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Chapter 12. Pesah in Jewish History
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Chapter 12 Pesah in Jewish History The Eucharist is one of the elements of church life which moderns may well like or dislike, but no intelligent person dare ignore it in seeking to understand Jesus. The elements served at Eucharist are the most stable dimension of Christendom. Questions abound, and the answers to those questions provide interpretations that shape the worshiper. But, on each Sunday, throughout Christendom, Christians sit, kneel, stand, and so partake of the “body of the Lord” and the “blood of the Lord.” To many it brings relief, a sense of forgiveness, and a feeling of being at peace with God, self, and others. The Eucharist embodies the Christian’s theology of atonement, forgiveness, reconciliation, and mission. It reveals a Christology as much as it also announces an eschatology. It forms an ecclesiology as much as it shapes the liturgy. But are these theological themes and shapings from Jesus himself? Reshaping our question in more first-century terms: did Jesus see his last supper with his disciples as the foundation for the Christian practice of the Eucharist or, even more, as the embodiment of his own understanding of atonement? We should not relegate these questions either to the corners of history or to the ends of our consciences. In fact, Christianity has become a cruciform religion, a religion of the cross. Did the early Christian shapers of the emerging movement get this right? Was their conceptualizing of the Jesus traditions into a cruciform theology consistent with the very life of Jesus: his mission, his teachings, his actions? Or, somehow, was the simpler idea of Jesus derailed? Has the cross taken on a life of its own? This is no small set of questions. Indeed, Christian identity today is rooted in this cruciform shape of the gospel. What would happen to Christian faith if it were suddenly discovered, by fresh discoveries, that Jesus did not intend to die to forgive sins? that he did not understand his death as atoning? Or that he didn’t even anticipate his death? that, in fact, the last week was a blur of surprises 243 244 Jesus and His Death that only became clear when he faced an angry crowd from a cross? And then it was too late to do anything about it. To answer these questions, we need to answer other questions. Was the last supper the Passover meal proper (Pesah)? If so, does Pesah provide clues about how Jesus divined his own death? And, even further, do such clues point us in the direction of an interpretation of a death that provides immediate and direct continuity to the early Christian interpretation that Jesus’ death was in fact representative or substitutionary or vicarious or propitiatory or sacrificial and sin-absorbing? These questions are many, and they do not permit easy answers. But before we can inquire into the last supper as a Pesah meal we must first examine what Pesah was like in the first century. Here, too, there have been serious historical blunders—of two sorts: (1) that the Exodus 12 tradition was practiced completely and continuously for centuries , and (2) that the Mishnah tractate Pesahim, often equated with the modern Passover Haggadah, reveals the details of practice in the first century. A survey of the history of the practice of Pesah, embedded as it is in the formalities of the Week of Unleavened Bread (Massot), reveals both of these historical lapses and sets our feet on firmer ground for analyzing the gospel traditions of the last supper. PESAH IN HISTORY Christian observance of the Eucharist as well as Jewish observance of Pesah blinker the practitioners into equating modern observance and rabbinic ritual with first-century practice.1 Indeed, our liturgical practices shape our religious identity, and our identity then influences our understanding of the liturgy. The liturgies of Pesah and Eucharist tell the story of how Israelites and Christians understand themselves and their beliefs. These rites, in fact, embody their story. Can we find the original stories or, at least, a good approximation? Fleeting snapshots of the observance of Pesah in Jewish history—this is all we have—provide us with a sweep of the history of the festival as well as a contoured perception of what was most important to various Jewish communities. But, whether or not the last supper of Jesus was originally Pesah and, if not, at least a Pesah week meal, is very important. Accordingly, we begin with the development of Pesah in Jewish...