Was Jesus crucified after eating the Passover meal, or before the Passover was eaten?

Many scholars who hold the Gospels to be accurate answer that John, read with the Greek, means the same day as the other Gospels. ‘Preparation’ (paraskeuē) was the ordinary Jewish name for Friday, the day on which everything was made ready for the sabbath. Mark defines it so: “the preparation, that is, the day before the sabbath” (Mark 15:42), and John’s own later uses of the word point to the coming sabbath (John 19:31, 42); it is still the Greek word for Friday today. So “the preparation of the passover” (John 19:14) can well mean ‘the Friday of Passover week’ rather than ‘the day before the Passover meal’.

‘The passover’ could also mean the whole seven-day feast, not only the meal of its first night. Luke writes that “the feast of unleavened bread drew nigh, which is called the Passover” (Luke 22:1), and Deuteronomy uses ‘the passover’ for sacrifices “of the flock and the herd” eaten during the feast (Deuteronomy 16:2–3). So when the priests kept themselves undefiled “that they might eat the passover” (John 18:28), they may well have meant the festival offerings and meals of that day and the days that followed, which later Jewish writings call the chagigah (the festival offering). Gill explains the verse this way, and Barnes likewise takes ‘passover’ here to mean the seven-day feast that followed the lamb. And John 13:1 (“before the feast of the passover”) introduces the supper scene; it does not date the supper to the day before.

On this reading all four Gospels agree: Jesus ate the Passover with his disciples on the Thursday evening, the start of 15 Nisan by Jewish reckoning, and was crucified the next day, still 15 Nisan, the ‘preparation’ for a sabbath that fell in the feast and was therefore “an high day” (John 19:31).

Two calendars

Some scholars think the Jews of Jesus’ day did not all keep Passover on the same day. Suggestions include a difference between Galilean and Judean ways of reckoning the day, which H. W. Hoehner linked with the Pharisees and the Sadducees, or the use of a solar calendar like that of the Dead Sea Scrolls community (A. Jaubert, who dated the supper to the Tuesday). On these views Jesus and his disciples ate the Passover a day before the temple authorities, and Mark and John each report correctly what one group did.

A Passover meal a day early

Others hold that Jesus, knowing he would die at the time of the sacrifice, held his Passover with the disciples a day early (“With desire I have desired to eat this passover with you before I suffer”, Luke 22:15), while the nation ate it the following evening. The difficulty for this view is that Mark dates the preparations to the day “when they killed the passover” (Mark 14:12).

This is one of the most debated questions of Gospel chronology, and Christian scholars who hold the Gospels to be accurate are divided between these answers. Whichever is right, all four Gospels agree that Jesus died at Passover, on the day before a sabbath, and rose on the first day of the week.