A Better Harmonization of Matthew's Double Donkeys

A popular contradiction alleged between the Gospel accounts is the number of donkeys Jesus rode into Jerusalem during the triumphal entry. Mark and Luke both mention a "colt" and say that Jesus sat on "it". Matthew, however, mentions the colt and its mother and ambiguously says that Jesus sat on "them". Thus, it is argued that Matthew has Jesus sitting on both of these animals while riding into Jerusalem. As Bart Ehrman says: 

"In Matthew, Jesus' disciples procure two animals for him, a donkey and a colt; they spread their garments over the two of them, and Jesus rode into town straddling them both (Matthew 21:7). It's an odd image, but Matthew made Jesus fulfill the prophecy of Scripture quite literally." (Jesus Interrupted, p. 50)

Here's Matthew 21:6-7 (NASB): [1]
"The disciples went and did just as Jesus had instructed them, and brought the donkey and the colt, and laid their cloaks on them; and He sat on them."

What does "on them" mean?

When Matthew says that Jesus sat "on them" the context yields only two plural antecedents to which Matthew might be referring: the donkeys or the cloaks (technically, it could be referring to the disciples, but this option will be dismissed without further comment). If "them" means the donkeys, it must further be adjudicated whether Matthew intends to say that Jesus is straddling the donkeys or whether a simpler interpretation is correct. I will briefly summarize these interpretations.

The "cloaks" interpretation

According to this interpretation, when Matthew says that Jesus sat "on them" he is referring to the cloaks—the disciples put the cloaks on the donkeys, and Jesus sat on the cloaks. While this harmonization is very popular, I don't think it is as convincing as many apologists assert. For one thing, the phrase "on them" is used just a few words earlier to refer to the donkeys. Since Matthew does not specify anything different, this offers some support for "them" referring to the donkeys, albeit not very much. The more convincing, though also not conclusive, argument against this reading comes when we compare Mark's account with Matthew's.

Mark 11.6-7:
"And they told them just as Jesus had said, and they gave them permission. They brought the colt to Jesus and put their cloaks on it; and He sat on it."
Matthew 21.6-7:
"The disciples went and did just as Jesus had instructed them, and brought the donkey and the colt, and laid their cloaks on them; and He sat on them."

In Mark, the antecedent of it is the colt, even though Mark also has plural cloaks. In Matthew, the sentence is structured the same way, so it's most plausible to take them as having the same antecedent—namely, the donkeys. It's unlikely that Matthew would perfectly parallel Mark's account and switch out the singular pronoun for the plural in every case but mean something entirely different at the end.

A worse objection to the "cloaks" harmonization is the one defended by Bart Ehrman here. [2] Ehrman argues that since the cloaks were spread over both animals, sitting on the cloaks would still entail sitting on both donkeys. But sitting on "the cloaks" doesn't mean sitting on all of the cloaks. That can only be exegeted via a very uncharitable hermeneutic. As long as Jesus sat on some of the cloaks, it could be correctly said that he sat "on them".

While these arguments aren't conclusive, they provide reason to be skeptical of this interpretation. I think it's still a marginally better interpretation than saying that Jesus was straddling two donkeys, but a better harmonization would be preferred.

The "unit" interpretation

According to this interpretation, "on them" does refer to the donkeys, but it doesn't mean Jesus was straddling both of them. Rather, Matthew refers to the donkeys as a unit on which Jesus sat, but he only needs to have sat on one of them. Steve Hays references Donald Hagner's commentary, saying that even if "them" refers to the donkeys,

"it hardly means that the evangelist alleges that Jesus actually sat upon both animals at once (!) or even in succession. Instead it means that here the two animals, which were kept so closely together, are conceptually regarded as a single, inseparable unit,” D. Hagner, Matthew 14-28 (Nelson 1995), 595

D. A. Carson gives this as a secondary harmonization, preferring the cloaks harmonization instead. (The Expositor's Bible Commentary: Matthew) To see the plausibility of such a grammatical construction, we need only consider an English example. One might say, of a room with multiple chairs packed closely together, "The chairs were very comfortable. I sat on them," and yet only have sat on one chair. The speaker is referring to the chairs as a unit, and it would be absurd to think he straddled all of them. Even if the grammar might initially incline us towards the notion, common sense rules it out, leading us to assume he only sat on one chair. It is not difficult to think of other examples of this sort of grammatical construction.

I contend that this is the best harmonization of the texts. The suggestion that Matthew has Jesus balancing on two animals of different heights, while not impossible, is rather unlikely from the start. Matthew had access to Mark when he wrote this passage, as the textual similarities make clear, so a straddling Jesus would be a deliberate correction of Mark's narrative. Thus, if Matthew meant something so counterintuitive, why wasn't he clearer? It would be easy to say something akin to "he sat on both of them" if that was what he wanted to communicate. It's highly unlikely such a strange event would be inserted so ambiguously and subtly.

Some further points are in order about why Matthew wrote his account this way. We'll start with an examination of the prophecy quoted in verse 5.

Did Matthew misunderstand Zechariah's parallelism?

Those who allege that Matthew has Jesus riding two donkeys sometimes allege that Matthew was trying to make Jesus fulfill the prophecy of Zechariah 9.9, which he quotes in verse 5. Zechariah 9.9 (NASB) says:

"Rejoice greatly, daughter of Zion!
    Shout in triumph, daughter of Jerusalem!
Behold, your king is coming to you;
    He is righteous and endowed with salvation,
Humble, and mounted on a donkey,
    Even on a colt, the foal of a donkey."

This verse is an example of Hebrew synonymous parallelism—the first line expresses an idea, and the second line amplifies it or repeats it with slight variations. If this prophecy inspired Matthew to write Jesus riding two donkeys, it would require him to have misunderstood the parallelism. But this is highly unlikely. Consider the text that Matthew cites:

"Say to the daughter of Zion,
'Behold your King is coming to you,
Humble, and mounted on a donkey,
Even on a colt, the foal of a donkey.'"

Note that Matthew omits lines 2 and 4 from Zechariah 9.9. These both echo the lines before them, indicating that Matthew is quite familiar with this Hebrew convention. Further, as Jonathan McLatchie notes, commenting on Matthew 8.16-17, 

"Verse 17 quotes from Isaiah 53:4. It is of note that Matthew does not here quote from the Septuagint, which reads, “He himself bore our sins and was pained because of them.” Matthew’s quotation does not even match the Aramaic Targum, which reads, “Then for our sins he will pray and our iniquities will be forgiven because of him.” Instead, Matthew translates the Hebrew quite literally, highlighting how it is fulfilled in Jesus performing miracles of healing. Matthew’s acquaintance with Hebrew thus make it quite unlikely that he would so grossly misunderstand the parallelism in Zechariah." [3]

A further strike against the theory that Matthew misinterpreted Zechariah is that the Hebrew text of Zechariah, which Matthew was translating from, uses the word for a male donkey. In Matthew's narrative, the second donkey is a female donkey (apparently called a "jenny"). Matthew's familiarity with Hebrew and the lack of a direct correspondence between Zechariah 9 and Matthew 21 thus make it unlikely that Matthew misinterpreted Zechariah.

Why does Matthew mention two donkeys?

This leaves the question of why Matthew bothered mentioning the female donkey in the first place. It could be to show that the colt was truly unridden, as Robert Gundry suggests. [4] Gundry also suggests that the donkeys are meant to be viewed as a "wide throne". This would explain why Matthew uses a plural pronoun even though he's only referring to one donkey—he wants the readers to envision the donkeys, the throne, as a singular unit upon which Jesus sat. Others have argued that sitting on a throne of two donkeys emphasizes both Jesus' divinity and his humility. For an interesting treatment of these options, I would recommend this video from InspiringPhilosophy. He defends the "cloaks" harmonization but has solid research nonetheless.

Conclusion

In conclusion, the arguments against the "cloaks" harmonization have been shown to have weight, if not being ultimately decisive. Matthew's phrase "on them" is best interpreted as referring to the donkeys. However, this need not mean that Matthew intended his readers to envision Jesus straddling both animals, as the donkeys are regarded as a single unit: a garment-spread throne for Jesus. Thus, saying Jesus sat "on them" can still be correct, even if he only sat on the colt. While some might object that this is grammatically counterintuitive, it is less counterintuitive than the notion that Jesus was straddling both of the donkeys. The idea that Matthew didn't understand the Hebrew parallelism in Zechariah has also been shown to be unlikely, given Matthew's competency with the Hebrew text and his omission of the other parallel cola from the verse he's citing. Therefore, Matthew's account is not in tension with Mark's.

Notes and References

[1] The NASB translates the final "them" in this quotation as "the cloaks", in keeping with the proposed harmonization that "them" does in fact refer to the cloaks. To better illustrate where the ambiguity lies, I have supplied the literal translation of the Greek text.

[2] See here for Dr. Jonathan McLatchie's response to Bart Ehrman's remarks. Although McLatchie defends the "cloaks" harmonization, his comments are helpful.

[3] ibid. 

[4] Gundry, Robert H. Matthew: A Commentary on His Handbook for a Mixed Church under Persecution. 2nd ed, W.B. Eerdmans, 1994.

Six Days Before the Passover: The Casual Interlocking of Johannine and Markan Chronology

In this post I will analyze an undesigned coincidence between the Markan and Johannine chronologies of the passion week. More specifically, I will argue that the timelines subtly interlock in a way difficult to explain as either deliberate imitation or accidental verisimilitude.

John and Mark

We'll begin by dissecting the Johannine chronology.

John 12.1, 12-13 anchors the timeline: "Therefore, six days before the Passover, Jesus came to Bethany where Lazarus was, whom Jesus had raised from the dead... On the next day, when the large crowd that had come to the feast heard that Jesus was coming to Jerusalem, they took the branches of the palm trees and went out to meet Him, and began shouting, 'Hosanna! Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord, indeed, the King of Israel!'"

These temporal markers, unique to John, establish that the triumphal entry took place five days before the Passover. John gives us no timestamps after this but skips forward to the night of the Last Supper. For a response to the allegation that John has the Last Supper on a different day than the Synoptics, see my post here. And for a response to the objection that Jerusalem lacked palm trees, see here.

We can now turn to Mark and see whether his account lines up with John's. The first relevant passage is Mark 11.1-2, 7-8: "And as they approached Jerusalem, at Bethphage and Bethany, near the Mount of Olives, He sent two of His disciples, and said to them, 'Go into the village opposite you, and immediately as you enter it you will find a colt tied there, on which no one has ever sat; untie it and bring it here...' They brought the colt to Jesus and put their cloaks on it; and He sat on it. And many people spread their cloaks on the road, and others spread leafy branches which they had cut from the fields."

At this point we must make a plausible assumption about Mark's chronology—namely, that there's a day between Jesus approaching Bethany and and the triumphal entry, as in John. Lydia McGrew argues that this verse should be taken as "merely alluding to the fact that Bethany and Bethphage were close to Jerusalem and marked the approach to Jerusalem and the approximate location from which Jesus sent his disciples to get the colt." Lydia McGrew comments, "As some independent support for this assumption, Matthew mentions only Bethphage at the same point in his narrative—Matthew 21.1." (Hidden in Plain View, p. 114) This fits better with the amount of activity that takes place on the following day: the disciples get the colt, Jesus enters Jerusalem, and after he and his disciples were done "looking around at everything" (which probably took some time), it is said that he left for Bethany, because it was "already late". I confess that this ambiguity makes the interlocking less impressive, but it still has evidential value.

According to John's chronology, Jesus entered Bethany six days before the Passover, and rode in to Jerusalem five days before the Passover. This is quite consistent with Mark's account. Since Mark gives us temporal markers for the rest of the week, we can begin counting the days until Passover and see whether it lines up with John's account.

Mark 11.12 says "On the next day...". Since this is the day after the triumphal entry (five days before the Passover, according to John), it puts us at four days away. Verses 19-20 say "And whenever evening came, they would leave the city. As they were passing by in the morning...". This is three days away.

A lot of activity follows, plausibly filling up the third day before the Passover. This, along with the fact that this next verse mentions the chronology, strongly suggests that if John is correct, we should now be in the second day before the Passover. So consult Mark 14.1-2: "Now the Passover and Festival of Unleavened Bread were two days away; and the chief priests and the scribes were seeking how to arrest Him..."

Recall that this is the first time Mark tells us how many days until the Passover—he doesn't include the "six days before" marker that John has. John, on the other hand, includes the sixth and the fifth days before the Passover but leaves out the rest of the week, not mentioning Mark's comment about it being two days before the Passover. By making an initial minor assumption, his account lines up perfectly with John's.

The Other Synoptics

See footnote [1] for a comment on how Matthew's account makes our earlier minor assumption more probable. There is some tension between the timelines for the rest of the week in Mark and Matthew, specifically with regard to the cleansing of the temple and the withering of the fig tree. This might be the subject of a future post.

Luke doesn't give many temporal markers in his account, so we can't compare it with the Markan chronology.

Objections

There are a few objections that could be raised to this line of argument. One could argue that John deliberately mentioned "six days before" in an attempt to line up with Mark's account, or that this interlocking was entirely accidental and carries little evidential weight. I will offer some comments in response to both of these.

How plausible is it that John would deliberately follow Mark here? The first assumption necessary for this hypothesis to work is that John had access to Mark's Gospel, which many scholars doubt, but it will be granted for the sake of argument. Note that John contains nothing else from Mark's account of the final week of Jesus, up until the Passover meal. There is no Johannine account of the (second) cleansing of the temple, the withering of the fig tree, the Olivet discourse, Jesus' final parables, or the widow giving coins. It's pretty implausible that John would so subtly insert a temporal marker derived from Mark's account but then omit everything else Mark has to say, even including things that superficially contradict Mark (e.g. Jesus, rather than his disciples, getting the donkey; the law of agency absolves this discrepancy). And even if John did get his information from Mark, the fact that the would go to such a length to accurately and subtly embed a chronological detail into his narrative, when he could just as easily have left it out, shows his high concern for historical accuracy and extreme fidelity to his source material, counting in favor of his general reliability.

By far the better skeptical response to this undesigned coincidence is that the interlocking was accidental, not in the sense entailed by an undesigned coincidence, but rather a chance versimilitude that has nothing to do with the reality of the event in question. This objection has less to do with the reality of the undesigned coincidence and more with its epistemic implications. An example would be two separate Harry Potter fanfiction stories agreeing narrating an interlocking chronology. In response, it may first be stated that this kind of interlocking is undoubtedly at least somewhat more probable on the hypothesis of eyewitness testimony, and the debate is rather over the degree of that probability. In favor of a weighty probability, we may adduce certain considerations, such as the unlikelihood of Mark and John including temporal markers at all if they weren't certain about the timing of the passion week, and the otherwise vastly differing content selections in both Gospels. The skeptic might further argue that perhaps the interlocking is motivated by a common agreement as to the time of the triumphal entry, and coincidence takes care of the rest. However, any common agreement pertaining to the chronology is itself difficult to explain unless it goes back to a genuine memory of the events in question, which is exactly what this undesigned coincidence is trying to argue. 

Considerations like those just discussed are one of the reasons undesigned coincidences are best presented as a cumulative argument, as no individual coincidence is inexplicable without eyewitness testimony. Rather, a pattern of plausible examples adduces a strong case for their evidential weight. I hope to have shown that this particular interlocking is plausibly the result of historical accuracy. Instead of constructing ad hoc theories to explain this agreement between Mark and John, we should accept the far simpler hypothesis that both accounts are accurately reporting the events as remembered. 

No Palm Trees in Jerusalem?

It is sometimes claimed that there were no palm trees in Jerusalem. This would count against the reliability of the Gospels, as the Gospel of John specifically reports that Jesus' triumphal entry was celebrated with the waving of palm branches (cf. John 12.12-13). While this objection is uncommon and neglected by most skeptics, it is nonetheless present and deserving of a reply. 

We have extrabiblical sources which report the presence of palm trees in Jerusalem. For example, after Simon the Maccabee expunged the Syrian forces from Jerusalem, we read in 1 Maccabees 13.51 (CEB): "On the twenty-third day of the second month, in the year 171, the Jews entered it with praise and palm branches, with harps and cymbals and stringed instruments, and with hymns and songs. A great enemy had been crushed and removed from Israel." 2 Maccabees 10.7 (CEB), chronicling the same event, says "So they held ivy wands, beautiful branches, and also palm leaves, and offered hymns to the one who had made the purification of his own temple possible."

And from the Bible itself, Nehemiah 8.15 (CSB) says "So they proclaimed and spread this news throughout their towns and in Jerusalem, saying, 'Go out to the hill country and bring back branches of olive, wild olive, myrtle, palm, and other leafy trees to make shelters, just as it is written.'"

It's highly unlikely that all these comments about palm trees would exist if they didn't grow in and near Jerusalem.

D. A. Carson asserts, "There was little difficulty obtaining palm branches: date palms were plentiful around Jerusalem, and still grow there." (The Gospel According to John, 1991, p. 432). This can be seen in pictures of Jerusalem. See here, for instance.

The quotations from 1 Maccabees, 2 Maccabees, and Nehemiah, alongside the current existence of palm trees in Jerusalem, render this objection broadly untenable.

Did John Move the Crucifixion?

A common thesis among contemporary biblical scholars is that the Gospel of John took more liberties than the Synoptics when it comes to “theological narration”; that is, modifying the details of the stories about Jesus to make a theological point. A popular example of this pertains to the timing of the crucifixion.

 

While in the Synoptics, Jesus is crucified on Nisan 15, the day after the Passover lambs are killed, the Gospel of John supposedly has Jesus crucified on Nisan 14 to more directly portray him as the Passover lamb. In his book The Resurrection of Jesus: A Critical Inquiry, Michael J. Alter claims that this contradiction is “unequivocal” and "indisputable” [1]. There are scholars across the theological spectrum who advocate for a Johannine adaptation of the paschal chronology: on the skeptical side, Bart Ehrman; on the conservative side, Craig Keener and, to a lesser extent, Michael Licona. There are five verses, as well as a typological argument pertaining to the Lamb of God, commonly used to argue for this conclusion. I will discuss all of these here. The verses are John 13.1-2, 13.29, 18.39, 19.14, and 19.31 (all NASB).

Remember: the Passover lambs were killed on Nisan 14. At sunset, it becomes Nisan 15 and the Passover feast is celebrated. The crucifixion is the following day, still Nisan 15. So John allegedly has the Passover feast the night before the Synoptics (Nisan 14) and the crucifixion the following day (still Nisan 14), which is the day before the Synoptics have the Last Supper and the crucifixion (Nisan 15).

John 13.1-2       

“Now before the Feast of the Passover, Jesus, knowing that His hour had come that He would depart from this world to the Father, having loved His own who were in the world, He loved them to the end. And during supper, the devil having already put into the heart of Judas Iscariot, the son of Simon, to betray Him…”   

The relevant phrases here are “Before the Feast of the Passover” and “during supper”. Some scholars argue that this establishes the Last Supper as happening before the Passover Festival.

However, given that the Passover Festival is mentioned in the initial verse, it is entirely plausible to interpret the second verse as referring to the Passover feast itself. Lydia McGrew [2] quotes Craig Blomberg [3]:

“Imagine if I were to write about a comparable treasured annual American festival, Thanksgiving. ... ‘Now before the Thanksgiving Feast, my grandmother, knowing that her days were numbered, decided to go all out for her family and shower her love on us.’ Then imagine that, after a pause, my narrative continued, ‘When dinner time came…’ Without reference to any other meals anywhere in the context, would any American reader think of any dinner other than the eagerly expected Thanksgiving dinner?...Surely the same is true for the dinner of John 13.2, after the reference to the Passover in verse 1.”   

While it is certainly possible to interpret “supper” as referring to a meal before the Passover feast, it is equally if not more plausible to interpret it as referring to the Passover feast itself. Given the ease with which this passage can be harmonized with the Synoptic account, it shouldn’t be regarded as any evidence that John moved the Passover. If anything, it supports the Synoptic chronology.

John 13.29                           

“For some were assuming, since Judas kept the money box, that Jesus was saying to him, ‘Buy the things we need for the feast’; or else, that he was to give something to the poor.”   

The objection here is that the disciples’ conjecture of Judas buying what was needed for the festival indicates that the Passover feast is yet to come, rather than presently happening. It is also objected that purchasing food on Nisan 15 violates Leviticus 23.7 (“On the first day [of the festival of Unleavened Bread] you shall have a holy convocation; you shall not do any laborious work.”)

In his commentary on the Gospel of John, D.A. Carson offers a response to these concerns. It is worth quoting at length:

“These objections are far from convincing. One might wonder, on these premises, why Jesus should send Judas out for purchases for a feast still twenty-four hours away. The next day would have left ample time. It is best to think of this as taking place on the night of Passover, 15 Nisan. Judas was sent out (so the disciples thought) to purchase what was needed for the Feast, i.e., not the feast of Passover, but the Feast of Unleavened Bread, which began that night and lasted for seven days. The next day, still Friday 15 Nisan, was a high feast day; the following day was Sabbath. It might seem best to make necessary purchases (e.g. more unleavened bread) immediately. Purchases on that Thursday evening were in all likelihood possible, though inconvenient. The rabbinic authorities were in dispute on the matter (cf. Mishna Pesahim 4:5. One could buy necessities even on a Sabbath if it fell before Passover, provided it was done by leaving something in trust rather than paying cash (Mishna Shabbath 23:1. Moreover, it was customary to give alms to the poor on Passover night, the temple gates being left open from midnight on, allowing beggars to congregate there. On any night other than Passover it is hard to imagine why the disciples might have thought Jesus was sending Judas out to give something to the poor: the next day would have done just as well.” [4]

In summary, this verse also fails to support the thesis that the Passover feast, and thus, the crucifixion, were yet to come. It also gives a slight indication that this was the Passover feast via Judas being sent out to give something to the poor.

John 18.28     

“Then they brought Jesus from Caiaphas into the Praetorium, and it was early; and they themselves did not enter the Praetorium, so that they would not be defiled, but might eat the Passover.”

Supposedly, the concern about being able to “eat the Passover” indicates that the Passover feast hadn’t occurred yet. On the face of it, this seems convincing, but there are good reasons to interpret the verse as referring to a different meal during Passover week, not the main feast at the beginning of the week.

Blomberg responds:                       

“John 18.28 actually makes better sense on the assumption that the main, initial meal of the Passover had occurred the night before. Ritual uncleanness due to entering an unclean house typically only lasted until the end of that day, and Jews calculated each day from sundown to sundown. So, if the Jewish leaders were worrying about not being able to eat the Passover after dark that night, then their worry seems unnecessary; the new day would have rendered them clean. But if they were concerned about the hagigah, the special lunch served midday after the start of Passover, then the text makes good sense. Indeed, the Mishnah would later devote an entire tractate to mid-festival days (Moed Katan) and another to the festal offerings (Hagigah), including the offerings brought in between the first and last days of feasts (e.g., Hag. 1.3.)” [5]   

Lydia McGrew comments:                       

“It is helpful at this point to back up and consider what these scholars are alleging and how strange it truly is. John's Gentile readers might very well not have known on what day the Passover lambs were killed anyway, and John does not mention lambs anywhere at all in the Passion narrative. He certainly does not state or emphasize that Jesus was killed on the day that the lambs were killed. As Blomberg notes, the only references in the Passion narratives to Passover lambs occur in the Synoptics, not in John. We are therefore to think that John, without bothering to mention any Passover lambs anywhere in the vicinity, invented a scruple on the part of the Jewish religious leaders that they never felt and narrates as if they had such a scruple merely in order to imply hyper-subtly that Jesus died on a day when he did not really die, in order to convey a symbolic meaning, based on a false fact, to any Jewish readers who happened to catch it and probably to no one else If anything is strained or forced, it is this theory, not the perfectly sensible answer to it.” [6]

McGrew goes on to say that John’s comment about the scruple of the religious leaders makes better sense in the narrative as an eyewitness recalling what happened, rather than a subtle clue that the date of the crucifixion had been changed.   

As with the other verses, this verse could be referring to the actual Passover feast, but there's an entirely plausible alternative interpretation that doesn't require a Johannine chronological adaptation. If anything, this verse supports the Synoptic paschal chronology due to laws on Jewish uncleanliness.

John 19.14       

“Now it was the day of preparation for the Passover; it was about the sixth hour. And he said to the Jews, ‘Look, your King!’”

The phrase “the day of preparation for the Passover” is taken by some scholars to mean that the Passover hadn’t yet happened. But that phrase can also be translated as “the day of preparation of the Passover”. There are two ways to interpret this verse: 1) the preparation for the Passover is taking place on this day, or 2) this is the day of preparation for the Sabbath that takes place during the Passover feast. Blomberg summarizes this effectively:

“As for John 19.14 and 31, the “day of Preparation” could refer to preparing for the Passover, but it more likely refers to preparing for the Sabbath. Verse 31 makes it explicit that the next day was to be a Sabbath, so both verses may well be using the term in that sense only. Even to this day, Paraskeuê in Greek is the standard name for Friday, the day before Saturday, the Jewish Sabbath.” [7]

The word “Passover” can also be used of the Passover week as a whole. For example, the Jewish historian Flavius Josephus, in Antiquities of the Jews Book XIV, 2.1, says “As this happened at the time when the feast of unleavened bread was celebrated, which we call the passover…” So “Passover” need not be taken as a reference to the main Passover feast.

Given that in the same chapter, verse 31 probably refers to the Passover, it makes more sense that John is using the same meaning of the phrase in verse 14. This would mean the second option listed above is the most plausible meaning. This interpretation doesn't support either theory about the date of the crucifixion in John's gospel—it's irrelevant to the question.

 

The significance of “the sixth hour” and the alleged contradiction with Mark's Gospel is a topic that won’t be discussed here. A good treatment of it can be found in Lydia McGrew’s aforementioned book on John.

John 19.31                           

“Now then, since it was the day of preparation, to prevent the bodies from remaining on the cross on the Sabbath (for that Sabbath was a high day), the Jews requested of Pilate that their legs be broken, and the bodies be taken away.”

The relevant portion of this verse is “that Sabbath was a high day”. Allegedly, this is a reference to the Passover. However, Carson comments: “It was a special Sabbath, not only because it fell during the Passover feast, but because the second paschal day, in this case falling on the Sabbath, was devoted to the very important sheaf offering (Lv 23.11; cf. SB 2. 582).” [8]

Lamb of God typology

An auxiliary argument for the thesis that John moved the crucifixion pertains to his alleged motives for doing it—namely, his desire to directly portray Jesus as the Passover lamb. The Passover lambs were killed on Nisan 14, so this is the date to which John allegedly moved the crucifixion. Craig Blomberg briefly replies: 

“With respect to Lamb-of-God typology, it is true that the Fourth Evangelist is the only New Testament writer to apply this term to Jesus, but most of the references come in Revelation. In his Gospel, John uses the term only in chapter 1. If John had intended the passing reference to noon in 19:14 to highlight Jesus as the true Passover lamb, John kept his reference about as brief and cryptic as he possibly could have. It is not good method to allow this possible allusion to dictate the interpretation of the rest of the Passion Narrative’s chronology.” [9]

Even if you take the Gospel of John and Revelation to have different authors, this undermines even further the notion that John had a special interest in Jesus as the Passover lamb, and thus, that he was trying to emphasize it via chronological reworking.

Another point that bears mentioning is the attribution of this Christological title in 1 Corinthians 5.7: “Clean out the old leaven so that you may be a new lump, just as you are in fact unleavened. For Christ our Passover also has been sacrificed.” The Synoptics all agree on Nisan 15 as the date of crucifixion, so if this is indeed historical, the early Christians had no problem labeling Jesus their Passover lamb even though his death didn’t perfectly line up with the date of the slaughter of the Passover lambs. So a chronological shift is not necessary to convey this theological point. And it’s not unreasonable to expect that, if John had made this shift for that reason, he would have made a reference, in the passion narrative, to Jesus as the Lamb of God to drive his point home. We see this in Mark 14:12 “On the first day of Unleavened Bread, when the Passover lamb was being sacrificed…” 

While this argument from silence shouldn’t be given too much weight, the subtlety with which John would have executed this change should give us pause.

Conclusion 

The late Cullen Story writes, 

“By way of conclusion, we observe that John makes no overt attempt to correct the chronology of the Synoptic writers which says in effect that Jesus ate the passover meal with his disciples on Thursday evening and was crucified on Friday, "Friday of passover week" (John 19:14). In John 3:23-24, we find that the writer does make a conscious attempt to correct a possible misunderstanding by his readers of the Synoptic witness concerning the chronology of the Baptist's imprisonment. But in John 18-19, no similar effort is made to correct Synoptic passion chronology, intimating that the Johannine writer is in agreement with it.” [10]

Obviously, John’s silence on this point isn’t proof that he agrees with the Synoptic chronology, but it does bear mentioning.

In summary:

• The tradition of the last supper was well-known when John wrote his Gospel, and the parallels to the Synoptic version are clear. He never explicitly corrects the Synoptic chronology. Thus, in the absence of good evidence to the contrary, we should assume that the chronology is the same.

• The verses used to support the thesis that John moved the crucifixion either work better under the Synoptic chronology or work equally well under either, providing no evidence for a change.

• The typological argument relating to the Lamb of God is too trivial to tip the scales one way or the other. Jesus’ death doesn’t need to line up perfectly with the killing of the Passover lambs for the title to be applicable.

• Thus, there is no good evidence John moved the crucifixion, and accordingly, we should conclude that his chronology aligns with that of the Synoptics.

References

[1] Alter, Michael J. The Resurrection: A Critical Inquiry. 2015, p. 110

[2] McGrew, Lydia. The Eye of the Beholder: The Gospel of John as Historical Reportage. DeWard Publishing, 2021, p. 298

[3] Blomberg, Craig L. "A Constructive Traditional Response to New Testament Criticism" in James K. Hoffmeier and Dennis R. Magary, eds. Do Historical Matters Matter to Faith Wheaton, IL Crossway Books, 2012, p. 355

[4] Carson, D. A. The Gospel According to John. Inter-Varsity Press ; W.B. Eerdmans, 1991, p. 370

[5] Blomberg, Craig L. “Passion Problems.” Apologetics, https://www.namb.net/apologetics/resource/passion-problems/. Accessed 27 Feb. 2022.

[6] McGrew, Lydia. The Eye of the Beholder, p. 300-301

[7] Blomberg, Craig L. “Passion Problems.”

[8] Carson, D. A. The Gospel According to John, p. 724

[9] Blomberg, Craig L. “Passion Problems.”

[10] Story, Cullen I.K. “The Bearing of Old Testament Terminology On the Johannine Chronology of the Final Passover of Jesus”. Novum Testamentum 31.4 (1989): 316-324. https://doi.org/10.1163/156853689X00261 Web.