Go and prepare us the Passover, that we may eat. The three synoptists unite in describing this solemn meal, for which Peter and John were sent to prepare, as the ordinary Paschal Supper. But, on comparing the record of the same Supper given by St.
John, we are irresistibly led to a different conclusion; for we read that on the following day those who led Jesus into the Praetorium went not in themselves, "lest they should be defiled; but that they might eat the Passover" (John 18:28); and again it is said of the same day, that "it was the preparation of the Passover" (John 19:14).
So the time of the Supper is described by St. John (John 13:1) as "before the Feast of the Passover." It appears that our Lord was crucified on the 14th of Nisan, on the very day of the sacrifice of the Paschal Lamb, a few hours before the time of the Paschal Supper, and that his own Last Supper was eaten the night before, that is, twenty-four hours before the general time of eating the Passover Supper.
The most venerable of the Fathers preserved this as a sacred tradition. So Justin Martyr: "On the day of the Passover ye took him, and om the day of the Passover ye crucified him" ('Dial. cum Trypho,' ch.
3.). To the same effect write Irenaeus ('Adv. Haer.,' 4.23) and Tertullian ('Adv. Judaeos,' ch. 8). Clement of Alexandria is most definite: "The Lord did not cat his last Passover on the legal day of the Passover, but on the previous day, the 13th, and suffered on the day following, being himself the Passover".
Hippolytus of Portus bears similar testimony. The question—as to whether the famous Last Supper was the actual Passover Supper, or the anticipatory Paschal Feast, which we believe it to have been—is important; for thus the language of St.
Paul (1 Corinthians 5:7), "Christ our Passover is sacrificed for us," is justified. "The apostle regarded not the Last Supper, but the death of Christ, as the antitype of the Paschal sacrifice, and the correspondence of type and antitype would be incomplete unless the sacrifice of the Redeemer took place at the time on which alone that of the Paschal lamb could legally be offered" (Dean Mansel).