^F1The Upper Room of the Last Supper was a second story room wherein Jesus and his disciples dined together the evening of his arrest on the 14th of Nisan (Luke 22:8�10 and Mark 14:13). The disciples also stayed in an upper room while they remained in Jerusalem for Pentecost (Acts 1:13). There is no hint in the accounts by Luke and Mark that the Upper Room of the Last Supper was also place where they lodged. When Jesus and his disciples visited Jerusalem during his public ministry they stayed outside the city usually on the Mount of Olives. John's gospel records that Jesus' residence for this festival was Bethany (John 12:1). Some time after the Resurrection the Twelve were found in the city staying in an upper room in Jerusalem. To reach this facility, probably the house of Mary, the mother of John Mark, they had to enter the city and go up implying they put up in the Upper City (Acts 1:13).

^F2la�Alh'q" (qehal'el), the Hebrew formal name of the early Christian community translatable into English as Church of God, the contracted form of syhiOla� h�q� (qehal 'eloh�m), was the self-designation of Judeo-Christians for their early community. They saw themselves as the new Israel of God. The Greek equivalent of la�Alh'q" (qehal'el) is ejkklhsiva/ tou' Qeou' (�kkles�a tou Theou)�Church of God. Matthew quotes Jesus at Matthew 16:18 and at 18:17 in reference to the la�Alh'q" (qehal'el). Jesus presumably used hL�hiq" (qehila) to refer to the church�assembly, congregation, company, community�he planned to bring into being as the new assembly of Israel with its new covenant relationship with God.

^F3Nisan was the Babylonian name for the first month. Abib was the Hebrew word for the first month in Moses' day. The word abib refers to a stage in grain during the ripening process between green and ripe. The Hebrew sacred year began with he month of Abib during which the early barley harvest began the ripening process, the stage called abib, such that during the Days of Unleavened Bread the wave sheaf offering of the fresh barley could be made as the first of the firstfruits. With this offering the barley harvest could commence.

^F4Exodus 12:40 records that God informed the people of Israel that the month of their first Passover and Exodus from Egypt, the month of Abib, would be the beginning of months for them. In Jewish tradition the early Hebrew Calendar, with its 19-year lunar-solar pattern, came into being at the time of Adam and Eve. God provided, according to this tradition, more details about calendar calculations to the Levitical priests with the inception of the Sinaitic covenant. Exodus 12:40 states that at the end of 430 years "to the very day" (NASB) the people of Israel went out from Egypt. Kenneth Herrmann, in Calendar Eclipse Interrelationships, holds that these ancient Israelites could not have left Egypt "430 years (from the date of the covenant with Abraham when he was 99) even to the selfsame day, unless a very careful count of days as well as years had been kept" (Herrmann 1969:15-16). Does the Rabbinic Calculated Calendar (also known as the Hillel II Calendar) demonstrate this? In biblical chronology, according to Jack Finegan in the Handbook of Biblical Chronology (Finegan1998:202-206), the first Passover, "a night to be much observed" (Exodus 12:42), likely occurred in 1446 BCE (the early Exodus view) or 1250 BCE (the late Exodus view). The Passover, according to the Rabbinic Calculated Calendar, occurred on April 22 (Wednesday) in 1446 and, precisely 430 years earlier, on April 6 (Wednesday) in 1873 BCE. In 1680 BCE the Passover was on April 29 (Friday) in 1250 BCE on April 17 (Friday). The Friday to Friday exactness could be coincidental but it may attest to the veracity of the Rabbinic Calculated Calendar.

^F5Following the injunction of Leviticus 23:11, 23:15 the priests insisted on a literal discharge of the scriptural directive and offered the wave-sheaf offering, consisting of an omer of freshly cut barley, in a special Temple service the day after the first weekly Sabbath during the Days of Unleavened Bread. Prior to the CE 70 destruction of the Second Temple the priests and the Sadducees regularly fixed the date of Shavuoth, Pentecost, by counting from this weekly Sabbath rather than from the first High Sabbath (Nisan 16). According to the Mishna the priests of the Boethus family, who were Sadducees, always counted from the weekly Sabbath and not from the first High Sabbath. The Mishna reads: "Because of the Bo�thusians who used to say: 'The Omer may not be reaped at the close of a Festival-day'" (Mishna at Menanoth 10.3; Danby 1980:506). William Dankenbring, a theological journalist, holds that the Jewish people counted from Nisan 16, "like the Jews have always done and as the apostle Paul must have done, since he learned God's law as a Pharisee and was 'blameless in the law' (Philippians 3:5; Acts 22:3)" (Dankenbring 2001:2). There is no evidence that the Jewish people ever observed a Pentecost based on counting from Nisan 16 until well after the collapse of the priesthood in CE 70. Even leading Jewish Torah scholars do not argue that extreme view. Dankenbring's argument is transparent fiction.

^F6Jesus observation of the festivals, Sabbaths, and annual Sabbaths are set out in the gospels and there is no serious scholarly challenge to those details. As to the apostles, consider the behavior of the apostle Paul. He departed from Corinth in the spring of CE 52 for Syria. He sailed from Cenchrea taking Priscilla and Aquila with him. In Cenchrea Paul had his hair cut for he was fulfilling a vow (Acts 18:18). Briefly stopping at Ephesus he visited the synagogue and reasoned with the Jews (Acts 18:19) but apparently only to determine the desirability of a future visit. He refused an invitation to stay longer stating "I absolutely must by all means keep this feast [of Tabernacles] that cometh in Jerusalem but I will return to you again if God wills" and he sailed to Caesarea (Acts 18:21, Western and Byzantine texts, see Longenecker 1981:488). If his vow was of the nature of a Nazarite vow (Numbers 6), apparently the case, he needed to go to Jerusalem to complete the vow for he could not partake of the symbolic wine at the annual observance of the Christian Passover as those fulfilling a Nazarite vow couldn�t drink wine (Numbers 6:1-21). Paul left Priscilla and Aquila in Ephesus and hastened on to Caesarea where on arrival he greeted the local church and apparently quietly "went up" (Acts 18:22) to Jerusalem for the Feast of Tabernacles. Paul privately completed his vow during the Feast of Tabernacles and then went on to Antioch of Syria (Acts 18:22) where he wintered CE 52-53. In Antioch of Syria, more or less his home base, he spent some time. Notice there is no indication of challenge to the calendar.

^F7Under the rules of the Rabbinic Calculated Calendar (also known as the Hillel II Calendar), Passover regulates all the other festival times. Passover Sabbath, Nisan 15, begins at twilight at the end of the 14th day of the first month (Leviticus 23:5). Passover Sabbath (the first High Day of the Feast of Unleavened Bread) always occurs with a full moon rising in the east, the 15th day after the new moon. It cannot occur before the vernal equinox. By Rabbinical rules Passover Sabbath, starting at the previous sunset, can never occur on a Monday, Wednesday, or Friday (so it can fall on a Sunday, Tuesday, Thursday, or Saturday). Preventing Passover Sabbath from falling on Monday, Wednesday, or Friday eliminates the possibility that Tishri 1 could occur on a Friday, Sunday, or Wednesday. This is because Tishri 1 is always 163 days after Nisan 15. Succoth, the Feast of Tabernacles, was also set to begin on a full moon, the fifteenth day of the seventh month, Tishri (Leviticus 23:34). Succoth had to occur in the fall after the gathering of crops (Deuteronomy 16:16).

^F8In scholarly literature the Babylonian Calculated Calendar is a standard utilized by many Protestant scholars in deciphering the biblical chronology of the New Testament. I would give more weight to the Rabbinic Calculated Calendar (Hillel II) than to the Babylonian Calculated Calendar in approximating the Julian date of Nisan 14 in the CE 27-34 period. They were closest in tradition and time to the Temple authority responsible for fixing the festival calendar. Moreover, most scholars addressing the year of the Crucifixion in print date the Crucifixion to CE 30 or 33. There are many reasons for this. Perhaps for Protestants, who usually opt for CE 30, the main reason is that the Babylonian Calculated Calendar (Parker and Dubberstein 1942, Finegan 1998:363), places Nisan 14 on Friday and on no other Friday in the period CE 27-34. A secondary reason is that a CE 30 Crucifixion is exactly 40 years from the Crucifixion to the destruction of Jerusalem. This is significant to some as they argue that a generation in biblical context was 40 years and that the sense of the events foretold by Jesus in Matthew 23:36 were to happen to "this generation" and that would require a CE 30 Crucifixion. The Rabbinic Calculated Calendar (the Hillel II calendar) has Nisan 14 on Friday in CE 33 which many Roman Catholic writers hold is the year of the Crucifixion.

^F9One of the means of determining whether or not the priests used the calculated calendar in the year of the Crucifixion would be to find, by using computer simulation, when the Passover Sabbath would occur in CE 30 and 31 by the rules of observation. The task then would be to test this data against the gospel accounts. There are several software packages that provide this kind of simulation but none that I am comfortable with at this point.

^F10While not prominent in the New Testament, the sect of the Essenes made up a significant subdivision of early first-century Judaism. The Essenes were an extremist monastic group, holding to a rigid, austere, and bizarre form of religion with Gnostic overtones, awaiting the Messiah to appear to deliver them to a new Israel. The sect died out but there are people today who claim to be Essenes.

^F11In Jewish culture days began at sunset so that evening/night came before morning/daytime. Sunset marked the end of a day and the beginning of a new one. The new day came before it was dark. The context of Luke 22:8-10 and Mark 14:13, where Jesus discussed where he would eat the Passover, shows it was still daylight but Nisan 14, a new day, had come. The discussion apparently took place in the period between sunset and when the sun disappears below the horizon. When it was late (Greek: opsios), that is, later at nightfall, or dark, Jesus and the Twelve came (Mark 14:16-17).

^F12For a list of solutions two excellent starting places are Raymond Brown's The Death of the Messiah (Brown 1994) and Barry Smith's The Last Passover Meal (Smith 1993).

^F13Raymond Brown's concern is that "the end products are not simply historical and that harmonizing them can produce a distortion" (Brown 1994:23). For Brown a distortion certainly does occur when the results do not conform to a Friday Crucifixion--Sunday resurrection scenario. Any other result is untenable to many Christian scholars. Barry Smith says the "consensus seems to be forming that it is a lost labor of love to attempt to harmonize these accounts" (Smith 1993:189).

^F14When the Last Great Day began, on Friday night, Jesus spoke out at the Temple (John 7:37-38). Temple authorities met to discuss the situation without resolution so they went home for the night. Jesus went to the Mount of Olives to spend the night (John 8:1). Early Saturday morning he again went to the Temple (John 8:2) spoke. When his life became threatened he left the Temple (John 8:59). As he passed a blind man he took time to heal him. This disturbed Temple authorities as it was also the weekly Sabbath (John 7:14, 7:16). On the calculated calendar this double Sabbath could only have occurred in CE 27 or 30.

^F15My reference is not to people who live a somewhat straight-laced lifestyle. That can be a cultural phenomenon without any reference to Christianity. I am speaking of Christians of all sorts. Many Protestant fellowships remain quite legalistic while denying that fact. This tendency is inherent in Sabbatarian groups, whether it be Saturday or Sunday Sabbatarianism, and in those who emphasize God's Law (meaning the Ten Commandments) as a way of life. People who cling to such fellowships often cannot give a clear and rational explanation of legalism. I suggest, if you want more information about this subject, that you read my article The Sinaitic Covenant and the Law of Moses: Irrelevant? Or, Do They Still Matter?

^F16First-century Christians kept the Christian Passover, or new Passover, as an annual commemoration of the suffering and death of Jesus the Messiah (Luke 22:19�20). Linked to the Jewish Passover, and Nisan 14, it was an annual event and not more frequent. The specious argument that the new Passover, or the Lord�s Supper as it came to be known, is only to be kept once a year since it is a "memorial" is not biblically persuasive. The Sabbath as a memorial of creation was kept weekly not annually (Exodus 20:8�11).

^F17I Corinthians 11:20. In early Christianity the Last Supper was a Passover meal, but by the time of the Reformation, orthodox Greco-Roman Christianity, distancing itself from Jewish customs, had removed the paschal features of the ritual. and it became Lord's Supper.