I set out to answer one simple question: Does the Feast of Firstfruits fall on the day after the weekly Sabbath of Unleavened Bread or on the day following the first High Sabbath of Unleavened Bread. I thought the question could be easily answered by verifying the translation of the two Torah passages that define this feast, but I quickly discovered that the question isn't so simple. The original Hebrew is ambiguous, and prominent rabbis debated the question thousands of years ago. Convinced that the Spring Feasts are prophetic of the events surrounding Yeshua's Crucifixion and Resurrection, I hoped the Gospels would have the answer. Unfortunately, they are also ambiguous.
There are three major events of the Passion Week that need to be placed on the monthly and weekly calendars before a definitive answer can be had.
- The Triumphal Entry
- The Crucifixion
- The Resurrection
The traditional Roman Catholic chronology puts the Triumphal Entry on Sunday, the Crucifixion on Friday, and the Resurrection on the second Sunday. Most Protestants follow the Catholic tradition, however there is a minority opinion that the Crucifixion had to occur on Thursday in order to align with three other factors:
- Yeshua promised to rise after three days and three nights.
- The timing of the Feast of Firstfruits.
- The timing of the presentation of the Passover Lamb.
Triumphal Entry
Many non-Catholic Christians and Messianics say Yeshua's entry into Jerusalem had to happen on 10 Nisan to fulfill the command in Exodus 12:3-6 that the Passover lamb must be presented for inspection on that date. However, the rabbis teach that this command only applied to the first Passover in Egypt and was not to be followed afterwards. It seems to me out of character for God to tie a sacred ritual to a single date in history for two reasons. First, all of the other Moedim are prophetic and are repeated annually. Second, although it might only be my own desire to fit data into patterns, God seems to be a God of patterns. What has happened before, will happen again. What happened to the fathers, will happen to the sons. For this reason, I side with the Christian tradition of placing Yeshua's Triumphal Entry on 10 Nisan. At least in my own mind, that settles the day on the monthly calendar, but what about the day of the week? The Torah only says 10 Nisan, so it will be on a different day each year. With a few minor exceptions Christians place this day on Sunday in the year of Yeshua's Crucifixion without regard to the date, but I found nothing in the Gospels to indicate the day of the week, so this is based purely on tradition and not Scripture.
Matthew and John tend to be more precise in their chronology than Mark and Luke, or at least they are more precise in their wording. John states that "Six days before the Passover, Jesus came to Bethany" (John 12:1). All of the Gospels and the Acts use the term "Passover" to refer not to the Passover of Torah (14 Nisan), but to the first day of Unleavened Bread (Nisan 15). According to a strict Greek calculation then, six days before the Passover would be 9 Nisan. If the fuzzy-count theory of Jewish days is used (see Resurrection section below), then this could be 10 Nisan, but certainly no earlier than 9 Nisan.
My sister Regina published a charming little book recently, but don't let the words "charming" and "little" fool you. In it she addresses some profound and difficult questions such as,