Διαφορές των συνοπτικών και του Ευαγγελιστή Ιωάννη

Παραθέτω πιθανές ερμηνείες, με τις πηγές τους.

1) John in no way contradicted the other Gospels… He merely followed a different calendar than they. It is a known fact that the Sadducees, for example, maintained their own calendar, distinct from the calendar used by the Pharisees; and a notable part of the high priesthood came from the ranks of the Sadducees (Claude Tresmontant, The Hebrew Christ: Language in the Age of the Gospels (English and French Edition), p. 292).

There is some difficulty in reconciling his chronology of Passion Week with the Synoptic data, but this difficulty might disappear if we were better acquainted with the conditions under which the Passover was celebrated at that time. There is considerable ground for believing that certain religious groups (including our Lord and His disciples) followed a different calendar from that by which the chief priests regulated the temple services. While the chief priests and those who followed their reckoning ate the Passover on Friday evening, when Jesus was already dead (Jn. xviii. 28, xix. 14), He and His disciples appear to have eaten it earlier in the week [F. F. Bruce, The New Testament Documents: Are They Reliable?, p. 57 (Greek edition)].

2) The reference to Passover may be to the entire Feast of Unleavened Bread, which lasted seven days (cf. Luke 22:1: “the Feast of Unleavened Bread… called the Passover”), and so “eat the Passover” probably means “continue to celebrate the ongoing feast” (cf. 2 Chron. 30:21). The other Gospels state that Jesus had already eaten the Passover Feast with his disciples, but the current verse seems to refer to the Jewish leaders’ desire to continue in the ongoing celebrations (ESV Study Bible, p. 2063).

3) Ehrman draws attention to John’s remark in his Gospel (19:14) that Jesus was still on trial around the sixth hour (12 noon Jewish time). According to Mark’s Gospel (15:25), Jesus eats the Passover and is crucified the next morning, at the third hour (9 a.m. Jew­ish time). Ehrman notices that this would make His crucifixion much earlier than indi­cated by John.

As we have seen earlier, what remains most shocking is Ehrman’s failure to engage with the often repeated response by conservative scholars to this kind of objection. They typically note the differing time systems employed by John and Mark. John uses Roman time to describe the events in his Gospel, while Mark utilizes the Jewish system. The Jewish day started in the evening at 6 p.m. and the morning of that day began at 6 a.m. In Roman time, midnight to midnight marked a day. (Today’s 24-hour day is obviously based on the Roman system.) So when Mark says that Christ was crucified at the third hour, he means around 9 a.m. John stated that Christ’s trial was about the sixth hour. This would place the trial before the crucifixion at around 6 a.m., and therefore, would not negate any testimony of the Gospel writers. This fits with John’s other references to time (for example, John 1:39).

That solves the time issue, but Ehrman also insists that the days are different. Accord­ing to John, Jesus was crucified on the day before the Passover, while the lambs were being slaughtered (symbolically); whereas Mark and the other synoptics (Matthew, Luke) have Him eat the Passover meal (Thursday night), and they then narrate His cru­cifixion the next morning. John says Jesus was crucified on the day of “preparation” for the Passover rather than on the day of preparation for the Sabbath, as in the synoptic Gospels.

Ehrman makes passing reference to the possible response that a different sectarian calendar might have been used by John, but this is by no means the strongest or most fre­quent response to this alleged discrepancy. A much better resolution, discussed by D. A. Carson for example, involves a more careful consideration of John’s language. It must be recognized that παρασκευή (paraskeue—“preparation”) frequently has reference to Friday—and in this case, Preparation of the Sabbath is Friday (see John 19:31, 42; Mat­thew 27:62; Mark 15:42; Luke 23:54). Barrett famously asserted that this text must refer to the preparation for (that is, before) the Passover, yet could not furnish one reference where παρασκευή (paraskeue) was used for a day before a feast day other than the Sab­bath (Saturday), which would fall on Friday. If Carson is correct, then John has Friday in mind with his phrase “Preparation” (paraskeue) Day of the Passover, and paraskeue can refer to the Passover feast or even the entire Passover week. This use of the Greek word in the meaning of Passover is not infrequent at all (for example, see Luke 22:1).

So what John seems to have meant was “the Friday of Passover week,” which is perfectly consistent with the Gospels’ usage of the day of Preparation of the Sabbath. Therefore, we may conclude as Carson does “that the last supper was eaten on Thursday evening [after 6:00 p.m.] (that is, the onset of Friday by Jewish reckoning), and was a Passover meal, and that Jesus was crucified on Friday as John and the Synoptic Gospels agree. In addition, taking this phrase in John 19:14 to mean the Friday before Passover is supported by the fact that both the Western and Eastern Church adopted this phrase as a synonym for Friday, as is recognized in Greece today (The Popular Handbook of Archaeology and the Bible: Discoveries That Confirm the Reliability of Scripture, by Joseph M. Holden and Norman Geisler, pp., 143-158).