by Ian Paul, Psephizo
I am reposting again this year the article I post most years in Easter, on the question of whether the gospel accounts contradict each other in their schedule of the first Holy Week. I think it is worth meditating on each year…
Have you ever sat and read through the gospel accounts of Passion Week, and tried to work out chronologically what is happening? And have you done that with the four gospels? (It is easiest to do that latter using a synopsis, either in print or using this one online.) Why not do it as part of your Holy Week devotions this year? If you do, you might notice several things.
- Though there are variations in wording and in some details, there is a striking agreement between all four gospels in the order of the main events during the week.
- The events at the beginning of the week around Palm Sunday, and at the end of the week around the crucifixion seem very busy, yet the middle seems very quiet—the issue of the ‘silent Wednesday’.
- The main issue on which the gospel accounts disagree on the order of events is in relation to the denials of Peter by Jesus, which come earlier in Luke’s gospel, and are spread out in John’s gospel.
- Jesus’ trial is more detailed, with more people involved in different phases in John than in the Matthew and Mark, the latter two treating it in quite a compressed way as more or less a single event.
- The synoptics claim explicitly that the last supper was some form of Passover meal (which must happen after the lambs are sacrificed), whilst John makes no mention of this, and appears to have Jesus crucified at the moment that the Passover lambs are sacrificed.
These anomalies have made the question of the Passion Week chronology ‘the most intractable problem in the New Testament’, and it causes many readers to wonder whether the accounts are reliable at all. For some, they are happy to inhabit the narratives in each gospel as they are, and not worry about reconciling each account with the others, or any of the accounts with what might have actually happened.