Hebrew Voices #68 – An Early Christian Passover (Rebroadcast)

Melito of Sardis

In this episode of Hebrew Voices, An Early Christian Passover, Nehemia Gordon continues his fascinating discussion with Prof. Shaye Cohen of Harvard University. This time, the two focus on a Christian Church Father named Melito of Sardis, who in the second century, wrote a prayer service or sermon, for a Christian Passover. This leads Gordon and Cohen to discuss the differences and similarities between Easter, Pascha and Passover, what each commemorated, and when each of these holidays were observed by different historical groups. Be sure to also listen to Part 1 - Was the Last Supper a Passover Seder!

I look forward to reading your comments!

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Hebrew Voices #68 - An Early Christian Passover

You are listening to Hebrew Voices with Nehemia Gordon. Thank you for supporting Nehemia Gordon's Makor Hebrew Foundation. Learn more at NehemiasWall.com.

Shaye: Melito of Sardis is a fascinating text we know is a 14th er… is a Quartodeciman. For him, the Pascha means it’s the Passover, but it also means it’s the holiday of the suffering of Jesus Christ. And that happens on the 14th day of Nissan.

Benjamin Netanyahu: Le ma’an Zion lo ekhesheh, u’l’ma’an Yerushalayim lo eshkot. (For Zion’s sake I will not be silent, and for Jerusalem’s sake I will not rest. Isaiah 62:1)

Nehemia: Shalom, this is Nehemia Gordon, and welcome to Hebrew Voices. This is the second of my two conversations with Professor Shaye Cohen of Harvard University. In this episode, we focus on a Christian Church Father named Melito of Sardis, who in the 2nd century wrote a prayer service or sermon for a Christian Passover. This leads us to a discussion about the differences and similarities between Easter, Pascha and Passover, what each commemorated, and when each of these holidays was observed by different historical groups. Be sure to also listen to Part 1 - Was the Last Supper a Passover Seder? Here is Part 2 of my conversation with Professor Shaye Cohen.

I’m here with Professor Shaye Cohen, who’s a Professor of Jewish Studies at Harvard University, and we’re going to talk today about Melito of Sardis. He was a Christian author who around the year 190 AD wrote a book called, “Peri Pascha”, “On the Pascha”, “On the Passover”.

So, I heard a lecture that you gave on iTunes University, talking about Melito of Sardis’ Peri Pascha, and I was completely fascinated by it. I thought this was really, really interesting.

You have this Christian author in the 2nd century, and he is writing what sounds to me is a Christian Passover Seder. And I know you don’t entirely accept that, but you had recommended to me a book by Alistair Stewart called On Pascha; Melito of Sardis circa 80-190, and he actually makes a really strong case, or I could say he argues vehemently that this was something like a Christian Passover. And I was left with some questions, but in any event, it definitely is a fascinating text here.

Shaye: So, the interesting thing is that this text, about which we are now speaking, was actually not discovered until 1940. In other words, it’s one of the most recent discoveries that up-ends expectations and comes out of the blue. Nobody knew where it was going to come from, and here it is. We can read a text now that, two generations ago, scholars could not read, because they simply didn’t have it.

We know it’s Melito because the text that we have, which was discovered in Egypt, contains quotations that other ancient sources attribute to Melito. So, they say, “Melito says x,” lo and behold, we find x in this text, and that’s how we know it’s Melito. I emphasize that because the text doesn’t actually say it’s by Melito, and there’s some room for doubt, because other ancient authors quote texts which are not found here in this text, and they attribute those to Melito. So, it’s a slightly messy problem.

The reason it’s important is because if it is Melito, then it is Quartodeciman. And if it’s not Melito, then we’re not quite as sure. Now, what is a Quartodeciman? So, the Quartodeciman is Latin. Of course, it means 14. Quarto is four, decima, like decimal, is 10. So, a Quartodeciman is literally a 14th-er, someone who celebrates the Christian Passover on the 14th, which means that he, as a Christian – I repeat, as a Christian – he is celebrating the Pascha, which is the holiday of suffering, because the word Pesach sounds just like the Greek verb, paschen, which in Greek means “to suffer”. So, for him, the Pascha means it’s the Passover, but it also means it’s the holiday of the suffering of Jesus Christ. And that happens on the 14th day of Nissan. And here, we have a complicated chronological problem - the distinction between the Gospel of John and Matthew, Mark and Luke.

Nehemia: So, before you get to Matthew, Mark and Luke and John… look, I’ve got Jewish listeners who are going to say, “When did the Christians normally keep it, if not on the 14th? When else?” So, help us out.

Shaye: Okay, good. So, if you’re a 14th-er then you’re celebrating the festival that later on will come to be called Easter.

Nehemia: Ah-ha.

Shaye: I’m going to call it “Pascha” for now. You’re saying the Pascha’s on the 14th day of Nissan.

Nehemia: For example, in Greece today, the Greek Orthodox Church, they don’t call it Easter, they call it Pascha, I believe.

Shaye: That’s correct. In many western languages they call it Paque or Pasqua.

Nehemia: So, in other words, they keep it on a Sunday, right, the Sunday after…?

Shaye: You have to be careful, who’s “they”? “They” keep it on a Sunday…

Nehemia: Meaning that most Christians will keep Pascha on a Sunday, and Melito is stepping out of that by keeping it on the 14th of Nissan.

Shaye: Yes. The computation of Easter was one of the contentious issues in the early Church, for which they argued about exactly when to celebrate Easter.

Nehemia: Right.

Shaye: So the 14th-ers thought it could be any day of the week, because the 14th day of Nissan can appear on - not any day of the week, actually, but almost any day of the week. And the 14th day we celebrate Christ’s suffering, Jesus’ suffering. In fact, Melito’s sermon on the Pascha is all about Jesus on the cross. Now, that’s fundamentally what it’s about.

Nehemia: So, one more time. So, in Melito’s day, which is the late 2nd century…

Shaye: Right.

Nehemia: If I understand correctly, most Christians were celebrating Pascha, which is simply the Greek word for Pesach – although, I guess it’s not simply, it’s more than that – they were celebrating it on the Sunday after the Jewish Passover, and the Quartodecimans were doing it on the day of the Jewish Passover, is that…?

Shaye: I don’t know about “the most part”, because I don’t have a survey.

Nehemia: All right.

Shaye: You fundamentally wind up with several debates. One debate was, is Easter going to be on Sunday, or is Pascha going to be on the 14th? That was one debate.

Nehemia: Okay.

Shaye: And if Easter’s going to be on Sunday, now we have a debate about exactly when, which Sunday it’s going to be.

Nehemia: What I want to make clear though is, it’s not like Easter and Pascha are two different things.

Shaye: No, they’re different versions of the same thing.

Nehemia: In other words, they call it to this day, “Pascha” in Greece, and they do it on Sunday.

Shaye: I said, if you speak Italian, French or Spanish or Russian, you call Easter “Pascha”.

Nehemia: And what’s interesting to me is the word “Pascha” appears in the Septuagint for the translation of Pesach. And then, I looked in Philo, and Philo actually uses two different words. Can I read this passage, it’s from Philo, Allegories 394? He says, “And Moses also of those who sacrificed the Passover…” and there he uses the word Fasec for Passover.

Shaye: Oh, Fasec, okay. So, he’s transliterating it a little off.

Nehemia: Pesach, Fasec. And then he also then says, “The second party to sacrifice the Pascha.” So, in the same passage, within two sentences, he once calls it “Fasec” and the other time he calls it “Pascha”. So the point is, the Christians took this word to mean “passion”, which in English is passion, which means suffering.

Shaye: Correct.

Nehemia: Passion means suffering, so Pascha is simply the Greek word that means suffering, but then in the Septuagint and Philo and Josephus, Pesach is Pascha. So, what’s going on here?

Shaye: It’s a happy coincidence. You have the Hebrew word Pesach, which you want to translate into Greek, if you’re a Greek speaker, so one way of transliterating it would be Pascha or put the vowels where you want. But Pascha was a way by which we transliterate from the Hebrew into the Greek.

Nehemia: So, in other words, even before Christianity, they were translating it into…

Shaye: Yeah, that’s one of the ways in which… Right, the Hebrew word Pesach gets transliterated into Greek.

Nehemia: Okay.

Shaye: Now by happy coincidence…

Nehemia: Yeah.

Shaye: … if you’re a Christian or if you’re a 14th-er, by happy coincidence, that transliteration of Pesach sounds just like the Greek verb, paschen, which means “to suffer”, and various associated forms with it, so that allows you to homiletically - Midrashically, I’m tempted to say - allows you say Pesach is a holiday of suffering. Whose suffering is it? It’s Jesus’ suffering. That’s the Pesach. That’s the true Pesach.

Nehemia: And you mentioned how there was a big debate about when this Pascha would be celebrated by the Christians.

Shaye: Correct.

Nehemia: So, the Quartodecimans are doing it on the 14th day of Nissan, and the other Christians are doing it on a Sunday. I want to read a passage here, this was in Stewart’s book, and he quotes Apollinaris, Bishop of Hierapolis who around the year 180 wrote…

Shaye: Right.

Nehemia: “Now, there are some who through ignorance love to quarrel about these matters.” [laughing]

Shaye: Yes.

Nehemia: “But what they maintain in this affair is forgivable, for ignorance does not respond well to accusation, but may be amenable to teaching.” And he’s talking about the people who keep it on Sunday!

Shaye: That’s right.

Nehemia: …because he’s a 14th-er.

Shaye: They’re doing it wrong.

Nehemia: That’s amazing.

Shaye: They’re doing it wrong. Now, so the debate really is, what exactly is Easter, this central Christian holiday? Is it a festival or a holiday celebrating Christ’s suffering on the cross? Is it Christ’s redemptive suffering on the cross? That Christ died for our sins and Christ Himself through his suffering and His death has now removed our sins from us? That’s Melito.

Or, is the whole point of the festival the resurrection?

Nehemia: Ah.

Shaye: Redemption, it’s salvation, right? I’m tempted to say, one of them is more dark, one of them is more light, one of them is more about pain and suffering, one of them is about redemption, salvation and renewal. But that’s really, I think, the theological underpinnings of the debate, what exactly are we Christians emphasizing? The Passion, the suffering, or that Christ has risen? As we say, if you go to a Greek Church on Saturday night of Easter, you have your Easter vigil, and then the highlight of that vigil is Christ has risen. And that’s the climax of the ritual celebrating salvation. So, which one is it? Now, for me as a Jew, it’s not for me to tell Christians what…

Nehemia: Right.

Shaye: …how they should celebrate their holiday, but I do understand the theological tension here between what exactly is the point that we’re celebrating? So, the Quartodecimans celebrate Pesach on the 14th because for them Jesus is the Pascal lamb. Jesus is the Pascal lamb, and that they get from the Gospel of John.

Nehemia: So John versus Matthew, Mark and Luke, you were going to talk about that.

Shaye: Right, so the Gospel of John, his chronology of that holy week, as the Christians will call it, namely those last days of Jesus’ life, John makes it very clear that Jesus on the cross is the Pascal lamb – namely, He dies on the cross precisely when Jews are sacrificing the Pascal lamb, which is the 14th day of Nissan in the afternoon. That’s why he says that “not a bone was broken in Jesus’ body,” because after all, that’s the commandment applying to the Pascal lamb, and Jesus is the Pascal lamb. That’s the Gospel of John.

If you accept the Gospel of John’s chronology, there is no Last Supper, because the Pesach meal is Christ, is Jesus Himself, which is on the 14th day of Nissan - when Jesus is slaughtered, the Pesach lamb is slaughtered. That’s the Gospel of John.

Matthew, Mark and Luke don’t have that chronology. They all agree he dies on Friday and is resurrected on Sunday, that everybody agrees. But the question is, what is actually happening? So for the Gospel of John, the 14th day is Friday. That’s the day of the sacrifice, and the first day of the matzah festival that year would have been on Shabbat, on the 15th day of Nissan, whereas, according to the general account, he has the Last Supper with his disciples, presumably that would have been on the night of the 14th into the 15th. That would have been the Pascal meal, so they were moving the whole thing forward by a day. And that’s an argument within the Gospel texts themselves, but the ecclesiology here is, later Christians will hold two contradictory truths. One, they will say there was a Last Supper, and two, they will say Jesus was the Pascal lamb.

Nehemia: So, when you say “Last Supper”, this then becomes the Christian communion or Eucharist which is understood by, at least many Christians, I guess, historically, as the Last Supper that Jesus had, and that was a Passover service of some kind, right?

Shaye: A Seder, a service, a meal.

Nehemia: You don’t want to use the word “Seder”, so fine…

Shaye: I never used the word “Seder” either, yes.

Nehemia: A ritualized Passover meal of the Passover sacrifice. And that’s pretty explicit in, I think, some of the Gospels they actually refer to…

Shaye: Yes. Jesus says to his disciples, “Find me a spot in Jerusalem where we go have the Passover.”

Nehemia: So, in other words, you would say in Jewish terms, there’s a machlokes between Matthew, Mark and Luke on the one hand, and John on the other, a seeming contradiction.

Shaye: They all attribute great importance to Pesach. That holiday, that festival, sets the background for what takes place. On that point, everybody agrees.

Nehemia: And for my Christian listeners - guys, don’t be nervous. There have been many attempts throughout history, people have written entire books trying to reconcile…

Shaye: That is correct.

Nehemia: …John with the other Gospels. Go look it up, like for example, Joubert was this French lady who claimed there were two different calendars. There are all kinds of different explanations that have been out there since in history.

Shaye: Right. So, Christians need not worry. I’m arguing we have a…

Nehemia: Apparent contradiction.

Shaye: One issue is the history, what actually happened. But for Christians, what’s more important is the theological meaning of it.

Nehemia: Okay.

Shaye: Just as I was saying for Jews, what actually happens on many of these events is not as important as the memory of it, or the lessons to be learned from it. So, here we have Christ is the Pascal lamb on the one hand, that’s the Gospel of John. We have Christ celebrating the Last Supper with His disciples and instituting the words of institution, establishing the Eucharist as the central Christian ritual on the other, and they’re both true – and if you are a pious Christian then you have no doubt that they’re both true. And the details are messy, but okay, fine.

Nehemia:Elu v’elu divrei Elohim chayim,” “Both these and those are the words of the living God.” [laughing]

Shaye: If you’re a Christian I could you find a way to live with these contradictory truths, because we Jews have lots of practice doing that.

Nehemia: And that was a quote from the Mishnah, the Rabbinical literature of course, about contradictions in Judaism.

Shaye: So, there was something called the Easter Controversy - you can look it up - in which the early Church, they’re not just arguing with the Quartodecimans who were off on their own with the 14th-ers, but even the ones who said, “No, it should be on Sunday as a memorial to Christ’s resurrection, which was on Sunday, so we need to have again, salvation, the resurrection and redemption. That’s the main theme. So, which Sunday is it going to be?” Well, that’s not so simple.

So the rule that will emerge is the first Sunday after the first full moon after the vernal equinox. That will turn out to be the classic rule, but there are lots of other ways of calculating it, which explains why to this very day, Western Christians and Eastern Christians often celebrate Easter on a different Sunday.

Nehemia: Sometimes a month apart.

Shaye: Sometimes up to a month apart.

Nehemia: Yeah.

Shaye: Because it depends when the vernal equinox is.

Nehemia: Let’s go back to the Quartodecimans. So according to Stewart in his book, he brings a bunch of quotations, and in particular there’s a guy named Polycrates – I may be mispronouncing his name…

Shaye: Polycrates

Nehemia: Polycrates, who in the 2nd century makes the claim that all the Christians of Asia, by which he means today most of Turkey, Asia Minor…

Shaye: Right.

Nehemia: All the Christians of Asia are Quartodecimans.

Shaye: That’s right. So, once upon a time they seem to have been a large and powerful movement in the Church, but they lost.

Nehemia: And in fact, he claims that John, by which I think he means the author of the Gospel of John…

Shaye: I think so.

Nehemia: He claims he was a Quartodeciman, and they know where he’s buried in Asia, and he makes a strange statement, Polycrates, that he was a high priest who wore the breastplate. Incredible stuff, who knows. But the point is, in the 2nd century the Quartodecimans were based in what’s today Turkey.

Shaye: That’s correct.

Nehemia: And in Rome you had the Bishop Victor who was opposed to this, who was Sunday-er.

Shaye: That’s correct. He was a Sunday guy.

Nehemia: Okay.

Shaye: He said it should be on Sunday.

Nehemia: Yeah.

Shaye: So that, of course, is the view that triumphs everywhere in Christianity, except we now have the problem of which Sunday.

Nehemia: Now, Stewart claims in the book something which I’m sure you won’t agree with. I thought it was quite fanciful; that Melito himself was Jewish.

Shaye: Yes, I’ve seen no reliable evidence for that.

Nehemia: Yeah, oh, he bases it on Polycrates saying, “All of those of my race are Quartodecimans.” I think he just means those in Asia.

Shaye: I’m not sure what he means. I thought that was not a very convincing argument. The usual evidence for the argument is that Melito’s work on Pascha sounds and feels Jewish. It’s an amazing text, and if you’re a listener who hasn’t read it yet, there is actually a translation available online.

Nehemia: Yeah.

Shaye: But the Stewart translation is a very useful one.

Nehemia: And guys, this is the Stewart translation on Pascha, Melito of Sardis.

Shaye: It’s not very expensive.

Nehemia: Yeah, fascinating book, very fascinating book. It’s worth reading. Even to the Jews I would say, “Look, this is part of…” And we’ll get the deicide issue. So, Jews should definitely be aware of this, in my opinion. Other than the anti-Semitic parts, or what I think are anti-Semitic, it’s actually a very beautiful liturgy.

Shaye: Yeah, so it’s both a very Jewish text and a very anti-Jewish text…

Nehemia: Yeah.

Shaye: …at the same time. By Jewish I mean that if you’re familiar with the Passover Seder, if you’re familiar with the Haggadah, if you’re familiar with Rabbinic Midrash, then large chunks of this book sound at home, make you feel at home. I understand what he’s doing, he’s reading Exodus chapter 12, the main chapter, the chapter which we spoke about at our first session together.

Nehemia: Yeah.

Shaye: Right? And he’s basically giving you a Christian Midrashic reading of Exodus 12 describing the Pascal lamb, focusing on the Pascal lamb, which of course, he explains the Pascal lamb is Jesus, but he’s explaining very clearly how this is God’s plan for redemption. It’s happening through the Pascal lamb, saving the Israelites from death, just as in his mind that’s the same thing - Jesus is saving his followers from death.

And many of the phrases, as you observed earlier, sound Jewish. A lot of the rhetoric sounds Jewish. It sounds like the Pesach Seder, the Pesach Haggadah, that we have, there are various bits of it that sound like the passage you read earlier from Mishnah Pesachim about why redemption is “shi’abud legeula”.

Nehemia: All right, so we’re talking about Melito of Sardis’s On Pascha, and there’s a section there, section 68, where has the phrase, “He…” meaning Jesus in the context, “He is the one who delivered us from slavery to freedom, from darkness into light, from death into life…”

Shaye: Right.

Nehemia: “…from tyranny into an eternal kingdom.” And then you open up Mishnah Pesachim 10:5 and you find, “He brought us forth from slavery to freedom, anguish to joy, mourning to festival, darkness to great light, subjugation to redemption…”

Shaye: Right.

Nehemia: “and we should say before Him, Hallelujah.” And it sounds like Melito is echoing the Mishnah, but I did something a bit radical. I looked up in the Kaufman manuscript of the Mishnah…

Shaye: Good for you, yes, the Kaufman.

Nehemia: In the Kaufman manuscript is says, “And He brought us out from slavery to freedom,” end of sentence.

Shaye: Oh, that’s disappointing.

Nehemia: [laughing] So I’ve got to wonder, is our version of the Mishnah, “our” meaning the common printed version, is it influenced by the Haggadah and not the other way around?

Shaye: That has been suggested.

Nehemia: Okay.

Shaye: Right.

Nehemia: In which case, Melito couldn’t have been influenced by… well, unless the Haggadah was around in the end of the 2nd century, that’s a different…

Shaye: Right. In other words, all the older scholars always assumed that if you have liturgical parallel between Jews and Christians, the Christians got it from the Jews. The Jews were there first, and they influenced Christians. It never occurred to anybody, “Gee, maybe we should turn it around and think about the other possibility.” But within the last generation or so, many scholars have been arguing precisely that - that Jewish rituals were shaped by Jews in response to Christian rituals.

Nehemia: And so, what’s the third possibility?

Shaye: Well, one influenced the other, A, B, B, A. The third possibility would be, they’re both drawing on a liturgical common pool.

Nehemia: Right. You mentioned that in the iTunes University lecture, that this is…

Shaye: Right, yeah this.

Nehemia: … there’s a spirit in the air.

Shaye: Right, it’s not very satisfactory for a historian, because it’s kind of floating, but you would say, since I’m not convinced that there is direct causal nexus between the one and the other, that means that they’re both drawing on liturgical patterns.

Nehemia: Great minds think alike. [laughing]

Shaye: Great minds think alike, or something like that. And it’s very hard to prove. Proving influence is very, very difficult, because it’s usually a lot more complicated than two possibilities - A versus B, B versus A.

Nehemia: There could even be a dialog going on.

Shaye: Yeah, well yes. So sometimes you can see it, and then you’re fine, other times, like Melito, you’re left with a whole set of intriguing possibilities but the absence of any clear proof.

Nehemia: So Melito has this On Pascha, and Stewart suggests that this was actually a Passover Seder for Quartodecimans, and you don’t accept that, right?

Shaye: No, what may have happened is as follows, right. So, I agree with Stewart that he’s a 14th-er.

Nehemia: Right.

Shaye: I agree with him that they seem – they, the community of Christians to whom Melito is speaking, right, because he is addressing an audience in this text - they seem to have read Exodus chapter 12, and you now, some people have observed… what’s really interesting is that in our Pesach Haggadah, we don’t read Exodus chapter 12.

Nehemia: [laughing] That’s kind of shocking.

Shaye: That’s kind of shocking, right. Isn’t that weird? You know, that should be a basic text, and instead, we read this text about a wandering Aramean who was my father from the first fruits passage in Deuteronomy. What do the first fruits have to do with anything? And why are we reading this passage in Deuteronomy arame avad avi? We should be reading Exodus chapter 12. Hmm.

So some people have suggested that maybe the Christians got there first and the Jews were saying, “Okay, you take Exodus chapter 12, we’re not going to touch it on Passover eve. We’ll just quote from it a little bit here and there, but basically we’re going to ignore it and we’ll find some other passage. I know. We’ll read the passage about the first fruits from Deuteronomy.”

Nehemia: And the passage about the first fruits in Deuteronomy 26 is a very concise re-telling of the exodus story.

Shaye: Right. That would be a counter-argument, that it’s a wonderful, short summary of sacred history, right.

Nehemia: And everyone’s writing by hand, or memorizing things, and if you’ve got to memorize a short thing, you’re not going to do Exodus 12, you’ll do Deuteronomy 26, which is like two or three…

Shaye: That’s correct. However, having said that, so Melito is just talking to his congregation. “We’ve just heard Exodus chapter 12…”

Nehemia: Yeah.

Shaye: “Let me give you a sermon on it,” and that’s the Peri Pascha.

Nehemia: At the very least it’s a sermon on Exodus 12.

Shaye: I don’t think it’s a Seder. I think it’s a reading of Exodus 12. Now, the interesting thing is, what happens after he’s done?

Nehemia: Yeah.

Shaye: Stewart-Sykes says that it should be around midnight, and precisely at midnight, when the destroyer was let loose and the Israelites were redeemed, is precisely when they had their actual ritual. Now, he could say that because we don’t have that. So, he doesn’t talk about drinking cups of wine, he doesn’t talk about eating the Pascal lamb, except for… all historical. It’s all referring back…

Nehemia: Well, they were fasting at this time, weren’t the Quartodecimans doing a fast while they were hearing this sermon?

Shaye: Yes, I’m not sure of the evidence for that, exactly. But that’s what Sykes says. So, they had a fast before and he says it’s just like the Jewish fast. But the Jewish fast is from Pesachim chapter 10, Mishnah 1, “Avrei Pesachim lo yochal adam ad shetechshach. Samuch lamincha lo yochal adam ad shetechshach.” Right.

Nehemia: In fifth grade, my class studied the Gemara of Avrei Pesachim, so I know it quite well. [laughing]

Shaye: Yeah, so many students have, yes. So, Avrei Pesachim samuch lamincha lo yochal adam ad shetechshach.

Nehemia: Yeah.

Shaye: So in other words, the Jewish fast, which is allegedly parallel to the Christian fast, is not a parallel at all. It means, come late afternoon, don’t eat anything so that we…

Nehemia: It’s like a three-hour fast, I mean.

Shaye: Exactly, it’s a couple of hours. I mean, that’s not a… I wouldn’t call it…

Nehemia: I think what they’re confusing is later we have the fast of the firstborn, but that’s from a much later period, isn’t it?

Shaye: That’s a much later period. That’s in the Islamic period. That’s… That is much, much later.

Nehemia: So as you say, it’s 1,000 years too late.

Shaye: Maybe not a 1,000…

Nehemia: 600, or whatever.

Shaye: 500, 800, whatever. What’s a few hundred years among friends?

Nehemia: Yeah.

Shaye: Again, you have to… Often, these things change and develop over time.

Nehemia: Okay.

Shaye: So I think Melito of Sardis is a wonderfully evocative book, and it is. It’s rather poetic in style, highly rhetorical, very developed. There are all sorts of echoes of the Hebrew Bible, Exodus 12, Book of Psalms, and elsewhere, echoes of what we have in our Haggadah. But at the end of the day, it is what it is. Now, it isn’t a Christian Haggadah - it’s not a Haggadah at all, it’s a Christian sermon based on Exodus 12, presumably on the 14th day of Nissan, in which we celebrate - we Christians - celebrate the passion and suffering of Jesus, and presumably, it’s going to lead into at midnight, some sort of ceremony which Sykes sees clues about it scattered throughout this book.

And if you’re generous you could say, “Okay, there are clues,” But at the end of the day, I’m not feeling generous. I didn’t see any clues of a ritual after it. It’s all conjecture. We don’t how the Quartodecimans actually observed their Pascha, we don’t know.

Nehemia: So, let me push back a little bit. So this is a sermon, and you do accept that this was delivered on the night of Pesach, right?

Shaye: On the 14th, the 14th of Nissan, that’s correct.

Nehemia: Okay. Do you think that this was a one-time thing that Melito read, and then he was done, and never used it again?

Shaye: That’s a great question. I don’t know.

Nehemia: Because we have manuscripts. I was looking at a different version that goes into a lot more detail, Stuart George Hall, he talks about…

Shaye: Yeah.

Nehemia: …how they have a version in Georgian, and they have an epitome in Latin. I mean, there are all these different versions of it. It sounds to me like this wasn’t a text that was just used once, that it was used…

Shaye: That’s the assumption, it wasn’t a one-off. It wasn’t just…

Nehemia: Yeah. And in that case, it is a Passover Haggadah, in a sense. It’s just not…

Shaye: That’s a good point. Yeah, in that sense, it was meant to be ritually repeated.

Nehemia: Yeah.

Shaye: And I guess that’s sort of like a Haggadah.

Nehemia: And it may be they didn’t have to do this Haggadah every year. Maybe, you know, every fourth year whoever was in charge of the church there said, “Hey, this year let’s do Melito. Last year, we did Polycrates,” and whatever.

Shaye: Year before that, we did Manischewitz.

Nehemia: Exactly, okay. [laughing]

Shaye: It’s time for a new one.

Nehemia: Well, and I think the idea - and you use this term in your lectures of “high church”, of which Judaism really is, meaning in the sense that we have very specific rituals that we recite at different times…

Shaye: Correct.

Nehemia: Did that exist in the 2nd century, even in Judaism?

Shaye: No, it’s developing. That’s one of the genius creations of Rabbinic Judaism, is ritualizing things, things that just have been left natural before turned out to be… you have to do it in a very specific way, at a very specific time, at a very specific amount, in a very specific context, right? That’s the essence of Rabbinic Judaism, I would say, or certainly one of its great contributions, is ritualizing things that previously had just been helter-skelter.

Nehemia: So, an interesting example of that is the haftarah. So you go to different Jewish communities, and sometimes they read different sections on different weeks, and if you look in the earlier sources they talk about, you know, “Read from the Prophets, but not less than three verses.” Wait a minute. We have specific things to read, what do you mean, “not less than three verses”? And it sounds like you could just open up anything in Isaiah and read it, or anything in Jeremiah and read it. That’s the impression, at least, that I get.

Shaye: That’s very good. Yeah, I think you’re right. I want to give an example also of brit milah, which once upon a time simply meant was, you take a knife and cut off the piece of skin, and that’s the end of it. But it turns out to be the centerpiece of a ritual with brachot and specific rules and requirements, none of which can be found before Rabbinic literature. Again, the rabbis are standardizing something which had previously just been entirely episodic or personal.

Nehemia: That’s a good word, “episodic”. So, in other words, they may have used Melito’s… And I think it seems quite likely that they used this in different… In fact, what Hall brings here, Stuart George Hall, is that it was used by non-Quartodecimans, meaning most of the copies we have in the translations in Georgian weren’t Quartodecimans.

Shaye: That’s a good point.

Nehemia: So the text was then used - I don’t know if it was being used, at least it was being studied - but presumably, if somebody was bothering to copy this, somebody would have used this sermon on the Sunday of Pascha, perhaps.

Shaye: Well, I’m tempted to joke a little bit. I know that it’s not really a Pesach Seder and it’s not really a Haggadah, because there aren’t any wine stains on it.

Nehemia: [laughing] Okay, fair enough. That’s a good joke.

Hey, I want to start with the first passage in section one, look at some details if we can, quickly. Section 1, it starts, “The Scripture of the exodus…” and this is from Stuart’s translation, “The Scripture of the exodus of the Hebrews has been read and the words of the mystery have been declared.” And you were suggesting, and others, say that they’re reading Exodus 12. I think that’s based on other Quartodeciman literature.

And when I saw that, I looked in the Greek and I saw the phrase, [Greek 27:31] “tase breakas exodu,” and I thought, “Surely, that means not that they read the Scripture of the exodus of the Hebrews, but they read the Scripture of the exodus in Hebrew.” That is, the Hebrew exodus. And I asked a native Greek speaker who has a PhD in Biblical Studies, and he said, “There’s no way it means that.”

Shaye: I agree with him, your friend.

Nehemia: He said, “The better translation is ‘the Scripture of the Hebraic Exodus.’”

Shaye: Who is your friend? I agree with him.

Nehemia: Dr. Pavlos Vassiliades who got a PhD recently from Aristotle University of Thessalonica.

Shaye: Okay, good man, he is. You should stick with him. I agree with him completely.

Nehemia: But I wanted it to mean that! I wanted them to have read the Exodus in Hebrew, and then Melito, who’s a native Jew, according to…

Shaye: No, no, no, no.

Nehemia: … but no, it doesn’t work.

Shaye: No, no, it doesn’t work. The whole thing falls apart.

Nehemia: It’s a great story, though! [laughing]

Shaye: Great story, I agree with you completely.

Nehemia: It doesn’t work. So in section 58 he says something which I think is completely profound. He says, “If you scrutinize the type through its outcome, you will discern Him.” And that’s so profound to me, because I’ll see Jews and Christians having these discussions, and the Christians will point to something and say to the Jew, “How is it you don’t see that this refers to Jesus?” And the Jew says, “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” And here, Melito’s explaining, he says, “You know what the result is. You’re looking for Jesus here. Scrutinize the type through its outcome and you will discern Him.” And I think that’s actually more honest and consistent with the New Testament, for example Luke 24, which I won’t get into. I have a whole talk about that.

Shaye: What is Luke 24, remind me?

Nehemia: Well, Luke 24… I guess I will talk about it. It’s about the road to Emmaus.

Shaye: Oh.

Nehemia: And it talks about the disciples of Jesus don’t know that Isaiah 53 talks about a resurrected Messiah…

Shaye: Right.

Nehemia: …until these things are then explained to them through a revelation. In other words, no one’s going to look at these passages in the Bible – I shouldn’t say no one – but it wouldn’t be intuitive to look at these passages in the Bible and think they have anything to do with Jesus. And Melito is accepting that. He’s saying, “Scrutinize the type through its outcome and you will discern Him.” I think that’s pretty interesting.

And then in section 9 he says, “He is all things. He is Father in that He begets. He is…” Which I think is blasphemy in Christianity, right? “He is Father in that He begets. He is Son in that He has begotten. He is sheep in that He suffers.” So, I realized he’s saying, “He’s all things but not in all ways.”

Shaye: Right. Later Christians will not be happy with this Christology, because he clearly is not making distinctions that later Christians will say you need to make.

Nehemia: Right, but even from the typology perspective, when he says, “Jesus is all things” and he says, “He is Father in that He begets. He is Son in that he’s begotten. He is sheep in that He suffers,” so He’s not a sheep in all ways, He’s only a sheep in the sense that He suffers. He’s only Father in that He begets, meaning they believe He was the Creator. And so, the point is, my Jewish Talmudic mind hears “He’s all things,” I say, “You’re saying He’s these things, but He doesn’t have all the characteristics of those things.”

And in the Christian way of thinking, typology-wise, He doesn’t have to be that in all ways, just in enough ways that we can connect Him to it. Does that make any sense?

Shaye: That could be. Typology is a tricky thing. He has a nice discretion of it.

Nehemia: Yeah.

Shaye: So, we’re arguing that much of what we have in the Hebrew Bible foreshadows. That’s an important word from the Letter to the Hebrews.

Nehemia: Yeah.

Shaye: Right? It’s foreshadowing what’s going to happen.

Nehemia: Yeah.

Shaye: Once you realize it’s just foreshadowing, then the thing itself doesn’t mean anything, because its meaning is entirely contained in that which it foreshadows. Or in this case, the Pascal lamb foreshadows Jesus the lamb, right? And the death of the Pascal lamb foreshadows the death of Jesus. And the atoning power – he gets a little confused there, I think between the Pascal sacrifice and the Talmud sacrifices - but he says, “The atoning power of the Pascal lamb foreshadows the atoning power of the death of Jesus.”

Nehemia: Can I read this passage? It’s section 35, it combines two things. It’s a two-fer. It combines the issue of typology – and again, guys, the typology is the idea that Melito looks in the Tanakh, in what Christians call the Old Testament, and he finds something that then is fulfilled in the New Testament.

Shaye: Right.

Nehemia: So, in section 35, and I’m going to read just excerpts of it. “Nothing beloved…” meaning he’s addressing his congregation, presumably, “Nothing beloved is spoken or made without an analogy and a sketch.”

Shaye: Right.

Nehemia: Therefore, a preliminary sketch is made of what is to be.” In other words, he’s speaking like an architect who has a blueprint. And then he says, “From wax or from clay or from wood,” and that’s an analogy, I believe, from making statues from the lost wax method of making statues. And what they would do is, they would make the statue, cover it in clay, and then pour molten metal into it and the wax would dissolve. So, it’s a really interesting analogy he’s using.

He goes on in section 37, “Then the type is destroyed. It has become useless,” referring to the Tanakh. “It yields up an image to what is truly real,” meaning the New Testament. “For indeed, the Lord’s salvation and His truth were prefigured in the people,” by which I think he means the Jews, “and the decrees of the Gospels were proclaimed in advance by the law.”

In other words, the purpose of Israel as a nation was to prefigure the truth of Christian salvation, and the purpose of the Torah, at least, was to prefigure the Gospel, according to Melito.

He goes on in section 41, “So, the people were valuable before the Church arose, and the law was wonderful before the illumination of the Gospel.” In other words, today the Jews are worthless and the Torah is worthless.

Shaye: They have no purpose.

Nehemia: And then he says it explicitly, “The law fulfilled gave up its meaning to the Gospel.” I’ll read that again. “The law fulfilled gave up its meaning to the Gospel, and the people is depleted…” meaning the Jews are depleted, they don’t have any value. “The people is depleted by the arising of the Church and the model was dissolved by the appearance of the Lord.” And there he says, “The model is dissolved,” he’s echoing back to the wax and the clay, right? You pour in the molten metal and the wax actually melts, it’s dissolved by the appearance of Jesus. “The Jerusalem below as a value, now it is worthless because of the heavenly Jerusalem.”

And then he says in section 90 and 99, “On this account…” meaning, because you killed Jesus, “You Jews had to die.” And then he says, “You disowned the Lord and so are not owned by Him and you lie dead.”

So, talk to us about this anti-Judaism. The Jews as a people fulfilled their function, which was to foretell Jesus, and now they have no purpose and they’re empty, they’re depleted.

Shaye: Right, I mean, that’s what he says. There’s no way to get around the fact that that’s what he says. He’s making it clear. The interesting thing is that the term he uses throughout is “Israel”. He doesn’t use the word “Jews”.

Nehemia: Yeah.

Shaye: I’m not 100 percent sure why, but that just puts things onto a theological plane, right? At no point is it clear to me that what he was talking about is contemporary Jews.

Nehemia: Really?

Shaye: I think he’s dealing with theological abstraction.

Nehemia: Okay.

Shaye: The Hebrew Bible is exhausted, Israel is exhausted, meaning that the people of God now are, of course, not the Jews…

Nehemia: Yeah.

Shaye: …or Israel, as he calls them, but they are the Christians who replace them.

Nehemia: And the Church.

Shaye: You’re absolutely right. Right.

Nehemia: So he’s definitely a replacement theologian, right? In other words…

Shaye: No question about it.

Nehemia: Okay.

Shaye: No question about it.

Nehemia: The Church has replaced Israel, and the historical Israel now isn’t God’s chosen people, is nothing.

Shaye: That’s correct, because they’ve been replaced.

Nehemia: Okay.

Shaye: They’ve been replaced.

Nehemia: I want to look at some of the more harsh anti-Jewish things which I feel are anti-Semitic. I want to hear your perspective. He starts in section 74, I’ll just read some excerpts. “Oh, Israel, what have you done?”

Shaye: Right.

Nehemia: “I, said Israel, I killed the Lord.” I mean, that’s an explicit accusation of deicide. In fact, the Jews are confessing it, according to him.

Shaye: That’s right.

Nehemia: Section 75, “He had to suffer, but not through you.” And you read this passage, it’s very liturgically beautiful, [laughing] yet content-wise it’s quite offensive. 76, “You should have called to God,” meaning Israel should have called out to God, “‘Oh, Master. If Your Son should suffer, let Him be nailed in place by a tyrannical right-hand, not mine.’” And I read that and I was shocked. Wasn’t it the Romans who nailed Him in place? So, it was literally the tyrannical right-hand, not the Jews.

Shaye: What is fascinating about Melito is there are no Romans anywhere.

Nehemia: Right. In other words, he’s saying, “You Jews should have said, ‘Okay, I know Your Son has to suffer, but let Him suffer by the hands of the Romans.’” But that’s actually what happened.

Shaye: That’s actually what happened. But that’s fine… but I’m saying again, this is theology. I wouldn’t call this history.

Nehemia: I don’t know. This sounds anti-Jewish to me. In other words…

Shaye: Okay.

Nehemia: …he blames the Jews for what the New Testament said, I can call that theology. But he’s going above and beyond. I want to read some more here. Let’s wrap it up. Section 79, “You prepared for Him sharp nails and false witnesses, and ropes and whips and vinegar and gall, and a sword and torture.” He’s talking about the Jews.

Shaye: That’s all from the Gospels, except there are no Romans anywhere.

Nehemia: Yeah, but the sharp nails - the Jews prepared? The whips - the Jews prepared? The vinegar and gall? “You brought forth the flogging for His body and thorns for His head and He fed with gall His goodly mouth. And you killed your Lord at the great feast.” I can read the verses, we don’t have time. But guys, look it up for yourselves. The Jews aren’t the ones who nailed in the nails, the Jews aren’t the ones who fed with him gall - In fact, it’s explicitly said it was the Roman soldiers who fed him gall.

Shaye: That’s correct.

Nehemia: Meaning the vinegar. But Melito’s blaming the Jews. And the thorns, the crown of thorns is also the Roman soldiers. So, why is he blaming the Jews?

Shaye: Why is he blaming the Jews?

Nehemia: Or Israel.

Shaye: I understand this to be in theological terms. In other words, if you call Melito an anti-Semite…

Nehemia: Yeah.

Shaye: … one has to use that term very delicately, because I’m not sure that Melito wants to pack Jews up into box cars and send them to Auschwitz.

Nehemia: Fair enough.

Shaye: I’m really not sure that’s what he means. What he really means to say is that Judaism – he doesn’t use the word – but Judaism is dead, right, because it has been replaced by Christianity. The former message of God has now been shifted, removed over from Israel and the Jews to Christians. In that sense, it’s why I’m calling it theology. He’s arguing for the legitimacy of the Christian message at the expense of the Jewish message. The Jewish message has been replaced, they were once upon a time the people of God, they are no longer. They’ve been replaced by God, and in fact, God is angry at them because they in turn, have killed God.

Now, if you argue, “How do you kill God?” that makes no sense. That’s a nonsensical statement. It isn’t nonsensical, but it’s a theological judgment. So, that’s what I meant by calling it theology - that he can ignore the Romans because he’s not giving you a historical matter. Historical facts don’t matter. What matters is truth on the theological plane, and for that, Melito is convinced that God has shifted His favorite from one to the other, and that Israel lies dead, theologically speaking. It is no longer the people of God, it is no longer a path to salvation, it is no longer a path of truth. In all those things, it’s been replaced. I call that theology.

Now, you want to call it anti-Semitism? Feel free to do so, but I’m uncomfortable with that word, because I think it implies that Melito is saying something which he didn’t mean to say. I don’t know if Melito in his life ever met a Jew. I have no evidence, and I don’t think it would matter to him, because he’s arguing that Judaism is what lies dead. He’s not interested in killing Jews, he’s interested in saying that theologically speaking, Judaism now lies dead – which again, is not a pleasant message to hear. I agree completely, it’s not nice. I agree with that completely.

Nehemia: Yeah.

Shaye: But when you want to call it anti-Semitism, that’s the point we may want to disagree.

Nehemia: Okay. So, let’s say Melito himself wasn’t espousing anti-Semitism. You mention in your lecture how this then led to anti-Semitism. In fact, your cousin wrote a book about this.

Shaye: To be sure, yes, Jeremy Cohen wrote a book called Christ Killers on this motif. And you know, there are many stories about Jewish kids growing up in New York in a prior time in the playground, where the Irish kids, they’re playing with says to him, “You killed God” or “You killed Christ.” You know, and then the kid would go home to his mother, “We didn’t kill anybody. I don’t know what he’s talking about,” right? But there are many such stories.

So, once upon a time it was a very potent way of describing Jews. Nowadays, we live in a more politically correct environment…

Nehemia: Maybe at Harvard. I still encounter the anti-Semites…

Shaye: Okay.

Nehemia: … who say, “You Jews killed Christ.” In fact, my understand is that Kike means “killer of Christ”.

Shaye: That I don’t know - is that true? I guess it is.

Nehemia: That’s what I read. In any event, so I still encounter people to this day who hate Jews, and they don’t want to box us up in box cars, but they believe that God will crush us like a bug because we killed His Son.

Anyway, that’s a bit off topic. Professor, I really appreciate you giving us all this time. Thank you. Shalom.

Shaye: Shalom, shalom, Nehemia.

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Related Posts:
When was the Passover Sacrifice Brought
Was the Last Supper a Passover Seder
Pesach: Feast of Protection
Guess Who’s Coming to Seder
How the New Testament Interprets the Tanakh
Pesher in the Dead Sea Scrolls

Show Notes:
Exodus 12
Deuteronomy 26
Psachim Chapter 10, Mishnah 5
Psachim Chapter 10, Mishnah 1
Philo – Allegories 394
Prof. Shaye Cohen
On Pascha by Melito of Sardis (Author),‎ Alistair C. Stewart (Translator)
On Pascha and Fragments by Melito of Sardis (Author),‎ Stewart George Hall (Editor)
Christ Killers by Jeremy Cohen

  • shell says:

    The things that are said around 31min to 34min is faithfully taken (unfortunately) from the christian bible. It seems surprising cause lots of people shy away from it, but If a person is going to follow paul, theyre supposed to believe this replacement stuff and the doing away with the law:

    2Co 3: v7. But if the ministration of death, written [and] engraven in stones, was glorious, so that the children of Israel could not stedfastly behold the face of Moses for the glory of his countenance; which [glory] was to be done away:
    v8. How shall not the ministration of the spirit be rather glorious?
    v9. For if the ministration of condemnation [be] glory, much more doth the ministration of righteousness exceed in glory.
    v10. For even that which was made glorious had no glory in this respect, by reason of the glory that excelleth.
    v11. For if that which is done away [was] glorious, much more that which remaineth [is] glorious.
    v12. Seeing then that we have such hope, we use great plainness of speech:
    v13. And not as Moses, [which] put a vail over his face, that the children of Israel could not stedfastly look to the end of that which is abolished:
    v14. But their minds were blinded: for until this day remaineth the same vail untaken away in the reading of the old testament; which [vail] is done away in Christ.
    v15. But even unto this day, when Moses is read, the vail is upon their heart.

    But my response to paul would be very simple: Deu 29: v29. The secret [things belong] unto the LORD our God: but those [things which are] revealed [belong] unto us and to our children for ever, that [we] may do all the words of this law.

    (To any christians questioning themselves over paul and have a crisis of faith, there are christians who remain christians while rejecting paul)

    • Anon says:

      Paul was a Torah genius and therefore was difficult to understand:

      2Pe 3:16  as also in all his letters, speaking in them of these things; in which are some things hard to be understood, which the unlearned and unstable pervert, as also they do the rest of the Scriptures, to their own destruction).

      Paul did away with the man-made laws that went against the Torah, but never the Torah itself:

      Rom 3:31  Do we then make the Law void through faith? Let it not be! {But we establish the Law.}

      Act 21:24  taking them, be purified with them, and be at expense for them, so that they may shave their heads. And all may know that what they have been told about you is nothing, {but you yourself also walk orderly and keep the Law.}

      Act 24:14  But I confess this to you, that after the Way which they call heresy, {so I worship the God of my fathers, believing all things that are written in the Law and in the Prophets.}

      Act 25:8  Defending himself, Paul said, {Neither against the Law of the Jews, nor against the temple, nor against Caesar have I offended in anything.}

      Act 28:17  And after three days it happened that Paul called together those being chief of the Jews. And they coming together, he said to them, Men, brothers, {I did nothing against the people or customs of our fathers.} I was delivered a prisoner from Jerusalem into the hands of the Romans

      Act 28:23  And they having appointed him a day, many came to him in his lodging; to whom he expounded, testifying the kingdom of God, and persuading them the things concerning Jesus, {both out of the Law of Moses and out of the Prophets,} from morning until evening.

  • Kelly McDowell says:

    Possibilities;
    1.The Last Supper, the last meal the disciples share with Jesus. Not meaning the Passover meal, just a meal where they found lodgings before they were to celebrate the Passover Festival. Prayers, blessings, wine and bread are usual parts aren’t they?
    2.A Messianic Rabbi once said there was a traditional meal that men shared before the Passover meal.
    3.Jesus can’t be eating the Passover meal as he is supposed to be the Lamb to be sacrificed .
    4.Jesus is sacrificed on Preparation Day which allows him to be the sacrifice before the Passover Meal

  • Scott Loras says:

    Melito of Sardis destroyed the Way of YHVH which is precisely what Yeshua exemplified. The “church” is NOT the ekklesia or qahal. It has been the same formula front the beginning – grace faith obedience. Torah is Truth, which Yeshua exemplified, it is alive and well.

    Melito may have had (or not) good intentions but he was full of error. Many of the so-called faithful began to leave The Way of YHVH after the apostle John died, following these antisemites like Melito and Marcion etc. And, here we are today, with a “church” that hardly resembles Yeshua’s qahal/ekklesia/assembly of called out ones or faithful.

    The fact is, neither “Judaism” not “Christianity” are found in the Bible. What is in the Bible is The Way of YHVH, and a whole bunch of “do it our own way” (tradition instead of Torah), disobedient (sinful) people. This includes Rabbinic Judaism, arising out of Babylonian captivity, and Christianity, arising out of pagan Greek/Roman dominance. The further are to Torah, while the latter has done away with Torah altogether.

  • Scott Loras says:

    Melito of Sardis was not Jewish. Why not? Because no Jew would refer to the Tanakh as the “old testament.” He is the one responsible for the misnomers, old and new testament.

    Father, Son, lamb, these are metaphors, so accept their meaning but not as much their literal nature, except as role.

  • Scott Loras says:

    Easter is syncretism which began under the Emperor Constantine, and is based on the Greek/Roman Ishtar. This is how eggs, bunnies, and other pagan elements enter the Christian holiday. Ironically, of course, this is forbidden by YHVH.

    • VictoriaRose says:

      Syncretism actually began much earlier – invoked heavily by the Emperor Hadrian persecution sparked by the Bar Kokhba revolt. As Roman hatred of the Jewish people intensified, Gentile leadership in Yeshua sought to distance themselves from the Jews, hoping to avoid Roman persecution.

      This occured and deepened most prevelently in areas farther to the West, away from strong Jewish influence. Lacking the “Jewish traditions” to tie their celebratiins to, “heathen converts” began to incorporate elements of their own national customs into their celebrations. While the believers in Palastine remained Torah observant (p. 82).

      The syncreatism at first was very effective in gaining Gentile Christians the favor of the Emperors, though later they too endured fierce persecution when they refused to make sacrifices to the Emperor.

      When Emperor Constantine “converted to Christianity” he did however, make much of the syncretism into offical church doctrine at the Council of Nicia in 325 CE, ending persecution to those willing to compromise, and banned – on peanalty of death – any Judaizing (Torah Observance). Such rigid laws demonstrates that there was still a strong presence of Torah Observant believers in Yeshua at that time. (See Texrbook of Ecclesiastical History, by Johann Karl Ludwig Giesler 1836. Available Online at Internet Archive)

  • Scott Loras says:

    What’s missing is First Fruits, which begins when the weekly Sabbath ends after Passover.

    There “Last Supper” was a rehearsal so the disciples (and the rest of us) would understand His connection to the Holy-days.

  • Gary Lowrey says:

    When Melito wrote his sermon the church was only about 140 years old. There were limited scriptures to read and the early church was not yet informed. The pentecostal church does not belive Israel is replaced in fact they teach that Israel will return to the proper place in G-d’s kingdom. The Father has many promises to Israel that will soon be fulfilled. We do not belive in the Catholic eucharist in which the bead is transformed into Jesus actual flesh and the wine his actual blood. . The people who attack Jewish people are not born again. G-d loves his people Israel. The Romans killed Jesus but it was G-d’s plan.

  • Jason Ostler says:

    Absolutely love the thoughtfulness and information from this post. Thank you for sharing the history and the background!

  • Diane Watson says:

    It’s so funny…I barely recognized your voice at first, Nehemia

  • Beverleyann Kazmierczak says:

    Easter Sunday, is just a excuse to have eggs candy, lost the real foues,in the foues today, it just a excuse to keep pagan holiday .That all it is

  • Daniel Monroe says:

    Oohhh! There’s a Classic! Will have to listen to that(both parts) several times – and a future episode with a Wed. pesach/crucifixion for a Sat. sunset resurrection, sounds about right.

  • Adele Voss says:

    I thought I heard your guest say that Yeshua died on Passover/Friday. I don’t know that I have heard you discuss this either. Wouldn’t ‘Passover’ have been on Wednesday that year?

    • Professor Cohen was echoing the scholarly consensus, which in turn reflects the mainstream Christian understanding that Jesus was crucified on a Friday. The alternative Hebrew Roots explanation that he was crucified on a Wednesday afternoon would would make a great future episide!

      • Hilary Butler says:

        Jesus said that he would spend three nights and three days in the heart of the earth Matthew 12: 39 – 40.

        So if Jesus was crucified on Wednesday, and buried before sundown =

        Wednesday night, Thursday day day of the eating of passover lamb
        Thursday night Friday day Feast of Tabernacles High holy day ? like a Sabbath
        Friday night, Saturday day Sabbath and the next day was day of the Firstfruits?

        Then he would have risen just as the Sabbath ended after dusk on the day of the firstfruits which makes sense..

        Which would fit with the stone being rolled away before dawn.

        On the basis of what Jesus said, I can’t see how he could have been crucified on a Friday.

        So the question is, how did mainstream christianity make three night and three days into Friday to Sunday?

        Sounds intellectually challenging to me….

        • Anonymous says:

          He was buried in haste on Tuesday, just before the High Sabbath of the first day of Unleavened Bread, which began Wednesday evening.

          “And taking it down, he wrapped it in linen, and laid it in a tomb hewn out of the rock, where no one was yet laid. And it was Preparation day, and the Sabbath was approaching” (Luk 23:53-54).

          “Therefore, since it was the Preparation Day, that the bodies should not remain on the stake on the Sabbath – for that Sabbath was a high one – the Yehudim asked Pilate to have their legs broken, and that they be taken away. Then they took the body of Yehoshua, and bound it in linen wrappings with the spices, as was the habit of the Yehudim for burial” (Joh 19:31, 40)

          So after 3 days and nights, He rose shortly before sunset on the Sabbath.

          • Richard Peterson says:

            Absolutely! This is the correct chronology of events that year. I came out of wwcg. Now with Pacific Church of God. We currently are debating The Calendar.

      • Mark Dunn says:

        Yes, it would would Nehemia. 🙂

  • Sheryl says:

    Nehemia, they blame the Jews and not the Romans because some of the Jews of that time handed over Jesus to the Romans according to NT.

    • UKJ says:

      The word Jew may not be an appropriate description of what you are trying to say.

      However…

      The high priests/hood in the time of Yeshua must have feared for their position, hence their hatred for him….

      if anybody knew, then “they” would have known who Yeshua was, as they had the knowledge of the genealogy of people and they knew that he was the legitimate and rightful king through his parents.(King Herod in times before knew too , why else would he have wanted to kill the children, those after king Herod , the Herodians must also have had knowledge of it, Yeshua himself warned of them)

      Most of the Jewish people loved Yeshua and great multitudes followed him ..

  • Jan says:

    No one had/has authority to change the instructions for Passover or Unleavened Bread from Leviticus, Exodus and as observed by Jewish Jesus and His Jewish Followers. There is no good friday and resurrection Sun god day. You cannot get 3 days and 3 nights in the grave from Fri to Sun. Must use the biblical defintion for begining of a day erev to end of next day erev. No such thing as a Christian Passover, as defined by the bible, do not add to or subtract from the Hebrew instructions, they are eternal for all your generations.
    Easter is from pagan fertility goddess Israr, which was accepted in Roman pantheon, where Istar rolled eggs in blood, and rabbits connected with fertility. Do not study what the nations do, to do what they do. You shall have no other gods or goddess before me, especiallly not Istar/Easter.

  • Michael Baran says:

    There is really no difference between the synoptic Gospels and John. The main problem with Matthew’s gospel is the translation of the Greek “protos” which with a genetive does not mean “first” but should be understood as “before” as is the case in the correct translations given in John 1:15, 30; 15:18. The problem with Matthew is translation and not any calendrical or any other issues. Mark and Luke present somewhat different problems to Matthew but these can be easily reconciled with John. It seems that Christian translators were careless with their translations probably because they did not and still do not value the Holy Days of Lev 23 in the way that they should. Jesus did not eat a Passover meal with his disciples at his last supper at the end of the 13th day of Aviv if only because he was the passover lamb who died the next day on the 14th day of Aviv.

    • Jason Ostler says:

      Thank you for sharing. Love it!

    • VictoriaRose says:

      Good point. I am not a Greek scholar, but it does appear from Biblehub resource that the meaning of Greek “protos” does include “before”. I looked in Hebrew Matthew, the word used there is “הראשין” a variation of “רֵאשִׁית” rasheet = beginning. It is part of the first word of the Hebrew Bible – “בְּרֵאשִׁית.” I am not an expert in Hebrew, so Nehemia you will have to help here, but it appears from the context, that “b’rasheet” could also have the meaning of “before it all began” (“Before it all began, ….the earth was void and darkness…” vs. “on the first day”). If this is true, could it be that Matthew was saying, “before the feast of Passover began, the deciples came to Yeshua to ask where he wanted the feast prepared. It would make more sense for them to ask ahead of time vs at the last minute.

      Nehemia, would this be a possible meaning of the word “רֵאשִׁית” (and the Greek “prote” of Matthew 26:17) and a possible solution to the issue?

      Thank you.

  • P'alex Dillon says:

    As always breathtaking, perplexing. Of course I had to listen to both parts about five times with many rewinds.

    So, I believe the are powers that be that have always found cause to separate Jewish people from Christian people so that neither can realize the gifts they have for each other.

    I have received so much revelation from your teaching that I can now see through ignorance to a greater realization of truth, and that without hating the ignorant institutionalization and stifling tradition binding of the people.

    I have come to appreciate truth and hope to recognize it on all fronts as I look to both camps, Jewish and Christian, and peel back the pages of history to uncover it.

    Thank you, once again, Nehemiah.

    Also, per both lessons,I have a roadmap of practices to memorialize the Passover and the crucifixion all over my calendar.

    Seeking Eliyahu,
    P’alex.

  • Josh and Emily Brown says:

    Link to “On the Passover” presumed by Melito of Sardis.

    http://www.kerux.com/doc/0401A1.asp

  • Alexander Kuvshinov says:

    Shalom Nehemia, I know it sounds like accusations for the Jews. Roman occupation was a perfect death machine for those thrown in. Yeshua was betrayed by a friend for money from the Jewish Prists at a time. Accused for talking to destroy Jerusalem Temple, given to Romans and pushed in until executed. Even though performed by Romans he became Jewish sacrifice by the Prists and Jewish National rulers at the time. If Israel extradited prime minister to Iran for accusation of a bribe to cut his hand who do you think could be blamed? But Yeshua knew and prophesied that it was a plan from the beginning of time and for a reason. God bless you, thank you for sharing.

  • Elizabeth says:

    Melito is thought to be the immediate successor of the “angel” (or “apostle”) of the church of Sardis in Rev 3. He says the Jews lie dead and the Torah is depleted. It is to this church that Yeshua said, ‘I know your works. You have the reputation of being alive, but YOU ARE DEAD. Wake up, and strengthen what remains and is about to die, for I have not found your works complete in the sight of my God.’

    • Daniel Monroe says:

      Good connection, Elizabeth! I wonder what the evidences are, even the anectodal evidence.

    • Mark Dunn says:

      Revelation 3:1-6 KJVS
      [1] And unto the angel of the church in Sardis write; These things saith he that hath the seven Spirits of God, and the seven stars; I know thy works, that thou hast a name that thou livest, and art dead. [2] Be watchful, and strengthen the things which remain, that are ready to die: for I have not found thy works perfect before God. [3] Remember therefore how thou hast received and heard, and hold fast, and repent. If therefore thou shalt not watch, I will come on thee as a thief, and thou shalt not know what hour I will come upon thee. [4] Thou hast a few names even in Sardis which have not defiled their garments; and they shall walk with me in white: for they are worthy. [5] He that overcometh, the same shall be clothed in white raiment; and I will not blot out his name out of the book of life, but I will confess his name before my Father, and before his angels. [6] He that hath an ear, let him hear what the Spirit saith unto the churches.

  • Elizabeth says:

    St Patrick and the early Celtic church were quartodecimans and Torah keepers until the catholic church decided to make them into good catholics about 500 years later!

  • Lori Young says:

    I can hardly express my appreciation for coming accross this web site. Knowing the Lord, as it is said, for 30 years, finding my jewish roots as an African American following this movement than that movement I’m astounded at how much i am lacking. Thanks to a reply from this site ” Read your Bible” my life has taken a vast about face. Thank you for sharing what some believers dont know because we are spoon fed instead of taking responsibility for ” study(ing) to show yourself approved”. No offense to others, i am speaking for myself and of my experience.

  • Kristi Rawlins says:

    Interesting, Michael Rood in Chronological Gospels doesn’t see a conflict between John and other gospel accounts. He views other accounts as a just a normal evening meal on the 13th, then Yeshua killed on the 14th.

    • UKJ says:

      Interestingly enough, I too understand it that way , one of the reasons , Yeshua’s disciples didn’t even understand what he has been trying to tell them, as they were distressed at his death. To remember also , these people have been Torah keeping people, including keeping the feast days in its correct fashion..

    • Laurie Giesler says:

      Agreed. His students would have been with their families.

      • Kim says:

        Oooh another good clue, I missed so much in reading the gospels before learning to look at the context. This is such an exciting time, having the eyes of my/our hearts opened

  • Simon says:

    Nehemia,, is it possible that yeshua is the FINAL attonment sacrifice for the sins of mankind .

  • Margaret East says:

    Dear Nehemiah, Thank you for your excellent work helping Christians to understand the Jewish roots of Yashuah Ha Messiach! I hope all Christians will love the Jewish people as I do.
    The Jewish people are not dead to YHWH. When Yeshuah returns, all Jewish people will be given the chance to see he is Ha Meshiach. Your good works are appreciated by YHWH. Even Yeshuah said “even those who speak against me can still be saved, but those who offend the Ruach Ha Kodesh will suffer the second death.”
    Yeshuah said, in Mathew, that “I would not change one mark or dot in the Torah, I came to fulfill it.” He preached the 10 commandments. He said “This above all: Love YHWH with all your heart, all your mind and all your might; and love your neighbor as yourself.”
    My question is: Since Yeshuah was a devout Jew, who observed Shabbat and the High Holy Days, does this mean Christians should do also?
    Shalom, Margaret East

    • Margaret East says:

      Oops! Yeshuah said Love YHWH with all your SOUL, all your heart, all your mind.” I confused might with soul.

  • Shawn Ozbun says:

    If I may add a thought. From a Christian perspective, I think we are all to blame. Both Jew and Gentile. For it is our sin that put Messiah on the cross.

    • Anonymous says:

      Amen!…starting with sin in the Garden. And even then, His death was the plan from the beginning:

      “No one takes My life from Me, but I lay it down of Myself. I have authority to lay it down, and I have authority to receive it again. This command I have received from My Father” (Joh 10:18).

      “…knowing that you were redeemed from your futile behaviour inherited from your fathers, not with what is corruptible, silver or gold, but with the precious blood of Messiah, as of a lamb unblemished and spotless, foreknown, indeed, before the foundation of the world…” (1 Pet 1:18-20).