“Christ Our Passover” (1 Corinthians 5:6–8): The Death of Jesus and the Quartodeciman Pascha

Paul’s reference to Passover and the Festival of Unleavened Bread at 1 Corinthians 5:6–8 has furnished a point of departure for two lines of inquiry. Liturgiologists, interested in early Christian festal practice, have sought to discern the extent to which it signals the origins of later Quartodeciman observance (breaking paschal fasts on 14 Nisan); biblical scholars, concerned with Jesus of Nazareth, have questioned the degree to which it reflects the actual Sitz im Leben of Jesus’s death. This article seeks to initiate a dialogue between these two lines by bringing questions from biblical scholarship to bear on one of the most extensive liturgiological treatments of the passage—that of Karl Gerlach in his 1998 The Antenicene Pascha: A Rhetorical History. From an examination of Gerlach’s case on this passage, it is concluded, firstly, that he has significantly moved discussion forward in at least three respects, but, secondly, that his thesis requires modification along as many lines. That is to say, Gerlach’s hypothesis sheds light upon the biblical passage to which Paul alludes, the traditio-historical development of that passage prior to Paul and the Corinthians’ own awareness of the Jewish festal system. It requires adjustment, however, on the post-biblical tradition to which Paul appeals, the impetus behind Paul’s use of that tradition in 1 Corinthians and the Corinthian association with Jewish festivals implied by Paul’s allusions.