Matthew, Mark, Luke, and Paul Agree

A single word in a single account could be an accident. A writer might choose a looser word without thinking, and a careful reader would be right not to build much on it. But the moment when Yeshua took bread at the Last Supper is not told once. It is told four times: by Matthew, by Mark, by Luke, and by Paul. Each of them had the same two Greek words to choose from, artos ἄρτος ar'-tos for ordinary bread and azumos ἄζυμος ad'-zoo-mos for unleavened bread. So the fair test is to call all four witnesses and hear what each one says.

Matthew, Mark, and Luke

We have already heard Matthew. “Yeshua took bread” (Matthew 26:26), and the Greek is ton arton, a form of artos. Here is Mark.

Mark 14:22 While they were eating, Yeshua took some bread, and after a blessing He broke it and gave it to them and said: "Take, eat — this is My body."

The Greek reads labon ho Iesous arton, “Yeshua took bread.” Again the word is artos. Mark, like Matthew, has already used the name of the feast, ta azuma, earlier in the same chapter (Mark 14:1). He knew the word for unleavened. He did not use it here.

Here is Luke.

Luke 22:19 And when He had taken some bread and given thanks, He broke it and gave it to them, saying, "This is My body which is given for you; do this in remembrance of Me."

The Greek begins labon arton, “having taken bread.” The word once more is artos. Luke too has named the feast by its proper word, he heorte ἑορτή heh-or-tay' ton azumon, at the opening of the same chapter (Luke 22:1). He knew it, and at the table he wrote artos.

Paul

The fourth witness stands a little apart from the other three, and that is what gives his witness its weight. Paul was not one of the twelve at the table. He received the account and handed it on to the church in Corinth, a Greek city far from Jerusalem.

1 Corinthians 11:23-24 For I received from the Lord that which I also delivered to you, that the Lord Yeshua in the night in which He was betrayed took bread; and when He had given thanks, He broke it and said, "Take, eat; this is My body which is broken for you; do this in remembrance of Me."

In Greek Paul writes ho kurios Iesous ... elaben arton, “the Lord Yeshua ... took bread.” The word is artos. The tradition that Paul passed on to churches among the nations carries the same word as the Gospels. That means the word was not the habit of one writer or the custom of one region. It belonged to the apostolic account itself. When the apostles handed on what the Lord did that night, the bread in their account was ordinary bread.

There are four accounts, and all four use artos. This is not coincidence. Four men, writing at different times and for different readers, each had to choose a word for the bread in Yeshua’s hands, and none of them chose the word for unleavened bread.

Paul does not stop with the account. When he goes on to teach the Corinthians how to come to the Lord’s table, he keeps the same word.

1 Corinthians 11:26 For as often as you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord's death until He comes.

“For as often as you eat this bread,” he writes, and the Greek is ton arton touton, “this artos.” He uses it again in the next two verses (1 Corinthians 11:27-28). From the account of the supper to his instructions for the church, Paul calls the bread of the Lord’s table artos throughout.

The Same Writers, Elsewhere

Someone might still ask whether the writers of the New Testament were simply loose in their use of these words. The answer lies in how they use azumos elsewhere. When they name the unleavened bread of the feast, or the feast itself, they use it.

Mark 14:1 Now the Passover and Unleavened Bread were two days away; and the chief priests and the scribes were seeking how to seize Him by stealth and kill Him;

The Greek is to pascha πάσχα pas'-khah kai ta azuma, “the Passover and the unleavened.”

Luke 22:1 Now the Feast of Unleavened Bread, which is called the Passover, was approaching.

The Greek is he heorte ton azumon, “the feast of the unleavened.”

Acts 12:3 When he saw that it pleased the Jews, he proceeded to arrest Peter also — now it was during the days of Unleavened Bread.

The Greek is hai hemerai ton azumon, “the days of the unleavened.”

Acts 20:6 We sailed from Philippi after the days of Unleavened Bread, and came to them at Troas within five days; and there we stayed seven days.

Again tas hemeras ton azumon, “the days of the unleavened.” This is the voyage that brought Paul to Troas, where, as we saw in Book 1, the believers gathered on a sabbaton σάββατον sab'-bat-on.

Every time the feast is meant, the writers use azumos. They do not slip into artos when the feast is in view.

Paul’s Leaven and Unleavened

Paul shows the same care in the one passage where he speaks of leaven and the Passover together.

1 Corinthians 5:7-8 Clean out the old leaven so that you may be a new lump, just as you are unleavened; for Messiah our Passover has been sacrificed for us. Therefore let us celebrate the feast, not with old leaven nor with leaven of malice and wickedness, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and aletheia ἀλήθεια al-ay'-thi-a(truth).

The word artos does not appear in these verses at all. The English word “bread” in “the unleavened bread of sincerity and aletheia(truth)” is supplied by the translators; Paul’s Greek says en azumois, “in unleavened things.” What Paul sets against each other is zyme ζύμη dzoo'-may, leaven, and azumos, unleavened: “Clean out the old leaven so that you may be a new lump, just as you are unleavened.” When Paul has the unleavened in view, he uses azumos and sets it squarely against leaven.

What the Four Witnesses Say

The writers of the New Testament knew the difference between these two words and kept to it. When unleavened bread or the unleavened feast was in view, they wrote azumos. When ordinary bread was in view, they wrote artos. And at the Last Supper, every account says artos.

It is worth weighing what the other reading would require. If the bread on the table had been unleavened, then four writers who knew the word azumos, and who used it every time the feast came up, would each have set it aside at the one moment when it mattered most. Each would have reached instead for the word that means ordinary bread. That is not how careful writers work, and these writers were careful.

If the Last Supper had been the Passover meal, eaten as the fourteenth began, the bread on the table would by law have been unleavened, and the writers, who knew the word and used it everywhere else it belonged, would have written azumos. They all wrote artos. The text itself testifies that this meal was not the Passover, but the household’s last leavened meal, eaten as the thirteenth began, before the command of unleavened bread had taken effect.

The bread agrees with John’s first two markers. John has one more, and he gives the morning after the supper its name in the scene at Pilate’s judgment seat. There, at the point where Pilate brings Yeshua out to the people, John stops and names the day in three Greek words, and those three words are the subject of the next chapter.