, the others did not understand why.

John 13:29 For some were supposing, because Judas had the money box, that Yeshua was saying to him, "Buy the things we have need of for the feast"; or else, that he should give something to the poor.

Some of them supposed that Yeshua was sending Judas to “Buy the things we have need of for the feast.” The disciples were at the table, the supper was under way, and they still thought there were things to be bought for the feast. John records their passing thought, and it agrees with his first line: the supper came before the feast.

They Had Not Yet Eaten the Passover

The second of John’s markers comes the next morning. The supper was over, the night had passed in the garden and in the high priest’s house, and Yeshua had been arrested and questioned. Then He was taken to the Roman governor.

John 18:28 Then they led Yeshua from Caiaphas into the Praetorium, and it was early; and they themselves did not enter into the Praetorium so that they would not be defiled, but might eat the Passover.

John notes that “it was early.” The Greek word is proi, the early part of the morning. And at that hour, the men who led Yeshua to Pilate would not go into the Praetorium, the governor’s headquarters, “so that they would not be defiled, but might eat the Passover.”

At the moment when Yeshua had already been arrested and was being led to Pilate in the early morning, the leaders of the people still had not eaten the Passover. They were concerned that entering a Gentile building would make them ceremonially unclean, and that being unclean would keep them from eating the Passover that coming evening. The Passover was still ahead of them.

Consider what that means. These were not men careless about the calendar. They were the very people most concerned to keep the feast by the rule. If the Last Supper of the night before had been the Passover meal, eaten at the time the Torah set, then they too would already have eaten the Passover that same night. They had not. They were guarding themselves so that they could eat it later. The early morning of the trial, then, was still the morning of the thirteenth. The fourteenth, the Passover, had not yet begun.

Two Markers, One Direction

John’s first two markers point the same way. At the supper the feast was still ahead, and the next morning the Passover had still not been eaten. These agree exactly with what the Torah and the Greek words have already shown. The supper was eaten as the thirteenth began, with ordinary bread, the household’s last leavened meal. The night of the arrest and the early morning before Pilate belonged to that same thirteenth day. And the Passover, which would begin with the evening of the fourteenth, was still to come.

A reader who carries the lived day in mind might be puzzled. The supper was in the evening, the trial was the following morning, and so it seems the supper must belong to one day and the trial to the next. But Part One has shown that the biblical day begins with evening. The supper at the start of the evening, the night in the garden, and the trial at early morning all fall within one day, the thirteenth. John’s markers fit that day without strain.

John does not say that the supper was a Passover meal held early, or a meal that stood in for the Passover. He says it was before the feast, and he shows that the next morning the Passover was still to be eaten. Read as he wrote them, his words agree with the bread the other three Gospels describe, as the next two chapters will show.

The Bread on the Table

John has told us that the supper came before the feast, and that the morning after the supper still came before the Passover meal. The other three Gospels give a second line of evidence, and it lies in the bread. If the Last Supper had been the Passover meal, the bread that Yeshua took and broke would have to have been unleavened. If it was the household’s last leavened supper, the bread would have been ordinary bread. The Gospel writers knew the difference, and they had two different words for the two kinds of bread. The next chapter sets those two words side by side.