294 NOTES. 



preparation of the Sabbath'' — Mark xv. 42 ; Luhe xxiii. 54 ; 

 John xix. 31)j Sunday would of course be the day of the 

 " wave-sheaf But while this construction would gratify my 

 friendj and while, moreover, it would present the happy cir- 

 cumstance of making the great Christian Offering strictly 

 coincident in point of time with its archetype, the paschal sacri- 

 fice, it is attended with the insurmountable difficulty (besides 

 being explicitly contradicted by all the other evangelists) that 

 Jesus could not have partaken of the passover ! And it was 

 impossible for him, as a Jew, to have kept the passover on any 

 other day than that appointed by the law.* 



On the other hand, clear and conclusive as is the concurrent 

 testimony of Matthew (xxvi. 17), Mark (xiv. 12), and Luke 

 (xxii. 7), against the Sunday interpreters, candor requires me 

 to notice that these texts, in the judgment of the learned, 

 likewise labor under two remarkable difficulties. In the first 

 place, by a peculiarity of the Hebrew calendar, the Ist, and 

 consequently the 15th of Ahib^ never falls on Friday; the 

 object of which arrangement is to prevent the annual ''day of 

 atonement" {Levit. xxiii. 27) falling contiguous to the weekly 

 Sabbath, since it would be impossible (in reference to food, &c.) 

 to observe two successive days of ahsolute "rest" with the 

 strictness required by the law. {Exod. xvi. 23; xxxv. 3.) 

 All the other Jewish holy days were simple '' sabbaths," ex- 

 acting no rigid observance, and yielding to lighter emergencies. 

 But " the tenth day of the seventh month," like " the seventh 



'^ HoRXE, in Lis " Introduciion to the Holy Scripiures,''^ tliinks it "not 

 improbable that some clifference or mistake might arise in determining 

 the new-mooni" and that " such a discordance might easily arise be- 

 tween the rival and hostile sects of Pharisees and Sadducees ; and such 

 a difference, it has been conjectured, did exist at the time Jesus Christ 

 celebrated the passover with his disciples, one whole day before the 

 Pharisees offered their paschal sacrifice!" [Iniroduc. vol. iii. part iii. 

 ch. 4.) We have the unfortunate dilemma that Jesus eithcr kept the 

 right day or the xvrong one. "He that is able to receive it, let him 

 receive it!'" 



