Building on the Foundation

  Every now and then, you’ll hear someone confidently assert that the two major Jewish parties of Jesus’ day, the Pharisees and Sadducees, disagreed about when to observe Passover. I’ve heard or read this claim a handful of times in recent years, and from more than one person. They declare that the Sadducees killed the Passover lambs as soon as the sun set at the end of the Nisan/Abib 13, at the beginning of the 14th, and ate them that night, the night of the 14th. So how about it? Is this true? A few months ago, we published a study entitled, “ Eyewitnesses to History: When Were the Passover Lambs Killed? ” In it, we noted that every eyewitness account — such as the Bible, Philo, and Josephus — places the Passover sacrifice from mid to late afternoon on Nisan 14, which is both the same day and the same time that Jesus Christ died as our Passover Lamb. Later Jewish traditions written in the Mishnah and both the Babylonian and Jerusalem Talmuds fully agree. Regarding the Sadducees, ...

  In Exodus 12, the Passover Chapter, we find this command that God told Israel: “And thus you shall eat it: with a belt on your waist, your sandals on your feet, and your staff in your hand. So you shall eat it in haste. It is the LORD's Passover” (Ex. 12:11). “It is the Lord’s Passover.” What is the Lord’s Passover? Is it a ceremony? A meal? A lamb? A sacrifice? This simple, two-letter word holds a fascinating depth of meaning! A prophecy, even. What Is the Lord’s Passover? The context shows that it’s a lamb, for God’s entire instructions in this chapter, right up to this verse, have been about selecting, killing, preparing, and eating a lamb. The passage begins with God telling Moses, 3 "Speak to all the congregation of Israel, saying: 'On the tenth of this month every man shall take for himself a lamb, according to the house of his father, a lamb for a household. 4 'And if the household is too small for the lamb, let him and his neighbor next to his house take ...

  Recently, we published a blog post entitled “‘Historical Context’ and the Word of God,” showing that we don’t have to rely on history books or reconstructions of ancient history to understand the Word of God. The Word of God is sufficient to teach us what God requires. When it comes to Passover, the same holds true. We don’t need to rely on history books to know what day or what time of day God commanded for the Passover lambs to be killed; the Word of God is sufficient to teach us what God requires. God commanded the Israelites to kill the Passover lambs on the 14th day of the first month (Ex. 12:6; Lev. 23:5; etc.). This month was first called Abib (Ex. 13:4; 34:18; Deut. 16:1), and later came to be called Nisan (Est. 3:7), as it still is to this day. But what time of day on the 14th? God told the Israelites to kill the lambs “between the two evenings,” or bayn ha-arbayim in Hebrew. Simply by examining how God’s Word uses this phrase, we can see that it applies to the latter ...