App
(Bible Study #3)
Fred R. Coulter | April 12, 2009
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After seeing a Messianic Jew explain about the Passover, that the 14th Passover was a supper, and they didn't use unleavened bread on the 14th because the Passover is on the 15th. That's the basic heart and core of the question. Subsequent to that, Jesus dipped a sop and gave it to Judas: How can you have a sop with unleavened bread? Jesus also gave Judas a morsel, too.
The book of Mark will help clarify everything, and we have all of that answered in The Christian Passover book.
First of all I'll review the 14th/15th problem of the Jews. The Jews consider themselves superior to anybody else, and all of the rest of us are 'goyeem' and Gentiles, unworthy, except to be taught by them, even Messianic Jews.
I've only met one Jew who does not follow any traditions. So, the burden for the Jews is to repent of the traditions of the fathers, like the Catholics and Protestants need to, but more particularly the Jews.
Note Rom, 2; Paul in excoriating the Jews, said, 'You who boast in the Law, do you transgress the Law? You say do not steal, do you steal? You say you do not commit adultery, do you committed adultery? You say do not commit idolatry, do you commit sacrilege?'
And if that's the case, 'your circumcision has become uncircumcision'! Which is saying that the Jews who do not accept Christ and the Truth of the Bible, are no better than the goyeem that they condemn. It needs to be said in those terms because that's the Truth of the matter, and that is not anti-Semitism. We have a plague in the world that no one can say anything against the Jews, but the Jews can destroy anybody in any press, movie or book that they desire to do, and no one can raise a word about them, especially concerning Biblical things.
Review about the 14th/15th Passover:
The original command was on the 14th, and that's explain very thoroughly in the Passover book. I have a chapter on No Passover for the Exiled. The Jews claim to be the chosen people, but they are, in fact, the rejected people. Even the Messianic Jews have not come fully around to the Truth.
In Num. 9 they had a problem with someone who is contaminated by a dead body and couldn't keep the Passover on the 14th day of the 1st month. So, the judgment was made by God to Moses that they can keep it on the 14th day of the 2nd month.
But God also added a little clause to it. That if a man is defiled by a dead body, or in a journey afar off, then he can keep the Passover on the 14th day of the 2nd month, provided that he comes back in the land, because the Passover on the 14th was to be kept in the land.
So the Jews, when they were exiled and one commentary says they 'were the only ones honest enough to say that they no longer do anything on the 14th, because we're following in the sinful footsteps of our forefathers, and we are sinners like them. That's why we are in the Diaspora and, therefore, we celebrate nothing on the 14th because were not in the land.'
What they did was say: Passover was on the 15th, which was the first day the Feast of Unleavened Bread, adding an eighth day to the 22nd at the end of that. So, the Passover was never on the 14th according to the commands of God. However we see traces in the New Testament were some of the Jews did keep a 15th Passover, using a temple-sacrificed Lamb, but never was it to be sacrificed at the temple; it was to be a domestic home operation entirely. When Jesus kept the Passover, He kept it in a house. He kept it the day before some of the Jews kept it as evidenced by John 19.
Mark 14:1: "Now, after two days was the Passover and the Feast of Unleavened Bread, and the chief priests and the scribes were seeking how they might stealthily lay hold of Him and kill Him. But they said, 'Not during the Feast…'" (vs 1-2). Then it talks about the anointing of Jesus and so forth.
We have a footnote on the follow phrase Matthew 26:17: "Now, on the first of the unleaveneds…" We have a footnote on this, on page 990 The Holy Bible in Its Original Order, A Faithful Version.
Mark 14:12: "And on the first day of the unleaveneds…" That's an awkward phrase. But that is a literal translation of the Greek. This also tells us something very important concerning the Passover and bread.
"…when they were killing the Passover lambs…" (v 12). That's a literal exact translation from the Greek. The disciples were seeing them killing the Lamb's. They were coming into Jerusalem, still on the outskirts of Bethany, and Jesus had not yet told them where they were going to keep the Passover. Here it's going to come up right away. They were seeing the lambs killed.
Since they were not in Jerusalem, yet, but in the outskirts of Jerusalem in the festival area where they could kill the lambs at the homes, what were they seeing? Were they at the temple seeing lambs killed at the temple? No, they were a long way from that! But they were seeing those at the domestic homes, killing the Lambs for the domestic observance of the Passover. This is present tense passive: they were killingthe Lambs.
"…His disciples said to Him, 'Where do You desire that we go and prepare, so that You may eat the Passover?'" (v 12).
What did they eat? Contrary to opinion it was not a separate supper before, nor was it a lesson before on the 14th, and Passover being on the 15th. Since Jesus never sinned and always obeyed God, what do we have? This had to be at the very beginning of the 14th day, because they were not to kill the Lambs until the sun had set at the beginning of 'ben ha arbayim.' That's why the Passover book goes into great detail concerning when 'ben ha arbayim' is.
Verse 13: "And He sent two of His disciples and said to them, 'Go into the city, and you shall meet a man carrying a pitcher of water; follow him. And whatever house he shall enter, say to the master of the house that the Teacher says, "Where is the guest chamber, where I may eat the Passover with My disciples?"'" (vs 13-14).
I've got a whole chapter analyzing how many lambs could of been killed in three courses at the temple, maximum, given all the priests and Levites: 18,000, and they never finished off all three courses, which tells you the majority of the people were not using temple-sacrificed lambs. They were using domestic-sacrificed lambs within the Festival area of Jerusalem. That's what they were seeing. It was the Passover, and it had to be on the 14th.
So, they went, v 15: "…and they prepared the Passover. Now after evening had come, He came with the twelve. And as they sat and were eating, Jesus said…" (vs 15-18).
Speculation: I think it's true that based on how God operates, when Jesus said that He was the servant of all, and the least of all though He was the greatest. Taking that principle, I believe that the lamb that was used for this Passover dinner with His apostles… Remember that the 12 apostles were the only ones who kept the New Covenant Passover; none of the other disciples did.
And that was one of the first things they had to write about, to teach all the rest of the apostles what to do by the time the next Passover came around. What do we do?
Now, I believe that the lamb that they ate had to be an eight-day-old lamb. Because that's the first day on which a lamb could be sacrificed for any kind of sacrificial thing. Do you know how long it would take to cook an eight-day-old lamb not refrigerated?
A man said that if he were left alone to do a full grown sheep—and he was a professional butcher and he killed the sheep—he could do one every 11 minutes.
Those who were killing them were skilled. We did a test of it, and it was actually 20 minutes to do two kid lambs. So, if you have a lamb of eight-days-old, it could be cooked within 45 minutes which is from sundown into almost dark. That's when Jesus came, and it was probably all ready, and He ate the Passover.
Unleavened Bread:
Let's read the footnote, because this will help answer the question: Was it unleavened bread that they ate at the Passover? or leavened bread? It had to be unleavened bread, because it was called the first of the unleaveneds. Here's why:
Footnote, page 990—The Holy Bible in Its Original Order, A Faithful Version:
This phrase has caused some confusion. It is certain that this phrase does not refer to the first day the Feast of Unleavened Bread, because the Feast of Unleavened Bread begins after, not before, the Passover. As recorded in the Gospels, "the first of the unleaveneds" was the day that the lambs were killed. Those who obey God's ordinances in Exodus 12 and kept the domestic Passover killed there lambs at the beginning of the 14th of Nissan. Those who follow the traditions of Judaism killed the lambs at the temple on the afternoon of the 14th. The Gospel writers were clearly referring to the 14th day and not the 15th, as "the first of the unleaveneds." In New Testament times, this term was commonly used for the 14th day of the first month.
In the first century was commonly known that "the day of the unleaveneds" in Luke 22 7 was the 14th Passover day. G Amadon, in his article entitled The Crucifixion Calendar, pointed out the error of the translators who translated this verse to read "the first day of the festival"… [of Unleavened Bread] (the following words are cited from this article): …"But on what authority should the Hebrew translators, as Salkinson and Delitzeh, introduce the word 'chag' (a Hebrew word for "feast"). into the text when the corresponding Greek has no word for "feast" and it speaks only of the "first of the unleavened bread"—a common expression for the Jewish 14th with practically all first century writers (Journal of Biblical Literature, vol. LXIII 1944, pp. 188-189, emphasis added).
Yes, it was unleavened bread, though it was called the sop. When we hear the word sop we are thinking of leavened bread, like dipping it into soup. However someone gave me some unleavened bread here today, which I could use as a sop. I could scoop up some food in that and give it to someone, and that would be a sop of unleavened bread.
Jesus was sinless. During the Feast of Unleavened Bread, leaven pictures sin. But also leaven pictures sin on the Passover Day, too, because they were to be unleavened on the Passover Day as well, and that's why Josephus wrote that we keep a Feast of Unleavened Bread for eight days. Of course, when they were leaving Egypt on the way to Rameses it had to be unleavened bread.
Now this also points out something for the Jews. Did Jesus teach them about the 14th Passover? Yes!
Matthew 28:18: "And Jesus came and spoke to them, saying, 'All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to Me. Therefore, go and make disciples in all nations, baptizing them into the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit; teaching them… [all the world, all the Gentiles that God would call] …to observe all things that I have commanded you…." (vs 18-20).
- What did Jesus command on the Passover night? This is My body broken for you, take eat.'
- On what night? The 14th!
When the Jews, even though they become Messianic Jews, do not give up the tradition of the Jews, but still keep the 15th, but Jesus commanded the 14th, by this broad command of "…teaching them to observe all things that I have commanded you…." It had to be unleavened; it had to be on the 14th.
So, those who know the Truth, who repent, are baptized and receive the Spirit of God are commanded to keep the Passover on the 14th in the night that Jesus was betrayed, and it had to be unleavened bread. Now that's a short review of it, but it's all in the Passover book. I know how the Messianic Jews do, and we will touch a little on sacred names here in just a bit.
Someone said that Jesus could not see the Passover lambs being killed.
- There is no correlation between the Passover lambs being killed at the temple while Jesus was dying.
I cover that in Passover book. God would not have fulfilled His Word according to a single solitary Jewish tradition.
- timing—and it's in the book—of Jesus' death is out of Gen.15, and not Exo. 12 or a Jewish tradition
- Passover did not begin with the Israelites, it began with Abraham
Good comment was made concerning the Greek word for bread 'artos' is a good example of how you reason with the Scriptures and not around them. To where during the Feast of Unleavened Bread in the middle of the Feast when Jesus appeared to the two disciples and walked with them to Emmaus and went into the little inn or café or whatever they had in those days. They sat down to eat, and he broke the bread—'artos' during the Feast of Unleavened Bread—that had to be unleavened bread.
So, 'artos' can refer to unleavened bread during the Feast of Unleavened Bread or the Passover. The Passover was you were to eat it with unleavened bread. That's the proper way to approach it.
Now let's come back to Lev. 23 concerning the translation for the English out of the Hebrew. I went over this very meticulously with Michael Heiss, and he said this is the proper translation. It also reveals something else that's important that we have referenced in the column in the Faithful Version Bible.
Leviticus 23:9: "And the LORD spoke to Moses, saying, 'Speak to the children of Israel and say to them, "When you have come into the land which I give to you, and shall reap the harvest of it, then you shall bring the premier sheaf of the firstfruits of your harvest to the priest"'" (vs 9-10).
The premier sheaf was a symbolic offering of the First of the firstfruits Jesus Christ; He fulfilled it. Notice when it was to be waved:
Verse 11: "And he shall wave the sheaf before the LORD to be accepted for you…"—because He was a sin offering for us, our Savior Who was resurrected from the dead.
"…On the next day after the Sabbath the priest shall wave it" (v 11).
In Hebrew the Sabbath 'ha Shabbat' refers to the weekly Sabbath. 'Shabbat'—meaning Sabbath—refers to the Holy Days (John 19). They didn't want to leave the bodies on the cross that Sabbath, for that Sabbath was a High Day. It didn't say the Sabbath; it was that particular Sabbath. Now, the reason that has to be the Sabbath is because the Holy Days are called 'Shabbat' without the definite article, 'ha Shabbat.'
Verse 24: "Speak to the children of Israel saying, 'In the seventh month, in the first day of the month, you shall have a Sabbath… [because it's a Holy Day] …a memorial of blowing of ram's horns, a Holy convocation.'"
Verse 32—Day of Atonement: "It shall be to you a Sabbath of rest…"
Verse 39: Also, in the fifteenth day of the seventh month when you have gathered in the fruit of the land, you shall keep a Feast to the LORD seven days. On the first day shall be a Sabbath, and on the eighth day shall be a Sabbath."
This tells us when to begin to count on the day after the regular Sabbath. That pictured Christ, Who was accepted of God the Father and ascended to heaven after He was resurrected from the dead.
Jesus died at 3 p.m., the 9th hour! He was to be raised back to life in three days. When was He put into the tomb? Right at sunset, a three hour difference! He was to be in the heart of the earth three days and three nights. So, He had two three-day periods to fulfill.
- being dead for three days, then raised back to life; He was still in the tomb
- being in the tomb for three days and three nights; He didn't need to have the stone rolled away to come out of the tomb; He could go right through it
Just like He appeared to the disciples later after He had ascended to the Father. Of course, that was a tremendous thing that took place when Jesus ascended to the Father. This was a tremendous day!
People ask: Why don't you celebrate this day? Because this day was between God the Father and Jesus Christ alone! None of the disciples saw it, the women didn't see it and the soldiers didn't see it. When Jesus was resurrected from the dead He remained in the tomb for three hours to fulfill the fact that He would be in there three days and three nights, and then He walked right out through the sealed tomb.
The soldiers never saw him. Because when the women came, the soldiers didn't say, 'We were here guarding Him and we saw Him walk right out of the tomb, right through the stone and we were astonished! What are you coming here for?' No, that didn't happen!
Then where did He go that night? He probably went to the Garden of Gethsemane where He prayed all night thanking God, praising Him and so forth! He didn't ascend to heaven until it was time, as pictured by the Wave Sheaf Offering, which was about nine o'clock in the morning.
When the women came to the tomb He wasn't there. Then when after all the women but Mary Magdalene had left, He appeared to Mary. What did He say? 'Don't be touching Me because I haven't ascended to My Father! But go to the disciples and tell them that I ascend to My Father and your Father and My God and your God.'
What He said here shows the personal relationship that we are going to be in as true Christians with God's Spirit. That is the whole key for us to understand. In our lives it's our relationship with God. Doctrine is important to tell us what we need to do and what is right. But our relationship with God is the key important thing through prayer and study, and that you are developing that every single day.
Counting to Pentecost:
This day has great meaning; the same way with counting to Pentecost. You show me anywhere on any calendar, how you can have the day after the 7th Sabbath come out to be a Monday! Never happened! That could have all been avoided clear back as far as 1954.
There three things that Dr. Hoeh did to the Church, and that was one of them. I found out that could have been avoided, because Raymond Cole was sent up to Eugene where they had the big question about counting Pentecost in 1954, and he waited for word from Pasadena as to which day it would be, Sunday or Monday. Herman Hoeh said, 'Well Herbert Armstrong is God's apostle, therefore, he must have been inspired; so it's got to be on Monday. So, I've got a figure out a way to show from the Bible that it is Monday.' He did a little finagling and twisting and turning of Scripture.
Then when he finally came to understand what was right, Herbert Armstrong had the audacity to say—instead of really repenting and saying, 'Look, brethren, we've had it wrong all these years'—'For forty years God bound Pentecost on Monday.' Nonsense! God never bound anything contrary to His Word! Never happen! If that were true, then the pope is true. That could have been solved way back then.
But this day is a special day between God the Father and Jesus Christ. Rev. 4 and 5 give a pretty good close view of what the scene was when Jesus ascended up to God the Father and the Sea of Glass and all that.
A little bit about sacred names:
Is there meaning to sacred names? Yes, there are! Like there are meanings for every word. And the sacred names tell us about various characteristics of God, various functions of God, such as He is our Healer, etc.
Of those who wrote the New Testament, do you suppose that they knew the sacred names? Of course, they did; have to. Matthew was a Levite; he could have put them in.
Don't believe for a minute that the New Testament was written in Hebrew or Aramaic first, because that was not true. Parts of Matthew may have been to instruct the Jewish people who were converted on how to keep the Passover. But it was written and preserved in Greek. Whenever they came to the name Lord, they could have put in YHVH, but they didn't.
We find that that as Jesus explained Psa. 110:1, that it is written in the Greek. The Lord—'Kurios'—said to my Lord—'Kurios'—not YHVH YHVH. Wherever there is God in the New Testament it is 'Theos.' In the Old Testament in the Hebrew it's 'Elohim.'
When we come to Acts 2, what do we have? They are speaking in tongues, in languages. Let's notice why they were amazed. How would they know about this in their own language?
Acts 2:5—there were "…devout men from every nation under heaven. And when word of this went out, the multitude came together and were confounded, because each one heard them speaking in his own language. And they were all amazed, and marveled, saying to one another, 'Behold, are not all these who are speaking Galileans? Then how is it that we hear each one in our own language in which we were born?'" (vs 5-8).
Verse 11: "Cretes and Arabians; we hear them speaking in our own languages the great things of God." How was this recorded?
- the Lord—'Kurios'
- Jesus—'Iesous'
- Christ—'Christos'
- God—'Theos
Is all Scripture God-breathed? Yes! That means each and every Scripture is God-breathed (2-Tim. 3:16). If God wanted or needed the sacred names in there, He would have inspired them to be put in there!
Now if you're a Jew and you speak Hebrew—and Jewish is different than Hebrew—and you have a Hebrew translation of the Greek New Testament and you read that, that's fine if you are a Jew. Those are the names associated with the Jewish language. The names associated with the Greek language are the ones that I just covered, and ones that are associated with the English language are
- Lord
- God the Father
- Jesus Christ
Are Abraham, Isaac and Jacob going to be in the Kingdom of God? Yes! God revealed Himself to them as El Shaddai or God Almighty. And He told Moses that 'they didn't know Me by YHVH. My real name is I AM That I AM.' But to the Israelites, being the covenant God He appeared and called Himself YHVH.
From: The Five Books of Moses: A Translation with Commentary by Robert Alter
referring to Yahweh (YHVH):
…in any case Yahweh would have given the English version a certain academic archaeological coloration that I preferred to avoid and would've also introduced a certain discomfort at least for some Jewish readers of the translation. I rejected the option of using (YHWH) because it cannot be pronounced anywhere the dimension of the sound seem to me vital to the translation.
So even if you have it and you attempt to pronounce it, how do you know it is right? Salvation does not depend upon the pronunciation of a word, it depends upon faith and belief in Jesus Christ!
I have therefore followed the president of the King James version in representing YHVH as the Lord, with small upper cases to indicate that like Adoni it is an anomaly or a substitution for another name. The other most common designation of deity is Elohim, a word that is a plural in form perhaps—so this is far from certain—a plural of Majesty. But it is generally treated grammatically as a singular God as is the natural English equivalent.
But in some contexts where the generic character of the name seems prominent, I have rendered it with lower cases as God, when the name is treated as a plural. Especially when the narrative context involves polytheism, I've translated it as gods. Three other names for the deity, all borrowed from the Canaan Canaanite pantheon, occur in these books: El, Elyon and El Shaddai.
I think it was the other way around; they borrowed it from God!
…especially in poetry and in narrative moments in high solemnity the writers appear to play on the archaic residence of these names. So, for the most part I have given them their Hebrew form, in particular the context in which they typically appear, a touch of linguistic archaeology seem to me entirely appropriate.
Admittedly any of the choices I have described may be debated, but in all of them my aim has been to name the deity in English in ways that would be keeping with the overall consort of literary affects that translation strive to create.
So therefore, he says that since we don't know the true pronunciation, and if it's keyed to the true pronunciation of those words and our salvation depends upon that, then you are actually nullifying and rejecting the sacrifice of Jesus Christ because you are depending upon the pronunciation of a Hebrew word.
Now there's a book out, called The Names of God by Andrew Jukes. I don't know if it still in print, but that's a very good one. A lady back here has as a book about the sacred names, there are 52 of them and you can learn a lot from that.
I want you to see a pattern of the things that we have discussed today. We have a pattern of things that take away from true belief and faith in God, by going to something supposed, or something physical. Physical meaning in relation to a word that is transliterated rather than translated.
I've talked to people who have read sacred name Bibles, and everything is in Hebrew pronunciation. I remember listening to a man who read the English New Testament with all the Hebrew pronunciations of Jesus, and all the names of the cities and disciples and everything like that, and you don't know what he is talking about.
Now to a Jew that's fine; so be it! What are you going to do to a German? What you going to do to whatever other language that you want? Since it was not inspired in the New Testament to bring over the Hebrew names, they're not required. Can we learn from them? Yes! Various aspects of God and so forth.
If you want to use them yourself, that would be fine, if that is true. But ask yourself, can you pronounce them correctly? That would be personal preference! But remember to never make personal preferences a requirement for other people!
When Jesus said to pray, He said, 'Our Father…' We're told we can call Him our Father, and the only place that there is a transliterated name is 'Abba,' which is Hebrew for Father. There is in one place. The long and the short of it is, the sacred names in the New Testament are,
- our Father
- Iesous Christos—Jesus Christ
- our Lord—'Kurios'.
Those are the sacred names!
- knowledge 'puffs up'
- 'a little leaven leavens the whole lump
- wrong knowledge is self-exalting
but love edifies!
All Scriptures from The Holy Bible in Its Original Order, A Faithful Version (except where noted)
Scriptural References:
- Mark 14:1-2
- Matthew 26:17
- Mark 14:12-18
- Matthew 28:18-20
- Leviticus 23:9-11, 24, 32, 39
- Acts 2:5-8, 11
Scriptures referenced, not quoted:
- Romans 2
- Numbers 9
- Genesis 15
- Exodus 12
- John 19
- Revelation 4; 5
- 2 Timothy 3:16
Also referenced: Books:
- The Christian Passover by Fred R. Coulter
- The Five Books of Moses: A Translation with Commentary by Robert Alter
- The Names of God by Andrew Jukes
FRC: po/bo
Transcribed: 11/6/17
