Rome and the East
The Trial Narratives
As already suggested, the trial narratives occupy a central place in the struc-
ture of all four Gospels. Both in scale and in coherence they have to be taken
as representing a significant aspect of what the Gospels, conceived of as nar-
ratives, are. It is also quite possible, though it cannot be proved, that they
represent the earliest narrative sections to come into existence; on this hy-
pothesis the Gospels, as biographical narratives, will have grown backwards.
It is noticeable, as we have seen, that only two of them stretch back to Jesus’
birth, both in unconvincing ways, though Luke much more unconvincingly
than Matthew.
As is well known, the trial narratives also present profound and irrecon-
cilable differences, Mark/Matthew from Luke and, much more profoundly,
all three Synoptics from John. The differences centre both on the timing of
the Last Supper and the crucifixion, and, in ways which need more emphasis
than they have received, on thesignificanceof Passover as a factor which de-
termines how the events unfold. In the Synoptics the Last Supper is a paschal
meal eaten on the first night of Passover, the examinations of Jesus take place
during that night and in the following morning, and the crucifixion follows
on the first day of the festival. In John all this happens one day earlier, and
the beginning of Passover, on the evening of the day of the crucifixion, is
still expected.
Not all the features of the celebration of Passover as it was in the first cen-
tury.., while the Temple still stood, need to be considered here; and many
aspects in any case remain somewhat obscure.^9 But certain points are crucial.
First, Josephus makes clear that the people would begin to assemble some
six days before the festival, on the th of Nisan (BJ, ); we have already
seen this reflected in John’s narrative when ‘‘many went up to Jerusalem from
the country before thePascha, so that they might purify themselves’’ (:).
Just after this a precise date is given: six days before thePaschaJesus goes to
Bethany (:).
Passover proper began on the evening of th Nisan, though it seems clear
that to accommodate the enormous number of private sacrifices now offered
by the people in groups, the long sequence of sacrifices had in fact moved
back into the afternoon of that day, long before sunset.^10 Indeed the festi-
. I rely on the very interesting, if not always entirely clear or conclusive, discussion by
J. B. Segal,The Hebrew Passover from the Earliest Times to..().
. For the conduct of the sacrifices in daylight, during the afternoon of th Nisan,
see Segal (n. ), , usingJub. . For the process of sacrificing in groups, amounting to