Christ_, Appendix,
Excursus 10; Andrews' _Life of our Lord_, and Gresswell's
_Dissertations_. Suffice it here to say that the apparent inconsistency
may be explained by any of several assumptions. Thus, first, and very
probably, the Passover referred to by John, for the eating of which the
priests were desirous of keeping themselves free from Levitical
defilement, may not have been the supper at which the paschal lamb was
eaten, but the supplementary meal, the Chagigah. This later meal, the
flesh part of which was designated as a sacrifice, had come to be
regarded with veneration equal to that attaching to the paschal supper.
Secondly; it is held by many authorities on Jewish antiquities that
before, at, and after the time of Christ, two nights were devoted yearly
to the paschal observance, during either of which the lamb might be
eaten, and that this extension of time had been made in consideration of
the increased population, which necessitated the ceremonial slaughtering
of more lambs than could be slain on a single day; and in this
connection it is interesting to note that Josephus (Wars, vi, ch. 9:3)
records the number of lambs slain at a single Passover as 256,500. In
the same paragraph, Josephus states that the lambs had to be slain
between the ninth and the eleventh hour (3 to 5 p.m.). According to this
explanation, Jesus and the Twelve may have partaken of the passover meal
on the first of the two evenings, and the Jews who next day feared
defilement may have deferred their observance until the second. Thirdly;
the Lord's last paschal supper may have been eaten earlier than the time
of general observance, He knowing that night to be His last in
mortality. Supporters of this view explain the message to the man who
provided the chamber for the last supper, "My time is at hand" (Matt.
26:18) as indicating a special urgency for the passover observance by
Christ and the apostles, before the regularly appointed day. Some
authorities assert that an error of one day had crept into the Jewish
reckoning of time, and that Jesus ate the passover on the true date,
while the Jews were a day behind. If "the preparation of the passover"
(John 19:14) on Friday, the day of Christ's crucifixion, means the
slaughtering of the paschal lambs, our Lord, the real sacrifice of which
all earlier altar victims had been but prototypes, died on the cross
while the passover lambs were being slain at the temple.

2. Did Judas Iscariot Partak