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Word Gems 

exploring self-realization, sacred personhood, and full humanity

Prof. Bart D. Ehrman

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Editor's prefatory comment: Dr. Ehrman explains that the 5700 early copies of the New Testament – copies of copies of copies – contain hundreds of thousands of discrepancies. Many of these are inconsequential but a significant number alter the meaning of the text in important ways. Most of these constituted mere human error in copying but some of them, it appears, were purposefully injected into the text by editorial judgment of scribes. This entire area of scholarship is far more complex than most realize, leading the objective reviewer to understand that, in many cases, we have no knowledge of the original text of the New Testament. In addition to Dr. Ehrman’s books, his lectures are available on youtube; for example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pfheSAcCsrE&t=12s

Dr. Ehrman speaks of this in his lectures on "The New Testament," in the section, "The Earliest Traditions About Jesus," published by The Great Courses.

Both Mark and John offer a precise dating of the death of Jesus, sometime during the Passover season.

The lambs were sacrificed in the Temple on the day before the Passover, which was called "the preparation for the Passover."

In the earliest gospel, Mark (written several decades before John), the sequence of events is clearly laid out. Jesus' disciples speak of preparing for the Passover meal (Mark 14:12), which was done before the start of the Passover (which would begin at sundown).

That night (a new day commencing after sundown, the beginning of Passover) Jesus and his men partake of the famous Passover meal. After this, Jesus prays in the garden, is arrested, spends the night in jail, is judged by Pilate early in the morning, and dies on the cross later that afternoon -- according to Mark, all occurring on the Passover day.

To restate, Mark speaks of the disciples preparing for the Passover meal -- on the "day of preparation" -- and that very evening Jesus and his men ate the "last supper", or the Passover meal, which, it should be no surprise, was eaten on the Passover. Following the meal, we find the garden and arrest scene, the trial the next morning, and Jesus' death, all on the Passover. This is very clear in Mark.

However, John's chronology is quite different. In John's account, the writer is silent, seems to avoid ostensibly linking the aforementioned events with the Passover. There is not the same talk from his men regarding making prepartions for the Passover meal. Why this apparent hesitancy of lack of emphasis on the Passover?

In John 19:14 we are given the precise hour and day of Jesus' trial before Pilate. Which day? John says that is was the "preparation day for the Passover."

But how can this be? Mark, the much earlier account, specifically informs us that Jesus' men were making preparations for the meal on "the preparation day," which would be normal for any Jew of the day. But it's all different in John. That writer wants us to believe that Jesus died on "the preparation day," the day before the Passover!

As the writer of John would have been aware of Mark's gospel, having been in circulation for decades prior, why does John take it upon himself to change the day of Jesus' death?

It appears that John is making a theological statement by having Jesus die on the preparation day; in fact, according to John, Jesus dies at the very time that the Passover lambs were being killed in the Temple!

John is the only one to refer to Jesus as "the Lamb of God, sacrificed for the sins of the world." And what better way to highlight this theological tenet than by having Jesus die, seemingly, at the very time when the Passover lambs were being sacrificed! It's high drama, high symbolical art-form, but, given that Mark was written decades earlier, John's account is likely to be fake-new.

We have seen, in earlier articles in this series, that biblical manuscripts were purposefully altered, centuries after the original events, by scribes who felt deputized to bring to the rest of us what, in their opinion, the scripture ought to have said. And the evidence suggests that John engaged in this kind of piously fraudulent editing.

We've also seen, in other cases in the fourth gospel, that John is not shy to make deliberate changes to the text, outright lies, concerning Thomas, vis-a-vis the earlier-written gospels - and this is just one more example of his disingenuous crusader-ism.