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.
But I am not sure it is quite so easy to leave it there. After all, the word ‘gospel’ means ‘announcement of good news about something that has happened’; a central part of the Christian claim is that, in the death and resurrection of Jesus, God has done something, and so we cannot evade question of what exactly happened and when. Sceptics (both popular and academic) make much of these apparent inconsistencies, so there is an apologetic task to engage in. And understanding how these issues might be resolved could potentially shed new light on the meaning of the texts themselves.
A couple of years ago, I caught up with Sir Colin Humphreys’ book The Mystery of the Last Supper, in which he attempts to solve this problem. Humphreys is an academic, and a distinguished one at that, though in materials science. He has written on biblical questions before, though is not a biblical studies professional, but he does engage thoroughly with some key parts of the literature. He identifies the main elements of the puzzle under four headings:
- The lost day of Jesus, noticing the lull in activity in the middle of the week.
- The problem of the last supper; what kind of meal was it, when did it happen, and can we harmonise John’s account with the synoptics?
- No time for the trials of Jesus. If we include all the different elements, they cannot fit within the half night from Thursday to Friday morning.
- The legality of the trials. Here, Humphreys notes that later Jewish sources prohibit the conduct of a capital trial during the night, and require that any decision is ratified on the morning following the first trial.
The book is set out very clearly and logically (as you might expect) and includes a good number of tables. Early on Humphreys helpfully tabulates the events in the gospels, showing their relationship.
Having started by looking at the biblical texts, in the middle of the book Humphreys goes on a long scientific exploration, delving into the astronomical issues behind the construction of Jewish calendars, and using this to argue for a particular date for the crucifixion. The key issue here is identifying the dates of the calendar from what we know of the moon phases, and then finding the years when the Passover falls on a Friday, which it will do on average only one year in seven.
Humphreys then uses other well-established data to eliminate outlying dates, and argues for Jesus’ death at 3 pm on Friday, April 3rd, AD 33. He is not alone in this, though the style of his argumentation will have lost many mainstream New Testament specialists (there is quite a nice, clear argument working through the data at this Catholic site). He assumes that the gospels are historically accurate, and takes them as his basic data, when most scholars would want him to be much more provisional. If the case was expressed more in terms of ‘were the gospels accurate, it would lead to this conclusion’ might have been more persuasive for the guild—but then Humphreys is primarily writing for a popular and not a professional audience. There is no particular problem in asking the question Humphreys does in fact ask: are the narratives we have capable of coherent reading, and if we taken them seriously, what do we find?
I was much more interested, though, in the later chapters, where Humphreys explores the gospel texts in detail in the light of the calendrical background. Although his proposals about the different calendars in use at the time of Jesus are speculative (even if plausible), there can be no doubt that different calendars were in use, and that it is quite likely that different gospel writers are making reference to different calendar schedules which could give rise to apparent anomalies in the gospel chronologies. In particular, some calendars worked sunset to sunset (as Jewish calculation works today), others counted from sunrise to sunrise, and the Roman calendar counted from midnight to midnight, as we do now. It is not hard to see how the phrase ‘on the next day’ can now have three different possible meanings.
It is also clear that the gospel writers vary in the emphasis that they give to chronological issues. So, whilst Luke offers some very specific markers in his narrative to locate the gospel story to wider world events (which has been typical of his overall approach), and John includes frequent temporal markers in relation both to Jewish feasts and successive days of Jesus’ ministry, Matthew is happy to group Jesus’ teaching and ministry into non-chronological blocks, and Mark has long been recognised as linking events in Jesus’ ministry thematically rather than chronologically. Humphreys uses an everyday example to illustrate this: if I cut the lawn and do some weeding, and someone asks my wife what I have been doing, and she says ‘He has been doing some weeding and cut the lawn’ then we would not describe our two accounts as ‘contradictory’. Chronology just hasn’t been an important issue here.
Humphreys’ solution rests on proposing that, in celebrating the Passover with his disciples, Jesus used the pre-Exile calendar which ran sunrise to sunrise and was at least a day ahead of the official Jerusalem calendar, so that there could be up to two days’ difference in calculation. (It is worth noting here in passing that first century Judaism was far from monolithic, and serious differences in belief, including about dates and calendars, was part of the diversity.) This means that, if the Jerusalem Passover took place on the Friday, following the sacrifice of the lambs on Friday afternoon, it would be possible for Jesus to celebrate his own Passover (and not merely a ‘Passover-like meal’ as some scholars have suggested) as early as the Wednesday. Humphreys believes that the man carrying the water jar (in Luke 22.10 and parallels) is a signal that the Upper Room was in the Essene quarter of Jerusalem, where there would not have been any women to undertake such roles. And the calendar differences account for Mark’s statement that the lambs were sacrificed on the ‘first day of the feast of Unleavened Bread’, (Mark 14.12) which is a contradiction that scholars have in the past attributed either to Mark’s error or his careless writing.
At some points, I think Humphreys’ case is actually slightly stronger than he claims. For example, John’s phrase ‘the Passover of the Jews’ in John 11.55 could arguably be translated as ‘the Passover of the Judeans’, thus emphasising communal and calendrical differences, and Matthew highlights the differences between the crowds of pilgrims and the local Jerusalemites in their response to Jesus. Richard Bauckham has argued that John is writing on the assumption that his readers know Mark, so there is no need for him to recount the details of the Passover meal in John 13 and following. And in the latest edition of Bauckham’s Jesus and the Eyewitnesses, he argues (in an additional chapter) that the ‘Beloved Disciple’ is the author of the gospel but is not John son of Zebedee, and so not one of the Twelve, but a Jerusalemite. This explains some of the distinctive perspectives of John’s gospel with its Judean and Jerusalem focus in contrast to Mark’s focus on Galilee—but would also account for calendrical differences.
There are some points of strain in Humphreys’ argument—for me, the most testing one was Humphreys’ account of the cock crowing three times, the first of which was (he argues) the Roman horn blown to signal the approach of dawn, the gallicinium which is Latin for ‘cock crow’. (I always struggle to be convinced by an argument that claims a repeated phrase actually means different things at different times when the phrase is identical.) But there are also some interesting ways in which his reading makes better sense of some details of the text, such as the dream of Pilate’s wife—which she could not have had time to have under the traditional chronology. Moreover, one of our earliest testimonies to the last supper, in 1 Cor 11.23, does not say (as much Anglican liturgy) ‘on the night before he died’ but ‘on the night that he was betrayed’. I will be sticking with the latter phrase in my future use of Eucharistic Prayers! And when Paul says that Christ our Passover has been sacrificed for us (1 Cor 5.7), and that he is the first fruits of those who sleep (1 Cor 15.20), Paul is reflecting his death on Passover (as per John, even though in other respects Paul’s account matches Luke, and it is largely Paul and Luke’s language we use in liturgy) and his resurrection on the celebration of First Fruits two days later.
Humphreys is certainly bold in taking on key scholars, including Dick France (with whom I would always hesitate to disagree), but in every case he gives citations and explains where the disagreement lies. When the book was first published, Mark Goodacre wrote a brief blog on why he disagrees, and the debate in comments—including from Humphreys himself—are worth reading. Goodacre’s main concern is Humphreys’ anxiety about demonstrating the reliability of the gospel accounts, and the need to eliminate contradictions.
One of Humphreys’s primary concerns is to avoid the idea that the Gospels “contradict themselves”. The concern is one that characterizes apologetic works and it is not a concern that I share.
But I wonder whether concern about this aim has led many scholars to dismiss the detail too quickly; much of academic scholarship is ideologically committed to the notion that the gospels are irredeemably contradictory. (If I were being mischievous, I would point to the irony of Mark’s resisting Humphrey’s challenging of a scholarly consensus, when that is precisely what Mark is doing himself in relation to the existence of ‘Q’, the supposed ‘sayings source’ that accounts for the shared material of Luke and Matthew…!) And we need to take seriously that fact that Humphrey’s approach resolves several key issues (including the silence of Wednesday, the lack of time for the trial, the reference in Mark 14.12, and Pilate’s wife’s dream) that are otherwise inexplicable or are put down (slightly arbitrarily) to writer error.
I think there are some further things to explore, but it seems to me that Humphreys’ case is worth taking seriously.
(Posted previously.)
Hi Ian, on your point about what to say while conducting the Lord’s Supper, I like William Barclay’s way of putting it in his SCM book on same: ‘on the night in which he was being betrayed …’ i.e. our Lord knew he was being betrayed (that hurts) but still had the presence of mind, and the care for us, to institute this anticipation / marking / koinonia / memorial / explication (cutting) of covenant.
thanks for so often stimulating us; this one is a most helpful chronology.
Hi Ian what do you think of the Thursday crucifixion theory explained here
https://gracethrufaith.com/topical-studies/holidays-and-holy-days/solving-the-three-day-three-night-mystery/
We can call Q a scholarly consensus but only in a circular way – i.e., it has been held to by the majority at one point (in a pan-source age) and is therefore ever after presented as such in introductions (which are not allowed to go out on a limb) which makes its almost perpetual acceptance self fulfilling. Given that, it is amazing how many now correctly reject it. Consensus is of no weight; balance of evidence is of weight.
I do not know whether Mark Goodacre is right that C Humphreys is anxious to harmonise. The truth is that all forensic investigation is a case of harmonising the evidence. Humphreys does indeed omit redactional tendencies etc from his data, but a better book (and there are few such) would simply expand the types of data examined to include that data too. It still remains a matter of harmonising the evidence.
He is certainly right that, Humphreys aside, many will not accept any conclusion that is not completely in harmony, rather than keeping an open mind on that. Which automatically makes their (triumphant or otherwise) conclusions of harmony sometimes hollow, because they would not have allowed any other conclusion in the first place. Not that for one moment it is up to us to allow or disallow.
That also goes for dating, Christopher – of which there are very few definite markers. I have never seen any evidence that compels us to date (say) Acts before the Great Fire of Rome and a good deal that argues for earlier. But if that is so, we would be pushing Mark and Luke into the late 50s or early 60s.
This kind of point is frequently made, and relies on seeing one or two factors only (sometimes particularly clear or compelling ones; sometimes not) when in reality there will always be quite a number of factors in existence, which, obviously, need each to be considered before anything so conclusive can be said.
Thanks for reposting this, Ian – I have now obtained this book and will try to read it this week.
I wonder what you think of John Wenham’s book ‘Easter Enigma’, written c. 1984 (I read that reconstruction many years ago).
Peter Williams of Tyndale House has also given a lecture (available on youtube) on a harmonising approach to the Resurrection narratives that makes a lot of sense to me, especially on reading between the lines on John 20.
And if you really want to throw the cat among the pigeons – how many times did Jesus cleanse the Temple?
I would lean towards thinking that there was only one cleansing. And it falls naturally into the Easter story, as another reason for the authorities to want to get rid of Jesus. Although John seems to me to be generally quite strong on a chronological account of Jesus’ life, I wonder whether he moved this incident to the beginning of the Gospel as a statement of Jesus’ ministry. The Gospel is then read in this light.
“Peter Williams of Tyndale House has also given a lecture (available on youtube) on a harmonising approach to the Resurrection narratives that makes a lot of sense to me, especially on reading between the lines on John 20.”
Are you able to share a link to this?
As a thoroughly argued scholarly alternative to Humphreys’ proposal, one that takes the testimony of all four gospels seriously, I’d highly recommend Brant Pitre’s “Jesus and the Last Supper” (Eerdmans, 2015). It argues that the last supper is indeed presented as a regular Passover meal in both the Synoptics and John and provides extended engagement with objections and alternative views such as Humphreys’ calendrical/astronomical proposals.
Thanks John. What are the material points of disagreement with Humphrey’s in Pitre?
I’m really sorry, Ian. I’m just packing to travel early tomorrow. I’ll be away from my books so will have to comment on return. Alternatively, email me and I’ll reply as soon as I can. Pitre’s key material on this issue is in chapter 4. I’m not sure what’s available on Google Books.
Having studied the chronological questions in some depth myself, I came to the following conclusions:
(i) the Lord’s final year was AD 30 (in my view AD 33 is untenable), consistent with Dan 9:24f
(ii) the crucifixion occurred on the Thursday (6 April), followed by the sabbath of Nisan 15 and then the weekly sabbath – only on this basis can Jonah 1:17 and Mark 8:31/Matt 27:63 be satisfied
(iii) Nisan 1, the first day of the year, was fixed by the sighting of the crescent new moon; in AD 30 this day fell on March 24 or 25 (the sighting was weather-dependent)
(iv) Jesus understood ‘between the two evenings’ (sunset and nightfall, Ex 12:6) to refer to the beginning of Nisan 14, whereas the Pharisees understood it to refer to the end of Nisan 14; consequently he celebrated Passover a day earlier than most of Judaea
(v) the chronology of Christ’s death and resurrection exactly corresponded to the chronology of Israel’s original deliverance, i.e. Passover/crucifixion on Nisan 14 and passing through the Red Sea/resurrection on Nisan 17.
Some of this is in my book, though I don’t claim any originality for the arguments.
I recommend Humphreys’ book The Miracles of Exodus: A Scientist’s Discovery of the Extraordinary Natural Causes of the Biblical Stories.
Thank God for Jesus !
; and thank God for Sir Colin Humphreys, et al.
Seventy weeks seems to me to be a symbolic reference to Jesus. He is the 70 cut in the midst of His days. Therefore he died age 35. The Temple was destroyed in AD70, signalling the end of the 70 weeks symbol. The trouble with accurate timekeeping is this: God seems to be able to concertina time to get things done. If there is a discrepancy in time it may have happened on the cross; all the time not used up in creation, the time the sun stood still , the shadow going back on the sundial, the time it took to get across the lake after the storm, were balanced and accounted for in the dark, on the cross.
I try to find meaning within scripture. As if scripture was a board game like Monopoly. Theologians always want to introduce foreign money to the game. The rule should be ‘only play with what you find in the box’. Discount old French franks or the German marks. The currency of worldly wisdom! Only use Monopoly money to play Monopoly. 😉
Thanks for your comments on ‘Time’, Steve.
Do you think it possible that the Divine prophetical plans may contain some element of flexibility within them?
Mark 13:32 states, with regard to the Second Advent (‘Parousia’) :
” Now concerning that day or hour no one knows – neither the angels in heaven nor the Son – except only (Gk. monos) the Father.”
In Acts 3:19-20, Peter urges the Jews to :
“Repent therefore, and be converted, that your sins may be blotted out, so that times of refreshing may come from the presence of God, and He may send the Messiah appointed in advance for you, that is, Jesus.”
Do you think that if the Jews had nationally turned to Messiah Jesus, then there may have been an earlier ‘Parousia’ ?
Hi Pelegríno,
An earlier Parousia? No. Everything in the O.T. Pushed towards the grand climax, one miraculous intervention after another. But God does seem to be able to distort time, stretch it here, squash it there, bend it. Perhaps this is why the gospels don’t tally quite as well as we would wish, It’s not that the trauma of the events made it difficult for the compilation of the timeline, it is due in part to God working everything into the time and place of the cross. E.g. While time was running slow for Pilate it was rushing for Peter. I imagine a series of vortexes/ currents in which the final cataclysm took place.
Ian Paul, cos he’s good at maths, should create a chart of the events as probabilities radiating out instead of the Newtonian example used to illustrate this post.
Now that the Lamb is at the centre of the throne, the One and the Lamb are , if not in essence, of one mind and will. Jesus therefore knows exactly when He will return. The seven Lamps are still operating , illuminating, messaging between us , the world and the Throne. They still enquire of the Throne, they still transmit the Throne’s will. It’s the Spirit who doesn’t know when; if He did , we would know too….is my thought.
Thanks, Steve.
You’ve presented quite a bit to cogitate on !
I accidently came across a quote from the Talmud the other day, which semi-parallels, in part, what Peter said in Acts 3:19-20 :
” All deadlines for the coming of the Messiah have come and gone –
the thing depends solely on our [the Jews’] returning to God. “
Of course it didn’t depend on repentance before God moved. He always initiates reconciliation.
Sorry for the almost incoherent babble. I’m interested in the idea of how and if time itself gets manipulated by God. Did the last days and hours run straight or did Jesus ‘walk on’ time like he did with water?
If you have a good grasp of the timeline leading up to the crucifixion can you see anything comparable to The time when Jesus got into the boat and it instantly arrived at its destination?
Personally, I’m happy to simply understand the three ‘days’ as evening&mornings.
Postscriptum, Steve.
Talmud quote from : Sanhedrin 97b.
Thanks for the ref..
Interesting read …for a while… does my head in!
doh! silly me, “the irony of Mark’s resisting Humphrey’s challenging of a scholarly consensus” – how could the evangelist …? ahh! Mark Goodacre!
Since in 33 AD the Preparation Day fell on a Wednesday (Sundown to
Sundown), and the High Sabbath fell on a Friday, I always believed
Matthew’s “Day After the Preparation Day” (Mt: 27:62) was a reference to
Thursday. Given that the Pharisees are going to Pilate, it’s definitely
not the Sabbath. If that is wrong, I don’t know what day the verse
is referring to.
The day of preparation was the day before the sabbath, for which one had to prepare because one could not buy or sell or work on that day. The sabbath might be the weekly sabbath or the high sabbath of Nisan 15 (Lev 23:7), the first day of the week-long Feast of Unleavened Bread. Consequently the day in Matt 27:62, being the next day after the crucifixion, must have been a Saturday if Jesus was crucified on a Friday. And that makes no sense because Saturday was already the sabbath. Likewise Mark 15:42 says that (1) Joseph took the body when evening had come, i.e. at the start of the Jewish 24-hour day, (2) that was the day of preparation, and (3) that day was the day before the sabbath. Again, that can only make sense if the sabbath referred to was the weekly sabbath.
The crucifixion took place on Nisan 14, a Thursday.
Joseph took away and entombed the body at the Jewish start of Nisan 15, i.e. at the end of Thursday.
The daylight part of Nisan 15 was Friday.
That day was the day of preparation before the weekly sabbath on Saturday.
Jesus rose before dawn on Sunday.
The Pharisees told Pilate. “Sir, we remember how that impostor said, while he was still alive, ‘After three days I will rise.’ Therefore order the tomb to be made secure until the third day.” The request was made on the Friday, and evidently after Joseph had laid the body to rest. It is difficult to make sense of their words if Jesus was to rise the following day.
I don’t see that the Pharisees would have had scruples about taking a short walk to Pilate to ensure that the tomb was guarded and not interfered with.
I think Humphreys is probably correct. I dont find other points, such as Jesus had to be dead for literally 3 days and 3 nights, convincing given that such phrases can be shown to mean 3-part days. As for the ‘cock crowing’ I think Humphreys’ explanation is reasonable – see https://news.ag.org/Features/Sometimes-a-Rooster-is-Not-a-Rooster . The readers/hearers then could very well have understood this to be a commonly understood phrase rather than a literal rendering.
Interestingly he doesnt use Daniel as part of his argument. People have different views on how to understand Daniel, but i tend to think Daniel being told messiah would come and die in the spring of AD33 is rather a coincidence. Which corresponds with Humphreys’ case.
Peter
Would you care to show us yourself how ‘such phrases can be shown to mean 3-part days’ (I suppose you mean 3 part-days)? I just don’t get it. Crucifixion on Friday = part of a day. Saturday = one whole day consisting of night and day. Christ rises in the early part of Sunday, i.e. one more night. How does this square ‘with three days and three nights’, a phrase which seems designedly precise? Even with crucifixion on Thursday, Jesus is not in the belly of the earth three full days. Logically one can’t have three continuous part-days. Any period bounded by at least two nights must include at least one whole day.
And since your comment comes well after mine on the day of preparation, how do you account for the fact that the day of preparation is the day after the crucifixion but the day before the sabbath?
You might also demonstrate how Daniel was told messiah that would come and die in the spring of AD 33, if that is your belief.
3 evenings & mornings = Thursday-Friday, Friday-Saturday and Saturday-Sunday.
I assume Jesus Suffering and death to be one event. It should not be timed from the moment of his actual death. It’s like calculating the tragedy of the Titanic to only have started when the final , visible piece of ship disappeared beneath the surface. In Jesus case the iceberg was when Judas closed the door behind him.
When Judas left only Jesus felt the agony, the last supper carried on. The tear in the ship was only noticed when Judas kissed Him.
Well, I don’t know how clever Q with forensic investigative journalism, nor the first creative Christian commonities did spot any of this and untie the scolarlarly knots we tie ourselves in, and for what purpose, to sow doubt, scepticism?.
Maybe chronology problems weren’t identified because there weren’t and aren’t any. And if there were loopholes they could have been thoroughly closed down – got their act together.
We see from a distance. They were close up and personal. We seek precision, they didn’t, but sufficient detail is recorded to evidence reliability.
Just, Who did Move the Stone?
Hi Geoff, I wonder what the seal looked like on the stone. I’ve never seen it depicted on any image.
It must have been attached to a cord. I imagine a red cord with a crushed seal under the rolled heel stone. It never gets a mention in sermons. Also it reminds me of Rahab’s red cord, and the 7 headed beast. A rope of 7 red cords?
Is everyone here bored with the Easter message?ay it Stoke us anew, as if for the first time. May it forensically examine us discerning the thoughts and intentions of our hearts.
Why did Jesus die? Why did he have to? Why was it necessary?
Why a new sacrificial blood covenant?
The invigorating Easter message forms the daily basis of our Christian lives (Romans 6:1-4).
Why did Christ die? The ‘Acts of the Apostles’ doesn’t present much of an atonement theory.
The earliest form of Apostolic soteriology seems to have been based on faith in Jesus as the resurrected lord Messiah, repentance, baptism, and the principle enunciated in Isaiah 55:6-9:
“Let the wicked abandon their ways, and evil men their thoughts; Let them return to Yahweh Who will have pity on them; return to our God for He will freely forgive. For My thoughts are not your thoughts, and My ways are not your ways, declares Yahweh.”
Why would you rely on Acts for doctrinal basis?
As for Isaiah, He does indeed freely forgive us but at what cost to Himself…
Because, Peter –
Without Luke’s enunciation of the Apostolic kerygma, and an account the history of first several decades of the Christian Church, we wouldn’t be in a position to properly understand what was :
” The faith that was once for all entrusted to the saints.”
Jude 1:3.
Correction:
May it strike us anew as if for the first time.
I still like the illustration on the cover of Michael Green’s little book ‘The Day Death Died’.
He is risen!
As the public face and voice of the church evacuates Easter, the vacuum filled with empty tropes, solipsistic sepulchres, the ultimate exodus- of- exoduses is found, seen, in the empty tomb and your succinct declaratory summation of Gospel scolarship, Peter, that at once absorbs and transcends, sometimes traduces, some scholarship in its speculations and apriori presumptions – reading spectacles.
Today, apart from our Good Friday church service, where in the UK have I seen or heard anything of why this particular Friday is in Christianity known as Good.
Yes there has been talk of Ramadan, yes the N Ireland Good Friday agreement but nothing of the crucifixion of Jesus, AD. No Good Friday, Good News?
Ah yes, there is one national newspaper article/comment by Cardinal Vincent Nicols.
Its a shame the BBC or other UK channels wont buy and broadcast the likes of The Chosen, or even Jesus of Nazareth at Easter. Oh well.
How Jesus understood his own death:
https://au.thegospelcoalition.org/article/how-jesus-understood-his-own-death/
7 Theories of the Atonement Summarized :
https://www.sdmorrison.org/7-theories-of-the-atonement-summarized/
The author presents the 7 theories and summarises thus: “ I personally believe that we need to move beyond some of these theories and progress into a more robust theory of atonement.”
Like a stone with seven facets are these theories.
I like the Scapegoat one.
But, It may be that the two goats represent Jesus and The Holy Spirit. One is killed. The other is thrust into the void. Jesus died on the cross and gave up His Spirit.
The Great City of Revelation was split in three . God’s unity broke on the cross. The story speaks of a future punishment but it had already taken place in Jesus. It’s a backwardly compatible prophecy.
Indeed. Steve,
They are all aspects, multifaceted sides, of the reality of the diamond jewel in Christ’s Crown of glorious atonement fulfilled by Jesus the Messsiah on the Cross, as rejoiced over by Messianic Jews.
On Good Friday morning we sang, along with some contemporary songs, There is a Green Hill Far Away, and as we did it brought to mind Jesus as the azazel, scapegoat, (a Levitical foreshadowing of the Christ) killed outside the City walls.
But God’s unity being broken, that is for another day and I’m not sure this is the place. Fully God and fully man (with a human spirit).
Here is a starter article for your consideration:
https://www.crossway.org/articles/was-the-trinity-torn-apart-at-the-cross/
Happy Resurrection Day.
Amen Geoff!
I keep pushing the Bowls of Wrath as the inside view of the Passion from the Spirit’s perspective. It’s obviously beyond 5he remit of this blog.
Geoff, I’ve read the link you sent. I think when Revelation reveals the Great City [of God] broken in three it reveals the broken heart of The Trinity in some sublime way. It’s worth reading the Bowls of Wrath again to see the three evil spirits like frogs as depictions of Pilate, Herod and Chiaphas . Jesus became sin for us and identified Himself as the object of Wrath.