Chapter 259 of 404

The Last Supper

As we have noted, the same circles of early Jewish Christians who preserved reminiscences of the Hallel and other early Jewish features also had some reason to associate Jesus’ death with Passover (1 Cor 5:7), and early Jewish Christians were also the ones with the best access to the authentic traditions.¹⁴⁹ That they invented Jesus’ execution during the Passover week is unlikely. We know that Jesus was a Galilean executed near Jerusalem; the likeliest time to find Jesus and his Galilean followers in Jerusalem would have been precisely at one of the three major pilgrimage festivals. Had Jesus been martyred in Galilee, where Herod’s son Antipas rather than a Roman governor ruled, it is unlikely that he would have died on a Roman cross. Unless Jesus was executed immediately after his entry into Jerusalem, therefore, his “last supper” there was presumably near Passover.

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