Exodus 12 · a question people ask
Was Jesus' last supper a Passover meal?
Mark and Luke call it one. "On the first day of unleavened bread, when they sacrificed the Passover", the disciples asked where to "eat the Passover" (Mark 14:12), and "they prepared the Passover" (Mark 14:16). Jesus said, "I have earnestly desired to eat this Passover with you before I suffer" (Luke 22:15). John tells it differently: on the morning Jesus was tried, the leaders stayed out of the Praetorium "that they might not be defiled, but might eat the Passover" (John 18:28), and when Pilate brought Jesus out, "it was the Preparation Day of the Passover, at about the sixth hour" (John 19:14). Everyone agrees that Jesus died at the Passover (Mark 14:1; John 19:14) and that Paul calls him "our Passover" (1 Corinthians 5:7). Christians put the Gospels together in more than one way.
How Christians read it
Where Christians differ, Favor sets out the main views side by side and doesn't pick one.
It was the Passover meal
Those who hold this view take Mark and Luke's words as they read (Mark 14:12-16; Luke 22:7-15). They read John's "eat the Passover" (John 18:28) as the meals of the feast's seven days (12:15), and "the Preparation Day of the Passover" (John 19:14) as the day before the Sabbath in Passover week, as Mark uses "the Preparation Day, that is, the day before the Sabbath" (Mark 15:42).
Mark 14:12-16 · Luke 22:7-15 · John 18:28 · John 19:14 · Mark 15:42 · Exodus 12:15
A meal the night before
Those who hold this view take John's timing as it reads: the supper came "before the feast of the Passover" (John 13:1-2), the leaders had not yet eaten the Passover when Jesus was tried (John 18:28), and Jesus died on "the Preparation Day of the Passover" (John 19:14), the day the lambs were killed (12:6). They read Mark and Luke as calling Jesus' last meal with his disciples a Passover because it was eaten in the Passover season and in its setting (Luke 22:1).
John 13:1-2 · John 18:28 · John 19:14 · Exodus 12:6 · Luke 22:1
The verses
“It was now two days before the Passover and the Feast of Unleavened Bread, and the chief priests and the scribes sought how they might seize him by deception and kill him.”
“He said to them, “I have earnestly desired to eat this Passover with you before I suffer,”
“They led Jesus therefore from Caiaphas into the Praetorium. It was early, and they themselves didn’t enter into the Praetorium, that they might not be defiled, but might eat the Passover.”
“Now it was the Preparation Day of the Passover, at about the sixth hour. He said to the Jews, “Behold, your King!””