The Last Supper a Seder Meal

Professor James Tabor questions whether the Last Supper was in fact a Seder and on many of the issues that he raises, he is correct. However, on some matters he is clearly not correct. First, he asserts that there was no Seder per se until after the 2nd Century C.E. Actually, the meal associated with Pesach dates back before the Hebrews adopted the customs of the first pilgrim feast from the pagan shepherds in Canaan. As Seder means order, the order of the meal may have changed and is open to change today.

Second, Professor Tabor accurately points out that the alleged meal that takes place in the Synoptics cannot have been as stated because of the difficulties in the dating. If in fact as the Synoptics say, the Seder occurred on a Thursday evening; that would have made Pesach occur on the Friday. No High Priest or observant Jew would have held a trial on Pesach. A trial is clearly work and to do work on the High Sabbath of Pesach would have been a grave sin. This particular Pesach would have had a double Sabbath as the next day, the first day of Unleavened Bread, would have been the regular Sabbath of the week. Again, no trial would be allowed on that day. How do we resolve the problem? John’s Gospel has the Seder occurring on a Wednesday. Matthew clearly says that Yeshua was a Nasorean in Matthew 2:23. Therefore, it follows that he and his disciples would have followed the Essene Calendar. On that particular year, the Essene Pesach was a day earlier than the Farsi and Zaddoki Pesach. Thus, Yeshua would have had his Seder on Wednesday evening and been tried on Thursday, which was the day of preparation for the Farsi and Zaddoki. As a result, the trial could have been held on Wednesday night and Yeshua would have been executed on Thursday.

On the other hand Joachim Jeremias in his book The Eucharistic Words of Jesus lists at least 14 distinct parallels between the Last Supper Tradition and the Seder Meal. In his Biblical Archaeology Review article, Professor Tabor says:

“The Jewish holiday of Passover commemorates the Exodus from Egypt. The roots of the festival are found in Exodus 12, in which God instructs the Israelites to sacrifice a lamb at twilight on the 14th day of the Jewish month of Nisan, before the sun sets (Exodus 12:18). That night the Israelites are to eat the lamb with unleavened bread and bitter herbs. The lamb’s blood should be swabbed on their doorposts as a sign. God, seeing the sign, will then “pass over” the houses of the Israelites (Exodus 12:13), while smiting the Egyptians with the tenth plague, the killing of the first-born sons.
Exodus 12 commands the Israelites to repeat this practice every year, performing the sacrifice during the day and then consuming it after the sun has set. (According to Jewish tradition, the new day begins with the setting of the sun, so the sacrifice is made on the 14th but the beginning of Passover and the meal are actually on the 15th, although this sequence of dates is not specified in Exodus.) Exodus 12 further speaks of a seven-day festival, which begins when the sacrifice is consumed (Exodus 12:15).
Once the Israelites were settled in Israel, and once a Temple was built in Jerusalem, the original sacrifice described in Exodus 12 changed dramatically. Passover became one of the Jewish Pilgrimage festivals, and Israelites were expected to travel to Jerusalem to sacrifice a Passover lamb at the Temple during the afternoon of the 14th day, and then consume the Passover sacrifice once the sun had set, and the festival had formally begun on the 15th. This kind of celebration is described as having taken place during the reigns of Kings Hezekiah and Josiah (2 Chronicles 30 and 35).”
Whether the Seder of Yeshua was the same as the modern Seder is not the point. The point is that Yeshua used the Seder Meal in a ritualistic way to change the nature of the sacrifice. Using a Paschal Lamb in his Seder, he reinterprets the bread and wine as sacrifices and declares thereby that the discussion, even debate, within the Nasorean-Essene Community over the sacrifice of animals is now resolved. The Bread and Wine of the Seder replaces the bloody sacrifice and we are returned by the shedding of Yeshua’s blood on the cross to an earlier time, the time of Melchizedek, in which an universal sacrifice was made available to all the world. Yeshua acted as Melchizedek Returned and changed the sacrifice of Moses back to His earlier sacrifice and thus acting as High Priest he not only consecrated the sacrifice at the Seder Meal but paid the price of the change by offering his own body as the Sacrifice necessary to change the covenant of G-d and eliminate the Bloody Sacrifice. All of this Yeshua did in accordance with the Torah and those who do not celebrate the sacrifice in this way both at the Seder and at the weekly remembrance of the Seder on Friday night remain in their sins and will therefore suffer in the future for their sins.
While the sacrifice is now available to everyone, not everyone will participate equally in the grace of being chosen. As Scripture says, first to the Jews and then to the Gentiles goes the blessing of G-d. Persons who join themselves to the spiritual Israel and begin to keep the Torah and the Sacrifice can claim to be grafted onto the Tree of Life, but contrary to those who would say that Israel has lost its claim, the Nasoreans, who have not changed in 2100 years still are the Tree of Life and those who join with us will be saved; as Paul says from the opinion of the early community, all Israel will be saved.
As a result of this great truth, we can say at the end of the Seder “Next Year in Jerusalem”, for each of us can claim the blessings of the Tree of Life by beginning to keep the Torah and to seek out the Sacrifice that is celebrated by the Tzaddik Baruch and those he ordains to the Priesthood as Melchizedek High Priest of G-d. Then that person can say they have been grafted on to the Tree of Life and will receive on the blessings of G-d.